Are we going to homeschool?

A neighbor asked me that recently, and I sputtered, "uh, we're thinking about it...er, that's basically what we're doing now... mm, we're keeping our options open." I'm nervous about people finding out before I know whether they will be offended.

To make things worse, a bill was just proposed in the NJ Assembly which will effectively make us all public school teachers. I wrote a letter to our assembly reps, but I don't hold out much hope they will stand up to the NEA. They think homeschoolers are all either neglectful abusers or conservative creationists. The one argument in our favor is that the bill as it stands puts the onus (and expense) of all that oversight onto the local school superintendent. Just what our school districts needed-- to be saddled with managing a few dozen distrustful, vaguely uncooperative, somewhat resentful homeschoolers.

That wasn't what I meant to write about, though.

I meant to write about yesterday in the park with Jack. He flew a kite, saw a groundhog, looked for poison ivy, made a new friend, and slid down a pole. We walked across a bridge and he talked about why it wouldn't be a good idea to walk through the sticky mud.

I need to remember to get him some new shoes.

So we are homeschooling. Today we went to gymnastics. I had to do an errand in Hamilton, so we went out to lunch at Panera, where he took over an hour to eat a bagel. He played outside with Michael (rather cooperatively, I must say!). Then we went to see Mr. Ray perform. Jack danced, and jumped, and went around giving people high fives. He wanted to get a turn to sing in the microphone, but there were too many other kids. At 7 p.m., John called for us to pick him up, and Jack fell asleep on the way there.

I'm not going to break down every educational objective. There are just too many. I'll just keep a diary and note things that surprised me, or that he especially liked. Like David Albert says, homeschooling is a voyage of self-discovery.