Ugh. Every now and then I come to a point when I realize that my parenting needs some work. I try to work on it constantly, but there are times when it seems I've been neglecting something for months and haven't realized it needs to be worked at, or have just not given it the proper attention. Poor Conrad. He has suffered the pains of my parental weaknesses the most for a long time now. It must be so difficult to be the middle child, especially when you're three! Everything is going great with homeschooling, but with my relationship with Conrad, I feel that he's being dragged behind a horse and the horse just keeps going. I need to stop everything and take a good look at his needs and what I can do to help him grow and feel loved.
Homeschooling is just parenting 24/7 really, and I feel the need to brush up on my parenting skills very often. So for now, I'm putting aside my book list (again), to review The Power of Positive Parenting and look into a few new sources (friends have suggested Alfie Kohn books). And trying to read scriptures and pray more regularly in order to keep the conduit of the Spirit open for revelation and reinforcement for my efforts. So Sparks of Genius will have to wait. And my list of improv books and Unschooling Rules. I'm still getting used to my new calling at church (primary chorister!) and we have the play performance (for which I need to make a costume for and help with sets/props) and the boys' dance recital coming up in about a month, not to mention various field trips.
It's all good stuff, and I'm not overwhelmed at all right now. I'm learning the value of staying organized and regularly reviewing my planner calendars so I'm not caught off-guard by some forgotten committment. And not forgetting my most important commitments--my family relationships...which means dropping my own favored agenda for relearning weak parenting skills.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Monday, April 8, 2013
Improving
So that's a lot of good news in the last post. Something that is not going so great that we need to work on is finding happiness in the basics, the things we do every day, no matter what else is going on. There have been not a few complaints about scripture time and chores and things like dressing in the morning and brushing teeth. Maybe it's the kid in me that will never really grow up and disappear, but I still don't believe duties HAVE to be un-fun, even things that have to be done. I've heard plenty of people say that "kids need to learn that some things in life that just have to be done." Yeah, but what about Mary Poppins' "element of fun"? Don't tell my mom, but to this day I still enjoy cleaning toilets. Toilets! (Maybe that's why my boys fight over who gets to do it!) And there's something very soothing about washing dishes by hand in a sinkful of warm soapy water. And on the days when I push through a few boring verses of scripture, I am always rewarded with something inspiring before I'm finished. To me, it is more an issue of attitude than one of duty. Yes, there are things that need to be done, but how we feel about them is up to us.
You can always find something negative in a task, but you can also always find something positive, even if it's the tiniest little good thing, it's there. In fact, we make clean-up a game every time if we can, and we're always thinking up new ways to play clean-up. Sometimes the boys get tongs from the kitchen and pretend that the clutter is hot lava rocks and they have to carefully pick the items up with the tongs to put away. Other times we do Tornado Clean-up, where we clean as fast as we can, sort of crazy like a tornado. We also do Box Clean-up, where we put a box in the center of the room and throw everything in the box as fast as we can, and it's instant gratification for us because it looks clean immediately, and then we put everything away from the box. Every now and then we do a competition, where the first person to clean up 4 things gets a chocolate chip, though I don't like this one as much, the boys sure do! Another way we haven't tried yet is to tape a line accross the room and have a competition to see who can get their side clean first. I try not to be the one who invents the games, because it's also important for the kids to learn to find their own element of fun. One game the boys made up is using their construction toys (dump truck and the like) to clean up, or they use their stuffed animals and pretend the animals are doing the cleaning. Edit: Trevor just made up another game after I posted this. We played I Spy Clean-up: one person spies something on the floor that needs to be put away, and when another person guesses correctly, they put it away and get to spy something next.
Of course, I prefer that we don't get to the point where we have a whole room of junk to clean up and we strive to instead clean up as we go, but big messes are inevitable and it's better not to dread clean-up.
