Homeschooling in California

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?

With a stack of books already in my arms, my daughter found a Lilo and Stitch book she wanted to check out at our latest trip to the library.  I almost said no, that we had enough books, but I didn’t.  I already feel sometimes like she watches too much TV (or maybe I should say DVDs) so I hate bringing home these same over advertised characters home in our reading materials too, but she asked so politely, I couldn’t bring myself to say no.

 Well, I’m glad we checked that book out.  It’s one of those “Step into Reading” books, level 2.  Hannah read it to me yesterday, struggling a great deal but refusing any assistance.  Then she wanted me to read it to her for her bedtime story.  Today she had read it to me no less than 3 times.  It feels like it takes her an hour to get through this simple story, but she loves it so much and is working so hard, I can’t help but puff with pride a little each time. 

Sure, it flies in the face of my lofty goals of beautiful classic children’s literature.  It seems silly and trivial, but I’m over that part now.  Hannah loves this book.  What could possibly be a better thing to teach her than that reading is fun and wonderful?  If all she gets out of school is a passion for reading, then I think we’ve done well.  (I’d like her to be able to add too, but you get the idea.)

Luckily, she loves the other stories I read to her as well.  I’m hoping that her infatuation with this book is really a sign that she’s growing in her reading confidence, and that having the characters be familiar and beloved only help keep her engaged long enough to get through it.  Time will tell. 

I have to go now.  She wanted to read it again to me before bedtime.  I’ll have it memorised soon.

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.

My daughter asked for games at her birthday party. I was a little nervous about this idea because so many child experts that I’ve read about are very anti-competition. I wasn’t worried about my own kid – she wanted to have games – she’d asked for them after all. No, I was more worried about how the other kids, and the other parents might feel about it. Was is okay to declare one child the winner of each game, or was that not allowed now a days?

I’m happy to report that the kids all had a wonderful time. They absolutely loved the games. I even got some nice comments from parents too. They’d noticed, just as I had, that kids don’t play games at parties anymore, and it was a shame, considering how much fun they were having with their three legged races, and hot potato games.

We did have one little girl dissolve briefly into tears, but it wasn’t because she lost a game. She was frustrated that she was having trouble keeping her ping pong ball on her spoon. She wanted to do well for herself, she didn’t care about winning. All the kids were like that. They were in it for the fun. None of them cared who won. It was inspiring to watch in a way.

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!

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.

Maybe I was seeing the future in my last post, or maybe the reason I was feeling out of sorts and like our schooling was idling was because I was starting to get sick. 

The kiddo and I both got a nasty stomach virus yesterday.  Well, she got sick, literally, about three in the morning, on the carpet next to my bed.  Poor girl.  My husband and the baby had been sick two days before, but were much better.  Thankfully, my husband decided to stay home one more day to kick the last bit of virus he was carrying.  I could barely sit up in bed for more thna a few minutes at a time.  It would have been even more miserable for me to have to chase that cute, yet trouble-making, toddler around all day.

 We made a few haf-hearted attempts to do school work.  We did our reading lesson, because we could do than while snuggled together in the bed.  We started a writing lesson, but didn’t finish.

If we were homeschooling independently, it wouldn’t be a big deal.  We’d just continue on when we felt up for it.  But because we have to report to our school about what we do each day, we’ll need to make up the work.  At least we got sick on a Friday.  We have all weekend to do the rest of what I’d planned for Friday.  We’ll probably need that long too, because while I’m much better today, I’m still only operating at about 50%.  The kiddo says she’s all better, and she’s certainly running around like a healthy child, but she’s still running a small fever, so I want her to rest some today too.

 Well, it’s back to bed for now for me.  I hope today finds you well.  Hug your kids.

This past week has felt really tough on the homeschooling front, but I’m not real sure why.  Nothing major has happened to take up our time.  We’ve had some fun playdates, got some neat project ideas from our advisor, and yet I just feel like I’m spinning my wheels, not moving.

I did a lot of reading before making the decision and commitment to homeschool, so I’d read plenty of homeschoolers discuss the bad days.  Somehow I thought the bad days were when mom or the kids were sick, or there was some upheaval in the household.  Maybe it is.  Maybe the bla-s I’m feeling this week don’t actually qualify as bad, just, bla.

When I take a step back and look at things objectively, I think the homeschooling has been going fine.  It’s the rest of my life that’s been overwhelming.  I had a bunch of writing deadline all land on top of each other, so I had several late nights in a row.  That’s left me tired, and. . .well, bla.

Juggling work (as in a job, and working from home to boot) homeschooling, and regular life stuff is still a skill I haven’t mastered yet.  I don’t switch mental gears quickly, so it makes it hard to go back and forth from one thing to another.  I don’t feel like it’s undoable, but I’m just not doing it well yet.

Now on top of feeling overwhelmed and fractured, I’m rambling in my blog.  Sorry to take you down with me.  I do have a few thoughts on more solid posts to make, but I can’t seem to pull them into focus in my mind tonight.  But I’ll be back to coherent thought soon.

The message for tonight is, brain and/or emotional overload happen.  I’m trying to remember that it’s all just inside me.  My family says it isn’t spilling out as much as it feels.  It’s just hard to see that things are still good when everything is filtered through my own temporarily flawed perceptions.

Sometimes things really aren’t as bad as you think.

What really helped me feel comfortable with the decision to homeschool was seeking out other homeshooling families and groups. Meeting these families and kids in person was wonderfully reassuring.

I started by joining the HSC Yahoo group I mentioned in an earlier post, and then asking around for a homeschool group in my area. Unfortunately, I didn’t find much in my immediate area, but in a nearby community we found a group we love.

It was great to see my daughter playing with the other kids, and seeing how normal they all were. It also gave me a chance to talk (and mostly to listen) to the other moms. Most of them had more experience than I did with homeschooling, many had older children that they’d been working with for many years, and they knew about resources and books, and places to go that it would have taken me forever to learn about all on my own. Homeschool groups are worth joining just for these reasons if nothing else in my opinion.

Some groups have a set purpose, like to study a particular subject, or pursue a certain activity. Others are purely social, and the kids just get together to do whatever they want. The groups can be formal, or casual, and anywhere in between on the continuum. Whatever type of group you’re looking for, the Internet is a great place to start looking. If nothing else, post what you’re looking for on a homeschool forum or chat board – if a group like the one you want doesn’t already exist, you may get one started just by asking.