School Readiness

Has anyone read Penelope Trunk? She has both a career and a homeschool blog. Her strict unschooling is often a little more than I can handle. (For example, she doesn't limit screen time.) But occasionally her posts really resonate with me, as is the case with today's post about kindergarten readiness. (It's that time of year!) She writes:

Kindergarten is the first time that kids will have their creativity crushed in the name of following along with the group. Kindergarten will be the first time they will be part of a group of twenty-five or more kids who are supervised by only one or two adults. It's a different story with that ratio: kids need to fall into step to make things manageable. This is really what kindergarten teaches you.

This passage brings up images of Bonnie's kindergarten experience, complete with little painted lines on the hallway floors so the kids could literally learn to fall into step. I am so glad Jack didn't have that experience last year. In what should technically have been his kindergarten year, he spent most of his time running around outside and learning through play-based activities, mostly of his choice. He was obviously NOT ready to learn to read, and I didn't push it. Now, before what should be the start of his first grade year, he has told me he wants to learn to read and is making progress each day toward that goal. His goal. 

Life Lately

Summer seems to be flying by. Though we intended to have "school" throughout the break, reality kept us so busy that we have hardly done any school work. We're tiptoeing back in now, trying to find the happy medium between the unschooling I am drawn to and the structure that both Kelly and the kids need.

My biggest challenge is math for Bonnie. Saxon is definitely too rigid for our family, but we need something a bit more organized than what I was doing at the end of the school year, which was basically rushing through a few Saxon lessons and working on word problems with her each week. We're looking at Teaching Textbooks, which may just satisfy both Kelly's desire for structure and Bonnie's desire to be more independent. (She likes math, but doesn't like being told what to do. No idea where she gets that.) She's taken their placement tests and falls somewhere between level 7 and pre-algebra, so we are probably going to start with the level 7 and see how it goes. Trying as always to find that balance of challenging without frustrating!


Speaking of balance, I have quit my part time job that I'd had since last fall. I brought the kids with me, but the novelty wore off for them, and trying to get my work done with them in tow was becoming increasingly difficult. Next time I work outside of the home, it will be without my children, or risk losing my own sanity.


And speaking of sanity, I've been consumed with sibling stresses once more, as my sister relapsed and we had to have her hospitalized against her will a couple of weeks ago. In case anyone was wondering, the mental health care system in this country is completely and totally messed up. 


Has anyone seen Mr. Deity? Though this video does not particularly address the awfulness that is schizophrenia, it shows the absurdity in thinking that an all-powerful deity could allow so many evils in this world and also be good. Watch it and enjoy!

Summer Booklist

Life's been a bit chaotic around here, with the wrap-up of soccer season being one of the many things eating up our days. I'm struggling with this thing called balance and how to find it while homeschooling three young kids, working part time, being a soccer mom, and having all these visions of self-sustainability. For example, it's nearing the end of May and I haven't planted so much as a tomato plant. Sigh.

As the local schools are all finishing up for the summer, we've decided that our little unschooling adventures don't really call for a long break. A box from Amazon arrived last week, and look at the goodies it contained:

 

Included in our new stash of books is Joy Hakim's The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way. I've been trying to find something to get Bonnie excited about science, and this series looks like it might be it! The first chapters open with lessons on distinguishing between mythology and science. The author uses examples from Genesis, sacred Hindu texts, ancient Chinese works, and others to show the difference between creation stories rooted in oral traditions and scientific theories on the formation of the universe that are firmly rooted in facts. She talks about how myths are unchanging and non-evidence based, while science is constantly evolving as we learn more about the world around us. I love it! We also ordered a little Student's Quest Guide, but the verdict is still out on that one. I like it, but Bonnie is kind of adverse to anything that involves, well, writing.

I also picked up the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Fossils, so that Jack and I can identify the trilobites and other fossils we find together.

We're not quite finished with The Story of the World: Volume 3 , but will continue a chapter per week during the summer and start with Volume 4 as soon as we've finished. The authors really try to make the books non-Western centric, and though they don't always succeed, Bonnie loves the narratives and I find them a great starting off point for moving through history chronologically.

To help counterbalance some of the history according to Dead White Men, we picked up Howard Zinn's A Young People's History of the United States, which shares the too-often untold stories of women, slaves, immigrants, Native Americans, and workers. It came highly recommended by Jennifer at Home for Good, and we look forward to reading it. She also suggested The Book of Perfectly Perilous Math: 24 Death-Defying Challenges for Young Mathematicians, and I'm excited to work through that right away.

Bonnie just finished reading Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor, a photo journal depicting child laborers in the early nineteen hundreds. She flew through it, and it's hard to described how moved she was seeing pictures of those children, some of them even younger than Fred (who is only four.) This book should be required reading in every middle school. I want my children to know that we don't have to wonder what will happen if workers' rights and labor laws continue to be attacked.

