Boyschooling

A Glimpse at our School Room

2012-02-07T16:20:00.000Z

We were heading out on a shopping trip during school hours today, and I thought -- just in case the truancy police were around -- I'd better take some "proof" that we're homeschoolers.

So I took some snaps of our school room.

It isn't clean, tidy, or especially presentable, but it's true-to-life.

I decided to post them because someone on a Yahoo! group I belong to had posted a request today about how people organize their school rooms.

Here it is:
the unvarnished truth! (And no, I'm not intentionally advertising Ikea; however, they do sell some good stuff for homeschoolers!)

Tables bought from a supplier
of Educational Furniture

Ikea "Trofast" Storage

How to Homeschool when Mother is under-the-weather -- THE SEQUEL!!!!

2012-01-26T19:56:00.000Z

When Mom is ill...
school in bed!

Right. Here it is, January, and I'm once again writing about how I coped with educating my children at home while I was ill.

Rocky watches Salsa
with the pet bird on her shoulder

Back in September, I lost my voice. Over Christmas, I had the flu; but we weren't homeschooling then, so it didn't matter so much.

Last week, however, I both lost my voice and had a flu-like illness that kept me in bed for about ten days, off and on.

The maths must go on!

And did we give up school? Well, for a few days, it was cancelled. Then I realised that it was a lingering thing, and that I was going to have to do something about it.

Here are some photos of the kinds of things the kids did while I was ill: some with me, some on their own or in pairs/groups, some on the computer or telly, and quite a lot of it in my bed!!!

Killer and Phoenix perfect their magic

Busy Timmy works on map skills

Killer has to get his own lunch

Timmy and Phoenix work on the new blog

The computer-building project carries on

Something about Killer being stuck ...
not sure on this one ...

How Do You Schedule Your Homeschooling Day?

2012-01-17T23:43:00.000Z

Personally, I like the idea of "routine" rather than "schedule" -- I'm quite a free-form person at heart, but have had to get more structured for my kids' sakes.

So, I've gone with the "middling" description of routine, so it's still a bit flow-y without being chaotic.

Maybe it's still a bit chaotic

We wake up about 8 (or so ...), and while the kids have breakfast and do their morning jobs (normal toileting like getting dressed, brushing teeth, as well as chores, which include some that are done every day like emptying the dishwasher and some that are the same each day of the week, like putting out new toilet paper rolls in all the bathrooms on a Tuesday), I get my own breakfast, throw on a load of laundry, and have my quiet time.

We start promptly at 10 every day. First, it's prayer and Bible song and Bible reading and Bible memory verses. This is followed by history. We're currently reading this book: The Story of the World: Ancient Times v. 1: History for the Classical Child (Story of the World: History for the Classical Child). We follow that with science (Jeannie Fulbright's Anatomy and Physiology).

Strengthening the muscles
of our hands

Sometimes, the Fulbright is a bit dense for my younger ones, so they might drift away to do some colouring, drawing, or work in some kind of workbook like Thinking Skills.

Then the kids break up into separate categories -- my oldest and youngest play together for 15 minutes while I do maths with my 9-year-old, and the 6-year-old does her copywork and map skills or handwriting or art (depending on the day).

Busy Timmy's favourite part
of the school day is playing
with Phoenix all by himself

Then my oldest does her math while I help my younger two with their math, and 9-year-old does his copywork, guitar practice, and map skills/handwriting/art.

My younger two finish off their work-day by watching the Spanish language videos called Salsa. I read to the older two from Plutarch or Shakespeare or Robinson Crusoe or poetry. Then the 9-year-old finishes with Salsa while, some days, I do dictation with my oldest one by using a Geography textbook that she enjoys studying from.

By now, it's easily lunch time.

The kids play some computer game after lunch, and then if it isn't a day for shared art with a friend, or Spanish conversation, or music lessons, or a friend is visiting, then we'll get back together and do either art appreciation or music appreciation or something from the Keepers Club manual or just bake/cook/(in good weather, play in the garden).

Friends AND Baking:
The Best!

I also make it a habit to read to each child before bedtime, so that's when we get to our free reading from Ambleside Online (as opposed to the mounds of books they free-read on their own that aren't necessarily on the AO list). Many nights, I try to get Daddy to play a board game with them while I go for a walk.

There are lots of variation on this theme, but we stick to the general idea most of the time.

I've tried much stricter schedules and have written them all down and ticked boxes, but it always seems to move back into this undulating ebb and flow of education being simply an atmosphere and life (and a bit less of a discipline!).

Just starting out? Foundations for Christian Home Education

2012-01-03T00:17:00.005Z

Just starting your homeschooling journey and want to know some basics?

Obviously, not all home educators are Christian.

Obviously, not all Christians are home educators.

Obviously, not all home educators who are Christian follow the same methods or have the same combination of aims, objectives or even reasons behind their choices to home educate.

Never the less, I think Christian home educators DO tend to have one thing in common, and that is a distinctive value system that underpins their home-educating journey.

To some people, this basic truth may feel like a strait-jacket, but for others -- especially if you're just starting out -- it's more like a rock on which you can build the foundations of your home school.

On the other hand, I have firmly believe that home educating is a distinctively individual thing, and that includes each individual even in one family. What I do with my kids in my situation isn't at all what my friend does with her kids in her situation.

Home-educating styles are
as unique as the child

There are almost as many permutations of home educating as there are people in the world!

So with some hesitation, I put my suggestions and advice onto this blog. And yet, I know that those just starting out will find it helpful to see the path that someone else has already trod, and so here are my thoughts about organising, planning, and establishing a Christian HE foundation in your home.

In the first place, I'll just remind you that I have 4 children aged 11, 9, 6, and 4. I have home educated from the beginning, so have about eight years of this under my belt. I have tried many different curricula like Konos, Heart of Dakota, Montessori methods, Heart of Wisdom, etc. They all worked in their different ways in their different times.

At the current moment, I'm picking and choosing from Ambleside Online, and using a Charlotte Mason methodology with strong biblical study overtones.

This is a fairly usual eclectic arrangement you find with families who have been doing this a long time ...

Typical Christian HE Mum
Loved by God
Rarely in photos!

To my mind, I think what's most important is putting God first in your own life, learning about Him yourself, praying, having quiet time, listening, etc., and then passing that to your children. All the academic studies need to be subordinate to this, since I think that's why we're all home educating in the first place. Putting God first, that is.

Finally, I would like to suggest some resources I have found to be invaluable:

R C Sproul wrote a fantastic book called When You Rise Up which is specifically about educating children biblically.
Robin Sampson's Heart of Wisdom website (see above) offers a lot of ideas and guidance for a Bible-first approach. Most of it you can glean from her extensive website and blog without buying her ebooks, but I did like her Heart of Wisdom Approach manual and was glad to have that in a file I can refer to every year.
Anything by Sally Clarkson. I started with her Educating the Wholehearted Child and Seasons of a Mothers Heart, and then devoured her books about Ministry of Motherhood and Mission of Motherhood. And then devoured them again. They're so down-to-earth and encouraging.
The Apologia science books by Jeannie Fulbright for elementary grades. We're on the new one about anatomy and physiology, and it's challenging but terrific. The astronomy one is probably best for younger kids.
ShillerMath. It was my big God-send when it came to maths and HE -- no preparation for me, and clearly explained at every stage. My kids have really flourished with it. Montessori in method, and great for kinesthetic learners as well as aural or visual or spatial. Only to Year 7/6th grade, though (after that, we're going to try Life of Fred).
Ambleside Online and anything Charlotte Mason. Just google these and you'll get all the info -- AO has a lot of background about Charlotte Mason, as does Simply Charlotte Mason.
Finally, Anne Elliott's Coffee Break E-zine. Weekly emails with links to her biblical and practical insights about being a home-educating family.

What about you? Have you found a resource that you consider a must-have for Christian home-educators? Tell me about it. Share it with all of us!

A Boyschooler's Birthday

2011-12-12T22:59:00.000Z

Surprised "Killer" this weekend with a "rock school" birthday party, led by his guitar teacher and the teacher's drummer from his band, Million Faces.

Here's the song they composed during that morning's session. It's called "Chicken Pox", and the singer is doing "pox, pox, pox," sounds along with crowing.

What a hoot!

Trip to Ashmolean's new Egyptian Gallery

2011-12-08T22:43:00.000Z

I must have been mad -- taking six children to Oxford's Ashmolean museum to look at their new Egyptian gallery.

Even madder to meet up with a friend who brought along four boys.

Two adults with ten children was ... just about do-able.

Oxford's Ashmolean Museum
est. 1683
(the current building is from 1845)

The Ashmolean likes to provide little worksheet "trails" to its young visitors, and while it's true that the children love to do them (and get rewarded with certificates afterwards for completing them), the practical side of rounding up ten children who want to dash through an exhibition just to tick boxes isn't, it would seem, completely thought out.

Ten items were identified and "collected" on their sheets, but did they read any captions? Did they know what they were? Like heck!

The shrine of King Taharqa --
the only free-standing pharaonic structure in Britain

Anyway, my friend and I did our best to take them all through a second time and point out cool things -- like cartouches and the free-standing, stone pharaonic shrine of King Taharqa and real, live canopic jars like those they had fashioned out of spice jars and clay a few weeks ago at our history co-op. I did enjoy hearing the children shout, "Hey, look, it's Duamutef."

Phoenix was fascinated by a series of glass plates, each with part of a drawing that, together, made up the CT image of a child's mummy believed to have been from 100 AD. We all wonder, however, that the radiologists hypothesized that the child had died of pneumonia when his lungs would have been removed (and put in the Hapi canopic jar).

The Ashmolean Mummy Boy 3
by Angela Palmer
Ink Drawing on 111 sheets of Mirogard Glass

Our final attempt to get extra mileage out of the trip was looking around some of the Grecian items, since we're turning our attention to Ancient Greece in the new year. Instead, they discovered the room with pre-historic British artefacts and an interactive bow and arrow where you try to shoot some plastic cut-out stags.

Later, when I was cuddling Busy Timmy in bed and asking him what was the best part of the museum trip today, he said, "The revolving door where you go in."

The Joy of Posada

2011-12-06T22:42:00.000Z

Our church runs a scheme during Advent called the Posada, which is a re-enactment of Mary and Joseph looking for lodgings on Christmas Eve. The festival originated in Latin American countries and traditionally starts on the 16th of December, but we start ours on Advent Sunday.

Essentially, it's a rota of people who agree to keep the Mary, Joseph, and donkey figures from our church's nativity set. Each evening, the people with the holy family meet with the next people on the rota, and effect a changeover. This goes on until Christmas Eve, when the figures are processed to the front of the church and placed in the nativity scene.