With scriptures, I just need to continue introducing variety. Trevor is great with doing things the same way every time, but Conrad will start to crawl all over us and be very distracting if he's bored, which has been a lot lately. We usually take the gospel art book and Trevor's large-print scriptures and use those to do scripture time, but I think Conrad needs more interaction still. Role-play is usually his favorite. If he gets a choice, Samuel the Lamanite is the story he chooses because he loves acting out the scene on the wall with arrows and rocks flying. It's so simple and doesn't need any preparation, but is very effective. We could also use the children's version of scriptures, which we haven't utilized in a long time. I want my kids to love reading scriptures and to develop that love early on. So we'll keep trying new things and finding that element of fun wherever we can.
You can always find something negative in a task, but you can also always find something positive, even if it's the tiniest little good thing, it's there. In fact, we make clean-up a game every time if we can, and we're always thinking up new ways to play clean-up. Sometimes the boys get tongs from the kitchen and pretend that the clutter is hot lava rocks and they have to carefully pick the items up with the tongs to put away. Other times we do Tornado Clean-up, where we clean as fast as we can, sort of crazy like a tornado. We also do Box Clean-up, where we put a box in the center of the room and throw everything in the box as fast as we can, and it's instant gratification for us because it looks clean immediately, and then we put everything away from the box. Every now and then we do a competition, where the first person to clean up 4 things gets a chocolate chip, though I don't like this one as much, the boys sure do! Another way we haven't tried yet is to tape a line accross the room and have a competition to see who can get their side clean first. I try not to be the one who invents the games, because it's also important for the kids to learn to find their own element of fun. One game the boys made up is using their construction toys (dump truck and the like) to clean up, or they use their stuffed animals and pretend the animals are doing the cleaning. Edit: Trevor just made up another game after I posted this. We played I Spy Clean-up: one person spies something on the floor that needs to be put away, and when another person guesses correctly, they put it away and get to spy something next.
Of course, I prefer that we don't get to the point where we have a whole room of junk to clean up and we strive to instead clean up as we go, but big messes are inevitable and it's better not to dread clean-up.
With scriptures, I just need to continue introducing variety. Trevor is great with doing things the same way every time, but Conrad will start to crawl all over us and be very distracting if he's bored, which has been a lot lately. We usually take the gospel art book and Trevor's large-print scriptures and use those to do scripture time, but I think Conrad needs more interaction still. Role-play is usually his favorite. If he gets a choice, Samuel the Lamanite is the story he chooses because he loves acting out the scene on the wall with arrows and rocks flying. It's so simple and doesn't need any preparation, but is very effective. We could also use the children's version of scriptures, which we haven't utilized in a long time. I want my kids to love reading scriptures and to develop that love early on. So we'll keep trying new things and finding that element of fun wherever we can.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Natural Learning Connections
I love it when the kids make connections on their own. Here are a few recent stories:
1. Today during General Conference, Trevor was making up his own rebus messages. We had just seen rebus messages and stories in a few places like The Friend magazine and an I Spy book, so he knew what they were and was doing a really good job making his own. It was a great time to ask him about a previous conversation on China. I asked him if he remembered what it was called when people use pictures for words (he knew they're called pictograms) and then I asked if he remembered one group of people who used to use them before they used letters (he remembered the Chinese people did). I LOVE those moments when connections are made and lessons reviewed without a paper quiz.
2. A few months ago, Trevor and I were reading the Friend magazine while the little ones napped. We read an article about President Packer and his woodcarving hobby (Feb. 2013 issue). It had several photos of his drawings and carvings. Trevor was really excited about it and asked if he could have a pocketknife. He repeatedly asked for one over the next several weeks, so we got him one for his birthday. Now we've been checking out library books with simple woodcarving projects and he looks for good pieces of wood to carve every time we go for a walk.
3. Another interest of Trevor's that keeps coming up is sewing. He has done a little bit of sewing with my mom, but he's always asking me if we can do some sewing at home. Since my sewing machine has been buried under storage for the last several months, and we didn't ahve a good place to put it while we worked on anything, the answer has been no. But we finally finished most of the basement and rearranged things so we can start on something soon! (He was inspired most recently by a sock monkey in a really cool book we read called How Things Work In The House). He was a little distracted by something else, though, so we haven't started yet. That "something else" is...(drumroll please)...
