Homeschooling Somewhere in Between

Trying a bigger pond for a while.     Come visit me at http://laraszoo.wordpress.com/

My inner artist must have come out this spring and we’ve had lots of  “arty” experiences primarily focusing on contemporary art.     When I had to come up with my class for our Spring co-op session, I ran across a book I’ve had laying around “Discovering Great Artists” and the projects that looked manageable and struck my interest all happened to be contemporary artists.

We  had three sessions.  For the first, we discussed the work of Piet Mondrian and then used primary colored poster paint and black electrical tape to do projects inspired by his style.

Mostly, I found that kids liked to play with tape and they weren’t all that inspired by Mondrian, lol.   But, they created fun and interesting projects.

Next we gathered leaves from our yard and used a couple of fake leaves I’d gotten at the craft store and made jungle prints after looking over Rousseau’s jungle paintings.    They loved making prints so much that they never got to the point of adding jungle creatures.

Last, we looked at Matisse’s cut paper projects and did cut paper collages.

Jordan went with a desert theme but is still working on it.

Alex was almost immediately inspired to go 3D with his project.

Even Aubrey was inpsired to join in and brought a manga-esque feel to her project. (the flash made some still wet glue spots really stand out that you can’t see on the real piece).

After I planned the co-op classes I emailed and set up a tour of our local contemporary art museum.   I was a bit nervous—a bunch of kids used to a lot of freedom in a place where you absolutely CANNOT touch anything?    Our docent, though very softspoken, did a wonderful job of helping the kids enjoy the paintings.  The exhibit we saw was called “Volunteer Voices” and was an eclectic mix of the projects from their permanent collection that were voted as favorites by the docents who volunteer there.    I was totally surprised that Alex, my man of action wild monkey boy, was very intently interested and engaged for most of the tour.     There was a very blurry painting that Alex was able to recognize as the Kennedy assassination after a brief prompting (we haven’t studied that!  How could he know about that if we haven’t “studied” it!) and he went on to discuss how they were in an open car, and where the shooter was….    Then he surprised me further by providing a very astute emotional analysis of this painting…

He commented on the fact that it looked like a beautiful place and like they were on vacation but that their expressions seemed pensive like they were sad.   When the docent asked why they might be sad he said maybe they were leaving a place they loved.    He later selected this painting and the Kennedy painting as his favorites.

Jordan was won over by the wonderful colors and textures of this piece.   Yum!!!    Practical girl!   All the kids had excellent observations to share and it ended up being a very fun, free field trip.

In the process of setting up the tour I found out about some free classes the museum was offering (so many things with homeschooling turn into an exercise in “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”!!!       Jordan has participated in two of them so far.  They focus on one piece of artwork from the museum and then do a projected inspired by it.     They looked at a piece by Leslie Dill that was an upturned half of a human body with words made out of wires streaming out the open, bottom end.  The words were all bits of poetry from Emily Dickinson.    Then they made their own word sculpture.   Jordan’s theme was family and the top has silhouette of all of us and then she has the words “sweet, loving, kind and gentle” flowing off of it.

Last week they made dioramas.   I just love finding great FREE resources.    Jordan loves doing projects.  This last time, she was the only student who showed up for some reason and she had an art educator and two college art students completely to herself!

Well, that makes up for several years lacking in anything formal related to art!

I guess we got bored with the “typical” kitchen math and science. We’ve been baking a lot of bread, sprouting alfalfa seeds so we have fresh sprouts while it is too cold to have fresh garden produce. Apparently all that was getting to be mundane. When a head of cabbage appeared in my weekly organic produce box I decided to finally try to make Kimchi. Yes, my Korean born children are now 11 and I am just now getting to that one. Oh, I bought some and made sure they knew what the “Korean national food” was and tasted like. But, truthfully, the whole thing kind of scared me. Last week I decided to take the plunge and Jordan and I mixed up cabbage and salt and red peppers and green onions. Then we put it in a jar, weighted it down and let it sit on the counter to ferment. Yup, ferment. There it sat on the counter for several days.

