Free U: Next stop is Vietnam

Armed with a calendar from church, a library card and an Internet connection, I've made a start on crafting unit studies for Big Brother and Girlface. Really, those are the only inputs. It amazes me that at this stage the resources available are more than enough to spark their interest.

Last week, we did Madagascar, which was a fairly easy start. The recipe on the calendar was easy to make (though not easy to get at least two of my kids to eat) and there was no shortage of entertaining videos about lemurs. There may even be a trip to the lemur center in Durham sometime in the future.

This week's country? Vietnam. The recipe on our calendar was quite complicated. I can't exactly make spring rolls from scratch anymore. The Baby practically pins me against the counter waving a plate at me anytime I go near the stove. 

Of course, the first thing that comes to mind about Vietnam is the war. And now I have a war protest song running through my head. You remember it right?

And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.

 

I can't necessarily teach that one to the children, now can I? 

 

So I decided to do what I do best. The minimum. I checked out two books from the library, read them to the kids and waited for something to spark their interest. It fascinated Big Brother that the people in our book didn't own a refrigerator and that they ate with chopsticks. We also found a recipe for soda chan in one of the books. We actually have all the ingredients for it. It's a lime soda made from sugar, sparkling water and lime juice poured over crushed ice. Sounds like a winner. For  dinner tonight, I made a nice tofu dish with rice that was dubbed a Vietnamese recipe on allrecipes.com and let the kids use chopsticks. 

 

Big Brother was the only one who was amenable to instruction on chop stick technique. Girlface is just impossible to direct these days and The Baby was intent on stabbing something or someone. There was a lot of whining, which was unfortunate since I had reached my whine limit by noon today.

 

Next week's country is El Salvador. The recipe is easy, the country is in this hemisphere and the back story on the calendar revolves around clean drinking water. I think I can make something out of that.

Free U: Just let it happen

For a few weeks, I'd been taking a more structured approach with the kids in anticipation of formally starting homeschool next fall with Big Brother. I'd instituted two structured times a day. One in the morning, which Big Brother deemed blanket time, centered around some music and movement, a kids devotion book and any other book they brought to me. A typical blanket time usually lasted as long as the kids were interested. Table time occurred after I put The Baby down for his nap and usually lasted about a half hour. The kids would play with some sort of manipulative or work on handwriting and drawing.  It seemed to work well when it was cold and rainy or just plain cold. It kept the kids from tearing up the house and it gave us a rhythm to the day.

 Lately, this has not been working so well. Big Brother won't sit still for blanket time any more. It's devolved into endless begging to play "Red Light, Green Light." Meanwhile, The Baby is running laps around the room, tearing through our spread-out blanket, and the dog is trying to sit in my lap, as she does every time I read to the kids. What can I say, the dog likes story time. And lately, I've been so exhausted by lunchtime that I corral all the kids upstairs for a nap and forego table time all together. Then I collapse on my own bed for a nap.

The best thing to come out of those weeks was developing the habit of after-breakfast chores. The Baby, it turns out, is an excellent dishwasher emptier. Girlface is good at putting away the silverware, in the proper slots, too. Big Brother is my compost runner. He takes the veggie scraps out to the compost bin.

I also set out to start unit studies. We checked out a bunch of books about butterflies and caterpillars for our first attempt at this. No day seemed right to start this, however. One kid or another was in a bad mood or sick. I just didn't have the energy to carry through on reading the books that the kids weren't too interested in or crafts that I would just end up doing myself or trips the museum butterfly pavilion that just were not a good fit for that particular week.

By now, I'm feeling like a pretty crappy homeschool mom-in-training. One of the things I like best about homeschooling, though, is the ability to change tactics when you see that something is clearly not working. Since I know my kids best, I can do what works best for them on any given day. And they let me know what works best for them by rebelling against the order of the day.  So I backed off and just decided to let the days unfold again.