The changeover is supposed to be a time of prayer and celebration together, though these may sometimes have to happen on the fly with a quick "God bless"; other times, there's a whole afternoon of tea and mince pies, or a meal, or a few minutes of quiet together. It just depends on what people want to do, and what they have time for.

"Busy Timmy" unveils the scroll;
Phoenix in the conservatory (background) lights the Advent candle

The best thing about Posada is meeting up with people that you rarely have a chance to spend time with. For example, we received the holy family from a friend of mine who's a single mum and whose schedule is so opposite to mine that we've never managed to share that glass of wine we always talk about.

Last night, we had her and her daughters over for the Posada hand-over, and they stayed for dinner. It was fantastic!

Then this afternoon, we took the Posada figures to the home of a retired Vicar and his wife. They had the children light their Advent candle, and then played "Mary's Boy Child" while unrolling a huge scroll that someone had made on wallpaper that depicted the song in cartoon characters.

"Man will live forever more because of Christmas Day"

Busy Timmy was absolutely fascinated, and though my children are pretty well-versed in their Bible stories, he has come away with that scroll burned into his memory.

So thanks to our new friends and our old friends, and thanks to the whole idea of the Posada.

What is Education For?

2011-12-05T20:02:00.000Z

Recently discovered the RSA Animate stable of fascinating videos: talks with white-board cartoon drawings that illustrate a 10-minute precis of lectures ranging from education to capitalism and other economic issues.

Here is one of my favourite by Sir Ken Robinson called "Changing Education Paradigms":

And here's me with my children + friends, changing some education paradigms of our own:

Boo to "Batching!"
Children from 6 to 11 prepare to board
an imaginary LCV for re-enacting the D-Day landings.

Teaching Boys About God

2011-11-17T19:55:00.000Z

I've read a couple of really rubbish books about boys and spirituality this past year. They were badly researched, full of anecdote rather than evidence, difficult to work out which age range they were talking about, and finally, not always very Godly in their attitudes, much less, it would seem, in a position to dispense advice.

Hopefully, I won't repeat the same mistake when I make some suggestions about how a parent might go about teaching a son about God.

Busy Timmy visits a Synagogue

What follows is a short burst of suggestions that I've tried. Admittedly, they include some anecdotal evidence as well, but my observations are also put in the context of how boys learn in general, and how the Bible guides us to teach our children.

Here it is in a nutshell:

First of all, I applaud you for thinking about this issue at all, and I want to encourage you to make a life-long quest about how to best serve your family in terms of passing on your faith to them. Second, I encourage you to never give up. This is soooo important.

Two suggestions I would make that you could try:

First, if you want some stimulus material that will light their fire, you might try the DVDs called StoryKeepers. They're about a group of orphans during 70AD, just after Christ's death and during the terrible persecution of Christians by the Romans. Each episode has some minor peril where the kids are trying to outwit the Romans, and meanwhile, someone will tell a story from the Bible that illustrates something from Christ's life.

Very boy-ish, and might give you a place to start. (BTW, when my son was about 4, he had been watching one of the episodes and asked me afterwards about the secret sign of the fish that the Christians were using. I briefly explained what I knew (based on what I learned from watching the DVD!), and then he asked me how he could become one of those Christians, too. We talked it over a little bit, and then he gave his life to Christ on the spot. So you can see, I have a lot of RESPECT for the StoryKeepers DVDs!!!)

The second thing is taking on board the command in Deuteronomy 6:7 that we should talk about God to our children when we're walking, when we're sitting, when we're waking up, when we're going to bed ... in other words, model for your boys what it means to live a life under the banner of Christ (and never stop seeking better and better ways of doing this, because none of us has got the complete answer to it yet), and then just have conversations with them about Him as a matter of course.

Remember that boys (and men!) often have "deep" discussions *alongside* someone rather than face-to-face like women often do, so bring up the subject when you're driving in the car, or while doing Lego, or on the swing set, or perhaps while washing/drying dishes together, hanging out laundry, weeding the vegetable patch, etc.

The Bible is full of parenting advice!

In a nutshell:

- try StoryKeepers
- live authentically, and talk about God -- a lot!

That's where I'd start.

Good luck.

NaNoWriMo Takes Over

2011-11-03T22:18:00.000Z

"I may be some time"

Legend has it that these were the last words of Captain Scott during his ill-fated Antarctic expedition. Right now, they're going to be mine, as I embark on National Novel Writing Month.

In order to produce a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, I think I will have to put my nose to the writing grindstone.

In the meantime, have a look at the NaNoWriMo site for its free writing workbooks for kids.

See you in December.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a snapshot from our trip to Stonehenge yesterday.

Boyschooling Wordle Fun : What Homeschooling Boys is all About!

2011-10-23T19:13:00.000+01:00

Just a fun "Wordle"
Gosh, it's a steep learning curve on the Internet!

Update on my Boyschoolers

2011-10-15T00:26:00.004+01:00

I've just decided to update the photo of my Boyschoolers, "Killer" and "Busy Timmy", after having the same photo for over a year, which was already about a year old.

So instead of highlighting a child of 2 and another of 6, you've now got the current cast, who are 4 and 8 instead.

Killer and Busy Timmy
Air Guitar at the Skate Park

This picture also highlights the beautiful Indian Summer we've been having in England since the beginning of September. The autumn colours are just stunning, the skies a brilliant blue, and the apples are teeming on the trees.

Yesterday, we met some friends at a natural rope-swing clearing in a forest near us. One thing about England: its footpath system, where the public can roam freely on a criss-crossing system of free paths throughout the countryside, is one of the country's greatest assets.

The "Phoenix" is flying!

Finally, don't forget the ShillerMath discount code. The offer ends at the end of October!

ShillerMath Discount is Back!

2011-10-11T00:07:00.000+01:00

Use this special promo code, available only here on the Boyschooling blog, and get $150 off on a ShillerMath kit, including free postage anywhere. Offer ends 31st October 2011.

That's an awesome deal for my favourite math curriculum.

Here's the code
KATPAT11

Not sure about ShillerMath? You can see my blogpost about maths curriculum with manipulatives here:
http://boyschooling.blogspot.com/2011/05/which-math-curriculum-should-you-choose.html

If you want to know more about ShillerMath, look here

How to Homeschool when Mother is under-the-weather

2011-10-05T00:05:00.007+01:00

I've had a cold and laryngitis for the past ten days. This severely cramps one's homeschooling style, especially when following the Charlotte Mason method with all its reading aloud.

So what to do instead?

We found a lot of alternatives to sitting at the tables with our books: here are just a few. (By the way, it helps that England was having one of its hottest Septembers on record, swapping some summer weather for the usual dull-and-grey, just in time!).

"Making ice cream"

Who needs computers to play
a cool game with your brother??

Wow! Look at all the snails!

Taking an awesome walk
in the country

Playing in the mud

Clay men need toothpicks
like humans need skeletons
(idea courtesy of Apologia Science)

Harvesting potatoes

I'll be glad when my illness is finally finished and I can get my voice back, but in the meantime, it's been a really fun week.

Thanks guys for all your imagination and your creative ways of learning. Let's do it more often!

One reason Lapbooking Works for Boys

2011-09-28T23:12:00.000+01:00

One of my favourite homeschooling gurus is Robin Sampson from Heart of Wisdom. She wrote something about lapbooking which I recently read, and I thought she hit the nail on the head about why they work for boys when she described how they integrate both halves of the brain.

Why is it important to get both halves working? Research shows that the male brain is more prone to stick with the left-half of the brain, whereas the female brain is more likely to use two halves in conjunction. It may be one of the reasons that girls are more verbal at an earlier age than boys. It's also one of the reasons that women seem to recover better from strokes than men.

Research aside, it just seems to me a good idea to make sure the whole brain is being exercised, and Robin clarifies this in her sixth point of seven in her blog post "Seven Reasons Lap Booking Works"

We have two halves to our brains which think in different ways. The left side thinks linearly, following direct linkages to related ideas. The right side prefers the whole picture with flow, images, and colors.

Lap booking brings together your left brain (words, logic) and right-brain skills (images, color, rhythm, space) which dramatically increases your mind power.

The more you integrate left- and right-brain activities, the more the brain’s performance becomes synergetic. This means that each cortical skill enhances the performance of other areas so that the brain is working at its optimum. (Sperry, R.W.)
Research shows that the brain likes to work on the basis of association and it will connect every idea, memory or piece of information to tens, hundreds and even thousands of other ideas and concepts. (Anokhin P.K.)

Berlitz Language Book Proves Homeschooling is Best!

2011-09-27T22:57:00.001+01:00

I recently bought a book by Berlitz Kids called "Help Your Child with a Foreign Language." Imagine my surprise when the first chapter lists all the reasons that a family environment is the optimum when it comes to how a child learns.

"Personal relationships --
the keystone of language learning"
--Berlitz

Here's the book's argument about why the parent is the best teacher for a child when learning a foreign language. I find it so easy to translate this to homeschooling, so if you're a newbie out there, wondering whether or not you can really hack it, or whether it's a good idea to teach your children at home, or perhaps needing some ammunition to all those naysayers who are getting you down, then here it is straight from a trusted source with no axe to grind.

(I have chosen to remove those comments which are specifically about learning a foreign language)
********
Why the parent?

The parent knows his own child better than a teacher does.
The parent knows through experience and intuition how to judge his child's temperament and moods.
The parent is more sensitive to his own child's individual:

needs and interests;
level of working;
ability to do things;
ways of learning.

The parent knows how to gain and maintain his own child's interest.
The parent generally has time for more one-to-one sessions than a teacher in a classroom situation.
The parent can plan follow-up and continuity more accurately and on a day-to-day basis.
The parent is often a more patient listener.
The parent can influence the child's attitudes.

Is a child happy learning from the parent?

A child is used to learning from his parents and does so without being conscious that he is actually learning.
A child feels secure learning with his parent at home.
A child knows that the family is interested in what he is doing and wants him to succeed. This gives him confidence and helps him to cope when, as sometimes happens, schoolmates make fun of [...] learning.
Learning can be tailored to fit the child's needs. He can learn when he most feels like it.
Learning together may give a child an added opportunity to confirm his parents' love, and to appreciate their interest, encouragement, and praise.

********

After home-educating my four children for nearly eight years, all these reasons ring so true. It's about relationship, about trust, about being your child's best champion and having time for him. Very few of these can really happen in a classroom of thirty-plus children, with a teacher who is around for only nine months of a child's life.

Homeschooling really is the best way for a child to learn. After all, you probably did it for the first three or more years of his life, and look at all the walking and talking and counting and coordination skills that have happened under your tutelage.

