March 2017 Recap

Field studies

Science! Unlike art, science is a subject I feel almost completely at home with, especially when it comes to the life sciences thread. I think one of my favorite times of year, or favorite annual school studies, is the time for spring science, for getting outside again and witnessing nature come back to life. We always start our weekly hikes just before the earth really starts to warm up so that we can watch weekly changes happening in the spaces around us. Later we look for signs that the bird migration will come through and we go in search of as many migrating species as we can find, a "collect them all" that is pock-book and earth friendly. 

And we also use this time to look at life on a microscopic scale, an activity which makes us feel very, very large all of a sudden.

Artistic Pursuits

When people tell me that they are afraid to homeschool, especially in the later years, because they don't think they have enough knowledge to do so, I always cringe a little inside. I figure as long as you graduated from high school you have the knowledge you need to at least go back and review the subjects enough to help your child along the way. even more importantly, our goal in homeschooling has always been to make learning a joint effort, one in which we gently guide Calvin's learning through reading and research, but not through lecturing. I'm helping, not teaching. 

Learning is a lifelong process, and if we reach a subject I can't help him with, I figure we'll just learn it together.

Take art, for example. I am not artistic or creative by nature. I can follow directions (Pinterest is grand) and think with ingenuity, and I can copy art fairly well, but ask me to sit down and sketch something on my own, or paint a scene, or tackle pretty much any artistic endeavor and you're out of luck. So while some parents fear teaching math or chemistry, my biggest fear has always been art.

Over the past few years I have tried several times to use Drawing with Children as a backbone for our work in the subject, and I loved the book—I really did—but the lack of clear lesson plans or directions left the non-artistic part of me floundering. So this semester we tried something new: ARTistic Pursuits, grades 4-5. With it's very clearly delineated and detailed lessons, this was a very big change, and not one that I'm entirely pleased with. While Drawing with Children always expected a lot of its readers, it did so with a level of trust that is lacking in ARTistic Pursuits, which suffers a bit from lessons that seem rather abbreviated and sometimes not very cohesive. So while I do appreciate the clear assignments and expectations, I think next fall we will return to Drawing with Children. 

Driving robots crazy with Lego Mindstorms EV3

Programming Lego Mindstorms EV3 with the EV3 Discovery Book from Lawrence Valk

This is the first year that we have included technology as a homeschool subject outside of our science lessons. The impetus to do so came from Calvin himself, of course, who was fascinated by projects he'd already done using HyperStudio or a variety of sometimes questionable Minecraft plugins and mods and...whatever (I don't actually know what I'm talking about when it comes to Minecraft). Last semester we started our technology studies using JavaScript for Kids, which was both challenging and fun, and this semester we are using the Lego Mindstorm EV3 kit (a Christmas gift from a few years ago that has already hours of fun that produced such oddities as a cookie icer and a hissing, lunging cobra) along with the unendorsed but clearly accompanying EV3 Discovery Book. 

I'm not the technology counselor in our house. It's not that I'm technology illiterate, it's just that I'm not as technology literate as Jon and I don't have the time, or really the interest, to become so. Since Calvin is insistent on getting up to walk his friends to the bus stop every morning (we'll see if that lasts through the teenage "sleep in" years), there is at least an hour after he gets back before Jon has to leave that is the perfect time slot for teching (that's not a typo), and the two have made good use of that time. Jon tells me that the Discovery Book, though not officially endorsed by Lego, is the instruction book that should have come in the box. It offers dozens and dozens of discovery challenges and unique robot builds with clearly written, easily followed instructions. It gets two thumbs up from both boys, or a well earned five stars.

10 things to love about homeschooling

(1) The pacing. Go fast, go slow, go a little of each. In homeschooling the limited number of students, only one in our case, allows the class to go at whatever pace it wants. And that pace can change throughout the year, as many times as you want. Maybe you flew through multiplication but are struggling with fractions. Maybe you sped through Animal Farm but are finding Moby Dick more time consuming. In homeschooling you can set your own due dates, and change them as necessary. No harm done.

