Today was the last day of the Simple Machines class held at ROC, a homeschool community center in the basement of a church on the Upper East Side. I can't say we got a lot out of it, not because the class wasn't good but because we had missed so many after the car accident and getting sick and getting the New Paltz house ready. I think we ended up going to two or three. But we got to take the Lego educational kit home with us so we'll just do all the projects on our own, though Teacher Tom's talks on physics (for five-year-olds) will be missed.
There was one girl, about 8 or 9, who attached herself to L & me as we were doing our car-building project. I let her help because L didn't seem to mind, but found it incredibly annoying -- she wasn't signed up for the class, and was monopolizing what should have been L's project while her father sat about 6 feet away, totally ignoring what was going on. I had to jump in several times just to make sure L got a chance to put some pieces together herself. And she was wearing so much perfume that it made my eyes water to stand next to her! (meow) And all through my teeth-clenching, eye-rolling and barely restrained sighs of irritation, L let the girl build the car with her and complimented her on her pretty dress at the end. Now who is the child here?
I'm planning on starting 1st grade in June, and run a 12-month year so that we can get away with doing only 4 days a week and have wiggle room for slotting in other fun things. Like going to France this summer for 2 weeks and maybe London. Because we had to cancel our London trip due to the scarlet fever episode last month we still have those tickets that have to be used. That would be a hell of a field trip.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Nature study and curriculum decisions
We've been spending a lot of time up here in New Paltz. The house is so surrounded by trees and other plants that sometimes the green light sifting through makes me feel like I'm underwater.
We've started incorporating a lot more nature study into the day simply because it's such a large part of our lives here. Yesterday, L, T & I went for a walk to find a tree to "adopt". We found it on what L calls her island, a little bump in the course of the stream. I don't know what kind of tree it is yet, just that it's a bit bigger than a sapling, but not quite a mature tree, and L says it speaks to her. Through the year we'll research what species it is, look at how it appears in all the seasons, measure the trunk circumference and just generally visit it regularly and keep a record in our nature book.
The really good news of the week is that I think I'm settling into a curriculum, at least for this year. Charlotte Mason (CM) is one of the major types of homeschooling philosophies, not quite as strict and full-on as Classical Education but with more structure than unschooling. It's named for a British educator who created a philosophy around the education of children that incorporated a lot of nature study, short lessons, and learning through the reading of classic "living" books. I'm still educating myself on exactly what all this entails but what I see of it so far I'm really attracted to. (You can find out more about this philosophy here). What I like about it is that it is flexible, doesn't require us to follow a rigid schedule of courses, and incorporates much of what we already do--read classic children's literature, use narration for example.
So CM is going to be the driving philosophy behind my choices for what and how to study & teach. I'm still going to use Starfall for phonics, Singapore Math (though I'm really intrigued by this free math curriculum which I might incorporate), do nature study ála Tanglewood for science, and follow Ambleside Online's art & music schedule. For the history/geography core, I'm going to use this online curriculum, Mosaic Introduction to World History, which, on top of being free, uses Story of the World which L loves.
So now I just need to file my paperwork with the Board of Ed, figure out the bones of a schedule, and get started!
We've started incorporating a lot more nature study into the day simply because it's such a large part of our lives here. Yesterday, L, T & I went for a walk to find a tree to "adopt". We found it on what L calls her island, a little bump in the course of the stream. I don't know what kind of tree it is yet, just that it's a bit bigger than a sapling, but not quite a mature tree, and L says it speaks to her. Through the year we'll research what species it is, look at how it appears in all the seasons, measure the trunk circumference and just generally visit it regularly and keep a record in our nature book.
The really good news of the week is that I think I'm settling into a curriculum, at least for this year. Charlotte Mason (CM) is one of the major types of homeschooling philosophies, not quite as strict and full-on as Classical Education but with more structure than unschooling. It's named for a British educator who created a philosophy around the education of children that incorporated a lot of nature study, short lessons, and learning through the reading of classic "living" books. I'm still educating myself on exactly what all this entails but what I see of it so far I'm really attracted to. (You can find out more about this philosophy here). What I like about it is that it is flexible, doesn't require us to follow a rigid schedule of courses, and incorporates much of what we already do--read classic children's literature, use narration for example.
So CM is going to be the driving philosophy behind my choices for what and how to study & teach. I'm still going to use Starfall for phonics, Singapore Math (though I'm really intrigued by this free math curriculum which I might incorporate), do nature study ála Tanglewood for science, and follow Ambleside Online's art & music schedule. For the history/geography core, I'm going to use this online curriculum, Mosaic Introduction to World History, which, on top of being free, uses Story of the World which L loves.
