Maracas…
We did this today… with eight children and three mommies. Unfortunately, none of us took pictures (our hands were all covered in flour paste), but we’re not done with them yet, so there’s still a photo op left on this project. I found CharmingPixieFlora a while back and though she is seriously cheerful – enough that I feel like I should wear ‘extra dark’ black all day after watching one – I do enjoy her perspectives and her videos are very informative. We’ve gotten some really great ideas (like the blessing stones) from them.
We have a field trip coming up Thursday during which we’ll be exploring the Coastal Marshes ecosystem. After that I think the plan is to go back to SFK’s house to finish up the maracas (and take pictures!!). Sorry this is so short, but between information-gathering for our homeschool group’s planning meeting on Friday, dealing with my van’s ‘issues’ and school this week, I am tapped out! Hopefully next week will be slower and more interesting to blog about. Thanks for reading, anyway {wink}
Warmly,
~h
Back to the Daily Grind
So this morning was our first day back ‘in school’. It went much better than I was expecting. We got a nice, early start, and amazingly had very little of the adjustment-struggle that has usually peppered our first day back… though come to think of it, it’s the second day that’s usually more painful. I guess we’ll see!
We started out with Math & Handwriting. We’re not using a real math curriculum right now, we’re just drilling multiplication tables with LittleBoyBlue and still working on place value with PeaGreen. Have I ever mentioned how much I HATE place value? My poor baby is struggling so much to get this, so we work on it for a day or two then go to something else and then come back to it.
LittleBoyBlue is working on cursive. Loverly Husband and I disagree on teaching cursive. I think we should, he does not. He’s a printer, and so does not see the value in it, especially with the increasing reliance on typing… but since I’m doing the lesson planning, we’re doing cursive. One of the moms of SecularHomeschool.com’s forums mentioned that cursive helped her dc with word spacing and the size of the writing; I’m hoping that we see similar results.
We worked on our Constitution lapbook (I’ll have the page up on that soon) and a few worksheets that we did orally. I think that had a lot to do with how easy the day was overall. Instead of having them write, write, write, I let them tell me and I wrote it down. It’s hard as a parent to know how much you should push when it comes to something like that. I know that if they were in the classroom, they’d probably have to write more than they do at home. But their enthusiasm and participation is so much better when they’re not struggling to write. we have yet to find just the right balance, but I suppose we still have time.
We’re starting their Love Notes Journal today, so I’m interested to see how involved the boys will be in that. I also found StoryBird.org, courtesy of FreelyEducate’s Facebook page. That is a neat little site! PeaGreen used to love writing his spelling words into a story and illustrating it. This is a neat way to do that – and more. I’m looking forward to introducing the kids to it.
All in all, a really great first day back 
Warmly,
~h
Kids Stuff Swap
I’m skipping out on the Sunday Surf
week because of my Saturday. A group I’m
involved with, Southeast Texas Moms, hosted a
“Kids Stuff Swap” benefit for one of our local
Rainbow Room charities.
The Rainbow Room is an emergency resource center available to CPS caseworkers to help them meet the critical needs of abused and neglected children.
It’s a great cause, and with so many of my parenting decisions being outside the ‘norm’, it was nice to have a chance to chat with the ladies who work with CPS in a non-traditional environment. There’s definitely a gap in communication among families who don’t follow mainstream methods and CPS’s role and authority. We’re looking at working with one of the coordinators in the near future to put on a workshop meeting help strengthen communication and help both sides understand each other a little better. I’m so glad that we were able to help support this organization. It was a really good day.
For several weeks before the event, we painted signs, passed out flyers and tried to get the word out (there was even a newspaper article about the event!). We had a ton of baby and little kids stuff – hopefully we can reach more moms with older kids and encourage them to participate more in the next one.
Saturday morning, I met with 4 other local moms and 5 of the Rainbow Room’s coordinators to take in donations and give moms & dads vouchers for their stuff to come back and shop with that afternoon. We took in donations from 8-11, then took an hour break to grab some lunch (McDonald’s NEVER tasted so good, lol) and then were open from 1-4:45 for shopping. We had over 50 families participate and sent a TON of kids’ gear and clothing to the Rainbow Room.
It was hard work – I’m sore and exhausted and a tiny bit sun-kissed, but worth it. We had to completely set up the space (including putting up clothing racks and shelves, and moving big landscaping rocks into more out-of-the-way piles). We were all sweat-soaked and completely bushed at the end of the day. We’re planning another one for sometime in November. Hopefully it will be cooler!
We start school tomorrow, so wish us luck!
Warmly,
~h
Lesson Planning for M6 (Sept-Oct 2010)
Wow – we’re really starting to wind down into the end of our school year! Just in time for ‘back to school’ madness, we’re ready to start fresh on Monday.
If you’re just finding TAL, welcome! Let me explain a bit about this post. We are year-round schooling. Our school year begins in January and ends at the end of November. We school for 6 weeks (modules, or ‘mods’), then take a week-long break. I plan the kids lessons 6 weeks at a time, and usually post a ‘lesson planning’ post at some point before the new mod starts.
I find that planning incrementally lets me make adjustments as-needed during the year. I’m not planning so far ahead that if we stop on a subject and linger for a while, we haven’t thrown off the rest of the year. I use this post to remind myself of (and share with ya’ll) the links I’ve collected that I thought were so neat – this is to keep myself from coming across them 6 months after we’re done with that lesson and going, ‘Darn it!! I wanted to use that!!”.
Before we get into the good stuff, I wanted to mention a couple of things. I found this article – it’s only relevant in the ‘learning about lesson planning’ sense, but if you’re like me, the you might find it interesting. I liked the diagram – that first column of goals is quite helpful in knowing what ‘my’ goals as a teacher need to be in planning lessons for the boys.
I was recently asked if I use a lesson planner – I do. In fact, I consider it an essential part of keeping myself on track. What ‘on track’ means may be different from day-to-day, but I rely on my planner quite heavily. I keep it in my purse and use it to make notes (like I’ve said before, homeschooling isn’t something we do, it’s how we live) when we’re out and about, or to record notes for myself about the kids’ achievements or areas that might need addressing later on. I looked into the kind meant for classroom teachers and found that they weren’t really suited to homeschooling use. I tried the homeschooling ones on sites like CurrClick.com, but most are religious-y and as a secular homeschooler, that also doesn’t work for me, so I ended up making my own. I’ve added them here for you to see; feel free to print and fill them out for your own use. I take mine to a local printing shop and have the pages copied into however many I’ll need (and print them so that they’re front&back printed), then separate them into 7-six-week sections and add a colored page of paper to mark each mod. I put an evaluation sheet at the beginning of the school year, end of each mod and end of the year, print out a cover with our homeschool crest and put plastic on the front and back to protect it from wear and tear.
LessonPlanP1_ThisAdventureLife
LessonPLanP@_ThisAdventureLife
EvaluationPage_ThisAdventureLife
CurricRefSheet_ThisAdventureLife
Donna Young also has a page with a ton of printable planning forms for homeschoolers that I love looking through. Here are a couple of other pages that I didn’t make that I may add to next year’s book:
- Student Goals Worksheet (or something similar – I really like the idea of the kids having goals for themselves and outlining a strategy to reach them.)
- I am going to add a 2-page month-view calendar to the beginning of the planner – I frequently need one for planning non-school events.
I always put a school year calendar and a page for the kids to tell me about themselves (fun to look back on later – plus it’s a good place to add their picture for this year), and I add a page to list all of the books and resources we’re using this year and the code that I am using for that books (for example, ‘Saxon Math 3′ is ‘S3′) and any pertinent info (like reordering info for workbooks and such).
Once I have all my pages printed and copied and in the correct order (check once, twice, thrice!!), I have the book spiral bound with sturdy plastic covers. In all, the last one I printed cost around $15-$20, which is comparable to what I would pay for a commercial one, so I think that’s reasonable, especially when I have the features that I want in it – and no pages that I don’t!
I also made Student Planners for the boys for next year. found several online, but all were faith-based, so I made secular versions that are similar. Most of the clip art is ‘boy’ related; I may work on a girl version in the future:
STARSPlannerReadLog_ThisAdventureLife
STARSPlannerPg2_ThisAdventureLife
STARSPlannerPg1_ThisAdventureLife
Now, on to the links!! {fanfare}
One of the links I am SUPER excited about is this one from NASA, Virtual Skies. LittleBoyBlue has his heart set on being a jet pilot (on the days where he doesn’t want to own a grocery store or run an orphanage). Even though many of the concepts are clearly above his level of understanding, he’s interested in the subject and wants to explore it. Far be it from me to deny him access! We recently had the chance to preview ‘Legends of Flight’ at IMAX, so I’m sure that will come up in discussion as we work on the concepts in Virtual Skies.
We’re always looking for fun ways to work on grammar and parts of speech; Teachers Pay Teachers Open Marketplace has a free download of Grammar Comics volume 1 that looks fun. We found printable comic strips a while back and have been meaning to make use of them – maybe we can work on that this mod.
Grade Two Word Wall (Math words) – love this list!
The Homeschool Mom.com – How to Make a Time Line We’ve been using HyperHistory’s timeline online, but I think that the boys would benefit more from having one they can touch. That’s the only drawback to finding cool stuff online when you have (or are) a tactile learner!
Most of our resources will actually not change all that much for this mod. We’re still using LessonPathways for many of our lessons and augmenting with different websites and workbooks/sheets (listed on the ‘Our Current Curriculum‘ page). We’re planning field trips with our local group about once per week, most science or history based, so we’ll use those as the backbone to our lessons for those subjects. We started working on a lapbook for the US Constitution, so we’ll be continuing that as well. Overall, I want to add more lapbooking to our lessons; I think that’s a good way to cover and review individual units or specific topics – we’re going to give it a try, anyway!
I’ll be updating the curriculum page over the weekend, but as I said, much of it will stay the same. If you’re local and interested in the specific lesson plans associated with the field trips our group is doing, you might consider joining Triangle Homeschoolers’ Yahoo Group. We’ll be discussing lesson plans onlist there.
