Homeschooling

This is Leif's Homeschooling Central, a little corner of his room where the bulk of his schooling activities are out on the shelves.

I've been meaning to do a little tour of his room (which is also his "classroom" if you want to call it that) for a while now. Plus, I wanted to talk about homeschooling, his progress, and few points on our homeschooling in general. I decided today, an overcast day with little light was the day to do it (despite the fact that I'd been waiting for a nice sunny day for pretty pictures). But then, in a Voltaire-ish mood, I decided to not let Perfection get in the way of Good. I'd procrastinated long enough. So enjoy the poorly lit, poorly taken photos and the long borish text. :)

I had started out all Montessori-centric, but there are two facts to doing Montessori at home:

1) It's wicked expensive (think slightly cheaper than putting your kid in an upscale private school).
2) You can never perfectly re-create the Montessori classroom in a home. Just ain't gonna happen. Esp. with one kid.

So, we've decided that pure Montessori goodness just wasn't going to happen for us, and we changed course.

That's one of the beautiful things about Homeschooling, though.

You can kinda just do whatever you want.

So, we are.

Our methodology now is a mix of education breeds, a blend of Montessori, unschooling, classical, and whatever floats our boat.

We have structure some days, but lately, it's been pretty unstructured, but he still gets in a lot of "schoolwork."

At his age, I'm a pretty big fan of learning through Play, because quite frankly, he's not interested in doing much else (nor should he be).

So, we do a lot of Memory Games, Go Fish, and other games like that which help improve his memory/memorization.

We've been doing these since he was 2 or so, but in the past few months he has improved so much that it's almost scary.

He almost always beats me at the Memory Games now, and I'm not one to let him win, just to let him win. (Then again, my memory isn't exactly a steel trap these days).

He's been doing a lot of coloring, too lately, which is great practice for handwriting.

In the past two days, he's developed so much in coloring that I didn't think he'd done two pages in a coloring book he showed me, but he had.

He's also written his first letter, L. And his second, S.

We've been reading, with a very light emphasis on him reading.So, he's read his first word, mat.

And he's read his second word, Madagascar.

That makes me laugh. So fitting!

Although we haven't done much of anything with it, he has started basic math (addition).

He's still in the very earliest stages of that, though (as in, I haven't even started teaching him that).

I've finally learned that my little boy is as hard headed as I am.

So, I don't force him to do things.

I don't even like to suggest things. I just let him find the items on his own.

I do this through strewing (leaving activities around the house to find, which he does, becomes interested in, and does them - think it's all his idea).

Here's a picture of a new activity (that he should definitely be able to do without me ever showing him) that I put out on his desk while he was in doing his lacing cards (excellent fine motor skills in that and great prep for writing!)

Most of the time, I don't strew them on his workdesk like this, but this one wasn't exactly one I could leave on the kitchen table.

I also get him interested in learning activities (and we don't really ever call it homeschooling, or school, or anything like - it's all games, activities and FUN) by starting to do the activity myself. A creature of curiosity, he'll come over and ask to play (of course I let him) and voila - he's learning on his own terms.

He's really into activity books right now, and while they weren't exactly my top choice for a homeschooling method, he can spend hours doing them and gets a lot from them. And since we're all about educating HIM the way it works best for HIM, I am more than happy to let him get all the activity bookage on that he wants!

Other than that, most of his activities look like this:

and live on that shelf in the first picture.

Each activity is on its own little tray so he can just grab a tray and go.

Represented in this picture are: (Top, L-R) Pencil Sharpening (which teaches Preparation, Care of Items, as well as fine motor skills), Bird Flash Cards (Nature/Science), Sandpaper Letters with Counters (preparation for writing, number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, math, etc).

On the lower shelf (L-R): Metal Insets (Preparation for Writing, Shapes, etc) and the last two trays are actually one activity, although you can't see it with the box on the right being closed. He puts the simple puzzle pieces together (that's the "dog" thing on the left) and then uses the wooden letters (in the closed box on the right) to spell out the name of the animal in the puzzle (ie, dog). We also use those wooden letters for a variety of other spelling purposes.

Oh, and the rugs in that first picture (in the basket on the right of the bookshelf) are for placing on the floor when he does floor activities, which are basically any of the activities too big for the table :)

I'm a pretty lax Homeschooling Momma, especially at this phase, because I believe pretty strongly that rushing kids into things before they're ready or willing will create a pretty furious backlash (and I say that as both general belief and from Homeschooling experience I've already gotten myself). Frankly, I'm not exactly the competitive type (understatement of the year) so I'm more than happy for Leif to continue at his own pace with little regard to what anyone else (in any schooling situation) is doing. I don't think rushing kids into things makes for smarter kids, and in fact, I think it can have the opposite effect. I'm more for encouraging a love of learning over just hammering facts into his head. We're in it for the long haul here, so I don't care if he isn't a master of toddler tricks (my pet peeve, actually) I just want him to be still eagerly learning when he's 60, 80 and until the end of his days. I'm a firm believer that learning is a lifelong pursuit, not just a mandatory sentence you endure until you graduate with a diploma or degree.

That being said, we homeschool for our very own unique reasons. I particularly like this little blog post 2p sent me a while back:

The Public School Parents' Guide to Homeschool Parents

I very much love #5, which states, "Our decision to homeschool is not a personal commentary on your decision not to. "

Which falls into the category of "Amen, sista!"

I totally couldn't agree more.

Homeschooling is a very, very, very personal choice for each family (and even each child within that family) and my decision to homeschool has no bearing whatsoever on what I think of your family's choice on the matter.

To each their own, I say.

Or, as my Dad always says, "Different strokes for different folks."

And about Socialization.

Since people always ask first thing about Socialization.

Here are my thoughts on that:

1) I believe that kids who are exposed to more social situations with a variety of people (age, ethnicity, etc) are better prepared for the "real world." Because the world, as we all know, is comprised of a mixture of people, not just your peers in the same age group as you.

I'd rather Leif has 20 friends in the 0-100+ age range than 100 friends in his exact age group.

2) That being said, I have every plan to enroll Leif in some fun classes (Karate, music, swimming) or such that will enable him to interact with a group of people, both his age group and not. When we were down South, I joined a Catholic Homeschooling Group shortly before we left, where we were going to go on educational and religious trips with these other families (kids of all ages), but alas, we moved and were never able to do that. Right now, we're not in a permanent situation (as far as where we live) so I'm not keen on the thought of joining a group that we'll possibly be leaving sooner rather than later (ie, when we get our own house). When we do get to that point, though, I will be hopping right on the karate, homeschooling group, etc. bandwagon. But, Leif still has interaction with plenty of other children (and adults) through his family/cousins, as well as swimming at the pool (where he meets lots of kids) and other outdoor adventures we go on frequently (parks, etc).

So, that is that.

A long diatribe in lieu of what otherwise could have been a very simple post.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Tiramisu? (Ooh, yes please!)

PS.  Fun pics of Leif in the post below, so don't miss that! :)