Boring rambly stuff

We went to the drive-in last night (me and the kids) and saw Happy Feet and Deck the Halls.  Both pretty cute movies.  I love the drive-in!  Maybe it's nostalgia about the Capital drive-in in San Jose we went fairly often when I was a kid.  There were these cool horse swings that we would get to go swing on while waiting for the movie to start.  There were a bunch of different movies playing at one time so if the one your parents were watching was boring, there were usually other things to look at.

I have to go to Sacramento tomorrow for a committee looking at the state tests and making sure they are aligned to the state standards.  Should be interesting, lol.

We are doing some blocking of our subject areas this week, just for an experiment.  Kevan's was more blocked than Ben's.  Monday he did quite a bit of progress in his math book; Tuesday he finished the novel he was reading for literature (Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry) and we spent some time discussing it, Wednesday (today) he read several chapters of his history book (History of US series; he is currently on An Age of Extremes) and did some analysis; tomorrow he will be doing some in depth science learning about plate tectonics and volcanic activity.  Friday he will do vocabulary and music.  Every day he still does a little bit of math review to keep it fresh in his head and build automaticity.  He seems to enjoy doing it this way; makes it easier for me too, because I can schedule subjects he does more independently for the days that I have less flexibility with my schedule.

Ben was a little less of a block schedule.  Since he's only 7, I didn't think he would enjoy doing too much of one thing.  Monday he did a little bit of math, and some Language Arts - we read a couple of poems, went over his new spelling words, and introduced adjectives; he had a great time doing a "mad lib" type activity, adding in adjectives to a boring story with none.  We also did a history lesson - he is just finishing up a study of Roman history that began in September, and is learning about the beginnings of Christianity.  It always amazes me the information that he retains, and Kevan, who loves history, is often lurking in the background listening to the stories as well.  I know I never learned about "Veni, vedi, vici" or Pax Romana in any of my schooling.  It is fascinating stuff!  Yesterday, he did mostly math because it was my busy day and he was at the point where he could take a unit assessment and semester assessment for math.  We did not review for these at all because I wanted to see what he had retained; he did awesome on both, getting over 100% on his semester assessment counting the optional questions.  We also did a history lesson and learned about Nero and the burning of Rome.  Today the kids were at Grandpa's since I had to go to a meeting, and Ben did some science and language arts.  Tomorrow he will have science and history, and will be done for the week, except for a spelling test Friday.

The kids will be in our town's Christmas parade this weekend with Ben's Cub Scout den.  I am going to miss it because I will be out of town still, but will see it on tv (recorded).  That's all folks!

Homeschooling ’styles’

I've been thinking a lot about styles of homeschooling and education in general, and why there are so darn many of them, and why people sometimes become so passionate about their choice that they can be overbearing or judgmental toward those who follow another path.

I have been drawn to various unschooling forums and lists over the years because of the relationships and parenting ideals that I really jived with, but the actual education part of it just didn't work for me.  On the other hand, people who use the materials/methods I like do not typically have the same mentality as I do with regard to being extremely flexible and open-ended with the things, and keeping the child first and foremost over the curriculum or standard or whatever.

Needless to say I never have found a comfortable group to feel that I belonged to with regard to homeschooling.  I think homeschooling is such an intensely personal part of a family that it is nearly impossible to find a theory/model/ideal that fits more than one family exactly.

I really believe in collaborative education as Willa has been talking about at Every Waking Hour and Stephanie at Throwing Marshmallows.  We go through periods of being perfectly unstructured and periods of being perfectly structured.  Sometimes I over-structure things, and sometimes I under-structure.  As Sarah describes discovering in The Teacher's Heart at Wickentree Homeschool, to flourish the homeschool has to be a fit for both the mother and the child.

It is absolutely like a one-of-a-kind dance between each parent-child pair, with an enormous variety of styles and steps with little repetition but with a bit more sureness of step and familiarity with each turn around the dance floor.

It is our responsibility and privilege as homeschooling parents to remain in-tune emotionally and intellectually with our children to determine the appropriate next step together, and not to simply let it happen as it will.

Giving Thanks

I didn't intend to write a Thanksgiving thankfulness post, since it seemed almost cliche.  However I was inspired by several that I read, including this post at Mental Multivitamin and this blog I ran into through one Carnival or another, where Karen is in the middle of listing 1,000 things (gifts) that she is thankful for.  Her goal is to complete this by next year but she is already off to an impressive start.

It is good medicine for the soul to think about and meditate in gratefulness and just the beauty of life more often than I do.  I have been blessed (some would say lucky rather than blessed) far beyond what makes sense to me.  In the day to day grind I so often forget just how incredible life is!

So... I am thankful for

My Spirituality - which has been through the highest of highs and the absolute lowest of lows.  My path has gone from childhood fundamentalist Christianity to complete disillusionment to exploring everything from Native American spirituality to atheism to Catholicism, Judaism, paganism, wicca, various forms of Christianity, agnosticism, etc. ad infinitum, and has finally leveled out into just being my path.  I have absolute peace with my faith, and I am grateful for all of the pain and soul-searching and anger and desolation that it took to get there.

