Proof that Children DO eat Bugs
Fried crickets and meal worms. Who said Summer Reading Club was boring?
Warmly,
~h
Lazy Summer Days
This is undoubtedly something that we just don’t get enough of around here. Take, for example, this week… we’re out of school (it’s one of our regularly scheduled week-long breaks in our year-round school schedule) and so far, we’ve been go-go-go, and will continue to be so until at least Thursday. So that really only leaves us with 2 days of ‘break’ and 2 days of weekend.
Don’t get e wrong, I generally love having a busy schedule, but there are times when I look at my calendar and end up wanting to chuck it out the window. To be fair, sometimes I do shed the plans in favor of relaxing family fun, but sadly, this week will not be one of those times.
I started the week with bad news/good news. My eyes have been hurting a lot lately - very light sensitive (photophobic, almost) and almost like dry eyes but not quite… I know why; it’s because I wear disposable contacts that I don’t dispose of when I’m supposed to. I wear and wear and wear them until I can’t anymore and that’s lead to what amounts to scratches on my corneas and an incredible amount of irritation and swelling. We started off yesterday morning with a trip to the optometrist. So the bad news is that contact lenses are, for the foreseeable future, verboten. Furthermore, my future as a contact lens candidate is questionable. I’m currently on a ‘take these eye drops for a week and then come back and we’ll see’. It’s also been 7 years since my glasses prescription has been updated, so they have been woefully out of date for sometime now. I’ve been squinting through them for a while now, and I was informed that I’d fail a driving test with the current pair. The good news is that I got new glasses and rx sunglasses out of the deal.
Also, same-day service = Yay!
The rest of the week consists of trying to fit in painting my bedroom a lovely blue called ‘daring indigo’ in amongst playgroup (vegan/vegetarian & fermented foods luncheon rescheduled due to the first forecasted rainstorm in 8 months), summer reading club plans (bug cooking and eating today, a NASA presentation tomorrow) and visiting our lovely friend SFK, whom we haven’t seen for 2 whole weeks.
One of these days though, we’re going to have to take a blanket out to the woods and just laze about with books to read and tasty cool drinks to sip. We may through a couple of magnifying glasses and a pair of binoculars in the bag for good measure and do some exploring at the edges of the blanket or high in the trees. That sounds like a good plan to me.
Warmly,
~h
Ancient Egypt and Bubble Day at the Library
This year’s theme for our Summer Reading Club is ‘Dig up a Good Book’. The libraries here go to great lengths to put on good shows, and so far, we’ve been impressed with their efforts. Some of the libraries here have attached meeting rooms, and some have community rooms next door. It’s nice when the programs are in larger spaces since these events usually draw a crowd.
This week, the kids got to explore some ancient Egyptian activities with our very favorite Librarienne Extraordinnaire, Ms. Robin. She brought out a bunch of books on Egypt and had the kids sit down with a page of riddles in hieroglyphs and a translation chart. The boys did better than I expected them to; in fact, all the activities that they did that day, they worked diligently on.
This may be a bit of a mama-brag, so bear with me for a minute, but as a homeschooling mom, it’s rare to get what seems like ‘real’ feedback on how your kids are doing. You know how much effort you put into working with them and going over material, but it’s hard, at least for me sometimes, to really know for sure how much they’re ‘getting’ from it. So when they answer questions in groups like this one, it’s really reassuring to me to know that they are paying attention and that wheat we go over does, indeed, sink it. Ms. Robin asked about the Nile river, and the boys were able to answer questions about it. We’ve been covering China for the last couple of weeks, so granted, PeaGreen mixed up the Yellow River and the Nile when he answered (he said rice when she was asking about their crops), but he did get the flooding and dam-building parts right… so color me impressed.
After the riddles, she divided the kids up into teams of three and had two wrap the third member of the team in two rolls of toilet paper to simulate a mummy. That was fun; the boys’ team even added a cardboard tube on LBB’s chin to simulate the beard that is found on a lot of death masks. Of course, busting out of the paper – and the incredible mess that made – was the most enjoyable part of that activity.
