Mama of Letters

February 22, 2012

January / February Activities with Small Children

One of my goals this year was to plan a lesson / activity around each of the holidays, and I wanted to try to start some new traditions too. Unfortunately, I have not started off well in this 2012 New Year. Though I’ve done a few projects for New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, and even Groundhog Dog, I didn’t feel very prepared, and I didn’t do anything for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day or Washington’s Birthday. Oh well. I plan to do this every year, so I’ll make up for eventually. Since my boys are so young, I have probably done just enough anyway.

To help myself, I’ve just looked up and bookmarked some sites that will tell me the holidays. Here they are:

2012 American holiday schedule:

Click here for just the Federal Holidays
Click here for all the holidays – and even some I’ve never heard of before! (I’m not going to worry about covering all of these.)

Here’s a few visuals and notes about what I did accomplish these past two months. (I’ll repost this next year before the holidays.)

January 1, 2012 – New Year’s Day

For New Year’s, I thought it would be a good time to go over the months of the year with my five-year-old. He has already learned the days of the week on his own. I think he’s motivated because he likes to know what our plans are, and he understands that some of our routines happen on a weekly basis. He almost knows the months of the year, but not quite.

I made these calendars with the boys and laminated them, but I admit, it was more for me than for them. They had fun creating a list of their “favorites” for 2011, though. It’s a great item to put into their keepsakes box.

We put a 2012 calendar on one side and their list of favorites for 2011 on the other. I invited them to decorate the calendars, but the five-year-old wasn’t really into it. (This seems to be typical of him. I think decorating is more of a girl thing.) He did want to cut out his calendar and list and paste it to the construction paper, though. He also picked the color black – one of his favorites.

I also made this peace dove for New Year’s. Again, I thought five-year-old might enjoy making it since he likes making so many animals out of paper, but it turned out I did the creating here. And it turned out rather blah too. Oh well.

February 2, 2012 – Groundhog Day

If it wasn’t for checking the Internet on the morning of the 2nd, I would have missed Groundhog Day altogether. Athens has a pretty fun Groundhog Day celebration with Gus, the groundhog who resides at Bear Hollow Zoo. We may have been able to make it there that morning, but it was cold, and I wasn’t feeling that energetic. So, I turned to the Internet to help me.

I printed off some fun sheets to color, which you can access by clicking here. Whereas in the past my boys have not been into coloring at all, I’ve noticed that changing a bit. They had fun with these sheets, and we hung them on the bulletin board.

I told my five-year-old what the holiday was about, and we watched several videos about groundhogs and Groundhog Day on YouTube. Here’s a couple, and you’ll find many more on YouTube.

Ground Hog Day (2012 HD) - watch a real groundhog take a peek outside his burrow. I enjoyed the music on this one.
Groundhog Day - Get some more information about groundhogs and Groundhog Day history on this one.

It happened to be a lovely, springlike day, so we also went outside to see if we could see our shadows!!

Despite my lack of preparedness, I could tell that my five-year-old enjoyed learning and celebrating Groundhog Day. At the end of the day, I said, “I’ll have to check the newspaper to see if Gus saw his shadow today.” The five-year-old said, “I just don’t understand…..groundhogs don’t understand like people do.” He’s a smart little guy. I told him, “Yep. The groundhog has no idea what all the fuss is about. This holiday is just for fun….”

February 14, 2012 – Valentine’s Day

For Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d get an early start (unusual for me, if you can’t tell), so we started making crafts a week or two early. I made this Valentine’s mailbox, and the five-year-old helped me decorate it. I wrapped a box with some old paper that they had already drawn on. (I try to recycle whatever I can.)

The best part of preparing for Valentine’s Day was teaching my five-year-old how to make a heart: by folding a piece of paper, drawing half a heart with its center on the crease, and then cutting it out. Once he opened it up, he was so happy to discover a perfect heart!

However, he couldn’t quite draw half a heart very well, so my five-year-old was very disappointed with his first attempts. Since he can be quite a perfectionist, he usually gives up when this happens. I was pleasantly surprised to watch him keep trying this time. Soon, he mastered heart making, and once he could make some good hearts, there was no stopping him! We strung his hearts up along the doorway to our activity room and also pinned them to our bulletin board. It was really fun for me to watch him do the decorating on his own!

We’re lucky to own a few Valentine’s Day books, so we read those too:

My First Valentine’s Day Book - This a great book for 2~3 year olds, and my 5-year-old still likes it too. It consists of simple rhymes, and there are little cards on each page that your child can take out of an envelope and read.
The Best Thing About Valentines by Eleanor Hudson – Also for youngsters. A cute book emphasizing how we make our own Valentines and give them away.
Valentine’s Day by Cass R. Sandak – This is a great book, but I got lucky and found it at a library sale. It has the history and customs of Valentine’s Day throughout history. It’s for older kids, so I only read my five-year-old a few pages.

We also made (and bought) some Valentines for each other. I made each of the boys a special card with their names on it and described their personalities and things they like to do. Similar to the calendar, and it’ll go into their keepsakes box.

Unfortunately, on Valentine’s Day, I was extremely sick with a bad cold and fever, so some other things I had wanted to do will have to wait until next year. :(

So please tell me, what kinds of traditions do you have during January and February? Do you celebrate these holidays and/or celebrate other holidays / traditions this time of year?

Posted in Homeschool Activities, Kindergarten, Traditions / Rituals / Holidays | Leave a Comment »

Tags: holidays, traditions, New Year's Day, Valentines Day, Groundhog Day, January, February

February 2, 2012

Homeschool Priorities Part 6 of 6: Teaching Responsibility

Sophie - She has taught both my boys about being gentle and caring for animals.

My last homeschool priority for my children is teaching responsibility. Obviously this is something that will have to be taught over the long-haul, and I’m always looking for ideas on character building. If anyone has any suggestions in this area, especially for youngsters, I’d love for you to contribute your ideas in the comments section.

I’ve tried different things to instill a sense of responsibility in my five-year-old. Some of them I continue to do, but there is one that didn’t stick:

I created a sticker board for him, and across the top, I wrote various things that I expected him to do during the day, such as his reading and math lessons, helping to take care of his baby brother, playing, and helping to clean. If he did that during the day, he’d get a sticker for it. Some of what I put down as his “responsibilities” were easy for him because I didn’t want to make all of them chores, and I wanted to show him that working is just as important as taking time to play. We used this sticker board for a while, and he really liked it, but unfortunately, we started to forget about it and eventually I abandoned it altogether. In addition, I didn’t like the idea of rewarding him with stickers all the time. It wasn’t a big deal after awhile. However, I do think it served an important purpose: it got him to realize that I expect certain things from him, and he seems more willing to “step up to the plate” when I ask him to do something.

Here are a few other things I’ve done to (hopefully) instill a sense of responsibility:

After I abandoned the sticker board, I created a sheet in which I listed everyone’s responsibilities in house. I made three columns (and a short one for the two-year-0ld on the bottom), and I listed every chore that each of us do to “maintain and take care of our home.” I often tell my son that this house is our only home, and it’s our responsibility to take care of it. I believe that writing this out and going over it with him has helped him see the “big picture” and begin to understand the roles each of us play in making a home. (I don’t expect him to remember all this. It’s a just a beginning.) So, for example, I wrote:
I have picked a few small chores for him to do to help me around the house. I only picked things that I thought he and I could both stick to. And luckily I picked right because I always make him do these things:
I think the biggest way I teach responsibility is just by talking and making gentle reminders (Daddy does this too):
I tell stories. Notice that storytelling comes up a lot on my blog? You can do so much by making up your own stories for your children. In my Jack and Piper stories, Jack and Piper take care of the forest and all the animals that live there. In these and other stories, I insert my ideas about why we need to be responsible without even thinking about it.

So that is a little of what I do, but I have to say for my five-year-old, being an older brother is probably the number one opportunity to teach him responsibility. Everyday I see small actions he takes to help care for his brother, and I think he does it out of his own love for his little brother. It’s wonderful to watch. Will it take a little more creativity on my part to instill a sense of responsibility on his younger brother? I guess we’ll see how this all plays out!

Thanks so much for reading about my homeschool priorities! Please stay tuned because I’m going to write about the formal lessons I do with my five-year-0ld, some activities we’ve been working on, and I need to post some recent columns too!

Now give me those ideas (or children’s books?) that might help with building character and a sense of responsibility.

Posted in A Bit o' Me Philosophy, Homeschooling, Kindergarten, Preschool | Leave a Comment »

Tags: homeschool priorities, homeschooling, parenting, teaching responsibility

January 22, 2012

Homeschool Priorities Part 4: Teaching him how to find answers

My third homeschool priority is teaching my children how to find answers to their questions. Right now this applies to my five-year-old since my two-year-old doesn’t have many questions yet, but he follows along.

This is an idea I have to credit to Lori of Camp Creek Blog and my source for learning about project-based homeschooling. When I wrote my columns about project-based learning, she emphasized that it’s important to show children how to look for answers, and more importantly, encourage them to ask questions.

I know I encourage my son to ask questions because I never discourage them, and I always give him as detailed an answer as possible. When I don’t know the answer, I tell him it’s a great question and we’ll have to look it up at such and such time. (He rarely asks a question when it’s convenient to find the answer.) I tell him, “Keep asking these great questions!”

As Lori suggested, I tried keeping a notepad handy and jotting down his questions, but that just didn’t stick. It also doesn’t help that he usually asks wonderful questions while I’m driving the car, especially when we’re coming home from someplace and I’m exhausted. But even if I know we’ll probably forget about it, I always say we can look that up later. At the very least he knows I honor I his curiosity.

One thing Lori suggests, which is a great idea, but I often forget to do it, is to ask, “Where do you think we could find the answer to that?” Usually he answers “the computer,” but he did surprise me once by suggesting another resource we had on our shelves: some cards with pictures and facts about animals.

Here are some things I do and plan to do as I move forth and try to keep my memory from lagging!

