Studying the Declaration of Independence...

Around the dinner table...

Over the month of June, we'll be rowing Paul Revere's Ride. I wanted to do this last year, but summer got busy, and we didn't have a plan. This year I have a plan, and we'll be covering some early history of America up through the Revolutionary War just in time for the 4th of July!

New website to check out!

I just found this today, and I thought it was worthy of sharing!

Lesson Pathways has free K-5 curriculum & resources for all kinds of subjects - science, math, language arts, and reading. They have structured plans that you can follow in sequence or you can pick and choose your own particular areas of interest and organize them into a planner for your child(ren). I don't know much else about the site, but I've already found some great ideas and on-line resources for our current history studies.

Go check it out!

The Ugly Duckling

Yesterday we began "rowing" The Ugly Duckling.  This story is not part of our Five in a Row  curriculum, but I happened to find a unit study at the thrift store for The Ugly Duckling, and since it's spring, it seems like a good time to row a book about ducklings! We started by reading The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Anderson in A Treasury of Children's Literature. I have to say that I find this version of the story very compelling. It is beautifully written, and the theme is many-layered and rich. I got to thinking about how important the lesson of this story is for children (and grown-ups) - both that people are more than what we see on the outside, and that we are more than what people say about us. The Ugly Duckling had been teased so much about being ugly that he believed it, and it took the love and care of other swans to convince him that he wasn't ugly at all. I think we'll be spending some time on this story just to let it simmer, to talk about how the things we say affect other people, but also, how we can be secure enough in ourselves to let hurtful things go. And we'll be talking about how to bring healing to others and how to repair our own mistakes when we've said destructive things to others.

Today we read another version of the story and compared it to the one we read yesterday. Then we talked about swans, what baby swans are called, where swans live, etc... Mane had already looked them up in her North American Wildlife: Birds Field Guide book. She has declared swans to be her favorite birds (though we've been through this with cardinals, whooping cranes, eagles, and owls already)! Mane learned to make a simple sketch of a swan by beginning with the number 2, and she followed instructions for making a swan hat out of paper!

One on One

Mane has been learning multiplication. And what I've realized is that if she was in a regular school classroom with lots of other kids per teacher, she wouldn't really, REALLY learn this. I have learned that I can set her loose with her math worksheets, and she will return with them finished and correct...but she'll have done all the problems the long way. I want her to learn the "tricks of the trade," so to speak, and that means I have to sit with her while she's doing math and have her talk me through the problem...so the so-called shortcuts actually become shortcuts. Sitting with me helps her to focus, and verbalizing the process helps her to learn.

This is one of the first times I've really stopped and realized that she wouldn't be getting this kind of attention in school, and she needs it if she's going to really learn. She'd be one of those kids who gets by and doesn't cause a lot of fuss, but she would only get to mediocre. I read in the blog of a teacher recently how much she (the teacher) is frustrated with previously homeschooled students because they won't do anything on their own. They require so much attention. And she implored homeschool parents to teach their kids independent study. While I agree that being able to learn independently at some point is important, I think it's entirely possible that homeschooled students are asking for more attention because they really want to understand the process and they aren't accustomed to settling for "good enough." They come to expect themselves to really learn something instead of just getting by.

At least, that's what I hope. I hope that all the time and attention I'm pouring into this means that Mane won't settle for being able to do the work without really understanding. That's what I did through most of school. I was so excited when I got to college and really began to understand how things fit together and why they worked the way they did.

In any case, I'm not going to try to teach Mane to work independently right now at the expense of true learning...no matter what the school administrators complain about homeschooled students. I'm going to take advantage of the opportunity to have her one on one, to provide her with her greatest tool for learning success...my presence.