project-based homeschooling

May 7, 2013

Embracing the Chaos, Part 2

{Creating a Welcoming Environment for Homeschooling}

When I wrote my column Embracing the Chaos, I intended to write a post more like this, but it took a life of its own, and it turned out to be a good column, so there you go – that’s how writing happens and that’s good. But now I’m following up with a this-is-my-chaos-and-how-I’m-handling-it-post. I’m not offering any real organization tips because I don’t have those. I’m just winging it! If nothing else, I hope this post can give you solace as you work through your own chaos.

First of all, it’s important to remember that Chaos is Normal. Almost everybody, regardless of where they live or how they live, feels like life gets chaotic sometimes. (This is why some people move into monasteries.) I don’t have any scientific evidence for this, but I would bet my dollar that the people who are more willing and able to go with the flow handle chaos better. This will serve them very well when they have children, and even better if they decide to homeschool. But nobody, and I seriously doubt that anybody, can handle all kinds of chaos all of the time. We all have what we’re good at, and we all have those things that make us feel flustered and overwhelmed.

I’m kind of in the middle. I’m not a neat freak (anybody who has visited my house and seen my clutter can attest to this), but I also like to have a certain amount of organization. I’m always wishing I had more shelves and more closets and more drawers to put things. I wish I had the time to sort through my junk. I wish I could get away with throwing out my husband’s junk. You know what I mean.

But I don’t have money, time or a blind husband, so what I do is live with quite a bit of clutter, and I chisel away at it once in awhile. As the boys get older, I’ll be able to throw more things away. For example, I just recently took all the baby and toddler clothes to the thrift store! Yay! This has freed up space and boxes. So hang tight…just when you’re starting to feel overwhelmed, your kids are going to outgrow one mess and then you can make room for another!

Space for Project-based Homeschooling

When I read Lori Pickert’s book on project-based homeschooling, I took note that one very important aspect of the Reggio educational philosophy is environment. Having a nice space for the kids to work in is crucial. I agree with that. Also, having all the supplies within reach and looking attractive is important too. How I would love that.

I’m very lucky that a few years ago, my husband agreed we needed a space for the homeschooling, so he and my father-in-law helped paint our never-used dining room and turn it into what I now call the “activity room.” (And thank you, Mom, for the table and chairs!) It’s in the heart of the house, and I know it couldn’t be anywhere else. If we had turned one of the rooms upstairs into an activity room, we’d never use it. The boys live and play most of the time downstairs. Having all educational tools and art supplies in the activity room has created an atmosphere where learning, creating and building is part of our lives – just like the T.V. is part of our lives! (Seriously, how many families have the television in the heart of their house, but they tuck the kid clutter into a back room? Why not also have the open-ended toys, art studio or science lab there too?)

Of course this means that the downstairs is going to get messy. Very messy. If you’re having trouble with that, then I suggest you read the original Embracing the Chaos.

Despite my efforts, the activity room can get quite messy and disorganized, but this doesn’t stop the boys from being productive.

It’s hard to keep everything looking tidy and organized, especially the art supplies. Despite my laments, I do try to organize and clean up. Rearranging the shelves can be great for getting kids to notice things they haven’t used in awhile. But despite my upkeep, the place gets jumbled and cluttered. But here’s the good part:

I’ve noticed that even though the activity room is messy, the boys know where their art supplies are, and they can find them. The mess doesn’t stop my boys from being creative. In fact, my six-year-old’s creative mind has been exploding recently. He’s been doing so many projects that I can’t keep up with him. I spend most of my clean-up time just making space for the new mess.

Having the supplies accessible to the children is more important than having them in a specific place or shown attractively on the shelves.

The same goes for the supplies that can’t fit into the activity room. There’s not a lot of space in there, so we have ~~junk~~ supplies all over the house. For example, I keep a box of odd items on my closet shelf, which the boys know they can ask for; an armoire in my bedroom is home for the paints, games and some other art supplies; and building supplies are in my six-year-old’s closet upstairs. This stuff is scattered around the house, but the boys know where everything is, and if they can’t reach it, they can ask for it at any time. (However, I recommend keeping the main supplies out where kids can see them because anything tucked away can be forgotten. I only do this for overflow items.)

What’s funny is that the building supplies is trash. I taught my six-year-old how to recycle cereal boxes, toilet paper tubes, milk jugs, and other odd items. He caught on a little too well, and he began to save things without my noticing. Then I noticed ~~trash~~ recyclables falling out of his closet! Now we have organized his building supplies into two big plastic boxes inside his closet, and he has explicit orders to not dig anything else out of the trash until he uses this stuff up! (see picture below)

Yep, that’ll make a good story someday, but I’m still proud of his enthusiasm and willingness to see an object and say, “I’m going to make something with that.” My three-year-old has even caught on, and one day when he finished off a big goldfish cracker box, he wouldn’t let me throw it away. “I make somethin’ with that!” he said. “Oh yeah? What are you going to make?” I asked. “Bot!” he said. Sure enough, the next day he had me cutting it into half so that he could have a “boat,” and it even floated in the bathtub!

If our supplies weren’t at my boys’ fingertips, I’m not sure these creative juices would be flowing. When I get overwhelmed by the chaos, I remember that I’m more than willing to put up with it during this era of my life that will go by so quickly.

Upstairs vs. Downstairs

My boys do spend time upstairs, especially on rainy days, and it’s a welcome break for me when they decide to go up there. What’s my secret? I put lots of toys up there. The trucks, the noise makers, the billions of stuffed animals, and the little stuff that they rarely play with anymore. (I get a lot of protests from my idea of giving these things away, but someday I’ll achieve that goal.)

I try to keep toys downstairs such as blocks, Legos, pretend food and a small kitchen set, their overflowing box of animals and dinosaurs (which is what they play with the most), and a toy cash register. These are fun, but they’re open-ended, and they require a lot of imagination. Since we’re downstairs more often, the boys play with this stuff more. See where I’m going? Not that they don’t get imaginative with their cars and trucks, but those things that bleep and honk and play music so loudly, well, I just like them to be upstairs, if you know what I mean. These things do trickle downstairs, and that’s okay. I don’t make them stay upstairs, but when we get to a serious cleaning day, I’ll sort the toys this way, and put those things back upstairs.

How to Display the Artwork?

Left to right: My son’s treasures & projects are displayed in his room on our old changing table. A small dresser has become another display area. Recyclables, which will be used in future projects, are kept in his closet where he can reach them.

Any project that my sons make will stay in the activity room for a very short time. There’s not much room in there for displaying their projects. After the project is finished, if it’s three-dimensional, it’ll go upstairs in their room. In my six-year-old’s room, we converted our old diaper changing station into some shelves for him to display his work and treasures. Eventually his projects will either be thrown out or recycled (except for a few extra special ones). We take pictures of everything for a keepsakes. My three-year-old doesn’t have a big collection of projects yet, so his stuff is on a small table in his room.

As for paintings and other two-dimensional artwork, we have one section of our kitchen wall that is designated as the “art gallery.”

So that’s the gist of it. I live in chaos, but I’m embracing it…kind of…at least until my boys move out! Now please tell me about your chaos and how you deal with it.

Posted in Homeschooling, Project-based Homeschooling | 13 Comments »

Tags: environment, homeschooling, mess, parenting, project-based homeschooling, reggio-inspired, room, space

April 14, 2013

The Little Projects: Project-based Homeschooling

{A.K.A. I don’t plan any crafts in this house.} {In between projects} {Exploring mediums}

I’ve written about what I’ve considered our “project-based homeschooling” in terms of long projects in which my son learned about a specific topic and also spent some considerable time constructing something, such as in Building the Titanic and Rockets and the Benefits of Failure. But to tell the truth, he spends most of his time doing what I think of as “little projects.” That is, they are projects he has come up with on his own, but they aren’t tied to what I consider a long-term study project. Not that they couldn’t become that, and in a way, you could consider some of what he’s doing long-term study in that he’s learning some skills such as sewing.

For me, this is what homeschooling is all about. I want my children’s imaginations to be unfettered. I want them to have fun. I don’t want them to be told what they can or can’t do. I want them to have the time and the resources (to the best of my ability) to develop their imaginations and real, quality skills along the way!

I’ve already written about how my boys love to build. You can read about many of the building and art supplies we keep on hand and ideas my son “found” last year in Boys Like to Build. You can read about the benefits of building with Legos or blocks in Little Builders.

Here, I want to show you examples of other projects. For lack of a better term, they’re kind of “artsy.” How did he come up with these ideas? Many different ways:

He “finds” ideas in television shows, such as Blues Clues, or he happens to find an idea in a book or on a pamphlet at Hobby Lobby, and he tells me he wants to make it.
Some ideas are from pure imagination.
Some ideas I lead him to. Occasionally I’ll see something online that I think he might like or could easily do, and I show it to him. If he likes it, he wants to make it.
For holiday craft ideas, I don’t plan anything. I let my son google “Easter crafts,” and then we look at the zillion of images and he picks what he likes!
Most artwork comes from just playing with different mediums. I keep all art supplies out where the kids can reach them at any time. Here’s a short list of what we’ve got:
- paints, brushes
- construction paper
- markers, crayons, pens, pencils
- glue, tape
- lots of fun stuff such as sequins, pom poms, little wooden cubes, etc.
- modeling clay
- recently added: watercolor pencils and watercolor paper!
- sewing stuff: fabric, felt, fabric scissors, craft thread, needles (but the needles are kept in a safer place)

We have one section of the wall in our kitchen that is our “art gallery.”

I am the “YES” Mom.

Part of “project-based homeschooling” is creating an environment where supplies are on hand and easily accessible to my children. From the time my son was three- or four-years-old, I’ve been doing simple art with him – nothing stressful for me and nothing that needed a lot of pre-planning. For example, when he was two and three, he just liked to cut paper, so I turned his paper bits into animals. We did that for the longest time, and sometimes my boys will still ask me to make them a paper animal!

We have a routine, and there are things that I require of my children, but I try very hard to always say “Yes! Go ahead!” whenever they want to paint, draw or create something. It doesn’t have to be a certain time of day – I just let them do it. The only time that I may say no is when it’s, say, fifteen minutes before our evening routine begins, and someone wants to pull all the paints out. Then I’ll say, “Well, you’re going to need to get your bath in a few minutes, so why don’t we plan to paint tomorrow?” But if it’s crayons or markers, I’d probably be inclined to say “Go ahead!” even at that time.