4. His snap circuit kit! Whoo hoo! Finally! We went to an electricity museum (The Bakken) last summer that just happened to be having a really awesome workshop where the kids could build their own circuits. Trevor and Conrad both loved it and we didn't see much else of the museum that day, though we did go back later a few times (I had to see their Frankenstein exhibit--really neat!). I asked where they got their stuff from and went to the store later to get Trevor started on his own little kit. Well, I am no electrician and the pieces I bought were mismatched and the voltage didn't match up, and while it was still fun, it wasn't much. We also give Trevor any electronics that break down so he can take them apart and explore them with his own tools from his toolbox we gave him for Christmas. But I knew he needed more. Trevor got to try out a few homeschool friends' snap circuit kits and wanted one of his own. He got some birthday money from Sean's dad and he wanted to spend it on his much-awaited snap circuit kit. He's been having such a blast with it and learning a ton. I just love that boy and his curiousity.
5. In other news, I've been catching Trevor reading on his own more and more. I love it. Love, love, love it. Especially when I find him reading to Conrad. It brings tears to my eyes and is one of the most rewarding things I've witnessed so far as a mom. My active, rambunctious boys snuggling close, quietly huddling over a book with the "eyes of learning". I don't know how else to describe it, the look kids get in their eyes when they are deeply engaged in learning. I could watch it all day...oh, wait, I do!!
Here's another story I shared a few weeks ago with my local homeschool group:
6. A few nights ago Abigail and I were having a rough time with sleeping, and we both slept in the next morning. I awoke hearing two little voices outside my door where we keep a small bookcase containing a set of encyclopedias. I love eavesdropping on my boys’ conversations (they’re 5 and 3), so I lay there listening. I could hear Trevor instructing, “Now we’re going to put them in order. Can you find the number 4? Good! The number 4 goes here…” I guess Trevor has heard me talk this way so many times, now he enjoys helping Conrad the same way. Conrad also enjoys the attention he gets from his big brother and is eager to learn with him. Teaching others is an awesome kind of review. I don’t think I’ve ever sat down with Conrad and tried to teach him numbers, but we count all the time and talk about numbers whenever they come up in life or in a book. Yesterday while helping me do some baking, Trevor noticed the settings on my Kitchen Aid go up by twos. So we counted by twos forward and backward for a while. We’ve been talking about skip-counting a lot lately because Trevor has been asking me about the time and we’ve been skip-counting by fives, just like the minutes on a clock. It was really satisfying to see him make the connection between that and counting by twos with the mixer settings. Maybe soon I’ll wake up to my encyclopedias in reverse order skipping every other book.
1. Today during General Conference, Trevor was making up his own rebus messages. We had just seen rebus messages and stories in a few places like The Friend magazine and an I Spy book, so he knew what they were and was doing a really good job making his own. It was a great time to ask him about a previous conversation on China. I asked him if he remembered what it was called when people use pictures for words (he knew they're called pictograms) and then I asked if he remembered one group of people who used to use them before they used letters (he remembered the Chinese people did). I LOVE those moments when connections are made and lessons reviewed without a paper quiz.
2. A few months ago, Trevor and I were reading the Friend magazine while the little ones napped. We read an article about President Packer and his woodcarving hobby (Feb. 2013 issue). It had several photos of his drawings and carvings. Trevor was really excited about it and asked if he could have a pocketknife. He repeatedly asked for one over the next several weeks, so we got him one for his birthday. Now we've been checking out library books with simple woodcarving projects and he looks for good pieces of wood to carve every time we go for a walk.
