Rosy
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Posts posted by Rosy
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CVA is working well for me too. When I realized I wasn't going to get CBIs anywhere for DD11, I reenrolled her part-time at CVA so we could at least get her books covered. They had the curricula I wanted for all subjects, and they even let me order outside of her grade level for math. My AT asked what my plan was for getting 3 math credits in high school and encouraged me to go back and do a refresher if needed at that time to pass her EOCs, but she specifically said she didn't want to hold her back.
That said, we are still waiting for curricula to arrive...and judging by my ATs emails, we're not the only ones. I'm not too worried about it since we just enrolled 2 weeks ago, but I am looking forward to the man in brown showing up with a big box of books. :)
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I do all of the inside chores, housework, laundry and meal prep. He does the yard, garage, snow removal, cars and trash. Very traditional, I know, but it works for us.
My dh works 50 hours a week, and I really don't feel like he needs to come home to another part time job. I'm a SAH mom, and I feel the housework is my job. He doesn't demand that I come to his office and take part of his workload, I don't demand that he come home and take mine.
:iagree:
I do make the kids do a good share of the chores. We maintain through the week and then we do any cleaning on Saturday morning that we didn't get to earlier in the week. Sometimes DH participates in the Saturday cleaning, sometimes not. Usually I'd rather he didn't. :D
I do most of the kid-shuttling--it only seems fair to me, since I'm the one who manages the family schedules (if I say they can go to a b-day party, I'm the one who is responsible for getting them there and back).
He does pitch in if I ask him to or if I'm overwhelmed, and of course he takes over the household stuff if I'm gone for a weekend or something. I feel that, while my "job" teaching the kids is as important as his job, I have a lot more flexibility during the day to maintain the house, and he needs time to relax and time to enjoy the kids.
Granted, I don't have the highest standards of cleanliness. :D I'm not someone who can't go to sleep unless the kitchen is clean, etc.
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At that age, maybe you can help her learn some project management skills?
My parents would sponsor all my unschooling projects. My mum expects me to give her a draft of my project proposal, list of items that needs to be purchase and a budget. That means I have to go to the stores and do a survey on prices as well as work out what on my list cannot be store bought.
Yes, I think the project management skills are exactly what she needs...not just to get me off her back, but to prepare her for adulthood.
I'm not any sort of unschooler (those of you who know me may laugh now,) but the "coaching/facilitating educational opportunities" in your title intrigued me, because I do a lot of that...I have kiddos just like this (your quote.) Current examples: My oldest spent the morning at the public library reading the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology ($3,000 for the set, she has to read it there. :D) She was copying sketches out for vision tracking systems (or something like that.) My middle taught herself Trigonometry this summer in order to enroll in Calculus, and she is currently coaching herself for math competitions. My little guy is cataloguing all of the life in our backyard and the adjoining field: sketching, researching, etc. They always have one or more personal projects going: Arduino, programming, arts, music, historical reading, etc.
I don't think it has anything to do with schooling style personally. My parents raised me like that, and I was in public school. I think the two biggest factors have been (1.) modeling this interest for them and (2.) supporting the interests with our time and money.
We also didn't make lists, and we also turned off the TV (by law for many years, though now the olders have free access but never watch it.) There were no school days and days off. We do some school work six days a week, we fill in a lot of time with activities and planned things, and then the rest of the time is spent in useful free time (I could write a whole 'nother post about my opinions on the history of "leisure time." :D)
I always helped a LOT in the beginning of an interest. We did a bit of reading and watching, but mostly we would go seek out experts, experiences, places to visit, etc. It took more help with some of my dc than others; as someone else said, it depends on their personality how much help and leading it requires. I think all kiddos can get there, though.
Anway, I could go on and on, but I'm not sure I'm supposed to be in this thread to begin with, so I'll end there. :D
That totally makes sense. I appreciate your perspective!
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The origami I don't mind. :) That was my 2nd grader. She and my 3rd grader have been working on a play all afternoon. They wrote a script and are doing the blocking now. DD11 tends to have the big and hard-to-implement ideas. I had her make a schedule for the week and I think I'll try to push her with a few of the ideas to go further than she would have otherwise.
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Thank you, everyone. I feel like I'm closer to where I need to be now. I probably need a combination of relaxing when they don't make the choices I would make and helping them set goals and plan how they're going to achieve them. It makes sense to me that they'll be more self-motivated after they've had some victories (i.e. "I worked hard on that thing I wanted to do and it turned out really well!").