My kids don’t “create” everyday or every week, but looking at all the pieces of artwork in the house, I know that they’ve had a lot of fun and freedom. It does make for a messy house, and even though I always make the boys clean up after themselves, there’s still a lot of mess left over waiting for me to pick it up. (And it can just keep waiting.) I’ll be writing about this “chaos” and our messy but productive environment in upcoming posts.

Art Lessons

It’s always in the back of my mind to get a little more formal with the art. Show them different mediums, artists, and styles. I’m really looking forward to reading more of Amy Hood’s amy hood arts blog for ideas on teaching art to my children. But right now I can hardly keep up with my son’s ideas, so for awhile, we’ll just go with his ideas.

Here’s a few of his self-made projects:

Making a bed for one of his stuffed animals. He used a box, fabric & a glue gun. He’s never felt the need to paint the boxes or add embellishes.

Making an alien puppet. This idea came to him after we made the dinosaur puppets below.

Here it is!

I saw the dinosaur & rocket puppets online & thought they’d be easy to make. The six-year-old made the one in the middle. We both worked on the green one. I made the one on the right.

The rocket puppet. I cut out the pattern & the six-year-old sewed it.

I started this lizard for a Christmas gift, but I don’t have the patience my son has, so he had to finish it for me. ;o

Our Thanksgiving wreath. Idea given to us by a friend. (Once my six-year-old hears good ideas, there’s no stopping him.)

My six-year-old found this pamphlet with instructions on how to make a lion puppet at Hobby Lobby. He bugged me for months to make it, and we finally did. The instructions were not good, by the way, so I had to improvise on some of it. I helped with the sewing/cutting on this, but the six-year-old did a lot of it!

Nature art. My six-year-old did this all by himself. He got the idea after seeing some similar artwork at the Botanical Garden.

Clay is a huge hit with my boys! My six-year-old watched this tutorial on how to make this car.

This tree was his idea.

I’m really impressed with how my son has taken up sewing. (I don’t sew.) He saw this snake fabric at the store, and he said he’d make a snake with it. And he did! I helped, but it was all his idea, and he was very fussy about how it needed to be done.

Every day my son carries some little toy around the house all day, and at night, he puts it to “sleep” on his nightstand. One day he had the idea to make a bed for his toys! I didn’t even know what he was doing until he was almost done.

I can’t forget the three-year-old! He LOVES to paint, cut paper, glue, build with blocks, make pretend food, paste things into his “notebook,” and create different things too. At Christmas, I got him these little wooden cubes and sticks. I let him make all the messes he wants to. (This picture was taken the day after Christmas, which is why there’s a lot of odd stuff in the room.)

The three-year-old doesn’t have the motor skills to make things like my six-year-old, but he’s often creating interesting things with blocks or cards or anything he can stack.

The three-year-old made this flower face with some wooden shapes. I think the six-year-old had showed him how to do this once.

The Benefits

I know there are more benefits to living this lifestyle than I’m even aware of, but I do feel confident to say that my boys are developing their imaginations, self-esteem, fine motor skills, problem-solving skills, and a general awareness of how things work. By experimenting, they are learning how things work together, and learning how to deal with the frustrations that come with trial and error. I try my best not to interfere with how they plan out their work unless they ask for my help or get very stuck. I can hardly wait to see what they come up with next!

Note: I have noticed that in most of my photographs, especially these, my boys are in pajamas. Ahem. Just so you know, I do dress my boys! But with that thought, I’ll leave you with this quote:

Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. ~Lewis Carroll

Please share your children’s artwork with me!

Posted in 1st Grade, Homeschooling, Kindergarten, Project-based Homeschooling | 8 Comments »

Tags: art, homeschooling, in between projects, letting kids use their imaginations, Little Projects, project-based homeschooling

April 9, 2013

Inspire Kids: Coastal Plains Herper

My six-year-old and I are almost finished with his snake book. I’ll write about it when we’re finished, but in short, it’s a 3-ring binder “book” we started nearly two years ago because snakes are my son’s passion. At least, he tells me he wants to learn about snakes and that he’s going to study snakes when he grows up – he’s been saying that since he was four (almost five). He’s been able to learn about and touch a lot of snakes at the nature center, which is where this obsession started. So we bought him a “Snakes of Georgia” poster, and a long time ago, I suggested we make a book about those snakes in the poster. One page per snake. (Little did I know I was silently feeding his interests.)

And this is where Brandon’s Herp Adventures come in. Because our routine with making this snake book includes letting my son watch a video about each snake, and as we started looking up videos, we came across Brandon’s videos quite often. Now I always search for one of his videos first because I know they’re good, and he’ll give good information. And I love how this young, amateur herpetologist/film maker has used the Internet to educate people. I think he’s a good role model for my son.

I wish Brandon posted an e-mail address so that I could write him and say thank you for his videos and let him know how much my six-year-old enjoys them. I also think he might enjoy viewing our own Backyard Adventure involving a black rat snake eating a squirrel!

Anyway, I can’t embed one of his videos, so I invite you to click on the above screen shot and go to his YouTube channel. If you have a budding herpetologist in your family, you won’t want to miss any of his stuff!

pink columbines Be sure to check out the other posts in this series under the tag “Inspire Kids.” If my six-year-old likes it, then maybe your children will too!

Posted in Inspire Kids, Project-based Homeschooling | 6 Comments »

Tags: Brandon's Herp Adventures, Coastal Plains Herper, herpetology, Inspire Kids, project-based homeschooling, snakes

March 27, 2013

What Is Project-Based Homeschooling?

{Project-based Learning} {Reggio-Inspired}

Over a year ago, I found Lori Pickert’s blog and the terms “project-based homeschooling,” “project-based learning” and “reggio-inspired” started to dance in my head. What I read on her site echoed my own thoughts on how I wanted to homeschool, but she defined the terms better for me. I think many homeschoolers can relate to this method of homeschooling, and you may find you’re already doing part of this in your homeschool like I did. What I find helpful in Lori’s advice is how she spells out exactly how to “mentor” my child.

After reading her book, interviewing her, and especially after trying to implement the strategies she has outlined with my own child, I’m starting to “get it.”

When I was going through some rough spots during my son’s Titanic project, it was hard to foresee the value of letting a child direct the course of a project. Sure, I’m all about doing a child-led approach in our homeschool, but letting him make all those mistakes in a small building project and then endure the temper tantrums when it didn’t work? Shouldn’t I direct him more? But as Lori has said, it’s a process, and we have to learn how to become mentors just as our children are learning to direct their learning.

This process is about learning how to step back and see the value in letting your children take the lead. It’s also about learning how to “step in” to support their interests by helping them learn how to find answers to their questions, solve their own problems, achieve their own goals, and watch them become deeply engrossed in their work.

Children don’t get personal mentors in traditional school, but every child – homeschooled or not – has the opportunity to be mentored by a conscientious parent who knows him/her best, who is with him/her through it all, and who can guide him/her to the resources he/she needs to become more than passive learners.

Lori has been busy making additions to her site so that those new to Project-based Homeschooling can have help getting started. She is my mentor in this process, so if you want to go to the source, go to her website, and be sure to check out 10 Steps to Getting Started with Project-based Homeschooling and her FAQ.

But here’s a bullet list of what I have learned…at least, this is how I view project-based homeschooling for my family thus far.

I’m not numbering them because all these elements work together to create this lifestyle of learning. Project-based homeschooling is like putting together a puzzle. It doesn’t matter which piece you start with, but as you lay them all on the table, you’ll start to see how they fit together to make the whole picture.

Create an environment where all questions and interests are honored. All projects should stem from your child’s true interests - not yours or a prescribed list of what a child should learn.
Create an environment where your children can freely access a variety of materials to create and learn with. As long as it’s safe, let them make a mess! Also, don’t plan so many crafts. Show them how to use the materials and let them experiment and get to know them. Sometimes a planned craft may be helpful for this, but you should allow your child to experiment and create according to his whims. (I’ll be writing a post about our home learning environment in the future.)
PBH is not “arts and crafts.” By making representations of the Titanic and the Apollo Saturn V, my son had to inquire, study and really ingest those structures. He learned a lot of problem solving skills in the process of making the models, and I’m guessing the stories of the Titanic and Saturn V will stay in his memory much longer!

Also part of this “environment” is giving them rich experiences: field trips, meeting people, showing them how to use the library, exploring the computer. Teach them how to use the resources that are available to them to answer their questions.

Think out loud as you go through the process to find answers to their or your questions. This is part of modeling the behavior you want them to use later when they are more capable of working independently. (This is something I need to work on.)

In the beginning, you may need to “silently feed” their interests. If you know your child loves tigers, lay out a book about tigers. Take them to the zoo. Find a show for them to watch about tigers. Suggest they make a tiger out of clay or paint one for the wall. Or fill a notebook with tiger facts.

Observe what they do, how they play, and note what their questions are. Keeping a journal is helpful. If you can’t answer a question, try to go back to it. Show him you’re writing it down, and schedule a time to work on answering his questions.

When you think they’re ready, ask, “Do you want to make a project out of this?”

Start asking them, “Where do you think we could find the answer to that question?” Or as Lori suggested in my interview with her, write down a list of several places you could look and ask the child where he wants to start first.

When assisting them with their creations, always go with their ideas first. Let them make mistakes. Let them make a mess! Only make suggestions when they get stumped or ask you for help.

Sometimes a well-placed suggestion works wonders. Don’t get hung-up like I did thinking you can never make a suggestion. As Lori said, “It just means waiting to see if he will have his own ideas and supporting those first.” (Our Titanic project was jump-started by my suggestion to make the Titanic out of clay, and when that failed, my husband suggested he make it out of cardboard.)

To help him work through his frustrations, start looking for real-world examples of artists, makers, builders, and entrepreneurs who have failed and had to start over again. Talk about the process of goal-setting, rough drafts, trial and error. (If your child is old enough, the NASA Missions are a perfect example of this.)

Start sharing your work/hobbies/goals with your children. Think aloud when you’re working. Share with them your frustrations and how you’re working through them. If you need help working on your own projects, see Lori’s PBH for adults.

Schedule project time. There’s no right or wrong to how much time – The important thing is making time for it, and making it a regular part of your routine. Schedule time to show your child fun building or art materials and follow their direction. Schedule time to go through your journal and answer their questions. Schedule time to work on their ideas.

Get in the habit of asking, “Do you want to do more with this? Do you want to learn more about this?”

