Teaching "outside the box" - or "Now what?"

[swimmermom3]

The recent MCT and grammar thread has me pondering larger questions than can be resolved by changing curriculum. Many board member have been pushed to teach "outside the box" - going against traditional methods or curriculum or even current standards. Sometimes it is our own personalities rebelling against our youthful educational experiences, but most often, the needs of our particular children push us to the ledge and straight over.

 

What happens when learning disabilities, extreme giftedness, or quirky personalities push us to move beyond the norms in teaching? How did you get to that point? How did you make the change? What tools did you have on hand that help you? What tools do you feel you need? Where would you encourage someone that is struggling to start from?

 

This is really broad but I know sometimes I see wonderful posts about teaching "outside the box" and I think "Oh, I want to do that, but my gosh, look at her educational background, her financial resources...her saintliness.;)" "I could never do that." Let's talk about the nitty, gritty details. And please, educational theories are welcome. It was obvious, at least to me, from the other thread that a few of us are dying to talk about education on a deeper level.

[jvenice]

My theory on education is that curriculum is everything you do from start to finish and that we are not limited by what the publishers want us to do...they are constantly updating to try to sell us something and every publisher comes from a vantage point that may not be our own.

 

This type of education takes more planning, but you are in control. You take the standards that you want your kids to learn and then match materials to those standards. Most of the time it takes multiple materials to achieve this goal. Many of these materials are less expensive than going to a 'box' curriculum.

 

I hope this helps...it is more of a professional teaching style (lesson planning as a trained teacher) and may not be right for someone who is limited on time, but the rewards are tremendous and very specific to your goals.

[elegantlion]

I didn't enter homeschooling with any background on educational theory. Most of how I now teach is directly related to my son's needs. Reading LCC helped me strengthen what I feel is important in school so I could raise the bar for us.

 

When ds was in 3rd we realized he was having difficulty reading, it wasn't simple stubborness. I vowed at that point not to hold his other subjects back because reading was an issue. He has great comprehension and can see patterns in many things, so even grammar wasn't an issue. At that point we switched to an eclectic approach and I read higher level books as read alouds. All the while I fretted, read, and worked on how to increase his reading level.

 

We had to get out of the box simply because that is how is academic knowledge grew. It's like curly hair, as much as you want it to go one way, it's going to go in 15 regardless.

 

If my child had been progressing at an even rate our schooling would look very different. But we've had to modify, reevaluate, regroup, over and over and over.

 

I've also envied the "atmosphere of learning" some households seem to hold. My dh is not a big reader. He'll read online or about technology, but literature is not his thing. So much of the classical part of the education rests on my shoulders. My ds would never pick up another book if given the option. But he loves me reading to him.

 

I do believe in free time and ds uses his time on his own projects, most of which I am not involved. We don't have a huge budget and most of the time we can't afford outside activities so I feel fortunate that ds is not begging to do them. He's found a few computer related activities and probably has more computer/gaming freedom than other kids his age. Being into technology is just part of our family dynamic.

 

My family also has a strong independent streak. I hate being told how and what to do and it's my natural inclination to tweak anything.

 

My son is a big why kid. He has never quit asking why, we just discussed this yesterday. During logic he told me ,"So many whys, so little time." So we follow some of the rabbit trails in thought and generally they lead us halfway across the galaxy from where I meant for us to go. But he's learning and wondering. You know that song. "I hope you never lose your sense of wonder" ? Well that is what I want for my child so, by way of his brain, many of subjects end up not looking like the traditional WTM or even LCC way.

 

I have one child and one chance to help him with his education. I know we won't get it all done in 12 years. I try to keep my goals to a minimum but high up the ladder. Such as Latin through high school, math through this level, learn to write and communicate well. But I allow his wanderings to become a part of the overall educational goals. Many of those are still forming and some days I feel like I'm running a circus for reluctant boys and distracting dogs.

 

His educational journey is much more interesting than mine ever was. My goal is that someday he truly understand and appreciate that. Today may not be that day, but we'll try again tomorrow.

[jvenice]

It sounds wonderful to me...like what Charlotte Mason calls "An Abundant Feast." You are doing what is working for your situation and allowing him to explore things that interest him while keeping an eye on where you want him to go in other subjects.

[JennW in SoCal]

So you want the nitty gritty details of how to handle education outside of the box? Or how I've handled things outside of the box? There is one caveat. It really isn't something that can be replicated by following someone's step by step instructions as it more of a mindset, a way of living life.

 

I approached homeschooling the way I approached being the mom of a toddler. Sounds silly, I know, but think about how a toddler views life. Everything is new and interesting and worth stopping to look at, touch and maybe break. Rules are an infuriating intrusion into life. A soft blankie and read aloud time makes everything better. As the mom of a toddler you build in lots of time to play with and explore all those interesting things in the world, you deal with their tantrums with a modicum of patience, and you spend long hours reading aloud.

 

When my oldest was in 1st, his teacher commented on how much I must have done with him because he had such a broad base of general knowledge. She and I were both stumped that he was struggling in the classroom when he was clearly a bright and inquisitive kid. When I finally pulled him out of school, I decided I should stick with my strong points -- the way I had always mothered seemed to be giving my boys a strong basic education, so why change anything?

 

(I hope this is coherent -- I'm still getting over the flu and am a little spacey today.)

 

So. How does the toddler approach look for a middle schooler, since this is the board we are on??

 

That enthusiasm for exploring the world evaporated for a time during the middle school years. But following their interests was always the most important aspect to our homeschool journey so they had theater classes and science classes and various field trips. I used my Aspie's obsession with all things Disney as an educational tool. He followed Disney stock, planned fantasy vacations complete with budgets and maps. He made up word problems using anything Disney, such as average wait times at Tower of Terror in July. For my other son I found art classes and science classes, although there was very little appropriate for him in the middle school years. All too often the classes were babyish or had age restrictions.

 

Once they were old enough (13 -14) they each found mentors and did volunteer work that interested them. My oldest started working on the tech team at church and is now a paid employee, and my youngest apprenticed with an electrical engineer and occasionally is asked to come work for a day.

 

The skills part of education, which in our house was math and writing, was the unfair intrusion into their happy go lucky life. I didn't do lots of formal grammar, but preferred to use the editing of their writing as a means to reinforce grammar, punctuation and spelling. They could do work sheets perfectly but not apply it to their writing, so why waste time with the work sheets? Dictation and narrations are a terrific tool for this. Games are great for grammar, too. Try diagramming silly Mad Libs sentences.

 

Reading aloud or listening together to audio books was a daily part of our school. While they also had assigned reading (I loosely followed the WTM history cycle), the most important books, the ones I most remember, were those we shared. It is my most fond memory of the middle school years, even though they rolled their eyes and groaned each day it was time to sit and read together, and they jumped up and escaped the second it was all done. It was the time while reading that was special -- stopping and discussing, explaining what something was (kids don't know about water marks in stationery!). We also watched old movies together, and Lost!! We had a field day with Lost, discussing our theories and the literary references in the show.

 

I didn't do any formal history or science courses until high school, as both subjects were naturally covered through their interests, our activities and reading. I don't worry about gaps. They have a lifetime and the tools to fill those gaps. They are kind of young men I wanted to turn loose in the world: articulate, knowledgeable, and engaging young men who are continuing their educations.

 

Is that nitty gritty enough?

Edited January 19, 2011 by JennW in SoCal

[Guest]

The very first day I did official homeschool, dd resisted my wonderful plans with so much strenuousness -- she had so many, many other things she wanted to do, like hanging up stuffed animals on the ends of umbrella sections and spinning them around for a ferris wheel, or painting her whole body with finger paints and lying down on paper to make prints -- that after resorting to going out for an early dinner so I could drink wine to recover and she could color on the tablecloth, I finally got round to ONE thing on my list. The next day I met with similar resistance. So on the spur of the moment I turned what I had planned into a joint game. THIS met with enthusiastic approval. The next day dd had ideas to add to the plans (now in game form). By the second or third week she was running the show.

 

This is kind of how my introduction to out-of-the-box education went: I was pulled my my dd and I was kicking and screaming all the way. It was only after a couple of months that I realized how good she was at making up activities that actually accomplished exactly what I wanted her to be learning, and more than I'd never thought of, that I was able to give it a good look and relax a bit. And it was only a couple of years later that I was able to understand how dd's mind worked enough to recognize, as one poster above said so wonderfully, that you may be able to straighten curly hair with a great deal of effort each morning, but it's still going to be curly hair.

 

Having a non-conventional thinker who was clearly a whole lot brighter and also more troubled than I was made me realize that educational theories and pedagogies in general are typically formed top-down: that is, the actual child, the type of mind the child has, comes last into play, if it is considered at all. If you start with a top-down theory, as does TWTM (and this is NOT a blast at TWTM, which I think has many things to offer a great many people), what you have is a theory that is based -- naturally enough -- on the way YOU think and see the world. I think pretty well everybody grows up assuming that how they think and process is the way everyone else does, barring contact with a close family member of friend who is clearly, utterly different. You get used to thinking this way, and if you are a fairly conventional left-brained, parts-to-whole, however-you-want-to-phrase-it thinker, the education system as a whole supports, reinforces, and rewards that kind of thinking. Kids who think differently struggle, flunk or drop out, learn to think of themselves as stupid -- and equally tragically, OTHERS think this about them. "These" kids, I hear, will "hold others back," slow them down, destroy the intellectual integrity and progress of the "best" kids. And this stems from a train of thought that defines "best" as "my way" and considers that if one very select way of teaching doesn't reach others, they are therefore not bright, they don't belong in those classrooms. We end up with a very narrow, selective, and ultimately destructive vision of what constitutes intelligence and how people ought to think.

 

On the other hand, some of us have been forced to start with the child, to learn to understand the workings of very different kinds of minds from our own, and to find ways to nurture them. This doesn't mean that the actual goals for our kids are different -- although they may be. It doesn't mean that we eschew all formal curricula -- although we might. It means that we do what works best, what preserves a love of learning, what addresses our children's strengths and weaknesses.

