thinking for ourselves… all day, in every way

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!

the pack will play, apparently.

Alpha is in London at the first ever TAM London event.  I’m practically rabid with jealousy.  But I’m trying to contain myself.

I had grand plans for the weekend — taking the boys out every day to do something cool and different.  A hike, perhaps a zoo or wildlife preserve, maybe a movie.  But when we woke up this morning, all they really wanted to do was stay in their jammies and play.

So that’s what we did.

I’ve done some editing as of late around here, to reflect our slightly less-schooly mentality (haven’t gone all the way, sorry JJ!).  Note the change from “teaching them to think for themselves” to “thinking for ourselves… all day, in every way.”    The reading seems to be rolling along just fine, despite my interference.  So, for the time being, I’m letting go of that.   I think Gamma’s getting more out of reading the instructions for video games, et al, than he was getting out of our phonics program.  Recently, he seems to be quite intrigued by maths, so we’re working on that more.  Funny to me, he still gets the numerals 6,7,8, and 9 confused, but he can add and subtract, and even multiply numbers much higher.  The concept is there, just not the notation.

Also, Gamma’s Lit Picks in the sidebar will no longer contain just our current reads.  Rather, it will hold only the cream of the crop — books Gamma personally recommends for other adventure-loving, thrill-seeking, irrepressible five year old boys!  As you can all ready see, we’ve been on a bit of a Roald Dahl kick, as of late.  We’ve also read Winnie the Pooh and attempted The Wind in the Willows, but neither of them have passed the 5-year old boy test!  Hopefully, someday, this list will help other starting-out homeschooling mums, desperate for good literature for their young sons — sons who are left cold by the current “recommended” reads for this age group!

In a comment from my most recent cry for help, JJ quotes from one of her own past posts (a quote of a quote of a quote of a quote, I think!):

Some students as children were taught to color inside the lines, watch Barney the purple dinosaur, and always ask permission.  We need students who found out what Crayons tasted like, loved reading “The Cat in the Hat” and paid little attention to rules — students whose parents encouraged their children’s curiosity.

Have I mentioned in the past that Gamma has gone to school here?  It’s called maternelle, and most children start at the age of 2 1/2. We sent Gamma briefly at the age of 2 1/2, believing it was the only way he would meet local kids and make friends.  (that’s a topic for another post, but let me just briefly say, there are no kids running about around here, even in the heart of the summer.  all the parents seem to work, and all kids seem to be in special all-day programs, even during vacation.)  He cried every single time I took him, so eventually we brought him home.  We tried again just last September, at 4 1/2.  At this point we’d been back and forth on the homeschool question half a dozen times.  What tipped the scales into “real” school’s favor?  Simply put: French.  I can teach him French, but fluency will be a stretch.  It seemed extremely important at the time.

Still some tears, but he was older and adjusted better.  His teacher was firm but kind.  Most of the other kids were fine.  He brought home some behaviors we didn’t care for, but we took that as par for the course.  Regardless, it was during that year that we decided his need for close family ties and an individualized education outweighed his need for French.  He didn’t go back after spring vacation.

His last day of school, his teacher gave me a packet with his papers and schoolwork from the year.  She said she had loved having Gamma for a student, and we could stop by anytime.  I left feeling a wee bit nostalgic.

In the car, I glanced through the paperwork.  On several pages, I saw a sad face with tears dripping from the eyes.  Why?  Because he had scribbled instead of colored in neatly.  He had followed the key correctly, coloring all the N spots black (noire), all the R spots red (rouge), all the J spots yellow (jaune).  But the coloring in had been done half-heartedly, because it’s not something he enjoys doing yet.

The message those sad faces sent (to me, at least) was that understanding the concept behind your task wasn’t important.  What was important was delivering a pretty package.  I was stunned.  Does a kid at 4 1/2 really need to be made to feel like they failed?  At coloring?  At that point, whatever doubts I’d been feeling about the should we/shouldn’t we issue disappeared.

Thanks, JJ.  I’m glad to have been reminded of that moment.

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.

I had been planning on making my kids participating in TV Turnoff Week, back when I just missed the last one.  Although I’m not in the “television is evil” camp, I do wish the kids our family spent more time outside and less time plopped on the couch watching the tube.   I’m hesitant to establish any kind of ruling or specific hourly-allowance for the boys — my controlling nature is at odds with my desire for them to be as autonomous as possible from an early age and able to make these kind of judgments for themselves.  But I digress…the planned TV Turnoff Week…

The timing was off.  We had just returned from Scotland, the ease-into-homeschooling wasn’t going as well as I’d hoped, and I was smack out of ideas on how to make it a fun adventure.  So how did we compromise??

We bought a Wii.

…some highlights from our most recent trip to Scotland.  We base ourselves in Fort Augustus, a wonderful albeit tourist-filled town at the base of Loch Ness.  I find it funny that we scorn the “tourists” and wish they’d clear the streets and leave us in peace.  We’ve been there enough we feel like locals.  But that’s probably what all the tourists say!  Next year we’re hoping to go up in the winter and really slip off the tourist radar.

Without further ado…

This will hopefully become a weekly feature.  In keeping with the laid back, CM-ish tone of our homeschool, Gamma narrates a story we’ve read a few times this week, from Aesop’s Fables. **edited to add: from here on out, Gamma is dictating.  I just did the typing, because I’m a wee bit faster than him.  For now…

*****

A fable is a pretend story where animals act like humans and talk like humans.  There is always a lesson at the end.

The Lion and the Mouse

A mouse ran over the lion’s nose while he was sleeping.  It woke him up!  He waited his moment and then flashed out his paw onto the mouse’s tail!  He let him go because he wouldn’t make much of a meal.  The mouse promised that he would pay the lion back.

The lion was stalking his prey, a zebra, at dusk.  He finally got caught by a hunter’s net!  It held him fast!  He roared!  And it echoed through the forest so that everyone could hear him, even mouse.  The mouse ran as fast as his little legs could carry him to the lion.  He helped him get out of the net by gnawing on the net with his teeth.  The lion broke free.

The mouse said, “You see, I told you I’d pay you back someday.”

“A little tiddly thing like you helping a king of beasts like me,” said the lion.

The lesson: KINDNESS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN STRENGTH