One downside to homeschooling? Having "real life" intrude on your child's school time. Our new-to-us Jeep Cherokee (the one that's been continually in and out of the shop since we bought it back in November) started overheating this morning, so I had to deal with that mess before my son and I could start our homeschool session. If he'd been in a traditional, outside-the-home school, our car's cooling system troubles wouldn't necessarily have interfered with his education. The hour or so we spent tracking down our mechanic and then transporting our vehicle to the big gravel lot where he works wasn't a complete waste, though: Parker now knows the word "thermostat," and has a rudimentary grasp on what an auto thermostat is supposed to do. This, in addition to the other words he's learned since we bought our lovely lemon: solenoid, (car) computer, radiator. Once we'd been dropped back home by our mechanic (Parker directed him to our house--a skill I hadn't realized my son had already acquired), we did have a good (if foreshortened) homeschool session. We're still working on sensorial activities, but I've also put some basic math (sorting) and science (magnets) materials out on Parker's school shelves, just to mix things up a bit.
There's a more traditional "matching two-dimensional shapes" Montessori activity, which I will prepare and introduce to my son soon. In the meantime, the mini-puzzles out of the Lauri Toys Primer Pack I bought Parker prior to our last big trip make for pretty good practice working with geometric shapes. He disassembles all four puzzles at once, then puts them back together, piece by piece. There are various-sized circles, ovals, triangles and quadrilaterals, so he has to identify size as well as shape to complete the puzzles.
Color tablets are insanely easy to make: you just cut up paint sample strips! In this activity, the child is supposed to grade the shades of one color, i.e. line them up from darkest to lightest. I saved half of each paint sample strip to serve as the control of error; after my son does his best to line up the color tablets in the correct order, he can compare his work to the still intact paint sample strip to see if they match.
Working with shades of purple.
Checking his work.
My mother-in-law sent me a box of Montessori goodies a while back, which we've been enjoying. Parker particularly likes an activity called the "graduated rainbow" (I made that name up--I don't know its technical title). It consists of pieces of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple felt cut into half-circles, graduated in size. The red half-circle is the largest and the purple half-circle is the smallest, so you end up with a rainbow when you do the activity correctly.
Another treasure from Grandma Betty: farm sorting cards. These are twelve square cards with pictures of horses, roosters and pigs glued on. There's one pink, one red, one yellow and one black horse; one pink, one red, one yellow and one black rooster; and one pink, one red, one yellow and one black pig. Parker can sort the cards either by animal or by color. Today, he lined up the pigs, pink, black, red, yellow. Then he copied that color sequence with the horse cards, placing them above the pigs, and then again with the rooster cards. Then he sat back and realized that he had rows of the same animal and columns of the same color. Cool stuff.
Last October, while sitting on some characteristically uncomfortable wooden bleachers, watching my 4-year-old little sister purposefully jump, roll and tumble her way through her weekly gymnastics class, I began to descend into a pathetic state of self-pity. "Oh, poor us. We live on a little island in the Caribbean, instead of in a suburban city in the States. My son will never be able to take gymnastics like his aunt or learn to play an instrument like his (9-year-old) uncle. Poor, poor Parker. Sure, he'll be plenty book smart, but he'll never know the joy of rolling and tumbling or making music. Boo hoo hoo." In an attempt to shake myself out of such abject despair, I decided that, upon returning home, I would start to teach my son both rudimentary gymnastics and how to play the violin, in addition to continuing to homeschool him. This, despite the fact that I am notoriously uncoordinated (I myself dropped out of gymnastics at 6 because I couldn't complete a cartwheel) and haven't seriously played a musical instrument since I was 18 (and, to be honest, "seriously" might be too strong a word to describe how I used to (attempt to) play French horn and tenor saxophone). I went so far as to browse Amazon for "how to teach kiddie gymnastics" and "how to teach violin via the Suzuki method" books, as well as for tumbling mats and a pint-sized violin. (Have I told you about my superpower of self-deception?) Though I didn't actually order anything from that fulsome internet superstore, I remained resolute: I would supplement our homeschool sessions with extracurricular activities even if it killed me. I would!
