Playing With Legos

OK, I obviously really suck at blogging here lately. I dropped off the song of the week thing, I haven’t posted regularly in forever, and I just don’t even remember I have this blog frankly. I do still blog at my main blog, if anyone’s interested.

Anyway, I still do believe strongly in unschooling, but I’m facing a little reality here…I’m not organized nor consistent enough to do all that I really need to be doing to really have a quality unschooling environment for my children. Its far too easy for me to just get sucked into housework and my own projects and neglect setting up the environment and opportunities for enrichment for my children.

PLUS, I have a husband that just doesn’t get unschooling, nor agree with it. While I do feel that I have more say in this because I am the only parent that has spent ANY time (not to mention HOURS and HOURS and HOURS of time) researching anything education related…so I’m not necessarily of the mindset that he really can say much since he’s not taken the time to read up on anything…I think the one that actually is educated on the subject should have the  say (like I wouldn’t ever be the one to decide what video camera we get because I don’t care to research it and HE has the knowledge, so I would defer to him)…HOWEVER, I do respect that he is also equally a parent of these children and I do have to live with him and, hopefully, have a quality relationship with him…So…I do feel it is worthwhile to have some things that are more “schooly” to do during the day so that he can feel better about how things are going. And frankly, I feel better too.

So…all that to say that I have gone back to some of my single subject curriculums that I feel good about. Math and spelling for now, and I’ll add more as we get where I want to be with these. And things seem to be going pretty dang well, I think.

Ok we got off to a rocky start and there were some days of Maeven crying through lessons. Well I should explain that my daughter is prone to crying, so this isn’t really a huge surprise. And she doesn’t react well to change, and going from not having to do structured math for awhile, back to sitting down and having to do some (even though this math is really very hands-on and uses cool props and really is not a big drag to do), shook up her world a little. But she seems to be handling it ok now. And I’m starting to see the value in actually doing math that is really below what she is probably capable of, at least in the beginning like this, because we are whizzing through it pretty easily. She has really very little tolerance for frustration, and I’m trying to just get her into a groove right now so this is a good thing that its pretty simple for her. Every once in awhile there’s a concept that is a little more work for her, but she’s getting it. And we are able to do 2 lessons a day right now because there’s a lot that is so beneath her because she already gets it, so I skip it. Like there are some chapters coming up that are all about telling time and she already knows how to tell time so we’ll be skipping over those.

At this rate, we’ll be done with this book sometime in November and I’ll be able to move her into the next level and have THAT done probably by the end of spring, if all goes well. We got way behind on this, but I am not really concerned about things as far as where the public schoolers deem “at grade level.” I’m just concerned about where *I* think she should be. I was reading the other day that 3rd graders, which is where she would probably be if I had her in school, do multiplication and division. And actually some have been doing it, at least to some degree, since 1st grade. I think this is just ludicrous. Sure some of them may be capable of it, but I am pretty sure we did not learn it that early when I was in school…and I don’t have the problem of being in a hurry and trying to cram stuff in earlier and earlier that the schools do. She’ll learn it soon enough. I want her to first really get addition and subtraction fully. And if that means putting off  more complex topics for awhile, then so be it. I would rather she REALLY “gets” the easier stuff before throwing a more complex subject at her. Anyway, I’m not even sure which level book this math curriculum starts them on that. They don’t even do subtraction until the addition is really mastered. I love that.

This math curriculum I use, Right Start Math, is just awesome in doing all sorts of activities that set the kids up to fully understand these concepts. Its just amazing, I wish I had it when I was her age. Would have made a lot of difference in me learning math.

Anyway, so we’re rockin at math…doing 2 lessons a day and I think we could actually sometimes do 3, so I’ll be trying to do just that when I can. We were way off schedule (the schedule I had plotted out for us), but now in just a month we’ll be back on. YAY!

well i obviously have seriously sucked at blogging here about all things homeschooling. we have gone in a more unschooling direction and i have just gotten lax about everything.

but i have a husband that doesn’t understand or agree with unschooling, and a nagging voice in my head that makes unschooling difficult for me, so i’m taking up some more “schooly” things to ease things. i still lean towards child-led learning, but i’m tired of feeling stressed about everything. and i had already purchased these single subject curricula that i feel really good about, so we’ll take a shot at these again.

plus the learning village is off the ground finally, so i’ll be seeing to it that we cover some other topics there, in a co-0p setting.

so today i’m diving back into right start math for maeven. might allow tyr to join is as well…as he’s able. and i’m going back to sequential spelling. also story of the world, book 2. its a good start. i’ll figure out more things later.

