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The other day something made me think about the time close to 30 years ago now when our family was intact and we used to go to a lake near Eau Claire, Wisconsin during the summer. The whole family assembled there as it had routinely for generations with all the cousins (three generations of cousins sometimes), as well as aunts, uncles, and grand-parents. The main daily event was to swim in the lake, paddle out to Dill Pickle Island, go to the antique mall nearby, and spend leisurely evenings together with no interruptions - prior to cell phones we really were free from interruptions when we were away from home. and play never ending cribbage tournaments. (That's when I learned not to stand in the water when menstruating because fish nibbled at my legs when I was in that condition.) All of the fiercely entrepreneurial young cousins were being homeschooled.. The older ones (I mean the ones older than about 8) made crafts during the year to "sell" to the family at the lake. No, not for money!!!! And not for a fixed price, either! The kids sold their products at the annual family auction for M & Ms. The grown-ups were each issued a certain number of M & Ms - everyone received the same amount of each color too. Then we bid on the various goodies in M & Ms - the seller pocketing and or swallowing the highest bid. Red M & Ms were worth the most, if I remember it correctly :) Yes, we could elect to eat our chocolate but then we would not have enough currency to buy any of the good stuff. Some married couples pooled their assets while others bid heartily against each other. Good fun and great memories of a time long gone are among our lasting treasures. |
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It has been 11 years since I have taught a home school class - all my children are grown or in college - I even just received my second grand-child, Morgan, a red-headed little girl like so many of Virginia and my mutual red headed nieces and nephews. Morgan was born on Sunday morning and it won't be until next Sunday that I'll get to see her and snuggle the newborn soft red head. I digress. But today, at the Museum, we held the first session of our French Colonial Missouri History class for home schooled high school students. We had a great time, laughed a lot, and everyone went home with an assignment for next week. Not one of us knows exactly what grist is as in a grist mill - that's my homework. Their homework will help us build a hands-on interactive room for children to explore French colonial life in the 1700s. Home schoolers do have a confidence that many kids the same age have yet to develop. I knew it was a good idea to create reasons for home schoolers to participate at the Museum. |
If anyone asks me how to parent well (most people think I have), I usually say that there are only two things any good parent needs to know:
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It is the beginning of birthday season in our family - or more accurately, it is nearly my birthday - which I no longer actually celebrate. I have had enough birthdays so a few years ago I yielded mine to my nephew, Timmy, who attempted some 22 years ago to usurp it. We had some interesting birthdays during our home school era. We gave our children birthday parties ONLY when they turned 4, 10, and 16. On the other years the birthday kid chose the supper menu and decided what kind of birthday cake I would make. No, that did not mean chocolate or yellow or spice cake. It meant a dinosaur cake, a fire truck, a tree cake, or a bubble gum cake - leaving me to interpret the instructions. Virginia's and my mutual sister-in-law appeared at my front door on Audrey's third birthday when I was quite pregnant with Colin to find me in tears because the blue bubble gum cake had collapsed under the weight of all the gum balls. It was genius on Audrey's part to request bubble gum for her cake because in general the rule was that you couldn't chew gum until you were four. Our sister-in-law just laughed at my misery and we drowned it in a cup of tea. Audrey's fifth birthday was another near fiasco. Of course it was not a party year but that did not stop Audrey from writing party invitations - the home school room had all the card making supplies any five year old could ever hope to need. Not being a party year, Audrey knew better than to ask me for envelopes and stamps but she did sucker her dad into giving them to her and even addressing the envelopes and walking her to the mailbox. Nobody said anything to me....until the same mutual sister-in-law called. "Audrey did a really good job writing the party invitations but she left off the time for the kids to arrive." How many invitations had been sent? Who else needed to know what time a party started? Party! That presupposed games, favors, food, a cake....a clean house......yes, Audrey managed to get an extra birthday party. Home schooled children show more initiative than others, don't they? Perhaps another blog time I'll talk about some of the other birthdays. Usually they were adventuresome. |