Well, my son must have the luck of the Irish (he is almost half Irish, after all); he never did have to suffer through the sad spectacle of his maladroit, functionally unmusical mother trying to teach him how to do a backwards somersault or play some scales. At a playdate last November, a week or so after Parker and I returned home from our epic Stateside journey, a mommy friend of mine presented me with the 2010-2011 class schedule for the St. John School of the Arts, a nonprofit academy here on island dedicated to offering St. Johnian kids instruction in all things (or most things, at least) artistic. Maybe she had intuited my quixotic plan to add extracurriculars to my son's homeschool sessions and decided an intervention was crucial. Probably she just wanted to spread the good (art school on island!) news. Her son had apparently been enrolled in Tumbling and Music Circle at SJSA for over a year; he loved attending the classes, and she couldn't say enough good things about the teachers and the curriculum. I returned home that afternoon tremendously relieved, and immediately sent an e-mail to the school, asking how to go about enrolling my son in some classes.
What's that old adage? Be careful what you wish for! Soon after sending that e-mail, a sense of trepidation descended upon me. Was my (heretofore solely homeschooled) son ready to heed the lessons of a teacher (one who is not me, I mean)? Would he get along with his classmates? Would he even want to go to class? I suddenly pictured scenes of Parker crying at the classroom door while I simultaneously pleaded with him to go in and tried not to appear too embarrassed by his antics. I did, of course, realize that my anxieties did not offer any rational reason why my son shouldn't at least try a class or two of Tumbling and/or Music Circle. He could conceivably even benefit from experiencing being taught by a teacher who is not his mother, in a setting that is not his home, with other kids besides him, instead of all alone. If he really hated it, we could try again next year. Knowing this, though, did not lessen my anxieties appreciably much. Not until the first time I took him to Tumbling--he happily joined the class and followed the teacher's instructions, laughing and enjoying the company of his classmates all the while--did I calm down. Man, this parenting stuff can stress a mother out!
It hasn't all been cartwheels and kumbaya since. Parker's Tumbling teacher is super "old school" in the way she manages her classroom and motivates her students. It's pretty much "be quiet and do what I say." Kids who perform well receive loud, effusive praise, and kids who get a little chatty or cut in line or act too animated get yelled at. It's easy to understand why: how would you go about teaching tumbling to a class of twelve extremely energetic and enthusiastic preschoolers? And, lest you wonder, "Well, why does she persist in taking her son to Tumbling, if the teacher is such a tyrant" I do have to say that, teaching style aside, the class is by and large fun for all involved. The kids giggle, the teacher grins, the spectating parents swell with pride. But, if you're a kid who has never stepped foot inside a traditional classroom, one where students are expected to sit down and shut up, where behavior is controlled via rewards and consequences, where students must constantly work to produce tangible results (worksheets, exams, reports), you might very well experience something akin to culture shock the first few times you're yelled at for talking to a friend or ignored for not completing a forward roll. I can see my son struggle with this aspect of Tumbling. He flat out refused to go to class one day last month, though he'd seemed excited enough in the car on our way there. Talking to my husband later that night, I realized that I'd been pushing Parker to practice somersaults at home; he'd been having trouble tipping over, and I misguidedly decided it was my job to help him succeed. I'd even gone so far as to say, "Won't your teacher be surprised when she sees how good you are at somersaults now?!" Well, my son has never enjoyed playing the role of performing monkey. I'd carelessly induced a full-blown case of performance anxiety in him. By ignoring him when he failed to complete a forward roll and showering him with praise when he did manage to actually tip himself over, my son's teacher had already put enough pressure on him. The last thing he needed was me making him feel like everything hinged upon a silly somersault.
