school at home for Harvey
I am starting to dip my toe in the waters of homeschooling, to see if it's something that might be possible in the future given the presence of a one-year-old. Or a younger year-old, I don't know... I'm very ambivalent about both kindergarten and baby next.
I have my moments when I shout "I can NOT do this!" whether it's about homeschooling or knitting or simply putting food in my mouth while the 23lb baby tries to remove my dermis with his fingernails. Then there are better days, when I get more than an hour of sleep at a stretch and I wake up early and cut out an entire story's worth of flannel board figures.
The snake is a rather droopy after Zion chewed it up this morning. May you always deal so shrewdly with the enemy, Zibra.
This is the Adam and Eve story, and Harvey has liked it much better than creation which, er, didn't have as many talking characters. We've done Adam and Eve each day this week and I'm gonna try to milk it until I decide whether a weird lesson about brother's keepers is better than cutting out gillions pairs of animals. I hate making animals. Noah's ark is the hardest story for crafters, why does it come so early in Genesis?
Anyway, Harvey seems to be getting something from the felt board stories. Yesterday we had the following interaction:
Me: "And God made clothing of skins for Adam and Eve so that they could keep warm."
Harvey pointing to the elephants: "Maybe he took the skins from those animals!"
Me: "Yes! Very good Harvey! You're so smart to know that skins come from animals. Do you think God killed them to get their skins?"
Harvey" "Yes." (and suddenly getting concerned) "And then Jesus made them new."
Harvey's also been getting into craft projects during Zion's rest time. We've been working on weaving because knitting is too complicated for a three year old, even if he does ask every day, "Can I make a sweater for school at home?"
the tongue sticking out is hereditary
He's quite good at weaving, but he only wants to do a few lines before he decides the whole loom is a guitar.
He also asks to sew near constantly, so we brought up my old sewing machine from the basement and (with 100% constant supervision and also a little of mama tugging the fabric in the right direction) Harvey sewed a pillow all by himself!
he chose black for the heart because he's already punk
Thrown in at other random times I've been doing two-minute teachings on letters or numbers or whatever I feel like talking about. I figure if we do about an hour a day of teaching year round then that's all we'll really have to do until the snake-eaters are ready for instruction too. The other part of preschool Harvey is missing is socialization, but he seems to get on like gangbusters with other children. Regular playdates should ease my conscience on that front. And I'll be glad he's missing the other parts of school: bullying, disney brand indoctrination, and the crushing abuse of adult authority. That I won't try to recreate at home. I mean, any more than I already do.