Goodbye Old Book

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Posted on : 8:41 AM | By : Anonymous | In : , , , ,

It seems funny to post this on April Fool's, but I am a notoriously bad pranker and so I don't even really attempt it much any more. I just wanted to say goodbye old book...


...hello new book!

It has been a bit of a slow week of ultra-frugal food budgeting and homeschooling.  It has been raining mostly, and it is probably a good thing because we are finding any leaks from windows and crevasses.  Today is a big construction day and we will make some more progress.

On the homeschool front, Ana (the back story is in the autism category) now has a psychologist and we are making strides in her behavior.  While changing diet seems to help temporarily, it seems as though after a time it just goes back to where it was, leading me to believe that these aren't reactions to food but simply disorders.  It turns out my suspicions about her sensory integration were correct, and she also has a serious anxiety disorder which is probably caused by a chemical imbalance somewhere.  I'm still not sure that she doesn't have Aspergers, but it is a mild case.  We'll see what happens when she gets help for her anxiety.

After allowing her to try out public school, she decided it was not for her and she is motivated to learn at home, although we still struggle to focus every day.  She really needs a challenge and we've left unschooling behind and we are back into classical learning once again.  It was an interesting experiment for me to see how they react without the structure and direction and I was surprised how much they learned by teaching themselves.  However, I changed my mind when I met some lovely homeschool graduates who had been radically unschooled, who related to me the very large gaps in their education they would never get back.  They both seemed to be extremely good at understanding and relating with people and their worldview was broad and their minds were sharp, probably much more so than other more traditional homeschoolers.  But academically they had no real knowledge of math, literature, and writing other than the ability to function passably in the world. It may be that homeschoolers lose some social skills as payment for their three R's.  So back to classical education we go, and it has been a relief.  I could see gaps beginning to form and these are the years that they need to be filled.  We are seeking a healthy balance between my direction and feeding their curiosity.

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