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Rainy Day Walk Were All Grown-Ups Now . . . So fun to be a mom! (See photo to the left!) We visited our grown up girl last fall. Went for a walk around Walden Pond. Many puddles, look and laugh at each other - how soaked and muddy we are! Going for walks today is just as good as when they were little. Remember going for a walk all these different ways? First. . . with a baby in a snugly. Then, an older baby in a backpack. Later on, holding a toddler's hand. Later later. . being a mom walking behind a pre-schooler riding furiously on a trike! The running years! Yelling ahead. . . "Wait at the corner!! Don't cross the street til we get there!" Later later later -- all of us on big bikes. Someone on the walk always does a hand-stand, or climbs a tree. Then the Frisbee years. Later, talking-while-walking about what's comin' up. . .college, big giant tests, applications, stressy-stuff. Now, the college years are done. Back to leisurely just walkin together! Its fun to be a mom! |
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Lesley. . . thanks for telling us more about Haiti and your shared ministry there. Thanks too, Lesley, for going to Haiti last year ! ! ! For those of you who don’t know our friend Lesley went to Haiti last year to pray with pastors – to pray with others – to be present together with many people in Haiti in friendship and in shared ministry. Wow! Lesley, I love how you pray so easily with people – all the time! You’ve taught me that praying is conversing – hearing from God and speaking with God – and bringing many to that conversation. Please tell us more! Here’s a story I offer from when I went to the Dominican Republic, many, many years ago. Different country, different language, different people, but same island. Being there, for me, was a heart-changer. Maybe we helped while we were there - but I know that I came away changed for the better. Received the gift of friendship and saw that friendship takes time – and it takes throwing away time in favor of people. Went with a group – I had not been to a Caribbean country before. I was the scheduler of our group. We were scheduled to arrive on a Sunday. Before we arrived I had been fretting that we - the American visitors - might arrive in their town, too late! Too late in the day! That we would miss their church service, and miss out on meeting many. As soon as we arrived I was overwhelmed by the warm, joyful welcome from everyone. As we arrived in town, as we hugged and met people, I knew this was a special welcome. Yet, I also held on to my schedule –wouldn’t let it go . I kept interrupting hugs and introductions to ask urgent questions of the pastor and of everyone. . .’What time is church? Did we miss it? When is it? “ I just kept worrying about that. After all of us were settled and were ready to walk around the community our new friends led us down the road to their church. Very soon their worship service began. So wonderful! For years afterward I did not connect the dots of this scene . For years I thought about it like this. . .”It was so amazing that we arrived just in time for church!” Much later I realized what had happened - it’s not that we had not arrived “just in time.” Our new friends welcomed us and “held off” their church service until we were ready . . .until we had had time to catch our breath. Their gentleness included adjusting their day to fit us, to make room for us to join them in their community and at their church. What a gift! Taught me a lot. I stopped wearing a watch that year and haven’t worn one since. Don’t wear a watch so that when I’m with people perhaps I will not be distracted by the time going by. Not wearing a watch gives me more likelihood of that – so that perhaps I can be present – with others and with myself as well! This time-friendship experience helped me want to homeschool – helped me want to ignore time and not count the hours or the days of life but just lavish them out – lavish them on being together as a family. May we all ignore time today - and not count the minutes but lavish our presence - making room in our day - to be with the people of Haiti in prayer – to share their grief – and to ask God to help for them and to show us how we can give support. Lord, please heal and comfort, please make miracles happen with your presence. Please help us help. Thank you. |
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On 9/11 when the twin towers fell in New York City where I grew up, I was teaching in an inner city St. Louis public school where about 40% of the students were Muslim refugees. Fear gripped the teachers and the students alike and we had to make instant policy decisions about what to announce and how to help the children understand what had happened. We could not allow our personal feelings or faith interfere with delivering a controlled message. How different this experience was from when the Oklahoma City federal building was bombed several years earlier. Then I was home-schooling and my sister's family lived and worked quite close to the bomb site. Instead of shielding the children from my emotions I was able to involve them in the emotional process. For me, this meant that I turned to the Scriptures for inspiration to turn God-ward as prayer. I daily spent a portion of each home school day in the consideration of Scripture. We read passages from the Bible and each child would then share what they were going to remember or think about based on what we had read. Next we always practiced the discipline of prayer experimenting with its various facets: worship, petition, praise, thanksgiving, confession, and intercession. So, when a crisis happened