Perils of homeschooling

There are times when the realities of life as a homeschooling family are just not as dignified as we might wish. We had one of those times last weekend.

We had turned out parlour into a quasi “artists’ garret”, and our dear friend Linda came over to play. The light through the window was just right, we improvised easels and work areas for everyone and put on a couple of Bach discs for background music to help us focus, and the four of us set to work with great seriousness on painting and drawing …

Then, right in the middle of it all, we were brought up short by an unusually bouncy tune coming from the stereo…

I'm a verb. I'm a verb, verb, verb - I'm an action word.
So put me where the action is 'cause I'm an action word.

Hmmm. One of Jack’s learning with music CDs was still in the stereo. Linda, being a delight and a good sport, laughed, picked up a much more “spirited” colour and got into the music as she drew. I shook my head and thought darkly for a moment about submitting the whole thing to the Home Schooling Horror Stories column of our favorite magazine…except of course, that it wasn’t really a Horror Story – it was “just us” and Linda knows us far too well for this to have injured her impression of us. We can try – but we really aren’t “serious” about much of anything and she knows it.

Oh well – we had a lot of fun, and once I got over myself, I had to admit that the change in music may have changed the mood – but that isn’t entirely a bad thing.