Unschooling? Chasing happiness

Are we Unschooling? I really don't know. The way I understand it, Unschooling is about letting the child direct their learning, not making them do school work they don't want to; providing them the means to learn what they want to learn, when they want to.  It definitely takes away pressure and adds a lot of joy to our lives.  Our unschooling looks like this:

I've given up on "structure" in general. We have "learning time" in my bed, reading Life of Fred, doing MadLibs, and for my little guy, doing Language Arts from a "1st grade everything" kind of worksheet book. I don't force writing on PJ, but I compromise with "I'll write this sentence, you write the next." He does all right with that and seems very happy with an approximate hour per day of studies. He's only 6 and pretty brilliant, so I'm not too worried. Especially when Daddy comes home and goes to give them kisses and PJ pipes up with some comment about what comes at the end of Daddy's sentence. Or when he's adding 8+8+8 while driving to meet friends at the beach. Clearly we're learning.

I am wishing for more social time. We haven't had enough. This past week we were able to spend time with PJ's BFF, Henry and his sisters Keely and Sadie. I had to share this picture because they are just so freaking cute. They were winding down to a little Scooby Doo on a Friday afternoon.



"Essay" on Sea Monkeys

As for the T Man, age 8.5 and going on 14, trying to tell this little bugger anything is a challenge. He shut me up in the car the other day when I asked if he knew where the word "riviera" came from. He said "No, and I don't want to know. I'm just not interested in it." Well alrighty then. I think he's being a disrespectful brat, but then I guess he knows what he doesn't want to learn about. I just wish we had a better, clearer idea of what he does want to learn about so I could feed his thirst for knowledge. I'm pretty sure that he thinks he knows everything already: just like a bratty teenager. (sigh) The boy's reading and Science is middle-school level, he has an amazing grasp on History, his sense of humor and understanding of the world is outstanding. His math is coming along - Dreambox just moved him into pre-algebra, so he's definitely on the right track.

T will do a minimal amount of formal study time without a fuss: a couple of lessons on Dreambox, rapt attention to Life of Fred and MadLibs, and will occasionally do a paragraph of writing. Outside of this, he's doing what he wants. He reads voraciously, researches things on the web, and does any kind of web games he can find that are free. These past couple of weeks I rebuilt a couple of old desktop PCs for the boy's exclusive use. (T had already broken my laptop screen hinge and downloaded malware and I really need to make this laptop last for another 6 months or there's no Christmas gifts under the tree!)   So now they each have a PC that is fast enough to accommodate Dreambox, Ooka Island and whatever kind of malware or virus they wish to experiment with. I can easily wipe and reload.

Lately T has figured out how to download maps for Minecraft and load them, he has been downloading Google Chrome apps, and then he found Wizards 101 which has turned out to be fairly educational. The important part is that he become comfortable with the computer and confident installing software, learning the file system, and also researching fixes on the web. This is where the future is, barring zombie invasions or the loss of electricity ;-)

I'm feeling so much better, so much more confident that this new direction of less formal study is the way to go.

We are happier. Shouldn't we chase happiness? I am sure many agree that chasing A's is better... just maybe not for us. My loving
sister, Aunt Mimi, says "This is OUR TIME NOW."   She's right - we need to make the most of it. So... in case their is an outbreak, a Zombie invasion or the lights go out and all hell breaks loose on 12/12/12... we've certainly had a good time while it lasted. ha ha

So, what do you think? Should I be worried that what we're doing is enough for now? I'm just curious if I'm delusional... 

Hellacious Weeks 5 and 6 of Home "School"

Something broke last week.  We lost our groove.  T is punching his brother.  PJ is asking to go to school.  T is getting anxiety over thinking about a family trip mid-October.  Just shoot me.

We started off the week last week with optimism and some drive.  They each took a turn on Dreambox for math.  T was struggling with sorting 10s and 1s and the all the possible combinations of that.  I reached for the base 10 blocks and showed him how they could group.  He resisted even looking at the blocks, and then conceded that it made sense.  Whenever he hits something that he doesn't know, the boy freezes up!  Ugh.

PJ asks to play math games on the tablet and the next thing I know he's playing Angry Birds.  Busted.  He's grounded from screens for the day.

By mid-week we were bustling around getting ready for PJ's 6th birthday party.  He just wanted to have his few friends over for a "messy party" that consisted of a dinosaur dig (sand+plaster of paris), silly string fight, shaving cream play, cornstarch and water and flour and water stations, and a slime center.  It was messy.  His cake was a custom Mommy Creation - Minecraft.  He loved it.