in Oklahoma, the children could approach God's throne confident that their requests would be both heard and answered. Today I thank God for having heard from the leaders in Leogone, Haiti, where I visited last April - that in spite of horrendous damage to homes and churches, so far none of the orphans in the orphanage nor any the members of the church family have been injured (of course there are many that we have yet to hear about.) I find myself praying as I recall the faces of the Haitians I know. One of my friends, Ken, will travel on a disaster relief team to provide water purification services beginning February 4th. We have relationships with Christian leaders in 22 Haitian cities and these leaders represent thousands of individuals and families. My children no longer live at my home but I am sure that they have breathed prayer for the people of Haiti. Let me encourage you who are currently home-schooling. May every praying home-school pray that what the enemy meant to bring despair and devastation to Haiti will end up bringing glory to God. May God arise and have mercy on His people in Haiti. May the enemies of God's kingdom scatter! Thank you. |
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Reading Virginia's latest post made me think of the maps we used in homeschool. I remember not liking geography when I was a student because I had issues remembering how to read the maps. Now that I am a vision therapist I know that I likely would have failed the developmental tests measuring the visual spatial skills of laterality and directionality ( ask about my Yellow Book of the Eye Can Too! Read series of e-books that Virginia and I collaborated on a couple of years ago). Anyway, I did not want to pass on my deficits or dislikes to my children so we spent a lot of time making, reading, and following maps. For about two years the walls along the gorgeous 1858 vintage cherry staircase were papered with maps - our city, our county, our state, nation and world, older maps of Egypt and Jerusalem, maps with nations that are no longer.... Sometimes I nearly tripped over small map readers curled up on one of the stairs on my way up or down with a basket of laundry - what I would have given for a laundry room on the second floor where all the bedrooms were! Later I found an awesome curriculum but have since forgotten who made it that started out by asking the students to draw a map of the world by memory. The activity does several things. It checks the prior knowledge of the students against the curricular objectives. The activity also gives the students immediate feedback about their own level of expertise and it helps you evaluate their visual perceptual skills - are they familiar with maps but cannot reproduce one accurately? Do they have the ability to create a visual mental memory of a map they have already seen? Do they have enough information to create a meaningful map? Fourth grade inner city students that I taught in the public school, for example, could not reliably discriminate between the ideas of city, state, or country nor had many of them any idea of the name of the big river that runs right past our St. Louis Arch downtown. To build that cognitive layer of mapping schema one starts by making a map of the classroom - maps are abstract representations that don't just make sense to kids the first several times they encounter them. |
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Homeschooling and the Ice Storm ! (How a series of ice storms caused us to introduce homeschooling to another family in the neighborhood and how it bore fruit the next summer. ) If you homeschool in a snow-state, then dollars-to-donuts (where does that expression come from?) you have a homeschool-and-snow story. When we lived in PA and homeschooled, there were more ice storms than snow storms. It’s very hilly there and winter days are more likely to be in the low 30’s F, than the 20’s, teen, or oughts, as they are here in the Midwest. So during the day the ice and snow melted and then at night it froze over again! Made the roads super-treacherous each morning. One winter the local schools closed for ice a total of 12 days! It really was almost impossible to drive —lots of ice and lots of steep hills - a tough combo. Another family on our block faced a big challenge when school was cancelled for ice. Mom and dad both worked and the parents still had to go to work. They asked me if we could take their 2 girls for the day – the first day. It worked so well that each time there was an ice day the girls came over and shared school with us. Their ages were close to my daughter’s and all 3 were already were friends. We did our schoolwork like normal and the girls brought some books from school, and some work. During one of those weeks we added a fun project of creating a map of our neighborhood on a huge, huge piece of cardboard. The neighbor girls and my daughter were art-oriented so they enjoyed drawing things in – the post office, the ice cream store, and their favorite places at Valley Forge Park. - the radio-controlled model plane field, the covered bridge, Washington’s headquarters, and the Valley Forge sledding hill. We could walk to that sledding hill and to the monument at Valley Forge Park, so it really was a part of our neighborhood. We also went sledding and skating and actually driving was OK after about 10 am. Our neighbors got to see