The breadth vs. depth question

[Corraleno]

As I'm sitting here typing this, my son and his best friend are sitting at DS's computer using the CAD-thingy on the Lego website to design custom lego kits. When you're done, you can click a button to see what it would cost to actually order the kit. Well, now they've started clicking on other currencies to see what it would cost in other countries. They're rounding off the numbers and calculating the exchange rates in their heads (apparently 1 Czech something-or-other equals $.05), and then they're looking up the countries on the large world map above DS's desk.

I'm sitting here with the BIGGEST grin on my face, doing an invisible fist-pump.  :D

Jackie

[Capt_Uhura]

Don't let them see you!

 

My boys love that design program as well. DS has a few ships he wants to order the kit for. I'll have to see if he's played with the different currencies. When DH travels abroad, he brings back currency for the boys and they are always fascinated.

[Nan in Mass]

I always let mine choose their own projects. They did a much better job than I did. They didn't want stupid little ones. I remember when we were reading about stone age peoples, mine wanted to chip flint. Mine pored over those History of Every Day Life books, with their miriad of tiny accurate drawings of artifacts. Luckily, I knew a place that had flint, having been the same sort of child and having already tried to make arrowheads when I was their age. My mother, who had been forced to take geology because it was the only extra science that would fit into her college schedule, knew where there was some flint. (That dreaded geology class turned out to be fantasic, she said, and she remembers much of it today. They went on lots of field trips. All my life, she has pointed out places she went.) My mother went through a spell of being interested in archaeology and doing quite a lot of reading in it when I was in elementary school, so she could tell me roughly how to it was done. So, I explained all that because I have always considered it one of our finest moments: for once, for once, I knew enough to help. I think you have to be careful, though. It is really easy to do all the fun bits, like chipping the flint, without ever learning any of the academic part. My children go off peace walking for months at a time. My older one always said that he learned tons while he was on the walks, but that it was all in little pieces, and that it was my job to tie all the pieces together when he came home. I, too, think there is something to be said for spines. That is why I love TWTM. It explains how to use a spine to tie all those bits together. My older one read A People's History of the US and Spielvogel and that Idiot's Guide about government, and that tied together the primary sources we read for great books, all the hands-on activism, and all the bits of stories that people had told him. We never did discuss any of it, really. He got tons of varying viewpoints from all the people he met. At the time, I felt like we really botched history. I think a good teacher could have turned the whole mess into a fantastic history program by adding some research and discussion and thought-provoking papers, especially if there were other intelligent, interested students involved. I am incapable of doing that for history (or for just about anything else, for that matter). But on the other hand, a good history teacher would have required that he go to school (or that we be rich enough to hire tutors or send him to private school), and that would have meant that he couldn't be gone for months at a time mid-school year. And it would have meant less time to do his own mulling and investigating, less time to spend hours and hours watching youtube videos of stand-up comics or doing gymnastics. I don't know. We muddle along as best we can. By letting them choose their own, finding projects has never been a problem.

 

Elizabeth, I was one of those children who was driven to do projects. Discovering the section of the library with all the how-to books was one of the most disappointing events of my childhood. I still vividly remember how excited I was to find a gigantic book of origami, real origami, not simplified American stuff, and then my frustration with my mother for not being willing to help me make an origami dragon fly. It wasn't until I bought a Dover book as an adult that I realized why she was unwilling to help me - it would have taken hours to learn the terminology in order to be able to follow those directions. I did manage to make the dragon fly. "Seasoned wood" was the bane of my existance. Everything I wanted to make, canoes, bows, etc., seemed to require that one find a specific type of sapling, cut it, and then let it season for a looonnnggg time before one could actually make it. I was way too impatient for that. Doll clothes were something my mother was will to help with. One vacation she realized that our Barbie dolls weren't really suitable as models because their arms weren't removable. Her own childhood model-type doll had removable arms so fitted clothing could be put on despite the lack of full ball joints at the shoulders. She sewed us beautiful Barbie shaped and sized cloth dolls and we made them Civil War era ball dresses. I was in my teens at the time. I almost signed up for a stitch and lash canoe-making course this summer, but it was a bit too expensive to do while we have two sons in college. Some day. So, the point of telling you all these memories is to tell you that as frustrating as my childhood was, it didn't do me any harm. I just kept trying. It isn't a bad thing to have to figure out some things on your own, or to have to give up making a proper bow because your neighbors wouldn't want you cutting their foundation plantings (bows are traditionally made of yews LOL), or even to figure out that you can't do that right now because you aren't old enough or you don't have the proper tools or you can't afford to buy the materials or find someone to help you. All it does is make it really, really fun to be grownup GRIN.

 

-Nan

[Nan in Mass]

Yup. Yupyupyup. I always tell myself that art history is very easy to pick up as an adult. I know many adults who read history for fun, also. And I think that modern novels like The Great Gatsby will probably be read, and certainly appreciated more, sometime later in life.

[Guest]

But my real fear in homeschooling is teaching those subjects that I have no experience with. I don't remember learning history, and I certainly never learned to analyze literature. How can I trust myself to teach these subjects well?

 

I have been frustrated for so many years because my husband, who is a marine chemist, doesn't work with my daughter in the science field (he's an Aspie who just finds it too difficult to be both father and teacher). But what I am realizing is that as I learn alongside my daughter, she's getting a different but to my mind also valuable science education, plus an education in how an adult goes about learning what she doesn't know, and how exciting it can be for a 50-year-old to have an "aha! so THAT'S how it works!" moment.

 

Each kind of teacher has something different to offer. Let your children share in your research into curriculum (or a list of possible books, topics, DVDs) -- in an age-appropriate way. Share with them what you didn't know before, what you have learned, what piques your curiosity, what surprised you the most. Have them read a picture book or a chapter book and "teach" you and their siblings. Help them follow up what interests them: find more books, interview people in your town who are war veterans, take a map-making class at a museum, cook a meal together with foods from the time period you are studying and accompany it with period music... they will learn different things from you than they would from someone with a history background. And that's perfectly okay.

