Isn’t educating for the experts?

A neighbor boy who plays with our kids almost every day found out yesterday that we are homeschooling now. He is 13 years old. Here’s how the conversation went:

Mohammed: So, they go to homeschool now?

Me: Well they don’t actually GO anywhere, this is home.

Mohammed: So do you have teachers come to your house?

Me: Nope. Just me.

Mohammed: Really? Like YOU teach them stuff?

Me: Sort of.

Mohammed: Shouldn’t you leave that up to the experts?

Me: Nope. Geez Mohemmed! The schools have trained you well.

Mohammed: {puzzled look}

It was actually sort of amusing to me to have this conversation with him. He’s a very nice kid, and I think he really likes being at our house, because we don’t have a lot of rules. He’s much older than our kids, but he’s really good with them, and I think he enjoys being able to act like a boy without having to prove anything to anyone.

Oh yeah, and he thinks I am a cool mom. :)

September 28, 2006 | Filed Under Homeschool Issues | 2 Comments 

We are very lucky

As a new homeschooler, I feel so fortunate to live in an area where there is not only a variety of great educational activities available, but a huge number of homeschoolers! I would not be so confident in my decision if I didn’t have such a great group of people to network with. We’ve got so many cool field trips and “classes” set up.

Everywhere I turn I see a homeschooling family. When we go to the park, there is always someone else there with kids during “school hours.” When we go to the store during the day, there they are. There’s another homeschooled kid on Alvin’s soccer team. We’ve met two homeschooling families (so far) at gymnastics. Even the classes we have signed up for through the park authority have homeschoolers. How did I not notice this before? It is like when I first became pregnant with Simon back in 1996, and suddenly I saw pregnant women EVERYWHERE! Weird.

So for those who know me, thank you for being there! I’m so lucky.

September 23, 2006 | Filed Under Homeschool Issues | 2 Comments 

Penguins and Fried Worms

Awhile back, I wrote about our free books from Barnes and Noble from the summer book reading challenge (the kids had to read at least 8 books over the summer, fill out the form, and return it to the store by September 8th). B&N had a list of free books the kids could receive if they completed the form. Simon chose “Mr. Popper’s Penguins,” Alvin chose “How To Eat Fried Worms,” and Theodore chose “The Fire Cat.”

Simon just adored “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” and so did I. What a wonderful and silly story. It illustrated a man’s interest in the geography and animal life of the Arctic and Antarctic with a really interesting and fun story.

Alvin insisted on getting the edition of “How To Eat Fried Worms” that had the color photos from the new movie. He poured over the photos after every reading session. He asked a zillion questions about bullies, why Billy liked worms, why was the bet so important, and on and on. He’s an analytical whiz kid. We read the entire book over 3 reading sessions and he was impressed that we were able to read it so quickly. Now he can hardly wait to go see the movie. My fear is that they have made the movie too contemporary. By that, I mean that the language used is even worse than what was “allowed” back in the early 1970s when the book was originally written. If anyone can comment on that, I’d appreciate it.

Theodore has read his free book “The Fire Cat” several times. When we first got it, I read it to him twice. I think Ward Cleaver has read it to him twice as well. When Ward Cleaver reads it to him though, he does cool stuff like echo reading and taking turns reading. You might think it is because Ward Cleaver is really up on his reading instruction skills, but the truth is, he hates reading and looks for any opportunity for a break! :)

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In the end, we are very happy about the free books. I always hesitate to accept a reward when it is offered for something that should be intrinsically enjoyable (like reading). However, who can balk at free books?!

September 16, 2006 | Filed Under Learning | 3 Comments 

An apple a day…

Today was our apple picking field trip. The weather was miserable, but we had fun anyway. We went on a hayride (thankfully, the wagon was covered), learned about how an apple tree grows and produces apples, picked apples, learned how the apples get from the tree to the store, and had a wonderful “family style” lunch at the lodge.

The very best part of the trip though was buying gas on the way back home. Most of the stations had marked their gas down to $2.19/gallon sometime during the day. That’s a far cry from the $2.77 my husband paid LAST NIGHT here in our area. Maybe we need to move to the country!

