Loosening the Chains

We have one full week of afternoon schooling under our belts and it continues to be a successful transition. With the new schedule, I'm finding that the boys are working on their own passions in their free time. JT started writing a story on Sunday afternoon about slugs and bugs. It has many epic battle scenes. His favorite books include The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Guardians of Ga'Hoole series and The Redwall series. All of those are full of battles and desperate times. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that his writing is following the same path. Monday and Tuesday he SET HIS ALARM clock so he could wake up early and write. Did you hear what I said? He WANTED to write!

In case you have forgotten...this child dreads the physical act of writing. He is full of excellent ideas, but when it comes time to put them to paper...forget it. I have spent hours in vain trying to bribe, threaten and plead with him to write a simple composition. So far, his story is 17 pages long. Handwritten. This is nothing short of a miracle. Remember what I said about finding your passion? I made a deal with him that if he continues to write the story, I will count it as his writing 'class'. I will type up the rough draft just as he writes it, but he will have to do all of the proofreading and correction on the computer himself. He loves to use dialogue in his stories, so I reminded him he will need to brush up on use of quotations in order to do his corrections. Sneaky mom. :-)

EM has started spending much more of his free time reading. After he resigned to the fact that the mornings were not to be spent on computer games and non-educational movies, he realized reading wasn't as bad as he thought. He checked a huge volume of Curious George stories out of the library and read it in 2 days. This is also unprecedented. Typically he spends much more time looking at pictures in books than reading the stories. He usually wakes up an hour or two before the rest of the family. Most mornings, I find him sitting on his bed reading Calvin and Hobbes or some other favorite from his book shelf when I get up. What a joy this has been for me.

We are still having fairly structured classroom time in the afternoons. Everyday we have reading, spelling, grammar/writing, and math. Two days a week we cover history. Three days for science. Health, civics, art, geography and music each have one day. Right now we are covering these subjects in approximately 3 1/2 hours a day. But based on how the boys are using their free time I believe those hours may turn out to be more educational than any of the structured learning I will provide.

Schedule Flexibility

What time of day does schooling need to take place? Is there a best time of day? I think that answer is different for every family...maybe every individual child.

Last year I was playing with the idea of teaching EM in the mornings and JT in the afternoons. EM is definitely more of a morning person and I thought he might do his best work then. Unfortunately, it never seemed to come to fruition. I just couldn't work out a schedule that allowed me to teach at two different times every day.

A couple nights ago, I was telling a friend that I do my best planning late in the evening, usually between 8pm and midnight. The problem with this is that the next morning I never feel like teaching. I'm too tired. My friend said, "Why don't you just do school in the afternoon?"

Duh!

Last year this idea probably would not have worked. We had piano and violin lessons in the afternoons. Now that we have eliminated some of our outside activities, we have a very open schedule in the afternoons. Most of our doctor appointments and library activities are in the mornings. All of a sudden, schooling later in the day makes perfect sense. I was worried that EM might not do as well as JT, but he seems to be adjusting well. Both of the boys enjoy starting the day out with free time. It was often a struggle to get going in the mornings if they had found something to do before schooling started. Now they have a few hours to play with Legos or go outside or work on drawing one of their endless battle games they invent. I did lay down the rule that there would be no computer games or movie watching during this free time. I want it to involve creative play.

I have found that I am much more enthusiastic about teaching in the afternoons. I have been able to get housework out of the way in the mornings this week. It is so much easier to conquer those kinds of tasks before schooling. By the end of the school day, I am worn out from being the cheerleader for my kids. All I want to do is relax...not fold laundry or clean the bathroom. I also feel like I'm accomplishing more every day, so that gives me more energy to spend on them. I no longer feel that they are 'wasting' my time when they aren't moving as quickly as I'd like.

So, why didn't it occur to me to move our school day to the afternoon? I believe it has to do with the assumption that I have to do what the schools are doing. Even after three years of non-conformity, I just can't stop comparing what we do with what THEY do. Am I afraid people who find out we let our kids sleep in until they are well rested will think we are somehow depriving them of needed skills? I know that no matter what we do, there will be critics out there who think we are ruining the lives of our children by our homeschooling choice. I didn't realize just how common that attitude was until I listened to a call in radio program called The Kojo Nnamdi Show episode entitled, "Homeschooling Goes Mainstream". I knew the naysayers were out there...I had just never really thought about the fact that people have a real disdain for what I do. Most of the callers seemed to think homeschoolers were all doing something harmful to their children.

Regardless of the disgust of the masses, I know what I am doing for my children is the right choice for them. They are happy. They are learning. They are developing into fine examples of people who can think for themselves. They aren't being told they are 'bad' because they can't sit still to listen to something they may or may not need to learn. They aren't being stuffed into a mold of what 'all 5th graders' should be. They are being allowed to grow and think and learn that even if every one else has done it this way for as long as anyone can remember...they can do it their own way and succeed.

