Entries Tagged 'Beta' ↓

It’s been slow going around here lately.  We’ve started a couple new books — The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling and The Marvelous Land of Oz by Baum — but Gamma couldn’t get into either of them.  I don’t think it’s the reading material that’s the issue.  Both are books I think he’d normally really enjoy.  But right now, his mind is 100% focused on…?  Yes, you got it!  Bionicles.  He can’t stop talking about them, from first waking til saying goodnight.  He doesn’t want to read books, or play games, or go exploring, or or or… If he’s not playing with his Bionicles, he’s looking at homemade videos about them on YouTube.  Either that or playing the game on the Wii.

I am being driven slowly insane.

…I have many thoughts, most not fully developed, rambling about in my head right now.  I think the end result, should I ever reason it out, will be an epiphany (for me, at least).  So forgive me for pouring my ramblings out here…

I often read accounts of home/unschooling projects in which everyone is involved, learning is happening on multiple levels, connections are being made, and there’s just a warm fuzzy glow encompassing everyone.  But somehow, I didn’t see that as being real.  Not that I thought learning and projects would necessitate a “chore” mentality — just that I couldn’t see it working for and involving every one of us.  For example, I figured that if we decided to… say, learn to play chess, I would read about it before hand, find some good sites, and then impart my knowledge to Gamma.  He’d be suitably grateful and enthralled with the knowledge, and we’d both become expert chess players as a result.  So yes, we’d all be learning, but I’d be learning in advance, and then teaching.

Gamma has a long-standing obsession with Bionicles.  He loves to put them together.  He scours the Lego site for information on them.  He has discovered the wonders of YouTube and homemade movies starring Bionicles.  He plays the game on the Wii, and he watches the movie as often as we allow can stand to listen to it.  He asks me what Bionicles I would like for my birthday, and which action figure I like best, and who I want to be when we play make-believe games together.  It doesn’t stop.  Ever.  All…day…long.

(this has a point… I swear it… at least I think it does… I’m not sure where this will end up…)

I really don’t like Bionicles very much.  The storyline has too much fighting for my taste.  But knowing how infatuated he is with these right now, I tried to look at them objectively and figure out how we could use this as a learning experience.  Not turning it into schoolwork, but extracting learning from it, if you follow me.

But I couldn’t see it.  Sure, he was following sometimes 20- or 30-step instructions, intended for kids three-to-five years older than he is.  But he’s just playing. Sure, he’s correctly typing in words like “Mata Nui” and “Rahkshi” and “Vahki,” and finding videos and instruction manuals.  But these aren’t “real” words and he’s just fooling around. Sure, he’s reading things like “do you want to purchase this hint for 500?”  But this isn’t a phonics program, it’s just a video game.

I kept looking for how I could connect this to history, or literature, or something I saw as meaningful.  I just couldn’t see it.

A week or so ago, Alpha bid on and won a huge lot of Bionicle sets and spare pieces.  When he called me from work and told me about it, I admit I was less than thrilled.  Gamma had just been digging in his heels and ignoring some of the “organic” learning I was trying to make him joyously discover.  Instead, he wanted to be playing with his stinking Bionicles.  I was ready to ban them from the house!  But despite my opposition to the war-mentality, and despite the education battles, I really just want my kids to have fun and be happy, and so, when Alpha came home Friday afternoon with a load of Bionicles, I was grinning along with him while we watched Gamma’s ever-increasing joy as he discovered each new set.

Thus began a two day marathon Bionicle session.  For all of us.  Gamma was the lead builder, as he knew the most about the sets.  Some did not have instructions — Alpha and Gamma figured those out together.  Then came the huge bag of assorted parts.  A strange helmet, an unusual weapon or disk or shield.  I’d  use these clues to look them up on the internet, find the correct name/species (???) of Bionicle, and locate a scanned instruction booklet so they could piece them together.  Epsilon… he is the only two year old on earth, I’d dare say, that can say “Bionicle”, let alone name individual characters.