 

For instance, my dd is prone to both startling mental creativity and rigidity of thought. It's an uncomfortable combination and I never know which I'm facing. But early on, a psychologist told me that the best thing I could do for her would be to practice, model, teach, and use flexibility of thought in every single thing, across all subjects. So the sameness of TWTM model, with its emphasis on incremental progress, parts-to-whole thinking, and repetitive practice of skills doesn't work for my dd on any level whatever, from the intellectual to the socially and emotionally adaptive. I haven't tossed out each and every thing from TWTM, but if I do utilize an aspect of its program, it's not because I am wedded to the program but because I have found this works for dd.

 

Anyway, as dd had severe dysgraphia as a young child I had to find other ways to work besides usual workbooks and writing. Even math had to be done differently. What I found was, at least FOR THIS CHILD, all the supposed wisdom and assumptions I had formed or heard about the need for incremental teaching in math, practice in writing, and much more, was not at all the fact for us. Dd learned multiplication and basic algebra before she had her addition facts down (not to mention subtraction). She taught herself cursive although I'd been told she'd never learn it. She begged me not to "ruin" the "surprise" of a Shakespeare performance by telling her what it was about beforehand. I mean literally everything was out of the order I'd always assumed her education would take; and there is not a single thing I can think of that she learned parts-to-whole fashion outside of physical things like ice skating and riding a horse. She needs to be explicitly taught, incrementally, in those areas. But nothing else proceeded as I had ever imagined.

 

The traditional rules and aphorisms of education may certainly apply to many, even most people. They certainly did not apply to my daughter. This is one of the most important lessons I've ever learned in my life: that other minds take in the world and learn from it in ways I cannot imagine because mine does not do that. But this does not mean that other ways are not real, valid, and even more efficient or joyous than mine.

 

Lisa, this is more abstract than I'm sure you were looking for, but I've posted a lot on other threads about alternative ways to do math, etc. If there is something specific you'd like to ask please do. If you would like more day-to-day stuff about what we do now that dd is in 9th grade, just say the word. I hope LOTS of people tell their stories and introduce us to ways their children work and how the moms have dealt with this. And Lisa, please be one of them! I am always envious of the marvelous discussions you seem to have in your household. Having an inherently cautious and anxious child, I get relatively few of those -- that's one other cherished educational ideal I've had to let go of. Dd also mulls a lot, and I hear what she's thinking at the end of some invisible process, whereas I chew it all up and spit it out by talking or writing (drives dd crazy).

[Carol in Cal.]

One thing that helped me with this was talking curriculum with teachers. I love curriculum. I analyse it. Studying curricula is the main reason I go to the occasional homeschool conference--something I didn't ever do at all until I had been homeschooling for 6-7 years.

 

What I found out in talking with teachers is that they largely don't compare curricula. They take what they have been given, and what they think they should teach, and make it work. The curricula are just tools, and not the only ones that they use to teach the material.

 

Additionally, early on I looked at a standard publisher public school language arts curriculum, and about $500 worth of materials into first grade stuff, I still couldn't for the life of me figure out what they were getting at. I realized that that curriculum was just plain not going to work for me, and I sought what I needed elsewhere, though libraries and TWTM and other resources. I started a pattern that I have followed ever since--I got firmly into my head an overview of what I wanted to convey, and kept that in mind as I looked at materials, taught, and discussed things. In other words, I became a teacher rather than a regurgitator of curricula.

 

Now, I do use math curricula very closely, although I extend beyond it as needed. And I do assign things as well.

 

But I am still the teacher, the curriculum is not. And I am teaching my own child, and occasionally some other coop children--not some theoretical children from some book on educational or development theory.

 

That's why I'm untethered. I'm the master. These materials are tools in my hand, not replacements for me.

[Guest]

Yes, it's me again. It just occurred to me in re-reading Jenn's post that one thing she and I have discussed repeatedly is that all too often middle school and high school education is approached as something that happens at a desk or table rather than out in the world. Just at the age when kids are old enough, interested, and responsible enough to engage in the real world, we lock them down with more hours at the desk, pencils in their sweaty hands.

 

Like Jenn's sons, my dd found an apprenticeship of sorts at around age twelve. We can't afford to own or lease a horse, so dd began to work part-time at the stables to earn extra lessons, and the loan of a horse for a few shows. This has grown and morphed over the years. Now dd teaches younger kids in the summers at riding camp, is taking occasional classes in basic horse first-aid, and is beginning to learn about training. She has learned how to shave a horse's coat, watched the farrier, the vet, the horse chiropractor and acupuncturist.

 

Now this may seem to be thoroughly and utterly "non-academic." But the bizarre thing is that it has produced the most unexpected academic results -- unexpected to me, at any rate.

 

For one thing, working has improved dd's core strength and hand strength, which I hold responsible for an amazing leap in her handwriting ability at around age thirteen, after she'd begun working regularly.

 

This past December, the horse with whom dd was utterly in love was sold to another barn, and in her great grief dd stopped riding for a month or so. At the same time, she began to find "school" work undo-able. She couldn't make herself be interested or do what she had done with great ease a month before.

 

Two weeks ago we finally got her back on another horse. After two lessons, all of a sudden she began to do her work willingly, if not with enthusiasm, and she even seems to THINK better.

 

Yes, part of this is the lifting of depression. But some of it seems to go beyond that -- the bond with the horse is actually conducive to learning in some way. Has anyone read The Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson, the story of his autistic son and the way his relationship with a horse triggered his son's talking? I met Rupert Isaacson a year or so ago and heard him speak; the interesting thing for me was that he teaches his son his lessons ON HORSEBACK. They do school on a horse -- they even have a lap desk the child can use while riding (at a walk, obviously).

 

Well, this opens up all kinds of fascinating possibilities for me: it makes me realize how little attention we pay in general to the neurological links between body and mind, to the emotional components of learning.

[Karen in CO]

I am an accidental homeschooler. I don't have a philosophy or theory behind what I do. I started because I was loosing my very bright son in public middle school. Our parent-teacher conferences had always been, "Tony is very bright, but..." One day on the phone with his vice-principal, out of blue, I told her I'd be picking him up, and he would not be returning. I knew two homeschooling families that both used sonlight so that is where I started. My main goal was saving him, not educating him.

 

We spent six months doing basically nothing except reading and trying to find something he was interested in. Then we tried Sonlight, AO and a bazillion other things. Over the years, that bazillion things resulted in an education.

 

What we did successfully was find something he was interested in and spend a lot of time reading and talking. His professors love him for the same reasons his ps teachers thought he was trouble. He has taught me everything I know about education.

 

One of my most recent lessons was on the value of good books or great books. In high school I pushed and pulled him through a tremedous list of GBs. When he went to college, he "discovered" how brilliant Socrates was and how mind-blowing Frankenstein was. The boy actually asked ME if I had read it. Seriously? He wrote a brillant paper on it in 11th grade. I know, deep down, that reading it the first time prepared him better to appreciate it when he was older. However, I spent a lot of energy getting him to read it. I have a lesson in there somewhere that I am still trying to figure out. I do know that I will be assigning fewer books for the next two and have them work on them more deeply.

 

Right at this moment, my older dd is lying on the floor of my office reading while the younger is playing under my desk. I seriously believe that if they do their math and spend the rest of the day reading, playing and talking, that they will have a terrific education. I am not an unschooler or even a relaxed educator. I assign work, poetry to memorize, books and projects to the kids, but I know that they will learn best if they are working on a project that they chose.

 

In the end, what saved my son was finding a passion. I just read with him and talked to him while he was looking for it.

[HappyGrace]

I always love reading about this!

 

In theory, I had this year all set up to work that way. But I found that in reality, my dc are too far apart in age to pursue it (dd11 is more like on a 7th grade level or more, and ds7 is an on-level 2nd grader.) I tried this year using TOG very loosely to combine them in content areas, so we could all read together and discuss and pursue any and all rabbit trails in history and science, and tie things together and drink it all in. I did this with older dd when it was just her and we loved it.

 

But now with two so far apart intellectually, there is just not enough of *me* to go around to do this exploration learning. I tried it all this fall. If I shot for the middle, dd was bored silly. If I shot high, ala Marva Collins, ds just totally glazed over (and I'm not talking Shakespeare; I'm talking he got lost trying to follow "The Golden Goblet")

 

And they are not the type that will do out of the box learning on their own AT ALL. They are both linear thinkers that do what's in front of them happily, but it would not occur to them to pursue things on their own. But they love to go on rabbit trails out of the box with me and can be taken into much deeper and more intense interesting ground when we go there together. Even the 2nd grader would be able to go much deeper if I could have the time to do with him what I did with dd when she was that age.

 

I am very comfortable using curriculum to fit our needs, making up my own things to suit us, knowing how to extend learning into areas of interest, etc., so that's not the problem.

 

But there is only so much time in the day. I'm feeling stretched now just to get their basics done, but longing for this out of the box learning.

 

I just can't wrap my head around how to pursue this so they each get what they need on their own level. Combining then was my solution to the time crunch, and that didn't work.

 

Have people been able to make this work with children far apart in age? Or are most people doing this with an only, or dc close together?

 

Great thread!

[elegantlion]

In the end, what saved my son was finding a passion. I just read with him and talked to him while he was looking for it.

 

Thank you. This has been one of those weeks when I wonder if I am simply teaching myself. It's reassuring* to hear the above comment.

 

 

 

*reassuring as brought to tears because I really needed this today.

[Guest]

I just can't wrap my head around how to pursue this so they each get what they need on their own level. Combining then was my solution to the time crunch, and that didn't work.

 

Have people been able to make this work with children far apart in age? Or are most people doing this with an only, or dc close together?

 

Great thread!