I also had to use up those beautiful apples we got up in the mountains the week before.  While I peeled and sliced, PJ searched for recipes on the tablet and read me the ingredients.  He learned cup, tsp, tbsp.  I was quite impressed he had the patience to review it with me.

The T Man was assigned a fact-finding mission.  I asked him to choose a country and find five interesting facts about it on Google.  First he chose Asia - and I explained to him that Asia is not a country and we walked over to the World Map on the classroom wall for a quick review.  I think he was embarassed, but isn't this what "school" is for?   In the end he chose Brazil, specifically Rio.  Here are his findings: 



 

We did this video, because T really hates writing anything down.  This is apparently pretty typical for gifted boys.  Even so, during the last few weeks, I have been able to coerce some writing out of him.  He tries to get my requirement from 5 sentences down to three.  This week's writing wasn't from one of the prompts in his book.  He just wrote some lines down on the back of the book and wrote:

"One day i was attacked by a ... taco.  It tried to eat me. {wait shouldn't it be the other way round?}  lucky me I had a knife. {I don't know why}  Then I sliced him (or "it") in half.  I had defeated him.  

the end 

Note: The braces were conversation bubbles on the opposite page.  

I don't know whether to be impressed or horrified.

PJ produced this little beauty today.  He flipped through his First Grade workbook after studying sentence formation, "naming words" and periods, did a little math and decided that counting the dots and decoding the colors was an awesome idea.  Ohhhhkay, I'll go with that.  T would have cried if I asked him to color anything at age 6!!

    

This week PJ and I moved onto double digit addition.  There weren't any tears because we quit 12 problems into the lesson, after seeing the horrified expression that came over PJ's face at the problem:  23 + 37.  We'll see those again in a day or two.  Ha ha

 

PJ has asked several times to go back to school but I refuse to put him into the local LAUSD school just out of sheer fear of what could happen.  (In case you are wondering why, you can check out the earlier blog on our experience with the school system here).  I was feeling so down about our effort to homeschool, I did actually try to place him in his best friend's school this week, as much as I didn't think it was a great idea for the whole family.  But I was turned down for financial aid and I don't think it's SUCH a great idea to turn our lives upside down trying to pull the money together for it each month.  These are the days I shake my head and wish we actually had a CHOICE of where we put our tax money.  And I question - if we aren't using this money for my kid's spot in school, where does it go?  And then I move on.

 

It hasn't been easy to motivate these two lately and I am wishing they were more self-motivated to do anything other than play video games. There are days I want to just want to look at job ads. But maybe tomorrow will be better?   I am ever hopeful.  I am not afraid to change my strategy.  And I also happen to really like my boys, so that helps. A lot.  

 

2nd Week of "School"

First of all, why the heck am I calling this "school"?  I am beginning to realize that it's a bad word around here, a bad word I'm telling my kids to use.  Silly mom.

We started our week off on Labor Day Monday.  Dad had to work (no irony there) and so we decided to be couch potatoes.  Mr. T parked himself on the coach with my laptop and proceeded to spend the day studying his favorite topic:  Minecraft.  He had discovered a nice guy named Paul Soares, Jr., a dad of boys who is quite funny and clearly gifted, and who does some very nice tutorials on youtube aimed at the child audience.  Am I a big fan of the game?  Not so much.  But since my son is studying it with the voraciousness of a groupie to a rock band, who am I to complain?  The fact that my son was finding an actual goal within the game helps me to cope with it.

In the meantime, I discovered that Rovio, famed game designers of Angry Birds, has a new release called "Amazing Alex" a ""whiz kid who turns everything into adventure. From cleaning his room to battling cardboard robots in his backyard.  Alex creates amazing chain reactions..." another awesome physics game to challenge my little PJ's puzzle brain.  This gave me time to look at our Moving Beyond the Page and make a strategy, as well as investigate some new history books to order.  T Man loves his history.

Tuesday started off with nightmare battles trying for some cooperation to do some school work.  (There's that WORD AGAIN, Mom!)  After the usual threat of zero gaming, things turned around.  T wrote out our grocery list, emptied the dishwasher and offered to join PJ for a game of Scrabble.  PJ and I had worked our way through the day with Life of Fred, Boggle, Dreambox and were just pulling down the box for Scrabble.  I decided to give them each 10 tiles and we actually finished a game, the boys nearly the same score of 140 and 144.  PJ beat his big brother.  I, of course, found the word FOUNDER on my tile holder and was able to play FLOUNDER for a 50 point bonus, but they didn't seem to mind ;-)

Wednesday was much nicer and we moved through our day with wonderful cooperation, working on our Map of the Community, doing some Ooka Island and reading Horrible Histories.  At one point the house was too quiet and I found these two taking over Life of Fred and finishing the first book.  I'm feeling a little bit of a loss over that; I wanted to see how it ended!  :)

Liam and T tutor each other on Minecraft

Thursday featured a playdate and nature hike to Temescal Canyon with our gifted homeschooling friends.  It's always such a treat to be with this crew because they are as funny, interesting and quirky as us.  We hung out at their house on the Westside for a bit and the little ones played board games and the big ones played Lego Hero Factory and then tutored each other on Minecraft.