Warmly,
~h
Houston Museum of Natural Science
I was raised in a Christian faith that believed and taught that the earth was young; only 6,000 years old or so. As you can imagine, dinosaurs didn’t really fit into that picture being that they’re millions of years old. So naturally, the dino bones at the Houston Museum of Natural Science have always held immense fascination for me. I am so pleased to be able to pass that fascination along to my children without the challenge of fitting scientific fact into religious dogma.
We went with our homeschool group yesterday, and even though we were not ‘technically’ in school, they certainly took a lot of information in. We had lunch in the courtyard, which was lined with statues. We had the kids go read about a statue and come back and tell us 2 interesting facts about their statue, then we went ’round and checked them out.
Inside the museum, we discovered that they were previewing a new IMAX film, so we got to see a free show, ‘Legends of Flight‘ which will be released this Friday. The film is a documentary about the design and making of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet. LittleBoyBlue is all about being a pilot when he grows up, so that was right up his alley.
Inside the main gallery, we got the info for the Texas Nature Challenge mission and their stickers for the Houston Wilderness Passport, then went fossil hunting. All of the boys except PeaGreen were totally into the fossil hunting exercise. PeaGreen was very into the dinos, so he and I took a quick trip around to see the parts that were of interest to him. The TNC mission was about ‘predator and prey’ in the TX marshes, but we expanded that to all of the galleries and he found quite a few on his own in other sections of the gallery. He was really into it and I was impressed with his enthusiasm.
We spent some time in the 3rd floor gallery, which was South American cultures (Maya, Aztecs, etc) and by the time we were through, the boys needed some outside time. We got some fun pictures and walked across the street to horse around under the statue of Sam Houston for a bit, then we re-joined the girls for a tour of the 2nd floor gallery, which was gemstones, aquatic life, marshes and African animals.
After we filled out our TNC paperwork, we trekked outside for a few last shot pictures of the kids outside the museum (you’ll have to check SFK’s blog for that; I didn’t get a shot) and then headed back in a homeward direction. We didn’t get home until 10:07PM, but it was so worth the trip! The kids all had a fantastic day – no meltdowns or upsetting moments – and the moms did, too.
If you get a chance to visit this museum, I highly recommend it! We spent the day there, with plans only to visit the main galleries, and didn’t really get to see everything. Thanks for sharing a peek into our field trip!
Warmly,
~h
There Will be Gaps
I was lying in bed this morning thinking about school. My oldest, LittleBoyBlue, started Kindergarten at a charter school that opened its doors that year. His class will be the first class that will graduate from there that would have gone through the school from K-12.
It sounds silly, but I was stressing over whether or not he’d be able to go back and graduate with his class if he wanted to; whether or not I would be able to keep his education ‘on-track’ with the school so that would at least be an option open to him if he wanted it. Specifically, I was thinking about math and science. Since that was the school’s focus, and those are my weakest areas, I was giving in to a moment of self-doubt that I would be able to measure up when it comes to those fields.
From there, that progressed to thinking about gaps in education, overall. We homeschooling parents hear that a lot, I think – not only from outside sources, but for many of us it’s a constant loop that runs in our own head. I was reading something the other day that was talking about homeschooling and someone commented that it was unfair of parents to homeschool since they could not possibly hope to be as well-versed in a single subject the way that teachers were, and that by attempting to fill those shoes homeschooling parents were denying their kids the expertise of the teachers and the education that goes along with that.
Though that’s a somewhat valid point, it’s just not that black and white. Yes, teachers are experts in their fields, but being knowledgeable does not mean that one can actually teach the material. Many teachers simply lecture and expect the students to ‘get it’. If the kids don’t, then there isn’t time in the schedule to really go in-depth with a student to ensure the he grasps the lesson or skill, and if he skates by with a barely passing grade, then they don’t really take the time to go back over it with them. The only alternative offered usually is remediation, which is often after school or on weekends. That interferes with family time and many parents are reluctant to give up the already limited time they have with their kids.
That stance also does not take into account any child who does not learn within the system. School is set up ONE WAY. If you don’t learn well or at all in that way, then you’re given a label and if you’re lucky, some special ed. But even then, you’re still expected to function within the environment of school. If you have a child that does not do well in a school setting, and even if you do, homeschooling allows for both the time to linger on a subject or specific lesson in order to master it and the leeway to pursue alternatives to the ‘lecture and learn’ variety of teaching that many junior high and high school teachers rely on.
I have a high school diploma. I am woefully deficient in even basic math skills. I know how to do math, and given time, I can figure it out, but I have to really think about it. Ask me a math question expecting expect a quick answer and I get flustered and go into panic mode, basically ‘forgetting’ that I do actually know how to do figure the answer. Even if I don’t know the answer off the top of my head, I know what tools to use to figure the problem out, and if it was a process that I needed to use frequently, then the skills would stick at least a bit from repetitive use.
I think that the kids will be the same way – if they don’t know the answer to a question, they’ll know where to go to find it. I think that’s the goal of education – a foundation of basic knowledge and the ability to seek out the information you need when you need it. The foundation changes depending on the state you live in, the method you use and your personal experience and opinion of what is ‘essential’ to know, so even there, a homeschooling parent has quite a bit of leeway to work with. And, just as teachers specialize, homeschooling parents can, too, to a degree.
I’m also not relying solely on my own knowledge to educate my kids. My husband’s academic skills run strong in areas that I am weak and we see his contributions to our kids’ education every but as essential as mine. My dad is also gifted in math (which caused no end of frustrations to me when I was little and just didn’t ‘get it’) and is more than willing to help if we need it. We also live in a city with several professional tutoring agencies and learning centers that we can utilize if we need them. When we took on full responsibility for our kids education, we didn’t go into it with pie in the sky, ‘this’ll be so fun!’ blinders on. We knew it would be a lot of time and energy and hard work. But then again, I tend to think that as a parent, it was always my responsibility to ensure that my kids got what they needed.
The conclusion I have reached is that there will be gaps in my kids’ education. They may come from lack of interest, because we didn’t get to it, or because they just haven’t needed it yet. That doesn’t mean that we’ll abandon the basics – obviously, reading, writing and arithmetic (and grammar and science) are on the menu for quite some time yet. But if we eschew studying ancient Greece for an in-depth examination of ancient China, or get lost in classic literature and gloss over neo-classical art, I think they’ll still have a well-rounded education.
Warmly,
~h
How To: Make a Homeschool Crest
Welcome to my very first tutorial post!
This {fanfare} … is our school’s crest. It’s on our lesson planner. It will be on the kids’ student planners next year. It’s on our Homeschool ID cards. I think it’s spiffy, and use it pretty much everywhere it is possible to use it.
The official name of our homeschool is T.H.E. Academy.Our last name begins with ‘T’, so I thought that was quite fitting and clever on my part (you may, of course, disagree if you so choose). We’re huge bibliophiles, so the book up top made my day.
Our school mascot is the phoenix. While many mamas talk with their kiddos and agree on a mascot, this is one time where I pulled rank and chose without their input. Over the course of my life, I’ve had to pick myself up by the bootstraps and reinvent myself more than once to become the awesome and outspoken individual that I am today.
Since I am too big of a chicken to have this fiery bird emblazoned on my body in ink, I settled for it being part of our homeschooling crest. Plus, since I was the one making it, I wanted something interesting to me to make, not the Transformers logo (which is entirely possible that my kids would have chosen as a mascot, only to change their mind once I’m done with it and want a giant tree weta or some such icky thing that strikes their fancy).
Our motto is in Latin (like all good mottos). In English, it says, “It’s not the heat; it’s the humidity.” That is entirely fitting because we live in Texas and this is the single most uttered phrase by Texans, native and transplant alike.
Want one? Of course you do. It’s awesome. How could you not? Well, let me show you, step by step, how I made mine. Now, before we get started on that, let me tell you that yes, YOU can make one of your very own. I didn’t use anything fancy – I made the whole thing in MSPaint. I know, right? I’ll wait while you get over your shock and amazement that absolutely no Photoshopping will be required in this tutorial. Yes, of course you can use Photoshop, but I don’t have it, and if you do and plan to use it, then… well, this really won’t be all that much help to you. So… to begin:
Step 1. Open MSPaint. Then open your browser and search for the background image that you want. If you want a shield design, then you can search for ‘shield clip art’ for a host of options. Flags, banners, pennants crests, laurel leaves and certificate seals all make good searches as well for starting points on your crest. Just be sure to add ‘clip art’ to whatever you search to avoid tetchy copyright issues (you’re going to be altering the image by quite some bit, so I think you’re covered). When you find one you like, right click on it and say “copy image’. Then move your mouse over into your Paint window and click “Edit” from the top menu, and ‘paste’. You should have a copy of the picture you chose now in paint.
If your picture is very small (many clip art images are), you can right click on the image and say ‘resize/skew’. In the box, you’ll see measurements for horizontal and vertical at 100. Add 25% by changing the numbers to 125. (more if you need it). If the image is pixelated now, that’s okay; we’re going to fix it in a minute. If it’s a large image, you can reduce the size there, too. Just say 50% or 25%.
Step 2. Choose your background colors. It doesn’t matter what colors are on the shield now. You can use a solid field, or divide your field into quarters or in half – whatever suits your aesthetic. To divide, use the line tool:
If you’re not dividing, you can skip that step, or you can add guidelines of your choice to help with your placement. To add a bit of flair, you can make your lines zig-zagged or whatever – it’s your crest – be creative!
Step 3. Zoom in and use the brush tool to fill in your spaces. If your image is pixelated, then you’ll want to go over those areas with a similarly colored solid brush to clean the pixels up. You can also use the eraser tool (the pink eraser, 2nd down on the left) to clean up stray pixels in the background or take away elements of your crest that you don’t like (for example, if the shape you like already has a mascot on it, you can erase the current mascot and then fill in the background, then add your own mascot).
Some images (like the one I was working on in the pictures) are shaded. I prefer working on images that are not shaded, but if you like one that is, you can go in with a solid color and ‘flatten’ the image if you need to. You can use the image as a guide to ‘draw’ your own over it.
