Patricia Harrelson

Getting back to homeschool this week after the seasonal break underscored the simple pleasures in this occupation. How many grandmother/tutors have the privilege of enjoying:

• a seven-year-old gnawing a chicken leg at second breakfast while doing phonogram drills?
• the burgeoning vocabulary of 18-month-old, sitting happily at the schoolroom table repeating sounds and words from her older brother’s phonics lesson as she marks a paper with her pencil?
• a fashion show– in between geography and Latin lessons–of the new clothes a grand-daughter acquired at Plato’s over the weekend?
• the song of parakeets joining the conversations and questions regarding various and disparate lessons: “Dearma, how do you make an uppercase cursive K?” “Dearma, do you know about librevox?” “Dearma, remember those maze books you used to bring?” “Dearma, what am I supposed to do here? Translate the Latin to English or change the person?”
• the Ah Ha of a child who suddenly sees/hears the relationship between 2 sounds?
• the careful and deliberate penmanship of a 4th grader mastering cursive?
• a phone call from a 9th grader making a date for help with a research paper?
• that same 9th grader remembering the Citation Machine used in a previous lesson, more than year before, to construct a bibliography?

. . . all of this against a constant backdrop of joyful noise: children clamoring to tell about a recent event in their lives.

My life’s work has been entrenched in the laboratory of learning and homeschool is a glorious opportunity to continue doing something I love.