This week, we went to the museum and saw the daily butterfly release. The kids got to hold butterflies and one landed on Big Brother's face. He is now terrified of butterflies. Girlface kept crying on the way home that she wanted a butterfly. Apparently, she thought the butterfly would come home with her. The kids even got to see a butterfly with it's proboscis (it's tongue) out eating an orange rind. That afternoon, I hustled the kids up for quiet time as usual. Big Brother wanted me to read one of our library books on butterflies. It was a fairly long book and he wanted me to read all the words. Since he's reading now, I can't get away with skipping words or pages anymore. I couldn't believe this was the same kid who wouldn't sit still for blanket time.

This week, we're also talking about Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday and Lent. We went to the pancake dinner at church Tuesday. On Sunday, we received a Lenten calendar and rice bowl to fill with coins for Catholic Relief Services. The calendar provides a different story for each week of Lent about a person/family from a country that CRS is helping, plus there is a recipe for each week. Each day, there is information about the country. Some days there are questions such as "How many faucets do you have in your home?" and it instructs you to put 24 cents the rice bowl in for each faucet you have. I basically have six weeks of unit studies to do with the kids that cover geography, culture, charity, cooking and math (money, counting) among other things.

I've been pondering how to introduce the whole concept to Big Brother and Girlface. Blanket time or any kind of formal sit down lesson is out of the question. So I just hung the calendar in the kitchen, put the rice bowl on top of the microwave and waited.

Around 4:30 p.m. today, Big Brother strolled into the kitchen, looked at the calendar and started asking questions. I got down the rice bowl and explained that we would put money in it to help Catholic Relief Services. He darted off to get his little safe full of birthday money and coins that he's collected over the years.

We got the safe open, he counted out a few coins and put them in the bowl. He continued taking coins out and I started twitching a bit because it just seemed like the wrong time to dump coins and bills all over the table. Supper was simmering on the stove, after all. But I decided to relax and go with it. He began counting out his bills. Then he wanted to start counting the coins. So I directed him to pick out and stack up all the quarters. When he was done with that, I told him to make piles of four quarters each. I explained that four quarters make up one dollar, so I had him count all the piles. We came up with $7 in quarters and $16 in bills.

I could not have planned that. I could not have directed that. He would have squirmed so much his little butt would have caught on fire.

Sometimes I try too hard. Today, I just had to let it happen. Whatever it happens to be.

Free U: Half and Double

Big Brother is obsessed with counting. He doesn't always do it in order, but who cares. He's recognizing numbers, even if he sometimes declares that the 24 on our advent calendar is a 42 and then tries to count to that number. He's also obsessed with the number 45, which he sees on speed limit signs and believes must be super fast. (I'll let him believe that one. Forever.)

This morning, he was flashing his five fingers at me, because, you know, he's now five. I'm afraid someone is going to think he's flashing gang signals. So I took advantage of this display to talk about half and double. He's been figuring that one out on his own lately, so I thought I'd build on that.

I told him to put up both hands and count his fingers. 

Then I told him to put one hand behind his back and said, "Half."

Okay, now bring your other hand back; that's double, I told him.

He then put his hand behind his back, then back out front and then behind again, dancing and chanting, "Half, double, butt. Half, double, butt."

Clearly, this is five year old humor.

And that concludes our lesson in math and fractions that I'm pretty sure would end in an automatic time out or stern look in school for potty talk.

Free U: Stone Soup Day

As I was writing the menu for the next few weeks, I consulted Big Brother about what we should put on the menu. You see, it's fall now and in my anal retentive menu plan, we just can't have tacos on Tuesday when it's under 70 degrees outside. So when I got to Tuesday on the menu, I needed some ideas. I was hoping that Big Brother's recommendation would not include the words poop or the garbage can, because, you know, he's four and everything revolves around poop and the garbage can.

His answer?

Stone Soup.

We've read this story a lot over the years, though not so much lately. We even have it on CD with Pete Seeger retelling the story and singing. For those who don't know the story, it's about a stranger who convinces wary villagers to add ingredients to a pot of boiling water with a large stone in it. Each time a character adds something to the pot, the refrain is the same:

Stone Soup is what you need/When you have some friends to feed

It's a classic fable about cooperation amidst scarcity. By the end of the story, the villagers and the strangers all enjoy a hearty soup. I never knew how much he got out of it until he suggested that we make Tuesday our Stone Soup day.

