A number of unconnected somethings

It appears, although I'm not really awake enough to be sure, that the babies slept through the night, finally. (I've really got to stop calling them babies as we have a real one momentarily down our throats.) I'm pretty sure this is the case because I'm REALLY tired, like I got more sleep than I'm used to, tired.

Sooooo, I was thinking maybe I'd try to get up and sit in a chair and make the children learn something. I intend to make yogurt today, and bread, because on my little calendar I fussed around making for hours and hours instead of actually doing real work, it says 'Kitchen Day: Make bread and yogurt'. I read that somewhere. You should have a kitchen day and a laundry day and some other housekeeping stuff that I can't remember right now.

On a completely unrelated note, a very nice commenter wanted to know 10 reasons, or something, why we home school, and how we intend to prepare our children to deal in a pluralistic relativistic society. I'm not sure I can think of Ten Whole Reasons, maybe one or two. But it occurs to me that the answer depends on what you want to prepare your children for--in what manner do you want a child to engage with said pluralistic society? Do you agree with the basic pluralistic underpinnings and want your child to be comfortable and happy in such a society? Or do you disagree and want your child to combat pluralism or relativism?

It won't be any surprise to anyone that Matt and I want our children to be intellectually equipped to combat relativism. And so we're crafting our brief time with them as children in such a way that they have the tools to think through and engage with a world we hope they won't entirely agree with. We would be really sorry, I think, after all this work, if they decided they weren't interested in the fight. As Matt pointed out, this season of training is so important, and it is necessarily removed from the frey and heat of battle, but that's so they have the space to become equipped, not so they will never enter it.

The Other reasons I'm homeschooling (right now) is because
1. I really like my children
2. Its interesting and fun to be involved in what they're learning.
3. Its more stressful to put them on a bus (because I'm not a morning person) than to organize their entire education.
4. I Really Believe in Classical Education and there's not a school in Binghamton that provides this opportunity
5. I'd rather homeschool and make bread than be the church secretary and go to vestry.
6. We're going to try and build a pyramid this week and it would be really lame for me to have to do something like that by myself while my kids were at school and my husband looked on and assumed I'd lost my mind.
7. My children are learning to integrate learning with every day life.
8. Their primary relationships, right now, are with each other and not with a lot of other people I don't know very well, which is important because their brothers and sisters will be there always, but friends come and go.
9. We can take off and go to Nairobi at a moments notice and not worry about making up piles of work because we took it all with us.
10. Their social lives are more interesting and varied. Frankly, I find it very weird the way this culture divides everyone up by age. All the children have to be corralled by age, and when you get old enough, you either have to move to Florida (didn't Jerry Seinfeld say that?) or into a retirement community. Matt and I are already preparing our children for the fact that we intend to live with them. Unless they all turn out to be awful, in which case we'll have to revise our plans. (Honestly, I jest. I haven't made any plans for my retirement yet. I just want to keep all my options open.)

And now, I think I might be just slightly awake enough to remove myself from my pillow and see what Gladys has done to all the math blocks. I've been informed that she was 'building something'. Hopefully a pyramid.