Here are a few pics from our adventure:

Simon and Theodore (Alvin refused to “look foolish”)

Animals

*****

In the apple cooler (we were VERY wet, and it was only 34 degrees in there!):

Apple Cooler

*****

Sorting seeds:

Sorting Seeds

September 11, 2006 | Filed Under Trips and Travel, Learning | 2 Comments 

No, we don’t have a classroom

Everyone wants to know how homeschooling is going.

“Do you have a classroom?” No.

Pretty much nothing about what we are doing resembles school. The closest we get are the AVKO spelling “tests.” We do these after breakfast while everyone is sitting at the table. They each have a response sheet in their spelling notebook. I read out a word and a sentence using the word, and they write it down. Then we go over the correct spelling of the word, and they correct their word. We move on like this until we finish the list. We’re working our way up to 25 words a day. We will do this every day.

The rest of our day is a mish mash.

Math

They each have a math book (Miquon for Alvin and Theodore, Saxon for Simon) that they are working through. Simon does one lesson a day in his book. Alvin and Theodore just work through as many pages as they want with my help along the way. We also do math games and fun little math activities whenever we can.

Language Arts

Theodore (age 5) is using Explode the Code along with the corresponding “I Can Read It” books from Sonlight. We read together from various other books and he reads what he is able to read, or we do some echo reading together. He’s really getting the hang of it quickly! He’s also using Handwriting Without Tears and doing well with it.

Alvin (age 7) will be starting Explode the Code as soon as I can convince him to do it. We read together (he reads some out loud and I read some out loud) from various books. He’s also working through a Spectrum grade 2 reading workbook. He is using Handwriting Without Tears and balking at it on a regular basis.

Simon (age 9) will do some review in the upper level Explode the Code books starting next week. He’s also working through a Spectrum grade 4 reading workbook and a Total Reading grade 4 workbook. We read together too, alternating as he tires out. He is using Handwriting Without Tears “Printing Success” as a quick review until we move on to Cursive. We will start using Writing Success book A as soon as it seems appropriate. I don’t want to overwhelm him from the get go.

Everything Else

Everything else will mostly be up to them. We have a ton of reference materials for history, geography, and science at appropriate reading levels. They have expressed an interest in Chemistry, so I got Janice VanCleave’s Chemistry for Every Kid and some other cool materials. We have some great history materials and historical fiction books that I hope to read to them. Once we start doing more history, we will make some sort of timeline to organize what we are learning. Mostly I want it to be up to them.

We have at least three activities a week planned outside the house, but last week we did something outside the house every single day! They are extremely social kids, so I’m going out of my way to make sure they get to hang out with other people. They surely don’t want to look at my ugly mug all day!

So, we are enjoying the journey so far. It takes time for those educated in schools (including me!) to let go of their preconceived ideas of what it means to be educated.

“True learning — learning that is permanent and useful, that leads to intelligent action and further learning — can arise only out of the experience, interests and concerns of the learner.” –John Holt

September 10, 2006 | Filed Under Homeschool Issues | 4 Comments 

Our First Day of Homeschooling

First of all, it is 8:41 p.m. and the kids are grazing eating dinner in the kitchen and watching Tom and Jerry reruns on the Boomerang channel. Our late “dinner” was precipitated by a pretty nasty bike wreck by our 5 year old, Theodore, at dinnertime. That put us off a bit while Ward Cleaver went to the drug store to buy a special butterfly strip (we have some in the house, somewhere…). He’s fine really, but this is his second Thank-God-For-The-Helmet Crash in 2 days. We are so thankful for that helmet! Time to buy a new one. I was going to let the first wreck slide and keep the helmet, but now he’s had two wrecks hitting the same place on the helmet hard enough to break the cover. We don’t want to press our luck with the compromised strength. Do you ever wonder how WE survived without bicycle helmets? I do.

Anyway, a few minutes ago, I was in the kitchen, watching cartoons them eat and digging stuff out of the fridge fixing some dinner for them, and it just felt soooooooo good that we are not hurrying to finish homework and get to bed at a decent hour! Wow. It was just such a great feeling to end our first day on such a positive note (despite the bike wreck).

