dragons in the flower bed
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Posts posted by dragons in the flower bed
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In years past, I have scheduled read-alouds to coincide with snack breaks. The kids would get popcorn or seedless grapes and sit relatively still while I read through the titles in our WinterPromise program.
This year, we are talking about our reading a lot as we go. The boys are almost teens and they have a lot of funny, sarcastic commentary to make. Our schedule for the fall semester went like follows.
7:00 - get up, get dressed, take care of animals and eat
8:00-8:20 - yoga
8:20-8:50 - math
8:50-9:35 - grammar, vocab, writing & logic workbooks
9:35-10:00 - music practice
10:00-10:30 - Spanish program
10:30-11:00 - lunch
11:00-12:00 - schooly read-alouds (covering religion, historical fiction, mythology, biographies and great books)
12:00-1:00 - Mondays & Tuesdays, history; Thursdays & Fridays, science
1:00:-whenever they feel like stopping - Mondays & Tuesdays, drafting (13yo) or studio art (10yo); Thursdays & Fridays, programming (10yo), electronics (13yo)
5:00 help straighten up the house, help make dinner
6:00 dinner
7:00 fun read-alouds (Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman so far this year)
8:00 little kids are sung to sleep, big kids read independently in bed for an hour
Wednesday afternoons, after schooly read-alouds, the boys worked towards goals in projects of their own choosing.
Often the boys would keep on doing art, programming or electronics until their younger brother and stepsisters came home from school at 3:00 because those are subjects they loved. I put them last so they could do that if they wished.
Read-alouds were right after lunch because that is generally a moment in the day when the boys are dragging and reluctant. It's not hard to sit and poke holes in a book, though, so I found it easiest to re-engage them via that.
We start Monday with a new schedule for spring, because we wanted to switch up some of the books we're using, but I haven't sorted it out just yet. Guess I'd better get on that.
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I read George Washington to my 8 yr old son today, because he spotted it on the shelf and asked for it. My son liked it and remained engaged the whole time. I will say it was a pleasant read, except for the part where Washington's slaves beamed to see him return home. Yes, the pictures are pretty. But I don't understand why homeschoolers think these books are so fabulous. What is the magic? What makes these less twaddle and more spectacular than the gazillion other picture-book bios of American legends?
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An autism diagnosis can prevent your son from getting medical care under the policy of several health insurers. It will follow your son around forever. I would never ever agree to have a kid falsely diagnosed.
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Your kids are seven and nine. Whatever you can't get done during your school hours should just be left for another day (with the possible exception of requiring quiet reading). Perhaps you are trying to do to much, or wasting time during your school hours.
Yup. My advice to this mom would have been:
First, have a much shorter homeschool day. 8:30 - 4:30 is WAY too long for ages seven and nine. Extended academic hours can prevent a kid from having time for pretend play, outdoor exploration, gross motor exercise and creativity, which in turn can kill a child's ability to focus, which may then be contributing to their difficulties working independently. Many homeschoolers use the rule of one hour for each grade up til grade six.
Secondly, schedule a daily quiet time when you can get some peace. Make it a rule that from 1 to 3 no kid may ask you for anything unless necessary to prevent danger or great expense. Use half of that for work and half for just refreshing your spirit, so you can be more willfully fully present to help your kids learn whenever opportunities present themselves.
He's right that moms get to have some boundaries too, to take care of themselves, but he's all wrong about how to go about it.
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If my 13yo or 11yo are really dragging, to where their concentration is off, I will offer them a timed break (15 minutes usually, and I make them set the timer when they start the break) or a food break that may begin after the next hardest thing is completed. So if my kid is doing math super slowly, with not much alertness, and holding back the whine, then I'll say, "Get math done and then one workbook page in [subject You Hate] and you can have a 15 minute break."
With my little guy, who is eight, I just give him a break after every two subjects. He can not concentrate for more than 30 minutes.
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Breakfast:
- smoothies made of orange juice, silken tofu, frozen peaches, frozen blackberries, frozen kale
- savory waffles*
- oatmeal or Farina, fresh fruit
- gluten-free muesli in plain yogurt with bananas
- rice cakes with thinly sliced apples and peanut butter
- eggs scrambled with salsa
- roesti
Dinner:
- chicken soup with rice
- chili, corn fritters
- fresh spinach tossed with glazed walnuts, avocado, and bleu cheese in a raspberry vinaigrette
- pot roast with root vegetables
- spinach pancakes, baked potatoes with green onions & bacon
- raw zuccini shredded and tossed with a cashew sauce
- fried cubed tofu, broccoli and rice noodles tossed with a peanut butter, soy sauce & ginger mixture
- lentils monastery style
We rotate through these dinners and another six or seven that are less healthy but more kid-pleasing. On nights when we're not doing food I can eat, I have leftovers, or just one portion of the meal. For lunches and snacks we always eat either leftovers or raw fruits & veggies.
