Sid the kid and the homeschool experiment.

Oh my god, I'm in Perpignan and am using an application that gives me a picture of a kitten for every 100 words I type. But now I have to type 100 words in order to get that picture! Sidney will be pysched. Which reminds me... many of you have wondered how Sidney has taken to being away from his friends and school this year. Some of you have asked - can you just do that... take your kid out of school for a year?  It appears that the answer is yes. The school board was really fine about it as long as we presented a plan for his education.

There's no doubt that he misses his friends at times, but he really doesn't miss school. I worry that he doesn't like school, which indeed he doesn't as yet. But he does like learning now more than he did when he stopped going to school. His love of science and math in particular is intense. He wants to go to a school that's 'all science class.' He's enjoying multiplication and reading. He likes history okay but likes geography more (though that could be due to cookie bribes and quizzes on maps). We can have fun with french. That said he still has trouble focussing sometimes on doing any particular project with Mac, except for science which tends to be hands on. They collect bugs, read about the French Revolution, learn division and read comic books together. Its pretty cool.

Other changes? His imagination has blossomed. I worry a bit that he's totally in his own world without other kids to challenge him and we tend to indulge him. But its okay. He imagines living on cat world, says he's half cat and builds lego for hours. There's a tad too much weaponry and war stuff in his imaginings, but he gets that partly from his dad. He's also shown a newfound interest in 'stuffies' and imaginary pets without other kids around. In addition, he's become really articulate as well and can try to 'make deals' to get toys better than the best Wall Street broker. But he's happy. He's also less gender-binary-driven, in that he can make friends with girls as easily as boys now, and has less gender oriented color preferences that he had when in school.

So... are we keeping him in a bubble that will damage him in some way? I think not. As soon as he returns to school I'm sure he'll get more than enough information about 'appropriate' play.

All in all, he's doing great.  He takes gymnastics and now an art class in the village (albeit in the hippy bus outside the village) And I got four kitten pictures out of this blog posting! (see writtenkitten.net)