Good on ya, Mom and Dad. Keep up the good work!

(PS The photo above includes my son "Busy Timmy", but the woman isn't me. We've found a native Spanish speaker who comes to our house and works with the children, and though it seems to go against the whole argument about the parent teaching a child, it's still ticking all the boxes about relationship and environment. Remember, I was standing behind the camera to take the picture, and I was sitting across the table, learning my "azul oscura" right along with him).

AMAZING resource -- Montessori printables -- a $3000 value!

2011-08-28T23:01:00.001+01:00

If you want a great resource for your Montessori school, homeschool, co-op, or even just for your primary-school aged kids in general, then this is it. Hundreds and hundreds of .pdf printables at your fingertips.

Bought separately, you'd spend over $3000, but the CD-ROM is available for just under $600. Once purchased, you can continue to purchase future files that she makes for 50% off. Visit the Montessori for Everyone website.

I tended to use the 3-part cards. These are brightly coloured pictures, words, and a third card with pictures and words together. Once you print them out on card and laminate them, then your child can practice matching the pictures and the words together, and then check them with the "control" card to make sure the answers are correct.

That makes these items self-correcting, which is great for a child's learning and independence.

BTW, I've had to withdraw the offer to give my copy away free: it infringed Lori's T&C's.

Planning and Preparing for Back-to-School

2011-08-27T00:41:00.001+01:00

To me, the run-up to a new school-year is one of the most fun times in the life of a homeschooling mom. All the great, optimistic plans, the excuses to buy new notebooks and pens and books, the joy of clearing out last year's stuff to make way for the new.

Yet, it can also be a stressful and difficult time. For one thing, if you're anything like me, you've just had a fantastically relaxed summer vacation. I've just returned from two months in my home state of Texas, where -- ok -- we were setting record temperatures over 105 and it never rained, but having lived twenty years in England, there's something glorious in having the sun on-tap whenever you want to brave the scorching weather for a half-hour or so.

Soaking up the sun in the sand.

Now it's back to dreary, chilly reality, an empty calendar looming in front of me, and lesson plans to arrange for four children who range in age from 11 to 4, and a house to de-clutter after the exodus at the end of last term.

Factor into that the vacation-thing: piles of laundry and new books and toys and swimgear, all gathered over the past two months when the children seemed to decide that sunshine was some kind of growth hormone, and they all shot up about an inch, which meant new clothes and shoes as well.

Unusual picture of me among the clutter
(unusual that it's me, not that there's clutter!)

So to help us all -- new homeschoolers as well as veterans, since every year is a new challenge -- I've come up with a handy little acronym to help you get everything ready in under a week's time.

R-A-D-A-R-S

You can either think of it in terms of having a RADAR device that locates everything that's coming your way, or you can think of that character in MASH who always seemed to be able to know what was coming ahead of time and so anticipated his commanding officer's needs.

This is your RADAR for the coming year:

R) Remind yourself why you're homeschooling. I think it's important every year to recall your purposes and motivations, because there are times (and we all have them!!!) when you just can't think of who thought homeschooling was a good idea.
A) Avoid over-buying curriculum and supplies. The flush of having a whole year's worth of stuff is so exciting, until the credit card bill comes. Spread out your costs if possible (for example, some curricula, like ShillerMath, might offer payment plans -- if there's no penalty for doing it, then it's not a bad solution). Better yet, look into free options like AmblesideOnline.
D) De-clutter. I can't tell you how important this is for starting your year, since you'll invariably clutter back up during the year. I'm going through a phase right now of having a very critical look at the books on my bookshelves, choosing only those "living books" that don't "undermine the child's integrity". In other words, that doesn't dumb-down the reading experience. I can't believe how many annuals of Teletubbies, Thomas the Tank Engine, and My Little Pony I had accumulated, and now they're going down to the charity shop.
A) Adapt any curricula or programme so that your input is minimized, particularly in terms of combining children or even your whole family together for some things. I know with some boxed options, this will be hard, but there is only one you, and that makes it really important to protect yourself from burn-out. Otherwise, it affects not just the homeschooling, but the home itself.
R) Routine, not schedule. I think of schedules as rigid, whereas routines are more flowing. Instead of using a time frame like "10:00-10:30 Science", I just aim to do science after we've done our history reading, which should be around 10 or so. An example of routine in a timetable can be found at Simply Charlotte Mason. Just note: at first, they looked overwhelming to me, and then I realised that -- true to the Charlotte Mason method -- the number of different subjects were being covered in only about 10 or 15 minutes each. This is so children can concentrate for a long stretch of time (between 2 and 4 hours, depending on the age), but not have to focus too long on any one thing and so get tired and cranky. You can, for example, mix in some silly dancing, or PE, or computer time, or music practice so children, especially boys, can move between desk work and something that uses a different part of the brain and perhaps is more geared toward gross motor skills.
S) Stay simple, and stay sentered ... yeah, yeah. I stretched that one. Again, though, it's a matter of protecting yourself. There's such a tendency to overcommit to lots of outside clubs and sports, seemingly overcompensating for your children's social opportunities at home (though children who are at school are also dangerously overcommitted, and they haven't got that excuse!). Keep it simple, because actually there's a huge bonus for children to be left alone sometimes to make up their own entertainment. And keeping it "sentered"? That's getting yourself a break from it all, a time when your kids are doing something on their own and leaving Mommy to have some Quiet Time. It may be to pray or meditate, read a novel, have a cup of tea or coffee, soak in the tub, potter in the garden, or whatever is your method of choice to relax. But honestly, do it every day. Every day.

A good book about simplifying, not exactly about homeschooling is Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids. Maybe pick up a copy and read it in your Quiet Time!

So fix your eyes on your RADARS in these last few days before you leap into your homeschooling again, and hopefully, you'll be able to see all those things that lie ahead of you.

Remember: forewarned is forearmed.

Good book about Children's Faith

2011-06-16T21:12:00.000+01:00

I've just read a book by Rob Parsons about nurturing children's faith, called "Getting Your Kids through Church without them Ending up Hating God".

I highly recommend it.

Rob Parsons runs a charity in the United Kingdom called Care for the Family. I might be wrong in likening it to Focus on the Family in the US, but it seems to be an organization along the same lines.

You can see my review about it at amazon.co.uk.

ShillerMath $100 discount to end SOON!

2011-06-12T23:32:00.002+01:00

Just wanted to remind you all that ShillerMath has offered you an extra $100 off either Kit 1 or Kit 2 if you order before the end of June and use the special code available only here:

KatPat11.

That's an AMAZING deal -- less than $100 a year for a kit that lasts all your children. Snap it while you can!

One Kind of Daily Schedule

2011-06-12T22:54:00.000+01:00

I have been home-educating my children for over seven years now, and though I have dabbled in various curricula from unit study to biblically based, they all have one general thing in common: a sympathy to the methods espoused by Charlotte Mason over a hundred years ago.

If you want to know more about the Charlotte Mason method, you can Google the name, or start off with this website.

In the meantime, I thought I would share with you the kind of schedule that my son, Killer, has responded to so well over the past year.

I have made it myself using the "table" function in Word, printing it out, and then laminating it. That way, he can use a water soluble pen to mark through his work every day, then wipe it all off for the next day, to start over again.

To reproduce it here, I had to save it as a JPEG in "Paint", so it's got a bit garbled in translation. I think you can get the gist of it, though.

Thinking about Next Year

2011-06-05T01:25:00.000+01:00

This is a blog topic that deserves more attention than the 5 minutes I'm about to give it, but I've just got to get the thoughts off my chest right now (at 12:30 am!).

What I should be doing now instead of blogging!!

I've been home-educating for seven years, many of which were with a baby or a toddler and, as anyone with aforementioned personnel in their home-ed environment knows, they make for very challenging times.

Now my youngest is 4 and a pretty good reader, plus well-focused and enjoys being at the school table with the others.

Meanwhile, my 8-year-old boy, whom caused me many-a-problem with behaviour until we went to a cranial osteopath a couple of years ago, is turning into a really top-notch narrator a-la-Charlotte Mason method, showing me he actually can listen to my reading aloud, and can indeed tell back to me what I've been reading, including our latest nightly story of the Shakespeare play, "Merchant of Venice".

So the long and the short of it is that I'm planning this next September to do something I've always wanted to do, but didn't really have -- or so I felt -- the right situation to go for it wholeheartedly. Namely, I'm going to implement the Ambleside Online curriculum with my children.

Despite warnings to the contrary, I think my older two can do Year 4 together, and my younger two can do Year 1 together, with some minor adjustments for the younger in the pair.

My kids are used to doing things together!

If you don't know about Ambleside Online, let me tell you that you're missing a treat. It's a complete, detailed, and absolutely free curriculum for ages about 5 to 18, using the Charlotte Mason method and as many free on-line books as possible.

Check it out here: http://www.amblesideonline.org/

One more month for ShillerMath deal

2011-06-03T21:35:00.000+01:00

Just wanted to remind you all that ShillerMath has offered you an extra $100 off either Kit 1 or Kit 2 if you order before the end of June and use the special code available only here:

KatPat11.

That's an AMAZING deal -- less than $100 a year for a kit that lasts all your children. Snap it while you can!

Which Math Curriculum Should You Choose? -- (Amazing Promo Deal at End)

2011-05-02T23:36:00.000+01:00

People often ask about math curriculum -- which one is best, which one do I use, which would I recommend, which would be a good change from "x".

Mathematics can be learned without a textbook

When it comes to boys and math, I think there are three things to keep in mind: first, young boys especially are spatial learners, so a curriculum using manipulatives will probably be better; second, boys will probably prefer math to other subjects because there's not as much writing, so a curriculum that they could sometimes do independently will be useful so they can spend a lot of time doing it as and when they feel like it; finally, boys are not all the same, so what suits one, may not suit another.

And likewise, girls. But that's another story ....

Probably the biggest surprise, however, is that research has shown that it's not so much which curriculum you choose and use, but whether or not you, the teacher, are excited by it.

Homeschoolers in the US and UK tend to choose different programs from each other: partly, it's availability; partly, it's price (it almost always costs more in the UK); and partly, it's measurements and money which Brits, rightly, want to focus on metric and pounds stirling, and not imperial and dollars. (As a dual citizen, I'm quite happy either way.)

While the UK has access to programs like Singapore maths, Miquon maths, Galore Park, and even the free program known as MEP (Mathematics Enhancement Programme from the Centre for Innovations in Mathematics Teaching at the University of Plymouth, UK), all these options are text-based, or even workbook-based.

