Links to ZombieProm photos, Oct 2009

http://s26.photobucket.com/albums/c114/techie_pixie/Zomprom%202009%20-%20John%20Gerecht%20Photography/?albumview=slideshow

A Homeschooling-Mom Update, two+ years and counting

The question of doing or not doing daily blogging became a non-issue after May, 2006, when my son and I moved our homeschooling location to our new condo, which -- quite intentionally -- did not come equipped with a land-line phone, cable TV, or internet.

Our workarounds for those formerly critical items ... are working!

Instead of a home phone ... we have cell phones ... and text messaging ...

Instead of cable TV, daily and weekly favorites incorporated into our schedules ... we have overcome those addictions (my son is very proud of himself for kicking his TV-watching habit when we moved!). Now we have full seasons of shows available for rent or checkout (at our local video stores or at the library, depending on finances), and as many DVD and videotape movies as we wish, for those few nights each month when we're at home and ready for some video watching.

Instead of internet ... well, let's face it, we really weren't all that interested in giving internet up completely, and there really isn't anything else that compares to it, is there? -- So we still have internet in our lives, lots and lots and lots of it, as much as we can stand, just ... not at home (we use the library computers, and borrow my son's dad's computers a few times each week, before or after my son's overnights), and not always every day. (We can access the internet via our cell phones, if we really really want to proclaim daily connection!)

At some point ... perhaps ... we will get ourselves laptops, and wireless connectivities ... but for now, we save ourselves a few dollars each month and, more importantly, also save ourselves from those countless hours of former addiction-times that we used to experience, before we moved!

To Blog or not to Blog ...

My son has not agreed with my pro-blogging views. For more than two months now, we have been avoiding the issues of who-keeps-track-of-what for my son's homeschooling studies and learnings ... I should say that we have been avoiding the resolving of the issues, for we find that I am in favor of daily tracking and my son is in favor of my doing updates "when something exciting or interesting occurs." -- In fact, my child would agree to my doing daily updates, if that's what I wanted to do, so long as I did them without reqesting or requiring input from him!!!

In other important areas, my child's 11th birthday occurred in November in a rather nice kind of celebratory fashion (with just one special friend this year instead of the whole crowd). Then there was Thanksgiving, and the end of the legalities of the cooperative divorce process between myself and my child's dad, and a Snow Day (with just one inch of snow covering our yard here in town, whereas our friends who live 40 minutes away had what looked to be almost a foot of snow!).

With an 11-year-old who stands taller than my chin when we are both in socks, no shoes, it occurs to me that in just five more years this son of mine will be driving ... could possibly be employed ... where will we be? How will we be getting along? How many years of homeschooling (with or without blogging!) will we have accomplished by then?

How will we have grown? ... What will we have learned? ... What will we be doing next!! The possibilities are mind-boggling!!

Let's rephrase the beginning and move on ...

Here are two scenes, quite complementary:

In the first scene, the homeschooling mom praises her son's progress in terms of reduced frenzies of video-gaming and TV-watching and, perhaps, an overall less-agonized acceptance of some of his newer homeschooling responsibilities.

In the second scene, we check on the homeschooling son and learn that he has been watching TV from early-morning cartoons through to these later-night bedtime-hour shows. The mom says, "Have you had the TV on ALL DAY???"
The son nods and says, quite cheerfully, "Yes, I believe it's a new record!"

Today's project (words can only describe ...)

Today my son and I are composing an afghan crochet project. I am being the chief crochet hook wielder and my son is being chief color consultant and style and texture coordinator.

I call it an 'afghan' in a very loose sense, for we do not yet know if it will become big enough to claim this title. Maybe it will end up being a scarf or a doily, or a rug or book cover or treasure map. The start of something bigger that remains smaller until some later time, defined by colors and shape rather than by size.

In the beginning ...

This is the end of my third week of being a stay-at-home / home-schooling / learning-at-home mom with my son David.

I think it quite likely that we are going to survive this home-schooling thing! -- I hesitate to proclaim this too loudly, as my belief in opposites and their occurrences so often seems to come true. -- Especially when I've proclaimed something Positive, which is a definite invitation for something Negative to occur!
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Update, March 30, 2006: I'm updating my 'dacmom' blog six months after this first entry. My son and I have made the rounds of several different homeschooling philosophies and styles ... "eclectic" remains the only true descriptive of what we have tried!
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