Category Archives: School-at-home

recreating the school system’s classroom at home.

Tuesday – Day Two

Posted in children, Family, Homeschooling, Kids, parenting, School-at-home, Uncategorized, Unschooling by

Today started off typical, I was up early and got my mama me time before the little folks were up for the day.

After a while, my daughter surfaced…she contently looked thru a bag of rocks and minerals for a long time.

image

After a while my son joined us and they made themselves some breakfast.

While preparing their breakfast I over hear my son telling his sister, that when we go on vacation they will get spending money and if they save it they can buy all the junk cereal they want…my daughter replies something on the lines of; no, we only get two per year! My son replies: Yeah, that’s the deal with mom’s money, not our money! (he’s getting clever now!) 🙂

SIDE NOTE: We have a family deal, twice a year (Christmas and Birthdays) they get their choice of a box of crap cereal, you know the kind, typically have a toy in the bottom of the box and turns your poop bright turquoise blue green color! And when they get their box of cereal, they will opt for cereal breakfast, lunch and dinner until it’s gone.

image

Breakfast around here is make it yourself if mom hasn’t gotten to it by the time you are hungry. Be grateful when someone serves you, but be willing to do things for yourself if you can and need to. I’d say a couple days a week they make their own breakfast and majority of the time I make it.

image

After breakfast:

Son: And NOW I’m actually going to do school!
Daughter: Really?!?!
Son: Yes, I’m really going to read this book and learn something new!

image

How could I interrupt that with my plans to make those darn crackers???

While reading a basher book on weather:
Son: Mom, do you remember mine craft on the ipad?
Mom: yes.
Son: Do you think I could get to outer space on mine craft? Because in creative mode you can fly and if you go above the clouds, there is a bluish orb like place. Do you think if you puncture thru the bottom of that orb you would reach the outer atmosphere? Or like the other side of the atmosphere? I really want to know what is on the other side!

Son: mom, look (showing me his book) these are the extreme weather conditions, except you really can’t have a draught and flood at the same time. Wanna know something sis – you can’t have a tornado without a thunder cloud. There is a difference between a tornado and hurricane. A hurricane does not lower itself from a thunderstorm cloud. Hurricanes come from the sea and tornados come from the sky.

He continues on, but I need to get this cracker deal going…so I stroll off to the kitchen while he has his sister’s ear now.

He comes into the kitchen to find me, apparently, he has been checking out his basher book on elements now and has stumbled across an element he can’t pronounce…and truth be known neither can mom! We have our talking dictionary give us a leg up on this one!

image

Son: finally found what I was looking for! Neodymium
Mom: why?
Son: I’m kind of interested in it, that’s why

CRACKER TIME…I had to just get it over with…stuff was sitting there waiting, staring me in the face…so here we go, we are making saltine crackers from scratch! (And yes it involved washing the table cloth ha ha!)

image

image

image

Daughter: can I push on it? Because then I can feel the squish substance called dough, isn’t that funny mom, and anyways it’s quicker than rolling it.

image

image

image

While I put the table cloth and a load of reds in the wash, my daughter started to read a book about horses.

image

a bit later, my son decided he was going to teach his little sis how to tell time by reading a baby basher book on TIME to her. I’ve mentioned before both my children enjoy being the teacher…not so much the student role model, but teacher position they thrive! Ha ha!

image

Outside time! Some days I have to kick these little kiddos OUTSIDE! Today was one of those days, out out out, go get your wiggly beans OUT!