Before going to the library, I ask him what kind of books he might like to check out. He usually picks topics about questions he’s recently asked me. (This attests to the fact that children do have good memories when they are interested in something!)
- In addition to this, when we’re at the library, I encourage him to ask the librarian for the books he wants.
I want him to learn that he can turn to people for answers. For example:
- As we begin history lessons (I haven’t done this yet), my son will have a great resource: his father who is a history professor.
- Currently, my son is fascinated with snakes. One of my best friends is a herpetologist, so I’m going to propose to my son that we write her a letter with a list of questions that he might have. (If this works out, I’ll be sure to blog about it.)
- As he develops more interests, I hope to tap into our network of friends, relatives or the community, if possible. (This can also be called socializing!)
Some of his questions might be answered by acting like a scientist: observing, experimenting, using all of his senses, etc.. That is, whenever possible, I need to remember to help him find other ways of answering questions and not always supply quick answers or resources.
In the future, I plan to teach my son what online sources are reputable and to be aware that not everything we read may be accurate.
- Now as we explore the web together, I’m sorting and bookmarking certain web pages on his computer. This may help with that.
Last but not least, I remind my son about the books and resources we have at home.
- For example, when he had a question about clouds, I reminded him that we had a book about clouds, and we got it and read it right then.
- I am not opposed to looking on Netflix and seeing if they have some kind of show or documentary about his topic of choice. I think educational television is a wonderful resource, especially for auditory/visual learners, which I think applies to my five-year-old. He amazes me how he’ll sit and watch a long documentary that is intended for an adult audience. He may not grasp all of it, but his curiosity keeps him interested.

Please give me more ideas. How do you teach your children how to find answers for themselves?

Posted in Homeschooling, Kindergarten, Project-based Homeschooling | Leave a Comment »

Tags: encouraging children to ask questions, homeschooling, my philosophy, parenting, teaching children how to find answers

January 17, 2012

Homeschool Priorities Part 3: Exploration * Nature

The second priority on my list for my boys at ages 5 and 2 is Exploration and Nature.

I’m not aware of many families who don’t love nature and see the value in getting out into it, but unfortunately there must be some reason that a book like Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv is being written. No, I have not read that book, but it and many others on this list look intriguing. I hope to read some of them.

I have always loved nature. I was lucky to have parents who enjoyed getting out into nature, and with them, I’ve traveled to many national parks in the U.S. My dad loved boating, so we were often on a lake on weekends too.

My husband grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and he and his friends would play in an alleyway. He said one of their neighbors would be enraged if any of the kids stepped one foot onto the small square of grass that was his front yard. Fortunately, I had a nice yard as a child, although I have done my fair share of living in apartments too.

Anyway, my husband and I both fell in love with our yard before we fell in love with the house, although we love it too. We have less than an acre, but it’s still big by our standards, and it has woods with a variety of trees. So our nature and exploration starts in our own yard.

Here are some simple things I do to let my boys explore and appreciate nature:

I let my boys get dirty.
I let them play with sticks.
I don’t discourage them from looking under rocks or branches.
I take them to parks and nature centers as often as I can.
We created a Wildlife Habitat in our yard.
My husband and I have started a hiking ritual.
I have signed the five-year-old up for classes at the Sandy Creek Nature center.
We watch a lot of nature shows on T.V.
I tell stories set in nature, and I make a big deal of taking care of animals and the earth.
Sometimes I take my boys outside at night to see the stars and the moon.
My son has a treasure box, and he fills it with treasures found in nature.
In the spring, we plant.
In the summer, we water and tend our vegetables and flowers.
In the autumn, we collect leaves and seeds.
In the winter, we still admire the plants.

Most importantly, I hope that I impart the wisdom to respect and take care of nature and be very careful with it. We follow my son’s knee-high naturalist teacher’s advice when turning over rocks and large branches. Pull it towards you. If there’s an animal under it, doing this will allow that animal an escape route. It will also keep you safe!

I used to be wary of letting the boys play with sticks, but then I saw this Ted Talk by Gever Tulley, and it gave me a different perspective. So I give firm rules about playing with sticks. (And I keep my eyes on them like glue!) They can’t get too close to each other when they have a stick, and if they don’t follow this rule, the sticks have to be put down.

Once I needed to channel their energy and the stick toting, so with some fast thinking, I started making this little “shelter,” and the boys helped me gather the sticks and build it.

We are also fortunate that we live in rural Georgia, though we’re between the big city and a college town, which supplies us with a lot of culture and art. We are two hours from the nearest mountain hiking trails, and we’re five hours from the ocean. But when we can’t travel, we have Ft. Yargo, The State Botanical Garden of Georgia, the Sandy Creek Nature Center and many other parks and places to get us outside.

But wait. I didn’t mean for “Exploration” to only imply exploration of nature. I let my boys explore everything as long as it’s safe to do so. When my five-year-old asks me questions about the human body, I get a book about the human body, a human body model and we also look online. We explore his questions.

When my two-year-old wants to get into the cupboards, I lock the ones that aren’t safe, and I allow him to crawl into the other ones, pull out the pots, bowls, and whatever else might be in there. I let him explore the world around him.

My husband and I have taken our boys to museums, aquariums, zoos, parks, and wildlife areas as much as we can. Together we explore what’s out there.

I don’t consider myself an expert on kids; I’m learning this as I go. But if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that kids need freedom to explore, and they need nature. Even if it’s just a small park with some grass they can roll around in. But my hope for all children is that they can have the whole world.

I could go on and on about this subject, but I would like to hear from you. Please tell me what you do to encourage your children to explore the world and get into nature.

Posted in A Bit o' Me Philosophy, Homeschooling, Kindergarten, Preschool, Resources for Georgia Homeschoolers | 6 Comments »

Tags: exploration, getting kids into nature, homeschool priorities, parenting

January 14, 2012

Homeschool Priorities Part 2: Imagination * Play * Motion * Literature

scenes from my five-year-old’s puppet show

My first priorities for my sons at the ages of 5 and 2 are: imagination, play, motion and literature.

I grouped imagination/play/motion together because they go hand and hand. At five-years-old, my son is using his tremendous imagination constantly. The two-year-old is quite adept at it too. Playing is their number one job. Right now as I type this, the five-year-old is upstairs with all his stuffed animals. He has arranged them “just so” on his bed, and he says he’s keeping them warm.

He runs up and down the hallway, and he pretends he’s a horse. He “flies” toys around the house. Outside, he’ll find a strand of wild onion, tell me it’s an “eel” and then go feed it “ants.”

I’m thrilled to see that at five- and two-years-old, my boys are beginning to play together well, creating forts and pretending to be dinosaurs or ocean animals. (This is also a big relief to me because I’m getting a little more free time to myself.)

Rough and tumble play is a frequent activity in our house. My boys are always moving, always pretending, and I don’t want to discourage that. There is clear evidence that children learn through play. In addition, authors Michael Gurian (The Wonder of Boys) and Steve Biddulph (Raising Boys) both write about how important it is for boys to have plenty of space, and they need to move their bodies.

Biddulph writes in Raising Boys, “Sitting still at a desk for a long time is usually hard and painful for boys (and some girls too). In early primary school, boys (whose motor nerves are still growing) actually get signals from their body saying, ’Move around. Use me.’ To a stressed-out first grade teacher, this looks like misbehavior.” (This is in a section titled “Starting School: Why Boys Should Start Later.”)

I probably don’t have to convince you how important play and movement is for children (or any of this for that matter), so I’ll leave it at that. But I will tell you exactly what I’m doing besides giving them ample time to imagine, play and move. This is where my second priority, Literature, comes in. The number one “schooling” activity kids this age should be involved in is soaking up books and stories: fiction, non-fiction, oral storytelling, plays, you get the drift. (The phases of learning mentioned in this post is very intriguing to me, and I want to read more about educational philosophies that support this notion.)

We read books often. If we’re not going anywhere, I have “book time” with both my boys in the mornings, and then we (my husband and I each take one child) usually read one book at bedtime with the five-year-old and look through several picture books with the two-year-old. We go to the library too, but I’m lucky to have quite a nice collection of children’s books through library sales, so I find we have long stretches of time when we don’t go to the library because we’re busy with other things.

We read storybooks as well as non-fiction. My five-year-old is very fond of science books about bugs, snakes, the earth or whatnot.

I’ve also incorporated storytelling into our routine, and I’ve already written a blog series about this. Almost every night, I tell a story that I make up to my five-year-old. This is a great way to teach my values to him. I am stimulating his imagination, and sometimes he tells me stories! It’s a great way to learn speaking skills. As he gets older, I want to teach him more about the importance of oral storytelling, use the technique for specific learning in different subjects, and someday I hope I can take both my boys to the National Storytelling Festival.

For a long time, I wanted to incorporate another way to foster make-believe with both my boys that I could easily participate in. I also wanted to create some kind of morning ritual with them. I wasn’t sure how to do this. I started “book time” but I wanted more than that. Then one morning my five-year-old pulled down the finger puppets that were sitting on the top of my bookshelf in the living room. (They had been there untouched for a long time.) He wanted to do a puppet show.

And that was the beginning of our morning puppet shows. We all take turns putting on a play, and even my two-year-old will get behind the love seat and put on his own puppet show! How cool is that?

We don’t do a puppet show every morning. If we are going somewhere, or if the boys are playing nicely together, I don’t push it, but I do encourage it and ask for a puppet show on a regular basis. My puppet shows are another outlet for me to impart some wisdom, though mostly I entertain. (Once I even let their toy alligator try to eat the puppets. It’s nice for me to have an outlet to do “boy stuff” in a way that suits my energy level. Afterall, I’m a forty-year-old girl who likes to sit in one place!)

In addition:

I have created a space and keep plenty of materials for the boys to “create.” They love to draw, cut paper, paste, and make a mess! My eldest son still likes making animals out of paper, and he knows how to find the paper and materials he needs for that.
We listen to a lot of music. My five-year-old loves classical music, and he’s still singing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony everyday. My husband provides them with more music education than I do, but one of my goals is to work more music study into our lives.

My future goals: In the near future, I hope we can find an art class for the five-year-old. Long term goals: some kind of art study, music study, and/or creating more elaborate puppet shows. I’d like to make some puppets or make a puppet stage.

What do you do to stimulate your child’s imagination? And please come back. I’ll continue to go over my homeschool priorities in detail.

Posted in A Bit o' Me Philosophy, Homeschooling, Kindergarten, Preschool, Storytelling as a Teaching Tool | 1 Comment »

Tags: homeschool priorities, imagination, literature, parenting

January 10, 2012

Setting Our Homeschool Priorities for Two Boys, ages 5 & 2

In my last post I shared our homeschool mission statement and how I brainstormed what was most important to me to teach my children. But how does that look on a day-to-day basis while my boys are five and two-years-old? Obviously I’m not going to teach everything all at once. Instead, I sorted out what my priorities are for them at this time.

I should note that I’m mainly referring to my five-year-old when I talk about specific things I’m teaching. My two-year-old is happily tagging along and I involve him in what I can.

