A Little About School, Part 1

I wrote this pretty early this morning - posting it this afternoon after ironing out a computer problem.)

It's been ages (again) since my last post. I really wish I could be keeping up with things better. Once upon a time I used to write during the "quiet time" hour - back when we had such a thing.
Every once in awhile we go through phases in which it is more work trying to get everyone quietly occupied with something than is worth the small amount of time I might be able to eke out of it, and here we are. Chase isn't napping anymore, but he isn't quite old enough to be trustworthy in quiet moments by himself. Actually I wonder if in his case that will EVER happen. Just now it seems like I could be stuck forever in this nerve-wracking vortex, anticipating the next "surprise" - "Why is there a battery in the toilet?!" or, "WHO drew with a SHARPIE all over the wall?!", or better yet, "Why did you take your clothes off AGAIN in the backyard?".
And those are pretty mild examples. I have the chance to write now only because I have been up since the wee hours of the morning with a sick Chase, who is now sleeping after
a rough couple of hours (while I am left awake and will probably be half-dead by lunchtime - oh, if only he could remember this kind of thing by the time he is a teenager and thinks
I am hopelessly uncool!)

Somewhere in the midst of this happy chaos (because he is awfully cute) we are trying to maintain some semblance of order in the schoolroom. (The what?) Right now we
are working mostly on a Civil War project for an Academic Presentation day our home school group is having next Friday. We're putting together a display board that's going to be pretty good for our first go at this sort of thing, and Aimee is working on an oral presentation. I thought it would be a no-brainer to have her recite the Gettysburg Address, but I quite forgot
to suggest strongly that she NOT recite it, as, naturally, she strenuously rejected that idea and insisted on writing her own essay. I admit I've struggled just a little with how much input and direction to give here, especially since we haven't done any essay writing, per se, yet. We've done narration and dictation, but I've only just begun to consider purchasing a formal writing course. However, I agreed to the essay, because Aimee does have a long and (and fairly sophisticated for her age) story going that she and a friend are writing together, and I've also seen book reviews (for a box she saw at the library) that she's written on some of her favorite books. I don't think I was supposed to see the latter, probably because they were very good and I don't think she would want me to know that she possesses this kind of skill, should I ever dare to think of asking her to write a book report, which I'm not sure I would actually ever do. It's my opinion, both out of real philosophy as well as out of a certain amount of laziness, that immersion - that's not even a strong enough word - in good literature will do most of the job of teaching most of the language arts, and that good writing skills will emerge in the proper time during this kind of exposure. I exult in this "grammar stage," in which the goal IS simply to let kids wallow around in interesting facts and well-woven tales of imagination and adventure. I really do believe that the result of this is at least a good foundation of good grammar, spelling, reading, and even writing skills. So back to the paper Aimee is writing - it's not exactly how an essay ought to be put together, but there are some glimmers of savvy writing in it. I'm looking forward to her presenting it next week and enjoying the satisfaction of having done it herself.