Living Room Learning

For this mom, homeschooling proved educational for everyone in the family.

THREE YEARS AGO OUR FAMILY MOVED TO CALIFORNIA FROM WASHINGTON, D.C. It was unexpected, it happened fast and for some of us it was a painful repositioning. My husbands company relocated to Silicon Valley, so we and our kids (aged 6 months, 4,7 and 8) did, too. After fewer than four years in Washington we had to leave our comfortable existence—lots of extended family, a friendly neighborhood, a terrific public school—behind.

We had little information about our new school district and thought we could research our options better once we were there. Meanwhile the kids and I wanted to take our time arriving, and drive crosscountry to visit friends and family along the way. The kids pored over a big map of the United States and began charting our course, estimating mileage, calculating daily driving times and reviewing guidebooks for must-see sites and funny-named places.

As my husband, Amit, and I discussed various circumstances surrounding our move, we realized this might be the perfect opportunity to try something wed always considered: home schooling.

Sure, we had our doubts. How would the kids meet new friends? How could we teach them all at once when they are different ages? How do you do long division without a calculator? Won't other people think we're strange? How will I—parent, teacher and unpacking-breastfeedingcooking person—keep from going crazy? Will my kids even listen to me?!

But over the years we have known several interesting home schoolers, and we were intrigued.

Why homeschool? For many parents, their neighborhood public school cannot offer the academic challenge they would like for their children. Many families want a little more religion in their children's day than the public school provides. But more and more folks I know are home schooling simply for the whole-family benefit of learning together.

For us homeschooling meant the opportunity to explore our beautiful new community together. California—heck, the entire West Coast—was new to us. I had close Dartmouth friends in Seattle, Washington, and Phoenix, Arizona, we could visit. We could make museum trips mid-week, when crowds were minimal, and take off-season vacations to places such as Tahoe and Yosemite.

We decided as a family to name ourselves Adventure School, and registered with the State of California. The form took fewer than 10 minutes to fill out online. We obtained school records from D.C., reviewed California's broad curriculum guidelines for second and third grade, set up folders for record-keeping, signed up for free support groups, including a homeschool community center program, and embraced our new school philosophy of learning by doing.

Next we ventured out. Rain threatened on a dreary Tuesday afternoon in Sunnyvale as we tentatively approached the nearly deserted playground for our first ever homeschool park day. There we met many interesting families, several with former-educator parents now leading their small home-classrooms. We discussed the ins and outs of homeschooling in California, a state considered friendly to alternative education. Some parents chose to work through their school district, which made them eligible for free curricula, two hours a week group class time for their children and, in some cases, a stipend toward vendor-approved courses or materials. Some parents opposed this formula, preferring complete independence from government support or control. Some adopted the "unschooling" approach to educating their children: letting the children direct their learning based on their own random interests, with parents simply facilitating or supporting along the way. Two of the families used a strictly structured approach, with formal daily lessons in advanced math, Latin, robotics, piano, etc. Two other families were something in between, which is where we found ourselves over the course of the year, shifting slightly as we learned, accommodating life's other demands.

We went on weekly hikes with one family. Involved in the Sierra Club, the dad knew perfect spots for kids, and over time he and his children taught us how to identify local flora, animal tracks and scat (a favorite). We spent countless hours in the children's section of the expansive new Saratoga library, borrowing around 50 books a week. We connected with a community center for homeschoolers, formerly part of a nearby school district but now independent, where my daughters took weekly classes in aikido, sign language and pottery. There we met many selfless parents who put their children's education above all else and embraced unconventional methods to teach them.

Several times when the kids and I were out running errands (um, I mean learning about grocery shopping, the postal service and gas pumping), other adults would ask awkward questions. "Where do you go to school?" or "Why aren't you in school?" At first we hesitated to answer but eventually we would say homeschool and, to our surprise, not too many eyebrows were raised. "Oh, my sister homeschools her 17 children," was a more likely response. "Yeah, I never liked those government schools, either," was one that had me smiling.

The kids and I made two interstate journeys. In spring we drove to San Diego, the Anza-Borrego Desert and Arizona, where we camped for several days with my old Dartmouth roommate and her good-natured new husband. We learned all about the desert firsthand and were lucky enough to experience the first rain there in five months. No amount of Googling or library research can provide the unforgettable smell of sour, musty, damp dust that we slowly learned to appreciate. In July we made our second big road trip to the Oregon Country Fair, a huge, family-friendly hippie fest that a close Dartmouth friend from Seattle attends every year with her husband and son. I'm sure it left a lifetimes impression on my children.

As a family we grew strong and close through the adventure of homeschooling. We learned from each other and enjoyed many shared experiences, with the house always buzzing yet no rushing out to school or meetings or play-dates. When family or friends came to town to visit we had all the time in the world to be with them (perhaps to their dismay). We did a big mid-week ski adventure to Tahoe with my brother and his family. We enjoyed lazy afternoons in Santa Cruz, watching the surfers ride whatever waves the Pacific offered that day. We took the train to San Francisco, explored Chinatown on foot and watched a field guide artist paint moths under a microscope at the Cal Academy of Science. Mid-week park rangers and museum staff always seemed to have spare time to chat with the children, explaining why the monarch butterflies preferred one tree to another or how to

My 4-year-old daughter taught herself to read. I'm not sure if that was because of the constant presence of her older sisters, lounging around reading to themselves, or my brilliant one-on-one phonics instruction with a heavy dose of Dr. Seuss but it certainly bolstered the way the grandparents felt about our choice to homeschool.

In the end homeschooling challenged all our beliefs about traditional education and stretched my own understanding of why and how we learn. If Dartmouth taught us one thing it's never to stop learning, conventionally or otherwise, and that's a lesson for the whole family. With our children wanting more socialization, we chose a different path for our second year in California. We found a public parent-participation school for our children, which embraces whole-child learning, supports learning by doing and offers lots of venturesome field trips in which the children do much of the planning themselves. My girls enjoyed cooking classes, gardening, elaborate theater productions—and felt at home. When three days at the beach in Santa Cruz is school, who would complain?

JANE VARNER MALHOTRA is back inWashington, D.C. With her kids enrolled inpublic school, she is working on a children's bookabout the disenfranchisement of D.C. residents.