Let’s see… yesterday was the coldest day so far so when I got there only 2 or 3 other mothers were there (and I was 15 min late). Brendan shot off to the play area and Darrell followed with Andy. The play area is a little too far away for my young kids- I am glad DH was there with me. It also had some high slides and a merry go round that shouted “Kids get hurt on me often”. I found out later that the parents of the really young just meet up down there.
They welcomed me well enough but I was uncomfortable. As time passed more families crept into the park. Several I seemed to jive with and I talked to most of them by the end. Brendan played a lot with a boy named Ray and I liked his Dad a lot. Mom and Dad both work from home so they tag team homeschool.
I got to talking about math curriculums with another lady named Diana (I wanted to know if others had video lessons like MUS and she had used Saxon and SIngapore) and I inadvertantly complimented her on her two kids because DH had just told me he liked them. Haha.
The facilitator of the group- Linda- is very UNSCHOOL. Exuded it like oil from every pore of her body. She has a nine year old boy (who is a bit wild or at least he was then) and she has never opened any sort of schoolwork book or curriculum for him. They play or act out everything. He wants to play bank teller and customer? Let’s fit in counting money… that sort of thing. She exhausted me. I think she was trying to impress me but she wasn’t. If anyone just mentioned something about public school and she was quick to pipe up with “but we don’t really care what they are doing”. She was okay and nice but very opinionated and sometimes abrupt.
Another lady in the group was very big on how she used to be a board member of the PTA and when she dropped out she thought perhaps her kids were being unfairly treated at the school because of her so she pulled them out too. And then Child Protective Services started coming after her. Yeah.
It was good to get out and socialize. Bren LOVED it. Andy had a good time. DH tolerated it. I enjoyed myself- it was nice to be among adult women.
The park is 30-35 minutes away though. Smack in the middle of a work day.
The best part for me was they were talking about a homeschool convention that is held each summer at the university where my DH works. Apparently it is a big one. One lady had brought huge bags full of (like 25 pounds!) of homeschooling curriculum ads and resource books and a lot of stuff left over fromt he convention and gave me and another newcomer one. I’ve been having fun with it! I’d really like to go to it- too bad it just happened a few month ago. There were a lot of workshops I’d love to go to and a lot of presentations on what different places do for homeschoolers here in San Antonio.
I should now have admittance to their online forums. Field trips links and stuff are posted there. Hopefully I’ll get some positive ideas from there. It was an interesting day and in the end maybe 15 families showed up. A very mixed group but I have to remind myself that, while it’d be nice, I am not really going to these groups to learn about how to homeschool- just to learn about what’s going on around town, field trips, sports, etc. to join and for my kids to play and have friends.
In those respects it was great.