Flexible schooling

We have gone through a transition over here. As far as homeschooling goes I have forever held unschoolers in a very high regard and from the start that kind of learning environment has always been my goal. Lately, however, I have found myself leaning harder and harder on guides—not curriculum per se, but learning guides—and I have been grappling with the increasing distance between where we are and where I want to be. I had this image of getting up in the mornings and following our learning desires from dawn until dusk, but lately we've both fallen enjoyably into following first Math-U-See, then the units in Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, and now the progression in The Story of the World. One subject at a time I have been giving in, or giving up, as I tell myself.

Then, a few weeks ago Calvin asked if he could stop writing in his journal and start doing some other kind of writing practice. I went in search of an answer to this request and came across The Well Trained Mind, by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise. This is a method of education that is based on the classic trivium of learning stages: first grammar, then logic, then rhetoric. Now, in some part this seems like exactly what I wanted to avoid—the concept of rote memorization by repetition in the early grades seems like it was made to kill an interest in learning. But I decided to give some of it a try, and Calvin is eating it up. He loves the spelling workbooks, the poem recitation and memorization, and the grammar exploration.

So now I can no longer honestly say we are unschoolers.

This leaves me torn. If you consider that we started out unschooling (following Calvin's interests and encouraging learning in every situation) and only recently began to give over to outside influence in methods, Calvin is a wonderful example of unschooling success. He asks questions and pursues the answers, with or without adult help. He is eager to master skills and usually willing to try and try again in order to do so. When he has struggled beyond normal with a concept I have always set it aside and not much later he returns to it, usually on his own, only to grasp it with ease. He is a happy, eager, and able learner all on his own. So why am I looking to curricula at this point? I'm not sure. Maybe it's because in many cases I feel that following a natural progression of information can be helpful, and having a guide to that natural progression in front of me is a comfortable crutch. Or maybe it's because I think there actually may be something to the concept of the trivium.

Unfortunately, saying that we are following a classical education doesn't feel quite right, either.

We've been loosely trying the concepts in The Well Trained Mind for a couple of weeks now, and like I said Calvin is eating it up. But even though I know we'll have to give up the title of "unschoolers", I'm also not ready to say that we are plainly following the classical education arc. In health they say "everything in moderation" and I think methods and curricula should come with the same warning. I'm still trying to fit the process uniquely to Calvin's needs and desires, not just following the recipe to the letter. Math-U-See is where I come closest, but we use games and books to supplement the worksheets, and even as replacement for worksheets that are over-repetitive. We are doing the units in BFSU, but when there is extra interest we spend extra time and delve more deeply and do more research. The same is especially true for The Story of the World. Calvin has a great love for history. The place where I am having to be the most inventive is in the actual grammar portion of the classical education. Via unschooling, learning naturally by using and doing, Calvin has become quite proficient in this subject for his age, and yet there are some things, some skills, that have been missed. So we are wending our way through the grammar, spelling, and writing books recommended for his age, but they are actually rather easy for him, and I find myself supplementing, altering, and sometimes completely cutting out recommended lessons.

Perhaps I can refer to us from now on as flexible schoolers.

I am still thinking about this whole thing. I'm doing a lot of hard thinking, and it's been a real struggle. I feel more comfortable with the classical method and I think I do better with it, and that's saying something. But of course the real measure is Calvin. I don't ever want him to lose the love of learning, or especially his curiousity or independence. I will never stop him from following the thread of his own desire simply because it wasn't on the week's docket. Even while we are classically memorizing multiplication tables, the parts of speech, biological terms, and historical dates while in the grammar stage, we are also still building with Legos, reading whatever is in front of us, playing with art, experimenting with life, staring out the window at the birds visiting our feeder, etc., etc. And I'm still thinking about this whole thing, but we are having a great time, and that's good enough for me right now.