If they don’t want to do more, be okay with that. Later you will ask them again as you continue to refer to your journal. Some interests may peter out quickly. Others may become deep interests.

You don’t have to make a project out of every interest your child has. Pick and choose according to your thoughtful knowledge and observations about your child. Of course, older children will tell you what they want to work on.

Your homeschool can be all project-based, or project-based learning could be part of it. For example, currently I’ve also created a reading and math program for my son. Follow your instincts. Whatever you do, it shouldn’t cause you a lot of stress. Although PBH is a lot of work for the parent, it should be rewarding and fun too.

Remember this is a slow process. Build it up over time. Create the environment over time. Learn how to mentor over time. Let your children take control slowly as they grow.

If you haven’t already, be sure to read the interview with Lori Pickert on Project-based Homeschooling for Young Children. The last post is open for your questions about PBH. Be sure to read the great questions and answers that commenters have left already!

Okay, so what do you think? Would you add something to this list? Or eliminate something?

Posted in Homeschooling, Project-based Homeschooling | 4 Comments »

Tags: education, homeschooling, Lori Pickert, mentoring children, parenting, project-based homeschooling, reggio-inspired, what is project-based homeschooling?

March 8, 2013

Project-based Homeschooling for Young Children: Interview with Lori Pickert, Part 3

Rocket Project This is Part 3 of my interview with Lori Pickert, author of Project-based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-directed Learners. Please click here to start with Part 1. Scroll below to leave your own questions for Lori.

My questions have to do with getting started in Project-based Learning with such young children who obviously don’t have the experience to direct their learning. I sent Lori six, multi-layered questions, and not only did she answer them, she gave very detailed answers, which I appreciate very much. However, they were too long to put into one post, so I have divided the interview into three posts – this being the last. (Note that I have emphasized parts of the interview in bold text.)

The good news is that Lori has promised to be available to answer YOUR questions. See below. I hope you’ve enjoyed this interview, learned from it as I have, and I hope you’ll contribute to the discussion below. Thank you!

PART 3: Interview with Lori Pickert on Getting Started with Project-based Homeschooling with Young Children

4. I liked a comment you once made to me on Twitter that for youngsters, we need to “silently feed” their interests. Can you speak more about that for the sake of my readers? I think I have been doing this in many ways with my son, but it has never felt very child-led to me. However, I know if I ask him his opinion on things, he’s not going to articulate exactly what I know he’s deeply interested in. And if we “silently feed the interests of young children,” how do we transition them into doing most of the work on their own? Is this something that we can expect will happen naturally as they get older? Have you noticed an approximate age that all this gets easier?

Lori: The age at which children will take over directing and managing their own learning depends on many things — your comfort level, your child’s personality/temperament, his level of independence, and his experience doing this type of work. Some children have a stronger need to collaborate and prefer involving others in their work. If that’s the case, if you don’t provide an opportunity for him to work with other children, he’ll probably depend on you to be his co-learner. Other children prefer to work alone, even in a classroom situation.

A child of six might conceive of a project and pretty much carry it through to the end without needing you to do much more than supply resources and transportation. Another child might not work that independently until much later.

When I talk about silently feeding a child’s interests, I’m usually contrasting that to sitting down and having a purposeful discussion with a child about what they would like to study. Instead, you simply enhance their environment and support the work they’re already doing, letting them discover and use what you’ve provided in their own way.

As an example, if you know your child is very interested in dinosaurs, you might sit down and say, “Do you want to do a project on dinosaurs? What questions do you have? What do you want to learn?” Or you could silently feed that interest by bringing in a few library books, hanging a couple of posters, putting plastic dinosaurs in the block basket, and so forth. Then as your child articulates questions, you ease into project work.

This works well for children who are resistant to adult involvement, who are prejudiced against anything “educational,” who are (maybe rightfully) suspicious of your motives, and so on. Maybe you’ve had a bad experience turning something they enjoyed into a unit that they did not enjoy. Maybe they’re deschooling and are afraid of anything that smacks of school. Maybe the words “project” and “learning” have negative connotations for them right now. Or maybe they just prefer to be completely independent.

It can also work well as an introduction to project work if a child is too young or inexperienced to understand what you mean when you say, “What would you like to learn about?” If they have an obvious interest, you can begin to feed that interest and support their work immediately.

Even an older child can be confused about what you mean when you ask what they’d like to learn more about. Silently feeding their existing interest can help them put the experience before the jargon.

It is still “child-led” or self-directed — you are simply offering, without expectation or demand, materials and experiences that can provoke further investigation, play, and questions. And as they research and make and share, you begin to talk about that work in a way that introduces the ideas of doing long-term projects. Next time, they’ll probably tell you what they want to learn about next.

5. Finally, much of the time that I would like to dedicate to project time is eaten up by the demands of a particularly needy three-year-old. Do you have any general advice for moms of youngsters who are interested in PBH, but are having a hard time “doing it all”?

Lori: You can’t do it all perfectly all the time, so relax and concentrate on setting and meeting some small goals.

One of the reasons we focus on “small wins” in the PBH forum is because focusing on what’s working is usually the best way to make more of it! Alas, focusing on whatever we perceive to be lacking is not as motivating.

Younger children benefit enormously from being at the edges of project work. They can pick up the habits and routines and attitudes of their older siblings. They learn early on to be independent and clean up after themselves, and they imitate the creative work and play they observe. Give them the chance to do what their siblings are doing if they are interested. Let them experiment with the same materials as much as possible; give them age-appropriate versions to work with, and let them have their turn getting your full attention as they work on their own ideas.

Look for pockets of time during the day when you can focus on your older child — even for just a few minutes — and use that time to have him tell you about what he made, what his plans are, his new questions, and so on.

Use time and activities you already do to fold in project work. When you read aloud, choose a project-related book. Try reading aloud right before dedicated project time. If they watch a little TV, use that time to watch project-related videos from the library. At dinner, have your son tell his dad about what he did today and the newest things he’s learned, and so on.

Finally, be aware that the kids are always getting older and more mature and it’s likely that everything will be completely different in six months!

Even when it feels like you aren’t accomplishing as much as you want, keep living a life that prioritizes learning, making, and sharing. It’s those underlying values that will form the foundation of his learning life. ~Lori Pickert

***

Thank you, Lori, for taking the time to answer my difficult and long-winded questions! I also have a couple of extra questions that might be helpful to my readers, and I’m curious too!

What are you working on now?

Lori: Currently I’m writing a book for adults who want to learn to mentor themselves (a more formal companion to my PBH for Grown-Ups series) that also folds in advice for mentoring children (without necessarily homeschooling!) as well as building a family culture that supports this type of learning and living.

Do you have any other resources to help parents get started in project-based homeschooling?

Lori: We have a forum with over 600 members. It’s a warm, supportive, inclusive community, and I answer questions and brainstorm with readers there daily.

I’m also working on a mini-guide to starting PBH and another guide for starting a project group. We’re enhancing the site with a gallery of children’s projects and a forum for people who would like to meet other PBHers in their area. And I will be publishing a series of e-books that drill down deeper into various aspects of PBH (focusing on the different age ranges from preK to teen, authentic art, journaling, and so on) so people can get more detailed information in the areas they need most.

I’ve received tremendous feedback from my readers during the last six months. My intention now is to create a foundation of supportive work that will give people the help they need to try these ideas. I’m very available on my site, in my forum, and on Twitter for people who want to make contact, ask questions, or offer suggestions. I strongly believe adults need the same type of learning experiences that I champion for children: to follow their own path, work at their own pace, explore their particular interests, make mistakes, and work within a supportive community. If we can learn this way, it makes it so much more likely that our children will, too.

***

These questions had to do with what I, Shelli, needed to learn. Now, what do YOU need to learn? If you have additional questions or comments about project-based homeschooling for Lori Pickert, please leave them in the comments section, and she will be happy to answer them for you. I will also respond to any questions or comments directed at me. Thank you!

Click here to read Part 1 of this interview. Click here to read Part 2.

Posted in 1st Grade, Homeschooling, Kindergarten, Project-based Homeschooling | 21 Comments »

Tags: child led learning, education, homeschooling with younger children, How to start project-based learning, Interview with Lori Pickert on Getting Started with Project-based Homeschooling with Young Children, project-based homeschooling

March 6, 2013

Project-based Homeschooling for Young Children: Interview with Lori Pickert, Part 2

This is Part 2 of my interview with Lori Pickert, author of Project-based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-directed Learners. Please click here to start with Part 1.

My questions have to do with getting started in Project-based Learning with young children who obviously don’t have the experience to direct their learning. I sent Lori six, multi-layered questions, and not only did she answer them, she gave very detailed answers, which is why I’ve divided the interview into three posts. (Note that I have emphasized parts of the interview in bold text.)

The good news is that Lori has promised to be available to answer YOUR questions. (Click here to go to Part 3 and read the Q&A.) I am turning off the comments section on these first two sections so that we can direct all the comments and questions at the end of this interview and avoid any repetition of questions. I hope you’ll enjoy this interview, learn from it as I have, and I hope you’ll contribute to the discussion at the end. Thank you, and Thank you, Lori!

PART 2: Interview with Lori Pickert on Getting Started with Project-based Homeschooling with Young Children

2. As I read your book, I could see that it’s very important for children to be able to present their findings to some kind of audience. While my six-year-old is happy to show his creations — for example, the model of the Titanic — to anyone who wants to see them, neither does he want to explain what he has learned about the Titanic, nor does he want to put it into book form, charts, puppet shows or anything else. (And, yes, I have written his questions and progress in a journal, and I have asked him what else he would like to do, etc.) Is this just his age, and can I assume that as he gets older, he’ll want to go farther with his projects? Is the model of the Titanic enough because he has decided it’s enough? How do I encourage him to share his knowledge?

Lori: Showing his creations and talking about them is one way to share. If you have family far away, you might start a family blog just to share his project work. Kids usually really like blogging — they love getting comments from friends and family. You could transcribe what he wants to say about his project and type his words for him. He could take photographs himself if he was interested. You could video him talking about (and showing) his constructions. And as he gets a little older, he might want to type his own entries.

If he decides his model is enough and he isn’t interested in producing other types of representations, that’s fine. You can encourage him to represent his work in different ways by exploring different media (drawing, painting, clay, etc.) and by having a nice selection of materials available all the time. But if he’s not interested, don’t push it.

