Rehearsal Learning

Photo by Alan Light

Rehearsal.

I’m not talking about the kind of rehearsal you have before a play, but if that’s what comes to your mind,  you are on the right track. I mean that some kids need to practice before they are expected to “perform”. For example, my little one whispers words that she is practicing before she says them for everyone to hear. There are many ways to use rehearsal in your home school.

• Very shy children, children who do not react well to the unexpected, and autistic children benefit from practicing social scenarios. They learn what to expect and what to say. Rehearsal allows the children to make mistakes and get coached in social skills.
• Children who struggle with writing, either the act of writing or with the process of writing, benefit from rehearsing their ideas before they write them down. Simply removing the frustration of actually writing can be a huge relief to kids who struggle to write. You might notice more insightful written thoughts and better organized writing.
• Children learning a foreign language can rehearse useful and typical conversations before you assess them on their conversational skills. This gives them the opportunity to think about vocabulary and verb tenses ahead of time. They can correct grammatical errors on the spot without the risk of failure. This also works for written work.
• Rehearsing by taking a practice test can also alleviate test anxiety. Through rehearsal children know what to study for and what to expect on the test. Often they perform better on the test.
• Young children can learn basic safety skills by rehearsing. Recently my daughter and I rehearsed an emergency scenario. I pretended to be unconscious and a friend talked her through making a 9-1-1 call. It was both enlightening to me and helpful for her. She’s now more equipped for emergency situations.

Rehearsal is a unique and helpful learning tool. Try it out in your home school.

Homeschooling on the Road

Homeschooling my kids means that I can teach them when ever and where ever it seems appropriate. We went on vacation this past week, and I was able to take our school on the road. We enjoyed some relaxation while learning a lot.

On vacation we were able to continue our nature study on our hikes. While we went hiking, we talked about the leaves and continued identifying which trees they came from. We also looked under logs to see the bugs. There were so many tree roots on the trail, so we discussed what the roots are for. All the while we were taking photos and laughing with each other. What great memories!

We also went to a gorge and saw a waterfall there. It was magnificent! The kids were amazed by the size of the waterfall and surprised by how loud it was. They had never seen a waterfall like this one! On this same hike we were able to talk about the plants and bugs that we saw and even used our magnifying glasses to observe the plants more closely. There was a bear’s den tucked away on the hike as well. Since we had read Blueberries for Sal this summer and made a lapbook on it, we were all happy to see a bear’s den up close.

One of the highlights of our trip was a train ride. We were able to see the foliage as we rode through the woods. The train we rode did not have a steam engine, which came to a surprise to our kids. They assume that all trains are like Thomas the Tank Engine. They asked the conductor about it, and we learned that this train runs on diesel fuel that creates electricity that runs the motor. I never knew that and would never have taken the initiative to find that out. Our kids wanted to know what made the train run, though, so we investigated it further.

Why is it so important to me that we can take out school with us when we vacation? My kids’ education is richer from the experiences that they are having on vacation. I am able to encourage their natural interests and reinforce their learning while we are relaxing and making memories. While I am at the library this week, I will look for books about trains to continue the conversation about that. I will also find books about waterfalls and more about autumn. We may also incorporate some new and interesting experiments in the coming weeks. Now my kids have real life experiences to draw from as they read books about trains and nature. They will also be able to write something more meaningful and interesting in a story or an article. There are layers upon layers of meaning folded into their understanding of these three simple experiences.

I hope this inspires you to keep the learning going while you vacation!

Football Theme

I have a dear friend, Rose, who has inspired this post.

Do you have a kiddo who absolutely loves football? Use this passion as a way into learning. You can use the football theme to teach practically anything this year in your home school. Here is what I mean.

Social Studies:

• Have your child create football trading cards that include information about important historical figures.
• On a map locate where the home stadiums are for each NFL team.
• Create a time line of the history of football.

Math:

• Convert yards into feet.
• Throw a football around the backyard, make an estimate for the distance it went, and measure it in feet and in yards.
• Calculate someone’s quarterback rating.

