My Home-School Idea Binder, and a Winner!

Recently I shared with you my goals for the remainder of Buddy’s preschool year. Today I’ll share with you the method I use for planning our elementary years. Then I’ll tell you who the winner is of The Fundamentals of Home-Schooling. Of course, you could skip ahead, but I’ll try to keep the anticipation going just a little longer.

This is my homeschool planning binder, or idea book. Whatever you want to call it, this is where I keep all my plans, hopes, ideas, wish lists, and resource information. I collect info from anything I find useful and tuck it in here for current or future use. Despite our laid-back approach to the early years, I would feel directionless without it.

If you are a new homeschooling mom, you should definitely start one of these to offer you encouragement and inspiration. Based on what I’ve come up with, here’s how to make one.

1. Purchase a 1 or 2” three-ring binder. Personalize it however you wish, with a simple title or an artistic cover that expresses your family
2. Purchase a set of dividers to make your binder easier to use, and label as you see fit – based on subjects, notes you have, whatever works
3. As you read books on homeschooling, share ideas with others, attend classes, or find inspiration, jot down your ideas and store print-outs in your binder. It will fill up faster than you think!
4. Every time you feel your days need a little more spark, or you are planning the next few weeks (or more!) of your school days, review your binder to find useful activities and resources to fit your needs

And now, for the winner of Ann Lahrson-Fisher’s book…

Sarah!

Congratulations and happy reading!

“Remember that it is not what children learn that is most important, but that the learning twins, the love of learning and the ability to learn, flourish within each child.” ~ Ann Lahrson-Fisher’s

Child-Led, Mama-Guided Learning

I am a big supporter of delayed schooling: waiting until age 6-8 to begin doing short lessons in the basics of education. This is based on the value of learning foundational thinking and physical skills, and common sense in the years prior.

When their senses are more developed and they have had the opportunity to release energy and spend the day with their imagination, then, they are ready to begin learning big people stuff.

Yet, as with almost every other phase of childhood we’ve moved to so far, I’ve seen that whatever form of schooling is used, it should in the early years be based on the individual child.

For example, I did not plan to teach Buddy how to read for another year or two, but he has for some time now been memorizing words we read to him and practicing spelling out and writing them because he wants to know them.

So I started going through Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Engelmann, Haddox, and Bruner, with the idea that if he balked at it we would stop. Instead, he found the first lessons useless because he already knew their objective. When we got into combining sounds though, he started getting excited, and you could see the joy in his face when he realized that simple, but important fact that a word is made of sounds. And then it clicked.

Buddy will be 5 years old next week, and I do not want to pressure him to learn anything. I want learning to be a fun adventure that he discovers. However, kids need guides to help them along, and clues like those Buddy gave me say, “get in line mom! Help me figure this out!”

There is a line between teaching too much too early, and not teaching enough in the early years. You have to be able to read the signs that each of your kids send and use those to determine the when and hows of introducing school at the right time and in the right way.

How did you introduce homeschooling to your kids?

On making an airplane… all by himself

I knew this was going to be a fun summer with the kids. Buddy is growing up so fast, and has really become quite interested in using man tools to make man projects. Last week he used a handsaw and cut his very first board. And he says, “I didn’t even hurt myself!” A couple days later he asked Papa for six nails, and the next thing I knew Papa was supervising him nailing three boards together, all by himself, to create this airplane!

He’s very proud of himself, and so are his Mama and Papa.

Beautiful Sunshine

Written May 24, 2011

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Sunshine. It really does exist after all! Eleven days after the sun last rested on our shoulders, we’re finally feeling it again. They say we still have a few more days at least before it decides to stick around, but we’re soaking it all in, and boy does it feel good.

This week has been interesting. Although we are still moving stuff to the homestead from the old place, there is a sense of normalcy finally making itself known. Our things have a new place, our days have some sort of order, we can depend on being able to eat when we’re hungry instead of working lunch into our moving schedule, and we’re even doing things just for fun.

Boy, does feel nice. Yesterday I took the kids to the new library. Unfortunately we didn’t have any cash on us, so we haven’t picked up a library card yet, but the librarian was kind enough to send us home with some children’s books that were on the donation shelf.

Pal has been teething for I don’t even know how long now and last Friday he came down with a low grade fever and diarrhea. He won’t eat the Tylenol chewables so I’ve been giving him a couple doses of yarrow tincture almost every day, nursing him three times as much, and giving him more fruit. I hope it goes away soon, I don’t like seeing him uncomfortable.

We did make contact with the mortgage company about what to expect from the foreclosure process. It looks like after the next missed payment they will pass our case to Maine State Housing, who will look at our options, including a short sale. The eviction notice will probably arrive in a couple months, then we’ll have a final two weeks to get the last things out before they give us a court date to make the foreclosure official. There are still a lot of variables, so we’ll see how it plays out, but this is what the rep at the collections office described.

