Today we had a long productive day in which we did very little that looked like schoolwork.  

Initially we were going to buy a pomelo. This thing basically looked like a ginormous grapefruit. I’ve never seen anything like it – it was bigger than my head! The Wikipedia link says that they tend to be between 2 and 4 lbs., but this one was closer to 7!  They sound like they’d be tasty, but I wasn’t about to spend $9 on one piece of fruit, so we decided to just look it up online and buy our second choices. There were quite a few to pick from, because our local Publix has a pretty awesome produce section, but ultimately, he picked a persimmon and I picked a pomegranate. They’re waiting on our table to be discovred tomorrow morning. And maybe, maybe be eaten.

And a couple of other versions we didn’t like as much.

Posted via email from hi, i’m andie.

Lara at TexasHomesteader.com has discovered a neat and ingeious way to use Skype, the free video chat software that lets you talk to anyone on the Internet using a webcam, a computer and a regular Internet connection.  Her daughter Kyra’s harp teacher moved away, and they live in a fairly remote location where it wasn’t easy to find a replacement harp instructor, so she came up with a neat solution. 

I loved this idea. It’s probably the wave of the future in homeschooling. Music teachers can now reach students all over the world for no additional cost. We use Skype to keep in touch with relatives around the world that we can’t see face-to-face very often; Shorty uses it to talk to his dad in Boston every week and it’s been great for that.  The video chat is still not great quality (no matter how good your camera and how good your lighting, you will still look consumptive and sleep-deprived) but it’s vastly improved in the last couple of years, and the sound is about as good as a phone call.  I’ve been trying to get my mom, who lives 45 minutes away, to use Skype more often, too. I’m reminded of The Jetsons and how they thought we’d be viewing each other clear as day on 7-foot-high screens by the 80s. Technology has moved a little slower than that, but i’m thinking homeschoolers can probably make great use of video chat technology to create educational opportunities for themselves and others.  Skype even offers group chats. Virtual co-ops, anyone?

One caveat:  Skype has its cavalry of spammers like any other service and some of them aren’t G-rated. Parents are cautioned to set their children’s account to the highest privacy setting – only allow contact from specific users – and to not allow unsupervised use.  Thanks for the post, Lara!

Continuing my series about what we’re doing for sixth grade and why, as Charlotte Mason educators, here’s what we purchased for math:

This year, we did MEP Math, Year 2. Since they start Year 0 in first grade, this is actually third grade. He is in fifth grade, but this was the appropriate level for him. Shorty liked the gentle format, but his progress was very slow, so much so that we have been doing it consistently and we’re still not halfway through the year. Neither of us are happy about that.

A big hindrance is that he still hasn’t memorized all his math facts (though his speed has drastically improved) and so he hasn’t progressed very much. Neither of us enjoy the fact that it’s extremely teacher-intensive. This, I knew going into it, having read up on the Yahoo! group. but Shorty seemed to take it as an opportunity to argue with me constantly. I understand math triggers his OCD in an extreme way and I’m the only available target to vent his frustration on, but as a single parent that needs to work full time, I just can’t afford to spend 1-2 hours just on math every day, and that’s hwo long each lesson was taking. So we started limiting our math time to 20-30 minutes per day, which helped with frustration levels, but slowed our progress to glacier pace.

He was also getting discouraged that he’s still in “third grade math.” Exacerbated by the fact that MEP calls their third grade “Year 2.” He has recently developed a real desire to independently work to catch up to grade level and this was taking a toll on his self-esteem. I read many reviews of many different approaches and curriculums, trying to find one that would best remedy all these issues.

Developmental Math, Level 6 seems like the answer to our prayers – it is inexpensive; it is self-paced and entirely completed by the student; it emphasizes skill mastery over spiral progress; and he would start in “level six,” which he might think is sixth grade math (it’s midway through third, in reality, which is where he is, but he doesn’t have to know that – he can just be proud that he’s working on “level six.”) So that’s what we’ll be using next year.