[Nan in Mass]

While I was typing this afternoon, my oldest was taking his Ukrainian friend fishing after having spent the last two days struggling to get him a visa to go home. That picture with the crayfish net? My oldest one just got pictures of his friend holding up a string of mackrel with the biggest grin on his face... It doesn't end with those crayfish. My middle one was doing the navigating with a borrowed GPS on the trip, and taking over the steering when the older one got seasick. (I prefer not to think about how tiny the boat was, or how foggy it was, or how far out they went, or how they exchanged foghorn blasts with an excursion boat until it passed them 50 feet off. Sometimes I wish they'd stuck to those crayfish.) And my youngest yelled to me that he had just figured out how to reduce the frustrations of online chess by playing 4 chess games at once. Mine are totally over-scheduled except for summer time and I am always amazed at how much they learn over the summer.

-Nan

[Nan in Mass]

'I was plagued by a nagging feeling that I was coddling him or "giving in." ' - How well I know that feeling. Mine always sabatage (never written that word before and have no idea how to spell it) every single assignment. Either there are a LOT of bad curriculums out there, or we are doing something wrong. I worry about it a lot but don't seem to be able to do anything about it.

 

Yes, it was in a different post, one from awhile ago, that I talked about picking one subject to learn to think in and doing the rest in a more easy way. I have written posts about that for years now, ever since some of Tina's first logic posts.

 

Cool thread! I'm learning lots.

-Nan

[Corraleno]

That kind of says it all doesn't it, Jackie? Sniff, sniff.:crying: Do you think our boys have any idea what's in store for them this fall? It's good to have company on this course correction.

I think DS is going to be soooo psyched about next year. I had another real epiphany this week, about biology. I found a HUGE weird bug on the patio one night, and actually dragged the kids out of bed to see it. I'd never seen anything like it before, but DS immediately said "Oh, that's a female dobsonfly. The larvae are called hellgrammites, they're completely aquatic and have 6 gills." I said "How the heck do you know all this stuff???" and he said he saw one last summer and looked it up. And I thought: I need to dump the biology texts.

 

The BIG mistake I made this year was assuming that because he can handle HS and even college level material in some subjects, that he could handle HS & college level textbooks. Duh. He's a 12 yo dyslexic. The first third or so of most bio texts is biochemistry, cellular biology, genetics and DNA. We've been stuck there for.ev.er. because the bits he remembers are disjointed and random — and almost entirely visual. He can draw plant and animal cells and label the parts pretty well, but ask him to explain the properties of lipids, or what an enzyme-catalyzed reaction is, and he draws a total blank, despite having read about it in several different textbooks. He just has no frame of reference for that stuff. But point out a lizard scurrying up the wall and he'll tell you that it's an unusual species of whiptail lizard that's thought to be a cross between two common species, and that they're parthenogenic — all of them are female and are able to reproduce asexually — and that parthenogenesis is not uncommon in arthropods but quite rare in vertebrates.

 

And yet I've been making him go over and over the same chapters in the same textbooks, thinking he really needs to memorize all this stuff before we can move on. Why???? Why haven't I been letting him catch lizards and dissect crayfish and collect insects all year, instead of making him read small type in a HS textbook? Why is the mammalian organ dissection kit stinking up the storage cabinet, waiting "until we get to that part of the text?" Why have I been making him wait to do the virtual Froguts dissections, allowing him only to do the Mendelian pea lab, because that's where we are in the schedule? I feel like such an idiot. :blush:

 

So I've decided to put away the textbooks and give him The Way Life Works, which is more narrative and thematic and full of visual analogies. (Capt_Uhura, isn't this what you're using?) And I'm not going to assign chapters or give him worksheets and vocabulary lists and quizzes. I'll just have him read maybe an hour a day, 2-3 days a week — whatever part of the book looks interesting to him. And I'm going to order a boatload of critters from Carolina Biological that we can grow and study and dissect. And we're going to build the Galileoscopes that have been sitting in the closet, waiting "until we get to Astronomy," and DH is going to build the catapults and trebuchets DS has been dying to work on, whether or not it correlates perfectly with "the schedule."

 

I think DS is going to be very happy with how we do school from now on — and I think his previously schedule-obsessed mother is going to have a much better time, too. :tongue_smilie:

 

Jackie

[Nan in Mass]

I always think about Wart's education in Sword in the Stone.

 

Changing topics (sort of): You know, in general, I think a big danger of homeschooling is that we don't just let our children alone enough.

-Nan

[Nan in Mass]

Stepping sideways... This post reminds me that it is difficult to be creative unless you have something to create with.

 

-Nan

[PeterPan]

Nan, thank you for sharing your reminisces. They do make me feel better. :)

[Guest]

Why is the mammalian organ dissection kit stinking up the storage cabinet, waiting "until we get to that part of the text?" Why have I been making him wait to do the virtual Froguts dissections, allowing him only to do the Mendelian pea lab, because that's where we are in the schedule? I feel like such an idiot. :blush:

Jackie

 

This is the enormous problem I have with the concept that you must necessarily have the survey course information before you can possibly go in depth, because the particular thing a kid might want to do right now doesn't "fit" or fall in line with the overall picture and/or someone else's schedule.

 

My daughter has taught me to question almost all conventions about the order in which things must be learned. She actually taught herself to read before it occurred to me to start phonics. She only learned to add a very few numbers before she went on the embrace and memorize her multiplication tables; she was doing basic algebraic equations before those addition facts were down pat and even before she could accurately count out the candles for her birthday cake (finger/brain/eye problems). She preferred trying to write longer stories and pieces rather than individual sentences, EVER.

 

I've since found out that teachers who are specialists in various subjects at, say, a high school level often rearrange the order of chapters in textbooks for their own syllabi, because they disagree with the author about the order in which things are best learned.

 

So I no longer believe there is anything sacred or magical about the ordering systems we are trained to believe in and follow (lest our children develop gaps or be left behind). Some patterns or structures might work better than others for various children, at various points. And that's about how far I can see at the moment.

 

One thing I do believe in, however, that I share with you, Corraleno, is the primacy of a child's passionate desire to learn about a topic or a subject of their choice.

[PeterPan]

If I could connect Karen's thought with Nan's book reading. My dd skips the beginning of a book (which she calls boring) and goes to the middle. And for a student like her, rearranging the content of curriculum or study to get to the most engaging part and then going back to fill in the dots makes a lot of sense. However when I read a book, I ALWAYS read the table of contents. Not only do I read the toc, but I read the prefaces and even look at the appendices or afterwords. I always, always do this. And to me, curriculum is studied in logical order BECAUSE IT IS. So is it any wonder these two people clash, the one who prefers to read a book out of order to get to the most interesting stuff and the one who can't handle it in any other way?

