Origins with the family

We took our family vacation last week to Origins Game Fair and Convention in Columbus, Ohio.  Here are some of the lessons I learned:

1.  Board Room Passes for EVERYONE with a badge.  We didn't do this and while Josh had lots of time to play games, the kids and I were left with way too much down time at the Convention.  

2.  Be sure to NOT let anyone pack the diaper bag without checking it twice for first aid kit, wipes and plenty of diapers.  Between a bloody nose, poopy diapers and a killer tension head ache brought on by the lack of first aid kit and wipes, my stress level was high by the end of the day on Thursday.

3.  Get a hotel room a year in advance - when all the hotels book up quickly, reserving the room well in advance of the con is really important.  We were about 6-8 blocks from the con and riding the bus with a stroller is not fun.  We've booked at the Hyatt already for next year.

4.  Children 3 or under need naps and a schedule - plan accordingly.  We had planned for this somewhat, but not enough. 

5.  Children over 3 get homesick.  The cure for this - physical exhaustion so they will sleep really well.  The best release for Asher on Friday was going to the park with my dad's three sisters.  Next year, after lots and lots of gaming, I will be taking my children to some park or play ground to romp for a while.  They need to romp and run.  

6.  Hotel Sofa Beds are crap.  The springs on the kids' sofa bed were broken, the mattress was awful and the kids were miserable.  Next year, I will bring an air mattress or something if it is needed.  

7.  Leave the baby home.  Oz was great, he rode in his stroller, he napped in his stroller, he played nicely at the hotel room.  But he was exhausting to me - next year, as he will be entering his terrible twos, I think I'll see if Grandma would be willing to keep him for the week.  

8.  Find a way to separate the children for some individual activities.  Asher and Evie had the most fun when he was sword fighting with the Bruce Willis looking guy and she was getting her face painted.  Seriously, the guy looked like Bruce Willis...  No joke...  

9.  Be careful what you eat.  Stomach upset at 3 a.m. when the baby is wanting to sleep with you and the 3 y.o. is already in your bed is so not fun.  Thankfully, Josh took over the baby and Isaac just snuggled up to me really closely between bathroom trips.

10.  RELAX.  I was way too uptight about this trip.  I think next year will be more pleasant whether we take all 4 children or just a couple of them.  

Homeschooling 101 Part III - Types of Homeschooling

There are numerous types of homeschooling and homeschoolers within the homeschooling community.  From classical homeschoolers to unschoolers, the variety within the homeschooling community spans across all racial, religious and ethnic backgrounds.  Homeschooling is not just for "hippies" or "ultra-conservative Christians" any more.  I used to say that there were two camps within homeschooling and I did not fit into either - these were the "Granola-Crunching Tye-Dye Brigade" and the "Bible-Toting Denim Jumper Brigade".  I have absolutely no problems with either of these two 'camps', other than the fact that I did not 'fit' into either of them very well.  

Being a person who never really 'fit' into any one group (except the band geeks in high school), this didn't bother me too much, but it made finding a good match in a homeschooling support group difficult.  I don't think the line between two 'camps' in homeschooling are much more blurred now, at least in North Carolina.  There is a much wider variety of people homeschooling now than ever before.  Finding your niche in homeschooling is a lot like finding your niche in life.  So, when beginning homeschooling one must examine themselves and see where they fit.

I will begin by describing what I think of as opposite ends of the homeschooling spectrum:  unschooling and classical education.  These two forms of homeschooling are equally valid and I’ve seen highly educated students coming from both ends.  Honestly, the differences between the two, in my opinion, do not matter as long as knowledge is acquired and children are learning.  Depending upon your children’s learning styles, unschooling may be right for one child and classical right for another.  Here are brief descriptions of the two methods:

Unschooling varies from unschooler to unschooler, but basically, unschooling is the process of eliminating the use of a formal curriculum and replacing it with self-directed learning focusing on the individual child.  Some unschoolers do provide curriculum to their children, but just as a resource for self-directed learning.  Unschooling uses life to learn all the core subjects (reading, writing, math).  Unschoolers encourage their children to find their passions and do research to educate themselves.  They also encourage their children to learn at their own pace.  

Classical Education uses time tested methods to teach children not only core subjects, but usually subjects such as logic and Latin.  Classical Educators can use a variety of curricula or even a boxed curriculum to teach each of these subjects, but are typically rigorous in their academics.  Again, though, even in the classical arena, education can be self-paced if the parent and child desire.    

