Talking about Easter

So, today we started talking about Easter with Mane, using Resurrection Eggs:


They're these totally cheesy plastic eggs with equally cheesy little plastic figures inside that symbolize different parts of the Easter story. In all honesty, I could have made nicer ones myself, but I got the "real" set from Savers for $0.99. I couldn't pass it up when I saw it this summer, and I'm determined to push through the unappealing aesthetics in order to have a concrete, tactile tool for talking about Easter with Mane.

I described Mane this morning to Mango as a "theological child." She talks to me about God in these random moments. Once, I was cutting out paper dolls for her, and we were listening to Sara Groves. Mane told me that she knows the things I tell her about God are true because when she hears them she knows in her heart that they're true. I talked to her about how God made us so that even if nobody ever tells us about God, we can know God. That's part of the wonder and the mystery. And sometimes I think it's easier to know God if nobody ever tells us about God. It muddies the waters less. Maybe that's why I enjoy these theological talks with Mane. She seems to see so much more clearly sometimes.

So, this week, we'll follow the Passion Story (isn't it interesting that we call it that?) using our thoroughly American and 21st century Resurrection Eggs...because Mane is also my "kinesthetic child." Today we read the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. We read it from several different books: The Children's Illustrated Bible, Jesus: The Friend of Children, and The Easter Story. When one book referenced Jesus healing a lame man, we went back and read the story of the man who was lowered through the roof of a house by his friends. Jesus forgave his sins and healed him, and, though he had been paralyzed, he walked home healthy and strong. We also learned that kings would ride on donkeys in times of peace. They rode on horses in wartime. So, Jesus came into Jerusalem as a king of peace. The Bible is so rich with symbolism that I still find myself amazed, after all these years of studying.

Tonight we may open another egg, as there are 12 eggs and only 7 days until Easter. Tomorrow we will read Miriam's Cup in honor of the beginning of Passover. We have been reading Mrs. Katz and Tush for homeschool, which includes a beautiful explanation of Passover. And sometime this week we'll read The Tale of Three Trees.

I hoping this will develop into a tradition as rich as Advent has become for us. It's always hard the first time around. I always have to jump into these new traditions, and I feel unprepared no matter how prepared I am. Isn't that true of most new things in life?

Shalom.

Earth Hour 2009

This post is cross-posted at Peregrin House, the homeschooling blog...



Saturday night we participated in Earth Hour. We turned off the lights from 8:30-9:30pm and sat around the kitchen table telling stories with grandma & grandpa, who live upstairs. Mango set a recorder on the table, and now we have some fabulous recordings of grandma and grandpa telling stories. Mane was enchanted by the candles and by the quiet, warm atmosphere. It really was beautiful and made us want to have Earth Hour every night.

However, on Sunday morning we spent some time researching the carbon emissions of candles or oil lanterns versus electric light bulbs, and we found that even a single candle may give off more carbon than a 60 watt light bulb. Mango says we need to stick with using candles only occasionally for ambiance. They're not a better environmental alternative. What *is* a better alternative is turning off lights whenever we don't need them, unplugging cell phone chargers when they're not in use, turning off the computer when we're not using it, turning off the receiver amp when we aren't listening to music, and using the city bus and our bicycles more.

Mane spent some time on the Earth Hour Kids website, and then we watched a NOVA movie on global warming and more energy efficient choices. We heard all about electric cars, solar panels, wind farms, and reforestation. The options are all so expensive right now, and, with kids, we have to focus on the things that are within our reach. So, we're helping Mane remember things like turning off lights and reminding her that if we all work together, we can make a difference, which was a key message of Earth Hour.

We also spent some time reading about how a group called Engineers Without Borders is working on helping to replace oil lanterns in developing countries with solar powered LED lanterns. It's a good example of how technology can be used to reverse some of the negative effects that earlier technology created...and how environmental concerns interplay with world economics and poverty. Because people in developing countries are less likely to have electricity, they're more likely to use kerosene lanterns, and this contributes to health problems from soot and carbon monoxide, as well as the more global problem of greenhouse gases and global warming. The article we read even pointed out how reading is difficult with less light, making it harder for children to get an education, and, if they do read by the light of the kerosene lantern, they're more likely to get sick from the lantern emissions. It's strange how something as simple as lighting can have such a huge effect.