So now I just need to file my paperwork with the Board of Ed, figure out the bones of a schedule, and get started!
Thursday, May 15, 2008
L's blog
>>Little Flower Journal<<
I know a lot of people would react to a five-year-old with her own blog in the same way I do to a five-year-old with a cell phone: hunh? How absolutely ridiculous and indulgent and really... ostentatious on the parent's part -- hey, look how cool we are. Our kid has a blog.
So I sort of cringed when I first saw an example of a kid's school blog at The Amazing Discoveries of Dash. But then the idea sort of grew on me. What a great way to create a portfolio of a child's work, and let him or her see it published. And it can be used as tool for all sorts of things, like doing narrations (which I was writing by hand in a notebook, which had the disadvantage of keeping her dictation slow enough for me to write down, and if you know L, you know the lightening speed at which her tongue runs), dictating a journal, teaching her the technology, and another use for the computer beyond games and watching dvds.
We've only been doing it for three days, and so far it's been great. She finds it thrilling to see her words appear on the computer screen; for her it's almost as good as appearing on tv, I think. She's a little more cooperative doing narrations since I can almost keep up with her thoughts, and best of all, she gets to ramble on about her webkinz for as long as my fingers can stand it.
I expect that the novelty will wear off soon, and then the real test of this as an educational tool will begin. I also confess that I'm a little hesitant about how much information will go out about her and her life. I had a photo of her up there at first, but then took it down, though since I have loads of photos of her on this blog, I'm not sure why I'm being so delicate about that, but there it is. Too many television shows about crazy pedophiles stalking the internet, I guess.
In any event, so far, so good. Pretty much all of it is.
I know a lot of people would react to a five-year-old with her own blog in the same way I do to a five-year-old with a cell phone: hunh? How absolutely ridiculous and indulgent and really... ostentatious on the parent's part -- hey, look how cool we are. Our kid has a blog.
So I sort of cringed when I first saw an example of a kid's school blog at The Amazing Discoveries of Dash. But then the idea sort of grew on me. What a great way to create a portfolio of a child's work, and let him or her see it published. And it can be used as tool for all sorts of things, like doing narrations (which I was writing by hand in a notebook, which had the disadvantage of keeping her dictation slow enough for me to write down, and if you know L, you know the lightening speed at which her tongue runs), dictating a journal, teaching her the technology, and another use for the computer beyond games and watching dvds.
We've only been doing it for three days, and so far it's been great. She finds it thrilling to see her words appear on the computer screen; for her it's almost as good as appearing on tv, I think. She's a little more cooperative doing narrations since I can almost keep up with her thoughts, and best of all, she gets to ramble on about her webkinz for as long as my fingers can stand it.
I expect that the novelty will wear off soon, and then the real test of this as an educational tool will begin. I also confess that I'm a little hesitant about how much information will go out about her and her life. I had a photo of her up there at first, but then took it down, though since I have loads of photos of her on this blog, I'm not sure why I'm being so delicate about that, but there it is. Too many television shows about crazy pedophiles stalking the internet, I guess.
In any event, so far, so good. Pretty much all of it is.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Dead bird
With all this curriculum insanity going on in my head it seems hard to focus on what this is all about, which is teaching L. Luckily, the past few days the weather has been perfect: bright, blue blue skies, breezy with just enough edge of chill that it feels good to wear a snuggly sweater but nothing more on top. Good weather means we've been spending time outside where almost everything we do serves to teach us (at least me) something. For instance, yesterday while raking the remnants of winter leaves out of the flower beds --I'm city girl and had no idea that this was even necessary till the day before when a gardener came by and was shocked at the amount of leaf crap that was smothering all the baby green things to death, but I digress-- we found a dead robin that we suspect flew into one of our windows; its neck was bent at a disturbingly unnatural angle.
We decided to give it a funeral, so L dug a little hole next to China's grave (my brother's kitty who is buried in the front yard). I gingerly scooped the little corpse up with a rake (the empty eye sockets freaked me out too much to touch even with gloves) and deposited it in the ground. The whole family assembled, we all said a few words. I gave a short lecture on how the bird would be eaten by worms and bugs and decompose so that it would become earth again. D said, "Rest in peace, birdy." T yelled, "Get up birdy! The birdy not listening to me!". And L read a very zen poem she wrote:
Then we covered it up with dirt, decorated the site with flowers, maple leaves and a rock to remember it by.
