Lions, and Tigers and Schools, Oh My!

Let me first just say, I have no idea what we are going to do when little miss HC hits kindergarten (which is a mere 20 months from now). We have some good options, which is great. The local elementary school is decent, at least according to GA standards, we have an amazing private classical school run by our church which I have always dreamed of my children attending, and then last, but not least there is always the option to home-school if the need arises.

Homeschool, I know, can you believe the words just slipped through my typing fingers? Believe it, or not, I was homeschooled. I know you find that weird since I am not a freakish-social outcast (at least most of the time I am what some would call normal). I think I am more shocked than all of you, because although I think my parents did a wonderful job, I always said I could never do that...and that is still mostly my thought.

As our family meandered through Wal-mart on Christmas Eve (not shopping, just browsing and watching everyone else scurry), I found a box of 10 Christmas puzzles. One of the F family traditions was putting together Christmas puzzles, so I immediately had to grab up the box. The box contained 2 puzzles with 100 pieces, 4 puzzles with 300 pieces and 4 puzzles with 500 pieces. As soon as we got home HC and I went to work on the 100 piece puzzle. She is amazing at puzzles, so I thought it would be super fun to put it together, together. So...5 minutes into the process, as I am trying to encourage her to not only turn all the pieces right-side-up, but also to separate the edge pieces from the middle pieces, I found myself growing frustrated.
Me: HC, please put all the pieces with an edge in THIS pile.
HC: With an edge?
Me: Yes, you see this? (as I run my finger along the straight side of the piece), all the pieces like THIS go over here. Can you find a piece with an edge?
HC: This one? (as she picks up a middle piece)
Me: Does that have a straight line, HC? (now a little more irritated)
HC: A straight line?
Me: Do you know what a straight line is?

Dave walks over and assesses the situation. He gives me a look, and I know what he is thinking...and you want to do this ALL the time? And I am thinking the same thing. How the hell do those crazy homeschool moms do it? But then we have such sweet moments while we sit reading "Charlotte's Web", and have made it through 100 pages in 1 sitting, and I think, I could do this all day!

Ah, another day in the M house, but I digress. So, we have lots of decisions before us regarding school, and one of my friends recommended that I read Susan Wise Bauer's book "The Well Trained Mind" which I promptly put on my book wish list and received for Christmas, thank you, Chris and Rubie! She is pretty much the super-star of the classical model for education, which I have always loved, and I pretty much devoured the book from cover to cover. There is so much good, amazing information in it, wow, I cannot say enough about it.

There is a chapter in the book entitled, "The Confident Child: Socialization", and it begins with this quote from H. McCurdy, "The Smithsonian Institution's recipe for genius and leadership: (1)children should spend a great deal of time with loving, educationally minded parents; (2)children should be allowed a lot of free exploration; and (3)children should have little to no association with peers outside of family and relatives." I found this mildly amusing, but as I read the chapter, I was intrigued by some of her thoughts. One of her observations is that in large groups of same-age-peers, children learn to value the opinion of their peers, which can create a dependency on their classmates for approval, direction, and affection...HELLO please don't take me back to those awful teenage years. But upon reading this, I had a memory from when I was growing up. Now, I am not sure why this happened, I don't think it is necessarily because I was home-schooled, but I now think that certainly played a role.

I went to public school for kindergarten and then was home-schooled for 1st and 2nd grade, and then went back to the same public school for 3rd and 4th grade before my parents pulled me out again until high school. I remember in 3rd grade there were 2 children in my class that no one liked (who knows why, I remember that the girl was a little weird, and the boy had a weird name, well it wasn't weird, his name was Israel). After recess everyday, our class had to line-up in two lines before our teacher walked us back to class. For whatever reason no one wanted to be in line with either Andrea or Israel, and as soon as they would get in line, all my classmates would jump into the other line. All of my classmates except me. I always stood in line with them. I think I was mildly mocked for this choice, but for the most part no one bothered me about my decision.

When HC was born, and then Annelise, our prayers for them have been that they would never know a day without the Lord, and that she would grow to love all kinds of people. Part of that prayer, for me, was with that story in the back of my mind.

Now, I don't think homeschooling made me a nice person, actually, I don't often think of myself as a nice person. Dave is nice, I am a little too fiery to be nice. But after reading this book, I wondered if being at home for those 2 years gave me the confidence to do the right thing, at age 8, and to treat those children as image-bearers of God.

Don't know, but I continue to pray that no matter where my children go to school, they will have the confidence and the foundation to do the right thing. And now I am off to read my other Chistmas book, which is a bit lighter, "My Life in France" (Julia Child's memoir).