And it was an absolutely awesome, warm-fuzzy-glow weekend.  Alpha is almost as infatuated with Bionicles as Gamma now.  He loves to build and construct, and figure things out with no blueprint, only to find a blueprint later and realize he was dead-on balls accurate (it’s an industry term).  Gamma was in his element, and I think being the resident expert gave him a level of confidence and assured-ness about himself he’d not realized before.  I loved finding that I’m a valued part of the team — that being research assistant/librarian is just as valuable  (if not more)  as being hands on/go-to-girl.  Epsilon enjoyed getting to play with spare parts and simply not being brushed aside in the interest of real learning, as opposed to play.  And both kids got to see that both Dad’s and Mom’s skills (although vastly different) have great value.

Sigh… if I’d taken the time to write this all out in the midst of the epiphany, it might have made so much more sense… but then I’d have missed most of the moments…

I can’t equate all learning to the Bionicle universe.  I still can’t fathom how our history can be traced through this alternative universe.  Or how most math, or history, or science, can spring from this.  But I am beginning to get the picture of how the learning can happen, and the possibilities are enticing.  I still have a long way to go, but I think I’m becoming more open to the possibilities.

And I think that – getting how the learning can happen – will be the most important step of all.

Can you find a familiar face amongst the legion?

Years, ago, before I finally got brave enough to have laser eye surgery, I wore contacts.  Either contacts or coke-bottle glasses.  20/200, no lie.  With astigmatisms.  My nieces, so very near and dear to my heart in those pre-children days (children of my own that is, and the girls are still very near and dear!) would watch me put in my contacts with awe.  They always said I was “putting in my eyes!”

I am so glad to have stumbled across this today.

I feel as though I’ve been looking at homeschooling through old, jaded, public-schooled eyes.  Now that I’m attempting to journal (on paper, not here) Gamma’s goings-on and questions, I’m seeing far more learning and inquiry than I could have imagined. And I’m sure I’ll “see” more as I really learn to recognize the learning taking place right before me.

My head is still spinning.

I have read more about educational theory and philosophies in the past week or two than you can imagine.  I’ve run into a multitude of choices I didn’t even know we had.  Reggio?  Steiner?  Project-based?  Problem-based?  I find it very telling that the choices that appeal to me most are the ones that most closely line up with unschooling. But let me assure you, if we’re applying labels, Alpha will be much more comfortable with the term inquiry-based learning.

The Camp Creek blog has been just a wealth of information and inspiration.  THIS is an approach I think could actually work in our house.  For EVERYONE.  However….

I find it rather ironic that, when I first set up this blog, I made a point on our about page of saying “we don’t label our children.”  So why am I so insistent upon labeling our children’s education?  Searching for an identity in the homeschool blogging community, maybe?  (as if being a secular/atheist homeschooling family isn’t identity enough!!)  I don’t want to be fenced in by a label three years from now, when Gamma decides he wants to, I don’t know, tackle math in a textbook.  Or when Epsilon is a little older and loves phonics and workbooks and lots and lots of structure.  (ha ha ha)

So I have decided to abstain from the worksheets, and the phonics program, and the checklist.  Instead I’m going to more actively track his interests and his questions, and encourage him to pursue them.  And document everything, for my own sanity.  I’m finding that, when I do that, the other things get accomplished along the way.  Let’s see if it continues.

We are still here.  I am doing lots of reading and thinking and processing.  It’s all good reading and thinking and processing, I promise.  Just not ready to go into detail — the thoughts have not all been processed and are still currently whirling around inside my head.

It’s been over two weeks since we cracked open our phonics program.  And yet Gamma’s reading more than ever.  I’m learning to sit back and relax and enjoy watching the progress, rather than trying to instigate it.

Learning being the operative word here.  It takes time to learn to relax.  Who knew I was so uptight?  In the meantime, I’ve been crocheting.

Keeping my hands busy and out of his business… some of the time.

