Great Show

What a night. What an awesome concert put on by the music camp, crowned with a wildly active thunderstorm. Beautiful.

Everyone is so impressed with my homeschooled son. All the counsellors said he’s such a great kid. They were just as impressed with his personality as his piano playing. The camp director, a professional jazz pianist, and his piano teacher, a professional organist and accompaniest, want to discuss his very promising future with me. I’m looking forward to hearing what they have to say.

When the choir director asked me how he relates to others “at school or wherever,” I was proud to say he is homeschooled. Apparently, he is very socially adept despite his lack of socialization. Imagine that.

Pardon me a little Mamastrut, but I’m so proud of him. He has gone through so much, faced so many challenges, it was wonderful to hear such talented people paying him such honours. Good for you, Bah Bah!

Back to school week, Curriculum

Curriculum–
1. the aggregate of courses of study given in a school, college, university, etc.: The school is adding more science courses to its curriculum.
2. the regular or a particular course of study in a school, college, etc.

Whoever said you have to use curriculum for home learning didn’t really know what curriculum is. Curriculum, homeschool, school at home, all misnomers.

Curriculum to me means a very limited source of learning inspiration dedicated for use in groups in an institutional setting. This so far from what we do at home it’s not even funny.

Curriculum was developed to teach groups at differing levels of ability. To keep groups organized and under control. To ensure parents and government the students are being taught something. What does any of this have to do with home learning?

Books. Well, books are a lot more inclusive, aren’t they. Reading is different. Read, read, read, I say. To limit a child’s desire to read is to rob that child of, well, so much I couldn’t possibly list it all here. It’s a real tragedy that happens far too often within the walls of your local learning institution. However, to have books as your main source of learning, especially with workbooks which I despise, is to miss out on all the much more effective tools, like experience, knowledge of elders and experts, interacting with your environment, and being creative, to name a few.

How can reading about something give you a feeling of accomplishment? Build relationships? Develop your connection to the world around you? Enjoy the sheer pleasure of creating?

Home learning families have in the past been way too book happy. I suggest spending no more than an hour or two a day in book learning, if that, and the rest of your time doing. Okay, doing and reading.

Don’t get me wrong. Read a few other posts on this weblog and you can’t help but notice I love books. Love them. Of course I’ve used so-called curriculum, although I still think that’s a misnomer when it comes to learning outside of an institution. But when it comes to home learning and the dreaded, “What do you use for curriculum?” question, my answer will always be, Lord willing, a few books and the whole wide world.

Why would you limit yourself to books when you have the whole world right in front of you?

7 Steps to Learning to Learn at Home

In lieu of Back to School Week, Thursday, August 9—If I had only known…, I offer this reposted article. I could write a whole book about this subject, but this pretty much sums up the bulk of it.

Step 1: School Days

Monitor your son’s progress in school carefully compared to the rest of the class until mid November of grade two. Get very angry at your son’s teacher because your son is suddenly having problems, noting it must be the teacher’s fault since everything was going wonderfully until this year. Gasp when she tells you how your perfect child may be experiencing difficulty due to any number of problems, such as poor vision, stress, or, God forbid, a learning disability.

Stomp into the principal’s office to express your indignation over your son’s teacher. Repeat the gasp when she backs up the teacher, leaving you no choice but to go over their heads.

Go home and call the school board superintendent. Leave an angry message on his voice mail.

Step 2: Friends and Family

Call your friend to sound off. Listen to your friend’s suggestion to homeschool. Immediately call your friend’s friend who homeschools her children and ask her how to do it. Completely miss the part where she explains how many learning problems come to light when students begin to learn more complex concepts, usually in grades two or three.

Accept your husband’s support in your quest for what’s best for your son. Brush off your mother-in-law’s protest about his lack of socialization. Ignore your aunt’s threat to call the police.

Promise your son you’ll do a better job than the school ever could. Minimize his concerns about leaving behind familiar friends and routine.