Homeschooling takes many other forms along the spectrum between Classical Education and Unschooling.    Traditional Education; Unit Studies; Distance or Virtual Learning; Eclectic.  These methods take many forms, but I will try to describe them as I have seen them typically applied.

Some families choose to do a boxed curriculum and set a traditional ‘school at home’ type of schedule.  This sort of homeschooling usually looks like a regular institutional style education with a set schedule and ‘typical’ scope and sequence - meaning children learn certain concepts and skills at certain ages just like in public school.

Unit Studies are a great resource for just about any form of homeschooling.  This method takes a subject or theme and uses this to learn all core subjects.  Unit studies are also great for those who have children of multiple ages because these studies can be covered on many levels.  Some families choose this as their primary form of education which is why I include it as a ‘type’ of homeschooling.  A family could do a unit study on the plant life cycle.  This unit study could include: mathematics to measure a growing plant, science in growing the plant in the first place; social studies by studying the history of the plant within society; geography by studying different plants in different regions of the world; and reading by doing research on how to grow plants or reading about the plant life cycle; and even writing by developing a composition based upon the results of any science experiments or books read.  A parent and child(ren) could easily go from topic to topic doing nothing but unit studies to learn all subjects.

Distance or Virtual Learning is becoming popular among many homeschooling families because of the ease in planning it provides.  Any of the other forms of homeschooling take a serious time commitment in lesson plans and lesson execution.  A virtual learning tool such as www.time4learning.com provides the lesson planning for the parent so they can focus on helping the child learn the material.  What virtual or distance learning takes away is the customization a family has with other forms of homeschooling.  Some families choose to use Virtual Learning tools as a supplement to another type of homeschooling.

This is where Eclectic Education comes into play.  Eclectic Homeschooling involves using whatever resources or types of homeschooling a parent feels is necessary to accomplish learning.  From what I have seen, a lot homeschooling families fall into this category.  This is the category that most closely matches my family.  We use a virtual learning tool (www.time4learning.com) as our primary curriculum, but add in unit studies, video games, science experiments, literature and whatever else I can find to pour as much learning into my little spongy children as I can.  

I hope this helps someone in the quest to find a way to home educate their children.  Any of these methods can be used effectively to help a child learn.  The trick to doing so is finding the one that works for both your child and yourself.  Try to be flexible and don't go out and spend a ton of money on one thing in the beginning.  Research and experiment and see what works for all parties.  

Homeschooling 101 Part II - Balancing Act...

I have been married for 12 years.  I have been a mother for 11 (if you count my pregnancy with Asher).  I have been homeschooling my kid(s) for 7 years.  You'd think that by now, I'd have it all together and know exactly what I'm doing all the time.  Unless they come into my house, most mom's I meet think I do have it all together.  I've been called an 'earth momma' by a good friend.  My step father tells me that I am patient with my kids.   Others say I have 'well behaved' children (these people clearly haven't seen my children when they are in their native habitat).

I lack any confidence in what these kind hearted people say about me or my children.  Seventy-five percent of the time, I feel frazzled, annoyed, disheveled, caffeinated (because how else am I going to stay awake?), and most of all scared out of my mind!  I never feel 'together', I have trouble following schedules, I'm constantly late even though I try really hard to be early to everything.  While my confidence in my children's education has grown a bit, I question my own sanity at least once daily.

I know a lot of mom's who work outside their homes (or inside) for pay.  I know several moms who homeschool while working for pay...  I don't know how these moms do it.  

Here is what a typical day looks like in my house during the school year:  

8:30 a.m. - Wake Up and breakfast, drink some form of caffeinated beverage.

9:00 a.m. - Start yelling at the children to get dressed and get their chores done.

9:30 a.m. - Threaten the children with restriction from video games and television unless they get their behinds on their chores and get their behinds into some clothing.

10:00 a.m. - Finally sit down to get started on school work, drink some form of caffeinated beverage.

11:00 a.m. - Throw some chicken nuggets into the oven for lunch then sit back down with the kids and their school work.

12:00 p.m. - Remember the chicken nuggets in the oven that are now smoking up the entire kitchen.

12:15 p.m. - Put in a new pan of chicken nuggets.

12:30 p.m. - Feed the nuggets to the children then get back on school work with the kids.

1:30 p.m. - Put the little ones down for their naps.

2:00 p.m. - Put Isaac back in bed after he sneaks out into the hallway.

2:30 p.m. - Finish school with the kids and recover the living room from the havoc wreaked by the little ones while we were working.  Caffeinated Beverage time again.

