Conquering clutter... by living in the moment

I've been glancing through Apartment Therapy: The Eight Step Home Cure recently and found one of the author's comments really enlightening. Clutter isn't about stuff. It is about procrastination (or nostalgia, as Dan pointed out). It is about not living in the present.

His comments hit home because I clutter up much of my home in order to avoid reality. I could decide about the stuff on my counter today or put it off til tomorrow... or next week... or maybe it'll go away before I have to admit that I never used those lovely things I bought. I used to never clean my fridge because it felt like a slap in the face to realize that I had let food go bad. Now, I at least declutter my fridge once a week, admitting that I let some food go back but hoping that by being able to see what is in it, I may prevent future waste.

We have a lovely counter connecting our kitchen and dining room. Usually it is covered with unread mail, children's drawings to be filed, CDs to be uploaded, books to be read, and many other things. Feeling challenged to deal with clutter, and knowing that a clean counter makes me happy, I decided to attack it. It wasn't that hard. I put away the CDs. I recycled or shredded the mail. I dealt with the books. It wasn't really that bad.

Will I ever upload the CDs? I don't know. Maybe, but if I don't, I am no worse off than now.

Will I ever look at the counter? Definitely, dozens of times per day, and I feel happier and freer each time I look.

German as a foreign/second language

We're doing it! We're doing J's German School homework!

He can be in the advanced or beginner class. The advanced class includes children who spend the summer in Germany. The beginner class includes children who have never been exposed to German as a spoken language. He doesn't really fit into either group, as he understands way too much German to be a beginner and doesn't speak well enough to be advanced. We made a deal with the advanced teacher that J would try out her class for a month and then we'd reevaluate.

With that in mind, we really have to prepare for class. He can't just do spontaneous oral drills, we have to practice beforehand. We have to go over everything covered last class and preview everything he'll be doing the next class.

This discipline has been great. After looking for some sort of German curriculum to provide extra practice for the kids for a few years, we finally have one, preplanned and prepared for us. We have the discipline of class time and homework, and J has the reading skills necessary to do well with German in a spoken and written way.

We're still doing our own things to achieve my goal for German this year: that the children can understand stranger-produced German. We're reading books and listening to CD stories and music. We speak German in the afternoons after we've finished our other homeschool tasks for the day. This is the heart and lifeblood of our German learning. The German School and homework has just added the bones to keep things in place.

Crash and burned

I tried Sonlight last year and we crashed and burned.

I tried Ambleside Online during the summer and we crashed and burned.

I gave (used) KONOS a try this month and we (shock) crashed and burned.

We're doing really well in math and language arts with RightStart and the Writing Road to Reading. Neither is an extremely simple program and neither is hands-off on the teacher. If I can handle teaching two kids math, one child phonics, and one language arts with WRTR, why can't I handle another curriculum for the rest?

I think I figured out at least part of the problem last night.

When I started math, we did only math for a while. Actually, quite a while. We did only math for about nine months. Then, we added on phonics and language arts via WRTR/SWR.

As we've started new curricula, I haven't added things one at a time but instead threw everything into the mix at once. We didn't have any time to adjust our schedules, to sink our teeth into a new subject, to ask questions and enjoy. Instead, we started reading ten new books at a time and it was crazy. Very crazy, annoying, and frustrating.

This isn't how I work well.

Now, I'm going to do things differently, We're not going to do everything at once but do one thing at a time. I know narration is extremely important, so "narration" is going to be our only new subject for the month of October. Since I printed out "50 Famous Stories Retold" and already own a great copy of Aesop's fables, that is what we'll be doing this month, but we'll be reading at least one story and narrating it each day.

We'll see what November brings!

Week 2: Sept. 26 to 30

After a good start last week, I was somewhat reluctant to break up our week to visit a traveling Picasso exhibit, but since I had already RSVP'd, we went.

We added in a visit to a nearby Japanese Garden and picnicked in the park before entering the exhibit.

 I approached the exhibit lightheartedly and told the big kids to pick out a favorite picture in each room to look at. We didn't do more than just glance at any but the favorites, and for once, I appreciated the pictures I saw and wasn't begging to leave by the end. I think I'll use my new museum method when I go with adults in the future.

The girls loved the water and especially the water skater bugs at the Japanese Garden.

Monday, Thursday, and Friday were our only structured school days this week now that BSF is back in session, but we still got a lot done. J is cruising along in his Writing Road to Reading notebook.

Great writing, J, but it looks like we need to correct a sentence.

