Monday, June 19, 2006

Twelve Senses, Seven Arts

This ideal really spoke to me. We're so art heavy here, and I am excited to find a way that makes sense to me to punch it through into the other disciplines.

This is really turning into a homeschool blog isn't it? Well, if that is the case then here follows some more homeschool items under consideration.

There is a program called WAVA out of the Steilacoom school district which throws a bone at people like me. I don't HATE public school, per se, but I do really believe in my core that it wastes enormous amounts of time and squashes creativity and individual thinking in a morass of invented rules. K12 is a respected homeschooling curriculum available for purchase. Like many other states, WA has now licensed it for use as a virtual curriculum through the school district. The financial deal is that we don't have to pay for anything (k12 is expensive) and the children are enrolled officially in a public school district. They count G on their books, but I do all the teaching and get a curriculum I might like anyway for free.

One of the things that gives me pause is that unlike a traditional k12 curriculum, G would be taking "assessments." She would be in contact with a teacher from the district who will "help us" with our progress. WAVA participants also must participate in the pile of horseshit known as the WASL, and I kind of groove on the idea of having an invisble child or two. G is not known to the state yet, as kids here do not have to report to school until they are 8, and if I enroll her now I will have to file the homeschool letter of intent every year should I choose to not continue with WAVA.

The meeting is on Saturday at a museum in Tacoma. I am very much looking forward to it. (Then after that.........we get to go to a program hosted by Wolf Haven International at our local library. Obviously, I am a big fan of wolves, but G has shown some interest in them as a result of it.)

The other consideration is a GH homeschool organization also administered through the public school district, which allows for a much more liberal relationship between home and brick and mortar school. It seems pretty active and if you look at their yearbook for this year, G's age group has a significant amount of kids for a community this size. This is extremely appealing to me. Local, local, local. There is no secret about my grand affection for Pugetopolis at large, but when it comes to day in and day out, I'd rather engage here at the municipal level rather than go over to Tacoma, for example and participate in their (extremely well-organized and dynamic) homeschool HUB. We mindfully chose to live here, and I'd like to surround ourselves with other people who made the same decisions for themselves and their children.

Having said that, Kitsap county (adjacent to us) also has some really good offerings for the homeschooler, the most attractive to us being in the arena of music. They even have organized choirs for the children.

We also watched the Search for the Atocha, so that G could see where her coin came from. The documentary was a nice launchpad for discussion of hurricanes, shipping traditions, international trade then and now, and what constitutes "treasure." What do people value? We compared the Atocha to the wooden boats the kids had boarded at the maritime gig festival, and we learned that G now wants to have all the treasure off the Atocha. Failing that, she says she will just have to find treasure all her own. She says she has a lot to do when she is a grown up.

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