And the countdown begins!

Only 6 more days until we leave on our trip south which includes a fabulous Disney vacation!!! WooHooo!! Yeah Mickey! M-I-C, see you real soon, K-E-Y, why? because we like you, M-O-U-S-E!! Of course, my kids think I'm crazy when I sing that because the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse song goes... MI-CK-EY-MOUSE-that's me! It's the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Come inside; it's fun inside! I never thought I would be old enough for a Generation Gap - especially with me on the Old Fogie side!

We started the day today with Cameron's spelling test. He correctly spelled hot, map, pin, and hop but misspelled hook (huk) and stop (sop). I had him write those words three times on another paper. He was pretty bummed that he didn't get foil stars on all of his words and asked if he could have stars on the wrong words once he wrote them three times. I told him that he had to cover them up and write them correctly from memory and then I would give him stars. It took a small reminder to get hook right, but he finally earned his stars.

Next we did math and the actual multiplication sign (x) was introduced. He did really well with it and we took turns making up multiplication stories. He didn't like mine unless they had his name in them though, lol. One of my stories was "I went to the store and bought five packages of pencils which each had two pencils in them" and he made me make up a new one. I had to change it to "Cameron, Cassia, Greyson, Friend X, and Friend Y each had two pencils. How many pencils did the five friends have?"

I thought about doing science as well, but we opted to go get pizza for lunch instead. We grabbed our pizza and then went to the 4-H LEGO Engineering project. They built these motorized rope rider thingies. They were pretty cool, but not nearly as exciting as some of the other projects. I think part of it may have been that they *had to* work in teams and some team members were better at working together than others. Don't get me wrong, everyone built and had a good time, but the team thing seemed a bit forced. I guess that's a skill though.

On the way home from the 4-H center, we ended up doing science anyway! We were talking about our upcoming trip to Grandma C's house and Disneyland and I was describing what we had planned for each day. Suddenly Cameron said, "Hey that's an icicle!" What? Please remember that we live in California about 30 miles from the coast. We do NOT have icicles... especially when it's 75 degrees out and we are wearing shorts and tank tops! He said again, "An icicle! The days of the week, they're an icicle!" OOOOHHHHHH, a life cycle!! Yes, the days of the week are, indeed, a cycle. And so we spent the next twenty minutes talking about different things that made cycles. Science accomplished.

While we were at the LEGO project, I got to talk to one of the "I Can Never Remember the Title"s from the charter school. I really love her attitude and if I had to go that direction, she is definitely someone I would want to be on my side. The thing is though, I don't have to go in that direction. No one is forcing me to do this under the guidance of another organization. I am not feeling insecure about my abilities to provide adequate tutelage, instruction, and/or educational depth and breadth to my children (discipline maybe, lol, but I wouldn't consider that the school's business either way!). I really have had no urge to have anyone else "help" me - aside from my myriad of friends (internet and *real* life) and resources - so the only thing that is tempting me is the free money. But nothing is really free, is it. To move in this direction would be giving up many of the reasons that I originally chose homeschooling - even if my reasons and principles would not be directly compromised or changed, in my heart they would be tainted.

I did talk to DH about it and he straight up said what my heart has been telling me all along: don't involve the public school system if you don't have to. Don't get involved in their red tape when it isn't necessary. We can provide an education for our children without subjecting them to ridiculous STAR and other tests. We don't need to check in with someone to know that we're making progress. We don't need them to tell us that x must learned at y age and before z can even be attempted. In other words, if it ain't broke, don't fix it! Sure, the extra money would be nice, but we don't need it and it would probably end up causing more stress than it alleviated. Now if my friends who are using this charter school happen to be shelving things that we may want to be borrowing.... ;)