Family game night reinstated

Wednesday

First thing this morning, the Lego princess married the man in the bunny suit to the sound of pirate music and scales (i.e. piano practice).

Then we were visited by a woodpecker while we were math-ing at the kitchen table. I take it as a good sign for our deck that he didn't stay long.

There was some playing with the parts of speech, and some map crosswords. Calvin is determined to learn cursive right now, so I downloaded this wonderful practice book from Currclick while it was on sale and he enjoyed some writing and coloring in that. There was much reading, of course, and some jogging around the block to exercise both the dogs and ourselves.

And then it was lunchtime. (No, we didn't have muffins for lunch, but later on we did snack on these pumpkin muffins we made together on Sunday. It's pumpkin season again, and that makes Jon happy).

We were out for the early afternoon, playing at the park and whatnot, but back at home the wedding party continued while Iris kept a lookout for the kids arriving home at the bus stop in front of our house.

Then some science. Calvin and I watched some Bill Nye (not my favorite) and did some bone assembly activities. Building on the idea of adaptations, after learning about food webs and biomes, we are exploring the adaptations of movement in animals. This is us moving forward in BFSU (from B5/D4 to B6). The more I use it, the more I really love the way that book is laid out, the way it gives ideas for a path of study that will allow building on prior learning, but ultimately leaves the decisions up to those who are actually doing it. It's a wonderfully loose set of suggestions for those who don't necessarily want to go it alone, but don't want to be told how to learn, either.

This is the stuff we are both loving right now, and I think we'll spend some more time exploring the idea of adaptations in various species before we move on again. Today we were mainly looking at what moves us (aside from a good book, that is). Before going to bed tonight he asked me to give his "humerus, radius, ulna, carpals, and phalanges a squeeze."

Missing the bus (for another year)

We live in a small cul de sac. Five houses, only ours being home to a child, and not a child who goes to school, yet of all the places in the neighborhood they could have designated as this year's bus stop, they chose the corner of our cul de sac. The first day of school and we are all snug in our beds, right where we like to be at 7:30 in the morning, and what should awake us at such an unseemly hour? The crazy laughter and singing from the school bus stop just outside our windows. I guess they just wanted to make sure we did not miss out on all the joys of a public education.

So we got up early for the first day of school after all. I went running, Calvin dressed nicely, we had breakfast at the counter, and we trudged to the front porch for photos (I wouldn't want to be left out of the facebook "first day of school" photo frenzy, after all), and then we went about our Tuesday as we have on many other Tuesdays before it.

Goodness. He's growing up. This year would see him in first grade in the public school, but in our house he learns outside of grade restrictions. Instead we try to go where interest and ability guide us. Calvin spent everyone else's first day of school playing piano, doing a math sheet or two, writing in his journal, reading Through the Looking Glass, taking swimming lessons, going out to lunch with his grandparents, grocery shopping, sorting books at the library, and building with Lego blocks. The rest of the week wasn't too different.

Having begun with the Well Trained Mind we have changed things a bit over the past month, spending the morning with more "formal" lessons, and the afternoon in choice learning. We're working in Math-U-See's Gamma books, we are midway through the Story of the World, which we combine with Intellego's history units, and we are also midway through the first BFSU book, which boils down right now to multiplication, the history of the ancients, and, right now, earth and life sciences. In addition we are using Spelling Workout book C, and First Language Lessons book 1, but because Calvin is such an avid reader most of those lessons are unnecessary, and I'd leave them behind if Calvin didn't seem to enjoy them so. More important will be what he reads, and choosing material that is both age and ability appropriate has been a challenge.

Even though we do not really take the summers off the way others do, this is the way we are beginning what feels like a new school year. It feels too defined to me, too far from our unschooling beginnings and hopes, but Calvin is thriving with this plan, and I find it comfortable. Some day soon, I would like to define for myself just what it would mean to teach following a desire with research, trying, and doing, but Calvin helps me with the planning now, and is interested in all that we do. It is a change in our methods, but I'm sure they will change again, which is the point of homeschooling for us: doing what works at the time.

And so we embark on another year of missing the bus to school.

Journaling our trip to the lake.

Reading Anansi stories.

Biomes

Assistance

Strange encounters, weekend edition

A cooling breeze coming in through the windows, the warm rays of an early summer sun. I love lazy Saturday mornings when we're slow to rise and a soft sleepiness hangs around for a time before the get-up-and-go takes over. It's the perfect time for a book, or a crossword, or a puzzle, and definitely the perfect time for discovery. Then again, what isn't the perfect time for discovery?

