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Wildwood: Creative Narration
I don’t give my children tests. Well, at least not my elementary student children. They don’t receive a multiple choice, true/false, fill in the blank piece of paper when they complete a chapter about Columbus or learn about narwhals in their science book. (They don’t ever really use textbooks either, but that’s another story.) As an advocate of a Charlotte Mason education, we employ the use of narration in our daily school routine. Narration means just what it sounds like. We read a chapter, learn about a subject, finish a novel – and when we do that – I ask the kids to tell me the story back in their…
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can the grocery store be a field trip?
When you are raising young children, every time you leave your house – it’s an adventure. They’re so curious about all the details of life. The trips that may be mundane to us are still full of wonder to them. I’m always seeing advertisements and links to websites for homeschooling and classes and projects and activities. I keep a notebook near the computer where I jot down leads and eventually research them to see if they’ll fit our family. The most recent one I sat at our old desk and typed into my search engine of choice was fieldtripfactory.com. It’s a website designed to connect educators with local businesses that…
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Outdoor Hour Challenge X.
I don’t think I actually completed an outdoor challenge last week. At least not in an official way. But I know the kids spent so much real-time good hours upon hours of outside time. While our family was visiting we trimmed branches, built forts, made wreaths and frames out of grape vines and spent long hours in the rope swing. And I absolutely believe that time counts. Besides, in truth, a large portion of the reason I joined in the Outdoor Hour Challenge was to gain direction, focus and inspiration to promote consistency in our outdoor times as a school assignment. All that to say, I might not have recorded…
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a real thursday.
What is it about a plan, anyway? Seems like whenever you make one, it goes awry. Our homeschool’s motto is stolen directly from Charlotte Mason. I am. I can. I ought. I will. I get the first three. No problem there. It’s the stinkin’ “I will” that always throws me for a loop. It’s not the man getting me down, it’s me. This week I have once again renewed my efforts to establish a daily routine and a nearly-hourly plan for our days. (These schedules have ebbed and flowed for me over the many years of homeschooling, in accordance with our lives and the number of children running around in…
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mosely. miracles. in the middle.
Can I just talk about this one for a little while? She is sweet and sharp and sensitive. Mosely is clever and brave and the only person in our home willing to kill spiders for the rest of us weaklings when Daddy’s at work. She is eight years old, a second grader and a struggling reader. The teaching of reading, the concept of words on paper, has been a struggle for Mosely since kindergarten. We both watched London catch the reading fever in full swing around first grade. And then we both watched Bergen conquer words like nobody’s business the first day of kindergarten. And there she was. Mosely. Middle.…
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Field Trip Friday: Happy Cow Creamery
Field Trip Fridays are quickly becoming my favorite part of this school year. First we have math class and then we pack our lunches, load up and head out. (We listen to our composer – Mozart – on the drive, plus an audio book.) We’ve been to the apple orchard, the zoo and to DuPont Forest for a fishing class so far. Sometimes we go alone, sometimes with friends. This past Friday, our field trip was far from alone. We visited Happy Cow Creamery with over one hundred other home schoolers. (Yeah – over a hundred. What in the world?) (This picture makes me laugh. The nose-holding, the closed eyes,…
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The New Game
This fall The School of Keigley has a transfer student arriving. And her name is Riley. She’s spent the last two years attending a local private school and is now heading home for her junior year. Which means, I have to do something I have never done before. Instruct a high school student. Actually, that’s not the truth. I spent six years teaching high school students. But most days that feels like another life. And, anyway, I have never actually been in charge of all aspects of teaching a high school student. So when a couple of women who lead a local homeschool co-op offered an evening class covering all…
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homeschool this week
I have been homeschooling at least one child in our family for the past six years. It took me a long time to realize that homeschool (school at my house) did not have to resemble main stream school in any way. I didn’t have to set up desks or ring a bell or take traditional tests or teach four years of history covering only the Civil War. I didn’t need a dress code and lessons need not be fifty-two minutes in length, eight times a day. And now I am in the middle of continually realizing that my homeschool (school at my house) need not resemble anyone else’s homeschool either.…
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as the pendulum swings
If you have read this blog for any length of time then you already know a-plenty about me. You know that I love a list. And I have a fondness for schedule. Let me tell you this, I can plan the mess out of something. I make a mean routine. I am a first-rate organizer. I draw it up in colorful coordination. Little squares, circles, colors assigned to each child, a day per activity. If there was a thrown-down for planning, I could take you. But, uh, I have a little problem that no amount of planning seems to solve. I think you call it follow-through. I mean, ask me…
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The Burgess Animal Book For Children: A Book Review
The majority of books that I read to the kids for school purposes come from a list on Ambleside Online – our primary homeschool curriculum source. Last year we read Thornton W. Burgess’ Bird Book for Children so I was already familiar with this author’s style. Burgess creates animal characters and a storyline for his creatures. In The Burgess Animal Book for Children the woodland animals gather each morning to attend school with Old Mother Nature, who serves as the teacher for both the animals in her school and for the readers of the novel. Each of the forty chapters covers several animals in the same family group and describes the habits and characteristics…
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Progress That Is Slow Is Still Called Progress
So much of homeschool seems like a Grand Experiment to me. I mean, I won’t really know if my work was a success or a failure until the kids graduate. Maybe not even then. I might not know until Berg is thirty or Mosely is married with kids of her own or Piper Finn is running her own small country. In other words, I won’t know if this project called homeschool worked until it is too late. Tell me, what other job works that way? Anyway. I feel as if some school projects seem as open-ended as school itself can seem. Take, for example, our School of Keigley Nature Notes…
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Try This At Home
At heart, I want to be a no television, live in the woods, everybody drink from a shared tin cup we dip in the stream outside of our door, type of family. Or so I like to imagine. But I married this guy and he likes movies and big televisions and gadgets. And, uh, I sort of have found that I love gadgets too. Plus, as much as I love the idea of a Laura Ingalls Wilder existence, (and I do love the idea – I mean, I named a kid after the Wilder family so that should prove something) I know that I would soon grow weary of an outhouse…
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always something.
It’s always something. Isn’t it? At least, it seems that way around here. There is always something that keeps my day from running as intended. That stops me from checking off every little line on my to-do list. That makes our homeschool day run less structured than I dreamed while lying in bed the night before. Today it was a trip to the doctor for me and a diagnosis of bronchitis. Yesterday it was four little sick kids. Tomorrow it will be Otto’s doctor’s appointment. And the next day – well, I can only imagine. It really is – always something. But I am slowly trying to embrace the truth…