[Guest]

If I could connect Karen's thought with Nan's book reading. My dd skips the beginning of a book (which she calls boring) and goes to the middle. And for a student like her, rearranging the content of curriculum or study to get to the most engaging part and then going back to fill in the dots makes a lot of sense. However when I read a book, I ALWAYS read the table of contents. Not only do I read the toc, but I read the prefaces and even look at the appendices or afterwords. I always, always do this. And to me, curriculum is studied in logical order BECAUSE IT IS. So is it any wonder these two people clash, the one who prefers to read a book out of order to get to the most interesting stuff and the one who can't handle it in any other way?

 

But this makes it so much more interesting!

[swimmermom3]

I think DS is going to be soooo psyched about next year. I had another real epiphany this week, about biology. I found a HUGE weird bug on the patio one night, and actually dragged the kids out of bed to see it. I'd never seen anything like it before, but DS immediately said "Oh, that's a female dobsonfly. The larvae are called hellgrammites, they're completely aquatic and have 6 gills." I said "How the heck do you know all this stuff???" and he said he saw one last summer and looked it up. And I thought: I need to dump the biology texts.

 

The BIG mistake I made this year was assuming that because he can handle HS and even college level material in some subjects, that he could handle HS & college level textbooks. Duh. He's a 12 yo dyslexic. The first third or so of most bio texts is biochemistry, cellular biology, genetics and DNA. We've been stuck there for.ev.er. because the bits he remembers are disjointed and random — and almost entirely visual. He can draw plant and animal cells and label the parts pretty well, but ask him to explain the properties of lipids, or what an enzyme-catalyzed reaction is, and he draws a total blank, despite having read about it in several different textbooks. He just has no frame of reference for that stuff. But point out a lizard scurrying up the wall and he'll tell you that it's an unusual species of whiptail lizard that's thought to be a cross between two common species, and that they're parthenogenic — all of them are female and are able to reproduce asexually — and that parthenogenesis is not uncommon in arthropods but quite rare in vertebrates.

 

And yet I've been making him go over and over the same chapters in the same textbooks, thinking he really needs to memorize all this stuff before we can move on. Why???? Why haven't I been letting him catch lizards and dissect crayfish and collect insects all year, instead of making him read small type in a HS textbook? Why is the mammalian organ dissection kit stinking up the storage cabinet, waiting "until we get to that part of the text?" Why have I been making him wait to do the virtual Froguts dissections, allowing him only to do the Mendelian pea lab, because that's where we are in the schedule? I feel like such an idiot. :blush:

 

So I've decided to put away the textbooks and give him The Way Life Works, which is more narrative and thematic and full of visual analogies. (Capt_Uhura, isn't this what you're using?) And I'm not going to assign chapters or give him worksheets and vocabulary lists and quizzes. I'll just have him read maybe an hour a day, 2-3 days a week — whatever part of the book looks interesting to him. And I'm going to order a boatload of critters from Carolina Biological that we can grow and study and dissect. And we're going to build the Galileoscopes that have been sitting in the closet, waiting "until we get to Astronomy," and DH is going to build the catapults and trebuchets DS has been dying to work on, whether or not it correlates perfectly with "the schedule."

 

I think DS is going to be very happy with how we do school from now on — and I think his previously schedule-obsessed mother is going to have a much better time, too. :tongue_smilie:

 

Jackie

Okay Jackie, time's up. Put the scourge away. We've got things to do!:D You know, Swimmer Dude is always messing around with setting up websites and forums. wonder if there is a way to put the kids who are working on the Middle Ages this year together on a web site where they could do an online book group for Once and Future King or swap photos of their castle projects. Just an out there thought.

 

Dude and I are hitting the nature trail again this fall to work on our drawing. Another cool thread we had a while back with Nicole M, Jane, mcconnellboys, and maybe, Nan, was about "naming" things. How so many of our parents our grandparents could name the various plants on their property. Or like Nan mentioned today about knowledge of the stars.

 

I need to go to bed. Early morning swim practice. Thank you all for some incredible conversation today. I may have been able to bump my IQ up a few points and at least temporarily halt its sad decline.:lol:

[Corraleno]

If I could connect Karen's thought with Nan's book reading. My dd skips the beginning of a book (which she calls boring) and goes to the middle. And for a student like her, rearranging the content of curriculum or study to get to the most engaging part and then going back to fill in the dots makes a lot of sense. However when I read a book, I ALWAYS read the table of contents. Not only do I read the toc, but I read the prefaces and even look at the appendices or afterwords. I always, always do this. And to me, curriculum is studied in logical order BECAUSE IT IS. So is it any wonder these two people clash, the one who prefers to read a book out of order to get to the most interesting stuff and the one who can't handle it in any other way?

Me, too. DH says I "think in outline format and argue in bulleted lists." :tongue_smilie: DH and DS, on the other hand, think in clouds of images, linked together with threads like spider webs. I can't even imagine thinking like that, and it does make it difficult for them to retrieve information if it's out of context, but on the other hand it allows them to make really interesting and original connections between things that other people (like me) might not connect. And it seems much less important to them what order they learn things in. In fact, one of DH's biggest "communication" problems is that he always seems to start in the middle of whatever story he's trying to tell, so I'm constantly interrupting him with questions like "what guy?" and "when did that happen?" and "why would he say that?" Putting the story together is like assembling a puzzle, and then when I have all the pieces I need to recite it back to him, in the correct order, to see if I got it right!

 

Realizing that about DS is actually kind of freeing, because it makes it so much easier to be flexible and just go with whatever he's interested in when he's interested in pursuing it, without having to worry about whether we're doing it "out of order."

 

Jackie

[swimmermom3]

Why is the mammalian organ dissection kit stinking up the storage cabinet, waiting "until we get to that part of the text?" Why have I been making him wait to do the virtual Froguts dissections, allowing him only to do the Mendelian pea lab, because that's where we are in the schedule? I feel like such an idiot. :blush:

 

 

 

It's not about being an idiot. It's about doing what you know until you know better. And our boys survived. I must admit I had a similar thought after reading KarenAnne's post, only my epiphany didn't involve Froguts. I told ds we were doing a 2 week study of Islam this year which fascinates him. We had been listening to NPR and he wanted to know if he could trace everything up to today and research the Taliban. Of course not. That would belong to Modern history and next year.:blushing: He even tried to remind me that he had current events on Friday and could tie everything together.

