Homeschooling in California

For those who don’t know it, 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy.  Since a lot of kids love outer space, this is a good time to take advantage of some special events.  For the most up to date info, you can visit the official International Year of Astronomy website at: http://www.astronomy2009.org/

One of the things I’m looking forward to, is getting a Galileoscope.  It is an inexpensive telescope designed to be used inurban areas that allows us to see what Galileo saw with his telescope 400 years ago.  We should be able to see the rings of Saturn and some of Jupiter’s moons.  It isn’t available yet, but I’ve signed up to be notified when it’s ready.  If you don’t want to wait for me to post about it again, you can sign up too at: http://galileoscope.org.s24296.gridserver.com/

 So if you’ve been interested in tracking down a local astronomy club to join a stargazing session, now is a great time.  I bet a lot of local groups are planning extra fun stuff this year.  I think in the spring, we’ll make a special camping trip to go out an see the stars.

I just started reading “A Natural Sense of Wonder: Connecting Kids With Nature through the Seasons” by Rick Van Noy. I haven’t learned anything yet, but it has brought a lot of old memories up for me. We used to play in the woods a few blocks form our house all the time when I was a kid. We had names for the different parts of the wood, and favorite spots to play. There was a creek, and a fallen tree that made a bridge across. I have some really precious, wonderful memories of that place.

We have to drive for about 20 min to get to a regional park/open space here. If there’s someplace closer, I don’t know about it. Anyway, there’s no place within walking distance that’s wild or natural. Even if there was, would I feel safe letting my kids play there alone the way I played when I was little? Maybe when they’re a little older, I like to think I would, especially if they went with a group of friends. I remember that was always a rule for going to the woods for my sister and I – we couldn’t go alone, only with a group of other kids.

But the sad thing is, my kids can’t just go knock on the neighbor’s door, collect a few kids, and run off to their imaginary kingdom in the woods. I can take them to a natural area, but that’s hardly the same kind of experience. Maybe it’s just the world changing, maybe it’s the area we live now, I guess it doesn’t really matter. It just means that I’ll have to put more thought and effort and time into letting my kids have access to fun outdoor nature experiences than my parents had to.

I’m curious – do your kids have a natural place to play? Did you when you were a child? What do you do to explore nature with your children?

I’ve found that the hardest part of homeschooling for me has been to pace myself.  It’s so easy to get excited about a subject, and want to go wild with it, forgetting that my daughter is barely 5, and maybe doesn’t need or want to know all the gritty details surrounding every innocent question she asks.

For example, when we were learning about frogs, I happend across a science catalog where you could order actual tadpoles and watch them grow into frogs.  IT would have been so cool!  SHe’d love it.  I’d love it.  But, other than the cool factor, what would she get out of it that she wouldn’t get if we waited a year or two?  Actually, later on, she’d get so much more out of watching a tadpole transform.  When she can keep a log of her observations, really notice subtle differences, and understand how what she’d read about actually occus in front of her eyes it will all mean so much more.  More than just, “Whoo Hoo, I have a pet frog!”

I even considered getting a frog now, then another one later on in a few years to do the deeper observations with, but the more I thought about it the more I thought that would take away from the specialness of doing it.  I really have to learn to pace mayself.  We have plenty of learning to do, and many years to do it.  We need to remember to play a lot.  Sing, read, paint, count, and play some more.  She loves science, and asks great questions.  I have to remember that we’ll get to all the fun experiments eventually.  We don’t need to start on the particle physics doctorate dissertation in kindergarten.

I read the term’ unit studies’ in various places, education books, and homeschool chat boards, for quite awhile before I knew what it meant. A few weeks ago, we actually used a reptile and amphibian unity study pack that our advisor gave us when my daughter asked to learn about snakes.

Basically, a unit study takes a topic that’s interesting to the child, and teaches as many subjects as possible around that topic. So, Hannah wanted to learn about snakes. So we read books about snakes (science and reading), looked at pictures of snakes, and painted and drew pictures of snakes (art), counted, sorted, and graphed all our reptile toys (math), made up a story about a snake (writing), Looked up where some snakes live on a map (science and social studies), and so on.

It was really a lot of fun. As a mom, I liked the way this type of learning combines many subjects, and shows the interconnectedness of learning. That math, for example, is relevant to other subjects. That all subjects can relate to each other in some way. I think it helps show how subjects fit into real life better than having every subject stand all alone.

That said, we were pretty well tired of learning about reptiles and amphibians after two weeks. Although, since we’ve moved on to other topics, Hannah still brings up, and wants to talk about what she learned about reptiles, so I know that unit studies can really stick with a kid.

Another favorite in our house is Sid the Science Kid, a PBS program. Since this comes on in the morning at a time when I assume most kids are in school, I’m assuming this show is actually aimed at preschoolers. Even so, I think it’s a great show for introducing basic science concepts, and the scientific process to children. Slightly older kids could expand on the basics in the show, but I’d guess that once you get a few years above the demographic for Sid the Science Kid, you probably would be bored with the show anyway.

What I like best is that there is a simple, usually quick to set up, experiment that goes along with each show. It gives us something to do at home so we can see that what we saw on TV is what really happens when we do the same experiment ourselves. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for the child to try to predict or hypothesize on their own, but at the preschool, and kindergarten level, that really isn’t the most important aspect of science yet.

If you’re more organized than me, and want to have your experiment ready to go as soon as the show is done, parents can even hop online and see what experiment goes with each show ahead of time. For that matter, if you’re anti-television, but want to use the experiments from the website, you can easily do that too. See http://pbskids.org/sid/index.html for links to local schedules, and info for parents, as well as games for kids.