So this Tuesday, on our first Stone Soup day, we were having split pea and ham soup. As we put it together in the crockpot, I tried to convince him that the ham bone was our stone. It does rhyme with bone, after all.

No deal. Our soup apparently had to have an actual stone in it, according to Big Brother.

He ran off to get a stone from the backyard. We chose a smooth rock from our "river bed" that has some Appalachian river rocks in it that we picked up on a trip to Boone last fall. I cleaned it up, soaking it in boiling water with some dish soap for a bit and scrubbing it for a little longer.

Then we put it in the crockpot with the rest of the ingredients. Really. (Obviously, we are not germaphobic in this household.)

It simmered all day amidst the potatoes, peas, carrots and ham bone. Later on in the afternoon, he and his buddy next door picked some sage and asked to drop it in the soup.

As we ate dinner that evening, Big Brother insisted on having the stone in his soup for a while.

"Look, mom, I'm buttering the stone," he said as he smeared pea soup on it with his spoon.

I know. We're weird. But at least now I have something to plug into the menu once a week.

And the soup stone is still in the kitchen, ready for next week.

Free U: The Identical Identifier

It's hard to shake the feeling that my son isn't learning what he's supposed to. Whatever that means. Every once in a while, I get nervous that he's reluctant to write letters or draw or that he knows all his letter sounds but won't put them together to sound out a word. It's hard, he tells me about reading and writing. I fear that he'll be behind his peers, that he won't read until he's much older, that he'll struggle to write and read, that he won't learn math easily or at all. And then I remember that life and learning are not a race and that learning should not be measured and inspected.

Learning just happens despite my efforts or lack thereof.

Lately, my 4 year old son randomly uses a word in conversation or mutters it under his breath. Then he asks what it means. Who says you have to know how to read to learn vocabulary words? I guarantee you that this kid is learning quite a bit of vocabulary words on the installment plan. (Vocabulary is such a school word, don't you think?)

The word of the week for him has been "identical."

One evening last week, my husband and I sat in the yard while the kids played. Big Brother wanted to know the meaning of identical. We told him. He brought out two trikes that are nearly identical, except for the color scheme.

"These bikes are identical," he claimed.

Jim asked him to find the similarities between the two bikes. He pointed out that the handlebars were both red. Big Brother then pointed out that the pedals were the same color: yellow. We talked about how some parts of the bike were identical and others were not.

Jim then spotted a yellow golf ball. We have probably half a dozen of these around the yard. My husband has turned the yard into a par 3. He told Big Brother to find a ball in the yard that was identical to the yellow golf ball.

And he was off for the physical education portion of that night's "lesson." He picked up a stick and began scouring the yard. Jim called it his identical identifier. (We're finding the key to keeping him engaged is to keep him physically moving. This is why we suspect a classroom would be a disaster for him. Who says you need to sit still to learn anything?)

Our dinner conversations have also turned to the identical properties of various items on and around the table. Cups are identical in color, but not size. Other cups are identical in size and shape, but not color. The dining room chairs are identical, but not the same color wood as the train table. I always hesitate to turn every conversation into something "educational." But the difference here, I think, is that he initiated the discussions. We did not craft lessons for the purpose of teaching him what identical means. He figured it out all on his own.

I know I say it often, but it bears repeating: This is spontaneous learning at its best. And I hesitate to even call it learning. He was just having fun in the backyard with his family, having a scavenger hunt for a yellow golf ball identical to the one his father gave him. He merely noticed with delight that he and his father had the same color cup and that he and his sister had the same size cup.

I envision all kinds of worksheets and mindless matching games being used to teach kids what identical means. In fact, I think that I can recall matching questions on standardized tests. This is not to say that these activities can't be fun. I did love a good game of Memory when I was a kid. Still do. It's just a lot less fun when you're being forced to play.

Free U: Visual Math

It was way past Big Brother's bedtime after a particularly irritating day with him. I was sitting in the kitchen with my laptop trying to get some work done. All the while, I heard bumps and thumps and waited expectantly for that voice at the top of the stairs. I was waiting for the bedtime extender du jour.