The kids all settled righ back down though and started working on plaster carvings. Ms. Robin gave them all small squares of plaster and had them use the hieroglyph chart to draw out their names or whatever design they wanted, then trace them onto their plaster blocks, then carve the designs out with toothpicks. Then they used paint to define the cravings. The kids really enjoyed making their blocks and even asked to take a second block home.
The next day was Bubble Day, sponsored by the Energy Museum of SETX. They had 10 stations set up for the kids to see and try out different properties of bubbles. Some were niftier than others, and we ended up skipping some of them due to the crowd, but the kids had a great time.
After the bubbles, we went over to the library to sign up for a drawing class that they’re putting on all next week, then we checked out a few books on China to complete the lapbook we’re working on for history.
Next week: NASA fun!
Warmly,
~h
Science Fair 2011
Our homeschool group decided a few months ago to host a show and tell style science fair. Rather than go all out with display boards, we figured the kids could just do their experiment, and then do a report on them and an oral presentation.
We all got off to a pretty good start; there was a lot of interest in the idea, especially since we were going to do a non-competitive fair. I think that most of our group’s families plan to participate in the Texas Regional Science Fair, which is a homeschool science fair in Tomball, TX, in coming years, but since none of our kids have ever participated, we thought that a local show-and-tell fair would be a great introduction and practice run for them.
When my kids were in school, they went to a science academy charter school. There was heavy emphasis on math, science and technology, and the Science Fair was so big a deal that there was a special committee and an orientation specifically for parents who haven’t participated in SF before. The science fair was probably THE biggest event at the school, and to be fair, the kids had some truly awesome projects. I was privileged to be on the judges panel one year, and the kids had some truly impressive offerings. I was really looking forward to my kids participating there, and benefitting from the enthusiasm and encouragement from those teachers. Now that we’re homeschooling, they’ll miss out on some of that, but I think/hope that between our enthusiasm and encouragement, and participation in the TRSF, they’ll do fine.
Anyway… the boys waffled a bit on what project they wanted to do. We started looking at sites like Easy Science Fair Projects, Crystal Clear, All Science Fair Projects, PBSKids and About.com for ideas and topics. PeaGreen heard ‘fossils’ and immediately latched on to that one; even after a couple of days of looking, he was dedicated to that topic. LBB initially wanted to do triboluminescence – the light that tape or band-aids make when you rip the adhesive open in the dark or the ‘spark’ when you bite into a LifeSavers Wint-o-green candy. That lasted for a couple of days and then he lost interest; it’s fly season in southeast Texas and no matter how clean the kitchen is, it seems that for a couple of weeks in the beginning of the summer we always have a herd of flies in the kitchen window. So LBB decided to make bug traps to see if he could get them out of the window. From there, that evolved into an actual experiment – which bait would be better to catch fruit flies: raw meat or fruit? PeaGreen wanted to try to make a fossil, so we watched a few videos on fossils and casting them, and he took off with an idea – he was going to make an impression fossil and cast it plaster of paris.
I have to say that I am SUPER impressed with my boys. Both of their projects required trial and error and re-working the idea, and patience. These are qualities that I’d ‘hoped’ my kids possessed, but I had yet to see them in action. I can happily report that they do indeed possess the necessary perseverance and fortitude and patience necessary to complete a project. PeaGreen ended up doing three different versions of his impression fossil, and two different castings, and LBB made two traps and came back over several days to chart his data.
I was doubly impressed because even though I said to begin with that these were their projects to do on their own, inevitably, mom ends up helping here and there. But, other than a few words of encouragement here and there, these projects were done completely by the kids.I helped with the write-ups, mostly transcribing and fine-tuning their ideas and thoughts on paper, but their videos are all their own. We ended up being the only once who could make it to the presentation on the day of the Science Fair, so I filmed the boys doing their presentations and thought I’d share them here.
You can read their reports if you like, LBB’s “The Flies Have It’ & PeaGreen’s ‘Fossilized’.
Even though we don’t put much emphasis on grade level, we decided that the end of May and the Science fair would complete this grade for them (done with 2nd for PG and 3rd for LBB), so we awarded them both with their grade diploma and Science Fair certificate. Good job, boys!!