What struck me most about Earth Hour, though, was the number of places where lights seem to serve very little purpose, yet it was such a huge deal to turn them off Saturday night. Of special note was the Coca Cola billboard in New York. Do we really need to light up billboards at night? Isn't it enough to see them in the daylight? Also, several bridges, including the Golden Gate Bridge, turned off their "decorative" lights, leaving only the necessary lights to help people drive safely. What are we doing leaving all those lights on all the time anyway? The lights were turned off on the pyramids in Egypt, the Colosseum in Rome, and the Eiffel Tower. I can understand lights for security reasons, but the sheer volume of lights is questionable. It left me wondering how much we could "save" in terms of CO2 emissions if we all gave some hard and careful thoughts to which lights are really necessary.

We seem to honor things by lighting them all day and all night (the pyramids, for example, and the statue of the Virgin Mary in Rio de Janeiro), which raises a myriad of other questions for me. Why? Why do we do that? Do we think the pyramids know they're being honored with lights all night long? Why is it so disrespectful for them to sit in darkness? Perhaps they want to rest at night, too. I don't have such a hard time thinking about turning the lights off on the pyramids, but I cringe to think about turning them off on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. (I have no idea if the lights were turned off on monuments in D.C., by the way). Why is that? Why do a feel that it's disrespectful to turn out the lights on the list of names? It's not really. It doesn't dishonor the dead to let the names rest a while, especially when nobody is there and the people have left this life long ago.

Earth Hour gave us plenty to think about. I have at least three other blog posts floating around in my head, but this seemed the simplest to get down in type right now. If this is simple, I don't know how I'll ever get to the rest. ;) ...stay tuned...

Peregrin House has a Blog

You can read about the adventures of Peregrin House here: http://peregrinhouse.blogspot.com/. I decided that I need a place to keep track of homeschooling separately. Most days you'll find more written there than here, as the life and doings of Peregrin House are what consumes most of my days right now. Enjoy!

And, as a reminder, you can also find me (and some other smart & funny ladies) over at If Life is a Highway.

Peregrin House

Our homeschool has a name!

Peregrin House

Peregrin is a Latin word for "Pilgrim," and, of course, it is also the name of one of the hobbits in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is close to the Spanish word for pilgrim, perigrino, and it captures how we think of school as a journey, a pursuit of truth and knowledge.

I like the "homey" sound of "house," as opposed to "school" or "academy," or even "homeschool." I've always like the way the Montessori school refer to the Kindergarten House. It gives the feel of something small, eclectic, & real life, which is exactly what we are.

So, there you have it. Thanks for reading.

Homeschool Update 9/22

Not a lot to advertise about last week's homeschooling endeavors. We're not getting serious until October when soccer season is over. So, we're easing our way in slowly.

We flew through a couple more math lessons. Mane will take the test for chapter 12 today. We slogged through a couple more reading lessons. I don't remember what number we're on, but it's still somewhere in the 40's. We read Owl Moon by Jane Yolen, and the unit study adventures began! We talked about (and read about) the moon, owls, and famous naturalists (Henry David Thoreau & Rachel Carson). Mane wrote her own nature counting book and sat at the window in the sunroom/library observing & drawing nature pictures.

We watched and played a lot of soccer, played Swap at a coffee shop, went to the Walker library, and took a couple of long bus rides.

That's our week in a nutshell. Stay tuned for future updates.

Homeschool Check-In

First off, our homeschool needs a name. Then this can be something other than the "Homeschool" Check-In. For now, though, it's my intent to post the highlights of the past week in my blog sometime in the following week. We'll see if I can narrow it down to a particular day eventually.

So, last week Mane finished chapter 9 in her math book (Alpha by Math U See). I ordered the teaching DVDs to see what I've been missing up until now, and, after looking through Alpha, I think we'll be ordering Beta about halfway through the year. Mane LOVES math, and she could totally play games surrounding math concepts all day.

We began reviewing reading concepts after a pretty significant summer break. I KNOW I should have had her practicing all summer, but the truth is that reading is tough for her, and I took the summer to evaluate how I want to approach reading. I really, really don't want to turn it into a battle. I loved to read as a child, and I want so badly to pass that joy on the Mane. Mango struggled with reading, though, and it looks like Mane is following a similar pattern. Fortunately, she loves stories and could listen to reading for hours, with or without pictures.