Science:

• Investigate gravity. How long does the ball stay in the air and how high does it have to go?
• Investigate wind resistance. Why is the ball oblong?
• Investigate properties of materials. What makes leather hard when it gets cold?
• Investigate conservation of energy and conservation of momentum. When a player is tackling another, how fast does the light person have to be going to stop the heavy person? (f=ma, e=mv²)

Writing:

• Write a series of newspaper articles on key players for each team.
• Create a series of letters that one of the players would write to family members. They should be written as if the player is actually writing.
• Write a research paper on one of the players.
• Write a fictional story about a football.

Handwriting:

• Write the NFL teams’ names in cursive.
• Write sentences about football in cursive.
• Make a football shaped book for spelling words that are inspired by football written in cursive and in sentences.
  

  

Reading:

• Read newspaper articles about the players.
• Read any available biographies on the players.
• Read football inspired stories.
• Research the rules for the NFL.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, so be creative! Have fun learning through football!

Are Home Educated Children at a Disadvantage?

Are homeschooled kids at a disadvantage? That is an interesting question that I have been pondering a reasonably good answer to for a while, and the idea just resurfaced when I received an e-mail from the editor from Opposing Views. It has forced me to think about that idea again. This post does not cover all of the reasons that I believe that home educated children are not disadvantaged but actually at an advantage; this post is just the tip of the iceberg.

Families choose to homeschool their children for many reasons. Some want to provide a safe learning environment, or parents homeschool because they feel they can meet their children’s needs better than a public or even a private school. There are families who suppliment home education with services from public school. Other families choose to homeschool for religious reasons. Whatever the reason is, families are equipping their children for the real world through home education. They are doing it successfully, too, and there is research to back that statement.

The data cannot unequivocally prove that the positive results seen in home educated children are directly caused by their experiences in their home schools. I have to wonder, though, what else could be the cause of such positive results? Home education happens in the context of real life with people who are committed to their children. Who knows your children better than you do? The curriculum is tailored to meet a particular child’s needs. Children are offered learning opportunities that are delivered in ways that address their individual learning styles. Homeschools offer a tutoring situation. Imagine if you had a personal tutor all throughout your schooling!

Many people are concerned about the quality of the education provided in home schools. Unlike public and private schools, home schools offer flexibility so families can take advantage of learning opportunities that the children might otherwise miss out on. A family can go on field trips that offer real experiences that cannot be replicated in the classroom. Parents can also decide what their children learn, how long to study something, and what time of day works best for the children to complete assignments. If a child gets engrossed in a lesson, s/he can continue that work for as long as is necessary since there aren’t the same time constraints in the home school as in the classroom. Lesson plans can also be abandoned more easily if a child has already mastered a particular skill, if s/he is not ready for that work, or even if the lesson just is not working.

Socialization is one other thing that people bring up when I talk about home education, which I find interesting. Today many of our children spend the majority of their time with child care workers, teachers, coaches, and their peers instead of time with their families. Bullying, violence, and teen pregnancy are just a few of the issues that are causing problems for our children in public and private schools. Children’s interactions with each other are being shaped by their peers or other adults who do not necessarily share the family’s morals and values. However, the center of a home school is the family with siblings learning together and families spending exponentially more time together than children who are educated outside the home. Parents have more time to shape their children’s social experiences and have more opportunities to impart their values on their children. Homeschoolers provide all kinds of social situations for their children just not exactly the same ones that public and private school children have. Home educated children have time outside of the family while they participate in church activities, service opportunities, and co-ops.

I ask you, what are the disadvantages?

Blueberries for Sal Lapbook

We have finally finished our very first lapbook! It is on Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey. I loved making it, and I think the kids enjoyed it, too. There were so many resources online for this particular book. Although there are many commercial resources available, I chose to make up my own lapbook. I borrowed a few ideas from what is available online and came up with a few ideas of my own. Here is what we did.

My children each made a lapbook whith similar work in them. Both children wrote the letter “B” and drew pictures of “B” words and both made blue collages. They both have photos of the different kinds of bears and a bear’s den, and they both have books about our blueberry picking trip as well as a book on the life cycle of a blueberry bush. However, I modified the work for their different levels in order to meet my individual children’s needs. My older child located Maine on a map, but my younger child did not. They both made a counting book, but my older child’s book went up to 10 while my younger child’s book went up to 4. My older child dictated the text for the Full or Empty book, but my younger child just has a flap for full and a flap for empty.