 

Lisa is doing this in some areas with her two children... Lisa, tell us how you make it work!

[Another Lynn]

I always love reading about this!

 

But there is only so much time in the day. I'm feeling stretched now just to get their basics done, but longing for this out of the box learning.

 

I just can't wrap my head around how to pursue this so they each get what they need on their own level. Combining then was my solution to the time crunch, and that didn't work.

 

Have people been able to make this work with children far apart in age? Or are most people doing this with an only, or dc close together?

 

Great thread!

 

:iagree: Great question!

 

I am marching my middle three through their various assignments and it seems okay that there are not a plethora of bunny trails in their day. But my oldest.... oh my... so many changes this year. He has always loved history, but everything I've tried this year has been "boring." He reads plenty, but I want more output. One day I would love to assign narrations, summaries, and outlines ad nauseum thinking that writing will be automatic someday... the next day I want to bring more purpose and thinking into our writing... show him that analyzing and proving something can be fun. I have changed my mind quicker than the UPS guy can get here with it. (I like the "P90X muscle confusion" concept CaptUhura mentioned in Testimony's math thread! That's my story and I'm sticking to it! :D)

 

Anyway, I love the idea of teaching outside the box, but I struggle with where to put the bar and how to enforce it.

[Guest]

I'm interested also in whether and to what extent people find that their kids absorb conventional academic material through other means. It seems as though every single time I ask dd whether she knows a word, or has heard of a historical figure, or knows about whatever concept from physics, she'll invariably know it -- but not from having studied it or come across it in a textbook.

 

Terry Pratchett's satiric fantasies have acquainted her with such things as Schroedinger's cat; when she was younger she told me that she knew what suicide meant because "I HAVE read Sherlock Holmes, you know, Mother" (silly mom); she'll remember historical events or figures because they were referred to in a musical and she'll have looked them up... the list goes on and on.

 

At some point I had to figure that I could try force-feeding through conventional means, which would result in her brain setting being turned to "sieve," or I could allow her to keep it on "osmosis" and she would apparently absorb much conventional material apparently through the air.

 

This means that we do VERY little resembling regular academics, so as to free her time up for her own quirky research and reading.

 

I would not have done well under such a program myself. I was an intellectual curious person, but I did not EVER read with such alertness and awareness as she does until much later in my life. Even when she was little dd was an active reader and listener in a way that I was not; I let the story flow over me pretty passively, but she was always speculating, commenting, repeating passages, making comparisons. I saw no point in quenching that by asking her to read things of my choosing pretty well through middle school. I'd bring all kinds of material to her attention in the library and bookstore, but her reading was almost entirely of her choice until then. Of course, I had it easy, because her choices included Shakespeare, Doyle, Dickens, Wodehouse, Swift, Anglo-Saxon riddles. It's only in 9th grade that I've been asking her to read to a certain program, and I'm not really sure whether it's been a success. But I go into periodic convulsions of worry over what she "should" read, even as I see in front of me the efficacy of her own choices. One of the hardest things for me continues to be the letting go of control, at some moments more than others.

[elegantlion]

My son has learned a lot of science by osmosis. Early this week I was evaluating how awful we've been about actually doing science for the last few years. Then I realized he spent hours as a young child watching Emeril and Alton Brown. He knows what happens to food. He watched of his own desire, I don't even like to cook. He's watched every Mythbusters ever created, science channel, etc.

 

He's learned so much from watching Star Trek, I kid not. Every episode of every series, except the original series. I can't count the number of times I've said "Remember in that episode of Star Trek..."

 

We used to live where nature study literally fell in our laps at least once a week.

 

I will often get the "I know that," followed by my "Where did you learn that?" comment.

 

That's one of the reason I protect his free time. Who I am to get in the way of his education? :tongue_smilie:

[justamouse]

I am an accidental homeschooler. I don't have a philosophy or theory behind what I do. I started because I was loosing my very bright son in public middle school. Our parent-teacher conferences had always been, "Tony is very bright, but..." One day on the phone with his vice-principal, out of blue, I told her I'd be picking him up, and he would not be returning. I knew two homeschooling families that both used sonlight so that is where I started. My main goal was saving him, not educating him.

 

This is exactly how I started. From there I went horribly, horribly wrong. I had read TWTM, made myself a schedule and took my pressured kid and applied more pressure until he exploded.

 

Then, thinking that I had just not applied enough pressure (the beatings will continue until morale improves?), I tried the same exact thing again, and he exploded again. (Yes, I'm thick) After that, I let him go. I gave him and I time off. I learned to let go of that destructive fear that said, "If I do not do it exactly SO I will ruin him forever."

 

He fought me so much though by that point that he ended up going back to school (at the same grade he should have been in as opposed to when I took him out he was going to be 'staying back'). He failed PS another year, then signed himself out, took the GED and passed with an almost perfect score.

 

So did my applying that pressure pay off? If you look at it from a purely academic standpoint, yes. But I had not only ruined our relationship-I had destroyed his love of learning. So to me, it was a failure. He is now my most troubled child now, too.

 

That's why I homeschool the way I do. We follow the AO schedule *for the most part*. I allow as many rabbit trails and tangents as they like. My children are allowed as much time as they want to pursue their passions. Art, robotics and engineering, biology, just being, sportsman and Fancy Nancy.

 

They read (and I've bent over backwards to cultivate that in them-Junie B? bring it on), do nature study, Singapore math, loose science, read some more, poetry, and a slow and deep great books a la AO.

 

What happens when learning disabilities, extreme giftedness, or quirky personalities push us to move beyond the norms in teaching? How did you get to that point? How did you make the change? What tools did you have on hand that help you? What tools do you feel you need? Where would you encourage someone that is struggling to start from?

 

I had no other tools than knowing what way NOT to go and the love of my kids to do better and keep trying. So I kept reading about homeschooling theories and I went down my own rabbit trails-it all served a purpose. How would I start? Get a few books on schooling from every spectrum for yourself, have long conversations with your kids about what they love and listen very carefully to what they speak with passion about. Then lay out a buffet and see where it takes you. Edited January 20, 2011 by justamouse

[lewelma]

Bravewriter made me think about LIVING academics throughout your day. The way she experiences Language Arts in her life is the way I experience science and math. My kids don't need a science curriculum or to develop scientific thinking because I can't help but encourage it, model it, love it all day long. Although I never bought her curriculum, I read Julie's blog for a few months. I used her ideas to create a language arts lifestyle just like I do naturally with science. At first I had to really try to remember to notice a great word that my child used, or share a thrill in a fun metaphor my son found in a book. But the more I did it, the more it became natural, and the more my children tried to show me cool stuff or try to use cool words. I still use curriculum, but it really seems to be only half of what they remember.

 

So, a math and science lifestyle are natural to me, but the language arts lifestyle I have had to learn. Art, however, I outsource!

 

Ruth in NZ

[swimmermom3]

My theory on education is that curriculum is everything you do from start to finish and that we are not limited by what the publishers want us to do...they are constantly updating to try to sell us something and every publisher comes from a vantage point that may not be our own.

 

This type of education takes more planning, but you are in control. You take the standards that you want your kids to learn and then match materials to those standards. Most of the time it takes multiple materials to achieve this goal. Many of these materials are less expensive than going to a 'box' curriculum.

 

I hope this helps...it is more of a professional teaching style (lesson planning as a trained teacher) and may not be right for someone who is limited on time, but the rewards are tremendous and very specific to your goals.

 

There is not a single point on here I would disagree with except perhaps that it is lesson planning a trained teacher. Most of us have limited time, so what I want to know is the process of getting out of the box.

 

Oh dear! This isn't sounding quite right but oftentimes on this board, you see those in the box and those out of the box, but not really the process in between. There are those home school teachers who start at the beginning of their journey way out in left field, but many meander that way on their journey, dabbling here and there as their child or the inner urgings push them. Does that make sense?

[prairiegirl]

I am an 'out of the box-er wannabe.' My children all have learning difficulties and I can see where giving them this kind of education would be beneficial to them but it is SO hard to let go of the kind of education that I had already planned for them. I have never been a workbook-textbook kind of hs mom. We use living books quite heavily and I am now quite comfortable teaching without a curriuclum. But I still hold tightly to the 4 yr. history and science cycle. If we did things out of the box, I would have to give up the cycles and that is scary for me.

 

I already have next year planned for my oldest but I have been dreaming about her Gr. 8 year. I would love to do a food history course for her. She loves to cook and bake and I can justify doing this as this would be our last hurrah before high school. I have poured over Jackie's food history list on Amazon. I am in the process of reading through the list to pick out the books that would work well for my dd. We will do a world history survey through these books as well as coordinating literature for the various time frames. I would also incorporate science (Alton Brown books, How to Read a French Fry,) economics, nutrition and geography.

 

I get very excited just thinking about all of these plans, then comes a wave of fear. It would be so much easier to follow an already made book list rather than go out on this kind of limb. I hope that I have the courage to tread into this new way of learning. I can see that this would open things up for all of my children. If I only have the courage...

[Guest]

He's learned so much from watching Star Trek, I kid not. Every episode of every series, except the original series. I can't count the number of times I've said "Remember in that episode of Star Trek..."

 

 

We also used Star Trek as a major source of learning. One year my dd was so obsessed by Star Trek that we did Star Trek math (I turned all her word problems into Star Trek problems, and NEVER did so much math get done in our household); we read about the Klingon Language Institute and discussed grammar via Klingon; dd read books about the making of the movies from writing the scripts to post-production; and we discussed things from the series endlessly as associated issues came up -- political, social, scientific. Star Trek is a golden tool that is sadly overlooked as belonging "simply" to popular culture.

 

But -- you didn't do the original series?????

[Guest]

I get very excited just thinking about all of these plans, then comes a wave of fear. It would be so much easier to follow an already made book list rather than go out on this kind of limb. I hope that I have the courage to tread into this new way of learning. I can see that this would open things up for all of my children. If I only have the courage...

