Last Weeks Kidtopia Update

Explosive Experiments!

Child Labor :)

What happens when you use Child Labor

With life being so busy it is hard to keep up with posting our daily fun.
Last Tuesday was another Kidtopia week. We had the 7 crazy boys and one brave girl wielding hammers and nails and remarkable no one got hurt. The leaf pile seemed to be more dangerous but it may have been the large metal rakes we armed them with...hmmm.
Anyway the kids made lanterns and as an added activity they mixed Ground Dragon Bones, Unicorn Urine and Tears of Demon for an explosive experiment.
As always a wonderfully chaotic afternoon with some great ladies and crazy kids and a little drama thrown in just to make things interesting.
(the drama among other things was the random baby that was in our care for this time slot - she was a trooper in the chaos)

Beautiful October Day = Cemetery Walk

We did tell the kids it was not polite to climb on the tombstones....


Notice in this one Scruffy out lived everyone else....


Too Cute...


I wonder if I am related to her.....


I love the old tombstones. The amazing stone carving skills...


Mom and Pop...

Who is Lynn?


No name...


Where the fake flowers go when they die...



A cherub chillin' in the grave yard...


Jen...


Find the dog.....

close up of the dogs bum...

Kidtopia!

The lovely Jen purposed that we work through this great book Kidtopia this year.

Kidtopia: 'Round the Country and Back Through Time in 60 Projects

Last week we did crayon candles. It was awesome!!!!




Another use for the hot bath.


The kids and two of the lovely ladies who rock my world!


My awesome boy. I didn't catch the backwards smock. Luckily the shirt made it though ok.

The Lovely Jen! Without her this would not have happened.

A Day of Other People Schooling My Kids

One thing that is brought up occasionally about homeschooling is "Shouldn't your kids get exposure to other people teaching them? For other opinions and experiences..... something outside those of the parents. To diversify their education." My answer - Absolutely!

Other than the fact that it happens all the time in unorganized ways here are just two examples of community homeschooling.


This is RM in her delightfully colorful home teaching science from Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding by Dr. Bernard Nebel. I get to teach the next session..whoohoo! Today they were playing around with the concept of liquid, solids and gases. This was more for the younger kids but Monkey thought he would join on the fun in too. It was all fun and games until after the lesson they started blowing up the balloons up and letting them fly all over the room and after awhile the balloon just became a vehicle for spraying spit all over the room.


Then it was off to Dungeons and Dragons at L's house. She leads this group and I am so thankful to her. She is wonderful! Monkey looks forward to D&D every week. It helps with math, history, geography, imagination, teamwork, and even writing poetry.

Off topic: I also wanted to share my off the hip review session while making lunch two days ago. I was whipping up some macaroni and cheese when Monkey and his friend walked in. I started asking about the continents that we had been learning and then I moved into the earth. On a whim I grabbed a chop stick and stabbed a nearby potato. The kids were a little shocked by my sudden movement. Then I grabbed a sharpie marker and drew line on it.


I proceeded to ask about the hemispheres, axis, equator, seasons and the tilt of the axis, rotation around axis, rotation around the earth - all this revolving around an IKEA kids cup.

(in the background you see writing on the wall. we have lived in our house for almost five years and the family has never been painted and half the wall paper is still on the wall. i have resigned to the fact that it will never get painted so i have started to write on it. in the background is a brief synopsis of the precambrian and cambrian period)

Pep Talk To Self & A Reminder

It is amazing how things break down so quickly. What I am saying is that we are unschoolers.

I am going to use the curriculum's that we have as sources every once in awhile but school at homers we are not.

I do ask myself why every year I seem to go through this - try to be regimented and scheduled in learning? Why is it so hard for me to let go?

I get tired of trying to answer the questions-
"What kind of testing is done to make sure your child is up to par?"
"Where does your child stand in comparison to kids in school?"
"What are their weaknesses and strengths in comparison to school kids?"
"Are you sure they are learning what they are supposed to?"
and so on.

My faith founders every September but by October we are back to our natural groove.

Today we were driving in the car and Monkey asks out of the blue "Mom, how do we know atoms exist?" My reply was that I didn't know but dad would be a great person to ask that question or we can look it up when we get home or sometime this week.

It is moments like these that smack me over the head that we are learning all the time. The most important thing is to ensure that they hold on to the curiosity to learn and the desire to ask questions. Not to make sure that every kid is learning the same thing at the same time. Life is not a race it is a journey with the only beginning and end being birth and death. I do not want my kids or myself to dread any part of their day. That does not mean that they don't have to do things that are difficult but if they are doing something difficult they should have a good reason for doing it. Dreading going to school or schooling at home does not help the learning process for us.

Then there is also the statement "children need structure."

Some structure in life is helpful. Dad goes to work M-F 7ish-5ish. Mom works M-W at night. Friday is homeschool group and we have pizza for dinner. Sunday is church. That is just enough structure for our house. Every day they ask what we are doing that day so they know. Sometimes they ask the night before. That is enough. When people are over structured is it possible that they lose the ability to be flexible, easy going, go with the flow? Could getting used to being over structured cause the anxiety of unstructured time? Are we as adults projecting our discomfort with unstructured time onto our kids? Is it that kids with unstructured time seem a bit adventurous, high energy, creative, uncontrolled and that is difficult for most adults to be around? I don't know but my kids seem to be doing fine.

I find myself going back to my original thoughts about school-
Who invented the standards that the kids are supposed to be meeting by X time in their development?
How is that the same for all kids?
Who decided what kids should know? What information is important?
How is school a good example of socialization?
How does school prepare them for life on the outside?

I am a non-conformist and that in itself goes to the root of unschooling - ASK QUESTIONS. I find it very hard to take anything at face value. I have a great need to ask why? Why is it that way? Why should I do what you say? (asked very politely of course) Why should I do that? Why does everyone do it? Why isn't anyone else asking why?

