homeschooling

To kickstart my homeschooling program, today was all about construction toys. The objectives: creative thinking, finger dexterity, following instructions, learning to focus, all that jazz.

See, much as I’d like them to become a rock star or a heart surgeon, I need to prepare them in case they ever want to become a construction worker. I’m considerate like that.

My mom got them these wooden sets from Plan Toys for Christmas and we only just got around to playing with them today.

I made these by looking at pictures of the finished models. 15 minutes a pop.

We poured out all the parts onto the table and I was all like “Tru, can you build momma a sailboat”, hoping it would keep him occupied for at least a half hour. He fiddled with the parts for a minute then shoved it to me and said “mommy build”.

So that was that. Lesson over.

It turned out that I had a lot more fun building all these models than they did. My inner geek was rocking out to construction toys for 3-year-olds while they ditched me and went to harass my sister instead. It took me 15 minutes to complete one and I was showing it off to the kids like “see, momma made you a race car”. They looked at it for all of 5 seconds and said “I don’t like the car, mommy build airplane”.

Great, after 15 minutes and fingers like a claw, I have to take it apart and make something else, which they will look at for 5 seconds. It’s a good thing I actually enjoy making them.

Maybe tomorrow we’ll do something easier, like one of those doctor sets.

Homeschooling. I never thought I’d come to this bridge. I always figured the only people who did it were Amish or poor or a little weird. Ok, I did not just diss 3 groups of people at once, totally not my intention.

But the point being that I never saw myself as the homeschooling type. I mean, having spent 16 years going through our brilliant education system, I am most acquainted with its shortcomings like rigidity, lack of creativity and imposed clon-ish behavior. Even then, never once did I think of homeschooling as a better alternative. First of all, I would suck as an educator because I have the patience of a 2-year-old. Also, the thought of being cooped up at home with 2-4 kids doing math all day is not exactly my idea of fun.

Well anyway, if there’s a lesson motherhood has taught me, it’s that I usually end up doing the things I say I’ll never do.

In a nutshell, my plans to put the kids in school this year have stalled somewhat and I’m left to consider the option of homeschooling. Yay, me! At first, it was all about keeping them at home for a month while waiting for a confirmation from a preschool. Then a week in, I got to thinking that I could actually do this for an entire year, which was right about the time I started researching for curriculums and lesson plans.

It was also the time I started reading all these experiences on homeschooling by awesome moms like Ree Drummond, who made it sound interesting and fun and most importantly, doable.

To be honest, this world of flashcards and homemade crafts sounds pretty daunting to me. That’s on top of having to cook, feed, clean, play, sing, read, and do cartwheels. It would also mean that I have 24 hours with the kids every single day for the next 11 and a half months. Double yay, me!.

If I decide to go with it, I’ll have to force myself to quit stressing about the Montesorri/Shichida/Multiple Intelligence lesson plans and whatnots. Because on some level, I am that kind of competitive Chinese mother and I must remember that the point of this is not to make it the most unpleasant and stressful year for all of us.

In fact, I might just spend the first half of the year bringing them out to parks, beaches, malls then teach them whatever comes to mind when we’re out. We’re going to do spontaneous learning, like how to do a proper monkey bar or bury someone in the sand or eat an earthquake sundae without puking.

You know, the kinds of lessons you wished teachers taught in playgroup but didn’t because they spent all that time going on and on about the alphabet.

Or I might just cave and send them to school. We’ll see how this pans out.

Any thoughts on homeschooling, successful or otherwise?