Wardrobe Change #2 – She is in one of her fancy gowns, jumping on the trampoline and announces that she thinks this dress should not be a dress but rather dress up clothes from now on. She has serious individual ideas on what is what when it comes to clothes and shoes! She has stated many times she wants to design her own clothes, shoes, jewelry, etc… From the first (and last) power struggle over shoes when she was 9 months old, I decided clothes really aren’t worth it, as long as they are content in their skin, and happy with their choices, I do not intervene when it comes to their fashion preferrences. They are free to express themselves fully. I do however, get to choose Christmas dinner and Easter Brunch outfits for both kiddos.

image

Wardrobe Change #3 – Pondering life while swinging on the swings.

image

Pondering life while hanging in his self made tree hammock…yes, my rug is still in the tree!

image

Story time with narration and discussion afterwards

image

Reading about rocks and minerals…we also made a trip today to the rock and mineral shop in town.

image

Son: A hypothesis about Stonehenge is it was used to be a UFO landing site and the Easter Island rock heads are known to also be associated with aliens. And I think aliens would be awesome!
Daughter: No, people believe Stonehenge is a place where people saw the sunrise and set.
Son: Some people think Stonehenge was built as a giant calendar because the sun rises and sets in certain positions during the solstices, but I like the alien theory better.

image

My Daughter making orange juice with one orange that is still not ready, but she was, so it was plucked, cut and squeezed…she’d like to sell you a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice for 50 cents at her “lemonade stand” ha ha!

image

image

A little more piano practice

image

My son is trying to build an upside down telescope.

image

image

Which leads him to you tube for directions, but he is quickly side tracked by anti gravity toys…which leads to magnet play. Which is related to his morning interest of Neodymium…right?! I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure Neodymium is used to make really powerful magnets.

image

image

My daughter likes that the figurine bin was taken out and quickly has her own saving story going on. A goat has falling off a cliff and all the other animals are trying to save him from falling to the ground…she plays this story out in many ways and has a great time talking for each animals and is very serious with different voices for different characters.

image

all animals made it safe and sound to their farm land…and no the lion is not going to eat the pig. ha ha!

image

Dad’s Home….dinner time and all that jazz…

During dinner:

Son: I have a hypothesis, that cloth gets wet when you dump water on it because the water molecules latch on to the cloth molecules.
Dad: And then they use capillary action to propagate through the material.
Daughter: So if I dump a bucket of water here, the whole table cloth gets wet?
Dad: Yup, you got it.
Mom: Sooooo capillary action to propagate??? Would that be spreads out for the rest of us??? Ha ha!

Daughter: Well I have a hypothesis too about bubbles – it is I think bubbles are little air things filled with liquid.
Dad: you are close, but it’s the opposite.
Daughter: its air trapped in liquid? Hmmm…
Mom: come on kids, clear your dishes and get ready for story time in my room.

image

They are now in their own beds listening to an audio book. I’m posting this, and then heading for bed myself. My editor (I mean better at spelling friend) will tell me tomorrow of any major glitches in my verbal spewing, ha ha! I’m too tired tonight!

Monday – Day One

Posted in children, Family, Homeschooling, Kids, parenting, School-at-home, Uncategorized, Unschooling by

I normally wake up early, hours before my children, to ensure that mama quiet time. Sip my cup of tea, think my thoughts, just enjoy the morning sounds before the house is so noisy I can’t hear myself think.

Today was not one of those days, I woke up early and then crawled right back into bed and slipped off into a deep sleep. Woken up by my son, who just woke up himself, asking if he can finish the NATE THE GREAT audio book he didn’t finish last night.

image

We snuggle up in our jams on the sofa, he is listening with headphones because his sister is still sleeping and I like it quiet until the whole herd is up and roaring. I am facing him, with ipad and iphone at the ready, trying to sort out three different play dates this week with three different mamas. I have an unexpected guest coming, which is exciting, looking forward to her visit, but I needed to see where a fantabulous play date might fit in with this friend. Once all of that calendar stuff is sorted out, my daughter wakes up. She decides she is going to snuggle up with us right smack in the middle on top of us, making both my son and I a lot uncomfortable, so rearranging our positions, ends up with my son off doing something else, my daughter snuggling up with me for a while, but her ultimate goal of conquering the entire sofa for herself is eventually achieved. Ha ha!