Here are a few of the lessons that I learned along the way.

1. Read the text to the children a lot, and get the book on cd if at all possible. I found that my children made more interesting comments, asked better questions, and made fantastic connections to our work after reading the book many times. We listened to it in the car for days as we ran errands and visited people. A recorded version takes the pressure off of you to reread all of the time.
2. Consider the learning levels of your individual children, and modify the work if that seems most appropriate for your children.
3. Prepare the mini books ahead of time. The kids simply are not going to wait for you to construct something last minute - unless your children are more patient than mine are.
4. Think about where the mini books will be placed inside of the lapbook. You’ll want all of the work to fit into the book perfectly.
5. Be willing to toss out work that did not come out as planned. Some things are just not worthy of keeping whether your planning was the culprit or the kids just were not ready for that type of work. Don’t beat yourself up about it; just toss it.
6. Be ready to change gears. Sometimes things don’t go as planned, but something on the fly works out better. Follow your instincts and try something unplanned that works better.
7. Remember to let the kids review their own work. You are making the lapbook so your child will be able to look back and reflect on all of the learning s/he did. Keep the book in an accessible place.
8. Have fun making the book! This is the most important piece. Any of the work you do with the children will result in learning, so just let go and have a great time with the kids!

I hope that this serves as an inspiration for you to try out a lapbook or two.

Homeschool Composting

I am one of those homeschoolers who try to use kinesthetic activities to improve learning, and I am always looking for creative ways to connect our learning to real life. The other day I was thinking about all of the waste that leaves my kitchen every day and how to reduce that. The it occurred to me that we can make our home more eco-friendly. Even though we recycle, there is a lot of organic waste that goes down the drain. I would rather put it to good use and since we are growing a garden this year, it dawned on me that we should start composting. Children can learn more about being “green” by maintaining a compost pile than from reading books about it or simply recycling. They also find out more about all of the science concepts involved in the process of composting. What a fun way to learn!

Since I myself have a brown thumb, I know nothing at all about composting - or gardening for that matter. I started researching it and found some great information which will get us started. Hopefully this will help you out, too!

Cornell University has a wonderful website filled with information about composting called Cornell Composting. It is a great place to start your composting journey. It is a thorough website with photos to help you. You can also check out The Organic Gardener to learn about compost containers that will make home composting easier.

If you are not new to composting, but you are looking for a new approach to try out, you can attempt the Berkley Thermophilic Compost method. This video gives you plenty of information about this method and even shows you what your compost should look like.

If you want to delve deeper into the topic of permaculture with older children, you can go to Permaculture Reflections, a blog all about the topic. It would be a good jumping off point to help you find topics to research.

I also plan to start a science journal just for our compost pile. The kids will be able to chronicle the process in it, and we can reflect on the changes that we see. We can even include any research that we do about composting. Another part that I like about composting is that it is an ongoing project. We will spend quite some time working with the compost pile. Our learning and understanding of the topic will deepen over time. Then it will simply become part of what we do together.

There is so much to find out about composting. Find a place to set up your compost pile and get started especially since fall is just around the corner and you’ll have plenty of leaves to add to the pile!

8 Ways to Encourage Curiosity

Homeschooling has given me a new lens to look at the world of education through. Many times I have my own plans for what we are going to do, but my children and my husband definitely have shown me that there are may different ways to approach learning. My experience with my own children has revealed to me that I can let my children take the wheel more often than not, and I can encourage them to question.

