In their free time, they do school

So, parents of schooled kids wonder what schooled kids do in their free time.  They play video games, of course.

My kids?  Well, in their free time, they do school.

I’m being completely serious.

Alasandra just linked to a relatively positive article about homeschooling in Illinios.  The article just made me think about how we homeschool.  People are positive when they think you are doing school at home.  You know — the way they imagine school should be.  That has to be better than school, right?  It’s one-on-one and individualized to the learner.  But what about people who don’t do school at home?  What about those of us who completely buck the system?  Are they so congratulatory then?  Probably not.  It doesn’t fit into their educational paradigm.

Tonight, we visited News Channel 8 studios.  The kids actually got to be on live TV (that was a surprise to all).  When we got home, they got out their video camera (we got them a cheap digitial videocam last year) and pretended to do newscasts.  I was chuckling over things I heard them say like, “Back to you, Phil,” and “We’ll be live in 5-4-3-2-1…”

You may have already read my recent post about how Simon has decided to become a writer.  He has continued to write about 2 pages every day (handwritten).  He is choosing this as a fun thing to do.  I’m so happy! He only does this at night though, after a good long day of video gaming!

Nighttime around here is filled with educational activities.  Their days are spent on the computer playing games — which, by the way, include an amazing amount of learning about economics, math, and social interactions/getting along with others/cooperation.  I’m not ready to argue that computer time is a positive thing, but I’m beginning to believe that it is.

At night we do our AVKO Sequential Spelling tests (all three boys do it together at the same level).  They complain and laugh and try to get out of it, but we do it anyway.  They know that spelling is important.  That is really the only non-unschool thing we do.  We have math books that we work through, but not consistently.  They are great with math, all of them, but in different ways.  I truly believe that when they are ready, they will learn it.

So, the big difference I see with homeschooled and schooled kids is how they spend their free time. Do you see that too?

November 19, 2008 | Filed Under Homeschool Issues | 9 Comments 

Unschooling

I never push writing.  I worry about it a lot — too much, I’m sure, but I never push.  It’s scary for me, but I really want them to want to write.

Last night, Simon (age 11) came to me and said, “Mom, maybe as one of my learning things, I could write stories.”

I said, “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!  Yes! Yes! Yes! Please write stories!”  “Gee honey, that’s a great idea.”

He went up to his room and wrote two full pages of an adventure of some sort of fight the hero is having with a huge monster.  He is soooooo excited.  He wants to become a famous author now.

Be still my heart!

November 16, 2008 | Filed Under Homeschool Issues, Learning | 12 Comments 

More on the Socialization Myth

A great article called “The Real Job of Socialization” was just posted on Life Without School.  In it, Steph W. says:

…we all know that “socialization” — the process by which kids acquire values and learn to relate to other human beings — takes place within the family and community. Schools can certainly play a part in that, but real socialization always — for better or worse — occurs in the heart of the family and community.

She goes on to say that she feels that the schools are failing in part because they are trying to shoulder responsibilities for which they were not designed to handle.

Check it out.

September 24, 2008 | Filed Under Homeschool Issues | 1 Comment 

First Day of Not School

I’m an unschooler at heart. I WANT to believe in unschooling. I’ve seen it work in people I know and love dearly. I have seen it in process with friends’ kids. I read about it and believe in it. But I cannot seem to shake the fear that it won’t work for MY kids.

But apparently I don’t actually believe in it! You should have seen me last night. I wish I had had my camera out. I was meandering back and forth from the bookshelves to the floor hauling books from the shelves and piling them in stacks around me — math, vocabulary, science, reading, literature, writing, and everything else. As I sat in the middle of my stacks, I couldn’t believe all the stuff I had purchased with high hopes of using it and them loving it. As I went through this process, they fairly well ignored me and watched TV while my husband built a new computer for me from scratch (nice guy!).

I started getting frustrated and expressing it. I stated that I couldn’t believe that we hadn’t “done anything” since November 2007 (I date the pages as they complete them). Then I went on my math tirade (more of a verbal diarrhea then a tirade actually) about how you have to do math every day or you forget it, like a foreign language. Yada. Yada. Yada.

Mind you, this was about 10:00 p.m. I hauled out an Usborn Book of Knowledge and handed it to dumped it on Simon saying, “Here. Find something interesting to read.” I did the same to Alvin with a Kingfisher book of Science. I continued on with my quest to organize and decide on this year’s plan.

Before I knew it, Simon had found something in his book about sonic booms with an actual photo and couldn’t wait to show it to me. Alvin was up in the kitchen doing experiments with sound (he had put saran wrap over cup, salt on the wrap, and was banging a drum next to it to watch the sound vibrations make the salt jump). He ran to his dad saying, “Did you know that sound travels 100 times faster through wood than through air?!” They had taken those books and reveled in the new knowledge. I was so happy!

And tonight, probably out of guilt, Simon completed Lesson 1 in Wordly Wise 3000 book C. It is a 2nd grade book. He is now in 6th grade. He said he wanted a harder book. I said, “Try this one first. I’d hate for you to try a harder book and get discouraged.” He promptly completed Lesson 1 with no errors. None. I showed him how to use the pronunciation guide and how the accent symbol works. He read through the word list and finished all 4 exercises. It was definitely too easy for him. He was right.