My son is outside making lizard traps. Did I mention we bought a terrarium and crickets for the lizard he caught before, but it was too small and had to be released into the wild again…so right now we have about a dozen pet crickets!

image

image

While he is hunting lizards, my daughter designs jewelry for her stuffed animals. She announces she will start a stuffie jewelry line and sell these creations to the top buyers! (Watch out Build-A-Bear! Ha ha!)

image

After my son’s lizard hunt, he’s ready for a little Life of Fred Math. We snuggle up for the next chapter. He moves to the table to write down his answers to the last chapters questions.

image

image

As he moves on to earn an egg on Reading Eggs (a computer reading program) My daughter snuggles up on the sofa to practice her reading. She reads a couple BOB books out loud to me. And we talk about sounds and sounding out words and how most of the words in these books can be sounded out, but in some of her other readers you can’t sound out the words easily, you need to learn the letter combinations that make different sounds when they are together, etc…

image

image

She then takes her turn on Reading Eggs while her brother tries to get an old lap top working. He wants to put in the circuit board (snap circuits science toy) CD-ROM and create something on the computer. The disk isn’t working, dad will need to sort that out later.

image

I make lunch.

After lunch we all go outside and play. I sit with a cup of tea (I am a sitter and a tea drinker, eeks, I see thru this blog post, I need to get up and off my arse and exercise! Haha!)

image

image

The kids are busy, jumping on the trampoline, riding bikes, scooters, playing with the hose, etc…Some of the conversations I overheard or took part in were interesting:

image

Kids asked why I’m taking so many photos today…I tell them of the blog. My son says: well I’m sure they are going to think I’m a girl, because I have long hair and a leopard print vest on…but I don’t care because I love my vest! It’s the best vest! That rhymes ha ha! (he loves it so much, he didn’t want it to get wet, so I had to be the vest guardian for a bit)

image

Daughter: Mom, what time is it?
Me: 12:22pm
Daughter: Well I’m noticing it is shady at 12:22 and I’m guessing it is probably always shady at 12:22 in our play yard. This spurs a discussion on tracking the shade and how the sun moves during the seasons. And apparently now we are going to check the shade out and track it now.

Daughter: Mom, look what I found, I think it is a diamond because it is sparkly and hard…as she brings me a piece of cement I think, maybe roof tile? Not sure…we plan on asking dad what it is made of, I’m guessing glass, not diamonds. Ha ha! Sometimes mom isn’t up for researching when dad can easily answer a question, he needs to be in on the homeschooling gig too. Ha ha! Not to mention the wi-fi didn’t reach where I was sitting in the yard.

Son: Mom, you wanna know what I think was one of the most important speeches during the war against Great Britain…you know that battle on bunker hill, I think the statement “hold your fire until you see the whites of their eyes” was one of the most important bits. What do you think?

Daughter: spraying water out of the hose states, it looks like a butterfly…a wing over here and another one over there.
Son: yeah but butterflies have four wings not two.

image

Daughter: Can everything go thru water?
Son: No
Daughter: What can’t get thru water?
Son: well I know oil can’t get thru water, so there must be things that can and some that can’t.
Daughter: Mom can you look up what can get thru water?
Me: sure…

Son: wanna know the process of how I make tracks? I run thru the puddles you are making sis and the bike tires pick up the water. When I ride over the dry part the water comes off. Interesting huh?

image

Daughter: while violently flinging the hose around flinging water everywhere. (I’m hoping she doesn’t drench me and my ipad) she announces loudly…how cool is that mom, what goes up has to come down, it is gravity mom, look!!!

All this pondering and processing took place in about 30 minutes. It is a little before 1:00pm and we are heading downtown to an appointment and the book store. When you pay attention to the random comments the kids say during their play, you realize just how much is going on up in their developing brains. They seem to be learning and processing information non-stop at lightening speeds!

At the book store my son talked me into a couple basher books. We love the basher books.

image

In the afternoons, we often have a quiet time…not every day, but I aim for a few times a week, especially on the days the kids need a break from one another. I noticed they were starting to debate about more then enough topics on the way home from town. I figured quiet time was needed, so into their rooms for an hour to read, play quietly and relax on their own. Believe it or not, they both actually really like quiet time and have in the past asked for it!