It’s great to share your work not just when it’s completed but while it’s being constructed. If he has friends over (just to play or specifically to make art with), he can show them what he’s made and field their questions and suggestions.

If he’s showing his work to his little brother, that counts, too!

As he gets older, he may focus just as intently on sharing his knowledge in a particular way — by making a film, say, or a model. That’s okay. Variety is nice, but it’s more important for him to own the learning process — and being very confident about what he wants to do and when he’s done is part of that. He should have abundant choices, abundant materials to choose from, and abundant experiences. Then he can narrow them down and communicate his ideas in the way that feels right to him.

There are many reasons why project-based homeschooling emphasizes sharing what you learn. You really know you understand something when you can teach it to someone else. Collaboration is a crucial life skill. And PBH is about helping children connect with their meaningful work: where their interests and their talents intersect. This is a years-long process that you are only just beginning; there will be time to explore it fully and develop it from project to project.

Helping children share what they know helps them find their place in the world, and it helps them discover what they have to give. I don’t think there’s a better goal for education than that.

3. On page 58 you wrote, “He learns to plan and make first drafts, write lists of needed materials, and adapt materials to new uses.” My six-year-old wants a final product RIGHT NOW. I realize that it takes time and maturity for him to overcome his impatience, but do you have any advice as to what I could do and say to help him learn that it takes time to do things, especially to do them well?

Lori: Remember, he learns to plan and make first drafts — he probably won’t start off already working that way.

Every version of a draft is a final product, in a way. It’s the repetition and enlargement of the original idea that makes the earlier version a “draft.” So if he wants to make a book or a robot or a cape, he does. What turns it into a first draft is continuing to come back to that piece of work and talk about it, examine it, share it with others, and possibly decide to improve upon it. Children working together spur each other to do multiple drafts as they copy and extend one another’s ideas. I make a cape out of paper; you make a cape out of paper and add a big emblem to the middle. I make a new cape out of fabric and add an emblem to that. You make a fabric cape with an emblem and you change the way it is tied shut. And so on. But a child working alone can also be encouraged to improve upon an original design by asking him, “Is there anything you want to add? Is there anything you want to change? Why don’t you show it to your friend from next door?” Get in the habit of asking, “Are you done with this or is there more you want to do with it?”

My book discusses other ways to encourage multiple drafts, including introducing new materials, stepping up to expensive materials at the end, repeating field trips, and so on.

As to helping him learn that it takes time to do things well, that is a lesson that life teaches us, right? We can try gently pointing it out. (Although that would get old fast if someone was doing it to us, so proceed delicately.) If you try some of the ways listed in the book to “deepen the work,” he will hopefully learn through experience that when he comes back to do something again, he gets a little further than before.

You can also sit down together and reflect on the work he’s done, looking it over and talking about everything he did. Then you can talk about that life lesson: that it takes time to do things well, that we get better with each attempt.

Shelli: I would like to also mention that since our Titanic Project, I have learned that showing my son how other people (artists, builders, etc.) have dealt with mistakes and gained resilience has helped him start to become more patient with his own abilities. I will write more about this in an upcoming post about our rocket project.

***

Click here to read Part 1 of this interview. Click here to go to Part 3. I have turned off the comments on the first two parts, but Lori will be available after I publish Part 3 for your additional questions! I also hope you’ll subscribe to my blog so that you can join me on this project-based homeschooling adventure——->

Posted in 1st Grade, Homeschooling, Kindergarten, Project-based Homeschooling | 2 Comments »

March 4, 2013

Project-based Homeschooling for Young Children: Interview with Lori Pickert, Part 1

Lori Pickert was the owner and director of a small, Reggio-inspired school, and she has also traveled around the country as an educational consultant “helping teachers and administrators explore authentic art, long-term projects, and Reggio-inspired learning.” Later she began homeschooling her two boys, and now she’s the author of Project-based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-directed Learners. You can find her blog, forum and other resources at project-based-homeschooling.com.

Last week I published my review of Lori’s book. When I first found Lori’s blog, I was very attracted to this idea of mentoring my children, which is based on the Reggio Emilia educational philosophy. It just felt right. What I learned on her blog echoed my own thoughts on how to homeschool my children, and I was very excited when her book came out because I wanted to understand this process better. While I loved the book, I found myself asking questions throughout it because I had already experimented with project-based homeschooling with my six-year-old. Doing it in real life is hard and messy, as I wrote about in Building the Titanic: Project-based Homeschooling. That post is my first true foray into a complicated project with my son, but it is a good example of how this process works.

My questions mostly had to do with getting started with such young children who obviously don’t have the experience to direct their learning. I asked Lori if I could interview her about project-based learning specifically for young children, and since she is supportive and gracious, she said yes. I sent her six, multi-layered questions, and not only did she answer them, she gave very detailed answers, which I appreciate very much. However, they are too long to put into one post, so I have divided the interview into three posts, which I will publish this week. (Note that I have emphasized parts of the interview in bold text.)

The good news is that Lori has promised to be available to answer YOUR questions. I am turning off the comments section on these first two posts so that we can direct all the comments and questions at the end of this interview and avoid any repetition of questions. I hope you’ll enjoy this interview, learn from it as I have, and I hope you’ll contribute to the discussion at the end. Thank you, and Thank you, Lori!

(Update: The rest of this interview has been posted: Click here to go to Part 2. Click here to go to Part 3.)

PART 1: Interview with Lori Pickert on Getting Started with Project-based Homeschooling with Young Children

1. In your book you say it’s very important to not make suggestions and let the children “own the work.” However, I find it very difficult to not make suggestions to my six-year-old. When I ask, “Where can we find out more information about this?” he always says “the computer,” so I end up suggesting other resources we could turn to. When we were doing the Titanic project, I worked very hard at letting him try to come up with the ideas first, and then when he got stumped (which was often), I made suggestions. Is this what you mean? Or in other words, how do you let a child direct his own work when he doesn’t yet have the experience to know how to answer his own questions? Or even know how to articulate the questions he wants to ask?

Lori: The most important thing is to remember that it’s a process. You are learning how to mentor, and your child is learning how to direct and manage his own learning. Mentoring means slowly transferring the power to him and helping him learn how to be in charge of his own learning. You should try to stay out of his way as much as possible and leave him room to have his own ideas — but that doesn’t mean never making suggestions. It just means waiting to see if he will have his own ideas and supporting those first.

He needs an environment that supports independent working, he needs you to model how to ask questions and research and make and share, and he might need you to help him recognize and articulate his interests and questions.

Being a mentor means helping him slowly take control — and it means showing him the ropes.

You keep the ball rolling by making gentle suggestions (or offering choices) when necessary. You use a gentle touch, staying alert to his questions and ideas (even if they need some digging to uncover) and letting him lead whenever possible.

I’ll quote from the book:

At the beginning, your child might need you to model how to wonder aloud, ask questions, consider alternatives. He looks to you as an example of how to approach learning as a researcher and investigator. As times goes on, this approach to learning becomes second nature to him. He is accustomed to asking questions, seeking out experts, collecting research materials, investigating first-hand, and creating original work. He looks automatically for ways to share what he learns with others.

…

He will look to you to set the tone, get the ball rolling, and keep it rolling. In time, he will take over. He knows what to do and how to do it. He knows what to expect from the process, and he has a firm goal in mind.

But he will still need you to be that trusted resource. He will still need you as his first audience, his best collaborator, and his mentor. He will still need the support of a family culture that celebrates and supports meaningful work.

There are times when he might get off course, lose steam, hit a dead end. He will benefit from your input and suggestions. —Project-Based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners

You learn to observe carefully and wait to offer suggestions only when and if they’re needed. It takes practice to be patient, to support his interests without directing how he explores them, and to prioritize his ideas. You have to give yourself the gift of time and allow yourself to slowly but steadily acquire these mentoring skills, just as you respect his setting his own learning pace.

You focus on giving him the tools, experiences, and skills he needs to work as independently as possible. But it doesn’t happen immediately. If it did, he wouldn’t need a thoughtful mentor! It is a slow and steady transfer of control and decision-making.

If your son is stuck in a Google/Wikipedia rut (like most of us adults), remember that research is multilayered. Finding one answer should turn up new questions (if an interest is deep and engaging enough). Google results can offer up books on Amazon, which can lead you to checking your library to see what books they offer. Reading a National Geographic Kids article on sharks might spark new questions he’ll need to look up in books or online. Or it might remind you of a show you saw on Animal Planet. And so on.

Children can’t reference things they are completely unfamiliar with. They can only work with the raw materials they’ve been given and the experiences they’ve already had. So we need to make sure they get plenty of experience at the library, looking through reference books at home, and even asking friends and family for help. We need to visit places in the community that offer knowledge and skills — universities, libraries, museums, park districts, events. We need to start making a connection between the things that interest us and how we can explore them. Then, when they are puzzling out where they can find information they need, you can ask leading questions like

Where else could we find out about this?
What kind of people might know about this?
Are there any places in our town where we might go to find out more?

and so on. If they get stuck, you can gently nudge them in the right direction, both by modeling (“I remember Grandma showed you that book about birds…”) and gentle suggestion (“Maybe we could ask the librarian for help”), then back off as soon as they articulate a plan.

If he keeps suggesting the computer, ask, “Where else could we look?,” then sit down and brainstorm together. You can make a game of it: Let’s think of ten things we could do to find out more about igloos. This is a good learning step to master: instead of just working on one idea at a time until you figure out it doesn’t work, have a brainstorming session and come up with a whole list of ideas, then let him decide which is the best one to start with. You might brainstorm about materials he could use to build a model of the Mars rover, places in the community where you could learn about cats, and so on.

It also helps to build a habit of talking about your own learning. Say out loud, “I wonder what kind of bird that is at the feeder — I’m going to get the field guide and look.” Say, “I’m totally stuck on the sweater I’m knitting — I’m going to ask one of the women at the yarn store to help me.” This can feel awkward at first, but you’re making your own learning visible. He can see you using different resources to find your own answers, and it gives him ideas for his own investigations.

Finally, don’t ignore or slide over suggestions he makes that seem silly or useless on the surface. Let him try his ideas. They may take longer; they may even fail — but you don’t want to shorten the learning process or make it easier. Make long work of it; slow learning leads to authentic understanding.

While it’s always optimal to stand back and let your child lead, when he gets stuck, it’s fine to help get things rolling again — just do as little as possible and then step into the background again.