So what are my priorities for my five-year-old, a.k.a. Kindergartener? I have read some blogs by homeschoolers with children this age, and it amazes me what they are doing! I’m impressed how they spend a good portion of their day on “homeschool” whether they use a curriculum or various resources. At first I was inclined to think we weren’t doing enough, but then something occurred to me. Usually these other families had one or more girls. Maybe there was a boy in the mix, but there was always a girl. Having two boys, I know there is no way we could sit down and do formal lessons for more than say….twenty minutes (give or take)! Maybe it’s just my two boys, but having read many resources about boys, I’m inclined to believe gender makes a huge difference. Of course, family dynamics can make a difference too, and every family has to figure out what works for them. I made this list for myself to sort out what is most important for my five-year-old at this time.

All of these are equally important to me. I’ve included some links where I’ve already written about some of these topics, and I’ll follow-up this post with a further breakdown of these categories.

Imagination/Play/Motion - Let him use his imagination and be in motion as much as he needs to be. Allowing for a lot of movement and having ample space for that is especially important for boys.
Literature – Immerse him in books and storytelling.
Exploration/Nature – Let him explore the world and get into nature as much as possible.
How to find answers – Encourage him to ask questions and teach him how to find answers.
Spend quality, stress-free time together – Use our time wisely. Don’t over schedule the kids or myself. Allow for plenty of time at home for free, unstructured playtime. Allow for quiet time in the afternoons.
Teach responsibility/involve him in my work – I explain why we (mom and dad) need to work, why we all need to take care of our (only) home, and I plan to engage him more in the work/hobbies that I enjoy like blogging and photography.

Notice that except for literature, I didn’t mention any academic subjects. This is because I don’t feel academics should be a priority for a five-year-old. However, I am teaching my son reading and math right now, and I do think this is important. These formal lessons are short and slow-paced, and I’ll explain the why, what and how of that in a future post.

And as I mentioned above, I’ll be following up this post with a series on how I accomplish all of these things. I hope you’ll subscribe to my blog and stay tuned! Thank you for stopping by!

Please tell me what your priorities are for your child whatever his/her age might be.

Posted in Homeschooling, Kindergarten | 14 Comments »

Tags: educating boys, five-year-old, homeschooling, kindergarten, parenting, setting homeschool priorities for my family

January 7, 2012

Our Homeschool Mission

Several years ago I read the mission of another homeschool family that I admire, and I liked the idea of creating a mission. I don’t think it’s necessary if that’s not your thing, but for me, it helps me focus on what I want my children to learn. This is especially important since I’m not depending on a curriculum.

Our mission is fluid. Since I’m just starting out on this homeschooling journey, I’m not going to say this is what we’ll always do. I’m sure my sons’ interests will take us on many varied paths. But right now I need a compass to put me in the starting position.

So, almost two years ago, I began brainstorming about what was important to me to teach my children, and I came up with these lists. The first list is “the basics” and the second list is what I want to teach or emphasize. Many of these categories overlap, but I wrote them out as a reminder to myself.

Then I wrote the mission statement. Yes, it’s a bit wordy and lofty, but like I said, I wanted a compass to guide me as I began to facilitate my children’s education. Why not have a high ideal?

Now that my eldest son is five-years-old, I am finally referring to this list and statement as I plan our activities. I think it’ll help me focus my time and my blog, and maybe it’ll help some of you starting out too.

I begin with the categories of learning. *Note that according to Georgia Law I’m required to teach the following: reading, language arts, mathematics, social studies, and science. The law does not go into further detail about what I have to teach.

Categories of Learning

The Basics:

*Reading
*Language Arts (including Writing & Handwriting)
*Math
*Science
*Social Studies (includes History)
Art
P.E.

Mama’s Emphasis/Additions:

Storytelling
Nature/Animals
International Education
Religious Education
Spiritual Lessons/Life Missions
Leadership/Good Citizenship
Financial Literacy
Foreign Language

Without further ado…

Our Mission Statement:

The purpose of our homeschool is to not only teach our children what they need to know to be accepted into an accredited college (if they choose to do so) but to also foster a love of learning and give them a foundation on which to build a fulfilling life of their own. We want to enable them to find what will make them prosper: spiritually, in their vocation, and for their livelihood. We want to create strong citizens who have knowledge of the world they live in and a respect for the earth they live on. We want to show them that learning is a life-long endeavor and that knowledge and experience are steppingstones to wisdom.

…Do you have a mission statement for your homeschool? Please share it with me.

In my next post, I’ll talk about our homeschool priorities for my sons’ current ages/levels: preschool and kindergarten. And I’ll explain how I plan to go about fulfilling our mission.

Posted in Homeschooling, Kindergarten, Preschool | 2 Comments »

Tags: homeschool mission statement, homeschooling, planning our homeschool

December 21, 2011

December & Christmas Activities with Small Children

These are snowflakes that we made last year for the tree. I hung them up in the entrance way of our activity room. They make a pretty decoration.

A while back I wrote about my desire to make new family traditions for my family, and December seems like a great time to do that. However, I have to admit, I have kept this December extremely simple and I’ve done nothing to intentionally start anything new. This might also be laziness on my part too. But right now with a 5 and 2 year old, it feels like an accomplishment to get our regular chores done let alone begin new projects! So I haven’t stressed. I’ve just done what I could do easily and what the boys were receptive to.

(However, part of the reason I haven’t had to do much is because my husband initiated a new goal for the family! ~~I’ll be writing about this in an upcoming post.~~ You can read about that here!)

So let’s see. What have we done? We have done what we’ve always done…..

We decorated a Christmas tree. And this year, my five-year-old put all the ornaments on by himself! That was special.
We also put a small tree in the five-year-old’s room. We’ve done this the last few years, so I think we can call it a tradition.
This should have been written up under my “November Activities” post, but in early November, I always help my son write a letter to Santa Claus. This year I forgot to put a stamp in the envelope, but if you put a stamp in the envelope and address it to “Santa Claus, North Pole,” you’ll probably get a reply like we did last year!!
My five-year-old and I decided to make puppets with some extra cardboard I found and popsicle sticks. We drew pictures on the cardboard, cut them out, pasted a popsicle stick on the back, and voila! a puppet! We made some for my little nephews, and then my son wanted to make some for his friends. (A proud mama moment!)
We have been reading our Christmas books. (I keep all the seasonal books tucked away so that we can pull them out around the holidays and they seem like new.)
Yesterday I baked one batch of oatmeal raisin cookies with the five-year-old while the two-year-old was napping, and yep, that’s the extent of my baking for the holidays.
This week I’ll let my boys watch some Christmas specials on T.V. if they want to. We own the Charlie Brown Christmas special.
We strung up frosted Os for the tree. We also did this last year, so maybe we can call it a tradition. Frosted Os (or some kind of generic version) are big and easy for a little one to hold and string! (That is, if he’s willing to do it.) (Also, word to the wise: do not put them low on the tree if you have a dog. Also don’t leave them on the kid’s activity table while the dogs are in the house.)
For an easy craft, I cut out the shape of a Christmas tree out of green construction paper, and then I cut out different colored shapes such as a star and circles, squares, triangles & small rectangles to make ornaments. (My intent was to help my 2yo learn his shapes, but the craft didn’t hold his attention for very long.) I put all the shapes and bits of paper into a plastic bag with a glue stick and a few extra Christmas stickers, and I told my boys they could make a Christmas tree whenever they wanted. I wasn’t sure my five-year-old wanted to do it, but he finally asked for it today.

So that is what I have done this December. There’s also a few things I didn’t do:

A simple craft: cut out the shape of a tree and several different shapes to use as ornaments. Stickers are also fun to add.

We didn’t decorate the outside of our house. (Except for a small wreath on the door.)
I didn’t send Christmas cards this year. (Needed to save time and money.)
We didn’t do a lot of baking. (Except for that one batch of oatmeal raisin cookies.)
We didn’t drive around looking at Christmas lights. (This was a favorite tradition of mine growing up.)
I didn’t buy a lot of presents (don’t have the money anyway), make any presents (except for the easy puppets), or invite anyone over for a Christmas get-together.

My main goal this December was to just enjoy the time with my boys, husband and keep up with our daily routine because when I don’t do that, we can all get quite frazzled. Like I said above, with a 5 and 2 year-old, it’s an accomplishment to get anything done, and routine is important to them. As their mom, I have to be ready for their mood changes (which can be swift), illnesses or whims (“I don’t want to do a craft, Mommy!”) I also want to honor daddy’s ideas for family outings while he’s home on winter break. So, not overwhelming myself with extra chores or expectations is key to making me a good mother. (At least, most of the time.)

Whether you celebrate Christmas, another holiday, or none at all, I hope this winter season is warm, happy and peaceful for you! Please leave me a comment and tell me what celebrations or activities you are participating in this December.

Posted in Homeschool Activities, Kindergarten, Traditions / Rituals / Holidays | Leave a Comment »

Tags: activities for preschoolers, Christmas, December, homeschooling, parenting, traditions

November 26, 2011

November & Thanksgiving Activities With Small Children

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I wanted to create history lessons around each holiday this year. In addition to this, I want to do general activities to celebrate each season. However, I still feel the need to keep things extremely simple with my boys. At ages 5 & 2, they just aren’t ready for big projects or crafts. When I do initiate crafts, it’s usually me doing most of the crafting, or the boys take over by making it a cutting-up-paper-into-tiny-bits session. Whether it’s their ages or that they are boys, long sit-down lessons and activities don’t work for us. (And this also goes for just the five-year-old when the two-year-old is napping too.)

So here are the simple things we did this November to celebrate autumn and Thanksgiving:

We had a gorgeous autumn in Georgia this year, so I wanted to celebrate those beautiful leaves. We collected leaves and laminated them. Last year I tried ironing them between parchment paper, and it looked awful. I asked my sister – a first grade teacher – what she recommended. She said she just laminated the leaves. Guess what? It works great! After laminating them, I strung some up over our window and the doorway into our activity room. I tacked the others up to our bulletin board, and I labeled the leaves that I knew. (Tree identification will come when they’re older too.) (This it the laminator I purchased over a year ago – a worthwhile investment.)
We planted bulbs. And garlic. I’ve never planted garlic before, so I’m excited to see what will happen. Planting seeds is a favorite pastime of my five-year-old, which I have written about extensively in this post.
We read our Thanksgiving books:

What Is Thanksgiving? by Harriet Ziefert – A sweet, lift-the-flap book about a mouse who asks his parents “What is Thanksgiving?” It’s very simple and dedicates only two lines to the history of the holiday. It’s mostly about what we do now to celebrate Thanksgiving. I would only recommend it for very young children.
The Story of the Pilgrims by Katherine Ross – I highly recommend this book for the approximate ages 4~6 or anyone needing a beginning lesson on Thanksgiving history. It starts in England and talks about a group of people call Pilgrims and why they left, their journey in the Mayflower, their first difficult winter, the encounter with the Indians and what the Indians taught them, and it ends with the big feast. It’s simple enough for youngsters but full of interesting details.

