Learning Snapshots. February

Gymnastics

Our bodies. Flight: history & simple science of.

Types of birds

Crafts

Creating his own stories & books (& reading them to the dog), order & sequence


READING



Building, design, painting, simple engineering, problem solving

Calendars; reading calendar & year, months, days

Waiting & Homeschooling Legalities

When you're 9 months pregnant and baby could arrive anytime, thereby changing life as you know it, that's pretty much all you can think about.

Physically I am constantly reminded that I'm very pregnant and baby is just about ready. Mentally it's a continuous stream of thought that centers around the impending arrival . . . . my last bits of time with two children, the end of our family & life as it's been, a new season, a newborn to take care of, my most recent shower and what I'm wearing, things that need to be gathered or packed, where my husband's at, where my mom's at, and on and on. It's such a strange bit of time to be waiting in . . . . everything is just waiting and on the precipice of total change but exactly when it's all going to happen remains a mystery. Yet I want to be ready when it comes.

When my thoughts are able to break free from baby they have focused on kindergarten options for my amazing firstborn. There's the option of homeschooling through a charter that offers fairly local classes once a week. Then there's the option of homeschooling through the charter I used to work for and know well. This week, for the first time, I looked briefly at the option of homeschooling totally independently. In our state, parents who want to homeschool on their own have two legal options.

1) They declare themselves a private school. They file an affidavit to do so annually and keep some records.

2) They have their children instructed by a teacher who holds a valid state credential for the grade taught. This is called the Private Tutoring Exemption and does not require any filing or record keeping. Hmmmm...... very interesting.

In daily practice, none of the above four options would look that different from the others. I will be homeschooling. I'm thinking a lot about Charlotte Mason and perusing dusty books on my bookshelves while gathering random materials. The four options do not dictate practice and method but remain a significant decision for my husband and I to make in the near future. Baby thoughts are center stage and the legal paths to homeschooling as well as other possibilities inherent in the various choices are mulling around in the background.

Learning Snapshots. January

Steam engines



Cotton & how crops are grown, harvested, transported, & ultimately used by consumer. We saw cotton growing in the fields before seeing this truck.



Rocks, minerals, gold.



Gymnastics



Painting & mixing colors


Cutting, fine motor skills



Counting down! Sense of time



Puppy! Puppy care, baby preparation - babies & learning & expectations: babies put things in their mouth, have a lot to learn, etc.



Building, measuring, painting, tools, basic construction, how walls are made, structure, electricity



Reading!

"You are worried about seeing him spend his early years in doing nothing.

"What? Is it nothing to be happy?

"Nothing to skip, play and run around all day long?

"Never in his life will he be so busy again."
--Rousseau

I started my blogging journey with a great deal of tension inside of me . . . . as evident in many of my previous posts. Tension between my untested beliefs/ideals/hopes/etc and actually, personally, homeschooling and facing the pressures and expectations of both the outside world and my own years in the educational system and then the realization that finding some way to succumb to some normal route of schooling would be easier in every imaginable way - from actual hard work to time and space management in a little home to dealing with all the pressures.

I think the tension's gone! Not that it won't return or be an ongoing part of my journey, but the initial roadblock is gone. I am relaxed in that part of my brain and questioning whether or not it is laziness and apathy but am pretty confident that it is not. I embrace Rousseau's words above. I full-heartedly believe that nothing is to be lost by not intentionally striving after academic skills right now. I believe everything is to be gained by embracing play, fresh air, good books, God, and learning the content of the child's world that is naturally set before him each day (for now, not forever).

This article fits nicely with what I've always believed and now am ready to do without worrying.

This quote gives simplicity and focus to my world of academic learning:

What we need to improve education is not more curriculum, but better education, and that comes from classics and mentors. With young children you do two things: read them the classics—things at their level like Black Beauty, Charlotte’s Web, the Little House on the Prairie series, fables and rhymes—then talk about it with them, teach them lessons.~A Thomas Jefferson Education p. 49

One Day At A Time

When I started blogging I was consumed by trying to figure out every detail of my son's kindergarten education. I think it hit me hard and unexpectedly that it's advent was a year away and, for all my philosophical ideas and past studies, I had no solid plan of action.

