Lemony Webbles

first day of school

Georgia's first day back at Montessori school was Monday and she was fine with that and actually so excited that she woke up before anyone else and got herself dressed and ready to go half an hour early. I needn't have worried about her adjusting to school in the morning; she's suddenly a morning person. And when I picked her up afterwards, she was happy about her class, even with some people being different from last year and the room being rearranged. She took it all in stride and was singing songs she had learned (over and over all day). So with all this good stuff, I thought I was ok with her being back in school, and seemed to feel fine, but there must have been something for me to resolve because I had a frightening nightmare that night about Georgia. She was playing too close to the edge of a third floor balcony that had no railing and just as I was warning her of the danger, she fell all the way down and when I got to her I found she had fallen on her head, but she didn't look too bad at first and as much as I was screaming for help, nobody was acting like there was a problem, and were glaring at me like I was a nuisance and walking REALLY slow getting me ice. And then I looked at her again and she had gotten much worse and I knew she was going to die and I couldn't get anyone to call an ambulance. They just stared at me uncomprehending and a little irritated at being bothered. Then I woke up indescribably scared and I had to go stay with Georgia in her bunk bed after that to make sure she was really ok. I'd like to say I slept well after that, knowing she was alive and well, but it didn't happen. It left me feeling unsettled and unresolved. Where did those big scary feelings come from and was there any warning to it or was it just a release of the fears of sending your child off into the unknown of other peoples' care? I'm paying attention to that and trying to learn whatever is there to be learned but trying not to be paranoid of every conceivable danger (and balcony). I don't know how literally to take it but I feel sort of shaken up. Which always gets me thinking differently about life. Hence...

Georgia starting school also made me start thinking about what she's going to do next year when she's old enough for kindergarten and what our choices are if we decide not to go with the Montessori one. I started doing some more reading online about homeschooling and came across this great thing called a Certificate of Empowerment that a homeschooling mother wrote. Here's the link so you can officially be empowered in your own education (just change the language from 'your kids' to 'yourself')- I think most of us could use a little more empowerment in our quests for learning. There seem to be different types of homeschooling out there and the one I was reading about was 'unschooling' which I don't think I can define yet, but seems to be sort of free form, non-curriculum, following childrens' interests and lead to some extent. I found a good reading list in an essay called 'The Unschool Mambo' to start me off since investigating homeschooling is really developing your own vision of what education means. That seems like a good idea no matter what we decide about school.