[Corraleno]

Okay Jackie, time's up. Put the scourge away. We've got things to do!:D You know, Swimmer Dude is always messing around with setting up websites and forums. wonder if there is a way to put the kids who are working on the Middle Ages this year together on a web site where they could do an online book group for Once and Future King or swap photos of their castle projects. Just an out there thought.

What a terrific idea!!! DS would love that!

 

Dude and I are hitting the nature trail again this fall to work on our drawing. Another cool thread we had a while back with Nicole M, Jane, mcconnellboys, and maybe, Nan, was about "naming" things. How so many of our parents our grandparents could name the various plants on their property. Or like Nan mentioned today about knowledge of the stars.

Yes, we're planning the same thing! Our natural history museum currently has the most beautiful and inspiring exhibit of nature journals, by none other than Claire Walker Leslie herself, and her group of women friends who have been nature journaling together for years. DS has an amazing memory for the names of things in nature, if he learns them in context. I just bought the TC course The Night Sky and a soon as our Galileoscopes are built, we're going to start studying the constellations, too.

 

Jackie

[Corraleno]

It's not about being an idiot. It's about doing what you know until you know better. And our boys survived. I must admit I had a similar thought after reading KarenAnne's post, only my epiphany didn't involve Froguts. I told ds we were doing a 2 week study of Islam this year which fascinates him. We had been listening to NPR and he wanted to know if he could trace everything up to today and research the Taliban. Of course not. That would belong to Modern history and next year.:blushing: He even tried to remind me that he had current events on Friday and could tie everything together.

:lol: OMG that is so me! There should be a 12-step program for homeschool moms like us. :tongue_smilie:

 

Jackie

[PeterPan]

Jackie, I finally get why you're stressing about this. Or not that you're stressing, but why this feels like a new approach for you. We all did interest-driven stuff in elementary and felt fine. It's when you start getting into these upper grades and you want naturally to bring in some solid texts to make sure you're doing a good job. Then you find the texts backfiring with these kids. But to remove the texts entirely is really, really scary, so we keep oscillating (text but multiple grades up, text for scope and sequence but fill in with more living books, no text but a narrative spine, no spine just significant projects with books to fill in, etc. etc.). It's a mess to sort through, and it's not as easy as saying one of those combos will be perfect for all kids. To *me* going to the extreme of saying just to do significant hands-on feels like I'm leaping off a bridge. I might even be cool with that, but that's what it feels like. So I was trying to walk the edge of the cliff and stick with my textbook just brought a bit more to life. Thing is, when you get these kids, it really doesn't stick, not right, not like they mean it to. It's as much of a waste of time, in some senses, as it would be to sit there studying particular spelling words with them, for the particular facts in those texts are going to stick about as well.

 

Well I'm rambling. It's very hard to decide to jump off a cliff. :)

[PeterPan]

Ok, I'm gonna ask a dumb question. How do you know when to start TC courses? I SO had not considered them. I see them on the "high school" board and dd is just my (not so) little girl. How do you know when they'll be appropriate? See, just another idea I had NOT considered.

[Corraleno]

Well I'm rambling. It's very hard to decide to jump off a cliff. :)

 

Aw, c'mon. We'll all have a tea party at the bottom. Or maybe a beer. :cheers2:

 

Jackie

[PeterPan]

Ahh, now she's breaking out the virtual beer. :)

 

Well not only do I not drink, but I'm thinking enough to have watched a whole bunch of people drive themselves over cliffs with Hummers the last 6 months. So when any wave comes along, I just watch. I look for fruit and where it leads. I look to see if the dc are still developing the skills they need while having all this fun.

 

I did peak at that book you're using for next year. Looks like fun.

[Corraleno]

Ok, I'm gonna ask a dumb question. How do you know when to start TC courses? I SO had not considered them. I see them on the "high school" board and dd is just my (not so) little girl. How do you know when they'll be appropriate? See, just another idea I had NOT considered.

I think it mostly depends on whether listening to 30-minute lectures will work for your child. There were some real snoozers among the first few professors we tried, but Bob Brier (History of Ancient Egypt) totally lit DS's fire. He watched the 12 lecture series and begged for the 48 lecture series. He would often ask to watch several in a row. Neil DeGrasse Tyson's course, My Favorite Universe, was another big hit. Some of the professors are more dynamic and animated than others, and the academic level of the courses vary from general public to advanced math/science. If your DD is an audio learner, you can also get the courses on CD or as downloads.

 

Are you doing medieval history next year? I'm planning to use Dorsey Armstrong's The Medieval World course as a "spine" next fall. It's 30 lectures, and it focuses primarily on "everyday life" sort of topics (children & family, life in a noble household vs a peasant household, knighthood & heraldry, food & entertainment, etc). It sounds like that approach might appeal to your DD? The professor is a little stiff (she reads from a teleprompter and it's almost too polished if you KWIM) but the information is very very good. Her specialty is medieval English literature rather than history, which lends an interesting perspective. Actually I think it coordinates wonderfully with the Duke/TIP syllabus on The Once and Future King, which also takes a literature-based approach to medieval history. Have you seen the Duke course? One of the threads of questioning they follow throughout the syllabus is how the female characters in the books reflect the role of women in the middle ages, so that might be another thing that could be appealing to your DD.

 

Jackie

[Joyofsixreboot]

Our goal was a Monty Python education. Think of the literary and philosophical references. There's French as well as historical and scientific tidbits. And much laughter.

 

We were only pretending to follow The Well Trained Mind. ;)

 

Jane

 

THAT'S IT! You said what I'm hoping for. Someone who gets the references and knows the material well enough to satirize it. I always fell for the smart, geeky, funny guy and I guess that's what I'm trying to create in my kids. Not that it's any more attainable than creating any other 'type'. The kids have those pesky personalities.....

[prairiegirl]

Ok, I'm gonna ask a dumb question. How do you know when to start TC courses? I SO had not considered them. I see them on the "high school" board and dd is just my (not so) little girl. How do you know when they'll be appropriate? See, just another idea I had NOT considered.

