Tag Archives: learning home

I’ll bee real carefull not to mispell anything

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We attended our home school group Family Spelling Bee last Friday. I must say, it wasn’t as fun as square dancing, but it was more dramatic. For one: Susan missed an easy word, awhile. I suspect in her eagerness and excitement, she rushed and forgot the H. That one hurt, especially since she did great in the Bee last year (second place).

She started to weep as she watched her younger brother get his word correct (bank). Then she remembered her candy reward just for participating and decided it would taste much better without the salty tears, so that was the end of that.

Silly spelling girl. What is it with kids and candy? Get your word wrong, come get a piece of candy. Suddenly, the world is a happy place again.

Even the adults participating accepted a sugary treat as they were eliminated. Me? I had enough public humiliation at last year’s Bee, so I just observed and took pictures. I need to type a word or scratch it out on paper to spell it correctly, forget this oral nonesense. Either I’m too old or too much of a writer. I need my fingers to do my spelling for me.

My latest at Homeschool Bliss

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For those of you interested, my latest post at Homeschool Bliss is up. It’s about that much feared and misunderstood “S” word: socialization. It’s the first in a series of how to find social opportunities for the home educated student.

Go check it out, and if any of my non-home educating readers have questions relating to the subject of home schooling, feel free to ask me. The comments are open to all inquiries.

Me vs. the public school evangelist

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I’m not kidding. A ten year old boy preached his school to me.

It happened as I drove my car full, plus one more, home from Vacation Bible School. One of Peter’s friends from church invited for an afternoon of Lego’s and computer games. Out of the blue, this boy’s voice came from the back seat.

“You should send Peter to public school, then he would get to play with me at recess.”

Uh. I didn’t know what to say. Amazing, I know, but I was surprised he would be brazen enough to tell a grown-up what to do.

He continued on about the things he likes about his school, and of course it’s all those silly things a ten-year-old boy loves. Like seeing your buddies in the hall and eating in the lunch room. Finally he gave one last effort to convince me, to win me over to the converted.

“School is so much better than home schooling.”

Oh, really?

I know from past experiences that if I turn my head away from watching the road I tend to crash into things (remind me to share those two stories sometime), so I didn’t turn around to give the kid a dirty look.

And how I wanted to do just that.

Evil Monica really wanted to say some not-so-nice things. Evil Monica likes to defend herself, even against a little boy who doesn’t know any different than what he’s been taught. Good Monica decided that wouldn’t be very Christ-like, and since the boy is the pastor’s grandson, and he might possibly repeat the conversation, I kept my obnoxious reply to myself.

See? I am definitely improving at biting my tongue.

As a result of that conversation with School Preacher Kid, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our church and it’s lack of other home schooling families. The only other home school family at our church has two teen boys, and the other family, also with older kids, are going to Christian school next month.

So as it stands right now, we are the only home schooling family with young children in our fellowship.

Any nice home school families with kids aged 10 to 3 out there willing to uproot and move to Jersey? We’re a super easy state when it comes to home schooling, I promise.

I love my church, our pastor and his wife are like family, but if I could change one thing about it, this would be my wish – more home schoolers. More kids for my kids to relate to and be friends with, know what I mean?

Yeah, I think you do.