Why I can't really tell you what we're doing for school

It's happened multiple times to me, and I imagine it must happen to other homeschooling families as well - the question of "What are you learning at school?" or its twin "So what are you doing/teaching this year?"  I'm a chronic over-thinker and these sorts of questions fill me with dread because I have no idea how to answer them accurately.

This year, sometime in August and well before we 'started school' (another phrase I can't wrap my head around) I wrote out a list of our curriculum choices.  I knew I needed a piece of paper that easily gave me a black and white answer to those kinds of inevitable questions for my own sanity.  And so I can tell you what it is that my children are theoretically using for school; on the other hand, here's why that piece of paper doesn't explain anything.

1.  I will not actually follow all of those curriculum choices as they are written to be followed.  If X science curriculum asks me to do two lessons per week there is a strong chance that I will do three lessons a week, or one lesson a week, or that some weeks I will do three lessons and the next week we'll be out of town and do half a lesson and then skip the next week and the following week we'll decide the scheduled lesson is boring and just do the experiment and then the fourth week we get on a kick about invertebrates and...you get the idea.  Am I using this curriculum?  I suppose so, roughly, approximately, but at the same time not really.

2.  I am going to add/subtract curriculum constantly.  The most carefully curated list of books for the eight year old will suddenly be unacceptable when he jumps ahead a few reading levels or randomly drops a few reading levels for no reason.  Or the six year old reads all of the books I picked for her for a month in three days.  Or we start on the handwriting selections and it is a vale of tears and I need to drastically reconsider everything.  None of my choices are set in stone and the majority of the time there is at least something that gets changed.

3.  I don't do all the teaching so actually I don't know exactly what everyone is doing every day of the week.  All three children have swimming lessons, for example.  I can tell you that.  But I can't tell you what they are learning, necessarily.  The eight year old takes piano lessons.  I get updates from his instructor but have only a rough idea what he's doing on a lesson-by-lesson basis.  He's learning how to play the piano.  That's what I know.

4.  A lot of the learning the children do is in their own time.  Every one of my children has their own set of interests and they tend to develop those without my assistance.  My son likes robotics, Lego, superheroes, learning sign language, origami, following NHL hockey teams, cross stitching, drawing comic strips, tv shows about history and archaeology, math videos, asking people trivia questions, playing the piano and numerous other interests and most of these things I have very little to do with.  So he will arrive at the kitchen table and launch into a lecture about hexaflexagons and I had no idea he knew anything about them.

5.  Finally, but maybe most importantly, there are days when it's hard to define exactly what we did 'for school'.  When a child helped me measure in the kitchen, were we doing math?  When we were all working in the garden and someone mentioned photosynthesis, were we doing science?  When a sick toddler asked for a book and I read to her, was that read aloud time?  A large portion of homeschooling, for me, has been accepting learning opportunities as they arrive, but because of that I have trouble explaining when we start or end our school day, or even necessarily what we're learning about.

October Reading Notes

I am reading...

More Home Cooking - Laurie Colwin

I have heard so much about Colwin's food writing and her Home Cooking and More Home Cooking have both been in my Amazon cart for ages.  This was my first opportunity to sit down and read any of her essays, and my opinions are mixed.  On one hand, hurray for articulate, thoughtful, often humorous food literature!  On the other hand, Colwin goes a bit far into the realm of the food snob to have me fully behind her.  Many of her recipes sound frankly disgusting to me, but I wasn't reading her for cooking suggestions and I believe More Home Cooking was published almost twenty years ago when for all I know tastes were very different.  There was just a lot of rah-rah organics, everything made from scratch, 'knowing about your food', mothers knowing where their children's food came from, etc. etc.  It was tiresome.  All that being said, actually I am enjoying it and have a good ability to skim over annoying prose anyway.

On Rereading - Patricia Meyer Spacks

Spacks is a retired professor of English literature and writes exactly like a retired professor of English literature.  In fact, her entire first chapter carefully outlines what she plans to write about in subsequent chapters.  I just found this odd.  She's articulate and interesting and so far I find that I'm picking this book up and putting it down multiple times.  It hasn't gripped me yet, but that being said I am a die hard rereader myself and really want to hear what she has to say about the subject.

