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| I've got a new blog. I feel like I only post here to worry over homeschooling and my kids. Time for a little more balance. The new blog will be more focused on crafting and home keeping and cooking and general life stuff- as well as homeschooling and my kids. I didn't have to go somewhere else to do it, but making a move feels like a new start and that seems to be what I'm craving right now. I know a lot of you keep your blogs friends only or have some reservations about having a lots of strangers visiting your blog, so leave me a comment and let me know if it's okay to link to you.
There's not much there right now, but come over and visit me In The Blue House.
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| Cold today! We even got a little snow! It was nice to sit in church and watch it snowing outside. Made me feel all peaceful and happy. Whenever I see snow like that I hear the soundtrack from A Charlie Brown Christmas in my head. I was feeling so good I went a volunteered for the church care committee. I'm on the list to call if someone needs a meal made and delivered. My Nana used to that at her church. Even when she was old and bent she'd drive out in that hard Wisconsin winter weather and take meals to the "shut-ins". She said that fewer and fewer people helped with that sort of thing over the years. Said the young people didn't have time for it. I'm not so young anymore, but I figure it's not too late to take her not so subtle hint to heart.
M.E.'s school announced one of their most beloved teachers- who currently teachers fourth grade- is going to move down and teach first grade next year. Last month another homeschooler/former Waldorfarian told me if this particular teacher was going to teach her daughter's grade level next year, she'd scrape up the money to send her back to Waldorf -and this was the only teacher for whom she'd do that. This week Bee and I talked and pretty much decided next year we'd homeschool M., and now they went and did this. Those dirty dogs! It has been nice to have the best of both worlds for the last two years, but it also means next year she's going to lose one. Waldorf seems like a lovely place to go and spend the day, bit it's expensive and I'm also not thrilled about the idea of my six year old child being away from home for over 7 hours a day! What the hell do they need to teach her that she needs to be there for that long? They do let them out at lunchtime on Thursdays.
I need to go clean. My house is a mess. My damn house is always a mess.
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| Sorry. I'm tired. M.E. has a cough (allergies, I think. Or a bug that consists of no fevers or aches- just a cough) that's kept us up the past couple nights. Also, Hot Sauce has a big, big science fair project due tomorrow and of course he didn't get started until this weekend. I promise I'm not doing it for him, but it's his first project like this so I have to give him a lot of direction and advice which is driving me crazy because he already knows everything in the universe so he refuses to listen until things don't work out right and then he's mad and wants my help. I've heard there's a problem nowadays with parents doing their kids homework which I though was funny. I totally understand it now. It would be a lot less work for me to just do this project myself! (btw- he's doing a report on solar cookers and if the one he and his dad made works, we're totally going to use it this summer. We don't have central air and cooking really heats up our house.) On top of all that, I seem to be getting pms every two weeks these past two months. It's no fun. I overreacted about the open house. Sorry about my little tantrum.
It would have been nice to stay for one more session though. Especially since it was about the sorts of classes the school offered. That might have gotten Hot Sauce excited. I read this Spring they're offering a course called Drum Culture. My little drummer boy might really like something like that. But I was probably just as disappointed that it wasn't what I expected. Lots of talk about striving for excellence! and raising the bar high! and 90% of our kids get into college! which turned me off. I know. I know. Those things are all supposed to be what you want in a good school, but all schools say that stuff and what does it even mean? As far as I'm concerned, if you only have 170 students which you pretty much got to handpick from a group of maybe not the best students in Richmond public schools, but at least good students who have never failed a class and who want to be there and those kids most likely all come from parents who have been planning on them going to college since their conception, well then 90% of them going to college isn't such a big deal. I wanted to hear about their cool, hippy-dippy alternative teaching methods and about the community projects in which all their kids seem to participate. I wanted to hear that their kids love being there. I wanted it to be less schooly. This is a very cool school where, unlike other schools, the kids are often out and about and a part of the community. I love that about it. But it seems like it doesn't matter how alternative an education a school might promise, it still smells like a school (and I do mean that literally as well as figuratively). I wanted it to be not like school at all- the way I heard it used to be. I think I just hate school so much that it's hard for me not to go into one without getting tense and defensive. Why am I so mad at my kid (and Bee) for not being more into this idea? Neither of them liked school either. Hot Sauce doesn't remember school as fun or interesting, so why should he think Open High would be any different?
He did like some things. He liked that they have an hour and fifteen minute lunch. He liked that you could walk fairly easily to the classes that aren't at the school (they have some classes at the nearby Y, the public library, the sort of nearby community college city campus) and that it is okay to leave school grounds (I, on the other hand, got a bit nervous when the teachers stressed that kids had to walk in groups of at least four in order to be safe around the city and even within the neighborhood which houses the school! Do I really want my kid running around unsafe neighborhoods? Richmond does have a very high crime and murder rate.)
I have to say that it felt weird listening to them talk about their school getting the kids out to be a part of their community and that large part of their school philosophy is that kids need to be the ones in charge of their own educations. As a homeschooler, I think it's ironic I want to send my son to school to give him those things. We could do that homeschooling. But we couldn't do it with a large group of kids and without his mother hanging around. You know what I mean? I guess the open house didn't really change my mind one way or the other. I still don't know what to do, so I'm going to let Hot Sauce decide.
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| We just got back from the Open High open house. Hot Sauce thought it was okay, but he wanted to leave early. Bee was bored, M.E. whined. I saw some people I used to know back when Hot Sauce was in school. I was hoping to talk to some of them at the reception- especially one who I used to hang out with some. Also to talk to a couple of the teachers I met at a solstice party and the very nice school counselor I met over the phone. But it wasn't worth forcing everyone else to stay. I was so disappointed I ended-up yelling at them all the way home. I told them about it two weeks ago, reminded then, made a bid deal out of it. I was so pissed at Bee. He's been to conferences and he knows it's pointless to just show-up. You need to meet people, help them remember you. He can make any little kid happy, but he didn't do a thing to get M.E. to stop her whining or help get Hot Sauce on board with staying until the reception. If Hot Sauce does apply it's going to be a lot of work getting him in there and it would have been helpful if somebody at the school remembered us. I think I'm going to give up on it. It's not the sort of school that has to take anyone who applies. They like to keep their classes small. I feel like this is just so typical of us. Like in the big open house of life we're always the one's skulking in late and ducking out the back early.
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