As for “school,” I wanted to start in August, Simon (who had initially wanted to start in August too) convinced me that it would be better to wait until the public schools started on September 5th so they could maximize their remaining summer days with the neighborhood kids. I agreed. Stay tuned — in 26 years, he will be President of the United States of America.

Our first day was supposed to be tomorrow because we had planned a “Not Back to School” gathering at Breezy Point in Maryland to hunt for shark’s teeth on the beach today. Unfortunately, it poured all day. Suddenly, I was a day ahead on my already loose schedule and had to improvise. Here’s how it went:

  • First stayed up until 12:30 a.m. looking over curricula and worrying about the next day.
  • Had a crappy night of sleep due to:
    • rotten congestion
    • being awake for an hour from 2:30 - 3:30 a.m. after Theodore woke with a nightmare
    • being awoken again by heavy rain around 5:00
    • being awoken again at 5:30 by the sound of a power saw and hammering at the house behind us (apparently they had a leak from the heavy rain that needed some immediate repair)
    • and awoken yet again at 6:30 by Ward Cleaver going to work. Finally fell asleep shortly after that.
  • Around 8:00 a.m. Alvin woke me up to show me some cool K’nex weapons he had made. When I put him to bed last night, I found him sitting in the dark drawing up the plans for making “conex wepinds.” I made him put them away and wait until morning. I guess once morning came and he finally made the plans a reality, he assumed I’d share in the urgency of his creation. I convinced him to let me sleep until 8:30. Thankfully, he didn’t come back until 9.
  • Got up and fixed breakfast around 9:15
  • Around 9:45 or so, we all headed down to the family room to check out our school stuff. It was a little weird. They were curious though. We started with our math books because they all love math so much. I introduced Alvin and Theodore to the orange level Miquon books. Alvin is far beyond that level, but since we’ve never used Miquon before, I figured he could just zoom through and hopefully pick up the methodology. I intended that they would cover a few pages in the workbook and we’d move on to Explode the Code. To my surprise, they spent an HOUR on math. At the same time, I showed Simon his Saxon 54 book and explained that he could work through the lessons and ask me for help. The beginning is all review for him. He quickly completed Lesson 1 on his own with just a few explanations from me.
  • We got dressed around 11:00 and went to Barnes and Noble to turn in our summer reading list and get our free books. I also signed up for their teacher discount card. The boys chose “How to Eat Fried Worms,” “Mr. Popper’s Penguins,” and “The Fire Cat.” We saw another woman there with two school-aged kids. I assumed she was also a homeschooler and smiled at her as we were leaving.
  • We picked up the team soccer shirts from the store that was putting the kids’ names on the backs and then went to Arby’s for lunch.
  • Around 1:00 we showed up at the replacement activity for our rained-out field trip — a potluck lunch at a fellow homeschooler’s home. What an AWESOME event that turned out to be. I met some other new homeschoolers and the kids had a ton of fun abusing their house playing with their toys and meeting new friends.
  • Returned home around 4:00 and the first thing Theodore did was run downstairs and grab his new math book and bring it to the kitchen. He completed 4 more pages in it!

Tonight, after I put the younger boys to bed, I went to Simon’s room to say goodnight, and HE WAS READING MR. POPPER’S PENGUINS!!!

All-in-all I’d call the day a great success, even though “all we did was math!”

September 5, 2006 | Filed Under Homeschool Issues | 7 Comments 

Reality Check

I finally got around to cleaning up the basement yesterday, thanks to tropical storm Ernesto making it too icky to go outside.  My husband came home early and I asked him to set up the entertainment center so the kids could watch videos and DVDs.  Afterwards, we all sat on the sofa and watched one of the Baby Einstein videos we hadn’t seen in ages.

I said, “Geez, why didn’t I make a video in my garage and become a millionaire!”  Without hesitating, Theodore shot back, “We don’t have a garage!”

Duh.

September 2, 2006 | Filed Under Parenting | 2 Comments