Shorty is aware that his progress in math is not where it could be. I have no problem with children doing work below arbitrarily determined “grade levels” if that’s truly where their capacity is. But I don’t think it’s that he is not capable of doing higher level math yet, but that his OCD has been so severely triggered by math these last 3 years, causing tantrums, delays and just general obstinacy, all of which have delayed him significantly. I know he knows he can do better and that he’ll be better served with his career goals of computer programming and electrical engineering with stronger math skills; it is his own independent goal that he be “caught up” to at least 7th grade math by the 8th grade. I think this is totally doable with hard work on his end, and am pleased to see him taking so much initiative.

Recently Shorty asked me to dig out his addition and subtraction flash cards; he’s been working on his own for a couple of weeks with that and I already see an improvement. We’ll be spending the summer doing math drills and working on math facts, as well as working through the I Hate Mathematics book and doing a few lessons per week from MEP Y2.

Then he’ll be tackling Developmental Math Level 6 in the fall. We are very excited about this as a potentially low-stress method of building strong mastery skills he’s lacking. I am excited that he’ll hopefully be able to complete it on his own with minimal input from me. The only downside is that levels 7, 8 and 9 are all currently unavailable because they’re being revamped by the publisher. But I figure, by the time my kid is done with level 6, they should be done, or at the very least it will give me time to track down an older copy. If we don’t like it, we can always go back to MEP!

This is part 2 of a series for work-at-home parents who want to launch and manage their own web sites, either for personal or business purposes, or a little of both.

As I covered in my last post, “Choosing Your Domain Name,” here are the six basic steps to setting up your own site, and each will get its own article in the upcoming couple of weeks.

1. Choose a domain name.
2. Decide on your site’s features.
3. Choose a web hosting plan.
4. Decide what your site will look like.
5. Put it all together.
6. Launch with promotional efforts.

Today I’m going to be looking at #3 – I realize I’ve only posted #1, but I’m going to do things out of order and post #2 tomorrow, so bear with me

What is a web host?
Think of a web host as a virtual landlord; it’s a large Internet-connected computer called a server, where you can rent space, or a virtual home for your web site’s files and data. Just like in real life, you’ll need to determine how much space you’ll need and what kinds of features and amenities you’re looking for.

This can obviously be overwhelming for a non-techie, because there are literally thousands of web hosting companies to choose from. Hence, I strongly recommend using a web hosting rating system, which compares web hosting companies side by side by features, price, and services. Though I have a few favorites when it comes to web hosts, sometimes my clients have unique needs, so I actually use that one quite a bit when finding specific kinds of web hosting. If you’re still not sure what kind you need, I recommend browsing through their articles before investing in a web hosting company – once you’ve committed to a web hosting plan, it can be challenging to change it, so it pays to compare and shop around.

Next article: Decide on your site’s features.

I’m a web designer by trade, so I get a LOT of questions from my readers about how to start their own web site. Since many single parent homeschoolers are work at home parents on the Internet, I’ve decided to write a series of articles on how to set up your own web site – whether it be to promote your own business, to sell your products, or just to blog and share your thoughts and resources with the world.

Most of the people who write to me aren’t professionals, but are on a limited budget. Fortunately, there are a lot of avenues for non-professionals to set up and run their own web sites without a lot of technical expertise and without spending a lot of money. As a professional developer, of course, I would caution against diving into a too-complex project without hiring a professional, but there are content management software packages, many of them free, that allow a person to set up a simple blog or site, then edit and maintain its content without any programming knowledge. Because most of these content management systems have a large community of developers, there are often many free customizable templates to make it look how you want. In other words, the content and look of the site is not going to be the first step.

There are six basic steps to setting up your own site, and each will get its own article in the upcoming couple of weeks.

1. Buy a domain name.
2. Decide on your site’s features.
3. Choose a web hosting plan.
4. Decide what your site will look like.
5. Put it all together.
6. Launch with promotional efforts.

Today I’ll be talking about how to choose your own domain name, or your own “dot-com.” Much like your business’ name, your domain name is crucial to the success of whatever endeavor you’re hoping to promote with the web site. You’ll need to purchase the dot-com, if it’s available, through a domain name registrar such as GoDaddy.com. It’s cheap – only about $10/year.