3. Another interest of Trevor's that keeps coming up is sewing. He has done a little bit of sewing with my mom, but he's always asking me if we can do some sewing at home. Since my sewing machine has been buried under storage for the last several months, and we didn't ahve a good place to put it while we worked on anything, the answer has been no. But we finally finished most of the basement and rearranged things so we can start on something soon! (He was inspired most recently by a sock monkey in a really cool book we read called How Things Work In The House). He was a little distracted by something else, though, so we haven't started yet. That "something else" is...(drumroll please)...
4. His snap circuit kit! Whoo hoo! Finally! We went to an electricity museum (The Bakken) last summer that just happened to be having a really awesome workshop where the kids could build their own circuits. Trevor and Conrad both loved it and we didn't see much else of the museum that day, though we did go back later a few times (I had to see their Frankenstein exhibit--really neat!). I asked where they got their stuff from and went to the store later to get Trevor started on his own little kit. Well, I am no electrician and the pieces I bought were mismatched and the voltage didn't match up, and while it was still fun, it wasn't much. We also give Trevor any electronics that break down so he can take them apart and explore them with his own tools from his toolbox we gave him for Christmas. But I knew he needed more. Trevor got to try out a few homeschool friends' snap circuit kits and wanted one of his own. He got some birthday money from Sean's dad and he wanted to spend it on his much-awaited snap circuit kit. He's been having such a blast with it and learning a ton. I just love that boy and his curiousity.
5. In other news, I've been catching Trevor reading on his own more and more. I love it. Love, love, love it. Especially when I find him reading to Conrad. It brings tears to my eyes and is one of the most rewarding things I've witnessed so far as a mom. My active, rambunctious boys snuggling close, quietly huddling over a book with the "eyes of learning". I don't know how else to describe it, the look kids get in their eyes when they are deeply engaged in learning. I could watch it all day...oh, wait, I do!!
Here's another story I shared a few weeks ago with my local homeschool group:
6. A few nights ago Abigail and I were having a rough time with sleeping, and we both slept in the next morning. I awoke hearing two little voices outside my door where we keep a small bookcase containing a set of encyclopedias. I love eavesdropping on my boys’ conversations (they’re 5 and 3), so I lay there listening. I could hear Trevor instructing, “Now we’re going to put them in order. Can you find the number 4? Good! The number 4 goes here…” I guess Trevor has heard me talk this way so many times, now he enjoys helping Conrad the same way. Conrad also enjoys the attention he gets from his big brother and is eager to learn with him. Teaching others is an awesome kind of review. I don’t think I’ve ever sat down with Conrad and tried to teach him numbers, but we count all the time and talk about numbers whenever they come up in life or in a book. Yesterday while helping me do some baking, Trevor noticed the settings on my Kitchen Aid go up by twos. So we counted by twos forward and backward for a while. We’ve been talking about skip-counting a lot lately because Trevor has been asking me about the time and we’ve been skip-counting by fives, just like the minutes on a clock. It was really satisfying to see him make the connection between that and counting by twos with the mixer settings. Maybe soon I’ll wake up to my encyclopedias in reverse order skipping every other book.
Monday, March 4, 2013
Testing, Grading, Ranking
We got the results for Trevor's homeschool test about a month ago. You know, the one they make your kids take so the state knows you're actually doing something with your kids to teach them. So why haven't I posted the results on our family record? Good question. Because Trevor did really awful? Nope. His composite score was above average. So wouldn't I want everyone to know? Even just to show friends and family that homeschooling is not so bad after all, that I'm not going to mess my kids up with this crazy, unconventional plan?
First of all, kindergarten is not that rigorous anyway, and shouldn't be.
Next, I feel very strongly about not ranking or grading children, especially at such a young age when their ideas of self-worth and "others-worth" are in such a green stage. I want Trevor to feel good about his efforts, but knowing that you rank higher than someone else is not necessary to feeling good about your own efforts. In fact, when I get a compliment for one of my kids in earshot of them, I try to talk to them about it afterward, making sure they understand that doing better at a subject or activity in no way makes them better than anyone else, that we all have different strengths and the Lord expects us to develop the talents we have, but it isn't true that we all need to be perfect at everything. (That being said, I also feel strongly that every "subject" is interconnected and I encourage my kids to develop all areas, as well as the ones they are naturally inclined toward.)
