Is This Much Fun Legal?

by Hillary Harvey, September 22, 2008

Of all the fears I've heard and had, I'm really surprised by how much fun homeschooling is. It kind of takes parenting to the next level.

When Zoë was a baby, it was horribly boring.  I mean, it was beautiful and amazing and triumphant.  But there is really very little intellectual stimulation in watching someone else take every single building block out of the box, one-by-one, just to return them all to the box, one at a time. And when I would try to read or get up, let alone look away for some respite, it was met with a not-so-peaceful (or quiet) protest.

A lot of why I wanted to homeschool was because of my own desire to be with Zoë, to (over)protect her and meet her development. (As one homeschooling mom-friend put it, “I want to be the one who spends the day with my kids.  I want to be the one who raises them.”)  Perhaps those are selfish reasons, but that's what my role has always been up until now.  It was expected, and I was rewarded with compliments for being good at it.

But homeschooling also feeds my own sense of curiosity and essential need to research. It's been a long time since I thought seriously about symmetry and how to define it. It's been a while since I began to take the concepts of photosynthesis for granted. As Zoë and I spend the days exploring ideas together, her questions begin to come more rapidly. Each new bit of knowledge seems to feed the next question.  And I am right there with her, fascinated and learning.  So we end up performing the sort of rambling investigations that only my child could teach me how to do.

One day our wanderings took us to Japan (the culture we are studying) for much of the day. Zoë remembered that we'd been meaning to do a "theater", and so she set up two pillows on the floor with an intricate design in crayons for decoration. I sat on one of the pillows while she narrated her tale about a Japanese emperor. After the play and numerous curtseys at the wall, we created a storyboard of it so we could perform it for Lesley, Zoë’s drama teacher and the new children’s librarian.

Next we read about Japanese plant and animal life from a library book, and then I set Zoë up to make her own version of traditional ka-mon and Tanabata Festival decorations while I exercised. Before Pata, as Zoë likes to call my mother, took over Zoë's care for the afternoon, Zoë asked me what Japanese dancing looked like. I entered the words into YouTube, and Zoë began to watch all kinds of dancing: traditional Japanese, Japanese folk, and Geisha girls, before roaming onto videos of dancing from the Philippines, Spain and wherever else the mouse would go.

When I returned that evening, I was invited with a gassho to enter The Restaurant where I was served delicious homemade nori rolls by “Zokiki,” who had donned an apron that covered her entire body.

In these first few months of homeschooling, the discussions we have and the things we witness have become part of a continuing conversation about the interrelatedness of everything. Her mind spreads itself open to me, showing me how to live in a world with wonder and questions and wonderful questions. This is what I worked so hard for during those endless sessions of peek-a-boo. This is what I’ve been waiting for!


II.
It is intensely intellectually and creatively stimulating to prepare activities for Zoë. I wanted to have time to work with her on reading and math, so I planned for Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays to be Morning Lesson Time with a practiced routine we developed together. Zoë really likes the rhythm of it, and is less resistant to doing what I ask when it's part of a themed Lesson Time (as opposed to when it's on-the-fly, interrupting her day).

Each Morning Lesson Time, we cover life skills (the days of the week, the months of the year, counting by 5s and 10s, telling time and sitting still) as well as some things that I thought would be a fun (we have a weather chart and a chart to track the growth and care of our cat). Then we do math, phonics and reading, followed by literature, geography, handwriting, sight words or science (on an alternating schedule). Each subject is about 10-15 minutes (about 30 for math).

The Lessons are so well-suited to both our personalities: feeding my need to get things accomplished in terms of the purchased curriculum and expert opinions; feeding Zoë's desire for consistency and order. And then we have the afternoons for our ramblings. One day we created a greenhouse to house a weed we’d dug up from the yard. Last Tuesday Zoë’s friend came over for an art class (my half of a babysitting swap – his mom does a science class with them every other week). We talked briefly about the history of paper-cutting in various folk art traditions, and then tried kirigami and papel picado. I showed them examples of modern art interpretations, Matisse’s Jazz series and recent Imi Knoebel, in the hopes that it would inspire them. And it did… before they ran off to play.

I have never had even a remote inkling toward being a teacher. But I'm loving exploring the world with my daughter.

I think that Zoë is enjoying it, too. We pick up a friend after school every Monday. I bring her back to our house and get the girls ready for modern dance class together. When she was here recently, there was some time to play. The friend showed Zoë the book she'd borrowed from the school library. So Zoë brought her to see our shelves of homeschool supplies. She seemed excited to show it off, thumbing through the books, pointing out the box of Bob Books.  When Zoë showed her friend the notebooks we fill with our writing and exercises, she seemed really proud of what we were doing.


*Legally, kindergarten is not mandatory.  As Zoë does not turn six until next year, she is not officially being homeschooled (as defined by home instruction of compulsory age children which is registered with the state).
From the New York State Education Department Website:
“A change in Education Law 3205, which became effective on July 26, 1993, clarifies the age at which a student is subject to compulsory education. The law now requires children who turn six on or before December 1 to receive instruction from the start of the school year in September of that year. Children who turn six after December 1 must begin to receive instruction no later than the first day of school the following September.”