 

Your plans sound great; but I understand the fear part. And actually, even once you make the breakaway, it is possible to be periodically revisited by doubt and fear.

 

That is why threads like this are important. We can show each other that we have finally dared to deviate, to go into the unknown... and for the most part, not only has it been all right, but it has been infinitely better than when we tried to mold our kids into the conventional shape -- better for them, better for us. Some people like Jenn have young adults to show for it and can perhaps alleviate our fears about the future.

[Caitilin]

KarenAnne, in reading the post where you discuss your dd's horse-riding, and how that has been such a good thing for her, I was reminded of a documentary on dogs that dh and I watched recently. One of the findings was that people who have dogs are healthier, both physically and emotionally; they found that the petting of dogs stimulated the production of oxytocin in the brains of BOTH the human and the dog, in ways which mirror that of a nursing couple. I imagine that the same thing must be happening to your dd and the horse! No wonder it's such a beneficial thing for her. (I love synchronicity!)

[swimmermom3]

I'm interested also in whether and to what extent people find that their kids absorb conventional academic material through other means. It seems as though every single time I ask dd whether she knows a word, or has heard of a historical figure, or knows about whatever concept from physics, she'll invariably know it -- but not from having studied it or come across it in a textbook.

 

 

 

The Simpsons! There. Now you all know my deep, dark, educational secret. Swimmer Dude, who does not care to read in his off time, is prompted to ask numerous questions after watching the Simpsons. He routinely introduces new vocabulary words into his papers that come from...the Simpsons. I don't mean "bad words"; I mean MCT quality words.

[Capt_Uhura]

Happy Grace - let's meet for coffee!!! I could have written your post....albeit less eloquently. I have a 5th grader and a 2nd grader who luckily I can combine in most things.... and the kink in the chain is my 4yr old. She makes read alouds difficult. This week I'm supposed to write a schedule so that everyone knows what is expected of him/her at each hour. I really need to stretch my 5th grader and do more exploration stuff w/ my 2nd grader....and meet DDs needs as well who begs me everyday to read to her, teach her to read, do math with her. I try to give her attention (playtime) in case it's the one on one time she's craving rather than academics. Yet, she spends HOURS writing words and sounding them out, and counting things, and writing numbers, and drawing.....I need a clone!

 

I always love reading about this!

 

In theory, I had this year all set up to work that way. But I found that in reality, my dc are too far apart in age to pursue it (dd11 is more like on a 7th grade level or more, and ds7 is an on-level 2nd grader.) I tried this year using TOG very loosely to combine them in content areas, so we could all read together and discuss and pursue any and all rabbit trails in history and science, and tie things together and drink it all in. I did this with older dd when it was just her and we loved it.

 

But now with two so far apart intellectually, there is just not enough of *me* to go around to do this exploration learning. I tried it all this fall. If I shot for the middle, dd was bored silly. If I shot high, ala Marva Collins, ds just totally glazed over (and I'm not talking Shakespeare; I'm talking he got lost trying to follow "The Golden Goblet")

 

And they are not the type that will do out of the box learning on their own AT ALL. They are both linear thinkers that do what's in front of them happily, but it would not occur to them to pursue things on their own. But they love to go on rabbit trails out of the box with me and can be taken into much deeper and more intense interesting ground when we go there together. Even the 2nd grader would be able to go much deeper if I could have the time to do with him what I did with dd when she was that age.

 

I am very comfortable using curriculum to fit our needs, making up my own things to suit us, knowing how to extend learning into areas of interest, etc., so that's not the problem.

 

But there is only so much time in the day. I'm feeling stretched now just to get their basics done, but longing for this out of the box learning.

 

I just can't wrap my head around how to pursue this so they each get what they need on their own level. Combining then was my solution to the time crunch, and that didn't work.

 

Have people been able to make this work with children far apart in age? Or are most people doing this with an only, or dc close together?

 

Great thread!

[Guest]

One of the findings was that people who have dogs are healthier, both physically and emotionally; they found that the petting of dogs stimulated the production of oxytocin in the brains of BOTH the human and the dog, in ways which mirror that of a nursing couple. /QUOTE]

 

That's astounding -- particularly the last phrase there. I knew all this was good for dd but I didn't think to imagine what it was like for the horse!

[Carol in Cal.]

It occurs to me that I should probably say that I regard much of TWTM as 'out of the box'. Maybe that's not the working definition for this thread, though. The use of history and the trivium as organizing principles, the use of integrated humanities, etc. are key principles of TWTM and areas where it is at odds with a conventional education and also with any curriculum that I have ever seen. So in that sense, it's 'out of the box'.

 

Separating language arts into different components, including coaching in writing poetry and fiction as well as non-fiction, and tying literature choices to what is going on around here are ways that I have personalized TWTM's recommendations for our specific circumstances. But I still use those methods, I just apply them a bit differently; and having heard SWB speak more than once I am confident that she would be the first to say that that is a perfectly reasonable interpretation of how she thinks people should homeschool.

 

I've also looked for one day per week learning opportunities that include other children--nature awareness programs, coops, teacher-led focus classes that cover some aspect of social studies and combine it with art and literature, etc. have always been a part of homeschooling my only child. This was a big time sacrifice, but broadened her education while exposing her to other children and teachers to a limited but notable extent.

[Guest]

It occurs to me that I should probably say that I regard much of TWTM as 'out of the box'. Maybe that's not the working definition for this thread, though. The use of history and the trivium as organizing principles, the use of integrated humanities, etc. are key principles of TWTM and areas where it is at odds with a conventional education and also with any curriculum that I have ever seen. So in that sense, it's 'out of the box'.

 

Now that is interesting to me, and I can see how you would perceive and categorize it this way. It's hard to remember back far enough into my foggy past, but I can remember feeling much the same way when I first read TWTM, when dd was very young. And I'm sure that for many kids (and their homeschooling parents) this kind of education is indeed a glorious release from the grinding routine of public schools and state-sanctioned curricula. For many kids it seems to work particularly well during the early elementary years and give them many areas in which to pursue interests, be curious, and have fun.

 

Since dd, though, I have looked around at a number of private middle and high schools that use integrated curricula, or organize a year's work around "big questions" -- such as who owns water, does might make right, etc. -- and avoid textbooks for as many classes as possible. So TWTM isn't as unusual or different to me as it would have been say, ten or fifteen years ago when it first occurred to me to look around at all types of schools in our city.

 

However, there are many elements of TWTM that for my particular dd end up being just as much of a box. These include the insistence that math be learned incrementally, that reading be taught through phonics (dd taught herself to read while I wasn't looking and does not read OR spell phonetically), that writing be taught in a certain progression and that "creative" writing is something kids do apart from "school", that the entire curriculum be largely approached through desk-bound reading and writing, that grammar be taught fairly formally throughout elementary and middle school, that the teacher explicitly instructs and corrects her students, standing in a position of unquestioned and non-negotiable authority over them in their learning. (All those quotes about doing this or that because it's good for you and I as the parent and teacher know best because of all my experience... that approach rarely proves beneficial for me or for dd.)

 

I do think that as SWB has refined her methods over the years and begun giving more informal talks, what seems rigid in the book has become more flexible, and people are naturally urged to do what works best -- but still, within the overall structure and non-negotiable components of the program. For many kids who are different in whatever way, from LDs to processing issues to simply radically different ways of perceiving and learning, TWTM still seems to me confining and restrictive/prescriptive.

 

With my particular dd at home and with some alternative schools I've found after YEARS of searching, many of educational assumptions get flipped completely. For some kids, academics plays second-fiddle to life skills or creative work in music, playwriting, robotics, etc. The schools do not consider out-of-school activities like field trips, travel, handwork, artistic performances, or a whole range of other possibilities as enrichment or supplements, something that happens after school as a hobby, but as foundational to learning, and JUST AS VALID ACADEMICALLY as sitting parsing a verb or analyzing a poem or doing a chapter of math. One school required graduating seniors not only to have followed a four-year course of an academic interest of their own but to also have acquired and learned a trade or other skills, ranging from scuba diving to plumbing to training horses. Another required all kids to take two semester of work training dogs, learning about the ways dogs learn, reading their body language, working as a team with their dog.

 

None of these ideas is going to fit every kid, or even every different kid, or even every kid within a certain sub-group of differences (such as Aspies or dyslexics). But what they have in common, which makes TWTM a "box" in comparison, is a much wider view of what constitutes an education and ways of pursuing that outside ANY text-based, desk-based curriculum. They don't NOT do conventional academic work, but they may approach it very differently or weight it much differently in relation to other skills and learning.

 

My dd is basically an intellectually-driven kid, although she is not at all motivated to succeed at conventional academic tasks; and I went through the conventional system and got a PhD. But one of the lessons I have learned from her and from other kids is just how narrow my academic education really is out there in the wider world. This isn't to say that what I learned conventionally is useless; of course it's not. Some of it has been enormous beneficial, and not just in terms of employment. But it's limited. The more I learn with dd, the more limited my own background seems and the more the world opens up, and with it, my definition of education. I think this is largely because with her I have a new perspective, that of an outsider looking in -- here's this wonderful, vibrant, intelligent little person beside me who doesn't operate in ways that translate to what academia or formal schooling requires -- and this came to eventually include TWTM's philosophy. Once you are outside the charmed circle you begin to recognize it for the closed circle it indeed is. It might be a very large circle, able to stretch and fit a whole lot of kids. But not all.

[1Togo]

How is this for "outside the box"? During the early years of our country, especially in the New England states, the literacy rates were high. Yet, parents and even small town schools accomplished this with few books; i.e. the Bible, Webster's "Blue-backed" Speller, etc. Think about it. No shelves full of curriculum or internet for research and forums.