and i am thinking of starting tyren on something, but haven’t decided what yet. just to keep him busy for now. i still want to hold onto the no academics for little ones belief that i’ve felt strongly about for years…but he needs something to keep him busy so that he doesn’t bug me and maeven…so i’ll see what i can do towards that end. maybe its time i pull out some puzzles from the shed and see what else i can find that he can only play with when maeven’s “doing school.”

i am going to be starting a story of the world activity class at the learning village to force me to get my butt in gear for activities that go with that curriculum. hopefully i’ll get people to join us that also will add to the activities. i was going to do 4 chapters a week…but then realized that this curriculum is meant to be done one book a year…and the way i had it, it was going to be all 4 books in one year. so i decided to relax and just do a chapter a week, which gives us time to explore activities for that chapter more.  i would like to get costumes for the studied time frames/cultures as well…not sure how i’ll do that yet. i am not rich, so i cannot go crazy on all these plans.

anyway, i think our muffins are done for breakfast…and kids are fighting already. (such has been our summer) must go get them fed.

oh my gosh i HAVE to share this amazing book!

i found out about it from melissa wiley here. so of course i had to check it out from the library.

let me tell you…the book is ENORMOUS! immediately i was chomping to dig in…the bigger the book, the better, in my eyes…and i wasn’t sure yet if it would be appropriate for maeven, nor even if she’d be interested in it. so i started it on my own. right about chapter 3 she saw me with it and asked what it was about…i told her a little about it and she said “read it to me please?”  good thing i only had just started it!

from that moment on we were both hooked and we ate it up in just a couple days. huge book and all, didn’t matter…we DEVOURED it! and there’s not a chapter that didn’t keep us on the edge of our seat. there wasn’t a single part of the book that was in the least bit predictable. there were surprises all the way to the very end! i had no idea what was going to happen and was absolutely enjoying every second!

as a homeschooling mom who really likes the charlotte mason idea of “living books”, i was delighted with all the complex words that were used, exposing my child to so much depth. the characters, as well, were very complex and very well described. there wasn’t anything light about this book. it was so amazing, it was like eating a brownie…rich and chewy and YUMMY!

oh my gosh! when i went to find that code i found out there are TWO more in this series! ok, heading to the library website RIGHT NOW to order them!

maeven is very into emailing people these days. i use zoobuh for her because its very cheap (i think it ends up being $1/month, but you pay a year in advance) and very kid friendly and safe. another plus is that you can configure it to send an email to the parent anytime the child receives or sends an email. way cool.

so i just got a copy of this that she sent out today:

Hi thea! my mom just got The Double Daring Book For Girls in the mail! if you have not read  it yet, you should! i got The Pocket Daring Book For Girls for christmas and i started reading, it and i loved it and now i have The Double Daring Book For Girls and i know i’ll love it too! maeven. 

how cute is that? i got this book in the mail and she’s so excited about it she goes and writes one of her best friends about it. i love it!   i believe the only word she asked for help spelling in that was christmas. she’s coming along nicely,  i think.

just furthers my belief that anything initiated entirely by the child and driven by their own desires is MOUNTAINS more valuable than any forced learning.

this is a child that just months ago had a very difficult time spelling just about anything. and less than a year ago wasn’t even reading all that well. fast forward past many hours of playing computer games and reading/writing emails and reading/writing her own stories and chapter books and letters to family members and keeping a journal (occasionally) and we have a child that has really grown in her reading and writing abilities exponentially all of her own volition!

proud mama? you bet!

Got some really awesome books today at the library. I have had little success getting my kids excited about picking books out from the library, so I go by myself when my husband is home…and its really wonderful to be able to browse the shelves looking for new books to read…new jewels to treasure. Oh I SO love books!

Today I felt especially excited by some of my finds, including:

The artwork on the cover of this one is what appealed to me. So cute! Looks like a really neat book about things that grow.

This book is REALLY COOL! We already read most of it…Tyren asked me to read it to him…and while it was really above his understanding, it was interesting enough to capture his attention til nearly the end. It is a bit long, so we didn’t get through the whole thing yet, but its really fascinating!!

We had a lot of fun today dying Easter eggs. Wasn’t really planned…we went to our Nature Kids class at The Discovery Center…this is a preschool science class we do every week for Tyren…and they were dying eggs and then did an egg hunt. (Also stories about eggs and animals that lay eggs.)

They had some cute egg dying kits…one that had glitter and another that you glued pieces of foil on the eggs. They only got to do 2 eggs each child, though…So of course I realized that it would be really fun to do egg dying at our friends’ house today…we go to the Hudson/Renzi house on Wednesdays to play for a few hours.

