{this photo has nothing at all to do with Dinosaurs but I am going to post one of each of my favorite blue bonnet pictures until they are gone, darnit}

One of the coolest advantages of homeschooling is that we get to steal away in the middle of the week to do things that the masses flood to over the weekend, usually for much cheaper.

Walking with Dinosaurs is touring here right now and we just had to go. My boys are all dinosaur fanatics. When Dalton was 5, he knew more dinosaurs than anyone I knew. When Teegan was 2 & 3, he could barely talk but he could name dinosaurs by looking at their skull bones alone. Eventually they fell out of interest but in the last year or so they’ve sort of jumped back into it all in some collegiate level that I can hardly follow most of the time. So it was fun for all of us to go check out the animatronic dinosaur show.

We scored some really good tickets – 3rd row – for the “student” rate of $18.50 a ticket instead of the outrageous $50+ ticket price. See what I mean? Homeschooling pays for itself, right?!

Let me just say that it did NOT start out well. I think every kid under six in the entire place was horrified. One mother in our row had to leave with her son immediately becuase he was inconsolably terrified. Several kids surrounding us, including Addison, kept their hands over their ears pretty much the entire show. But it opened with some adorable little eggs hatching tiny cute babies who were then RIPPED out and DANGLED into the mouth of a carnivorous predator before being swallowed alive.  Gosh – easing into that kind of drama might have been nice!

That was about as bad as it got but there was a lot of ominous LOUD music and ominous LOUD sound effects and ominous lighting. Addison actually didn’t mind the huge horrifying dinosaurs or their loud and vicious growls. She WAS very sensitive to the change in tone of voice of the storyteller, the change in music and lighting. She is probably not going to be a horror flick fan!

Noah spent a large chunk of the show, off and on, burying his face in our laps. He was not a fan of the fighting dinosaurs. No amount of telling himself that they were just robots seemed to help. He was just freaked.  But afterward he said he had a really good time. My bigger two boys had an awesome time, they totally loved every minute of it, even Teegan who had been completely adamantly opposed to going with us.  I’m so glad we went.

Addy, like I said, either covered her own ears are made US cover her ears for her while she sucked her thumb and peaked out at the show from under our arms! It really didn’t seem like she had much fun but she has talked about it all day. At dinner she spontaneously said “I had fun chocolate” which after some further back and forth that involved her wildly saying “Baby!” and “Growl” and various other words to describe the show, we deciphered to mean “I had fun dinosaurs”.  I asked her if that was what she meant and she said “Yeah! I had fun chocolate! It cool! Baby!”. She really REALLY liked the eggs (prior to the carnivorous homicide) and the baby dinos and the mama/baby love scenes

So it was totally worth the $18.50/ticket if it comes on tour near you. Probably not worth the $50/ticket unless your kid is REALLY into dinosaurs and over the age of 5!

  It’s Back-To-School time which, for homeschoolers, often means reevaluating curriculum, grade placement and organizing materials in a born-anew desire to be all on top of things. For me, it is often a time of reflection on the past year, as well.

Second only to vegetarianism, homeschooling is the thing my family does that gets the most negative attention. I suspect there are other aspects of my parenting that would be even more controversial but they don’t often come up in conversation and they aren’t transparent parts of our lives. What I’m saying is people don’t judge what they don’t know about you

So why do we homeschool?

When Dalton was just a toddler, full of love of learning, I spent my days doing nothing much else besides watching him explore the world and devour it. It filled me up, to discover the world through his eyes. I knew that I wanted that to last his entire childhood and at some point, homeschooling was the obvious choice. It would enable him to continue his love of learning and it would enable me to continue to be a part of it. School was, honestly, never part of the plan.

Then when he was 4, my boys’ father and I split up and I became Single Working Mom. Daycare and school became parts of our lives. I forgot about my homeschool plans and enrolled Dalton into first grade when he was 5. This, alone, turned out to be a big controversy. Because Dalton didn’t go to Kindergarten and because he was so young (born 30 days later, he would have been placed in Kindergarten instead of First grade), we were pressured to keep him back. However, socially, he was ready for first grade and I really did not want him held back. So I pushed for what would later become an on-going problematic situation. His age became the on-going excuse for every tiny issue that would come up: Dalton’s tired today? He probably still needs naps due to his age. Dalton’s having trouble spelling? It is his age. His writing isn’t on par? It’s his age. As his Mom, I knew this was totally off base. I got my first dose of the public school’s disinterest in trusting my own parental instincts and the need to advocate for my kid. And I resented the hell out of it.

Meanwhile Dalton was really enjoying school. He liked learning, he had tons of friends and loved recess most of all. Typical. What he didn’t love was standing in front of the class and being made to “perform”. It didn’t get easier. He became more and more anxious about it. He got more and more withdrawn and reserved.

And then the bullying started. It was never bad but bad enough to make my sensitive boy pretty upset on a few occasions.

Meanwhile, all year, I had to force Dalton to wake up way earlier than he would have otherwise. I had to wake up toddler Teegan, dragged us all out of bed and down the street to school. Then every day, right in the middle of his nap, I had to wake up Teegan again to drag him all the way down to the school to pick up Dalton. Dalton came home and spent all his free playtime doing homework. Busywork. And we were expected to do these projects and activities on no notice with supplies we rarely had around the house. School was taking over our lives. My baby couldn’t sleep. We couldn’t just go to the park or play after school. We couldn’t go out of town. I felt trapped, I felt like *I* was in school. And really, Dalton wasn’t learning a whole lot and because of his age, he was also not being accelerated at the rate that he was capable. Nor was he getting any help for his spelling and writing challenges which, as it turned out, will be a life-long challenge for him.