homeschool “on the inside. ” The next summer, along with 5 or 6 other working-mom families, they created a summer adaptation of homeschooling. Most of the moms had somewhat flexible schedules and each mom arranged to take a different week of the summer off (beyond vacation time) and then had all these kids at her house all week. The mom-of-the-week kept the kids organized and essentially created a kind of day-camp for that week focusing on something that this mom liked to do, – lots of different crafts were common themes, as I remember. Also, the family who was taking the kids that week also made dinner for all the other families. I’m not sure why they did that except that all the kids were there and could help get dinner ready and then the working parents could just come in and eat and then they’d go home with dinner done. Pretty ingenious, actually. Adapted-homeschool. So, while this was a lot of work, it accomplished many things - saved them all a ton of money because in a typical summer each family paid for all those weeks of different kinds of day-camp. Also, the children enjoyed it because it was more relaxed, they were in a home, they were with people they knew, and the location changed each week. And it made me happy to think that our homeschooling had lead these other families to come up with this creative and very home-oriented way of give their children a good summer experience. All in a day’s homeschool! An ice day, that is. Lesley, sorry you have so much driving! And thanks for liking the flower picture. Took that picture the day we drove up to Wisconsin, and Will and my mother-in-law drove up from St. Louis. We celebrated her wedding anniversary that day. Brought those flowers to put on the picnic table. Also brought a fruit cake, made it the English way, as she is from England and their wedding had been in England, and so. . .fruitcake. the English way means more cake like and not quite so fruity. By the way, we have beautiful snow outside today. The flower pots I still have out there have beautiful mounds of snow on top of them – looks like winter-wonderland. Blessings! |
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I'm very tired this evening after having driven to Sainte Genevieve and back to St. Louis in the snow today - it wasn't actually snowing but the roads were covered on the way there and the wind was treacherously blowing snow on the way back. It makes me think of the times I was tired and homeschooling. One year I was ill for much of the year - in fact all I managed to do was sit in my chair, supervise lessons, and make dinner. I ended up with major surgery and a long recovery after the fifth doctor discerned the problem. It takes a total commitment to homeschool well - in season and out of season - pregnant and nursing - motivated or discouraged. Let me affirm to any tired homeschool mom today that the task is a worthy one and that its rewards increase with time like a fine wine allowed to mature - the buds, blossoms, and ripening grapes on the vine are forgotten when the cork is removed from the bottle. The mature flavor emerges only after the process is fully past. |
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Speaking of antiques - did I mention that we thrived on antique text books. Not when we first started home-schooling - I was much too lacking in confidence to rely on a K-8th grade speller from 1890 then. But it worked when I had 10 kids in homeschool spanning most all the grades (some were home school student-imports- I taught- their parents bought our groceries since it was illegal to accept tuition as a homeschooler in my state). We did spelling via old fashioned spelling bees - after I determined everyone's starting point. Then it was necessary for each student to move through one new lesson or list of words minimum each week.... We also used an eighth grade math text book from around 1930. Talk about mental math! Students who used that textbook had to be able to do impressive calculations by the end of eighth grade without the benefit of a calculator too. Oh, but, like Virginia and the typewriter, I date myself - we used slide rules and square root charts when I was in high school. Vintage math. Slide rules are truly magical. And, as for snow days - I picked up a second grade reader organized around Inuit culture from 1902. Not only could we mesh social studies and reading, we could try to replicate the activities following a rare St. Louis blizzard - how far can you pitch a smooth stick along a snowy path? Farther than I can? But, alas, there isn't any snow here today in spite of the frigid temperatures. By the way, I like the flowers, Virginia! |
