What stories do you tell your children (and yourself!) about learning?

It is an almost universal phenomenon that people are profoundly moved and impressed by the stories we tell each other (and ourselves) about what we are doing and why.

Almost everything we say or do is deeply intertwined with the stories we are currently hearing and telling.

From that standpoint, parents are largely responsible for marketing learning to their children. We determine the stories our children learn about learning.

The “marketing” term sounds icky, but it’s not as bad as it sounds.

Really anytime we interact with other people we are making an impression on them by our enthusiasm or indifference; our ideas and opinions; our words and actions. These cues work collectively to tell others a story about ourselves and what we think is important in life, whether we want them to or not.

What stories do you tell about the value of learning?

• “We learn because it is ‘the law’.”
• “We learn because we can’t help it!”
• “. . .Because I said so!”
• “. . .Because it will help us live happy and prosperous lives.”
• “. . .Because learning helps us make the world a better place.”

I’m certain I’ve told all these stories (and more) at some point. No question, some of these are more motivational, long-term, than others. Those are the stories I hope to emphasize to myself and my children.

The important thing, I think, is not to say that some stories should be used and others shouldn’t, but that we should try to be aware of the story we are telling. Then we can decide if that story is accurate, and if it will get us where we need to go.

What stories do you tell?

Photo credit: Biltmore Estate 4 by Emilia Miná Bicking

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Last week marked a couple of memorable firsts for Lunablog.net that lead me to wonder, “Am I officially a real, true, bona fide blogger, now?”

Milestone #1 – For the first time, I accidentally wrote a duplicate post. For some reason I’d thought it would take much longer than 8 months to get to the point where I pretty much said exactly the same things I’ve already said (on the topic of homeschool stereotypes in case you are curious).

I thought I’d been meaning to get around to writing about the subject, but forgot that I’d already done it back in December. Sigh. I realized my mistake shortly after spending about an hour on the post and then clicking publish. I quickly “un-published” it, but for some reason it went out on my email subscription list and rss feeds anyway. So, if you got a post that you already remember reading about . . . well, that’s why. And if you didn’t get the post . . . well that just goes to show you the kind of excitement that you miss out on around here by not subscribing!

[Read more]

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Does that title sound just a little odd?

“Balancing children and family.”

Aren’t kids and family sort of the same thing? Shouldn’t we be talking about something like “balancing children and housework” or “balancing children and a job”, instead?

Well, not exactly. Children and family are not the same thing, although I think many people (myself included) get them confused sometimes. Kids, of course, are a part of a family. Parents are part of the family, too. A good question, to me, is does your family center mainly on your children? On the parents? On the family as a whole?

I’d hazard a guess that most of the parents visiting this site correctly place a pretty high priority on their children. Because I have found that in our family the line between “high priority” and “over-indulgence” is pretty fine, I think it can be helpful to ask some of the following questions:

• Do my children get the opportunity to learn to respect and value the priorities of others?
• Do I have interests or hobbies other than my children?
• Do I let my children see me modeling lifelong learning and pursuit of personal goals and interests?
• Do I feel that I need to provide my children with everything that they need or want? How about most things? Where do I draw the line?
• How does the age of my child play a role in determining a good balance?
• Do my children think that they (and their feelings/desires/wants) are significantly more important than those of others in the family?

In our family we seem to need to continually evaluate and adjust to find the most effective balance between supporting individual family members and working together to create a healthy overall family culture.

I’d love to discuss your ideas about these questions (or any others you can think of on this topic). How do you work towards a good family balance? What are the challenges that you still face?

(For a thoughtful post on this very topic, be sure to check out The Thinking Mother’s post, Are Homeschool Moms Unbalanced? )

Photo credit: “Walking the Trunk” by Janet Burgess

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First Exercise:

View the aerial photo above in 3D by crossing your eyes slightly until a third white dot appears between the two. The center image that forms will be in 3D! (Don’t worry if you can’t get it to work. My husband has never been able to get these hidden images to cooperate.)

Another quick little experiment:

Just for a moment, close your left eye.

Look around with only your right eye, and see how things look different.

At first, nothing much seems to have changed. Objects in your surroundings still have the same shape, color, and location. Although you can’t see quite as much on your left without turning your head, the image that you see out of your right eye looks remarkably similar to what you saw with both eyes.

