Homeschooling Hippycrites

Life has been stressful lately.  Rebecca and I took an impromptu break and haven’t “done school” in over a week.  We’ll get back to a routine, probably starting tomorrow as today we’re watching a friend’s kids.  It’s been gratifying to me to see learning still happening, and the product of her learning in action, though.  Not like I thought she wouldn’t learn if we didn’t do book work, or that I thought our book learning was going in one ear and out the other.  But in a time when I’m feeling unsure of so many things, it is good to have assurances that things are okay.  I haven’t “wrecked” her by trying to teach her in ways that weren’t best for her, I haven’t squashed my seven year-old’s desire for knowledge.  We’re okay.  She’s okay, she’s great.

I surprise myself sometimes.  I thought I was open-minded.  I thought I had discarded unnatural learning timelines.  I thought I was fairly well de-schooled.  Turns out I was really really wrong about that.  I still have a lot of work to do to get all that schooling out of my head.  When I was a kid, I was very much a “student.”  I loved the academic part of school, for the most part.  I liked work sheets and text books.  I got good grades all the way through school.  But … all that didn’t do much for me as an adult.  I’m not really sure what to do with all this stuff in my brain.  I read unschooling stories and blogs and I want to go there but I have a hard time picturing my life, my daughter, myself, us, as unschoolers.  What am I missing, how can I feel safe enough to let go and trust in us?  Why am I clinging to the idea that we need to “do” school?

Today was our first day of “school” after a weekend of reading about right-brain thinkers.  I’m so thankful for Cindy’s comment, how much longer would it have taken me to stumble across this information?  I’m thankful I have it now and not a year from now, or more.  Although clearly some of what we’ve been doing for school has not been good for Rebecca, I’ve always leaned toward unschooling, so I was never going to push her very hard if she resisted.   For the time being, we are not unschoolers, although I will definitely be reevaluating my opinions about it.  Doing school in the mornings, though, between breakfast and lunch?  It works really well for us right now, so with some modification we’ll be continuing.  This morning we mostly read books together.  We read about Cleopatra (tying in mostly to Halloween because Rebecca is going as Cleopatra this year, but also tying into our history lessons about Egypt, although the time frame is wrong), and a chapter from Gilgamesh, and a book about a carrot and a story from a book of spooky stories.  We talked about math and reading.  I’m still … working on this.  For now, she says she enjoys doing math and reading on time4learning.com, so we’ll go back to that.  I think math will be my main thing to figure out for now, figuring out if there’s a math curriculum that is better suited to right-brainers than what we have (Singapore), which is barely tolerable to her.  I’m thinking she might like some math games, too.  I think Draw-Write-Now is good, it’s a little writing practice but mostly drawing.

Today she was building.  She played with Legos for a long time and now she’s building a huge intricate track with her wooden train set.

So much to think about.

Cindy left a comment on my “problem” entry and I visited her site and did some reading about right-brain learners.  I have a lot more reading to do.  I feel bad now for all the times I pushed Rebecca to sound things out.  I’m glad I could feel it wasn’t right, I could feel that her resistance wasn’t just, I don’t know, defiance or whatever.  I haven’t actually pushed her much, when we work on language and reading, it’s pretty mellow.  Really, all of our school stuff is pretty mellow.  I’m relieved that we have this communication problem because she’s a right-brainer and I’m not, but it’s something I can learn about and work with.  Although a few things when I was reading about it?  Resonated with me, especially about translating symbols to three-dimensional objects.  I have a similar thing, with knitting, translating symbols on a lace or color chart into motions with my hands, it’s very slow and tedious for me, so much that I won’t actually knit from a chart.  This trouble I have helped me visualize how I have been miscommunicating with Rebecca, or just whatever, teaching her in a way that must have been very frustrating for her.  Thankfully we’re relatively new to all of this, and I haven’t been trying to cram all this crap on her for a long time.  Now I think she’s been very patient with me.

I have to read more.  But my initial thought is that only some of our regular school stuff will need to change, or that maybe some will only need a little change, other things might need more drastic changing.