(2) The personalized subjects. I do believe in the value of learning at least a little bit of everything out there, but personalizing our homeschool schedule allows us to devote extra time to the things Calvin loves. And again, we can change things up as the year goes on. We focused heavily on literature and science in the fall to go with our travel plans. This winter Calvin was enthralled by the math he was getting into, so we cut back on literature and gave more daily time to geometry. Come spring and good weather, we were back outside pursuing science again, this time with a side of art, because that's what tickled his fancy. We're doing at least a little bit of everything, but our focus shifts fluidly throughout the year.

(3) The personalized style. With regards to teaching and learning alike, we are all different. Some people are visual learners, others more hands-on. Some need lots of guidance, others are introverted, or autodidacts. And probably most of us learn different subjects differently. In homeschooling the method can be made to match the learner, the teacher, the subject, or a mixture of all of the above.

(4) Mix and Match curriculum. When we first started homeschooling I discovered and fell in love with The Well Trained Mind. In it, Susan Wise Bauer describes the benefits of a classical education and lays out, year by year, the methods and materials for achieving one. I sat down and with great dedication created a general map of the next four years, and a detailed schedule for the next four years, and immediately ordered all the materials we needed to get started. Oh the folly. It didn't take long to find that the package deal wasn't going to work, and by Christmas I'd already tossed the detailed schedule and reworked the four-year plan. We pick and choose our curriculum based on what's working, and feel completely free to change it up whenever something isn't. 

(5) The schedule. Or lack thereof, really. Some weeks we work every day but are done by lunchtime. Other weeks we work two or three full days  and take the others off. Sometimes we work on weekends, sometimes we take whole weeks off. When we're stuck at home with light but contagious illnesses we get lots of tedious work done and save our healthiest, most exuberant days for more fun stuff.

(6) The travel, or break, schedule. Related to the benefits of scheduling, we can take our vacation time whenever we want, meaning we get to go when the lines are shortest and/or the weather is the best. One of our favorite travel times is in early fall, after kids have started school but before they've started field trips, after the hottest days, before the coldest. Another great time is January, right between the public school breaks.

(7) Awayschooling. Speaking of travel, homeschooling allows you to take field trips to a whole new level. We spent three weeks in Italy once, discovering ancient  Rome through the Renaissance. Another time we spent a long week touring Washington D.C. after studying the American Revolution. Last fall we took our studies to the northwest. Awayschooling can be proactive or reactive. We've planned trips to go with our studies before, but more often we plan trips then tailor our studies to go with them. Either way, kids are learning in time and place what they could never really get so fully from a book at a desk.

(8) The socialization. What? Homeschoolers are socialized? Here's the thing. Kids are learning socially all the time. They learn from watching adults interact as well as from their own experiences. In a classroom kids spend most of their time observing an adult or two lecture a classroom of kids who may or may not care. The rest of their time they spend learning how to be social from others who are equally clueless in their cohort. You wouldn't ask the average first grader to teach another average first grader their academics, why would we ask them to teach each other manners, respect, or compassion? Homeschoolers spend their time in a more evenly mixed world. Some parents, some teachers, and other kids of a wide variety of ages, all working together to define society and culture. At the store, at homeschool group gathers, with kids in the neighborhood, at the library, at the post office...we learn about being social in the community from the community itself.

(9) The partnership. I am not responsible for the learning or the teaching in our household all by myself, it is a process that Calvin and I work through together. From the planning stage to the implementation stage to the grading stage, Calvin is a partner in every step of his education, and that gives him ownership over it. We all tend to respect our own things just a little more, and that ownership is a great way to keep kids engaged and respectful of their learning processes. It also gives them an understanding of the process, and a language for discussing it, that will serve them well for all their lives.

(10) The witnessing. This one is a little touchy feely, but I can't help it. I love spending our days together and witnessing all every discovery, every new skill mastered, every bit of excitement that comes in growing and learning. Not every day is great. Heck, some days are downright awful, but the bright moments are well worth the sacrifice and hardships. I truly love this life of ours.