The challenges this week involved teaching A to read. I generally don't want to push early reading, but A would be a lot happier at church if she could read, so we're doing basic phonics for a few minutes twice a day. The challenge was involving her in J's WRTR lesson. At first she resisted, since in the past she was allowed to play outside during that time. By Friday, things were much improved. She listened in (phonetic awareness) and played with pattern blocks.

Making cinnamon raisin bagels.

M shook things up today during naptime by putting her own "sunblock" on. (It was really Daddy's shoe polish. Whoops.)

"I thought it was sunblock, Mommy!"

Loving all the learning

We had finished math and spelling, the intensive parts of our day, and it was time to move onto narration. During narration, I read a passage aloud to J from Aesop's Fables and he tells me back, in his own words, what has happened.

There was only one problem: I couldn't find John. He wasn't in his block hideout or out in the (miniscule) yard. I found him on M's toddler bed, reading a book about animals in National Parks.

"J, time to shut the book! Narration time!"

"OK Mommy. Do you know about the rattlesnake? It has button-like shakers in the back that it moves around if it knows a person is close by. The sound scares people away." He went told me detail after detail about rattlesnakes. Couldn't we just move onto narration time?

Whoops! I almost missed out on one of the most enthusiastic narrations of the day because I was so excited about doing a "real" narration.

Week 1: September 21 to 24

We had two and a half days of school today after returning from our trip Tuesday and starting BSF on Wednesday.

It seems like the way to be a happy homeschooler (for me, at least), is to start small, with the basics, and add things on as we go, so that is what we did.

A has her own math to do now as it is going swimmingly. We play lots of games and do half of a lesson per day. I started her off in RightStart A, but soon found out she had learned too much from listening in to J's lessons for that to be a good fit. RightStart B works well as long as I don't drag out the lessons.

Additionally, A worked hard building some swooping patterns.

Her hard work paid off with a beautiful bridge pattern of her own design.

M set up her own working, sorting the colored pieces from a Montessori trinomial cube.

J had plenty to do as we quizzed the first sixty or so works from The Writing Road to Reading and continued in RightStart C. We finally started the geometric drawing portion, which was the part that convinced me not to switch to Singapore. As expected, he loves it.

Friday morning, as I started A's math lesson, I told J it was free play time.

"Can I please do the next math page? Please?" he begged. I gave in. Who can resist such a request?

We ended our week with the first day, for us, of German school, and we're geared up and excited about speaking more German at home again after a lot of laziness on my part over the summer.

Home from the Tetons, starting a new school year

We just got back from our family trip to Grand Tetons National Park.

Our reward for driving off at 8 am: a stunning Tetons view.

I've seen a lot of parks, but this was my first time there. We had a home base at Jackson Lake Lodge due to Dan's work but the kids and I were able to play everyday while Dan was at his conference. My favorite part of the week was seeing a moose for the first time in my life. We prayed to see one and were given one eating right next to the street! We started keeping Nature Journals during our trip and tried to draw bisons. Apparently, a "still" bison actually moves a lot, so we resorted to drawing flowers and grasses.

Now that we're back, and learning isn't getting in the way of homeschooling, we're getting back into gear with respect to homeschooling. We're going to give KONOS a month's trial since I really want to use a curriculum that facilitates my children learning together. We'll also read through the Mr. Q Science book as a science spine. Otherwise, our curriculum isn't much changed from last year, with The Writing Road to Reading replacing it's knock-off, Spell to Write and Read and Anna doing her own math this year. 

A real morning in nature

We went to the forest with J's independent study program today! It was lovely. We didn't go to the main part, with precisely fenced trails and signs every fifty feet, but to the back part, where we went off the trails and spent a couple hours playing games in a relatively open part of the redwood forest.

The kids played on a nature playground (made with fallen tree limbs and ropes, including two swings), played sardines (wow, that game helps you notice nature while you're looking for the hidden people), eagle eyes (ditto sardines), and built a house using tree limbs and leaf litter. The last was A's favorite part. Finally, at the end, we took down the playground, packed up the ropes, and it was just another clearing.

The morning was magical. I don't think I've looked at redwoods as closely as when I was looking for the hidden people, at least not in a long time. I never noticed how many huge stumps there were for whole groups of people to hide behind before. We all had a great time. I hope we can go back next week.

(And I hope I can take my nieces in the summer.)

Final Silent E Page - We did it!

While I was waiting for my sister's labor to really start, I read The Writing Road to Reading and had my eyes opened.