*edited to link to Nicole’s fabulous basic sock pattern.  I could never have come up with this on my own!

things Gamma, Epsilon and I did today:

• read three chapters in Dahl’s “The Witches”
• read assorted other books throughout the day
• measured a bedroom window for curtains
• took the circumference of the biggest pumpkin from our garden (55 inches)
• vacuumed, Gamma earning 2 euros toward his next Bionicle purchase
• pretended a plain brown refrigerator-sized cardboard box was a castle
• played knights and marauders, Gamma and Epsilon shooting imaginary arrows through the slits in the box
• played Bionicle on the Wii (Gamma gave me lessons)
• looked up information on the computer about Bionicles and read said info aloud until I was hoarse
• played outside, some kind of made up game in which I am the Queen of Ice and he is the King of Fire (Epsilon gets to be minion to us both, running back and forth to serve our dastardly plans)

Things we did not do today:

• phonics
• fight

I’ve got to tell you… we’re having a hard time over here.  I’m really struggling.  What happened to my sweet, compliant Gamma?  In his place is this moody teenager, trapped inside a five year old body.  And what happened to the endless patience I used to possess?  He’s sullen and rebellious, I’m bitchy and short-tempered and…. well, Alpha may or may not have called me a harpie tonight.  And he may or may not have been kidding.

All my well-laid plans and schedules seem laughable at this point.  I’ve actually seriously considered the local public schools once more.  Are they really as bad an option as we thought?  (yes) What about the local Catholic schools, which are purported to be stronger academically?  Could we abide having our kids indoctrinated, and just do some un-indoctrinating at home?  (no, obviously) Obviously, I was just being a wee bit melodramatic when I started talking public school — it’s not a good fit for our family and we’ve always known that.

But, somehow… somehow I always thought we’d just segue naturally into homeschooling.  Gamma’s curious by nature; I love to research and learn new things.  He and I are extremely close.  I knew he wouldn’t be the sit-and-fill-in-workbooks kid that I was, but I thought I had accounted for that.  Apparently I don’t understand his personality and learning styles nearly as well as I thought I did.

(And how the hell do you figure out the learning styles of a 5 year old, anyway?  Why are all the tests to figure out your learning style geared for those who have already completed the crux of their learning??)

I like to think this is the norm — that all new homeschoolers experience this uncertainty, and have to re-evaluate as they go.  The dreaded term “unschooling” has popped up a few times in the last few days, all met with an immediate negative shake of the head from Alpha.  There is great value, he says, in formal knowledge and structured lessons.  I agree, for what it’s worth.  I just don’t know that they are of value to a five year old, or even a ten year old.  To a fifteen year old, pursuing the path they desire in life, I think formal, structured lessons are well-advised. But to my kindergartner… I think close family relationships and pursuing your interest of the day are more beneficial.

If I choose to pursue unschooling (please, someone, give me a less-volatile title for this concept!), I may be soothing one relationship (mother and son) but irritating another (husband and wife).  I’m uncertain in which direction to proceed.  Do I keep going, and eventually bend my child’s will to my own?  Or follow his?  In which case, bending my own?  And what lesson does that send?

Tomorrow… tomorrow we are making cookies, and dog food (home-roasted turkey, rice, and veg — nothing but the best for our Border Collie/mutt), and perhaps making a trip to the library to look for crochet books for me, and Wii games for loan, and whatever perks the interest of my boys.  Tomorrow we are taking a break.  A break from the fighting, and the nagging, and the 5 year old pretending he can’t spell “not” in his phonics  program, but completely able to sound out “La Flûte Enchantée” and figure out that was French for “The Magic  Flute” and beg to go to it because he loves the music.

JJ, please move to Belgium and be my best friend for a year and help me figure out how to do this!!   Because the only homeschool support here is unabashedly christian (good for them; if you’re going to take a stand, take it unabashedly), and I find myself completely on my own.

OK — those two books over there ——>?  They are totally pissing me off.

First, the French book.  Le Secret de Monsierur Verlan.  I don’t know if you’ve blown up the image, but in the bottom left-hand corner it says “huit et plus” — eight and older.  So the typical 8-9 year old should have no problem with this text.  Yet I, at thirty-mumble mumble mumble, am agonizing through it!  I can read it, and yet it makes no sense!  Why?!  Well, because it’s not supposed to make sense.  M. Verlan, apparently, does everything in reverse. He says “good evening” when he should say “good morning”, he asks the class to write in tiny script so he can see it from far away, he claims singular objects end in “s” and plurals do not.  Amusing to young French readers, no doubt, but confounding as all get out to adults trying to read in French! I’m trying to figure things out logically, and fill in vocabulary I don’t know contextually, but that doesn’t work in a book where everything is backward!  I think I need to abandon this and try another early French reader.  I can figure out this book, but figuring out what is serious and what is farcical is taking up too much of my time.    I’m sure Gamma, in 3 or 4 years, will find this highly amusing.  I, however, am moving on.