I have to admit, I was afraid of it. What if I poisoned my family? Well, it didn’t. It IS an acquired taste though, and Jordan and I are the only ones who don’t wrinkle our noses at the thought of adding it to our stir fry. BUT, MY homemade kimchi was much tastier than the store bought stuff.

Then last week Jordan and I participated in a co-op class on lacto-fermentation—the process of preserving and fermenting foods with whey. We made pickles and ketsup.

After sitting on the counter for a few days to FERMENT we tried our pickles. A big thumbs up from all the pickle fans at our house. I plan on adding dill to my garden this year so I have something to do with all those extra cucumbers.

Today we decided to try yet another fermentation and we made our own ginger ale. With the wonderful step by step guidance from this website http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Cheese/Ginger_Ale_Ag0.htm we got started.

And now it is sitting on our counter. I admit to being a little nervous by all the warnings that it just might explode. Sure hope I don’t forget about it!! Next up, as soon as I can find some Root beer extract—making our own root beer.

I’m not crafty and I don’t really like to do crafty things. Jordan, on the other hand, finds some sort of craft to work into almost every day. Just in the last week or so we’ve done sock critters, started a covered wagon, made cards… So, when I decided to make my own fraction manipulatives I thought I just might be able to pass it off as a craft project with Jordan. I did have to give up a little bit of neatness, but she learned a lot by helping me make the project and then has been excited to use it.

I used clear page protectors and made several six inch rectangles and drew lines dividing them into various fractional lengths. Then I took extra pieces of the plastic page protector and made fractional pieces to match. I color coded them so each fraction has its own color and Jordan colored them with colored sharpie markers.

After some general exploration she did some simple addition of fractions

Then we started working on equivalent fractions by finding all the pieces that were the same size and then matching them to their fraction:

Then we did some addition and subtraction of fractions without common denominators.

It was a win, win kind of project. She was happy to be making something and she really learned a lot of fractions while we did it.

I recently had the pleasure of getting to hear Cindy of http://applestars.homeschooljournal.net/ speak about right brain learners and was especially intrigued by the parts about how right brain learners approach writing. Aubrey, my poster child for right brain learner, has never been a writer. Though she did read extremely early, I remember clearly her first grade teacher calling a conference because of her concerns that Aubrey’s writing was just not where it should be. At the time I was still miles away from homeschooling and where I am now in my thoughts about child development, but even then I remember being surprised that a 7 year old could be “behind” in writing and my casual response of, well, maybe she isn’t going to be good at writing totally flummoxed her otherwise excellent first grade teacher. Because, I suppose, I had already formed that opinion. It was ok to me that Aubrey wouldn’t be a writer, and I figured that was my part–to not push and accept her as is and focus on what she could do. I didn’t realize at the time that I was shortchanging her in my insistence that, really, it was ok, not everyone enjoys or is able to express themselves in writing.

The first year we homeschooled I did doggedly try to get her to complete a writing program, but finally decided it was not worth the potential damage to our relationship so I dropped it. When she was a freshman I decided once again that maybe it was time to formalize some writing and I convinced her to take an online class from www.writeathome.com. She made it through it and I took a decidedly hands off approach but she didn’t find it an enjoyable experience. I really didn’t pay much attention to what else she might have been doing as far as writing. I knew she often created manga characters and would write character descriptions and short stories about them. And I knew she did some online role playing that involved writing–but I never really thought of it as noteworthy or serious writing. Really, the pictures were what she spent the time on–words were just an afterthought.

This semester Aubrey (with a bit of nudging) signed up for Composition 1 at the community college. We discussed that, since she really didn’t care for writing (probably my words not hers) and wasn’t great at it, getting this out of the way at the community college level would probably be a good idea. I was totally surprised by her independence at just getting papers done. Even more surprised when she told me on more than one occasion how much she was enjoying the class. I remembered the struggles we had when I attempted to get her to write. When she showed me the “A” on her first paper and announced that she had been selected to read her paper to the class, I admit that I immediately thought to myself that wow, community college student standards must be low. When she brought home her second paper, and read parts of it to me I realized that something had happened. She had become an eloquent, insightful writer despite my insistence that it was ok if she didn’t. The assignment? To describe her path to literacy and writing.