Now, I wasn't unfamiliar with this approach. Actually, we've technically been "using" Spell to Write and Read (which is based on it) off and on since October. However, the opinions she wrote into her book really put me off, such that I had a hard time reading it. Additionally, what she writes a very long book about is only the first chapter of The Writing Road to Reading because WRR is just so much more succinct. 

Suddenly, I caught the vision. THIS was what I was trying to do. It really wasn't so hard after all. Sanseri's book had just overwhelmed me.

We're back on track now, reviewing all phonograms visually everyday and writing eight to ten from dictation everyday. We've reviewed the first three sections from the WISE guide, which we did during the fall, and today started covering new ground.

We did the Silent Final E page. Wow. It wasn't hard. We just had to do it.

Quizzing, which I felt so opposed to before, isn't hard. It is just a different form of practice. Of course John has never gotten a bad spelling test back before (and won't be this year, either). I'll just put a dot over the wrong word, let him fix it, and then put on a star sticker to cover the dot. Then, we'll review it in future weeks.

Amazing - I'm going to be following two programs almost to the letter. We're all happier that way.

Schooling by the book

A few weeks ago, I gave myself a challenge: follow RightStart B to the word for four weeks and then decide if I didn't like it.

I don't know how long I've been doing this "challenge", but it has been wonderful.

I love RightStart B. It is easy to teach. If John clearly knows how to do a section, we do a few problems and move on. He loves the games. If we just do it consistently (which we have, recently), he'll be "accelerated" even though the text goes deeply into concepts. I don't need to speed things up.

Next up: four weeks of "by the book" Spell to Write and Read. Then I can decide if I really can't handle it.

The trouble with message boards

I used to love message boards, but I promised my hubby I'd go message board free for six months if we bought a certain curriculum. I made the promise for a few reasons. First, the point of a curriculum, for me, is to save time, so if I spend hours figuring out ways to tweak it, I shouldn't be paying lots of money for it. Second, I knew that I'd quickly become dissatisfied with any curriculum if I saw all the opinions people gave about it on a message board.

So, as with some time removed from message boards, I can see how discontent I become when I read them. The board is gossip central, with everyone talking about their new and exciting curriculum. Everyone has a brilliant child (or, at least, the outspoken people are ones with brilliant children, or, minimally, children who happened to have a brilliant five minutes that morning) and is eager to share how this that or the other curriculum was too simple/boring/slow for their child. Well, I want my children to show signs of brilliance and then start looking for that same curriculum to fail for my child, or I may just pine for that new, more perfect curriculum that will effortlessly teach my child how to spell/write/speak Spanish/train elephants/etc.

Our math curriculum is a victim of the message boards. I loved Right Start A. It was perfect. Everyday was exhilarating. Even though we haven't consistently RSed since October, I can see my son's ability to understand the math I teach him stemming directly from the great RS foundation he has.

However, comments on the boards talked about how "slow" RS is (another word for slow could be "thorough" or "careful")  and about how their children were "bored" (it is somewhat scripted, but one doesn't have to spend a lot of time on each section). Then, I, wanting to turn against it, started agreeing.

We're going back to RS tomorrow. It deserves a chance. It is exceptionally thorough and teaches concepts from multiple viewpoints. It will help prevent "holes" - which really can exist! My son is dangerous because he can figure things out, which I could do, too. The danger is that you figure out the motions to go through without actually understanding. I don't think RS will allow that!

Here's my commitment:
- four weeks
- four days per week
- 20-25 minutes per day
- do all sections
- continue to next section without extra review if seems appropriate

I'll update with my new opinion of RS in mid-February.

What is the point of games?

We live on the California coast. We are surrounded by hippies and unschoolers who use games to (essentially) trick their children into learning. Some abhor curricula and believe that games and life experience will provide their children's foundational skills.

I'm not an unschooler. I'm constantly shocked by the things my children learn on their own, but direct instruction is at the heart of our homeschool (and life). From things like, "We say please if we want someone to do something for us," to "You must apologize to your sister if you cause her harm," to "G may say /j/ when followed by E, I, or Y," we utilize direct instruction all the time.

So I find myself asking myself why I play games with my children. Of course we love math games for reinforcing skills, but games are more fundamental to our school than that. We play math games that cover skills we've never learned and we play physics games that demonstrate ideas that I remember from college. Why?

It's fun, of course, but there's more than that. By playing games, my children are gently introduced to concepts before they are taught them. When I teach the concepts, they come much more naturally because they have become intuitive. They will think these subjects are easy and consider themselves good at them, and will be more likely to like them.

Of course, any subject worth studying eventually becomes hard. But hopefully curiosity and adventure will take over by then.