They tidy up the living room first. Then choose a book, grab a snack, and head off into their rooms.

I’m on the sofa with a cup of tea surfing the net and thinking about putting a load of laundry in…

image

…yes okay laundry guilt is over, the load is in and I also pulled out the ingredients to make the cracker recipe my son has been asking to make…

image

NOW, I feel I can sit and relax with my tea and surf the net a bit
…(note to hubby who will read this: no comment from the peanut gallery! Ha ha! We all deserve a break during our work day!)

After quiet time:

Son: mom, during quiet time I got pretty good at this! (showing me his harmonica)

Which spurs a little jam session between the two kids…one on harmonica and the other on the wooden frog…we rock out a bit and they decide they want to watch Nanny McPhee Returns. I decide I’m not up for crackers just yet, but I’m not up for tv either…sooooo I say they need to do a little piano practice and then play outside for a while before I will consider a movie. They practice and then bounce outside.

image

image

My son apparently took the entry way rug with him and decided to take it up a tree…looks sort of comfy huh? Ha ha! He is that kid that is so creative you quickly realize you will go insane if you worry too much about the little things in life like my rug is up in a freaking tree! haha!

I remind myself often of Thomas Edison’s mother…she is my hero really and I don’t even know her name! But she home schooled Thomas and fostered his creativity that we all benefit from today. Maybe one day we will all benefit from my son’s creation, who knows. I do know I won’t be the one to step on his ideas.

image

Well looks like crackers have safely been procrastinated a bit further into the afternoon/evening; they have suckered me into Nanny McPhee Returns!

image

Hubby is on his way home and I am going to a stretching class with some friends. Some of the school reading on our list will either happen late tonight when I get home, if the kids are up and want some story time with mom or tomorrow…

Not sure what adventures dad has in store for the kiddos while I’m away, but I do know my daughter needs to unload the dishwasher. She made a deal to unload it 5 times in exchange for me purchasing yet another stuffed animal for her!

Well I’m back from stretching class. My husband informs me that the kids ate dinner, did some tidy up chores, our son read a few books to his sister, they jumped on the trampoline with dad, did bedtime routine stuff and went to sleep.

I had a great adventure with friends and look forward to tomorrow…figure crackers will HAVE TO HAPPEN tomorrow! They have been on the list for a few days now! ha ha!

I still have a goal of less words and more photos, but after attempting to take photos of our day, I’m guessing as the week goes on, I’ll have less photos and less words by Friday ha ha! I will do my best for ya! 🙂

Good Night…

Our Homeschooling Week In Photos

Posted in children, Deschooling, Family, Homeschooling, Kids, parenting, School-at-home, Uncategorized, Unschooling by

I was thinking back to the beginning and how I really wished someone would document their week in photos. I needed to see what people did. I read about a typical day. I found schedules and charts. But I needed to see pictures, I needed a visual aid!

I am only one fish in a giant sea of homeschoolers, so I am not saying OUR WAY is the only way or the right way. Each family has to find their own groove. Figure out your families goals and priorities. What works for the different personalities in your family, the different learning styles, teaching styles, etc…

This is OUR family. This is what works for us. I hope it is helpful to see how we go about our days.

For the record: I will not be documenting everything, but I will do my best to give you a good idea of our days.

Hopefully I can convey the sense of peace homeschooling brings our family…but of course because that is my hope, it will probably turn into a Murphy’s Law week haha! Which in itself might give my readers a sense of normalcy and relief they aren’t the only ones having a wacky day here and there…haha! 🙂

Here we go…wish us luck…

I didn’t plan on starting until tomorrow, but why not start now?

Sunday evening

Earlier this evening my son was finishing up an audio story, Sara and Solomon

While he was doing that, my daughter was creating something with play dough.

image

After a lot of rolling, pinching, smashing, pushing, poking and exercising just about every fine motor skill one could work on, she had created a duck, on a lake near an island with a palm tree. (Must admit she is more talented with play dough creations then her dear mama. I had pretty much only mastered the snake, worm, a ball, and the ever famous ash tray, but not much more haha!)

image

All that play dough work is enhancing her future writing skills. Great for all ages IMHO.