So I called Jen to make sure that she was ok with the idea…and she was, so we went in search of the glitter and foil egg dying kits. Didn’t find the foil one, but we did get the glitter one!

Our friends hard boiled 3 dozen eggs and we brought a few egg dying kits (the glitter one, and a tie dye and a regular dye kit and a marble kit that looked just like the tie dye but Tyr just had to have and we didn’t even end up using.) And the kids had a great time dying eggs!

Today we got to play with and dye eggs with: Thor, Thea, Clem, and Emma! Very fun! Then us moms hid the eggs and the kids got to hunt for them. Very VERY fun!   Jen even bought a bunch of confetti eggs so the kids loved finding them and immediately cracking them on each other’s heads, LOL!

Unfortunately I didn’t plan ahead and so I didn’t have a camera. But Jen and Lex took pics, so I’ll have to get them to send some to me so I can post them later.

It was a very fun time! And I got to socialize with my friends while the kids played!

a long time ago i started to get comfortable with the idea that there wasn’t any specific schedule of topics and skills that my children needed to learn at certain times. i’ve been comfortable with this idea, for the most part, for awhile…but i still find myself susceptible to the fears of whether my child is learning enough…whether she’s learning the same things as other kids her age…whether she’s as smart as other kids her age. and feeling to blame if she’s not up to the level of others her age.

this is so silly, i know. it really is, particularly when i remember that i am homeschooling, among many other reasons, so that we can have our own schedule of learning. and not be stuck with someone else’s idea of what MY child should know, when.

thank heavens that my brain tends to come back to my original thoughts eventually…regardless of how many times i stray from my path and doubt myself, i still keep coming back to this wonderful feeling that really i can just relax…that i KNOW that the public schools have absolutely ridiculous ideas about what children should know, when.

i mean, for pete’s sake, they have children doing in kindergarten now, what only  30-40yrs ago we weren’t doing til 1st and 2nd grade! and why? because their method of “education” is so ridiculously flawed that they have to buy themselves more time to cram more stuff in because it doesn’t stick. which is just ludicrous because now they have children far too young learning things they shouldn’t even be thinking about yet! teaching preschoolers, and maybe even kindergarteners, to read is just silly!

i’m not saying that its not possible. of course there are children that learn to read and write at 4 and 5. what i’m saying is that the average child, in my mind,  shouldn’t.

i strongly believe kids up to 4 or 5 (and maybe even later!) shouldn’t even think about more than just enjoying all the fun of giggling with friends and making mud pies and painting their hands and spinning in circles!!

i just have to hold that thought when i waiver.

lately, with all the thinking i’ve been doing about unschooling…i’ve been really feeling better about maeven’s education. i do know that i need to still take an active role in things…and i do, and i intend to even do more…but i’m feeling really good about relaxing more about how things are going and to just let things be much more natural and relaxed. really, its been a wonderful relief!

she IS learning, and learning all the time…and she’s proving to me every day how much more efficiently she can learn when its self-guided.

that’s not to say that i think there’s anything evil in teaching children. i still think that there’s no harm in it when the child is interested in the subject matter. i spend a lot of time on any given day explaining all sorts of things to my children. i am happy to be their teacher, and i think there’s nothing wrong with that.

and i don’t subscribe to the thought that all that my children learn should be completely of their own volition. they simply do not have the life experience to  know what’s out there to even explore! of course, i DO agree they learn best when it’s self-driven…but i see no harm in providing opportunities for them to explore topics that they might not otherwise have run into.

anyway, my brain needs a rest and my son finally fell asleep…so its mommy’s toontown time now!

i posted this a couple days ago at my main blog, and realized i should have posted it here, on my homeschooling blog. oh well, its both places now.

———————————————–

i’ve been doing a LOT of thinking about education again since listening to some radio shows about it…i’ve mentioned them in a few posts recently, i believe (i never can remember what i’ve written after i’ve written them)…

i just was thinking some more about it…i don’t know where i’ll end up or what adventures we’ll still have in homeschooling…but i tend to go with what feels right and good, and steer away from things that don’t feel right or good. forcing my child to do anything “educational”, against their protests, just doesn’t feel right or good to me. i’m not putting value on anyone else for their educational practices…just stating how it feels to me.

one of the big reasons (out of about a thousand different reasons) that i chose to homeschool is that i wanted to ensure that learning was fun for my kids. i’m not saying that every single thing has to be a hoot and a holler…i mean, it has to be enjoyable. i read somewhere (forgive me if i’m repeating myself here…dain bramage, remember, LOL!) that whether or not you retain info can be dependent upon your mood at the time you are “learning”. therefore, if you are in a good mood, with positive emotions going through you (not necessarily pure delight, but not negative)…you are much more likely to understand and retain the information. Whereas, if you are in a fowl/negative mood (i.e. throwing a tantrum or fighting it tooth and nail), when you are presented with the information, it just isn’t going to stick. how could it? i mean really!