I think you have to be willing to accept a lot of down time when it looks as though they are doing nothing. During that time interests may be developing and I believe interest in and curiosity about the world drives self motivated learners. You can't really teach them that. You can help them find the ways to pursue those interests. I am not surprised your kids have more ideas than actual activity; orchestrating a large scale project is quite difficult. Dreaming about it and imagining the possibilities can be useful too though.When we first started homeschooling I had a pretty standard view of what education should look like. Slowly this morphed for a variety of reasons and we ended up pretty relaxed. My boys grew into voracious learners, but rarely did their activities look like school. I was the one who had to change and accept that learning does not have to look like a worksheet.
<deep breath> You're probably right. :D
Unschooling is very appealing to me because I have things of my own I want to do too. And I have a great role model - unschooling mom of 5 whose kids are just incredible. Self-motivated to learn, curious, interested in doing interesting stuff. That said, they have resources I don't have to encourage their kids in their pursuits. Money and/or space can be limiting factors in what we can provide our kids.My kids are not self-motivated when it comes to things like math and a systematic study of science, but we have unschoolish areas. My son has learned an awful lot about aviation and weaponry on his own. We've never had a class about those things. And of course with that he's learned a good bit of history and science via books, documentaries, and such. Right now for a Scout project he's working on making atlatls, an ancient spear-type hunting tool, for an upcoming demo/competition at a camp. He's really getting into it. The motivation didn't exactly come from within (he was assigned it at a Scout meeting), but it wasn't a school assignment either.
My daughter spends a lot of time on photography, and we can see her improving greatly. Today she go the water colors out again, after neglecting them for a while.
So, we try to have a mix of school time and "productive down time" during our day. I do find I have to stay out of the way sometimes and not push unschooling on them, so to speak. I can't go out and buy everything they want/need for a project, but I do what I can to help them follow their interests.
That is exactly how I want my kids to be! How do you encourage their interests? How did your son's interests in aviation and weaponry develop?
If you turn off the TV, they cannot vegetate in front of it.And if they're putting the "least possible effort forward," well, that's their decision. You don't have to play into that by allowing screens, but if you're going to give them freedom to make choices, then you have to let them do that.
But if it's an "unsctructured day off," then she gets to decide what to do, yes? Well...
I don't allow screens during the "school day", and after that it's pretty much only if their chores are done and the neighbor kids aren't around. We have a lot of activities, too. I know, I know, if I let her decide I have to be ok with her deciding. :)
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Thank you all for your responses. :)
Just some random thoughts on it.My first thought was that those self motivated kids are just that way-I have facilitated my kids and the same approach brings very different results from each of them.
But, I do try to talk a lot with them about their interests and ideas and try to have the appropriate materials/supplies/experiences lined up so that when their unstructured time comes, they have some things to readily pick up. I allow a certain amount of "easy" free stuff, since we all need that too.
It depends, too, on what your long term goals are for them, educationally. Are they looking to enter a more structured high school program, will they need scholarship money for college, or are they looking more at vocational, own business, art, farming, etc.
Being an educational coach is often lonely because everyone does it differently and gets different results, so beware of comparing.
Good luck with it all.
Mum--I think the problem for us is that when the unstructured time comes, most of the things on their lists are too hard to make happen. Picking up a book is easy. Popping in a documentary is easy. My oldest will make epic lists of all the things she wants to do and learn about, and them not do anything on them. I'm not as worried about my younger girls, but I feel that by 6th grade we should be off of the path of least resistance.
I've struggled with this on and off. We were pretty unschool-y until about age 9. It worked fine, and she was a voracious reader, and can make a parade out of dust.She rarely wanted to consider spelling, and I needed (I own this) her to understand the mechanices of writing, which doesn't come 'naturally', imo, as there are so many particulars you simply have to memorize. Spelling, ditto. She is a pretty good natural speller, but there are so many exceptions.
She also didn't pick up Algebra on her own. ;) Some kids might, but she didn't. She was getting a lot of history from reading, and she loved SOTW audios.
However, I do see the need for some formal sit down time. She wants to learn French, very much, but studying it is a often a pain. I told her, I want to be a master knitter-- by osmosis. I want the talent and knowledge without 10,000 hours of knitting. But learning some things just doesn't work by osmosis. I can't t let her out into the world without covering certain subjects. I am not an unschooler these days, although my child does choose the order in which to do subjects. But she can't not do math or other subjects. I gave up the Sandra Dodd ghost many, many years ago.
