Christopher and Sarah on the local news...

Back in March, I took the kids along with other homeschool families to the Dallas Heritage Villlage in Old City Park for a field trip.  It just so happened that the local FOX4 news was there the same day video taping a segment for their Lone Star Adventures.  Christopher and Sarah ended up in a couple portions of the video.  Christopher first appears in the lower left corner when a man demonstrates and explains pottery.  Then both Christopher and Sarah appear sitting at a table planting sunflower seeds.  Christopher is wearing a charcoal golf shirt with a white stripe at the top and Sarah is wearing a hot pink t-shirt.  If you click on this link, you can watch it: http://www.myfoxdfw.com/dpp/news/fox_4_features/Lone_Star_Adventures_Heritage

End of the year program...

We are part of a homeschool co-op called "Classical Conversations" which meets once a week for 12 weeks each semester.  We have finished our first full year with them and have learned a TON! Today was our end-of-the-year program where each of the classes presented some of the material that they have learned throughout the year.  Christopher's class (the abecedarians) presented some of the history sentences that they have learned.  We covered U.S. history this year and what's amazing is that they memorized 22 history sentences in order from 1492 all the way to Sept.11, 2001, plus the preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and all 44 U. S. presidents.  Each of the kids picked his/her favorite history sentence for the program...

Candace picked "In 1866 the 14th Ammendment made all former slaves U.S. citizens and paved the way for the Civil Rights movement."  So she got to stand in front while the rest of the class stood behind her and held up signs saying "Freedom for all".  I think Candace was the most consistent in singing loudly and clearly for every song.  Christopher wasn't singing the words during the presentation, so when I made eye contact with him he said out loud, "Stage fright." Yeah right...

R.J. picked the next song, "In 1898 Theodore Roosevelt and his rough riders defeated the Spanish at the Battle of San Juan Hill, while trying to help the Cubans win their independence." Everybody had a stick horse as one of the rough riders while R.J. had a cowboy hat to boot.  He rode his stick horse around in circles so much during the presentation, I'm surprised he didn't get dizzy and fall over!

Catie picked the next song, "On December 7, 1941 the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, causing the U.S. to join the allies in World War II."  Remembering that he should sing loudly and clearly, Christopher broke out in the middle of the song but ended up cracking himself up.  Catie (wearing the sailor hat and hawaiian necklace) remained amazingly composed and unaffected by all the commotion going on behind her.

Christopher naturally chose, "In 1969 U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin were the first men to walk on the moon."  Thankfully he chose to sing loudly and clearly for the song of his choice, but in the middle of the second time through, he decided to interrupt the flow of the song by telling everyone that "My grandmother thinks I'm saying 'moo moo moo'".  Such a clown.  He's the one in the space suit hood while the other kids are holding pictures of outer space.

Even Sarah wanted to stand with the class during the presentation and I think I saw her singing some of the words to the songs.  She has definitely picked up a lot by listening in.  I knew that no matter what they ended up doing on stage it would be funny and adorable, but I think they all did a great job and made it very entertaining!

Copy cats

One of the funniest, adorable, and sometimes alarming things that you get to witness as a parent is your children copying your behavior and manerisms or repeating what you say.  I thought it was pretty comical that Christopher would begin his answer to almost every question with, "Well..." until I heard Sarah do it on a regular basis.  Then I realized that's how I begin all of my answers to their questions; they simply learned this response from me.  

After a very full morning of homeschooling on Wednesday, I persuaded my wiggly 5-year-old to get through his history timeline and Latin memory work with the promise of a Starburst upon completion.  As soon as he was finished, he triumphantly took his Starburst into the family room to show Nana, who was reading books to Sarah.  Sarah naturally wanted one too, so she came into the kitchen to see where the stash was.  I had her sit down and simply go through her number recognition so that she could earn a treat just like Christopher did.  She took great pride and satisfaction in this.  After she picked out a sucker for herself, she said, "I want to take another one to give to Hannah."  I let her take one to Hannah, who was happily playing in the toyroom. Moments later, I heard Sarah asking Hannah her catechism questions while dangling the tasty sucker behind her back!  "Hannah, who made you?  Who made you, Hannah?"  Ha!  She was making Hannah "earn" her treat as well.  Hilarious.

