First Day

This is weird.

This morning, I put both my kids on a school bus for the very first time, waved to them, and then went about my business for seven hours.

That's never happened before.

I mean, I've been away from them for that long. But never without knowing that I could pick up the phone at any time and the person responsible for them would answer and tell me exactly what was happening. I didn't take advantage of that knowledge, but I knew I could.

You can't do that when your kids are in school. For one thing, the teacher is too busy being responsible for them and 20 of their soon-to-be closest friends to stop and take a phone call from a paranoid parent. For another, they go to a bunch of different places. Are they on the playground for recess? In the cafeteria eating lunch? Playing in the gym? Painting in the art room? Enjoying story time in the library?

So all day long, I've been wondering, "Where are they right now? What are they doing right now?" But in addition to that, I can't help but also wonder, "Were they scared or confused when they got off the bus? Did they like their new teachers? Did they find someone to sit with at lunch? Did they remember to wash their hands after they used the bathroom? Will they be able to find the right bus at the end of the day?" So many questions.

And with one hour left before the bus brings them back home, I'm trying to decide which of those questions I should ask them at the end of their first day. Actually, I probably shouldn't ask them any of those questions. What I should be asking them is things like, "Who was the nicest person you met today? What did you like best about your new classroom? What did you bring home in your backpack? What was your favorite part of the day? Who was wearing the cutest first-day-of-school outfit? (that one's for my daughter) Who had the coolest backpack? (that one's for my son) What was the most interesting thing you learned today?"

Because I know that my attitude will rub off on them. They'll understand my concerns about school, even if I don't express them in so many words. If I approach them with questions that assume their first day was scary and uncertain and unpredictable, they'll think of school as being scary and uncertain and unpredictable. But if I ask them questions that assume their first day was exciting and interesting and fun, they'll think of school as being exciting and interesting and fun.

And that's exactly what school should be: exciting and interesting and fun. And I bet that if I approach it that way, I'll be sure to get the right answer when I ask, "Are you looking forward to going back tomorrow?"

Reflections on the Incipient First Day of School

Today is T minus 5 days until my kids start public school. I'd be lying if I said this wasn't at the front of my mind most of my waking hours lately. I mean, I'm going from homeschooling 1 child and being the primary caregiver for both, to handing over the reins to two complete (albeit I'm sure very nice and perfectly competent) strangers. I am, in a very real sense of the term, losing my job in 5 days.

Unlike losing a "real" job, however, I have to stay around to see the results that my successors are bringing about in the projects that I have spent 5 and 6-1/2 years, respectively, laying the foundations for. I don't get to walk away completely and start something new. No, like a divorcee forced to live in a house with her ex and his new wife, I am constantly faced with the new relationship that I am not a part of.

Overly dramatic, much? Yeah. But also, no. These teachers - these wonderful, dedicated, experienced teachers - are taking away something I love more than my own life: spending time watching and helping my children become adults. These may be only the first steps toward adulthood, but I am very conscious that those steps are steps away from me.

But I need to remind myself that this was the plan from the very beginning. From the moment I saw those two lines on the stick, my goal was to teach my children to become self-sufficient, independent adults, able to make their own choices and deal with the consequences, both positive and negative. I knew all along that my job was to lose my job. But it's very difficult to figure out when the children are ready to begin making their own decisions - and it's even more difficult to allow them to make those decisions.

This idea of allowing my children to make their own decisions and to fight their own battles came to the fore this afternoon as our whole family attended a school-wide cookout at their elementary school. The playground was open to all students, from pre-K up to 5th grade, and their families. Which meant that there was much competition for the best playground equipment: 4th graders hogging the ziplines; 2nd graders claiming the swings for half an hour at a time; pre-K kiddos literally pushing each other out of the way at the bottom of the slides. It was an education in the huge range of parenting theories and techniques that are out there. It was the law of the jungle.

