Soul Searching

I feel like I have been doing some soul searching this last week. Its been an interesting time in my head figuring out where I am at and what I want to get out of homeschooling. I guess you could say I have been reevaluating what I believe homeschooling to be. I am still new at this idea and find that my perceptions and expectations change almost daily.

It all started when G decided that she is incapable of sleeping without movement. I wrapped her up in the soft carrier and duly paced the house to keep her asleep. This got a bit much after awhile and I was getting sore and tired so she got put in the hammock and I bounce her instead. It means that I am kind of stuck in one spot while she sleeps. I initially felt very sorry for A who really had to get on and find something to do on his own unless he wanted to draw at the table with me or just chat. I felt like I was neglecting him and the poor wee man being only two should be getting MORE of me!!!

Then something interesting started to happen. He started asking more and more questions, questions on topics that would never have been covered if I had been around to 'help'. He has seriously and with great earnest started his OWN learning. I know, I know! DUH say all of the unschooling people out there! But I guess I had not done enough 'deschooling' myself yet. I have been working so hard on setting up learning that I had missed all of the learning that was happening around me.

So for the last week I have left him alone (not literally of course) and been amazed at what he has been getting up to! He has been doing a lot of outside stuff and we have had such cool questions as "what do spiders eat" and "why does rain wash the chalk away" "how do you tell time?". He has conducted his own experiments by doing things like putting a piece of chalk in a bowl of water and making mud out of the sand and then noticing the next day that it had dried out. These things have lead to many discussions about spider webs and bugs. How other spiders catch bugs in other ways. This has lead onto talks about how we dont eat bugs but some people in other cultures do... and then onto those cultures and the people in them. In theory I knew this is how it worked. In theory. But I just couldnt switch my brain off and the 'learning potential' in everything we did was foremost in my mind. I guess it still is in a way, but its kind of different now. More relaxed. And the funny thing is that I think that he has learned more in this last week than in all of the weeks before when I was trying! Yes, once again, I know! DUH! :-)