If you get up and try to walk around, however, you will soon notice that you are having to try a lot harder to coordinate your movements. Throw a small ball or an ink pen high in the air and try to catch it. You might still manage to catch it, but you weren’t as confidant that you would be successful, were you?

After looking through just your right eye for a while, it strikes you that the image you see with one eye could be perfectly replicated by any flat television screen or photograph. It looks correct, but it is missing information that would more accurately depict your surroundings.

What you see lacks depth. Because it is, essentially, a less accurate picture of the reality you are experiencing, it is easier to make missteps, harder to keep balance, more difficult to judge where you are exactly and where other things are in relation to each other.

Open your eye again. Isn’t that a relief?!

Yes, but what is the point? [Read more]

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Apparently, you are not alone! Earlier today, in fact, I was bemoaning to myself the fact that I had so many projects going right now I could hardly see straight. Lo and behold, what did I proceed to stumble across but a recent blog post of Susan Wise Bauer’s about the limits of multitasking!

Now Susan (or should I say “Dr. Bauer” now – she’s earned it!) is one of my favorite bloggers. I’ve read her blog for at least 18 months or more. She doesn’t post so often that it is a chore to keep up, and I love to vicariously follow her on her writing, revising, and publicity adventures, with a few farm-related highlights to keep things interesting. If you don’t already read her blog, I highly recommend it!

As I was reading the list of what she had going on this past week, though, I have to admit that I felt downright queasy on her behalf. She laments the frustration she is having: [Read more]

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In recent years, cases of abuse, neglect, or even (as in Washington DC last week) murder by homeschoolers or persons claiming to be homeschoolers have prompted some journalists and government officials to call for increased regulation and supervision of homeschooling families. Each time abuse like this comes to the attention of the nation, the obvious first response is to reign in the autonomy of homeschool parents, so that they are unable to slip through the cracks of the social services system.

In this most recent case of apparently gruesome and heartbreaking murder, such a reaction is certainly understandable. The innocent children involved appear to have been at the mercy of a distraught and deranged parent, and everyone wants to know how this could have happened, and how it could be prevented in the future. [Read more]

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This post is the first in an ongoing series about “hacking” your homeschooling materials and resources to fit your own situation. Think of hacking in the Macgyver sense of the word, where you take available materials and deftly modify them into something that will work for whatever need your family has at the moment. Often hacking can help you turn something otherwise unusable into a great asset for your family!

Since the Carnival of Homeschooling’s theme this week is schedules, I decided to make the first Curriculum Hacking post about Schedule Hacking.

Many homeschoolers have found themselves to be the proud owners of a curriculum that they love, but that doesn’t fit well with their families’ schedule. Or, maybe you planned out the year yourself, but find that your schedule just isn’t doing the trick. You may have even downloaded my free Ancient History curriculum guide that I posted last week. Now that I’ve posted those plans (complete with daily schedules!) I feel it is only fair to give you some ideas for how you can modify them – or almost any curriculum or schedule, including your own – to fit the real world needs of your family.

Here are a few possibilites for you to consider:

Weekly approach:

If your curriculum is scheduled on a daily basis (like the Mosaic Myths, Maps, and Marvels one that I wrote), feel free to switch things up by taking a more “weekly” approach. That is, you may want to do all the history encyclopedia readings one day, literature readings, another day, poetry another day, and websites or hands-on activities the last day. Any similar way of rearranging can work. In this approach, you are still working through lessons in the same basic order, week by week, but you are grouping or rearranging certain assignments within that week.

This approach works well if you or your child have a hard time switching back and forth from lots of different kinds of activities in a day. Many children benefit from short, frequently changing lessons, but others prefer to get “in the zone” with a particular type of project, and don’t like to abruptly switch gears many times in one day.

Short Lessons:

Some children really benefit from short, to the point lessons. Long lessons in a single subject (as mentioned above) may bore them to tears. They may benefit from being able to switch gears frequently during their “school day”. You can try it out both ways, to see whether long or short lessons works best for your family. Don’t be surprise if it varies from subject to subject, or for different types of activities.

In any case, busy work is usually best left out entirely, and care should be taken to present as much information and practice as is needed, but not to needlessly belabor a lesson. Sometimes you can shorten the lessons and still cover the same amount of material, just by ruthlessly cutting out any activities or assignments that don’t serve a significant role in meeting your learning goals and objectives.

