Apparently, our homeschooling program needs a name, or so sayeth the monthly attendance forms, at least. What can I call my program of study? I’m going back and forth between a name that makes an accurate, if boring, statement (McLernins Secular Elementary Home Study Program?), a name that is creative, if overblown (Eternal Hottentots Academy for Excellence?), or a name whose acronym spells a dirty word.
Suggestions?
I forgot about review. I FORGOT ABOUT REVIEW. I didn’t plan any way of making sure Captain Science actually retained what we covered in history. I lose at homeschooling forever and for all times. The Captain will fail his SATS and live in my basement until he’s 107.
Ok, actually, I just made a crossword puzzle with all our history vocab stuff, so if he can fill that in with ease, he’s obviously retained the history lessons. If he can’t, we’ll push Egypt back a week for review of Mesopotamia.
No need to panic, right? Right?
Ok, going off to panic anyway.
I no longer find the weekends restful. The routine and obligations of the school week have so greatly improved my mental state that the weekends are significantly more stressful, because I don’t have anything I have to do. I feel more anxious and depressed today than I have all week. Homeschooling is my anti-depressant, apparently.
This week, Captain Science studied the Hittites, Babylonians, and Assyrians. He read The Hittite Warrior. He covered chapters three and four in Life of Fred: Fractions and successfully demonstrated mastery of long division. In science lab, he built on earlier concepts of circuits and switches by learning about fuses. Grammar lessons covered possessive nouns and nouns of direct address. Writing (which took forever and a day this week) introduced key word outlines and using strong adjectives, “-ly words,” and action verbs in summaries. He also attended the homeschool co-op and took martial arts, chess, match club, and filmmaking. Busy week for Captain Science!
The Tank enjoyed week 2 of away-from-home preschool. He brought some several painted pictures, one of which was an entire white piece of paper painted red, titled “A Bomb.”
Babypie has started playing with toys and added “w” and “b” to her list of baby sounds. It’s not really school-related, but babies have smrt lernins, too.
Because Thursday is Science Day at the McLernins house, I find myself thinking about what it means to be a secular homeschooler. Patchfire and I often discuss how extraneous one feels being a secular homeschooler who also has a rigorous curriculum. There just really aren’t that many of us. Most of our secular contemporaries are schooling much more informally than we are, and many have actually jumped the homeschooling shark into full-blown unschooling.
Yes, education can be fun. It often should be fun. Learning only by rote doesn’t teach critical thinking skills or creativity. That does not mean, however, that memorization has no place in education. Think of the wide array of professions where being able to remember and recall many tiny bits of information is critical to success. If you don’t develop those skills early on, you’re going to be hard pressed to learn them in adulthood. The ability to write a formal piece and express yourself eloquently will never fall out of fashion or become irrelevant. Reading the classics expands your child’s mind with language usage, scenarios, and settings they might not ever imagine on their own. This type of education may not be hip, it may not be sexy, and it certainly isn’t trendy and cutting edge, but it’s persisted for a reason. Children aren’t always the best judge of what they need to know. You can’t make an informed choice in a bubble, and asking your child to make decision about what she needs to know for the rest of her life from a place of naivete doesn’t serve her well.
Here’s my challenge to you, secular homeschoolers. Raise the bar. Why should the religious homeschoolers be the only ones expecting high performance from their children? Why should they be the only ones whose children are expected to read, do math, or exhibit critical thinking skills in any formal capacity? It’s not an unschooling world out there and you’re putting your children at a disadvantage when you expect nothing of them. Take a cue from the religious homeschoolers for one, and raise the bar. “Throw out the books and go learn something” might work with your first grader, but failure to develop the ability to engage in some formal study is only going to hurt your child.
Worst homeschooling day yet and proof-positive that any vigorous curriculum day must be fronted by a run with Officer Daddyman. We were all dragging this morning when we woke up, so I encourage Daddyman to stay in bed with sleeping Babypie while I took Tank to preschool. Officer Daddyman and the Captain skipped their morning run as a result.
Captain Science decided to test our new “if you don’t get it done during the pre-established time frame, it’ll be tacked on at the end of the day in lieu of fun stuff” policy. It’s 6 o’clock and he is still working on his writing assignment and has a few more history things to do. He dawdled over his history and only got half of it done, so I had him put it away.
We moved on to grammar (possessive nouns). He didn’t follow the simple instruction to read the chapter first, so he plowed right through all the work and did it completely incorrectly. I had him read the chapter again and redo just the first section. He did it incorrectly again. I had him read the chapter aloud and he finally got it right. It’s not that he doesn’t understand, and he has actually demonstrated in the past that he can use possessive nouns correctly in sentences, but he just would not pay attention to what he was supposed to do.
