Amen!

Lest you think I’m going to burst into prayer at any moment…

Amen to the sentiments of this article Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills

Apparently, limiting imaginative play for children may cause deficits in executive function, which is a part of the brain responsible for many things, including a person’s ability to exert self-control. Children today focus on toys and electronics for play rather than imaginative and interactive play. In an effort to keep children safe from harm, we have created activities to keep them busy — classes, camps, sports. These regimented activities limit the children’s decision-making opportunities. And to top it off, the emphasis on test scores and academic achievement have led us to approve of schooling over play. It is in the best interests of the children afterall, right?

The article concludes with the following statement in which the author quotes psychological researcher Dorothy Singer:

‘Because of the testing, and the emphasis now that you have to really pass these tests, teachers are starting earlier and earlier to drill the kids in their basic fundamentals. Play is viewed as unnecessary, a waste of time,” Singer says. “I have so many articles that have documented the shortening of free play for children, where the teachers in these schools are using the time for cognitive skills.’

It seems that in the rush to give children every advantage — to protect them, to stimulate them, to enrich them — our culture has unwittingly compromised one of the activities that helped children most. All that wasted time was not such a waste after all.

Amen!

Reading this article, I was reminded of a situation that happened a few months ago. We attended “Colonial Days” at Mount Vernon, home of George Washington, with a homeschool group. There was a wonderful hay maze there. After running through the maze a little bit, the kids decided it would be more fun to run on the maze, and so they did. We moms stood by watching and occasionally snapping some pictures. There was a little stairstep section at the edge that was apparently there to allow easier access to the top of the piles, and there were no signs indicating that being on the hay was not allowed.

Quickly, the school children who were on field trips joined in. We got a kick out of the looks we got from the teachers and chaperones as they yelled at their students to get off the hay bales and go through the maze the way you are supposed to do it.

Free Play

Did you ever hear the song “Flowers are Red” by Harry Chapin? Seems the person who loaded the actual video of Harry Chapin singing this song has now made it unavailable for embedding, but here is a link to it in YouTube:

Flowers are Red

Here is a link to the lyrics.

February 27, 2008 | Filed Under Rants, Moods and Attitude, Homeschool Issues, Learning | 15 Comments 

I’m sorry to interrupt your school day…

Dear Friends and Acquaintences,

You don’t actually have to apologize for interrupting our school day, because we don’t really recreate school at home. If we are actually here when you call or knock on the door, we are probably just having fun together. If we just happen to be “doing school” together, it isn’t really a big deal to stop for awhile. Thanks for being polite though.

Sincerely,

Not June Cleaver

Learning at Home

February 20, 2008 | Filed Under Rants, Moods and Attitude, Homeschool Issues | 6 Comments 

I think I’ll stay inside today…

Needs a Fire

Brrrrr

February 13, 2008 | Filed Under Fun Stuff | 7 Comments 

Another Boy Thing

Awhile back, I posted an entry titled “He’s a Godsend” about my baby, Theodore, and how God (or whatever that supernatural being might be or not be) must have had a special plan for him.  I took it down a couple of weeks ago, along with a related post about “inviable pregnancies” because they were a little too personal. I also realized that there are a lot of people out there who went through similar situations with different outcomes, and I felt bad about that.

Anyway, all this boy talk has me wanting to see that incredible picture of Theodore enjoying life, so I’m posting it here on its own with no story, the picture says everything:

Theodore Jumps!

February 4, 2008 | Filed Under Fun Stuff, Parenting | 2 Comments 

Rated E for Excellent!

I feel a little (no, a lot) guilty about this, but my new favorite blogger just gave me the Rated E for Excellent blog award. Gosh, she’s like the nicest person in the world. I’ve been just about the worst blogger ever, yet she still felt I deserved this.

So thank you Colleen. I hope I can keep up with your (and others’) expectations!

Excellent

Update 2/3/08: Apparently I broke the rules! I was supposed to tag 10 other blogs! TEN! And as usual with memes, I never tag anyone. But this time I’m going to tag 2 blogs that I really like:

Paradise Found

Throwing Marshmallows

I hate this tagging thing. What if they don’t want to do it? What if they already did it? What if I don’t tag someone and they wanted it? Ugh.

February 2, 2008 | Filed Under Fun Stuff | 4 Comments 

Girls Rule?

Thank you JJ for posting a great link in my comments on my Should Boys Be Homeschooled post. You realize that a link like that consumes me, right? And I just had so much time to spend clicking through on the various articles! ;)

JJ posted a link to an organization called the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. There are a variety of articles and opinions on the subject of gender in education, but this article by Margaret Wente, was particularly interesting. Wente notes that there has been a complete reversal in higher education over the past 25 years. Apparently, females now outnumber males in college, law school and medical school.

No wonder the hottest topic in education is how to help the boys. The remedies suggested range from more boy-friendly books (Surprise! Boys are interested in cowboys and cars) to more recess (Surprise! Boys have a hard time sitting still) and more male role models (Guess what! Boys admire hockey stars).

To the average parent, this may seem like a stunning statement of the obvious. But in education, it’s an earthquake. An entire generation of educational theory has been rooted in the notion that boys and girls are the same, and that gender is socially constructed. Worse, social critics such as Christine Hoff Summers (The War Against Boys) have argued persuasively that schools tend to pathologize normal boy behaviour — in other words, to treat boys as defective girls.

That last sentence really resonated with me, but this article is 5 years old. Has anything changed? Apparently the “earthquake” wasn’t big enough. In my personal experience, and in my observations of others, very little has changed to “accommodate” gender differences in education. I can’t find an accurate number to quote (lucky for me I just blog and don’t get paid to write).

The good news is, I don’t have to. I have taken matters into my own hands, so to speak. No longer do I have to hear the teacher say, “He was supposed to be doing worksheets, but I found him under his desk making pig noises.” No longer do I have to sit in meetings with all the Big Scary School People (do we EVER get over the inferiority complex that schools instill in us?), hearing that maybe drugs would help (no, they are not allowed to say that, but they did).

Now, we celebrate boys. We do whatever we can to foster that creativity and allow that creative energy. And YES, it drives me nuts! I am a girl. I grew up in a family of 6 girls raised by my mother. This is all foreign to me, but I embrace it. Boys are different, like it or not. Not better or worse, just different.

By the way, none of my boys has been diagnosed with ADHD, not even the one making the pig noises. His pediatrician said no way, my psychologist sister said no way, and I said no way. Turns out he couldn’t read the worksheets, so he would do other things instead.

stuntmen


kids 1

kids 2

kids 3

reading

fireman

bottle rockets

February 2, 2008 | Filed Under Homeschool Issues, Parenting | 13 Comments