By the next summer I was living with Tony and just a few weeks before the start of second grade, I lost my job. We took that as a sign, I decided to stay home and homeschool.

Dalton was actually really upset. He didn’t want to homeschool, he wanted his friends – bullying and all. But it was one of the few times in my kids’ lives that I’ve just put my foot down and forced a major life change that I knew they were not on board with. We agreed to try it for a year and reevaluate.

That first year was rough. Dalton continued to miss his friends, we didn’t really find our ebb and flow and ended up taking most of the year off to ‘deschool’. Some kids can deschool in just a few weeks, my boy needed a full year. By the time it he was ready to start third grade, he had no lasting desire to go to public school and his zest for homeschooling has only grown over the last 5 years. Now he can’t imagine ever choosing the confines of public school. He loves the freedom and endless possibility that homeschooling offers.

It made sense to me to continue homeschooling the rest of the kids although I still do take it on a year by year basis. If a child of mine ever requested to go to school, I would support that. There was a period of time just last month that Noah seriously considered enrolling in Kindergarten this year and we talked about it with him. When he realized he’d not just get to show off his radical “skipping” skills all day, he quickly lost interest. Instead he’s taking gymnastics.

I’m not completely opposed to public school but I think it is a failed system that needs revitalization, at very least. I think in some cases, school is not good for families. I think in many cases, school is not good for children. I think teachers are overworked and underpaid in most areas. I think group learning isn’t usually ideal and structured learning is not always conducive to a true love of learning, particularly when the child is not opting into the group or structured learning. I think teachers feel a great deal of unnatural pressure to teach to the test in most states and this naturally interferes with actual productive teaching.

I love that homeschooling gives my kids the freedom to do nothing but study rocks and minerals for 8 hours straight if they want, without having to stop and switch subjects. I love that we can get up and go tour the world if we are inclined. I love that my kids learning things because they learn them, not becuase they have to pass a test or get a good grade. I love that we can spend the afternoon in the swimming pool and not even touch books until 8pm if we want. I love that we can learn in 2 hours a day what the public schools are teaching in 8 hours. I love that each child’s learning style can be met and fulfilled individually so they can learn in the most logical, natural and efficient way possible. I love that we can learn in 2 days a week or 7 days a week. I love that we don’t have to take summers off and, if we want, we can take winters off instead.

As my kids get older, there are all sorts of other hidden benefits. I love that my 12 year old loves to hang out with his 9 year old brother and dotes on his sister without worrying about “looking cool” to his friends. In fact I love even more that he thinks kids who worry about “looking cool” or the uncoolest of all . I love that my kids see friendships as unconstrained by classroom, age or peer group limits. I love that the negative influences, while they still exist, aren’t what they are exposed to day in and day out. This makes them much less likely to cave to peer pressure. I love that my kids are all individuals who don’t seem to give much thought to “fitting in” and can put their energy into other things that are more useful to them.

And they love it just as much as I do!

We have a fun year planned. In our new neighborhood, there is an amazing homeschool co-op that I’m actively involved in and all three of my boys are enrolling to take classes of their choice. Plus there is soccer, gymnastics and Kindermusik. Plus playgroups, park days, homeschool field trips and more. And then we’ll throw in some trips here and there, because we are on this crazy Learning Through Living kick and try to fit in those 2 hours of traditional “learning” each day along the way. Sounds pretty fun to me!

Today Noah asked what Thanksgiving was all about. I explained that it was a day that Pilgrims and Pirates sat to share a meal. Dalton stood by, giving me shocked and horrified looks and finally had to interrupt to correct me. It was just a slip of the tongue, I swear.

I have a habit of sharing too much information. I generally use the theory that it is better to say too much on the off chance that the kid is more intelligent than one would assume. I tend to teach to the eldest and let the younger kids absorb as much as they are able. And honestly most of the time I’m pleasantly surprised at just how much they absorb, despite their ages.

So I explained about the Native Americans – the good, the bad and the ugly. And while Noah can understand the theories, he doesn’t have the concrete idea of time or space to put it all together in a realistic picture. Noah wants to understand the timeline so he asks questions like “Did this happen millions of years ago before the dinosaurs?” (timeline errors number 1 and 2 and maybe 3!) and “Did this happen before my name existed?” (a common point of reference for him as he’s proud of his Biblical name). I think we need to bust out the old timelines and start adding things to them as they come up in conversation. I’m not sure we have enough wall space for a billion-year-long timeline.

There is more but its not pretty. I’ll spare you. Finally the conversation shifted to food. “Isn’t that the day we kill the huge chicken?” These conversations just make my kids shine with knowledge and brilliance, right? Yeah, he knows what a turkey is. Being a vegetarian, he doesn’t really differentiate the meat on the table – it’s all just animals with eyes. And somehow this turns into a discussion of where we can get our next Eggnog fix. In June.

Is it bad that I was like “Hey, why don’t you go turn on Boomerang for awhile?!” haha.