Introduction
The following is a description of one family's homeschooling day, lessons, and plans. I asked Pam if she would be so kind as to forward on her experiences for other's to benefit from, and she willingly obliged. I know that Pam has provided many individuals with guidance because she is an incredible role model.
Sheri
Yikes! This has been a hard one to write. I just couldn't keep it short and sweet! And I have to add a bit of a disclaimer: this is what is working well for us now. I don't presume that this will work well for other families, or that it will continue to work for us forever.
Having said that, yes, I guess you could call our homeschooling relaxed! It's been about 5 months (since March Break 2002) since we began. We started out pretty "scheduled", since that was what we knew and I had picked up some spelling, math & reading workbooks from Chapters to just finish out the year. After a couple of weeks it started "interfering" with all the other learning that was starting to happen naturally. And I read more & more about homeschooling and realized that maybe I didn't need to recreate the school structure at home for them to learn. I want them to become life-long learners.
So I decided to "deschool" for a while and just watch what was happening &ldots; what their interests were, what they were learning, how they liked to learn etc. It really is amazing what you see. And I continued reading (I am definitely an immersion learner! J). I also took the time to take them to a behavioural optometrist &ldots; and we did vision therapy almost daily for five weeks. As an aside, it seems my eldest ds (10), with all his amazing reading & comprehension ability, had practically no peripheral vision (a circle of clear focus maybe the size of a quarter). It did improve with therapy and he now has glasses. And my dd's (8) visual perception skills were well below normal and this was definitely hindering her reading skills. We did this therapy at home and I have noticed improvement in her ability to decode / read more quickly (signs when we're driving etc.). But she still doesn't like reading on her own so I read to her trying to find some books that will interest her. Funnily enough, the only book she has ever picked up on her own to read was Harry Potter #4 (she wanted to reread her favourite part). So much for the easy readers they kept sending home from school!
But I digress. Let's see &ldots; the curriculum I've purchased:
Conservation
Journeys passport to all parks run by TDCA. This
includes free admittance to Kortright Conservation Centre and Black
Creek Pioneer Village which both have many educational programs and activities.
Ontario
Science Centre family pass.
Handwriting
Without Tears program for all 3 kids (writing is a big issue for
my eldest, and it's looking like it might be an issue for my youngest
as well).
Subscriptions
to Canadian Geographic & Discover magazines (we just stopped
receiving Chirp and Chickadee since the kids got bored with them -
we'd subscribed for about 3 years)
Resource
books for me: Creative Homeschooling for Gifted Children (by
Lisa Rivero) and Some of My Best Friends Are Books: Guiding Gifted
Readers From Preschool to High School (by Judith Wynn Halstead)
Books,
books and more books. I transformed the living room - had
been used officially once in the past 5 years - into a library by
collecting all the various bookcases throughout the house and
unpacking the boxes and boxes of my books that were still hiding in
the basement. I have also put all the "stuff" in
there &ldots; games (chess, scrabble, boggle, dominoes etc),
keyboard, recorders, abacus, electricity kit, logic games (they love
Rush Hour, Cool Moves, and Bouncing Bugs).
I also have "laying around" in the library an "afterschool" curriculum that I purchased a few years ago which included: 3 Steps Ahead program, The Phonics Factory, The Math Factory, New Science Library (6 volumes), Young Students Learning Library (23 volumes), Launch Pad Library (a 12 volume set), and a Scholarship electronic learning program (one set of activity books for ages 7 to 10 - though my 5 year-old is enjoying the Logic & Thinking Puzzles book - and another set for ages 11 & up).
So, I have the Ontario curriculum expectations and I keep track for myself what skills / knowledge are "expected", but I follow this in the background for now. It is quite impressive what skills they learn just by living and following their interests. I just wrote out a "unit study" for all the stuff my eldest has learned in his quest for knowledge in video games over the past few months. It was amazing to me (and to him) all the subjects he covered and skills he worked on (research skills, typing, web site design, computer programming & math, reading, writing, art, career development etc.).
I have learned that, for my kids at least, it's all in how you present something. You just need to set up an interesting situation, or catch them when their interest is tweaked. Often they don't even realize they are learning (I like the phrase "stealth learning"). But with this type of learning, the best "description" is anecdotal (hence the length of this message!). So here are some anecdotes:
Math: "Hey guys, time to sit down and do a couple pages from your math workbook". I say. "Later." They say. So at our place, nothing beats games for basic math skills. More formal, but fun, board games (from the Math Factory) like Sum Buddies, Minus Maze, Multiplication Madness etc., and timeless games like dominoes, Monopoly, Rummy-O etc. work wonders for exercising those operations. For geometry, a pile of toothpicks and a bag of mini marshmallows go a long way - a couple months ago we spent most of an afternoon making & identifying geometric shapes. This morning my eldest made a comment holding his game console that it was like carrying around a box. With my simple sense of humour I said "No, it's like carrying a cube." - just a little joke on it's name (GameCube). And he said, "No Mom, actually it's a rectangular prism. Not all the sides are the same length". Put me in my place (again! J). For data management, there's tons of stuff around to sort, track and graph. Okay, I haven't found one to catch their interest yet (the weight of the beehive at Kortright, and the weight of their growing hamster both had lukewarm responses), but I'm sure we'll find something soon. They each participate to their own level of expertise (which is usually above their grade-level).
