Last week was a choir day. On December 10th is the concert we are performing.
I was striving for a solo and I got a duet.
The bad news is that the person I'm with is louder and we both need to work on staying together. The song we are singing our duet in is called "Just A Tiny Baby." We are doing other songs too. In one of the songs I have jingle bells as an instrument. We all got something as an instrument. Show day is close!
Love, H
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Ways That We ARE Helping Our Child OWN her Homeschool Adventure
When we began considering homeschooling as parents. We of course thought about all the things the other homeschool families do... How's it going to work for our family? What resources do we have? What are the requirements? Etc. There was one thing we had to think about, that I don't think all homeschool families do. Many families know they are starting homeschooling from the beginning. We hadn't. We were public school kids, we were working adults, public schooling made the most sense at first. H, learned well from other people. She is intelligent and a great learner. So when we made the decision to homeschool it wasn't based on us not liking the system, not liking the teachers, or because H needed something she wasn't getting at school. We had to ask ourselves how do we take a child who is thriving in the school system, and transition her to something she doesn't understand, and is completely different for her? H, is a social butterfly. She was that way before school started, and in school she did her work, but she got her chatting and playing done as well.
From the beginning we understood it was very important to make H a part of her new education. As the Mama Bear of the family, I researched all the requirements and told her that those were a must. Otherwise, we have made H the center of her education.
Things we were going to keep the same, but how we are going to make them work for us:
1. Every day would have lesson plans just like in public school. (who was I kidding?)
- But I told her that we'd have more time after those lessons and in that time she could help navigate what her learning looked like. Picking topics or asking to do a kind of activity to accompany a topic we are already working on. The possibilities are endless.
- We don't have lesson plans, and I'll talk about that a bit more in another post. But we do have a general order of things.
2. H loved the field trips that public school did. Which wasn't very many, she always wished there was more.
- We would still field trip, and try to do so often! We have already field tripped more that she did in school last year. It's getting colder and icier here though, so we are slowing down for a bit. While having plans for many more in the Spring. H does well with hands on type learning and we live in a great location do quite a bit of it.
3. We were still going to get up do school first thing in the morning and then work on other tasks.
- H loves her sleep, and requires quite a bit of it. So when we talked about homeschooling with her, we of course told her 5am alarms were no longer required.
- We still get up eat breakfast, get ready and start our school day. We have already found that we accomplish more when we do our work while we are fresh.
So we are working together with H to make her homeschooling work for all of us. It isn't my education, it is hers. I'm just here to help her find what she needs and help her learn it.
One really significant way we helped H gain a feeling of ownership of her education was allowing her to "name" her school. Then she also gave it a mascot. It's one thing to feel like you are part of the family, a natural thing. A title can give you the sense of belonging to many things in life. The schools in our area are named after different landmarks, or where they are located. So, H chose to name our school after our location as well. Then because her mom is a graphic designer we built a logo. Where she was able to be the client and help make important decisions on the design. The school's around us mascots are usually based on wildlife we have in our area, or wildlife that is "aggressive." H had a harder time choosing a mascot. She thought about choosing something aggressive, but then decided that it was more important that the mascot had a meaning to her. A personal meaning. So our mascot is a pit bull. H's best friend was a pit bull named Lucky before we lost him last year. Now in her eyes he is overlooking our education adventure. All I have left to do is order our shirts for everyone in the house who is a part of Rocky Mountain Academy - Nation Homeschool Family.
From the beginning we understood it was very important to make H a part of her new education. As the Mama Bear of the family, I researched all the requirements and told her that those were a must. Otherwise, we have made H the center of her education.
Things we were going to keep the same, but how we are going to make them work for us:
1. Every day would have lesson plans just like in public school. (who was I kidding?)
- But I told her that we'd have more time after those lessons and in that time she could help navigate what her learning looked like. Picking topics or asking to do a kind of activity to accompany a topic we are already working on. The possibilities are endless.
- We don't have lesson plans, and I'll talk about that a bit more in another post. But we do have a general order of things.
2. H loved the field trips that public school did. Which wasn't very many, she always wished there was more.
- We would still field trip, and try to do so often! We have already field tripped more that she did in school last year. It's getting colder and icier here though, so we are slowing down for a bit. While having plans for many more in the Spring. H does well with hands on type learning and we live in a great location do quite a bit of it.
3. We were still going to get up do school first thing in the morning and then work on other tasks.
- H loves her sleep, and requires quite a bit of it. So when we talked about homeschooling with her, we of course told her 5am alarms were no longer required.
- We still get up eat breakfast, get ready and start our school day. We have already found that we accomplish more when we do our work while we are fresh.
So we are working together with H to make her homeschooling work for all of us. It isn't my education, it is hers. I'm just here to help her find what she needs and help her learn it.
One really significant way we helped H gain a feeling of ownership of her education was allowing her to "name" her school. Then she also gave it a mascot. It's one thing to feel like you are part of the family, a natural thing. A title can give you the sense of belonging to many things in life. The schools in our area are named after different landmarks, or where they are located. So, H chose to name our school after our location as well. Then because her mom is a graphic designer we built a logo. Where she was able to be the client and help make important decisions on the design. The school's around us mascots are usually based on wildlife we have in our area, or wildlife that is "aggressive." H had a harder time choosing a mascot. She thought about choosing something aggressive, but then decided that it was more important that the mascot had a meaning to her. A personal meaning. So our mascot is a pit bull. H's best friend was a pit bull named Lucky before we lost him last year. Now in her eyes he is overlooking our education adventure. All I have left to do is order our shirts for everyone in the house who is a part of Rocky Mountain Academy - Nation Homeschool Family.
One of the other things we did was tell H to talk to us constantly. To keep the communication open and honest about homeschooling and all things in her life. To allow us to work together and make this work we all had to talk about our needs and wants. Which she has done. There are things she still misses from school, and we are working on meeting those needs. There are things we still want to do with this adventure as parents, and we are working on those too. Overall, we are gaining a better family unit because of this adventure.
I hope that others who are interested in changing the school style for their kids realize that no matter what direction they choose it's never too late to switch. It's never too early to get your kids involved in their own education. They love to learn naturally and it only gets better when they are involved in what they learn. Giving H ownership has been one of the best decisions so far in this transition. It has been really simple choices such as naming her school that has helped her and us. The simplest of things can get school going in whatever direction you choose.
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