21st Century Learners

This is why I'm homeschooling my kids.

"If we learn by doing, what are we learning sitting here?" I love that.

I really feel that more technology should be used in education. All people need to know how to use today's (and tomorrow's!) technology for information, for creating, for communicating. Student's are not learning this in today's schools, unfortunately.

My children will of course know the basics to learning anything: reading and writing. Then we will push learning further into utilizing technology in age appropriate situations. C at age 3 already uses our computer! She uses the internet to watch videos I've selected. She knows that when we're emailing, we're talking to real people. She uses Paint to draw. And this does not make her special! Most children today, whose parents have some type of technology in the house, are growing up with it from birth! So why is it not prevalent in most schools?!

I found this video posted on The Mom With Brownies blog. Thanks for sharing it!

Homeschooling & Crazy Event of the Night

Carlee had her first homeschool preschool co-op group meeting today. She loved it! She made all new friends and did so well. I was a little worried since she's used to only playing with a small group of friends here in our neighborhood. But I worried for no reason. =) Today was a simple water play date to introduce the kids and let them get to know eachother. They had a blast! Next month is my month, so I've got to get planning! =) I'm thinking some activities about our 5 senses since Carlee just got a new book in about the subject. fun fun

A few friends and I took the kids to the park tonight to wear them out... A young boy and his even younger sister showed up about 5 minutes after we got there. The boy must have been about 6, and kept jumping off of everything high. His mom was nowhere around. He even stood on the side of the highest & steepest slide and jumped off, grabbed the monkey bars, and swung. We told him we didn't think he should be doing that, but he assured us he was okay. I didn't doubt he'd be okay, it looked like he'd done it before; I was more worried about our 2 & 3 year olds trying to copy him. Well, two tries later he missed the monkey bar and fell. I thought he hit his head, because he was crying and yelling "OWWW!!" I went closer to ask him if he was okay, and I look down and there's his wrist in his other hand, obviously not in line with his arm. I immediately looked away (I have such a weak stomach!) and said, "OMG he broke his wrist!"

My friends were like, "WHAT?!" We kept asking him where his mom was. Where did he live? etc. Turns out his mom was out at baseball practice (about 4 streets down.) My friend D started to run to go get his mom after asking his name. Ugh after a few minutes (nobody really believed D when she told them he had broke his wrist) they finally ran down to the park. After about 10 minutes, they finally took him to base to the ER. I don't know what they were waiting for, I think they were trying to put a splint on it or something. He's so lucky we were there.

I just don't get it. I mean seriously, how old is old enough to go to the park by yourself, especially with a 3 year old(ish) sister? I definitely wouldn't have allowed him to be there on his own if he were mine. I don't even know how old Carlee's going to be before I finally feel comfortable letting her go on her own. I told Tony, "By the time I do feel comfortable letting her go, it's going to be boy liking age, so she's still not going to get to go." LOL just kidding... but honestly, I don't know. Six is definitely too young in my honest opinion. What do you think?

Starting Homeschooling Again!

Today, I started Carlee's homeschooling again. We started out simple today. I "tested" her on what I had taught her back a few months ago before I started my English class. I was so surprised at how much she retained! First, I had her sing her ABC song, which she already knew, but it got her in a school frame of mind. Then I drew one letter at a time on an eraser board and asked her what letter it was. She could identify most of them. W and Z she got on the second try, and N and U she still had trouble with. She could write: C, H, T, A, O, P, X, L on her own (she was trying to test me LOL.) She recognized all numbers 1 - 10 except 9. She knew all her colors: green, purple, pink, yellow, orange, brown, blue, black, red, gray, and white. She also wanted to start a new workbook, so I let her do a few pages in a Hidden Pictures workbook. I thought this was going to be a challenge from the get go... apparently not. She did a total of 7 of these pages completely on her own.
I had originally not wanted to do workbooks as we got further into homeschooling, but for now Carlee still loves them, so I'm letting her. I've decided since she doesn't even know enough to know what she wants to learn about, I'm going to do sort of unit studies that I will revolve around things I know that she enjoys or that I think she will enjoy. Our first will be "farm" animals. I wish we lived in the states so I could take her to an Farm Animal Rescue. She would LOVE that! sigh... oh well. We'll save that for kindergarten I suppose. =D I'm also going to be working on the upper case letters she had trouble with, and then start on recognizing the lower case letters. We'll also start working on numbers greater than 10, and of course, continue working on the list of things preschoolers are supposed to master before kindergarten.