I will admit that I gave in once, when I happened to be giving my son a boost onto the zipline and another kid tried to grab the handle out of his hands. I turned my head and was literally in the kid's face. His look was a challenge; this was not a kid who was going to back down just because an adult was there. I tried to keep my mouth shut. I swear, I really did. But I suddenly I heard my own voice saying, "You know, he's been waiting in line for a turn and you just had a bunch of turns" (I neglected to add "because you shoved a bunch of smaller kids out of the way"). The kid looked me in the eye for a second, then backed off and headed off elsewhere.

Should I have let my son fight that battle? Yeah, probably. But I'm still glad he knows that I've got his back. Even if I make him fight first, I want him to know that I'm always right behind him, to push him forward if needed, to cover his retreat if he chooses, to talk through his choices after the fact and figure out how to make better choices next time. To support his choices, whatever they may be.

We're all learning, my kids and I. They're learning that they can make their own decisions, and that sometimes they're wrong, and sometimes they're right. I'm learning that making wrong decisions won't kill them. Or me. But making decisions - even wrong decisions - will give them the confidence to continue making decisions throughout their life. Making a wrong decision and surviving the consequences is one of the most important experiences a child can have. If I try to deprive my children of that experience, what kind of mom am I?

Not the kind I want to be. Not the kind I will be. At least, not the kind I'm trying my hardest to be, 5 days from now.

Reflections on My First Week of Homeschooling

If you asked me to sum up my experiences during my first week of homeschooling, the sentence I would use is this: "Homeschooling is HARD."

That's not to say that it isn't rewarding, or that I'm not glad that I chose homeschooling over various other options. It's not to say that I'm not aiming to do better next week, or even to say that I did badly this week. But it is HARD. Unexpectedly hard.

I honestly thought that the first few weeks wouldn't be so bad. I figured that the hard part would come a few weeks, maybe even a month, in, when the novelty wore off and the coolest stuff that I had planned was used up. I honestly thought that the first week would be easy, for both me and my son.

Ha.

It wasn't easy.

It wasn't easy to take off the "mom" hat and put on the "teacher" hat. It wasn't easy to start seeing my son as a student rather than as, well, my son. It wasn't easy to respond to his frustration with the patience of a teacher rather than with the discipline of a mother.

Honestly, I didn't realize quite how different these two hats are, that of "mother" and that of "teacher." They do have a lot in common: Both want the child to do his best, to learn, to understand, to enjoy. Both want to help the child understand and absorb. Both know how the child thinks and adapt the plan to that way of thinking. Both love the child and have his best interests at heart. But the mother wants to soothe and protect and comfort in a way that the teacher should not. The teacher should - MUST - at times, force the issue. The teacher must insist that the child does what he is being asked to do. She must discipline in a much more distanced and impartial way than the mother is used to.

That is asking a lot of a mother.

I didn't know quite how hard it would be to take off my mother hat.

Even before homeschooling entered the picture, I struggled with not being a "helicopter mom." I had to fight my instinct to hover over my children, to fight their battles, to solve their problems, even when they were perfectly capable of fighting their own battles and solving their own problems. I had to remind myself that they were capable of fighting their own battles and solving their own problems, and that even when they weren't, they would benefit if I let them try. It has always been a hard lesson. I am grateful that I have a husband who is perhaps a bit too far on the other end of the spectrum. Given his druthers, he would let them run through the park without an adult watching over them, stay at home without supervision while he runs a quick errand, and be in a large group of people without holding the hand of a parent. These scenarios are all horrifying to me. But between the two of us, I think we strike a reasonable balance of supervision and freedom. I think we balance each other out so that our children have a healthy dose of both protection and independence.

But when it comes to the classroom, and it's just me and my son, my helicopter mom self wants so badly to do everything for him. I desperately want him to answer all the questions correctly, and if I can't I want to whisper the answers to him. I don't want to see him struggle, or be confused, or have to work hard to figure things out for himself, or (God forbid) to be WRONG. I have to literally bite my tongue to not hand him the answers.