But what domain name should you register? It doesn’t have to be a complicated process, despite my having talked it up as being very crucial. I wrote an article that kind of walks you through the myths and realities of buying the perfect domain name for your site here: 5 Myths about Buying Domain Names.

Hopefully that will help clarify the process, but as always, you can comment this post for help, or use the contact form, and I’ll try to point you in the direction of the right resources.

Next Article in the Series: I’m going to skip ahead here and do #3: Choose your web hosting plan.

About once or twice a week I get an email from a single or working parent who wants to homeschool their child(ren), but they don’t think it’s possible, because they have to work. Whether they’re single, or their spouse is unable to work for whatever reason, or has faced job loss, or they have determined they cannot live without two incomes, or whatever. The point is – “But I have to work…” is one of the biggest roadblocks many, many families see as insurmountable to homeschooling their children.

It’s hardly an insurmountable one, however; many people homeschool and work full time.  I am cutting and pasting a response from a Yahoo! group. It was to a lady whose husband has been laid off, and the husband is demanding that she get a job outside the home and put the children back in public school. This is hardly the only alternative; it’s just the only alternative when you don’t think outside the box.

What most people don’t realize is that homeschooling is a lifestyle choice, just as putting your child in public school is a lifestyle choice for your family.  The means and methods by which you educate your children dictate the way your family lives, either way.  When you make the lifestyle choice of homeschooling, you’ve already decided your family’s time will not be spent the way most people choose to live. This almost certainly includes finances, and if you have to work and homeschool, it’s just time to accept that your lifestyle will be unorthodox, and work from there.

The point is: there are many alternatives to just sending your kids back to public school if the mother must work.

One or both of you could get jobs from home.
I have a links directory with a work-from-home section of over 100 legitimate work-from-home companies. I’m not affiliated with or paid by any of these companies so I’m just listing the ones I have either worked for in the past or know they have a good reputation. There are many excellent work at home forums that help you vet legitimate WAH jobs and offer resources and support, my two favorites are WorkPlaceLikeHome and WorkAtHomeMoms (not just for moms), and RatRaceRebellion has new pre-screened WAH job listings daily.  It takes time and persistence to find a work-at-home-situation that works for you, but it’s worthwhile if your goal is to spend more time with your family while being able to meet your family’s financial needs and goals. I have a few tips and starting off points here for people who want to explore this possibility more.

If people want advice or starting points, please feel free to contact me and I’ll be happy to help. I work as a web designer during the day and transcriptionist at night so I won’t be making any profit off helping anyone, I just have a passion for helping working and single parents homeschool.

Homeschool at unorthodox times.
If working from home isn’t going to make ends meet or it’s not for you for whatever reason, you can work full time and homeschool in the evenings and weekends. Remember that homeschooling takes a lot less time than traditional schooling, because there’s not nearly as much crowd-control and busy work going on. Getting an education doesn’t need to be limited to traditional school hours. Learning can take place at any time.  You can fit your children’s academic needs around your job schedule instead of the other way around.

Share the homeschooling duties.
If you’re a married couple that needs a full-time income, this doesn’t mean that this income needs to be earned by one person or bust. You could both get part-time jobs with rotating schedules and split the homeschooling duties if you are a two-parent household. If you’re a single parent household, perhaps there is a relative – or better yet, a grandparent or two – who would be willing to read, help with math, assist with science experiments, or just drive the child to a weekly co-op or something. You do not have to do everything yourself!

Teach your kids to be self-directed, independent learners.
If your children are reading independently, they are ready to take on increasing responsibility for their own schoolwork, with the goal being that eventually they are doing most of their own academics themselves, with you acting as a facilitator. Isn’t that our overall goal anyway?  To teach children how to learn and how to be active participants in their own education is a worthy goal, and easily accomplished over time in manageable increments.

Initially, they can be left with a sitter during the time you work, with a checklist of stuff to read and do themselves. This checklist should have only one or two things on them at first, then slowly added to, so that eventually the child is doing the majority of his or her own reading and schoolwork. My son has a checklist of things he must do weekly. He has the choice of spreading them out over time so that he only does a little every day for 5 days, or reading them in 3 or 4 days’ time, or reading all the assignments for one book in a single day, etc. In this way he learns to manage his own time – an essential life-skill for success in both post-secondary education and the workplace.