For the past couple of months pregnancy, holidays, and other pieces of life have kept me occupied and taken my immediate attention off of educational study and planning. And you know what - learning has still been happening at least as much and as well as it was before - it seems to happen so naturally when allowed. I sigh - partially a sigh of relief and partially of giving up - and realize that come Fall, I most likely will not have a perfect plan and everything will be fine. I don't even know that there is one perfect plan. In all of my formal education, including or especially, the pursuit of my MA in Education, the biggest thing I learned was that no great expert or secret exists on the topic. I don't know that I was really setting out to find the perfect plan or if that was just my way of making sure I did my very best and didn't go about homeschooling lazily. I believe I need to know my kids and really pay attention to their learning and what motivates them; know what they understand and what they don't and refuse to just go through the motions on any level; do the hard work to think things through and do my best to model reading, thinking, and love of learning; and be purposeful in how their time is spent.

I like the writings and principles of Charlotte Mason, John Tayor Gatto, Oliver De Mille, and a motley pile of bits and pieces from many others. I don't need to settle on one philosophy and stick to it 100 percent; no one is 100 percent perfect for 100 percent of children. I've picked up the first few McGuffey's Readers, not because I determined that this was the absolute best tool for the job, but because I found them at an estate sale for two or three dollars and I know they are one of the many quality tools out there. They will not be the sole way my son learns language arts but they'll help. Reading and writing materials abound in this house and he seems to be picking so much up on his own because it's there and I try to cultivate his interest in it. Oh ya . . . . plus, I don't really even think formal instruction is necessary for a few years yet. I have a Singapore math text but haven't done anything with it yet. I don't know if or what charter we'll go through to homeschool and whether or not a day at school will be included. I am feeling much more at peace about all of it. One day at a time.

Learning Snapshots

rocks, gold, mining history, natural vs man-made geographic features, water table


patterns


coloring


library & computer familiarity


READING


meaning of Christmas


crafts


water flow, dams, rivers, lakes, erosion, geographic formations



painting & different types of paint

Exactly What I Needed

Since becoming a blogger (albeit a half-hearted and infrequent one lately), I've also become a follower of blogs. Reading other blogs has opened up a new world to me. There are so many mothers out in this virtual world that I share many things in common with and ones that have gone ahead of me in pursuing very purposeful parenting and homeschooling. Not that such amazing women do not exist in my immediate physical world, but the Internet supplies a vast supply of Godly women who are writing about their journeys and often providing the encouragement I need in a given situation.

Today I read THIS blog and it was exactly what I needed today! (Honestly, I probably need this post a few times a week.) It is so easy to get sucked into the stresses of life and annoyances of my little ones. It takes so much effort to be thankful and purposeful. I have been tired and emotional; financial and other stresses have been nagging at me constantly. I have felt completely incompetent in providing decent structure, love, patience, and guidance to my little ones throughout recent days. I am grateful for Jessica Bowman's post today and the reminder I needed. This morning L and L were having a squabble and the littler L started crying from the other room like something really horrible had happened to her. I rush in there, expecting that bigger L had perpetrated something terrible. It took littler L quite some time to say what had happened because she was crying so hard she could barely get the words out. Finally, she gets it all out, "he called me a LITTLE GIRL." She was so hurt and angry and all I could do was laugh. I needed the comic relief and I was so thankful he hadn't done anything terrible. I love how when I'm discouraged and stressed and only focused on problems, they bring me laughter and God tries to remind me that they are what's important and should be my focus; let the other things be the annoyances that I try to ignore and those things will be ok. My kids need to be the focus, ignored like annoyances (although they can annoy), they will not be ok. Ultimately, they bring joy and fullness to life that I cannot even imagine without them.