As for math, we have done a great job with Living Math. Ward Cleaver is FANTASTIC at involving them in real world math problems based on our daily lives. He tries to make it fun for them in a way I cannot do with my left brained, sequential belief in math textbooks.

Writing is a completely different issue. I really think we fail in that category. But again, I need to find a way to make it meaningful for them. Tonight I think we came close with Simon. We explained to him the reason why we changed pediatricians when he was younger. Nobody could read this doctor’s handwriting, not even the doctor himself. That may have never been a problem for some patients, but since Simon had some health issues, we depended on accurate records of his doctor visits. Suddenly, I think he understood that written communication is only meaningful if others can read and understand it. It was like a lightbulb went off for him. Maybe tomorrow it will be gone, but I really hope that we sparked enough understanding in him (at age 11) that he may just believe that writing is important.

So I haven’t solved my unschooling problem. I still want to unschool, yet I feel compelled to force math and writing on them. I have heard numerous stories about how math and writing suddenly click for kids as teens, but I’m so scared to wait that long. Does anyone have advice?

September 3, 2008 | Filed Under Homeschool Issues, Learning | 25 Comments 

ADHD Serves a Purpose

Since I am apparently incapable of writing anything of my own (sorry, I’m a very busy mom these days), take a minute to pop over to Stephanie’s blog Throwing Marshmallows for a great post about Michael Phelps, ADHD, and spelling.

August 16, 2008 | Filed Under Homeschool Issues, Learning | 1 Comment 

Home Is Where the School Is

Thanks JJ for posting a link to a story in my local paper! I have to share it as well now, because the author, Gregory J. Millman, just made so many great points.

Home Is Where the School Is

Here are four things that stood out for me:

It’s hard to generalize about home-schoolers, but if there’s one thing we know, it’s that we are changing the world, or at least the world of education choices. Others, though, see us as either misguided or threatening — and probably cheered last month’s California appeals court ruling that all children in the state must be taught by credentialed teachers.

I remember excitedly telling someone a couple of years ago that I was going to homeschool, and he looked at me funny and said, “Is that legal?” That’s when I realized that not everyone shared my enthusiasm.

But “home-schooling” is a misnomer, really. Most of it doesn’t even take place at home, and the schooling has little in common with what goes on in school.

We once made a playdate with another homeschooling family, and we had to schedule it 3 weeks out before we could find a date where we were both available. We have activities, classes, field trips, and fun scheduled at least 4 days of the week. It is such a relief when we have a quiet day together at home. Our experience is typical, from what I have observed of other homeschooling families I know. We all laugh that homeschooling doesn’t happen at home. My husband and I joke that we are basically providing our kids with an a la carte private education.

Though we first tried to teach the children what the official curriculum standards said they ought to be learning in school, we soon realized that this only made sense in the context of a school. So we scrapped dry textbooks and workbooks and found more interesting ways for our children to learn.

This is the key to homeschooling. I think most of us start out trying to re-create, even loosely, school at home. We are worried about keeping our kids “on grade level” and covering all the content and subjects that the schools cover. Then, as we talk to others and observe our own and others’ kids, we begin to understand Millman’s statement. The term “grade level” that was so important when our kids were in school is irrelevant in homeschooling. People who believe education happens in a building, separated from the world, segregated by age, led by experts, just don’t get why we aren’t worried.

The results? Studies have shown that home-schooled children outperform the conventionally schooled not only on standardized academic tests but also on tests of social skills. This, I believe, isn’t because home-schoolers do things better than schools do them but because we do better things than schools do.

Yes! What could be better than customizing an educational approach for each of our children based on what works for them? And that isn’t as hard as it may sound. We learn an amazing amount from everyday life. We have more time together and opportunities to explain and work with our children. We see immediately whether something is working or not working and can adjust our methods on the fly.

According to the article, “Gregory J. Millman is co-author, with Martine Millman, of ‘Homeschooling: A Family’s Journey,’ to be published in August.” I’m looking forward to reading it.

March 22, 2008 | Filed Under Homeschool Issues | 6 Comments 

Carnival of Cool Homeschoolers

Shez over at Homeschooled Twins has posted the inaugural edition of the

Carnival of Cool Homeschoolers

Carnival of Cool Homeschoolers.

She has posted links to a bunch of neat stuff, including my “Amen” post regarding the importance of free play to children’s brain development.

Thanks Shez!

March 19, 2008 | Filed Under Homeschool Issues | 2 Comments 

The Educational Experiment

One of my newly found unschooling blogs Unschool Days has a new post up today about justifying unschooling to those who don’t. It’s a great read. Someone suggested that she shouldn’t use her child for an educational experiment, and this post is her rebuttal. Here’s a titillating tidbit to entice you to read it:

If education is an experiment, then we as unschoolers are in fact the control group. For we are raising our children outside of the experimental treatment called public schooling.

It really is hard to respond thoughtfully to a topic that causes defensive posturing from both sides. People make the decision that works for them, and really nobody should have to defend their choice to others who have chosen differently. But alas, I hear it often. Fortunately for us though, nobody has suggested that we leave town.

By the way, while you are over there, be sure to read her “Decision to Unschool” story.

March 10, 2008 | Filed Under Homeschool Issues | Leave a Comment 

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 

Next Page »