School at home

We took Ethan out of his Lutheran Kindergarten soon after moving here. It's a half-hour drive from our new house and taking two hours out of each morning to transport him to a half day of Kindergarten seemed a little silly. We had not planned to send him next year anyway because tuition increases quite a bit with the full day program. So with a few tears (on my part) we said our goodbyes. I'm very glad to be where we are right now but it is always hard to start over again.

Rather than plop Ethan into a new classroom for the last few weeks of the school year, we've decided to just keep him home and work on letters and important concepts together. He is at an age where he really wants to learn and enjoys reading and writing which makes the whole thing much more appealing.

I won't go in to all my own conflicting feelings about homeschooling. I have the greatest respect for those who do it and do it well. I was homeschooled myself for a couple years so I do not speak from total ignorance. When I took Ethan along to Wal-mart this morning I was suddenly reminded of one unpleasant home school experience.

Walking into the store with Ethan, it struck me that there were no other kids around. Uh, yeah, they're in school. That's when I remembered with a sudden sick feeling my awkward, self-conscious, homeschooled sixth-grade self sitting in the waiting room of a doctor's office. It happened to be between the magic hours of 8am-3pm. I sat waiting for my mother, while an ignorant, indignant woman sitting across from me glared down her pinched nose and questioned me about my apparent truancy and the legality of being schooled at home.

Ethan and I encountered no such nosy knuckleheads on our morning excursions. I was surprised actually at how educational and fun such an ordinary event turned out to be. Ethan was interested in reading street signs and signs all through the store. He learned what "Ped Xing" means, he worked at sounding out groceries on my list so he could pick them out himself.













So far we've been pretty informal about the whole thing but we did get to make a little "science project" of sorts today. I picked out the jar for a terrarium at Ikea probably a year or so ago, inspired by all the info and photos online.

Even Drew got into the action and both boys seemed proud of the finished product.