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Ever type with an actual typewriter? If you did - are you smiling at the thought of it? So huge, so quaint, so not-now, but when we were kids we all yearned for a typewriter! I started to dream of one at five-years old. A typewriter!! That's all I could do - dream! No easy-bake typewriters back then. If you started homeschooling after the early 90's, maybe you've never typed on an actual typewriter?! I If you haven’t used an actual typewriter, maybe you haven’t even seen one, either ? Except in a movie? Have you? Typewriters and Homeschooling - Yes, they go toether! By the time we started homeschooling typewriters were antiques, for the most part. But they were still around. Ours: an Underwood. Color: taupe Color of keys: forest green Where’s the homeschool connection? When my daughter was 9 (or 10 or 11?) we brought my family’s Underwood typewriter home with us from my mom’s house. She was downsizing. This typewriter had been her father’s – my grandfather’s. and in the technology-sense it had/has no practical value, anymore. But just the sight of it is a powerful memory for me, of growing up. But not of seeing it our home - only at our grandparents. When we were young typewriters meant technological magic. Typewriters had a mystique - at least for me. They allowed a person to type - to create those perfect letters. (I still love the magic of a keyboard!) It's hard to remember what it was like to write everything with a pencil or a pen - unless you had a typewriter. We were pen-people. Most people were. Back then it was rare to see a typewriter outside of an office. Typewriters were not household items. Did your family have a typewriter? Our Underwood - After bringing this Underwood typewriter home, we gave it a place of honor - on a shelf in our basement. (Lesser honor would have been to put it on a shelf in the garage!) Just wanted to keep it around. Then, surprisingly, our daughter and another homeschool friend took to this Underwood . . . with joy! (Yipes! just carried it upstairs again to look at it. So so heavy! Elegant and petite looking yet, one foot by one foot by about five inches, yet it must weigh over 20 pounds. No foolin!!) The girls loved this typewriter. Even though they both had family computers and were proficient keyboarders, this typewriter became a toy-of-joy, for their pretend-games. How do kids play with a typewriter? Our kids used it to help them create pretend worlds. One of those, I think, was either a pretend hospital or a pretend doctor’s office. The memory is real, but a glimmer. They used the typewriter to create registration cards for pretend patients (with long character names) who arrived at their pretend hospital with pretend illnesses and pretend injuries. Very fun! At the time it surprised me that they enjoyed playing with this typewriter - especially so much and for so long. As in. . ."Wanna play with your typewriter today!!" Why? Why play with a typewriter? Typing with a real typewriter takes time. It also takes physical strength! To type (not to keyboard) one needs to really pound the keys to make a letter impression on the paper (or cardstock.) There’s no ability to go back over a letter and make it disappear the way we can on a keyboard! And of course, they’re no ability to save your work – that’s it – the typing that appears on that one piece of paper. It’s hard to believe that typewriters were a tremendous advance of communication technology – and publishing. Again, why? Well, I just remembered doing the same thing. . .when I was a kid. . .at the same grandparents . . .with their Victrola! ( BTW. . . What's a Victrola? A Victrola was an early record-player. What's a record-player? An early turn-table. What's a turn-table? An early "I-Pod" ) We would wind up the Victrola, manually with a huge beautiful crank. Then the turn-table would start spinning and we'd place the needle down on a record. It played old, old, huge records until it would start to go slow—w-w-w-w- and we’ve have to wind it up again. Victor Herbert records. . .Anchors’ Away and others. Tremendously fun. Brought us back in time to a time we had not lived! Gave me an anchor for enjoying history. Where did my grandparents keep their Victrola? At the bottom of the stairs in the basement!!! The place of honor for treasures! So . . . what’s your typewriter? What do you use all the time/did you use all the time, that your children and grandchildren – will find squealingly-fascinating? Soon-to-be-antiques, that will delight? Your car? (If you have a cheap place to keep a clunker - don’t get rid of it – even after it completely quits – the next gen. will love it!) Your cell phone? Your laptop? Your iron? (Just kidding – Do you have one?) Your Mr. Coffee machine? Your snowblower? Old televisions can't turn on - I don't thnk anyway. Does anyone have one? But old radios still work – love those too – all those old radios. (Or “rahdios” as my grandfather would say.) Old things remind us, and can introduce us, to old days and old ways. More about typewriters: No ability to correct - no delete key or insert key. Page Up and Page Down were manual - and lining up a new line was tricky. No ability to store! No ability to make more than one or two carbon copies! No ability to send to anyone except in a letter. But. . . really, really great to have. And BTW, typewriter letters set the template for our keyboard - this old Underwood keys are arranged: QWERTYUIOP! ASDFGHJKL: ZXCVBNM,./ Still the same on our keyboards! MORE HOME TYPEWRITER HISTORY: This Underwood is an antique among antiques. It is not the typewriter my husband and I were using right before we got our first computer. That typewriter, I believe, was an IBM selectric – and electronic typewriter – which was something I had yearned for – for years. Went through college typing papers on a manual typewriter – not this Underwood, but something else – and not electric! We didn’t get an electric typewriter until after we were married. Yipes! From then on it’s been a whirl of computers, keyboard, and printers. Old-new blessings to you! |
