Oct. 5, 2006 - 10/05/2006
I am cycling rapidly between absolute certainty and serious doubt about unschooling. I am totally committed to homeschooling but unschooling is testing my faith. I have to remember that we are technically still in a de-schooling period. I just feel a lot of pressure from family to "produce" something and give them a "good" education. Everyone else is so impatient that it's hard to sit back, relax and have faith that they will learn what they need to in their time and that they don't have to know 10 tons of useless trivia by the time they are 18 in order to survive out in the world.
I've also been seriously overwhelmed with everything in my life lately. Especially the task of working from home, balancing that with kid/mom stuff and also working on finding myself as a person and in my community on a personal level.
On the other hand I am so grateful for all the good things in my life. I have abundant work that keeps us afloat financially and a somewhat patient husband who puts up with all the weird things I decide and a lot of possibilities for my future.
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Sep. 15, 2006 - I'm back
Ok, I'm back and a lot more confident. I'm just loving this so much! We are totally unschooling which means theres not a lot of visible "results" being produced, but we are enjoying each other, doing fun things and they are learning as they go.
We've found some real cool homeschool community and meet up with other families quite often. All three of my kids are making friends although as I have seen in the past it is being hard for my two sons to connect with other boys. It's not nearly as painful for them now though with a wide age range of kids to play with and not being stuck in a room with a bunch of other kids their same age all day.
I'm way behind on my work and having a hard time focusing on it. It's much more fun to take my kids to the park then work. I find myself wishing I was a SAHM still instead of a WAHM but I am grateful to have the work so we can pay our bills.
We didn't do a lot over the summer as is typical. We never have gotten the worm bin going :-( (I still hope to do it at some point) but we did manage to keep one pumpkin plant alive and grow one big pumpkin. That will be fun for halloween!
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May. 22, 2006 - Forgot
Forgot to mention - thanks for the comments ladies :-) It's nice to see someone is reading and I appreciate the encouragement!
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May. 22, 2006 - only 8 more days
Well only 8 more days of school left. It seems so pointless because they've wound down so much at school that they are just marking time. No homework etc. My daughters last day of pre-school was today and she had a great time since they did field day in the park.
I went ahead and paid for a family membership to the Denver Zoo and signed the kids up for swim lessons this summer. We are getting ready to plant some things in areas that we took evergreen bushes out of last fall so I had the kids each get a sample of dirt from different areas and we used testing strips to determine the PH and levels of Nitrogen, potassium and Phosphorous. It was fun and I felt good doing a "science" experiment. Makes me encouraged as to our ability to do fun and educational things without a set curriculum. We determined that our dirt has plenty of Phosphorous and potassium but needs a little more nitrogen and the PH is too high. We should be able to solve both problems by adding manure and compost to the soil.
DD3 is continuing her push to learn to read. I'm doing it totally at her pace and there's no rush but it is fun to see how quickly she learns things and how much she loves to do it.
I've decided the boys and DH can each take a night to make dinner. They will be in charge of planning, prep, cooking and deciding a fair way to get it cleaned up. It should help them feel more important to the family, have a better appreciation for meal prep and take some burden off of me. I'll continue to update on how that goes.
My DH has a couple of job possibilities so we may have less financial burden soon - woohoo :-) I'm just feeling like I'm in a waiting mode. Just waiting for this phase of life to end (school) and for the rest of my life to begin.
DD3 is turning 4 on Thursday and we will be having a little party down here as well as going up to spend the night in the Mountains and have a party at my brothers house. That should be fun.
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May. 19, 2006 - He had a great time
DS1 got home form outdoor lab today and he had a great time. He talked faster than you can imagine non-stop for about 20 minutes - it was just amazing to listen to. I'm so proud of him and he seems to have grown up a lot while he was gone. We picked both boys up from school early and went out to lunch as a family. It was nice. DH's comment was "and you want to deny DS2 this?" I replied "suffer through a year of drudgery for a week of fun he could get at a camp?" and his reply was "that's real life" GRRRRR I hate that he thinks our home isn't real life and school is. I'm not going to bring up homeschooling with DS1 for a while into summer. With this fun experience under his belt I can see him begging to go back to school and if DH sees him doing that he'll insist we send DS1 to school and homeschool DS2. That's something I don't want to do and really can't imagine being able to do with schedules.
I got my first negative feedback for my decision today from my cousin. He and I are close and he's been my complaint buddy about how we were raised including our education so I expected him to think I am insane. On the other hand I've been at this parenting thing for over 11 years and he's determined to never get married much less have kids so I think I'm more qualified to comment, lol. I did start feeling a little doubtful during the day but sometime in the afternoon my faith was restored and I remembered why I think it's so important to get hem out of the PS system.
