School. At home. Oh the possibilities!

When I was pregnant with Dominic, many people were excited for me. Some expressed concerns about my plans for continuing education, or the tightness of our budget, or about whether I was too young, but even they were generally positive. When I was pregnant with Noemie, it seemed that the mood of the public shifted to one of resignation to the fact that Danny and I were officially in family mode. But the announcement that we are expecting our third has brought out the uglies! If you've had more than two kids you know what I'm talking about. One tactless family member made the discovery while asking Danny if he'd "snip snip"-ed yet. When she found out that on the contrary, we were still at work, she glared at me from afar for the rest of the evening. Yet another family member admitted she was "too liberal" to share her opinion on the matter. Hah! I'm still planning on at least one more. I suppose at that point people will dismiss me from the human race altogether. And wait till they find out I want to home school!

Here are Dominic and Noemie in their Halloween costumes:

Dominic is a beach-goer in the 1920s. Noemie is his lifeguard. Obviously.

I recently got in an argument about homeschooling with my parental units. And while I've no intention to use my blog for a forum of discussion on the topic, I would like to reiterate my points here.

Why Anais wants to homeschool:
1. I like my kids
2. I like teaching them stuff
3. The teacher:student ratio is way better than they're going to get anywhere else
4. I desire to have control over what they learn, when they learn it, and how they learn it because no one knows my kids better than I do, and no one loves them as much as I do
5. Because we can take vacation whenever, wherever I want, for as long as I want

Will my kids be socialized? Yes, and probably much better than in a traditional schooling system where the only "socialization" that happens is on the playground or on the bus, with a pack of unsupervised children exactly their same age, from the same socio-economic background. How very like the real world. (Oh wait, that's not like the real word at all now, is it?)

It saddens me to see kids drooling over their mundane homework worksheets at the library. They just spent 7 hours at school and now they have to spend another 3 hours grueling over fractions and using the word "earnest" in a sentence? Gross! My busywork-free 4th grader, meanwhile, will be reciting the Declaration of Independence as he runs down the soccer field, solving quadratic equations in his head, for fun, as he plays the drums in his garage band, and explaining oxidative phosphorylation to his little sister as they work together to replace the transmission on a '57 Thunderbird. And if we don't make it to the Krebs cycle, no big deal. I didn't understand it till college anyway. If you take away all the time spent going to and from school, waiting for attendance or walking between classes, taking useless assessments, and waiting for the slow kids to catch up, your kids could have 4 more hours to their day- 4 more hours to learn, to play, to meet people who aren't just like them... It's a beautiful thing.

I'm a HUGE homeschooling advocate, even though most people look at me like I've got pudding coming out of my nose when I talk about it. I am EXCITED! Homeschooling was the norm prior to the 20th century. Literacy today is lower than it was at the onset of compulsory education! Not every one can homeschool for many reasons, but if it's something you are considering, I would love to convince you. I can also give you a number of reasons why having a big family is awesome, but you might feel kinda lonely if you go for it.