Warmly,
~h
Religion: Education vs. Indoctrination
If the topic of religion is a hot topic, then the topic of religion in schools may best be described as nuclear… which is kind of odd to me since it should be a non-topic, what with that whole pesky ‘separation of church and state’ thing that those darn Atheist Americans are so insistent upon.
Depending on which camp you’re in, there is either too much or not enough religion in the school system. Atheists constantly clamor for further reviews of curriculum and push for more science-based texts while creationists complain that atheists are infringing on their rights by saying that science should take precedence over the bible’s version of the beginning.
My interest in this particular topic comes in when you start differentiating between education about religion (more rightly termed ‘religious studies’) versus religious indoctrination – two very different concepts. Obviously as a homeschooling family, whether or not religion is in school is not relevant to my children at this time, but I am interested in the subject, and rightly so, because though we’re homeschooling now and plan to continue, plans have a bad habit of changing without notice. As a parent who values research and evidence-based information, this is a topic that I keep my eyes and ears on.
I’m addressing it here, in a homeschooling blog, because I think that a lot of people assume that all/most homeschoolers do so for religious reasons, or to secure a religiously themed academic program for their kids. That’s hardly true, but it is a widespread misconception. I think it’s relevant here because the difference between education/study and indoctrination is key and as secular homeschoolers, we’re not indoctrinating our kids into a religion, but we do think that the study of religions and their beliefs as an academic subject is extremely valuable.
‘Religious studies’ is commented on as follows at Wikipedia:
Religious studies is the academic field of multi-disciplinary, secular study of religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasising systematic, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives.
While theology attempts to understand the intentions of a supernatural force (such as deities), religious studies tries to study religious behavior and belief from outside any particular religious viewpoint. Religious studies draws upon multiple disciplines and their methodologies including anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and history of religion.
Religious indoctrination is defined and distinguished from education as:
the process of inculcating ideas, attitudes, cognitive strategies or a professional methodology (see doctrine). It is often distinguished from education by the fact that the indoctrinated person is expected not to question or critically examine the doctrine they have learned. As such it is used pejoratively, often in the context of political opinions,theology or religious dogma. Instruction in the basic principles of science, in particular, can not properly be called indoctrination, in the sense that the fundamental principles of science call for critical self-evaluation and skeptical scrutiny of one’s own ideas, a stance outside any doctrine. In practice, however, a certain level of non-rational indoctrination, usually seen as miseducative, is invariably present.
So, to recap, education requires critical thinking skills; to examine the information and evaluate it. Indoctrination discourages such practices.
Now, I know that there are some out there who would read that and dismiss it as a criticism of their religion. Years ago, I would have said that my religion actively encouraged its members to ‘seek out the truth’; to study and ask questions so that you can be sure of your faith. However, looking back now, I can clearly see that even though what was said from the platform was ‘ask and study and seek’, what was unspoken was definitely the opposite. People who asked too many questions were booted. The constant message from the platform was to be ‘sheep-like’, ‘meek’ and to follow the instructions of the church leaders. Your faith and dedication was called into question should you fail to fall in line with what was preached. It was made abundantly clear that you should not ask questions. The spoken message and the unspoken one were contradictory, and yet still allowed the members to ‘feel’ and ‘believe’ that they had the freedom to ask questions (make waves) without consequence. Because they felt that they were encouraged to study the claims presented as truth, they were less likely to do so, based on the false logic that ‘only those with the truth will invite criticism’. This example, to me, illustrates perfectly the difference between the two ideas.
Over the last few weeks as I was putting together this post, I’ve come across a few articles that deal with this subject. One is at EndHereditaryReligion.com. There are a couple of articles on children and indoctrination; Forcing Children into Faith is Ethically Objectionable asserts that indoctrinating children without their consent is an ethical violation, and Religions use Cult Indoctrination Techniques discusses the many insidious ways that religions go about indoctrinating their members,
especially children.
Religious Education is not Mindless Indoctrination asserts that there is value in having religious knowledge and the study of religion as a human phenomenon, and that the classroom is the logical place to get that information in the hands of small humans.
