It's Over

Harry isn't going back to his school. I will call on Monday and tell them that he has started at a new school and won't be needing their services. I also need to talk to his teacher and get the work that he's done for her. He's way more excited than I am at this point. I had no intention of bringing him home until Spring Break at the earliest. I realized on Friday afternoon, though, that the school is toxic for him. And I don't say that lightly. I honestly believe that I would be shirking my parenting duties to send him back with what's happening.

So now what? I don't know. We will spend the time before Spring Break "deschooling," and getting used to being home. We will read a lot of books and spend some time catching up with each other. We will also have to work on getting rid of some of the behaviors he picked up at school. That won't be as fun as some of the other things!

I probably won't start him on anything really new for the rest of the year. We'll loosely follow the Ambleside Online reading list and work on some math facts. He told me today that he wants to learn how to do multiplication and division, so we'll work on that. I'm going to stay as far away from worksheets and meaningless things as I can. He's already done enough of that for the year.

In the fall I'll enroll him and Sam in one of the local homeschool charters and we'll start over again. But we're done with traditional school. It's just not worth it.

Myth Busters

People give many reasons for not liking the idea of homeschooling, whether they are considering it or they know someone else who is. Chief among the reasons they give is "socialization." People hate the idea that there are kids out there that aren't having the same experience as the other kids. They fear, among other things, that the kids are going to grow up not knowing how to relate to other kids, that they won't have a shared body of knowledge, and about a hundred other, made-up fears.

This is a false problem though, in my opinion. I went to school for something like 17 years. You can ask anyone who knew me in middle school, I didn't fit in at all. In fact, I still consider those the worst years of my life. But why? According to the theory that sending a kid to school, they will be socialized the same as the other kids. I should have fit in, I had the same opportunities as the other kids, the same shared school experience. But I didn't. So I spent three years crying almost every day after school because the other kids were mean.

Something happened today at Harry's school that makes me even more deeply skeptical of the socialization occurring at school. A kid said something that in any other situation would have gotten him sued for sexual harassment. But since it happened at the school, it's supposed to help Harry become properly socialized and learn to deal with people as he grows up.

Here's the thing. Harry is a normal 8-year-old kid. There is absolutely no reason for him to hear other 8-year-olds say things like he heard today. Not even so that he can be properly socialized. No reason whatsoever.

In case you were wondering...

Here are my plans for preschool this month:

March

Theme: Animals

Daily Theme Craft Letter/Craft Activity Story

Tuesday 3/3 Wild Animals: Moose	Moose	M: marble painting	Eat muffins	If you give a moose a muffin, moostache
Thursday 3/5 Wild Animals: Bears	Brown Bear craft	L: lines with rulers	Color hunt	Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see
Tuesday 3/10 Zoo Animals	Giraffe: link below	D: dot markers
Thursday 3/12 Zoo Animals	Elephant: link below	Z: zebra stripes
Tuesday 3/17 St. Patrick’s Day	Shamrock table top craft	G: glitter	Shamrock hop or make green in shaving cream
Thursday 3/19 Farm Animals	Create a farm with the kids	F: fingerpainting	Create a farm together
Tuesday 3/24 Farm Animals	Don’t forget that R loves tractors—do something with that	K: keys
Tuesday 3/26 Pets	Fish	P: purple and pink	Goldfish pick up