[Corraleno]

When DS started school at 6.5, half way through 1st grade, his teacher said that his reading and math skills were ahead of grade level, and his knowledge of science was "scary." This despite the fact that we never "did school" — I taught him to read by playing with magnetic letters on the fridge and reading lots and lots of books, and he learned math with plastic numbers and lots of counting and playing and talking about things. He learned science by looking at books and watching documentaries and asking millions of questions from the moment he could talk. He was an insatiably curious little sponge who would blow people away with monologues about the 27 moons of Uranus or the evolution of Devonian fish. Then he started school.

 

When I pulled him out of school, at 10, he’d basically repeated 3rd grade and was still way behind in math & LA, he hated school, and he was convinced he was stupid. Of course, he was still years ahead in science — but science wasn’t taught (at all) in school; everything he knew about science he'd learned at home or on his own. You'd think that would have been a pretty clear indicator of how he learns best, wouldn't you? But I was thick; I naively thought that a combination of one-on-one attention and the right curriculum would solve the problem.

 

I will not even admit to the number and variety of math, LA, history, and science curricula/texts I’ve bought that are currently sitting in boxes in the garage waiting for me to get around to listing them for sale — and that doesn’t even count all the curricula still sitting on my shelves that I’ll probably never use, but which I hang onto “just in case†I need to refer to them some day. If I could do it over, I’d start with my kid and build up from there, instead of starting with books and plans and curricula and working downward hoping I could tweak them (or tweak DS) enough to make it work. I wish I’d let DS just read and draw and study whatever he wanted that first year, and then gradually added focus and structure, instead of wasting so much time and money buying curricula and making elaborate plans and schedules. Doh!

 

Now that I have a much better idea of what I’m dealing with, and have finally accepted that there really is no curriculum out there that does what I want, I’m working out how to design my own program from scratch. Here are the parameters I have to work with:

 

1. Visual/spatial learner

2. Dyslexic & somewhat dysgraphic

3. Slow processing speed + working memory issues (applies primarily to verbal or non-contextual information)

4. Fidgety and easily distracted

5. Anxiety issues and low tolerance for frustration

6. Gifted

 

Throw all that into a blender and what you get is that DS needs advanced and challenging content, presented in context and in a primarily visual way, with no busy work and limited amounts of daily seat work and writing. Given his distractibility and the fact that it tends to take him hours to complete work he’s not interested in, I’ve learned that efficiency is critical. Not in the sense of “what’s the minimum amount of effort we can get away with here,†but in the sense of “how can I make everything we do really count?†How many educational birds can I kill with one stone — can I use one project to teach two content areas and three skills in an integrated way, instead of doing every subject and skill separately? What things can I take out of "school" and teach through daily life? I’ve learned to look at every subject and ask why are we learning this, why are we learning it this way, and why are we learning it now. The fact that TWTM recommends something, or “it’s what all X-graders cover in PS,†is not (for me) sufficient.

 

I’d say the biggest change I’ve gone through this year, in terms of how I think about school, is that instead of starting with a “typical†middle school schedule (or even a WTM one) and then pruning and tweaking it, I’m starting from zero and saying what do I need to put in, and what’s the most effective way for me to teach it? That process requires, first of all, prioritzing the most important subjects and skills, and then figuring out the most efficient way to teach them, and the most efficient time to teach them. So here’s what that process looks like so far:

 

Content: Since DS plans a career in science, the content priorities are math and science. Given his limited tolerance for boredom, frustration, and seat work, I’ve chosen math as the one subject that he does every day, for an hour, sitting at his desk. I’m looking to start incorporating more fun, hands-on things as we get into geometry, but math is still the one subject that he generally just has to sit there and do out of a textbook. OTOH, since science is his favorite subject and it’s something that doesn’t require textbooks and seat work (at this age), we’re doing science as a combination of Teaching Co lectures, hands-on labs & demos, documentaries, and interest-led reading. We do multiple sciences at a time, and I try to either link them to each other or to history (e.g. studying tectonics/earthquakes/volcanoes when we cover Pompeii).

 

Skills: For me, the key skills I want my kids to have are: critical/analytical thinking, clear concise writing, and good organizational skills. Critical thinking I try to teach across all subjects (and in daily life), with lots of discussion and Socratic questioning. I plan to approach writing this year primarily by reading and discussing good literature and by writing one research paper (with a thesis!) in history, with a bit of grammar thrown in courtesy of Killgallon & Image Grammar. (I can post more details about the direction I’m heading with LA, but I fear there’ll be pitchforks, firebrands, and cries of heresy... :tongue_smilie:)

 

Methods: For visual/spatial learners, who think in pictures not words, it’s important to have a visual vocabulary to think with. So, whenever possible, I try to introduce subjects visually, then add detail to the images, then add analysis of the details. For history and science, I try to introduce a subject with documentaries to give DS what is literally “the big picture,†followed by discussions, TC lectures, museum visits, field trips or hands-on activities, etc., and then follow up with reading in areas of interest where DS wants to go deeper. For example, he watched several documentaries on Greece and Greek warfare, which gave DS the “visual vocabulary†for the subject — he knew what hoplites looked like, what weapons they used, what the geography looked like for some of the key battles, and what the combat itself looked like. We also have lots of visual reference books on Greece and classical warfare, and he did a lot of drawings (for fun) of various warriors in full gear. Then, when we watched the TC lectures on classical warfare, DS could “see†in his mind what Prof. Fagan was talking about. We pause and discuss things a LOT while watching the lectures, because Fagan spends a lot of time analyzing different theories about Greek warfare and presenting the evidence for and against each theory. DS also reads extensively on the subject, despite his dyslexia, because (1) he’s extremely interested in the subject and (2) he has the “visual vocabulary†he needs to picture what he’s reading, so he retains it. If I just handed him a history text and said “read this,†he wouldn’t understand or remember any of it.

 

Timing: The longer I homeschool, the more convinced I am that “better late than early†makes a ton of sense. Introducing something early and drilling it over and over may work for some kids, but I’ve found (even with DD8, who has no particular quirks or LDs) that waiting until kids are really ready for something can be much more effective and efficient — and much less frustrating for the kids.

 

I think the key to getting out of the educational "box" is to look at what the ultimate goals are, look at where the child is now, and then figure out the best path between those two points. Even if that path looks nothing like a “typical†path, if you understand where you are (the child’s abilities, needs, interests, learning style, etc) and you understand where you want to go, then you really will find the best way to get there.

 

Jackie

 

ETA: As I’ve been sitting here typing this, DS has been regaling me with information about sea cucumbers. I naively asked if sea cucumbers were the same thing as sea slugs, and he looked shocked and said “Of course not — sea cucumbers are echinoderms and sea slugs are gastropods. Echinoderms are pentaradially symmetrical and gastropods are bilaterally symmetrical.†He then went on to ennumerate many more technical differences, but I didn’t understand them and certainly couldn’t remember them well enough to repeat them. Researching sea cucumbers is the kind of thing he does for fun. :lol:

[Corraleno]

It occurs to me that I should probably say that I regard much of TWTM as 'out of the box'. Maybe that's not the working definition for this thread, though. The use of history and the trivium as organizing principles, the use of integrated humanities, etc. are key principles of TWTM and areas where it is at odds with a conventional education and also with any curriculum that I have ever seen. So in that sense, it's 'out of the box'.

The fact that it's different from conventional/PS education doesn't IMO make it any less "boxy." In fact, I'd say that the boxiness of WTM is precisely the appeal for most people who use it — everything is laid out, with schedules and "stages" and curriculum recommendations and reading lists for every subject at every age. In many ways it's actually more "boxy" than PS, by including formal grammar and logic and Latin in elementary school, requiring copywork and narration and dictation, focusing history and literature primarily on Western Civ, etc. It may be a well-constructed, antique wooden box based on classical/medieval blueprints, but it's still a box.

 

Also, IMHO the whole concept of grammar, logic, and rhetoric "stages" creates a new set of boxes — which many parents misunderstand and misinterpret as actual developmental stages that all children go through, when in fact it's just a different way of labeling elementary, middle, and high school. DS was born in the so-called "logic stage," and most of the "grammar stage" recommendations would have driven him insane. Ditto for DH and me.

 

I think a lot of us gravitated towards WTM methods and content because it's the kind of education we would have enjoyed, and then we find ourselves struggling to make it work for kids who think and learn in totally different ways. And it's precisely because TWTM is so compartmentalized into subjects and stages and schedules that it's hard to find our way out of those boxes. As I said in my previous post, I think the way to do that is to look beyond the boxes at the goals — what are the end results we hoped the WTM methods would produce that appeal to us? — and then look at how we can get there in ways that may work better for our kids.

 

Jackie

[TechWife]

I'm interested also in whether and to what extent people find that their kids absorb conventional academic material through other means. It seems as though every single time I ask dd whether she knows a word, or has heard of a historical figure, or knows about whatever concept from physics, she'll invariably know it -- but not from having studied it or come across it in a textbook.

I think this has happened in our home because we live like this - we are genuinely interested in history & age appropriate (sometimes age stretching) materials have always been in our home - books (both fiction & non), documentaries, visits to museums, etc. DS has been on several historical tangents over the years and I am always amazed at what he retains. When he starts a tangent, we are quick to provide resources - library books, visits to area museums & historic sites, hands on projects. Admittedly hands on history projects were easier to do when he was younger as there are many library books that tell you how to make things. Now, the good projects come up sporadically. For example, right now he is drawing a storyboard for World War I and putting a lot of time into the research, drawing and coloring. Next he will make an encyclopedia of WWI aircraft (both ideas were in HO). We are reading WWI poetry as well, such as In Flanders Field.

 

At some point I had to figure that I could try force-feeding through conventional means, which would result in her brain setting being turned to "sieve," or I could allow her to keep it on "osmosis" and she would apparently absorb much conventional material apparently through the air.

 

I need to get better at this, but as we approach high school, I find myself becoming more and more of a box checker. I would love to hear how other high school students are doing the independent learning and ensuring that they have knowledge in common with others - a shared history if you will.