Keeping my mouth shut and letting him struggle is absolutely the hardest thing I have ever done as a parent.

And yet, when I do let him struggle, and he gets frustrated, and cries, and gets angry, but then finally figures something out on his own, I am so proud that I fear my heart might actually explode. I am almost as proud as he is.

Yes, homeschooling is HARD. But boy, is it worth it. It is ever so worth it.

Homeschooling: Day 1

Today is my first official day as a homeschooling mom.

This is what my kids looked like as they headed off, respectively, to preschool and back into our home classroom:

And this is what I looked like as I headed back into our home classroom:

Being the planner that I am, I have lists of topics and projects and resources and crafts. I have lesson plans and a ringbinder and evaluation charts. I have worksheets and educational websites and DVDs and library books. I SHOULD know what I'm doing: I have experience, I've done the research, I've put in the preparation time, and yet somehow I still feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants. I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing.

I can't help but be reminded of when I was pregnant with this very child, my son, my firstborn, and my husband and I attended a one-day birthing class led by a wonderful L&D nurse practitioner with two children of her own, who told the class, "Go ahead and write up a birthing plan. Write down exactly what you want to happen, exactly how everything should go, what all of your choices are under various circumstances. [She paused for a moment.] And then rip it up and throw it away, because you're not the one driving this bus. Your doctor isn't the one driving this bus. Your baby is the only one driving this bus, and your baby is the one who will be driving every decision that is being made from here on out. And the sooner you accept that, the easier the whole process will be for all concerned."

I can't help but think that this wise advice applies to homeschooling as well. After all, one of the main advantages of homeschooling is that you can tailor both the material and the teaching methods to the needs and personality of the individual child. And no matter how well I know my son, there's no predicting how he will respond to a certain type of problem, or how well he will take to a particular subject, or what kind of schedule will work for him, once we actually get into the nitty-gritty of a scheduled and structured (however loosely) school day.

So I may have a fabulous list of science projects that include stinky and messy (and vaguely dangerous) chemical experiments, but he may only be interested in cleaner and neater (and absolutely dangerous) electricity experiments. Maybe he won't want to go on a nature walk. Maybe I'll need to figure out different ways to introduce him to the worlds of science and nature. I may have all kinds of ideas about drawing pictures to illustrate the stories we read, but he might have no interest. Maybe I'll discover that he would rather dress up like one of the characters in the book we're reading and act out what we just read instead of drawing a picture of it.

But I'm willing to experiment. I'm willing to wade through my lists of ideas and options and opportunities and see what works for us. I'm willing to throw a whole bunch of educational spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. I'm willing to take a page from my own notebook and come up with a hypothesis, test it out, and if it doesn't work, come up with a different hypothesis, and just keep testing.

It may be my son's home school, but he's not the only one who'll be learning a few things this year!

The Unexpected Benefits of Unit Theory

Over the past few days, I’ve been spending a lot of time planning next year’s homeschool curriculum for my son. Part of that planning has been organizing my own thoughts about which “school” of homeschooling I plan to follow. Some theories involve teaching whatever the child is interested in at the time (He builds Legos? Let’s study architecture and geometry! She loves to paint? Let’s learn about primary and secondary colors!). Others involve having set schedules for set topics (9:30-9:40am, penmanship; 9:40-9:55am, American history; 9:55-10:10am, math flash cards). Still others involve following a purchased curriculum. But the one that most appeals to me is the idea of using a single general topic as a jumping-off point to study a number of other topics across a whole range of subjects. In other words, using units.

