Progress Report

When we decided to give homeschooling a whirl, I decided that I would give it a concerted effort until Winter Break. If we were not doing well by then, I'd toss in the towel and enroll her back into school.

Well, this is the last day of Winter Break, and it's time to evaluate.

The biggest difference I see in our lives is in the reduction of conflict. When school is on, five days a week are devoted to almost constant conflict. Seriously. I have to make her do things almost every minute that I see her and she does not respond well to it. In the morning it's "it's time to get up, get dressed, no you can't wear that, brush your teeth and hair, finish your breakfast, get your shoes on, it's time to go, we're going to be late, get your shoes on NOW!" No matter how I phrase it or what my tone of voice is, I am ordering her around and she does not like that.

After school there's a brief respite where I don't have to give her orders but I get to hear how her day went. Frequently she has had trouble with the other kids, often in tears about it, and once a week like clockwork she got in trouble with the teacher and I had to follow up on that. After dinner it was the usual litany of, "get your homework done, you got this problem wrong, yes you have to re-do it, you need to capitalize this" then "take your bath, no it's time for your bath, get out of the bathtub already you've been in there for an hour, get your pajamas on, turn out the light and go to sleep, no you can't read it's too late, go to SLEEP!"

Fun. It's not so much that there is less of that, although there is less. I still have to make her bathe and brush her teeth and do her work, but I don't have to make her do it by 8 AM and that helps tremendously.

It's that there is more of the other stuff. I have time to be with her that I'm not ordering her around. We play games, we play with her cat, we clean out the lizard cage, we talk over lunch, we read next to each other companionably.

I'm not the evil witch. Well, I am still sometimes, but I am the nice mommy, too, and not just on the weekends. I say that an improved relationship with your only child is a big reason to homeschool.

As far as the academic goes, I'm not so sure that she's doing better work at home. That's the reason I started--I had heard so much about the academic success of homeschoolers and I wanted my brilliant daughter to have every opportunity to succeed. What I get, though, is control. I get to decide what is important and what to spend time on.

Since kindergarten Mi'ita has spend probably an hour and a half daily on reading instruction. After first grade, she didn't need it. She reads constantly and well. She may need direction in literature, vocabulary, and pronunciation, but she does not need instruction in decoding and reading comprehension. For the first time since she learned how to read, she doesn't have to spend time learning to read.

Yea.

She probably spends less time on math, but it's more focused. We finally got a math program that she likes, thank goodness.

I haven't been happy with her writing instruction and I will be focusing on that next.

She has been learning four languages. Well, learning Latin and dabbling in three other languages: German, Swahili, and Vietnamese (we were going to go to Tanzania, canceled our trip because of violence, and booked a trip to Vietnam in February.) Languages used to be a huge part of education. Even in this monolingual country, up until recently everyone had to learn French. The languages themselves are not the ones I would have chosen, but just learning any language increases the understanding of how languages work, grammar, spelling, and most important in my book, increases the respect of immigrants in our country that have to figure out how to speak English.

I get to pick out what I think is important for her to spend time on, and what is not important for her.

She has a better relationship with people, too. She sees friends regularly on frequent play dates and classes that I make a priority to arrange. Playing with friends one on one or in small groups is easier for her. I know that she has to figure out how to work in teams, manage with large groups of people, and deal with people she doesn't like. I make it a priority to arrange times for her to do that, too--in classes such as ballet and TAG, and being in plays. She still doesn't like dealing with people she doesn't like (know anyone who does?) but I make her do it. Luckily she has cousins that she doesn't particularly like and I foist them on her regularly. We all have to deal with family!

Another thing that is a benefit is that I know what she's up to. I know what she is working on and what she is lousy at and who she has been playing with. Her dad asked her the other day what she had done and for some bazaar reason she told him that we had taken the day off. I was able to disabuse him of that notion--we had done Latin, Vietnamese, and math, gone to the library, read a stack of books, and written an entry in her blog.

She likes homeschooling. I like homeschooling. We'll stick with it for now.