 

It's only in 9th grade that I've been asking her to read to a certain program, and I'm not really sure whether it's been a success. But I go into periodic convulsions of worry over what she "should" read, even as I see in front of me the efficacy of her own choices. One of the hardest things for me continues to be the letting go of control, at some moments more than others.

What program have you tried for 9th grade? We have tried Lightening Literature for 8th grade, but found it didn't go in depth enough. I am changing tactics & having DS complete a study guide on a book & we will just talk about poetry concepts as they come up on our reading schedule.

 

Now, you notice that I am driving all of this. I, too have the same fear of letting him drive the subject matter.

[Guest]

I need to get better at this, but as we approach high school, I find myself becoming more and more of a box checker. I would love to hear how other high school students are doing the independent learning and ensuring that they have knowledge in common with others - a shared history if you will.

 

 

What program have you tried for 9th grade? We have tried Lightening Literature for 8th grade, but found it didn't go in depth enough. I am changing tactics & having DS complete a study guide on a book & we will just talk about poetry concepts as they come up on our reading schedule.

 

Now, you notice that I am driving all of this. I, too have the same fear of letting him drive the subject matter.

 

It's much harder for me to continue to feel as free and happy with self-initiated learning as dd is in high school. College admissions requirements etc. hang over our heads like storm clouds even though I am continually uncertain whether this highly intellectual child will take that route; if she does get there I'm pretty sure it will not be through the standard path. That's why JennW's stories of her sons continue to inspire and hearten me.

 

The "program" for lit for 9th grade is just my idea of trying to re-hook history and literature after the last two years in which she has read freely without my interference, barring taking her to bookstores and saying, "Oh, this looks interesting." I had her read Sir Gawain, some of the Canterbury Tales (which she actually enjoyed), some courtier poetry from the Elizabethan age, and had planned to have her compare translations of the Bible, read a tract or two from the English Civil War, and some of Pepys's diary. I still may do some of all of this. But on her own she is going through everything written by P.G. Wodehouse, all of Terry Pratchett, and now is willing to dip -- backwards, as we usually manage to do -- into original sources used by Mel Brooks and other satirists. For instance, she found a musical called The Frogs, listened to the soundtrack, and decided it might be interesting to read the actual play of The Frogs now. One of the few Pratchett books she has left is a take-off on Faust, so she's willing to take a look at that. I have to let go of my feeling she should read things in a certain (chronological) order and realize she's doing a smack-dab job of educating herself in this area, in a way that MAKES SENSE TO HER, rather than a plan I design because from my standpoint now I see the patterns in chronological order.

 

I love the sound of your son's WWI project. That's what dd used to love to do, and somehow we have managed to lose that. I don't know whether this is because she'd rather learn differently now, or that I've imposed enough on her that she's lost that particular kind of initiative.

[littleWMN]

I am an 'out of the box-er wannabe.' My children all have learning difficulties and I can see where giving them this kind of education would be beneficial to them but it is SO hard to let go of the kind of education that I had already planned for them. I have never been a workbook-textbook kind of hs mom. We use living books quite heavily and I am now quite comfortable teaching without a curriuclum. But I still hold tightly to the 4 yr. history and science cycle. If we did things out of the box, I would have to give up the cycles and that is scary for me.

 

I already have next year planned for my oldest but I have been dreaming about her Gr. 8 year. I would love to do a food history course for her. She loves to cook and bake and I can justify doing this as this would be our last hurrah before high school. I have poured over Jackie's food history list on Amazon. I am in the process of reading through the list to pick out the books that would work well for my dd. We will do a world history survey through these books as well as coordinating literature for the various time frames. I would also incorporate science (Alton Brown books, How to Read a French Fry,) economics, nutrition and geography.

 

I get very excited just thinking about all of these plans, then comes a wave of fear. It would be so much easier to follow an already made book list rather than go out on this kind of limb. I hope that I have the courage to tread into this new way of learning. I can see that this would open things up for all of my children. If I only have the courage...

 

I think the food history course sounds awesome!

[swimmermom3]

I have written half a dozen posts and erased them. I don't really like to think of the couple of years before we started home schooling. Like Karen in Co., I am an "accidental homeschooler." And like Karen, we too had those teacher conferences and phone calls that began, "Your child (X, Y, or Z) is bright, but..." However, I wasn't as swift as Karen to figure out that any of my kids needed saving. Why should they? They all "seemed normal enough." They just bothered their teachers and their parents by being "bright, but..."

 

I can look back now and see all of the signs I missed because I was rigidly committed to traditional education and because I placed deviations from "the norm" squarely on my children's shoulders. We needed tutors and specialists because the kids were "inattentive, lazy, and stubborn." I never thought to question the system, just my children.:tongue_smilie:

 

The turning point came the summer before Swimmer Dude started fourth grade. I am not really sure why I said yes when he asked to be home schooled and I am not really sure why dh said yes. I think we were both tired of parent/teacher conferences and phone calls. Swimmer Dude would go to school, do just the work he needed to do, and not disrupt the class. He was completely ambivalent about school. A teacher's dream except when it came to his writing projects. At least the 3rd grade teacher was less disturbed than the second grade teacher about his topics and his "voice." She told me that the only time she saw signs of life was when the boy wrote and that we did not want to let this habit of disengagement continue. Shoot! The last thing the boy was at home was disengaged. "Why?" "Why?" Why?" Morning, noon, and night. My ears were bleeding by the time we got home from swim practice. He developed a passion for Terri Gross on NPR and his questions were more along the lines of "How long do you think it will take for us to achieve world peace?" Or "How does the Black Market work?" He really thought it was a viable career option.

 

Fortunately, Dude's best friend's mother is a committed home schooler who had been warming a bleacher with me at the pool for a couple of years. Thanks to Debbie, we've never looked back. We started with SL and Saxon that first year because it was the easiest thing to do. My older son was tired of middle school bullying and came home that November. That was a golden year.:crying: The Dude was happy, absorbing facts like a sponge, and sleeping with a Boorstin book under his pillow. Tech Sargent read every book in SL 7 Alt. and then I ordered every spare book that was in Cores 6 and 7. SOTW was a much beloved-companion. I was able to see this child that I had always fought with in a completely different light and to this day, I love to teach him when I get the chance.

 

We are now in our fourth year of homeschooling. This was never supposed to last. Each year I move tentatively further and further outside the box. It has not been a honeymoon. It is hard, exhausting work. There are weeks that we are brilliant and weeks that I make calls to the local middle school to reassure myself that it is still there and it will still accept the Dude who is taking the dialectic stage to new heights. He pushes me to question why we do everything. I am fairly sure I learn more from him than he does from me. This year I have also been given the mixed blessing of teaching my oldest, never homeschooled child in her final year of high school. I had to begin the year way outside the box to even reach her. "Groping in the dark?" That is me. If you are not a brave soul by nature and if you lack confidence, stepping outside the educational norm is just a bugger, but in our household, the alternative is far worse.

[mcconnellboys]

You take the standards that you want your kids to learn and then match materials to those standards. Most of the time it takes multiple materials to achieve this goal. Many of these materials are less expensive than going to a 'box' curriculum.

 

I agree, there are no curriculums I've found that I like in toto. Pulling together specific items to work the areas where your child needs work, to address those issues you want to address, to focus or emphasize those areas important to you (or them) are all part of what makes hsing so unique to the individual.

[mcconnellboys]

What I found out in talking with teachers is that they largely don't compare curricula. They take what they have been given, and what they think they should teach, and make it work. The curricula are just tools, and not the only ones that they use to teach the material.

 

Precisely! The curriculum is just a tool - it's not the teacher. We are there to pick and choose from one book, program, website, workbook, and another. We are there to blend the mix of discussion, hands-on, writing, and experiencing the subject in other ways (through field trips, etc.) into what we feel will be the best fit for each individual child....

[Guest]

This isn't sounding quite right but oftentimes on this board, you see those in the box and those out of the box, but not really the process in between. There are those home school teachers who start at the beginning of their journey way out in left field, but many meander that way on their journey, dabbling here and there as their child or the inner urgings push them. Does that make sense?

 

It seems that most people are saying the process begins with close observation of a specific child and the understanding that this child learns differently. They then begin to look around and try to figure out what other ways learning can happen and how they can encourage -- and perhaps guide -- this process.

 

Another step I think all of us have probably grappled with is that of comparing what our kids do with what others do, whether others in the school system or other homeschoolers or even our other children. At some point it is critical to getting out of the box to let go of comparisons, to realize that your child is not on the same highway that the others are but a different kind of road altogether, and that therefore all the nice signposts on the main highway about where to stop and eat or what to see along the way or how fast to go don't apply. I find myself being able to do this, and then falling back into the trap, repeatedly. It's a continual struggle, particularly when you can plainly see your child is so bright but so resistant to what seems like an excellent educational plan.

 

Then there's the task of finding resources. As kids get older it's easier to turn this over to them; but at the same time, I myself feel pressured to pull in the reins a bit, to try to align what dd does more with college admissions standards. I resent that bitterly. Sometimes I manage to get outside of THAT particular box as well. More often, dd just adamantly remains outside it, resistant to my nudgings. She is a MASTER of passive resistance, a monument to it as an art form, if she thinks something goes against her deepest values or her understanding of right and wrong. As she is overall an almost anxiety-ridden complaisant, obedient child who wants to do what is "right," I can only believe that this is not some rebellious character problem but a child who IS trying to do what is right; that just doesn't coincide with what I might be thinking.

 

A lot of the kids people are describing sound as though they know, instinctively, what they need and how they need to be taught or set free to learn in ways that make sense to them. I think one tool or step is recognizing and respecting that. With some kids this would be exactly the wrong thing to do. But for kids like dd, anyway, doing so isn't catering to her, or giving in to her whims, or letting her get away with something. It's allowing her to honor her deepest inner understanding of what she needs.

