Sally tells me today is the best day of her life. I express surprise, and she says, “Is it not the best day of your life too?” I tell her maybe not the best, but certainly a good day, I hope, and why is it the best day of her life? Because she doesn’t have to go back to school until January 4th, she says.
Perhaps that is just the rhythm of childhood. Vacation — Christmas break, summer vacation, a trip in the middle of the year — is exciting, special, different. School is everyday, normal, routine, boring at times by definition.
But as I’ve been thinking about homeschooling, I wonder if it is more than that. Rixa commented on my initial homeschooling post that she would love a charter school with a half-day program. The day I read her comment there were two articles in the New York Times in intriguing juxtaposition. The first was about Forest Kindergarten, where kids 3 1/2 to 6 years old spend three hours a day outside in a 325-acre nature reserve, every day, regardless of weather (in New York State, where the weather is a factor). They explore and play, with no formal academic curriculum until first grade. I assume (hope) that even in the upper grades, outdoor exploration/play is emphasized.
The other article was a story of parents with children in Chicago’s public elementary schools trying to raise money to add an hour to the school day, which is currently 5 hours and 8 minutes long. “By comparison, students in New York City go for 6 hours 30 minutes. In Boston, they spend 6 hours in class, and in Los Angeles, most students are there 5 hours 19 minutes.”
I have long had an unarticulated feeling that I wish Sally could go to school, but just not so long every day. She’s at a school with early and late tracks, so her day is 8-2:15, while half of the kids go 9:15-3:30. (That’s a 6 hour, 15 minute day). I think this schedule might be okay if three hours of it were spent outside, but I think her play time (and not on a nature preserve, but rather a limited schoolyard, is much less than an hour).
The parents (and educators quoted in the article) in the Chicago area are convinced that a longer school day, week, and year is the answer to making their children competitive. Chicago-area charter and contract schools are in session up to two hours longer than the regular schools (that would be over 7 hours in school each day!).
Interestingly, the parents in both articles are relatively well-off (as the Waldorf Schools are private, and one presumes, pricey, and in the Chicago area parents are wanting to spend more money in addition to their property taxes, etc). Often when there is talk of extending the school day, including moving from half-day to full-day kindergarten, and to adding pre-kindergarten, etc, legislators and advocates point out that households with two parents working need the extended child-care that a longer day would provide.
The economic and other logistics of homeschooling are fascinating to me. Homeschooling requires that a family be well-enough off to have a full-time parent, and/or modest enough in their wants and needs to accept the priority of homeschooling over the desire/need for a second income and/or that parent’s willingness to sacrifice temporarily some of their own ambitions.
When I think of Sally going to a half-day of formal education, or the wish to shorten her school day by even an hour (as she could if she attended the middle of the day and neither early or late track), and even when I am vehemently against homework, it is all in the service of providing her with more time in the day to play, preferably outside. This is even more urgent in the winter months, when it gets dark at 5 pm, and yet my three kids are outside in their snow clothes, long past the time when the sun’s rays provided meager warmth.
This again could be simply the rhythm of life in a four-season climate. Summers are for spending outdoors, for gardening, biking, jumping on the trampoline, swimming, running through the sprinklers, and winters are for quietly reading by the fire (or . . . doing homework or sitting in class).
But given what we know about dirt being good for kids, and active play improving sleep, and finally — how excited my kids are by the prospect of a week and a half off to sled, cook with mom, build snowmen and snow forts, and swim in the indoor pool with the big bucket and water slides, I am worried it will be impossibly hard to sentence Sally back to a desk come January.
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There’s a school in my district called the Family School. It’s part home-school, part traditional school. The kids go to school in a classroom for four hours a day M-Th and then the parents are responsible for the other half of the schooling at home. No recess though, one of my friends is bugged by that. Another friend thinks it’s the most wonderful thing ever. We don’t go to that school though. Me homeschooling my son just wouldn’t go so well. It seems like it’d totally be up your alley, you’d have to move to New Mexico, though.
I also remember reading about a similar outdoor school, only it was in Germany. I think it’s a lovely idea. I already know I don’t get myself (and hence the kids) outside as much as I’d like, especially as the weather gets cold and icky. My mom firmly believes that all children should spend at least an hour outside every day, summer or winter. So right now (up in cold, snowy Minnesota) Zari is playing outside with Eric and several cousins.
The more I think about schooling options, the more I want a half-day school. No homework either. Or “homework” that is fun projects and activities, not meaningless paperwork and worksheets. (Like, say, building a baking soda & vinegar volcano or collecting snowflakes on black paper or learning how to cook something.)