Mentoring self-directed learners is like rolling a hoop down a hill. You want to let the hoop roll on its own, only touching it when necessary to keep it upright and rolling, and even then as lightly as possible. — Project-Based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners

Overall, remember this is a slow process. You are helping him develop these abilities by living this way yourself (and sharing as you go), by deliberate modeling, by making suggestions but letting him lead as much as possible. It’s not a hands-off process — it’s actually very hands-on. The more aware you are of his thinking process, the more carefully you observe his play and conversation, the better you can help him take control of his own learning.

***

~~Please come back on Wednesday and Friday to read Part 2 and Part 3 of my interview with Lori Pickert about project-based homeschooling for young children.~~ Click here to go to Part 2. Click here to go to Part 3. I have turned off the comments on the first two parts, but Lori will be available after I publish Part 3 for your additional questions! I also hope you’ll subscribe to my blog so that you can join me on this project-based homeschooling adventure——->

Posted in 1st Grade, Homeschooling, Kindergarten, Project-based Homeschooling | 6 Comments »

February 28, 2013

Book Review: Project-based Homeschooling by Lori Pickert

Note: This column was published in the Barrow Journal on February 27, 2013.

How many children realize that education is for them, so they can do whatever they want to do in life…? ~ Lori Pickert, author of Project-based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-directed Learners.

Friends of mine know that I’m a fan of Lori Pickert’s book Project-based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners. I had begun following her blog before her book came out, and it peaked my interest in this style of homeschooling that is based on the Emilia Reggio Approach, an educational philosophy for early-childhood that began in Italy shortly after World War II. Now there are Reggio-inspired schools around the world.

I don’t like that Pickert titled her book with the word “homeschooling.” To me, it’s a manual for every parent who wants to become a better mentor for his or her child. Though homeschoolers have the luxury of time, any parent can use the strategies in this book, especially since the work you would do with your child would have no time restraints.

If you want to understand how you can support your child’s interests and foster independent thinking and entrepreneurship, then you need to read this book.

Broadening our perspective about how our children should learn is a good idea anyway. According to Cathy Davidson, author and professor at Duke University, “65 percent of today’s grade-school kids may end up doing work that hasn’t been invented yet.”

I got that quote from an interview with Davidson on Mindshift, an excellent education blog, and one of her suggestions to parents is to have students embark on meaningful community projects. “Dreaming big, taking risks, and scaling back if and when you have to are fantastic skills. These skills are hardly ever taught in the school room….” she writes.

This sounds very much like the kind of learning Pickert writes about, though projects could be big or small. They could be shared within your family or outside of it. Whatever the size, they are going to give students a chance to direct their own education.

Adults and children learn best when they are studying subjects of their choosing, and with a good mentor, they’ll take their learning to a higher level and find ways of sharing it with other people. After all, teaching what you know to others is the final stage of learning.

What Pickert has done with her book is explain in an easy-to-read and practical manner what parents can do at home to ensure that children will take charge of their own education and gain essential skills. If that sounds far-fetched, I suggest you read the book.

Project-based learning (PBL) is for any parent who wants to be involved in their children’s education. What I found inspiring in the book is the way she insists parents must live the lives that they want their children to aspire to. After all, to be a mentor, you must be doing the work yourself.

One way to teach your children how to fulfill their goals is to show them how you work toward your goals. Your children will learn from your example. Your goals don’t have to be lofty – Everyone has work, hobbies or other interests that they can share with their children, and sharing your disappointments are just as important as sharing your victories.

In PBL, children chose their projects and make long-term deep inquiries into their chosen subjects. Unlike traditional school where students have time restraints, PBL students can take the time they need to dig deep. They could take months or years to complete a project. It may branch off into other projects. Letting them make mistakes and learn from them is a key component in PBL.

As mentors, parents will be writing down their questions, reminding them of what they wanted to know, documenting their work, and most importantly, scheduling dedicated project time. You will ask them what materials they need to do their work, and you’ll make suggestions when they get stuck.

What you don’t do is take over the project or push your agenda on the child. That’s not easy, but Pickert gives practical advice on how to do it. I love how she includes lists of “things you might do” which includes materials you might have on hand. (Environment is considered the “third teacher” in the Reggio Approach.) She even suggests things to say to your children when you’re trying to get out of the rut of doing things for them.

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve gotten from Pickert is that parents need to pay attention (vs. giving empty praise) to what they want their children to do more of. By writing down their questions, recording their progress, photographing their work, hanging their artwork on the wall, you are sending them a message that this is meaningful work. If you do this (and don’t give attention to the less desirable acts), kids are going to want to do more of the good stuff.

After reading the book, I had many questions about how PBL would look for young children like mine, so I asked Lori if I could interview her on this topic. She said yes! Please come back next week for my three-part interview with Lori Pickert on Project-based Homeschooling for Young Children. (Yes, she’s so thorough I had to break it up into three posts!) Lori will also be available to answer your questions at the end of the interview, so I hope you won’t miss that.

Posted in Homeschooling, My Newspaper Columns, Project-based Homeschooling | 11 Comments »

Tags: book review, child led learning, education, Lori Pickert, project-based homeschooling, Project-based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners, recommended books

February 21, 2013

Story: Lego Boy

Since I don’t have a column to share with you this week, I thought I would share one of the silly stories I made up for my son one night during our nightly storytelling ritual. If you want to start a storytelling ritual with your children, please see The Storytelling Advocate for a list of resources.

Storytelling tip: Pick something that your children are interested in, and make it the main character or setting for a story. This story was inspired by my boys’ nascent interest in building, especially with Legos. In it, I also tried to touch on something that my son had been dealing with recently: his frustrations when he couldn’t do something the way he wanted to. I wanted him to know that set-backs are part of building and creating, and part of life!

Lego Boy by Shelli Bond Pabis

Once there was a little Lego boy who lived in a big, Lego city. The city was built by two brothers, and it was sitting up on a table in their room where they always left it.

At night, while the brothers slept, Lego boy would wake up and explore his city and play with his Lego cat.

“I think,” the Lego boy said to his cat, “I could build this city even better!” And he went about rearranging the Lego pieces. He built himself a nice, cozy room for him and his cat to sleep in during the day.

But that night when he woke up, two walls of his room were gone, and he had to put them all back. He also built himself a bed and a chair for him and his cat.

The next night, he was happy to wake up and find that his room was just like he had left it, but there was another place in the city – his other favorite place – that was gone! It was the park where he liked to go with this cat, sit on a bench and look out the window at the moon.

So that night he worked hard to remove all the blocks that had been put right in the middle of his park, and he found the flowers and put them back. He built a bench, and he and his cat had just enough time to sit there awhile and watch the sunrise out of the window before the two little boys woke up.

The next night was Lego boy’s happiest night because when he woke up, he found that nothing had been changed in Lego city. The two little boys must have been busy doing other things that day. So Lego boy and Lego cat sat on the bench in the park and gazed at the moon all night. Just as the sun was rising, they hurried back to their room and went to sleep.

When they woke up that night, however, Lego Boy was heartbroken to see that his room was gone. Everything had been changed! “It’s going to take me all night to fix it again!”

He was very frustrated. “There must be something I can do. Something I haven’t thought of before.”

Lego Boy thought and thought and then realized he would have to go on a journey. He’d search outside the city. He and Lego cat left the city and walked to the edge of the table. He looked out into the room. The two brothers were sleeping peacefully in their beds. He also saw a shelf across the room. On it there were paints, paint brushes, paper, scissors, and…..the answer to his dreams! GLUE!

With the help of Lego Cat, Lego Boy made it across the room, climbed the shelf and got the glue. When they pushed it off the shelf, it made a soft thud on the carpet, and one of the boys turned over in his sleep! Lego Boy and Lego Cat held their breath! Luckily, the boys didn’t wake up.

When they got back to Lego City, Lego Boy collected the pieces he needed to build his walls again, but this time, as he was building them, he poured glue between the pieces. It oozed out as he snapped the pieces together, and he smiled in satisfaction.

It took him all night to build his room again, and right at sunrise, he couldn’t even make it back to his bed! He fell right to sleep on his doorway!

The next day, the little boys were busy doing other things and didn’t notice the glue bottle sitting inside Lego City. But their mother came into their room that afternoon to put laundry away. She noticed it, and she frowned as she tried to pull Lego Boy’s walls apart – they wouldn’t budge.

She called the boys into their room and showed them the glue. “You need to take care of your toys!” She scolded them. “I’m not buying you new Legos if you are going to glue them all together!”

“We didn’t glue them together,” the boys cried. But, of course, the mother didn’t believe them.

When Lego Boy woke up that night, he didn’t know anything about the scolding that the two boys got. He was just very happy to see that the walls to his room were still there, and, in fact, while Lego City got changed around quite a bit over the years, his room always stayed right where he glued it.

***

I apologize in advance if this gives your children the idea to glue their Legos together.

Remember: Please respect copyright laws. While I’m happy for any parent or teacher to borrow this story, I hope no one is stealing it for other purposes. Don’t plagiarize.

Posted in Homeschooling, Storytelling as a Teaching Tool, Traditions / Rituals / Holidays | 2 Comments »

Tags: frustration, helping children deal with frustration, Lego Boy, project-based homeschooling, stories I've made up for my children, storytelling, storytelling as a teaching tool

January 10, 2013

Building the Titanic: Project-based Homeschooling

Note: This column was printed in the Barrow Journal on Wednesday, January 9, 2013.

One night my family was watching a documentary about a sunken ship when my son asked me about another “big, fancy ship that sunk.” I had mentioned the Titanic to him a few months ago because 2012 was the 100th anniversary of that tragedy. He wasn’t interested in it then, but he seemed interested in it now.

“Do you want to learn about the Titanic?” I asked. He nodded vigorously. “Okay,” I said, “We’ll make it a project.”

What that was going to look like, I wasn’t sure, but at the time I was reading Lori Pickert’s new book Project-based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners, and I wanted to follow the advice she gave in that book.

We found a documentary on Netflix, looked at photos online, and we took a trip to the library. We both learned a lot about the Titanic.

On another day shortly after this my son was working with modeling clay, and when he wasn’t sure what to make, I suggested that he sculpt a Titanic. He loved the idea, so he looked at some pictures of the ship and went right to work. He needed minimal help from me, and it looked great until….