Writing: This is a touchy subject for both my boys. I have picked up the Handwriting Without Tears (HWT) books for all three, but we don't used in a regimented fashion; we use them when the interest is there. My eldest had quite a traumatic experience with writing at school so there's no pressure at all from me for now to write. I've been focusing on him learning to type. However, the two "fun" typing programs I bought through Scholastic did not hold his interest at all. L But, when he's developing his website (he must have at least 30-40 pages now) and I happen to be busy, he's now typing himself instead of waiting for me. They are happy to learn things when they see a need. And he's been picking up a pen once in a while lately, so his HWT books always sit nearby. As for my youngest (5), yesterday he asked (again) how many days until Halloween - his favourite holiday (can you say candy freak?!). I suggested he might like to make a countdown sheet. He thought it would be better to count them down on the calendar. Cool! An opportunity for some writing practice. When he asks, "How do I print the number 4 again?" I say "Just a sec&ldots;" and return with his HWT Letters & Numbers book and our homemade hundreds chart for good measure. And we spent the next 45 minutes practicing numbers in his HWT book and writing them on the calendar. I just have to wait for the opportunity and we accomplish more in that time than scheduling 10 minutes a day and trying to chase him down to do a couple pages. As for my daughter, she enjoys writing stories and has expressed an interest in learning cursive (thank goodness I anticipated that and already have that HWT book for her!).
Reading: My eldest reads anything to do with his passion, video games (surprise!). He reads magazines, books, web sites; whatever he can get his hands on. My youngest is hooked on Scooby Doo books right now &ldots; he has 8 of them that we read together almost every night. He is reading the smaller words, and when I say an interesting word he picks it out on the page. It's almost a game we play. It's a fun way for him to learn to read. And I read more advanced books to all of them (when they are good, the eldest reads ahead). We went through the Harry Potter books 2, 3 & 4 in month and a half. Now I'm using the book "Some of My Best Friends Are Books" to find books that I think they may find interesting (by topic) or may be relevant (may touch on perfectionism, intensity etc.). And they seem to be pretty available. I've got a number of them sitting at the library waiting for me to pick them up.
Science & Technology: Well, the Science Centre goes a long way here J. September is great time to go ... it is practically empty. And I picked up their school brochure which links all strands of the science & technology curriculum to exhibits, programs & films at the OSC. And they love to do any type of experiments. Growing pumpkins, sunflowers, tomatoes. And whenever something comes up, we check out the subject in our library, or the public one if the interest holds and they want to go deeper. And don't forget their favourite shows: Ultimate Guide to the Awesome, Bill Nye etc. The Discovery Channel, the Science Channel, Discovery Kids all have some great shows on interesting topics. And I have also been taping the "Inventor's Specials" series on CBC.
Art: For art, I really just leave stuff lying about. We have a well-stocked craft cupboard. They each have a sketchbook and some good pencils. I have charcoal and watercolour paints etc. We have an Usborne book of Art Ideas if they are looking for something new. Or if I think it's been a while, I'll start up a project and they are likely to show interest and join me. They enjoy browsing art galleries and we usually visit one wherever we vacation. Add in the AGO and the McMichael Gallery for some more fun.
Music: Ditto. I found some Classical Kids CDs at the library. "Who would like to listen to a story about a famous composer and his music?" Even when said with enthusiasm, this almost always meets with a chorus of "NOT ME"s. But when you find yourself in the car on a trip likely to last ½ hour or more, just pop in the CD without a word. Soon there are requests to "turn it up please". And now Bach is their favourite story (Beethoven is not far behind), so I surfed the library online and requested a couple of Bach CDs of music mentioned in the story. And last night (as in 9pm) my daughter pulled out her keyboard and mucked about. Which caught her brother's attention as well and he also took a turn.
Anyway &ldots; I know I didn't cover all subjects but at the risk of droning on (oops, I already did that, didn't I) I think you get the point. So far I have found that by following their interests, me generating interest in new areas, and with a healthy dose of activities and field trips we can more than cover the curriculum, following subjects in whatever breadth or depth they want (and going back to them later). And really have fun doing it! They also have time to learn and pursue things that aren't in the elementary curriculum &ldots; knitting, sewing, computer programming etc. It gives purpose and meaning to their learning and I think really goes a long way to developing their skills as lifelong learners.
Pam.