Passion

This week started out poorly. The boys were less than inspired to learn, which made me less than inspired to teach them. I know they are not always going to want to apply themselves...but this week...yikes!

By Wednesday things improved a bit. We made a barometer from Janice VanCleave's Weather book. JT was excited by his writing assignment. I asked him to compare and contrast two Pokemon. Sneaky, aren't I? Both of the boys are having more success with our current math plan. JT is back to Calvert(more on that shift later) and EM is being introduced to concepts of multiplication. The commutative, zero and identity properties are our friends!

After our rough start this week, I have been thinking a lot about focus. Then today I watched a video on YouTube about an 8 year old artist named Autumn de Forest. Her style of communicating reminded me of JT, except she had a control of herself that I rarely see in him. You could tell she was focused and intent on sharing her passion with others. The more I thought about her, I realized she had found her passion in her art and perhaps that is what took all of that talent and harnessed it into something productive. I see mostly counter-productivity in my home. I would love to find the passion my children have inside of them. Occasionally I will see a glimmer of the possibilities when one of the boys is working on something they love. The more I think about this, the more I believe the next logical step in our homeschooling journey will involve more project based learning and the exploration of their own personal interests.

The boys watched the video with me. When it was over, we worked with some new watercolor paints we had purchased last week. They were both more interested in the painting after seeing the amazing art Autumn could create. Maybe they just need to see more passion in others to push them to find their own inner drive. I plan to start exposing them to more success stories through reading and other media in the near future. Maybe if I can focus some of that energy, they can be motivated internally by their own desires, instead of being externally driven by me.

Smooth Sailing

A couple weeks ago, we found two swallowtail caterpillars in our patch of dill. We put them in jars and fed them until they made their cocoons. We were sure, due to the lateness of the season, that they would over-winter in their cocoons. Yesterday we were surprised to see a butterfly in our jar! Apparently, it had other plans. We quickly moved the stick with the butterfly to our flower bed to allow it to prepare for its first flight. Later in the day, he (we are fairly certain this one was a male, based on coloration of wings) was gone.

In other news...we made a discovery. Not all experiment books are created equally. We have been working our way through a unit on weather and atmosphere. We generally plan to 'do' science three days a week. I also try to include at least one demonstration or experiment every week. Last week we were discussing cloud formation. I found a demonstration in one of our science books for a 'cloud in a jar' and thought, "Perfect!". Well...it was anything but perfect. This particular book recommended putting an inch of water in a jar, putting a lid on, placing it in a saucepan of water on the stove. When the water in the pot starts boiling, place a plastic bag of ice cubes on the lid of the jar and wait for a cloud to form. NO cloud. Sad kids. Grumpy mom.

So, over the weekend I searched for a better version of this demo. I knew I had one somewhere...in some book...(not that I have a lot of books lying around here...perish the thought!) Then I found it, Janice VanCleave's Spectacular Science Projects: Weather. Have I ever told you about my love for Janice VanCleave? My husband laughs at me when I start talking about her books because I get so caught up in my joy over the elegance of her experiments and her ability to teach science, that I literally tear up. Some women cry for sappy commercials...I cry for good science.

When I read her version of this demonstration I knew right away it would work. Put a small amount of water in a glass jar, swish it around a bit, dump most of the water out. Have an adult (important!) light a match, blow it out and hold it inside the jar for a few seconds. Immediately have a helper stretch a square piece of latex, cut from a rubber glove, over the top of the jar and seal it with a rubber band. Push down in the center of the latex. Then pull the center of the latex back up. The change in pressure, plus the presence of the smoke in the air, allows the water to condense and form a cloud in a jar! Happy kids. Happy mom. Concept grasped. Education acquired.

Polar Opposites

Today it was made very clear to me that I will need to customize our school days to fit the learning needs of each of my boys.

JT and EM were each given work to do in various subjects. JT blew through his reading assignment about the life of Shakespeare. EM had a fit when I asked him to read a short selection from a reading text about park rangers. JT learns well when reading and thoroughly enjoys it. EM's favorite form of literature is LEGO catalogs.

Later, we worked on science together. We have been studying earth's atmosphere and weather in this unit. Today we were discussing precipitation. As I was reading aloud, EM was distracted by every little thing. I told him he would have to pay attention because there would be questions on what I read to him. He said, "Mom...I don't remember the things you read. I don't store them in my brain." Maybe mom should stop reading aloud to the hands-on learner, eh?

Due to EM's difficulties with background noise, I have been keeping the boys in separate rooms when they are doing independent work. I only bring them together for art, science and history. Since I've been focusing on keeping things quieter lately, it slipped my mind that JT seems to work best with some background music. This was today's downfall. JT was out in the library STARING into space for a good hour. He was supposed to be working on a set of only five questions based on the reading he had done. Why should this take over an hour? Because mom forgot that the secret ingredient to get him motivated is to turn on the stereo. As soon as the music started, he plowed through those questions and moved on to math.

