Rainy October

So... It's been quite a while since I posted here.

I got about as fed up as a person could get with being hit, nearly hit, honked at, sneered at, and screamed at by motorists while biking or walking in Chicago. I love Chicago, but I don't want to be hit by any more cars, so we moved to Madison Wisconsin. Madison is a great place to live: I hope I'm not contributing to ruining it by moving here; it would be the first time I was on the ruing-the-awesome-by-moving-into it side rather than the forced-to-move-out-of-a-place-I-love-by-clueless-and-careless-new-residents-ruining-it side of that equation. Wish me luck there.

Anyway, we signed up for school here because we didn't know anybody, much less a bunch of homeschoolers. School was OK, I think it was a pretty good school as schools go, but it wasn't a good fit for us for a bunch of reasons, mostly related to food, health, and lifestyle. Most of the kids were bussed into the local school, so we still weren't making friends in the neighborhood by going there. Then after less than a month of school, we met a really wonderful group of local homeschoolers, so we quit kindergarten. Now we're doing roughly 2 days a week of playdates, where the kids play together in a public park, and one more day of group outings; so far these have been things like apple picking, watching a parade, attending a theater production with juggling & a visit from the medical helicopter, and going to the zoo. (We missed some of them in the transition period, but hope to do better there now that we're formally withdrawn from public school and officially Homeschooling.) We're also signed up for twice monthly classes at a local nature center, they have some in the middle of the day specifically geared to homeschoolers.

More later, I'll post a recent picture, some links about Homeschooling, and our Homeschool curriculum wishlist.