Another option open to both markets -- and gaining in popularity lately -- is the literary based concept of Living Math. This is basically a good dose of reading books with mathematical concepts to explore. My own children have dabbled in it since discovering the Murderous Maths series, but there's much more to it than I can do justice to here. So, check out the website by Julie Brennan here.

But back to the US and curriculum choices with manipulatives. Below, I list the four main competitors when it comes to manipulative-based math (if I forgot another major one, just give me a nudge and I'll add it in). I think they're probably listed in order of popularity, but as you will see, certainly not in order of preference!

Math-U-See:

K-12 program using colorful rods, also comes with video instruction. Primary school levels are called by Greek alphabet names (Alpha, Beta, etc.). Plus side seems to be how it explains concepts and ensures a child understands it rather than just memorizing it. One downside of this program is that, by using colored rods, a child has to make a symbolic leap that one size rod is more or less than another size rod -- autistic children apparently struggle with this. As do children with color-differentiation issues. Cost per year: $40 instruction kit, $25 students kit, plus one-off purchase of manipulative blocks $35.

RightStart Mathematics:

K-5 program using an "AL abacus" (where colored beads are grouped in 5s and 10s). It is unique by not starting with counting, but with visualizing quantities as children are taught in Japan. People who use it note that it is teacher-dependent, and though it isn't onerous or difficult, it does require teacher input rather than a child working independently. Finally, because its scope and sequence is different from most other curricula, some people say it's important to stick with it for at least two years -- by then, the child will have grasped the important basics of conceptual maths (rather than memorization), because otherwise, the transition to a more traditional program will be difficult. Cost per year: many options to choose from, but roughly $150 initial outlay, then about $100 per year afterwards.

Making Math Meaningful:

K-6, plus algebra and geometry. Manipulatives include colored links, counting chips, and unifix cubes. This program, from a Christian publisher, sets out to ensure a child has full, logical understanding of concepts, and not just a skill in parroting or memorizing. As an example, it teaches that a thorough understanding of mulitiplication up to 5 will allow a child to understand that 8 x 7 is the same as 8 x 2 plus 8 x 5. Re-arranging computation like this is an effective skill. Cost: $45 for both teacher's and student's book, plus a one-off purchase of manipulatives for $15.

ShillerMath:

K-3 (Kit 1) and 4-6 (Kit 2). This Montessori-based curriculum uses a spiral approach, scripted lesson plans (where the teacher reads the script, or as children get more independent, they read it for themselves), and a stable full of manipulatives, much like RightStart. However, one of its unique selling points is its dedication to the four different learning styles of children, and each concept will be approached using all four styles (including CDs with songs), to ensure complete understanding. Cost: $399.95 per kit, plus free consumables downloads for 5 years. (See Cathy Duffy's review for a more thorough description).

Now here's where I show my hand. I moved from Singapore math to ShillerMath two years ago, and am thoroughly astounded by the clarity, the depth, the explanations, and everything covered in it. Apparently, there's a junior high kit in the making, and I just can't wait!

To show you what a stellar lot you could be working with by using ShillerMath, the good people (ahem, Mr Shiller himself) has agreed to offer my blog readers a very special deal -- another $100 discount off either Kit 1 or Kit 2 between May 1 and June 30, 2011. Just tell 'em promo code KatPat11.

That's an AMAZING deal -- less than $100 a year for a kit that lasts all your children. Snap it while you can!

Click here to start your savings today!

Sewing with Boys (Guest Blogger)

2011-03-30T14:37:00.009+01:00

I'm very pleased to introduce Amie Plumley, the blog-owner of Sewing School, as a guest blogger for today's topic of boys and sewing. Her details can be found at the end of this article.

Amie writes:

This semester, we had a record number of boys join our weekly sewing club. We’ve realized that sewing with boys does require something extra on the teacher’s part. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s because I’m a girl. I dunno, but I thought I would share my thoughts on sewing with boys. I am mindful of boys sewing. What do they want to sew? What do they need to sew? Why will they want to sew?

Sewing strengthens fine motor skills

I have come to a few conclusions. First, from my own experience, kindergarten is the perfect age to introduce boys to sewing; however, I’m sure they can start earlier with some extra one-on-one help. They get super excited about it and really, really see the possibilities. They like to make stuff, ya know? It's not easy, though, it's a challenge. They like that part. Oh yeah, there's sharp needles involved too.

It never ceases to amaze me how a kid that could be bouncing off the walls one minute, will settle into a project and give it 100%. I have often given my most challenging students handwork to do throughout the day. Not only does it focus them, they feel a real sense of accomplishment.

Next up is materials. You have to have boy friendly fabric in your stash. Anytime I put out some camouflage, the boys flock to it. Even those that don't seem particularly into camo will get excited. I also try to find animal and sports prints. It's hard to find boy fabric that is not too babyish. Boys also seem to like notions like eyeballs, buttons, pin backs and magnets. I had a few loose socks on the sewing cart last week, and they quickly got sewn into crazy aliens and monsters. From the looks above, they are also cuddly.

Boys like animal patterns

Lastly, finding the perfect project is essential. We have found that projects for boys need to be useful - they loved the wristies and water bottle holders. Masks and capes are also a big hit. Boys can be sweet too, though, like when they make something for their mom or sister and they choose pink or flower fabric. They know what it feels like to give something handmade.

Simple but satisfying!

So, what's the age cut off with boy sewers? At my school, boys don't stay in Sewing Club past 2nd grade. After that, I guess it's just not cool and there are more things to choose from. I keep up with them, though, and they remain sewers at home. Plus, it's a life long skill. They are going to blow some minds when their future wives need a button sewn on and they jump to the task!

About Amie: While I teach kindergarten at a traditional private school in Memphis, TN, I like to incorporate non-traditional and life-skills into my classroom. Sewing has been a part of my teaching experience since the beginning. I’m also a mom to a 6-year old girl and 3-year old boy. I am excited to be a guest blogger at Boyschooling. Teaching boys is definitely an adventure! Find out more about me and sewing with kids at my blog Sewing School
and my book (available from Amazon).

Check out "Scratch"

2011-03-20T13:02:00.000Z

"Scratch" is a programming language for everyone to enjoy -- free to download and developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT Media Lab.

In a downloadable paper by Peppler and Kafai, you can see the argument for that "learning the language of creative coding is essential to expression in a digital medium."

In other words, it's not just about viewing or playing the games, but constructing them oneself through coding that make essential connections to art expression.

Anyway, why not? It's cool and it's free.

A Question of Mathematics

2011-03-17T00:35:00.003Z

Are you worried about your child's ability in mathematics, or about which curriculum to use, or -- let's not kid ourselves -- about our own ability in maths and whether or not we can teach anything about the subjects to our kids?

Judging from the number of times this subject comes up in the various home-ed forums I belong to, you would definitely not be alone in your maths-angst. Every week, there will be at least one person who asks questions along these lines. For that reason, I won't try to answer all the questions about maths in one blog post: it's just too big a subject (in more ways than one!).

Instead, I'll answer just one question here:

what is the best way to get my child
not just to learn how to do maths,
but to learn actually how to like it?

First of all, let me say that I am not -- repeat NOT -- a specialist in mathematics. That's why I was so glad when I came across a book that 'splains things to me in such a clear way. It's called "The Elephant in the Classroom" by Jo Boaler. Get it, read it. It's that simple.

(Now, if you're a woman, then I would expect, according to Dr Boaler's research, that you will not be prone to accepting my advice without an explanation as to why you should read it, so suffice to say, it's because she identifies the ways that traditional maths teaching has gone wrong, the ways that maths teaching can go right, and the ways that parents can support this excitement about maths at home.)

This book was refreshing in more ways than one. Basically, it answered the looming question in my life about why I scraped by with a C in Calculus at university when I'd been a straight A student all through high school (once, when I was 14, I even scored 107 out of 100 on my report card -- how's that for a mathematical mystery??!!!).

After you have bought this book and read it, then you might want to take the lead from a friend of mine who has determined that she will buy all the books that are designed to make maths fun. The Sir Cumference books, for example. The Murderous Maths series. The two books about Penrose the Mathematical Cat, the Number Devil, and for the older child, 1089 and All That: A Journey into Mathematics. Charlotte Mason enthusiasts also suggest books about mathematicians, such as Mathematicians Are People, Too: Stories from the Lives of Great Mathematicians .

Reading about maths
can be captivating

Now that you've:

read the book about why you need to make maths fun,
and had your children read books about maths that are fun,
then you need to start introducing maths that is fun.

Puzzles are a good way of doing this. If you just search on the internet for maths puzzles (or even "math" puzzles -- in the UK we always say "maths"), then you'll discover more sites than you'd ever use in a decade, most of which have the answers along with the questions. At least one site http://www.mathsisfun.com/puzzle.html also has a forum so you can find out why the answer works that way.

Your only problem now is having more maths in your life than you know what to do with. Here's what we do in our family: nights when we have dinner together around the table, we talk about maths. Maybe just once or twice a week, and we have to be firm that the toddler doesn't carry on his own conversation with his peas at the far end of the table, otherwise no one can concentrate on drawing a graph about a monk falling down a mountain. (This is one of the many interesting examples suggested by Boaler in her book -- about the monk, not the toddler and his peas!)

As most subjects, maths in conversations like this can sometimes (ahem ... often) get beyond my ability, and that's when I simply say that I will have to go away and think about it (ahem ... ask my maths-minded friends).

I'm sure there are still burning questions to be answered about which maths curriculum can support this bid to make maths interesting and fun and exciting, and it seems appropriate that I should provide a survey about curricula in the near future.

In the meantime, I think it should be a matter of expanding our definition of mathematics, learning to discern patterns in the world around us, and trying to have some fun with it, for goodness' sake!

Practical math:
measuring the length a blue whale
(we started at the beginning of the sidewalk!)

What about you? Any good maths books you've read that your children enjoyed? Any good websites for puzzles or games? Any good tips for a regular dose of practical, fun maths challenges? Do you want to suggest a curriculum for considering amongst the good, the bad, or the ugly mathematics hall of fame? All comments and suggestions are encouraged, so please let yourself be heard.

Try Making Books to Encourage Writing

2011-02-15T15:05:00.000Z

In my previous post on this blog, I wrote about why boys don't like to write, and gave some suggestions for encouraging them to do so.

Then I came across a faded old copy of an out-of-print book called "An Experiment in Education" by Sybil Marshall which had another excellent idea.

Just before I explain her suggestion, I want to spend a few lines in praise of this old book. Yes, it was written in 1963 and chronicles over thirty years of teaching in a one-room schoolhouse near Cambridge in England, but her insights into juggling multiple ages in a single classroom are the stuff of beauty for homeschooling parents. She is particularly good about using art for educational purposes, but I shall say more about that in a future blog entry as I experiment in my own home a bit more.

