This is how I cope with stress: I read constantly in the hope that it will prepare me for whatever is coming up. Reading makes me feel competent -- deluded perhaps, but you gotta fake it til you make it. So for me Step One is buying books. I didn't have the patience to put in the requests at the library. Not cheap, but cheaper than therapy!

Here's what I've amassed for a homeschool library in the past 4 days:

Miser, Absolute Beginner's Guide to Homeschooling
Schaeffer Macaulay, For the Children's Sake (Charlotte Mason-style education)
Wise & Wise-Bauer, The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home (the 1st edition, which is supposed to have the better book lists)
Dobson (not James!), Homeschool the Right Way from Day One
Waring, Beyond Survival, A Guide to Abundant Life Homeschooling
Rivero, Creative Homeschooling: A Resource Guide for Smart Families

I'm also buried in curriculum catalogs that we had gotten last fall from the Ed.Psych.

Anyway, some of you know that this is not really step one. We've been thinking of homeschool for DD6 since before kindergarten, and I personally liked the idea ever since I was a bored kid reading about the homeschooling Colfax family in Reader's Digest during a long visit to a relative's house. (They're the ones who got famous 25 or so years ago for sending their homeschooled kids to Harvard.) I have many happy memories from most of school, so I assumed DD6, who is like me in many ways, would feel the same way.

Now I need to gird my loins and develop that backbone of steel for Step Two: Telling the School. Yikes! I'd almost like to sacrifice the piles of markers, scissors, notebooks, folders, and glue that we've got in her desk there--just to avoid face-to-face conflict . . . I mean contact --but I think we're going to need them.

After that is the happy one. Step Three: Start Extended Spring Vacation!

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