Step 3: The Home School

Order the complete curriculum from the most expensive company you can find in keeping with your goal to give your son every advantage. Go to garage sales and purchase a school desk, filing cabinet, blackboard and bulletin board. Go to a stationery store and buy bristol board, chalk, push pins, construction paper, zig-zag safety scissors, a bulletin board display on the weather, and anything else that might enhance your home classroom. Go to the book store and buy a new workbook for each subject, an atlas, a children’s dictionary, a world map, and order a full set of encyclopedias.

Designate a corner of your rec room for school. Put up the chalkboard, bulletin board, weather display, and world map. Place the desk opposite these. Realize you forgot a desk for yourself, but decide to use that old card table instead. Place the filing cabinet in the corner.

On Sunday evening, prepare the week’s lessons. Go to bed early.

Rise at 7:00 a.m. Monday morning and wake up your son. Begin school at 9 a.m. sharp by singing “O Canada” to the dripping Canadian flag you’ve just brought in from the rain.

At 9:05 a.m., complete page one in the math workbook. At 9:45, complete page one in the language arts workbook. At 10:15, allow your son to go outside to play for recess. Complete page one in the spelling workbook at 10:30 a.m., and so on. Have lunch at noon, and continue as per above until exactly 3:00 p.m.

Step 4: After School

Dismiss your son from school, emphasizing that there will be no homework in homeschool. Smile when he rushes out to meet friends as they walk home from school.

At bedtime, ask your son how homeschool was. Feel a tinge of guilt as he says, “I want to go back to school. I don’t like homeschool.”

Comfort him by saying that you are new to this and that you may need a few days to get the hang of it.

Go to bed very tired.

Step 5: Home School Blues

Persist with the school-at-home program for several months until your son suddenly refuses to cooperate. Leave the room in despair as he cries on his new workbook. Feel tremendous guilt. Go back and apologize.

Phone your new homeschooling friend. Listen as she adeptly suggests some mistakes many parents make, like setting up a rigid home classroom environment, ordering curriculum before understanding a child’s learning style, and burning bridges with school personnel.

Feel even more guilty.

Step 6: The Salvage

Sleep in until 8:00 a.m. Monday morning. Write a polite letter to the school board superintendent informing him of your intention to provide your son’s education. Sell most of the expensive curriculum for half price to a friend’s friend who is beginning to homeschool. Keep the encyclopedias because you enjoy them, too. Put your son’s desk in his bedroom for playtime. Put the filing cabinet in the den. Use the chalkboard and bulletin board as a message centre in the kitchen. Put the card table away until family game night. Put the flag back outside. Join a local homeschooling group which both your child and you can attend together.

Step 7: Learning to Learn

Listen to your son. Play with your son. Go places together with your son. Begin learning with your son. Love very minute of it.

Back to Homeschool Week, Day 3

Wednesday, August 8—Getting out there…

Since I don’t view our family life as a separate entity from our homeschooling life, “getting out there” for us is kind of a boring topic. We just do the usual things that people do. Go to the library, music lessons, church activities, visits, concerts, nothing special, really. We don’t live in a cave, and we don’t make a special effort to be social, either, and we certainly do not worry about the dreaded socialization issue. Please. That topic’s been worn out. Not even going there.

I guess what I’m saying is we don’t do “extra-curricular activities” because we don’t have a curriculum. Curriculum is a school thing. And anything else is a family thing.

Back to Homeschool Week, Day 2

Tuesday, August 7—How do you homeschool?

How do we homeschool? In the words of a great man (i.e.my Dad), verrrry carrrrefullllllly.

I can’t really say we have a specific home learning method, but I have tried several methods before. Some homeschoolers would call our method unschooling, some radical unschooling, others eclectic. We call it, the “What works for us” method. By us, I mean all of us, not just the students.

I don’t really view our home and school as different entities either. School is an institution of learning. Home is not a school, and, thankfully, school is not a home. Therefore, whatever the boys would like to get that they will get much use from and is constructive and we can afford it (or sometimes can’t afford it), I try to get it for them. I have very rarely regretted these purchases. We try to go places and pick people’s brains and create things, whatever. Being creative is highly valued here, as is learning to learn, not just memorizing facts. And character is more important that curriculum.

I guess I’ve never really thought of myself and mom and teacher. Aren’t they the same thing? They always have been to me. When I sent my kids to school, I just couldn’t understand how someone other than their mom could possibly teach them better than I could. How right I was.

