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Chatterbox: Down to Earth
What do you
What do you do in real life?
Hey guys, Blue here! So as you can see above, I was wondering what y’all are like off the CB. I know I’m quite different online vs. offline, (though neither version of me is fake, just different ways of me expressing myself). And more importantly, what do you spend your time doing? School schedules are great, long-winded descriptions are awesome, and basically anything if it talks about what you do IRL.
My turn!
I’m actually loads different offline, which most of you will probably not be. For starters, I swear... a lot. Like, uh, every-other-sentence lot. Of course, I can’t do that on the CB. I spend most of my non-school-or-sleep time at Alberta Park, a medium-size (four city blocks, about) park that’s mostly playground, with multiple little playstructures scattered about. Well, that’s where I start, anyway. Then I usually find one or more of my friends there, and go off racing, playing video games, getting ice cream, getting into fights (like, fights,) and doing very fun and slightly illegal things.
During summer, there’s movies and a free-lunch program that comes with activities in Alberta Park, plus loads of street fairs, block parties... There’s also a street a couple blocks away (like, three or four) that’s covered in shops, where I go a lot and have rapidly been losing my money to. (There is a bookstore. How am I supposed to just walk by that?)
I’m public schooled, and go to a K-8 school. I’m in middle school, though, (sixth grade aaa) and the elementary and middle schoolers are pretty separate. There’s a certain ‘group’ I hang out with, plus my friends Alex, Cole, and Estefania, but a lot of my friends don’t go to my school and I know them because they live nearby. We switch classes for things, which is kind of weird as I’m not used to it. I’m sort of ‘the new kid’ because I transferred, but, y’know, in a friendly type way. I don’t act like a new kid, at least I don’t think I do. And everyone is a bit, because the middle school is a lot different than elementary.
Wow... that was longer than I expected. If you read the whole thing, I applaud you.
So what’s your life like?
submitted by Blue Moon, age 11, Here
(September 12, 2018 - 9:37 pm)
(September 12, 2018 - 9:37 pm)
Also, wondering, what’s homeschooling like? I know a lot of CBers are homeschooled, but honestly I can’t fathom it. If you look up ‘public schooler’ in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of me, probably. So what’s it like? Do your parents teach you? Do you go out of the house occasionally or stay in like a school? Is it just like free time all the time? Do you get vacations? What would you do for a recess type time?
And of course, I can answer any questions about being a public schooled sixth grader. Just ask!
(September 17, 2018 - 8:27 pm)
Oh, I like talking about this. My little cousin's in... fourth grade, I think- and when he was a little younger the whole idea of homeschooling made no sense to him. It was kinda funny. He was in kindergarten and knew "everyone goes to school!" and didn't understand how you WOULDN'T go to the place to learn. He still has some questions though. Recently he told me that he had pajama day at his school and I just kind of laughed. XD
Anyway, long answer you probably won't need in its entirity:
Homeschooling is pretty cool. I'm in highschool now and have more work than my siblings, so my mom and I get up at seven in the morning and work together on whatever I need help on, like when we're supposed to read a chapter of ______ textbook together and go over the questions. Then I eat breakfast at like eight and poof around (is that a thing) until nine. Then EVERYBODY goes downstairs and starts doing their stuff, and I go upstairs to do my own work. Everyone works all morning (not serious at all down there- whenever my mom comes upstairs to get something there's usually yelling in the basement for the two minutes she's gone) and then everybody comes up yelling to eat lunch. (We have a finished basement, btw. It might sound weird otherwise that everyone works in the basement for four hours.)
The afternoon varies a lot. After lunch we all read books for what is supposed to be an hour- on a normal day, anyway. Today is Tuesday, so we go to a homeschool music thing from 12:30 to almost 5:00 (there are three of us that have a class there and naturally they aren't at the same time) which totally throws us off from our normal schedual. Sometimes we do history and science in the afternoon, but because of the way it's structured we only need to do it two or three days a week.