therefore, i’ve always tried to back off if i get a negative reaction from my daughter when i’m trying some sort of lesson or activity with her. i’ve not always done this right away, i must admit…sometimes we end up with a battle of the wills…and then after we finally get away from the situation i realize there just wasn’t anything positive that came out of that.

oh sure, there probably will still be some tidbits of info that make it through…some new skills even…but how much damage am i doing to my child’s ability to love learning if i persist in this method of education. i wonder. i really don’t know the answer, but it just doesn’t feel right to me.

just take a look at any public or private schooled kid. how many do any of us know that can honestly say they enjoy school? oh i’m sure they can be found, i’m not saying its impossible…but by and far, children HATE school! i did. my husband did, my mom did, my dad did…i’m pretty sure i’d be hard put to find anyone in my life that didn’t hate school. why? because school, as it exists currently in our mainstream form of education, isn’t enjoyable. it really isn’t.

therefore, if i’m going to take those same methods and apply them at home, a.k.a. “school at home”, then how am i doing anything different? well…sure i’ve taken out all the negative factors of the environment and the massive amounts of children, etc etc…that’s awesome, and i would say that a school-at-home homeschooler is definitely still better off than a public or private schooled child. (in a private school that uses the same methods) but what about that love of learning? perhaps this isn’t important to some people. its crucial to me.

because if you don’t enjoy learning, you will then not only not retain the info you are getting (which, if you don’t retain or understand it, what’s the point of even spending the time working on it?)…but you will tend to shy away from anything that even remotely resembles learning, in your every day life and later after school.

all this thinking is because i’m realizing that i am probably going to have to let go of more of the things that i have wanted to make work. the curriculums i chose (single-subject) for maeven are wonderful, but they just haven’t been working for us. she really is resisting anything forced. and i don’t want her to reject learning.

she’s such a bright and beautiful child, and i want to keep that spark alive in her…that spark of interest and love and joy in the things she’s able to pursue on her own…its really a beautiful thing. and i really feel like forcing her to do any “learning” against her will, is really a damper on that spark. i don’t want to extinguish that…

that’s what most schools do…you see the kids enter school just so excited to learn and within a matter of just a few years, that fire, that spark, is going out and then it eventually gets extinguished. i fear that using a “school-at-home” technique with maeven will do the same thing, and i don’t want to see that happen. that goes against why i’m doing this!

i’m not saying school-at-home doesn’t work for some families…i’m sure there are children who’s personalities are quite right for that method. they probably find a delight in it. but not maeven. she has started to sound like so many public schooled kids, groaning when i say we are going to do some lesson or whatever… getting grouchy when i push the issue. that’s not what i want. this is not a positive learning environment.

i asked her the other day what she thought about learning…you know what she said? she said she didn’t like it! that she didn’t like someone telling her she had to do this and that. wow, major important moment for me to hear that. she’s telling me that’s not working for her. she’s telling me that spark is in jeopardy when i force activities and lessons on her.

so then another day, not long after…i asked her about the story of the world stories…if she liked those? and if she would be happier if we skipped the map work? she was visibly relieved by the idea! she hated the map work! but she enjoys listening to the stories. so, we are now just listening to the stories…and i’ll continue to get books from the library out on whatever we are learning about in those stories, and we can casually read them. and instead of making her do the map work, i am going to just have us both take a look at a globe from time to time and find out where this area is that we are learning about…maybe even copy the map, but not do the mapwork, just look at it. and maybe she can pick out some activities from the activity book to do, if she thinks they look fun.

i’ll just keep offering her ideas of fun activities…but not force the issue. if she feels like it, great, if not, that’s fine too!

and she will continue to learn. she always does! i stopped doing copywork because she didn’t enjoy it. but now she is doing her own writing constantly. she is writing her own books, even a chapter book! and she writes letters to all of us all the time and she writes emails and types to her friends in toontown…and she started spelling words when talking to us…instead of saying her words, she’ll spell them…too funny. i am pretty sure that she would NOT be doing all this if i was forcing her to read/write, do spelling, etc, every day. it would take the joy out of doing those things, and she wouldn’t want to do them anymore unless she had to.

that’s not what i want.

i want her to find the joy i finally did, years after school (YEARS) when i finally started to develop an interest again in learning things…learning them on my own, in my own time…i even enjoyed going back to college for a few classes…because i had been out of that grind for quite a few years, and had enough of a break to enjoy it the second time around. it would have been fully enjoyable to me if it hadn’t been for the assignments, papers and tests, though. i remember thinking that. that if i could just go and listen to the lectures (many of which i found fascinating) and not have to do all the busy work, i would have enjoyed the classes even more!

anyway, just doing lots of thinking on this lately and wanted to post my thoughts. its possible i may continue to change my mind and my views and continue to learn better things that work for me…for now, i’m really digging the idea of “no-forced learning.” it makes a lot of sense to me.

