Walking Therein

Home with the Babes and the High Schoolers

8:08 PM, Monday, September 17, 2007 .. Posted in Living Learning Moments, A Dixon Home Education .. 0 comments .. Link

I was on IM with a friend a few weeks ago, and we were talking about what we had been doing lately... we started talking about blogging, and I said I had written a post on HWTB. I had to chuckle at her response:
"What's that? Home With The Babies?".
I chuckled OUT-LOUD for quite some time. While I could see why she said that, it was still quite humorous to me. And it was about 3 in the am.
I explained to her that I meant Home Where They Belong, TOSPUBLISHER's blog, but I thought, yes, Home With The Babes... Soon I would be homeschooling with the Babes. Soon we would be tackling unit studies and craft times, textbooks and workbooks.... With children ranging from Amanda, 17 to Lucy, 5 months, we homeschool from high school to infant, and it is quite a task sometimes.

It used to totally stress me out. And that was when I only had 5 children! I thought I had to have a project for each child, fitted to their own age - and "grade", all the while juggling a toddler-specific fun time. Ahhh... un-huh. Not anymore. The freedom of homeschooling is freedom to live. Our children are constant learners, and learn best as we all do - through real-life experiences and trial and error. You know, the old - "How many times did Thomas Edison make the light bulb wrong before the 1 time he made it right?" Trial and Error, real-life learning.

While we use workbooks and text books for Math and some for English, our children learn more math in application by cooking and shopping and measuring and building than they do by sitting at a desk doing worksheets. They learn good verbal English skills by speaking them and hearing them spoken. They learn good spelling and writing skills by reading well-written classic books and seeing their work corrected. Not to lessen the importance of children writing things out or practicing in textbooks, but if the application is lost, then will they have to suffice living out of a manual for the rest of their lives? Yikes, I hope not!
Homeschooling them in application makes it an experience to be remembered, and one that can be shared with younger, watching siblings while the older children do the activity.

We will be doing Spanish this year with Amanda and Jocelyn. As Amanda and I were planning for this year, I told her that we were going to practice Spanish in front of the Littles, and if they join in, great; if not, they will learn some things by hearing them. Of course, can you imagine us sitting there, amidst 5 or 6 other children, speaking to each other in another language, repeating foreign words that just sound, well, funny? It will be hard to keep them away, I'm sure. They will want to know what we are saying, and what it means. Then, they will want to try it themselves. I think, before long, we will *all* be learning Spanish, what do you think?

We make Mexican food from scratch all the time here, but can you imagine how much fun we would have if we all joined in and made sopaipillas or even some fried ice cream? I don't think I could draw the line there between the high schoolers and the Littles. Eric, the 10 year-old and Hannah, the 7 year-old have been my tortilla-makers the last few times. I think they would have a blast 'frying ice cream'.

So, homeschooling High Schoolers with the Babes. It's going to be fun. If the Littles get bored, well, we'll count Legos. Or I'll sit them down with a blank sheet of paper and some markers, and we will all have a sketch-time... Whatever they do, they will be a *part* of the learning, not apart *from* the learning.

Now, back to canning those tomatoes. Which, I might add, were prepared mostly by Rachel, our 13yo, and her little brother, Isaac, who is 4. I did have to wrestle Caleb, the 2yo, a few times though... He wanted to help wa-a-a-y too much with ~~squishing~~ cleaning them!!

Blessings! -Jacque

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