Lest I become prideful...

...the second day of homeschooling did not go as smoothly or easily as the first day. It was almost as if the Lord gave me an easy first day in order to calm my anxieties and fears about homeschooling, and then gave me a more challenging second day in order to keep me from pride. The Lord is indeed wise, for both strategies worked.

Christopher was still eager to learn but became very easily frustrated when I drilled him on certain facts. Sarah wanted to draw on all of the flash cards that I had made. Hannah kept bringing me her board books to read to her (i.e. she gave us no peace unless I picked her up and held her in my lap while she flipped through the books). I remember thinking to myself, 'It's only the second day... has the novelty worn off already?!?'

Having said that, the beauty of being at home is that I could stop the lesson and deal with the heart issues behind Christopher's anger and frustration. While he had some time to think about these issues, I was able to give Hannah and Sarah a little attention before resuming school. When Christopher returned to the table, he was more than eager to get back to learning. And my very helpful Sarah picked up Hannah and carried her to the toy room where they happily played together for the remainder of the lesson. We still got a lot accomplished today, but it was not nearly as easy, smooth or joyful as the first day!

One of the things I told John yesterday was that having a structured and scheduled lesson is a most welcome break from talking incessantly about dinosaurs, which is Christopher's default activity if we don't have anything else planned for him. Regardless of the lesson, he will still find ways to sneak in the topic (i.e. yesterday he insisted that I write "Quaternary" and "Quetzalcoatlus" on the back of the "qu" flashcard). It became very frustrating today when during our math lesson he continually wanted to divert to his "guess which shape of dinosaur I am" game (a highly frustrating game when the 5 year old doing the charades is pretending to be a dinosaur that you've never even heard of). I had to remind him several times that I am the teacher, he is the student and the teacher is the one who decides the lesson plan while the student obediently follows it. As I was writing down "kept" and "wept" as examples of words containing the "pt" blend, he looked at me and said, "Yes, and Archaeopteryx is another word that has 'pt' in it." After thinking about it I realized he was right and had to write that blessed word on the back of the "pt" flashcard. Good grief.

So today was a good dose of reality. Obviously I'm still committed to educating my kids at home, but I'm also not blind to the challenges that will accompany this very demanding task. I must say that in the midst of the challenges, it certainly is a joy to watch my children's growth in learning and hear the funny things that come out of their little brains. I think back to my teaching days at Covenant when I would write down or try to remember the funny things that my students said or did so I could tell their parents. What a privilege it is to witness these things firsthand from my own children! I'll try to keep that in mind especially on the more challenging and humbling days...

1st day of homeschool...

Even though I've been educating my children since birth, I was very apprehensive about beginning 'formal' kindergarten for Christopher at home. I've taught 5th, 7th, 9th and 10th graders, but they all knew how to read, study and take notes. Teaching a child the 'basics' seemed more daunting to me than teaching about DNA transcription and translation. And yet, as I've been studying the various curricula for reading and math over the past few weeks, I've realized that we've been learning the basics with everyday life (i.e. we have 4 people coming over for dinner, how many people will be in our house? how many more chairs do we need?; do you see a letter "c" on the cereal box?; how many syllables does your name have?; and of course, don't forget about everything we're learning about dinosaurs...). Thankfully, I've become less anxious and overwhelmed as I've read through the books instead of more so. That said, the thing that overwhelmed me was having a schedule; a time to sit down and work on the specific rules and content of each subject rather than just teaching on the fly as the opportunity presents itself. And of course, the challenges of sticking to this schedule with 2, soon to be 3 preschoolers running around the house.

I am relieved to say that Day 1 of homeschooling has been fun and a lot easier than I anticipated so far! We began shortly after breakfast and a brief playtime with our Bible lesson and review of catechism questions. Sarah eagerly sat at the table and joined in while Hannah contentedly sat in the family room and flipped through board books. Then we moved on to reading/phonics. Since both kids know their letters and sounds, I started with the letter "Q" and how it is always followed by the letter "u" in words. When I asked which words begin with "qu", Sarah was the first to call out, "queen!" After we went through a few more, Christopher's face lit up and he said, "Quaternary!", as in the period when the woolly mammoths and saber tooth tigers lived. After some more phonics and reading exercises, we ended the morning with a math lesson and are now listening to Beethoven as we play.