Group lessons into Units:

Another path you can take would be to carve your lessons up into related units. You can group similar topics together, and then delve into an extended study of a particular part of the curriculum.

For instance, if your history curriculum is written chronologically, you could split it up into units for each major civilization. I wrote Myths, Maps, and Marvels to be like a set of connected unit studies, because my children (and I’m sure many other young children) could understand each culture better by studying one at a time, instead of hopping back and forth. For history, you can use a timeline to help you keep up with the chronology. If you have a curriculum that moves very chronologically, and it seems that moving frequently from one culture to another to another and back again might be losing your children (especially if they are fairly young), you might consider doing the history as units.
For a widely varied science curriculum, you might want to group the life science lessons together, and then do a unit with the lessons on physics.

For math, if your child is stuck on memorizing addition facts, you might want to switch the schedule up a bit and jump to telling time for a while. Or if your older child is stuck in some other computation crisis, it might be a good time to move to some lessons on geometry.

When you group lessons into units, you still can (and should!) make connections with other parts of the curriculum as well. Telling time still lets you reinforce counting by fives, for example.

Main Lessons:

If you are having a hard time going from subject to subject in the course of a week, you can take a page from the Waldorf playbook, and use Main Lessons.

A Main Lesson is a primary subject that is studied each day for (usually) several weeks at a time. That means you might study mostly history for a few weeks, then spend several weeks learning science, then a few weeks on intensive math studies.

Advantages are that you can get really in depth with a particular subject. You can focus on one thing at a time, without feeling pulled in so many directions at once. You can attempt involved and ambitious projects that will further your child’s understanding. You can really take advantage of a particular learning urge, “striking while the iron is hot”. Or, you can successfully put aside a subject where there is developmental unreadiness, and come back to it in a few weeks when things just may “click” a little better.

Potential disadvantages could be that your child may dislike studying only one main topic. They may get bored, or burned out before you can cover a whole morning of math. Your child could also lose momentum in some skills based subjects like math or reading without regular practice.

A great way around some of these problems is to continue regularly practicing and learning math and/or reading, but to use Main Lessons as a way to get to some of those subject areas that often fall by the wayside in the normal course of a busy day. Science, History, Grammar, Art, and Music appreciation are good candidates. Rotating your focus on these topics can often be more productive than trying to fit everything in every week.

Summer Focus:

I’ve heard of many families who plan to leave science until the summer, and then easily complete a year’s worth of science reading and activities/experiments in 2 or 3 months. If you find that you just can’t make room for something that you really do want to include in your schedule, summer just may be the ideal time to get it in.

Doing something different in summer (especially if it is fun or hands-on) can give your family a break from the routine of the school year, while still having a very productive learning experience.

If you get to the “end” of a year, and feel that there’s something you really didn’t get to as much as you would have liked, you can consider making a special effort over the summer. (You will notice that this is just a less formal way of using the Main Lesson idea.)

Unschooling:

Finally, you can consider throwing the schedule out the window entirely, and just use the curriculum as a guide to resources and ideas for learning topics in which your children are interested. If there is a booklist included, let your children pick the ones that interest them. If there are activities, buy lots of supplies and encourage your children to select any that they find appealing. If your children are fascinated with a particular topic, use the curriculum for ideas on how to learn more about it.

Even if you don’t think you would be comfortable with unschooling full time, you can consider having “unschooling breaks” periodically, so that everyone in the family gets a chance to pursue their favorite topics. Alternating periods of structure and routine with periods of freedom and exploration can be a great way to get some of the benefits of unschooling without freaking out your spouse or committing to an approach that makes you uncomfortable when done full time.

Any suggestions?

What other ways have you seen or heard or just thought of for scheduling your learning?

Photo credit: Hilde Vanstraelen

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I read a great post recently by Dana at Principled Discovery, and it brought to mind an article I had written for Home Education Magazine earlier this year. Since HEM kindly only reserves first printing rights, I can now repost the article here on the blog, in case anyone else would care to read it (for free)! You can scroll down to the end of this post for the link.