I struggle, personally, with Mane's reading, though. It's something I want to work for her so badly, and it's probably the first thing where I've really had to recognize that she isn't going to just pick it up...like walking and talking and math. Heck, even potty training with easy with this kid. People tell stories about kids who just start reading on their own without formal teaching, and I imagined that it would be like this with Mane, but it hasn't been. It's funny the dreams we have that we have to release.

So, I picked up the book The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, which we borrowed from the library for much of last spring, and we'll be working and struggling and braving our way through it for the rest of this year. We did lessons 42 & 43 today. The plan is to go through 2-3 lessons a day (one or two review and one or two new).

We also listened to lesson one of Pimsleur Spanish AND both Beth Manners Spanish CDs that we have. I am determined to work on Spanish this year. Determined, I tell you. I go through horrible periods of guilt at having not begun speaking Spanish to Mane from the time she was born. I feel ridiculous about it, but it's something I've continued to drag my feet about for the last two years of home pre-schooling and kindergarten. This year I want to really tackle it. Perhaps this blog will hold me accountable.

We'll be "rowing" the Five in a Row book Owl Moon this week and next, learning about owls and the moon (obviously), along with some various other things that pop up along the way. If you've never read it before, it's a sweet, sweet story about a father and child going to watch for Owls at night in the snow.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

And if you have a name suggestion, please post!!

4/24/08

Today the three girls made yarn dolls, just as some of the pioneer girls made their own dolls because store bought dolls were expensive & not readily available. Then they looked at maps of the U.S. and traced the travels of the Ingalls family. We looked at a book with real photos of the Ingalls and their homes. It's so incredible that the Ingalls girls lived from the time of wagon trains to the time of airplanes. The times changed fast!

Other than that, the girls have had the tiny dollhouse items spread out all over the living room all day. Now they're playing in Mane's little tent in the dining room (since it's raining outside), and the play kitchen stuff is getting spread out all over my kitchen!

Lessons we're working on:
* asking for what you want, rather than complaining about it
* working things out without involving a grown-up all the time
* using "kind & loving" words with each other
* using "inside voices"
* using words to let people know that you've heard them

That's all folks!

Schooling & Socialization

It seems to me that everything gets blamed on home schooling if a child was home schooled, but nothing gets blamed on public schooling if a child went to public school. I mean, if people go to public school & end up in jail, nobody blames public school for their lack of proper socialization. And I don't think they should. The problem has a lot more to do with family & community than it does with school. In the same way, if a child is home educated, it hardly seems fair to blame all their "issues" on the fact that they didn't go to public school. It's entirely possible, though, that family & community bear some responsibility for those issues. For example, I knew many young women in my college who were home schooled prior to college. All of them seemed to have more "uniqueness" than the rest of us. I viewed that as a positive thing. They marched to the beat of their own drum & were less affected by social pressure. On the other hand, some of them were incredibly naive. This isn't the fault of home schooling any more than it would be the fault of public schooling if they had been to public school. It just means their parents didn't provide them with adequate information in some areas of life...typically sexuality, often political issues & societal concerns. People often think of this as the result of home schooling because it's harder to get out of public school without finding some things out. But, really, it's a parenting issue, not a schooling issue. And, honestly, I think it's disturbing that we expect public schools to fill in the gaps wherever parents fail. If we really think that kids who go to school are better socialized *because* they went to school we aren't taking enough responsibility as parents for the socialization of our children.

Learning Songs

In case anybody is interested OR in case anybody has more ideas for me, we've been using songs to learn things. As I already mentioned, Mane loves The Case of the Missing Part of Speech and all the accompanying songs. We also sing:

The Days of the Week ~ to the tune of "Where is Thumbkin" :

These are all the
Days of the Week
Sing With Me
Sing With Me

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
Saturday
A Day to Play



The Months of the Year ~ to the tune of "10 Little Indians" :

January,
February,
March and April,
May, June, July,
August
And September,
October,
November,
And December,
These are the months of the year.



The Seven Continents ~ to the tune of "He's Got the Whole World" :

He's got North & South America in His Hands,
He's got Europe, Asia, Africa in His Hands,
He's got Australia & Antarctica in His Hands,
He's got the whole world in His Hands.

