over the next several days... i'll be sharing the how's, whys, fears and successes of our eclectic-homeschool lifestyle...

question: how did it all begin?

answer: it started at preschool age... actually before that... when my tot was in the bathtub every night, i taught him his abc's and numbers using foamy bathtub toys... this was before i ever considered homeschooling. little did i know... this was the beginning of our outside the box learning. truth is... i used to line up the foamy letters randomly, on the side of the tub... i'd ask him to point to a specific letter and then, if he answered correctly... i'd ping them at him with a flick of my finger... which resulted in belly giggles! is there anything better then a tot giggling from their belly?

when preschool age arrived... i only considered homeschooling for about 20 minutes, before i surrendered to back-pack envy and the wave of excitement from all of my friends who were excited to put their kids in pre-school. i kept a secret in my heart... i was having so much fun with my preschooler already... the thought of turning him over to someone else... left a dull ache in my belly. not to mention a lump in my throat that wouldn't go away.

we visited a preschool, for the day. a parochial preschool. it was cold. i don't mean the weather... i mean the learning atmosphere. the floors were institutional, the teachers stiff and also spoke in a "baby voice," yet with an authoritarian slant. which made me shrill. the kids were told... what to do... where to sit, when to play, when to wash their hands, when to talk, when to ask questions, when, when, when.... and my all time favorite (sarcastic)... being made to SHARE. I HATE BEING FORCED TO SHARE! example: little johnny is playing with a dumptruck-quietly-- in his own world of make believe- little jacob comes up and tries to take johnny's dumptruck away from him. johnny says no.. i'm playing with it... jacob yells out, HE WON'T SHARE! cold teacher comes up, reprimands little johnny... says we must share... you're not being nice. johnny looks up like what??? jacob gets the truck. this is jacobs first good lesson on how to manipulate. instead of the teacher saying... in her best baby voice.... jacob...why don't you find your own toy to play with and get out of johnny's face????? or find your own damn truck and join him?

this lesson of sharing that day... validated what is wrong in our learning institutions. i also vividly remember a boy quietly off by himself, building a wooden block structure.... the baby-voiced teacher, insisted he finger paint instead. why? because that's what everyone else was doing!

see where i'm going with this? more tomorrow....