A play, a talent show, and more

Today was the last day of indoor gathering for our weekly homeschooling group. During the summer we meet at various parks and eschew indoor activities in favor of learning from nature. It's a great arrangement, because while learning doesn't end when summer comes around, I think our desire and focus changes with the season, so why not follow them.

If I thought I might miss out on some of the cyclical nature of the public school system—the yearly plays, the parties, etc. that I always loved as a child—I have found instead that at HAA we seem to one-up them. Today all the kids gathered along with all the parents (both parents today in many cases) to share in food, games, a play performance, a talent show, and a "talented display". Calvin participated in all three, as a munchkin and a monkey in The Wizard of Oz, as a pianist in the talent show, and with a Lego display of ancient structures from around the world (Egyptian pyramid, Mesopotamian Ziggurat, Mayan temple) on the "talented display" table. 

I will never stop reveling in the camaraderie that exists between all the kids in the group regardless of age, gender, race, belief, yadda yadda, nor in the amount of time, effort, and interest the parents invest in their children, and in others in the group. There are about forty families in the group, and today's gathering was a joyful, raucous affair, without being either too big or too small. Although I barely saw Calvin once he was no longer on stage (a sign of our growing comfort with the group) I know we both had a great time because we came home tired yet positively filled with exuberant, happy energy.

Talented display...

Talent show...

This is the second play Calvin has been in through our group. The first one was Percy Jackson, which they did earlier this spring, but it really was nowhere near as good as The Wizard of Oz, which they put on today. Calvin's own acting ability had grown some, and he spoke with great diction and a loud, clear voice, he remembered all his lines, and I could tell he had a great time. Of course, doing The Wizard of Oz as a play was like a dream come true for him.

"Please take the ruby slippers as a thank-you gift."

"We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz..."

"I don't have a heart."

"Please take us to see the wizard."

"Hooray!" (she melted)

"Dorothy, you have saved us from the evils of the Wicked Witch of the West. But what do we do with our lives now that we're free?"

"The wizard looked at us and said: 'monkies, you have already found your purpose in life. You said it yourself, you enjoy helping people and you can fly. Combining those two things should give you great opportunities for self-fulfillment."

We are linked up to Saturday's Artist at OLM.

Cantaloupes and goals

Calvin and I have been talking a lot about units lately. It comes from some of the math he's been doing, most notably the word problems.

A measurement of anything requires definition of the unit being measured. If you plan on sending someone to the store to purchase 60 cantaloupes, it's imperative that the grocery list say "60 cantaloupes" because if it merely says "60" there's no telling what they'll come home with.

It follows that if you plan to measure your success it's imperative that you define the unit of such success. In homeschooling, at least in our state, setting the goals and declaring when they are met is entirely up to the discretion of the people at home. It's a wonderful freedom, but I have too often suffered from a lack of unit definition. I am a wishy-washy homeschooling parent, and by that I mean I'll mosey along thinking I'm doing okay, and then I'll happen upon another homeschooler's website where they're plowing through ten science projects a day, or twenty craft projects, or reading through both the Iliad and Odyssey at the ripe old age of five, and suddenly I feel rather like a failure.

The internet can be a lifeline, but it can also be dangerous. When we chose to homeschool we did so based on the belief that we could guide Calvin to a life of learning best at home, but we never had any grand plan in mind. No beloved curriculum to follow, not even a full-blown philosophy, and that has turned out to be a weak spot for me, because not knowing for sure what we are doing has left me vulnerable to a feeling of failure in the face of others' proclaimed successes; if I haven't defined a goal, then I cannot possibly declare a measurement of success.

Don't get me wrong—I'm not second guessing our choice, nor do I actually feel like I am failing on any deep level, it's just that I am chased by the constant, nagging feeling that I could be doing a whole lot better. Then today I found this article, a blog post that probably every homeschooling mom should read, the gist of it being that every homeschooling family has to decide what is right for them, that not every parent is going to love crafting, for example. She's right, of course, and it wasn't those words in particular that I needed to read, but they did remind me that in order to succeed, I have to be clear with myself about my goals, abut my units of success, so that when I see a family reading through all of Shakespeare's plays at the age of six, or the family traveling the world to study history, or the family doing thirty physics experiments a day, I will already know that these weren't my goals, and that I don't need to measure our days against theirs.