Parents participate in Parker's Music Circle class, so it falls on us to control our kids, rather than the teacher, but there is a similar--if much muted--expectation of performance. We sit close together, facing each other, singing and playing miscellaneous percussion instruments. Well, I should say we parents sing (most of us anyway) and the kids sometimes play along using drums or shakers or what have you. It'd be awesome if the kids sang along, but they seldom do. And I'd love it if the kids--the very students!--would consistently use their instruments to practice keeping the beat, but clappers inevitably become clamping jaws and rhythm sticks inevitably become hammers and nails and bells get ignored in favor of jumping up and down or cuddling in parents' laps. But I recently stopped and thought about what I want my son to get out of his Music Circle class. Do I want him to learn that he must obey the teacher and perform accordingly, or do I want him to be exposed to music, to develop a love for it, to learn that making music is accessible to him, if he should ever desire to do so? (I think you can guess the answer.) Apart from the actual music, I really appreciate that Parker's music teacher begins each class with a song of greeting--during which we all sing/say hello to each child--continually makes eye contact with her students throughout the class and concludes with a song of farewell--during which we all sing/say goodbye to each child. Parker has a hard time with the attention he receives when the class is singing hello or goodbye to him; he usually fails to make eye contact, and never returns the greeting. He's still learning about social niceties. One of these days, he'll look up and say, "Hi!" I'm sure of it.
Postscript: In case you're curious, the St. John School of the Arts does offer private music lessons, so Parker can someday learn to play an instrument like his 9-year-old uncle. OK, everyone breathe a big sigh of relief now.
Every month or so, upon receipt of his latest High Five, my son and I stop everything, sit ourselves down and proceed to plunge into the pages of another enriching issue of this marvelous preschool magazine. To be honest, I wasn't exactly atingle with excitement when my mother emailed me a little over a year ago to say she'd purchased a subscription to High Five for Parker. High Five is published by the people behind Highlights, that magazine perennially found dogeared and discarded inside pediatricians' waiting rooms. Am I the only one who, awaiting another annual checkup, found myself turning yet again to an old Highlights issue in a desperate attempt to alleviate the maddening mixture of boredom and anxiety that every kid feels when they know their turn with the doctor looms ahead? And did that old Highlights issue do anything to either pique my interest or calm my nerves? No. I'd inevitably toss it aside in frustration, incredulous that there were adults out there who actually thought kids would enjoy reading such insipid drivel. (OK, so I might have suffered from a slight case of ennui as a child.) Needless to say, I had very low expectations for Highlights magazine's younger sibling. Well, was I ever wrong! It is chock full of educational stories, poems and projects, from counting activities to hidden picture pages to bilingual stories to zoology lessons to kid-friendly recipes, and more! For my son and me, receiving a new issue of High Five is sort of like having a substitute teacher come teach in our homeschool for the day; the magazine becomes a pseudo lesson plan, one which we follow (mostly) to the letter, out of which we get immense enjoyment. I know that part of the reason we derive such pleasure from our "High Five holidays" is that they only come once a month. If we were to try to implement a High Five-like lesson plan in our homeschool everyday, I'm certain that not only would we both chafe at the confines of such a strict schedule of activities, but also that boredom would abound. One magazine a month is just about perfect for us.
One of the fantastic features of High Five is how every feature highlights (pardon the pun) in some way the current season and coming holiday(s). This not only helps Parker learn to recognize the passage of time (after fall comes winter, then comes spring, then summer, then the cycle starts all over again), but also facilitates discussions about special days (e.g., Thanksgiving, New Year's, etc.). My son and I talk about why the day is special, and what people do to celebrate it. This latest issue (February 2011) highlighted (there's that word again) Valentine's Day, with instructions for a making a "heart mobile." Before we got started crafting our heart mobile, Parker and I talked about why a special day exists just to honor love. (And, no, I didn't tell him it's solely to benefit the Hallmark corporation and jewelry and flower vendors everywhere.) Parker said, "It's nice to show people you love them. Like how I gave the Banana Deck man a hug at the bakery yesterday." I agreed, though I'm not sure we should all start spontaneously forcing unsolicited hugs upon our favorite restaurateurs, no matter how scrumptious their banana shakes are.
Cutting up bits of paper to use to decorate the hearts.
Getting ready to glue some pieces of paper on the first heart.
Adding a little blue crayon to the mix.
Brief break while the hearts dry to talk about letters (the sounds they make) and do some coloring. And make loud, raucous music by playing a pretend xylophone, natch.