Pilgrim At Tinker Creek - Annie Dillard

I actually saw Dillard's name on a list somewhere recently about books people found helpful in their religious journeys.  I can't say I really understand that but I have absolutely found Pilgrim At Tinker Creek eye-opening for my nature walks.  Her way of looking at the world - observing the huge and the minuscule - is beautiful.

Life Among The Lutherans - Garrison Keillor

The American Stephen Leacock!  This was my first time reading Keillor and he was very, very funny in a dry, cold, Minnesotan way.  We church people are a never ending source of humor, I tell you.

My reading this past month has been pretty sporadic what with the start of homeschooling, a very large event at the church, an overnight trip away that involved air travel and not a little planning on my part.  Hopefully October will see a few more books achieved, especially as I'm hoping to best last year's reading total of 62 books.  So far this year I have read 57.

The 8yo is reading...

 Some of the books that have caught our fancy the last little while - an eclectic list.  A little of this and a little of that, but attempting to pick, if not necessarily Good Books For Children, at least not undeniable twaddle.

 

A few of these titles have made it on to our study list for the next few weeks, so will have a bit more discussion  of themes and plot, etc.

 Some of them are just for fun.  The 8yo picked up Mr. Tinker in Oz on a whim, and I have no idea what sparked that interest.  I have never enjoyed Frank Baum so it wasn't from me.

Reading List in Early Winter

Reference materials to keep to hand

Other things to have on hand...

A good map!  I have a little atlas but I much prefer to keep a big rolled up laminated wall map beside me and unroll it so everyone can lie on it and see where they are.  A globe is also nice.

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This large, heavy doorstop has been invaluable to us.  The pictures are big and glossy and well done and the mini biographies are full of more information than I need for my littles to enjoy a piece of art but wouldn't likely be enough for an older child.

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Nicely done.  Not too much information to overwhelm younger students but enough to answer everyone's questions about who the vikings were.

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 My completely unprofessional opinion about dictionaries is this: buy a grown-up dictionary right off the bat and forget about children's versions, which they quickly outgrow anyway.  You may as well teach them how to look up a word properly as soon as they're able to because the rest of their school days will be spent doing just that.  Choose whichever publisher you like; I prefer Oxford.

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A birdfeeder, or a flat space to spread seeds, and a good birding guide for your area.  Also nice are other nature guides, to local plants, flowers, tracks, insects...as much or as little as your interests and pocketbook allow.

We're still in the early years, of course.  Who knows what will be invaluable reference material a few years from now.

Music - Vivaldi

Although I love the music of many genres I know very, very little about it from a teaching standpoint.  I'm afraid that after being able to tell a whole note from a half note my knowledge is exhausted.  Since this is the reality we're living with and I'm unable to outsource my children's musical education, I've been more than a little nervous about presuming to teach them anything.  We've defaulted to listening to a classical piece during morning time and taking it from there; right now we're enjoying Vivaldi's Autumn from his Four Seasons.  This is the sort of classical music I feel fairly confident with!  Listen, children, it sounds like leaves and wind!

And I came across this short and interesting TedEd video about why we should listen to Vivaldi - he is indeed the 'pop music' of his age.  Take a moment and enjoy.

In case you're interested in learning more about the orphans of the Ospedale Della Pieta, here are a few links:

From Classicfm

From Wikipedia

Beyond morning time

The 7yo dislikes being asked to practice reading aloud every day, but still we persevere.  This is what we're working through at the moment:

It's written from a Protestant viewpoint, if that is an issue for you, and I like how each biography is split into a few chapters and followed by review questions.  The font is quite large, and the chapters very small - perfect for the reader who can manage short chapter books and progressing into nonfiction.

Something else he dislikes?  Copy work.  We do as many words as we can before mutiny reads it's ugly head.  We putter through the John James Audubon copy work book from this site.

Math is significantly less of a battle and probably deserves it's own post, but we use these books:

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Combined with a lot of baking, number puzzles, calculator play, tangrams, board games and Doodling In Math Class videos it equals a lovely and interesting elementary math education.