I decided this year, in a tacit kind of way, that we weren't really going to have a "spring break" as such. If the children asked, I would say it was last week, when we went to visit family in Memphis. In fact, the trip did constitute a break from our regular core-et-elective daily structure; on the other hand, we all went to the zoo, talked to people, watched "educational" PBS children's shows ("Hey! Reading is fun! Almost as fun as watching this television show!"), and the like. Epiphany read Brideshead Revisited and worked on a paper on Henry James's Portrait of a Lady which is part of her application for a college summer program. From a friend, Amicus picked up a bunch of back issues of a magazine called Mental Floss and has been regaling us with quantities of arcane trivia, which is to him as a staff of life.
Looking back at the week, I'm inclined to think that that was our yearly dose of what a friend of mine refers to as "the Friday movie." This week her children are supposed to lose a day of their public-school spring break to make up a snow day, but she remarked to me that she was inclined keep them home instead. "The teacher already told me they're just going to watch movies all day." Apparently, in her daughter's fourth-grade class, the Friday movie is a standard M.O.: the kids watch Shrek III, and the teacher gets her grading done. So I'm thinking that we just had a week of what passes for educational time by official standards, as well as a good visit with the grandmothers.
What about this week? It's Holy Week, when in the past I've called off regular learning, though having been away last week, I'd been wavering . . .
Epiphany has to go to school this week, the college's spring break having happened two weeks ago. Today, thus far, she has done geometry and studied for her Latin midterm.
Amicus is somewhere reading.
Our fourteen-year-old family friend Hilaria, who returned with us from Memphis to spend her school break in Fabulous Fiat, has been helping Crispina to write a book. I think it's about bunnies; a while ago I overheard Crispina dictating a sentence involving "Mother Bunny" and "all her siblings." Now Hilaria, Helier and Crispina are playing board games -- Mancala is finished, Risk just got vetoed, and I think they're settling on RummiCube, though the instructions have gotten lost, and the success of the venture depends entirely upon Helier's powers of explication.
Later, depending on the weather and people's level of restlessness, we'll either rake up fallen sticks from last night's storm and turn the compost pile and weed the herb bed; or we'll hit a museum.
Tomorrow: the diocesan Chrism Mass, followed by . . . well, Epiphany has to meet her SAT math tutor, but if we don't visit a museum today, the rest of us might do that in the afternoon.
Wednesday: preparations for our Maundy Thursday seder: grocery-shopping, cooking, cleaning, table-setting, and so on.
Thursday: the seder, plus services in the evening.
Friday: liturgy+Stations of the Cross: the live outdoor version offered by the Spanish youth of the parish, if weather permits. Perhaps in the morning we'll make an Easter garden.
That takes us through the week, with no real shortage of learning experiences of one kind or another. At this stage in our homeschooling, I'm not comfortable with unstructured life-learning all the time; things too quickly go pear-shaped, especially where the younger children are concerned. Freedom is all too apt to become chaos. At the same time, having come from a more unschooly place, I see periods like this as a necessary part of a healthy learning rhythm. We're not not learning; we're just not doing school.
And now I'd better get up from this chair and go join it. The board games are over, the sun is shining, and Helier's packing a lunch for his campus-bound father and sister, which process may require some oversight.
5 comments:
My kids are in a private Christian school, and they also have a 4 day school week. On weeks where Monday is a holiday, they have to go to school on the Friday, which is normally the day they have off. This occurs 3 times a year. On one of those Friday's, they have a reading marathon. They even can take a bean bag chair in or something and they just read all day. I know they have occasionally watched a movie (as in one, not all day :) ), as well, but they also typically choose something classical - Where the Red Fern Grows, comes to mind as an example. In any case, it makes for a fun and different day without being just a total waste. It almost sounded like your friend was saying they did it every Friday, which would make me unhappy, but maybe I misread that.
Well, the larger context of the conversation was a lack of work time for teachers -- "teacher work days" taken up by hours of in-service workshops and so on. Having been a classroom teacher, I can sympathize with the desperation to get things done and to have kids quietly occupied at times so that that can happen. I don't know whether the movie is a weekly occurrence, though my friend indicated that it happens a lot more frequently than, as a parent, she's entirely happy with.
When my children went to an English state school, our last year there my oldest daughter had a part-time teacher who did seem to regard her function as that of DVD button-pusher. The kids all thought she was wonderful! Woo hoo! Shrek! Again!
Anyway, I'd have no problem with a reading marathon, or with a really good movie 3 times a year during school time. I would have a problem with the habitual parking of children in front of, as my friend put it, "movies they could just as well watch at home," if that was what she wanted them to be doing at 10:00 on a Friday morning. Again, I don't know that it happens absolutely every week, but it seems to happen more than is really desirable -- enough, at least, that she'd mention it.
PS -- We essentially do a 4-day week of regular schooling, with Thursdays devoted to church and Latin classes and playtime with friends. I like having an "alternative day," when we're not *not* learning, but not in our usual daily routine, either. Keeps us refreshed -- as these "off" weeks do as well.
I think making books with Crispina, gardening and playing games is the perfect spring break for Hilaria! Thank you a thousand times over! She lost a day of her spring break due to the snow this winter--they were supposed to have Easter Monday off, as well. The days that have been tacked on at the end of the year are completely wasted--as textbooks will have already been collected and grades submitted, they'll be watching something at least as bad as "Shrek III." Her Social Studies instructor already showed them parts of "Gangs of New York." Lovely.
Of course we are delighted to have her. She's been playing very sweetly with the younger kids all day while the big girl is off taking her Latin midterm. And I should have mentioned that everywhere we go, Helier introduces her, in this very sophisticatedly offhand way, as his girlfriend.
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