Back? To School?

Our neighbor the groundhog is F-A-T. So fat. Fall must be coming. That means this home school thing needs to get started in earnest soon. Goose would benefit tremendously from a good school--but the public one she would go to here has a 1:30 teacher:student ratio, and has some of the worst academic rankings in the region. I think if you trap her in a room with thirty kids, no supervision, and make her learn the alphabet AGAIN, bad things will happen. She reads almost as well as I do (Perhaps even better. She is always correcting me when I say the wrong words when reading a story. Even if she is across the room. She has them all memorized. It's a little freakish.). Her science and math learning are not far behind her reading. I enjoy planning the curriculum and the lessons. I have  a great year lined up for us, but there is no way of recreating the social and emotional learning she could get in a well designed, supportive classroom. The other day she told me "I'm glad we're having kindergarten at home so I don't have to meet new people." Oh, dear. Not to mention there are the added complications of a new baby who has a busier social calendar than most high school girls with all his medical and therapy appointments. To top it all off, I's personality and disposition don't always lend themselves to home schooling--she is much more likely to think a project is a good idea if it's presented by a teacher in a classroom than if it is presented by her mom in the kitchen. I found this great passage in a book a friend sent me while we were in the hospital. This mom had just lost a battle with her children regarding whether a gerbil should accompany them on a visit at the neighbor's house:

"She stood upon her doorstep once more digesting the knowledge that she could not manage her children. Miss Lindsay, she believed, would be more successful. How did these tall, poised women who could command obedience with the lifting of an eyebrow get like they were? Was it something they ate? But would even these olympic ones be able to manage their own children if they had any? Joanna doubted it and went back into the house in a more cheerful frame of mind."

I keep hoping that, by some miracle, the charter school where I is on the waiting list will call me up and say she is next on the list and would we please come tomorrow (she's number 64...not likely). Instead, I'll just have to practice my juggling skills.

As for sir e, he had his first outings this week--aside from grocery stores and doctors' offices--he went to the park and to church. He still isn't sure what to do about the sun. It is rather brighter than any NICU light. He tends to cope by shutting his eyes and going to sleep. Like an opossum. We stayed only for the first part of church this week. Maybe next week we'll try the whole thing. We still have to be pretty neurotic about germs.