Still Homeschooling

Alison may have graduated, but she's still homeschooling. :)  This week's learning projects: the skirt she is wearing in the photo (made without a pattern!) and some kind of sugar-free cocoa/peanut-butter/raisin dessert concoction, plus listening to Israeli talk radio. 

And the rest of them, well... the two younger girls were at the one room schoolhouse each morning this week, experiencing what they wish our homeschooling experience would look like -- fun!  Amy helped the neighbor kids put on a play while we moms had lunch together.  Oh how I wish I had a photo of THAT!  It was hilarious and delightful. 

So yes, we are still homeschooling.  I think we are getting the "home" part down nicely.  Now if I can just wrap my mind around the "school" part.  Maybe we need to redefine what that is, especially in light of what follows --

Next week we'll do the required standardized tests for the first time.  Public school teachers are required to teach to the test, so I thought I'd look ahead and see what we might need to review.  Get a load of this question on Amy's test.  (It's okay if I tell you. No one knows the answer except perhaps a linguist.)

The participle inflectional morpheme ending is used only with
a. conjunctions

b. adjectives

c. adverbs

d. nouns

e. verbs

Really?? Someone thinks our kids should know this?? What would that prove?  If Amy knows the answer to this question it will prove only one thing, and that is that she has nothing better to do all day than to cram her head full of grammarian tradesman's vocabulary. I'd much rather she know how to clean a bathroom, play a song on the piano, write a letter, defend a Bible doctrine, treat her sisters to Culvers, or cook supper for her family.  And not because those things are easier, but because they are WORTH KNOWING.  

Homeschooling requires constant re-focusing on worthy goals and sifting out humanistic philosophies.  It requires me to keep checking my compass, the Bible, to be sure we are on the narrow but blessed path that the Lord laid out for my family.  And it's a huge blessing that we can eliminate some of the busy work that other kids are forced to do just to keep them off the streets for several hours per day.

Thankfully I don't report our test results to anyone.  In Minnesota we have to do them annually, presumably to help homeschooling moms see where we might have holes in our kids' education.

Participle inflectional morpheme endings are a hole that we are not going to bother to fill in. The same goes for  possessive inflectional morpheme endings!

There is knowledge, and then there is knowledge...

For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.

Proverbs 2:6