Winding down...

We've been pretty busy the last while with all sorts of things, while others are winding down for the school year.  It'll be good to have our more relaxed schedule again.

We've had our required visit with our facilitator - a pleasure to have him, as always - and our paperwork is done for this year, as well as our registration for next year.

Youngest is done her voice lessons for the year at the end of this month (her teacher follows the school year and takes the summer off, since most of her students are on that schedule themselves).  Her teacher's year end recital was this weekend.  Youngest didn't perform, but she and I did get to see the first half of it before we left to take in another event.  Instead or performing, she's supposed to cut a CD for the grandparents, which will be done in the next few weeks. She's still debating whether or not she wants to continue next year.  Meanwhile, she's expressed an interest in learning the acoustic guitar.  We'll have to look into that. :-D

One of the local home school groups we're members of had a home education expo on the same day as the recital.  Eldest had a table with a few of her paintings.  This was her first public showing of her work, and the responses were very positive.  She had a lot of people asking if she was selling them.  She's thinking about it, but doesn't know how much to charge for them.  How do you even figure out something like that?  There was also a teen panel that she was on, though it wasn't quite as successful as the last one.   There were very few people there to ask questions.  I think the expo itself was too much of a distraction, and people just didn't want to leave the displays they were visiting to take in something else.

A friend of ours, who's had her first baby just a few months ago, took in the expo as well.  She and her husband are talking about home schooling their daughter, and she's been asking all sorts of questions.  She's also been sharing some of her own school experiences, which were far from positive.  Not a whole lot of learning involved!  I was interviewed for one of our home school group newsletters, where I was asked how we did things, how they've changed over the years, and if we'd have done anything differently, etc.  I described our method of home schooling as "free range."  When my friend read the interview, it really hit home for her - it's the sort of education method she says would have been so much better for her than the school system.

In talking with her, I got to thinking about some of the lessons I learned in school over the years that weren't exactly meant to be taught.  Some were positive, some were negative, some were just downright confusing.  As my kids have been interested in hearing some of these stories, I've decided to start writing a few of them here.  They'll be categorized under, imaginatively enough, "Lessons I learned in school." *L*  I don't know how regularly I'll be writing them, but they should be coming up fairly often.

Well, it's coming up on the wee hours of the morning.  Time for me to wind down the day and hit the hay. ;-)