 

I think it would depend on the series. I am getting the Night Sky (must remember to order that today :001_rolleyes: ) set for my 11 yr. old for this year. I am thinking (hoping) that this would word for her now. I have heard that one of the American History DVDs--I think it may be the high school one) is very good for younger kids. I can't remember the prof but he dresses up in the DVD. I am also thinking of letting my dd listen to the Shakespeare CDs i have for next year. I think she mightbe able to handle them then as she is a big Shakespeare fan. We are doing Ancients this year and I might have dd listen to a few about Greek mythology (again, this is something that she is interested in) just to wet her feet a bit with listening to lectures.

 

I get the series for myself first, with the thought of what my children would like and listen to them myself then decide if my kids (mostly dd at this point) could handle it now or let it wait a few years.

[Nan in Mass]

Guys - Where, oh where have you been? I have been trying for YEARS (please imagine the years part in GIANT font, and imagine tears dripping off it) to have this discussion. And NOBODY UNDERSTOOD sniff sniff. My older one (really my middle child) is like this. I am wired like this but have been taught to be sequential and am now rather ambidextrous. I have a million thoughts on this because I have been agonizing over it since my middle one tried to go to public kindergarten, where the first day he drew a squiggly pencil line and said it was a caterpillar while all the other children were drawing elaborate coloured gardens and race cars on their name cards, and then spent the rest of the year gently ignoring every effort to teach him reading and writing while he taught himself to draw. Salt water isn't good for keyboards so I am going to go make a cup of tea. Then I am going to print out this thread so I can write and draw arrows all over it while I go to the dentist. So far, I've only read bits and pieces. I am now going to sit down and read it carefully from the beginning (or at least try GRIN). I can tell you what might happen when your cloud children go to college. My middle one just finished his freshman year. I can tell you how we managed high school. Didn't manage would probably be more accurate. You can tell me how to manage my youngest, whom we thought was very, very different from his brother but now is looking scarily similar. I can tell you what happened to my oldest, who showed such promise at the beginning of his public school career and then crashed and burned in high school. I could write a whole book and call it CLOUD CHILDREN. Thank you, thank you, those of you who told me I needed to come read this thread. I guess I never should have switched from the K-8 board to the high school board. We don't fit there very well. Not that I am not grateful for all the advice I have gotten there... Cloud people need tons of help with high school.

nan

Edited July 14, 2010 by Nan in Mass

[Nan in Mass]

It is easily attainable if your child was born that type. In fact, you probably will find that it is almost impossible to attain anything else. That sort of child is almost totally impervious to outside attempts to change them. Even a whole public high school's worth of peer pressure and a whole school system's worth of teachers can't do it. You can make them very very miserable for awhile, but you can't change them.

-nan

[Capt_Uhura]

The BIG mistake I made this year was assuming that because he can handle HS and even college level material in some subjects, that he could handle HS & college level textbooks. Duh. He's a 12 yo dyslexic.

 

Unfortunately, these kids don't come with manuals. :001_smile:

 

So I've decided to put away the textbooks and give him The Way Life Works, which is more narrative and thematic and full of visual analogies. (Capt_Uhura, isn't this what you're using?) And I'm not going to assign chapters or give him worksheets and vocabulary lists and quizzes. I'll just have him read maybe an hour a day, 2-3 days a week — whatever part of the book looks interesting to him. And I'm going to order a boatload of critters from Carolina Biological that we can grow and study and dissect. And we're going to build the Galileoscopes that have been sitting in the closet, waiting "until we get to Astronomy," and DH is going to build the catapults and trebuchets DS has been dying to work on, whether or not it correlates perfectly with "the schedule."

 

Jackie

My boys also have a huge fascination with trebuchets and catapults. I think we have three of them, although one has seen better days. They'd love to build a full scale model. :001_huh:

 

Yes and no on The Way Life Works. I bought the expanded book, titled Exploring the Way Life Works. I showed it my son and he said he liked it. I love the narrative style, I love the visual images and the analogies. I love how it ties it all together. I'm also looking forward to Dr. Nebel's next installment of BFSU. THe grade 3-5 vol will be out shortly and the 6-8 volume not too long after. I love how he ties all the disciplines together rather than treating them as separate disciplines.

 

Sounds like you have a great year ahead!!! :001_smile:

[Nan in Mass]

You haven't lived until you come back from vacation to complaints by the neighbors about potatoes raining down on them during their sunset cruises around the lake and inquiries by your mother as to why your son wanted to know where to buy hair spray.

-nan

[Corraleno]

My boys also have a huge fascination with trebuchets and catapults. I think we have three of them, although one has seen better days. They'd love to build a full scale model. :001_huh:

Yeah, the first time DS looked through the Gurstelle books he was all excited, then he started reading the lists of materials and he said "Hey wait a minute — these things are little! Can't we make a real one???" I told him that was fine with me as long as he did the math to scale them up. :D

 

You haven't lived until you come back from vacation to complaints by the neighbors about potatoes raining down on them during their sunset cruises around the lake and inquiries by your mother as to why your son wanted to know where to buy hair spray.

-nan

Before we moved back to the States we had a place in France with a 12-acre meadow that sloped gently away from the back of the house. There was also an old orchard with an unlimited supply of green apples lying on the ground. So of course DH & DS (age 3-6 at the time) had to build a water cannon out of PVC pipe. They used to spend hours firing apples down the hill. Then they tried making different kinds of parachutes, to see if they could fire an egg and get it to land without breaking (no luck, LOL).

 

And the hairspray thing.... as a teenager DH once set fire to the curtains trying to kill a fly in mid-air with his homemade hairspray "flamethrower." :blink: I won't even tell you about his electrical experiments!

 

Jackie

[Guest]

They used to spend hours firing apples down the hill. Then they tried making different kinds of parachutes, to see if they could fire an egg and get it to land without breaking (no luck, LOL).

 

And the hairspray thing.... as a teenager DH once set fire to the curtains trying to kill a fly in mid-air with his homemade hairspray "flamethrower." :blink: I won't even tell you about his electrical experiments!

 

Jackie

 

All signs of the true scientific mind at work! This makes me glad my daughter's bent is more theoretical.