Step 4: Once you’re done with your coloring, you can un-zoom and see what you’ve got. It may take a few times of going in and making adjustments; that’s okay. When you’re happy with the background, you’re ready for the next step.
Step 5: When you’re satisfied with the field, you can minimize MSPaint (or just let it go into the background – just be sure not to close that window out or you’ll lose all your work!) and open your browser. It might be worth it to save your work now (just in case you mess up – ‘Undo’ only works for so many clicks. To save, use the BOX tool - next to the cut-out tool below – and put a nice box around your image. The right click and choose COPY TO. Select the folder you want to save it to and save it. If you need it later, just open a new MSPaint window (you can have 2 open at the same time) and choose EDIT, then PASTE FROM and open your folder and select the file. Then you can start again with a blank field.)
Now… you’re ready to find a mascot! Same process as finding the field. Again, adding clip art to whatever you’re looking for will most likely find you something simple to work with. Of course, you can get as fancy as you like; you’ll just have to work harder to get the image cleaned up and onto your field. So first things first – find the image you want and right click, then copy; then re-open the MSPaint window and click Edit, then Paste. The image will appear in the upper left hand corner – just drag it over, clear of your crest. If you mess up, click edit, undo and try again. Now, you’re going to cut the image of your mascot out of the background.
Step 6: Almost done! Hopefully now, you can see your crest taking shape. Your image should look MUCH cleaner than the one below – see how you can still see a bit of orange at the top of the shield? Yours shouldn’t have that. If you want to get fancy with it, you can use a slightly darker color than the ones you’re using to create shading. You can also color your mascot a solid contrasting color, or add laurel leaves or a banner (again: search, copy, paste, move, zoom, edit, un-zoom, save) and whatever text you want.
I didn’t finish this crest since it’s just an example, you by this point you should be able to use the tools in MSPaint to alter your crest and undo things you’ve tried and didn’t like with relative ease. You can layer as many things as you like, or you can clip pieces of an image and place it so that it looks like it is behind your crest. Experiment with it until you’re happy. When you’re done, you’ll want to save.
Step 7: Using the BOX tool, create a box around your image. Right click and choose COPY TO. Select your folder and create a name for your file, then save. Ta da! You should have an image that you can upload to Photobucket or flickr, and that you can use on word.docs and pretty much anywhere.
And that’s it! I hope that you’ve found this tutorial to be helpful. If you’ve successfully used this tutorial to create a homeschool crest, I would LOVE to see your work. Please comment with a link to your blog or photo account so I can see it.
Warmly,
~h
Thoughts on Not Back to School
Today is the first day of school for most of our non-homeschooled friends. This is the first ‘back to school’ since LittleBoyBlue was 5 that we’re not a part of. I thought it was really nice the my Loverly Husband always took off the kids’ first day of school. It was a big event for them, and I really appreciated that my kids had a dad who thought of things like that.
Truthfully, I didn’t give much thought to how I would feel about today, but now that it’s here and I am ‘in’ it, I have this odd feeling that we’re missing out. Oh, I know that we’re not; not really. But we always made the First Day of School such a ‘thing’ – almost like a holiday event – that I am finding it quite strange not to be a part of it this year.
We’re celebrating today with our homeschool group by hitting a local park. One thing I can say about our city is that they have a fairly decent parks system. They’re fairly well-maintained and we enjoy spending time there. So does everyone else. There are days during the summer that are just ridiculously crowded, so we either avoid it entirely or have to plan on going at less popular times, which are often inconvenient to us. Now that school’s back in, we should have a shot at a nice, deserted park.
I’m up early this morning – aside from the nagging feeling of something amiss, I am really looking forward to today’s event. Since this is our first ‘Not Back to School Day’, it’s a tradition-starting thing, and I really enjoy that. I am about to go make a big thermos of coffee (even though it’s hot outside, playdate is early this morning, so I am hoping that will go over well) and pack the cooler with lunch. We’ve also got to stop by the grocery to pick up snacks to take to the park – we’re having a brunch-potluck type thing. I’m picking up juice and donuts and possibly kolaches if I can find some.
I’m sure once our day gets started, I’ll feel better. I’m reasonably certain that what I’m feeling is the lack of excitement and hubub that would have surrounded today – not the actual ‘not going to school’ part. I think once we get going, I’ll feel differently. The kids aren’t even up yet, so I’m going to relax a bit before we have to get dressed and go.
On the menu at This Adventure Life for this week: I’m celebrating 100 posts, lesson planning for M6 and I have a tutorial for making your own homeschool crest almost done, so you’ll want to check back for that!
Warmly,
~h
Wrapping up the Weekend
… with a few more pictures from our wonderful vacation…
Today is the last day of Loverly Husband’s vacation and tomorrow is back to the daily grind. We’ve had such a great week!
Warmly,
~h
Sunday Surf for Aug. 22
This week’s Sunday Surf has a lot more homeschooling content than last weeks (even though I promised more last week, lol). As always, you can click the image and be taken to AuthenicParenting’s website, where the Sunday Surf originated. If you’ve come across good reading on the web this week, then we invite you to participate on your own blog. Snag the image and link back to AuthenticParenting’s site with your list!
Happy reading!
- The Attachment Parenting Blog, written by an AP dad with 3 kiddos shares his thoughts on a reader’s question, ‘Should you allow your older child to crawl into your bed at night? There are several other great posts as well. His blog is worth checking out as a whole. It’s neat to see such a blog from a dad’s perspective – rare, but good.
- Secular Homeschooling Magazine has an article that is long, but I found it to be very interesting regarding ‘Christian’ authors Michael and Debi Pearl and their book, To Train Up A Child, in which they advocate homeschooling. The article, To Train Up A Child: The Greater Problem, addresses the issues that arise when the rest of the world, despite many mainstream Christian organizations denouncing the Pearl’s teachings, associate their parenting methods with homeschooling.
- I really enjoyed this article on Family Based Living by Heather Madrone. In a world where many people seem to think of kids as an inconvenience that must be managed, it’s nice to read about how one family took a different approach. Her site, Heather’s Homeschooling Page, has quite a few articles in home and unschooling and the lifestyle associated with homeschooling families.
- Considering Methods & Styles of Homeschooling by Lillian Jones at Besthomeschooling.org is a nice reminder not to get bogged down in stuff that can get in the way of the spirit of learning at home.
- Another article from BestHomeschooling.org, Schooling: Liberation or Mind Control? by Richard Heinberg explores some very thought-provoking ideas on the purpose and consequences on institutionalized schooling, as well as providing a host of book recommendations that I am adding to my list.
- The Denim Jumper is a secular homeschooling forum with… attitude. I haven’t explored it fully, but I will be. You may depend upon it {wink}
- Men Wear Bras so Women can go Topless – apparently a big deal, the GoTopless organization is planning rallies to promote shirt-optional equality for women. I thought this was funny… not sure exactly where I stand on the issue, especially with the apparently religious backbone, but hey, it’s an interesting way to celebrate Women’s Equality Day (coming up next Sunday), which is the anniversary of women being granted the right to vote.
So that’s my picks! What have you been reading?
Warmly,
~h
Exploring…
Since my Loverly Husband is off this week, we’re spending the last of the week and weekend with my brother and sister-in-law in Jasper, TX. It’s a small town, and there are aspects of small town life that I envy. The availability of things within walking distance, for example. They have this bridge and park that is near their house that runs through town, and along the track is the library, the police station, a couple of play structures… it’s all so close. I would love to live in a place where everything was so accessible.
We took the kids out for a walk yesterday afternoon…
Today, the kids are in the splash pool outside. Tomorrow, we’re going to the lake. I love long weekends like this!
Warmly,
~h
A Homeschooler’s Image
Something that I struggle with a homeschooling mom, that I’m sure other homeschooling parents also struggle with, is the desire to project a good image as a homeschooling parent. Not a perfect, Little Miss Mary Sunshine image, but at least to project an image that somewhat resembles the one that most of us have in our head of what homeschooling ‘should’ look like or sound like or be like.
It’s unrealistic, of course, because homeschooling is what it is – at the foundation, it’s just a part of your day and days can be good and productive, or start off with crabby moods and go downhill from there – it’s life. But when someone learns that you’re homeschooling, you’re automatically fitted with this lens that people see you through, regardless of whether or not your homeschooling life emulates what they expect to see, and you just can’t help but want to convey a good image – even if you’re not quite what they expect.
Here in the ‘bible belt’ it’s usually pretty easy to clue in to what they expect to see. Homeschoolers here are almost always from fundamentalist Christian families and people expect to see many of the common threads of discipline and deportment that are associated with families who are active in the church.
Enter my heathen children…
My boys are active. And by that, I mean that if there is a structure to be climbed, they will attempt to climb it. If there is an echo to be experienced, my children will find it. If there is a mess to be made, my children will be instrumental in making it everything it can possibly be. I do not see this as a bad thing, however there are a lot of disapproving stares that come from the peanut gallery and I can’t help but wonder if, on occasion, I am doing harm to homeschoolers’ image or expanding the public’s consciousness by not only allowing but encouraging my children to fully experience their world. I’m not saying that I allow blatant disregard of basic social rules of conduct, but if there’s a gray area, my kids are more likely to be pushing the boundaries of what is considered normal while I take pictures and call posing cues.
On the one hand, I try to make sure that my kids are actively involved in our community. That goes along with instilling respect for quiet libraries, museums and national monuments, not making an ass of ourselves on field trips, in the newspaper or on television, and treating the property of others and the public with respect. But I also don’t want to raise ‘sheeple’ who just go along with the status-quo because that’s what is expected of them. I am a part of a very small secular homeschooling community and most of us follow what are considered to be alternative parenting styles – meaning that we don’t have perfect little zombie children who are seen and not heard. Ours are heard a great deal of the time – but it’s the normal chatter of friends and children. They’re not being loud to be disrespectful, they’re noisy because they’re exuberant and happy youths and it really only takes a slight change in your perception to get caught up in their natural excitement most days. While I hardly want our group (or anyone associated with it) to convey the image that secular homeschoolers are not also well-mannered, I don’t want for us to gain a reputation of being unruly and damage the opportunities that are extended to homeschoolers in our community.