Here is her description of her public school writing assignments: “Oddly enough, in all that time I spent reading books, I always saw writing as the bane of my existence. Writing was just a set of handwriting drills, no creative process at all, unless you counted having to pull creative flowery language out your ear to complete an assignment. One rather memorable example was where we had to take a picture up on the board and describe it in a half page paragraph. The catch: we weren’t allowed to repeat words. The first half of the class was spent alternately staring at a blank sheet of paper, and trying to figure out if the no repeat rule applied to short words too. The whole thing seemed overdone and, well, boring. Who could like writing when it was spent staring at a picture of a meadow and trying to think up a paragraph to say what could be summed up in a sentence?”

Her first pleasant writing experiences involved chatting, role playing and fan fiction on the internet. She wrote that through this she discovered she LIKED writing She writes of fan fiction, “The fan-fiction itself wasn’t awful and it showed my first step into writing for real. Through spell-and-grammar check alone, I learned how to spell a lot better and how to appropriately use commas and apostrophes. The process of typing the nearly sixty pages drastically increased my typing speed, making the whole process of writing an incredibly easier task. Since then I’ve only gotten better, branching out and writing my own stories, creating a cast of original characters, and often wanting to burn the old stories as my writing style evolves.”

I found it telling that she says that grammar and spell check actually improved her grammar–because I would imagine most people would say that it is contributing to the detriment of writing and spelling ability because there is no reason to learn it if it is there to fix it. But, at least for a right brain learner, that immediate visual feedback and then selecting the correct replacement word or adding the necessary punctuation to get the computer to stop flashing those colored squiggly lines, connected the information in her brain. She just took the ACT and scored over 30 in the grammar section despite having no formal grammar since leaving elementary school. And then there is the whole handwriting issue–though a gifted artist her handwriting is almost illegible and was certainly a deterrent to her interest in writing. Being able to use the computer and becoming proficient in typing took the difficulty of handwriting out of the equation.

Surely the hours spent role playing and creating stories to go along with her characters paved the way to her becoming a proficient writer, but I think more than that it was the timing. I think more than anything it was the freedom to not spend hours learning to hate writing while being forced to try to express herself in that manner before she was developmentally able. Maybe I should send this paper to her first grade teacher?

We’ve been listening to the Story of the World “Modern times” cd occasionally in the car. Yawn—this final installment in the SOTW series is very dry. It even comes with a very longwinded warning at the beginning that it is, in fact, going to be dry and boring. I find it deadly dull and I’m quite sure Jordan tunes it out as soon as she hears Jim Weiss’s sultry voice start. Alex, however, still asks for it. We haven’t expanded our history research beyond the cd’s much, but when we hit the one chapter on the civil war, I decided maybe we needed to expand our studies a bit. So, I found lots of resources from the library that has ended up turning the civil war into quite a unit study.

We read through parts of this and Jordan picked a few activities she wanted to do. She also read a “My America” book about a young girl who lives in Gettysburg during the time of that battle.

One of our favorite series has been this:

As we were winding down, I got a notice of some young adult books that had received awards and almost as an afterthought checked the audio book for “The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg”. It is my favorite audiobook of the year so far. What a great way to do historical fiction. I have found that historical fiction engages us in the study of history in a way that information books just can’t. This one stands out in that the main character is, well, quite a character. Most historical fiction is full of noble, maybe a bit stuffy, cardboard examples of people from an era. Homer is a humorous, if flawed, character with a tendency to exaggerate the truth. He doesn’t set off to be a hero, and his quest is to find his brother who has been sold off to the union army and get him OUT of the army.

A lot of fun, and much more colorful than the SOTW’s representation of the civil war.

Jordan wanted to make a picture book based on a cardboard fold out style (we had received a very fancy invitation in this style and she wanted to try it out).   She chose the topic of unicorns and we searched for some pictures on the internet and then she created a short story around them.

