Best homeschool purchase this year: A nicely bound lined journal from Grocery Outlet for $4. My 8 yo daughter saw it several months ago and wanted it for some reason she couldn't really explain. She's a poor and anxious speller, has less than stellar handwriting, and a reluctant writer, and this was not "right" for her, but since I too am attracted to pretty blank journals, I sprung for it.
Best homeschool field trip of the year: a holiday visit to my brother's house, where said kid (my middle) got to spend rare 1x1 time with her slightly older cousin. Said cousin shared her work-in-progress hand written and drawn comic book - long, silly, stories about a girl and her family. My daughter was Super impressed.
MONTHS LATER - like at least 4 - my daughter is suddenly covering her (lined!) notebook with elaborate cartoon drawings, speech bubbles, and the like. She has a wide-ranging plot planned. She's asking questions ranging from spelling to geography to salaries. She's working spontaneously and for long periods of time over the past few weeks, even in the car.
Her older brother (almost 10) is amazed. He works out plot elements with her and helps draw the mansion that the fictional family is acquiring. Soon he - also a reluctant writer and academics-resistant kid - wants his own nicely bound blank notebook and is beginning to fill it with his own cartoons, an offshoot of his sister's plot.
The youngest (newly 6, just starting to read semi-fluently) is also trying to make her own comic book.
My planning time on this: Zero. Honestly, if I had tried to plan this, I think it would have crashed and burned in the first two days. I am doing my best to stay out of the way, hoping that maybe if I don't acknowledge what's going on, they won't notice that it's educational.
Look, I feel guilty - sometimes really guilty - about not being a Classical or Charlotte Mason homeschooler with kids who have memorized the order of the presidents by age 6 and can explain Aristotle at 8. I've read - and have some fundamental agreements with - the articles disparaging the current trends towards kid-directed learning, as if letting the inmates run the asylum is somehow going to lead to superior results. "Unschooling" seems way too scatter-shot and lazy to me, even as I have to admit that in many subjects it's exactly what we do. I mean, the kids have exactly two textbooks this year. Two!
BUT... classical, highly structured learning is a bad fit for us. Most of the formal, classroom like options are.
I know I am going to be fighting my own emotions and assumptions about learning and schooling for this entire journey. And my kids are going to have some gaps, maybe even serious ones, that they'll have to figure out how to fill as they come closer to adulthood. I'll be happy to help.
But I can also relax. We're doing OK. They're working on something they find fun and compelling and creativity sparking, and there's no way it isn't teaching them Something useful.
This "cans and string telephone" experiment also happened largely without my input. I checked out a bright, shiny "you can make this" book from the library last week and never mentioned it. Grace was inspired to make a guitar - and to finish it up, she had to collaborate with James. I did NOTHING on that project. On the telephone project I did get out my yarn needle to poke holes and finish up knots when the project got frustrating, but that was pretty much it.
Lucy *asked* to do a report about Frogs. There was a ton of drama with James last week or so regarding the report I wanted him to do. It started out as salmon and somehow turned into the Internal Combustion Engine. I fought him on Every Step. Lucy, on the other hand, showed off her brand new reading skills to read me a book about frogs, and then eagerly did all the worksheets in the packet I printed her, acquired and resized her own piece of cardboard, and taped everything in place. She even labeled it and hand-drew a life cycle diagram.
Again, most of this happened while I was out of the room, and I emphasize that this is not a particularly compliant child. But this project struck her as fun, and it would have been hard to Stop her doing it.
Again, most of this happened while I was out of the room, and I emphasize that this is not a particularly compliant child. But this project struck her as fun, and it would have been hard to Stop her doing it.
(Thanks for sticking with me this long. This was going to be a short, simple little bit of encouragement... until it wasn't!)
1 comment:
I enjoyed reading this. I think it is great what kids come up with, given space and unexpected inspiration.
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