She can chase all the rabbit trails she wishes, and I will help when needed.
I recently sent my oldest homeschooler to college. There were things she absolutely had to know. She has come home from her uni classes saying things like, "I knew exactly what they were talking about in art history because we already did so much of that. It's all familiar." Now she can go deeper. She has the foudation. She says she sits up front, and participates regularly in all of her classes. She had to know enough Algebra and English to get decent SAT scores, even as an art major. She had to put together a proper art portfolio. She had to learn how to organize her work. She is excited and prepared.
I've read many stories about unschoolers going to college easily. I don't know any myself. I'm not exactly sure how they managed math SAT when they never did math. I know some schools don't require SAT etc. I don't know any colleges that don't require a transcript of some sort. I know a lot of relaxed hsers who have sent prepared kids off to college, however.
I have no intention of completely unschooling. We do 3 days of school per week, and that will continue. I completely see the value in structured, parent-led schooling. But I also want them to become self-directed when they have free time, and I don't think they can learn that if they don't have choices about what they're doing.
Well, when my dc were young, I didn't make lists, or have them make lists, of what they wanted to learn. That would negate the whole concept of their becoming self-directed in their learning. If they came up with the idea of makng lists, that would be different, but neither they nor I felt the need for that. I took us to the library every Wednesday, and on a field trip every Thursday; I introduced them to Camp Fire and Highland dance and 4-H, and we did those as long as they were interested (which was several years). I also signed them up for Missionettes at church. If I saw that their interests were going in a certain direction, I casually included what I could in our lives that would facilitate that, but I didn't make a big deal about it, and if it went away, it went away.After 6 years, I started us on KONOS for a couple of years, and they enjoyed that. By then older dd was beginning to take classes at the community college, which Changed Everything.:lol:
I get that about the lists. It does seem a little ridiculous for me to direct them to become self-directed! :D On the other hand, if I left alone, they would not figure things out on their own. They would sit in front of the TV all day if I let them. So I provide boundaries to encourage good use of their time. But something seems to be missing, because they are still putting the least possible effort forward.
I'm mostly concerned about my 6th grader. If my younger girls want to do origami all day on their days off, fine. But I feel that a 6th grader should have some self-motivation. And she does in pretty much every other area, just not on her unstructured school days.
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If you see yourself, at least part of the time, as an unschooler (a John Holt unschooler, not an anything goes type) or education facilitator or coach, what does that look like?
I'm about to give up on an experiment we've been doing for the last 9 or so months. I have a friend at co-op who has one of those super interesting, self-directed kids who takes a lot of initiative in his own learning (not so much the bookish stuff, but teaching himself to make/build/do things) and following his interests. I asked her what she did to encourage him and she said that she only did school 3 days a week when he was young and set goals for the days off for him to learn about the things that interested him.
We decided to try that and it's not working out the way I had hoped. My girls make lists of things they're interested in and would like to do or learn about, but when it comes time, they choose the easiest thing on the list. They play outside, watch documentaries, read books that are way too easy for them, do crafts, etc. I have no problem with any of these things, but I feel that these should be free time/recreational/weekend activities, not a substitute for school. Does that make sense?
I want my kids to be self-directed, but I also believe that they won't get there on their own...and I'm not sure how to help them get there. If you have kids who are interested and excited about learning for its own sake and don't have to be told to research an idea or historical period or a scientific principle or something, what have you done to encourage that?
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Congrats--I'm sure she is well-prepared! :grouphug:
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DD11 goes to our local middle school for 2 classes a day--band and PE. I enrolled her in PE so I wouldn't have to pick her up after 5th period, but she's really enjoying it (go figure). Our biggest glitch so far is that we have co-op on Fridays. Both of her teachers were agreeable to her making up the work, but last Friday is currently marked unexcused in the gradebook. :glare: I'll need to work that out with the principal. I'm happy to pull her out if he has a problem with our schedule, but I don't think he will.
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That stinks. I got tickets when I brought in my letter of intent. I guess good things come to those who procrastinate?
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That's tough. It sounds like maybe large, unstructured groups are really challenging for him. I have an ADD son and there are certain social situations he just can't manage. I would maybe work up to having a group like that again? Maybe just one at a time for a while, and once that works add another one, etc.
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We are also in WA and have also used ALEs. DS was miserable at home and making all of us miserable as well, so he started PS last year in Nov. DD11 joined 5th grade band around that time (zero hour, 3 days a week). He loves school and is much happier there, and now she's going 2 periods a day (for band and PE).
