First days of deschooling

Monday went famously well - it can't all be this good! Rayan was thrilled to be home, slept in, hung out, ate some chocolate-chip muffins I'd made - he's missed a lot of my baked breakfasts since he was having to leave so early. I found this big box that we'd been saving to make a playhouse with Morgan, and offered to let him spray-paint it, if he wanted. Well, he was just over the moon! Emptied his can of black paint in minutes, so after lunch we made a run to the store for more. He's still so shocked when I tell him I'll pay for things (buget willing). We also picked up some poster board for stencils.

Once we got back he added some red and blue details to the box - must get a pic of this for y'all - and then decided it was time to paint his skateboard. That's what he wanted stencils for. I'm used to making stencils for quilt stuff, so I showed him how I do it and how I use the copier to make things different sizes. What do they teach in these schools? I helped him cut the stencils and tape them to the board. Loads of fun.

It was so exciting to see him motivated - he's usually so passive. It gave me a great big surge of hope. He really can do things when he wants to - its just that school has left him wanting to do so little. He kept talking about all sorts of other things he could paint - clothes, the old fridge in the barn. He wants to paint the fence around the garden, but I think I'd like to see a design for that first. With the fence, the garden felt like an extra room to the house this year, so I'm leary of having it spray-painted just yet.

One of the things that made Monday work out so smoothly was Morgan. She watched movies in bed all morning and then got really involved in a project of her own as soon as we got home from the store, so I could give Rayan all the attention he needed. He's still pretty needy and uncertain in alot of ways. Morgan's much more autonomous.

Tuesday she came downstairs pretty early, so I had to do more "juggling" of kid needs and energy. Tricky stuff - the differences in the two kids make it easy to sort of overlook her, and I don't want to do that, for sure. At the same time, I don't want Rayan to feel like he's the "second best" kid, since he's the "step". Good thing I've been practicing juggling all summer.

Wednesday I worked at Barb's so George got to take the kids to the park and hang out with the homeschoolers. Everyone had fun - and Rayan learned to carve! That's a skateboarding term, folks! Its when you go around the sides of the bowl - okay, darnit, I'm going to have to figure out how to make hyperlinks so y'all can read about it in wikipedia or something, I'm not defining all these words for y'all!

I've set up another blog just for stuff about Rayan - mostly to provide some kind of documentation for his mom at this point, but if she mellows out, maybe it will even be interesting. We'll see about that.