This morning I was watching the news while jogging. I saw that a kindergarten boy in Queens, New York was handcuffed to a chair by school safety officers for hitting adults. He was also physically restrained by two safety officers. The boy was then transported to a psych hospital for an evaluation. This was all without any notification of or permission from the boy’s family. To make matters even worse, if that’s possible, this boy has a diagnosis of ADHD, which means he should have had an IEP, a plan to help him, and any specialized services he needed.

When I was in first grade on the lower east side of Manhattan I had a teacher named Mrs. Lee. She would scream at us a lot, red-in-the-face, out-of-control screams. She’d slam her ruler down right beside our hands. If she was trying to intimidate us, it surely worked on me–I was terrified. And that treatment was nothing compared with the way she treated the boy she hated.

I think his name was Tommy, but I don’t recall for sure. I never saw him doing anything wrong, but then I spent most of my time with my hands folded on my desk so I wouldn’t get into trouble. Anyway, Mrs. Lee would periodically get very angry at this boy. She’d take his chair and put it in the girl’s coat closet (so he’d be extra humiliated), tie him into the chair IIRC with a jump rope, and ‘bolt’ the closet closed with a ruler through the door handles.

Mrs. Lee’s legacy is one of the reasons I home school. I’ve always felt silly saying that before, because I knew that no teacher would behave that way these days. I figured I was protecting my daughter from a memory and not from a real danger.

Turns out I was wrong.

Yesterday was my daughter’s birthday party. She turned five a few days before. After all the stress and worry I put myself through, it actually went well. Even the cake looked pretty good. I could have gotten a much prettier one from a bakery, of course, but where’s the fun in that?

Anyway, I’ve been generally feeling like I am floundering, both in homeschooling and in life. I get overwhelmed and I just don’t keep on top of things the way I want. Other moms in this area don’t usually have birthday parties at home. It’s Not Done. If for some reason a person does have one at home, they hire entertainment. Even for babies, parties are held in restaurants or play spaces with programmed activities. Every single party we’ve had has been at home. This year I was planning to have a skating party. There is an ice rink close by and they have party rooms, and I thought it would be fun to have a party there since Bunny loves to ice skate.

But January is so full that I never managed to make that plan happen. And we had a great time anyway, probably better than if we’d gone to a skating rink. So I have to reconsider the wisdom of those fancier parties.

Also, as part of the party we had the kids do a treasure hunt. My kid read the clues aloud as they found them and had the cognitive flexibility to figure out how to look for the clues. She did have the ‘home team’ advantage going for her, but I was still proud of her.

Bottom line is, however badly I’m doing, dd si still learning better with me than her equally smart friends are in our local oft-touted preschool program.

April may be the cruelest month, but January is the busiest. There’s New Years, the getting of late holiday gifts, my mother’s birthday, my daughter’s birthday followed the next day by my stepdaughter’s birthday, and the class I teach at Cherry Hill Seminary begins this month as well.

That’s three birthday presents, two to three parties, and some technical glitches, all while at least one of us generally has a cold or flu.

My daughter, Bunny, turned five yesterday. Because of my desire to buy things not made in China, she got a lot of books for Yule, and she got more books for her birthday. She likes books, but she also likes games, toys and dolls, and I am very much afraid that her holidays have sucked AND that its entirely my fault. As the icing on the proverbial cake, I was planning to order her a cake this year. But you have to order them a week ahead, and her party is tomorrow. I remembered this yesterday.

Early in the day, in a complete panic, I bought a carousel bundt cake pan online. That will be here today. It’s not Dora, but it could made to be, and I thought a carousel cake would be adorable. Then I found pictures of the finished cake. It’s ugly, and it can’t be frosted because you lose the detailing. Can you imagine getting your kid an ugly cake with no frosting for their fifth birthday? Talk about a birthday to remember!

In a flurry of last-minute guilt and panic, I tried to order several things from Amazon to be overnighted so I could make a Dora castle cake in time. I also wanted to order a magical shoe cottage (a plastic dollhouse shaped like a boot and complete with fairies and furniture). And I could have purchased all of that, but even overnight it wouldn’t arrive till at least Monday.

So nix on that. What’s the point of calling it next day delivery if it isn’t?

Today I need to schlepp Bunny and I out into the winter and shop.

I’ve run out of things to do this year, except for some math. I’ve tried buying a K level lapbook on autumn (lame) and printing out some worksheets, or perhaps they called it a unit study, from Enchanted Learning on firemen (more lame).

I’m at a bit of a loss.

So I figured I’d start looking for stuff for next year and maybe I’d find something for now too. AND I’ve decided I want a boxed curriculum for next year. I think that would be much easier for me.

I never realized how frustrating it would be to find one. Boxed curricula are expensive. Its not like spending $20 on a subscription to EL to see what it’s like. Some are close to $1000. I can afford that, but its not an amount I want to invest in a product without being pretty sure its right for me.

K-12 seems to be an all day deal, and I’ve heard they are controlling. Also, I couldn’t see any sample lessons or syllabus online.

Calvert sounds great, but their sample lesson had an error in it (in the middle of a paragraph their story changes from past tense to present tense. Then it changes back. There is no reason for this change beyond sloppiness), which does not inspire me with confidence.

Oak Meadow also sounds great, but their language arts (what the heck is language arts?) is way below my child’s current level. I don’t want her to be bored. On top of that, I’ve already decided to stick with Singapore for math and science. So there’s not a lot there for me to use beyond their structure–which I must admit is what I truly want anyway. On the plus side their cs says you can start their “year” at any time.

Laurel Springs sounds like its all distance learning, which I emphatically do not want.

Enki doesn’t post sample lessons, and when I have emailed with them in the past they have avoided answering my questions. Since I want to SEE precisely what I’d be buying, I’ve not bought from them.

Winter Promise, I’m assured, is easy to secularize. I’m a little lost on what unit to pick for a 4 year old about to turn 5 who is behaviorally age appropriate, but is reading at about a first grade level. Especially since I am not sure she’d be interested in studying nothing but animals, nor am I certain I want her to hear about abused children.

Konos I know very little about. What it would take to secularize I don’t know.

On the positive side, I think it would be easy to do either a Konos or a WP unit for the second half of our academic year.

Sycamore Tree has a secular option, and its less expensive than other boxed sets, but there are no sample lessons or syllabus that I can find.

I have NO CLUE what to do.

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