Glad tidings: Lisa and Debbie are resurrecting South Valley
Homeschoolers Association by bringing back Park Day, Fridays, 1
p.m. to whenever, at Christmas Hill Park. Historical note: South
Valley Homeschoolers Association was founded in 1988 as an
inclusive homeschool support group by a secular humanist, Ann
Bodine. SVHA had two components: a newsletter and Park Day.
Glad tidings: Lisa and Debbie are resurrecting South Valley Homeschoolers Association by bringing back Park Day, Fridays, 1 p.m. to whenever, at Christmas Hill Park. Historical note: South Valley Homeschoolers Association was founded in 1988 as an inclusive homeschool support group by a secular humanist, Ann Bodine. SVHA had two components: a newsletter and Park Day.
At Park Day, the moms and the occasional hardy dad talked, mostly about homeschooling, while the kids played. Upon arrival of the Internet, we abandoned the newsletter for a listserv. The members were as diverse as America, every shade, creed, and ideology. We had charismatics, fundamentalists, Catholics, Mormons, agnostics, and atheists. We had unschoolers and video curricula users and every methodology in between. We had R-4 filers and private and public ISPers. We had people who homeschooled all their kids, just their big kids, just their little kids, just their smartest kids, or just their special needs kids. We had members whose oldest child was 4 but they planned to homeschool when the time comes.
Private, voluntary associations, unlike the water district, do not grow exponentially. In fact, they wax and wane. SVHA grew to 85 families, and shrank to two women, Nancy Green and me, talking and doing handwork, while our assorted children played FIRG, their own Futuristic Inventive Role-playing Game. SVHA grew again to 115 families, and shrank again to invisibility. Why does SVHA ever ebb while homeschooling keeps growing? Partly, it is natural attrition: the older kids grow up, attend community college, get jobs, and go away to four-year colleges, all of which actions preclude Park Day attendance.
Partly, it is a consequence of the very success of homeschooling. In the old days, in the 1980s, when my sister-in-law was first homeschooling, the practice was looked upon as downright weird if not illegal. In-laws, grandparents, and neighbors were uniformly disapproving. A homeschool mom desperately needed to get with like-minded others once a week for her sanity’s sake. Now, homeschooling has proved itself. It is regarded much more favorably by the general public.
Simultaneously, homeschoolers find many other homeschoolers with whom they can co-op and play in small like-minded groups. This has been the situation in South County for the last few years: small established groups of homeschoolers cheerfully and effectively educating their children. It works beautifully for the established homeschoolers, but not so well for the new homeschooler who is not already linked to a church or co-op that fosters homeschooling.
Even for the well-connected and firmly rooted homeschooling family, Park Day provided a large pool of people with whom to go on field trips (Sutter’s Fort and the CA Thayer), plan events (science fair and spelling bee), and trade resources (textbooks and crafts and historical fiction.) But the best part of Park Day was Park Day itself. The littlest kids would dig in the sand and swing on the swings. As they grew older, their sand sculptures became more elaborate and reflective of whatever history they were studying: ziggurats and labyrinths.
Michele Harvey, still homeschooling her youngest kids, remembers, “Staying late into the afternoon, the air growing chillier while the moms talked and the kids climbed trees and played imaginative games.” And the homeschooling alumni, the young adults now making their individual ways in the world, remember.
Lt. Nick Allen, USAF, writes from Minot ND, about his best memory: “Those massive games of boffer fighting and laser tag we used to do. Capture the flag, softball, all the large-scale sports stuff.” Aimee Buffum nee Whitakker writes: “Some of my best memories stem from our many games of ‘hot lava’ / ‘can’t touch the ground’ played on, between and around the two playgrounds in the sandy area. There were older kids, younger kids, siblings, friends – all combinations together playing, screaming, giggling and jumping everywhere trying not to touch the sand. And it was quite a challenge between the tall log fence (it got SUPER tall in the middle!), the big gaps you’d have to leap over and all the sand you’d have to traverse. I loved that.”
Welcome back, SVHA Park Day.
