Love in a Time of Homeschooling by Laura Brodie

multiplication tables in the same manner I remembered as a child. I had learned my twos and threes and fours sequentially, in times tables, but Julia’s instruction had hopped around, starting with easy numbers, such as two, five, and ten. This approach didn’t seem to have worked for her, because her retention was entirely piecemeal. She needed to backup and relearn her math facts one number at a time: first two, then three, then four. I thought that we might spend a month (or less, as needed) on the number three—multiplying and dividing by 33.33, computing the area and perimeter of rectangles three inches long, cutting pies into thirds, then ninths, then twelfths. Whatever the mathematical concept at hand, we could practice it while saturated in our number of the week. This meant that I would have to write out a lot of math worksheets separate from the Saxon supply—but so be it. A weekly schedule for math was taking shape in my head.
    When it came to social studies, Virginia’s fifth-graders focused entirely on American history, from pre-Columbian times through the Civil War. Neither Julia nor I was impressed with that plan.
    â€œDo you want to study American history next year?” I asked her. She replied by sticking her finger in the back of her throat and pretending to vomit.
    Julia had been studying American history ever since kindergarten, in Virginia’s “spiral method,” where students return again and again to the same material at a slightly higher level, year after year. American history had dominated her elementary curriculum, and in middle school, Julia would face two more years of American history and government, followed by two more years in the second half of high school. Forget about the Renaissance or the Enlightenment. Forget about most foreign cultures; they could be crammed into a few years of world geography and history. In Virginia’s model, America was the only country that merited in-depth study, which meant in-depth boredom for the children.
    â€œOkay.” I hastened to stop Julia’s simulated barfing. “We’ll race through American history in the last four months of the year. We can visit the new Museum of Native American History in Washington when we study Indians, and for the Colonial period, we can spend three days in the spring exploring Williamsburg and Yorktown.” Since we reside in a town where Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson lived and are buried, Julia already knew plenty about the “War of Northern Aggression.”
    â€œSo what should we study instead of America?” I asked Julia. “Are there any ancient cultures you’d like to know more about?” I thought she would choose the Egyptians, or maybe Greece or Rome, but one of Julia’s greatest strengths is that she never does what one expects.
    â€œThe Maya,” she said. Fair enough. I had always wanted to learn more about the Incas, so I persuaded Julia that they would complement the Maya well, and we threw in the Aztecs to complete the trio. Her school had touched upon Montezuma’s world in the past, but they hadn’t gone into detail.
    â€œAnd what about science?” Virginia’s SOLs seemed haphazard on that score. Fifth-graders were supposed to study the oceans, and sound and light, and loads of other topics. But what did it matter whether a ten-year-old focused on the sea or sky? Who cared whether she studied weather in the third grade or the fourth? Julia’s interests were clear: “I want to study dinosaurs.”
    I hesitated to spend a lot of time on dinosaurs, since they were the one subject Julia knew inside and out. She had read every children’s dinosaur book at our local public library, and we had taken her to see fossil collections at museums of natural history in New York, London, Philadelphia, and Washington. The first rule of homeschooling, however, is to encourage the child’s interests.
    â€œSure,