Meanwhile, back to boys and writing. In my previous post, one of the suggestions I made for getting boys to write involved diagramming or drawing first, then writing about the drawing second. I said "think map instead of a list of directions."

Marshall's description of making homemade books is similar, and though I haven't yet put it into practice, seems pedagogically sound.

Very sound.

Basically, each child should be given a blank booklet, perhaps made of 4 or 8 pieces of paper folded in half and stapled in the middle, and if you want to make it slightly more permanent, wrap a piece of coloured card around the outside as a cover before you staple it all together.

The child should designate the little book as a story from the beginning -- a trip to a farm, a day at the zoo, what the frogs are doing in the pond right now, or even something entirely fanciful (Marshall gives the example of a little girl who imagined herself as a cat who went on magical adventures, such as going to the moon, to the circus, to the seaside).

Then *daily*, children should draw a picture in their book to go with their story. If they aren't good writers yet, then they should take the book to the teacher/parent and dictate what they want written under the picture. You could vary this by dotting the letters for the child to trace, or dictating the spelling of words while the child writes them him-/herself.

One of Phoenix's first books:
note that mummy wrote the words
(click on image to enlarge)

As fluency progresses, children will be able to write their own words for their stories, and from these could come a few choice discussions about spelling, punctuation, grammar. If the words are in pencil, these corrections can be made by the child, but perhaps not insisted upon so you don't throw water on their fire. A separate booklet for grammar, spelling, etc, would probably be better if you feel the need for something more formal.

This process seems to mirror that which my oldest child, who is now 10, followed naturally, but I can see the good sense in having little books as a daily assignment for all the children. I'll post in the future about how I get on.

Killer demonstrates the process
of drawing first, writing last

One cautionary note: Marshall points out that the process is best when it's drawing before writing, and not the other way around. As she writes: "Thought must precede written work, and the picture first serves to inspire and then order thought, so that the words flow with confidence and clarity afterwards." She admits that illustrating a story once the words are already written is "pleasant", but has less value -- "if the words have been satisfying enough in their own right, the very sensitive child may even be irked by being asked to do the same thing twice." (Both quotes are from p. 143 of the 1968 CUP edition)

(Sybil Marshall died in 2005. Her obituary can be read here).

Why do (most) boys hate writing?

2011-01-23T18:18:00.003Z

One of the most common complaints I hear from parents about boys -- whether they're home educated or at schools -- is that they don't want to write anything.

Why do (most) boys hate to write so much?

The short answer is that boys develop later in that area of the brain. In fact, research has shown than girls' brains develop in the region of language and fine motor skills about six years earlier than boys! On the flip side, boys develop their spatial memory areas about four years earlier than girls.

Unfortunately, our expectations as educators are geared more toward writing than spatial memory, and so the boys get labeled or pushed too hard too early.

Is it any wonder they can develop a hang-up about writing?

Logic states, therefore, that boys should be allowed to develop more slowly in this area, and in the meantime, be provided with opportunities and strategies that can help them achieve as writers at their level!

Here are a few ideas based on experience with my own boys, aged 3 and 8:

Use the computer. Because boys develop earlier in their spatial skills than their literacy skills, they might find it easier to write using a keyboard than trying to form letters with a pencil. Further, writing on a word processor is less permanent and easier to correct, so boys needn't be too worried about mistakes (and who hasn't had to deal with a tantrum when something didn't work out just so??!!). An ICT educator recently told me that the schools in her district were going to explore this link in a bid to improve boys' literacy, so it's an idea that seems to be gathering some momentum.
Handwriting practice. "Killer" has rejected most handwriting programmes, some with violence and/or chucking books into the rubbish bin. Getty-Dubay italic book A was thrown across the room. Draw, Write, Now has the right idea -- drawing pictures and writing a two sentence caption underneath. Unfortunately, that was still too many words as far as Killer was concerned, so I got many well-drawn pictures and no writing. Our success story has been Write from the Start by Teodorescu -- a handwriting programme that's more about connecting dots, drawing circles around triangles, and practising curves. Killer and Timmy both get their respective books out in their spare time. You might ask if a handwriting programme is necessary at all, and I would probably say it isn't; however, the Teodorescu book allows us to tick that box without ticking each other off.
Let him dictate. We're eclectic homeschoolers who err on the side of Charlotte Mason method, so I check on the children's comprehension of our reading materials by getting them to "narrate", or tell back, what I've just read. This is primarily oral narration from the age of 7-11, or until a child is fluent enough in writing that his/her skills in handwriting won't disadvantage the thoughts making it to the page. Phoenix, for example, is capable of writing her own narration. Killer, on the other hand, will dictate his narration to me, which allows me to save some of his work on paper without coming to blows about the way in which that work gets processed.
Copywork. This is another hallmark of the Charlotte Mason method. Some might argue it's an unnecessary battle, but I like how it helps a child learn well-written sentences, good vocabulary, and complicated spelling, in a natural way. Any Charlotte Mason book or website will tell you more about it, but here's an example. My advice when it comes to boys? Keep it short. Keep it large. Offer a reward such as some computer time when he completes this along with three or four other topics, or break up the writing skills with a game, some dancing, some outdoor play.

Use movable alphabets. These are individual letters cut out of thick card, usually with the vowels in blue and the consonants in red. They're excellent for training young children to read, but also useful for the reluctant boy to practise spelling and writing without having to use fine motor skills which he may find difficult still. Here is an article about using movable alphabets, and also a very good Montessori book about teaching reading and writing which includes more detail and exercises for the younger child.
Diagram, or draw first. If you think about it, this is common sense. In their shoes, you would want to draw something with a great deal of detail and action and excitement, everything happening at once, rather than write a word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence explanation. Think map rather than a list of directions and you may see what I mean.
Read Michael Gurian's book "The Mind of Boys" for more excellent tips and the science behind them.

The bottom line is that we're wrong when we think boys aren't that good at writing. They certainly *can* be good at writing, but maybe not when we want them to be. It's a matter of being patient with them. Remember, Charlotte Mason, the Victorian educator and theorist, didn't have her children write their narrations till they were at least 11.

Perhaps we shouldn't either.

Teaching with Thomas the Tank Engine

2011-01-01T23:19:00.001Z

He's only a little blue wooden train with a number 1 on his side and a fairly jolly looking expression on his front, but Thomas the Tank Engine seems to be one of the few toys amongst our mountain of plastic that is a perennial favourite. I mean, my kids really do play for hours with their trains.

Did I say "play"? I meant to say "work", because that's what a child's focussed attention is with any object or in any activity. It's their work, and should be respected as such. In fact, if you look at this article here about child development and Montessori theory, you will see a list of bullet points about learning through play, all of which a good session with Thomas and friends will satisfy.

Let's take for example the second point in the list, "creativity expanded using problem-solving skills". If you've ever tried to make anything more than a simple figure-8 or circular track with the Thomas railway, then you know that this activity is all about problem-solving skills. Just how can I get one more bridge into the scheme, how can I make this bit of track match up to that bit of track, and how can I make that shed hook up when I've run out of little pieces with two sticky-out ends?

Then there's the point about building muscle control and strength. This article here lists how delicate an operation it is to push along an engine and its trucks without losing the back cars, but even the youngest of children will enjoy passing the tactile pieces from one hand to another, turning their wheels, tapping them (bashing them) against the floor.

Rocky and Killer pose with their collection
(notice how they've grouped all the square faces together)

Perhaps most interesting of all is the connection to Thomas and a child's emotional education. Countless articles are written about children on the autistic spectrum and how Thomas makes an important developmental connection for them. In conjunction with watching the short little films, an autistic child benefits from a relationship with Thomas, ranging from language skills to facial expressions. A very helpful article about this can be found here.

I can personally vouch for the way that Thomas the Tank Engine served a purpose in emotional intelligence for Killer when he was about 2. He's not on the autistic spectrum at all, but we both derived great pleasure from his learning to imitate the different facial expressions used by the engines on the show: angry, happy, surprised, snooty, sad.

I'd like to hear from other readers about how they've perhaps used Thomas or other wooden trains in a "work" capacity. We have done all kinds of things mathematical, like sorting and grouping. I made copies of all the engines with numbers, from 1 to 12, and pasted them into a file to be part of a "math mini office", and I also trawled old Thomas magazines to cut and paste pictures from A to Z as a sort of alphabet primer (hint: go for a kite for "k" and a queen for "q").

Above all these suggestions, however, are those which emphasize the enjoyable, the sociable, the imaginative work which is more than child's play -- it's just plain purposeful fun!

Snowy Day

2010-12-21T13:59:00.000Z

It's an unusual snow storm that dumps 15 inches of snow on us within 8 hours.

We all trekked down to the village sledging slope, but it was on an exposed ridge so the wind was really cold. Busy Timmy decided he'd had enough even before we started, so I left the others with their daddy and marched back home.

On the way home, I took a lot of photos of him. Here's my favourite:

It reminds me of one of our favourite picture books for winter:
Ezra Jack Keats' book, Snowy Day.

What the Israelites said when the Red Sea parted

2010-12-08T14:16:00.001Z

Uploading my daughter's cartoon: Chinese whispers during the Exodus! Enjoy!

(Hint: Click on the picture and it will zoom large enough to read all the comments)

WWI Poetry Project

2010-11-14T13:36:00.000Z

"Killer" has been working on animating a WWI poem for his history project this term. With the help of a local sixth former (17-year-old) who's a computer whiz, Killer has completed the project and uploaded it to YouTube.

Here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt9R3IGlOXE

Please visit, comment, and encourage him -- he found the whole thing a lot of hard work, and I'd like to see him get some attention for it.

Thanks.

Name that Personality Type

2010-11-10T00:30:00.000Z

I've been investigating my children's personality types. For this purpose, I like the book called Nurture by Nature written by Paul D. Tieger. Although I found it difficult to pinpoint my own type, that's probably because I'm ENFP -- the one that finds it difficult to make decisions!

The knock-on effect is that I find it hard to decide what my children are as well. However, they stumbled onto a quiz that they took on-line.
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp
Thus, they informed me of their personality types themselves.

I was surprised to discover that Killer is an introvert. He always seems so outgoing and jolly and energetic, but then again, I'm not the only one who has noticed that he sometimes gets out the Beano books and reads while his friends are over.

Considering how much he and I seem to clash, I'm also not surprised that he's almost exactly my opposite: ISTP.

ISTPs are easily bored with convention

I'll investigate further whether or not I think this is a true reflection of who he is. That is, as soon as my friend returns the Tieger book!

