Nah~nah ne Nah~nah.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink of it deeply, or taste it not, for shallow thoughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking deeply sobers us again. - Alexander Pope





At the beginning of each academic year our umbrella sends out the paperwork ~ which consists of a math paper, a comprehension paper & a vocab paper  ~ which are mostly designed to keep the government of our backs as proof that we are actually doing some academic work.  In our case this is necessary.  Star has dysgraphia.  We do very little written work.  I read aloud a lot.  We watch a lot of dvds.  Star does music ~ & a little German.  We do Home Ec because Home Ec is a necessary survival skill.

This year's papers were worse than usual.  I had to walk away from the math.  The sight of all those numbers & graphs & funny diagrams asking stupid questions made me physically ill.  I could feel the hole opening up in my head as all the numbers fell straight through!  Besides neither Star nor I had ever heard of most of the mathamatical terms being used.  I shrugged & told her to just do her best.  Star, who is unfazed by these things, did what she could ~ which was very little ~ then took pot luck on the rest.  She then sang her way through the remaining 2 papers while wiggling & squiggling & jiggling away, most of her attention obviously on things musical rather than things academic.  Which is the way Star does things.  Always.

Our aversion to math is well known on this blog.  I make no bones that homeschooling a bright but reluctant learner is no bed of roses.  Worth it, yes, but not necessarily easy.  I have been told, more than once, by the academically gifted who are competant in the sciences, that with an attitude like mine I have no business whatsoever homeschooling my child.  I have been berated to death from certain quarters about the disservice I am doing my child.  Really? 

See we got our marks back today ~ & I didn't need the marks to tell me what I already knew because I know my child very well indeed.  Our supervisor apologised profusely.  She had sent Star the wrong math paper & was astonished at how well Star had actually done with it given we have covered almost nothing that was actually on that paper.  However Star's math is not what our supervisor wished to discuss.  She was bursting to tell me that in both vocab & comprehension Star had scored in the 99th percentile!  Which doesn't surprise me.  Not even given that most of her attention was elsewhere at the time.

Most homschoolers score very well in Language skills ~ & well above state schooled children.  Even so Star has surpassed herself.  See we don't do standardised tests.  Haven't for years & years, not since the NAPLAN when Star was so bored by the whole process she drew a most amazing picture on the comprehension paper & applied her spelling rules in new & innovative ways!  I figured I didn't need the stress & refused to participate any more.  Which has meant we don't get feedback either.

Do you know how rare it is for any child to have such a comprehensive vocab & to not only know the meaning of the words but be able to use them correctly in a sentence?  So tell me again why I shouldn't homeschool my child?  Some days I revert to being ten just so I can go, Nah~nah ne nah~nah.