We sat down to a delicious dinner, ate and then went for a family walk.

My daughter caught bugs (or attempted to) my son mastered his stick throwing skills. My husband and I just enjoyed the walk while the kids ran ahead, hopping, skipping and laughing while the dog begged for another stick to be tossed.

After our walk, everyone snuggled up on the sofa to watch a bedtime cartoon and eat ice cream. (I quietly excused myself after eating ice cream, to the back room and sipped a cup of tea in solitude)

We brushed teeth and did all that bedtime routine stuff, jammies, teeth, etc…and the kids crawled into bed. Because they were in bed fairly early, they asked for an audio story, so I put on Nate The Great audio download (library overdrive option…big fan of free!)

That was our evening tonight, not overly exciting, but it was nice…

…goodnight

Hopefully I will have more photos and fewer words tomorrow. 🙂

Unschooling In The Little Red School House

Posted in children, Family, Homeschooling, Kids, parenting, School-at-home, Uncategorized, Unschooling by

They say the first step is to admit your addiction.

So I’m going to make that first step here in this public arena!

I am an unschooling mama with an addiction to curriculum.

It is the truth, I love both worlds of homeschooling. I like to take what I like and dump the rest. There is a reason we as a family did not fit the standard school box, we see far too many flaws with that system. Homeschooling offers such a fabulous way to dump the flaws and run wild with what works for your family!

Being a homeschooler gives me a brilliant excuse to purchase some of the most amazing curriculum, manipulatives, supplies, etc. I just love back to school sales!

However, I also have a serious fondness of unschooling methods, so there is an internal battle forging on inside of me. My inner teacher, curriculum addicted self battles on with my free spirit, trust in my children, natural loving, unschooling parenting self. Hence the reason I consider myself a relaxed schooler.

I believe in the unschooling methods I’ve read about, they simply make sense. I have seen the wheels turning in my children’s minds when they are given the time and trust required to learn on their own accord. Unschooling methods bring a massive sense of peace and calmness to our lives. The kids are happy learning and living in an educational world with many new wonders around each corner.

But I struggle with how to record keep when unschooling and my husband has reservations about the unschooling method. (Which is another post for another time)

I graduated college with a degree in child development. I was being groomed to be a classroom teacher, and yet all the theories I was taught to bring into a classroom, genuinely fits the unschooling methods better.

In the modern classroom setting, a good teacher (because there are a few of them out there ya’know) simply can’t implement what they hope to accomplish. It’s just not possible. There are far too many hurdles. (But again that’s another post for another day)

I mentioned my addiction to curriculum, but I may have forgotten to mention our little red school house…I really do enjoy “playing school” when my kids are willing to “play the students” haha!

image

It is the perfect place to keep our school materials and gives us a place to go and do school. A great place to keep all the record keeping administrative type things in order. A great place for the kids to “play school” with their friends. My kids enjoy being the teacher much more than the students. Haha!

Side note: I have noticed in the spirit of Charlotte Mason’s narration methods, when my children play teacher, I get a fantastic glimpse into what they know well and what still needs a little work.

I did mention the internal battle right? Yup, at some point in time I came up with “relaxed schooler” because that is what we are.

We go into the school-house and do school to fill my needs to teach, use the fabulous curriculum that has been given the stamp of approval from my kids, and have paper work for my record keeping.

However, majority of our lives are simply chocked full of relaxed style learning. I like to say: We go into the school-house to do school and when we are finished, we go out into the world and learn something. Haha!

The Benefits of Relaxed Homeschooling Year Round

Posted in children, Deschooling, Family, Homeschooling, Kids, parenting, School-at-home, Unschooling by

First off I should let you know we are considered “relaxed schoolers” And we relax-learn year-round for many reasons, some of the main reasons are:

1) I noticed my children (back when we attended school) defined learning as something you can only do at a desk with dictation by a teacher. You simply could not learn in any other situation. In fact they protested anything they deemed as school-ish outside of school hours. The class room situation quickly killed their lovely spirit and curiosity to learn, which broke my heart and frustrated our whole family. The children were stressed and their behavior reflected their stress.