[Capt_Uhura]

It's on the list to make a potato cannon this summer. :001_smile:

[swimmermom3]

Jackie, I finally get why you're stressing about this. Or not that you're stressing, but why this feels like a new approach for you. We all did interest-driven stuff in elementary and felt fine. It's when you start getting into these upper grades and you want naturally to bring in some solid texts to make sure you're doing a good job. Then you find the texts backfiring with these kids. But to remove the texts entirely is really, really scary, so we keep oscillating (text but multiple grades up, text for scope and sequence but fill in with more living books, no text but a narrative spine, no spine just significant projects with books to fill in, etc. etc.). It's a mess to sort through, and it's not as easy as saying one of those combos will be perfect for all kids. To *me* going to the extreme of saying just to do significant hands-on feels like I'm leaping off a bridge. I might even be cool with that, but that's what it feels like. So I was trying to walk the edge of the cliff and stick with my textbook just brought a bit more to life. Thing is, when you get these kids, it really doesn't stick, not right, not like they mean it to. It's as much of a waste of time, in some senses, as it would be to sit there studying particular spelling words with them, for the particular facts in those texts are going to stick about as well.

 

Well I'm rambling. It's very hard to decide to jump off a cliff. :)

 

Yes! Yes! Yes! This is it exactly (even though I'm not Jackie;)). Nan and Jenn's point that it's really not about breadth and depth but more about skills vs. content is much closer to the heart of the matter. However, there is an added component. Nan once likened educating her youngest (so much like my youngest) to trying to hit a moving target. It's an image that has stayed fixed in my mind when I think of teaching Swimmer Dude. We are standing in the middle of the room trying to throw these heavy texts (or standard educational processes) at these kids, who are moving freely about the room, hoping something sticks. The laws of nature are against us here! The typical course of action would be to make the kid stop moving. For so many kids (my oldest, for example) this is disastrous. That means the teacher has to be the one to change. Which brings us to Elizabeth standing at the edge of the cliff with her textbook.

 

There is an old joke about Oregonians standing on street corners waiting for lights to change. To adapt it here, the majority of educators are happy to stand on the street corner waiting for the light to change. You get across the street safely that way. There are those who wait for the first free opportunity, regardless of the light, to run across the street. It's both exhilarating and occasionally deadly. However, they have more things to do with their lives than wait on street corners so they are willing to take the risk. Then there are those like myself who stand there because they are well trained but at the same time every once of them is yelling, "Run for it." They're so busy entertaining analysis paralysis that they miss the benefit of either choice. It's that flat squirrel on the highway of life scenario that gets me every time. :tongue_smilie:

[swimmermom3]

Aw, c'mon. We'll all have a tea party at the bottom. Or maybe a beer. :cheers2:

 

Jackie

 

Sorry, ladies. I think I am going to have to bring a bottle of something stronger.:D

[swimmermom3]

You haven't lived until you come back from vacation to complaints by the neighbors about potatoes raining down on them during their sunset cruises around the lake and inquiries by your mother as to why your son wanted to know where to buy hair spray.

-nan

 

:smilielol5:I have to ask. How did they accomplish the potato episode and just what did he do with the hair spray?

 

ETA: Just finished reading the rest of the posts. I get it now.:D The Backyard Ballistics book is here and the boys have been plotting their course of action.

Edited July 14, 2010 by swimmermom3

[abrightmom]

Not that this needs a bump but WOW . . . this is some kind of discussion! :001_smile:

[Barb_]

Just :lurk5: for later.

[Guest]

It's not about being an idiot. It's about doing what you know until you know better. And our boys survived. I must admit I had a similar thought after reading KarenAnne's post, only my epiphany didn't involve Froguts. I told ds we were doing a 2 week study of Islam this year which fascinates him. We had been listening to NPR and he wanted to know if he could trace everything up to today and research the Taliban. Of course not. That would belong to Modern history and next year.:blushing: He even tried to remind me that he had current events on Friday and could tie everything together.

 

It is so difficult for us who are trying frantically make (impose?) a kind of order out of a child's interests to let go of chronological survey as the single way to determine "the right time" to do something. The right time is when a kid is interested and champing at the bit. To relegate that to something he must do in his "own" time, to consider it not as important as continuing on a schedule that "covers" all school subjects in a predetermined order, is what I continually find so problematic.

 

How awesomely brilliant that your ds is wanting to find out more about the unfolding of Islam and about the Taliban!

[Guest]

Nan once likened educating her youngest (so much like my youngest) to trying to hit a moving target. It's an image that has stayed fixed in my mind when I think of teaching Swimmer Dude. We are standing in the middle of the room trying to throw these heavy texts (or standard educational processes) at these kids, who are moving freely about the room, hoping something sticks. The laws of nature are against us here! The typical course of action would be to make the kid stop moving. For so many kids (my oldest, for example) this is disastrous.

 

This is such a great visual image! I have a child who is just about opposite of this: she's the rigid, frozen kid that would get repeatedly hit and knocked over with the throwing of standard educational processes. Or, using your story about the lights and crossings, she would still be standing there until everyone else had crossed, and about the time she decided okay, it seemed to be a good time to cross and was within the rules as she perceived them, the light would switch again and she'd get run over.

 

Corraleno, I also really found fascinating your account of how your dh tells stories. My daughter has always told tales in this way, and I always thought I had to "fix" it, to teach her how to tell a story in the proper order. Thank you for this very timely reminder that it can be an entire way of thinking that is just different from mine, and as you say, allows different types of connections to be made, differently enlightenments to arise.

[Nan in Mass]

I found myself telling my youngest to get off the computer and come do his math and then realized that that didn't make a whole lot of sense since he was researching speed-reading and how his brain works. But in a way, it does.

 

You can't really teach cloud children. It doesn't work. Conventional education is like water off a duck's back. You can drop the nuggets of information down into that cloud over and over and over and they just fall through the cloud. As you teach them content, you will find you have to review constantly to get them to remember it, and as the amount of content you have taught them grows, so will the review time, until you won't have any time left to cover new content. Your only hope is to give up on trying to get them to remember content and teach the cloud children the skills they need to teach themselves. And that isn't easy when you can't teach them. (This is beginning to sound like a tongue twister.)

 

I think you have to accept that the cloud children are not just different as children, but they will also be different as adults. They won't fit the standard definition of well-educated. They are probably going to be lopsided adults, not well-rounded ones. They may or may not be able to handle college. Decide up front whether you are going to try to match the education you are providing up with the standard one at some point (like college). If you aren't, you probably can go with even more of an unschooling approach because you don't have to teach your child to learn out of a textbook. I have met unschooled adults who are wonderful people. They have trouble learning anything they don't want to learn. That doesn't mean there aren't lots of things they know, just that they didn't learn them academically. I consider this to be a handicap, but they don't and are happy they were spared.