* To make my savory waffles, I use a standard waffle recipe but sub in 1/2 part Bob's GF flour, 1/2 part almond flour, either soy or goat milk depending on what we have, plus I add real yeast, spoonfuls of ground clove, and McCormick's chai seasoning blend. The flavor of the real yeast, the generous portion of ground cloves, and the protein-heaviness of the almond flour, makes a single waffle a hearty and satisfying breakfast all by itself. But sometimes for a treat we skim the cream off the top of a can of cold coconut milk and whip it and add that to the waffles. Coconut milk whips just like regular cream.
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My three-year-old stepdaughter got a plastic toy set in which each figure is a different stage in the life cycle of a frog. We knew she'd like it, since she's all about the animal baby-parent pair right now, but we did not expect her to choose to play with it rather than the trampoline, zip line, and kid-sized hamster ball we gave as group presents to the whole family. Very small children are funny, particular creatures, aren't they?
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If it is working, and feels easy, I would keep going with Saxon. Slow and steady truly does win the race. Though she may be moving slowly now, as she gets more confident (and she will if it continues to feel easy), she will be able to do more work in a day. You can continue schooling, just math, through summers, too. Homeschooling is more efficient; she'll likely catch up. But even if she doesn't, she's more likely to enjoy a STEM career if she has to take calculus in college for the first time but feels like she can because math is easy. If she was stressed through a rush job math program so she could get calculus on that high school transcript, she'll run from math once it's up to her what to do. Don't be afraid to go slowly and be patient. The value of a math curriculum that feels easy can not be overstated.
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To me this is another layer of dishonesty on top of the husbands. Not only did my husband keep a secret my friend continues to pretend she didn't now even after I found out.
If it turns out that there are major negative consequences beyond those caused by the husband's secret-keeping, then it might be appropriate to apologize to your friend for not protecting her when you had the chance. But what are the consequences of hiding from her that you knew? None. None except preventing one more layer of hurt.
I went the total raw tell-everything honesty route once, after I'd done something hurtful. After I'd told the main thing, there were some extra details left to tell. I did tell those details, but I was telling just to tell, just to get out of the secrecy place. And all those were perceived as unnecessarily hurtful; they were received not as a total coming-clean but as spiteful extras thrown in just to jab. Yes, being open, honest and direct is an important thing, and yes, I hold to that whole be-an-open-book principle dearly, but it is important when dealing with hurt people to discern what revelations are necessary and which are rubbing their noses in it.
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Thanks, everyone. Based on the info y'all have shared here, I believe we will focus on SAT IIs. The colleges he's interested in mostly do not give credit for APs (and yes, he's too young to know what college he'll target, but he "narrowed it down" to 30 schools and when that many mostly don't care about APs I have to think it's a trend or something). Also, I'd rather he do high school level work in high school and not try to master college-level stuff before he gets there.
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I'm sorry your family is going through this.
Nana, What's Cancer? covers all the facts in text-heavy picture book format. It doesn't talk down to kids or have a heavily homemade feel like some of the other books on the subject.
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You might like Drawn Into the Heart of Reading. The activity suggestions are genre-specific but not book-specific so you can still choose your own titles (within some limits - like, an animal fantasy, or, a hero biography). Because there are guides for multiple levels, if your kiddo's vocab and comprehension is high, you can do those activities on a higher level but still use the same book and on-grade-level suggestions for understanding genre, plot, etc.
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Can you get some mutual guy-friend to give the husband a come-to-Jesus talk about intimacy and secrets and healthy marriages? If you can't talk the husband into telling, I would not go directly to the friend with it, and when she finds out I would not let her know that I knew all along. That kind of you-knew-and-I-didn't dynamic just adds an unnecessary layer of stress on top of the stress of not being as intimate with your partner as you believed you were.
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Thanks for sharing this! My oldest son has recently noticed that kids in brick-and-mortar high schools are much busier than he is, and he's wondering if our homeschool is preparing him to face college. I emailed your post to him.
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My son's sole purpose in testing is to show some outside validation to admissions officers that he can really do the work we say he can do. He's looking at doing one in Spanish and one in each of the four main subject areas - science, social studies, math and English. Neither of the colleges in which he is interested give credit for CLEP, nor do they require SAT IIs in any specific area. So our question is, which tests should he take, AP, CLEP, or SAT IIs?
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My 3rd grader is using this in his public school and I am so impressed with it that I am pretty sure it's what we'll use when we get back to homeschooling him. It uses the things I loved best about RightStart and Singapore.
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Siblings don't need that accommodation and I don't give it to them.
Does any of this make sense to anyone? :)
Yep, exactly. A true need for silence is a rare and debilitating disorder. Of course disorders get accomodation but if you treat normal kids like that you'll disable them.
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When my kids tell me they can't concentrate with noises, I tell them part of what they are learning today is how to do just that, and that learning to focus despite noise is as important as math or history. I have never allowed them to demand silence. All of my kids and stepkids have tried insisting they need silence at one time or another and I have always responded that the world is noisy and they have to learn to work in it. It was hardest for my youngest son, who only this year, at eight, is able to stay on task despite sibling ruckus. There were many tears, and screaming fits, before he finally stopped fighting with me over it and started working on his own internal powers of focus. I'm seeing fruit now though. He's able to do it.
