library schooling

Free Schooling has not turned out to be as essential a help as we thought it might, so I took the Hero and the Storyteller to the library this past week in order to do a trial homeschooling day.

We are living with family in Albany right now. The Hero and N., the oldest child in the family we're staying with, are drawn to each other, and it can be hard to keep our usual routines in place with kids distracted by the potential of infinite cousin time. The idea behind homeschooling outside the house was to keep from disrupting anyone's usual morning routine: our homeschool morning routine, M.'s work-at-home morning in her office next to the dining room, or R.'s sweet homemaker-y morning with her daughters in the apartment upstairs.

Academically, it was a smash. The Storyteller breezed through his work as usual, and we had everything we needed with us even though it had been an afterthought to grab the pencils. I was again grateful for The Latin-Centered Curriculum because all the books we needed fit in a backpack that was easy to take on a bus with a boy in each hand. There's no way I could have done this if I was using a crafty program like Five in a Row or WinterPromise or even Story of the World.

Halfway through, the librarian invited us in for storytime. I'd had no idea that would be going on when we were there. Since no one else was present and I felt bad for the librarian, we agreed to go. Storyteller objected. I made him sit outside the door with his math book. At one point during the story reading I realized Storyteller was attempting to climb up the wall in the hallway. Next time we won't attend storytime. The Hero liked it but was definitely too old for the program. And the librarian made it clear multiple times that the little one could not so much be a stack away from me at any moment, so I had to bore the Storyteller in order to be with the Hero in there.

That was kind of a pain. The Hero won't rip pages out or tear down displays. While I was sitting at a table in a corner homeschooling the Storyteller, Hero was wandering around looking for the next book to bring me to read to him. It was my intention to read to him while the Storyteller worked on things he could do independently, and send the Hero to get the next book while I worked with Storyteller on things he needed help with. The librarian scotched this plan right quick with her anti-freeroaming-preschoolers decree.

It was only after we had come back in from storytime and were packing up our books, with all the other storytime parents (who showed up late) in the room, that I realized we had essentially given a public demonstration of homeschooling. I felt retroactively shy. On further reflection, I guess I feel we do okay; I'm not too self-conscious. But I am worried about snooty people getting up the nerve to say something, particularly librarians who will see us every day and gossip with the other library workers about us.

Since the Hero can't wander and isn't patient enough to sit at a table doing bookwork for the two hours it take Story to do his, I think we may try doing schoolwork at the children's center in the New York State Museum. It's the same trip length by bus as the library, about ten minutes, and I know the Hero will be allowed to wander around there doing puzzles and whatnot. I'm just not sure we'll be welcome to take up a table for two hours doing work unrelated to the materials in the discovery center. It's not a crowded place on weekday mornings, but I can understand why the clerk there might feel prickly about hosting us.

The museum has turned out to be a twice weekly stop for us anyway, because the children beg to go over anytime they can. It's not that far from the city bus stop we use to get the children to and from the Albany Free School. When we have a few extra minutes, we run over. So far no one has gotten bored of it. The Storyteller, in fact, says he wants to have his birthday party there and have a scavenger hunt for facts as a party activity. Once we add nature study back into our homeschooling routine, we will definitely we going there to add a new page to our nature notebooks once a week.

Who knows how this wil all shake out? Not me. But here was one potential method of homeschooling here, and I liked it. Even if we end up at the library each day, I think it will be a kick to homeschool in this city.