Useful Lesson

Never throw away a box. You never know when than one odd-shaped one will come in really handy.

Cursive in Kindergarten

I was at a curriculum sale (Abeka) the other day to buy some math workbooks for the boys and came across a pamphlet titled "Cursive in Kindergarten." Interesting, OK, I'll bite. I took it home and read it through and it was fascinating. I learn all kinds of new things about the history of education from homeschooling.

Turns out, print handwriting (or ball and stick as some like to call it) was introduced in the era of Dick and Jane thinking it would help the kids recognize the letters in the readers. Before that, learning to write meant learning cursive. The pamphlet argued that this introduction of ball and stick writing was the introduction of bad penmanship. After kids thoroughly learn how to print, then in about 3rd or 4th grade, everything is unlearned and they are expected to write in cursive. Unfortunately, it's hard to break those original habits.

Epiphany: my own horrible handwriting is horrible because it's a combination of print and cursive. I retained a lot of the print training, but connect some of the letters to make it faster and easier to write. Translation: bad penmanship.

So I decided to try it (without buying their fancy Cursive in Kindergarten program). For copywork in the morning, I told Ethan we were learning something new and I showed him how to write one word in cursive. He was so excited to write like Mom and Dad, and declared that he LOVES writing cursive. OK, OK, I know in a week he'll hate it as much as he hated printing, but I was still encouraged. I think the theory is a good one and learning about it made me want to improve my own penmanship and purge my handwriting of ball and stick habits.

It's that time again...

We're back into school. Well, not officially, but I've spent countless hours of the last month going over our curriculum, hammering out activities, library books and craft projects that will coincide with this year's learning calendar. It's been a pain in the rear, but I do feel a lot more prepared than I ever have to do this. Amazing what a long term plan will do.

I'm also working on filling out paperwork for the state, something I've never had to do. Ethan is entering the mandatory school age and I need to inform the state of my decision to homeschool. The paperwork is a bit intimidating. It's not long, but each parent has to get their signature notarized separately, and they ask detailed questions about your qualifications even though they are completely irrelevant. (I felt really stupid putting down that my highest education completed was high school. Next year I'll be a college graduate!)

I've decided we're not doing the Omaha Learning Center this year. We're moving even farther outside of town, so the drive would be an hour roundtrip each week and the real reason: I can't justify the expense anymore. I make my own hotdog buns and waffle syrup for crying out loud!! Even though I love doing it, it's still another monthly expense I can't afford. So I'm going to try to be more involved in our local (FREE) co-op group and see if I can get some of my ideas and needs implemented.

Official first day of school is August 24th, which is when the Elkhorn School District also starts. I figure I'd better play by the rules til I know what I'm doing.

Summertime

I was planning on doing some school during the summer, but it's been a bit more difficult than I anticipated. When it's nice outside, the kids will play outside most of the day, and I hate to get in the way of that. However, I have been trying to do our reading lessons everyday and Sean is pretty excited to start reading. He's really catching on quick and he's got the phonics part down pat. Seth's been letting the kids read a verse from the Book of Mormon during our daily scripture study and we can see improvement in reading and comprehension just by doing that little bit.

I realized the other day that summer is my time off as well, and it would be best to get as many projects, cleaning and otherwise, done during all this free time I have. So last week I cleaned under the fridge and stove and yesterday I went through the basement with a fine tooth comb and reorganized everything. I hope to get through the whole house in a few weeks and then maybe I'll have time to do another watercolor quilt!

Spring Break

It has been so nice this week that we only did one day of school. I heard a statistic last week that stated the average kid spends about 1% of his time outdoors. That's about 14 min, the time it takes to get from the bus stop to home or school. I'm happy to know my kids are on the larger side of that average. I love the flexibility we have to just throw schoolwork out the window on beautiful days (or weeks) and get out to enjoy nature.

I've been thinking that we'll probably keep school up throughout the summer. I think it might be nice to stay on a flexible schedule so when we wake up to rain, or just a particularly boring day, we can pull out some lessons. Or maybe with that they'll just learn not to come to me if they are bored!

