When They Know Themselves

Homeschooling is definately getting more interesting as they get older and know themselves more and more.  I had a great conversation today with my tween daughter.  She is in 6th grade now and has begun to develop some strong opinions about her own schooling and the direction it should be going in.  The conversation would be suprising with many children but somehow it just seemed to fit her personality.  She wanted to know when I would be adding Spanish in to her curriculm and if we could find some more advanced science options.  She wanted to discuss ways we could work together to help her find success in memorization of definitions (a weakness of hers in her mind) and to talk about her strengths and weaknesses as a student and strategies to help her overcome areas she wants to.  She finished the conversation by asking me if I could please assign her some traditional writing for school, I asked her what she meant and she said "You know normal essay questions like 'Global warming is bad for the planet' or 'Should we repeal Obama's health care plan'. You know things I need to research and have an opinion on and defend and you tell me how many pages to write."  I said "Yes I think we can add that to your studies if you want".  Who would say no?  What kid asks for this?

Then she watched the CNN student news program.  An addition to our day I am contemplating making a regular part of our curriculum.  We had some interesting discussion about food safety and state budgets and the difference between state and federal rights.  Then she asked if her first essay question could be about whether or not schools should move to digital textbooks and started rattling off some of the advantages and disadvantages.  She said she also would not mind researching and writing about the debt ceiling and if we should raise it or decrease spending because she had never heard about that before and thinks it is interesting.

Tonight she went down to our library and came upstairs with an advanced math textbook and a college argument textbook and asked if she could read them.  I asked why and she said because I think I need to read something with challenging vocabulary and I think these will have good vocabulary but be safe reading material.  I asked if she needed some new fiction and she said "No I am in the middle of a series but think this will be good too"

I can't make this stuff up :)  Maybe she needs to take a week off swimming and have winter vacation at the same time.  She was my most thankful child that we were starting to get back into a rhythm of school and schedules.  Homeschooling is certainly getting more interesting :)