Trying to Decide on a Homeschooling Method

I just finished reading Homeschooling Methods: Seasoned Advice on Learning Styles, in order to try and decide which method I will be using to homeschool Carlee. I'm so glad I found this book. It is a Christian oriented book in which each chapter has essays about different methods of homeschooling, and each chapter made me excited about each method! haha. But overall, I think I am still more inclined to the "unschooling" or "relaxed" method of homeschooling, where you don't follow any certain curriculum or use textbooks really, but instead follow the child's interest, read "real" or "live" books as they call them, and use the world as the "classroom."

However, I plan on working in parts of other methods as well, as they interest Carlee, including some Charlotte Mason ideas. Some of her ideas I already incorporate naturally into our lives, such as putting an emphasis on nature and being outside. I will also use whatever Carlee is interested in using at the time. For example, right now, she is really interested in workbooks, she loves them! So, I'm just going to follow her lead.

Perhaps I'll be using more of an eccletic method, then, since I will probably be borrowing from all of the different methods. Maybe we'll even do some unit studies, once she gets older. I really liked the idea of learning Latin from the Classical method of homeschooling. The book brought up the point that learning Latin really helps comprehend English vocabulary better since you can recognize the root words and their meanings. And of course, since Carlee is such a social butterfly, a few homeschooling co-ops and activities such as girl scouts and sports, etc. are surely in her future. I'm very excited to see the student Carlee will grow into.

Today, after a women's church group event, I was talking to one of the ladies and found out that the homeschooling group I had joined a few months ago was in fact not the actual group! It was a yahoo group they had started and that was supposed to have been deleted a long time ago! I was wondering why no one was posting or discussing anything. So, as of today, after sorting things out, I am officially a member of the homeschooling support group here. I plan on attending their monthly meetings, and they're even going on a field trip this Friday! How cool is that?! :) Can you tell I'm so excited?

So, currently, Carlee is doing really awesome with her learning. I've been homeschooling her now for 2 months. I wondered if perhaps I had started her too early, but felt reassured when I remembered that she was the one who started learning her alphabet first (I'm still not sure where from,) and initiated wanting to learn more and more. I really have just been following her lead, and we've been pretty relaxed about the learning anyway.

We have a fairly stable schedule where we work on one letter a week (that Carlee chooses,) a number, a shape, a color, and an extra concept (right now we're working on one set of opposites per week.) We do crafts with the letter, learn about animals that start with the letter, practice counting with various objects (her favorite is with a deck of cards,) read a TON, sing songs, read poems, play A LOT, work in preschool workbooks, etc etc. And she loves all of it! She really looks foward to "school time" and I'm glad that I started it now, because she knows that this is something that is just hers (for the next 4 years anyway.) She knows that it is something she won't have to share with the baby when he/she gets here. Because as she puts it, "Babies are too little to do school, only big girls get to do school." She is definitely becoming quite the big girl. :)

first unexpected preggo comment and red rice

I was walking to the store with Carlee to get some rice for a project, and a lady that I know saw me and waved. I waved back, and when I reached her, she bluntly said, "You look pregnant."

hunh. All I could think was... "Wow. You're so lucky I actually am."

LOL

As for the rice project... This week I'm working with Carlee on the letter R. She picked the letter. :) I made her some red colored rice (instructions here) to use to glue on letter Rs that I cut out for her. She loved the project, and then continued to play with the left over rice by "cooking" it at her little kitchen set that she begged for me to bring downstairs. :D

As soon as Tony walked in the door, I had to warn him, "Don't be mad," I said.

"Yeah, don't be mad, Daddy," said Carlee.

Tony looked around cautiously, "Uh, why?" I showed him what I made for Carlee, and he shrugged it off. It was not until right before dinner time, while he was sweeping up rice for the 6th time since he got home, that he admitted, "Ugh, that rice is an OCDer's nightmare."

I couldn't help but laugh.
:)

I realized....

I am already so in love with homeschooling :)

This is Carlee enjoying lunch while observing the weather outside. It was rainy so we had a productive discussion about weather. What school would let her do this? :) If you ever want to see what she's been learning, I'm keeping a (very) detailed blog of what I'm teaching her at Discovering Today. (Well, so far it's detailed, but we're only a week in with only one kid. LOL We'll see how detailed it stays later.... )

The Big Decision

*I have to warn you, this post is full of my opinions.* If you noticed the comments on one of my recent posts, you probably already figured out what our Big Decision was...