Cave Drawings

Today for history we talked about Nomads and learned about what they ate and how they lived. For our activity we made cave drawings. It ended up an experiment: what kinds of things could nomads use to draw on the cave walls? Sean suggested blood from animals, so I got out the red paint. He also thought maybe we could make green paint with leaves. Here they are trying to squeeze some green "paint" from a leaf.

Ethan thought maybe the daffodils would yeild some yellow, but he wasn't satisfied because it was too light. We also used "charcoal" from my old pastel set. Here is Sean's finished drawing. (Ethan was being OCD and gave up)

Current Curriculums

We've finally settled into a groove, after six months of everything being up in the air. A few weeks ago, Ethan finished his Kindergarten Math, so I decided it was time to graduate him to the first grade. I began to look up first grade programs and asking my veteran friends what they liked. This is what we came up with for the first grade year:

Math: Elementary Algebra Workbook
This is a workbook I found at our local teacher's store written for Grade 1-2. I picked something a bit above his level because I was tired of skipping around half of a book while they wanted him to learn to count to 10. So now he does about one page a day. Most of them are a good challenge for him, but some of them we have to stop and take a couple of days to learn a new concept before he can finish the worksheet. I really like that he's learning a lot, I just hope it's not pushing him to hard.

Reading: "Teaching Children to Read" by Grant Von Harrison
I got this tutor manual at the BYU Bookstore for the Independent Study class I took last year. I really love this book, it's huge and it will take Ethan through all the concepts he needs to learn. I like the format because he tells me how far he wants to go each day and we do it. It stresses sight words, phonics and comprehension. We tried 100 Easy Lessons before this one and he's responding much better. (Consequently, I have Sean on 100 Easy Lessons and he's LOVING it.)


History: Story of the World Volume 1 "Ancient Times" and Activity Book
I've decided to alternate History and Science by week, so last week we focused on the first lesson in this book: What is History and Archeology. It's a read aloud history and tells the story in a very engaging way. The activity book suggests very good and meaningful activities, and also give supplemental book suggestions for all ages. After reading some of the lesson and book suggestions, Ethan wanted to rush out into our backyard and start digging right away. A lot of my friends have used this series for years. I love that it's adaptable to all elementary school ages so we can go through the series of four books, then start over again and include all the kids learning the same thing.

Science: Apologia Young Explorer's Series "Exploring Creation with Botany"
This curriculum is also a read aloud and adaptable to 1st through 6th grade. There are several books in the series and each are meant to be studied in depth for a whole year, rather than skimming all the sciences each year every year. I had a few friends who highly recommended it to me, and I really liked that it is based on the philosophy of Charlotte Mason (it stresses narration, keeping a journal, active learning etc.). We've only been working on the first lesson this week, but I've been pretty happy with it. I'm not covering everything, as some of it is too complicated to dwell on, but I can read the parts I think are helpful and there are good activities that teach the concepts as well. If we choose to stick with this series, we'll cover the same book again in 4-5 years and then go more in depth for Ethan, while staying basic for Aaron. As you can tell, I LOVE flexibility and re-usability.

Thoughts on Unschooling

We started this school year early, in July because Aaron was born in September. I was SO organized at that point. I went over the whole week's lessons every Thursday night and wrote up a schedule for each week. I picked out worksheets for each day and changed them out once a week., etc, etc, etc. I have to admit, I would probably still be doing this if I had the time. I LOVE being organized, knowing exactly where we're going to end up at the end of the week/year. Unfortunately, the boys did not love it. I could sense their excitment waning, and it was frusterating for me to go through so much effort and then have to drag them along too.

So when Aaron was born, naturally everything that wasn't completely necessary went right out the window. I took a few months off, but when I tried to get back into it--even easing myself into our former schedule--it just didn't work. I don't have time to do even 1 to 2 hours of advance preparation a week. But I was feeling guilty for not having "school" so we started to do more spontanious educational activities.

That's where we are at now and I'm amazed at how responsive the boys are to it. As I've embraced this style, I'm forced to accept "unschooling" as my method of choice, at least for the moment.