As we talked about Thanksgiving and what we give thanks for, I used A Child’s Book of Animal Poems and Blessings (collected by Eliza Blanchard). My boys love animals, so these poems and prayers were fun. The illustrations are beautiful. It teaches respect for animals, and it gave me a chance to talk about praying and poetry. Needless to say, this isn’t a book I will use only for this season.
The night before Thanksgiving, I told my five-year-old a story about Jack and Piper and the big Thanksgiving feast they hosted in the forest. All the forest animals were invited, and on this day, there was no bickering or squabbles. One by one, each animal said what he was thankful for.
Besides these simple activities, I have spent as much time outdoors as the weather permitted. We visited Ft. Yargo, the Botanical Garden, and spent lots of time in our own yard.

Maybe next year I’ll get around to baking, more crafts and more history lessons. Or maybe we’ll just spend more time outside.

What’s your favorite activities for November?

Posted in Homeschool Activities, Homeschooling, Kindergarten, Traditions / Rituals / Holidays | 1 Comment »

Tags: autumn, homeschooling in georgia, homeschooling with younger children, November, parenting, Thanksgiving

November 12, 2011

The Importance of Play in Children’s Lives

Note: This column appeared in the November 9, 2011 print edition of the Barrow Journal. Almost two years ago I also wrote a column about the importance of playing make-believe and the research on how it teaches self-regulation to children. You can read that column by clicking here.

Sometimes I’ll get the question: “How’s homeschooling going?” and I get a little taken aback because I feel as if I should answer: “It’s great! We’re doing reading, math, science, art and going on lots of field trips!” At least, that’s what I think people want to hear. After all, if my child were in Kindergarten, he would be getting a daily dose of the above.

Truth be told, though we do a little of that stuff, and I’ve written about it in my columns, my main directive for my kids is “Go play.” Because when I consider what the most important mission of a five- and two-year-old should be, it’s PLAY!

Play is one of the main reasons I am homeschooling in the first place. I don’t want my children to have to spend their day at school and then have most of their evening hours consumed by doing homework, eating dinner, taking a bath and going to bed early because they have to get up early the next morning to go to school.

I’m not saying that schoolchildren don’t play, but I do think that play is at a lower priority when we have to stick to schedules and get homework done. And from what I hear, Kindergarteners are not excluded from these pressures anymore.

The American Academy of Pediatrics wrote a report on “The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds.” I recommend that parents read it. It issues a concern that a “hurried and pressured lifestyle” may be having ill-effects on our children.

It does not say that all activities or after-school programs are bad for children. In fact, they have clear benefits. But it does say “…the balance that needs to be achieved will be different for every child on the basis of the child’s academic needs, temperament, environment, and the family’s needs.”

As I watch my boys grow and my eldest nears his elementary years, I increasingly feel that he needs the right balance between structured activity, academics and playtime. Playtime should take up a much higher percentage of his time.

In “The Case for Play,” Tom Bartlett describes several researchers attempts to bring old-fashioned play back into children’s lives.

He explains that these researchers believe: “The emphasis on standardized testing, on attempting to constantly monitor, measure, and quantify what students learn, has forced teachers to spend more of the school day engaged in so-called direct instruction and has substantially reduced or eliminated opportunities that children have for exploring, interacting, and learning on their own.”

I want to homeschool for exactly those reasons cited above: so that my children can explore, interact and learn on their own.

In a wonderful New York Times opinion piece titled “Play to Learn,” Susan Engel lists what an ideal classroom daily schedule would entail for a third-grade class. Besides being immersed in storytelling, reading, discussion, practicing computation and giving the children a chance to devise original experiments (just to name a few), they would also have extended time to play.

She writes, “Research has shown unequivocally that children learn best when they are interested in the material or activity they are learning. Play — from building contraptions to enacting stories to inventing games — can allow children to satisfy their curiosity about the things that interest them in their own way. It can also help them acquire higher-order thinking skills, like generating testable hypotheses, imagining situations from someone else’s perspective and thinking of alternate solutions.”

Reading this makes me very excited about homeschooling because this is the kind of school I want to create. At home, I can teach my children the basics without drilling them or making them work on assignments they have no interest in. I can give them hours of leisure time to play, or I can plan some outings and interesting projects that they’ll enjoy.

Reading the latest research on play has renewed my enthusiasm for teaching my son and has reminded me to keep asking him questions, engage him in conversation, and, most importantly, encourage him to create his own make-believe world.

Susan Engel also writes, “Scientists know that children learn best by putting experiences together in new ways. They construct knowledge; they don’t swallow it.”

At five-years-old, spending time and money worrying about a curriculum should not be on my to-do list for my son. Instead I should be outside toting sticks and playing with him.

How important do you think play is for children…and adults?!

Posted in A Bit o' Me Philosophy, Homeschooling, Kindergarten, Preschool | 2 Comments »

Tags: homeschooling, importance of play for children, my philosophy, my reasons for homeschooling, parenting

November 9, 2011

Knee-High Naturalist Class at the Sandy Creek Nature Center in Athens, Georgia

This autumn, my five-year-old and I have been enjoying the knee-high naturalist class at the Sandy Creek Nature Center. It takes place every other Wednesday from 3:30-4:30p.m. Children ages 3-5 are eligible and must be accompanied by an adult. Click here for more information.

In the class the children have met and touched several live animals, and many times we go outside too. My son was in his element during the “creep walk” when we waded through a stream in search of critters! We’ve learned about the cardinal directions and how to use a compass and also about recycling, just to name a few of the activities.

“Miss Sarah” is a wonderful teacher/facilitator. Her patience and ability with kids is amazing, and once she talked an extra twenty minutes with just my son after class because he had questions about snakes! (Thanks, Sarah!)

I took a lot of good photos during one of the classes, but I don’t want any parent to be mad at me, so I’m only sharing photos of the backs of heads of the other children.

Below my son is awaiting to get his jar filled with compost in hopes of creating a mini bug habitat in a jar.

We have also been attending the Homeschool Science classes at the Nature Center, and we love those classes too. If I take any photos during one of those classes, I’ll be sure to share.

What classes/activities do your children enjoy around town?

Posted in Homeschooling, Kindergarten, Resources for Georgia Homeschoolers | 3 Comments »

Tags: animals, athens, getting kids out into nature, homeschooling in georgia, knee-high naturalist, parenting, Sandy Creek Nature Center

November 6, 2011

The Eastern King Snake & Our Snake Project

An Eastern King Snake. This photo is courtesy of Bill Peterman. Check out his wonderful herpetology photos by clicking here.

One of the main reasons I want to homeschool is so that I can allow my child’s interests to guide us in the learning process. As if to test me on this philosophy, my five-year-old son has taken a keen interest in snakes.

I have never been particularly fond of reptiles or amphibians, but truthfully I just never gave them much thought until I met one of my best friends who is a herpetologist. She shared her love of frogs, salamanders and snakes with me and though you still won’t find me out trying to catch any, I have a respect for the little critters.

Now my son is into them, and thanks to the Sandy Creek Nature Center in Athens, he gets to see and touch them quite often. We are taking classes out there, and we’ve been to snake day twice, and recently we went to Scary, Slimy, Oozy Day, which was their Halloween festival. It definitely satisfied my son’s slimy, oozy side.

A while back I bought my son two posters for his room at the Nature Center. One features photos of snakes and the other frogs. “Snakes of Georgia” hangs on his wall right next to his bed. Sometimes I wonder what I was thinking when I bought that poster, but seriously, I’m thrilled when he wants to learn about anything, snakes included.

And it’s funny how you can get used to “slimy and oozy” just like your nose gets used to bad smells. Now I’m kind of fascinated with snakes or at least one in particular: the Eastern Kingsnake.

I saw my first Eastern Kingsnake several weeks ago in our yard. I thought my cat was going after a lizard, and when I approached her to save the lizard, I saw it was really a baby snake. It was black with yellow strips – pretty, as far as snakes go. Unfortunately, the snake disappeared under a thick layer of leaves before my son could see it.

Curious, I ran upstairs to look at my son’s poster and found out that it was an Eastern Kingsnake, and I was relieved to note that it was not listed as venomous.

Several weeks later, my husband saw an Eastern Kingsnake while he was out jogging. It was near our house, so he ran to get us, and we watched the snake slither into the woods. I don’t know if it was the same snake that I saw, but it was also a small one.

Since then I have learned that Eastern Kingsnakes are very good snakes to have around. The main reason is because they eat venomous snakes, and a favorite meal is the copperhead. When I was at Slimy, Oozy Day, a UGA ecology student told me that copperheads are on the rise in Athens-Clarke County, and they think maybe one reason is because the Eastern Kingsnake is in decline.

I looked up the Eastern Kingsnake on the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory’s (SREL) Herpetology website, which is a great resource, if you’re interested in snakes or other reptiles or amphibians. This site describes Eastern Kingsnakes as “shiny-black, smooth-scaled snakes with white or yellow chain-link bands that cross the back and connect along the sides.”

I learned that Eastern Kingsnakes are resistant to the venom of pit-vipers, and they can eat copperheads, cottonmouths and rattlesnakes. They also eat lizards, rodents, birds and turtles eggs.

There is some concern that these snakes are in decline in some areas of the Coastal Plain and in Florida. The reason is unclear. There was once a large population of this snake near the Savannah River Site that has disappeared over the last 20 years.

So please take heed: If you see an Eastern Kingsnake in your yard, DO NOT KILL IT! In fact, you shouldn’t kill any snake. Most snakes are not venomous, and they are very beneficial. They eat rats, mice, insects and other pests.

According to Geoff Stein, author of “Snakes – Good for the Garden,” snakes do not damage the environment at all. “They don’t dig holes….They don’t chew or damage the landscape….They don’t contribute one bit to noise pollution,” he says. He goes on to point out that snakes will not bite unless stepped on, picked up or forced into a corner or otherwise threatened. Usually snakes just want to get away.

There are venomous snakes that we need to be wary of and usher out of our gardens, and if you’d like to learn more about those, the SREL website is a good place to go.

So, as scary, slimy and oozy as some of us think snakes are, we need to respect these creatures, who help balance the ecosystem in important ways.

This column was originally printed in the November 2, 2011 edition of the Barrow Journal.

