08-01
Today was Llani’s first day of first grade. She learns all the time, of course, so it’s not like we’re suddenly starting “school” after a summer of not doing anything, but I’ve decided to implement more structure to our schooling, and today was the first day of our new routine.
We’re starting a month earlier than the public schools here (which in itself is insanely early; I’m used to school starting after Labor Day), so we have a month to get into our groove. When I say structure, mind you, I’m not talking a strict schedule or anything. Just some regularity to our days and weeks to make things go smoothly, and some purchased curriculum materials. We’re also sticking to a regular bedtime routine: we read a few prayers from a marvelous Jewish prayer book for children, then Adrian reads a story in Spanish, then I read something in English, and then the lights go out. I nurse Zeke and snuggle Llani until they’re asleep.
Usually I read part of whatever chapter book we’re up to– right now we’re in the midst of All-Of-A-Kind Family Uptown. But we’d had history scheduled for today and we never got around to it, so I read part of our history book. There’s something really cozy about a skipped subject becoming bedtime reading.
Here is our curriculum for this year, more or less:
language arts: lots of books, both for Llani to read independently and me to read to her. She’s been reading those beginning reader books that are divided into different levels, as well as some of her favorite picture books. For reading aloud to her, I usually do chapter book series. She’s going to start learning spelling this year, mostly through her own reading and writing and using the dictionary and spellcheck. We’ll start composition and creative writing, probably doing some lapbooking and other Dinah Zike- inspired stuff. We’re also working on italic handwriting, using the Getty-Dubay workbooks, copywork, and natural writing in daily life.
math: Activities for the AL Abacus and living math.
social studies: Story of the World, Part 1, The Usborne Book of World History, The First Americans, Third Edition: Prehistory-1600 (A History of US, Book 1).
science: We’re starting with Learning to Be a Scientist, and after that I’m not sure. Deciding among 3-4 different science curricula.
foreign language: books in Spanish, conversation in Spanish, and even a soap opera in Spanish. Signing Time for ASL. I’ve thought about doing French, too, but I think it would be too much at this point. I do want to start studying Latin and Greek derivations of English words, and I think that will help with English and Spanish now and with French or other languages should she choose to study them in the future.
art: This is a bit of a toughie, as I think much teaching at this point would only stifle her natural creativity. I’m just going to provide her with materials and time and the freedom to have fun.
I’ve been thinking about some art appreciation/history, but I think I’ll wait on that. It’s so easy, as an early-years homeschooler, to get carried away and want to do everything at once. There’s so much fantastic educational material out there, and I get so excited. But really, she’s five and a half years old. She doesn’t need art appreciation at this point, at least not in any formal way.
I’m planning to sign her up for a theater class; she did it last spring and loved it.
phys. ed.: She’ll be starting soccer soon, and after that we’ll see if she wants to do another sport. Between that and informal stuff like playground time, she should be set.
So, those are our plans for formal curriculum. Much of Llani’s learning, though, will continue to occur in an informal way, and even with the packaged materials, we’ll mold things to make them work for us. I need a routine to keep us all sane, but I’m not going to be a slave to a schedule or a curriculum.
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08-05
Our first week of first grade went very well, especially considering how exhausted I was all week. The extreme heat here, combined with getting up earlier than usual, made me feel completely lethargic most of the time.
Still, though, we managed to get a lot done, and we’re falling into a routine. Llani has been reading up a storm. She is getting better and better, and she reads for enjoyment, which thrills me beyond belief. Yesterday we bought a Little Bear easy reader book, and when we got home she sat down on the couch and read the entire book quietly to herself. Incredible.
We went to our local independent bookstore and ordered our history activity book and our science book. Nothing like having an absolutely marvelous independent bookstore that gives a 20% discount to homeschoolers!
I waver between feeling guilty that I’m not “covering” everything I’ve scheduled in a structured way, and marveling at the amount that my children learn informally. Yesterday at Starbucks, for instance, Llani was learning some rudimentary multiplication and Zekey was learning counting– just from seeing how many tables there were in a row, and noticing that each “table” was really a pair of two smaller tables. When I was exercising with Llani in the room, we talked about the names of various muscles in the body. I guess I will always feel the pull between unschooling and structured, parent-led learning. I definitely lean toward unschooling, but I don’t think either extreme would work for us.
