The beach...

Today we went to the beach to meet an unschooling (about unschooling) group that meets regularly. Everyone was so nice and it was great to speak to other Moms who have made the same types of choices for their children. The great part is that there were many children in my childrens' age range! So Ben and Hannah will have kids to play with who are their age, and even Noah had a few kids that he'd grow up around. This is important to me and to my kids. Finding friends has been hard up until now because we go to many playgroups and most of the little boys (Ben wants 'boy' friends) are several years younger than Ben and he gets bored playing with babies. Not all the time but sometimes he will come to me and say that he has no friends. It breaks my heart. I've been on the hunt for his age and older for many years. He wants friends. So today has given me little hope in that department. It was a little hard to get to know some of them, and introduce my kids because we were at the beach and everyone was everywhere. I think we'll get to know them better as we go more often and as time goes by. We are also going to try out some other homeschooling park days around the city and see which one(s) we fit into.

Because this is Kindergarten, I'm not stressed about 'getting school-work done' during the day. I find that my children are learning all the time and it is hard to confine it into an 8-3 day. Just as it is hard to teach according to the standards. My kids already know a lot of what they should know in 1st grade already so we're not keeping to the standards very well (so far). I also found it hard not to encourage learning over the weekend. They ask so many questions and want to learn and discover...so why not let them?

So today was a good social day. Ben is learning how to play nicely with kids his age (& a bit older) and trying to fit in. It is a hard lesson when all the kids know each other already and have their set games. But he'll be fine.

Both Hannah and Ben learned how important it is to put sunblock on. They didn't want to come and put it on and now they each have a nice little sunburn. Next time, it goes on before we get to the sand. ;-)