I’m not entirely sure that I can have both of those things; a respectable image and lively children… and then I start to wonder if this is really something I need to worry about.
Image is such a subjective thing. I’ve heard, from numerous people, that my kids are well-mannered and polite. I’ve also been on the receiving end of scathing remarks about their rudeness and smart mouths. I’ve heard compliments as to their intellect and ability to pay attention, and had serious doubts expressed as to whether or not inviting my rambunctious and easily distracted children was a good idea. I think that my kids fit a happy medium known as ‘normal’, but for some reason people like the containers they use to fit people into their lives. We all have a desire to fit in, but I think that a lot of the time we fail to ask ourselves if fitting in is worth the effort.
Warmly,
~h
Summer Days…
As much as I wish I could wax poetic about the long days of summer slipping by, the truth is in Southeast Texas, we still have MONTHS of ‘summer’ to enjoy (if by ‘enjoy’ you mean ‘seek refuge from the soul-sucking humidity and glaring obscenity of brightness that used to be sunshine in the dark, cool confines of your home’). I am not even kidding.
While it’s true that some kids have gone back to school already, most of the local ISDs don’t start until Monday. Our homeschool group is having a “Not Back to School Park Day” to celebrate this blessed event, in which the libraries will once again return to the quiet haven we’ve known them to be, parks will be devoid of the 500 rowdy school aged children bogarting the swings, and museums once again get so little traffic that they’re over-helpful when homeschooling kiddos visit them… ahhhh.
Since here, many homeschooling families are involved in co-ops, and co-op groups likewise start next week (they usually follow the ISD’s schedule since many families have kids in both), we’re getting in quite a bit of last-minute visiting and play-dating with friends in. Today, we had lunch and spent the afternoon with my friend PB&JMom and her four kidlets.
The most amazing thing about visiting with this family for my kids is that they have BOYS. Almost all of my friends either have all girls, or have boys that are much older or much younger than mine. Not to say that the kids don’t all play well, they really do, but there is an entirely different dynamic at work when you have a group of boys similar in age.
For the majority of the day, the boys were neither seen nor heard from. They played legos, then video games for a bit, then went out to play in the yard, then set out down the road a ways to catch minnows and explore and just be boys…
The boys had a wonderful time… they were out, alone, exploring the world around them and quite happy to be masters of their own destiny, if only for an afternoon. So much fun was had that they were quite reluctant to leave – something that I never thought I would say I was glad to see (because when they were very small fry, a change in the status quo – like leaving a playdate – was call for a meltdown of epic proportions… now, it’s just a mild rumbling of dissent, but a realization that we’re seeing these same friends for two days in a row next week, so maybe the world will not, in fact, end, after all). They jumped into the van sweaty and muddy and hungry and content.
While they were gone, I started thinking about the whole ‘free range kids movement’ and became all annoyed again (as ever I do when I think about many of the extreme POVs found in that sector). This, to me, is what childhood should be about… freedom, but not at the expense of good sense. PB&JMom’s boys know their boundaries and are familiar with the area. There were four (actually 5 since a neighbor’s little boy joined them), so no one child was left alone – the buddy system in full effect. They actually did get scraped up a bit from scrambling down to get the bucket, yet no one came crying to mom about it – and let me just say that ALL of these children are ‘attached’ kids.
The assertions that ‘AP’ parents don’t let their kids experience anything really bug the crap out of me because it’s not true - at least in all cases. PB&JMom and I were enjoying our conversation in the house while the boys were out – for most of the afternoon. I sent them out with my camera (which is shatter-proof and waterproof; basically, it is kid-proof and one of the few things I consider ‘essential’ childcare equipment) to do as they will. Their only instruction today really was , ‘Don’t die.’
Generalizations are generally a bad thing, you know {wink}, and the generalization that AP automatically equals over-protective hovering is flat-out fallacious. I stand by what I said in my previous thoughts on free range kids post. I agree that kids need freedom to explore; I just don’t think that they need to be foisted into the world without a net, which is how it seems to me more often than not when I read FRK-style parenting blogs, which, ironically is another generalization – and one that I am sure makes ‘normal’ FRK moms pretty hacked off to read!
It’s not that I am opposed to the FRK movement overall. There are aspects of it that I wholeheartedly agree with. But so many factors will go into what is safe or right for each family; location is a big one – and I don’t think that any of us can truly judge another’s choices without being in their shoes… and even then, personal preference, personal philosophy and experience will still make those things different. I also happen to be of the opinion that the only way to be sure of what it is that I believe is to continually challenge myself on it… which is why I read things that might make me annoyed; it makes me think, and I do totally respect that. Anyway… enough philosophizing for one post, I think. {wink}
We had an awesome, fantastic, super-duper day and I want to end it on a high note. Tomorrow is Secular Thursday, so if you’re reading this and not currently a ST blogger, then I really encourage you to splash about in that puddle. Write about what secular homeschooling means to you and link back to Smrt Lernins Secular Thursday page with your post. The list there is growing and its so nice to have a great list of blogs to browse in the evening.
Warmly,
~h
Love Notes
Michelle at Lagniappe Academy shared a project that she and her DD are doing, which is a revamp of a post from The Homeschool Post that I think is amazing and wanted to both share and comment on (I know, you’re so surprised at that, right? {wink})
When I was little, my mom used to put notes and cards and little prizes in our lunch boxes. Infrequently enough that we weren’t checking the box every day, but frequently enough that after some time they were expected. We would know they were going to be in there, yet it was always a surprise to see it. She still does that; in fact, last week she sent me a card (through the mail, even though we live next door to each other) that was funny and cute and specifically to say, “I think you’re a great mom”. She sent one to my sister and sister-in-law, too. It’s a wonderful thing, to be told out of the blue that someone you love thinks highly of you.
When my kids were in school, how could I not carry on with this tradition? It was challenging, because they were pre-readers, but we managed. Lots of pictographs (eye, heart, U) and little trinkets that even sometimes ended up coming home. Now that we’re homeschooling, it’s a bit more challenging to get this kind of unexpected delight in. Enter the Love Notes journal idea.
I love the idea of this kind of journal being a communication tool, rather than focusing on the academics of it. It’s really difficult to get my kids to focus on the now sometimes. We’ll be having a discussion about an event or a reaction and they’ll come out of left field with something completely different; Monty Python could not have been more surprising. I think that this will help them see that they do, indeed, have my complete attention, and whatever it is that they want to say can be clearly ‘heard’.
I can also see the benefit academically that this type of writing can net. Since LittleBoyBlue and PeaGreen both have typical ‘boy’ handwriting, I think they could both use some non-’school’ opportunities to practice, and this seems like a lovely way to accomplish that.
I read on se7en+1′s blog a description of one of her kids – the one who likes to hurry up and get to the next thing. Both of my kids are like that, and so art projects and writing assignments are usually done to the minimum standard, and with as much haste as can be managed, just to get ‘done’. Though that’s not true in all cases, it seems like anything that requires academic creativity is rushed through. Maybe this will help them with that, and let me express how awesome I think that they both are; plus, this will be neat to go back through in a few years. My best friend in middle and high school and I got tired of exchanging lengthy notes between classes, so we started keeping notebooks that we’d pass back and forth. We don’t have any of them anymore, and I so wish we did. Oh, the teenage angst, lol.
It’s finding little things like this Love Notes idea that make me really appreciate the technological age we live in. I think that one of the most awesome things about the homeschooling community is their willingness to share – and there are some clever mamas (and daddies, too) out there. Many of the ideas that we now consider a necessary part of our homeschooling day have come from an idea I found on a blog or homeschooling community forum, or from talking to a homeschooling friend. Homeschooling parents (especially blogging ones) are always commenting on lessons they’ve learned, ideas they’re going to try, resources they’ve found to be helpful – it’s such a wonderful and open community, and I am so glad to be part of it.
So to ALL of you out there who regularly let me peek into your homeschooling life, THANK YOU!!
Warmly,
~h
Sunday Surf for Aug. 15
I recently saw a ‘homeschool blog hop’ thing that was pretty neat and was going to join in, but most of the participants were faith-based bloggers, and though they had some good ideas, it was… challenging to wade through the dogma to get to the good stuff, so I thought I’d use the Sunday Surf this week to steer you in the direction of some secular homeschooling blogs in amongst the other goodness.
.
.
.
.
- Rayven at Dysfunctional Homeschooler has been working on dissecting some of the various homeschooling methods that one can use with wit and humor.
- Heather at Babyslime posted a heartfelt piece about the dreaded phrase, “All that matters is a healthy baby“. It was picked up and reposted at The Unnecessarean.
- Sarah at The Napping House discusses Ven Diagrams and button sorting.
- Chickiepeas Pod is a new WP blog in which she shares her very inspirational and eventful summer recap with us… I look forward to seeing what’s in store for fall!
- A wonderfully thought-provoking piece defending alternative paths in education, People don’t Understand Schooling is an interesting (if lengthy) read for anyone concerned with education
- Though this isn’t a ‘blog post’, exactly, it’s an awesome article that I want to share. Brian Maffly recounts the birth that led to his wife’s death in an article discussing birth interventions in the US, and includes this quote, “There’s not a good history in obstetric practice of careful study of the long-term effects of all these interventions,” said Dr. Marsden Wagner, former director of Women’s and Children’s Health, World Health Organization. “This is why, if you really want a humanized birth, the best thing to do is get the hell out of the hospital.”
- WhyMommy at Toddler Planet was one of the BlogHer Voices of the Year – a hauntingly poignant piece relating to the bra colors game on Facebook and a breast cancer survivor’s feelings on the matter
- Seven Reasons not to Send Your Kids to College is quite thought-provoking…
- The ‘Women’s Rights’ section at Change.org has a couple of good ones; The_Supposed_Difficulty_of_Making_Plus-Size_Clothing and To_Pro-Choice,_Pro-Lifers_with_Love
- and the ‘Gay Rights’ section’s article and video about LGBT homeless youths is shocking – at the end of the day, regardless of belief, these are our children. It’s just shocking to me that this is happening on such a large-scale.