We finally finished grammar and started writing a little after lunch, and he’s been working on that ever since. It’s not hard — making a simple outline from a paragraph, making short lists of active verbs, adjectives, and -ly words, and then using those to write a short paragraph. It shouldn’t have taken him longer than an hour to do all of it, but he’s fought tooth and nail.
Because he wouldn’t do his work in a timely manner, he missed out on a trip to Nana’s house and on going to the McDonald’s playground. He was upset about that, so hopefully it inspires him to stay motivated in the future. This has been terribly frustrating.
We had our first homeschool co-op day yesterday. What a great experience! Captain Science took classes in martial arts, chess, math club, and filmmaking. I taught a creative writing class and Officer Daddyman taught martial arts.
I was initially worried about how my class would go. I’ve never taught creative writing to children before. Officer Daddyman told me not to worry about it, because these are “my people” and I’ll probably go in and be “queen of the homeschoolers.” They were certainly my people, and the kids seemed to enjoy the class a lot. I have to admit that I have more in common with kids (and parents) like these than I ever had in any other school environment, including private, Montessori, and public schools. The parents are a lot more like me. The kids are like my kids. It’s not at all cliquish like I’ve experienced elsewhere. So nice!
I’m impressed by the talent of some of these children. They already express themselves so well on the page. I think we can get some great material out of them during this class. If I get their permission, I’ll even share some of their work here (names removed, of course).
Our first class was “Show, Don’t Tell,” a common trope of writing. The kids all drew a feeling or experience (“I’m hot” or “I’m sad,” for example) from an envelope and then wrote a short paragraph expressing that feeling without saying the actual word. They all understood the concept right away and many of them came up with great ways to show what they were feeling.
I wouldn’t say I wish we could do the co-op more days a week, because it was a long and exhausting day, but I’m really looking forward to continuing. Captain Science is, too! He played the role of “dead body” in their first film and was so proud of himself.
So…Hammurabi’s Code. Colorful!
Because the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia doesn’t go into any detail about Hammurabi’s Code of Laws, we looked it up online. Captain Science has now had a nice lesson on class systems (or “stratified societies,” for some nice vocabulary) and also on the price of one’s privates as determined by one’s social standing. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth wasn’t really making much of an impact on him, but he certainly was impressed at the various penalties for striking someone in the privates in 1700s BCE Babylon. He also learned various definitions for the word “scourge.”
History? Check. Nut shots? Check. Bloody death by whipping? Check. I think my work here is done.
We finished up our exciting Babylonian adventures with the fill-in-the-blank map. With absolutely no prompting, Captain Science chose the rainbow-swirl crayon to fill in Babylon on the map. If that’s not funny to you, well, you’ve probably not seen an episode of Queer as Folk. I assure you, my son hasn’t either. He’s just colorful by nature, just like Hammurabi’s code.
While listening to Beethoven segment on “Classics for Kids” this morning, Captain Science remarked that he thought it was better to live in modern times. When I asked him why, he answered, “Because of rock music, instead of music that’s old and mushy.” He gestured at my laptop, where Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata was playing.
I asked him what he meant, and he said, “This music just isn’t a good fit for me. It’s too tight.”
Music appreciation seems to be turning into music criticism.
Today we had a day of undoing past educational damage. While working on Chapter 2 of Life of Fred: Fractions, Captain Science suddenly forgot how to do multiplication. He kept using some strange method that probably works just fine on shorter problems, but not on 5+ digits! He had a lot of negative self-talk about it, how he can’t do it and it’s too hard and OMG HISSY FIT TEARS AND ANGUISH!!!!
I had him work through some 2 digit times 2 digit problems, then some 3 digits times 2 digit problems, then 3 digit times 3 digit problems. Eventually, he regained his confidence and was able to easily turn out the answers to the 5 digit times 3 digit problem (and eventually a 9 digit times 2 digit problem!) and continue with his math work.
At times like these, I feel so angry about the complete lack of education he received in his 3rd grade classroom. His teacher spent her entire day giving them worksheets to work on alone, while she sat at her desk (usually working on her computer, though this didn’t mean she actually returned emails in a timely manner) and occasionally came around to criticize.
The other day, Captain Science and a friend from up the street were playing with Legos, when the Captain suddenly blew up at his friend and sent him home. This is totally unlike him, so we asked what the problem was. Apparently, they couldn’t agree on terms of play for whatever game they were inventing, and the friend kept saying, “Concentrate! Concentrate!” Captain Science was storming around the room in a white cold fury, picking up his toys, and saying that it was just like his teacher last year, that all she ever said was, “Concentrate, Captain Science! Concentrate!” any time he had a question or complaint.
The poor kid still has a lot of demons to exorcise from last year. There’s still so much damage to undo from that horrible woman. If only I’d been braver and realized I could just pull him out and homeschool him last year, I could have saved him from this. It breaks my heart, but I also feel so hopeful about his educational future now that he’s at home with us, where he belongs.