Big Brother is at the top of the stairs, telling his father to come and look at his car line.

"Come see my car line. It's different. It has a corner."

So up daddy goes. He comes back to down to report that Big Brother has indeed made a car line. He gave his father the run down:

"See, all the purple cars are here, and the orange and the blue ones. And the red cars. The green one is out of order. There was only one of those."

For years, he has been lining up his cars in various places around the house. But never like this; it was quite a meticulous line of cars to behold.

Of course, his mother had to take a picture.

So up I went to see this marvel. It really didn't matter to me that it was about an hour and a half past his bedtime and that I was in the midst of doing some editing work. I really needed at least one more positive interaction with him at the end of this particularly annoying day. And I got it.

Earlier in the day, while eating an afternoon snack, he began making patterns with the three different types of pretzels we had on hand -- sticks, twists and squares. It was his idea. Seems like patterns were on his mind that day. Maybe that's why he couldn't "hear" me to save his life.

Free U: The Accidental Geometry Lesson

It has been a rather rough week for Big Brother. He's been pretty aggressive. In fact, he hit a boy at preschool so hard that the kid had a bruise on his arm. Friday morning, I kept him out of Parents Morning Out as a consequence. I sent Girlface and kept him and The Baby home (he needed a morning nap). We told him that we just couldn't trust him to be around other kids right now. So instead, he hung out with me. I made no special effort to play with him; I just went about my housework and told him that this is what I do when they are at church on Fridays. And out came the laundry baskets. I sat on the floor started pulling out the kitchen rags. I told him to come help me fold.


They're square. I figured he could handle it.


He made a half-hearted attempt, said "help me" and then ran off to the sofa to sulk. I called him back, saying, "You asked for help. Come here so I can show you." I did not want to spend the morning with a sulky boy so I decided to try to make it fun for him.


I told him to "cut" the towel in the middle with his hand and fold it to turn a square towel into a rectangle.


So from then on, of course, towel folding had a sound effect. What do you expect from a four year old boy?


SHOOP. And fold. Voila! A rectangle.

SHOOP. And fold. Voila! Another square.

SHOOP. And fold. Voila! Another rectangle.


After a few of those, I decided to introduce diagonal folds to make triangles out of the square. We had a tidy pile of triangles and rectangles and a boy who was disappointed when all the towels were folded.


By this time, I had also introduced the concepts of diagonal, vertical and horizontal. In my head, I could see those graphs I had worked with in geometry class.

Now, I'm no math genius. (That's actually the understatement of the decade. I make my husband calculate and add tips to our restaurant tabs while he mocks me with "Math is hard." Whatever. This is the man who calls apostrophes "commas in the air.") I vaguely sensed, though, that these activities were math related. So I googled patterns and geometry just to see what would come up and found this charming worksheet. Albeit, it is third grade level math, but I bet if he looked at it long enough, he could find all the squares in the 5x5 or 25 unit square. But when I started staring at it, my mind immediately shut down and my eyes literally began to squint and actually hurt as if I'd been starting at it for a lot longer than 10 seconds (which was really all I could handle).

Something tells me that folding square kitchen rags into rectangles and triangles was a good enough and more productive accidental introduction to geometry for him.

Free U: Physical Math

It's dinnertime on Sunday night. Lovely evening on the screen porch. Until ... Girlface shows Daddy her food. Daddy says stop. She does it again and smiles.

Time out.

One person down.

Big Brother takes inventory.

Hey. There's four now, he says.

That's right. Five minus one equals four, I say. He's been asking about the word equal a lot lately. I figured now would be a good time to start using the word in context.

Daddy gets up.

So, four minus one equals? I ask.

Three, he says.

Daddy and Girlface return. Three plus two equals?

Five, he says.

Then he runs giggling from the table on the screen porch into the backyard. Normally, this would be a major infraction. But it was Sunday night and we were eating outside and he was engaged in a physical math activity. I thought it was pretty cool, actually.

When he came back, he said, four plus one equals five.

And that concludes today's lesson on addition and subtraction. 