Let me just stand a bit higher on my soapbox for a minute. Over the years, I've learned that a lot of things effect success and achievement. Maybe the kids Trevor ranked higher than have an abusive home life or a serious test anxiety or parents who really could care less about achievement themselves and don't set any kind of good example. Does it make Trevor better than other people because he has a mom and a dad at home? Or because I get to be a stay-at-home mom? Or because he has parents who care? Maybe when we or our kids achieve something great, we shouldn't be patting ourselves on the back or endlessly praising our kids, but instead looking around to see who we can help reach their goals, too, who might not have the same advantages that we have. Maybe it's money, maybe it's a loving mentor, maybe it's a kind word of encouragement. (To get a little political, I think the left wouldn't be so loud about welfare if there was a little more of this attitude.) (And this is not to say I don't ever get caught up in my kids' achievements and am not prone to boasting about them from time to time--I still have a long way to go.)
Of course there are people who have everything they could possibly need who will still make bad decisions about how to use their time and whether they develop talents. But I believe these people are the exception rather than the rule. I think most people, given the right circumstances and the right kind of love, can be just as successful as the next guy.
After struggling within myself about whether to put the results on the log or not, I decided to do it just for the record, and because it's a great opportunity to express my feelings about ranking and grading children. So there you have it: according to one, unimportant test, Trevor is above average. Whatever that means.
First of all, kindergarten is not that rigorous anyway, and shouldn't be.
Next, I feel very strongly about not ranking or grading children, especially at such a young age when their ideas of self-worth and "others-worth" are in such a green stage. I want Trevor to feel good about his efforts, but knowing that you rank higher than someone else is not necessary to feeling good about your own efforts. In fact, when I get a compliment for one of my kids in earshot of them, I try to talk to them about it afterward, making sure they understand that doing better at a subject or activity in no way makes them better than anyone else, that we all have different strengths and the Lord expects us to develop the talents we have, but it isn't true that we all need to be perfect at everything. (That being said, I also feel strongly that every "subject" is interconnected and I encourage my kids to develop all areas, as well as the ones they are naturally inclined toward.)
Let me just stand a bit higher on my soapbox for a minute. Over the years, I've learned that a lot of things effect success and achievement. Maybe the kids Trevor ranked higher than have an abusive home life or a serious test anxiety or parents who really could care less about achievement themselves and don't set any kind of good example. Does it make Trevor better than other people because he has a mom and a dad at home? Or because I get to be a stay-at-home mom? Or because he has parents who care? Maybe when we or our kids achieve something great, we shouldn't be patting ourselves on the back or endlessly praising our kids, but instead looking around to see who we can help reach their goals, too, who might not have the same advantages that we have. Maybe it's money, maybe it's a loving mentor, maybe it's a kind word of encouragement. (To get a little political, I think the left wouldn't be so loud about welfare if there was a little more of this attitude.) (And this is not to say I don't ever get caught up in my kids' achievements and am not prone to boasting about them from time to time--I still have a long way to go.)
Of course there are people who have everything they could possibly need who will still make bad decisions about how to use their time and whether they develop talents. But I believe these people are the exception rather than the rule. I think most people, given the right circumstances and the right kind of love, can be just as successful as the next guy.
After struggling within myself about whether to put the results on the log or not, I decided to do it just for the record, and because it's a great opportunity to express my feelings about ranking and grading children. So there you have it: according to one, unimportant test, Trevor is above average. Whatever that means.
Math Tidbits
Trevor just came up to me very excitedly and said, "Mommy! I just figured out that two 3's is 6 and three 2's is 6 too! Isn't that crazy!" Awesome. I never taught him that.
