I'm a believer!

I've never been a fan of the form of homeschooling called "unschooling." Child-directed learning seems nice when it comes to figuring out how many legos they need to build a castle, but not so much when it comes to math or reading. (Even though it could be argued that the lego example actually is math.)

It all seems too random--hoping that the child wants to learn what they need to know for the future. Also too easy on my part, no need for planning or organizing when you follow the kids' interest.

But I've been watching my kids in the past week or so learning when I haven't "assigned" much at all. They have played with their legos a lot. They've started to build bigger and more structural things. They have used every blank piece of paper in the house to draw robots. Their robots are amazingly complex creatures with names and histories. Of course the robots all have enemies they fight too. I've watched Harry read every book I checked out of the library the other day, learning even more about Ancient Rome. All of these have been because they were interested in what they are doing and they've been learning from each of these experiences. Oh, this morning Harry learned on his own about negative numbers when he was subtracting stuff on a calculator.

Then I started thinking about colors. Way back when I sat Harry down and told him I was going to teach him the names of the colors. So we looked at books, we made his own little booklet, we had "red" day and "blue" day and even colored our food to match. And still after all of that he continuously mixed up red and green. It drove me nuts--he should know the colors by the time we finished our little unit. I worried that Harry was color blind. Finally I just gave up. And you know what, somehow along the way, he learned all of his colors. I did similar stuff with Sam, but I also just trusted that he would figure out his colors. Annika, well, she's on her own. And you guessed it, she knows her colors. Already.

She also just woke up from her nap, so I'm going to post this and finish my thoughts later.

Harry's Narrations

March 11, 2008

Napoleon:

He was a general of the French Army. The French was at war with almost all the countries around it. Napoleon wanted to get to Italy but first they had to cross the Alps. He sent some men to see if it was possible. Most of them shook their heads. But one said "maybe." Napoleon said, "stop" and led his troops into Italy in four days.

Sword of Damocles:

There was a king who was a tyrant. His name was Damocles. He was so dread of the thought that someone would take his life. Then one day his friend came to him and said, "how happy you should be for all the riches that you have. If I could have your riches and pleasures for one day, I would be happy." Damocles said "okay, you shall have them." So the next day came and he was treated with all the pleasures and riches for one day. The next day the servants treated him like he was their master and gave him food and meat. The he looked at the ceiling and saw a sharp sword hanging by one horse hair could fall at any second. Then Damocles never wanted to trade places with the king for not even a second.

The Really Good Stuff

Well, we're kind of on Spring Break here in the Wonder House. As much as we can be. But I brought everyone together this morning to read and cut out and create. We've
been doing a lot of pompom crafts lately--making caterpillars and chicks and ducks. All very cute. So today we tried our hand at coffee-filter butterflies. I've wanted to make these for a while, but could never bring myself to buy the filters. I sucked it up though and did it. And no one saw me and asked why I was buying the filters. It's like no one cared that I bought them. Shocking--no one but me cared! But I digress...

We of course didn't start our day off with the butterflies. Oh no. First we did the important things like try to figure out how to write big numbers using Roman Numerals and doing spelling crossword puzzles (hey, it's Spring Break!).

Oh, I almost forgot the most important thing! We started Rome! Harry was so excited. We read the chapter from Story of the World about the founding of Rome and then he told the whole thing back to me. He knows his stuff.



I set the table up during Quiet Time:
Cupcakes in the middle, the craft stuff on one side, stickers on the other, and books to read in the front. We read Sun Bread , Toestomper and the Caterpillars, and Spring Acrostics while eating the cupcakes. (By the way, they were cupcakes with a lollipop in the middle. I am now the coolest Mom ever!)



Then I told the boys what acrostics are and we brainstormed for a few minutes about Spring things that they could possibly write their own with. Harry settled on Cows. His poem reads:
Chewing grass
On the hillside
When they have their calves
Spring is here.

Acrostics turned out to be a bit limiting for Sam who wrote a haiku instead:
Caterpillars sit
in the sunshine. The eat on
a branch. Soon they spin.

After that Annika woke up, demolished her cupcake and we made the butterflies.

I'm going to say now, this is why I homeschool. Not every day is a party--most days aren't and there are a few when I think I just don't want to anymore. But thankfully I'm given days when we have cupcakes, write poems, and read stories. I can't imagine missing that. This is all stuff that could be done after school--but it wouldn't. I know myself too well. I homeschool because I'm able to be the Mom I want to be and because I can't do it all. I can't send the kids to school, pick them up, deal with homework and after-school activities and still read the stories, do the projects, and play with the kids. I've tried and it didn't work.

This post is written for the days I just don't think I can do it any more.

A Trip Around the US

and we aren't stopping to see any trees growing in the middle of the freeway!

Anyway, I've decided to do a quick study of the states with the boys (and Annika if she wants).

