Back in Black.

Well, I’m wearing blue actually.

I have not had teh internet in a week and I was really going out of my stinkin’ head. No email! I had TONS of fun sifting through 300 emails when I finally regained service tonight. Stupid DSL.

We’ve been homeschooling for two weeks. It still feels strange. I feel like A should be in school with other kids, eating greasy lunchfood in a cafeteria. I really hope this starts to feel like normal soon.

I’ve learned a few things so far.

1. It doesn’t matter how many good books the library has on butterflies, you can’t read them all, so don’t check them all out and lug them all to the car, just to return them unread 2 weeks later. Share with the other patrons, mama.
2.  You should not do school at the same table where you eat dinner. It makes a big mess that you won’t want to clean up at 5:30. We moved our eating table into the formal dining room (formally the office, and the desk is now in the parlor…). We are actively scouring Goodwills for a round dining room table that isn’t too big and costs less than $30.
3. You can’t possibly spend the same amount of time cleaning as you did before school started. I knew I was not schooling from September to June and then taking off 3 months. So it came down to either three months on, one month off or 3 weeks on, 1 week off. My need for a clean house tipped the scales in favor of the latter. Whatever doesn’t get checked off my daily list can get done in the fourth week. I also think the regular breaks will be great for avoiding burnout but they won’t be so long that it is difficult to get back into the swing of things.
4. It’s okay to assign homework. A is a bit of a dawdler. Always has been. From now on, I am setting the timer. I will give her more than ample time to do her work. When the timer goes off, the work gets put away and she can finish it with her dad later that night. One hour for first grade math (which thus far has been painfully easy for her) is plenty. Twenty minutes for a 2-page worksheet in handwriting? Plenty of time.

We’ve been reading a lot of Bible stories this week. I’ve put it into the history section. (It was written long ago, after all.) That’s felt a bit strange for me as someone who doesn’t read much of the Bible. When I do read it, I interpret it figuratively. That being said, I do think it is important to read the Bible. It will be difficult to understand Shakepeare, Victorian poetry, or even Laura Ingalls Widler and C.S. Lewis if you aren’t Bible literate. Whether you believe in it or not, if you live in a culture saturated by Judeo-Christianity, you are well-served if you know the basic plot of the Bible.

However, it irks me that all of the women in the Bible are made out to be coniving whores whose goal in life is to seduce and decieve. (Except those who are only ever meek and obedient to their husbands. They’re okay.) So I sought out some books that focused major Biblical women and spoke of them in a postive way.  My favorite find is Daughters of Fire. I greatly appreciated Fran Manushkin’s treatment of that most infamous woman: Eve. Rather than exaggerate her greed or her foolishness, Manushkin paints Eve as a gentle, trusting (too trusting!) woman who delighted in all of God’s creation and thirsted for knowledge of her environment. The author also gives Adam his share of the blame. Eve may have offered him the apple, but he ate it of his own free will.