Reflection on our public school experience

Things I have learned from "Superman" being in public Kindergarten since the end of February:

1.  I miss him when he's gone.

2.  In public school they have to stay on topics for a long period of time to make sure everyone gets it.  This has advantages and disadvantages.  Reinforcement is good to a degree, but at some point if something is totally easy for your child, you are just wasting time.

3.  Consistently revisiting things your child has learned throughout the year really helps them retain it.  I could use some improvement in this area.

4.  When you child is gone to school for hours and comes home with a bunch of things to do (homework, piano practice, soccer sometimes, dinner, and always wanting to play with friends) it's easy to become a drill sergeant parent.  "Superman" feels this and even said to me yesterday, "When can I get my own house.  I'm tired of being told I can't do stuff and getting time outs."  This is a result (at least partially) of the time crunched, drill sergeant parent business.  I REALLY don't want that kind of relationship with my children.  I don't want to be the schedule keeper all the time.

5.  I learned that I like being accountable to someone for doing our reading.  It really helps me stay consistent.

Why I am currently leaning toward homeschool again for next year:

1.  6 hours a day away from Mom and family is a lot for such a young child. 

2.  I believe that spending more time with your family allows you to all know each other better and be closer.  (I am not at all concerned about lack of socialization between neighbor friends, church, homeschool group and sports).

The next two are currently the ones I feel the strongest about....

3.  I feel that in general, homeschooled children have more of an opportunity to find out who THEY are and what THEY love.  What do THEY want to learn about and why?  

4.  We can move at the pace of each individual kid.  I don't have to wait for 30 other kids to be proficient in one area. As soon as my child gets it, we can move on to the next concept and he has an opportunity to excel.  At the same time, he won't KNOW he's excelling.  He won't feel superior to another kid in his class, and if he needs to move slower, he won't feel inferior.

5.  There are many resources in our community to give me support as a homeschooling mother.  There's a library literacy program as well as many other library programs.  There is also a charter school with free kits for independent study on topics my 6 year old is especially interested in.  (They also give you access to a typing program, and Rosetta Stone for Spanish).  Doing some things through that school will give me someone to be accountable to in a no pressure, not stressful kind of way.  

6.  Less of a schedule to stick to....learning things will be done earlier in the day, so he will have more time when friends are home from school to play.  Also, sometimes he will get to play with homeschool friends earlier in the day and already feel socially fulfilled.  I won't have to run my life by the school bus....if Dad wants to see us for lunch, we're free to do that.  

A few mixed feelings:

This past week "Superman" has really enjoyed public school.  He still says he will not be sad if I decide to do homeschool next year.  I'm glad for that but it's still fun that he enjoys school.  At this point I'm feeling that being slowed down in his learning potential and the one thing after another evenings outweigh the fact that he enjoys school.  I can always change my mind later. :)  It's nice to feel you have a choice.

I plan on homeschooling through the summer with the children.  I figure by the fall, I will know for sure what I want to do next year.

12 Ways to Encourage Learning and 5 Rules of Engagement

Here are some good things I copied off of the site I linked to in the previous post.  Twelve ways to encourage children to learn:

1. Provide a safe and loving atmosphere for learning. More support, less pressure.

2. Create magic and anticipation. Provide inspiring materials.

3. Expose children to inspiring music, great art, good books, etc.

4. Read as a family on a regular, consistent basis. This has great benefits .

5. Inspire curiosity and then leave them to the wonder of experimentation and self discovery.

6. Leave plenty of time for thinking, playing and being with family. Avoid too many lessons, clubs and classes.

7. Remember that play is the work of children.

8. Be patient with the learning process.

9. Learn to recognize and respond to Sparks.

10. Learn and live the Five Rules of Engagement.

11. Enjoy learning yourself.

12. Share what you are learning with our children.

Here are her Five Rules of Engagement to help keep the children excited about learning.

Enjoy!  I'm excited to start applying these things along with the "spark station."

Thoughts Rolling Round and Round

 (Warning: this post is just me sorting out thoughts and is pointless for anyone else to read ;))
I've been pondering....my kids are young.  There are many homeschool methods that don't do any structured learning until age eight.  In the mean time, the children learn on their own, by living and exploring.  

I think I didn't initially go for this idea because the condition on which I get to homeschool our children (my husband says) is that they are not "dumb" as compared with other children their age.  Also, I did find a Christian curriculum that I really like, which I have talked about several times.

Well, after hearing of TJED twice in the same day last week (I  had also heard of it before of course) and learning that they don't do much schooling until age 8, I started pondering.  Whenever something comes up several times in a short period, I figure the Lord could be trying to tell me something, so generally I will look into that thing.  Also, I read an article this last week about exploratory learning through projects.

My brain is going round and round with ideas of loosening up our curriculum and focusing on the learning games, practicing reading, and writing just through letters and stuff. OR I could just do the parts of the curriculum the children enjoy, and the scriptural things, plus more exploratory learning time and materials.  Some of the blogs I've looked at just add math to an otherwise very loose and exploratory learning time.