For example, yesterday I made chicken soup with my son (home economics). He helped me to read the recipe (following directions, reading comprehension) and prepare and measure ingredients (units of measurement, math, counting, fractions, fine motor skills), and we talked about why we use each ingredient (chemistry, nutrition) and where the ingredients come from (geography, biology). We saved the carrot tops and set them up to sprout (botany). I’m having him write up a label every morning with the date and the day # of the experiment (penmanship, counting) and then take a photo to document our progress (photography, art composition, fine motor skills, the scientific method). I’ll also have him periodically make a sketch (drawing) and write a few sentences about his observations (composition, grammar, penmanship, the scientific method). We’ll find some books in the library (research methods) which I’ll have him read aloud to me (reading) and then explain in his own words (reading comprehension, conversational skills). And maybe at the end of the experiment, we’ll put them out in our yard for the local bunnies or use them to start a compost pile (environmentalism, good citizenship, biology, chemistry).

As you can see, a simple pot of soup can lead to education in a number of different areas. But even though I’ve thought through dozens of topics I can cover based only on a couple of carrot tops, I discovered this morning that there are also more subtle lessons to be taught that I hadn’t even thought of; namely, patience and faith. I forgot how slowly time can go when you’re five. But this morning, when my son painstakingly wrote out the “Day 2” label and got the camera ready to take today’s photograph, he looked at the carrots and informed me rather dubiously, “They haven’t started growing yet.”

My adult mind immediately thought, “Well, of COURSE they haven’t started growing yet; it’s been less than 24 hours!” But I stopped and reminded myself that my lifetime of experience in watching – and waiting for – various things to grow or change has taught me to be patient and trust that things are happening that I can’t yet see. My son, in his mere 5 years on this earth, does not have that experience. And that is why one of the most important things he will learn in this experiment is not how to keep a lab notebook, or what plants need to grow, or why carrots are good for you, but rather he will learn to be patient. He will learn that being faithful and continuing to do something good even when you don’t see results right away is a good thing to do. He will learn that good things come to those who wait. He will learn the reward of being patient and having faith.

And all because of a couple of carrots.

What Is Homeschooling Like?

Even though I’m not “officially” homeschooling yet (my son misses the age cutoff and is not eligible for public kindergarten this year), I’m doing it formally enough that it occasionally comes up in conversation, and people often ask what it’s like to homeschool. Every homeschooler is different, so I can’t answer that question in the broadest sense, but I can share what homeschooling is like for us. Here’s an example of a typical homeschooling day for us.

My son is naturally very curious, so I try to develop lessons based on what he’s interested in. Instead of having a separate math lesson, reading lesson, writing practice, etc., I try to tie them all together using something that he’s interested in. So I based this lesson on a police car craft that I found on Pinterest. 

I began by carefully writing out step by step instructions:

1. Color the car blue.
2. Cut out 2 black circles.
3. Cut out 2 white squares.
4. Cut out 1 red rectangle.
5. Cut out 1 yellow star.

I gave him a paper plate that had been cut into the general shape of a car, a box of magic markers, a pair of scissors, a stack of construction paper with the appropriate shapes drawn on, and the page of directions. 

 In this single project, he had to 1) read, 2)  hold a marker properly, 3) follow sequential directions, 4) identify colors, 5) identify shapes, 6) master using scissors for both curved and straight cutting, and 7) use glue without making a big mess.

I followed this lesson by asking him to draw each of the shapes that he had cut out, and then had him figure out how to spell and write out the name of one of those shapes with help from alphabet flash cards.

From there we moved on to reading a library book about different kinds of vehicles (including police cars). As we read, we talked about the difference between nouns and verbs, figuring out which words were “things” (ambulance, policeman, siren, headlights) and which were “doing” words (drive, stop, help, fly). After that, we watched a “Schoolhouse Rock” DVD, starting with songs like “Verb: That’s What’s Happening” and “A Noun Is a Person, Place or Thing,” then we moved on to a little American history with “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World” and “The Great American Melting Pot” and a bit of math with “Elementary, My Dear” and “Figure Eight,” all with appropriate discussion as we went along. And then we finished off the lesson by practicing writing numbers with more help from flash cards and workbook pages.

