Homeschooling

The Concord Consortium

Posted by Michelle on May 9, 2011 in Homeschooling | 0 comments

While writing an article, I stumbled upon The Concord Consortium which is an organization dedicated to contribute to education through technology.

From their Mission Statement:

Our mission is to stimulate large-scale, technology-based improvements in teaching and learning. Education is the single most important investment a society can make in its future. Quality education is essential to help people everywhere realize their full potential. But education needs enormous changes if it is to deliver on this promise. Its huge size, vested interests, and outmoded traditions prevent change.

Pretty awesome stuff.

The site has a bunch of science-related educational activities including free software!! And, most exciting to me, simulation software like this one on the subject of cellular respiration. (Seriously, this makes me all happy inside. Science was always my absolute favorite subject and if my life’s path had gone another way, I’d probably be a research scientist.)

I’m a bit bummed that TLE’s not nearly old enough to appreciate the awesomeness of having such awesome learning applications available for free use. Whether we end up homeschooling later or not, I can’t wait until she’s old enough to go through some of these activities with her!

Back to School

Posted by Michelle on Apr 23, 2011 in Homeschooling, Life, Parenting | 0 comments

Remember how I said we were quasi-homeschoolers for now because we wouldn’t fully homeschool until July, when TLE’s speech therapy school was up? Well, it looks like we’re putting formally homeschooling indefinitely.

Why?

Long story short, we were awarded a scholarship for TLE to attend the preschool I wanted her to attend. After several months of research — and nearly fainting after I saw how much preschool costs around here — I started poking around to see what, if any, programs may help us afford preschool. I found one, applied for it back in December/January and never heard back. I assumed that we either got lost in the shuffle and/or didn’t qualify so I started our homeschool contingency plan.

Fast forward to last week,  I got a call from the program saying that our name had come up. After a week of back and forth between us and the program, here we are with scholarship in hand, ready to start another new school on Monday.

Honestly, I have mixed feelings about it all. On one hand, I’m effing thrilled. All through the process, The Hubs ™ and I had our doubts and nearly pulled the plug on it several times. But it worked out far better than we could have hoped for. The school she is going to go to was the “dream” school I’d picked out for when, you know, we won the lottery or something. So for this opportunity to come around is really something.

Yet, I feel almost forlorn about it. We had our homeschooling plan in place and I want to believe that once we got into a rhythm, we could make it work. But I have to admit to myself that so far, our homeschooling journey hasn’t worked as well as I’d hoped.

Was she learning? Yes. But I didn’t have confidence in myself as a teacher. I realized that our home environment wasn’t stimulating enough for her. It was a struggle to keep her busy and her mind occupied. I often felt like I was failing her as a teacher by not providing that environment.  I think she could sense my stress about it all.

All in all, not a good way to lay a solid foundation to a lifelong love of learning.

There were times that I considered putting a stop to the entire process and giving us no other option but to homeschool. But in hindsight, I realize that would have been foolhardy and to what end? To prove to myself that I could homeschool at the risk of her education? No. For what? My pride. Bull.

In the end, it is all about what is best for TLE. For now, that means taking the golden opportunity that we have in front of us. At some point, that “best for her” may very well be homeschooling. Or it may not be. In any case, I’ll be more prepared for either outcome.

I still fully intend on supplementing her schooling at home. One thing I love about the school we picked is that the actively encourage parents to follow the curriculum and take an active role in building upon what they learned in school.

We’ll see if homeschooling is still in our future. If anything, I hope that I can learn from this (somewhat) failed month trial of homeschooling and create a more inviting, educational space at home, whether we homeschool or not.

I like to believe that things happen for a reason. I try not to get too religious about things but I think that God really does have a hand in my life because the things that I need (but not necessarily want) tend to come into my life just when I need them.

Seedling update, #1

Posted by Michelle on Apr 13, 2011 in Gardening, Homeschooling | 0 comments

Since sowing the seeds on Friday, we’ve been taking them down daily from the refrigerator to check on their progress and make sure the soil is nice and moist.

The packets all said that germination within 7 to 10 days so I was very surprised to see soil displacement as quickly as Saturday afternoon. By Sunday, 3 out of 5 of the seeds were all starting to germinate. By Monday morning, 4 out of 5 of the seeds are sprouting! The lone hold out seems to the basil which is taking its sweet time compared to the others.

We’re setting the tray out on the kitchen table where it will get plenty of sunlight. TLE is very excited that her plants are growing! (So am I!) She can’t stop crowing, “My plants! My plants!” I’m just hoping that she won’t disturb the seedlings on the kitchen table. We’ll see

UPDATE: The basil seeds were poking their little green heads out of the soil on Tuesday morning. By Tuesday afternoon, they were almost fully sprouted. YAY!

Garden Misadventures, 2011

Posted by Michelle on Apr 8, 2011 in Gardening, Home Matters, Homeschooling | 0 comments

I haven’t had much luck with gardens. Twice I’ve attempted to plant something in the ground and twice I’ve been thwarted by poor planning or the dog deciding that the raised bed was a great dog bed.

This time, I’ve decided that we’ll go smaller and opt to plant a container garden rather than revisit the failed raised bed attempt. I’ve got some planters but we’re not quite ready to plant yet so I decided to start some seeds indoors. I still have no idea what I’m doing but it seemed like a good opportunity for a science lesson.

We bought this Burpee seed starter kit at Target. It came with 25 pellets that you add water to. It was fun watching the pellets expand!   TLE loved pouring the water and then watching them grow. If you listened carefully, the pellets made some interesting sounds as they expanded too!