Zekey, meanwhile, does his own two-year-old version of whatever big sister Llani is working on. She when she is tracing in her handwriting workbook, he traces pictures or words that I print out for him. Thank God for the internet! I can’t imagine homeschooling in a time when I couldn’t Google and find hundreds of activities, printables, and ideas for whatever subject we’re doing!
He has impressive small motor control for a two-year-old, I must say. He loves to do dot-to-dots and mazes. All of these are pre-writing activities. They exercise the fine muscles in his hands, improve hand-eye coordination, and get him used to the movements used in writing. While I’d never advocate a formal, structured, academic program for preschoolers, I have seen my own children and others learn so much more than people give toddlers and preschoolers credit for. They learn it through play and freedom and their natural curiosity about the world around them.
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08-07
I love Target. There, I’ve said it. Judge me if you must. I know, I spend so much time railing against chain stores, with their destruction of community and their made-by-children-in-third-world-countries goods. I boycott Wal-Fart. But Target has sucked me in, big-time, and I’m not going to deny it or feel guilty about it any longer.
Yesterday, we went to the brand new SuperTarget near my parents’ house. I told Adrian (are you ready for this?) that I thought we could get in and out within half an hour. I know, I know. Here’s a Kleenex; wipe the tears of laughter from your eyes. Anyway, it was North Carolina’s tax-free weekend, when sales tax is waived on clothing, school supplies, and some other stuff in order to provoke a frenzy of consumption right before school starts. And of course Target was having fabulous sales on school supplies, too. I’m embarrassed to say just how much we spent when all was said and done, but I will say that I don’t regret any of our purchases. We got crayons, watercolors, colored pencils, and markers for the kids, along with good-quality drawing paper. Not artist-quality, of course; this is a discount store, after all, not Dick Blick. But it’s a heavier bond than printer paper, with a bit of texture to grab the colors. The markers are retractable, like pens. I want to kiss the genius who finally came up with this solution to the uncapped marker problem. Whoever it is must be a parent themself.
We replenished our supply of Take and Toss sippy cups, snack containers, forks, and spoons, and bought a couple of clothing items for the kids. We bought Llani a watch and are teaching her to tell time. I really can’t say enough about the line of Timex kids’ watches sold at this store. They are perfect for kids learning to tell time– easily distinguishable hour and minute hands, clear numbers, and even little dots for the minutes, with every fifth number printed out so kids can learn to count by fives. All this, plus Indiglo, and a stretchy band so they don’t have to keep buckling and unbuckling the dang thing. And it’s water-resistant. If Llani loses it, I think I’ll cry.
We also, believe it or not, got a lunchbag. As homeschoolers, I never anticipated us needing one, but when I saw the lunchbag display I was struck by how helpful it would be to pack up healthy snack/lunch items at night and just toss the bag in the stroller basket when we go out, thus avoiding the need to buy expensive, unhealthy snacks when we’re out.
When we got home with all these wonderful goodies, I was inspired to clean up the kids’ room. It had gotten to the point where walking across the room was a safety hazard. I even threw out all the broken crayons and old markers, and reorganized some of the art materials. Now that that’s done, it’s much easier for the kids to actually work at their table. They are in there right now doing watercolors. It’s a beautiful thing.
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08-08
Quite often, I’ll read something on a parenting website or in a magazine that discusses how to stop this or that troublesome behavior. The answer suggested is almost always punishment. Sometimes it’s time-out, sometimes it’s withholding of privileges, but almost without exception it is some way of making the child feel pain or unpleasantness whenever she misbehaves. The unquestioned assumption is that this unpleasantness will “teach the child a lesson” and cause her to change her behavior.
I do not punish my children. I do, however, discipline them. Contrary to popular belief, discipline and punishment are not the same thing. Punishment is one tool of discipline. It’s not one that I use. Instead, I use nonpunitive discipline.
