“School’s” Back in Session
We start school tomorrow in my house. This is my favorite time of the school year! the beginning. I get all excited gathering materials (especially art materials–I love new paints, markers, pencils, crisp white paper). The anticipation of the school year really gets me gitty. I have all the school books neatly stacked with the spines still stiff and new schedules posted on the fridge. I think about all we are going to learn, all the neat field trips we will take, my darlings sitting around the table filling their minds with great things. (Hey, a Mom can dream.) Ahhh! I take a moment to enjoy it…….
Because I know in about 4 days it will be all out the window–pencils broken, marker set down to three, can’t find the scissors, can’t find my math book, I really hate this writing course, this schedule is not working for me, do I really have to read this? And we will settle down into something more realistic. But it’s all good. It rarely goes the way I plan it but my kids always end up learning and have a great time.
This year we will be taking a trip up the east coast to visit Williamsburg, Washington DC, Gettysburg, Philadelphia, Lancaster CO., and NYC. I have been planning this trip for two years to coincide with our study of early American history. I remember taking this trip myself when I was a kid and really enjoying it. What a great opportunity we homeschoolers have to experience history this way. It’s not just about text books, but really seeing where it all happened. I am especially looking forward to the reenactments at Williamsburg.
We just finished our last science co-op class today! That has been great fun. Our group dwindled a bit from about 12 families down to 6 core families. The smaller group has been much better. (I highly recommend it.) Today we ended with making the Plant Parts Salad and had a pizza and pool party to celebrate.
With Pandia Press, I am still hard at work formatting Chemistry (1) and writing Modern Times (2). With MT2 I have recently spent weeks trying to write a series of lessons about socialism, communism, fascism, and Animal Farm. OMG - try doing an internet search for socialism or communism. It’s really difficult to find straightforward, unbiased, history information. You end up getting sites like Marxist teens, communists unite, score with the socialists.(OK, I made all of those up, but it was something like that.) Wow! I didn’t realize how many groups out there actually think Karl Marx and Lenin had a good idea that could work here in America. I guess they have never heard of Stalin or China. So now you know how I feel about it, I’m a Capitalist girl. But I try very hard not to let that show in the course. I actually think communism is a good idea on very small scale. I mean, I would love to live with a group of families, sharing resources, community garden, watching my kids for me, sharing chores, everybody equal, sharing property rights, nobody getting ahead . . . wait, how would that work? Maybe it’s not a good idea AT ALL.
I’ll let you all know how our first few weeks of school, our trip, and the communists turn out.
Kathleen