In short, there is more to teaching religion in school than mindless indoctrination. Religion can – and should – be taught as a sociological phenomenon – and one that is found in every human culture.
No doubt some of the practices that pass for religious education need to be examined. And no doubt some of the practices that pass for religious education in some of our state schools are questionable.
But that should not mean that these classes ought to be scrapped completely. If the education provided in these classes provides balance to different forms of religious expression, allows children to understand the practices of their peers and avoids indoctrinating children into a particular faith, then there should be no more harm in teaching children about religion than there is in teaching them philosophy or history.
I tend to feel like religious study is necessary. I think that as the world gets more inter-connected, having a deeper understanding and familiarity with other cultures and belief systems will go a long way towards peaceful interaction with other people and countries. I don’t think that in today’s world my kids can afford to grow up with a small-town mindset. Thinking globally is more than just a catch phrase, and I think that since so many cultures are indelibly stamped by their religious beliefs and practices, knowing about them can’t do anything but help. My conflict with this last article comes in with the assertion that the school should be doing the educating.
As a parent, and certainly as a homeschooling parent, I think it’s my job to educate my kids. This extends to religious studies as well – but I can definitely see the potential for some parents to withhold that information from their kids so that they’re properly indoctrinated into the parent’s religion. In such cases, then yes, having religious studies in school would help ensure that the children received at least a cursory introduction to other belief systems. I think that indoctrination goes the opposite way of understanding and respect for other cultures and people. How can you respect and value another person when you’re taught that they’ll be destroyed in fiery judgement because of their heathen beliefs?
In addition, I do think that indoctrination is an ethical violation. I understand the drive to share your faith with your children, but sharing is different from forcing them into it, and that’s what most parents are doing when they say ‘share’. I was raised in a religion where the indoctrination process is profound. It’s something that, like many religions who teach that their is the only way to salvation, is insidious and present in the very language of believers. Even now, I occasionally catch myself referring to the religion or the teachings using their terminology. I was baptized into my parent’s church at 16 – not because I believed the doctrine, but because it was expected of me. That was the next logical step. I was too old to coast along as a child anymore, yet too young to truly be aware of the consequences of what that commitment meant.
As an adult and non-practicing non/former member, any hope of my salvation within that religion is gone, because I have broken, irreparably, the vows I made as a child. Without ever having lived anywhere but in my believer-parents’ home, without ever being in any kind of situation to have my faith tested or even having access to information/education on other religions or cultures (beyond literature published on them BY the church), I chose a life-long commitment with only the indoctrination I received as a child. There’s no way that you can ethically be expected to make the kind of commitment that baptism or dedication requires when you’re not yet an adult. Even many adults don’t know what they’re getting themselves into when they make commitments; to expect a child to make and keep those kinds of vows is nine kinds of unethical.
We refuse to indoctrinate our kids. However, education is an entirely different matter. We want them to have a well-rounded and solid religious education – not to practice any one religion (unless they choose to and until they’re old enough to understand what that means), but to know about religions in general – the people, the cultures, the beliefs, the practices – and how those religions and their members have shaped history and modern science and education. I think that an academic knowledge of religion is necessary to understanding and relating to art and literature, and feel that there is a certain benefit in knowing what ‘you/they’ believe to further clarify what ‘I’ believe.
Since we’re raising our kids without religion, inevitably, there are questions asked and comments made. These are good questions, and often asked out of a sense of true concern. I can respect sincere requests for clarification, but once you take off the ‘god goggles’, it becomes obvious how ridiculous these questions/comments and others like them really are. Some of my favorites:
- Without God/The Bible/Religion, where do your morals come from?
Our morals come from the same place yours do – unless your position is that you really and honestly require a book to tell you what is right and what is wrong. I would imagine that if you lost your faith right this minute, you’d go the rest of your life without stomping on kittens and robbing banks. Wrong is still wrong and knowing those things come from inside… unless you’re a sociopath.
- You have to have a foundation in something. If not God, then what? (and other variations on the ‘you have to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything’ theme.)
- What about salvation? Aren’t you afraid for their futures?