 

If you want your cloud child to go to college, then they will have to learn to learn in the standard classroom fashion or compete for one of the coveted spots in a non-standard college (like that environmental program at Leslie where they drive around the country in a bus). Either way, you need to have some way of showing colleges that your child is prepared and is able to do the work. Some colleges are not going to want to take a chance on them. Your choices are reduced, just as they would be if your child were born unable to walk. (I'm not saying that the cloud children aren't able to do some things better than the rest of us, just that you are better off accepting early on that they are things they are not going to be able to do well enough to be worth trying to do them. Nobody in their right mind would hire me as a secretary. That is ok.)

 

I think it is important to make the distinction between uneducated, educated but not academic, and capable of doing academics but haven't gotten around to learning that yet. I am aiming for the last. I am having to settle on more of the second than I would prefer, partly because of my own ignorance.

 

In a perfect world, your cloud child would be willing to sit down and learn straight academic skills during his (I'm tired of using the plural they for unknown gender) childhood. You could spend the morning teaching academic skills in as dry a fashion as you pleased, and he could spend the early afternoon teaching himself whatever he wanted for content, and then he could play the rest of the day. Colleges wouldn't care whether he had ever had US history as long as he could read adult-level materials. They wouldn't care if he had had biology as long as he knew how to design an experiment and use a microscope. They wouldn't care if he had read Shakespeare as long as he was able to write clearly. (Think how much more interesting the student population would be! And think what a nightmare it would be to teach any classes that didn't start at the very beginning and procede from there.)

 

It isn't a perfect world. That means that in some sense, your child's home education has to arrive at approximately the same place as the rest of the student population. Therein lies the problem. It is a problem for the more creative of us even with ordinary children. The problem really is vast if we have cloud children.

 

I still think the answer is TWTM. It shows you how to have your cake and eat it too. You don't have to give up college and a well disciplined mind and just go with letting the child do whatever he wants. And you don't have to sit him down for 8 hours every day and cram textbooks into him. You do have to teach him how to work hard at something with self-discipline. I think you do your children a disfavour is you don't insist that they learn how to do this. School might not be the right place to do it, though. (We used gymnastics for teaching self-discipline and the learning/practising cycle.) These are the children who might not aquire academic skills if left to their own devices. They are creative enough and un-bored enough that they are able to find work-arounds to many rather severe academic deficiensies. Many of the great context oriented or hands-on oriented curriculums assume that children will somehow magically aquire those academic skills without being specifically taught them. Maybe yours will. Mine don't. Mine are capable of doing huge projects designed to teach a concept without ever catching on to what the concept was. At some level, yes, they probably got it, but the tricky bit about academics, the part that makes them academics, as far as I can see, is knowing that you know something and being able to explain it. TWTM assumes that your child needs specifically to be taught those academic skills, and shows you how to do that. It also shows you how to teach anything you want, any way you want. It tells you how to determine what the content of a standard class is (a spine). It tells you how to learn anything you please out of a book (read, outline, find examples or write a paper or discuss). You can make a list of skills to be learned and content to be covered, and then work on accomplishing the list in any order that makes sense. I have had the most success making a list, letting the child loose to play in the subject, then looking at the list and seeing what he's done. Then I either narrow the list and redefine the "class", or I work out what we can do that will cover the undone things.

 

I have to go do something else now, but I want to talk about my frustrations with this system, like output groan, and the problems with finding good books at the right level, and balancing their own learning time versus their learning-academic-skills time. I also want to talk about is really to force the big picture onto the puzzle pieces, SQ3R, speed reading, finding a live older child as a model, retaking classes, faith and output, the importance of keeping on building academic skills so you don't hit a wall, and setting hours. Maybe if I tell you what I have figured out, you can tell me where I can improve, and that will help me do a better job with my youngest. I am absolutely desperate to do a good job with him and really struggling.

 

-nan

[swimmermom3]

It is so difficult for us who are trying frantically make (impose?) a kind of order out of a child's interests to let go of chronological survey as the single way to determine "the right time" to do something. The right time is when a kid is interested and champing at the bit. To relegate that to something he must do in his "own" time, to consider it not as important as continuing on a schedule that "covers" all school subjects in a predetermined order, is what I continually find so problematic.

 

How awesomely brilliant that your ds is wanting to find out more about the unfolding of Islam and about the Taliban!

 

Do you think part of the problem is that it requires significantly more out of us as educators to utilize flexibility and creativity to tailor an interest or passion into some semblance of education? I'm not stating that right. Maybe an example would work better. All last year, Swimmer Dude wanted me to do something that required establishing a web site that he could administer. He wanted me to write curriculum or anything that would allow him to pursue his interest his interest and still call it "school." The whole project stalled.

 

Fast forward to my discussing with Elizabeth some potential projects her daughter could do that would build off of the ideas that you talked about in an earlier post. I realized that if Elizabeth's dd pulled these projects off, I wanted to see what she did as there is no way the Dude is going to be looking at Medieval fashion. We probably won't even get to do knightly things but will be following the money trail through the Crusades.:tongue_smilie:This evolved from "what would be the best way to share?' into "What if the kids doing medieval times had a web site to share projects?" Suddenly, we now have a way to tailor Dude's technological interest into a school project if we find souls brave enough to join us. There are several of us doing the Duke King Arthur study. Perhaps a chat room function could be utilized for a book club discussion? You get the idea. But shoot, this is far more difficult than opening a teacher's manual.

[elegantlion]

Our goal was a Monty Python education. Think of the literary and philosophical references. There's French as well as historical and scientific tidbits. And much laughter.

 

We were only pretending to follow The Well Trained Mind. ;)

 

Jane

 

The more Monty Python I watch, I more I realize how educated these men actually are. I wonder if their mothers ever sat and shook their heads thinking they had failed because they sent their sons to university for an education not to become comedians. I'm glad they stuck to their passion.

 

As I'm sitting here typing this, my son and his best friend are sitting at DS's computer using the CAD-thingy on the Lego website to design custom lego kits. When you're done, you can click a button to see what it would cost to actually order the kit. Well, now they've started clicking on other currencies to see what it would cost in other countries. They're rounding off the numbers and calculating the exchange rates in their heads (apparently 1 Czech something-or-other equals $.05), and then they're looking up the countries on the large world map above DS's desk.