She decorated each page with various papers and pictures

The text of the story:

There was once a staute of a unicorn and it lived in a museum park and it would come to life at night.
It would go into this realm that other statues of unicorns come to life and they would have baby unicorns too.
One day a little girl came and wandered off from her mother. She wandered into the park and saw the statue unicorn. The little girl climbed onto the unicorn’s back.At night it came to life and the little girl was not frightened. The unicorn ran and when they got to the realm the little girl aged and became a princess. The unicorn and the princess ran into a beautiful field of flowers.   Then they saw a dragan spitting fire and a squirrel.
The princess and the unicorn got tired and fell asleep on the soft grass. When she woke up she was back at the museum and she was a little girl again. The unicorn was a statue again.

Alex’s fascination with the story “Airman” by Eoin Colfer has introduced him to the “steampunk” aesthetic and when his dad showed him some online examples of turning an ordinary nerf gun (of which he has an arsenal), he jumped on the idea as a project.

He took an ordinary nerf gun:

Took it apart

Spray painted it:

(and yes, I realize, spray painting indoors is not recommended and I do lament the loss of brain cells.  It was simply too cold, even in our garage, to do it anywhere else)

Then came the hard part—reassembly.   He learned a lot about how the gun works and how various pieces work together.

And his new gun:

Next up, modifying the gun to shoot further.

I tried to jot down what the kids were doing this week since we didn’t have anything structured planned.    It was a rough week, lots of milling about finding nothing better to do than annoy a sibling, but it is helpful looking back to see how much they did.   Due to weather, we spent a lot more time at home than usual.  As I try to move closer to unschooling/child-directed/Inspire not require, I’m finding that the main stumbling block is the amount of time I’m having to tell my kids to find something to do.   They are victims of their culture, and if they aren’t connected to a screen then they are “bored”.  The one thing I do limit during the “school day” is tv and video games.   I know many people don’t, but for our family I find that excessive amounts of screen time for very active kids is a neurological time bomb.

So here’s my notes on what the kids managed to do in between times of antagonism and complaints of boredom.    I’m happy with the list, now to work on the in between times.

Alex:   He worked on spelling almost every day, and grammar as well.    In math, he did some mathletic challenges and we did a chapter of Life of Fred together.  Also, after snowboarding outside we had a long discussion about the measurement of angles and how that relates to “doing a 180″.    He loves the series “You Wouldn’t Want to be a….” and read through several of these that I got from the library.   He also watched several Bill Nye videos that I got from the library.    I am reading “Hatchet” to him, and we read a few chapters in that.   Also, lots of sledding, sledding, more sledding, and lego building.   He had 4 hours of gymnastics practice and built a castle out of a cardboard box and erected some sort of battle simulation across the only open area on his bedroom floor.    Friday he and his dad steampunked a nerf gun.

Jordan:  She worked on a story for a picture book, which we also made.   She did some challenges in mathletics and also asked to play several math games with me.   She read me a “My America” book based in the Civil War and also read some Geronimo Stilton books.    She also started working with her dog trying to train him to jump through a hula hoop.   And then, sledding, gymnastics, various craft projects.

Together we listened to SOTW while in the car.  We are on the Modern disk, which I’m finding quite dry but Alex seems to still enjoy.    Reading historical fiction seemed to really help Jordan connect with the time periods better than SOTW, so I plan on reading more with Jordan.   They also got into our body book and felt body parts and took turns laying down and letting the other lay the felt organs in the proper spot.  All fun and games until Jordan put the uterus (complete with baby) on Alex.

Figuring out what Aubrey does all day is more difficult, but she says she did a lot of drawing and also a few lessons on her virtual school which ends next week.   Sitting on my hands trying to stay out of it.   She starts a new class (Composition) at the community college next week.    I am curious to see what she does with her time once her virtual classes finish up.       I think she needs to take more responsibility and direction for her education and not just “cop out” by signing up for classes which she completes but doesn’t really get anything out of.