It's That Time of Year Again!!

The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race begins TOMORROW, March 1st, 2008, and we'll be watching!! We've decided to follow Jessie Royer again this year along with an Iditarod rookie, Melissa Owens. Ms. Owens just turned 18 on February 18th, which means she'll be among the youngest mushers in the race this year. She won the Jr. Iditarod in 2005, when she was only 15 years old!

Also, of note are Blake and Jennifer Freking, a married couple from MN. Blake is a veteran of the race & Jennifer is a rookie. Jennifer is from Cambrdige, MN! AND Rohn Buser, another 18yr-old, will be competing with his dad, Martin Buser, this year. Rohn was the 2007 winner of the Jr. Iditarod.

Mane & I have printed out the map and begun collages of Jessie Royer and Melissa Owens. We've printed our tracking sheets, and we've watched some video clips. We're ready to watch & cheer!

If you'd like to join us in watching this amazing race, the link to the official Iditarod website is in my sidebar.

The Case of the Missing Part of Speech!!!!

I got this CD in the mail today!!!!!! I am SO excited. I did this as a play with my class in 4th grade, and I've known the parts of speech ever since. I was so excited to find that it's been reissued on CD recently because I wanted so badly to add it to my collection of homeschooling materials for Mane. She's in love with it and has listened to it twice today. Of course, I don't expect her to really understand parts of speech for a few years yet, but when we get there she'll already know the songs to remember them by.

The Case of the Missing Part of Speech can be found at sheetmusicplus.com - both the director's book & the CD.

The Ocean & the Arctic

I have totally hit the jackpot in the last few weeks with books to go along with our homeschool lessons. As you know, we've been centering our lessons around the book Very Last First Time, and my plan was to study the ocean & the Arctic. We found two very cool books on just those subject, complete with experiments, projects & activities. Here's my shameless plug for those two books:



Awesome Ocean Science taught us to make rain in a jar & how to show that saltwater is heavier than freshwater! We also practiced fractions talking about how much of the earth is saltwater & how much of the human body is freshwater.

and



Let's Go To the Arctic tells a story of an Inuit family, and comes with activities related to animals and their adaptations to the cold Arctic climate, the arctic food chain, and the rotation of the earth! It also comes with patterns for some very cute paper dolls, which Mane is coloring clothes for as I type!

Drawing With Children

Mane & I started using this book today. I'm looking forward to the adventure, though I've had little interest in drawing in the past. Mane loves to draws and is actually quite good at it, if you ask me. Mango, Vespera, AND Novio ALL also turn out some fantastic artwork. So, this is an adventure. We started lesson 1 today over some Good Earth tea with some classical music in the background. I know. I'm crazy. But, it's fun!

Very Last First Time

This week Mane and I are doing a unit study around the book, Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews, using our Five in a Row curriculum. For future reference, we refer to this as "rowing" a book. My guess is that we'll be on this one for two weeks - one week to study oceans & tidepools, another week to study the tundra & Inuit people.

Today we talked briefly about the tide. Did you know that in Northern Canada the ocean freezes on the top & people can walk around under the ice on the ocean floor when the tide goes out? That's what Very Last First Time is about. A little girl, Eva, goes out to gather mussels on the sea floor, and this is the first time she's gone alone. Of course, because it is the first time, there will never be another first time. Thus, the title: Very Last First Time.

Aside from "rowing," Mane & I worked on memorizing Luke 2:52, "And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and people." Just as Jesus was growing up, so Mane is growing up, and so Eva, in the story, was growing up.

And we cracked nuts with a nutcrackers, a LEVER, just as Eva used her shovel as a lever to pry the ice open.

We played Math War:



And, Mane practiced reading by taping words on index cards to objects all over the house!

It's been a busy day in the homeschool house. Hmmm...our homeschool needs a names. Thinking... Thinking...

Children's Book List 2007

These are the children's books we checked out from the library in 2007 in alphabetical order. I realized the other day that the list is not complete because I couldn't find the title of a book I know we checked out in March! Wish I could find that title... In any case, you can certainly see the themes we followed last year!