I really can't imagine anything more boring than looking at numbers on a piece of paper and puzzling out the answers to addition and subtraction problems. In fact, thinking about it makes my head hurt. To this day, I couldn't tell you what algebra was all about. I probably use the principles in my life every day without knowing it. (If someone has an illustration of this, I'd love to hear it, because, as I said, I wouldn't know what real-life algebra application looks like.)

My son is a very physical little boy who is in a very literal phase. Although he recognizes most numbers and can count, he also needs to see what numbers look like in real life. And it helps if he can physically add and subtract himself from the mix.

Free U: Numbers

A stack of blue sticky notes and a chart with the numbers from 1 to 100 provided a 20-minute, unscripted, Big Brother-led number lesson on a napless Friday afternoon.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the two of them that afternoon. I was certain, though, that I wanted two exhausted kids by 8 p.m. instead of two wired monkeys hounding us from the top of the stairs until 10 p.m. So they wound up at the kitchen table with crayons, sticky notes, paper and markers while I prepped dinner. And, of course, they were begging to eat the frozen peas I was tossing in the casserole. (My kids are weird like that. They love to eat frozen veggies.)

It all started with the number four. Because, you see, Big Brother is four years old and he is the center of the universe. He counted out four frozen peas. Then he asked me to write the number four on a sticky note. Then he ran to get the number chart I had printed out months ago.

My sister told me about this handy little chart. It's just 10 rows of numbers from 1 to 100. For a time, it was written on the chalkboard wall. She told me to just put the hundred number board where he could access and study it anytime he wanted. 

I had to resist the urge to lead the lesson. I didn't always succeed. When I tried to get him to start counting from number 1, Big Brother quickly lost interest and began fidgeting. When I backed off, he started pointing to numbers, asking what they were and telling me to write them on the sticky notes. He called it his number map. I began sticking them along the edge of our round kitchen table. In order, of course. (I had to do something, but I didn't mention that they were in numerical order.)  He asked how old certain family members were. "What number is PopPop?" he'd ask. I showed him the ages of everyone in the family and wrote those on sticky notes with the corresponding name.

I decided to do a little matching game with him. I asked him to match the numbers on the sticky note with their matches on the number board. He found them quickly and correctly every time.

Then I explained how to name all the numbers. For instance, we talked about the 70 row and how every time you see a 7 before another number, you say 70 and then the number after the 7. I pointed to 71. He said 71. We went down the row this way. He got every one of them correct without hesitation. We did the 40 and 90 row, by no means sequentially as the lesson may have been in school.

This went surprisingly well for an indoor afternoon with no naps. If I had to plan an introduction to numbers lesson, I'm pretty sure this English major would have broken out in hives. He may not want to talk about numbers again for a few days, weeks or months. And that's okay (partly because anything math related does make me sweat). One of my core beliefs about learning is this: The teacher appears when the student is ready. And the teacher isn't always a person with credentials or a plan; it can be any situation or experience such as a piece of  paper with numbers written on it and a parent willing to just sit and answer whatever questions come up.

Free U: Dissolve

We've been having lunch on the back porch quite a bit lately. It's been that nice. The kids just don't want to come inside. You'd think my house would be cleaner; but it's not.

Mealtime at our house is a full sensory experience. My kids don't just eat their food; actually, they rarely eat their food. Instead they feel it, taste it, chew it, spit it out, feel that stuff, smell it, smear it, dip it, mix it and smash it.



This morning, Big Brother began dipping his french fries in ketchup and then in his water.

He asked, "What's dissolve?"

"Well, that's when a substance melts or disappears in the water."

He looked at the bits of ketchup in his cup, stirred it up a bit and said, "It's not dissolving."

I told him that some things dissolve quicker than other things and other things don't dissolve at all in water. He started rattling off items from the kitchen such as salt, butter and sugar. He wanted to dissolve more things in water. I failed to convince him that it was not a good time since The Baby was still awake.

So I brought out some nutmeg, salt, sugar, olive oil in a Misto, butter, corn starch, oatmeal (this one was his idea) and a bunch of clear plastic containers. He kept running into the house to refill his cup with water to test the collection of items I'd brought out. I even brought out some warmer water to better dissolve the sugar and salt.

