Escape Adulthood

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Homeschooling

We are a homeschooling family. We never thought we would be. We just never thought much about it, frankly. But somehow, homeschooling found us, and it fits us. We love it. This is a scrapbook of our rule breaking, Adultitis fighting, homeschooling life.
We write under these disclaimers.

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Thou Shalt Be Excited When School’s Out for Summer

What's a sadder reflection on our modern educational system: the fact that "School's Out" by Alice Cooper is the de facto theme for students everywhere this time of year, or the fact that almost no one stops to consider that maybe it's a problem that so many people feel this way about school? I wonder... is "Thou shalt be excited when school's out for the summer" a rule that doesn't need to exist? I'll admit, the first day of summer vacation for me was always gloriously delicious. It meant freedom. But freedom from what, exactly? Freedom from being told what to do all day long. Freedom from having to jump through hoops for other people. Freedom from having to spend most of the day memorizing facts and being lectured to about things I had no interest in whatsoever. Freedom from the pressure of having to measure up to the artificial standards of coolness as decided on by a consensus of my immature peers. Freedom from tests and book reports and homework! What if you …

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How Does The Fox Read?

I had a cool homeschooling moment yesterday, a shining example of interest-based learning! Lucy and Ben, coming a little late to the party, (because their dear 'ol mom is always about 6-12 months behind) love to watch the music video, "What does the fox say?" Lucy asked me to pull it up on our Apple TV. Since I had my hands full holding Virginia, I asked her to type it in by herself, using sound spelling with some reassurance from me that she was hearing/choosing the right sounds for the key words that we agreed might work: "fox say." (By the way, teaching a kiddo how to use search engines has to be one of the most relevant lessons ever, right?!) The video popped up as the number one choice (victory!) I noticed as it started that it had the lyrics on the bottom of the screen. "Hey," I said, "There's the word 'fox' that you just spelled, Lucy. And there's the word 'say.'" All of a sudden a lightbulb went off for her (and me!). She could recognize LOTS of these words. Dog. …

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12 Big Ideas About Homeschooling from Penelope Trunk

By some standards, Kim and I are at the beginning stages of homeschooling. On the other hand, if you subscribe to the belief that homeschooling begins at birth, then we've been at it for over five years. Either way, we are still in the stage of learning as much about it as we can. There are so many different styles of homeschooling, so many misconceptions about it, so much philosophy of how human beings actually learn, and so much history that led us to the educational system we have today. It's endlessly fascinating to us both. We regularly find ourselves deep down rabbit holes, voraciously exploring books and blogs on the subject and excitedly emailing each other links to gems we've uncovered. At times it feels a bit obsessive, but when I pause to remember that this is all about our kids' education and future, I wonder why this kind of "obsessiveness" is not actually the norm. Amidst all of the digging, some personal beliefs have grown more ironclad, while other times I've …

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Why Homeschooling Is For Us

Kim and I attended our first homeschooling conference this past weekend. With a December birthday, Lucy wouldn't be entering kindergarten for another year and a half, but we wanted to get more information about this life-changing decision we'd been considering. To be honest, we each felt a little uncertain and overwhelmed at the prospect of going all-in. …

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Why We Homeschool, Part 1

I do a lot of speaking in the field of education. Most of the teachers I've met are amazingly good. Passionate. Caring. Kind. Dedicated. Knowledgable. And yet most of them feel hampered by a system that no longer works. School is broken. But the main question isn't, "How do we fix it?" No, the first -- and most important -- question is, "What is school for?" …

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Parenthood is Definitely Not Like Politics

So we have officially started home schooling. I imagine we’ll share all the reasons for this at some point, but I’m pretty sure the main reason is because...we’re crazy. One thing I’ve noticed so far about parenthood is that the things our kids most readily pick up from us has nothing to do with the carefully crafted “lessons” we try to put forth. It’s definitely not like a political campaign, where you create an image with stories and photo-ops in order to present a pre-defined message to voters. No, kids aren’t fooled by spin. They see all sides of you, and the lessons they learn from the things you say and do when you don’t think they’re paying attention, well, those seem to be the most sticky. …

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