Homeschooling in California

There won’t be many, if any posts made to this blog in the month of November,as I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo, as it’s also known.) The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write novel (a novel by this definition is at least 50,000 words) in the month of November.

It doesn’t need to be a good novel. In fact, to keep up that word count, it probably won’t be. It only needs to be a 50,000 word first draft. Editing is for December, as they say. There is a wonderfully fun, supportive online community for this huge event at http://nanawrimo.org and there are even local events, and write-ins held all over during the corse of the month.

My kids are way too young to participate or enjoy this kind of event, but I love it, and there are many young writers who participate. If you have a middle or high school aged child (or a really ambitious, younger kid) who loves to write, send to the NaNoWriMo site to check it out. It’s a great experience for anyone who ever thought about someday wanting to try writing a novel.

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.

A lot of references I’ve found recommend writing down things your child says. It shows them that you think what they have to say is important enough to record. I’ve found this to be true. When I try to get ideas out of my daughter, she has a lot more to say when I have a paper and pencil in my hand than when I don’t. She lights up with importance when I, as my daughter says, “write down my words”.

Another tip I found, was to write down stories that they tell, and then let them read them back to you later on. Even though the words may be tough to read, they are, like Hanna said, her words. Her spoken vocabulary far outstrips her reading vocabulary, so she often needs help to re-read her own stories, but at least she’s familiar with them.

We’ve done this twice so far with limited success. The first time, she really loved the idea, and ‘read’ her story to everyone she ran into for the next few days, although it was clear she had trouble with many of the words. When I asked her if she would tell me another story, she was thrilled to, but firmly told me I was not to print it out. She didn’t want to read it to anyone – it was too hard.

“How about if I read it to you?” I asked.

“Sure!” she literally bounced.

So that’s what we’ve done so far. We also cut and pasted some pictures, and I even coaxed her into drawing a few so we could turn her stories into little books. I laminated the pages and bound them with a simple comb binding. Even if she doesn’t feel comfortable reading them alone yet, she still takes pride in them, and I expect, as her reading confidence grows, she’ll enjoy these projects more and more.

As a writer and storyteller myself, I have to say at this stage I’m probably loving these writing projects more than she is!