I'm all over the place.  Here's what I want.  I WANT my children to love learning.  I WANT them to be able to learn creatively, and especially at their young ages I don't want to stifle their ability to do so by learning in such a structured way all the time.  They do enjoy learning things when it's in their own way.  I think it could be a cool and fun process to just let them teach themselves with experiences and materials that I help provide.

For now, I am going to create a "spark station" or something like it.  I like the idea of them only having access to it at certain times so that they are more excited about learning time.  Not sure how I'll pull that off yet though.  I am going to make sure that I am available for any self motivated learning ideas the children have, i.e. going on a walk and making a story with pictures, playing store, writing a letter to a relative, etc.  Also, we will continue, no matter what, to have a daily set aside learning time.

Outside of those things, I have a split personality because there ARE a lot of things I love about our curriculum.  It will be interesting to see what these thoughts all turn into.  

I am looking at putting "Superman" into a 1 day a week charter school for fun group electives next year or the year after.  Largely because he has wanted to play violin since he was 3 and they have a group violin class.  Also, they have a music/drama class that I think he would LOVE and a lego robotics class.  Maybe I'll try to go check that out in person sometime very soon to help me decide if I should wait until he's older.

Pasta Art Gallery

Well, time to finally put those colored pastas to use!  We did this on a Saturday, and big brother "Harry Potter" got to join in the fun.  He always enjoys getting a glimpse into our homeschooling.  (Side note for any who don't know, "Harry Potter" is my almost 12 year old step-son and is mostly with his mom AND he just switched from a regular elementary school to a charter school!)

Admiring his "train track"!

Busy creating...

Time for glue

"Superman" constructing his "ladder and slide."

"Harry Potter" wanted to test out something we had done when he wasn't with us....(click HERE to see the post on art with milk and dish soap as well as how we dyed our pasta)

The finished products of all of the children up in the family room, our current art gallery.

               :)  I love this wall!

Sun Time

This is from part of the week we learned about the sun.  The line "Spiderman" got to memorize, and the theme of his scriptures and mini-devotionals for the week was, "Jesus is the light of the world."

(These ideas came from the still fabulous curriculum we use, My Father's World)

Our science (aka fun learning activity) was to make a sundial.  I made the dough ahead of time and we made the sun dial together.  The kids marked the lines in the dough (you could also use clay) and I wrote the time.  It was fun and cool for them to see how you can tell time from where the sun is in the sky.  It was about 10:30am when I took this picture of the sun dial....the shadow falls a little before our line for 11am.

Here is the recipe we used for the dough (again from our curriculum), you can of course make it any color you want.

In a pan mix:

                                 1 to 1-1/4 cups flour

                                 1/4 cup salt

                                 2 T. cream of tartar

Combine and add to the pan:

                               1 cup water

                               1 T. oil

                               a few drops food coloring

You could take this lesson so many different directions with different ages.  You could do this as part of a Native American unit for history, a unit on seasons or one that includes moon phases, planets, and meteors, or just sometime when you're working on clocks and telling time.  

My favorite thing is that it tied it into Heavenly Father.  The sun is the light of the world just like Christ is.  And just like the sun shines indiscriminately on all people, Christ's love and the gift of the atonement are available for all people everywhere.

Weeds and seeds

Some of these pictures are repeats from our family blog....I just really like them :)

This web was PERFECT and beautiful...."Superman" drew it in his sketch book.  It is has been a good web to look at and see how spiders catch their food.

                      A couple weeks ago we learned about plants and seeds, and how plants reproduce and grow.  We ran into this perfect weed in the midst of spreading it's seed.  So cool right!

 All of the kids pulled out some of the seeds.  On the way home we saw a lot of this seed blowing around among other plants.

Pictures to grow on.

Loving learning from God and his creations!

Loving Homeschool

I feel the need to express in words what I hope is being captured through this blog mainly through pictures.  I LOVE homeschooling my children.  I LOVE my children, I LOVE the time I have with them.  I LOVE having the time to get to know them all individually, to learn their learning styles, how their minds work.  I love seeing what things excite them, what things make them feel creative, and what things make them feel accomplished.  I love pretending with them, cuddling with them (at times....I don't love them hanging on me--two TOTALLY different things ;)) reading to them, and finding fun and interesting learning in everyday life.  I love learning about values and how the Lord works with them as part of their curriculum.  I love that I can use curriculum, and that I don't have to use curriculum.  I love the feeling that I'm unschooling while also being structured, that we can take days off when we need to or when someone's mood would make school less than ideal that day.  We will still learn!  My five year old will still tell me how many flies were in the house if I've killed 4 and there are 3 more flying around.  We can still learn about how to control our emotions and be kind on a day when we don't sit down at the desk.  And what is more important in life, learning how to be happy, or learning how to spell?  In this journey of home-learning, family-learning, God-parent-child-learning we call homeschool, we WILL learn spelling and reading and math, AND we will learn that if we push something too hard, it's not worth the sacrifice of happiness.

I am so fulfilled in life right now, just being on earth, and learning how to really be separate from the world.