By relax schooling my children have reconnected with the freedom to choose WHAT they want to learn, WHEN they want to learn it, WHERE they want to learn it and HOW they want to learn it. Which has translated into a constant stream of learning. They no longer protest the process of learning. Life is once again a peaceful learning experience, year round.

The process of “de-schooling” took my children a few months, but we didn’t see complete fruits of our labors until we as a family found trust in ourselves, our abilities and overall our family groove.

2) Before school I was a “strewing” type mama. Which is an unschooling term. And I stopped that when the kids were in school. I assumed they were getting their education at school. I assumed very wrong. Once we pulled out, I started strewing again. And once again our entire lives became educational; therefore, we homeschool year round, whether we want to or not. ha ha!

Everything we do has a degree of learning to it.

Example:

An average morning could look like this…sleepy heads surfacing, wanting to snuggle and listen to an audio book.

The audio story may lead my son to research the status of Pluto as a planet or not. He will talk non-stop about it, research it, make crafts of it, etc for a few days afterwards. Or become a detective like the main character in the story and start a sleuthing club.

My daughter might want to watch a cartoon DVD. I agree to let her watch, as long as the language of the DVD was switched to french. She will build a fort on the sofa and start talking to her stuffed animals in french.

It is still early in the morning, they are still in their PJs and nibbling on their breakfast….their minds are engaged in something interesting to them. The wheels are turning and I haven’t opened one text-book yet.

3) year round schooling allows you to take time off as needed.

I follow a few curriculums, because it makes record keeping for the state that much easier. I only follow curriculums my children enjoy.

I will give a giant shout out to the math program “LIFE OF FRED” my son will literally BEG me to do more and more chapters. My daughter is not a fan of math, but she is a fan of snuggling up with mom on the sofa to hear a story about math and the life of the crazy little character Fred.
http://www.stanleyschmidt.com/FredGauss/11catofbooks.html

If we sit down to do some text-book type schooling, and it isn’t going smoothly, If it is causing frustration for me or the kids, we can simply take that day off and come back to it at a later time.

Our state requires 175-180 days of school, depending on the year. By homeschooling year round, I don’t have to really worry about taking a day off or even a week off now and then. There is no way we will have 185 bad days each year and if we do, then something drastically needs to change! In fact we normally hit our 100th day of school at least a month before the public school hits theirs.

Other reasons we might take a day off are less stressful reasons…maybe friends or family come to visit. A spontaneous trip to Legoland. It is simply a beautiful day out and the beach or a hike sounds more appealing. It snows on our mountains and we want to make a snowman or go sledding. There are plenty of fabulous reasons to ditch the text books and head outside for a great learning experience.

Some families enjoy having a hard start and stop to their school year, but that does not work for our family. We see learning as something fun and a natural part of life that doesn’t stop in the summer or on the weekends.

My children do have some friends that attend school and can’t understand why my children love schooling year round. It does not compute with the kids that attend school, because they live for the summer break….to make that less confusing we simply call July our summer if people ask.

As I typed out this blog, my son was explaining this balancing experiment to his sister. (He learned all about this experiment from the tv show Beakman’s world. I am not anti-TV, but I am a firm believer that TV options for kids NEED to have an educational element. TV needs to spark curiosity that extends into their real life.)

image

image

And now that I’m about to hit publish on my post my son comes up to me and says “excuse me mom, but do you think you could give me some homework?” I ask “like what kind of homework?” He says “oh I don’t know maybe like go research our solar system or something?” I send him off with a post-it note that says “research and write down five facts about our solar system” he runs off with a giant smile….a moment later he asks if I can take him to the library today…so there you have it, we will be going to the library today. 🙂

That is what homeschooling in our house looks like! That is what learning should look like IMHO and that is why we have a relaxed homeschooling style and why we do it year round.