I never thought I’d be home schooling Leilani, but after 7 weeks at Island School I felt I had no choice. Unlike the teacher she had the last 2 months of the previous year Mrs Cristy was an excellent teacher, fair and attentive and definitely took her job seriously but… I felt Leilani was missing out on her childhood. 7 hours in school a day, plus about an hour’s worth of homework, add to that the getting ready and driving to and from school, for someone who sleeps close to 12 hours that leaves less than 2 hours for playing, bathing, dinner and bedtime routine. Leilani liked a lot about school, but by Thursday or Friday she was exhausted enough that we let her stay home. If we didn’t she had the school office call us to pick her up as she lay there “sick”.
Leilani had started to complain her skirts were too long and rolled them up at the waist to make them as short as dress code allowed it. Justin Bieber was big. If she sang it was “Baby, Baby, Baby…” and “Dynamite” in very inappropriate imitations of her stars. She did not go as far as her classmates who tried to ban their moms from attending the field trip as the moms would be “embarrassing”… I know eventually she will turn into a teen, but 6 seems a bit early for that. Now after 6 weeks away from school she has forgotten most of that stuff, and happily listens to the Wiggles and Austrian kids music again.
Another really big thing for me, I was not allowed in the classroom, they told me they didn’t want volunteers, although other moms (the classroom mom and her assistant…) were obviously more welcome.
It was a bit scary to make the decision to take her out, but now we are really glad about it. We were thinking about a home school study group, but after paying Island school about $7000 tuition for these 7 weeks (read the fine print when you sign up for tuition insurance…) it’s either public, charter or home school. Leilani really likes the idea of home schooling.
It is sometimes a bit difficult. I’m not very good at schedules, and as a teacher I am supposed to be a lot stricter than as a mom, and I’m not too good at that either. But Leilani is a great student and most the time it’s good. Some days all she wants to do is read, but we had days when she did 15 or more math sheets. In the beginning I fretted about that but now I think it evens out, just like sometimes she eats a lot and sometimes she doesn’t… We try to have 4 schooldays a week, 3-4 hours learning plus PE, cooking and art. We’ll try to add music to that soon, and make the PE a bit more organized and fun. I wish I had space for a garden. That would be another project. Everything here is so shady, and most of what I planted is not doing so well… frustrating enough for me, not good for sharing.
Leilani has great interest in surprising subjects (combustion engine, evolution, weather…) and I think it’s a lot better than re-doing the life-cycle of the butterfly or frog for the 4th time. And since she already knows more dinosaur names than I do, I now torture her a bit by making her memorize the layers of the atmosphere and such (Troposphere, Stratosphere, Mesosphere, Thermosphere and Exosphere in case you did not know…). Best of all, she reads about half of her science and history material herself.
Socially we do a lot. One potluck a week, one Art afternoon at our house and shortly one afternoon at a home schooling friend’s house makes for 3 multi-kid play dates and learning fun.
