See You In September

It’s time to get used to going against the grain.

Here it is, one week before the Carr family homeschool project kicks off in an official, marked-on-the-calendar call-the-girl-a-Kindergartener sort of way, and I’m worried about what people must be thinking of me for waiting until after Labor Day while everybody else started the school year weeks ago. Never mind that we’re not even registered at the school with an excellent rating where normal nice people send their kids. Never mind the fact that we’ll be saying the Pledge of Allegiance to the next door neighbor’s flag on a pole in the middle of the front yard every morning. Never mind the fact that a full third of my lesson planning involves going to the park.

Never mind all that. I’m worried about starting in September instead of August.

If I don’t toughen up my hide a little and resign myself to the fact that most of the people I know already think we’re weirdoes, I’m going to have a tough school year ahead. Even among other Homeschooling families, we’re a little bit different. For some strange reason I can’t find myself capable of taking an easy prepacked curriculum and just running with it. We’re picking up a little of this and a little of that, depending on what suits my fancy; the more work something appears to be for me, the more excited I seem to get about it. I’m kind of hoping I get over that particular tendency.

Soon I’ll be posting our curriculum choices and goals for this year, followed by subsequent posts with updates on what we are covering. This will mainly be for the benefit of those in our circle who are curious to know exactly how peculiar we really are when we get right down to it, and also to keep a record so I can look back later and see how far we’ve come along.

But getting started – that won’t be until September.

Buckle Up

It’s a bit like starting a road trip. First I’ve pulled out the maps and looked them over a hundred times, obsessing over just where we should go and what is the best way to get there. Hundreds of roads are available, and many will do the job – but what is the perfect route? And will we need to change course along the way? And then there are the lists and the shopping and the packing and the worrying, all of which is supposed to ensure that we’re starting off on the right foot and that we’ve not forgotten anything. I wish I could just throw a bunch of stuff in the trunk and take off, except that this journey is unfamiliar and my nerves are too jumpy to take the risk. Next we drift down the driveway and move slowly through the neighborhood, warming up the engine and getting comfortable. I’m still adjusting my sunglasses and the kids are already asking for their water bottles that I forgot to pass around before we left. Dad is plugging in the iPod.

Our family is beginning a journey. Not the metaphorical road trip described above, but a much more exciting one. We’re beginning to homeschool. The last several months have been a warm up period for us – packing the car and planning the route. We’ve been teaching our five year old how to read, how to count to one hundred, how to hula hoop. The important things in life. I’ve been telling her about this adventure. The first thing she asked me on January first was whether we were “going to start doing math now.” Yes, Buttercup. Soon. We would have started on January 2nd, except that Mommy didn’t order the math book until January 3rd and it’s not going to be here until January 11th. In the meantime, we made the exciting discovery today that three plus three is the same as four plus two. Can you believe it?

I’m terribly nervous about this. I have only a general idea of where we are going, and I’m not sure I’m a good enough navigator, but it looks as though I’m going to have to learn on the job. Part of the plan is to record something of our adventure here, on the blog. I’m doubtful that anybody but me is going to do much reading here, but I want the opportunity to gush and vent and philosophize and chronicle and then look back later on and see what happened while time was flying so fast. This seemed like a good place to do it.

Buckle your seatbelts, kids. Here we go . . .