The timing of this sabbatical has worked out extremely well. It just seems fortuitous that Katie is the perfect age to travel with me. If she were just two years older, it would have been so much more difficult to pull her out of school, but two years younger and she wouldn’t be so independent and able to appreciate it. It seems like the stars just lined up for us and that 6th grade is a perfect time to take her out of school. Her teachers and the school could not have been more supportive of this experience. In all my conversations with her guidance counselor and her teachers I never heard one word against the thought of pulling her out of school for an entire marking period. I know that I have the right to pull her out of the public school, but I never really expected the school to be so enthusiastic about it.
Officially I will be homeschooling her. I’ve done all the paperwork with the district (there was shockingly little documentation required) although I did have to submit “educational goals and objectives” and I need to make sure that she regularly studies English/Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies, Gym, Music, Art and Fire Safety. But as long as I cover these topics, exactly what I cover and how I cover it is entirely up to me. Katie is thrilled that she gets to leave school before her 6th grade health class moves onto the dreaded “family life” section and “reproduction”. She said that she knows her class is behind the others, which have already started this topic, and she keeps thinking to herself, “That’s OK Ms. E. , take as long as you need to finish the nervous system…” I told Katie that we can cover the human reproduction system in our studies, but she told me “No thank you”.
This is such an interesting age. In general, Katie and her friends are hitting their growth spurts and towering over the boys in their grade. They are maturing as well, and certainly don’t look like the little girls that they were just a couple of years ago. Some of the girls are now interested in fashion and boys, but this has not really affected Katie and her friends. They still have one foot in childhood and the other in adolescence. A few girls came over last weekend, and while they were interested in playing with the ipod stereo system, mainly so they could set it to play Katy Perry’s “firework” over and over and over, they were equally as interested in batting around balloons and attacking each other with the play swords that Katie uses to play pirates when her cousins come to visit. Watching them play it was so clear that they are still very much little girls in bigger girl bodies. I know they will mature into their bodies, but right now it is still wonderful to see that deep down they are the same girls that they have always been. I am so looking forward to sharing this experience with my big little girl.
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