The napping house

I'm not sure if it was something in the air today, but everyone in this house has been exceptionally sleepy. Alec took a much longer nap than he has been recently (I think he's flirting with giving up his nap in the next six months. He can't get through the day without one, but they keep getting shorter and shorter). K had a massive meltdown of the sort she only has when I'm about to find her asleep in the next ten minutes. longstrider fell asleep putting Alec to bed and I fell asleep downstairs while that was happening.

Tomorrow, knock wood, we will deliver our homeschooling affidavit to the school district, call to withdraw her from school, and we'll be flying solo educationally. Whee!

Maybe we'll do Madeline instead

Tonight, we got K to bed a bit later than we should have, which we could tell because she had reached the emotionally fragile state of tiredness. We were discussing her passionate desire to make a papier mache volcano, and longstrider and I both agreed pretty readily that it seemed like a fine thing to do. I reminded her that one of the great things about homeschooling on our own (besides no more Fast Forward! I'm a bit giddy at the thought) is that we can decide ourselves what we want to learn, so if there's something she really wants to learn, we can do it.

"Okay," she said, "But I don't want to learn..."

She trailed off, either unwilling to say it or too tired to come up with the words.

"But I don't want to learn about..."

I braced myself, prepared to explain sympathetically that she was still going to have to do reading and math.

"Boston!"

Well okay, sweetheart. I guess we won't start with Make Way for Ducklings after all.

****

I actually think we'll broach the topic again, to see if she was just tired, or attempting to express reservations about the entire FIAR concept (which I expect to dissipate pretty quickly once we start doing it, but I can understand how a completely new way of learning could make her nervous). Because if there's one thing K loves, it's Boston, where her aunt lives.

We filed the paperwork and withdrew her from school today, so we're official. We still have to hear from the school district that everything is in order, and get instructions on how to return all of the online school's stuff (you mean we have to give the computer back? Drat). I have declared the rest of this week a deschooling week, where we all recover a bit from worksheet fatigue (and give the teachers time to prepare) before starting fresh next week.