It sounds petty, it sounds simple, it sounds obvious, but the reminder is so welcome. So needed.

This afternoon, while Calvin and I sat in the driveway and tossed a football back and forth, he said to me "let's practice math!" (complete with exclamation point), so I started quizzing him on multiplication before I tossed the ball, and he asked me such hard questions as "what is 600 times 80,000?" before he tossed it back. He was cracking up, he was thinking, he was discovering (that the multiplication of numbers with lots of zeros wasn't harder just because of all those zeros). He was empowered in his own discoveries, and I thought, 'you know, this is what my goal really is: for him to be thrilled with learning, no matter the subect', and that definition will empower me until I realize how abstract it is, and then I'll obsess some more, but for now, things are all good.

life as we know it

Sometimes life seems so normal, so mundane, that I can't imagine anyone would want to see me write about it. Other times life is going by at such a dizzying pace that I can't find the time to sit down and write at all. The past few days have been a combination of both. And actually, if I'm honest, the real problem has been that I haven't taken any pictures. What? It's true. And a blog post without pictures just seems rather blah. Rather like a list of particulars.

Calvin and I have been scrapbooking a lot together lately—we're putting together a book of our Florida trip and reliving the memories together has been a lot of fun. We've all but closed up our exploration of the Maya and have moved on to the Aztecs. Calvin is plowing through the Math-U-See—he's reached the section on money and we've discussed getting him started with an allowance now that he can keep track of it, so that will be a new milestone to mark. There's been piano, and Lego play, and reading (about Walt Disney), and journaling, and lots and lots of fun with Iris.

Iris is really still our biggest happening. Adding a new dog to a home can be challenging, especially when there are already established pets present, but the transition with Iris has been delightfully smooth. She seems happy and comfortable—she's eating and playing (we might finally have a dog who will pay fetch with us!)—and her manners were already good when she arrived. For those things we need to work on she responds very quickly to praise and the occasional treat. It took only two nights for her to learn our "exile" command (the word we've used for years to banish the dogs from the kitchen when we cook or eat), she sits, she stays, she lays down, and she's getting the hang of leash walking. Still, we'll be enrolling in obedience classes in the next month or so to give her some practice time with Calvin (and Calvin some practice time with her).

We have tickets to see Sweet Honey in the Rock this week, and more books to sort at the library. One odd and rather time-consuming errand. Piano. Legos. We haven't played games in a while, so definitely some of those. We actually have snow on the ground and I'm hoping it will stick around for a while. I'd like a few chilly nights for building fires and snuggling in. This is life as we know it.

Life gets in the way

I haven't done a good job of keeping up here lately. The holidays always slow things down for me and we've had a number of things going on here that have kept me from getting back into the true swing of things. I still find that laundry is piling up, dinners are haphazard, and most of our days have been rather willy-nilly. I'm even forgetting to take pictures at all some days.

Still, life continues. Calvin has started theater class in Fridays through our homeschooling group (HAA) and was given a speaking part in they play. He has continued swimming lessons on Wednesdays and is really enjoying them. His current "thing" is still reading (almost every spare moment), with a side of Legos. He is now plowing through the Math-U-See Beta book, but we have stalled a bit on our tour through science. History is still a bright spot, though.

Today we effectively closed our survey of human migration and our foray into the rise of civilizations has begun. Calvin is seriously geeked about checking out early American civilizations, and I can't blame him. We picked up a few great books at sales this past weekend and are ready to decipher the Mayan code, etc., etc.

I get new glasses tomorrow, and we are in the process of packing for a big trip. The biggest Calvin has been on yet because it requires an airplane. So there are a lot of items on our to-do list for this week, all of them with a rather happy end goal.