* A Fine, Fine School by Sharon Creech
* A Flag for Our Country by Eve Spencer
* A Picture Book of Amelia Earhart by David A. Adler
* Across the Alley by Rishard Michelson
* Amazing You by Gail Saltz
* And the Dish Ran Away with the Spoon by Janet Stevens
* Celebrate the 50 States by Loreen Leedy
* Chickens Aren't the Only Ones by Ruth Heller
* Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende & Harry Devlin
* Dolls Kids Can Make by Sheila McGraw
* Easter by Jan Pienkowski
* Fly, Bessie, Fly by Lynn Joseph
* Groundhog Stays Up Late by Margery Cuyler
* Happy 4th of July, Jenny Sweeney! by Leslie Kimmelman
* Happy Birthday, America! by Marsha Wilson Chall
* How Do Birds Find Their Way by Roma Gans
* How Nanita Learned to Make Flan by Campbell Geeslin
* How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman
* I am a Dolphin by Darlene R. Stille
* I Am Too Absolutely Small For School by Lauren Child
* I Lost My Tooth in Africa by Penda Diakite
* I Will Never, Not Ever Eat a Tomato by Lauren Child
* In Rosa's Mexico by Campell Geeslin
* Inch By Inch by David Mallet
* Madeline Says Merci by John Bemelmans Marciano
* Magic Tree House Research Guide: Pilgrims by Mary Pope Osborne & Natalie Pope Boyce
* Miriam's Cup by Fran Manushkin
* Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day of Kindergarten by Joseph Slate
* Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready For Kindergarten by Joseph Slate
* Miss Bindergarten Takes a Field Trip With Kindergarten by Joseph Slate
* Moses by Ann Keay Beneduce
* Musicians of the Sun by Gerald McDermott
* Night Driving by John Coy
* One Morning in Maine by Robert McCloskey
* Pablo's Tree by Pat Mora
* Rain Makes Applesauce by Julian Scheer
* Sleep, Black Bear, Sleep by Jane Yolen
* Snow by Manya Stojic
* Storm in the Night by Mary Stolz
* Story of a Dolphin by Katherine Orr
* Swimming With Dolphins by Lambert Davis
* That Pesky Rat by Lauren Child
* The First Christmas Stocking by Elizabeth Winthrop
* The Glorious Flight by Alice & Martin Provensen
* The Journey: Stories of Migration by Cynthia Rylant
* The Night the Moon Fell by Pat Mora
* The Patchwork Quilt by Valerie Flournoy
* The Rag Coat by Lauren Mills
* The Seasons and Someone by Virginia Kroll
* The Scrambled States of America by Laurie Keller
* The Tale of Rabbit and Coyote by Tony Johnston
* The Tooth Fairy by Peter Collington
* This is the Rain by Lola M. Schaefer
* This Way Home by Lisa Westberg Peters
* Tiny Tortilla by Arlene Williams
* Tooth Fairy's First Night by Anne Bowen
* Tulip Sees America by Cynthia Rylant
* When the Root Children Wake Up by Audrey Wood
* When Winter Comes by Nancy Van Laan

Simile & Onomatopoeia

Today Mane & I talked about simile & onomatopoeia. I know this is boring for everybody else out there, but I we're having fun.

So, here's the simile exercise we did today. Mane's words are in bold:
The slipper was as soft as a sheep's wool.
The car crash was as loud as fireworks.
The cranberry bog was lonely like a sad person.
The fire seemed cheerful like mom.
The hotel was as homey as our house.

And Mane's onomatopoeia list (those are words that describe sounds, for those of you who aren't in the know):
crash
clumpity
moo
meow
bump
waaaaa
quack
click-clack
ding-ding-ding

Words are so fun!

A Christmas Carol, Timelines, and Continents

That's my week in a nutshell.

Mane & I did a marathon reading of A Christmas Carol. It took 3 days, and then we went to the performance of it at the Guthrie Theater on Thursday night. We placed Dickens on our LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG timeline today. The timeline stretches from the far wall in the kitchen to the opposite wall in the living room, from 0-2007AD. On Sunday we begin Advent and our Jesse Tree. I want to do a timeline with the Jesse Tree stories, but I don't know how long it's going to have to be! Ay-yi-yi.

