unschooling is stalling out.  chana wants to go to school.  she is bored.  she is emotional.  she wants more friends.

part of this is her age.  the burst of hormones rushing through the bloodstream (if that's even scientifically accurate) is plenty for any human being to deal with.  but it's more than that.  this is the same age that sarah began to feel unhappy with homeschooling, too.  at the time, i thought it was because she had 2 close friends, and one of them moved away and the other went to school.  chana has a really nice social group, but no intimate friends that are girls.  i think that is what she is searching for.  and she is correct that it will be easier to find that in school than out of school.  i tried a variety of extracurricular activities and camps to help sarah meet girls at this age.  she socially integrated easily, but didn't make close friends (though it turns out, throughout her high school years, she was acquainted with a wide variety of people in various situations from these attempts).

is this a socialization issue?  is this just the age?  it's looking like it  won't be the best choice to homeschool chana for high school, either.  sometimes i think that for homeschooling to work best, it's great to have a few neighbors also homeschooling, with kids roughly your children's ages, so that they can happily play and play and play.

but to address the boredom issue.  chana still has 2 years left until high school.  although i think she would be able to tolerate sitting in class, it's something i'd prefer her to avoid.

i wonder if it's the unfurling spring that is causing her to to have a surge of energy that causes yearning inside her that she doesn't know how to answer.  sure, if she were in class for 8 hours a day plus some more time for homework she wouldn't be bored, but would that be addressing what she is looking for? but what IS she looking for?

i'm feeling like maybe it's time for me to not be so hands-off with her education.  every time i ask her if she wants to do something "educational," she vehemently says that is not what she wants.  in general, i don't really like organizing projects or hands-on activities. but chana doesn't learn anything from lectures, doesn't enjoy watching videos for information, doesn't like to read for information.  how will she get the idea that the world is an exciting, interesting place with many things to explore if she doesn't want to do the classic things people do to get information?  bear in mind, i've brought her to many museums and hand-on science classes, and she only enjoyed a small percentage of them.

but who is better equipped than i am to find activities that are perfectly designed for her temperament and interest?  i am thinking about making a list of possible activities to do when she is bored.  i feel like she would like to do something creative, hands-on, social, that expands her mind.  maybe i need to participate more in her activities for a while.

Choices:
i read a book to you
we go to the pet store
we go to MoMA
we go to a science museum to play with the exhibits
we go to a zoo
we make a playdate
we choose something to all sit around and draw
we read some navi and maybe make a video about it or a cartoon
play with prisms
see if an avocado seed or a bean or a potato can grow if we put it in water
diet pepsi and mentos
play with chalk outside
make a sundial
make a sun print with construction paper
look for origami paper and make something
try to make an egg float
see what happens when you put oil and water together
try to make quicksand
try to stab a potato with a straw
make music with water and glasses
make invisible ink
hold a glass of water upside down and it won't spill (hopefully!)
make a kind of lava lamp
blow up a balloon without your mouth
make a parachute
make water travel by itself from one glass to another
make lemonade fizzy drink
(i took those last bunch from an easy looking site: http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/experiments.html)

i'll let you know how she reacts to this list.

at her pace

i did megila how i like to do it.  i told her in english, emphasizing details she didn't know so that it was new and interesting to her, and at the pace she likes.

it was a bit of a tough sell since today is the last day of one of her free trials for one of her video editors, and she's in the middle of making some action/spy movie thing.  we got through 2 perakim until she asked to stop.  she asked:

• would mordechai bow to the king?
• haman wanted to kill the rest of the jews? even though they did bow to him?

 at one point, chana said to me, "i'm sorry, i wasn't paying attention.  i missed that." and i repeated it.  it reminded me of the cartoon my mother cut out over 10 years ago when i was homeschooling sarah.  there is a picture of a kid sitting at a desk in the middle of his living room, and mom says," i'm looking for a volunteer to do a report on boll weevils.  no volunteers?  nobody?  i'm going to have to pick one..."
and the caption says: the down side of homeschooling

it's true that i tend to notice very quickly when my student stops paying attention.  that's because most of our learning is interactive.

al pi darko

today during chumash time, i pulled out the condensed version of pesukim i culled from the megilla to make the bare bones of the story.  i read it to her and translated it. 

i realized that this was not the way to go this year.  i am reminded of my friend's wise words: any year that you have a baby, kiss that year of homeschooling good-bye.

so really, as aharon is only 9mo, anything we do this year is gravy ;-)

the problem with doing it so bare bones is that chana was ready to have a much more sophisticated level of detail in the story.  when i read the first 3 perakim to her in english, the details she focused on and the things she noticed and commented on and the questions she asked were fairly detailed and sophisticated.  since the entire word for word translation was a little TOO detailed and boring, i made the mistake of thinking we could whiz through what we did in previous years.  this was also boring, and not detailed enough. 

as usual, i am back to the idea that i don't use a curriculum or supplies because in the moment, i need to make decisions about how and what to teach. 

i think tomorrow i will take a block of time, with no agenda in terms of amount to cover, and just go through it at exactly her pace and with the amount of details that will be interesting to her.

i think she would greatly enjoy navi this way (after seeing our thwarted attempt at the little midrash says).  i am finding, though, that i just don't have the time/energy to throw another subject into the mix.  however, that might be a good idea for a summer project.  if i don't have her translate, and just do the story with her, we can do some navi this summer.