- and the ‘Education’ sections doesn’t disappoint either, Scholastic_Book_Fairs_Ban_Books_Feature_Same-sex_Parents (with a link to the ever-amusing current ‘banned books list’)
- Parenting Beyond Belief has an awesome article on finding your way in the secular homeschooling world, and a list of 15 SH bloggers for you to peruse as well.
While not all parenting or homeschooling related, I found these articles and posts to be, by turns, interesting and thought-provoking, and I hope that you do, too.
Warmly,
~h
Religion = good behavior?
(Notes on this post: I was gone all afternoon on Thursday, so this is my Secular Thursday post for this week, even though today is Saturday; and this post comes about in contemplation of this article, Study: Religion is Good for Kids.)
I consider myself a spiritual person in that I have a strong moral code and set of beliefs about deity that I adhere to in order to explain the unexplainable, and my beliefs may or may not agree with yours. I’m really fine with that. I even enjoy discussing religion as a topic, and as long as your plan is to merely share your beliefs and not to attempt to bash me over the head with your Jesus stick or shove your bible down my throat in a misguided attempt at ‘saving’ me, then even if we fundamentally disagree on every point, in my opinion, we can still be friends.
Now, before we go much further I will admit that, living in the Bible Belt, when I hear reference to ‘religion’ I automatically assume that you’re talking about Christianity. I realize that I may be showing my small town southern roots here, but since most of my comments about the theory of “religion=good kids” are in relation to how some Christian authors tell you how to raise kids and my own experiences with Christianity, and since the resulting clashes in child rearing philosophy between what they advocate and what I think is good and right have left a somewhat negative impression on me, that’s my bias.
If you’ve read here before, then you may have seen commentary about certain so-called ‘Christian’ authors who advocate practices that can only be described as child abuse. I have been fairly vocal about my opinions of such authors, but have not really delved into the ‘why’. Aside from the obvious, my personal child-rearing philosophy is quite different from theirs. Even if you take away the abusive aspects, I would still not recommend these authors’ ideas because of the way they perceive the nature of a child to be (i.e.: sinful and selfish, out to manipulate, etc.)
To be clear, I am in no way saying that all Christian parents are abusive, nor am I equating a religious upbringing (regardless of sect) with abusive households in every case. What I am exploring here is my own experience with a Christian upbringing and the tendency among Christian parents to use corporal punishment as a first line of defense for all transgressions, both small and great, to control and coerce children into what is viewed as acceptable (and therefore ‘godly’) behavior.
I really have a problem with them using religion as an indicator of behavior in small children. It sends the message that the end result justifies whatever means you use to achieve that. For lots of Christian families, the tools they use can border on abuse, both physical and emotional. I am not outright opposed to spanking as many are, but I do think that we parents are surely intelligent enough to reach our children without resorting to physical punishment from the get-go. From my own experience, we were spanked without consideration of the external factors that contributed to the situation and were usually expected to accept punishment with a minimum of fuss or else face additional punishment if we failed to get our emotions under control within the alloted time frame. We were expected to ‘straighten up and fly right with only a word, because we knew that the consequence for failing to mind was severe and painful.
In such an environment, of course the children will ‘behave’ – they’re terrified of getting into trouble! I was always looking for a way, any way, to avoid getting in trouble. Telling the truth netted a spanking most of the time, as would lying, but a lie would delay the spanking for however long. When you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t, what would you do to save your butt? It’s hardly fair to compare the behavior of children from a home where the parents, because of their religious beliefs, require strict obedience and/or a joyful attitude even in the face of painful punishment to those who come from homes where the children are treated as whole human beings with the same rights owed to them as any adult. You wouldn’t punish your friend who was grouchy because she was hungry or tired, you’d make excuses for them, or offer them food or facilitate a nap if possible. Why are children, who are less capable of attributing grouchiness to another need than adults are, not worthy of being treated similarly?
If you take out the word “religion” and substitute “strong moral code”, then I pretty much agree with much of what the article says. I don’t think that any of the results that the researcher found would not be able to be duplicated in an environment where the parents had a strong network of support from similarly minded peers (for example, regular attendance at a playgroup, parenting support group or homeschooling group meeting). Frequency may play a role, and as few of those other type groups are so rigid or structured as religious services the results may not be exactly comparable, but I don’t think that the characteristics that they polled (behavior, self-control, social skills and approaches to learning) are limited to ‘religious’ families – I think it has more to do with support in general.
One of the primary ‘lessons’ I came away with as an adult is to hide emotions. Even now, I am not all that great at reflecting how I am feeling and it took me a long time to stop ‘acting’ happy when I darn well wasn’t. That’s not what I want for my kids, and even though it is more challenging to watch them act how they feel, it is comforting to me to know that my children are in touch with their feelings, and we’re all learning to communicate and address needs better because of it.
The last paragraph of the article reads,
“There are certain expectations about children’s behavior within a religious context, particularly within religious worship services,” he said. These expectations might frustrate parents, he said, and make congregational worship “a less viable option if they feel their kids are really poorly behaved.”
I assert that ‘poorly behaved’ is a misleading phrase. If ‘poorly behaved’ means that my kids are more impulsive (because they didn’t get their hands slapped every time they reached for something) or less apt to sit still for long periods of time (because they weren’t threatened with a wooden spoon if they wiggled during church) or be quiet when they feel they’ve been wronged (because they weren’t conditioned to accept punishment because they’ve probably done something to be punished for that wasn’t witnessed), but you know what? I’m okay with that. In fact, I prefer it.
I saw a tee-shirt the other say that said, “Know Religion, No Peace. No Religion, Know Peace”. While I don’t think that’s necessarily true in all cases, I find it to be a provocative statement that might be worth your consideration.
Warmly,
~h
Making Friends… for Mom
One of the biggest challenges, by far, as a homeschooling mom has been finding time without the children. It’s a rare event that I get more than an hour or so to myself, and even that is maybe once a week.
Loverly Husband is nothing if not supportive, and is wonderful at giving me what time he can – if he runs to the store, he’ll take the kids with and he takes them to see his grandmother almost every weekend for an hour or so. He misses spending time with them (he works a lot), and it’s nice to have even a half hour to myself.
I can’t complain overmuch; this is the lifestyle we chose. We’ve actually worked hard to be able to keep me home with the kids and have re-arranged things for that to continue so we can homeschool, so it’s not that I don’t love my life – I do. But even the most dedicated mom needs a break now and then.
I realized the other day that all of my current friends have come into my life because they have children that are close my kids in age. I’ve met some through playgroup, some through La Leche League, some through my sons’ former school – but aside from my sisters, I literally have NO friends that have not come into my life that are not related in some way to my children.
I think that the children tend to be my main connection point with other women. How I raise my children – the ideals that we live by – these are key points in my life and I just can’t make friends that don’t share at least some of those ideals. It’s virtually impossible to have friends who don’t have children because they just don’t get why I can’t go and do stuff – it’s because of the kids, but not for the reason you think. I like my children. I enjoy spending time with them. They’re really awesome little dudes!
That said, yesterday afternoon was spent on a nice, long, moms-only break from the precious little darlings with SFK and PB&JMom, because if I did not get a few hours to myself, I really might lose my ever-loving mind. I find it amazing how much just those few hours (well, okay… 9, but who’s counting??) have refreshed my outlook and re-filled my patience bank. Loverly Husband is off this coming week, so we’re looking forward to days of family togetherness fun – but I am so glad I got a bit of a break before that!
Warmly,
~h
100 Days of Homeschool Party
A couple of weeks ago, my good friend SFK sent me a Facebook message with the recipe for these super-vivid cupcakes with a single note, ‘Your house or mine?” (which illustrates perfectly why she holds a place in my heart… it’s not every mom who would willingly let not one but FOUR children spread super-bright food dye all over her kitchen counters).
A couple of days after that, I made mention to someone about celebrating 100 days of homeschool, not realizing that our own 100 days was fast approaching. Thus was the foundation for our 100 Days of Homeschool Party laid.
I went online and searched for activities and lesson plans and found a ton of stuff that was geared toward the classroom, which can usually be adapted for homeschooling use, but nothing that was actually directed towards homeschoolers. I posted last week with some preliminary plans; suffice it to say, I may have been over-reaching. The party supply store ended up seeming like a really long 5 minute drive and the thought of my poor fingers and lungs having to blow and tie 100 balloons was just too much, so we omitted that entire part of the plan.
The boys and I did start off the day with pancakes – only 10 of them, which is a multiple of 100, so that worked out. After breakfast, we did the quick tear through the house to tidy up that every mom on the planet does when she’s expecting company; though I have to say that I am extremely fortunate that my small group of friends truly do come to see me and not my house. That makes the tidy-up a quick bleach of the toilet and making sure there’s not actual heaps of dirt in the corners… and that’s about it.
Homeschooling pros SFK with girls LittleMiss and Tav, and introducing {fanfare} PB&JMom, with her kiddos (8DS PuddleJumper,11DD BellaBailar, 6DS AngelBoy & 3DD JellyBean – see: P, B And J Mom… clever, yes?) all came to celebrate with us. After a hot dog lunch, we mixed up 3 colors of Jello and lined the bottom of a dish with strawberries (for a coral reef – sorta) and orange Jello, then topped it with 100 Swedish fish and blue Jello (Tav comes in and asked if I knew why they called them ‘Swedish Fish’. I said no and was ever-so-adorbaly informed that it’s because they’re ‘sweet-ish’ and they’re shaped like fish’ – see? Swedish Fish!). We had the girls count out the fish, then let the boys double-check, then the girls double-checked them and so forth and so on until a consensus was reached that this was, indeed, 100 Swedish Fish.
The Jello looked pretty in the bowl… not so much scooped out on the plate:
The complaint was that the fish (which are supposed to be gooey and soft) got too hard in the cold refrigerator, plus they got all slimy. The Jello part was good, according to the kids. Our bowl was getting full, so we didn’t get to add the red Jello. If we do this again, we’ll use a taller container and start earlier in the day so the fish can be suspended in layers.
