Date with my girl + why I homeschool

“Perhaps we shall best use this wonderful power of reasoning by giving it plenty of work to do, by asking ourselves what is the cause of this and that; why do people and animals do certain things. Reason which is not worked grows sluggish; and there are persons who never wonder nor ask themselves questions about anything they see.”

*Charlotte Mason*

One thing I am very thankful for right now is the time to teach my sweet girl.  With all of the difficulty that has come from my boys, I think it’s such a great privilege to see her light up as she learns right before my eyes.  When I sent her off to school last year with hesitation, I started doing the math of how much time we spend in the car driving to and from school, how long she was at school, how exhausted she was when she got home, and how much she missed being a part of the learning that we do every day a home and in our city.  I remember during the first week of school, I was told over and over that I would “get used to it”.  What?  God put this child in me to grow for 10 months, she grows 5.5 years and I send her away for the next 13 years (with the exception of college) to go to school for 7 hours, 45 minutes in the car (1.5 hours for her brothers and mom), and nothing left at the end of the day.  I was looking around at everyone saying, “Doesn’t anyone else find the evolution of the school-day a little unsettling, to say the least?”  I’ve been talking about this with so many people for the last year (read: for as long as I can remember really).  Everyone admits there is a problem but no changes are being made, in fact it could be getting worse.  Think of the phrase, “Yeah, ___ had a bad teacher last year and ___ is going to have her next year.  Oh well, what can you do.”  Craziness.  Yes, you CAN actually do something.  Nobody said it was an easy solution(it’s been rough for me), but we have to make change.  For now, I intend to teach my kids at home and continue to be as much a part of my communities as ever…if not more.  I have to make the choice that the “we” has to become “I”.  I have to make change.  I don’t want them to be a statistic from 2011 that could have been changed but wasn’t.  I know there are exceptions.  I have friends who are just wonderful teachers.  There are also great schools across the country.  Just think about it and try not to look at good change over your shoulder as you walk past it, even if change means difficulty.

With all of the difficulties, Miss F is full of life in her learning now and doesn’t have a dead part to her day.  The only exception would be when she is so disappointed we don’t read another chapter of what we are reading or we haven’t seen a Black Phoebe bird in the yard that day.

 For this date, my husband had taken the boys on a camping trip so we had the whole day to ourselves.  We went to the museum of art to see some of the paintings from the artists we had studied that week.

 Matisse, Monet, and Degas were 3 of them so we were excited to find this Monet here for a short time.  We don’t get a great showing of famous paintings here but this one was lovely enough for 2 giddy girls. We have LA to go to for the famous ones.

 My little ballerina was thrilled to find this Degas since we had read the very interesting story of how these paintings came to be.  The girl in the most famous sculpture was a very talented dancer.  She said she was going to be “the most famous dancer in the world”.  Her family could not keep up with their payments for her classes.  She started posing for Degas to earn some extra money but could not continue to attend.   Eventually she grew up and her sculpture had become the most famous dancer in the world.  So sweet.  Too bad Degas was a grumpy, angry sort of man.  It was a happy ending though.

We also got to see the Stickley exhibit which was sweet.  It was cute strong and adorable, just like the furniture is.  I loved that they had pieces of the wood to fit together so they could understand the way the furniture was made with no nails.  It was pretty cool.

I loved this carpet and this clock.  My picture is a little blurry because I was taking it 5 seconds while the security guard was around the corner.  I never saw a single sign about not taking them, but their body language was suggesting serious business so I didn’t tempt trouble.  The Louvre had less security surrounding the Mona Lisa, for crying out loud.

Visiting some of her favorite fish.

These are special days.