I had a terrible day today otherwise. Didn't get anything done and am feeling so stressed about all the things hanging over my head. I know I'll feel better once I get things handled but right now I'm in that paralyzed stressed out stage.
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May. 18, 2006 - excited and scared
Well I finished reading the book The first year of home-schooling your child by Linda Dobson. It was a very good book and I think very helpful. I have a lot of information swirling around my head. This is when the doubts set in. Will I be able to handle it? I am leaning towards un-schooling in most things but I worry - will my kids sit around and do noting but read? I know I learned a LOT from fictional reading when I was a kid but I want more for them. Field trips should help. I've planned lots of field trips in summers past but I think I may actually be able to do them now that at least in my mind they are part of "learning" lol. I think I'll also have more support from DH for doing school stuff instead of fun stuff (doesn't make sense I know). Anyway field trips should help. Also I want to get involved in a group of home-schoolers in my area before the fall comes so my kids can see that between that, spiral scouts, church, and field trips they will have plenty to keep them occupied.
DS2 has obviously mentioned home-schooling at school because he came home the other day and said that "Jade says you have to have a license to home-school." Ack! This is what public school is teaching kids, that parents are dumb and that the only way you can learn is from a licensed teacher. Ick! I can't wait to get my kids out of the institution. I let DS2 know that Jade is not correct you do not have to have any kind of license to teach your kids at home.
DS1 is still at outdoor lab. My thoughts are with him quite a lot. This is his first time away from home with non-family. Also his first time away alone without his brother. The first time away alone for a whole week and the first time we have ever gone more than a day without talking to each other. I hope he is having a good time. No news is good news - it means things are going okay enough for him to stay. I do think he's going to need some serious decompression time when he gets back. I hope DH can have patience and give it to him.
One thing I have to work on the most is balancing the house, my work and the kids. Like right now I should be cleaning the house, paying the bills (overdue!) and also working. Ack! I think I'll get some work started and pay bills intermittently through the day. The house work will just have to wait - isn't that how it always goes?
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May. 17, 2006 - so excited
DS2 was so grumpy this morning about going to school. He said he just couldn't face another 2 weeks. I'm afraid I shouldn't have brought up the home-schooling until he was done with the year. Now that he sees an alternative he can't wait to get out of that school. He's really excited about home-schooling and I think he's going to be a breeze to work with. I think I can do projects with him that are interesting and fun to do as well as educational - something he hasn't had at all in school. I asked him what kind of projects he would like to do and his first thought was cooking so we've started on that. He's made french toast and hash so far and is very enthusiastic about learning how to cook. I realized that he's actually been wanting to learn for a long time. It's just that I'd been blind to it and him. Now that I've started looking for learning in all of life I've discovered so many avenues for teaching without ever having to do "school." A whole new world has opened up to me.
I am worried about my older son. He doesn't want to home-school at this point even though he doesn't like school. He has more of a social component to school. DS2 doesn't have any friends and doesn't fit in with any of the kids i his grade. But DS1 does and he is worried about losing that social outlet. I will have to be on top of my game to make sure we get out and do all the social things we need to including spiral scouts, church, sabbats, full moon circles etc. I think I can do it, the challenge will be winning him over and doing it in such a way that he participates instead of giving me grief.>/p>
DH is still against it but I think he's accepted the fact that I'm going to do it. I think he'll get supportive after a while. My biggest challenge will be balancing work and kids. I work from home but it is quite a lot of work and I can't spend my days focusing entirely on the kids. We'll just have to see how it goes and where it takes us.
I'm also not looking forward to telling my husbands grandmother that I am home-schooling - she going to think its a very bad idea. And I certainly don't want to talk to his step-mom about it - she's a 4th grade teacher and I'm sure she will think I am wholly unqualified to teach my kids. Ugg! Oh well, I am set on my course and I'll have to brave the opposition sometime.
So here are some of the projects we've got on our list to do/learn:
Cooking - mostly DS2
creating a worm bin - everyone
planting, caring for, harvesting: pumpkins, watermelon, sunflowers, gourds - all of us and it's already started.
Animal studies at the Denver Zoo - all of us, we're getting a family membership.
Insects - DS2 choice
Spiral scouts - all 3 kids
foot reflexology - DS2 choice, he is a massage therapist at heart.
Creating a permaculture design for the yard and beginning to plant the edible trees and bushes for it (my idea)
Native edible and medicinal plants (my idea)
Helping my brother at a building site (he's a general contractor, my idea for DS1 we'll see if he's interested
Raise an alpaca or angora goat - sheer, and process hair (DH and my idea not sure if it'll happen this year)
Field trips:
Zoo - frequently
Museum of natural history - thinking of getting a membership too
Art museum
Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute
Road trip to the great sand dunes national park, the four corners, and the grand canyon - maybe some native american studies as well?