The last book in the box isn't for the kids: Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality. Though we rarely attended church when I was growing up, my parents were raised as staunch Catholics, and I received a hefty dose of trickle-down guilt. This should be a fun read.

What's everyone else reading this summer?

Three Good Books

I try to surround Bonnie with lots of good books and let her choose what interests her. Sometimes her choices are right up my alley too, such as is the case with the following three.

Lynne Kelly's  Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal does a great job of debunking popular superstitions and mysteries, including psychic readings, Nostradamus, telepathy, alien abductions, crop circles, astrology, and more. I like that the book gives practical advice to the reader on ways to think through and debunk the superstition for herself. One of my favorite chapters is the one on ESP, in which the author discusses the dangers of using anecdotes as evidence for anything. My kids will be faced with all sorts of anecdotal "proof" from religious folk trying to persuade them into believing in a supernatural god. It's good for them to realize that they need to find their own evidence in these cases.

Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos, does a wonderful job of helping us understand the vast and brutal history of the sugar cane industry, with a focus on the institution of slavery. It talks about how the farmers who grew sugar cane and planned on making sugar faced special challenges that caused the growth of a new form of farming: the plantation.

The only way to make a lot of sugar is to engineer a system in which an army of workers swarms through the fields, cuts the cane, and hauls the pile to be crushed into a syrup that flows into the boiling room. There, laboring around the clock, workers cook and clean the bubbling liquid so that the sweetest syrup turns into the sweetest sugar. This is not farming the way men and women had done is for thousands of years in the Age of Honey. It is much more like a factory, where masses of people must do every step right, on time, together, or the whole system collapses. (Sugar Changed the World 27.)

I want my kids to fully understand our nation's special history with slavery. Most of our founding fathers owned other human beings. What does that say about everything it means to be an American? I'm not sure how to get past all the questions that are raised through in-depth research into our history. But I know we have to ask them.

Finally, Bonnie loved Susan Campbell Bartoletti's Growing Up in Coal Country, the story of children growing up in the coal country of Pennsylvania in the early nineteen hundreds. The author was able to offer glimpses of hope and happiness while conveying the incredibly difficult, dangerous lives these children and their families lived. I love that Bartoletti discusses the banding together of miners to form unions. This book, perhaps more than any discussion I've ever had with Bonnie, has shown her exactly why we have unions today and why we must continue fighting for them. Though set in Pennsylvania, this is Kentucky's coal history too.

Jack Out of the Box

Of course, a child may not know what he may need to know in ten years (who does?), but he knows, and much better than anyone else, what he wants and needs to know right now, what his mind is ready and hungry for. If we help him, or just allow him, to learn that, he will remember it, use it, build on it. If we try to make him learn something else, that we think is more important, the chances are that he won't learn it, or will learn very little of it, that he will soon forget most of what he learned, and what is worst of all, will before long lose most of his appetite for learning anything. -John Holt, Teach Your Own

Jack and I spent the evening meandering through fields and scouring our driveway for trilobites. (No luck this time, but we found some fossilized clams and coral!) I love our quiet walks together, because sometimes he gets a little overshadowed by his very vocal older sister and younger brother.

Of all my kids, I think homeschooling suits Jack the best. He is very much an introvert, and needs his connection to nature the way most of us need oxygen. Some days he's outside before I'm out of bed, and it's unusual for him not to be covered in dirt. I honestly cannot imagine him in traditional school right now, as I think an integral part of him would be lost being forced to sit inside all day, five days a week. Short recesses on some manufactured plastic playground could never replace trees for that boy.

Jack is one smart six year old, and the questions he comes up with show the beginnings of great critical thinking skills. He will discuss subjects at great length and listen to books all day long, as long as the subject interests him. Interest is really key though, because as soon as I try to work with him on something he doesn't like, such as reading, he tenses up and it becomes a battle.

John Holt says that there are no teachers, only learners, which I am seeing more and more with our little homeschooling endeavors. I know there are hundreds of books about teaching your kid how to read (and I've tried several of them) but I really think it boils down to the kid wanting to learn for it to happen. I have NO doubt that by instilling a love of reading in our family and by the kids seeing Kelly and me read all the time, that Jack will also be a reader. But it's going to be in his own time. (Potty training analogies do not seem out of place here.)

Given all of that, as well as believing that it's not necessary for a child to read young to be a good reader later, doesn't totally take away from fact that, especially as a homeschooling mom, I feel pressure to have my six year old reading. It's kind of this benchmark that we all use to judge elementary kids, isn't it? And it doesn't help that Kelly (who incidentally was a very late reader who became a very good reader) isn't quite on board with all of this unschooling stuff, or that Bonnie is an amazing reader who picked it up very easily at a young age.