One dead little bird and we got to talk about death and decomposition, write and recite poetry, and do art. Not bad for a totally unprepared afternoon.
We decided to give it a funeral, so L dug a little hole next to China's grave (my brother's kitty who is buried in the front yard). I gingerly scooped the little corpse up with a rake (the empty eye sockets freaked me out too much to touch even with gloves) and deposited it in the ground. The whole family assembled, we all said a few words. I gave a short lecture on how the bird would be eaten by worms and bugs and decompose so that it would become earth again. D said, "Rest in peace, birdy." T yelled, "Get up birdy! The birdy not listening to me!". And L read a very zen poem she wrote:
On a bird's death
As we don't know if it is a boy or a girl
Then we covered it up with dirt, decorated the site with flowers, maple leaves and a rock to remember it by.
One dead little bird and we got to talk about death and decomposition, write and recite poetry, and do art. Not bad for a totally unprepared afternoon.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
I'm going nuts
I'm driving myself crazy researching all the curricula that's available out there. There's just too many things that look cool. I'm going to start listing the more interesting ones on the side bar. The best thing I've stumbled across recently is The Handbook of Nature Study blog. This homeschooling mom is leading a nature study course online, with weekly assignments that involve getting your kids out in nature and looking at plants and animals and birds. I love it.
It's midnight. I've been surfing online for three hours with no end in sight. Got to just pick something and shut up already.
It's midnight. I've been surfing online for three hours with no end in sight. Got to just pick something and shut up already.
Friday, May 9, 2008
First Grade
We've finally decided that we're going to home school L next year, through 1st grade. Wow. It's taken me a while to admit to myself that this is what I want to do. Not that we had much choice; private school is still not an option financially (even if we could have found a spot in one, which is highly unlikely), the local alternative schools I was marginally happy with have no space in first grade, and there is some question as to whether L would be able to get back into the gifted-and-talented program due to changes in the board of Ed regulations which took the final decision out of the hands of the individual school (Previously, we were assured that if she wanted to come back she would be able to). We have basically worked ourselves into a corner as far as this district is concerned.
And who knows, maybe this is all sour grapes. I am just not impressed with the schools in this area and don't have the overwhelming feeling of panic other parents seem to experience, that if my child doesn't do what everyone else is doing that it's going to damage her. On the other hand, I don't think, like some homeschooling parents I've spoken to do, that sending my kid to school is going to damage her either. I'm just not that worried about all this.
Which worries me. Shouldn't I be worried?
In any event, now that the decision has been made (with the full blessing of the baby daddy, by the way), I am feeling some pressure to pick a curriculum for next year. This year I kept telling myself and everyone else who expressed concern, "Hell, it's just kindergarten. It's not even legally required!" We do school and, on days we have better things to do, we don't. Almost every day we do math and reading. The rest of it I figure comes up naturally through the course of our daily life -- we draw, we sing, we cook. Museums and books and movies bring up questions and answers that lead us to science and history with enough regularity that I don't feel that we're missing out if I don't sit her down and do structured activities with her every week.
But next year is the real deal. That's when we need to start keeping records and have paper work to file and the potential of truant officer home visits looming over our heads. I've invested in a home school record keeping software program to help me with the paper work. I'm trawling all the user groups online to figure out what curriculum would fit us best, whether we keep going on in our unstructured, meandering way or go for structure. I think I want more direction than I had this year, but not so much structure that I'll chafe under it. I'm not the best at following directions and she definitely takes after me in that respect.
There are so many choices that I'm sort of in paralysis. The two that I'm wavering between is K12, which a friend uses and loves, and Sonlight, which looks great as well. K12 is very very structured, basically a school out of a box. They send you everything you need, text books and equipment. There's a course schedule, lessons done on computer, online tracking and assessments. It's heavily influenced by the Core Knowledge Foundation, the folks behind the What Your X Grader Needs to Know series and the idea of Cultural Literacy, so it gives a pretty solid education. It is also quite expensive, running over $500 a month if you take the full plate of six classes (There are several different pricing options, but it's definitely on the pricier end of the curriculum spectrum). I also think we'd find it too scripted and have a hard time keeping on task. I also happen to prefer the math we're doing (Singapore Math), having originally tried the math textbook they offer.