Meanwhile, I shall dig out the Michael Gurian book of a similar title: Nurture the Nature: Understanding and Supporting Your Child's Unique Core Personality and see what insights that gives me.

And I promise I'll report back. Soon.

Having a Heart-to-Heart (on the way to Ikea)

2010-09-06T23:42:00.003+01:00

I had the privilege of driving with my son to Ikea the other night in order to return a damaged item. It's a two-hour round trip, and gave us some valuable one-on-one time.

On the way, I thought I'd ask him how life was going. He's only 7, so I'm not sure how much detail I was expecting.

Nevertheless, he opened up to me. "I just wish I did my work better."

Mommy-probe got into high gear: what do you mean by work? work, as in chores at home? work, as in homeschooling? And when you say you want to do it better, do you want a schedule? Something written out?

He was pretty quiet after that, so I gave him the low-down of what our homeschool schedule was going to be like this year: the Bible study, the history, the map skills and math and art.

"And you'll have a project this year. Something for history, when we're studying World War One."

"I could do something with poetry," he said. "Like make computer stick people do the actions."

Brilliant! He's reading poetry, and it's about his history topic, and he's combining it with his love for animation and computing.

So in my mind I've established his long-term goals and schedule till Christmas, and my intuition is to leave him to get on with it.

Oh, no, no, no! Not boys! You see, it's been tried in Norway for years, this idea of setting a work plan for individual students and them letting them get on with it, but they've discovered that boys are falling further behind the girls when they employ this strategy.

The study makes the following generalizations: boys don't do well with self-regulation and taking responsibility for their own planning: instead, they like when a teacher sets clear learning objectives, short-term tasks, and tightly timed activities with clear targets. Boys want immediate feedback, tend not to collaborate or discuss, and often put things off till the last minute.

Boys like immediate feedback

Of course, these may not be true for all boys, but in my struggles to get "Killer" peaceful in his school work and productive, they may not be far wrong.

Now it's not exactly back to the drawing board -- more like, back over to the computer to watch "Killer" make his stick figure animations and continue to encourage him in his poetry project.

This could be really good. I must tell him so, often.

The Boy and his Computer, or 5 ways to protect him from electronic danger

2010-08-23T01:41:00.000+01:00

What is it with boys and computers, eh? I mean, sure girls will play computer games, too, but research shows that fewer girls than boys display addictive behaviour when it comes to gaming, and it all seems to come down to the way their brains are wired.

An article called Boys and Video Games: A Natural Attraction? reports the fact that three brain structures -- the nucleus accumbens, amygdala, and orbitofrontal cortex -- were stimulated more in the male brain than the female during a controlled test of reactions to computer gaming.

These three areas of the brain matter when one looks at their functions. The first, the nucleus accumbens, is the region involved in motivation and reward, feelings, and drug addiction The second, the amygdala, are a pair of regions in the temporal lobe (located toward the bottom of the brain near the ears) and are linked to emotions and aggression, and more importantly for this post, to forming patterns related to learned addictive behaviour. The final region, abbreviated as OFC, can be found in the frontal lobe of the brain and has been implicated in a variety of psychiatric and neurological conditions including anxiety, mood, and addictive disorders.

Three regions, three mentions of addiction.

Further research shows a connection between gaming and addiction. Harris Interactive reports that, in a study done in 2007, 31% of boys felt addicted (compare with only 11% girls). Nearly half of all respondents thought they had a friend who was addicted.

What are the symptoms of video-gaming addiction?

a sense of euphoria when playing;
excessive game play and thoughts about gaming;
neglecting family, friends, and school or work;
physical symptoms such as migraines, weight gain, and sleep disturbances.

Notice that these symptoms aren't just about playing games a lot. They are very deep changes that affect the child's life and relationships. Lack of motivation, withdrawal from family, failure to engage in normal living activities like eating, hygiene, chores. Worryingly, doctors have noted that one out of ten youth gamers showed enough symptoms of damage to their school, family, and psychological functioning to merit serious concern (see Harris Interactive article above).

So what can we do? Well, like so many of these sorts of things, it's probably more a case of balance and common sense than expertise. Here are my top 5 suggestions, gleaned from a quick trawl on the internet and putting my own thoughts to it:

Set time limits. The general consensus is that you should set time limits, but that you will probably want to discuss them with your child so he knows you're being fair and logical. Different games probably get different limits: some sports games, for example, could reasonably be completed in fifteen minutes, while an action-adventure quest will, even after a generous allowance of a half-hour or an hour, need to be abandoned, saved, and returned to another day. Just remember that the final decision should be yours, and that you need to monitor that the limits are adhered to, or else the limits might become meaningless.
Set location limits. Experts seem as one voice on this: no computer in a child's bedroom. The media must be monitored for his safety and his sanity. However, I personally don't think this goes far enough. I say, get the computer out of the heart of the home -- otherwise, it's too much temptation for everyone, and I'm speaking from experience. Recently, we've had to move the computer into our schoolroom while remodeling takes place. That means it's right in the middle of all our activities. I've noticed that, since the computer has been placed here, I'm no longer checking e-mails just once a day (or should I say, late in the evening, after the kids have gone to bed), but now it's more like every hour, just because it's so accessible. I also notice how much more I'm being nagged for computer time (and with four kids, that's a lot of nagging!).
Set genre limits. What I mean by this is that you choose carefully the games that are being played. Some games are more addictive than others. Those that create a community and require long periods of time to play them are the most dangerous: that includes Warhammer, World of Warcraft, and the like. I'm not saying don't let them play them, but I am saying that they contain more addicting elements, so if your child hasn't entered that world yet, perhaps you should encourage more stand-alone games, educational stuff, or even games that can be played in pairs. And if your child has joined Warhammer, et al? It's time to be especially vigilant.
Change the scenery. If it's getting too much, then leave the media frenzy behind entirely and go on holiday, or at least, out of the house for a walk.
Get a life (err, I mean, a hobby). When I was at university, I noticed a lot of my friends were addicted to watching soap operas on t.v. I didn't have time to do that, because I played basketball for the varsity team and my life centred around classes, studying, and practising. I'm not advocating that kind of commitment for your child, but I am suggesting that having few or no outside interests will fail to provide an alternative to the lure of the computer.

Get outside if it's all too much

I want to end this blog post with a request: one of my favourite authors about boy-things, Michael Gurian, has a new book out called The Purpose of Boys (just released in paperback) in which seven pages are dedicated to exactly this topic, boys and the media. In the UK, the book is due out in a couple weeks' time, so I'm not able to avail myself of the treasures within just yet. It's certainly on my wishlist, but in the meantime, maybe someone in the US has read it already and can let me know the gist of what it says!

Boys and Visual Learning

2010-08-03T23:10:00.000+01:00

I decided to try out what I've read recently about boys and their preference for visual learning modes when I went to tutor a 15-year-old boy in Language Arts (GCSE English to my UK followers).

First, he wanted to understand paragraphing in an essay. I drew something like this:

Fruit Bowl

Paragraphs, I said, were like pieces of fruit, and the essay was like a fruit bowl. Most simple essays have three or four pieces of fruit in their fruit bowl, such as an orange, a pear, and an apple. The key to good writing is to make sure each fruit-bit remains whole; in other words, the writer has to make sure that bits of orange don't try to get into the apple, but that the orange stuff keeps to the orange paragraph, and the apple stuff stays with the apple.

I love it when a light seems to go off in a child's brain! Imagine, 15 years old, bright, top-set sort of student, and yet no one had ever bothered to really explain paragraphing to him.

His next concern was about knowing how to structure an essay -- that is, how many pieces of fruit should he have in his fruit bowl. This is when I changed analogies (it was the next session, mind).

The scenario I gave him was an exam situation. A question comes up and you're not sure how to answer it. Picture a curtain on a rail in front of a window, and then think: use the first hook as the introduction, the next four or five hooks as separate topics, then a final hook as your conclusion.

Here's what I drew as I talked:

My scanner cut off the final hook, labeled "conclusion"

The most important thing here is to see how the curtain fully covers the window. We will have to look at this in a future session, that is, knowing just how many hooks you need to have to hang your curtain so that it covers the window.

The main point, however, was that you don't need to flounder around when you come to write an essay question. Just know that you need an introduction, a handful of solid points that you can back up with evidence (quotes, examples, etc.), and a conclusion.

My drawings and diagrams paid off. The student wrote me a sample letter, and there was that gorgeous 5-paragraph essay that he'd never learn to write before. I realise it's just the beginning, but at least he's made big, noticeable strides in just a couple of hours.

So, what did I gain from this experience that I can translate to my homeschool? That my son, who is often asking for a schedule so he knows what to do, just wants a visual representation of what's expected of him. He can't remember all the verbal instructions I gibber out all day long.

He simply wants to see so he can know. Is that too much to ask?

Going Boy-Friendly in September

2010-07-18T00:59:00.002+01:00

Since re-reading Michael Gurian's book The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life, I've been thinking about my provision for my sons in a whole new light. My 3-year-old is still supposedly in non-school mode -- a bit of Montessori practical life here, a bit of reading or writing there, and a lot of playing cars with his 5-year-old sister. My 7-year-old, however, has had a mixed bag over the past year of success and stress, and it's for him that I need to make some changes

Here's what definitely worked: having a daily checklist for him to tick off his accomplishments; getting a chance to work on the computer once he had finished his work for the day; map skills (by both Carson-Dellosa and School Specialty Publishing); the new handwriting program called Write from the Start; playing active games before we started school such as "The Giant Says" (ie, Simon Says but with a gobbling-up bit when you do it wrong); and making Lego stop-action animation films about Bible stories.

Here's what sort of worked: ShillerMath (when I worked alongside him and made him slow down); Draw Write Now for art; writing stories on the computer; Thinking Skills workbook until it went into overdrive about alphabetizing, and our co-op on poetry, art, and drama.

What didn't really work at all: I Can Do All Things art curriculum (he begged me for this, having seen his big sister complete her copy -- I don't quite understand his problem with it), open-ended project work, foreign languages (even hiring a tutor).

