Socialization

This question comes up often when homeschooling is mentioned. I usually brush it because if it was a real concern they would already know the answer and not need to ask. I almost always have Cowboy with me and he is more the willing to have a conversation. For those of you looking for the answer, I am not going to answer it here. Instead I am going to share two experiences we had at the ice rink. Both days we went to the rink not knowing any one else.

We went up to the ice rink in the afternoon for Cowboy to get used to skating in his hockey gear and for me to practice my ice skating. When we arrived we were surprised to see a lot of families there. I asked one of the moms and she said it was homeschool skate day. I had no idea they even had a homeschool skate day but I was thrilled to find out there was.

I would say there were about 30 homeschool children at the rink from about 5 years up through 15 with a large concentration of 6-9 year olds. The 6-9 years all got along really well together and spent the time skating together. Cowboy showed two siblings how to skate since it was their first time ever out on the ice. At one point they formed a human chain and tried skating down the ice. It did not work out well but judging by the laughter it did not matter. The children did not stay together in one large group; instead they frequently skated in smaller groups of 2-4. These groups changed depending on various factors such as the speed of the skating and the conversation at the time. There was no ill will when the groups changed and no one was ever excluded. Cowboy was sad to see everyone leave and has asked me to make sure the next homeschool skate is on our calendar so we can come back.

The next day we went back to the ice rink. They were having a special extended session because several local school districts were out of school. There was about the same number of children on the ice and again a large number of 6-9 year olds. In the first few minutes I saw Cowboy talking with a few other children his age. They had never skated before and he had slowed to match their speed. He went around the rink a couple of times with them but then left them and spent the rest of the time skating alone. In less then an hour Cowboy asked to leave because he was not having fun. He had no one to skate with because the other children would not talk to him because they did not know him.

The most amazing difference between the two skating sessions happened whenever someone would fall. During the homeschool session if someone fell on the ice the nearest skaters would stop and make sure they were ok and help them up and encourage them to try again. During the public skate no one stopped and that person was pretty much on their own.

A Cowboy in Hockey

Our life has changed drastically since the week before Christmas. I finally signed Cowboy up for hockey. He has only been asking since before he turned 3. He couldn’t really talk so he only said “ice kate” over and over and over. I did try him in lessons around that time but for many reasons it was not a good fit. He has asked every autumn since then and I finally gave in and enrolled him.

He loves it.

Our local rink has holiday camps where the children go every day for 3 to 4 days. He enjoyed it so much that I enrolled him both the morning and the evening the week before Christmas and he passed. We tried the camps the week after Christmas but he got really sick and had to drop out of that class. He was sick enough that he didn’t care.

The good news is that the next week he was well enough to join two classed that met once a week for 6 weeks. In addition to the public sessions on the day of his class I took him skating one other day of the week each week. He worked very hard and is a pretty good ice skater because of his hard work. He just finished those classes and is now ready to learn more about the game of hockey. I bought him some gear and a stick and he had his first session on the ice with his stick. He is still enthusiastic and I am so proud with all his hard work. I am even taking lessons now. *gulp*