3:30 p.m. - Realize that I have taken out no meat for dinner and run to the freezer to find something.

3:32 p.m. - Smell a strange smell emanating from the play room and realize the dog has had an 'accident'.  Yell at Asher to clean up after his dog.

3:33 p.m. - Run upstairs to use the bathroom.  Then realize that we are going to be late for theatre class.

3:35 p.m. - Pull the babies out of bed and buckle them in their car seats.  Pull out of the drive way, only to back back into it to shut and lock the door.  Pull back out of the driveway only to realize I didn't crate the dog.  Drive around the block, back into the driveway and run back in to crate the dog.

4:10 p.m. - Arrive at theatre class 10 minutes late.

5:30 p.m. - Drive home from theatre class and realize I never took meat out of the freezer.

6:00 p.m. - Brown a frozen pack of ground beef and make spaghetti.

6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. - Eat dinner, Baths, bed time snacks, bed time...

9:30 p.m. - Yell at children to stop going to the bathroom and get to sleep.

10:00 p.m. - I do Laundry, Josh does the dishes, a bit of cleaning, computer and TV time for mom and dad.

12:00 a.m. - 1:00 a.m. - Get to bed so we can start the cycle all over again the next day! Though, Josh, God bless him, gets up at 4:30 to go to work!!  Amazing man I married, indeed.

Then the cycle starts all over again the next day with different times for classes or activities, but pretty much the same routine each day.  I savor the days when we don't do school work because that means, I might be able to play with the kids, get some nitty-gritty cleaning done or run some errands.  

We do school work usually four days per week, but the days vary because of our class/social schedule.  Sometimes we go Monday through Thursday, sometimes Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.  There are weeks that we don't do school work at all - but as long as we get in our required 180 days that the state requires us to track, when we operate doesn't really matter.  

Balancing work (by that I mean house work, because I can't really relate to the kind you get paid for), school, and making sure the children are all attended to and happy, is not an easy task.  I've finally found a routine that means I won't have to do 14 loads of laundry in one day (who knew that doing laundry daily would reduce my amount of stress?).  

That brings me to another point...  When you are homeschooling your kids, it is almost a necessity that the working parent pitch in on the house work, in my opinion.  Homeschooling - especially when you have more than one child to teach and cart around - is a full time job.   I work really hard to make sure my children are educated - think about the work a school teacher does - it is a full time.  Add in the responsibilities of being a parent and caring for a household and it is tiring.  The least any working spouse can do is realize the enormity of educating their child in an affordable fashion (because homeschooling is so much cheaper than private schools) and appreciate the hard work the teaching parent does to get that done. I am so fortunate to have a spouse who works very hard both at work and at home.  

A homeschooling parent is not just a 'house wife' (or husband).  A house wife usually sends her children off to school on the bus (unless she has toddlers/babies) and has 6 hours in which to run errands, clean house and take care of her household business.  This is hard work as well, and I am not diminishing the work a house wife does, but add in teaching one or more children and the other responsibilities are going to suffer.  

There are some people who can do it all and not have to partake of 5 caffeinated beverages a day.  I am not one of those people.  I must have help and support.  Thankfully, I have it!  Do I have balance?  No...  I still get incredibly stressed and question myself every day.  I think that is a natural thing to do though.  Doubt and questions are healthy to a point.  I don't obsess any more about my children's capabilities and progress, but I do try every day to find balance between being mommy and being teacher.  Really, I am both at all times and that can be hard...

Homeschooling 101 Part I - Getting Started

Several friends have been asking me about how to get started with homeschooling lately.  It is kind of a weird experience because I am just now realizing that I'm now a 'veteran homeschooler'.  Also, a lot of my friends from high school that I have reconnected with via FaceBook are just now having kids of school age since I started having kids about 5 years before any of those friends.  I thought that blogging about it might be a helpful place to start.  I haven't blogged in ages for family crisis reasons and it seems now is the time to get back into the swing of things.  So, thank you to those friends for pushing my brain back into life so that the rest of me will follow!!  

Okay, so looking at Kindergarten Curriculum - do not get overwhelmed with Kindergarten - it is JUST kindergarten. Cover the basics - learn to read, learn to count to 100, learn to do simple addition and subtraction starting with manipulatives (which can be as simple as blueberries or cheerios or as complex as counting bears and blocks) and move on to numbers. Lego's are also great for that sort of thing and are usually plentiful in my house. Add in some writing but don't expect your child's handwriting to be as beautiful as your own - especially if you have a boy - boys tend to be harder to teach to write for some strange reason. I've read articles on it, but still don't understand it. I have a 10 year old boy that is *still* learning to write and a 6 year old girl whose handwriting is prettier than the boy...  

