Warm winter light and time to play at the playground. We have been pottering through this winter, a little homeschool in the mornings, lazy afternoons. We use a reading programme and I do a little maths and spelling with her (on a small and informal scale) but most of the rest is just letting the kid follow her heart and her interests. Currently that means spending a lot of time on her monkey bars, playing with her dolls and play dates with friends. She has a writing (and read aloud) group fortnightly which includes a extended playtime afterwards for all the children.
Lazy play where the kids run barefoot or gumbooted round gardens, bounce on trampolines. Carry the muddled heads of snowmen about or chalk up a concrete patio. It is interesting watching kids who are broadly unscheduled; play. There is a relaxation, a lack of urgency to what they do. Its a delight and a lesson.
She loves to bike and hike so we often find ourselves peddling to playgrounds or the woods. Or a afternoon in the hills if the weather is nice. She voraciously follows her own extra curricular interests, dancing and gymnastics four days a week at the moment. Rather more than I had hoped for but she was quite determined not to drop anything before the end of the year. The promise of a looming stage performance just to great.
They are so good at keeping busy and learning very naturally at that age, it probably feels very alien to both of you that she could actually be at school instead.
its amazing how much information they can absorb – and how motivated by their own accomplishments they become. We do offer the school option but shes adamant shes waiting until shes 8 haha
i always envy those countries with so many activities for homeschooled kids… here we just have a homeschooling kids’ group and it isn’t good at all, i mean, we don’t empathize with the kind of people homeschooling, like children way too dirty (those tooooooo nature families) or snob families. hard, hard.
wendie’s going to dance and gym too, just it’s once a week for each activity, but let’s see if she likes it!
Oh how exciting! I bet she will love it. I think that a lot of the homeschool activities tend to be created and run by parents. Its taken quite a long time to connect with like minded people. It can be discouraging as its a slow process but when you find the right people for you its wonderful!