The nicest part of home schooling is being able to set our own pace and our own schedule. We can take breaks whenever one of us needs one and plow through when we happen to be on a roll. If we find ourselves on an interesting tangent, we can go with it instead of having to steer back to the original topic. Sometimes we take a wiggle break because we feel like it; sometimes we skip a boring book and find one that’s more exciting at the moment; sometimes we scrap a lesson altogether and find something else that works for us. Sometimes we get much more in depth than I'd anticipated and go two or three lessons at a time. If one of us is having a crabby morning, we can work on fun projects like crafts or coloring or cooking, and work on the harder or less interesting stuff after lunch when we’ve both gotten our second wind. Sometimes we "double-dip" by thinking of different kinds of ocean animals while we're swimming or practice walking like different kinds of animals while we're having a stretch break. We can even do lessons after dinner or on weekends to make up for breaks we’ve taken during the day. 

Making our own schedule also means we can be inspired by anything and everything around us. At the grocery store, we talk about nutrition, how plants grow, and where different fruits come from. We read the signs at the end of each aisle and talk about why the foods are grouped together the way they are. While we’re making brownies, we talk about the different ways we can measure things and we practice reading and following directions. In the car the other day, my son saw someone smoking a cigarette and asked what it was, and it segued into a discussion of health, how we breathe, and the meaning of the word “consequences”.

To quote John Dewey, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” And, in turn, life itself is education. 

Sticker Storytelling

Roughly two weeks into my home schooling journey with my son, I have discovered what is easily the skill with which he struggles most: writing. He has no problem with writing in terms of ideas; he has been telling stories - both repeating ones he's heard and creating stories of his own - since he was able to talk. Give him a character or a topic and he'll happily spin a wild yarn for you. But the act of getting those words onto paper is brutally difficult for him. Holding the marker, forming the letters, keeping the words from falling off the page...you'd think I was asking him to create life.

So I've been searching the internet, reading home schooling and kindergarten teacher blogs, and looking through books to find some creative ideas of how to help make writing practice more interesting and less frustrating for him. Writing in a tray of pudding, or jello or Kool-Aid powder, or sand, or shaving cream; and writing on a chalkboard or dry erase board seemed like great suggestions, but he wasn't terribly enthusiastic. I tried making letter flashcards that he could copy. I made dotted outlines he could trace. I read an article written by a kindergarten teacher who has her students draw a picture and then write a few words about it daily, and I laughed (a little enviously). I couldn't imagine how long it would be before my son would be interested in writing an entire sentence, never mind doing it every single day. But then, I had a sticker epiphany.

My son is moody about drawing pictures: some days he'd draw robots and space aliens all day long, but other days he has zero interest. But I've yet to offer him stickers and be turned down. So this morning, when his little sister was playing with stickers and he asked to make a sticker picture, I was struck with inspiration. I told him he could make a sticker picture, but afterwards he had to tell me a story about it and then we would work together to write one sentence about it. He considered that for a moment, then apparently decided that his love for stickers outweighed his hate of writing, and took me up on it.

I let him choose 10 stickers to put on a piece of construction paper. The Melissa and Doug sticker book we were using has literally hundreds of stickers with a different theme for each page: farm animals, jungle animals, ballerinas, fairies, princes and princesses, bugs and butterflies and flowers, a tea party, and paper dolls (did I mention it was his sister's sticker book?). He flipped right to the prince and princess page and chose a unicorn, a princess, a tiara, several sceptres, a palace, a rainbow, a flower, and several hearts. He carefully put them on the page, layering stickers on top of each other to create a sceptre topped with a flower and a rainbow and another topped with a heart. He studied his artwork carefully for several minutes and then, without any prompting from me, began to tell me all about the princess who lived in the beautiful castle and who had a pet pony (he hasn't much use for unicorns) who used his magic to make the princess special sceptres. After much discussion (and several reminders that the shorter the sentence he chose, the less he would have to write), he came up with this manageable sentence: "The princess has a pony."