It’s Not the Heat…
… it’s the humidity; at least, that’s the saying. That’s what we adopted as our motto when we started homeschooling (only in Latin, like all proper mottoes), but I have to say that based on the temperatures over the past couple of weeks, that may not be true anymore. With temps climbing into the 100+ range, we’ve been looking for anything and everything to stay cool. unfortunately, our pump on the pool is broken, so where we would normally be spending afternoons splish-splashing the day away, that’s not an option for another few weeks yet. Boo.
Thankfully, the library’s Summer Reading Club has started up again, and with the boys and niece Fred (whom you’ll be hearing about fairly often again this summer) all signed up, we’ve gotten off to a good start with building up their lists of book read and participating in the programs that were sponsored last week.
The guys from Terminix came out and did a program on some of our local bugs – he had some pretty interesting ones pinned in a box – I always wanted one of those bug boxes… we’re going to have to see about making one of those over the summer. The kids thought that was super fascinating; they spent most of the time waiting for the program to be over so they could check it out more closely. The presenter was great though; he delayed the class by a few minutes to continue talking with the older kids about some of the bugs. He gets a big gold star from me for being more interested in cultivating the kids’ interest than keeping on a time schedule. The kids left with a coloring book and a bug mask to cut out and color.
Hope your summer is off to a cool start!
Warmly,
~h
Math Journals
The first thing I ever saw about math journaling was on Integer Jim’s Math squad site. The journals there are totally drool-worthy and enough to make even a math-o-phobe like me get really interested in numbers and such.
I loved the idea of a math journal, and have wanted to start them with the kids since the beginning of the year but really had no idea where to start – what, exactly, goes into a math journal?
I was messing around on YouTube the other day and came across ZapplePi’s excellent two-part tutorial video on math journaling. It’s for the parent (or teacher), not the student, and it gives you an overview of how to help your kids start and keep and use math journals. He also has a ton of free resources on his website. I mean, really – a TON of them for kids 3rd-8th grade, including a PlaceMaths sample!
My kids are all about art journaling; I’ve posted stuff on that before, but math journaling is a little more intimidating. In addition to making it pretty, the information needs to be legible and useful. So I started fooling around with a notebook and came up with a few ideas. Thus far, I have a number line and the four basic math processes down – an explanation and definition of each process and an illustration, then the tables on the back of that sheet for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. In doing that, I really got inspired and more ideas started coming to me. I’ll make a page with fractions, geometric shapes, graphs, grids, angles… I can see just getting the basics down taking quite a while.
So with my handy reference journal in hand, I showed the kids what I thought they might like to add to their journals and they made a great effort! We’re intentionally leaving some blank space on each page so we can add more facts about that process as we go along. I can see ways for all kinds of interesting stuff to be incorporated this way. It seems that the more we add, the more we think about adding. This is similar to what happened with our history/geography folder – we have ended up using that so much more than I thought we would! I’ll have to post about that one, too.
Here are the kids journals. I was lacking inspiration, so I snagged a bit from Integer Jim’s ‘math adventure’ theme and used Indiana Jones and Lara Croft for the pictures, then made the lettering in Microsoft Word (word art). Fred’s with us again this summer; that’s her book on the far right. Since she’s here she gets to do school too. {wink}
I have to say that I’m pretty happy with their work! The pages look great and once we get a little more info in them, I am hoping they’ll act like a reference (similar to a dictionary) as they’re working. I honestly enjoy helping my kids when they need it, but sometimes, ‘Mom, can you…’ is just laziness.
Do you journal? Any recommendations? Link to your blog and post your kids’ journals!
Warmly,
~h
Underwater Basketweaving
I read that in a post by Pioneer Woman a while back as the name for a subject that the overly ambitious homeschooling mom might engage her kids in. Imagine my shock and surprise when I learned that UB actually exists, along with a host of other seemingly odd courses: Philosophy via The Simpsons, Science via Harry Potter (we may actually use that one), and cultural studies by way of a Zombie Apocalypse… pretty snifty if you ask me – the other stuff that is, not necessarily the UB part (though I kinda wonder now if the pressure of the water helps keep the strips from being so fly-away when you’re weaving and am oddly tempted to try this in the pool now…) Anyway, PW’s post inspired me to examine my own motives and methods and I thought I would share.