Dana’s topic is homeschooling stereotypes, which I’ve also found to be quite common in homeschooling circles. I’m not talking about the stereotypes that non-homeschoolers have about us, but rather the stereotypes that we apply to ourselves, the standards that we create in our minds that we feel the need to live up to. In the comments to Dana’s post, Marcy really hit the nail on the head when she shared advice given to her by her sister:

You know, I always thought other people were so much better homeschooling moms than me. I’d read about how they canned, or went on nature walks, or journaled, or had their kids involved in many sports, or read them all these great books, or made their own ______ (you fill in the blank!) – and I’d think how amazing they all were. Then it suddenly dawned on me – they don’t ALL do ALL these things!

You’ll find that in my article I took a positive approach towards those expectations that we develop for ourselves. My take is that while we are rarely living up to ALL the expectations we have at any given time, we are almost always doing SOMETHING that could be considered “productive” from a homeschooling standpoint. If we focus a bit more on what we are doing right, rather than what we’re doing wrong, we can avoid that unfortunate tendency to judge ourselves as coming up short on most counts!

You can read the entire article here. I’d love to hear your thoughts about living up to homeschooling expectations, whether self-imposed or held by others!

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Do you consider yourself to be a creative person?

Whether you answered “Yes, definitely!” or “No way – are you kidding?” I think you should keep reading.

Many of us have neglected to spend a lot of time realistically evaluating our creativity, and we often associate creativity with doings lots of crafts, creative writing, or art. There are many ways to live a creative life, though, and homeschooling is most definitely one of them!

I just finished reading a really cool free ebook this week, and I was unexpectedly struck by just how appropriate it was for homeschoolers. For instance, do you know what is one of the best ways to create amnesia? I bet most homeschoolers would be interested to know that, and also to know how to avoid that fate, as well!

You can download your own free copy of Time Management for Creative People, which was written by Mark McGuinness. The subtitle is “Manage the mundane, create the extraordinary” – that sounded pretty good, to me.

It is a very manageable 32 page download, succintly written, that collects a number of intriguing and unique ideas, including:

• How to ring fence your best time for creative work.
• How to get things done by putting them off until tomorrow (!)
• How to use buckets to get things off your mind.
• How to avoid getting so busy with urgent details that you never get around to doing the things that matter most.

I’m sure some of you are wondering (especially since the book is actually aimed at web and design workers), “Why does this apply to homeschoolers?”

Consider the following:

• Lots of homeschooling parents have creative goals for their lives, or ongoing creative projects. (blogs, for example, or work at home businesses, or scrapbooking, or even writing the Great American Novel)
• Lots of homeschooled kids and teens also have creative dreams and ambitions. At some point in their education it is incredibly useful for them to learn more about ways they can take full advantage of their creative potential.
• Finally, homeschooling itself can be an intensely creative experience. After all, no matter how you actually go about doing it, your primary goal as a parent is to create a rich learning environment for your offspring.

Homeschooling offers opportunities for amazing possibilities, but it also often entails plenty of distractions. These mundane, everyday distractions can derail (sometimes permanently) your more creative and meaningful plans. Those great things that you were going to get around to may be truly wonderful, even life changing. But they are rarely urgent, and so time and again they get bumped to the back of the line, while you struggle to take care of the “emergencies” that invariably pop up to gobble your time.

You may find this book especially helpful if you (like me) find yourself avoiding your child’s requests for a particularly cherished activity or project more often than you’d like, because, “We just don’t have time.”

Homeschoolers stand to greatly benefit from suggestions for setting aside the time to do the things that are most important to us. Unless we pay special attention to those goals, we run the risk of always putting out fires, but never quite getting around to engaging in some of the most meaningful, life enriching actions to which we aspire.

This ebook offers up some excellent tips and links to several intriguing tools and websites. It also includes recommendations for resources to learn more about creativity, productivity, and expanding our capacity for both. Best of all it is truly free, and it doesn’t even come with a sales pitch or sleazy marketing (phew!).

I want to challenge you to make the most of the opportunities you have opened up for your family through homeschooling! (I’m challenging myself to the same thing!)

What would your life look like if you dared to attempt some of your most audacious goals?

If you are a homeschooler, you have quite a bit of flexibility compared to most families. What are some great opportunities that you could pursue if you wanted to take maximum advantage of your freedom and flexibility?

What have you been telling yourself you’d like to do, but haven’t gotten around to yet?

What are some steps you can take now, to move yourself a little closer to actually doing those things? (Even baby steps or starting on a small scale is preferable to never getting started at all!)

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You aren’t alone!