We talked about how oil and water don't mix and how salt and sugar dissolve better in warm water than cold. He noticed that the corn starch dissolved and turned the water white.

Sliding backward

Meanwhile, Girlface was sliding down the slide backward and The Baby was sitting in the yard very methodically putting leaves into a container--both conducting experiments of their own.

Later this afternoon, Big Brother asked to do water experiments again. The lesson expanded as we talked about why some of the items float on top of the water and others sink. I told him that items sink when they are heavier than the water and float if they are lighter than the water. Each time he added something new from the spice basket I brought out, we watched what it did and I asked if it was lighter or heavier than the water. We also observed how liquids such as corn syrup, molasses and food dye behave in water. (Like a tornado, according to Big Brother, who observed the swirly patterns each substance made in the water. I explained diffusion to him.)

He had a blast and the activity was driven by his interest. I couldn't have planned it any better. But I still did an Internet search to gather more ideas on water experiments. My kids just can't get enough of water play and it's good to have some ideas. (You'd think my kids would be cleaner for all their interest in water, but they just aren't.)

Of course, our first water experiment on the screen porch ended when Girlface got involved and a bowl full of water, oatmeal and God knows what else spilled all over the deck and their half-eaten lunches. Ah, well.

Next lesson? How to be a janitor.

Free U: Mommy, the human dictionary

Big Brother asks a lot of questions these days. I don't always have the answers. Sometimes I tell him to go ask his father. Like the other day when he asked me where rocks come from and what a volcano is.

Oh dear. I haven't had enough sleep to deal with science questions. Daddy is the science guy.

Me? I'm the word girl.

"What's jewel?" he wants to know as we're reading a favorite book, "Girlface Loves the Night."

"It's a piece of rock that's shiny. My diamond is a jewel."

"What's transform?" he asks as he brings me his Transformer.
"It's when something changes from one form to another." Like the transformer, for instance.

"What's bothered?"
"It's when you don't like something someone has done." Like when your sister takes a toy from you.

"What's aggravating?" He actually asked this question way too many times.

It was rather aggravating.

After the 20th time he asked, I told him "Aggravating is when you ask the same question over and over and over again after I've already answered it. 'Kay?"

Big Brother hasn't asked again. This is how a kid builds a good vocabulary. He remembers what these words mean since he's doing the asking which means he's learning these words in a context that's meaningful to him.

One of the most banal and meaningless school experiences I can recall is the dreaded vocabulary homework and subsequent quizzing. Vocabulary quizzes made me sweat. Writing out vocabulary words and their definitions was torturous and deadly boring.

Honkshooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

And I was actually good at and liked my English classes. To this day, I can't recall a single vocabulary word that I learned in school. Definitions usually roll right off my tongue when my son asks the meaning of a word, however. How did I got here then? By reading books on topics that I enjoy and figuring out the definition through the context clues. In fairness, there was an effort to put vocabulary words in the context of whatever literature we were reading. But I retained little information since I was compelled by a curriculum that someone else designed to read books didn't interest me.


And therein lies the element that I feel is crucial to a good education and a meaningful life: Freedom to choose what you learn based on your interests.

Free U: What's scaly, mom?

Yesterday morning, Girlface wanted the animals from her Little People Zoo. I got them down for her, opened the case and tried to return to emptying the dishwasher. She went into a full body hyperwhine and repeated the same incoherent phrase over and over. My head threatened to explode. Then I realized what she was saying.

"Have to play with me."

Yes, baby. Yes, of course, I do. (Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.)

So we played. And the dishes waited.

She matched the animals with the letters and pictures on the mat. She named several of the animals. And the ones she didn't know she called "Go outside." That's her go-to answer to every question lately. She's weird.

Then I began sorting the animals into groups and explained each group to Girlface. All the birds. All the animals with fur. All the animals that go in the water. All the animals with scaly or leathery skin.

Big Brother was in the other room watching TV. I told him TV time was over. He quietly turned the TV off. (I'm surprised he actually did this without squawking.)