So, while pocketing fossils, picking wildflowers, and rescuing a box turtle from the dogs, I said to Jack, "I'd really like it if you'd let me teach you how to read."

He thought about it for a moment and replied, "I'd really like to learn how to swim."

Unschooling Fun

If you are like me and love unschooling as well as Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know", this is better than crack. I dare you to watch it and not laugh.

One Little Question...

So, I've been reading John Holt's Teach Your Own and feeling nice and confident about our decision to homeschool our kids. Since relaxing a little on the math with Bonnie, our days have been so much more pleasant. Then one little question, casually asked by my ten year old daughter, makes me doubt everything, once again.

Mom, when I go to prom, will you and dad pay for my dress or will I need to save up and buy it myself?

Outside of the Box

Today is a "school" day for us since Kelly's new schedule has him working weekends, and we like to take our breaks when he has his. We started with some lessons, but it's just pointless when the weather is this beautiful. Instead we're heading out for a hike in the woods, and Bonnie and I are both bringing books to do some reading as well.

On that note, here are a couple of our favorite songs:

And

Happy Sunday, everyone!

Postcrossing

The kids and I signed up with postcrossing this afternoon. We'll send and receive post cards around the world! Our first five cards are being mailed to people in Russia, The Netherlands, Belarus, Germany, and Missouri. (There is an option to receive cards only from people outside of your home country, but I thought it'd be nice to have a quicker postal turnover rate for some of them.) The site maps everything for you, and just looks really cool. Bonnie plans on starting a little scrap book and mapping all of our cards on the wall.

Hopefully the arrival of these cards leads to pop-up geography lessons because the kids want to learn more about each country or state. That's my little unschooling dream at any rate.

Map courtesy of Worldpress.org.

Drifting Toward Unschooling

When I first researched homeschooling, I fell in love with the classical model presented in The Well-Trained Mind. All the books, the history, the logic, the math! Oh and don't forget the memory work, grammar, multiplication tables, geography, and spelling. This was right up my alley... my kind of learning. And while there are still many things I like about this model, I've sure thrown out a lot of the others.

I started with spelling. Bonnie is an awful speller, despite reading all the time and possessing a very high vocabulary. I pushed her in spelling last year, and we almost completed the book for her grade level. Then when it was time to pick curricula for this school year, I bought the next level, somehow in denial that it just wasn't working for us. I can push and push and get her to memorize a list of words and then get them correct on a test, but she will spell those same words incorrectly two weeks later, as well as misspell common words like "chicken." Seriously. The girl has strengths and spelling ain't one of them. There are so many things we can do with our day, what is the point of forcing the whole spelling thing? It wasn't an easy decision for me, but we stopped doing it.

So, that was my first big step away from classical education. Next was Latin. As one might gather from the term "classical education," foreign language, particularly Latin, is a big part of it. The only problem is that Bonnie really has little interest in conjugating, translating, and memorizing vocabulary. That is an understatement. And as someone who took four years of foreign language in high school followed by four college semesters in the same foreign language, I really don't have a good answer when she asks, "Mom, why do I have to do this?" Is there inherent value in speaking multiple languages? Yes! Does that have anything to do with the kind of book learning of a foreign language that is called for when Mom and Dad only speak English? Not so much. Bonnie is working with the computer program Rosetta Stone and picking up a bit of Mandarin Chinese that way, but "formal" language lessons are out for us.

One thing I have been firm with has been our math curriculum: Saxon. It is awesome. I love everything about it-- daily facts test, mental math activities, and constant review. There's only been one slight problem with it really, and that is that Bonnie cannot stand it. Last year, I brushed off her dislike of Saxon because I knew she was comparing it to the math she had in public school the year before, which hadn't challenged her in any way. This year, I think I've been so comforted by the fact that I could see her progressing math skills, that I overlooked how much Bonnie still doesn't like it. I loved math as a kid, and so did Kelly. Bonnie is very good at math and she used to love it, but Saxon is zapping the math love out of her. So we're going to try to find something that fits a little better. (Looking into Singapore Math currently.) Most importantly, I am making peace with the fact that, no matter which math curriculum we settle on, regular formal math lessons may not be a part of our plan anymore.

Am I an unschooler now? I think I might be heading in that direction. As my friend pointed out, I've pretty much been doing the whole unschooling thing already with Jack and Fred. You know, those two mud-coated heathens that spend most of their day in the woods? I've been telling myself that we'd start "kindergarten" with Jack next year, when he's more ready for it. But you know what? He may never be ready for it. And though Bonnie has learned a lot with the classical model, that doesn't mean she couldn't learn more and be happier with something else.

This seems like a natural progression to me. Aren't all homeschoolers unschoolers to some degree?