Places They Will Go...: An education of sorts.

Lesson One:

Georgie started school this year &, in my infinite wisdom, I decided I’d be fine to take on the role of, ~~Asian Tiger Mom~~ totally laid back, teacher.

It’s only Kindy, right?

No big deal.

I can manage that.

I went to University, or something.

I can still even remember Kindergarten. The teachers, the classroom, the miniature furniture, the giant pencils, the chair bags, the smells (mostly clag, peanut butter, bananas, & a hint of urine).

So I did some research. Talked to my teacherly friends. Got the low down.

Tried to apply for “Home Schooling”, but we didn’t meet the criteria.

School of Distance Education? Not enough postal/internet access.

“Unschooling”- not enough under arm hair.

School of Life- not enough weed.

So I’ve been going it alone. Without the weed & the underarm hair. Well, mostly without the underarm hair. Making it up as I go, so to speak.

We bought a couple of age appropriate work books from Targét.

I looked up the curriculum…. And the 8 BILLION web pages about schooling your kid.

That oughta do it, right?

What ever I teach, it’s all inconsequential really.

Because she knows everything.

Along with knowing everything she’s also perfected The Eye Roll, The Foot Tap, The Exasperated Sigh of Annoyance, The Stomp & Slam, & The Huff & Strop.

There’s only so much huffing & stomping you can do in 4 square meters of floor space though.

After that, you get tied to the roof racks.

We don’t just concentrate on an academic education.

She’s learning really important, practical things. Things she might otherwise only learn from watching back to back episodes of Macgyver.

How to put on a pair of long pants in a wet shower cubicle without dipping her hems in the grotty water.

It’s involved some intensive training, not at all dissimilar to this…

How to navigate her way through a visit to the bathroom, touching the least amount of surfaces as possible & pointing out the most likely places you’ll find all the gram negative bacilli & cocci as she goes.

How to drive one of these…

How to catch, clean, cook & crack into one of these…

How awesome it is to be able to do this…

How they make these…

How many different colours these come in…

And this she picked up just from watching Laithe, not me…

Fish scaling.

She’s learning the value of a dollar.

I’d saved her birthday money from the last 5 years & cracked it out when we left for her to buy souvenirs & stuff while we travel.

She is officially the richest member of our family.

Unfortunately money doesn’t buy taste so I’ve had to veto most would-be purchases over the last few months.

She is, however, loving herself sick with her new purse ($6 from Strandbags). Naturally, a purse needs a handbag to be carried in. I managed to convince her that the ~~horrendous~~ lovely shiny silver bag she picked just wasn’t right for her & that she could, in fact, live without it.

So when she walked into the to the second hand shop in Denmark & found this little Billabong beauty for ONE DOLLAR, she was ecstatic!

She also scored these IMAX DVD’s.

She’s watched the Deep Sea & Galapagos ones over & over, & now tells me (in one breath) that when she is a marine biologist, she’s going to go to the Galapagos Islands to take photos to bring back to show the kids in her class when she’s a teacher…

She’s also going to be a nurse.

And maybe a pilot.

I wrote most of this post months ago & never published it. The pictures are old & so are the stories.

But, the other day, after weeks of this…