Answering your questions directly-
My mom teaches us and my dad works, but we consider him the "principal" and he talks to us when we're doing badly in a class. It's funny but at the same time not. XD
Go out of the house occasionally... well, I don't go "outdoors" that much, (which is probably not good. I should do that more) but I go to the music thing and a co-op (which is like going to school one day a week) and the youth group at my church, so yeah. I have stuff on weekends too.
Free time all the time? Depends. I used to be a terrible procrastinator and never do work when I was supposed to, which led to really painful weekends and draging school weeks into the summer. I don't do that anymore, but it looks like some of my younger siblings are taking this path this year. I'm trying to warn them. I do get to choose my own schedual though, so that's cool. I can decide to do logic before writing, and I can decide to do extra math today so I don't have to do it tomorrow. That's probably my favorite part of homeschooling.
Vacations are totally different for different people. Some families work for six weeks and then take one week off all year, but I do basically the same thing as public schoolers would.
Recess is me on the computer, xbox, or reading non-school books when I don't have school to do. I don't really take breaks in between, I just do it and then I'm done.
Wow, that was way too long. Sorry about that. I have a lot of words.
(September 18, 2018 - 7:15 am)
Haha. Goes both ways I guess. I've never ever been public schooled, and so I never really understood anything about it. I could see why you'd go somewhere to learn obviously, but other concepts confused me. What I know about public school is purely what I read in books (e.g. Babysitter's Club, The Origami Yoda Series, and any realistic fiction pretty much), the snippets I hear from my friends, and bits of my parents' experiences. Until a year or two ago I had no clue what a school period was.
(September 21, 2018 - 11:27 am)
Okay I'm going to do this. *Takes a deep breath*
I go to a private school it is not preppy, we don'thave uniforms, or grades. Yep. You heard me right no grades. We just have to do everything over again until we get it correct. I go to a Montessori school. I am in 7th grade there are 25 people in the entire 7th grade and I am taught by my principal as well.
At home I make soap. I have made 5 different scents: Lavender, Lemon, Honey Oatmeal, Cinnamon, and Peppermint. I love writing and reading. Like LOVE THEM. Ummm I don't have any pets. I live in the midwest, I make humming bird food, I grow tomatoes, like to bake, grow lemon balm, and yea.
My life outside of the chatterbox
(September 21, 2018 - 6:20 pm)
I'm a high school homeschooler, but instead of staying home I go to various classes at different places. My schedule is like a college schedule. I have different classes scheduled on different days. My classes are basically classes that last all day for two days, and then I have a separate class on Wednesday. My parents aren't really my teachers because I have actual teachers to grade my essays, tests, and homework and give me assignments, report cards, etc. My core classes are based on the Veritas Press Omnibus series, which I LOVE because it is basically taking classic, life-shaping books with a variety of ideas like Hamlet, Paradise Lost, The Social Contract, Animal Farm, The Great Divorce, and other books and analyzing them from a Christian perspective and using the foundations of literature to learn about...pretty much everything. We also study logic, rhetoric, debate, and essays. And then I take other normal stuff, like Spanish, Advanced Biology, Algebra II, Government and Economics, etc. We have deadlines, projects, in-class debates, essays, tests, pop quizzes, and all that other stuff just like a lot of other schooling options, just held in a different environment.
(September 21, 2018 - 8:36 pm)
Thanks so much you guys, Alizarine especially! The long reply was really nice.
Mostly for Jwyn, I’m going to write a few things about public school.
The biggest overreaching feeling is the sense of having a class. It’s not like a team or anything, but it’s like people who all know each other, banter, die in the period before lunch and complain to each other, laugh when someone says something funny...it’s great. Classes have their own inside jokes, legends, style... I’m using ellipses (...) a lot, aren’t I. It feels less formal than ‘etc.’