My Family - I have been blessed in so many ways.  My husband is smart, happy and successful in his career, an excellent cook, an involved and caring father, a good provider, and my best friend.  My kids are the most amazing, adorable, talented, and sweetest people in the universe (to me ;).  We have grandparents nearby for the kids, including an amazing grandpa (my husband's dad) who was widowed two years ago and is just SO involved with the kids - attending sports and other events, taking care of them when I have to go to meetings out of town, buying special food, movies, and video games for them to keep at his house, fixing dinner for them to visit every week, bringing us sushi when he goes shopping at the base, the list goes on and on!

Homeschooling - After working in a classroom for four years, and having my kids in my school, it was so exciting to be able to bring them home to learn.  I became more and more dissatisfied with the education that they were receiving; they were starting to hate learning and to just get through the school day.  They were not learning much at all, they were doing tons of busy work and they were not thriving as I wanted them to.  I had been so anti-homeschooling when I met my husband (that's another long story and has to do with my experience homeschooling as a kid) that it took a couple years to convince him that it was a good idea.  The timing was perfect.  William was finished with 8th grade, so he would be leaving the private school we were all at anyway; Kevan was going into 5th, which is when the other kids started to really form cliques and band together against other students; Ben got to try kindergarten and get a taste for what school was like.  It has been, and will continue to be, a huge learning process to constantly adapt to each child and find what works best to reach them and light their fire.  As much as it may never be done perfectly, at least someone is trying!

My home - I love the town I live in (not everybody does though, lol)!  There are always gorgeous sunsets over a riverbed and cliff right outside my house, a 2 mile trail along the riverbed, a park a couple blocks away, plenty of stores, a great library (for a small city), and we can get to the beach in 10 minutes, to waterfalls, snow, desert, mountains, lakes, whatever we want within an hour or two max.  I love our house, a beautiful (well, before WE moved in it was more beautiful lol) 2700 square foot 2 year new house with plenty of room for our stuff.

My job - I love my job.  I work from home in virtual education.  I get to do what I love - teach and create teaching materials - from the comfort of my home and teach my favorites students of all, my own kids.  Even though it can be a challenge to "do it all", I am so blessed to be able to continue to build my skills and experience in my chosen field while homeschooling.  The second income provides many things that we could live without but that make life more pleasant - the larger house, the lessons and activities, cable, high speed internet, Netflix, Audible, books, video games, gadgets, etc.  I don't feel that it is a sacrifice to work for my paycheck because I love the field and it is exciting to be a part of it.  Ten short years ago I was a "starving student" and single mom when I met a "starving student" and single dad and we fell in love.  We were a starving student couple for a few years, and then starving working people for a long time (it seemed at the time although in total it's only been 10 years since we got together) before we got to where we are now, which is comfortably tight but planning and investing for the future.

So, tomorrow when my dad, stepmom, brother and father-in-law come over to join us in gorging ourselves on an over-abundance of food in our warm home with our comfortable clothes, our adorable pets and our myriad of entertainment options, I will try to capture the feeling of abundance and blessedness like a snapshot that can be referred to time and time again throughout the year when things don't seem to be quite as perfect as they really are.

A musical day

This morning we had a musical treat!  Our semi-local symphony orchestra (is that redundant?) had an hour-long performance for kids.  Ben (7) has always been entranced by classical music and has learned to play a finger harp (after wanting a harp for Christmas last year and receiving a smaller version) and piano.  He has recently obtained a violin from his grandpa that he would love to play.   Kevan (11) was not so interested in attending and made jokes last night about being able to sleep through the symphony in the morning if he stayed up too late.

It started with a demonstration of the different sections, having them each play the same song individually - the strings, the woodwind, the brass, and the percussion - and then all together.  This was followed by a journey through space with pictures on a screen accompanying the music.  A few classical pieces were interspersed with a few modern pieces, including the ET theme song (we just watched ET a week ago!) and the Star Trek theme song.  Some other happy tie-ins: the talk about the Roman gods the planet names come from coincided nicely with Ben's study of Roman history.   The facts about the planets that were mentioned were mostly familiar. The 1812 Overture and Tchaikovsky were familiar from our music lessons last year, and the Nutcracker performance we attended at Christmas time last year.  There was something else... I can't remember.  It is nice for them to recognize things they have learned and enabled them to catch parts of the performance that could have been over their heads.

Ben was asking me the names of the galaxies they were showing during one of the songs and I did not know.  I told him they had names, but I wasn't sure what they were and that he could find out online.  When we got home I was pleasantly surprised to see that he found that information 100% on his own on the computer.

After lunch, we went to a park day.  One of the ladies there, whom I had not met before, was knitting.  On Friday Ben had a chance to watch a lady crocheting for awhile while selling raffle tickets w/ Kevan for Boy Scouts.  She taught him how to do it and he has been practicing at home ever since.  He has also been finger knitting which I showed him how to do.  He used to beg me to teach him to crochet and knit but since I am terrible at both I never did.  Well today he watched this lady knitting, and went up to talk to her.  He asked her what she was making, and she taught him how to do what she was doing and let him knit a row.  He was absolutely entranced, and she will be hosting some folk craft workshops at her home in the next several weeks so that should be fun!  She told me he could make his own knitting needles by sanding 1/4 inch dowels so we may try that!