Sorry I really suck at doing anything on a regular basis.   Hey, I’m still adding songs here and there at least!

Just now my son Tyren (TEERen) noticed a fly and I started singing this song…so then I figured I should teach it to him and make it a song-of-the-week. OK, so its the end of the week. Oh well, better late than never!

Here’s the music and lyrics.

And just to be able to post the lyrics here, here they are! (They spelled it different, but oh well.)

Shew, fly, don’t bother me,
Shew, fly, don’t bother me,
Shew, fly, don’t bother me,
For I belong to somebody.

I feel, I feel,
I feel like a morning star,
I feel, I feel,
I feel like a morning star.

Good heavens but this child is making this stuff easy! Who needs copywork? My child is CONSTANTLY writing!

Why in the world would I force her to write stuff she doesn’t want to when she is writing us letters and writing her own stories and journal entries and even writing her own books! Like nearly every day!! I’m not kidding!

Not only that but she’s taken quite naturally to typing. I credit Toontown for this.  She’s obsessed with this game…and she has lots of friends on there now that she talks to daily. So she has to–get this–read, and write and TYPE!!

Even her spelling’s improving because if she spells something wrong, it turns red and won’t let her type it. Plus she’s asking me all the time how to spell things, so she’s getting a lot of practice.

All by her own initiative.

This just is making me think harder about unschooling. Especially since  the past 2 Thursdays, I have been listening to some excellent radio shows on unschooling. Gena Kirby has a wonderful radio show called “Progressive Parenting” (click on “about” and choose “radio show” from the popup menu)  that covers all sorts of parenting topics that are often outside the mainstream. I’ve been in contact with Gena since a friend of mine met her when she was planning to open her store “Mommy Matters” (it’s since been closed and is now only online). We have remained in contact over the years and connected in a variety of ways via our mutual interests and groups and such.

Gena emailed me a couple weeks ago because her guest that was lined up to talk about unschooling fell through and she wanted to know if I had any recommendations. I told her to see if Dayna Martin or Sandra Dodd could do it…figuring Dayna would be available, but Sandra as a backup choice. Dayna is a friend of mine that I met after she appeared on the Dr. Phil show, talking about unschooling…this was back when I was doing weekly chats with Mothering Magazine and they booked Dayna after her Dr. Phil appearance to do an unschooling chat with us. We did the chat and then Dayna and I stayed in touch on the phone and I think she’s just an amazing person. Listening to her recent radio shows with Gena, I am reminded of this and am very eager to reconnect and learn more about unschooling.

I’ve got a strong interest right now in unschooling because of listening to these past 2 week’s radio shows…I even sat down and took notes on one of them today. (I taped them both). It’s really inspiring to me!

I might type up some of what I really liked that they said later…right now it’s getting late.

All this is to say that my daughter is learning so much of her own volition! I LOVE it!

Oh and one last thing…I asked her yesterday what she thinks of learning. She said something like “oh, its ok…but mostly its boring.” I was a bit shocked and then asked her what was boring and she said something like “oh when someone tells me to do this and this…”

I got it. She doesn’t like forced learning anymore than the rest of us do. I got the impression from her that she was referring to my “assignments” that I’ve been trying to enforce with her lately…her “schoolwork” that I have been making her do (although not totally consistantly). This was a strong message for me at just the right time. Having the topic of unschooling fresh on my mind…and a firm idea in my mind of what I strongly want for her…the love of learning…I’m determined to figure out a way to make learning fun for her again. Or maybe its just a matter of getting the terminology explained better because she really is learning all the time and she truly does enjoy it for the most part (I can see it in her eyes)…what she has got in her head right now is that learning and schoolwork are what Mommy makes her do that she doesn’t want to. And that’s not what I want for her.

I’m not saying that every single thing she ever learns has to be super fun…but there’s got to be a better way. I am determined to give my children the gift of that passion for learning that I have attained now, as an adult (long after the schools nearly killed it, but I was able to find it again on my own).

I think that maybe I can learn a lot from Dayna in the coming months. I’m excited to talk more to her about it!