Anyway, since we were talking about Dickens, we also found England on the map, placed a picture of Dickens on the page about England in Mane's binder about countries, and ended up talking about continents...which led to a discussion of the equator, latitude and longitude, temperature, directions, and the major oceans. I'm exhausted. Oh, and I almost forgot, we touched on the concept of Pangea, all of the continents being connected at one point in the earth's history...because Mane observed how they seemed to fit together.

Mane has also been reading her way steadily through the Bob Books, and is learning to make sense of numbers.

Our whole family (Me, Mango, Mane, Vespera, Novio, Mango's parents, and Mango's brother and sister-in-law) went to Festival of Christmas at Bethel University on Wednesday night, too. This is definitely going to become a Christmas tradition. We went last year. It's nice that it's so early in the season. It gets us looking ahead and anticipating Christmas, and it gets all of us together for something relaxed and beautiful.

Tonight is "date night," meaning Mango & I hang around chaperoning Vespera & Novio.

How time does fly.

Homeschooling Supplies

So now I am a homeschooling mom, and I thought I'd share my two week's worth of wisdom on what supplies are truly indispensable for a successful homeschool. In no particular order:

* tape
* playing cards
* cardboard
* those little gem/jewel/rock thingys that are supposed to be used for home decor purposes but make excellent math manipulatives
* a library card
* high speed internet
* a printer
* index cards
* writing utensils and reams of paper
* did I mention tape already? ;)
* stuffed animals (for acting out stories, for use as math manipulatives, for reading buddies...)
* glue (though tape is preferred)
* scissors

That's it. If you have all that, you are way more than prepared.

Please don't forget the tape.

Apple Pie

I made my first ever apple pie yesterday, and I made it with Mane, and we made it gluten free!! AND everyone loved it. Some days are so satisfying.

Making the apple pie was the closing event for our week spent "rowing" How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World. We read the book every day and spent time studying fall harvest, geography (to find all the apple pie ingredients), photosynthesis, and math (story problems based on the book & the recipe). We also made pumpkin soup on Thursday, learned "Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater," and read Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper. We went to the Farmer's Market on Sunday and picked out some pumpkins in the pouring rain and ate corn on the cob.

Autumn is such an abundant time to practice homeschooling.

School

So, we've had a bumpy first few weeks of school. Mane has gone from excited to distressed and resigned and back again. We considered homeschooling all of last year...seriously considered it. And I'm still pretty much homeschooling, except that she's gone for a few hours every day. Now we're in the struggle of deciding whether to keep her in school or not. Because she's learning very little content. Though, Mango will tell you that learning process is just as important as learning content...and I believe him. But she also has the longest bus ride I've ever heard of on the way to school. And she doesn't like the bus driver on the way home. And the boys in her class push people.

She is learning to put everything away after taking it out. To wait her turn without interrupting. To take responsibility for herself when she has needs (like getting off the bus past kids who won't move). She is making friends, learning new games, and singing new songs. She has stories to tell from life on her own in the big, big world.

But I miss her. And I have so many things I want to do with her. And I want her to learn the things she's interested in learning. And I want her to do that without being so tired from school that she cannot possibly do/learn one more thing. I love the way that homeschooler talk about their homes and their families. I might really want to homeschool. And the bumps this year have given me a lot of pause.

Soooooo, this morning she said AGAIN that she didn't want to go. So, I said, "Ok, you could stay home. You don't have to go to school." Mane paused, considered, and said, "No, I really like school. I want to go to school." Later she said that school was too long, and that it's boring, but she still wants to go. What am I supposed to make of that?! Well, I supposed what I can make of that is that a 5yr old cannot be relied upon to make such a decision, and I still need to make it myself.

And so I sit and stew. I need to talk and talk and talk about it. I'm even bored of hearing myself talk about it. So, now I'm writing instead.

I know she needs friends. And I know that's the age-old question about homeschooling, and homeschoolers have lots of ready responses. I know all the responses. I've even used those responses in defending my potential decision to homeschool. But, the truth of the matter is that there's something unique about spending several hours a day with the same group of kids. Even if I arranged other social activities for her, I'm sure I couldn't find people who wanted to get together for a few hours a day a few times a week. That's what school is for, right?

And now I have to run because Mane needs attention. Probably more thoughts to come...though everything may have changed by the time I get back to this.