It has not been easy for my boys to help around the house. While some parents may call my boys spoiled, I know they are anything but. When doing chores causes trauma, it’s not being lazy, is it. When they do help out, it is very much appreciated. When they don’t, well, stuff doesn’t get done. We’re still here. We’re clothed and fed, usually pretty clean, and generally a happy bunch, not a small task when the depression devil has hit us so badly.

Which brings me to special needs. Three out of my four sons have psychiatric conditions. People are sometimes quick to judge us based on what they see. We have suffered ridicule from strangers, misunderstanding from friends, and judgment from family. How could we possibly add on top of that all the crap that goes on in schools? That would be the real tragedy.

My oldest and my youngest are both genuises. The oldest started to read when he was three and was writing computer programs when he was seven. The youngest showed no signs of any exceptional ability until he was eleven and learned to play the piano. He is now sixteen and studying for his Level 10 exam, and has and continues to write classical music for full orchestra, ensembles, and piano.

So what? I honetly don’t think that matters much when it comes to homeschooling. The whole idea behind homeschooling is to tailor each child’s education. Each of my boys has had a different experience, but that’s more a result of my increased experience as a homeschooling mom. Gifted/average/slow, whatever, doesn’t matter.

Not really a very specific answer to the question posed, is it. But how do you describe something so detailed and tailored to our specific needs as a family, except to say we use the “Whatever works for all of us” method.

back to homeschool week!

Prompted by i have to say…. Thanks to Dewey’s Treehouse for bringing it to my attention.

Monday, August 6—What led to your decision to homeschool?
Why do you do what you do? What brought you to homeschooling? What factors played a part in your decision?

September 1984, I sent my firstborn son to school. I didn’t have any particular feelings about it. I’m not the sentimental type, so I didn’t feel sad. I’m not the overprotective type, so I didn’t worry about him. I’m not the arrogant type, so I had no idea that he was far advanced of his peers. I thought the only reason other kids didn’t read the newspaper before going off to kindergarten is because their parents simply didn’t bother teaching their kids to do this since they assumed they wouldn’t be able to do it. I should’ve known a school wouldn’t know how to handle my little genius.

Mid October, the teacher of 40 plus years experience explains that my son is the most intelligent child she’s ever taught. I hope my father doesn’t read this. She taught him, too.

What she told me didn’t quite sink in until he was in grade three.

“I had to stay in for recess and lunch today.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t complete my work.”

“You? That stuff is so easy for you. What’s the problem?”

“I keep daydreaming.”

My heart broke. Here my exceptional child was languishing away in a dingy classroom because his teacher thought it would be more beneficial to keep him in at recess than to challenge him.

“I want my son out for recess.”

“But he’ll never learn to complete his work if we give in to him.”

“He’ll never complete his work if you keep him inside all day staring at the same page of work.”

“He has to come around eventually.”

The principal only endorsed his teacher, something I’ve since learned is a pervasive issue within schools. The superintendent will always be the same way, too.

As I bemoaned this situation to a dear friend of mine, Evelyn simply told me to homeschool him, as if that were legal and possible and I was fully capable of taking on such a task. Her kids were still too young for school, so what did she know?

Evelyn is the original crunchy Mama. Her house is always a mess, she never gave her kids sugar, ever, and she very reluctantly allowed her two teens to experience school for the first time as seniors in high school. If it wasn’t for Evelyn, I never would have homeschooled, and then both of my sisters likely would not have either, and neither would many from the city where I lived. Without me knowing it, they all drew courage from my pioneering move since I was only the second mom in the entire city to homeschool, and the other mom was a teacher.

After arguing with the teacher, the principal, and the superintendent about something as ridiculous and letting my kid go outside for recess and lunch, after him getting beat up every day by a kid who had watched his father hit his mother, after much research, much prayer, and much resistance from the in-laws, I embarked on a journey that drastically changed our family dynamic for the better. My only regret is that all of my sons have at one time or another been in school. If I’d had the experience that I do know, I would’ve confidently kept them out of school no matter what our home situation.