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Snow Day Holiday ?!? by Virginia Right now, at this moment, it’s 6 degrees outside. It’s January 2 and we live in the Midwest, so this is no surprise. But it's OK because in our family. . . we are winter-lovers. Cold air feels fresh! Stars look brighter in winter! Plus, my husband is from Minnesota where winter wins! (It wins the “longest-strongest-season” award!) This very cold day reminds me of one of my favorite things about our homeschool. It's a tradition that got started one year and was so good we kept it up year after year. We called it: Snow Day Holiday ! ! ! Snow Day Holiday In a nutshell (or in a snowball) whenever the first good snow fell (the first snow good enough for sledding) we would shut the books, bundle up, and fly out of the house to go sledding. Even if this first good snow showed up on a Monday morning at 9:30 am - no matter when no matter what we declared it our Snow Day Holiday. If we’d been planning on a test for that day – test cancelled! If the first good snow began to pile up on the day before a big piano recital - no matter. If we’d been sick for a few days and felt the temptation to see ourselves as “behind” - no matter. Sledding trumped all. No schoolwork and no piano practicing until we’d had our fill of sledding and snowballs, cocoa and popcorn. Why? Because children love snow ! ! ! As homeschoolers we can move our schedule around and take advantage of the spontaneous joy of the first good snow. We can’t plan which day we’ll get that snow! But as homeschoolers we can jump on it and enjoy it – no matter when it happens. Snow is the weather of childhood. Snow is like a massive amount of toys! Snow is the kind of weather that a child would dream up. Can't you imagine a few children day-dreaming and saying: "Wouldn’t it be neat if toys fell from the sky? Yeah. . .and we could run outside and play with them! And wouldn't it be neat if we could also eat them! Wow that would be great - and what if they were also pretty!!!!! And they kept coming . . . and coming . . . and never stopped, so that if you broke one it wouldn't matter because there'd always be more ???” Snow is that toy. A grown-up might say “But snow does stop.” Well, snow does take a break (a nap?), but the next year snow comes back. And because it come backs (suspensefully!) we are ready to take another Snow Day Holiday whenever the snow decides to arrive.
Message Sent: Choosing to go sledding even when the first good snow falls on a Monday, sends a strong message not just to our children, but to ourselves. (Some may say that the message sent is that we don't take learning seriously. But aren't our messages always in context with all our messages? I think so.) Our children know we take learning seriously. When we choose to put schoolwork on hold for Snow Day Holiday, I think we send this message: “We choose the best for you. And the best, for today, is sledding.” Doesn’t snow have a science side? Yes. Sure. There's plenty to learn and teach about snow. But there are also plenty of other days to learn about the science of weather and the science of the water cycle. On the first good snow day, I love to say: "Embrace the fun of snow!" Confidence Booster: Snow day holidays made my child (and the other homeschool families we went sledding with) happy - and they also gave me a boost of confidence in my ‘creds’ as a homeschool mom. These days reconnected me to the idea that homeschooling really is parent-directed education - not just for the whole program, but each day. These days reminded me, afresh, that woven together in homeschooling is the opportunity to provide a customized education for each child, and to provide happy, unhurried childhoods right along side and with, the learning. Sunny, grassy, slow-lane of life. I like to say that homeschooling is living life along the sunny, grassy, slow-lane of life. In summer, homeschooling children get to grow flowers, corn, and beans. They get to learn a lot enjoyably from those gardens. In winter the sunny, grassy, slow-lane becomes a sunny, snowy, sledding hill! BTW, just saw this photo of the little picnic table bouquet we brought to a family get-together last September at Lake Kegonsa, Wisconsin. Some of the flowers are asters from our garden. Some are wildflowers picked from a vacant lot in our town. This photo of flowers reminded me of the sunny, grassy, slow-lane of our lives, both summer and winter. Snowy blessings to you! |
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Another book game: “Who can say?" Lesley. . .thanks so much for your post "Winnie-the-Pooh on a college student’s date.” Loved it! We had similar experiences this Christmas - up here at our little home. We started going through our children’s books, finding old favorites, delighting in them, and playing the game “Who can say?” “Who can say Madeleine?” The person with Madeleine open would then be the Madeleine monitor, and would yell “Nope!” when the “reciter” made a mistake. Then someone else could try. After we’d all done our best, the one with the book open read it aloud. Joyful joy! So many memories and so much today-joy. That’s what’s so great about these classics. “Who can say “Teddy Bear!” “Who can say “The King’s Breakfast?” Just thinking . . . Teddy Bear, in Milne’s When We Were Very Young (1924) must be the first incarnation of the character Winnie-the-Pooh, before Milne created the stories in Winnie-thePooh (1926.) There he is in this poem, wonderful Pooh – the same self-doubting, ponderous, yet brilliant fellow falling headlong into trouble, and yet always rescued, and offering us insight into our own selves. Lesley, having the kids do hand-work during read-alouds – totally cool! Another friend told me she used to have her kids fold laundry during read-alouds. Younger children folded their own. Older children folded their own and each older child also had a few other items, towels etc. That way squirmy kids got to do something during read-alouds, and also. . .the laundry got folded. Pretty fun! Book blessings to all!! |