 

I'm sitting here with the BIGGEST grin on my face, doing an invisible fist-pump and silently yelling YES!!! :D

 

Jackie

 

My son has spent the last day building a C-130 aircraft from Lego. That was original intent, now he realizes he doesn't have enough rounded pieces. He's now on the fourth incarnation and it looks more like a Republic gun ship.

 

I'm also loving this continued discussion. I struggle with wanted to fill my son's head with knowledge. Then I realize I'm 43 and I'm still learning. I can't expect him to know everything before he graduates high school.

 

I know one of my issues as we get to high school will be passions vs. the transcript. My natural inclination as a rule follower will be to remove the creativity and mold the perfectly ruled transcript. I need to be reminded of those of you who keep the creativity and modify the wording to make it fit what the colleges want to see.

 

Of course this upcoming year is already planned so that gives me time to consider future years. What about doing the Great Books with a child that doesn't love to read, but loves to be read to? Do I make him study ______(insert some Great Book name), when he'd have more enthusiasm if we spent a year studying warfare and modern weaponry? We went to an military aviation museum last year. We got to some model of some new weapon and he gave us a five minute talk all about it. He'd seen it on the military channel, I had no clue.

 

My mind can juggle a thousand scenarios at once (only briefly) and I *know* that the right path can look a hundred different ways. However add the little thought of "I only have one child, you only get this one chance to make his education right" and I find my thoughts spinning like an electron cloud.

 

Two weeks until school is supposed to start and I think we may have just added a move right into the middle of that. I think our flexibility is starting early this year.

 

My motto is: Blessed are the flexible for they will not be bent out of shape.

[Nan in Mass]

Yes. The things we've done best are the things where I have taken a ton of time, learned the material (or already knew it) and proceeded confidently to make that list (see the what I've learned post). They are the things where I can help efficiently, with a word or two in the right place"or the places where I know enough to be able to say, "I'm sorry but this is going to take a bit of time to explain, if you want to go further with this." They are not the subjects in which I have to say, "Hang on. Let me find a book to read about that (and where am I supposed to find the time to do that reading?). Then I'll get back to you." I always say that unschooling would work really well if I knew everything and had an infinite amount of time, but it is an awful lot of hard work for the parent if you want to do it well. I reserve the right to overtly teach my children something that I think they will need to know but which they can see no use for, and teach it at a time that is convenient for me. I have other children who also need me, and a husband, and parents, and animals, and a house.

-nan

[swimmermom3]

Nan, I've printed out your post. First, that way I have a copy for my WTM notebook and in particular, my "Nan file.":D Second, I need time to process and dry my eyes. :grouphug:

[Rosie_0801]

This is making me wonder how Nan's "Cloud children" matches up with the New Agey Indigo,Crystal and Star children. http://www.starchild.co.za/what.html

 

Not that that is important, I was just wondering and I'm terribly sleep deprived so I feel the need to babble instead of keeping it to myself.

 

I have a three year old who fits the Crystal child definition. I can't even teach her to speak because she thinks it is annoying. So, add me to the "ARGH What do I do with this child who isn't like ME" club.

 

Rosie- with this thread bookmarked and intentions to come and read it again in two years time, then probably monthly for the next 12-15.

[Corraleno]

The more Monty Python I watch, I more I realize how educated these men actually are. I wonder if their mothers ever sat and shook their heads thinking they had failed because they sent their sons to university for an education not to become comedians. I'm glad they stuck to their passion.

Yes, they were extremely well educated — Michael Palin & Terry Jones went to Oxford, and John Cleese, Graham Chapman, and Eric Idle went to Cambridge. My late FIL worked on Python's Meaning of Life, and DH met all the Pythons when he was a kid. I love Terry Jones, I'm looking forward to watching his medieval & barbarian documentaries with the kids this fall. His documentary on the history of numbers (The Story of 1) is lots of fun, too. I think Netflix has it.

 

Jackie

[Capt_Uhura]

I've been out all day and need time to catch up.:001_smile:

 

But something someone said....Swimmermom???.... brought me back to SWB's The Joy of Classical Education. In the last part, she distinguished between skills and content. In the content areas, she says to DUMP the textbooks. :D

 

 

Swimmermom....I LOVED LOVED the street crossing analogy. I'm the one dutifully waiting for the light to change but inwardly screaming "GO FOR IT!" And every once in a while I do!

[Capt_Uhura]

Do you think part of the problem is that it requires significantly more out of us as educators to utilize flexibility and creativity to tailor an interest or passion into some semblance of education? I'm not stating that right. Maybe an example would work better. All last year, Swimmer Dude wanted me to do something that required establishing a web site that he could administer. He wanted me to write curriculum or anything that would allow him to pursue his interest his interest and still call it "school." The whole project stalled.

 

Fast forward to my discussing with Elizabeth some potential projects her daughter could do that would build off of the ideas that you talked about in an earlier post. I realized that if Elizabeth's dd pulled these projects off, I wanted to see what she did as there is no way the Dude is going to be looking at Medieval fashion. We probably won't even get to do knightly things but will be following the money trail through the Crusades.:tongue_smilie:This evolved from "what would be the best way to share?' into "What if the kids doing medieval times had a web site to share projects?" Suddenly, we now have a way to tailor Dude's technological interest into a school project if we find souls brave enough to join us. There are several of us doing the Duke King Arthur study. Perhaps a chat room function could be utilized for a book club discussion? You get the idea. But shoot, this is far more difficult than opening a teacher's manual.

 

I do think this is heart of the problem for me!!! It is easier to have a map to follow rather than blazing your own trail. Blazing a trail takes a lot more energy than walking an already smooth and defined path. And you know the path will get you to where you want to be...... the trail I'm blazing might lead me over a cliff.

[Nan in Mass]

I live in a small town with no streetlights, and there were none where I grew up. I always forget to look to see if there are little sign thingies I am supposed to be following. Like most things, even when I notice them, I manage to mess them up. Either I forget to push the button, wait forever, and then finally dash when nobody is coming, or I push the wrong button, or I think I must have because it is taking forever, or everyone else dashes so I dash too, or something. I don't mean to break the law. I like the idea of taking turns. I just can't seem to manage it somehow. The same thing happens to curriculums. Even when I want to follow them, we somehow manage to mess them up. School was a nightmare for me because I always was afraid I would accidently do something wrong.

-Nan