Here are some thoughts in a nutshell based on Gurian's observations and on hard science about boys' brains:

Boys can be extremely distracted and stressed by a messy, disordered room, so I must de-clutter. (No, I mean it -- really! I must, I must, I must ... higher priority than painting the study ... remember!)
Boys apparently need more space to study than girls. They tend to want to spread out when they work, which has something to do with their reliance on the visual/spatial senses. That means the table I currently intend for both him and his sister to work on is w-a-y too small for two.
Boys tend to need brighter light to work in than girls, so I need to be careful about siting his table and perhaps provide him with a desk lamp.
Boys like displaying and arranging their work, so a large cork board would seem a good investment.
Boys respond better to diagrams and lists written down rather than lots of talk. Sounds like it's time to get out the ol' easel and employ a bit of "chalk" and not much "talk"
Boys can be frustrated by switching too often between topics. This puts me slightly in a quandary: the Charlotte Mason method I tend to follow is a big advocate of short, sharp lessons, so that a child maintains concentration over a period of time, and learns not to dawdle. The other method I incorporate into my eclectic mix is Montessori, who argued that switching too often was actually more tiring than just leaving a child alone. That's perhaps why the checklist-idea worked well for him last year -- it scooted him along through a variety of subjects, but he chose the pace of it.
Boys seem to want to move while someone is reading aloud to them. We do a lot of reading aloud, and it's very difficult to get him to retain anything, whether he's lying down and fidgeting and interrupting, or, as Gurian suggests, playing Lego. I need to find a balance between his movement and his remembering what I'm reading. Therefore, I may try something like a stress ball for him to squeeze, or play-dough (if he can stand to get his hands dirty -- depends on his mood that day), or even -- gasp -- letting him chew gum.

That's a lot of changes to consider, and I'm only 1/3 of the way through Gurian's book!

Well, if I can just get through the de-cluttering before September, I will have taken a major step toward removing stressors in "Killer's" environment, and hopefully, put him on a firmer foundation for next year's learning experience.

Are there any of these suggestions that you have implemented recently?

What Homeschool Mums Get Up To

2010-07-12T00:04:00.000+01:00

Mouths full of food, cups of tea at our side, children playing bubbles outside or finishing up their radio plays for the day's topic, our last co-op of the year was typical of our two-weekly meetings.

Various discussions followed about our plans next year, about who might join our group, about the topics we could cover.

And then this bizarre but funny conversation started. It went something like this:

Mum 1: I've got so much time now that I've been cross with my husband and stopped ironing his shirts.

Mum 2: I don't own anything that I iron.

Mum 3: I think we should all save the planet and just stop ironing altogether. In fact, I want to design t-shirts that say: "Go Green: Stop Ironing!"

Mum 2: Why do we iron anyway?

Mum 3: I think it all started with posh people -- they could afford to have servants who ironed for them, and then everyone else wanted flat clothes, too -- to look posh.

Mum 1: I think there are some parts of the world where you really have to iron, almost like a law. In Africa, there's a bug that lays eggs in your clothes while they're drying outside, so you have to iron to kill the eggs.

Mum 3: Ewwwww.

Mum 2: Maybe it was some queen who started having things ironed, like being the first one to have a baby lying down.

Mum 1: I think maybe the Chinese started it.

Mum 3: Oh, great! [My child] is doing a project on China. She can look up about ironing.

Mum 2: But isn't this our last co-op? I mean, we've finished for the summer now.

Mum 1: We don't stop for the summer, because we have breaks throughout the year as it is.

Mum 3: Yeah, us, too. We're getting in a good groove right now, and I don't want them to forget things. I think a little research about ironing would be interesting.

Mum 2: I think we should have more tea.

(Out of interest, see this link about the history of ironing -- it was the posh people who started it!)

Listening to Boys

2010-07-04T01:22:00.000+01:00

Recently, my 7-year-old son was asked to participate in a survey of Sunday school provision at our church. I was intrigued by some of his answers, and thought they could offer insight into homeschooling as well.

His first point was that the crafts at Sunday school were too easy and sometimes the subject matter lacked challenge. (I suspect these are the times when his behaviour deteriorates, and he gets silly or distracting.)

One solution may be to make sure he knows why he's asked to do this craft or talk about that subject. According to a Schools Improvement Officer in an article appearing on-line at Teaching Expertise, a boy won't engage with something if he doesn't see the sense or purpose in doing it. That's why it's important for him to "talk through and share ideas before he puts pen to paper", so he's got a good grasp of what he's aiming for and why.

I realise that I've accidentally gone through this process with my son in something like his maths. We changed last year from Singapore Maths to ShillerMath, which means sometimes the spiral approach of the latter will introduce a concept in a simplistic way that my son has already tackled in Singapore. He'll baulk at the lessons because they're too easy, so I let him talk through them orally until we get to new material, at which point, I'll sit alongside him as he works through the more challenging lessons.

Three things are going on at the same time: first, he's obviously doing his maths (and hopefully, learning it as well!); second, he's getting some precious one-on-one time with me, which makes him feel valued and probably helps associate learning with a pleasing relationship; and finally, he sees his progress when he marks on a grid which lessons he's completed.

Which brings me to his second point. He told me that he thought there should be more contests and incentives in Sunday school. Just like the grid for his maths, he wants something tangible onto which he can hang his progress at church. Bible-reading programmes, prize-giving ceremonies, etc.

He went on to describe how he would go up to the front of the church to receive his prizes and rewards in front of everybody, which struck me as especially brave for someone who claims adamantly that he has stage fright and refuses to do anything public most of the time.

His final point about Sunday school was that he knew the teachers listened to him, but he was also aware that they didn't value his opinions and suggestions because they never seemed to take on board what he said. I guess it's a case of hearing but not listening, if you see what I mean.

Boy, did this strike home! It's true that "Killer" is an incessant prattler, especially when he gets his mind on a subject like the latest Lego Indiana Jones computer game, but that doesn't excuse my usual blase response.

When our children talk, we shouldn't just hear -- we should listen.

Tonight, I learned that my son craves a challenge, seeks visual or tangible incentives and rewards, and wants to be taken seriously.

What would you learn from your children about their homeschooling experience if you asked them?

Or, should I say, what have you learned from them since this post inspired you to ask them?

Staying Home ... or Not

2010-06-28T23:45:00.000+01:00

To my mind, there’s nothing better than staying home to learn and to live. We spend our 2 1/2 hours every morning in our school room, not always getting through "the plan", but always focussing on something that’s interesting and stimulating.

The picture to the right, for example, was taken on a day we had been learning about whales in the Apologia Science text, called "Exploring Creation with Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures on the 5th Day." The photo shows how long a blue whale actually is, tracing back to our starting point where the sidewalk ends in the distance.

One welcomed addition this year is our opening routine. We do stretches called "yes, no, maybe", starting with our heads (yes and no are self-explanatory, but maybe is tilting your head side-to-side to point each ear toward your shoulder).

Then we have adapted an idea called Five Rhythm Dance to a music appreciation segment. Using something like "Bolero", we start off with slow, very long movements for a few minutes, then move into karate-chop type gestures. Finally, we switch over to "Ride of the Valkyries" and do crazy dancing.

Finally, we choose something like Vivaldi’s "Winter" and just lie down and listen. The kids are learning about composers and compositions while getting some exercise.

We try to stick to routine most days, because if we go out too many times in the afternoon each week, or have too many people over, we have problems with the "living" part of our day — that is, we can’t keep up with our daily fire-fighting chores, much less get ahead with de-cluttering.

Never the less, there are times when opportunities arise when a field trip or friend’s visit should be welcomed: carpe diem, seize the day! We took one of these when we received a voucher from the local wildlife park which saved us one child’s entry. It was enough to pack us off to the animals for a day. Hardly anyone was there, so we had the swings and slides to ourselves, could stand front-row to watch penguins eat, and pet all the goats and sheep until our hands felt like lanolin gloves.

So, there are distinct advantages to being an eclectic homeschooler, especially that of having an adaptable routine. We just call such flights of fancy by the name of "nature study"!

Are there any routines you find helpful? Post them in the comments box below.

In praise of hotdogs

2010-06-28T00:01:00.002+01:00

I'm not talking sodium nitrate and colouring and collagen casings here -- I'm talking a fun game that you can play with your children that's especially useful if someone is upset or grumpy or out of sorts.

First, I'll admit that this game wasn't my idea. I got it from a book called "The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun" by Carol Stock Kranowitz.

An "out-of-sync" child has many guises: over-hyper, total couch potato, extra-clumsy. All these symptoms and several in between could be indications of Sensory Integration Disorder, where a child's brain doesn't quite register senses properly.

I still haven't decided if my 7-year-old has a form of this -- he definitely requires over-stimulation to feel right, such as going to bed with a flashlight shining in his eyes and never being able to find his "inside voice". I've decided, however, that the label of SID isn't as important as Kranowitz's suggestions for tackling it, which is basically to ensure children have a varied sensory diet just as one would ensure they have a varied food diet.

"Hotdogs", therefore, are one "dish" in the sensory diet, and one particularly enjoyed by children who like deep touch. The key is to press deeply and deliberately, because children who have sensory issues might feel uncomfortable with soft touching.

Here is our variation. First, the child lies on the ground face down, then we mime turning on the stove and starting to "sizzle" the hotdog by jiggling him. After a few seconds, we turn him over to sizzle the other side. We turn the stove off, then start slathering on the condiments:

ketchup (long, slow strokes from head to toe)
mustard (splodgy pushes up and down the body)
onions (poking all ten fingers along the length of the body)
pickles (using the forearms, press from head down to the feet)
cheese (a bit of a feathery tickle)
chili (long stroke followed by a press, which is the sauce followed by the beans)
finally, the bun, which is your whole body on top of his. You can pretend to eat him now, or if he's too tall for the bun, pretend to cut off his head. (I think this a bit morbid, but they seem to love this part ... go figure).

With my hot-and-cold, intense 7-year-old, this game has become something of a tantrum buster. He's even offering to do it to the other children when they've had some kind of upset like a scraped knee, so I know he has come to regard it as a soothing therapy.

Meanwhile, if you want to know more about SID, then do consult Kranowitz. You may find that she finally nails the difficulty you've been having with your own child, and what's more, gives you some strategies for dealing with it.

Different Homeschooling Methods

2010-06-24T01:43:00.002+01:00

If you’re new to homeschooling, then sooner or later you’re going to want to explore the whole issue of different methods to try.

Here’s a short explanation of the main methods in a nutshell.

First, there’s the school-at-home option. This is where you try to imitate the kind of schooling you probably grew up with: desk work, worksheets, workbooks, perhaps computer-based lessons, schedules, grades. Some people try to cobble together a version of this with different curricula, while others might opt to purchase a comprehensive curriculum such as Sonlight or the Bob Jones University Press materials. Pros: it’s all done for you. Cons: it’s expensive, and sometimes, it’s difficult to pinpoint the right level for your child.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the un-schooling method. Perhaps it would be better labelled as the child-led method since un-schooling smacks of doing nothing. Most educators and parents come to realise that children are naturally curious and cannot help but want to learn things (think about how keen a toddler is to learn to walk or talk or feed himself). This method is about trusting children to do just that.

