Honing In

Every day of our new unschooling life teaches me new things.

Here's the newest revelation: it's about MY ONE CHILD learning. I was thinking (and worrying a bit) about how it was that at school, they'd spend an hour on history or grammar, and Caroline has been completing the work in less time here at home. I was thinking that I wasn't making the work hard enough, or complicated enough, or that I should be making things last longer.

And then it hit me: in a classroom, it takes the time it takes because there's that "pass out the papers, get everyone settled down, make sure people have the right pages in their books open" time... And then it takes time to make sure that 10 or 20 kids understand the concept.

But at home? It's just about Caroline. And when she gets it, she gets it. We don't need to beat it to death just to fill an hour. She can learn the day's lesson, and move on to other things. She's currently working on an in-depth science project about cats -- and so she's engrossed in learning cat anatomy and researching about ears and whiskers and all.

DUH! Bigh light-bulb moment for the New Head of School.

Another realization? We can be spontaneous! Last week, we were thinking that today we'd take taking a field trip into San Francisco to visit the new Science Center, and see an exhibit of Nick Cave costumes at the Yerba Buena Center we've heard raves about.

But it dawned on me earlier this week that maybe this isn't the best moment to spend time with hoards of kids in a densely-packed Science Center, what with this swine flu thing... And then, this morning, Caroline woke up with a migraine. So, we're not going anywhere this morning and maybe we'll just go do some volunteer time at the animal shelter this afternoon.

We can decide what we want to do, and then do that!