[Corraleno]

...the Dude who is taking the dialectic stage to new heights. He pushes me to question why we do everything. I am fairly sure I learn more from him than he does from me.

If the Dude could design his own education, what would it look like? What would he like more of, and what would he want less of? And what would be the consequences of letting him have more and less of those things?

 

Jackie

[MSNative]

Really enjoying this thread. Thx for starting it.

 

I find myself agreeing and disagreeing throughout this whole thread. I want to teach outside the box with my kids and we enjoy going off the beaten path. However, when I evaluate my kids' education, I inevitably find that they are lacking in something that I chucked aside from WTM. Case in point - the literature journal. We did it for a while in grammar stage and then I decided it was becoming busy work. We are a huge book family, we don't need this. Imagine my surprise when we started doing book reports and I realized how inexperienced my kids were at this. Had I been doing the journal, betcha they'd have had an easier time with this.

 

Not saying that we shouldn't go outside the box. However, sometimes when I'm doing that with my kids, what I'm really doing is ignoring the boring parts of education and just doing the stuff we like.

 

So how do you go outside the box and still make sure that you are checking all the boxes that are necessary for a good education?

[Mommybostic]

I just had to offer my $0.02 here since I've been homeschooling for about three weeks, but researching curriculum for about two years!

 

We only have two subjects that come from the same source--science and pre-algebra. I'm considering dropping the pre-algebra when we are finished. All of the other stuff is from various sources, some very traditional and some what I would consider "out of the box."

 

In just a short time, already some of my carefully researched choices are turning out not to be the perfect fit for my son. I never did much education theory research, but common sense told me that a straight across the board curriculum would not be a good fit for my child. He is well above grade level on some subjects, at grade level on a couple, and below level in writing, at least in my opinion.

 

I will also just say that I was interested that someone above posted most of the stuff their child have learned and retained so well wasn't learned from books, and that absolutely describes my son. He loves wars and history and science. He is a History Channel junkie, and he can throw dates and names and weapon descriptions at you until you are sick of it, and it's all from visiting museums and historical sites, and from watching different shows. He has a read a few little books on different subjects, but he tends to pick books on things he knows a lot about already. That is one of the things we are working on improving.

 

One last point--it's always interesting when two entirely different learning styles collide--and I don't mean my different children, I mean my son's and my own! That has been my biggest lesson so far--I have to do what works for him, and that may not be what is most interesting or even what makes the most sense to me.

 

Good luck!

[Corraleno]

So how do you go outside the box and still make sure that you are checking all the boxes that are necessary for a good education?

I think that depends largely on where the list of "boxes to check" comes from. For example, the ability to write a book report is not a box that I personally feel the need to check. Book reports are primarily a way for school teachers to make sure a student read a book. DS & I discuss everything he reads, so for me there's no point in having him write a book report, and it's not a genre of writing that occurs in "real life" once a student is out of HS. I want my kids to be able to write a really solid research paper, with a thesis, by the time they graduate HS, and I'll make sure they have the tools and the practice they need for that. But book reports are not on my checklist.

 

Similarly, I've dropped formal grammar and decided to teach it informally in the context of literature and writing. I won't be able to check the "sentence diagramming" box, but again that's not a box I care about checking. If my kids' writing is well organized and grammatically correct, and they have a love of and appreciation for good literature, then I've checked what are, to me, the most important boxes.

 

I think maybe this is the area that people have the most trouble with — wanting to get out of the box a bit with content and methods, but feeling like they still have to check off all the standard boxes everyone else does. For me, the key to really getting out of the box and finding what works best for us, is to question the purpose of all those boxes, and to discard the ones that are not useful for us.

 

Jackie

[Colleen in NS]

It occurs to me that I should probably say that I regard much of TWTM as 'out of the box'. Maybe that's not the working definition for this thread, though. The use of history and the trivium as organizing principles, the use of integrated humanities, etc. are key principles of TWTM and areas where it is at odds with a conventional education and also with any curriculum that I have ever seen. So in that sense, it's 'out of the box'.

 

This has been my experience, too. The principles in TWTM were WAY out of the box to me. I was just processed through the system during my schooling years (70s and 80s New England) - if I got good grades, all was good. But I sure felt pretty stupid by the time I got about halfway through high school, because I just didn't know how to conquer, much less understand, these classes anymore. No one, that I can remember, was teaching me any academic skills. Not that I even knew that they would be good to learn - I was just a "smart girl" who did as she was told in order to get good grades. I never questioned anything.

 

So, in my home now, teaching certain academic skills that I think are important takes priority. I've come to believe that there are some great mental tools available to us, to help us learn more efficiently, deeply, and satisfactorily. Lots of time for reading is our other big priority. I do streamline our skills-teaching time as much as possible, and I do tailor each teaching session to each child. I do use WTM booklists as a starting point for library book reading, but I don't make my kids read each and every book on the list - they are checked out of the library, they are handed to the kids, but if a kid says to me, "I tried it, but it was boring," I let it go, if they can tell me why it was boring (they always can). I also take them through the library and say, "Browse the shelves. Find what interests you." All of this is far out of the box of *my* experience of boxes. :D (I think there are many different boxes anyway) And, my kids have plenty of time for dreaming up their own projects to do. The living room is currently half-covered in a sheet-tent, with all sorts of items propping it up - it's divided into different rooms, with all sorts of props inside. Both kids did this together. Each kid has various projects going on in his or her room - ds is doing some type of rearrangement of his Legos, and dd always has little "setups" going in in different corners of her room. This whole life that we have is outside my previously known-boxes.

 

Each year I move tentatively further and further outside the box. ...He pushes me to question why we do everything.

 

I think the questioning is part of what "logic stage" is all about. My mind is constantly being challenged by ds's questions about "why", and dd10 is starting down this road, too. Scary at first, I'm actually finding it quite fun! It's mental gymnastics. Ds might say, "Mom, WHY do I have to study grammar?? It's BORING!" So I run through my brief explanation (again), and at some other point I will see him in a conversation or coming to me with an observation or a question, and see evidence of his having used his grammar knowledge to think something through. I may or may not point that out to him, lol! On the other side, I never have to say things like, "Ds, I want you to go outside and look at the moon, and look for this, this, and this on it. Report back to me when you've found those things." He just notices the moon, grabs the binoculars, runs outside to observe for awhile, and comes back in to tell me all about it. I don't do "moon lessons" or any other type of content lessons. That's out of the box for me.

 

Anyway, Lisa, I'm sure you are doing a great job of tailoring Dude's education!

[swimmermom3]

If the Dude could design his own education, what would it look like? What would he like more of, and what would he want less of? And what would be the consequences of letting him have more and less of those things?

 

Jackie

 

I will ask him when he gets back from practice. Of course I will have to bribe him with ice cream because that would be talking business outside of his office hours.:tongue_smilie: It is funny that you should ask this now as he just gave me some new requests. I feel like I am running a marathon and always trying to stay ahead of him. It would be okay except for the days I have these thoughts:

 

 

 

1. Who is the adult here?

2. Am I being had?

3. Am I spoiling him?

4. Am I making him unfit for "real school?"

5. Is he working hard enough?

6. Output? What output? If they gave credit for discussions, we might be okay.

 

It has been good to have dd home as she gives both suggestions to make his subjects better and provides an example on how to take subjects like literary analysis to the next level. She can get him to discuss a subject when I sometimes can't.

[MSNative]

I think that depends largely on where the list of "boxes to check" comes from. For example, the ability to write a book report is not a box that I personally feel the need to check. Book reports are primarily a way for school teachers to make sure a student read a book. DS & I discuss everything he reads, so for me there's no point in having him write a book report, and it's not a genre of writing that occurs in "real life" once a student is out of HS. I want my kids to be able to write a really solid research paper, with a thesis, by the time they graduate HS, and I'll make sure they have the tools and the practice they need for that. But book reports are not on my checklist.

 

Similarly, I've dropped formal grammar and decided to teach it informally in the context of literature and writing. I won't be able to check the "sentence diagramming" box, but again that's not a box I care about checking. If my kids' writing is well organized and grammatically correct, and they have a love of and appreciation for good literature, then I've checked what are, to me, the most important boxes.

 

I think maybe this is the area that people have the most trouble with — wanting to get out of the box a bit with content and methods, but feeling like they still have to check off all the standard boxes everyone else does. For me, the key to really getting out of the box and finding what works best for us, is to question the purpose of all those boxes, and to discard the ones that are not useful for us.

 

Jackie

 

I totally thought that about book reports and still do in a way. However, the skills involved in book reports - reading, analyzing, synthesizing and presenting info in a clear manner are all important. My kids could narrate to me, but they couldn't write in an organized fashion (in any genre. You should see their 5 para. essays. Yikes). We are still remediating their writing. Possibly the problem is that writing is my weakness. We go out of the box with math and science 'cause those are my strengths. Maybe that's the key. Since they are my strengths, I know how to go outside the box and still make sure they have the foundations that they need to succeed.

 

I agree that we have to decide which boxes are necessary and which are just "make work." However, sometimes we don't recognize which boxes really were necessary.

 

Hmmmm....lots to ponder.

 

(Oh, and I'm gonna let your sentence diagramming comment slide. How can you not love that? That was always my favorite part of English class. Come on, get yourself a multi-colored pen and break loose on that diagram. That's writing for the mathy people. There is one right answer. None of this creative stuff.) :)

[swimmermom3]

So you want the nitty gritty details of how to handle education outside of the box? Or how I've handled things outside of the box? There is one caveat. It really isn't something that can be replicated by following someone's step by step instructions as it more of a mindset, a way of living life.

 

I approached homeschooling the way I approached being the mom of a toddler. Sounds silly, I know, but think about how a toddler views life. Everything is new and interesting and worth stopping to look at, touch and maybe break. Rules are an infuriating intrusion into life. A soft blankie and read aloud time makes everything better. As the mom of a toddler you build in lots of time to play with and explore all those interesting things in the world, you deal with their tantrums with a modicum of patience, and you spend long hours reading aloud.

