How's Homeschooling??

Time for a little update on the homeschooling front. Whenever I run into anyone who knows what we are up to, I always get this question: How's homeschooling??! It is quite a curiosity really, and I can see why. I can truly understand why most people never consider doing this. Sending kids to school is a very rational and wise decision in so many cases. And for a confluence of reasons, not doing that works for all of us right now. I don't mind having my days mostly consumed by child-raising, curriculum planning and prep, and then spending intense time with kids actually seeing the curriculum in action. Breathing room is built in here and there in the homeschool environment, especially since Lucy and Jasper play well together and also independently.

Jasper really enjoys his time with Lucy and also his time by himself. He wanders away and does his own thing often: playing with trains or coloring or playdoh or a puzzle or looking at books or hammering with his tools. Today after a long bout of circle, morning lesson and story reading, Jasper looked at Lucy and me and said, I need a quiet time. Then he went to his room and closed the door. Half an hour later I knocked on his door and went in and he was asleep all tucked into his bed.

As for the actual curriculum, our school days always start with a very active and long movement and singing session. That is where lots of academic topics are first broached in some kind of playful fashion - with verses or beanbags or whatever. We really get moving too - and frequently things get a little goofy during this time. I sometimes feel I've lost control of the ship, Jim. But then I hand out beanbags or start jumping like a frog or something and they are magically back on board... Then we go from circle into a "morning lesson." This is when Lucy and I really are doing what looks like school - with me sitting near a blackboard and her sitting at the dining room table with her notebook and crayons and pencils.

We have finished the first language arts block where we reintroduced all the letters and the correct way to write them. We did this by reading a fairy tale with a verse that used lots of that particular letter. Then we would recall the story together (to exercise her memory and sequencing, people!), do a drawing or some sort of artistic rendering from the tale, recite the verse many times and then finally bring out the actual letter and she would write it in her book, along with the verse. That was four weeks long. Now we're in the midst of a math block where we're going into more depth on numbers, odd/even, counting by, exploring the geometry of numbers (i.e. triangle for 3, square for 4, etc.), doubling and tripling numbers, greater than, less than. For each of the numbers and many of the concepts as well, we read a fairy tale to introduce the topic - i.e. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves for seven. Today we read one that introduces nine and the concept of tripling as it has three sets of three as part of the plot. The story was a Bulgarian tale called Nine Peahens and the Golden Apples. It was a good'n. Lucy gets to sleep on the story and then tomorrow we dig into the number nine and the concept of tripling using threes as an example.

And during the math block, Lucy practices her letters from last month, creates keyword cards which is this little cache of special words she has written with a picture as a clue on the back, and is creating a book of the fairy tale verses we used in the first block. This is so cool because she has memorized these since we said them so often and now she "reads" the text of them out loud to me. She is clearly matching the word she remembers with the word on the page, but doesn't have the troublesome and tiring problem of having to sound every word out. It is very sweet and she is so thrilled after she's "read" them.

Then we sprinkle in other stuff as it makes sense: games of various sorts, nature stories, nature projects, sculpting with beeswax, watercoloring, knitting or doing art with wool. Not to mention the myriad of projects Lucy creates for herself to work on during the day. We're going to start recorder in a week or two.

Today, while Jasper was having his rest, Lucy wrote and drew a book that she titled "A Love Book to the Universe." Then we went to get Teo, a kindergarten friend of Lucy's, who spent the afternoon playing with Lucy. In short, I feel good and the kids seem to be thriving for the time being. Some pics follow of the kiddos in action (and the big guy at badminton too).