I have three different class groups, five (if you count our three dance teachers as one unit XD) different teachers, and six periods plus lunch.We have one of our electives (specialized classes we get to choose) first at 8:45, but everyone comes at 8:35 to 1. Eat the school breakfast 2. Complain about the school breakfast (Everything comes from a packet. Where do you even find maple-flavored artificial pancakes?) 3. Lean against a wall and talk while waiting for first period to start. Dance is right off the cafeteria, but everyone else has to spend their precious leaning-against-a-wall time going upstairs to their electives. Usually we do some stretches to music, learn a new technique, and then do free (ish- there’s prompts, like ‘use your wrists’ or ‘go into low space’) dance. That’s the theory, anyway. Everyone, including me, swears the dance room is haunted. The lights keep flashing on and off. A giant curtain rod fell across half of the classroom and right on top of Caloni. And so far, only a couple of our teachers have been actually competent, and all the teachers keep on getting sick or injured. And then the subs get sick. So yeah. Plus all the kids are Crazy and we spent yesterday’s first period making fake people out of jackets and then ripping them to shreds.
Then second period (science, we do a lab every few days, and spend the time leading up learning the principle, and the time after analyzing our results). This is upstairs, with my main sixth grade homeroom. (Electives are mixed grades.)
Third period (social studies), fourth period, (English), I think I’ve used up all my writing, and now lunch.
At lunch, though there’s not assigned seating, I sit on the First Table From The Hall In Between Clem And Estefania With Leroy Across From Me Cole Next To Him And Jimmy Joe Two Seats To My Right And Juan Next To Him... and so on. And you do not change it. Once I tried to sit with Alex and Demarre because I’d been hanging out with them more and called everyone else over to sit there too, and Estefania nearly killed me. (‘Why not?’ ‘That is the Third Table From The Hall you must never go there’.)
Recess is combined and optional, and me and my friends (the lunch group minus Jimmy Joe because he’s afraid of heights and plus Alex) usually make a beeline for this giant four-person swing that’s basically an oval flat plastic surface strung up like a swing and is absolutely terrifying. A couple other kids who aren’t particularly my friends also join because they like the swing. There’s one eighth grader who refuses to tell us his name and makes us call him Jake From State Farm (first name Jake, middle name From, last name State Farm) that hates bumps on the swing and we always bump him like crazy while he swears his head off. Plus Estefania’s friend Isaac.
Fifth period math, sixth period my STEM elective (which is cool) and then I bike home up a steep hill, sometimes with Fiona, Dean, or Tavy, (tAVIER) who aren’t really my friends but live on the same street so we go home together sometimes and we’re fairly friendly.
Wow. My fingers are tired. A few things, huh.
(September 21, 2018 - 8:11 pm)
That’s public school, I guess. I am a little young for the CB. I’m in fifth grade, as a mentioned before. I’d like to say my point of view, though it may not be that interesting.
School starts at SEVEN FORTY-FIVE. That means you have to get up at SIX IN THE MORNING and get in the car, bus, or whatever by seven fifteen. It’s a pain in the neck. 27 kids are crammed into rooms according to grade and academic status. So I’m in a room with a bunch of smart kids, which is great because I don’t have to review ANYTHING.
I have nine incredibly boring classes, most of them taught in one classroom. I have zero control of what classes I take. I have math (boring), English (YUS), science (I could fall asleep, and HARD), History (okay, I guess), Spanish (AGH!!!!! SO BORING), Music (YUS), art (YUS), and PE, or physical education (why do we even have that). History, English, science, and math are everyday classes, while Spanish is taught two days a week, and PE, music, and art are taught once a week.
Lunch is disgusting. I sit with almost all the girls in my class at The Table Right Smack in the Middle of the Cafetaria. We usually talk about Hamilton, sing, and read. Recess is real fun, considering we have The Spinny Thing (that is literally the only way to describe it). The Spinny Thing is a thingamabob where you climb onto a diamond-shaped thing with ropes all around it. We hold onto the ropes while somone who is the definition of fast grabs the bottom and spins it. Then we hang on for dear life.
(September 22, 2018 - 12:38 pm)