Greetings! It's been, what? Five months or so? I've missed you! Allow me to explain my absence. It's simple really: my computer broke (thank you, Tropical Storm Otto!), and it is very, very difficult to blog without a computer. (Alright, yes, I could have used my iPhone. I've been plagued these past months by a niggling sense of guilt over the fact that I didn't at least try to post a blog or two from my multitalented phone. I mean, there's an app for that! But I just balked at the thought of attempting to compose an intelligible, interesting and pertinent post using a keyboard smaller than my library card. Maybe that calls into question my commitment to this blog, but I contend that it confirms my (oftentimes questionable) grasp on sanity.) So, where was I? Ah yes, the irksome difficulty of blogging sans computer. Well, I have recently solved this problem! I have purchased a new computer! And upon booting up my new MacBook for the first time, I immediately sat down to write a new blog post. (OK, so I spent a week or so surfing the web, shopping for stuff like work shoes for my husband, birthday gifts for my son and his buddy, face lotion for me. But a week is pretty close to "immediately" if you take the macro view.)
So what have my son and I been doing in our homeschool all this time? Ummmmm, a lot? How can I even begin to sum up?!? I think the most important thing that has happened since we returned from our Stateside odyssey is that I have relaxed quite a bit. When my son and I started out on this homeschooling adventure, I was--how shall I say--FRAUGHT WITH ANXIETY about assuming responsibility for my son's education. Thanks to the passage of time, votes of confidence from friends and family members and insightful conversations with my parents and in-laws, the anxiety has abated. I realized that I was responsible for my son's education before we started homeschooling, with positive results. (Oprah has "Aha!" moments; I have "Duh!" moments.) Just because we officially began to homeschool didn't mean that I had to suddenly start doubting my abilities as parent/educator. I also realized that I needed to stop comparing our homeschool to traditional preschools, that it's OK for our homeschool to look a little less structured, a little more "organic" than regular schools. As my dad reminded me, "normal" preschool teachers have to constantly tackle crowd control issues at the same time they are trying to educate their gaggle of little tykes. The structure that permeates most preschools is necessary; the schools could not function without it. Well, I don't have a gaggle of little tykes in my school so I don't have to impose structure strictly to maintain order. This allows my son and I to approach learning much more freely, to follow his interests and indulge his curiosity.
In the interest of being less structured, I decided to simulate my mother-in-law's pink shelves here at home, and thus keep our homeschool materials out at all times. (In this way, my son could practice pouring or stacking the graduated blocks or what have you whenever the urge struck him; my husband or I would always be on hand to assist him, if necessary.) I was worried that finding suitable shelves would pose a problem. The shelves we had been using for our homeschool sessions were wobbly, beige-y gray and (gasp) plastic. Ceding some of our already meager living space for the sake of allowing my son unlimited access to his homeschool materials seemed a noble sacrifice to make, but I just couldn't stomach the idea of having to look at those ugly Home Depot shelves day in and day out. But, as I've mentioned before, we have no Ikea down here; nice, sturdy, wooden and inexpensive furniture is awfully hard to come by. However, in a truly serendipitous moment, my husband happened upon a pair of discarded wooden shelves next to the dumpsters behind his restaurant just days after my son and I returned home from our trip. We (and by "we" I mean my husband and his business partner) put them in the back of a school bus yellow pickup truck, drove them home and carried them up the stairs to our apartment. It took a little elbow grease to get them looking good, but it was well worth the effort.
The before photo.
Helping me paint.
Blue shelves in action!
Postscript: My husband and were talking over dinner the other night (a very rare occurrence given his 100-hour work weeks of late, thanks to the recent reopening of his restaurant in a bigger, better space in downtown Cruz Bay), when he gently suggested that a tad more structure in our homeschool sessions wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. I had to admit, I'd swung to the other end of the structure spectrum for a little while there; we weren't homeschooling so much as unschooling. While I admire the unschooling movement, the Montessori educational philosophy is what really resonates with me. So it's time to swing back a bit, to be somewhat more structured in our homeschooling. Notes on those adventures to follow...
Back in the 'burbs after living in the Caribbean for more than half a decade, I'm a widowed mom of two young boys. I do my best to practice attachment parenting and peaceful parenting, to live mindfully and holistically; sometimes, though, this roller coaster called Life derails my good intentions. Above all else, I strive to be happy and grateful for each day as it unfolds.