Our trip to the Canyon was a lot of fun.  The weather couldn't get any more beautiful and the kids couldn't be a better match.  The boys separated off in their little teams and explored the creek and ravines. 

We moms watched, amused to see how well the kids got along.  Little Sutton just turned 4 but is a great intellectual peer for little PJ, almost 6.  That is one of those funky "gifted" things that people have a hard time understanding.  T could go play Scrabble with a couple of college students, but don't put him in a classroom with twenty average 8-year-olds, because he just can't relate.  

On the other hand, put this kid in a giant play structure with a bunch of 4 and 5 year-olds during the week and he's having an absolute blast. Go figure. 

Friday we met up with another gifted friend just to let the boys run and play.  Kid's Concepts in Torrance isn't cheap, but it was just the kind of physical outlet these boys needed.

It's now Friday at the end of the day and T is waiting for the use of the laptop.  While he's waiting, he's sprawled out on my bed reading the 8th book in the Life of Fred series.  The kid just slurped up the other 7 books since Tuesday.  Sheesh, I really need to pay my library fines and get back over there... ;-) 

If you want to read more about our friends Liam and Sutton, you can find them on Amy's blog, A Voracious Mind.

  

The First Week of School

Wow, this has been a long week for all of us. Our transition into the school year could have been a little easier, but I still feel compelled to be the "teacher" and my kids do, in fact, need a little more hand-holding than they really want.  For example, we started Beast Academy 3A this week and lemme tell you, it ain't easy.  I have never been a geometry lover and memorizing different shapes' names and attributes is really not all that fun.  We made it through the first 3 chapters this week, but honesty, I'm really not sure we need to know the term "rhombus" or that a Square is actually a type of Rectangle in the future. I call these "cocktail party facts" that only your favorite show-off Geek may actually mention in conversation. Perhaps I'm wrong about that - please post back if you know where that info is potentially helpful!

On the other hand, Life of Fred - Apples has been so delightful.  We worked through the first seven chapters this week and BOTH kids can't wait for the next one, even though this is the very first book of the Elementary Series, meant for kindergarten or 1st grade.  We learned that the first day of the week is Sunday, some basic algebra, and that Archimedes estimated that the universe could hold 1 vigintillion grains of sand, among many other interesting things that included basic addition.

Dreambox online math has turned out to be a success.  Ooka Island reading is kind of "eh" for PJ.  We worked in some writing books to practice our letters and T wrote some fun paragraphs, even though getting either of them to write is sometimes like pulling teeth...

We played The Allowance Game, that earned a big Thumbs Down from The T Man but little PJ loved it so much he had to get dad to play every morning.


We visited the Cerritos Library (wow!) and found some fun reading there.  PJ is a very big fan of "Biscuit" the fictional dog.  He read a couple of those to me while T discovered a graphic novel about "Ug" the stone-age boy genius.  P.E. followed in the fountains in about 90 degrees.  Very fun.  Thanks to my dear friend Claudia for taking us along!  We all have so much fun together.

We are lacking in hard physical activity this week.  It's so hot outside, we're staying under fans!  And while we've had two playdates this week, I'd like to improve on that as well.  Baby Steps...

Moving Beyond the Page is barely moving.  The kids are not crazy about the "Community" topic because they have 1) studied it before and 2) don't find it all that exciting. We reviewed Rural life versus Urban Life.  It was a little lost on the Peej.   I'll be picking out the fun bits and moving right along in it next week.

I never realized that Slime, aka "Gak," could be so much fun.  T was using a straw and blowing it up into different shapes of human organs.  Wish I had caught a photo of that.  He also created a Minecraft scene and made a pretty good looking "Steve" and "Creeper" character out of the awesome non-drying modeling clay from Lakeshore Learning.

Are you exhausted just hearing about this week yet?  I'm not even done!

