The Crazee Chick's View of Life

My little dancers... had a very busy week at dance competitions. Kiki's jazz group brought home a silver medal and Mo's tap group captured the gold! Both Mo's lyrical and jazz groups showed a vast improvement and even managed to land in the medal spots (for lyrical) this time around. Both the jazz and lyrical groups have a lot of new dancers and so they are still working out the kinks. Maybe next year they'll be contenders for those number one spots! I'm so proud of my girls...they just glow on the stage. Kiki's smile covers her whole face and when she dances she has so much energy that it's infectious. Mo's talent in tap continues to blow me away! I love to watch her dance and my mind often wanders back to 6 years ago...she was so shy and so afraid to leave me for dance class that I would literally have to put my foot on her bottom and push her through the door. I'd shut it quickly and pray that she wouldn't remain on the floor crying the entire

Those who know how to think need no teachers. ~Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) As I struggle to maintain 'school at home,' I am more and more drawn to the unschooling approach whereby learning is child-led. It is this kind of learning that creates a more permanent 'groove' in the child's mind because they encounter, experience and exhaust a subject that INTERESTS them unlike traditional learning whereby a child learns in a textbook/workbook/repetitous format. I wish I had the courage to become an unschooler. I do try to dabble in it a bit but I find that without some sort of guidance my children generally, but not consistently, default to the TV or computer to occupy their spare time. I think my goal as a homeschooler is to teach my kids how to THINK not just fill their minds with information. True education comes from loving the act of learning...this is how I acquired most of my knowledge that 'stuck'. I remember wasting my time in general biology waiting for