Maybe someone else will have some insight or assvice about this problem.  Rebecca does not want me to “teach” her.  This manifests in two specific ways, for the moment, one more than the other.  The first, and biggest, is during math.  She wants to do all the math in her head, without using fingers, a number line, beans, basically any method at all that isn’t shutting her eyes or staring into space figuring out a problem inside her noggin.  If instructed to use a number line, she’ll do it, but only if the problems specifically say to do so, she won’t use it any other time.  Forget using her fingers or any counting device.  If I try to show her a way to do the problem, or tell her anything at all beyond reading the instructions, she gets very agitated, up to covering her ears and closing her eyes.  It is so frustrating.  The same issue comes up in reading/language sometimes, when I try to get her to sound out a word I know she can read if she would just … sound it out.  Like if she’s reading -ug words.  If the words in the lesson are “rug” and “bug” then she should be able to read “jug” or, heh, “fug.”  And she can, and I don’t even really mind reading them to her, I’m not sitting there with a long wooden pointer making her sound out every.single.word.  But I’m not the one learning to read here, she needs to sound out at least some all by her very own self.  And sometimes she does for whatever reason, and sometimes she doesn’t and if I push it even a tiny little bit she gets that same agitated, really really tense.

Why is she doing this and what can I do to help?  I don’t want to piss her off with my “teaching” but I don’t get why it upsets her so much, I don’t think I’m being preachy or cheesy, I’m very matter-of-fact when I show her things.   But really, I don’t get the feeling it’s my “teaching” style, I think it’s some weird thing with her.  I *think* it has something to do with her being a perfectionist, with a little bit of not liking to be on the spot.  I think she doesn’t like to show her learning process, she likes to show up with the figuring stuff out part already behind her, she doesn’t like people to see her struggling.  I try to show her that learning is a process everyone goes through with everything in life, it isn’t good or bad, it’s just human.

Today during math I wanted to huck all the books out the (closed) window.

This week has just been out of synch, all upside-down.  It started with my mom being here, which was good, and we were glad to ditch school and hang out with her instead!  We couldn’t quite get back on track, though.  I’m thankful for my curriculum this week, though, it meant I could haul out some work books, assign a few pages here and there, read some history and science books from the library and pronounce us educated for the day.  These weren’t the most invigorating days of learning around here this week, but I think we’ll survive.

Really, it made me think (for the zillionth time) how great homeschooling can be, how easy it is to make everything fit.  We’re able to adjust our schedule and routine to accomodate everything from being sick, to a visit from Grandma to one of us just being too grouchy for our regular school day.  We had all of that this week but we managed to fit learning time in, too.  We’ll get back to our more energetic selves next week!

Today was our 4-H science project meeting, we’re studying the human body. The topic for today was lungs and heart and the project leaders had a lot of fun activities. The kids tested their lungs by blowing on a pinwheel that pulled a little car up a ramp.

They also made a chest vest, I should get a photo, but each child colored and cut out a paper version of the heart, lungs and rib cage and taped them onto a big piece of paper that fit over their heads. Very cute. They also built model lungs and did a fun game where they walked a path laid out on the floor that was the heart and lungs working together. As they walked over the lungs, one junior project leader handed them an oxygenated blood cell, which they dropped off at the heart.

We are a drippy-nose family this week.  Rebecca and I have done our school work in the mornings each day, although they aren’t are most inspired lessons.  It would have been easy for me to say phooey and just cross “school” off our calendar this week, but we really aren’t that sick, I figured I’d leave that option for when we truly feel like crud.  So yesterday and today, we did our language lessons, a few pages of math, a few pages from Spelling Workout, read from Story of the World and read some story books together. Hopefully we’ll starting feeling healthier and more energetic and can do some fun science activities this week.

For now we’re sort of obsessed with the wildlife cams at National Geographic, especially the African cam. It’s science, right? It even sparked a discussion (and groovy demonstration with the blow-up globe and a tangerine [which is the wrong size but right color to represent the Sun]) about why it’s dark in Africa when it’s day time here.

I’m too lame to try to figure out how to muck with all the stuff here, at least for now.  I want to start writing, though.

Rebecca has had a cold and woke up grouchy and sniffly and drippy, so we did a short school this morning.  We did one page of math, a short language lesson and we read the first page of our new science curriculum (look, so lame I can’t even link it, duh).  We also read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which Rebecca announced she liked so much she wanted to keep it to read with Grandma when she comes to visit this weekend (it’s a library book).  We also read some William Steig stories, Shrek! and The Amazing Bone.  It was just that kind of day, to curl up on the couch and read.  In the afternoon we did a weather lab for science with our new big thermometer.

Also in the afternoon, the mail brought our new Quantum Leap Pad and now I’m confused.  It came with several books, but they are mostly a little too old for Rebecca.  A couple are third grade and they’re ok, but the 4th and 5th grade books aren’t quite her speed, she won’t get as much out of them now as she could later, I’m sure.  I have no idea where to get more, though, other than on eBay, which is where I got the Quantum.   I’m sure Rebecca would love to have some with her favorite brands attached to them (insert eyeroll).

Hopefully we’ll do a little more school tomorrow, although I think we did pretty well today for being sort of sick and slow.