The path of non-conformity does make it more difficult and it is a choice I make and it is not for everyone but it is right for me. I choose to be accountable for my kid's education I can blame no one else if something goes not "wrong" because I cut this path. I cannot blame a bad teacher or the school system.

Accountability is not an easy package to carry and it can be even harder when one is swimming upstream. I am very lucky to have wonderful supportive families walking next to me on their path that they are cutting. And I like to picture us all tromping along singing Supertramps "The Logical Song".

Work and Homeschool

Everyday I try to do the best I can with what I have and much of the time I feel I fall short but that is the curse of parenting for me. I just can't seem to shake it.

As a homeschooling and working parent there just doesn't seem to be enough time to catch up and figure out what the heck I am doing. Along with that is the guilt that any free time I may get I should be planning, cleaning, or working. Breath and let it go Kate.....
~~~
I cannot homeschool 5 days a week. Mondays are especially poopy since I leave for as early as 1pm depending on when my appointments are and I do not get home until 9:30pm. I am still working on reliable childcare for the kids on Monday, right now I am flying by the seat of my pants and gracious friends. Tuesday and Wednesday evening I also work and every other Thursday and some times on the weekends.

We are in a reassessment stage post the first week.

I must admit this happens every year and in the past we have degraded (or upgraded) to unschooling. This year I am trying to find a nice place in between.

This may be obvious to most of you but I took me a bit to figure out that just becasue I have a 5 day curriculum does not mean I have to homeschool 5 days a week. With this new information we are going to try 3 days a week and see how it goes. I am thinking of this as a unschool/homeschool hybrid. This also will offer us some flexibility in our week.

For example today I am watching a friends child starting at 9am to 1pm which is prime homeschool time. Today we are not going to homeschool but we will Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. While the Monkey is playing the bean and I will be busting out her sewing machine and whipping up......something.

Goldilocks and the Three Curriculums

I am a unschooler unfortunately my kids are not so much, they like structure and guidance. This year, with the Monkey being 8 and the Bean turning the big 0-5(!), was the year I knew I would have to pull up my boot straps and get on the ball.

In the past I have tried a couple of curriculum’s in an attempt to be a schooly homeschooler, which is what I thought I was supposed to be. Oak Meadow was our first try. It is a loosely structured Waldorf/Montessori, but was just too loose for my attention span. We made it through a few weeks before I bailed. At the time I tried it I was working nights while my husband worked days so prep time was limited. With this in mind I decided to try something much more structured.

My next curriculum was Sonlight. A heavily reading based and very structured curriculum. Instead of buying the package deal, with all the books used that year included, from the company I decided to do it economy. Which meant figuring out what books I could get from the library or inter-library loan, then see who had books I could borrow, finally I bought the remaining books online used at half.com. This was quite an undertaking but monetarily I think it worked out ok. We made it through maybe a week before I realized it was way too much for us. I was drowning in notebooks, post it notes, bookmarks, books, and to me it just seemed like chaos (mind you chaos that I was creating most likely from lack of organizational preparation time)

At this point I was pretty fed up with curriculums. I found the excuse of having a second child who was running head first into the depths of toddler-dom along with me working a lot to be sufficient enough for me to lay off the curriculums and truly unschool for a couple of years.

Unschooling has been a great experience and remarkably easy. One of the greatest accomplishments in this time was the Monkey teaching himself how to read. This truly taught me that kids do not need to be “taught”. I really believe that since we were so free the past couple of years he felt more comfortable and at ease with his relationship to reading. He was a reading with tears kind of kid early on in the days where I tried to “teach” him. Being able to see it as a relationship that is different for everyone and that grows at its own pace was a very important lesson for me to learn.

The unschooling years also allowed me to de-school myself a bit. To let go of my preconceived ideas of learning and get over the 12 years + of educational programming. I must be very honest here I am still struggling with this daily. I am also struggling with letting go of my ideas of “being a grown up” but that is another post.

This summer I was trying to figure out what we were going to do this year. I got a better handle on my work schedule. I found a great system for managing the house. All that was left was what to do about homeschooling. A friend introduced me to this great into to science book Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding by Dr. Bernard Nebel. searching on the internet for and about this book I came across this website Brining Up Learners. It is awesome! The best part is that they have a downloadable FREE curriculum. How exciting is that? Especially after I have spent hundreds of dollars in teaching materials in the past.

It is just enough to satisfy my kids desire for structure and introduction of new ideas. It is also structured but minimal to meet my unschooly style. As always things may change but for now it is all going grea. Everyday is a challenge but if it were not I would be concerned.

Book Suggestion:

Parenting a Free Child: An Unschooled Life by Rue Kream

"Parenting A Free Child: An Unschooled Life presents a radical approach to parenting and education in a way that seems logical, obvious and natural. I use the word “radical” because Kream’s approach is very different to mainstream parenting, even within the homeschooling community. It is built on an incredible and absolute trust in her two children and aims to give them control over all aspects of their life."

Going into to a new year

This year I am officially homeschooling TWO school age kids!

The bean is five and has gone through the right of passage - SafetyTown. She is official.

I have been looking forward to this time of our lives for a long time. Don't get me wrong I love little ones but Big Daddy and I are really excited about the future of hanging out with our "kids" without toddlers and diapers and nap times and all the other lovely stuff that comes with little ones.

I have already seen a shift in the conversations we have, how we experience our daily outings and even down to everyday functioning (this morning the Bean made everyone breakfast - fruit leather, fruit b'fast bar, cherries with a pit bowl tortilla chips and milk. it was awesome!)

I am super excited about the year to come with my two kiddos and Big Daddy. I have a great feeling about this.