Motive
My motives are multi-faceted. I think that most homeschooling parents can say that, but it seems that many? most? have a primary reason for homeschooling. I always get confused when talking about the ‘primary’ reason… we have the catalyst – what happened, what immediate need that was not being met that was the push I needed to make the decision to venture into homeschooling; but the reasons that we homeschool are much more broad than ‘a’ reason.
For one thing, I see homeschooling as an extension of our parenting style. Though we don’t follow every tenet of attachment parenting, that’s definitely the way we lean and I feel that this approach is responsible for the relationship that we have with our kids. As for educational goals, we want to have children who know how to find the information they need when they need it. To start with, we want them to have a solid foundation in math, science, history, language arts and a developed artistic voice. That means that at this age, we’re less delight-led and more eclectic with classical/CM leanings. As they get older, and master the basics, we’ll branch out more into their individual paths of study. We’re cultivating and fostering those interests now, but are more concerned with building a solid foundation right now. We also want to cultivate in them the desire to continue learning, even when there’s no paper due or grade attached to a project.
Obviously, homeschooling is not the only way to accomplish those things, but for our kids, we believe that homeschooling is the best way. Homeschooling allows me, as the primary teacher, to tailor my kids’ lessons to their individual needs; learning style, interests, abilities. It allows them to stay on one concept long enough to master it rather than ‘having’ to move on because we have to cover X number of pages/concepts this year.
Homeschooling also allows me the benefit of setting a schedule that works within the context of our family. We’re night owls and prefer to sleep later in the mornings. We can also incorporate community activities and area events that we’d normally be too tired for if we had to deal with school-school, and field trips on a whim. I’m sure there are additional benefits, but those are the ones that stand out as most important as write this.
Method
Though we look at education as a mutual responsibility, it works best for our family to have me in the role of primary educator. I’ve always been the primary caretaker, so this is again a natural extension of that role. It’s more traditional, and one of the few aspects of our lives that does fall into a more traditional/stereotypical ideal.
As a teacher, my methods are myriad. I am continuously looking for and learning about new ways to teach and new things that I think might inspire my kids. When I read about something I like, chances are that in the following weeks we’ll experiment with some form of that idea. If it works out, it might become a staple. If not, then I scrap it and try something new. This approach might not work for everyone, but it suits us quite well. It means that we’re not bogged down in any one thing or way for too long, but it also means that we’re not terribly consistent with any one style. We probably don’t garner the full benefit of Charlotte Mason style homeschooling, for example, but we incorporate plenty of her techniques into our homeschool and that works well for us. Besides, I honestly don’t think that any one method would suit us well enough to stick with long-term anyway.
One of the more inspiring things I’ve come across in recent months was a video by Escapist Magazine called Gamefying Education. We’re gamers, so naturally this caught my attention. It also made some darn good points about simple ideas that can change the way kids react and interact with education – things that even teachers in the classroom can implement. Since we’re not trapped by the a school administration’s policies and procedures, you’d think that such ideas come naturally, and to an extent they do, but having it all spelled out in this way (and in relation to gaming) was very illuminating.
The three areas of change that the video talks about are scoring, autonomy and motivation to continue learning once the lesson is over. One of the thoughts that struck me most in scoring was the notion that people go into a graded task with the thought that they have 100 points and that every mistake chips away at that. However, in gaming, you always start at zero and accumulate experience points as you go. You still can end up with the same number of points (though who wouldn’t choose a max of 100XP over a max of 10XP??), you just count up instead of down. Simple, but revolutionary.
The other two points, autonomy (freedom to choose their own direction) and motivation to continue learning, are less of a novel concept out of the classroom. I think that most homeschooling families tend to do so with and eye towards nurturing their kids’ interests and facilitating opportunities for their kids to expand them. But I really like the idea of learning as a game. The large-scale project that was mentioned in the video is beyond me at this point, but I am going to continue thinking about it and bugging my fellow homeschoolers out there (You. Yeah, YOU. *nudge, nudge*) and see what we come up with.