***

OUR SNAKE PROJECT

Since my five-year-old loves snakes so much, I suggested another project for him. We’re making a “book” about snakes. We’re using his poster as a guide by going down the list from top to bottom. Our book is in a three-ring binder. We look up the snake online, and my son chooses a photo, and he writes the name of the snake on the page. Then I write in some facts about the snake. I hope that as he gets older and learns how to read, he’ll enjoy this little resource we’re making. (I always note where we get the information and give credit to the photographer, if possible.)

While we’re doing this, I read about the snake to my son, and he also likes to watch some video about the snake, if we can find one.

Would you be willing to visit a slimy and oozy world for the sake of your child’s passions?

Posted in Kindergarten, My Newspaper Columns, Project-based Homeschooling, Unschooling | 4 Comments »

Tags: eastern king snake, my newspaper columns, parenting, project-based homeschooling, snake project, unschooling

October 30, 2011

A Kindergarten Child-Led Project: Seeds, Plants, Gardening

The five-year-old grew two pumpkins by himself. I’m a proud mama.

Most kindergarten curriculums include a study of how seeds grow into plants. I did not have to do anything to entice my son into learning about seeds. He is obsessed with them. Whenever he gets a chance, he’ll pull seeds off trees or plants – at church, at a park, grandma’s house or our yard – and he puts them in his pocket, telling me he wants to plant them as soon as possible. He has done this so many times that I almost want to pull my hair out, but I don’t. I just smile and say, “Okay.” Sometimes I have helped him plant the seeds, but usually I just let him plant them wherever he wants, ~~hoping~~ knowing he might forget about them. Since I’m a “green pinky” gardener, I usually know that the seeds he has won’t grow under the conditions in which he plants them in, but that’s not the point. The point is to just let him have fun planting his seeds.

But I have assisted him in planting seeds under conditions that I ~~knew~~ hoped would grow. Earlier this summer, we planted tomatoes, and to my surprise, he was very eager to take care of them. Since I have my hands full with two boys, I didn’t plan to plant much else, but he insisted that we plant pumpkins. So we did. Or I should say he did. He planted those pumpkins, and he took care of them all summer. He watered them every night! I think it was quite late summer before he finally started to let his little brother do the watering, but he was still eager enough most evenings. (He lasted longer than me. Usually by mid-August, I’ve had enough of gardening.) I was very proud of him.

Since plants are an interest of his, I have used the opportunity to teach him more about seeds, plants and gardening. This has been over a long period of time. As I wrote about in “Learning Is Like a Chain Link Fence,” I believe the best learning comes from doing and studying something at our leisure, over time, and when we need to learn about it for a purpose. I’ll continue to teach my son about planting, seeds and gardening in the future. This is an easy subject for me since I enjoy gardening myself.

Here’s a list of additional projects and resources that I’ve used to teach him about seeds and plants. And you can scroll down to see our pictures.

I found a “Plant: Life Cycle” Poster (see photo above) for less than $3 at a nearby teacher supply store. Though my son and I enjoy making our own educational posters, I have no problem spending a few bucks every now and then. (Actually, the price was probably the same as making one of our own.)
We have read and added the books How a Seed Grows by Helene J. Jordan and From Seed to Plant by Allan Fowler to our home library.
Using this Martha Stewart tutorial, we tried to sprout some beans in jars. We successfully sprouted some pinto beans, and one of them is still growing in our garden! Photos and more information below.
At my son’s request, we have tried several times to plant seeds from the fruits or vegetables that we eat and cook with in the kitchen. I don’t think we’ve gotten any of those to grow yet.
Other than this, I have let my boys play in the garden, tend the garden and plant anything they want. If it doesn’t grow, it’s just another lesson.

Nothing teaches a child about Earth’s bounty better than gardening.

My boys have been participating in gardening and growing plants since they were babies.

We’ve also taken advantage of local farms, and I plan to visit more as the boys get older. We went strawberry picking last spring.

Our seed sprouting project:

Our seed sprouting project had a lot of false starts. Thinking I could remember back to my kindergarten days, I thought we could just throw some seeds in a jar of water and watch them sprout. Ahem….This didn’t work. Then I tried Martha Stewart’s Garden in a Jar project. The black beans didn’t sprout at all but that may be because they were old beans from my pantry. The lima beans and pintos (which I bought new) started to sprout, but the limas stopped sprouting and got moldy, so I threw them out (too much water?) The pintos were a success!

This method is simple: Lightly wet a paper towel and put it in the bottom of a jar, place the dried beans on top of the towel and then cover the jar. I used regular dried beans that you can buy at the grocery store. You may need to mist the beans periodically, if the towel dries out.

Pinto bean success! My son planted these sprouts in our garden, and one of them is still growing. I doubt it’ll make it through the winter, though. Yet that is a lesson in itself, no?

At my son’s request, we have tried planting some other things. This lettuce was a success. We also planted some in our garden,and though I’ve had a lot of success with lettuce over the years, I’m sorry to say that crop didn’t grow.

What kinds of things have your kids done to learn about seeds, plants and gardening?

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Posted in Homeschool Activities, Homeschooling, Kindergarten, Project-based Homeschooling | 6 Comments »

Tags: gardening, homeschooling, kindergarten, learning about plants and seeds, parenting, project-based homeschooling

October 23, 2011

REVIEW: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

Earlier this year I decided to try Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons for my then four-year-old. (We started three months before his 5th birthday.) If you look up the reviews on this book, which is also called the Distar method, they are mostly favorable, but I could see that it doesn’t work for everybody. That’s not surprising because nothing works for everybody.

Fortunately, my son loved the lessons when we began the book, and I liked the book because it was easy for me to use.

There is an eighteen-page parent guide at the beginning of the book, which is important to read, and in each lesson, there’s a script that parents are supposed to follow exactly. At first this looked daunting, but after reading the guide and doing a few lessons with my son, I saw that it was beneficial. During the early lessons, I kept to the script fairly well, though I changed some of the words because I knew my son would understand me better with my changes.

As we continued on with the book, I didn’t have to read the script so closely because it’s very repetitive, and by then my son knew what he needed to do. However, I glanced at each lesson beforehand to see if there were any changes.

What I like the most about 100 Lessons is that each lesson builds on the one before it, and it introduces new letter sounds gradually. It helped that my son already knew all the sounds of the letters before we started this book, but the way it’s taught, you could potentially teach a child who doesn’t know any phonics.

I have a feeling that if my son had not known the sounds of the letters, he would not have liked it. Since the beginning lessons were very easy for him, it built his confidence and showed him that reading lessons were not scary. As he sounded out words with these sounds, he was delighted that he could read!

A couple of points about how this book teaches reading:

The book teaches the child to sound out words by blending the sounds together instead of pausing between sounds. For example, we usually teach kids to sound out the word “mat” by saying “mmm (pause) aaa (pause) t.” The Distar method says not to pause. Say “mmmaaat.” This simple technique helped my son hear the word, and he was able to decipher it quicker.
The book also uses an altered orthography or symbols to help the child read. That is, if the sound is a long A, such as in the word “lake”, there is a line over the A, and if it’s a short A sound, such as in the word “cat,” there’s no line. Silent letters, such as the E in “lake” are printed smaller.

The altered orthography worried me at first because I wondered how my son would transition to regular books with regular print, but quickly this worry faded. My son was so excited that he could read! He said, “I can read in this book, but I can’t read in those.”

Three things I liked about the book:

The silly pictures: My son would read the stories in the book, and I would keep the accompanying picture covered until he finished. He always looked forward to seeing the picture, so this gave him an incentive to finish the lesson. (Yet I can see where the pictures and stories might not interest older children.)
The book gradually introduces many irregular words or “sight words,” and since there’s so much repetition in the book, my son has most of them memorized now. This is why I didn’t worry about the altered orthography.
The book also requires the student to write two or three sounds at the end of each lesson. Fortunately, my son was already writing well and enjoyed this part too. It’s a good reinforcement of the sounds and practice of writing.

Making my child excited about reading is the first step in getting him to read. I’m grateful that 100 Lessons got us on the road to reading. Yet, as we got further into it, things changed.

Once we got to around Lesson 50, the lessons got harder. It wasn’t that my son wasn’t reading well. He could do the lessons, and he was learning, but while we did the lessons, he would squirm in his seat, start talking about other topics, and act silly. It was very hard for him to focus on the lesson.

I should interject here and say that the book claims these lessons will take only twenty minutes a day. The first few lessons took only twenty minutes, but as they get harder and there’s more reading involved, they take much longer. And when my child could not focus and kept squirming, I think we spent closer to 45 minutes completing a lesson.

Suddenly it became a lesson in patience for mama! Fortunately, this was about the time we were going on vacation to Chicago, so we took a break. After returning home, I looked up 100 Lessons on the Internet and began to read what other people’s experiences were.

I found one person who said a tutor recommended this book for her child, but emphasized that the lessons should remain light and fun. Another man described his little girl as squirmy and unable to focus too. He gave her incentives to finish each lesson, which worked.

Reading this renewed my patience with my son, and I regained my equanimity. Here are some tactics I employed:

I made sure we had plenty of time to do the lessons. I didn’t rush my son through them.
I gave my son “wiggle moments” when he got too fidgety, and he loved that. I’d count to three and then we’d both wiggle for a few minutes.
I was also more likely to take a day off from a lesson if we were busy with errands whereas in the beginning, I kept a tight daily schedule.

With this new strategy, we inched our way up to Lesson 70 where we reached another plateau. At that point, the book became monotonous. Since my son was reading quite well anyway, I decided to take another break from the book. Now I feel we probably won’t go back to it. I’ve searched my shelves for all the early readers in my house, and my son seems excited to be able to read real books with more lively illustrations.

Above is a photo of part of Lesson 69. My son completed through Lesson 70.

At the end of 100 Lessons, it states that a child who successfully completes this program will be reading at a second grade level. Considering that my son is only five-years-old, I feel confident that I don’t have to push him to finish it right now. He is happy that he’s starting to read, and he’s reading early readers. I couldn’t be more pleased.

If you have a young child who is struggling with reading, I highly suggest giving 100 Lessons a try. I’m not sure it would interest older students because the stories and pictures are silly, but it never hurts to try. Also, I found the book used online for $11, so it doesn’t hurt the pocket book either.

Have you tried Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons? What was your experience with it?

Note: An earlier version of this column appeared in print in the October 5, 2011 edition of the Barrow Journal.