So many days I feel like my teaching and therefore their learning is such a hit or miss process. My husband says I'll get better the longer I do it. I just need someone here to smack me over the head with something every time I forget that one of the main reasons we homeschool is so I can teach to their specific learning styles and needs. I imagine traditional classroom teachers deal with the frustration of lost days. I know not every day can be the day my child's eyes light up with joy when he finally grasps a concept he's been struggling with...but wouldn't it be nice if it could?

Structure

We have just returned from a week long trip to northern PA and NY. It was a beautiful and exhausting vacation...and I learned something. Structure in vacation is almost as detrimental to the goal as structure is to education.

When planning our little voyage, I tried not to schedule too many specific events. I knew that over planning with our sensitivity rich crowd usually results in disaster. I decided just planning based on where to go versus what we'd be doing would work best. Our first day we arrived at the PA Grand Canyon. The picture is looking west from the Leonard Harrison State Park observation deck. Beautiful! We hiked the shorter trails and discovered just how out of shape we are! Then we traveled to the Hills Creek State Park, where we stayed in a modern cabin. This was far from a true camping trip. We had heat, bathroom and full kitchen with a microwave. The only problem we had was that there was some mold growing in the bedroom where the boys were supposed to sleep. We solved this by moving their mattresses to the living room floor. Not perfect, but workable.

We spent the next day hiking more trails and just enjoying the park. Since it was past the swimming season, the beach was completely empty on the lake. The boys had the biggest sandbox they've ever used all to themselves!

The next day was when planning started to get in the way of fun. We had decided to go to the Corning Glass Museum in NY. Previous trips to museums didn't always go well. I assumed these previous failures resulted because we went to crowded, noisy places. I knew this time it wouldn't be busy. It turns out our kids just don't really want to go to museums. They did their best to make us know this by the end of the day. They enjoyed the hands on part. They were each able to make something in the glass studio. JT made a set of wind chimes and EM made a small plate. After that...forget it.

Our final day we checked out of our cabin and traveled 2 more hours north to the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge. I thought, "What isn't to love?!" We'll hike a bit, see some interesting animals. It's not that structured...they'll learn things and love it. Nope. They were tired of seeing nature. I wanted to stay long enough to look for some of the bald eagles that live in the refuge. They just wanted to get in the car and get home. We followed the highway along Lake Seneca, traveling through NY wine country. We stopped to walk out a pier onto the lake. My husband and I are thinking we will have to take a separate trip to see what we couldn't see with the boys.

So...what did I learn from our adventure? My children learn best when I don't direct or plan what they will learn. They learn as life is happening. Their favorite part of the trip was the hour they spent on the beach. We hadn't planned that. They created a cool irrigation channel and flooded it to their heart's content. I thought the trip would be educational. The most educational moments happened by accident. The cabin had a handout about bears. JT read it and learned how to react if he came upon a bear while we were hiking. He learned about their hibernation, their diets, their habits. Bears were not in the 'plan' for the vacation. They just came along on their own. When am I going to realize that the more I try to direct what they do, the less they seem to get out of it?

Hopefully this trip will remind me that our classroom needs to be a place where learning comes naturally...as life happens.

What is Working

We now have nearly a month of homeschooling under our belts. Things are starting to find a rhythm. I am starting to learn to go with the flow. If someone asks a question that has nothing to do with what we are studying, I sometimes even jump the tracks and follow that tangent! (most of the time it's me asking those questions)

Here is this week's example of changing things on the fly. On Wednesday we were working on art. Our current plan is that I read a bit from "A Child's History of Art, Painting", we discuss what we read and then we work on something related. This book is a favorite of ours. The authors, V.M. Hillyer and E. G. Huey, have a good sense of humor and place art in its historic framework to really bring it to life. This week I didn't really read ahead to see where the book was heading, so I just planned on allowing the boys some time to draw whatever they'd like after the reading. As we were reading the chapter on Mesopotamia, JT remembered that he had a book from the library about Mesopotamia in his bedroom. He brought it down and we looked at the section on arts and crafts. Then we continued reading and found that mosaic art was prevalent at that time in history. I realized we could make mosaics. Easy, fun and related to the reading! Several times this month things have just come together in such a way that I couldn't have planned them better had I spent my weekend thinking it through.

Now for the pictures. We have a new routine this year. Every morning we check the Dictionary.com Word of the Day. Then we write it on a card and hang it on the 'Word Wall'. (This name irks JT because it's actually a closet door and he insists it should be the 'Word Closet'.) Misnomers aside, we also copy the word on another card with the definition on the back. At the end of the week we have a little game to see who remembers the most words. I would say I probably know 50 - 60 percent of them when we first pull them up, so even I am expanding my vocabulary. Here's a sentence from the collection...

The lupine repo-man will schlep down the road to distrain the car of his neighbor.

Aren't you feeling smarter already?