Keeley at Wanderer in a Strange Land confessed a certain angst brought on by my list of 19 Can-Do Nature Walk Variations:

The HUGE problem is that when I get outside I’m just like “uhhh…ok, now what?” and April’s suggestions 2 and 3 make me want to run away screaming. Not that they’re bad suggestions! I’m just slightly bug and creepy thing phobic. How in the heck do I *not* pass that on to my kids? I really don’t want to!

Keeley is referring to my suggestions to turn over rotting logs to look for bugs, worms, and fungi, and also to look for places that animals and insects could make their homes, such as in shrubs, under rocks, in hollow spots in trees, etc.

One size definitely doesn’t fit all

I’m so glad she brought up this point, because it is important to remember that these suggestions are definitely just suggestions, not one-size-fits-all prescriptions for what a good nature walk has to include. Few of us are perfectly comfortable with all aspects of the natural world, so I think it’s important to play to our strengths here, instead of feeling inadequate because of some perceived shortcoming!

For instance, I may not mind bugs, much, but snakes give me major heebie-jeebies. I also have had fairly severe vertigo since I was a teenager, so I struggle quite a bit to avoid passing my discomfort with heights on to my kids. Seeing them play on the monkey bars makes me cringe all the way down to my toes.

My point in bringing all this up is to say that we shouldn’t beat ourselves up too much – What good can come from that? Just do the best you can. I try to be matter of fact about these things as much as possible, so that I don’t make my children think my little phobias are attitudes that they need to copy.

I tell them that I would love to be able to walk across the mile high swinging bridge, or ride on roller coasters, but that my body just doesn’t like heights. I try to let them know that it is something peculiar to me, and I also tell them that I admire how they are not bothered by such things. (They are roller coaster fans, like their daddy.)

I think the same tactic could potentially work for bugs, snakes, or many other disproportionate or misplaced fears. If you can’t help showing your discomfort (and you know those smart little scamps will probably sense it) just admit that your brain doesn’t like whatever it is, but that you wish it wasn’t so bothered by it. I think honesty is probably important, here.

Ideas for making nature less “icky”

One of Keeley’s respondents suggested that she could set aside a particular pair of jeans for her nature experiences, so she doesn’t have to be apprehensive about damaging or soiling her clothes. I think that is a really fabulous idea.

That plan would work for the kids, too. Pick up some old play clothes from a consignment store or garage sale, and let the children wear those old clothes when you go out on your walks. You won’t be cringing quite as much when they end up with “nature” all over them!

I’d also recommend focusing on the parts of nature that are more interesting to you. If you like birds, notice nests (winter is the best time of year to find these, since the leaves are off the trees). Hang a feeder outside your window, and start getting to know nature from the comfort of your family room!

Finally, especially if you are worried about feeling bored or uncomfortable, I’d suggest that, in addition to the activities I mentioned in the 19 Nature Walk Variations, you try some of these suggestions:

• Bring a blanket and a (simple) snack. This gives you something to do when you are bored with nature but still want some more outside time. Go ahead and bring hand sanitizer if it will make you feel better.
• Go with friends. While we most often do nature activities or walks on our own, I must admit that it is usually more interesting for me if there is at least one other adult along as well. And that’s coming from a natural introvert!
• Start with short sessions only – even 5 or 10 minutes is a good start. If you think your walk needs to be too long and overwhelming, you likely just won’t do it.
• Take a book with you, or something else to distract yourself. You know how people say, “I can’t look!”, when something is too scary or gross? That can actually be a good strategy. Keep a general idea of where your children are and what they are doing, but distract yourself from knowing too many of the details if you think you might not like them. This is usually my strategy when the kids get on the climbing wall or the monkey bars at the playground. (I know you won’t interpret that to mean that you shouldn’t watch your children at all – just that you give them some breathing room to do their own thing!)

Romance vs Reality

I think many of us have romanticized visions of the ideal, “Charlotte Mason sanctioned”, gold star nature walk experience. The reality is, we are all at different points along the “comfort level with nature” path, and we need to start where we are comfortable, and then begin gently expanding our horizons from there. If we think we aren’t really “doing” a nature walk unless we meet certain standards, well, we are selling ourselves short, big time.

Your nature walks don’t have to be one hour, three times a week to be effective. They don’t even have to be once a week for you to get some great benefits. The important thing to remember is that you should get out there when you can, and have fun when you do!

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