After jello, we brought the kids in to make the cupcakes.
While the cupcakes were baking, the girls did some flower-arranging (they made lovely bouquets for all the moms) and the boys played Wii. It was actually surprisingly quiet for a little while. Of course, that didn’t last long, so PB&JMom grabbed the lot of them and played a game.
Finally the cupcakes were done and decorating ensued:
Then it was out to the pool:
Since my children were asleep by 10PM (a rarity…) I know they were completely worn out, which usually happens after they’ve had a fun-filled busy day. I hope that our friends had as much fun as we did!
Warmly,
~h
Year Round Homeschooling
When my brother was in elementary school, our local ISD did a trial program with a year-round schedule for one year. The kids loved it but the program was a flop, mainly because of childcare issues; parents found it difficult to find childcare for a week once every 6 or so weeks. The idea, though, seemed brilliant to me and when my boys were old enough to start ‘pre-home-school’, we planned a similar schedule.
Now that we’re homeschooling in truth, it really never even occurred to me to continue with the traditional school schedule we had become accustomed to. Since we were no longer bound by the school’s way of doing things, and schooling all year-long seemed much more logical to me, we switched. We have school throughout the calendar year and take smaller, more frequent breaks between learning periods and it’s working very well for us.
Now, admittedly, I planned our schedule with absolutely no input from ‘experts’ and did zero research on the subject. It merely seemed logical to me based on my experience in public school – spending 3 months in the summer vegging out with no academic concerns and then spending weeks on reviews at the beginning of the school year catching up and re-learning what I’d lost. It seemed that not having that huge long break would eliminate that whole scenario.
Depending on the individual schedule, you might also have more academic days than a traditional school schedule. We don’t, because we only have school Monday through Thursday, which gives us lovely 3-day weekends to enjoy, which works better for us. As long as we have a comparable number of ‘in class’ days, I figure that’s plenty (though we do log school time in our ‘off’ weeks, we just don’t do formal, sit-down work).
Imagine my surprise when I found this article at Summer Matters that wants to Stop Year Round School. Some of the points that the Summer Matters site talks about are family time (though many families have two or are single-parent working and the summer doesn’t change that since the kids are still in the care of others during the day), childhood growth and development (which is currently ousted in favor of having children study more to boost standardized test scores) and the economy of seasonal communities (which really only matters if you’re among the top income brackets – we poor folks don’t really contribute much to the seasonal economy since we’re too busy worrying about budgeting this week’s grocery bill to plan a vacation to a touristy hot spot).
Having said that, there are some points that I agree with. For public schools. Homeschooling is quite different. One of the first points on their list of bad is that year round schedules offer too little, too late in the form of intercessions for students who are falling behind. If you’re talking about an over-burdened public school system where teachers are paid very little to do a monumental job, then yes. I agree. But for homeschooling students, intercessions aren’t needed simply because a parent/teacher is going over each concept and working with his or her student until he or she grasps the concept. There’s no push to keep ‘on schedule’ or worrying about keeping up with the faster learners. Their solution is to have the child attend Saturday classes.
I assert that if the school system can’t get the necessary lessons accomplished and fully educate my child in the 8+ hours per day that they have my child in their care, then an extra few hours on Saturday likewise isn’t going to help – not to mention the fact that by forcing my child into school on a Saturday, that will significantly interfere with our family togetherness time. How does that impact students and families long-term?
When you’re homeschooling year round, the learning never stops. Even if you start out planning to homeschool with more of a traditional schedule, you tend to find that homeschooling eventually starts to become ‘how you live‘ rather than ‘something you do‘. There is a learning opportunity in nearly everything that you do with your children. Most homeschooling parents are extremely conscious of the enormity of the responsibility that is on their shoulders and they take it quite seriously. They actively seek educational application in the mundane activities of everyday life.
The bottom line for this kind of debate is that comparing year round public (and other institutionalized) schooling with year round homeschooling is like comparing apples to oranges. They’re really two separate organisms with enough differing characteristics to make comparing them very difficult. I’m quite comfortable with our year round schedule and I know that this method works for other homeschooling families as well.
I’ve been looking for other year-round homeschoolers and have found a few. I’d love to have a group of homeschooling families who use a year round schedule to show the diversity and ‘how-to’ aspect of year round homeschooling. To that end, I’m creating the ‘Never Stop Learning’ blog ring for homeschooling bloggers who follow a year-round calendar. If you’d like to join in, please comment below and snag a button for your blog. You can link back to this post if you like.
Warmly,
~h
Summer Reading Club
Our library’s theme for the Summer Reading Club was ‘Catch the Reading Express. I’ve written all summer about the activities that the library and several local organizations and performers have organized, and now it’s all over. This is the first year that we’ve really participated, and it was so much fun! It seems like in previous years, we’ve always been so busy with learning and extra-curricular activities through the school that summer was a welcome break for all of us. I was just as worn out from the constant go-go-go of the school year that I really needed some time to recoup. Not that we haven’t been busy with extra stuff since we’ve been homeschooling – but it’s different, somehow.
Anyhoo, I am so proud of my little Troika!! They all read more than the required 20 books and logged an impressive amount of time with their nose stuck in a book. We turned in their forms last week and they all got to put their name on little trains and a certificate of participation. We would have turned in the reading minutes log for the Mayor’s Award, but we didn’t keep very good track of that part of it. The truth is that they spend a minimum of 20 minutes reading every day, but it’s more than that most days (I’m happy to say). After the first few days, it was hard to keep track of the minutes that they were reading, so we just did the book log.
The kids also got tickets for a free Frosty from Wendy’s and a free breakfast from The Waffle House, plus their tickets to the big party downtown.
Since they were among the first 400 kids in the door, they all 3 got a free Reading Express tee-shirt. They all thought that was cool enough to wear it over their clothes.
When we went into the auditorium, and I was really surprised at how much stuff they had in there! The fire department and police department both had vehicles set up and open for the kids – everyone seemed to really enjoy climbing through the trucks and car and messing with all the cool stuff. It makes me wonder if the firemen and policemen clear out the vehicles prior to coming out, or if they end up re-setting things at the end of the day. The police car had the computer up and open – surely it wasn’t active?!
One of the things that they kept coming back to was the bounce house. There were three of them, and the kids were supposed to group by age. They jumped at least twice, and of course, they all insisted on having multiple pictures taken of every aspect of this thing, so I have about 20 pictures of blurry bouncing children, some of whom aren’t even my kids.
There was face painting and balloon twisting and mask-making and a magician and an exotic bird show… there was so much to do that we missed out on some of the cooler aspects even though we got there early and as you can see here, one of the last to leave.
One of the most interesting showmen was a local craftsman who made bird and flower carvings (whittlings?) and put them on sticks for the kids. The poor man had been carving for 2 hours straight by the time we made it over to his table and he was running short on supplies, so we just watched him make the last few. He cut the flowers first, then used the stub to make a bird. SO neat!
We were asked to fill out a survey when we got there, and I gave them all high marks. The program was wonderful – great for the community, but especially interesting for us homeschoolers. This is one of the few activities that is not faith-based and it was so nice to be able to go and enjoy without having to run interference or have a big discussion afterwards to address those kinds of issues. I really hope that they have a similar program planned for next summer, and we’ll definitely participate.
Congratulations to LittleBoyBlue, Fred & PeaGreen!!
Warmly,
~h
Sunday Surf
Authentic Parenting has a feature called the ‘Sunday Surf’ in which she recommends some of the awesome blogs she’s read this week. I thought that was a pretty good idea, especially since my blogroll is getting longer every week.
- Child Central Station explores caterpillars and finds missing ones in chrysalis, wallpapers the kitchen with pictures of food in a must-see collage and gives us some awesome ideas on what can be done with old, dried out markers.
- One Inch World has the cutest felted food tutorials. My favorites are the ravioli and tomato. My boys have a little wooden kitchen that my dad built for them (though they’re getting a tad too old for it now, I think) and this would be a lovely addition. Plus, crafting fun for mom!
- Creekside Learning recently made a fantastic little chore chart that I’m in the process of making for my kids. It’s cute and easy and employs two of my favorite things: laminated material and velcro dots, lol.
- I’m always interested in seeing how other homeschooling moms process information and make decisions. Lost Persons Homeschool has several really good posts that do just that.
- Homeschooling a Texas Tornado & a Toddler Tag Along is my new friend Jana’s blog. I met Jana through the SecularHomeschool.com forums and have really enjoyed reading what she has to say. As a long-term homeschooling mom, she has quite the insight to the everyday fantastic of the learning at home lifestyle.
- Quaint Scribbles’s post “When a Teacher Becomes a Homeschooler” is a very eye-opening post, especially if you have a non-traditional learner.
I hope that you find something interesting here, and I’d love recommendations, too. If you get a chance, be sure to check out the original Sunday Surf over at Authentic Parenting, too. Now, I am off to enjoy the rest of my evening. My Loverly Husband and I celebrate 11 years of wedded bliss today!
Warmly,
~h
World Breastfeeding Week 2010
In an article that I wrote for our local Macaroni Kid Newsletter (You can see it at Whole Mothering Center with the images in tact; MK’s site doesn’t allow images), I challenged breastfeeding moms who’ve stuck with it through difficulties, for several years, and/or nursed several babies to talk and/or blog about what aspect of breastfeeding it was that made them love it so much. I don’t think I’ve ever posted many pictures of me breastfeeding my babies, now 7 and 8 years old, so I’m going to do that in celebration of World Breastfeeding Week.
I’ve worked with several organizations over the past 8 years; this picture is of me at the first La Leche League meeting I went to after PeaGreen was born (I’m actually breastfeeding both boys and holding a conversation all at the same time *gasp*). In that time, I’ve heard so many stories – of success, or failure, of hard work, of everything working beautifully from the first moment to mom ultimately deciding that breastfeeding just wasn’t for her. I’ve watched women become more confident, I’ve watched them struggle with criticism and bad advice and the stories are both satisfying and infuriating to listen to or read.