As in, the silent blog.    Long gaps in blog posts generally mean one of two things.  Either we are so busy livin’ and learnin’ that I can’t stop to catch up and post it all, or I’m operating under the “if you can’t say anything nice then don’t say anything at all.”    Let’s just say this break has been the latter.     And though I have come to expect cyclical bouts of educational doldrums, this one hit me particularly hard because right up until the moment it started, things were going so smoothly.   I’ve finally got it figured out!  I have found the perfect balance between structure and self-directed learning!  I’ve found the right methods to help all my kids learn!    And then, quite suddenly, noone is happy.   Alex is fighting everything I try to encourage him to work on, yet when not kept busy he mills about picking fights with his sisters for entertainment and seems completely unable to find himself something productive to do.       Aubrey shows absolutely no sign of ambition or plan beyond the moment and Jordan  can’t focus on what she’s doing for more than 3 seconds unless it involves my undivided attention and is littering the house with “started” projects.

Of course, at this point in my homeschooling journey, I have the depth and patience to handle these kids of days/weeks/months with grace.    You didn’t really think that did you?   Ok, so after a sustained period of family grumpiness, we seem to be shifting out of it.   Not because I did anything special, just because time has passed and kids are moving on.   And I am reminded once again that I am not really in control of their development, or their educational journey, even when I try to pretend to be.

Out of the blue my husband decides to start planning a new treehouse and Alex eagerly jumps up to help.  They’ve been planning, ciphering, shopping at huge chain home improvement stores—you know, male bonding, with math and power tools.        He’s recently had some big new experiences–first season with a competitive soccer team, first gymnastics meet, first hunting trip with dad, grandpa and uncle, and there are moments I see the young man he will soon become.   From a distance, it is easy to step back and see that in between bouts of drying me batty, he really was accomplishing and experiencing a lot.

And, I remind myself that it was really important that Aubrey not feel like she had to be miss Straight A college bound—that she felt that she had a full range of options open to her.   It smarted a bit to realize that somewhere deep down I wanted her to achieve all that college prep stuff but just have the disdain of playing the system.  But, I did my job too well and she really is a free spirit.    We did both read College Without Highschool and sit down and have a bit of a planning meeting.  Which went well, but she has not been motivated to implement any of the things we discussed.   Not sure what she’ll be doing next semester!  But, I have to learn to trust her.   She recently checked out every book she could find from the library on the Japanese language and culture.  She would really like to go to the Concordia Language Camps next summer and then travel to Japan at some point.  (This would require some sort of motivation towards earning some money on her part)    I want to step in and make her realize her dreams, but then I step back and remember that she has to believe in herself and execute these plans herself  and it wouldn’t be her journey if I made it happen.  You see, I’m a planner, an organizer, a make-things-happener.    Maybe she’ll follow this path through, and maybe she’ll switch to something else.    Though it may kill me, it is time to step back and let her become the make-things-happener in her own life.   Well, at least if she makes the choices I think she should (Kidding! Kidding!)

And, really, Jordan just wants a little attention.  Ok, nonstop attention.   When Alex was gone for the weekend on his hunting trip, Aubrey happened to be gone to a friends for almost two days and it was just Jordan and I.   Ah, the bliss–she had me all to herself.      Such a sweet and charming, engaging, clever, girl to be around!     It’s just the sharing of attention that we need to work on.   You’d think we’d have sooo much time together–but it is all split between me and whatever chore is at hand, between me and another sibling…..   I really need to work at carving out time every day devoted to giving her the attention she craves or it becomes a need I feel helpless to fulfill.

I made it through another one without putting them on the bus.  I did, eventually, come to realize that their day away at their one day a week schooly homeschool discovery program was making an unwelcome break in the flow of our lives.   Beyond that being fancy talk for us homeschoolers don’t like to wake up early, it gave them that day of institutional go from class to class on command and even that short amount of time seemed to interfere with their ability to adjust back to being self directed.  Or maybe they were just tired.   They have made lots of friends and enjoyed the program and I do think they benefited from their experiences, but the current plan is to drop the program in the new year.

So, the next lull will be handled with patience and grace, because now I really do know it all.