Yes, 9 months does seem a bit premature to be talking about schooling to me too. It's been on my mind a lot lately though, and I find myself reading a lot of articles and even websites dedicated to different platforms of homeschooling. Who knows why certain bees are put in certain people's bonnets? I've had fun humoring myself and looking into some resources in the Atlanta area while trying to sift through the various approaches and techniques of the at-home school.
For a long while there was a certain stigma attached to home schooled children. We had a student join our class in junior high after being schooled at home and he was incredibly different. And not in the endearing, a tad bit quirky, Zooey Deschanel way. He was different in a way that made him the butt of a lot of jokes, as sad as that is. As a result, whenever I used to think of home schooled children I thought of him and how it had made his life a lot harder, from my perspective. I don't know what he went on to do, but I'm sure he'd be the one laughing now, since he was seriously so smart.
Nowadays, I've had such positive influence from people that I know that homeschool, unbeknownst to them I'm sure. Michael has talked with someone he works with at WFM about it as well, and it seems that it has come a long way in the last few decades. Everything I've read about it makes so much sense to me: catering lessons to individual children and going at their pace, deciding when the school year is based on your family's needs, not having to worry about waiting for spring break to visit grandparents, giving one-on-one attention to the learning child and ensuring lessons are truly learned before moving on to the next. I think there's a great tragedy in how large classes are in traditional schools, and how thin teachers are spread between students. I know from personal experience that if there are certain things you can't quite keep up with, most of the time you're left behind. Or at least that was my experience. It's an unfortunate reality of having to get through certain curricula by certain times in order to start other things required by the school so they can check it off their lists. I'm not ragging on the school system, I just think some aspects of it are broken.
And as for socializing the home schooled child, I had no idea until recently how many amazing programs and networks there are available throughout every state. Several of them in Atlanta alone, all focused on getting like-minded people together and letting children form life-long bonds. I've known too many people that get caught up with the wrong crowd and basically have their lives ruined because of it. Too many people = more than none. The influence that others can have on children in the formative age is astounding, and it's basically when I stop liking kids, haha. Most of the time I love children until they start becoming under the influence of other kids because that's usually when brattiness and "so and so does this why can't I" sets in. Usually.
But enough of my generalizations! Who knows where we'll land on this, it's just something I've been thinking about and recently started looking into. Teaching has always seemed like such a fun thing to have the privilege of doing, and all the better if it's my own kid. So far I've been loving teaching Harper things and reading to her, and childhood development is so interesting to me. Who am I? Seriously, I'm telling you. Having a baby changes EVERYTHING! In such a good way.
We had a 50% off Scoutmob coupon (we never eat out without one) so we went to a sushi restaurant. We read the menu online ahead of time and they actually had a lot of options for vegetarians, and vegetarian sushi is so cheap! Harper liked it all, especially the tofu and this orange slice we couldn't pry from her fingers.
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