Stuff

It's been far too long since I last posted, so this is just a catch up of the home-schooly stuff we've been doing. ;-)

We've just sent off the last of the flat travelers we've had as guests over Christmas. It's been interesting and fun, though I must admit to a slight disappointment. We were actually supposed to get one more flat guest over Christmas. The girls had both made new Flat Travelers (FT) for this exchange, as we haven't done it in a while. The family we sent Youngest's FT to never acknowledged if it got there - and we never got theirs. I hate it when that happens, and it's happened too often. It's part of why we take part in exchanges only sporadically. We've exchanged many FT all over the world and have made some wonderful friends in the process. Every now and then, though, they disappear. At least this one was a new flattie. It's a lot harder when it's a well traveled FT, with many countries stamped in its passport, that suddenly disappears. The whole thing is based on the honour system. You assume that if you exchange with someone, they'll send your FT back. It's always a disappointment when they don't, and the families don't get back to you. I understand that things happen - envelopes go missing in the mail, FTs get lost or misplaced, and life just takes over. The very first FT we ever sent out never came back, and I really don't care - that family had gone through yet another miscarriage and quite frankly, a little paper doll just doesn't rate on the priority list, y'know? I can understand that. It's when you just don't know, and they don't answer your emails or anything - or worse, they do answer, but are really rude about it, and still don't send the FT back (thankfully, that hasn't happened to me, but I know of others it's happened to). Still, it's a valuable and fun project, and we will continue. Just not as actively as when we first started doing it.

So what else have we been doing?

Eldest has finished a whole bunch of pages for her comic. She's still needing to find workable space she can use for her online comic, but now feels she has enough pages that she can actually get things going. Youngest has been drawing a lot, too, and there's a noticeable improvement in her skill level.

They've been doing a fair amount of stuff on their own - especially Eldest. Her interests are far ranging, and she enjoys studying. The process of studying itself is a big part of what she likes, and it's interesting to hear her tell us some of the things she's found. About the most I do with that is occasionally send her links to sites I think might interest her. I still get somewhat antsy, if you will, about unschooling, even though logically I know it's the best way to do things with them. It's hard to trust, when you can't always see anything tangible to show that they're learning. Particularly with being a product of the public school system to begin with. Then we start talking about something, or they show me things they've been working on, and I see they've somehow managed to go well beyond where I would've expected, without my seeing when or how they did it.

We still have our weekly get togethers with a large group of hs'ers, plus another weekly get together with another hs'ing family. I've also been incorporating a lot of my business training into their "curriculum." I have a lot of cd's we listen to, but there's also a book of the month club, plus dvd's and the like. They teach all the stuff I wish I'd learned far earlier in my life! How can you go wrong learning from people like the Kiyosaki's and Maxwell's of the world? I figure this way, the girls will have a huge head start when they get to the point that they're on their own, compared to when I did it. :-D

So things have been going well, I'd say.
:-D