Unschooling is a method of education where you don't use a curriculum, or any method or organization. I know homeschoolers who use this method exclusively all the way through high school. You simply learn through everyday experiences. I am still a bit skeptical of unschooling because, how can you learn everything you need to know through your everyday experiences? For instance Math: I went all the way through Calculus BC in high school, and yet I can't imagine a situation where I would actually need differential equations, much less be motivated to learn it on my own. I suppose the rationale is that if you don't use it, why do you need it? Still not on board with that... But I can see how everyday experiences can be a springboard for higher learning. If the kids are curious about something, I can provide materials and activities that use thier own motivation to propel them further than simple everyday learning.

While I used to think Unschooling was the lazy way of teaching, I'm starting to see that it actually might be harder. Sure, there is a lot less day to day preparation, but it takes more mental and creative effort. In order for this to work, I've got to know the kindergarten curriculum backwards and forwards and be ready to jump into any subject at any time. Any interest Ethan has in anything, I've got to be able to recognize and quickly come up with creative activities that will fuel that interest and not kill it. I've got to be able to support his motivation rather than forcing or pushing.

As with anything, balance is key. I'm still not convinced this method is good enough to rely on exclusively, but whenever I use it, it's successful. Here are some examples of the ways we've used this recently: Writing Practice, Counting Money, Vocabluary.

A Well-Trained Mind

In the Book A Well Trained Mind, Jesse Wise talks about these younger grades being information sponges. From first grade to I think fifth grade, she suggests just filling your kids heads with fact after fact while they are able to soak in so much. (This by the way is contrary to EVERYTHING I was taught at BYU as an El Ed Major).

Today we were reading a book about maps called There's a Map in my Lap. It's in the style of Dr Suess and gives a basic, yet extensive introduction to maps and their uses. It mentioned puzzle maps and I told Ethan that we had a puzzle map of the U.S. downstairs. (I hadn't gotten it out because I figured he wasn't ready for it.) He begged me to get it out and spent the following hour using his basic phonics skills to figure out the names of all the states. He now can place and name 18 states all by himself. We wrote that number on the whiteboard so he can work on it later and improve.

It amazes me how well both the boys soak up the information I give them, especially Ethan. It doesn't matter how advanced the information, they truly have a gift for language at this age which translates into vocabulary as well. The premise of dA Well-Trained Mind is to fill their heads with facts and then in sixth grade start to sort out, apply and make sense of those facts. If they have all that knowledge already at their disposal, they can more easily understand and make use of it at a later age.

So basically, all those worksheets and rote memorization that was part of a classical education actually has some merit, contrary to popular education today. Our Elementary schools emphasize creativity and tactile learning. Wise argues that has a place, but in the later grades, when they have a basic vocabulary and a general understanding of the subjects. It's a must read for any homeschooler and public school parent alike.

I'm inclined to believe that both tactile and rote learning are valuable at this age, unfortunately our current learning trends vastly under emphasize rote learning, which is probably why our children test so poorly against other countries.

Money Madness

I've been trying to teach the concept of money to Ethan and Sean, but it's not sticking. Also, lately they have been resisting the sit-down/workbook type of lesson, so I had to come up with something more relevant (aka, unschooling). I posted this list on the fridge and directed them toward a jar of pennies on the counter. They loved it!

Ethan and Sean are learning what "cent" means and the concept of buying something.
By and by, Jenna is learning to count.
(Sorry about the nakedness, I can't keep clothes on her to save my life!)

After a day or two of just pennies, I'll throw in a couple of nickels and slowly work our way through all the coins.

Goin' to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo!

We go to the zoo a lot, so I figured I better make it educational. I wrote up a little Animal Worksheet with generic questions about animals (i.e. what does it eat, what does it look like, etc.). Now Ethan and Sean take this worksheet to the zoo and pick an animal. Sometimes we can get some of the information from the zoo, but it usually happens that we write the name of the animal down, then check out books at the library to learn more. (This is how the Stingray Report came about as well.)

So this time, Ethan chose Orangutans and Sean found a Bengal Tiger. After choosing the Tiger, Sean is now obsessed with them, especially the white ones. The Orangutan was fun; we sat and watched him for a while. At first Ethan wrote down that he eats paper, but then he realized the orangutan was just playing with the phone book.