If you have withdrawn a child from school, then un-schooling can be a way of de-schooling a child; that is, letting a child regain confidence or self-esteem by dropping anything that seems related to school, especially if the child has had a bad experience.

John Holt is sort of the “father” of un-schooling (see How Children Learn (Classics in Child Development)).

Pros: child-led, spontaneous, everything comes under the learning umbrella.

Cons: justifying the method to others, worrying about “holes” in your child’s education, pin-pointing achievement.

In between these two methods are a lot of other options. In no particular order, they are:

Unit Studies: basically, this is an inter-disciplinary, topic-based approach. You pick something like bats, borrow a lot of books from the library, find multi-media resources on the web, go to some places of relevance to serve as field trips, and then choose some way to document your work: maybe a journal, a notebook, a lapbook (see http://www.squidoo.com/lapbooking-vs-notebooking for an explanation of lapbooking v. notebooking).

Here’s a link about how to plan a unit study: http://homeschooling.about.com/cs/unitstudies/ht/unitstudy.htm). Konos is an example of a character-based unit study curriculum. The picture to the right comes from the unit on Honour, when we studied Japan.

Pros: comprehensive, multi-disciplinary; flexible to teach wide age range.

Cons: often there’s lots of preparation, and it’s sometimes difficult to juggle the wide age range.

Charlotte Mason method: Charlotte Mason was an educator living in England during Victorian times. She was a pioneer in child-led learning which was a new concept back then. Her method is characterized by reading “living” books – that is, written by one author who loves the subject rather than dumbed-down readers or textbooks; by nature study; short, sharp lessons; and narrating, or telling back, what’s been read as a way of “testing” what the child has learned. Charlotte Mason described education as “an atmosphere, a discipline, a life,” showing how wonderfully it meshes with the homeschooling environment.

Catherine Levison's book is a brilliant and practical summary.

Karen Andreola's website http://www.charlottemason.com/ and books are also recommended. You can find a free, ready-made curriculum from Ambleside On-line to help guide you.

Pros: living books are wonderful; can be an inexpensive option if you use the library a lot; emphasises fresh air and observation of nature; can be light on writing if you need it to be.

Cons: not every child is good at listening to stories read aloud; not every child is that keen on nature; some children are actually more tired when changing quickly from lesson to lesson than if they’re left alone to work and concentrate for long periods of time.

Montessori method: Maria Montessori was another educator from the turn of the 20^th century, this time in Italy. She worked with deprived children and discovered many amazing, ground-breaking observations about the way that children learned. Her books are still fascinating, and most beginners do well to read the The Absorbent Mind. Other good beginning books are Montessori Read and Write, Montessori Play and Learn, and Elizabeth Hainstock’s Teaching Montessori in the Home. One word of caution with this method: there are thousands of dollars to be spent on proprietary Montessori equipment, and there are hours of angst to be had in trying to imitate a trained Montessori directress. Don’t panic. You can achieve many of the same aims by using basic household items – just have a browse for Montessori blogs like those listed in my “other good blogs” section for more details.

Pros: very hands-on; encourages concentration and self-discovery; advises order and neatness in the whole home environment.

Cons: can be very expensive if you try to buy the proper equipment; can be very time-consuming to prepare all the laminated cards; probably needs more space than other methods; may seem overwhelming if the parent tries to imitate a Montessori school in the home.

Classical education: based on the education systems of ancient civilizations, and mirroring children’s natural ways of learning, classical education breaks down learning into three distinct stages, or Trivium: the grammar stage, where children absorb facts and exercise their memory; the logic stage of junior high, which is characterized by questioning and arguing; and the rhetoric stage of high school when the child focuses on explanation, persuasion, and debate.

Susan Wise Bauer’s book, The Well-Educated Mind, is probably the best introduction on the topic.

Pros: well-ordered and disciplined; prepares children well for further education;
highly enjoyable for children who like to read or who love history.

Cons: can be teacher intensive; requires daily discipline and consistency; may not
be of interest to a child who’s not keen on history or reading a lot.

Finally, there’s the eclectic method. This is the one that picks a bit from one method and mixes it with a bit from another, to make one’s own, unique brand of homeschooling. It’s the one that comes together depending on priorities, personnel, and resources (such as money and space), and offers the most flexibility when it comes to the ebb and flow of children’s maturity and interests.

Pros: can pick and choose the best on offer from any method; flexible; adaptable.

Cons: easy to lose one’s way in the jungle of options out there.

I hope you found these definitions helpful. If you have any questions about them, or want to know further resources, then drop me a comment below.

Boys and Reading

2010-06-23T00:35:00.008+01:00

If you’ve got a boy, then chances are that you are worried about his reading attainment. Maybe it’s just a gut feeling, if you homeschool, or it’s there in black and white every time you receive a school report or have a parents’ evening.

You aren’t imagining things – boys often read less well than girls.

The statistics are sobering: the average boy reads 1-1/2 years behind the average girl; he reads less than 30 minutes a day; he’s likely to be 7-percentage points behind the average girl in reading assessment at the end of primary-school age.

Then there are the scare stories – men with poor literacy struggle with lasting relationships later in life; 43% live alone; 22% still live with their parents; only 50% are satisfied with their lives, while those with good literacy rank at 78%.

Something must be done, right? (You don't want your son living at home with you when he's grown, do you?)

Here are some quick tips for improving your son’s reading ability.

First, don’t panic. Boys often read later than girls because physiologically their brains don’t finish developing till the age of 14 or so, whereas girls finish at about 11. In other words, you probably still have time to nurture this important life-skill.

Second, if you want your son to read, then you need to model the habit yourself.

Third, it’s important that dads and other male influences are seen to be reading: your son doesn’t want to engage in an activity that’s “only for girls”. Men often claim work pressures or lack of confidence as reasons for not reading to their children, but their role in this is absolutely essential. Print out this article and show it to them -- their involvement matters!

Finally, you have to find the right material, so he’ll want to read. This will vary from child to child, but there are two main categories. No, I don’t mean fiction vs. non-fiction, although these are useful divisions.

I mean, read-alouds or read-to-selfs. Books for reading aloud can be trickier, harder, perhaps in editions with smaller print and fewer illustrations. Those for reading alone might need to appear simpler so those young eyes can latch onto the words without straining.

With those two categories in mind, it’s important, then, that you make the time to read to your son. The physical enjoyment of it is as crucial to the experience as is the intellectual stimulation.

I’ve included several websites in my Suggested Links section for choosing good boys’ books. I also suggest the fantastic resource by Jim Trelease called the Read Aloud Handbook which covers the why’s and wherefore’s of reading to your children, and the reasons why you should do so till they’re well into their teens.

Finally, I want to list two popular authors with my own son: Frank Cottrell Boyce, and Steve Cole, whose Astrosaurs series is very popular here in the UK for its combination of dinosaurs and astronauts.

What are your favourites at home?

(Be sure to click on the comments link to tile-down the great things people are saying!)

Homeschooling 101 -- Three Steps for the Start

2010-06-11T01:27:00.000+01:00

Are you thinking about homeschooling? Or, are you just starting out?

Either way, you're probably full of questions right now: what curriculum should I use? what kind of schedule should I have? what equipment do I need? how do I convince my friends/family that it's a good idea? should I go see a psychiatrist?

As a homeschooling veteran of seven years, I have three simple pieces of advice for newbies: first, don't rush into anything, especially not curriculum purchases. Mistakes on this front can be expensive, and it's also likely you'll change your mind a lot as you get more informed and get to know your children better. If you're desperate to get started, then just use the library for a while.

Second, read anything you can get your hands on with regard to homeschooling. Terrie Lynn Bittner's book, "Homeschooling: Take a Deep Breath -- You Can Do This", has a lot to recommend for itself as a good beginner's book. Its reviews on Amazon are outstanding.

But don't just limit yourself to books. Blogs and Yahoo! groups (like Homeschooling Boys) offer a wealth of up-to-date, hands-on information. Some of my favourites are listed in the sidebar to the right.

Finally, sit down with a pencil and paper so that you can brainstorm what your aim is for homeschooling your children. This step may seem a bit underwhelming, but I believe it's one of the most important stages in a homeschooling journey. Times will come when learning at home gets a bit bumpy, or diversions arise, or distractions appear, and then you'll be glad to have a sort of philosophical satnav to keep you on course.

Some possible aims are: providing an atmosphere without bullying, focusing on character-building traits, strengthening family ties, seeking flexibility, letting a child enjoy innocent freedoms for longer, providing an appropriate environment for a child with special needs, accelerating your child's learning, or any number of other goals.

Setting goals will help you decide what method or style of homeschooling you'll adopt for your home: unit study, lapbooking, Charlotte Mason, Montessori, principled, classical, unschooling, or a combination of these (called "eclectic"). This will, in turn, lead you to make wise curriculum choices, that is, those that support your goals rather than something that just looks slick, is popular, or is on sale.

Setting goals will also keep you from straying when "the grass looks greener". Last year, for example, a friend of mine was looking into a school that specializes in foreign languages for her daughter who's the same age as my #3. I feel I'm particularly weak in this area, so I was tempted to enrol my children in the same school. However, as I investigated its total package more carefully, I realised it was far more restrictive and generic than I wanted in the individualized, child-led system I've adopted as my goal.

Of course, your goals may change over time, but don't let that stop you from defining what you're wanting right now. So get that cup of coffee or tea or can of Coke or whatever, grab a pencil and some paper or your journal or your calendar, and start making some notes about why -- right now and this minute -- you want to homeschool.

When you've reached the stage where you sort of like what you've written, then why not tell me in a comment? I'd love to hear from you about the goal you've set for your own home-learning journey.

Welcome Letter

2010-06-05T00:44:00.001+01:00

Boyschooling is a blog for you, all those parents out there who wonder if homeschooling boys isn't the daftest decision they've ever made.

Of course, a child doesn't have to be male to have the urge to turn a breadmaker into a robot; girls can equally prove a challenge when it comes to focusing on the child and finding the best learning fit. Therefore, some of the observations and suggestions I make will be relevant to any gender.

Also, the very act of homeschooling in the first place can be daunting, brave, even going against the grain, and so I'm here to encourage you however new you are, however many children you have, boys or girls.

However, it must be said that most people know, if only intuitively, that school situations are more suited to girls in general, and to teach boys appropriately, one must find new strategies, new ways of thinking, new approaches which will get these wiggley, fidgety, lego-loving creatures into a positive learning mode. I don't have all the answers, but I've asked an awful lot of questions over the years, read a lot of books, talked to a lot of people, and will do my best to pass on that little bit of information I've gleaned, if only so you don't have to re-invent the wheel.

Hmmm ... re-inventing the wheel ... that sounds like a good plan for tomorrow's lesson!