Once you get home from work, the children can narrate/ tell back to you what they read that day over dinner, and you can read a few texts at night like a bedtime story.  This is essentially what my son and I do with Ambleside Online – he has a daily checklist of things to read himself while I work in the same room with him in case he has any questions or needs help. Around 6 o’clock we do a brief math lesson, handwriting/grammar, art/poetry/Shakespeare/composer study (we do one of these each day of the week), and read the Bible together before dinner – about an hour or so. Then we talk about what he read that day over dinner, and read Age of Fable, a brief history reading and perhaps a literature selection before bed. We do our nature studies/ walks on Saturdays. I spend less than 2 hours a day homeschooling him directly and he spends perhaps another 1 or 2 hours doing his own independent work.

If your children are very young and aren’t reading independently, this is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, they don’t need as much formal academics as older kids do, so it’s even easier to fit their academic needs around a busy work schedule.  On the other hand, they need more attention and supervision than older children do and academic struggles present themselves at a larger scale in younger years. Either way, it is possible to find a solution that fits your family.

Ask for help.
You could rally your homeschooling community for support. One family won’t want to take on your children 5 days a week, but perhaps 5 or 6 families might each be willing to help you, especially if your family is in financial dire straits, by each taking your kids 1 day a week apiece (have an extra family on hand in case of an emergency). Then the kids could be in a homeschooling family setting while not being too much of a burden on any one particular family. I’m sure many families would be willing to help; many may have a homeschooled teenager who is willing to babysit and maybe even tutor for relatively low cost compared to daycares.

You can do it!
Your homeschool does not have to look like anyone else’s; it just has to work for YOU.  Where there’s a will, there is a way. I’ve been working from home and homeschooling my son for 6 years, so I know it can be done, but I also know the stress of financial worries, and the stress of managing a family’s finances AND homeschooling at the same time.  But this is not an obstacle to homeschooling – it’s just one more way in which we have to rearrange our lives to make this lifestyle choice fit. It’s not easy (when is anything with kids easy?) but it can be done.

… when I start pouring over curriculum catalogues and figuring out what we’re doing for next year. Sixth grade! I can hardly believe my baby is officially a junior high student as of this September, but as the song goes, the wheel in the sky keeps on turnin’.

There are things we’re keeping from this year, things we’re trying that are new, things we’re throwing out altogether.  The reality is that I’ve spent too much money on books these last couple of years and I can’t afford to do that again. Also, I’m going to try to design a homeschool for us that focuses more on nature study, art and music appreciation, and low-cost or free resources. WinterPromise is a wonderful curriculum and we may still be using their booklists for free reading since Shorty blazes through books (a habit I’m trying to discourage – a subject for another post though) and we’re going to rely on the excellent Miami-Dade Public library system more than ever. I’m attempting to focus our time and energy less on textbooks and more on real books and real-life  hands-on experiences right now, and hope to expand that in the future. So without further ado, here are our curriculum choices as of right now for next fall.

Main Spine: AmblesideOnline.org – Year 5, since we are finishing up the third term of Y4 this year. It’s not really “fifth grade” – many sixth through eighth graders are using it.  We’ll be using this as a guide for Bible, history, art, music, Shakespeare, nature study, composer study, poetry, literature and language arts.  It’s free, and relies heavily on public domain or easily obtainable texts.

So far I am really appreciating the schedule for Ambleside, which doesn’t have a day-to-day checklist (though parents have created many for your use each year on the various Yahoo! groups).  Each week I give Shorty a list of things to do that week. He can break it up into daily readings or read one book per day or however he chooses to do it. This is how real life works too; when I have a deadline, I can choose to cram it all into the last minute of things or do it little by little over time.  We are really enjoying the readings so far. There have been some growing pains about self-directed learning (no, you may not do the next month’s worth of reading in one day…) but I think we’re making really good progress and he really adores the books so far.