He decided he wanted to try to add the wires that drape over the top of the Titanic to his clay ship. I knew that would be hard to do with clay, but I took Pickert’s advice and didn’t discourage him. Instead (only when he was stumped as to how to do it), I suggested he try to make some poles out of clay, and then we could try to pierce the tops of the poles with a needle. After the clay dried, we could try to thread some black string through those holes.

Unfortunately, the dried clay crumbled when we were trying to thread the string the next day, and my son had a complete meltdown. Oh great, I thought, this is going swell. No matter what I said or did, he was inconsolable. I had no idea what to do.

I tried to tell him that whenever someone is making or creating something, they might have problems and have to figure out another way to do it. He didn’t buy it, but he finally calmed down.

That night, by shear coincidence, we watched another documentary in which some researchers were trying to figure out if the ancient Egyptians had traveled by sea. Could the boats in their drawings handle the rough seas? They attempted to build a replica and try it out. Fortunately for me, the first time they put it in the water, it sank.

“See?!” I said to my son. After some problem solving and trying new things, the researchers got their boat to work. A light bulb turned on in my son’s head. Then my husband suggested that my son try to make a Titanic out of cardboard. My son lit up. He thought that paper towel tubes would be perfect for the smoke stacks.

The next day, we spent five hours making a Titanic with empty frozen pizza boxes, popsicle sticks, paper towel tubes and a hot glue gun.

Yes, I had to do a lot of the work. But because of Pickert’s book, I never made a suggestion until my son was at a total loss and looked to me for an answer. He had his own ideas, and I listened to each one. When possible, I asked him questions instead of telling him flatly that his idea wouldn’t work.

Frankly, without him voicing his thoughts first, I doubt I would have been able to come up with the basic construction anyway. I am not an engineer! By listening to him and taking my time, I figured out what to do when he got stumped. And surprisingly, he did do quite a bit of the design and construction.

This was his work, and I was his servant for the day. When he finally glued the paper towel tubes on the top for the smoke stacks, he had a boat he could be proud of, and I was proud of him.

He did a lot of thinking that day, problem solving, and he began to understand that setbacks are inevitable. I’m also proud of myself.

Let’s face it: it’s not easy letting children take the lead. It wasn’t easy trying to understand this process when my son was crying and inconsolable. But I understand now that he has to learn these lessons, and there’s no better way than letting him learn with a project that’s his own. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have cared about doing it well, and he may have given up completely.

the final product

***

Thank you for reading my blog! If you liked this post, I hope you’ll come back because in the next few weeks ~~I’ll be posting~~ (it’s posted!) an interview with Lori Pickert about project-based homeschooling specifically for younger children. Also see my page Project-based Homeschooling to find more posts about our adventures using this technique to homeschool.

Posted in 1st Grade, Homeschooling, My Newspaper Columns, Project-based Homeschooling | 26 Comments »

Tags: Building the Titanic, first grade, homeschooling, my newspaper columns, parenting, project-based homeschooling

September 7, 2012

Back To Homeschool

a rare photo with me in it

Note: This column was printed in the Barrow Journal on Wednesday, September 5, 2012.

As you read this, I’ll be in the middle of my first official week of homeschooling my son. We have been homeschooling for the past few years, but now that he has turned six, we’re required by law to declare our intent to homeschool. I’ll also have to submit attendance forms once a year starting at the end of this year.

The law recently changed, so all homeschoolers in Georgia will be reporting directly to the Department of Education (GaDOE) instead of their local school district. The GaDOE has some simple online forms on their website, and the other night it took me less than five minutes to submit my declaration of intent online. It could not have been easier.

Some homeschoolers are not happy with the online form because it requires us to give our child’s birthdate while the law states that we only have to report our child’s age. I’ve heard through the grapevine that the GaDOE should be updating their form to reflect this, but that remains to be seen.

Currently the attendance form is a monthly form instead of a yearly form. I e-mailed the GaDOE to ask about that, and I was told they would be changing it to a yearly form shortly. (UPDATE 9/6/2012: I checked the GaDOE website, and a yearly form has been posted.) I’m not surprised that since this is all new there are some kinks to smooth out. In recent years there have been over 107,000 homeschooled students in Georgia, so the GaDOE will probably hear from some unhappy families, if not.

For me, now that my form is turned in, it’s an exciting week. I’ve been telling my son that “school starts next week,” but after clarifying that I meant “home school” and not real school, he didn’t seem too impressed. Perhaps it’s anticlimactic because as a homeschooler, he’s always in school. We do a lot of educational activities that he thinks is just plain fun.

Starting anew is more for me as I once again begin to keep track of exactly what he’s doing and plan a more structured routine. We had a nice routine last year, and I had planned to keep it going through the summer, but as a friend said to me, the summer has it’s own “time sucking vortex,” and I decided we needed a break from all things planned. More than that, I needed a break from keeping track of how my son’s natural curiosity moves us through most topics in a typical course of study for his age.

The most important subjects we’ll tackle are reading and math. We’ll start the morning off with either a reading or math lesson. At six years old, my son is still pretty squirmy and more interested in playing, but I think he’s old enough to understand that we have to get things done.

After a formal lesson, we’ll spend most of the morning on a project that will be multi-disciplinary. As he gets older he’ll be able to pick his projects, but for now, I’m directing most of them. I think he’ll like my choices, though, especially a project we’ll be doing on ants, and I’ll be sure to write about it when we’re all finished.

There will also be days that we go to science classes or spend an afternoon with friends. Field trips with daddy are sure to happen, and both my boys will learn the basics of housekeeping and shopping. That’s a side effect of homeschooling, but a good one.

We’ll also get back to doing book time, library visits, and I’ll try to throw in a short and easy preschool lesson for the three-year-old. It’ll be a challenge to get anything done with my littlest boy present, and I really don’t know how any of this will pan out.

The three-year-old loves to draw, so I’m hoping he might be satisfied with a little box of art projects he can do while I’m working with my older son. I’m also hoping to teach him how to use a gentle touch with our iPod Touch, which was a handy, educational tool that my eldest mastered at two years old. For some reason, my younger son is all thumbs with it, but I’ve noticed he’s gotten better lately.

I’m sure there will be bumps on the road, but hopefully we’ll settle into a routine like we did last year. Now that we’re official homeschoolers, it will definitely be a test for mama to see if this lifestyle will be worth the effort.

Please come back and I promise to tell you how this homeschooling journey turns out! Meanwhile, please share your “back to homeschool” stories in the comments section.

Posted in Homeschooling, My Newspaper Columns | 9 Comments »

Tags: 1st grade, back to homeschool, child led learning, Georgia, homeschooling, kindergarten, my newspaper columns, project-based homeschooling

July 12, 2012

Raising Tadpoles

{The Life Cycle of Toads} {Georgia} {Project-based Homeschooling}

Note: This column was printed in the Barrow Journal on July 11, 2012. Scroll down to view a slideshow of all the photos I took during this fun project!

On the afternoon of June 15^th, my husband and two-year-old had a surprise for my five-year-old and me. We had spent the morning apart. My five-year-old was in a camp, I had a couple hours to myself (yay), and my husband took the two-year-old to a park.

Guess what they found at the park? You guessed it – hundreds of tiny black tadpoles in a pool of water by a stream. My husband said that by scooping a cup in the water, he easily got three of the tadpoles. He also said the two-year-old carefully and proudly carried his cup to the car.

The five-year-old was delighted too, and together the “boys” set about to create a small habitat for the tadpoles. I gave them an old storage container, and my husband found some rocks in the garden. He used the same water conditioner that we use for our fish aquarium, which takes chlorine out of the water.

That night they took a trip to the pet store and bought an inexpensive filter (less than $15), although we ended up not using the filter and instead let it just circulate the water in the container. This provided oxygen. They also found some frog/tadpole food at the pet store.

We fed the tadpoles the frog food, but we also added some frozen spinach because my husband read online that they like that. They ate it up! The boys also visited the stream again and brought home water from it. We were told that there might be tiny microorganisms that the tadpoles would feed on in that water.

We kept the container on our porch and covered it with some old window screen to keep the mosquitoes out, and over the next two and a half weeks, we watched them grow. It was exciting for the whole family. Every morning my two boys got up and went out to check the tadpoles, and they also checked on them in the evenings.

Let me pause here and commend my husband for taking care of the tadpoles and the habitat during this entire project!

Part of the fun was trying to figure out what kind of frogs they were, yet as they grew so quickly, we noticed that they looked very similar to the Fowler toads who inhabit our yard. In the end, we realized that’s exactly what they were.

Fowler toads breed in this area in May and June, and my herpetologist friend told me that if the tadpoles were very black when they were tiny, then they were definitely toads. Tree or chorus frog tadpoles are clear, and if viewed from the bottom, you can see an orange-colored circle, which are their intestines.

This made sense because as I mentioned we had recently found baby Fowler toads in our yard, and on our trip to Watson’s Mill Bridge State Park last month, we saw hundreds, if not thousands of tiny black tadpoles in the shallow water near that bridge.

In regards to Fowler toads, the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory’s (SREL) website states: “Females lay eggs in strings with clutches of up to 25,000 eggs in spring or summer after a heavy rain. Tadpoles go through metamorphosis within 2 months. Sexual maturity is reached in 1-3 years, differing among sex and locality.”

On July 4^th – a very fitting day – we released two baby toads and one toadlet back into the wild where we found them. Since two of them had already lost their tails – literally within one day! – and they were sitting up on the rocks, we feared their diet had changed, and we wouldn’t be able to provide them with the tiny bugs they needed to eat. The toads were so small they could fit on my fingertip.

One of the tadpoles was always smaller and developed a day or two behind the others. This one, which was a “toadlet” with four legs, but it was still in the water and had a tail, we placed in a shallow part of the water with leaf cover so it could hide. I’m sure within a day, it would be hopping into the forest with the other toads.

Most tadpoles and baby frogs become food for larger animals, but we were happy to at least give three little guys a head start. The pool where we took them from was drying up and in the full sun when we returned to it. A few surviving tadpoles in it were not as well developed as ours.

For me, it was a wonderful experience – something I had never done before – but watching the delight on my boy’s faces is something I’ll never forget. And who knows? Maybe this will become a yearly ritual that will foster even more good memories.

Below is a slideshow of all the photos I took during this fun project so that you can see the metamorphosis. I’ve put dates on the photos for your reference.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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

Tags: Fowlers Toad, Georgia, lifecycle of frogs, project-based homeschooling, raising tadpoles, toad

May 12, 2012

A Child-Led Project: The Celery Lettuce Cake

Note: This column was printed in the May 2, 2012 edition of the Barrow Journal.