One of his favorite things to do at dinner is to quiz Sean and I or himself. He'll give himself the easy questions and give us the "hard" ones, trying to stump us.
For himself, "Daddy, did you know that 4 plus 3 is 7?"
For Sean or myself, "Daddy/Mommy, what's 3...plus one hundred and two?" It's so cute to hear him say, "Wow! How did you do that so fast?"
We recently read a library book about Fibonacci and Trevor loved it. I had never learned about the Fibonacci sequence, so it was fun for me, too. It was really fascinating to learn that everyone thought Fibonacci was a blockhead because of his love of numbers, and he never actually published anything or showed anyone his work. People can be so ridiculous being afraid of other people's differences! I hope I can teach my kids to not reject someone right away just based on the fact that they do things differently from them or like different things. How egocentric is that?
I don't know if I'm doing such a great job, though. Conrad told a man in the library elevator last week, "You talk funny." Ugh.
One of his favorite things to do at dinner is to quiz Sean and I or himself. He'll give himself the easy questions and give us the "hard" ones, trying to stump us.
For himself, "Daddy, did you know that 4 plus 3 is 7?"
For Sean or myself, "Daddy/Mommy, what's 3...plus one hundred and two?" It's so cute to hear him say, "Wow! How did you do that so fast?"
We recently read a library book about Fibonacci and Trevor loved it. I had never learned about the Fibonacci sequence, so it was fun for me, too. It was really fascinating to learn that everyone thought Fibonacci was a blockhead because of his love of numbers, and he never actually published anything or showed anyone his work. People can be so ridiculous being afraid of other people's differences! I hope I can teach my kids to not reject someone right away just based on the fact that they do things differently from them or like different things. How egocentric is that?
I don't know if I'm doing such a great job, though. Conrad told a man in the library elevator last week, "You talk funny." Ugh.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Backtracking
I realized that I haven't been logging our activities like I originally wanted to do. The first time I made a list, it felt like I was boasting or something, so I have been shy about doing it again, which is not helpful for making a truthful log. So I'm going back to our calendars and recording lists of some of the things we did.
September:
1. playgroups
2. Trevor's vegetable stand (so great!)
3. Fishing and kayaking with homeschool group
4. Museum class: earthquakes
5. Nature center class (I can't recall what this one was...)
6. Homeschool conference
7. nature center class: life under water- scooped up bugs and other animals from pond, looked at them under microscopes and on overhead
October:
1. Aquarium visit
2. Visited an orchard
3. Museum class: phases of matter
4. Wisconsin trip
5. Homeschool group
6. Nature center class: bats (was Trevor in his element or what?)
7. At home we also made bat houses
November:
1. Went to a ballet (Trevor's famous comment: "You're the funnest mom ever!")
2. Trip to Michigan to see grandparents
3. Zoo (My first time seeing a red panda! Very awesome. Couldn't decide if I thought it was more bear or raccoon. The boys loved the otters and the tiger the most. They weren't so interested in the spider monkeys, which I wanted to watch forever. I guess they watch each other enough...)
4. Visits from Aunt Annie for Thanksgiving and Grandpa Peine for cousin Brooke's blessing
5. Church playgroups
December:
1. Most of the time was spent doing advent stuff (one Christ-centered/service/family activity per day leading up to Christmas)
2. Singing at nursing home
3. Nature center class: dissecting owl pellets
4. Church gym playgroups
January:
1. Physics Circus assembly - so cool! I wish Conrad would have been interested so I could have watched it with Trevor instead of wrangling him in the back. Oh well!