(I acknowledge that possibly I may be the equivalent of the lucky parent who believes she produced little gourmets by never letting them say no to a food. As the mom of a boy who starved himself til he passed out rather than eat something that was not beige, I know we can't always create flexible kids by brute force. But it's worth a long, hard try. And I wouldn't give up before age thirteen.)
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A LEGO based team, most likely not. A team focused on arty, crafty robotics, absolutely. LOL She gets her competition fix via swimming. :D
At the high school level, FIRST robotics teams don't have anything to do with Lego, except that sometimes teams volunteer to help younger kids at competitions and the younger kids' kits are Lego-based. On my son's high school team, there are animators (who almost never touch the robots at all but just sit at their computers doing the art), "team theme" designers (who come up with branding for the team including costumes and chants and posters and a service mission), and a whole subcommitee that focuses only on volunteer and fundraising opportunities. Even if you are on the drive team, which means you go to the competition and run the robot in the ring, much of the actual work of the team revolves around finding out what other teams are doing, and since most teams will be secretive unless they can exchange info or be of help or need help, there's definitely an art to this kind of inter-team networking.
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My baby sister (19 yrs younger) went to a small Catholic school known for its good writers. All they did was expose kids to examples of good writing and have them write an essay a day from third grade to sixth grade.
I think I might have them read a sample essay every day, maybe with a prompt that the author might have based it around. There are books of sample college admissions essays. Having a library of the forms and language in their heads will help a lot. They'll know what they're aiming for.
I'd also get them writing daily. You could do freewrites for those who really struggle or give them prompts. (There are lists of them on the internet, if you Google.) Just get them in the habit of putting thought to paper for lengthy periods of time each day. Their hands will need to adjust, too. Require a number of words for the kids who are more competent with a pencil and a number of minutes (maybe 20 working up to 60) for reluctant writers.
I remember our exchange a few years ago and have thought of your family periodically as I have struggled to keep my kids out of school despite circumstances. I will pray and cross fingers and such that you and your kids will be well served by whatever happens next.
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I hadn't thought about that. I have actually encountered that even when I am able to provide scripture to back my view and the other person is unable to even with my background in theology..
I have too, but not among Christians who are genuinely trying to be good to each other. I do not practice any religion that is based around any scripture, but I am also a scripture nerd and can exegete with the best of 'em, and I have found that THE way to tell if someone is really trying to be good to you or if they are trying to bust your balls is to explain your practice/interpretation and see how they react. Super good close friends will argue because they know you love it, and acquaintances will either quietly back off (which means good) or correct you (which means bad). I guess I was assuming those parents are basically good people. There are basically good people in small Christian towns, usually. I wish you could find those and get some relief by sticking with them.
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Okay, given that you don't want to out yourself as polytheist (I think? you said gods, right?), and that these are preteens who have apparently picked up that religion is his weakness and is using it as a source of bully power, maybe you could have him say, "Jesus said that those who pray in the streets are hypocrites. My mom told me that faith is private and personal. That means I can't talk about it. Please stop talking to me about it so we can just play." If they persist, he could go over to a parent, say the same thing, and then add, "It feels like they are using your religion to tease me and that's not very Christ-like. Can you please help me explain to your kids that my relationship with Jesus is too personal a topic for me and i just want to play?"
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I think my advice would depend on how you know these people and where you and DS see them.
We live in the downtown of a big city and we constantly bump into clean-cut fundies from the 'burbs who are here just to save the unwashed masses. I think they target me because I'm less intimidating than a lot of the other people living here in downtown with me. I'm white, I usually have my children with me, and my visual counterculturalism comes across as the gentle hippie sort. They come up to me, and I smile because I can't tell right away if they're asking for directions to the museum (which I am happy to give) or going to tell us about Jesus. Then they say things right to my sons, who are always annoyed. My middle boy likes to drown them out by chanting ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn but I have usually stopped him, not wanting him to be rude. When one actually cornered my oldest kid this last autumn, separating him from me, I finally realized that there's a place in the world for anger. Now I have no qualms raising my voice and saying, "Do not EVER talk to ANY children about your church without parental permission!"
So maybe DS can say something like, "Perhaps it was a mistake to tolerate this for so long. Let me make it clear. Stop. Do not EVER mention your religion to me again. EVER."
Do you have "unschooler" tendencies?
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
For most people, "home education" would be perceived as synonymous with "home school." You could try to differentiate and explain but it would probably just annoy and overwhelm most people.
When I'm talking to other people who don't utilize traditional schools to educate their children, I'll usually say "homeschool" rather than "unschool" to indicate that I dictate a good chunk of my child's learning. As you can see in my sig, I use the words "relaxed" and "classical" to specify more about how I do that. "Classical" because I focus on the trivium and quadrivium and Greek & Roman methods of teaching those, "relaxed" because as much as possible I use Mary Hood's method of manipulating kids into thinking any particular bit of learning was their idea.