I am all for giving children as much freedom as possible. They need time to play, create and build. This make-believe and the trial and error of creating teaches them more lessons than they could ever learn from the well-meaning words of adults. This is at the heart of project-based homeschooling.

But in real life, it’s awfully hard to let my five-year-old pursue every project he thinks up. Sometimes I’m rushing around the house trying to get us ready to go out when he says something like, “Mommy, I think we could make a giant eel out of paper.” Please, I think, don’t talk to me now, but I don’t say it. He’ll go on and on about his idea while I’m only half listening.

Other times his ideas are just impossible. “Mommy, maybe sometime we can go to Greenland.” Uh huh. (Though requests like that are good ways to start explaining concepts like money, time and distance.)

For these reasons, I was happy the other day that we had the opportunity to let him run with one of his crazy ideas. I was cleaning up the lunch dishes, and I had planned to take the boys outside after that. It was a beautiful day, but my son had another idea.

“Mommy, I have an idea for a recipe. It would need celery and lettuce, and I would mash them together with that masher you use for making mashed potatoes. Then I would need that thing you use to mix stuff…”

I’ll interject here to explain that celery and lettuce are the only two vegetables my five-year-old will eat. He likes celery dipped in Catalina dressing, and he’ll eat a little bit of plain lettuce that he grew himself in the garden. And after more discussion, I figured out that the second utensil he was referring to was a whisk.

Now he continues, “…and then after it’s all mashed, we’ll make a cake out of it, and then we can put it in the oven and cook it for ten minutes!”

Oh yes…you can imagine how much he was whetting my appetite! But I stifled my laugh. Just as I was going to come up with a gentle explanation as to why that wouldn’t taste good, I thought to myself, “What would it hurt to let him find out for himself?”

All the stars seemed to be aligned for this special project. We weren’t going anywhere, and I had the two ingredients. The celery we had needed to be used up anyway. In addition to this, the two-year-old was in a rare, independent mood and went upstairs to play by himself for a while.

I laid out a cutting board, a big bowl, the masher and whisk. Then I cleaned a few sticks of celery and leaves of lettuce. I also gave my son a little knife to cut the celery with. My five-year-old is a cautious fellow, so if he knows something can hurt him, he’s very careful with it.

He stood on our step stool and went to work on his own recipe. He was very serious about it. I heard him counting the small pieces of celery he chopped and added to the bowl. At first he said he’d use nine pieces, but as he continued to work, he decided he needed more celery, and I cleaned a couple more stalks. He ripped up the lettuce into small pieces too.

He discovered that it’s very hard to mash celery. At this point I suggested that he chop the pieces smaller. He tried that, but I think it was too much work. He went back to the masher.

To my surprise, celery can be mashed if you keep at it a very long time. My son worked diligently for almost an hour. It gave me time to fold the laundry.

Finally the concoction was ready, but he said it needed water. We decided half a cup would do, and then I gave him a small casserole dish. He poured it in there, patted it down, and then I baked it at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

After it cooled down, we had the big taste test. My son took a bite, and though his expression was subtle, I wish I had videotaped it. After some contemplation, he admitted it wasn’t so good. But I knew it was a good day, and I’ll always remember the look of joy and determination on my son’s face while he was making his “celery and lettuce cake.”

Kelly O. Sullivan (@KellyOSullivan), a friend of mine on Twitter said, “That attitude of ‘try again but tweak’ is at the heart of science and experimentation.” So it is, but when my son said, “Maybe it will taste better if we put something else on top of it,” I finally snickered. Sometimes you gotta teach them when to cut loose.

Posted in Homeschooling, My Newspaper Columns, Project-based Homeschooling | 5 Comments »

Tags: celery lettuce cake, child led learning, homeschooling, kindergarten, my newspaper columns, parenting, project-based homeschooling

March 1, 2012

Boys Like to Build Outside Too

A couple of days ago I wrote about how my boys like to build and create inside the house with various materials, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that building outside is even more fun! I’ve posted a photo of our stick shelter before, but the day that I wrote about how the boys like to build, we happened to spend a good chunk of time outside adding to the shelter!

This was my idea many months ago when I was trying to channel my boys affection for sticks into a less dangerous activity. Although sometimes they play around the shelter, they haven’t seemed interested in adding to it. But the other day my five-year-old found some more branches and started to add them to the shelter. (After many months, we had plenty of freshly fallen branches!) The two-year-old picked up his fair share of small sticks. I began helping them, and my husband pitched in too. Before we knew it, the front yard was looking neater, and the shelter was a little taller.

My five-year-old says he wants to keep adding to it and build a little house. You never know!

<—-This photo to the left was taken shortly after we first built the shelter.

Note: And as someone kindly pointed out in my last post, girls definitely love to build too! I write about boys because I have boys, but everything on this blog could definitely pertain to girls too. I’m a girl, so I should know!

Posted in Kindergarten, Nature, Project-based Homeschooling | 2 Comments »

Tags: boys, building, education, homeschooling, parenting, project-based homeschooling, sticks

February 28, 2012

Boys Like to Build

Once after watching an episode of Bob the Builder, the five-year-old told me he wanted to build a bridge. Who says TV is bad for kids?!

Thanks to Lori of Camp Creek Blog I tuned into the fact that boys like to build. Boys like hands-on activities. Building fosters their creativity, organizational and problem solving skills.

At her suggestion, I started of a box of building supplies, which you can see in my photo down below. You might like to do this too, especially since it’s a great way to recycle! Here’s a list of ideas to get you started:

cardboard from old boxes, cereal boxes, etc.
empty boxes
paper towel and toilet paper tubes
gallon jugs
string
popsicle sticks
wine corks
scrap paper
old bottles
clothes pins
anything laying around the house that looks useful!

I try to let my son run with his ideas, although he often comes up with ideas that are impossible to implement. Without discouraging him too much, I remind him of what materials we have and don’t have, and I tell him when my skills are limited. Sometimes I have to tell him that we simply can’t do what he’s asking. Then I suggest going another route. I’m finding it very rewarding to sit back and let him find out for himself what works and doesn’t work. I do have to help him a lot, but I let him instruct me as to what I’m supposed to do! (Pssst: I’m getting better at not making suggestions. See Building the Titanic: Project-based Homeschooling.)

He can be quite the perfectionist, so if something falls apart on him, he can get quite upset. Then I make suggestions too, and I keep telling him that he just has to try another way. I’m hoping over time that his angst will lessen!

I try very hard not to micro-manage when he “builds.” I was very impressed with how he “measured” the bridge with a measuring tape,and then he counted the popsicle sticks to make sure they were the same size on both sides.

I’ve also begun to slowly accumulate some inexpensive store bought art materials on hand:

various sizes of construction paper and poster paper
crayons & markers
extra scissors & glue
inexpensive paints and brushes
felt
googly eyes
sparkly sequins etc.
stickers
pastels
anything fun

Our box of building supplies.

In my attempt to allow the boys ample freedom yet also preserve paper, I keep a box for the scrap paper. We reuse as much as possible.

To my pleasant surprise, and before I even showed my five-year-old the box of building supplies, he announced one night that he wanted to make a rocket. I have no idea where he got this desire, but I was so happy to have that box with a paper towel tube in it! So I showed him the box, and ever since then, he’s frequently wanted to make something.

The Rocket. Making things pretty is definitely a girl thing. I always suggest that we complete these projects by painting them or covering them with paper, but the five-year-old doesn’t care for that. He wants a simple structure that he can play with right away.

Sometimes he comes up with his own ideas. Other times he finds something to build with and asks, “What can I make with this?” The piggy bank was one such item where we started out with a gallon jug and searched for an idea. EcoArt! by Laurie Carlson is a book that we were given one Christmas, and it’s full of great ideas.

Piggy Bank made from gallon jug and wine corks. Five-year-old did want to decorate this with stickers – his favorite!

So here’s a picture portfolio of some of his work thus far. If you are wondering, “Where will she put all this stuff?” that’s a very good question. I’m wondering that myself! (Suggestions or advice will be much appreciated!) Eventually we’ll be able to weed through some of this. We’ll keep a few things and throw the rest away, but I think my son might build at a rate that I can’t keep up with! It’ll be fun to see what happens, though.

octopus made with toilet paper tube, felt and googly eyes

Popsicle stick creations! My son made this, and it’s supposed to be a raft, although we haven’t tried to make it float.

This one worked well, though! Thank goodness my boys like to eat a lot of popsicles.

A blowhorn. Don’t know where he got the idea to make this. But it works well. Unfortunately.

Like the five-year-old at that age, my two-year-old loves to just cut paper. This is where that scrap paper box comes in real handy.

And we still love to make paper animals, which I wrote about when my son was doing preschool work. The scrap paper box is essential for that.

How do you encourage your children to create?

Posted in Homeschooling, Kindergarten, Project-based Homeschooling | 16 Comments »

Tags: boys, building, education, kindergarten, parenting, preschool, project-based homeschooling

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 | 10 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?

Please sign up for my RSS Feed or subscribe by e-mail in the right margin. I would love to get to know you, so leave a message too.

Posted in Homeschool Activities, Homeschooling, Kindergarten, Project-based Homeschooling | 10 Comments »

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

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 | 3 Comments »

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

May 17, 2011

Interview with a Barrow County Homeschooling Family: The McGarrys

Carrie McGarry sent this photo of her beautiful children to share with you. (Thanks, Carrie!) Above is Alexandria, age 8, Gavin, age 5, and Samantha (Sam), age 1.

This is a column that I wrote for The Barrow Journal. The McGarrys are a local homeschooling family who have three young children, age eight and under. They are using a variety of resources to homeschool, including project-based, and like many families who homeschool, they feel that public schools are putting too much emphasis on standardized tests instead of the quality of learning. They are involved in the Barrow County Homeschooling Group.

Click here to read the full interview with this awesome family.

For other interviews with homeschoolers, be sure to click on the “Interviews with Homeschoolers” in the margin.

Posted in Georgia Homeschool Groups, Homeschooling, Interviews with Homeschoolers, My Newspaper Columns, Project-based Homeschooling | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Barrow County, Georgia homeschoolers, homeschooling, homeschooling in georgia, interview with a homeschooling family, my newspaper columns, project-based homeschooling, The McGarry Family

February 17, 2011

Homeschooling: A Look At Our Hammerhead Shark Project (Part 2 of Project-based learning)

This is a column that I wrote for The Barrow Journal, and it’s the second part of a two-part series on project-based learning. In it I describe the hammerhead shark project that I did with my 4-year-old son. You can read the first part here. Above is a photo of the poster board we made during this fun project.