I did find Integer Jim’s math game, ‘Quest for the Golden Calculator‘ and am trying to convince my homeschool group that we should do this as a group activity, but so far they seem pretty unenthusiastic about the idea. I also found this website with game resources – in particular is a Jeopardy style game-creator that’s pretty awesome. That’s not exactly the large-scale game that the video was talking about, but it’s a pretty good start, I think. In any case, I look forward to brainstorming more on the game idea and hearing what you guys come up with, too.
Warmly,
~h
Copywork, Narration and Notebooking
We’ve been doing copywork and oral narration since we started homeschooling in 2010 and we’re planning on starting notebooking in the fall. In case you’re not familiar with the terms, let me explain:
What is copywork?
Copywork is what it sounds like. The child copies a passage as-is in their own handwriting. When they’re beginning writers, you start with simple things (name, address, phone number, etc.) and can progress to whole paragraphs. We started with regular notebooks and then went to Mead’s RediSpace notebooks to help my boys learn proper spacing in print. Now that they’re progressing to script, they’re still helpful.
Copywork is beneficial on many levels. It can cement an idea through repetition, it exposes a child to proper grammar and syntax and tons of other benefits as well. Copywork was one of the first things that we started with when we began homeschooling, and it still features today in many different guises. We often start our school time with copywork of some sort and then go on from there.
What is narration?
Narration is ‘telling back’. Basically, the parent/teacher reads something, or discusses something, then the child tells the story or passage back. You can facilitate the narration by asking questions like, “What do you remember about what we just read?’, or “Name 3 things from this paragraph”. You can help your child organize his thoughts by asking what happened first, second and last. Oral narration precedes written narration; Charlotte Mason recommends that written narrations begin around 10, however you know your child best. My oldest is 10 and we’ll be starting written narration (in small doses) this fall.
Here’s a nice how-to on narration from Charlotte Mason Education. I also found a nifty article from Mozart & Mud Pies on difficulties with narration. This applied for my oldest and the verbal cues to imagine the scene helped tremendously.
What is notebooking?
While I’m sure there are a hundred different definitions to notebooking, the way I see it is basically a collection of copywork, narrations, dictation, artwork, research and more, all on a particular topic. You can go into a topic with the intent of notebooking it, or a notebook can serve as a landing ad for your child’s work on that topic. One of the most awesome and inspiring examples of notebooking style homeschooling is Jimmie’s Collage. Every time I go there, I find something else that I want to try with my kids.
If you’re into lapbooking, you can easily combine notebooking; either with pockets or brads to keep papers bound into your lapbook. My kids do a fair amount of copywork and writing in their lapbooks already, so we’ll just continue adding more as we go along.
I found some great links on notebooking here.
Since my last post was on the sometimes value of worksheets, it got me thinking about the alternatives to them. I thought I’d post my thoughts.
Basically, I think I might have gotten a bit lazy. Worksheets are easy and pretty basic. I am considering working with the boys over the next few weeks to assimilate their math work over the last few months into their math journals. In looking through the worksheets though, while they certainly did the work (in one form or fashion), those types of worksheets are entirely unsuited to notebooking. The worksheets we’ve been using have been more broad-subject types, which is good in some ways, but bad for delving deep into a subject or topic for notebooking.
One of the advantages that notebooking has over worksheets is that the kids actually write more, especially when narration is part of it. The kids can write their own thoughts instead of merely answering questions. I think that it will be a challenge to get LBB to write, so we will probably work on dictation and copywork (he’ll dictate, I’ll transcribe and he’ll copy) until he gets the hang of it. I’m not planning on starting PeaGreen with written narrations until he’s 10 or so – another couple of years, yet – but we are going to start notebooking with him, too.
Putting together a good notebook – helping the kids – will be an experience for me. We’ve gotten pretty good at lapbooking, so I see notebooking as an extension of that; the next natural step. I’m looking forward to the challenge!
I’m curious, do you notebook? What are some of your favorite resources?
Warmly,
~h