Christopher just yelled from the other room, "Is that all we're going to learn for today? I want to learn more, Mommy!" I'd better go...

Read, read, read to your children!

Our 5 year old son, Christopher, read an entire book out loud almost exclusively by himself today! This is a huge milestone in any child's life, I think. Granted, the book was Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss and not Moby Dick or even Charlotte's Webb, for that matter, but I am amazed that he could make out nearly all of the sentences without having yet begun a formal reading program. The thing that probably amazes me the most is that he had the patience to work through the entire book, sounding out each word and then repeating the sentence after he figured out all of the words. He is NOT my most patient child, so this was quite an accomplishment. Then again, the kid really enjoys learning and mastering newly acquired skills, so I can see why he was bound and determined to finish the book. He's been able to read 3-5 letter words that follow simple phonics rules for a while now, but it's only recently that he's been able to read sentences with complex words. You may already know that Christopher's latest obsession is dinosaurs (when we were traveling home from PA he would ask perfect strangers, "Did you know that Tyrannosaurus Rex was the largest and fiercest carnivore of the Cretaceous period?...and did you know that Dimetrodon was a Pelicosaur that lived even before the dinosaurs?") We have understandably indulged his love of dinosaur-learning by getting him books on the subject. Yesterday as he was flipping through one of these books, he was starring at and slowly trying to sound out a dinosaur name that he was not familiar with and finally said, "Mommy, is this dinosaur 'Albertosaurus'?" I looked down and sure enough, it was! So for those of you out there who think phonics is a waste of time, I point you to my child who was able to figure out the pronunciation of Albertosaurus from simply knowing his letters and sounds.

This is a huge relief to me as we embark on homeschooling this Fall. Not that there won't be challenges, but teaching my children how to read and write seemed a daunting task to one who has only had experience teaching children who already knew how to read and take notes. I just ordered the math and language arts curricula for the Fall and am eager to familiarize myself with them and get started. I'm currently reading Susan Wise-Bauer's & Jessie Bauer's book, The Well-Trained Mind and highly recommend it for anyone who is considering homeschooling. Not only is it a great reference book for classical home education, but it's also great at encouraging and relieving the stress from worries like, 'Am I doing enough?', 'Am I qualified to do this?', 'Which is the best curriculum out there?', 'How much time should ___ subject take each day/week?', etc. One of the things I remember reading in the chapter devoted to teaching your child to read is, "Remember, reading is easy. Reading is easy. Reading is easy." So far I'm finding that to be true. Plus, so much of reading preparedness is simply turning off the TV and reading to your kids as much as possible.

All of my kids, including Hannah, enjoy having books read to them and flipping through them on their own. Part of the reason is that we have shelves and shelves and SHELVES of children's books within their reach and we always walk out with way more books from the library than we can reasonably carry. Any time I am sitting cross-legged on the floor, Hannah will grab one of her board books, hand it to me while saying, "Ree ree reee!", then climb into my lap and plop down. Sarah will patiently sit through as many books as I will read to her and will bring me more if I in any way indicate that this might be the last one. I actually think Sarah will be reading at an earlier age than Christopher since she always wants to be where he is, do what he's doing, she's the 2nd child, AND she's a girl.

I still am a bit overwhelmed at the task, especially with a new baby arriving in the early Fall, but I am more excited and eager to get started than I am worried about it. Sure, it will be crazy with the little ones running about the house and I'm sure it will test my patience as tackle more challenging subjects and tasks, but I still think that it will be a lot of fun and that the benefits will far outweigh the stress of it. At least I hope so! I'll write another entry about this after we've been at it for a year or two and see if my song has changed, but so far I've thoroughly enjoyed home-educating my preschoolers and can't wait to get started on Kindergarten and beyond.