Wednesdays are always hard. Hard to fit in any sort of formal school time with mornings taken up with Bible Study. The kids love going and playing with friends at church so much. And I love the change of pace. But it really cramps school for the day.
Augustine was again reticent to practice violin today, so I told him to set a time and we would do it then. (Rather than expect him to positively respond to my, "get your violin out" approach). This worked well today. I really believe in giving kids a bit of control this way. And it would work well in a lot of situations if I could just work enough margins into our day to have time to allow them to set their schedule. This kind of leads me to a thought that has been knocking around in my head for awhile. That is the idea that education should simply be a provision of good soil in which the student can flourish. Not a revolutionary thought by any means, but something I can use and hang my hat on. Something that stimulates my imagination in a way that I'm inspired to think outside the box of traditional curriculum with lots of worksheets guidelines. I need to put a lot more thought into it. It is not an unschooling thing, really. I don't know exactly what our "good soil" looks like. I think I'll probably start with a lot of concrete resources, throw them together and let them "compost" or break down in whatever way seems natural to us. Infant thought. Tiny preemie infant thought.
So violin practice went well. He composed his first song yesterday with mom. She wrote it down for him. It's 16 notes long. Very cute. Certainly not part of a traditional lesson plan to allow the student to compose before they really even master Twinkle, but I suppose that's a big part of what I mean about providing good soil and just letting them grow.
Oh, the song is titled, "Violin cabbage down..."shoot. I forget the rest of the title. I'll have to include it in another post.
We read more Junie B. Jones. He was reluctant, but a can of Limonata did the trick. I think I love the idea of making reading time special by including special treats. This will become a ritual, I believe. Hope it doesn't turn into a burden for me!
After a bike ride through the cemetary and running around outside like mad catching fireflies and playing with neighbor kids, the children came in for a late night lettering session. Dinah really began to own her work, practicing the alphabet with the help of some indented, ruled paper. She was so proud of her work. I'm excited to see this interest in writing. I guess we have another scholar to teach, now. *Sighing a happy, tired sigh*
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