My children have a strong desire to know more. They ask “why” constantly - more than I would like to hear!  It has made me think about ways to encourage children’s natural curiosity and desire to learn. Here are some strategies that I have found successful:

1. When your child asks a question or a series of questions, answer them the best that you can, and find the answers if you don’t know them. I like to think that since I answer my kids’ questions to the best of my ability, they are encouraged to be that much more inquisitive. If you brush off your child’s questions, s/he will simply stop asking.
2. If you are truly exasperated by the shear number of questions (and I am often), turn the questions back on your child. Find out if your child can make a hypothesis or a deduction based on the information at hand or prior experiences.
3. Ask your child lots of questions when you are out and about or in the middle of a teachable moment. Expect your child to use higher order thinking skills, too. For example, today we went to Plimoth Plantation. I asked my children to deduce what a room was used for based on the clues they found in the room. I also asked them to make observations about the houses and compare them to our home. What does our home have that these homes do not? Why do you think these homes do not have those things?
4. Ask your own genuine questions when your child is with you. For example, I have wondered why certain plants will not grow in particular parts of our yard, and I want to find ones that will grow. Then it is my job to find the answers to those questions. Remember that you are your child’s model. Children imitate adult behavior - even older kids - so give them a great example for what it means to be curious, and show them where you can find the answers to your own questions.
5. Go on adventures! Novel experiences stimulate the mind. Your child will be more likely to have questions if you give your child a wide variety of experiences to draw from. Go hiking. Go to museums. Try gardening. try something new.
6. Here is your chance to live vicariously through your children. Play with them and encourage imaginative play!Your involvement in imaginative play will change the play scenarios and encourage thinking skills.
7. Read to your child. Remember to read a variety of genres - poetry, nonfiction, historical fiction, science fiction, etc. Try reading aloud genres that your child typically does not read on his/her own to broaden his/her horizons. The new ideas presented as you read will open your child up to new ways of thinking. This is also an opportunity to ask more of those questions. Encourage your child to also ask questions while you read.
8. Let your child take the lead. Observe your child in one of those new situations. What is interesting? What is your child drawn to? Now take some time to draw that out of your child. Maybe you can also plan other adventures that incorporate more of your child’s interests.

Enjoy your children’s natural curiosity and let yourself be taken away by it from time to time.

Home School Handwriting without Worksheets

The beauty of home education is flexibility. You are free to try different teaching strategies to meet your children’s particular learning needs. I prefer to limit worksheets. They do have a place, and we do use them, but I want to engage my children in more active learning that is fun. It is also hard to motivate me and the kids to do repetitive practice that can be very boring. If you have an unmotivated, kinesthetic, or tactile learner, it can be particularly difficult to get him/her to do all of the practice that will help achieve mastery of skills.

This summer we have been practicing  handwriting and have tried to practice without using worksheets. These strategies are quite useful and fun. Most of these ideas are great for unmotivated, kinesthetic, and tactile learners.

• Use several pieces of string to form a letter. Trace over the string as you say the name of the letter. Sometimes I talk about the direction that your finger goes as we are moving along the letter. You could do the same thing with spelling.
• We use tub crayons to write all of the letters that we know. We write both capital and lower case letters. We try writing the letters in different colors and sizes.
• We form letters with play dough. All of the rolling, smoothing, a movement helps my kinesthetic and tacticle kids stay engaged in the work. (Try making numbers, too.)
• Write letters in the sandbox using your finger or a stick. It is less intimidating because you can easily smooth the sand if you make a mistake. This is a great strategy for kids who are perfectionists.
• We have a “magic wand” to write letters in the sky. Ours is filled with colorful sand and sparkly stars that float in some liquid. I think that watching the floating things is good for developing eye tracking skills and adds visual interest. Any kind of pointer that looks magical and fancy will do, though. Girls in particular like the magic wand.
• Finger paint is another way of getting tactile learners involved in handwriting. You can mix colors and make the letters any size you like. It also works for the artist in your family.
• We use sidewalk chalk for handwriting practice. If you are like me and can’t find a place for all of the practice the kids do, the rain washes away the work. I think that the resistance also helps build certain muscles.
• Make the shape of a letter with your body. It highlights all of the parts of the letter so on paper the kids include all of the parts. This is particularly good for kinesthetic learners.
• We have a foam alphabet floor puzzle that has different textures on it. We trace those letters while laying on the puzzle. This position also helps build arm muscles and helps with motor control. The colors and the textures add interest and helps the kids remember the work.

Have fun with handwriting!