Life skills were folding and stowing laundry and putting away dishes for little PJ while T was getting handy in the kitchen.  He used the microwave to heat something and then made a new creation: a peanut butter pickle dog with mustard.  I didn't think he actually would like it, but low and behold... he did.  Perhaps it was just because he made it himself...  He also tried his hand at hand-washing dishes since our washer went kaput a few weeks ago.  A green-tinged face appeared at my desk exclaiming "I can't do it! There was CAT food on a bowl!  It just grossed me out!  I'm just too sensitive for that!"  Inwardly I sigh, but I was the same way at that age.  Maybe next year... :-)

It's now almost 5:00pm on Friday and Mama is tired and we are starting our long weekend.  Thank. Goodness.

You are probably thinking about now... Wouldn't it just be easier to drop them off at school?  If you have been reading my blog from the beginning, you know that it wouldn't.

Surprise! School Starts TODAY!

It is a beautiful warm Summer Friday and my foot is still out of order, having twisted it nearly two weeks ago and then aggravating it Monday while squatting down and digging for sand crabs at the beach. (I know, poor me! ;)   It has been a rough couple of weeks trying to keep these boys entertained at home while I use crutches and try to keep my foot up.

This week I was coaxed into purchasing the PC version of Minecraft, the hugely popular video game that the kids have been in love with for months on the Xbox360. I was crossed-armed adamant that this program would not enter my home, but logic won over when our new playmates created a server and wanted to meet online for private building parties. This was safe and T would be learning to type/chat online and get to spend quality brain time with a kid just like him.  A kid that happens to live a good 45-60 minutes away, depending on the infamous Los Angeles Traffic.

So now they've got the full online version of Minecraft and it is much more educational than the Xbox version. It is also infinitely more addictive.

We think we found Lucky's twin!

It's now Friday and here we are on this beautiful Summer day at the park throwing the ball for our fluffy pal Lucky and his presumably twin sister.  As I chat up the other dogs owner about the similarities in the pups, Lucky sniffs his new friend's rear and the boys stand entranced by the workers pouring concrete and smoothing it down on the brand-spankin' new playground. This lasts for maybe 8 minutes and then I've got two little boys hanging on my waist and arms (adding unwanted pressure to my sore foot) and whining about wanting to go home. "Why?" I ask. I am surrounded by lush green grass and fresh air and lovely trees and dogs to play with and throw balls for... what the heck? "I want to play Minecraft." my 8-year-old sulks. Seriously? My eyebrows and #11 frown line queries the child.

Oh yes, we were going home alright. And we were starting school. It is only 11:30 am!

After making a healthy lunch of their favorite tuna salad, I grab up Moving Beyond The Page and their newly decorated Spelling and Vocab books. I gave them 6 words to write and we discussed them with what felt like sheer glee! These kids were into it! So we covered Urban, Rural, Goods and Services, Wants and Needs. Interesting and fun to hear their ideas on these things. We moved onto Community Buildings and identified them on worksheets, skipping the whole "add a sentence" section, as that would probably end up more like the "add some tears" section   Next we moved over to the couch and read "Give a Pig a Pancake" and laughed our butts off. After that, a surprise Mad Lib and then two more because they begged.  PJ is starting to get what a Noun, Adverb, Verb and Adjective is!

T began his online math with Dreambox and found it pretty entertaining and educational, while PJ and I played the card game War and then did some Oooka Island. PJ took at turn at Dreambox while Tommy read some Horrible Science.

Next we made borax-based Slime for T and homemade Play-Dough for PJ and decided we need to hit Lakeshore Learning in the morning. We need a lot more Elmer' Glue because we want to test the degrees of stringiness based on how much Borax we add.

By now it's time for cleaning up the kitchen, picking up the living room and for Mom to start dinner. Minecraft at 4:30?  Be. My. Guest.

While tucking them in that night I asked them what they thought about their first day of school.  They said "It was Awesome!" I'm a happy mom.

Saturday morning and I'm woken with my new (un)favorite query...PJ stands by the bed and asked "Can we play Minecraft?" Oh dear, it's going to be a long day...

10:30 and we grab "Life of Fred: Apples" and cozy up on my bed. We laughed through two chapters and wrote our simple math in a separate workbook.  T can't stay away even though he already knows this stuff. We end up in a tickle attack because a resistent PJ won't recite the Days of the Week for me... Yes, this "schooling" is really stressful and rigorous ;-)

Next stop, Lakeshore Learning outlet where I scored big time on some awesome science stuff and filled the cart with educational games.  $175 later, we're ready to rock this school year.  Oh, darn it, I forgot the glue...

It's now Sunday morning, and Daddy finally has a day off.  T walks in at 7am says "Mom, can we play Minecraft?"  Oy, here we go again...