This is what homeschooling looks like today, as I reset, the 4 of the furious 5 engineering there own "beyblades" with Legos, figuring out how to make them spin as fast as possible, while 1 creates cute twin characters, in her drawing notebook. All while I reorganize and deep clean the house, as I listen to the Hamilton soundtrack, and drink my coffee. #thishowIclearmymind #secularhomeschool #secularhomeschoolersofcolor #secularhomeschooling #secularhomeschoolersofnewarknj

If you homeschool, you have and will continue to have conversations, with non homeschooling families, or people who,in general, have no idea what homeschooling is, around socialization. The main “concern” being that we are raising our kids to be socially awkward, super coddled spoiled brats, or some sort of reclusive, uber radical weirdo. It happens all to frequently for my taste, and after the inevitable eyeroll, I usually say something like: that’s a myth, homeschooling kids get plenty of “socialization”. Case in point, I am in Massachusetts, with the first born, as she is rehearsing to be in this incredible performance piece, more on that in another post, and while we are here, the remainder of the Furious Five are with dad and grandma. Grandma, aka nanny, is pinch hitting for me on the homeschooling front, while first born and I are in Massachusetts, and dad is working. This whole scenario had me thinking, about the “socialization” my kids are getting. Yesterday first born and I did some exploring before we went to rehearsal. We stopped in a sweet little playground where my 11 year old happily spent time playing with the children, all of which were between 4 and 5 years old. She skillfully lead them on some climbing adventures on the cargo net and monkey bars, then happily followed along when they suggested a game involving driving the “truck” play structure. She was amazing, kind, and sweet, then just 2 hours later she was rehearsing a serious duet and solo with these 3 amazing artist, all adults, for this incredible piece of art that she will get perform domestically, and internationally. All this without losing her eleven year old sensibilities and platfulness. In the mean time the rest of the furious five were in NJ, helping their grandmother navigate homeschooling with them, they read, together, did chores together, accompanied her to the store, and they made dinner together, and bonded with another adult other than dad or mom. If being able to interact with people across all generations, from all walks of life, isn’t being “socialized” then I don’t know what is?

Homeschooling happened here in a big way. From, laundry, to bed making, to calendar time, to reading, to music, to math, to school time messes. The furious five, showed up today in a big way.

Happy end of summer. We are busy getting ready for our fall session of homeschooling. During the summer we did reading, music practice, lots of playing, and a couple of field trips. We still have a couple of weeks of summer time fun but during this latest heat wave we took the time to clean and organize, take inventory and revamp our home school corner. We purged our home school/artsupply closet, we added a corkboard art wall, educational posters were added to our map wall. We have a Solar System poster with some fast facts, a periodic table and a map of the night sky for each month, a reference for when we use our telescope. We also have posters explaining the different branches of our government, and how checks and balances work. As far as books go we have all sorts of workbooks, from cursive to math, to science, to language arts, for all the different age levels we got going on. My kids like utilizing work books they like to see the progress they are making over time. We have tons of science reference books, for different ages, the DK Math reference book is a great resource and a collective favorite of ours. We are continuing work on US history using The Young People's History, and we will venture into world history, right now we have a great book about Aztec, Mayan, and Incan Civilization by Eyewitness, we plan to expand our Eyewitness library to put together our own World Civilization curriculum, making sure to be a truly inclusive study of ALL world civilizations Ancient to current. For science we are using a lot of different materials, for the twins we will be working on living and non living things, life cycle, weather, biomes, basic life science. The older kids will be concentrating on chemistry, and physics. Our hope is to also incorporate Coding and robotics to round out our study of all things STEM. We also plan to continue with field trips, use Netflix and YouTube for documentaries and work on experiments and research projects. We also are looking forward to getting back to our music classes in NYC, and taking a family trip to California in mid September to round out our fall homeschooling curriculum. Happy homeschooling.

A little obsessed with new tablecloths from @target and our dining area/homeschooling nook. It's a work in progress but its coming along. #homeschoolprep #secularhomeschooling #secularunschooling #homeschoolinginsmallspaces

Homeschooling recycle fashion show at the Montclair Public Library, we learned what upcycling and recycling are and made no sew T shirt dresses, and then worked the runway. Xavier had a good time just watching. Roxie-roo and Sonia Wonders really worked the runway. #secularhomeschoolers #secularhomeschooling #homeschoolwin

Roxie-roo created this altar/shrine/artinstallation #achildsshrine #magicspace #imagination #workofart #symmetry #homeschoollife #secularhomeschooling #learningthroughplay #homeschoolantics