There are a lot of 'box curricula' to choose from. A lot of them are faith based which is not a problem unless you happen to be a secular homeschooler like myself. The science in these faith based curriculum, while fine for those who believe and wish to teach that way are not for my family, but may be for yours. I won't cover any of those, because I haven't used them and don't really know them all that well. Other than the fact that they are mostly young earth/creation based which just happens to be the opposite of what I believe. Don't judge me on this - I simply happen to be a creative evolutionist.  

Okay, on to the stuff that I actually have used... Books you may want to pick up - Home Learning Year by Year; What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know; Story of the World (Audio CDs are the way to go - on your way too and from anywhere, the kids can get their history in with no work on your part). Some others - How to Homeschool Your Child for Free. And if you want to go with a Classical style of education look at The Well Trained Mind.  

After you have read all those (or skimmed them) and are thoroughly freaked out that you can't do it, then take a deep breath and reassert that it is ONLY kindergarten. You CAN'T do any worse than most traditional schools and your kids will be with you, following your own schedule, maintaining their relationships (that sometimes fall away when kids begin school), and getting lots of social interaction in ways other than traditional school. You will have BAD days, but you will have GREAT days - and my kids get more learning in before noon on school days than most kids get done in a full day of traditional school.  

Now the good stuff - K Curriculum: For Asher I used BOB Books for Reading, Singapore Math (though it took 3 other types of curriculum to get us to that point), Story of The World for History (on CD). We did some unit studies for Science - we did Body, Plants, Magnets, simple Chemistry (vinegar and baking soda, pickling cucumbers, jelly making, lots of food chemistry and cooking). We did some Handwriting without tears which made him cry at the time, but Evie has liked well enough... You can find most of these books on Amazon or at a local homeschooling store if you've got one (more on that later).  

For Evie we started with Singapore's Early Bird Kindergarten for math and struggled up one side and down the other for reading. It was overwhelming and frustrating and she just wasn't learning very well at all. In January of last year, we found www.time4learning.com - this web site has been WONDERFUL. It starts out covering all subjects in Kindergarten with Math, Language Arts and a Playbox Theme Time that covers different things for each month of the year. By June, she had finished all of the kindergarten and was on to the first grade - by this January she was done with all of first grade and was on to second grade. Now she is doing some second grade, but mostly third grade.  

Asher is also using this web site and it is wonderful. We still add in some hands-on fun history and science field trips and experiments.  But for the 'book work' using our computer has been great!

Some other great resources is www.currclick.com - they have a new Free PDF download each week if you subscribe to their newsletter.  They also have a lot of e-books that I have found wonderful for supplemental or extra practice.  Mammoth Math is really good for math drills and I've downloaded several 'Lap Books' pretty neat.  (I bought a LOAD of manila file folders for these, so if you are local, and use these, come get some from me instead of going out and buying a pack!!)

If you are in the Charlotte Area, my BEST resource over the past few years for information and knowledge has been Misty Spinelli and Growing Scholars Homeschooling stores (both the north and the south store staff are very knowledgeable and helpful!)

To get started - seriously just start teaching your child the sounds of his or her letters and the value of numbers.  Watch a lot of Between The Lions on PBS, sing songs, tell stories, let your child tell stories (and write them down because you'll forget them!), and most importantly READ!  Read everything you can...  Dr. Seuss, classic children's tales like Chicken Little, Skippy John Jones...  Find picture books that repeat words, rhymes, and rhythms.  A great book by a local friend of mine is really helpful for the 2-4 year old crowd is called The Potty Train by Dar Draper.  It's funny and you can sing it to your kids over and over and make them laugh...  

The big question I had when I first started was this:  How do I know I am getting in everything I need to get with the kid? I never got a good answer to this question and had to find it on my own.  But I bought the 'What your Kindergartner Needs to Know' book and 'Home Learning Year by Year' and they were both very helpful.  A couple years later, I found the North Carolina Standard Course of Study and that was a great resource for squashing my worries.  By this point, Asher was ahead of the game on most counts and on time on all the others.  The only other source I use for legal stuff is the North Carolina Department of Non-Public Education web site.  It can tell you what you need to do to legally homeschool in the state of North Carolina.

So that's my 2 cents for the beginning homeschooling family...  (Okay, maybe it's my $1.50)