Posted in Books, Homeschooling, Kindergarten, My Newspaper Columns | 2 Comments »

Tags: Distar method, homeschooling, how to teach reading, kindergarten, parenting, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

October 3, 2011

Music Appreciation with Beethoven

Or An Example of Child Led Learning…

Note: This column was first published in the Barrow Journal on September 28, 2011. You can view the online version by clicking here.

When I was pregnant with my first baby, my husband and I took advantage of the free music concerts at UGA. One of the concerts my husband wanted to attend was a performance of Beethoven’s 9^th symphony. It was during that concert that I felt my baby move for the first time.

Fast forward a few years until my first born is five-years-old. He loves the cartoon Little Einsteins, which features music by a famous composer in each episode. Out of all the music he hears on that show, he begins to hum (constantly) Beethoven’s 9^th symphony or the part we are most familiar with: “Ode to Joy.”

Is it a coincidence, or is that just a catchy tune? Obviously it’s a catchy tune, but I’ll always wonder if that prenatal exposure might have given him a predisposition to liking that music. Anything is possible, right?

So our house is full of Beethoven these days. I don’t think my five-year-old’s renditions of “Ode to Joy” are what Beethoven had in mind for his work, but I can say that forevermore I’ll be able to identify at least one piece of famous music.

I am not musically inclined. I love listening to music and I like a variety of genres, but I am hopeless when it comes to remembering even the simplest lyrics. I can carry a tune only so far, and you don’t want to know about my attempt to play the flute in the fifth grade.

My husband, on the other hand, while not a musician, is much more knowledgeable about music. While I would rather listen to talk radio, he keeps his iTunes library neatly organized into categories and genres. He listens to everything from classical to hard rock. He likes to look up information about musicians, and sometimes he relaxes by watching excerpts of concerts on YouTube.

When my son first began to hum “Ode to Joy,” I couldn’t name the tune even though I had heard it hundreds of times. (Yes, I’m that pitiful.) I told my son to ask his father about it. So that evening my husband pulled up a YouTube video of Beethoven’s 9^th symphony. Then my little boy started to ask questions.

“Is that Beethoven?” he asked as he pointed to one of the musicians.

We had to explain that Beethoven lived a very long time ago and that he died a very long time ago.

Pointing to another musician in the symphony, my son asked, “Is he dead too?”

While it’s fun to find learning opportunities in a child’s interests, it is difficult to balance what we adults want to teach with what a five-year-old really wants to know.

“No,” we said, “he’s not dead.”

Then we found a photo of Beethoven, and this made my son very happy. And then he patiently listened to that whole section of the symphony.

Since he was so interested in this music, I asked my son if he’d like to do a project on Beethoven, and he was enthusiastic about the idea. He wanted to make a book, so we printed out a photo of Beethoven, wrote a few facts about this life, included a map of Germany with an arrow pointing to Bonn (where Beethoven was born), and then we added the sheet music for “Ode to Joy.” We punched holes in the side of the paper, tied the pages to together and voila – a little book to showcase his obsession.

My son continues to hum, chant, and create odious lyrics for “Ode to Joy.” He also tries to play it on our small piano, and when we go somewhere in the car, he requests Beethoven’s 9^th symphony, which my husband is more than happy to play on the stereo.

I can’t complain that my son loves Beethoven’s 9^th symphony. Will it turn into something else? A musical talent? I have no idea. But I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

{Pointing to Bonn, Germany, which is where Beethoven was born}

What is your child’s latest obsession?

Posted in Kindergarten, My Newspaper Columns, Project-based Homeschooling, Unschooling | 2 Comments »

Tags: Beethoven, kindergarten, music appreciation, my newspaper columns, project-based homeschooling, unschooling

September 27, 2011

The Benefits of Storytelling

I’ve been spending the last few weeks thinking and writing about storytelling because I value the importance of storytelling for my children and community. I’m wrapping up my series on storytelling by brainstorming several reasons why storytelling is so valuable for children and adults. Below is my list in no particular order. I hope you might contribute to my list by adding your thoughts in the comments section.

Storytelling is beneficial because:

Stories both entertain and impart wisdom.
I can teach my children in an unique way that they will want to listen and remember.
Storytelling ignites the imagination.
It fosters listening and comprehension skills.
It teaches speaking skills. Shortly after beginning to make up stories for my five-year-old, he wanted to make up stories to tell me!
Storytelling is part of our language arts, which is a vital part of any person’s education!
Stories help people understand their place in the world. For children, stories can help them understand who they are and the world they live in.
It’s relaxing. A stress-reducer!
Storytelling provides valuable one-on-one time with the teller and listener(s). Telling stories to children is an expression of love.
Similarly, storytelling connects people and communities. It’s a positive form of communication that fosters compassion and understanding.
Stories preserve cultures, beliefs and values and shares those cultures, beliefs and values with the rest of the world.

You may also want to check out the National Storytelling Network’s “Values & Beliefs,” and to read my previous posts on storytelling, click on the following:

Storytelling, Murder and What That Has to do with Homeschooling

Book Review: Tell Me A Story by Chase Collins (This was also a newspaper column for the Barrow Journal.)

How I Use Storytelling to Enrich the Lives of My Children

Two Stories I Made Up for My Five-Year-Old — To Show that YOU Can Do it Too!

I’d like to dedicate my column and these blog posts on storytelling to the friend who inspired me to tell stories: J.J. Reneaux. I think of her so often.

What do you think? Please add your thoughts about storytelling in the comments section.

Posted in A Bit o' Me Philosophy, Homeschool Activities, Kindergarten, Life Stories, Storytelling as a Teaching Tool | 8 Comments »

Tags: Chase Collins, homeschool activities, life stories, my philosophy, parenting, storytelling, storytelling as a teaching tool, Tell Me a Story

September 26, 2011

Two Stories I Made Up For My Five-Year-Old — to Show That YOU Can Do It Too!

This is the third in my series of posts about storytelling for children by their parents. The first post was a review of the book Tell Me A Story by Chase Collins. The second post was “How I Use Storytelling to Enrich the Lives of My Children.” In that post, I warned you that I might get brave enough to share one of my stories with you! Well, guess what? I’m giving you two!

With these stories I would like to illustrate something that Chase Collins taught me in her book. When you are thinking “what the heck am I going to tell a story about?” she suggests that you look at what is going on with your child at that moment. Did they do something special that day? Is there something that they are into? When we were on vacation in Chicago this summer, my son took his first subway ride, so I told him a story about some children riding on a subway and meeting a subway monster (not a scary monster)! Right now my son is into snakes, so you can guess that many of my recent stories have snakes in them.

She also said that if you can get your child to give you an idea, then go with that! Sometimes my son says, “Just tell me a story,” and I know he doesn’t want to contribute an idea. But lately he has been saying, “Can you tell me a story about Jack and Piper? And it could be about how Jack goes walking to the river and finds a rainbow snake who is lost?” (That was my son’s prompt tonight!)

The following story is one I told last month before my boy’s birthdays, and while I usually forget my stories by the next day, this one stuck with me because I was kind of proud of it. But I don’t always tell good stories! Usually I start one and then struggle to come to a conclusion. After telling this tale, I later I realized it has a similar theme to a book that I’ve read to my son….but I promise I am not plagiarizing! My story is very different, yet perhaps I subconsciously got something out of that storybook. I think this is okay when making up stories for kids. We are not telling these stories to sell them. It’s a one-time love offering to our children. Get your ideas anywhere! It doesn’t have to be original or told with perfect diction. If it’s a bad story, don’t worry. You’ll forget it and tell another one the next day.

The beginning paragraph is how I usually start out my “Jack and Piper” stories. My main character is Jack, but since I told this story right before my son’s birthday, it seemed better to make Piper the main character in this one.

Once upon a time there was a little boy named Jack who lived in a forest in a log house, and he had a big garden full of vegetables and flowers. And he also had a friend named Piper who was a troll with big feet and shaggy hair, and he lived down the path in a tree. Piper couldn’t talk, but he had no problem communicating with his friend Jack.

Well, tomorrow was going to be Jack’s birthday, and Piper was at home thinking about what to get for his friend. That morning he walked outside his treehouse and noticed how beautiful the first morning light was glowing through the trees. Oh, it would be wonderful to get Jack something as beautiful as that morning light, he thought. Later, he was walking along the river, and he noticed how good the morning air smelled. He breathed deep and sighed. It would be wonderful to get Jack something that smelled as good as the morning air. Then he walked up a small hill to one of his favorite places. There, he sat in the grass and watched the sunrise while he ate some warm bread for breakfast. Oh, he thought, I would love to get something that Jack would love as much as I love this morning sunrise!

Piper sat there all day feeling kind of blue because he couldn’t think of anything he could give to Jack. He didn’t have any money to buy anything, and he wasn’t very good at making things. He went to bed feeling sad, but he woke up early in the morning, determined to be the first person to wish Jack a happy birthday! He warmed up some bread in the oven and though he still felt bad about not having a present for Jack’s birthday, he knew it would be worse to not wish Jack happy birthday at all. So he went to Jack’s house early. It was barely light, and Piper snickered because he knew his friend liked to sleep late. He would wake him up and be the first person to say “Happy Birthday!”

When Piper got to Jack’s house, he knocked on the door, and a very groggy Jack answered it. ”Aw, Piper!” Jack whined. ”You woke me up!” Jack clapped and jumped up and down. ”You want to wish me happy birthday?” Jack asked. Piper nodded and held up the warm bread. ”Okay,” Jack said, “Just a minute.” It didn’t take long for Jack to get dressed, and very soon the two friends were walking along the river. ”Wow,” Jack said, “It’s a beautiful morning. Smell that fresh air!” The first light was easing its way through the branches. The fog was gently lifting off the water. Soon they were on top of the hill where Piper liked to eat his breakfast. They ate the bread and watched the sunrise together.

“I haven’t been up to see the sunrise in such a long time,” Jack said. ”I forgot how amazing it is! Thank you, Piper!”

When Jack said that, Piper became very happy! Suddenly he realized that he did give Jack something as beautiful as the morning light, that smelled as good as the morning air, and something that he loved as much as the sunrise!

Currently, for a several nights in a row, my son keeps asking me to tell him a story about Jack and Piper AND an animal that gets lost. I have no idea why he chooses this theme. We did not have any occurrence when he got lost, and to my knowledge he has not watched a television show with this theme, but maybe he did. Who knows? For whatever reason, I believe it is important to him, so I am indulging him with stories about an animal getting lost and Jack and Piper helping the animal get home. For the first couple of stories, I just had Jack and Piper help the critter home, but then I wised up. I used the opportunity to tell my son what he could do to find his way home, if he got lost. So in my third story, I had Jack instruct the animal to remember what landmarks he passed on his way down the river. They followed them back up the river, and helped him find his way. In the fourth story, which I’ll share below, I gave the advice we always hear: If you get lost, stay put! (Tonight I told a similar story, and I’m starting to think I need to encourage him to think of a new theme.)