He is such a hands-on crafty kind of guy, and I am so not!  He (without restriction on tv and video games, gasp!) spends his spare time doing origami, drawing, tying various knots in ropes, playing with Magnetix or blocks, crocheting and finger knitting (now!), doing cartwheels...  Kevan is more like me - nose in a book or in the computer.  Or a video game.  He does a lot of creating, but it is on the computer - sprite comics, video games, video game levels or mods, etc.

That was kind of a long random tangent.  My take-home or take-to-heart for the day is to make sure to provide Ben with enough to keep him going, and to find more opportunities to experience live orchestras.  Also, I want to make sure I help Kevan find enough new challenges to keep him stretching his abilities and creativity.  He is pretty good at this on his own but I know he wants to learn a programming language to have a headstart on programming and I need to follow up on that.  I have some suggestions from acquaintances of ours who own/run a company that develops popular video games as to where he should begin so I need to make sure he has a chance to do that.

Whee! We got a Wii!!

My brother bought a Wii pre-order a few weeks ago, intending to sell it on Ebay.  This morning he called and said he decided to give it to us for an early Christmas present instead!  I didn't tell the kids.  Here is arriving.

It's wrapped in his jacket.  The kids unwrapping it.

Seussical

Kevan, Ben and I  got to see an incredible rendition of this musical that interweaves a lot of Seuss's writing into one amazing story.  We were enthralled throughout, and since Will got us a copy of the soundtrack we have been listening quite a bit.  We also picked up quite a few (16 I think) Seuss books from the library.  Since our kids are beyond the picture books, they are packed up in the garage and I couldn't find them for the life of me!

It was such fun to sit together on my bed reading picture books again!  We do sit and read in bed pretty often, but rarely all three of us together, and rarely a picture book.

Homeschooling as a *job*

Over at Mental Multivitamin, she (who? I'm not sure of her name, just stumbled across the site) was talking about treating homeschooling with the attitude that it is a job and one should be prepared and fully present in carrying it out. Her point is that homeschooling is not something to be handled haphazardly or taken lightly.  Many assume that since they are home educating, their kids are automatically receiving a better education than they would in school and therefore the job is practically doing itself.  Personally my goal is not to be just better than public school, but the best that it is possible for me to be.

I would add to her comments that homeschooling and parenting deserves so much more than a job!  I work full time from home.  I am dedicated and serious about my profession, and I enjoy it.  I am appreciated as an excellent employee (most of the time anyway ;). 

Homeschooling and parenting is so much more important than that!  I spend hours planning, preparing, researching, studying, and self-analyzing to be a better parent/teacher/guide for my kids.  I spend hours *with* my kids; reading, creating, exploring, talking, cooking, cleaning, driving, explaining, discovering.

I am sure I am sometimes guilty of over-analyzing things, but  I would much rather err on the side of giving my kids too rich of an environment than the side of leaving them to create their own learning environment.

Shakespeare Electronic Notebook

Ok, I thought this one was really cool.  Kevan did it last year (5th grade) for a Shakespeare unit.  We even have an audio clip of us reading a piece of script at the end.

http://www.unbridledlearning.com/kevan/SHAKESPEAREcomplete.htm

If you are interested in Electronic Notebooking, you should check out http://www.virtualhomeschoolgroup.com where there are some very cool examples and instructions for various things.  I think you have to sign up (free) to see the Electronic Notebooking "course".  But really just starting simple and then improving as you go is the easiest way to do it!

Ancient Rome Electronic Notebook

Ben is learning about Rome right now in History.  Here are the electronic notebooks that he has made so far.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/74853883@N00/sets/72157594376597960/show/

And here is his notebook on the period from Caesar to Augustus.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/74853883@N00/sets/72157594376605534/show/

Quotes not to forget

Friday we visited Pinnacles National Monument.  I will write more on that another time hopefully because I don't want to fill this post with that.  It was such a beautiful time and place together, that I said something like, "This is the coolest place in the world!"  Ben's reply?  "Mom... have you ever been *home*?"

About a week or so ago, Ben randomly declared, "I always wonder what it would be like to be one of those kids whose mom and dad yell at them.  I just always wonder that."  This has been a period of sudden awareness of self for Ben; he is often wondering what it would be like to be various people.

Yesterday we were driving by the private school my kids used to attend and that I used to teach at.  Kevan started pointing and joking, "Ha ha, they're still in school!" (he still has friends there).  I laughed and said, "Ha ha, those teachers are stuck there until 4:00!"  I felt bad suddenly and said, "That's not very nice to laugh at them like that.  Well actually, the teachers have a choice about whether to teach there or not; the kids don't have that choice."  Kevan said, "They could decide they want to go to a different school."  My response (from experience teaching there) was, "Some parents don't really care what their kids want."  Ben replied without hesitation, "Our parents do!"

These were so heartwarming!  I wanted to write them down before they fade away.  Ben's comments are so out of my own frame of reference of experiences, thoughts and feelings as a child, but they tell me that we are at least doing *something* right.