We met with our "teacher" Monday and had a great time chatting. He's a dyed in the wool unschooler working as a certified teacher with the school district (we homeschool in cooperation with our local school district.).
Yesterday, we went to the program's Pool Party. It was good to reconnect with others in the program and to see the new faces. Morganne befriended a little girl just her age who was on the program's waiting list all year last year. It looks like they're going to be major buddies. This is pretty exciting for us because there are very few girls in the 5 - 7 range in our program and at least a dozen boys. Morganne got along fine with the boys for the most part, but she and Bryn have a lot in common and it will be nice for her to have a good buddy in the program.
I'm jazzed to start the new school year. Lots of great ideas out there among the other parents.
More education: Morganne still loves her math books, but she takes them out rarely, with great excitement and then works on them for hours at a stretch. She can also count to 100 in Spanish.
We got the first two sets of Bob books. Since Morganne can memorize anything, I decreed that the Bob books were special, to be used only when Morganne wanted to practice reading. Garry thought that I was being contradictory to unschooling, but agreed to go along with me because he, too, knew that Morganne would memorize the words after we had read the books to her once. She has finished the first set. They seem like very appropriate aids to learning. She hasn't gotten frustrated; they maintain her interest and she is pleased to be able to read her own books.
We've been reading the Betsy, Tacy and Tib books by Maud Lovelace. I read these as a child and Morganne loves them as I did. They are pretty silly at times, but the basic values are good and there is nothing scary or objectionable in them (a criterion for Morganne, who has a vivid imagination and a high moral sense). They're about three little girls (and then three young women) growing up in Minnesota at the turn of the century. Autobiographical and full of lots of advanced vocabulary (why are modern books so parsimonious with language?). Morganne goes around saying, "O, di immortales!"
Copyright © 1996 by
Heather Madrone. All rights reserved.