Another note before I share the story: As I mentioned before, my son usually tells me what kind of animal gets lost. For the story below, he pointed to a snake on his “Snakes of Georgia” poster that he has on the wall next to his bed. The snake he pointed to was a Yellow Rat Snake. (Yes, you know you love your child when you let him have a poster full of snake photos and are willing to tell him a story about a Yellow Rat Snake!) Here it is:

One morning Jack decided to take a walk down by the river. When he got there, he sat down on a rock and enjoyed watching the river, listening to the gurgling sound of the water. Suddenly he saw a baby yellow rat snake slithering by on the path very fast!

“Little snake!” he said. ”Where are you going so fast?”

“I’m looking for my mother!” the little snake said. ”I’m lost!”

“Oh no!” Jack said. ”I’ll help you! I’m very experienced at helping lost animals.” (At this point my son asks me where Piper is, so I have to go get him.) ”But first we need to go get my friend Piper. He’ll help us.”

Relieved, the baby snake went along to Piper’s house. When Jack told Piper that the snake needed help finding his mother, Piper nodded and came along.

“First,” said Jack, “We’ll go back to where I found you.” Soon they were at the place where Jack was sitting that morning. ”Now, Little Snake, where were you when you lost your mother?”

“Not far from here,” said the snake. ”Over there!” He looked in the direction of a big boulder that was sitting on the bank of the river. “My mommy took my sister and I out to find food, and she found me a cricket. Then she went off with my sister to find her some food. And I was so busy eating that I didn’t notice that they were gone!” The little snake cried. He wanted his mama.

“Ah,” said Jack. ”You know what? I bet your mama isn’t far off. The best thing to do when you’re lost is to stay right where you are. Let’s go back to the boulder and wait. I bet your mama will find us!”

“Okay,” said the little snake. So Jack, Piper and the snake sat down by the big rock and waited. The snake was still worried, but he was glad he had Jack and Piper to be with him.

After a few minutes, the little snake’s mama and his sister came around a big tree that was close by. ”Mama!” the little snake cried. ”I thought I lost you!”

“I’m sorry you were scared,” said Mama. ”I was right over there with your sister.”

Jack and Piper were very happy that they were able to help the little snake. They waved good-bye and watched as the snake family slithered down the trail. Then they went back to Piper’s house and played together for the rest of the day.

Okay, so it won’t win any awards, but it made a 5-year-old very happy. I hope you’re inspired to tell stories to your child. If I can do it, you can do it! Just let your imagination go wild!

***

To read my other posts on storytelling, click on the following:

Storytelling, Murder and What That Has to do with Homeschooling

Book Review: Tell Me A Story by Chase Collins (This was also a newspaper column for the Barrow Journal.)

How I Use Storytelling to Enrich the Lives of My Children

The Benefits of Storytelling

Posted in A Bit o' Me Philosophy, Books, Homeschool Activities, Kindergarten, Life Stories, Storytelling as a Teaching Tool | 8 Comments »

Tags: book, Chase Collins, homeschool activities, kindergarten, parenting, stories I've made up for my children, storytelling, storytelling as a teaching tool, Tell Me a Story

September 21, 2011

How I Use Storytelling to Enrich the Lives of My Children

In my last post I reviewed the book Tell Me a Story: Creating Bedtime Tales Your Children Will Dream On by Chase Collins, and I spoke a little about her reasons and strategy for making up your own tales. In this post, I want to share my experience in telling stories to my son.

Telling stories has always been a passion of mine. I used to write fiction, though I wasn’t very good at it or at least not good enough to get published. Oral storytelling is also a passion, especially since I met the late J.J. Reneaux. I can’t wait until my boys are old enough to go to the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, TN. I have been once, and it’s a wonderful experience.

But it took reading Tell Me a Story to get me started on making up tales for my own children. Since I am a busy mama and often exhausted, I had felt like most of my creative juices were used up, but Chase’s book is inspiring. When I read it, I began wishing I had someone like her to tell me stories! She knows how to bolster confidence. If you want to do anything creative and think you can’t do it, you might want to read the first part of this book.

It also frees my creative side to know that I’m telling stories to a five-year-old who will be happy with anything I come up with. I don’t have to tell publishable stories or stories that adults or even other kids might like. I just have to tell something! My child is thrilled that I’m taking time to tell him a story that is just for him.

As Collins suggests, I think about what happened to my son that day or what he’s interested in at the time, and I incorporate those things in the stories. Even though it’s only been a few weeks since I finished the book, I have told dozens of stories to my son. Many of them had different characters and were in different settings, but then I came up with Jack and Piper. Jack is a little boy who lives in the forest in a log house with a large garden full of vegetables and flowers. Piper is a troll with big feet and shaggy hair that lives down the path in a tree, and he’s Jack’s good friend. Piper doesn’t talk, but Jack and Piper have no trouble communicating.

My son seems to love Jack and Piper because he’s been requesting a story about them every night. He’s starting to tell me who they meet in the woods too. I adore my son’s input because I know his creative juices are flowing, and he’s starting to see all the possibilities….

Best of all, he told me his first story the other night! His story was very similar to some of my stories, but he put in his own character and changed the setting. I was so proud.

A few observations about my storytelling since I read Tell Me a Story:

When necessary, I have tried to come up with stories that might give my son a message I want him to hear. This is something Collins talks about in her book, and I love the opportunity to teach my son in a fun way instead of hitting him over the head with a lecture. Once I told a story about a little girl who babysat a very naughty puppy. The puppy chewed up her favorite toy and wouldn’t do anything she needed him to do. I hoped that on some subconscious level, my son might start to understand why there are times I need him to obey, be calm and not so difficult.
In my last post I shared Chase Collin’s “nitty-gritty story structure,” which she claimed, if followed, was an easy and full-proof way of coming up with a good tale on the spur of the moment. Well, it’s not as easy as she makes it sound, but it definitely helps. I have created some decent stories using this structure. But then other times it’s so hard. I can come up with a journey and a threat, but figuring out a hero-inspired way out can be tricky! Luckily my son doesn’t mind my lame endings. However, I have found that I enjoy telling stories more if I just let go of the structure and tell, which brings me to my next point…
Sometimes my stories are more like a “slice of life.” Just a simple moment, a walk in the woods, what the hero encountered, what the hero liked and didn’t like, and then he went home. After telling a few of these, I realized they relaxed me tremendously, my son enjoyed them, and I think they impart a great wisdom: to notice life, our surroundings, feelings and to appreciate nature. And sometimes after telling these stories, I would think back and realize that it did indeed follow the nitty-gritty story structure after all! Just in a very subtle way.
Finally, I have observed how happy storytelling makes me. Take away the pressure to create a good story and simply speak about what you love, where you would like to be, what you’d like to be doing and with the kind of people you love, and you create a beautiful fantasy that both you and your child can dream on and keep with you throughout your day. And then, of course, you might start to notice how your life parallels the lives of your characters…

Please come back again because in my next post, I might get brave and share one of my stories!

***

To read my other posts on storytelling, click on the following:

Storytelling, Murder and What That Has to do with Homeschooling

Book Review: Tell Me A Story by Chase Collins (This was also a newspaper column for the Barrow Journal.)

Two Stories I Made Up for My Five-Year-Old — To Show that YOU Can Do it Too!

The Benefits of Storytelling

Posted in A Bit o' Me Philosophy, Books, Homeschool Activities, Kindergarten, Storytelling as a Teaching Tool | 9 Comments »

Tags: book, Chase Collins, homeschool activities, how to help your children get creative, my philosophy, parenting, storytelling, storytelling as a teaching tool, Tell Me a Story

August 31, 2011

Happy Birthday to My Boys and Kindergarten Goals for this Next Year

August is closing, and it’s hard to believe that Autumn is almost here. It’s been a busy month. During the first week we were still in Chicago visiting relatives and going to all the places that I shared in this, this and this post. Right before we left Chicago, my boys’ grandparents threw them a big birthday bash, and when we returned, we geared up for a couple of smaller celebrations on their actual birthdays.

My boys were born exactly one week apart, so we celebrated a new 2-year-old one night with my parents, and then repeated that for a new 5-year-old one week later! So now I’ll be referring to “the 2-year-old” and “the 5-year-old.

I bragged a little about my boys and why I love them so much in my recent column for the Barrow Journal, and I hope you’ll take a moment to read it by clicking here.

Then perhaps you can tell me how all this happened?! It was only yesterday that I left the hospital with that little baby feeling absolutely helpless and traumatized from the experience of my first labor. I pretended I was fine because I knew I would be, but I desperately wanted someone wiser to help my husband and I through those first few days. I guess it’s an experience every new parent has to go through.

Now it’s five years later and I’m a much more confident mama, but sometimes I still worry and wonder if I’m making the right choices. It wasn’t long ago that I debated if I should send my 5-year-old to Kindergarten this Fall, but now I’m so glad I listened to my gut. I’m working on “Kindergarten” with my son, and we’re both having fun, which is how learning should be.

“It is estimated that 95% of kindergarteners feel good about their learning potential. However, 98% of seniors in high school have lost their creative, inquisitive spirits. So, what has happened to all but 2% of these seniors?” — Discover Your Child’s Learning Style, Mariaemma Willis, M.S., and Victoria Kindle Hodson, M.A.

The more I think about it, the happier I am with my decision to homeschool. Realistically, I believe there are both pros and cons to homeschooling and to sending a child to school. Each family has to weigh those pros and cons and decide what is best for their children.

With that said, I thought I’d list some of what I’m hoping to blog about in the coming months. These are projects we are working on right now or that I’m planning to work on, and I’m excited to share our results with you. Here they are in no particular order: (UPDATE: Click on the links to go to these posts.)

A review of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and how it worked for my Kindergartener.
How I taught my Kindergartener about the solar system.
My Kindergartener’s gardening and seed sprouting experiments.
Beginning Math for my Kindergartener
Everyday Geography Lessons
Character Building with a Responsibility Chart (which is not working at the moment)
Science Classes at the Sandy Creek Nature Center
Mama’s Storytelling/Storytelling as a Teaching Tool
My Kindergartener’s natural interest in nature and animals and where that has led us.
My Kindergartener wants to study the human anatomy!
A review of Discover Your Child’s Learning Style and an assessment of my family’s learning styles.
….and more!