My own experiences lean more towards the ‘overcoming difficulty’ camp but are overall absolutely wonderful. I would not trade nursing my babies for anything. It’s something I always knew I would do. My mom nursed my brother for a year, my grandmother and aunts all nursed; it’s just how the women in my family fed their babies.
When LittleBoyBlue was born, it took a while for both of us to get the hang of it. He had a fever when he was born and so spent some time in the nursery. I didn’t know then that it was hospital policy to give ‘sick’ babies a bottle. That screwed us up for weeks! He ended up with nipple confusion (a condition where the baby tries to breastfeed by using their tongue in the same way he would use it to drink from a bottle – it doesn’t work; its two completely different mouth and tongue movements) and promptly put blisters on my nipples and made nursing extremely painful.
Even asking for help from the nurses didn’t get much help; the nurse who came in to help get him latched on brought in a bottle of glucose water and stuck that in his mouth to ‘get him going’, then tried to shove him onto my breast – then she left before he ever started sucking with a, ‘You’ll get the hang of it!” thrown over her shoulder as she exited the room.
All told, it took about a month of cringing every time he was hungry. I had sore, raw and bleeding nipples and there were days where I just cried at the thought of nursing. I remember one day having ENOUGH and getting out the hand pump and fully intending to stop torturing myself.
Somewhere at the four-week mark, I started thinking that maybe something was wrong. I pulled out my books and started looking back into all the breastfeeding sections of the pregnancy books that I’d skipped over. I’d naively assumed that just because I wanted to breastfeed, and because it was natural that it would just work. That it would be easy. It never once entered my mind that there was technique involved, or mechanics that all had to be right in order for comfortable breastfeeding bliss to be enjoyed.
Once I started reading, especially the ‘troubleshooting’ sections, I figured out that my stubborn babe was tucking his bottom lip in instead of making fish lips. That was what was causing so much pain and frustration. I went in and flipped his lip out and was amazed at how much of a difference that one tiny thing made. Of course, it still hurt – I needed time for my nipples to heal – but wow – the difference was incredible. From that point on, things got better every day.
At some point right around this time, I recalled my friend’s mom mentioning La Leche League and something about breastfeeding help. I decided to see what that was all about and gave the local leader a call. I remember asking her if I could bring the baby and she said, “Yes, please do!”. That first meeting was really neat. I met several other breastfeeding moms and was introduced to the baby sling (as a mother, which is wholly different from seeing a woman with a sling baby when you don’t have kids). That event helped make me into the mom I am today. Oh, I’m not crediting LLL with shaping my ideas – those were in place long before LLL. But being involved with LLL meant that my ideas were continually reinforced to the point that I didn’t question myself the same way I would have if the only mothers I’d been around were formula feeding. The prevailing mindset of LLL moms is more earth-mama-crunchy-granola-attachment-parenting, and though I was already there, I might not have been as comfortable with talking about what I thought was right for my kids as I now am. I can wholeheartedly credit LLL for succeeding in their mission of support in my case.
Knowing what I know now, I would have gotten involved in LLL or another breastfeeding support group during my pregnancy instead of waiting until I was having problems. The camaraderie of the mothers and support provided in that kind of environment is invaluable. Even now, one of the things that I learned then that I took to heart most was the need for support as a mother. Having your choices reflected back to you by mothers you respect is the ultimate validation, which gives you confidence. It’s also nice to have several mothers whose experience you can draw from when you’re struggling.
With PeaGreen’s pregnancy, I was still nursing. LittleBoyBlue was only 9 months old when I got pregnant and again, being involved in LLL gave me access to information that I might not have had otherwise, and put me in touch with other moms who had nursed through a pregnancy and tandem nursed. I’m sure that seems odd to some people, but for me, nursing was such a normal part of how I mothered my child that I just wasn’t ready to change that. Even at 9 months, LittleBoyBlue was obviously not ready to wean, so we just didn’t. I got a lot of criticism – from family, from nurses and even the midwife I saw at the beginning of my pregnancy. There wasn’t much published on nursing through pregnancy or tandem breastfeeding (nursing two children of different ages) at the time, so I once again turned to La Leche League.
I was put in touch with Hilary Flower, who was writing the book that became Adventures in Tandem Nursing. She sent me some info to bring to my midwife, which made such a difference in my own peace of mind. You can only hear that you’re doing it wrong so many times before you start to wonder if you really are doing it wrong. Turns out I wasn’t, and we continued breastfeeding through my pregnancy. When PeaGreen was born, he latched on like a pro (though I was surprised at how different nursing a newborn was compared to nursing a 19 month old babe; I’d forgotten how small new babies were!) and within a few hours of his birth, we were officially a tandem nursing trio.
Tandem nursing wasn’t something I set out to do; it was simply the best option for us for a variety of reasons. I’ve had a few friends who found themselves pregnant while still breastfeeding and some have continued to nurse and some have not and I respect their decisions fully. I would not choose to do it again, though if I found myself in a position where it was necessary, I would. Looking back, I think that we made the right decision.
Aside from the numerous documented and obvious reasons why breastfeeding is superior to artificial baby formulas, think that the relationship of the nursing pair is a big part of what draws mothers to it, especially if they’ve breastfed before. You have this connection with your breastfeeding child that you don’t have when you bottle feed. It’s not even about what’s in the bottle (though I am adamantly opposed to formula for my babies); it’s about nurturing at the breast. That’s not something that you can replicate in other ways. You can come close, but it’s just not the same. So many parenting books equate breastfeeding with a ‘nutrition only’ mindset, and if that’s how you look at it then you’re really missing out on a huge part of what makes breastfeeding so special. It may take work to get to the point of breastfeeding bliss, even for the experienced nursing mom – but once you do, it’s so worth it.
Warmly,
~h
Warning: Unsocialized Homeschoolers
It still amazes me sometimes that people actually still think that homeschoolers = isolated religious nuts who fear contact with the outside world. I am also somewhat surprised when its reinforced that people really do equate the peer segregated social outline of school with preparation for ‘real’ life, and that they hold the school socialization model up as the ‘standard’ to which all other forms of socialization are held against for measurement and validation. In my opinion, all of those things are false. Lets’ examine them one by one, shall we?
Myth: Homeschoolers are isolated.
FACT: (Obviously, I am not a super-scientific researcher, so I’m just going to tell what I know to be true for my family. I’m sure that others out there have similar stories and I’d love to read them in comments.)
Since we started homeschooling in January, we’ve been much more active in our community than we had been since the boys started going to school. We have always sought opportunities to volunteer or community activities that we could participate in, once they started school our time was severely limited. We really only had time for school and school activities. It was great that the school they went to offered social opportunities for the kids outside of class time in addition to extra curricular academic opportunities, but being involved there meant that we were not able to participate in more diverse, community-based activities.
Now that we’re homeschooling, we’re not limited to the same group of people and that one location all the time. Through our local homeschooling group, we’ve met new people and have been able to travel for educational field trips all across Southeast Texas that we wouldn’t have been able to do had we still been in school. Finding time to stay home has been a constant complaint because we’ve had the opportunity to do so much more since we’re not tied to the school’s schedule. Even though we’re not involved in classes or sports, I’d hardly call us ‘isolated’.
Myth: Homeschoolers do so for religious reasons / do so to limit contact with people who feel or believe differently.
FACT: WikiAnswers has a question: Is socialization a problem for homeschoolers?
Here’s the answer listed there:
Generally speaking, the main point of homeschooling is to regulate/limit a child’s contact with external social influences and information deemed ”undesirable” by parents. It is a form of parental censorship. By limiting a child’s contact with people that have values outside the family’s religion and political views, the parents succeed in conditioning their children in ways they think appropriate.
I was homeschooled while growing up and something that I realize looking back on my childhood is that the majority of the homeschooling families that I knew ONLY socialized with other homeschooling families, that shared similar religious/political values. Do you think that this constitutes proper socialization?
Okay, I just have to get this off my chest: I was also homeschooled and my experience was quite different. If your parents didn’t put much effort into seeing that you grew up to be a well-rounded adult, that’s probably a comment on a much larger problem than just the homeschooling aspect of the equation, and you don’t get to make assumptions about all homeschooling families or their motivations because of it. Additionally, just because you’re in public school does not mean that you’re raised any differently. Parents always have the responsibility to ensure that their children are taught to use the minds they were born with no matter how they’re educated.
Whew! Now that that’s out of the way… if you’ve read my blog before, then you know that the reality of ’the homeschoolers are religious’ myth is a loud, resounding ‘Not all of them!’ We certainly do not, and the entire community at SecularHomeschool.com will tell you the same thing. Some families are. Many families are. Perhaps even the majority of homeschooling families are – although truthfully, I’m not even sure that I’m convinced that the majority of families homeschool for religious reasons anymore. Almost daily, I talk to someone who is starting to see that the public education system is broken, perhaps beyond repair, who has ideas about possibly homeschooling their kids. While they may eventually gravitate towards a group that shares their religious views, that’s not always the primary reason someone might choose to give homeschooling a shot.
There are several issues with the listed answer to that question. The first word, even, puts a lie to everything that comes after it. I would assert that ‘generally speaking’, the main point of homeschooling is to ensure that your child has an education that will prepare them for life as an adult. For some, that comes from having a child who has fallen through the cracks in the public school system. For others, the public school system is so visibly broken that they never even enroll their child. Others may have a child who is a non-traditional (or non-conformist) learner and find that home education fits his or her needs best, finding that such a child flourishes in an environment where the teacher-to-child-ratio is higher rather than failing in a group environment.
Sure, there is a portion of the homeschooling community who choose to limit their contact and association only to others who share their views, but that’s hardly something that is limited to the religious community, nor is it always necessarily harmful. As a secular homeschooler, I prefer the company of other secular homeschoolers to that of those who are religiously based. As a mother, I prefer to be around parents who practice an attachment parenting style rather than mainstream parenting (and I shun outright Babywise and Pearl parents). As a person, I prefer to be around people who share my interests rather than hose who don’t; I prefer friends who are happily married to those who are single – segregation according to preference or belief is nothing new, it’s not going to go away, nor is it catastrophically damaging to children. I’d rather my kids grow up with parents who believe in something rather than have them floundering for some kind of foundation. Many families feel similarly and many of them choose religion to be that base. I don’t and lots of other families have other things that they feel strongly about and seek validation in that stand from others who feel similarly. It only becomes an issue when you cannot accept and respect your child’s right to believe as he or she sees fit.
