Today was the first Country Day of the school year, focused on Indonesia. After a busy Labor Day weekend (long days out with friend all three days), Sarah spent last night doing her research and putting together a presentation on tree kangaroos. She did a great job on her presentation.

I tried to make seitan satay for the potluck, to no avail. Instead I made a rice porridge with a spicy broth (vegetable broth, garlic, ginger, turmeric, cumin, curry powder, chili, and a little soy sauce), sauteed string beans, cabbage, and spinach. Turned out really nicely.

A year ago, at the first Country Day, Sarah was taken aback by how many kids were there (she'd been assuming it would be more like Lego League, with just a handful of kids, most of whom she already knew). After the first meeting, she didn't want to go back -- the thought of standing up and talking in front of such a large group was daunting, and she didn't want to be the only kid coming to Country Day and *not* doing a presentation.

We went home and talked about it, brainstormed different ways she could work around her concerns, and she decided to give it one more try. Joe showed her how to put together a presentation using OpenOffice's version of Powerpoint, and she spent days collecting pictures, doing research, breaking her presentation down into bite-sized pieces, then recording a separate voice-over for each slide. When Country Day came around the next month, all she had to do was set up the laptop at the front of the room and hit the space bar to keep advancing to the next slide.

Each month she grew more and more comfortable standing up in front of the group. Before long she decided that, for the amount of work that went into her powerpoint presentations, it would be easier to just bite the bullet, glue a few pictures to some posterboard, and do the presentation live. I don't know which one of us was prouder, Sarah or me, the first time she stood up there and read the presentation outloud in front of the whole group.

One of the many, many blessings of homeschooling is how easy it makes a process like this. We were able to meet Sarah exactly where she was. Sarah would have been more than welcome to come every month even if she didn't want to give a presentation. When she came up with an approach that worked for her, it was a totally trivial thing to implement -- we didn't need special permission or paperwork, and there was no stigma attached. Everyone, moms as well as kids, were so totally supportive and compassionate, no one ever made a big deal out of it, and I think the other moms were nearly as excited and proud as I was when Sarah made the transition to speaking in front of the group and answering questions comfortably.

(I also love the fact that at the age of 10 she knows more about time management and her own learning style than I did when I started college. She and I check in with each other about everything, about how the day went, how a particular approach to a project went, and how we could make sure it goes better next time. It only took her a couple Country Day meetings before she started gently suggesting that we might be less likely to wind up running late, both of us grumpy and stressed, if her presentation was finished by the night before. I know I hadn't learned that lesson by high school (as evidenced by all the homework I did on the train on the way in to school in the morning. No idea how my teachers could read a single thing I handed in.). Hadn't entirely learned it by college (as Joe can attest, after spending many nights watching me finish reading a book at 3 in the morning so I could write the paper due 6 hours later).)