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My 20 year old son, Colin, is a math and business major in his junior year. His girlfriend is a pre-dental senior at the same college. For fun, Colin is reading Winnie the Pooh stories outloud to Whitney. Over the summer Alice, home from college, read aloud various books to Roger, a senior in high school. When everyone was in homeschool, I read every afternoon for several hours outloud to the whole gang. I cried at the end of A Tale of Two Cities. I laughed my way through the politically incorrect (by today's standards) Penrod & Sam. We read Little Arthur's England, a classic British children's history book and Microbe Hunters and the Tolkein Trilogy and the Narnia Series. I read Lamb's Tales From Shakespeare and the Bible in multiple translations and, when it came time for the kids to read Shakespeare, we imported other homeschoolers and assigned them parts so everyone could really experience the plays. Not only did this build shared cannon of classical literature, it fostered a love of reading and engaged our imagination richly. While listening, everyone was welcome to do a quiet seated activity as long as it did not include words - I provided knitting needles and yarn, paper and crayons, colored beeswax for modeling, geometric pattern blocks, and quiet building toys. Multi-tasking is a critical skill. |
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Homeschooling is like soup - it takes a while! Learning takes a while. Learning doesn’t happen in same-sized bits, each day, every day. Learning isn’t linear. Learning doesn’t show up steadily. But that doesn’t mean it’s not on its way. Just like soup, before it comes together, learning is underway and on its way. Back in 1992 after 2 years of homeschool, how did I know if it was working? How did we know if learning was happening, or on the way? - Was it test scores ? ? ? Nope . . . because (thank goodness) we didn’t do standardized tests back then! Did them later, but somehow a surprising-surge-of-wisdom made me hold back on those for a few years. - Was it organized lesson plans and super-duper curriculum ? ? ? Nope . . . because despite having purchased organized lesson plans and super-duper curriculum through Calvert, and despite my best efforts to stick to their schedule I just couldn’t do it. After a few months I the mom began to meander around, mix and match, and just-not-quite-follow it! So how do we know, how did I know, if we should keep doing the things we were doing? Homeschooling is an art. It may be a science, and I’m sure that if we could see learning at a brain level, we could see the science of it. But just as when we create delicious soup homeschooling works differently for different kids in different years and in different subjects. One year math goes fast. Another year math goes more slowly. Does it mean your homeschool is a success one year and a failure the next? Nopey-nope. Just as one day I have parsley, a little beef, a few potatoes, an onion, salt and pepper, some frozen beef soup stock and add those together. But I decide not to add the parsnip because it just doesn’t fit. The same thing is true with homeschooling. Maybe the math and the science and the books everyone is reading and the essays they are writing are great! They’re all cookin’ and just because I have those Spanish language tapes, doesn’t mean that the time is right or that there is enough time, to include them. . . .at least not right now, this year. - But how do we know it’s working? We don’t really know. But just as we check the soup from time to time and make some adjustments, we can do that with homeschooling too. With soup we may decide to add that parsnip, after all. Or we may decide to add a can of tomatoes. With homeschool we may decide that this phonics program is creating anxiety and not a smidge of learning. Enough already! Enough with these phonics! Or, we may decide that slow-and-steady-crockpotcookery- of-phonics wins the race and that these phonograms are a help. We keep at it and suddenly this child takes a jump in reading-fluency jump. Homeschooling is like soup – it takes a while. Which is great news because that's what we have - we have a while. It's also great news because learning is so much fun (just like making soup) all along the way. And even after it's over, it's really not. The recipes are to be shared. Though each family changes the homeschool recipe and creates another secret recipe. Blessings to all! |
