The glorious ironies of homeschool
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg
This morning, as is her wont when she’s doing almost any writing or math, my daughter was singing to herself. What she was doing was practicing her handwriting by copying out the fourth of these rules.
9:28 AM / January 16, 2008
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Joe, does this really apply in one's own home? Relatedly, for some reason, my wife always objected to humming but not to singing!
No, probably not, but it was a teachable moment. I asked her if she would sing or hum when others were trying to have a conversation with her (Washington's big point). No, of course not, she replied. What about if her brother were trying to finish some work across the room? Hmm....
The other irony is that what she was singing/humming were the words she was writing.
"A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing"--Thomas Jefferson. (I don't know if that's the exact quote--too lazy to look it up--but it's about right.) Or, as my grandmother likes to say, "I wouldn't give you a bucket of warm spit for a kid who didn't buck some." I like your daughter, Joe! That's a great story.
A while back, I read a story in Christianity Today about an Amish community that debated whether or not to incorporate television (on a limited basis) into their children's regimen: chiefly the use of videos, that sort of thing, for instructional and entertainment purposes. They tried it for a short while, but got rid of the tvs after they discovered that their children stopped playing among themselves and singing. Disclaimer: Ask me if I have gotten rid of my TIVO, yet. . . .