Caveat: The one major criticism I would have about Ambleside is its lack of cultural diversity. There is very little in the way of studying art, music and literature from anything that isn’t American or British.   Of course, this is based on a British woman’s pedagogy, which should not be undermined because her ideas were spectacularly ahead of her time, but there’s no reason why a little Cuban-American child in Miami needs to be memorizing that much about British history.  No Our Island Story for us.

Other modifications I’m making to the curriculum in order to broaden its access to cultural diversity:

• In addition to composer studies, I’m going to add in modern music studies in between. Do 3 weeks of classics, 3 weeks of jazz and contemporary music.  I’ll be posting my schedule soon.
• Their reading list is great, but since I’m assuming Shorty will get through it rathe quickly, and since Y5 includes books he won’t touch with a 10 foot pole (Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm AND Little House on the Prairie for an 11yo boy? Please.)  I’m going to compile my own reading list of living books, with an eye toward books about people of various races, cultures and countries.  This, too, I will be posting.
• Likewise their poetry reading and biographies. Shorty happens to love biographies and we intend to read one per month, not three the entire year. So I’m going to add in people like Jose Marti, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Simón Bolivar, Clara Barton and Milton Hershey. (We’ll probably do a fun project/ lapbook on chocolate for that one. LOL).  I’m going to swap out one of their poets for Jose Marti too. It fits the time period, and why not? His poetry was at least as beautiful as Wordsworth.
• I notice there is not one Latino, Native American or Asian artist, and only one or two African-American artists, in the art rotation schedule for the next few years.  I’ll swap a few of those out, too.
• We are not touching Plutarch for now. There are only so many hours in the day, people.

Logic
I’m keeping our formal study of logic, because as a philosophy major and highly logical person, it’s important to me. Using The Well Trained Mind’s recommendations of the Mind Benders and Case of the Red Herrings books for now. They are each about $9 on Amazon.

Foreign Languages
I’m going to try to have Shorty do a formal Spanish class through the Florida Virtual School; barring that, I’ll do the Teach Them Spanish! workbooks with him. Kinda iffy on whether we’ll be doing Latin. I know Charlotte Mason recommends starting in the fourth grade, but yeah, as I said, there are only so many hours in the day. A lady on a mailing list recommended a fairly self-directed curriculum that is inexpensive; I may check that out, called Getting Started with Latin. I do think it’s important for many reasons, including the study of science, music, and etymology, but I remember last year I bought the Prima Latina set, which is intended for the K-3 set, and found it so dry , lofty, overwhelming and irrelevant to the average 5-year-old that I felt actual pity for any kindergartener upon whom this was foisted. Your mileage may vary. Shorty thinks etymology is fun, though, so if I find a short, gentle curriculum that he can largely do on his own, I may give it a try.

Science:
We’ll be trying Jeannie Fulbright’s economical Exploring Creation with Astronomy next year. It’s intended to be done fairly independently, though I have heard that it is a little thin for a sixth grader, but then, my sixth grader likes “a little thin.” He’s not very science-oriented. I think this’ll be extra cool just because we are planning on going to Homeschool Day at the Kennedy Space Center in 2010. We’ll also be getting a telescope to look at things from our backyard. Good times! We’ll also be doing the weather/ sky/ rocks/ etc. portions of The Handbook of Nature Study (free to read online) to tie it all in together. Over the summer we’ll be studying the bird section of that.  We have the Audubon Florida guide, some binoculars and some nature journals we bought at Michael’s Arts and Crafts for $1 apiece, so we’re good to go. Also, I am considering checking out the eco-science/nature class at the Deering Estate next fall. There’s an orientation on Tuesday that we’re going to; more on this later.

Math:
Ummm. As of right now, we’ll be continuing with MEP math. This may change. We like the format, but the reality is, he hasn’t learned his math facts after working on them for 3 straight years. I’ve tried everything. Manipulatives, flash cards, board games, drills, worksheets, spiral, mastery, whatever, I’ve tried it. And he still pauses when asked what 5+3 is. Frustrating, to say the least.