I braced myself and got out my pack of flashcards. I reminded him that the beginning of a sentence starts with a capital letter, and together we figured out what letter the word "The" starts with (starting with a diphthong was not my best decision). I laid out the appropriate flashcard, went over where each line starts and the order to make them in, and handed him a crayon with bated breath.

To my surprise, he started to hold the crayon in his fist then corrected his grip without my saying a word, then drew a huge - but surprisingly neat - capital T. I laid out the lowercase h flashcard, and stopped him when he began to make a capital H instead. He corrected it but then got all upset that the mistake made the h look like there was a capital A in the middle of it. But I reassured him that this was just practice and it was okay if there were mistakes, and he soon settled down and kept going. We carefully repeated each word to figure out what sound and what letter came next. Letter by painstaking letter, words began to form on the page. All we could fit on the front of the page was "The prince" so we continued on the back with "ss has a pony." (Technically, it says "has a pony. ss" since he doesn't always remember to start at the top of a new page.) He ran out of steam halfway through so I wrote "a pony" for him, but at least he was willing to tell me which letters to write.

It's just a start, but it gives me hope that someday he will experience the joys of writing that I feel every time I put words to paper. I want him to feel the same thrill that I do at being able to express my thoughts and feelings through words. Even if he doesn't end up being a writer, I want him to be a good communicator. Because he has so much to say!!!

A is for "Assessment"

My son is not quite 5, and therefore he missed the kindergarten cutoff for this year. So I’m dipping my toe (and his, as well) into the homeschooling pool and teaching him some kindergarten skills myself. As a starting point, I found a wonderful online assessment tool based on the kindergarten common core standards, and this morning I went through it with him to see what he already knows and what he still has to learn. And here’s what I discovered: My kid is a genius.

Well, okay, he’s not really a genius. But he is about 90% done with learning kindergarten language skills, anyway. He’s reading on a second grade level (he breezes through words like “nebula,” “hydration,” and “illustrator” without blinking, including figuring out what they mean from context clues); he can spell and write simple words like “cat” and “pig” and “no” without prompting; and he can describe the settings, characters, and plot of a simple story. I introduced the concept of syllables to him and literally within minutes he could tell me how many syllables are in the word “refrigerator” or “despicable” or “antidisestablishmentarianism” (okay, not that last one, although I’m sure he could have figured it out if I’d actually given him that one). This is one smart kid.

Really, the one skill he’s weak on is writing. Not the spelling or expressing himself part, but simply the physical act of writing, of holding a pen or pencil and actually forming the letters on the page. And the hardest part of teaching the physical act of writing is that it only comes through repetition and practice. Which is the bane of a smart, active little boy’s existence. He doesn’t want to sit and write stuff, he wants to get out there and do it! And this is where the creative part of teaching comes in. This is where I have to come up with ideas of how to help him understand the freedom that will come with being able to express himself in writing. This is one of his first big lessons in delayed gratification, and learning why it pays to do the boring stuff now so you can do the fun stuff later.

So we’ll start with making the fun stuff as immediately “later” as possible. I think I’ll start by having him write words like “jump” and “hop” and “run” and rewarding him for writing them by letting him DO them. Then I’ll have him write words like “pig” and “robot” and “soccer” and reward him by letting him draw pictures of them. We can try writing a single letter a few times and then running around the house to find as many things as we can that start with that letter. (We’ll count them, too, just to sneak in an extra math lesson!) And then maybe we can move on to writing words like “space” and “superhero” and “toilet” and then we can go to the library and find a book about each of those things.

It’s going to be an exciting journey for both of us – probably a little frustrating sometimes, certainly somewhat boring sometimes, definitely often confusing and occasionally scary. But I have no doubt that we’ll both learn a lot – about ourselves and how we think, and about each other and how the other person thinks. But the best part of the journey is that we’ll be taking it together.