What about the fun stuff? I’ve been thinking more about homeschooling lately. Although I like the idea of flexible learning, red shirting, and possibly a bit of unschooling, one of my goals for this summer is to add some fun learning activities to our days. Field trips, science experiments, building projects, and growing the garden as a family. We’ve already been dabbling in some of this as opportunities presented themselves, but I’ve also been looking up fresh ideas from some toddler activity/home school books.

One book I’ve been picking ideas from is The Preschooler’s Busy Book by Trish Kuffner. That’s where I got the soap, pepper, and sugar experiment from that I mentioned recently.

Although I am a proponent of delaying structured learning, I am not opposed to teaching our kids the basics as the interest shows itself. Buddy has been spelling his name for some time now, and has even learned how to spell Girlie’s name, but today I wanted to see what he understood about upper and lowercase letters, since he prefers spelling only with uppercase. I wrote out his full name and all on his own, he correctly identified upper and lowercase letters! Then, with just a tad bit of help, he spelled his full name using both. We had talked briefly about upper and lowercase letters in the past, but much of what he has learned so far has been based on playing with letter writing and watching me write and read.

Okay, so this post is mostly made of ramblings, but I must say, this fresh air and bright sunshine has been so inspiring today. It makes me want to get outside and DO things other than the mundane. I even transplanted the rest of the comfrey and our pine tree (only four years old) today. Please stick around beautiful sunshine! We really like you!

Rain, Rain, GO AWAY!

This post was written yesterday, Thursday, May 19, 2011. We haven’t seen the sun in a week now and they say it will be several more before we see any :::sigh:::
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When the rain keeps pouring out of the sky, day after day, night after night, eventually you just have to say “screw it” and go jump in the puddles… or, as in our case, slosh through the grass.

By the time these two came inside four hours later, they were covered in dirt, mud, and water, and a complete change of clothes was in order. Yet they had SO much fun making mud pies and washing play dishes in sandy water they played right through lunch, and then some!

We’re quite through with all this rain and we would be very happy if it would go away for a while, but I know I shouldn’t complain. Families in the south have to leave their homes and watch them wash away in the flood. At least we had time to move before the “flood” of foreclosure.

There are also some uses for all the water soaking our land. Papa lowered one corner of our camper awning and is letting the rain run into barrels. A hose connected to a water filter and drill pump then draws the rain water into the camper water tank and is used for washing dishes, flushing the toilet, and taking baths and showers! We are not into water conservation for the purpose of “saving the earth”, but it does feel good knowing we are using the resources we have available to save time, effort, and money.

At the same time, Papa has been digging a well out back, by one of the springs on the land. So far it’s just about five feet deep. Once he’s happy with the depth, he’ll drive the point in and attach the hand pump from which we can pull water directly from the ground. Until then we only have to be concerned with keeping the kids away from the hole filled with water. A heavy piece of plywood to cover it is in order I think…

What else to do on a rainy day? How about a science project? Girlie and I filled a shallow tray with water and sprinkled it with pepper. What happens when you dip a bar of soap in the middle? What happens when you add a sprinkling of sugar? Such simple ingredients offer an interesting few minutes of entertainment and exploration!

Or, another flower project. We don’t have our holiday tree anymore, so we decorated the living room curtain rod with colored foam flower shapes. The kids drew and cut out their own shapes or helped cut out the shapes I made. A hole punch and snippets of string later and you have something colorful to lighten up the dusky view.

I heard sunshine is in the forecast, I hope to be waking up to it warming my face tomorrow!

February Reads and Clips

Priston Planet reports – In a new study released today the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) estimates there were over 2 million children being homeschooled in the United States in 2010. “The growth of the modern homeschool movement has been remarkable,” said Michael Smith, president of HSLDA. “Just 30 years ago there were only an estimated 20,000 homeschooled children,” he added.

One of my new favorite bloggers shares on survivalism vs. “possum living”. ”Survivalism, with a slant toward tossing it all and living in a cheap pickup camper”. Sound familiar? hehe

People who recover from swine flu may be left with an extraordinary natural ability to fight off all influenza viruses, says the Journal of Experimental Medicine. I guess it’s not the end of the world afterall if you catch the H1N1 bug!

20 new economic records set in 2010. You gotta see the chart at the bottom, shocking!

“I was homeschooled”. One journalist’s story of growing up unschooled.

“House Republicans suffered an embarrassing setback Tuesday when they fell seven votes short of extending provisions of the Patriot Act, a vote that served as the first small uprising of the party’s tea-party bloc.” Of course, Congress dismissed this and extended the bill anyway, but this is a step in the right direction!!

I have a link for the Urban Homestead blog in our favorite internet reads, but they now have a video out where you can tour their garden in the city. Really cool!

Glen found Southern Prepper on Youtube. He has some really interesting videos on how his family has prepared for natural disasters and a “without rule of law” scenario. Food storage, building bug out locations, investing in guns and silver, and lots of other useful information.

What interesting internet reads have you found this month?