Real Learning and My People

As you may or may not know, we are attempting homeschooling.  I've been reading a lot of books about homeschooling via suggestion of my friend Jordana and the latest one being Real Learning by Elizabeth Foss.  I think if there were one person that I am a total fangirl of in the Catholic blogosphere it would be E. Foss.  She's just amazing and yet very down to earth and engaging. So I'm reading her book and so far I love it and I'm maybe a quarter of the way in.  It just makes sense to me. I always felt like school should not be school in the way its done with so many hoops to jump through but to simply learn for the love of learning.

My few takeaways so far are to read more aloud to them the classics.  And perhaps I'm stretching this a bit, but I'm having fun reading them the books that I love.  The ones that set your imagination going, and so far its going well.  Granted we are only reading Because of Winn-Dixie, which is not high literature, but Ben likes it.  The 2 year old is probably picking up on it somewhat, but he doesn't seem to like to sit still for it because there aren't any pictures to look at while we read. 

Next is that I really want to do more audio books for longer car trips.  Its almost 6 hours to my parents place from here, so why not use that time to "read" a good book and have the kids enjoy/learn too. 

Another is I want to engage more with questions and presenting more options, I think this means that I should also be more disciplined in my ways.  I can so easily veg out with FB or other social media and while its good to relax, there needs to be balance, and I'm going work on trying to find it.

In a case of using social media for good, today, I put together a park date with 3 other homeschool moms and corresponding kids from our parish.  It was really great.  I came away thinking these are my people.  Sometimes, things feel forced, this totally did not, and I loved it.  I'm excited that I have met these ladies and I look forward to hanging out with them and learning so much from them and just being able to have good company and conversation.

So that's it, hope your last week of August is off to a good start.