We've decided to homeschool Carlee (and her future brother/sister). Homeschooling has been in the back of my mind ever since we first had Carlee, but I kept putting off the decision since she was so young. Well, now she's almost 3 and would be going to preschool this year. A lot of things affected our decision.

I once added, "Why High School is Pointless," to an essay brainstorming list in my senior year creative writing class. My teacher has circled that one, saying, "I would love to read this." Did I write it? No. Why? Because I knew it was pointless, it wouldn't matter if I wrote it or not.

The present state of public education is just sad. Some have asked me, "Well, what about the social aspect?" Yeah, socialization with a bunch of kids whose morals are nonexistant. That's just the socialization I want Carlee to have! Face it, most of our country's kids don't care to have a sense of right and wrong, and are doing things they should never even be faced with at such a young age. I'd rather have at least a little control over who she socializes with, and what she is introduced to, than none at all.

Then there's the general aspect of learning. Learning is a natural passion for kids, no matter how advanced or not, they still love to learn. Public schooling takes away that passion, that excitement for learning. For example, all kids are on different levels of understanding and comprehension, but let's generalize like the school does, and say there's above average, average, and below average (and these are just their natural learning capabilities on that certain subject, they could actually excel in something else.) Well, the school will teach to the average level (the level to pass the state exam,) and the above average students are left bored (when they could be learning so much more), and the below average students are left struggling, trying to keep up (when if given the appropriate attention they could excel.) In both situations, the love for learning is squashed. Even the "average" students are not being challenged anymore. Now I understand that with so few teachers to the enormous amount of students, it is impossible at this time to make public schooling cater to each student's needs, sadly. However, (with all aspects in my life) if I can do something about it, then I'm going to.

I really want Carlee to keep her natural love for learning. She is so excited about new concepts and new things, always asking questions, always curious. I looked up a general preschool year course description, what they are expected to learn, and Carlee knows about 2/3 of the list. So what happens if I send her to public preschool? Are they going to teach her the last 1/3 of things, and then encourage her to keep learning? ha. no. I want her to keep learning, keep experiencing...

And that's another thing. I want Carlee to learn from experiences, not just from reading a text book about what that certain author thinks you should know and feel about a certain subject. I want her to think for herself, to learn because she wants to, to read because she enjoys it.

I had a few doubts to get over. Is it fair? Could I really do it? Do I have the patience? Do I know enough? Do I have the time? Are we going to be able to stay on one income? etc. I came to peace with all of these questions.


Is it fair? Yes, I believe she'll have the advantage over all the kids who "aren't being left behind." I realized the other day, that yes I could do this job. I realized that I was already doing it. I'm teaching her all day every day. She knows she is free to ask me questions, "mommy, what are you doing?" "Mommy what is this?" "Mommy, draw a T." "Mommy..." all day, she is so thirsty for learning, and I indulge her. I never leave a question unanswered. I never leave her out of whatever I'm doing, she's always right there, helping, or watching, learning. I realized I had the patience the other day, when Carlee brought something to me. Two lime juice containers from the fridge. Instead of saying, "Carlee, what are you doing in the fridge? Go put those back! Stay out of the fridge." I just looked at her, and said, "What did you find? That's lime juice, do you want to try?" I poured a little in her hand for her to lick, and she experienced very "sour" for the first memorable time. This was when I realized, "Hey, I could do this. I do it already. I have patience teaching her already!" It was so awesome to realize that. Do I know enough? was a silly question. I realized almost as soon as I thought it, that everyone knows enough because the educational resources are abundant. If you know how to sift through credible internet sources, use your library, find people who work in fields that your student is studying, then you have plenty to offer. I have plenty to offer! And like I was reading (on the net), if you come to a subject that you don't understand enough to teach, you can simply hire a tutor for that subject. Do I have the time was an easy one. I'm a stay at home mom. It's my job. Carlee is my priority. I'll make time to give her a good education. Can we stay on one income? Well, we've been successful at that so far. Tony's decided to make the Navy a career, and I don't see our spending habits changing, so I'm pretty sure we'd do fine. Also, with Tony deciding to make this a career, we will still be moving a lot throughout Carlee's school years, as my friend pointed out in the comments, homeschooling will add much needed continuity to her school learning.

So we decided the other night, that yes, we would homeschool Carlee from the get go. Do I have more research to do? Yes, of course, I'm already in contact with the local homeschool group. I can't wait to meet the parents and ask a few questions, and of course there are already books on their way. We are very excited, and happy with our decision.