Overextended

The name of the game in the Ross house is: Overextended 2009!

Both David and I are playing that game this fall, and it's no picnic. I know I'm writing a lot less than I used to; blogging is one of the things I finding it difficult to justify, even though I have all these analyses going on in my head all the time, things I'd like to record about the girls' development and experiences. One thing that ISN'T falling by the wayside, though, is the girls' education, thanks in part to some of their new classes. Ella in particular is at a new stage.

Ella's music education (and, consequently, conceptual learning) has been thrust ahead by her acceptance into the Bach Children's Chorus, and the discipline and practice required to be proficient. This is Madison's third year in the BCC. When Ella suddenly decided to audition at the end of the summer, David and I nearly gave her a lecture about how she really would have to be serious about this, how this is a commitment to real work. But we decided to hold off on talking with her about this until we saw how she took it. Thankfully (and somewhat surprisingly, since Ella doesn't typically launch energetically into new experiences, especially if they involve work), the lecture wasn't at all necessary. She's working hard at chorus; she's very disciplined, enjoys it a lot, never whines about having to practice, and is leaping ahead in the same way that Madison did two years ago.

Thanks to the fact that she can now read, Ella is finding new experiences open to her in ways that they weren't last year. She'd never be able to do chorus if she were still at last year's reading level. But also, she's having no trouble in drama class, which she would have had she taken it first semester last year; no one even has to make reading allowances for her as they did second semester last year. Today, she participated in this great art-history-literature-research class that the Fabulous Adrienne the Librarian at Webster Library has designed; Ella talked enthusiastically about how she was able to research more information about Paul Revere's Ride with a little guidance from the librarians. (Last year, she would have been in over her head at that part.)

And this year, I decided to make Ella WORK in math in a way that simultaneously cuts back on the amount of preparation I have to do. So we've started using a fifth-grade textbook that is only so-so, but fine for our purposes. Ella is pretty proud about doing fifth-grade math in the third grade, and that alone drives her along even when she's not necessarily feeling like working. That, and we go through the information together. I will admit to some guilt feelings about not designing the curriculum specifically to her needs, to taking the easy way out here. But she's learning plenty, and I get to see where her gaps are, which I might not have thought of had I not been using a guide.

Ella is still apt to get overwhelmed too easily, and take the easy-whiny way out ("I can't do this") whereas if she were in school, she'd buck up and push through it. That -- the crying -- is one of the down sides of home schooling. But for all of her whining and moaning about how she can't do something (I can't decide if it's a lot or a little, sometimes it seems like a lot, even though overall she is not a whiny child, she's cheerful almost to a fault), I know she's a lot more confident than she'd be if she were in school and were constantly being compared with the rest of the class. Whereas Madison's competitive drive to be the best would work to her advantage, I think Ella (who doesn't have the same drive) might tend to sink into mediocrity. This way, Ella gets to be Ella, happy to learn even if she's not pursuing knowledge relentlessly. Of course, I'll make darned sure she knows what she needs to know before launching in life.

And now, back to work. Or maybe to sleep.