Kathryn’s Voyage Blog

Publish Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Coordinates:   38° 46.31′ N   076° 33.86′ W

We started home school last week. Holy moley….

All of us were thrilled to begin homeschooling:

• we could finally pick our schedule (start after Labor Day and end before Memorial Day)
• go on lots of field trips
• lessons should take between 4 to 6 hours, and no home work, etc.

We enjoyed all our same back-to-school rituals: new first day of school outfit, new school supplies, special breakfast; first day of school photo etc. The first class was math and it went great (Dave is a wonderful teacher).  The morning went down hill after that: history was boring, spelling juvenile, grammar beyond boring…well you get the picture.  By noon Ayla and I were spent, and there was still 2 to 3 more hours to do. It was obvious we had a disaster-in-the-making on our hands.

Ayla loves school.  We have always appreciated her teachers — their creativity and tireless dedication to their students.  But after only 4 hours of home schooling, my esteem for them rose by an order of magnitude.  Ayla and I called a halt to that day’s lessons, and revamped the program.  We developed a school year theme based on the comic strip Sherman’s Lagoon.  We eliminated certain lessons and added others.

We now have school for between 4 and 5 hours each day, which leaves us most of the afternoon to go on field trips (~3 times a week).  We’ve been to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, visited sights along the Washington Mall and went to New York for a visit to The Met, Statute of Liberty, Ellis Island, and to see Auntie Mo. We are off and running, but there are still a few bumps to be worked out.

I stand in awe of our teachers who take these basic curriculum’s and develop fun and inspiring lessons for +25 different learner’s in their class.  I will try and apply what I have seen them do over the years to my one student who already loves to learn.  I hope I don’t mess this up.