Butterfly pavilion - we've been here many times but in light of DS2 interest in insects may go again.
Renaissance festival - been wanting to go for years, this year we'll really go
Ok, so that's what I've got going in terms of project ideas. We may do all or none of them, we'll see. I also plan to get some math textbooks and pretty much just go through the textbook together, skipping what they know and learning the rest. DS2 loves math as it is and I think DS1 will like it better when we can pace it to his personality. I'm also thinking some good grammar studies would be a good thing. They have them doing this ridiculous boring writing exercises but DS2 doesn't know what a pronoun or preposition is. Time to get back to real english and toss out the boring writing, ugg!
Ok, well that's all I've got for now. Got to get back to work.
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May. 15, 2006 - so tired today
I've been pushing the limit and burning the candle from both ends lately. Today I crashed and just couldn't stay awake anymore. I'm a little worried about getting all my work done AND home-school but I am still convinced it is the right thing. I'm just going to have to get even more organized and on top of things and also shift some of the work to the kids which is actually one goal of home-schooling for me - to make them more a part of a family unit, everyone contributing.
Last night we ended up at walmart get last-minute stuff for DS1's trip to Outdoor Lab. We were up early this morning to pack and blessedly I think he got everything he needed. I dropped him off at school at 8am and he will be back at 1:30pm Friday. It will be nice to have some time with DS2 without DS1 since they are so volatile together and DS1 is so bossy and overwhelming with DS2 - a problem we've been combating for 10 years now.
Tonight is my TV night. I watch very little tv but I always catch 24 and medium on Monday nights. Pretty soon the tv season will end and I can practically put it away for the summer. I must remember to get the kids registered for swimming lessons at the rec center - DD3 needs to take her first lessons and the boys need refresher courses. I'm also thinking I should sign her up for soccer this fall. I really don't like soccer but the boys each did multiple seasons of soccer and I think the team sport experience is valuable and it would be great physical development. DS1 has been wanting to do football as well as horse-back riding but we cant do both. Maybe if we aren't subject to PS schedule, we can find a social league he could play football with during the week. Not sure if they exist but it's worth a look.
I've got so many ideas running around my head but I need to put them down on paper so I don't forget them. I'll update later with some concrete ideas for different projects the kids might choose to do.
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May. 14, 2006 - First entry
Well, I am pretty much determined to home-school the kids this fall. I'm not sure how it happened but all of a sudden I feel it's imperative to get the kids out of public school. Suddenly I feel like I can do it and further that it's the right thing to do. I can't wait till the end of school. I leaning towards un-schooling more than schooling at home which is a big switch for me and I have lots of ideas for fun educational things we can do over the summer to ease into learning outside the school environment.
DH is not really on board with it but I don't think he'll put his foot down against it so I'm moving forward. I am hoping things will go well and he will be won over with the results. DS1 is against it too but I am hoping that over the summer his desire to return to school will fade. Especially once he sees that I'm not planning to have him at a desk at home drilling his math facts, lol. DS2 is all for it as far as I can tell. I haven't talked to DD3 about it and haven't mentioned that to her dad yet either. For some reason I think he'd be more against her never starting school than against me taking the boys out. So we'll let that rest till the fall when she's supposed to start pre-school again.
I still have lots of things to decide. What to buy and where to spend my limited resources. What subjects I want to teach with actual lessons or textbooks and which ones I want to address only through experience. I think I want to get a couple decent math textbooks and go through them at our own pace together. Maybe a good grammar book. Then I am thinking the rest could be done through special projects or through them choosing books on subjects they are interested in. We are already planning to build a worm bin for composting kitchen garbage this summer and we've started pumpkins, watermelon, gourds and sunflowers. I am also thinking that the 70$ family memberships to the zoo and history museum would be well worth the money. I also have some ideas for other field trips. I want to get all this info together so it's available but for the most part I really feel the need to de-school for a little while and just relax. Get away from the unnecessary busy-work, the yucky schedule and the icky teachers and just have fun as a family for a little while.
Ever since I decided to home-school I've been seeing learning opportunities in every day life just popping up where I hadn't seen them before. I think it will be fun to see all the learning that takes place without them even knowing it.
DD3 is really pushing the reading thing so we are currently working on learning to read. She is so smart and driven and enthusiastic and she memorizes so easily that I think it will be a breeze.
DS1 still has one big school project to complete before the end of school and it's like pulling teeth trying to get him to do it. The first thing I'm going to do away with is the constant pressure to make written reports. He hates them and I feel they are unnecessary in home-schooling. I'm going to start out letting him do almost all work orally and I hope with time and a lack of pressure he will become more interested in writing.
We'll see. Right now I am just keeping my mind open and looking forward to seeing where this adventure takes us.