He joined us and looked with interest on my little anal-retentively arranged menagerie. I explained what each pile was. He moved the penguin from the bird category to the water animal category. I began sorting them into subgroups. All the animals that live in Africa or Asia or South America. Big Brother has a puzzle of a world map with animals on it from every continent. He's learned the names of the continents and sometimes remembers the animals associated with each continent.

Then he asked "What's scaly, mom?" as he fingered the group which included an an alligator and an iguana, among other animals. Girlface perked up and was interested, too.

Well, let's see. How to explain this?

I whipped off my sock and let them feel my dry, hard, cracked heels. (It's been a long winter.)

"That's scaly," I said. "Want to touch it?"

They did. They thought it was hilarious. And weird.

So ... I saved $25 by not getting a pedicure and my kids spontaneously learned what scaly means.  They probably also picked up on sorting methods, animal names and where certain animals come from.

That's enough homeschool for one day, but the dishes can still wait.

Free U: The yard birds

An occasional feature
 
So much of what goes on around here is "educational" without being planned. I'm finding that I subscribe more to the unschooling philosophy of education. Or what I like to call just living. A few years ago, my sister, who homeschools her three children, would write blog posts about what her kids were doing and what they were learning while engaged in these activities. The activities were often not school-like activities and would grow out of the kids' interests rather than her planning. Big Brother is now so curious and engaged. Every day there seems to be an episode of spontaneous learning prompted by his questions about his world or just what his father and I are doing. I want to share these bits with you to show just how effortless learning can be.

Last weekend, we were homebound with three out of five us ailing from a nasty chest cold. My husband was a bit restless, as usual, and just itching to get out the hot glue gun. The kids had just finished off a pack of gum that comes in a several inch tall round container with a flip-top lid. This gave him an idea. And we wound up with this thing stuck to our window:

Yes, that is a piece of a child-safety cabinet lock acting as a bird perch.

It took about a week for a bird to actually show up at our windowsill. They were probably a little terrified of the jumpy, loud children with their faces and hands pressed against window. The entire week, though, I had two children eagerly watching birds out the window, noticing their colors, where they flew to, when they were eating seed off the ground, listening to the sounds they made (we could actually hear them through the window. Cool!!). Big Brother can now identify two types of birds: a cardinal (It's my bird, he says. It's red.) and a robin.

Just by chance, Big Brother's preschool class did a unit on birds this week, too. He didn't talk much about it at home and I found out only after the fact in the weekly email from his sweet teacher. One day he came home with a pair of "binoculars" -- two toilet paper tubes stapled together with a piece of yarn to hang around his neck. Another coincidence ... this weekend, Big Brother found an old Highlights magazine. He turned to an article about birds and saw a project he wanted to do: a bird feeder from an old milk carton.

The whole family is now interested in what kinds of birds we have hanging out in our side yard. This week, we will go to the library to find a bird identification guide, mostly for me. I'm curious myself and I know from experience that my curiosity usually sparks theirs.

I'm mentally filing this under science, but it's so much more. It's about observation. It's about reusing materials. It's about using your imagination. The kids saw Jim make a bird feeder out of something that you wouldn't normally see and think, "Hm, that would make a good bird feeder."

What was neat about this past week was that none of this was planned as part of a unit study. It just happened. And, aside from the bird seed that we bought, it was free.

A totally free education

I don't like to pay for things that are actually free. Education should be free. And, make no mistake, "free education" is not really free. As we're finding with Big Brother's preschool experience, school is an investment of time for the entire family that we foresee becoming more intrusive if our children move forward in this system. School tends to follow kids home and often leaves little private time for them to fashion a whole self. And when just one kid goes to school, the whole family's time and energy gets sucked into school and school-related activities.

I haven't written much about education lately. I used to write about it more when our decisions about education were not staring us in the face. Actually, my opinions seemed stronger and more certain when the issue didn't effect us so directly. Big Brother is 4 and we will have to decide soon what to do about school for him. And, of course, that decision will factor into what we do for the other children. We're opting out of preschool next year because of cost and the time investment. Four half days are too much for him and for us to commit to an institution that we don't feel will have much bearing on his future happiness and productivity as a citizen of the world. Practically speaking, hauling three young kids in and out of the van and into the preschool twice a day, the van ride, the getting ready, the "homework" and the volunteer hours were all too much for us. These things may not have become the burdens they did if I felt preschool was critically important.