I never thought I'd have my kids in school, esp in middle school! I had a terrible middle school experience. But it's working for us. The younger two are still homeschooled (still working out the ALE thing for them). Sometimes it seems like we're pulled in too many directions, but mostly I'm excited for each of them to be thriving in the way that works best for them.
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Ok, that sounds reasonable. One more thing (I think)--will they still allow World Languages as a core class, or does that come only if they're already enrolled in math, LA, science, soc studies, etc?
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Wolfmeis--yes, I'm sure they will! ;) I'm bummed there isn't a way I can get DDs karate covered, but at the time CVA does seem to be our best option.
So how do they work it with the set options vs. supplemental options? I'm assuming you choose one set option, but then do you have a certain # of supplemental options per class?
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Do you know what percent you are enrolled? I know it used to be each class was equal to 20%, and if you did a full load you got 6 classes.
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I'm in the process of reenrolling my oldest at CVA. OASIS has a wait list and I haven't been able to get an answer for whether we have any hope of getting in this year. MP3 doesn't do less then 70% FTE. She's enrolled at our local middle school for band and PE, so that leaves CVA for our ALE options.
Is anyone here enrolled part-time? I haven't been able to find any info about that so far.
I've been pleasantly surprised at how many of my first-choice options are listed at her grade level, with the exception of math.
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Aaaaahh!!! They have a waitlist now??? :P
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That is good to hear! I have had my OASIS paperwork printed for months and need to get it finished and sent in. My good friend uses them and says it has been a positive experience.
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I clicked maybe. We put a lot of time into DD11s karate. We are fortunate to have found a non-profit that offers an extremely high caliber of training for a reasonable amount of money. We make a lot of time sacrifices to support her, and I don't know what the limit is, but I know it's there. IMO, kids who are that good at sports will excel at whatever they put their minds to, and I could see us deciding to put a talented kid on the team at the high school and shoot for college scholarships.
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We absolutely need (minimally) a basic math education, which includes algebra and geometry. If we drop the requirement of high school math, I believe math education will suffer at the lower levels. I also believe that higher math will become the province of the geeky even more than it already is, and that the less competitive schools will fail to offer it.
In Washington State, you can graduate with 2 years of math. Someone who isn't math inclined can take Basic Math and Consumer Math and avoid Algebra altogether. At the community college level, one can take Formal Logic instead of math to get a diploma. So I believe, at least in this state, the means are already there to avoid algebra if one truly can't or doesn't want to do it.
Many people will not use higher math outside of school. Many people will also not use what they've learned in literature, science, history, etc. in the "real world". Does that mean we shy away from it and only require classes that are necessary for career training? If so, why would we even teach the ability to read past an 8th grade level?
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Honestly? I put him in school. We're all happier that way. Part of me aches to be able to homeschool him again, but when he's in school I can sustain a positive home atmosphere for the other kids.
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I just wanted to add that for many traditionally schooled students, afterschooling is a near impossibility. As a 3rd grader, my son never had less than an hour of homework a night, and often two hours. Bedtime has to come earlier when they need to get up early, and they need time to play and eat. Considering that he has about 5 hours from when he gets home from school until he needs to go to bed, we just haven't been able to work in any schooling other than what is required by his teachers.
We are in an excellent school district--my son's school is a 10 on greatschools.org. Their science and history education is abysmal. They spend the entire school year focused on learning the schools necessary to score well on the MSP (our standardized test), so the focus is almost entirely on reading and math. It's not terrible, he had excellent teachers last year and definitely was doing better there than he had been at home, but I would consider my son to be somewhat of an exception--he has some behavior disorders and really needs the order and structure school provides. I think most kids are better off at home.
However, if your husband isn't on board, I would proceed carefully. Homeschooling at the expense of family unity and peace would probably not facilitate the goals you are seeking. Many moms in your situation only commit to one year at a time and use that time to show their husbands all the benefits of homeschooling and introduce them to other homeschooling families that are doing well.
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Give him a box of Ziplocs and tell him he has 24 hours to pack them however he wants. At the end of that time, take the rest of them, throw them in a box, and call it good.
Which ALE is working well this year?
in CVA
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My younger daughters are currently independent. I would still have to help them with their check-ins, so I'm not as eager to enroll them. Also, I'm kind of enjoying a break from all the running around--right now we're only doing karate for DD11 and our church activities. I'm going back and forth between MP3 so we can get swim lessons and staying independent and getting Fitness 4 Home to keep them active.