Growing Up

It occurred to me today, while watching Monster (who is just learning how to really swim) boldly grab up preferred floatation devices and head for the deep end of the pool, that my kiddos are rapidly approaching school age.  Not pre-school age, but serious school-school.

We're fortunate enough to live in an area with a fantastic elementary school, mediocre middle school, and decent high school.  But that's just the thing - the words "decent" and "mediocre" shouldn't be in my vocabulary when discussing the environment in which my children will be spending most of their time.

So I started poking around, as I tend to do when I get a wild hair or start fretting over one thing or another.  If it weren't for list-making and Google, there'd be a padded cell somewhere with my name on it.

We're fortunate enough to live in a city filled with alternatives to the public school system.  Unfortunately, most of them are private schools of various flavors, with enormous tuitions.  My husband and I determined a while ago that it's more important to us for our children grow up in an environment that includes parents fulfilling their creative goals regardless of the income it brings in, which generally means we're budgeting fairly carefully.  Having to choose between eating food from the farms and our kids getting an exemplary education should not be an issue.

So imagine my elation to discover that the Austin Discovery School is not only affordable, but is actually tuition-free.

On top of that, there are all kinds of really rad new camps and schools popping up around town.  Neither of my kids are old enough yet, but The Austin Tinkering School provides a forum for little kidlets to poke and prod at various things and figure out how they work.  (More pictures are here)  These little guys are even making Rube-Goldberg machines, which makes them lucky and me jealous.  There's also the brand-new 9th Street School, which is a sort-of home school in East Austin for 5-7 year olds, taking a very practical, hands-on approach to learning.  The kids tend their own garden and cook with their bounty, make their own newspapers and books to encourage learning, fix and ride their own bicycles, and a number of other relevant, exciting things.

The newest mystery is The Living School.  I think.  I can't find ANY information on it outside of this blog (where is it?  Is it even in Austin?), but it's pretty much the coolest thing ever.