The only thing I do know for sure is that, for me, educational philosophy is as personal as spirituality and should be treated as such. Every individual experiences spirituality and education in their own unique way. That is why I feel so strongly that the one-size-fits-all K through 12 schooling -- the predominant model in this country -- is a grave disservice to children and families. I know many will disagree with me on this point. That's okay. I actually would be fine with the K through 12 system in place if it were just one of many educational options available for families and children that is supported by public funds. Here it seems diversity extends only as far as skin color and culture and is not applied to the vast variety of learning styles.

Homeschooling is something we are interested in but, as for most people, will have to be balanced with the financial needs of our family. I've been reading a bit about unit studies and curriculum that pull multi-disciplinary lessons from literature. It sounds easy enough but seems like a lot of work if you actually commit to following through on it. Spontaneity seems to work well here so far. A few instances recalled from just one day prove this point, if only to me.

We read "If You Give a Moose a Muffin" at story time one night. The next day, Big Brother pulled out the book. A few minutes later, he came in and said, "We've got to make sock puppets. We've got to do a puppet show with a moose and a mouse."  He ran around closing curtains and asking to make sock puppets for a few minutes.

For those who don't know the story, a moose is given a muffin which makes him think of something else he wants which, in turn, leads to another train of thought. Actually, he's kind of like Big Brother, scrambling to put on a sock puppet show, now that I think of it. Very cute book, as are its companions, "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,"  "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake" and "If You Give a Pig a Pancake."

The puppets are one of this creature's fantastic ideas. I gave it a few seconds thought. I got out some holy socks, the glue gun, some googly eyes, some red puff balls and a brown pipe cleaner and came up with these crude looking things.

We played with them for about 15 minutes. He wanted me to chase him around the house with them. His sister tried one on. His poor teething brother thought they were hilarious and then tried to bite it off mommy's hand.


Here Big Brother displayed reading comprehension, reading recall, imagination, initiative. If this were a classroom, it would be a unit study on this book, all kids doing the same thing planned by the teacher, all projects looking nearly the same. Whatever it would look like in a classroom, I doubt my son would be quite as interested.


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Later that same day, we were outside playing in the back yard. He went over to his trapeze and asked me if it was made of plastic. I felt no need to quiz him or ask him what he thought. I just told him, "No, honey, it's metal."

"Oh, it's magnetic," he said excitedly. That gave me an idea. We have a magnetic learning lab that Nana bought for Christmas with magnetic wands, ball, chips, etc. They both love it and it is a late afternoon go-to activity when neither have napped. I went in and got magnetic wands for him and his sister, red for him, pink for her, of course. He ran around the back yard for 15 minutes trying to find magnetic objects. He felt the pull in a few rocks, some of our deck furniture, door hinges and screws, the trapeze and even the chains on his swing. Trees, the ground, the dog's bowl and matchbox cars? All not magnetic. Now I'm curious as to why the dog's metal bowl and matchbox cars aren't magnetic and plan to look it up. What I loved about this was its spontaneous nature. And if I were to have to classify this by subject for some bureaucrat somewhere (as it appears I may have to in a few years) I could file it under science and physical education. But, really, learning can't and shouldn't be classified and quantified.
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I like your sweater, Big Brother told his father later that night.
It's wool, Jim replied. Do you know where wool comes from?
Sheep, he said, without skipping a beat.

Where did he learn this? One book that he likes, "Ice Cream Cows and Mitten Sheep." One question, one answer. No unit study, no quizzes or drilling, no field trip to see farm animals. Did he retain it? Of course. But the real question is do I want him to spit back random facts learned in a sterile environment or do I want him to learn about his world in a context that is meaningful to him and in a place that is safe and familiar? The latter, of course.  

The lesson being if you give a kid books and access to nearly everything in his world, answer his questions to the best of your knowledge and look it up when you can't, he's going to learn, he's going to ask questions, he's going to get his own ideas and feel free to act upon them within reason.

This takes all the time in the world, of course, but very little effort. This is my kind of learning. And it's free.