Over the summer I’m going to concentrate on lots of living math, we’re learning blackjack, dominos (an important cultural skill anyway – Cubans loooove them some dominos!) playing Yahtzee, stuff like that, plus doing a lot of the things from Math Wizardry for Kids and The I Hate Mathematics Book, and for now we’ll continue doing MEP math lessons for 20-30 minutes at a time. This means we take up to 4 days to do a single lesson, but it beats sitting there for 2 hours trying to do one per day. I guess we’ll just keep plugging away at his pace.

Electives
Shorty will be studying a musical instrument. We’ve decided on an electric piano, since he already likes his little electric keyboard, and unlike a real piano, it will fit in his room and he can practice with headphones. It’s a big investment, probably the most expensive thing I’ll buy all year.   Later this summer I will be looking into piano teachers to visit our home once a week.

He’ll be learning how to type over the summer informally, and perhaps taking a semester course on typing through the FLVS. There is also a semester course on drawing, which we may check out.

We will continue to do the Home Depot Kids Workshop all through next year, as it’s the last year he’ eligible to participate, and are considering rejoining the Boy Scouts, or possibly the Society for Creative Anachronisms, depending on what my schedule looks like. And depending on finances, we might start taking a kids-and-moms judo class at a nearby studio – only $40/month apiece.

A Special Note About Language Arts
I was considering buying the language arts program from Queen Homeschool, but now I’m not sure, and am instead considering just committing to the Charlotte Mason approach of narration (he still needs work with oral narration so we may stick to that for atleast another year), copywork and dictation, as well as poetry, Shakespeare and lots of great books with spelling and vocabulary lists taken from those books. I’ve disliked every single vocabulary, spelling and grammar text I’ve ever seen, because it treats language as an intellectual exercise rather than something that can be put to great and immediate, relevant use. He’s a great speller anyway, and likes to learn new words, and I think he’d enjoy it if I made vocabulary lists from his readings and maybe did a “find the word in the chapter!” kind of thing out of it. Still, Sandi Queen’s products are all so straightforward and simple and inexpensive that I may check out the program anyway. Lord knows I’ve spent a whole lot more than $20 on books I never used!

What are you using for next year, if you homeschool? Like most moms, I’m a curriculum junkie and enjoy reading about what other families use and why it works for them!

I believe that exposure to a wide variety of music is crucial to a child’s education. We listen to all kinds of music in the car and just hanging around the house and Shorty and I have studied a lot of contemporary music, like jazz, gospel, Christian contemporary, pop, showtunes, standards, bluegrass, rock, folk and world music, but I do believe that listening to music conventionally known as “classical” is important, not just for its historical and cultural significance, but because a lot of these other genres are based on aspects of classical musicality. It’s a fact, for example, that many pop songs are based on the chord structure of Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major, and it’s also a fact that a lot of jazz is a blend of musical traditions of the African diaspora and the atonal composers of the early 19th century.

We follow Ambleside Online’s composer study rotation because it’s just three composers a year. Shorty is already pretty familiar with Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Handel and those are all very easy to listen to online. I also have a large classical music CD collection if I feel like playing them in the car or while the song. But for the lesser known artists, buying CDs is expensive, and it can be confusing to find places to legally listen to entire symphonies online. So I’ve instead gone with the option of creating YouTube playlists to play the entire pieces or several pieces from the same composer in a row, just leaving it playing in the background as we do our schoolwork.

Click here to read more and for instructions…

I got this link from the wonderful World of Discovery blog, which has approximately a zillion or so incredible homeschooling freebies. I love this, and I think I’ll go to Office Max and have it printed out and spiral bound. It will run me about $13 and I can probably give it away later.  From her blog:

Are you looking for a fun, relaxing way to cuddle up with your children and teach basic grammar? Well I have found it, and guess what, I’m going to share it with you .

I have to put forth the following disclaimer before I share this resource: This is not intended to replace a formal grammar program, but if you use this along with worksheets, your children will really enjoy it, you will really enjoy it, and they will have a very good grasp on basic grammar. That said, let me tell you about our experience with Grammarland, written by M.L. Nesbitt.

I came across this book this past January on the freebies of the day website (link to their site is in the homeschool links section), but it is also available on other websites as well. It is a classic novel written in 1878, and is what I like to warmly refer to as “a living book”.