We sowed 5 different types of seeds: pumpkin, cucumber, lettuce, basil and shingiku (an Asian green used in Japanese and Chinese cooking.) I took the seeds out and TLE helped stick the larger ones in the hole in the pellets and covered them with dirt. We discovered that pumpkin seeds are bigger than cucumber seeds and that lettuce, basil and shingiku all have very tiny seeds.

TLE liked the project but was rather, um, disappointed that “her plants” aren’t ready to plant yet. I explained to her that seeds take time to grow and that we need to be patient. She’s looking forward to checking the tray regularly for the plants’ progress.

After several days of unseasonably high temperatures, we’re back in the middle of a cold snap. (Brr!!) I placed the seed container on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen where it is slightly warmer.  (And it keeps it OUT of her reach!) Hopefully the temps will improve and coax the seeds to sprout in the next two weeks.

Quasi Homeschoolers

Posted by Michelle on Apr 5, 2011 in Homeschooling | 0 comments

Water Play

If there’s anything that the past two weeks have taught me, it is that sometimes the best plan is no plan.

For the past few months, we (read: I) have been gearing up to homeschool The Little Empress. This is a decision that we have been kicking around for quite awhile now. The cost of preschool in this area is staggering, hovering at just about $180 per month for a 2 day a week, 3 hour a day class at the cheaper preschools and shooting well over $300 for the same at higher-end preschools.

We got lucky and a grant allowed us to enroll TLE in a speech-therapy preschool at the same center she just graduated from. Same center, different program with a speech therapist that she’s already familiar with. This was such welcome news!

The catch is that the speech therapy preschool is only 12 weeks long. Rather than continue to hem and haw about whether or not to put her in another preschool program, we decided to just go for it. So while she is technically attending an outside preschool, we are still home educating. Thus: quasi-homeschoolers.

The past several months have been filled with me researching different preschool curriculum and methodologies, reading up on preschool and homeschool blogs, everything. After TLE graduated, I had a gameplan in place that I was sure… sure! … would help ease the transition.

So… what was that saying about the best laid plans? Yeah. You can probably guess how long it took me to realize that sticking to the plan wasn’t in the, well, plan.

So here I am, about week and a half in to it. Despite giving myself conniptions over the fact that I hadn’t printed all the printables that I’d downloaded nor have we completed any of the laid down lesson plans (thankfully written by someone else and not myself!) or any of the zillion and a half things I had “planned”, I finally realized something very important: TLE is learning and not through the structured things I’d planned. No, she’s learning organically, as we move through the day. Counting in sequence as I doled out cupcake liners. (She’s counted up to 15 — correctly — much to my astonishment!!) Naming colors as she threw them around in her ball pit. Playing with her alphabet toy on the refrigerator and singing along to the songs. Drawing on paper and telling us stories about the drawings.

Well, I’ll be damned.

I joined a local homeschooling group and attended a park playdate today. As I watched the kids and spoke with their moms about homeschooling, one thing struck me about all of them: the trust that their parents had in the children to learn.

I’m slowly beginning to think that part of the “problem” is an assumption that kids dislike learning. Not helping the matter is media aimed at kids where other kids are shown hating school. Yet kids are programmed to learn, primed to do so at a young age. And given the right opportunities, the right encouragement, they do learn. Boy do they learn!!

With that in mind, I’m backing off of the hard and fast curriculum. Other homeschoolers who have homeschooled preschoolers have given the same advice: let her learn through play. Play is how preschoolers learn best and it should be encouraged.

While I’m not completely giving up on the homeschool curriculum I downloaded (I’ll review it later) I can say that relaxing my plans and just letting her explore while I support her, seems to be the best course for now.

Goodbye, Explorers

Posted by Michelle on Mar 27, 2011 in Homeschooling, Parenting, Therapy | 0 comments

Nursery school graduate

On the Friday before her birthday, The Little Empress  got to celebrate her third birthday with her classmates. I baked cupcakes for the kids to eat at snack time and then bought a pizza for their lunch. Sadly, this would be her last day with her classmates as her program only covers from ages 18 months to 3 years.

After nearly a year of watching her other friends graduate out of the Explorers program and sit in the special Graduation Chair, she was so excited to get to pick out her two Circle Time songs and be presented with a certificate, hat and presents. TLE absolutely basked in the attention.

TLE has made such incredible strides in the class that it was very hard to accept that she wouldn’t be attending anymore. She went from being a somewhat aloof, tantrum-prone toddler with very few discernible words to a lively, friendly and chatty preschooler.

Playing with blocks on her last day

But all good things must come to an end at after graduation and a round of goodbye hugs, we bid goodbye to her Explorers teachers and friends. Her main teacher, Lisa, teared up a little bit when hugging TLE goodbye. I had some problems holding back tears myself!

I’ve had the opportunity to volunteer in the classroom and have seen first hand how the teachers interact with the kids.  One thing I really loved about the school was that the teachers really cared about the kids. They spend over 25 hours per week with the kids, more than most other preschool kids. That’s a lot of time for such small kids but the work that their teachers do with them is nothing short of amazing. I can’t thank them enough for being such an important part of TLE’s life for the past year.

In some ways, being part of this program has sort of spoiled us for other preschools. The teacher ratio is VERY low — about three kids per teacher — so each child got lots of special attention and support throughout the day. There was also a lot of support for their particular needs, like speech therapy and occupational therapy sessions, that were built in to each school day.

It was a bit of a shock — and disappointment — for me to realize that TLE will never, ever, get that kind of attention from a traditional school program ever again. Even the best private schools don’t have such specialized one on one attention. The exception, of course, would be to homeschool where she would receive all of the attention because she would be the only student… which is exactly what we’ll be doing.

Yep, we’ve made the decision to homeschool… at least for now. But more on that later