Book of Days

This made me smile yesterday after a “stumble”…

I also thought of heading this post with the title “You’d think I’d know how to do this by now!”

This is our 10th year of homeschooling. My two older children each homeschooled a portion of their high school years, the next child homeschooled for grades 3 thru 6 and Joshua has homeschooled since birth :) Some would say this makes me a “veteran”. A veteran at what I am not really sure though. Yes I have had years now of experiences, good ones and not so good ones. I had to smile and nod in agreement as I read Jennifer’s recent post Breakfast of Planners because even as a veteran I have been there, done that!

This year I got a little cocky as I skipped this step. I have learned that Josh needs some structure to his studies or he gets very unsettled with total freedom but does not need/like the rigid structure of the typical school day. The game plan worked fairly well last year so I decided to just “keep on” with just a few minor changes. Good so far. See I have learned a few lessons :) And then!!….

There are times, especially as Joshua gets older, that I feel an urgent need for “written evidence” of his learning, forgetting that this last child of mine has “issues” with just how much/and what type of evidence is required. (It seems I’m not the only mom grappling with this. Check out these posts on the subject here , here, and here.) Through the years I generally have learned to trust my own instincts and we have worked out a good balance most times but then suddenly “panic” will rear it’s ugly head (especially as my senior daughter brings home syllabuses and workloads for AP classes that  leave our trail of “evidence” of learning in the dust, so to speak). But this last child also sometimes “scares me to no end” as he is so advanced academically in some areas. I start to fret that somehow I am not going to give him/challenge him to the level that he needs/deserves ….so all of a sudden … I begin to…”stumble”… search on line for questions/plans etc from others that have to be more “intelligent, better prepared than mine”. 

Hence our “stumble”… in the subject area of History, Josh’s favorite and his passion! I picked a book to use as a spine, which was recommended by others, without delving into it to make sure it was a “fit” for us and required him to start reading. I read too. As I read I got slightly uncomfortable. I didn’t appreciate the author’s bias… a little too radical for me. But…. still…. I went online and got someone else’s questions to use on this reading and gave them to Joshua to answer. Well…MELTDOWN! He felt the same way I did. In fact even stronger! He hates the book, thought the questions were stupid (”Goodness mom, I wondered what had happened as your questions etc are usually pretty interesting and MAKE sense!”) 

Ahhhhh. Lesson learned, again!  We decided to look together for a book to cover a new specific topic and mom will once again trust herself and said son.

And the picture at the top… Josh went looking in our home library books on the new topic and commenced “learning” on his own. I should have known. After all, this is what he does.