The Canon… sigh.  I wanted to love this book.  And a part of me does.  I’m listening to this, by the way, in audiobook format.  Nike Doukas is  great, absolutely great narrator.  The repartee is exhilarating and fun, and makes me forget I am listening to a science book.  The witty repartee, which some reviewers find annoying, resonates with me.  Because I am more an English major and less a Science major.  But when Angier, the author, starts waxing poetic about electrons and atomic bonds, I’m lost.  I feel like I should be reading this with a science textbook open in my lap.  And maybe I should.  She’s so excited by, in love with, her topic, it makes me yearn to feel the same passion for thermodynamics and electromagnetism and all that good stuff.  I suppose that’s the point to a book like this — to inspire literary-types to glimpse the beauty and poetry in science, as well as in Shakespeare.  But I had hoped this book would explain thermodynamics and electromagnetism in a way I could understand, rather than simply giving me a brief glimpse.  My search continues…

OK, first of all, it’s been a busy week.  The kind where nothing quite goes as expected, and “me” time, which is normally spent on the computer, updating for all my very lovely readers, falls by the wayside.  Chances are there will be many, many more long silences in this blog.  I love to blog, but my family comes first.  No apologies.  Sometimes living life is far more important than writing about it.

But TODAY….

Today, Sunday, I took Gamma to the local indoor child-play area.  You know, bouncy castles, ball pits, tumbling mats, obstacle courses… that kind of thing.  I love to get him out to play with local kids — he learns to communicate in a foreign language, or without language.  He was having a great time until he happened to piss of THE THUG.  You know, the kid that every other kid has to please or he’ll pay dearly with his lunch money, pride, and anything else  he has to give.

The first time, Gamma fought back.  They were pushing each other about, slapping at each other, fighting as little boys do.  THE THUG looked to be about the same size as Gamma, which means he was probably about a year older.  Because Alpha is a giant, and Gamma takes after him, usually being mistaken for a kid a year or so older than he actually is.  Anyway….

I stepped in, fairly calmly.  I took Gamma away, bought him a drink, and reminded him that we don’t fight, EVER.  We don’t back down and let bullies win, but we don’t engage in fistfights, slapping, etcetera.  We shrug and turn away (perhaps with a “whatever” rolling of the eyes, once you’ve perfected it), showing that you couldn’t care less and engaging in this argument just isn’t worth your time.  Gamma got the message and, once refreshed, went back to playing.

At which time THE THUG sought him out.  And pinned his arms behind his back.  And pushed him up against the mesh “wall” and wouldn’t let him go.

The bastard.

Gamma called for me, a loud, plaintive “Mom!”  Not, “Mom, I’m scared, come help me!”;  but, “Mom, he’s not playing by the rules!  What do I do?!”  I was already on the way, and when THE THUG saw me, he quickly released Gamma.  I gave him the evil eye, and he retreated into the funhouse.

Although I stayed relatively close after that, and evil-eyed THE THUG twice more to avoid confrontation, the fun seemed to sour for Gamma.  Shortly after that, we went home.

I’ve been lucky thus far.  Bullies have been few and far between.  But now I find myself — Gamma, really, — faced with a dilemna.  How do you teach a young boy like Gamma — only five and a half — to be nice and gentle and gentlemanly, and yet to stand up for himeslf?  How does a boy avoid confrontation, yet not cave to THE THUGs of the world?  How does a boy please his mom and do what he knows is expected of him, without looking like a mama’s boy?

Bueller?  Anyone?

p.s. — I totally wanted to kick that kid’s ass!  I need to figure out how to intimidate little shits in French, because that hasn’t been part of my education thus far!