 

When my oldest was in 1st, his teacher commented on how much I must have done with him because he had such a broad base of general knowledge. She and I were both stumped that he was struggling in the classroom when he was clearly a bright and inquisitive kid. When I finally pulled him out of school, I decided I should stick with my strong points -- the way I had always mothered seemed to be giving my boys a strong basic education, so why change anything?

 

(I hope this is coherent -- I'm still getting over the flu and am a little spacey today.)

 

So. How does the toddler approach look for a middle schooler, since this is the board we are on??

 

That enthusiasm for exploring the world evaporated for a time during the middle school years. But following their interests was always the most important aspect to our homeschool journey so they had theater classes and science classes and various field trips. I used my Aspie's obsession with all things Disney as an educational tool. He followed Disney stock, planned fantasy vacations complete with budgets and maps. He made up word problems using anything Disney, such as average wait times at Tower of Terror in July. For my other son I found art classes and science classes, although there was very little appropriate for him in the middle school years. All too often the classes were babyish or had age restrictions.

 

Once they were old enough (13 -14) they each found mentors and did volunteer work that interested them. My oldest started working on the tech team at church and is now a paid employee, and my youngest apprenticed with an electrical engineer and occasionally is asked to come work for a day.

 

The skills part of education, which in our house was math and writing, was the unfair intrusion into their happy go lucky life. I didn't do lots of formal grammar, but preferred to use the editing of their writing as a means to reinforce grammar, punctuation and spelling. They could do work sheets perfectly but not apply it to their writing, so why waste time with the work sheets? Dictation and narrations are a terrific tool for this. Games are great for grammar, too. Try diagramming silly Mad Libs sentences.

 

Reading aloud or listening together to audio books was a daily part of our school. While they also had assigned reading (I loosely followed the WTM history cycle), the most important books, the ones I most remember, were those we shared. It is my most fond memory of the middle school years, even though they rolled their eyes and groaned each day it was time to sit and read together, and they jumped up and escaped the second it was all done. It was the time while reading that was special -- stopping and discussing, explaining what something was (kids don't know about water marks in stationery!). We also watched old movies together, and Lost!! We had a field day with Lost, discussing our theories and the literary references in the show.

 

I didn't do any formal history or science courses until high school, as both subjects were naturally covered through their interests, our activities and reading. I don't worry about gaps. They have a lifetime and the tools to fill those gaps. They are kind of young men I wanted to turn loose in the world: articulate, knowledgeable, and engaging young men who are continuing their educations.

 

Is that nitty gritty enough?

 

It's lovely, Jenn. Like a breath of fresh air. Thank you. I was hoping you would show up. Take care and get over that nasty bug soon.:001_smile:

[swimmermom3]

I always love reading about this!

 

In theory, I had this year all set up to work that way. But I found that in reality, my dc are too far apart in age to pursue it (dd11 is more like on a 7th grade level or more, and ds7 is an on-level 2nd grader.) I tried this year using TOG very loosely to combine them in content areas, so we could all read together and discuss and pursue any and all rabbit trails in history and science, and tie things together and drink it all in. I did this with older dd when it was just her and we loved it.

 

But now with two so far apart intellectually, there is just not enough of *me* to go around to do this exploration learning. I tried it all this fall. If I shot for the middle, dd was bored silly. If I shot high, ala Marva Collins, ds just totally glazed over (and I'm not talking Shakespeare; I'm talking he got lost trying to follow "The Golden Goblet")

 

And they are not the type that will do out of the box learning on their own AT ALL. They are both linear thinkers that do what's in front of them happily, but it would not occur to them to pursue things on their own. But they love to go on rabbit trails out of the box with me and can be taken into much deeper and more intense interesting ground when we go there together. Even the 2nd grader would be able to go much deeper if I could have the time to do with him what I did with dd when she was that age.

 

I am very comfortable using curriculum to fit our needs, making up my own things to suit us, knowing how to extend learning into areas of interest, etc., so that's not the problem.

 

But there is only so much time in the day. I'm feeling stretched now just to get their basics done, but longing for this out of the box learning.

 

I just can't wrap my head around how to pursue this so they each get what they need on their own level. Combining then was my solution to the time crunch, and that didn't work.

 

Have people been able to make this work with children far apart in age? Or are most people doing this with an only, or dc close together?

 

Great thread!

 

I understand where the dilemma is. My two that are home are in 7th and 12th grade. Meeting their individual needs has certainly been a challenge this year, but it has also offered some worthwhile rewards. Our common meeting ground tends to be in literature and history. On the mornings my dd is not working, we are reading Sophie's World togetherand are playing with some basic philosophical questions.

 

For literature, if we are going to cover works like Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, or Hamlet, they may read the same book but just as often they will read the appropriate version for their level. Then they will work on analysis they both can do; later, dd does extended work. They both love the Teaching Company lectures on Shakespeare and their discussions can be rather lively. I intended to cover a few plays with my dd and maybe one with the youngest this year. Instead, at their insistence they are trying to cover as many Shakespeare plays as possible. I may regret this later on as I have had to do some serious rearranging, but they are both quite happy.

 

Dd has on occasion over the years created art literacy-type projects for her brothers when they were both home. She would research the artist, develop a project and then teach it. I assume the role of a student during those sessions. Having your older child teach a lesson can be a great exercise as long as both are open to it. The older child may have to research and develop a presentation. Teaching tests their own knowledge of a topic. Remember that they don't have to be covering the same content. If the older one is teaching, that child is developing skills while the younger one is mastering content.

 

I think a lot of second graders would glaze over at The Golden Goblet. It is a wonderful book and a favorite here, but it really is okay if your younger one wasn't ready. Would your oldest be happy with an audio of the read aloud, while you read to the younger one at her level?

 

Happy Grace, I hope you get some other, better answers to your question. I am finding that some areas have to give in order to allow both kids their rabbit trails. Fortunately, the older one is smitten with her literature and most of it feels like rabbit trails to her.

[elegantlion]

nm

Edited January 22, 2011 by elegantlion

[Karen in CO]

I asked my oldest this afternoon for help with his sister since it is obvious that she needs more of something (we chat online when I can catch him before class). His suggestion were: history is always a good topic she can't know all of it yet; try speeding her up in math until she gets stuck then backup a little; try that online writing program I did that time, it really helped me (brave writer); keep her supplied with good books. That was his remedy for his sister. We followed that with a healthy discussion of the role of the state in globalization.

 

I love talking to my son. I love how simply he sees the fix for what I perceive is a horrible failing on my part in the education of the girls. He helps me to keep perspective.

 

I figure that one day I have to stop feeling like what I am doing is wrong and will ruin my children. I remember the day i opened the first college acceptance letter. I stood at the mailbox and let out breath that I had been holding for 5 years.

[JennW in SoCal]

Not to pick on you, but how old are your kids that are supposed to be writing 5 paragraph essays? I didn't teach that until mine were about high school age, after they had mastered the basic narration and had some logic under their belt.

 

But examples are not the best way to answer your primary question about checking off those education boxes. Jackie had it right -- it depends on which boxes you are wanting to check. I too think you should be able to answer why those boxes are essential. Formal grammar is important to a point, but my homeschool sun did not rise and set with it. But math was important, though it was studied both through a formal math program and lots of games. I followed SWB's writing advice as it made enormous sense to me -- copywork, dictation, narrations, small research topics, building up to persuasive essays in every subject in high school. Logic was a box that I felt was important to check off, too.

 

So, using my boys, who have finished homeschooling, as an example of how this can all work, the basic skill set was covered: they can read, they can research information they don't know. Furthermore, they can think about what they read, formulate opinions about it, articulate and defend their opinions They advanced through math and have a broad base of knowledge and experience to prepare them for moving on in life.

 

KarenAnne has a point too, about high school involving an entirely unique set of boxes. There are courses that colleges expect to see on transcripts, so school becomes somewhat more traditional looking.

 

Are there things I missed? Oh my yes. But they have young agile minds that can quickly figure things out, and they have the motivation to do well in their college and adult lives. School -- becoming educated -- isn't something foisted upon them, it is something they want.

 

I don't mean to make it sound as if it was all so easy for me. It was and it wasn't -- I certainly lost many hours of sleep over the years, had those days where I was certain I had ruined them for life. But those standardized boxes are for institutional education where there are dozens, if not hundreds of students each semester. Sure your homeschool teen will someday be competing for admission to college against those standardized students, but a student who can think outside the box and ask questions -- that is the student who will stand out and succeed.

[Corraleno]

I feel like I am running a marathon and always trying to stay ahead of him.

Why do you have to stay ahead of him? DS knows waaaay more about science than I do. I didn't even know that sea cucumbers are different from sea slugs, let alone that they're pentaradially symmetrical. :lol:

 

It would be okay except for the days I have these thoughts:

 

Who is the adult here?

But whose education is it? Of course being older than him, and therefore more experienced, carries a lot of weight — but shouldn't being him carry a lot of weight, too?

 

Am I being had? Am I spoiling him?

What does it even mean to "spoil" someone? Is giving kids what they want inherently a bad thing? What if all they're really asking for is the chance to learn and grow and find their own way? You have a really smart, witty, thoughtful kid — it's not like he's asking for a Ferrarri and a bunch of video games! :lol:

 

Am I making him unfit for "real school?"

LOL, I'd hope so! If by "real school" you mean an 9th-12th grade public warehouse, then having a child be "unfit" because he's so smart, focused, and self-motivated that he'd be bored out of his mind in PS... would be a good thing, wouldn't it? OTOH, if you mean college, then I'd bet he'll be better prepared, not "unfit."

 

Is he working hard enough?

Hard enough for what? Is he learning? Is he happy?

 

Output? What output? If they gave credit for discussions, we might be okay.

You can, you know. ;)

 

 

 

Jackie