As parents, we shape our children’s beliefs every day. You couldn’t avoid doing it if you tried. While some parents go too far with it – instilling (or trying to instill) discrimination, racism, hate of those who look or believe differently, at some point those kids will grow up and be exposed to the outside world. At some point, those kinds of thoughts and the actions that may go along with them become their own. Many, many people who grow up with such things realize that what they were taught was wrong and choose to change and choose not to perpetuate that cycle in their own kids.
Myth: The classroom/school social model is the standard to which all other models must compare.
FACT: Ummm… why? No, really – I want to know why that is considered the gold standard. Before you enter school, and once you’re out of it, you’re never again segregated into groups by age as you are in the classroom. In real life you are surrounded with people of all ages, some older and some younger, who hold different roles. Each of those roles has a place in your life and children learn how they interact to form a family or community.
In the classroom, it’s not maturity or intelligence that dominates – it’s outward appearances. Pretty girls, athletic boys, kids who wear the ‘right’ jeans or sneakers… I think that’s one of the main reasons that or culture is so superficial; why Americans are so obsessed with what celebrities are doing and why we’re all so materialistic. I think it’s safe to assert that the accepted standard of socialization is what’s brought us to the consumerist culture that we’ve become.
The article that brought this issue to my attention (and profound need to comment on) is here, Research on the Socialization of Homeschoolers from the Homeschool Legal defense Association of Canada. My favorite part of the conclusion is this:
Home schooled students do not lag behind conventional students in social development.
A 1992 study compared the behaviors and social development test scores of 70 home schooled students with those of 70 public and private schooled students. The results showed no disparity in social development between the groups. In fact, home schooled children showed fewer behavioral problems, causing the researcher to conclude, “The results seem to show that a child’s social development depends more on adult contact and less on contact with other children as previously thought.”99. Shyers, Larry (1992). Comparison of Social Adjustment Between Home and Traditionally Schooled Students. Ph.D. dissertation. Univ. of FL.
I have to say that I see that conclusion as logical. Children don’t have the mental or emotional maturity or life-experience to lead other children. Remember Lord of the Flies? The classroom is only different when a teacher is present and paying attention. What strikes me is that those findings are from an eight year old study. If they’ve known that since 1992, are they just hoping things will change? That somehow, children will be better guides for other children if they just let this model continue? As my friends are familiar with me saying… How’s that workin’ for ya?
In my humble opinion, socialization is always going to be the responsibility of the parents, no matter what educational model you pursue. Homeschooling doesn’t limit your socialization opportunities; it broadens them. Some parents will find that mandate to be more challenging because they have to work a little harder to make it happen. It means that we have to be friendly and outgoing and meet people so that our kids can see how it’s done. It means that we need to be involved in community projects that open the doors to communication with the people in the smaller communities within our cities or towns. It also means that as our kids grown up, we have to step back and trust that we’ve done our job well – that our kids can use the tools we’ve taught them to make good decisions for themselves. And as long as you haven’t raised a clubber-of-baby-seals, then I think you can safely pat yourself on the back for a job well done.
Warmly,
~h
Summer Reading Clubs are Bad? WHAT??
I’m all for differing opinions, but the suggestion in this article is not merely that the mom in question doesn’t like them or chooses not to participate – she suggests that enrolling your child in reading clubs like the SRC’s could be damaging… Well, of course, anytime someone suggests that what I choose to do with my children might damage them, I’m interested in exploring their assertions more fully.
One of the things I came away with is that some of the opinions that the author expresses are apparently based on the assumption that the child is the only one involved in the SRC, and if that is the case, then I do kinda agree with her. If the SRC is the only avenue that the child experiences encouragement to read in, then the potential for the child to focus on the reward and not the book content is there. On the other hand, many SRCs are set up because of the fact that it truly may be the only exposure to encouragement in reading that some children have.
If the child is not being encouraged to read at home, then participation in the SRC may ultimately serve to help that child develop a love of reading. Even if they focus on the reward at first, the chance that at some point they’ll stumble on a book that really grabs them is high. For a lot of kids, myself included, regardless of the home environment and attitude towards reading, reading is a chore. It wasn’t until I was in 5th grade and came across the Nancy Drew series of books that I fell in love with reading as a hobby – and I was reading ‘well’ in the 1st grade. Until I found Nancy Drew, I LOATHED reading – and I come from an extremely pro-reading childhood home.
This statement seems to assume that the children are reading on their own, and that no parent is going back over what they’ve read with them. That simple step can avoid her whole point here. Right now, my kids don’t always enjoy reading. They enjoy the things that they choose to read, but we do have some stories or chapters that are assigned to them to read that works in conjunction with another assignment or project. If an incentive will help them get through the assignment, then I am all for it. As far as comprehension goes, my kids are not reading and then left to understand or not on their own. I’m right there with them, reading along with them or going back over the material with them. I don’t think that there’s a single book that my kids have read that me or my husband have not been interested in enough to discuss it with them.
As for enjoyment … well, I don’t think that all reading is supposed to be ‘enjoyable’. Sometimes, you read something because you need to know information that is contained in the text. Sometimes, you read in order to get where you’re going with a minimal amount of distraction. Sometimes you read so that you’re not agreeing to something you didn’t intend. Teaching kids that reading is always enjoyable, or only to be enjoyed is the wrong message. Now, granted, when you’re talking about new readers you do want them to have a certain enjoyment in it, but I can tell you from my experience, had I not been required to check out at least 2 books from the library I never would have found Nancy Drew. Had I not been required to write a book report, I never would have actually sat down and read the book. The only reason I ever even opened it was because of the deadline and threat of a bad grade over my head. So again, what the author of the article says about reading for enjoyment, I disagree with.
On reading to improve reading skills… I tend to think that any reading is going to work to improve your child’s reading skills, but especially books that they choose. Reading clubs encourage your child to pick books – books of their own choosing – to read. Presumably, your child will pick books that appeal to him, but even if he’s being a turkey and just grabbing 2 off the shelf, he might find accidentally grab something that he’ll enjoy.
PeaGreen isn’t a terribly proficient reader, but he found lots of books that he wanted to rad for the SRC. LittleBoyBlue is a really good reader, but he’s the one who just grabs 2 to fulfill Mom’s requirement. It wasn’t until we stumbled upon the non-fiction books about wounds and first aid (with photographs of real injuries) that his interest was piqued. In both cases, the books that they read did serve to encourage them to read more, which by default will improve their reading skills.
At the risk of being snarky, I think that’s a big stretch. I think that a child’s perception of success, especially a young child, has a LOT to do with the parent’s assessment and view of the situation. Any parent worth her salt can help a child re-think his view of a situation, even a ‘chronically inflexible’ child like mine. I have yet to see a SRC’s minimum for completion be something that is terribly challenging to achieve. If, as a parent, I know my child has this goal, wouldn’t I do everything I can to help him reach it? All the clubs I know of just had a number of books that a child must read in order to complete it. Our library’s number was 20. Over the course of 2 months. Hardly unattainable, right?
In light of that, if my child can’t reach that goal, then the first person I’m looking at to find out why is, frankly, Mom. What was I doing in all this time that prevented me from helping my kid reach this goal? And even if something happened this summer and we just really could not focus on something as frivolous as a reading club, then I would venture to say that as a parent, it’s my job to help my child understand that sometimes life simply gets in the way of the fun things we want to do. Explain that next summer will be here soon enough and we can try again, and try to come up with something that we can do to in the meantime to help him reach that goal (like a bedtime reading boot camp, or keep books in the car and read on the road…). We can’t always have what we want, and we have to learn to be adaptable.
Aside from that, we’re not always going to win. I think that avoiding competition in order to ‘protect’ my child from feeling like a failure is an erroneous strategy. A child doesn’t feel like a failure because he didn’t win or didn’t reach a goal. He feels like a failure because the people around him aren’t supportive. If my child didn’t succeed this time, then I think it’s my job as his parent to help him put that into perspective and help him set new goals. Whatever happened to ‘winning isn’t everything’? Participation and having fun are just as important, and if it truly is a competition, then learning how to lose gracefully is just as important a lesson to learn (perhaps more important, since there is usually only one winner – odds are that you’ll lose in life more than you’ll win).
The other point that the author brings up is the much debated issue of ‘payment for good grades’. When my kids were in school, we often combated the dreaded “I don’t wanna get dressed and go to school” complaint with, “Well Dad doesn’t want to go to work every day either, but he has to and so do you. School is your job, just like work is Daddy’s and keeping the house up is Mommy’s”. Well, leave it to my incredibly clever LittleBoyBlue to retort immediately with, “Well Daddy gets paid to do his job. We don’t get paid to go to school.” o_O
So yeah. We devised a plan reminiscent of real life whereby doing your job well nets you a reward (income). Doing it poorly results in consequence (loss of income). Then we decided that school was annoying and decided to homeschool, which pretty much makes the issue of ‘grades’ moot (though we do actually keep ‘grades’ – but it’s not quite the same as in school because we’re not on a schedule that pushes through to the next thing regardless of comprehension.)
I do agree with this wholeheartedly:
… and with her other points on grading as a system of assessment in institutionalized educational settings. Homeschooling is an entirely different bag-of-yarn*. I agree that offering a reward or incentive of cash for A’s may not work for every kid, but it’s also not always the big, horrible, always-negative thing that the author seems to be making it out to be. Like so many things in parenting, I think it’s going to be an individual kid, individual family type thing. What works for me may not work for you – but that doesn’t make either one of us inherently wrong. It just makes us different.
Warmly,
~h
* for my loverly husband, who was trying to think of ‘ball of wax’ this morning and came out with ‘bag of yarn’ {wink}
August 17, 2010 | Categories: Rambling Thoughts, Reading, She said WHAT? | Tags: commentary, debate, Parenting, summer reading club, YMMV | 4 Comments »