Living books are usually written in story form by an author who has a passion for the subject. A living book makes the subject come to life. In Grammar-Land, we are taught about the 9 parts of speech by wonderful characters such as: Judge Grammar, Mr. Noun, Mr. Pronoun, Little Article, Mr. Adjective, Little Interjection, Dr. Verb and so on. It is a wonderful story that follows the adventures and disagreements of the various parts of speech, as they parade in front of Judge Grammar to plead their case. The children of Schoolroom-Shire are given tasks to figure out in each chapter.

Our children LOVE this book! They can’t wait to do our lesson on grammar, and it truly warms mom’s heart when I hear “mom, can we do grammar today?”

Download your own free copy here.

You can also download a bunch of Grammar worksheets to supplement this here, and possibly supplement with the paragraph writing units at SchoolExpress. Add in some copywork from whatever book you’re currently reading, poetry, the Bible, or whatever you want, and/or this free handwriting course if necessary, and you have a complete free language arts program.  We’re pretty burnt out on Rod and Staff’s language arts program that we’ve been using for the last couple of years or so, so this is awesome!

The subject line was a series of questions Shorty threw at me today, after I read to him a short blurb I’d stumbled upon from my “Break Time!” email from HomeSchool, Inc. I thought it was fun and interesting, and called him over to read the email with me. It was this:

Did you know?…

Alexander Graham Bell’s notebook entry for this day – March 10 – in the
year 1876 documents the first successful experiment with the telephone.
With his assistant, Thomas Watson, in the next room, Bell uttered those
famous words, ‘Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you!’

His
notebook entry reads, ‘To my delight, he came and declared that he had
heard and understood what I said.’ Bell and Watson were on opposite
ends of the very first phone call.

Three days before his
life-changing experiment, on March 7, Bell had received U.S. patent
#174,465 – the very first for the telephone. Months later, during the
Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Bell would introduce his
telephone to the world. He was 29 years old.

In 1877, the Bell
Telephone Company was established and within 10 years, an estimated
150,000 people in the United States owned a telephone. Rutherford B.
Hayes is believed to be the first U.S. President to have a phone
installed at the White House. His first call was to none other than
Alexander Graham Bell who was 13 miles away and waiting for the
President’s call.

This lead to a bunch of questions I naturally didn’t know the answer to, then Wikipedia searches, then clicking around a few telephone history web sites – all on his own (with supervision, of course).  It wasnt on our to-do list for the day, but learning took place just because a child’s imagination was sparked by something incidental, and he was given the means to pursue it.

Due to time constraints, as well as my desire to encourage Shorty to become a more independent, self-motivated learner, I have been assigning a great deal more of our history, science and language arts reading for him to do on his own, instead of me reading it all to him and requiring narration. He now has to do short written narrations – a precursor to essay writing, coinciding nicely with our current study of beginning paragraph-writing. We still do some read-alouds, such as the Nim’s Island study and lap-and-notebook we are working on alongside our animal and habitat study of the world’s oceans from WinterPromise’s Animals and their Worlds. We only have another 3 or 4 weeks on the whole thing, combining it with the Coral Reef lapbook, and then doing a separate, 2-week study on dolphins and sharks, for which we’ll do a smaller lapook. I bought the curriculum in October, 2007, so we will have taken about a year and a half to do the complete theme, maybe a little bit longer, instead of the year it’s supposed to have taken, largely because Shorty just got interested in the topics and wanted to know more and more and more! Like how we took nearly 2 months to do polar animals, just because he loved Mr. Popper’s Penguins so much. He had so much fun, and the lap-and-notebook he produced was really pretty amazing!

I am certainly eager to move on to something else – after this, we’ll be doing a study of ecosystems and the environment, aided by HandsOfAChild’s Ecosystems lapbook and study guide to correspond with Earth day and my increasing interest in sustainable living, Christian stewardship and responsible consumption. The unit is for grades 2-6, but could be beefed up or watered down for slightly older or younger, and it is currently downloadable for free on their web site. I actually saved the WinterPromise section on Wetlands for when we do our survey of Florida history over the summer, since Florida is mostly wetlands and I thought it would all tie in nicely. 

