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New kids, homeschooling and oranges.
Nov. 16th, 2011 07:15 pmWhen we went out to Farmer's house to feed his animals some orange rinds, we ran across a family of four kids who happened to be out and about. They were fascinated by the fact that my kids are homeschooled (the topic came up because one of the girls thought she recognized H from her school).
The eldest girl (who we later determined is in 6th grade) asked,"Do they get to have recess?" to which I answered, "About 90% of their day could count as recess." I wasn't sugar coating it for her at all. Then she asked something along the lines of "So what do you teach them? Do they have to do math?" so I responded with something like, "Well, we explore topics they are interested in, but I don't make them do a curriculum because I believe that people learn best when it is something they want to learn." This seemed to resonate with her.
After hanging out for a while, they invited themselves back to our house. And while I've been reading the FreeRangeKids site a lot lately, actually running across kids who are allowed to explore a two or three mile area, with just the admonition to be back by 5pm, felt a little unreal to me. I was suspicious that maybe they were making it up that they could go as far as our house, but I got the feeling they were dealing with benign neglect rather than an intentional embracing of a philosophy.
As we headed back to our house the fifth grader asked, "Do they have homework?" After a pause I started to answer with, "No....". I was going to say more, but the little girl in first grade took my hand at that point and started talking to me. She was very excited that we had orange trees. We sent them home with a bag full, since their eagerness seemed indicative of someone lacking in vitamin C. It may have been quite a while since they'd had fresh citrus.
I told them to come back the next time they had free run of the neighborhood, now that they know where we live. We'll see if anything comes of it.
The eldest girl (who we later determined is in 6th grade) asked,"Do they get to have recess?" to which I answered, "About 90% of their day could count as recess." I wasn't sugar coating it for her at all. Then she asked something along the lines of "So what do you teach them? Do they have to do math?" so I responded with something like, "Well, we explore topics they are interested in, but I don't make them do a curriculum because I believe that people learn best when it is something they want to learn." This seemed to resonate with her.
After hanging out for a while, they invited themselves back to our house. And while I've been reading the FreeRangeKids site a lot lately, actually running across kids who are allowed to explore a two or three mile area, with just the admonition to be back by 5pm, felt a little unreal to me. I was suspicious that maybe they were making it up that they could go as far as our house, but I got the feeling they were dealing with benign neglect rather than an intentional embracing of a philosophy.
As we headed back to our house the fifth grader asked, "Do they have homework?" After a pause I started to answer with, "No....". I was going to say more, but the little girl in first grade took my hand at that point and started talking to me. She was very excited that we had orange trees. We sent them home with a bag full, since their eagerness seemed indicative of someone lacking in vitamin C. It may have been quite a while since they'd had fresh citrus.
I told them to come back the next time they had free run of the neighborhood, now that they know where we live. We'll see if anything comes of it.