2. Ice Skating
3. Indoor inflatable gym visits
4. Unschooling discussion with homeschool group
5. History class at nature center and snowshoeing (Trevor)
6. Production meeting for spring play with homeschool group
7. Church gym playgroups
If it seems like I'm more interested in the field trips and hands-on experiences and getting out of the house right now, you'd be right. I'm realizing more and more how much our boys thrive on those sorts of experiences. Our bishop recently described Sean as a "man of action" and I realized what an apt description that was. Sean is happiest when he's doing, and it should come as no surprise that our boys are, too. Sean's methods of parenting naturally take him and the kids wood-chopping, bike-riding, even shopping or out to movies, but not usually sitting around doing quiet activities, though he can do that when the situation requires it. I think he was the most accepting and enthusiastic about homeschooling when he realized how many rich "action" experiences the boys were getting. So I'm glad it makes Sean happy, too, because if both parents aren't happy with homeschooling, it can be difficult.
We do a lot at home, but most of the time it's not very exciting to record, or I just forget to. Like I said, I need to be better at this whole record-keeping thing. I don't even write the regular things down, like library visits, storytimes, nature walks, or music time, which we do semi-daily. I guess I try to focus more on the deeper learning processes, like when that random library book sparks lessons from all subject areas and makes all of us feel inspired, or when one question at breakfast keeps us busy searching for answers all day long. Those are the most satisfying days for us.
September:
1. playgroups
2. Trevor's vegetable stand (so great!)
3. Fishing and kayaking with homeschool group
4. Museum class: earthquakes
5. Nature center class (I can't recall what this one was...)
6. Homeschool conference
7. nature center class: life under water- scooped up bugs and other animals from pond, looked at them under microscopes and on overhead
October:
1. Aquarium visit
2. Visited an orchard
3. Museum class: phases of matter
4. Wisconsin trip
5. Homeschool group
6. Nature center class: bats (was Trevor in his element or what?)
7. At home we also made bat houses
November:
1. Went to a ballet (Trevor's famous comment: "You're the funnest mom ever!")
2. Trip to Michigan to see grandparents
3. Zoo (My first time seeing a red panda! Very awesome. Couldn't decide if I thought it was more bear or raccoon. The boys loved the otters and the tiger the most. They weren't so interested in the spider monkeys, which I wanted to watch forever. I guess they watch each other enough...)
4. Visits from Aunt Annie for Thanksgiving and Grandpa Peine for cousin Brooke's blessing
5. Church playgroups
December:
1. Most of the time was spent doing advent stuff (one Christ-centered/service/family activity per day leading up to Christmas)
2. Singing at nursing home
3. Nature center class: dissecting owl pellets
4. Church gym playgroups
January:
1. Physics Circus assembly - so cool! I wish Conrad would have been interested so I could have watched it with Trevor instead of wrangling him in the back. Oh well!
2. Ice Skating
3. Indoor inflatable gym visits
4. Unschooling discussion with homeschool group
5. History class at nature center and snowshoeing (Trevor)
6. Production meeting for spring play with homeschool group
7. Church gym playgroups
If it seems like I'm more interested in the field trips and hands-on experiences and getting out of the house right now, you'd be right. I'm realizing more and more how much our boys thrive on those sorts of experiences. Our bishop recently described Sean as a "man of action" and I realized what an apt description that was. Sean is happiest when he's doing, and it should come as no surprise that our boys are, too. Sean's methods of parenting naturally take him and the kids wood-chopping, bike-riding, even shopping or out to movies, but not usually sitting around doing quiet activities, though he can do that when the situation requires it. I think he was the most accepting and enthusiastic about homeschooling when he realized how many rich "action" experiences the boys were getting. So I'm glad it makes Sean happy, too, because if both parents aren't happy with homeschooling, it can be difficult.
We do a lot at home, but most of the time it's not very exciting to record, or I just forget to. Like I said, I need to be better at this whole record-keeping thing. I don't even write the regular things down, like library visits, storytimes, nature walks, or music time, which we do semi-daily. I guess I try to focus more on the deeper learning processes, like when that random library book sparks lessons from all subject areas and makes all of us feel inspired, or when one question at breakfast keeps us busy searching for answers all day long. Those are the most satisfying days for us.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Fall 2012
Here are a few things we did during the fall months of 2012:
Below are some fall scenes the boys did with dried leaves I had saved from Wisconsin years ago.
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