Do you think Iris is wondering what's gotten into us? Crawling around on the ground in a tangle of wires making a variety of frightening sounds and shooting things into the air. She may think we're off our rockers.

She should see us at other times.

Later in the morning we went to the Ann Arbor library book sale. All books were half off their already obscenely low prices so it was hard to resist. We brought home a number of treasures—Calvin picked up a couple of dragon stories and I got a couple of photography books and a beautiful copy of a 1960s Field Guide to the National Parks of East Africa. I love books like this because they have that wonderful book smell, because they are usually very well made, better made than most new books, and because they are primary sources in their own right. History changes as we write about it, and if I want to read about African Wildlife in the 1960s, the best way to do so is in a book from that time. But at the checkout the man helping add up our total felt the need to mention to me that the 1960s guide might not be so accurate anymore. Thanks anyway guy.

After the sale we stopped by our favorite downtown lunch spot, where Calvin devoured not only some truffle pizza, but also his new book on the summer Olympics (another library sale find). This is the first Olympics that he is really aware of, and he's very excited about the swimming and other water sports in particular. We were explaining that they show the most popular sports on a tape delay late at night (something that I, and much of the Twitter world, apparently, find excessively annoying), and that they'd likely be on after bedtime. At that moment the people sitting next to us politely interrupted, asked Calvin about his interest, and then negotiated a later bedtime for him. The Olympics come around so rarely, they argued for him. He was allowed to stay up until 10.

After lunch, shopping at the fair trade shop next door, my quiet perusal of the book shelf was interrupted by an elderly store worker who suggested I read to Calvin a book about "a boy with no toys of his own", unlike the children we're used to, she added. She then proceeded to complain to me about her granddaughter's bursting toy chest and overflowing bedroom. I told her that we try to keep the toys in our house somewhat limited, though "educational products" and books are pretty much coming out our ears, and we chatted briefly about that side of our culture before she up and tried to sell me a toy made by underprivileged children somewhere in the world. I thought she was joking, but she wasn't. I did not enlighten her on the irony of that exchange.

We did go home with our overflowing bags of books, however, and spend the afternoon reading, and snapping circuits, and walking dogs, gardening, discovering, exploring, grilling dinner, and living the lazy summer life. And if you ever want to know about wildlife in 1960s African National Parks, just ask me.

Summer school

There is no real consensus amongst homeschoolers regarding the issue of summer schooling. I know several families in our co-op take a break right along with conventional schoolers, or spend the summer months catching up on reading or revisiting topics they found difficult during the school year. Since Calvin has only just turned six we don't have a set yearly schedule as yet, but we've never considered taking the summers off. I believe I've written about this decision before, mentioning that we see no more reason to take a break from "schooling", or learning rather, than from life itself. But while we still hold to this philosophy, we have made some changes in our daily schedule, and the issue of summer schooling warranted a second glance.

Until very recently we've been dedicated unschoolers, traipsing from one curiosity to another as the day wore on. I found, though, that Calvin responded better to having more direction in his day, so since early May we've been leaning further and further into the classical education world. We spend a little time each day on math, reading, grammar, handwriting, and spelling, throw in history or science to go with it, and spend the rest of the day exploring whatever else we wish. Calvin now has workbooks that he loves for both math and spelling, and I've been combining the other subjects with the history and science in order to tie it all together. We also hit up the library at least once a week, taking home each time a well-rounded collection that includes books of Calvin's choice on science, history, art, poetry, biography, and music. This has been a happy change for us, especially since we aren't actually following a strict curriculum, but are, I believe, combining the best of two great homeschooling methods (those being unschooling and classical).

So how has this change affected our view on schooling in the summer? Actually it hasn't, because we still believe that learning is a way of life, but while the new methodology hasn't altered our view on summer, the summer has changed our methodology somewhat. At this time of year, with buzzing insects, calling birds, and brightly colored and odorific blooms, nature is practically standing on tiptoe and demanding extra attention, and it simply is not to be denied. It seems only natural that in the summer we spend less time on worksheets and more time in the field, less time on history, more time on science. So when we went on vacation last week we didn't take workbooks of any kind, but we did take our wildlife handbooks (and we love the Stan Tekiela series for our state), our hiking shoes, and our innate curiosity. We also took books about Michigan, and Mackinac Island, plus lots of other reading for quiet moments. And I figure something is going right when, on the beach, the boy is making a sand model of Bilbo's Shire.

And when we are worksheeting, we are often doing so from the breezy comfort of our deck while sipping lemonade.

Reading the Mahabharata in the shade