These are the supplies:
State coloring pages from Crayola (copy for both boys)
A map of the US to color
A map of the US to hang on the wall
Books about the states, such as this one G is for Golden

Binders and neat paper (always important for me)

The Plan:
Break the country up into regions and study one region at a time, paying closer attention to California. Cover one region of about 5-6 states per week. This is meant to be a survey to get to know where the states are, some of their attributes and their capitols. We aren't spending time on the history or anything like that because we'll cover that later.

How it Worked Today:
Things went pretty well. I read G is for Golden to the boys while they did the coloring page. They listened and were especially interested in Yosemite and the Chinese New Year parade in San Francisco. We also made plans (with ourselves) to go visit a Mission, since there are two within about 30 minutes from here. We then labeled California on our wall map along with Sacramento. And voila, we were finished!

Next week we'll do Oregon and Washington and that'll be it for the Pacific states. I'm not sure if we'll go straight from East to West or bounce around a little. I think they'd like to do Maryland and the East next, so that's where we'll head off to.

Busy Little Beavers

Over the fall I decided that we were way too busy and that we needed to quit some of our activities. It was a good decision for the time--we were selling the house, I was hugely pregnant, life was crazy.

While life is still crazy, I'm ready to add some outside activities back in. So in no particular order, here is what we do during the week: (I won't tell you which day actually has which thing in case of crazy people)

Day 1
Speech at 7:55 am (Sam)
Speech at 9 am (Annika
Standing playdate with friends 1:45 pm (one week they come here, then we trade)

Day 2
Classes from 9-12 and 1:15-2:15 (Harry)
Park playdate

Day 3
Gym class at 11:30 (Harry and soon-to-be Sam)
Archery at 1:30 (Harry)

Day 4
Speech at 7:55

Day 5
Home all day!

It's crazy and taking a bit to get used to, but so far it's working. Harry absolutely loves the archery and tolerates the gym class. He really likes his classes, although when another Mom asked me what classes he was in and I told her, math, art, science, and reading, she then asked me what I teach him at home.

I told her that I teach him everything. Because I do. The classes he takes are for enrichment and so he can hang out with his friends. I don't expect them to replace me. It was really kind of a rude question, at least the way she asked it.

Harry really wants to take piano, so I'm looking for a keyboard for him to practice on. One I find that, we'll work that in too. I'd also like to take Annika to a storytime at one of the libraries nearby, but I've yet to find one that works with our schedule. I hate to use up one of our "free" days, but I know she'd love it. So maybe that will come soon. Sam doesn't know this yet, but he's going to join in on the gym class starting in May. It's track and field then, so I think I can lure him into it by telling him that we need to show the other kids how fast he is!

Monday

A guy from our builder was coming over at 8:30 this morning to look at a couple of issues we're having, so our morning got off to a chaotic start--not the best when you actually want to accomplish something.

So after showing him the issues, he went off to solve them. I went off to educate the little ones. We started off with history. I got Evan-Moor Ancient History History Pockets the other day for Harry and Sam. They looked like fun and something easy to reinforce their learning. We cut, pasted, and colored the first batch today on "What is History." Although I figure if they don't know by now, they aren't going to. After all of the cutting and pasting, things had to dry. So we moved onto...

Reading. We read a story from James Herriot's Treasury for Children. I can't think of what it's called right now, but both Harry and Sam enjoyed it. I tried that book with Harry last year about this time and he hated the stories in it. He just couldn't relate to them at all. And while I'm sure he still isn't a veterinarian in rural England at the turn of the 20th century, he is at least willing to listen to the essays. While they listened all three worked on lacing cards. Annika interrupting every few seconds to shriek "mine" when the boys went near one she might've wanted to have at some point in her life. I decided it might be better if we did some actual...

Math so she could have the cards to herself. Harry and I sat down to learn regrouping. This is where all of the practice adding from right to left comes in. I explained to him what needed to happen, how, and why and we worked on a couple of problems together. I then moved away to talk to Sam while he finished the page. And we had fun with...

Grammar. Lesson 65 in First Language Lessons is way fun. Just so you know. It seemed like time to go outside and play, so that's what we did. But I'm mean so I brought them in to work on some...

Spelling. But I'm not that mean, because we did it in a cool way. It was review from last week because the concepts just didn't sink in too well, so we got out the dictionary and looked for all of the words that started with "wh." There are a bunch. I wrote them on a big piece of paper so we could see them all week. We read some more. Annika shrieked some more. Sam made yet more Roman Maps. If it weren't for recycling, I'd feel really bad about the amount of paper he uses for his maps.

Now it's 2:22 and I'm hanging out with the littlest one (no not the turtle), completing our March plans, and listening to Harry read every book I checked out of the library the other day. I'm not sure if I should hide the books I check out for future use or just let him read them early. Ahhh, if that's my biggest problem...