So I hope you’ll subscribe to my blog or come back often. Unfortunately, I can’t promise that I’ll blog regularly or often. My boys keep me too busy. But you can bet some of these topics will be fodder for my newspaper columns, and I have to write those every week, so something will get done! Hopefully.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you’ll tell me that you were here.

Posted in Homeschooling, Blog Business, Kindergarten | 1 Comment »

Tags: homeschooling, blog business, kindergarten goals for the year, happy birthday to my boys, parenting

June 30, 2011

How to Homeschool Kindergarten (with information on the law in Georgia)

I explained in this post why I would delay sending my four-year-old to Kindergarten this fall, if I were going to send him to public school. However, in our “home school” I’ve decided to officially consider him a Kindergartener, starting in June 2011. This is because I feel he’s ready for a higher level of learning.

First, some legal information pertaining to the law in my home state of Georgia, U.S.A.:

According to the law in Georgia, I don’t have to officially declare that we’re homeschooling until my child is six years old. Sending in a Declaration of Intent for Kindergarten is not necessary UNLESS my child has already been enrolled in school for 20 or more days.

Here is an excerpt of the law: “20-2-690.1 Compulsory Attendance: a) Every parent, guardian, or other person residing within this state having control or charge of any child or children between their sixth and sixteenth birthdays shall enroll and send such child or children to a public school, a private school, or a home study program that meets the requirements for a public school, a private school, or a home study program …”

The kindergarten (5 yr old) “exception”: Georgia Code 20-2-150: “Eligibility for enrollment” states … “(c) All children enrolled for 20 school days or more in the public schools of this state prior to their seventh birthday shall become subject to all of the provisions of this article, the provisions of Code Sections 20-2-690 through 20-2-701, and the rules and regulations of the State Board of Education relating to compulsory school attendance even though they have not attained seven years of age.”

According to the Georgia Department of Education, many homeschooling parents send in a Declaration of Intent to their local school district because they think that kindergarten is compulsory. Therefore, do not send in a declaration of intent for kindergarten unless your child has already been attending a public school.

To read the full law regarding homeschooling in Georgia, click here. Or click here for the State of Georgia Department of Education page regarding homeschooling.

So I’m very excited to have a Kindergartener in my house!

Yes, I know it’s the beginning of summer, but what I love about homeschooling is that I can teach my child something specific when I feel he’s ready to learn it. More importantly, however, I believe learning happens all the time, and even when he’s playing and exploring his world, he’s learning. When he’s interested in something, we can learn more about it. So even though it’s June, we’re doing homeschool.

There’s no right way to homeschool a child in Kindergarten. I don’t believe it’s necessary to purchase curriculums. Mostly what children need at this time is to play and interact with the world around them. For example, I wrote a column about how important it is for children to play make-believe. You can read that here.

I don’t think Kindergarten has to look too much different from preschool. I have written several posts about our preschool, which you can access here. All of that still applies to Kindergarten.

For our “Kindergarten” I am adding a few things:

We’ve started Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, which takes only 20 minutes a day. (UPDATE: You can read about our experience and my review of the book by clicking here.) I wish I could say that I did extensive research on reading programs and decided that this would be the best program according to my child’s learning style, but the reason I picked it is much more mundane than that. Another homeschooler who I admire very much said it worked well for one of her children, and then I found the book used on Amazon for about $10. For that price, I thought I would try it, and if it didn’t work, I would either wait awhile or look into other programs. I’m happy to say that we’ve completed 1/4 of the lessons, and my son is doing very well, and he’s enjoying it! I’ll write more about why I like it and our schedule for it in a future post. I’ll also be able to tell you if we continue to like it. I agree with this veteran homeschool mom about the importance of learning how to read. (If the child is ready.) We shouldn’t sweat over the other stuff, especially at this age.
I have looked over the class curriculum for our local school’s Kindergarten class (which isn’t easy to read, so I won’t share it here), and I have also consulted my favorite reference when it comes to a typical course of study: World Book Typical Course of Study. (UPDATE: World Book has removed this page from their site, and I tried to contact them to see why, but I haven’t gotten a response. If I find the resource again, I will update.) I mentioned this reference in my preschool posts too. This is a not a list that I’m going to stress over or feel like I have to check everything off on. I’m just using it as a guide. For example, I see that Kindergarteners might begin to learn about the earth, moon, stars and planets. I know that my son was interested in learning about space in the past and enjoyed looking at some library books about it. So I’m going to keep a look out for other books and activities related to this subject. There’s a lot on the list that my son has already learned about, but some of it gives me ideas and opens my eyes to what he might be interested in and what he might be ready for, so that’s how I’ll use it.
The World Book list gave me one of my ideas that I’m going to implement starting in July. It says that Kindergarteners learn the meanings of holidays, traditions and customs. We have read books about most of the holidays over the past couple of years, but I haven’t gone in depth about the origins or meanings of most holidays. He’s ready for this, and I think he’ll enjoy it, so I’m going to make a point to build a lesson around each holiday. I have already found some books about Independence Day. This will double as a history lesson and his introduction into the history of his country, the United States of America.
I’m going to be on the look out for simple ways to introduce more math to him. Lately he’s been interested in counting to 100, and he’s starting to “get it,” but I thought it would help him to see the numbers on a board. So I went by a teacher’s store in Athens and found a poster with the numbers from 1-100. He loves it and has already counted the numbers twice. He noticed the pattern in the numbers too, which is what I was counting on (pun intended). (I thought about making my own poster, but the one I found ($2.50) didn’t cost much more than a poster board and pen, and it saves me time.)
We also picked up an inexpensive map of the U.S. and a poster about plants (my son is really into planting right now). I’ll talk about these in future posts, and I’ll be sure to write about our other Kindergarten activities over this next year. (So I hope you’ll subscribe to my blog!)
In addition to this, we’ll continue to go on field trips, explore the world and make up projects according to my son’s interests!

I also wrote a newspaper column on this topic for The Barrow Journal, and you can read that by clicking here.

Please share your plans for Kindergarten!

Posted in Homeschooling, Kindergarten, My Newspaper Columns, Resources for Georgia Homeschoolers | 3 Comments »

Tags: georgia law for homeschooling kindergarten, homeschooling, how to homeschool kindergarten, kindergarten, kindergarten requirements, my newspaper columns, parenting

May 20, 2011

Kindergarten and Homeschooling

I have to admit that when it comes to Kindergarten, sometimes I wonder if I should enroll my 4-year-old in public school. I have little memories of my Kindergarten, but it seems like a good time to me. It’s a place where my son could get used to other kids his age and simply have the “school experience.” But then I see how well he is doing now, and I think about all the things we can do in our “home school.” I know it will be a different experience, but a good one. Maybe a better one too. In addition to this, I know that if I want to homeschool, it will be much easier to do it from the get-go.

While mulling over the possibility of sending him to school, however, I looked up how to enroll him. I noticed that the requirement is that he must be five years old by September 1st to enroll in that school year. That made my mind up immediately. I would not enroll him in Kindergarten this coming year, even if I was going to send him to public school. You see, my son’s birthday is August 25th. If he were born only a week later, he’d have to wait another year. But if I send him to school, he would be the youngest five year old in the class. There would be a big difference between his “five years” and the five years of a child that was born in, say, February or March.

This was brought to my attention when I read part of The Little Boy Book by Sheila Moore. (I should note that I didn’t finish the book because it seemed a little outdated, and I had already gotten similar information from Michael Gurian’s book, The Wonder of Boys. But I do think it was a helpful book.) She notes that boys develop differently than little girls and sometimes they need more time when it comes to entering school. As I mentioned, I had also learned a lot about the development differences in boys and girls in The Wonder of Boys. I highly recommend that book. (FYI: He wrote a book about girls too.)

I don’t know many girls of my son’s ages to compare them with, but I sense this advice is true. Academically my son is already in a Kindergarten level, but in other ways, I feel that my 4-year-old would benefit from waiting a year to enroll in Kindergarten.

Recently I met the daughter of one of our neighbors who happens to be a Kindergarten teacher at the school my son would attend, if I were going to send him to public school. She asked me if my son would be going to Kindergarten soon. When I told her I was planning to homeschool, she said, “Wonderful!” Then when I told her his birthday and my thoughts about waiting another year for Kindergarten if I were going to send him, she nodded and said, “I highly recommend that, especially for boys. Sometimes they seem to have a harder time adjusting to Kindergarten.”

It felt very gratifying hearing this from a Kindergarten teacher that could possibly be my son’s teacher! She was also very encouraging and positive about homeschooling, so that felt good too.

I am going to continue working with my son in a no-pressure way this year on his academics. Since we are homeschooling, I don’t have to worry about holding him back a year, but I can go at his own pace. I found this encouraging post on Simple Homeschool about going at a child’s pace, especially at this age, and it says everything I would say on that topic.

What are your thoughts about sending your child to Kindergarten?

Update June 3, 2011: Just found this interesting article, which says it all! Psychology Today: Early Homeschooling Can Save American Schools

Update June 29, 2011: Be sure to read this post about How to Homeschool Kindergarten (with information about the law in Georgia.)

For more of my posts on how we do kindergarten, click on “kindergarten” under Mama’s Main Matters in the left-hand margin.

Posted in Homeschooling, Kindergarten | 2 Comments »

Tags: boys and kindergarten, homeschooling, kindergarten, parenting, preschool, what's the right age for kindergarten?

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January / February Activities with Small Children

Homeschool Priorities Part 6 of 6: Teaching Responsibility

Homeschool Priorities Part 4: Teaching him how to find answers

Homeschool Priorities Part 3: Exploration * Nature

Homeschool Priorities Part 2: Imagination * Play * Motion * Literature

Setting Our Homeschool Priorities for Two Boys, ages 5 & 2

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The Importance of Play in Children’s Lives

Knee-High Naturalist Class at the Sandy Creek Nature Center in Athens, Georgia

The Eastern King Snake & Our Snake Project

A Kindergarten Child-Led Project: Seeds, Plants, Gardening

REVIEW: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

Making my child excited about reading is the first step in getting him to read. I’m grateful that 100 Lessons got us on the road to reading. Yet, as we got further into it, things changed.

Music Appreciation with Beethoven

Or An Example of Child Led Learning…

The Benefits of Storytelling

Two Stories I Made Up For My Five-Year-Old — to Show That YOU Can Do It Too!

How I Use Storytelling to Enrich the Lives of My Children

A few observations about my storytelling since I read Tell Me a Story:

Happy Birthday to My Boys and Kindergarten Goals for this Next Year

How to Homeschool Kindergarten (with information on the law in Georgia)

Kindergarten and Homeschooling

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