Last week I wrote what I learned about project-based learning from Lori Pickert’s blog at www.whiteoakschool.com. This week I’m going to tell you about my son’s first project. When I asked him what he might want to learn about, he told me, “hammerhead sharks.” He loves ocean animals, so this wasn’t a surprise to me.

In project-based learning, the emphasis is to teach children how to acquire information. It also emphasizes letting them have as much control over the project as possible. Asking children questions instead of supplying them with quick answers engages them in problem solving.

At age four, however, my son doesn’t have a lot of ideas on how to proceed with projects. He either says an emphatic yes or no to my suggestions. At this point project-based learning is more for me to learn and think about ways in which I can get him to take the lead and learn where to go for information.

In the past if my son asked me about hammerhead sharks, I would have gone straight to the Internet and looked up a video about hammerhead sharks to show him. This time, I asked him where he thought we might look for information about them. I expected him to say the computer, but he surprised me by saying a hammerhead shark was on one of his “cards.”

A while back, he received for a gift a stack of cards about oceans animals, bound together with a large ring. On the back of each card, there are two or three basic facts about the animal. I had forgotten about these cards, but he didn’t, and it was a good starting point. For example, we learned there are nine species of hammerhead sharks. Though he might not always have an answer for me when I ask him where we should go for information, I could certainly see the benefit in giving him the chance.

Later in the day while his little brother was napping, we made a poster about hammerhead sharks. I was surprised at how interested and attentive he was. He was willing to copy the words “hammerhead shark” on the top, and we colored a picture we found on the Internet. We also reviewed the sound “SH” as in “shark.” It was much more fun than the preschool workbooks that we often do together during this time.

The most fun we had was when we got a long string and measured it to 18 feet, which is as long as a hammerhead shark can grow. Then we rolled up the string and taped it to the poster board. After that, my son wanted to measure how long a humpback whale would be, so we looked it up and found out that they grow between 39-53 feet. It was a good lesson in numbers and measurement, and we were both delighted and surprised to find out that a humpback could grow longer than our house!

The next day we went to the library, and my son said he wanted books about hammerhead sharks and humpback whales. Usually I ask the librarian, or I look up the books on the computer, but this time I thought I would encourage my son to ask the librarian himself. Sometimes he’s shy, so I wasn’t sure if he would. Again, my son surprised me by speaking up when we were in front of the librarian, and he was very happy with the books she found for him.

By the next day, my son seemed satisfied with our work on hammerhead sharks and didn’t want to pursue it anymore. This was fine with me, although I admit I would have happily delved further into the subject.

When I contacted Lori by e-mail, she told me that I don’t have to worry too much about projects at this age. Right now it’s important to create an environment where materials are accessible to him, and it’s helpful if I begin to keep notes about the questions he asks and the things he does. I don’t know if we will always used a project-based approach to homeschooling, but I have learned some valuable tools that will help me help him.

Have you used project-based learning? Please tell me about it.

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

Tags: hammerhead shark project, homeschooling, my newspaper columns, parenting, preschool, project-based homeschooling

February 7, 2011

Experimenting with Project-based Homeschooling, Part 1

Note: This is a column I wrote for The Barrow Journal. For a list of all our projects, see the Table of Contents for Project-based learning.

Now that the holidays are over, visiting relatives are gone, and we are overcoming two back-to-back illnesses, I think (I hope) I can finally begin to think about a regular routine. One thing I have been intending to do is think more about how I want to homeschool. After reading a website I bookmarked several months ago, I’ve decided to experiment with project-based homeschooling.

Lori Pickert is a homeschooling mom of two boys, but before her days at home, she was the director of a private preschool for several years. Her school used a project-based curriculum in multi-aged classrooms. Now she writes extensively about this approach to teaching on her Camp Creek Blog, which you can find at www.whiteoakschool.com.

I think project-based learning can be useful for kids whether they attend school or not, so if this peaks your interest, be sure to read through Lori’s blog. I am not an expert on the subject, and I’ll only be sharing the highlights of what interested me about this approach and how I hope to apply them when working with my son.

In project-based learning, a child gets to choose a project that interests him or her and then study it in depth. Then they chose who they might want to share their information with and in what format: a book, video, poster, etc. The teacher or parent is there to offer support and help the child find the materials he needs to fulfill his projects, but the parent should not take over the project or push her agenda on the child.

I am guilty of this myself. Sometimes when I sit down with my son to work on a craft, I have a hard time letting go of control. I want that fish we’re creating to look like a real fish, so I volunteer to glue the eyes on for him or cut the paper just so. I’m getting better at sitting back and letting him do the work, and Lori’s website was a good reminder why this is so important. Kids learn by doing.

After reading her posts, I realized that it’s important for me to ask my son more questions instead of always offering the answer right away. Project-based learning emphasizes that it’s less important for children to memorize facts than it is for them to learn how to acquire information. Isn’t that the most useful thing we can teach children? Children learn the most when they are engaged in an activity that makes them problem solve and search for the answers themselves.

There was one post on her site where Lori shared a comment from a teacher, and the teacher gave this story. She said that one of her second grade boys once asked her whether the Loch Ness monster was real or not. She told him she didn’t know, but she’d help him find out. Over the next few days, this little boy visited the library, and he also interviewed his classmates to see what they thought. She said he was having a lot of fun, and obviously he was learning valuable skills along the way.

After a few days, the teacher said the boy dropped the subject altogether. When she asked him why, he told her that he asked his dad, and his dad told him there was no such thing as the Loch Ness monster, so that was it. My feeling is that even though the boy may have dropped the subject eventually when he felt satisfied with his research, parents can do a disservice by supplying quick answers.

When children are truly interested in a subject, they have much longer attention spans than many adults give them credit for. I know that my son has wanted to read the same books over and over again, and he can also watch the same television programs night after night. There is something about these things that are captivating to him.

Another tip I learned from this site was that I should write down the questions my son asks me. This was a light bulb moment for me because he has been asking me off the wall questions for several weeks now, and usually he asks them when we’re driving in the car, or I’m dealing with the baby or some other chore, and I can’t always engage him at that moment. So now, I’m jotting down the questions he asks, such as, “What is a lighthouse?” “What does fire burn?” …Two questions he asked me out of the blue yesterday! When we have more time, I’ll ask him if wants to me to help him find the answers.

When I told my son about working on a project and asked him what he might be interested in learning about, he came up with “hammerhead shark.” This didn’t surprise me because he loves ocean animals. Next week, I’ll write about our project and let you know what we came up with.

Click here to go to Part 2. UPDATE: Now my son is older, and I’m much wiser! To learn more about project-based learning, see my Project-based Homeschooling page.

Posted in Homeschooling, My Newspaper Columns, Preschool, Project-based Homeschooling | 8 Comments »

Tags: hammerhead shark project, homeschooling, my newspaper columns, parenting, preschool, project-based homeschooling

May 2013
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
« Apr
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Search this site

Getting Started with Mama of Letters

Homeschool Issues

Top Posts & Pages

Subscribe to this blog by e-mail!

Or subscribe via RSS feed…

Blogroll

Mama’s Main Matters

Posts tagged ‘project-based homeschooling’

{Creating a Welcoming Environment for Homeschooling}

Having the supplies accessible to the children is more important than having them in a specific place or shown attractively on the shelves.

If our supplies weren’t at my boys’ fingertips, I’m not sure these creative juices would be flowing. When I get overwhelmed by the chaos, I remember that I’m more than willing to put up with it during this era of my life that will go by so quickly.

Share this:

Like this:

{A.K.A. I don’t plan any crafts in this house.} {In between projects} {Exploring mediums}

I am the “YES” Mom.

Art Lessons

The Benefits

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

But here’s a bullet list of what I have learned…at least, this is how I view project-based homeschooling for my family thus far.

Share this:

Like this:

PART 3: Interview with Lori Pickert on Getting Started with Project-based Homeschooling with Young Children

5. Finally, much of the time that I would like to dedicate to project time is eaten up by the demands of a particularly needy three-year-old. Do you have any general advice for moms of youngsters who are interested in PBH, but are having a hard time “doing it all”?

Even when it feels like you aren’t accomplishing as much as you want, keep living a life that prioritizes learning, making, and sharing. It’s those underlying values that will form the foundation of his learning life. ~Lori Pickert

Thank you, Lori, for taking the time to answer my difficult and long-winded questions! I also have a couple of extra questions that might be helpful to my readers, and I’m curious too!

What are you working on now?

Do you have any other resources to help parents get started in project-based homeschooling?

Share this:

Like this:

PART 2: Interview with Lori Pickert on Getting Started with Project-based Homeschooling with Young Children

Share this:

Like this:

PART 1: Interview with Lori Pickert on Getting Started with Project-based Homeschooling with Young Children

Share this:

Like this:

How many children realize that education is for them, so they can do whatever they want to do in life…? ~ Lori Pickert, author of Project-based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-directed Learners.

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Once after watching an episode of Bob the Builder, the five-year-old told me he wanted to build a bridge. Who says TV is bad for kids?!

I try very hard not to micro-manage when he “builds.” I was very impressed with how he “measured” the bridge with a measuring tape,and then he counted the popsicle sticks to make sure they were the same size on both sides.

Our box of building supplies.

In my attempt to allow the boys ample freedom yet also preserve paper, I keep a box for the scrap paper. We reuse as much as possible.

The Rocket. Making things pretty is definitely a girl thing. I always suggest that we complete these projects by painting them or covering them with paper, but the five-year-old doesn’t care for that. He wants a simple structure that he can play with right away.

Piggy Bank made from gallon jug and wine corks. Five-year-old did want to decorate this with stickers – his favorite!

octopus made with toilet paper tube, felt and googly eyes

Popsicle stick creations! My son made this, and it’s supposed to be a raft, although we haven’t tried to make it float.

This one worked well, though! Thank goodness my boys like to eat a lot of popsicles.

A blowhorn. Don’t know where he got the idea to make this. But it works well. Unfortunately.

Like the five-year-old at that age, my two-year-old loves to just cut paper. This is where that scrap paper box comes in real handy.

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Or An Example of Child Led Learning…

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: