Perfect Fit

Last week was a productive one at Stratford Grammar School. Dagfari wrote his first college paper, for the 200-level art history class he's taking at WFU, and he also mastered (more or less) the 3 times table.

The former was his idea: he's auditing the class, so he doesn't have to do the papers or exams, but he insisted on it. The latter was accomplished with considerable coercion from me. He supposedly learned the multiplication tables in 3rd grade, his last year of non-home schooling. But they never really stuck, and it's frustrating to do more advanced math when you have to multiply using your fingers. So we're back at it. My latest strategy, suggested by another homeschool mom, is to do one fact per day. It seems to be working better than anything else we've tried.

Dagfari still resists math in all forms, mostly because it takes time away from things he really wants to study-- such as Luxury Arts of the Middle Ages, his art history class which he's absolutely loving. I worried a bit that D would get bored by a systematic study of art history, but he's taken to it like a duck to water. And his paper isn't bad.

So it's been a good week. And I'm reminded of the moment that sealed our homeschooling fate when D was 8 years old: the educational psychologist looking at his test results admitted that there was no appropriate school placement for him in our city. I guess it's not too suprising that there's no school for an 11-year-old who's working at maybe a 5th grade level in math, college level in art history, and somewhere in between for all his other subjects. Homeschool, on the other hand, is a perfect fit.