With my children, I try hard to avoid the entire behaviorist paradigm of reward/bribe/punishment/threat. The natural question, I guess, is, “If you don’t punish, then what do you do instead?” I have to preface my answer by saying that, unlike punishment, what I do is not a reaction to misbehavior, a single action taken after the misbehavior has occurred. A lot of it is preventative, and a lot is part of my everyday interaction with my children, so much so that it’s become habit and I barely think of it anymore. Some of the techniques I use are anticipating needs; avoiding boredom, fatigue, and hunger; understanding their temperaments; using natural or logical consequences; connecting with my kids when I talk to them by getting down to their level, making eye contact, and touching them; empathizing with their feelings; giving choices; and “time in”; among others.
I’m not going to write a guide to nonpunitive discipline here; there are many books and websites written about it. Google “positive discipline” or “nonpunitive discipline” and you’ll find lots of information. My two favorite discipline books are Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, and Kids Are Worth It! by Barbara Coloroso. Another great one (and a quicker read) is How To Talk So Kids Will Listen… And Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish.
My children are not wild, undisciplined brats. They’re not perfect angels, either. They certainly have their moments. They’re at their worst when they’re tired, hungry, bored, or any combination thereof. Generally, though, they are well behaved children. I regularly get compliments on how nicely they behave. If you know my kids, you’ve seen how great they are. And none of it is due to punishment.
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08-25
The thing about homeschooling is that you can go a little crazy researching philosophies and curricula, and shopping for the perfect homeschooling materials. You can put a lot of time and energy into planning your course of study, and you can spend quite a bit of money on curricula. There’s so much really marvelous material available to homeschoolers. What’s easy to forget, though, is that no matter how great the material is, it’s not going to work for you if your child doesn’t use it.
Once Llani got past the initial excitement of the new Story of The World Activity Book, she decided that social studies was boring. She didn’t want to sit around and listen to me read from the textbook, because it was boring. Of course, my first reaction was, “Well, boring or not, you still have to do it.” I started reading, and she covered her ears. I tried reasoning with her, telling her that we just had to read a short section, it wouldn’t be too boring, let’s just get it done and then we’ll do something else. She wasn’t having any of it. Although she’d shown interest in ancient Egypt and found mummies fascinating, she had no desire to listen to me read about ancient Egypt from SOTW.
It was pointless to read to her when she had her hands over her ears. And even if I’d gotten her to put down her hands, it would have been pointless to read to her. She wasn’t listening, wasn’t open to my teaching her. You can lead a horse to water and all that. And really, did I want to make her listen? Did I want to use bribes or threats or the force of my authority to get her to sit still for ten minutes while I read a passage that she found boring and would probably forget a few days later? Did I want to teach her that learning is something unpleasant that you just had to endure? Hell, I could send her to public school if that’s what I wanted! We chose to homeschool, in large part, because we want our children to love learning, and we want to mold our teaching to their interests and their learning styles, rather than forcing our children to conform to the mold of school.
The next day, we went to the library. I took out four or five different books on ancient Egypt, including a Ms. Frizzle (of Magic Schoolbus fame) book, a book on mummies, and a collection of poems about various careers in ancient Egypt. We’ve been reading these books over the past week or so (without me announcing “social studies time”), and Llani has been enjoying them.
Similarly, I spent a day or two trying to “make” Llani do her handwriting workbook, before I stepped back and realized what I was doing. Then I sat down with her and explained that I do want her to learn proper handwriting, and there were several ways we could do this. I asked her what kind of handwriting work she would enjoy and work on. She told me she would do pages that have tracing but not copying, and that she wanted to learn script. So, fine. I’d spent a lot of time researching various handwriting programs, and I really liked the Getty-Dubay curriculum. But if cursive tracing is what Llani wants, that’s what she’ll get. What’s really important is that she write easily and has legible and nice-looking handwriting. Whether it’s italic or traditional cursive, whether she learns cursive or print first, whether it’s a workbook or something I print out on the computer…. who really cares? My only regret is letting her write directly in her workbook instead of making copies of the pages. Now I can’t sell it on Ebay.