Anyway, for the last few weeks, every two weeks or so, I have been going through our history and science readings from our curriculum and deciding which ones can be read by him independently instead of me reading them to him, such as encyclopedia readings, plus jotting down his own reading, notebooking and activities that WP already assigns as independent tasks.  Then I write out a day-by-day checklist for him of assigned tasks, readings and projects for the next two weeks. (Never more than that – you never know what will come up). Typically in a work week, WP assigns several artsy craftsy projects for both history and science. Since he’s not really that artsy-craftsy of a guy, and there are a LOT of them, and we are only doing each subject 2-3 days a week, on his checklist there is a list of optional projects, of which he must choose at least one, but more if he wants. We’ve been doing this three weeks, and each week he’s chosen more than one because they’re fun projects, and then he’s doing schoolwork because he wants to, not because I’m making him. Huzzah!

In addition, he’s currently plowing through the Encyclopedia Brown series of books, of which he is very fond, because each chapter is like a little logic puzzle. They’re not very challenging reading, but they are wholesome and cute, and I figure he is being plenty challenged by the schoolwork. I like that he reads them for leisure and because he really likes them (and of course has started his own detective agency, little home-made sign in our front window and all). I think after this I might introduce him to the Hardy boys, slightly older versions of Encyclopedia Brown.

Because of Nim’s Island, which has as part of the story, Nim’s oceanographer dad being lost at sea due to a hurricane, Shorty’s also got on his checklist the free Hurricanes and Oceanography units from School Express. There are over 1000 similar units there, and we’ll be using them from here on out as independent work. They’re good introductory, tangential explorations of subthemes of our studies, and he likes the worksheets and the presentation, so it’s a nice way to beef up what he’s already interested in. Finally, he does one math worksheet per week independently (we have daily one-on-one math lessons otherwise), as well as 3 worksheets from Comic Strip Grammar, a cute grammar teaching  tool that uses little comic strips.

I do not necessarily see this as busywork, though it does help to keep him busy while I work in the mornings or afternoons. I am appreciative of the fact that he’s being so cooperative about taking on more of his schoolwork independently. He’s done so without complaint, which, since he complains a lot otherwise   I’m taking it as a sign that he’s actually ready to learn more independently. So far we have been a LOT more productive in our academic endeavors with the check-list. We’re clocking along quite nicely, even caught up some in some areas, and are on track to reach all our goals for the year by the middle of June.  But what’s pleasantly surprised me more is that Shorty has taken a little more initiative in what he’s learning and isn’t seeing learning as “schoolwork” as much anymore. Yesterday he asked when we were going to finish watching that Lewis and Clark: Journey of the Corps of Discovery DVD. Today I found him reading his animal encyclopedia past the assigned section – he’d been assigned jellyfish, and after that, had read the section on kangaroos. “I just thought it was cool,” he shrugged. Really? An 11-year-old – correction, my video-game obsessed 11-year-old, choosing to spend his free time reading an animal encyclopedia, because it’s “cool” and not because mom is breathing down his neck? I was pretty darn happy with that, let me tell y’all.

I really think Charlotte Mason was onto something 100+ years ago when she talked about how the role of the educator is best as a facilitator of learning, and not a drill sergeant or dictator of facts. There is something very contemptuous in the view that children are born empty vessels and that we, the all-knowing, wise adults, must fill them with our wisdom.  I am learning more and more that, if left to their own devices and given plenty of information and fodder for thought, even children whose strengths aren’t self-motivation and self-prompting will explore their natural curiosities indefinitely.  That we should present information and educational materials as a “banquet,” where kids have  access to a wealth of information, some that they nibble on, some that they ask for seconds and thirds about. I had been reading about her philosophy for a year before I started dipping my toe in it, just because it’s so hard coming out of a traditional school mindset to trust that knowledge doesn’t need to be compartmentalized and learning doesn’t need to e regimented, and it’s only been this last month or two that I think we’ve really taken off with it. I’ve been amazed at how quickly he’s flourishing with it, and I wish I’d trusted it sooner.