(no subject)
Our trip got even better - Ben came down sick the day after we left Albuquerque, when we were going to go see the Grand Canyon. Our foray to the Grand Canyon consisted of, "Do you suppose that viewpoint has a restroom?" "Pull over when you get a chance, please. Um, maybe before then." "Ack, there's no shoulder here!" "*whimper*" We got checked into a hotel, and Zinnia immediately puked up a bunch of milk and then giggled. Neil followed suit. I was glad that they seemed to have a much easier time of it than the rest of us. I got sick on our last night. With all 3 kids waking up that night, I was super tired. Ben took the kids to breakfast in the hotel lobby while I snoozed and showered, but it was probably only a half-hour of extra sleep and I ended up having a very hard time keeping my eyes open on the drive home.
The laundry beast is mostly tamed.
I went to a kindergarten open house at Harding Elementary yesterday, and the part I saw looked good, but I couldn't stay for the whole thing - we weren't supposed to bring children, and mine were starting to make noise. They said that Harding didn't accept any transfer students last year because it filled with neighborhood students. Today, Ben and I (and Neil and Zinnia) went to the one at Fairmont, which is our neighborhood school. We really didn't like it, especially for the upper grades. The kindergarten seemed okay (and it's half-day, which I hadn't realized earlier). There's also a neat before/after enrichment program available. I guess partly what I don't like is that as the kids get older, school gradually gets to be less hands-on activities and more and more repetitive paperwork stuff. When you've got a class of 30-some students that includes students with learning disabilities, then practicing stuff until everyone gets it takes a long time. That's one of the things I really disliked about most of school, and I can see how homeschooling would be much better in that particular regard.
I guess we'll look at some of the other public schools in the district, and see about putting in a transfer application for Iris. If that doesn't work out, we can try Fairmont and keep homeschooling or moving to a neighborhood with a better elementary school as backup options. I don't think we could really manage private school once we'd have three school-aged kids at the same time.
The laundry beast is mostly tamed.
I went to a kindergarten open house at Harding Elementary yesterday, and the part I saw looked good, but I couldn't stay for the whole thing - we weren't supposed to bring children, and mine were starting to make noise. They said that Harding didn't accept any transfer students last year because it filled with neighborhood students. Today, Ben and I (and Neil and Zinnia) went to the one at Fairmont, which is our neighborhood school. We really didn't like it, especially for the upper grades. The kindergarten seemed okay (and it's half-day, which I hadn't realized earlier). There's also a neat before/after enrichment program available. I guess partly what I don't like is that as the kids get older, school gradually gets to be less hands-on activities and more and more repetitive paperwork stuff. When you've got a class of 30-some students that includes students with learning disabilities, then practicing stuff until everyone gets it takes a long time. That's one of the things I really disliked about most of school, and I can see how homeschooling would be much better in that particular regard.
I guess we'll look at some of the other public schools in the district, and see about putting in a transfer application for Iris. If that doesn't work out, we can try Fairmont and keep homeschooling or moving to a neighborhood with a better elementary school as backup options. I don't think we could really manage private school once we'd have three school-aged kids at the same time.