Sonlight leans more toward the Classical Education and Charlotte Mason philosophies (which deserves posting of their own). The focus is on learning via "living books", by which it means reading and using classic stories and books, such as The House at Pooh Corner and Little House on the Prairie, as well as The Odyssey and The Iliad, rather than workbooks and abridged versions. It also focuses on history as the backbone of the program, so that all the literature you read is connected to a period on time that the child is studying (for example, reading greek myths and The Odyssey while studying the Greco-Roman period.) The program comes with all the books you need, plus instructor guides and a schedule. It's less structured than K12, I like the idea of reading good books with L, and the list of material covered is impressive. The con? It's a Christian curriculum. Granted, you can leave out the Bible study portion, but many of the books seem to have a God-is-good slant, tales of pure-hearted missionaries who save souls around the world. I don't actually mind reading Bible stories to L, since it has had an enormous influence on our literature and society. Not to be familiar with the Bible shows a certain type of cultural illiteracy, but I don't want to have to be forever putting Christian theology into a cultural context for L all the time so that she understands that this is not what all people believe, just what some do. She's already praying to Osiris and Anubis after the Egyptian gods lessons. Lord knows what she'll do after a year of Jesus study.
I don't know. Maybe I'll have to keep looking.
And who knows, maybe this is all sour grapes. I am just not impressed with the schools in this area and don't have the overwhelming feeling of panic other parents seem to experience, that if my child doesn't do what everyone else is doing that it's going to damage her. On the other hand, I don't think, like some homeschooling parents I've spoken to do, that sending my kid to school is going to damage her either. I'm just not that worried about all this.
Which worries me. Shouldn't I be worried?
In any event, now that the decision has been made (with the full blessing of the baby daddy, by the way), I am feeling some pressure to pick a curriculum for next year. This year I kept telling myself and everyone else who expressed concern, "Hell, it's just kindergarten. It's not even legally required!" We do school and, on days we have better things to do, we don't. Almost every day we do math and reading. The rest of it I figure comes up naturally through the course of our daily life -- we draw, we sing, we cook. Museums and books and movies bring up questions and answers that lead us to science and history with enough regularity that I don't feel that we're missing out if I don't sit her down and do structured activities with her every week.
But next year is the real deal. That's when we need to start keeping records and have paper work to file and the potential of truant officer home visits looming over our heads. I've invested in a home school record keeping software program to help me with the paper work. I'm trawling all the user groups online to figure out what curriculum would fit us best, whether we keep going on in our unstructured, meandering way or go for structure. I think I want more direction than I had this year, but not so much structure that I'll chafe under it. I'm not the best at following directions and she definitely takes after me in that respect.
There are so many choices that I'm sort of in paralysis. The two that I'm wavering between is K12, which a friend uses and loves, and Sonlight, which looks great as well. K12 is very very structured, basically a school out of a box. They send you everything you need, text books and equipment. There's a course schedule, lessons done on computer, online tracking and assessments. It's heavily influenced by the Core Knowledge Foundation, the folks behind the What Your X Grader Needs to Know series and the idea of Cultural Literacy, so it gives a pretty solid education. It is also quite expensive, running over $500 a month if you take the full plate of six classes (There are several different pricing options, but it's definitely on the pricier end of the curriculum spectrum). I also think we'd find it too scripted and have a hard time keeping on task. I also happen to prefer the math we're doing (Singapore Math), having originally tried the math textbook they offer.
Sonlight leans more toward the Classical Education and Charlotte Mason philosophies (which deserves posting of their own). The focus is on learning via "living books", by which it means reading and using classic stories and books, such as The House at Pooh Corner and Little House on the Prairie, as well as The Odyssey and The Iliad, rather than workbooks and abridged versions. It also focuses on history as the backbone of the program, so that all the literature you read is connected to a period on time that the child is studying (for example, reading greek myths and The Odyssey while studying the Greco-Roman period.) The program comes with all the books you need, plus instructor guides and a schedule. It's less structured than K12, I like the idea of reading good books with L, and the list of material covered is impressive. The con? It's a Christian curriculum. Granted, you can leave out the Bible study portion, but many of the books seem to have a God-is-good slant, tales of pure-hearted missionaries who save souls around the world. I don't actually mind reading Bible stories to L, since it has had an enormous influence on our literature and society. Not to be familiar with the Bible shows a certain type of cultural illiteracy, but I don't want to have to be forever putting Christian theology into a cultural context for L all the time so that she understands that this is not what all people believe, just what some do. She's already praying to Osiris and Anubis after the Egyptian gods lessons. Lord knows what she'll do after a year of Jesus study.
I don't know. Maybe I'll have to keep looking.
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