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The best Christmas home school project involved gingerbread architecture. Each high school student had to choose a genre or period and then figure out how to articulate a gingerbread house that represented that style. We ended up with a towering pagoda and a Versailles-inspired palace. It was an extension of a tradition whereby I used to make about 10 gingerbread houses each year as gifts for people who had been especially important to me during the year - only no one got a second gingerbread house. So, assigning the home school project connected the holiday with math, art, and history in a way that the kids loved especially because I left them in charge of the baking and decorating as well. Finger licking aside, the project built skills and memories. This year I think I'm making some very unique gingerbread renditions of the Bolduc House Museum, a nonprofit client for which I work a lot. Hopefully having written this blog will make me honor-bound to actually do what I envision as gifts to the various board members. I'll let you know next week. |
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Not having had enough cash to make Christmas easy, December usually contained a million more items on the to do list than any other time of the home school calendar for me. The only competitor was when a new baby was fewer than about three months old. Those were times that home school just didn't work or at least for me it didn't work normally. To abandon the routine of the home school structure can be worse than trying to fit more things in around the edges - at least the only one to become insane would be me but that was intolerable when the goal was merry and bright. So, my inevitable solution was to keep the home school schedule but drop the subjects that required me to plan, monitor, assess, or grade anything. That left us with art, music, read alouds, Bible, cooking, sewing or the exact subjects that can be achieved by Christmas baking, making ornaments and writing greetings on cards. When all else fails, have a snow day. |
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When we started home-schooling there wasn't a lot of encouragement. We had to constantly cope with the disapproval of our friends and family and there wasn't the mitigating assistance of support groups, co-ops or piles of catalogs hoping to capture our curriculum dollars. Those things definitely increased as the years went by until at the end of my tenure as a home-schooling mother I had my kids enrolled in home-school gym class at the local Salvation Army, a high school drafting course by correspondence with the University of Missouri's high school distance learning program, and a middle school drama class at a local home school co-operative. Today one of my nonprofit clients is the Bolduc House Museum in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. This historic house has stood on its present location since before 1790. Until now, however, the museum has not provided programs directed at the home school audience. My role there is as the interim site manager. So, of course, as we plan the next year I have home schoolers on my radar. Beginning in February we expect to host a pilot home school high school class about the region's French Colonial history that includes a focus on museum studies and historical preservation. I hope to recruit ten students who will pay around $25 each for a materials fee and also commit to contribute 30 volunteer hours to the museum. The class will meet weekly for three hours for 12 weeks. It will be keyed to the Missouri State Curriculum Standards and, in addition to functioning as an elective history credit, the students who complete the class and the volunteer hours will be eligible to apply for employment at the Museum as we have positions available. I'd love to have these ideas critiqued by parents who are homeschooling high school students today. And, of course, anyone who knows home schooled high schoolers in the Ste. Genevieve area of Missouri who would like to be in the class, email me at bolduchouse@gmail.com. Thanks. |
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Virginia's moving story reminds me of how we moved and home-schooled as well - FROM Illinois to Missouri. Esther was eight and working on the third grade and Nancy was about 15 months old. We moved into an OLD OLD house that had been vacant for 20 years - talk about cobwebs. I elected to take time off from school to accomplish the move - we nearly had amassed the 1000 hours needed and were mostly done with the grade level objectives by early February anyway. We were really pretty much done when Nancy came down with meningitis two weeks before Easter. I couldn't multi-task anymore - pregnant with Audrey, 24/7 for 14 days in the hospital with Nancy, I sent Esther alone on a plane to my mother in New York City. Home school does stretch with the demands of family life, though. In my opinion it takes a while though before the home school mom feels enough confidence to organize it to fit. New babies help build flexibility and home school is wonderfully adaptable to the need to budget a few weeks for postnatal recoveries. It also can be adjusted for vacations, company, big home-decorating projects, or abundant crops that need to be put up for the winter and can't wait until the next break. My advice is to remember that you are the one in charge. Set a schedule that you can manage - eventually we found one that did seem to work best for us: three weeks of school and one week off year round. But don't settle for someone else's home school schedule. Experiment until you find one that works for the particular needs of your family. |