Michaelmas

This is the first year we'll be celebrating Michaelmas, and I am very excited about adding this celebration to our year!

We are currently in the middle of a language arts block, so I'm weaving it in to our circles and main lessons.  The kids really thrive on stories, so they have been the main focus of all our circles so far this year, and the stories of Saint Michael and George and the Dragon are such great stories I really couldn't wait for the end of September to get here. 

Saint Michael is known as the Saint who conquered the "dragon" in heaven, a saint who gives strength to people, and a Saint who represent victory over evil.  Some stories say during his battle, he banishes the dragon from heaven, and the dragon falls to earth.  Michael then creates an earthly body of his spirit in George to fight the dragon on earth and protect the people from evil.

I love the focus on conquering the dragon, celebrating inner courage and strength.  During the week we will be focusing on identifying some of our personal dragons and how we can overcome them.  On the feast day, September 29th, we will have a small knighting ceremony to celebrate conquering our "dragons".  

I couldn't find any stories that had both stories woven together, so I had to create my own. I found some inspiration from this free ebook on waldorflibrary.org .  It has a few nice stories to tell young children.  I find they really focus on harvest, and less so on courage and bravery, so I really just took snippets and ideas to weave my own story together.

The kids came inside from their outdoor time early and were super excited to jump in to the new set up!  The props stay out and the children play with them reenacting the story all week long. We don't have a nature or seasonal table, so this is my compromise.   Mondays used to be a drag to get back in to our rhythm, but now they wake up excited about the prospect of a new story for the week.

I used a variety of the toys we had at home as props, but I did purchase a dragon because the one I attempted to make just wasn't cutting it.

The villagers hiding from the dragon in the castle. 

George and the princess battling the dragon.

George getting knighted by Saint Michael for his kindness, courage and bravery.

When Saint Michael knights George, I taught the children our verse for the week and introduced it to them as the Knights Oath.

For main lesson work we moved to the table and drew shields with the oath written on them.  My kindergartener really wanted to write the words herself, and I was really impressed with her attempt!

My second grader wrote the entire poem, but was thrown by the shape of the shield, so it came out a bit jumbled.  He is currently working on re-doing it on a larger piece of paper, because he isn't happy with the final main lesson book product. But for a kid who has really weak fine motor skills, I'm pretty proud he persevered through the poem, without complaint.

Typically he does a picture summary of the story we are focusing on and then prints a written summary a few sentences long (not copy work, his own original sentences describing his picture.)  I hadn't planned on the summary work today, mostly because I knew there was a lot of work in the shield and verse, but he still really wanted to draw a picture.

Michael and George conquering the dragon.

The kids were very excited about this story and played with the props all afternoon.  I am really looking forward to focusing on building our character through this story and working on some inner dragons.  The children really connected with that theme of the tale, which actually surprised me a bit.  I thought it would be all knights and dragons and battles that would stay as their focus.

Tomorrow I will post the story I told, in case anyone else wants a story with a bit of a different take.

What will you be doing to prepare for the Feast of Saint Michael?

Cheers,
Marina

What do you do all day? part deux

Since I started homeschooling, I've found the biggest concern people have for my kids is their social lives.  The question I get asked most often is "How will they make friends?"

Followed by, "Won't they get lonely? They won't have anyone to interact with."

And finally, "How will they learn to live in the real world if they never have to deal with people?"

All valid questions, and honestly, they focus on an area that my husband had the most concerns about.

See, we initially started homeschooling because I felt really strongly that my son wasn't ready to go to junior kindergarten.  He was very shy, had a lot of anxiety, and was very stressed out about going to school.  Really stressed out.  When we went to fill out the enrollment package, his hands were shaking, and when we got home half an hour later, he started to talk about his concerns and threw up he was so upset about it.

So I talked to my husband about keeping him home for junior kindergarten, and while he wasn't thrilled with the idea, he agreed that he wasn't ready for school, and we started on this wonderful road to homeschooling.

My husband's main concern was that our son wouldn't have any friends and that he would be seen as odd or weird by people.  Especially since he was so shy already.

So I asked him this question: "When did school become about making friends?  Isn't it supposed to be about learning?  How many people from school are you actually friends with now?", "When did we start caring what people thought of our family decision" and a host of other questions to prove my point.

I will admit that behind my bravado, I had the same concerns.  But after a year of homeschooling, the way I see things is so different.

School, to me, is a very contrived environment.  There are 20 kids mostly the same age in a class, all mostly at the same stage in development.  All are there based on their age because the system works better that way. And for many kids, this system works well.  I'll even venture to say for MOST kids this system works well.

But that doesn't mean that those same children wouldn't thrive in a mixed aged setting.  Just because something is the norm, doesn't always mean it is the best way.

Think of the skills that can be learned by having a group of children that are of different ages.  And I'm not talking about a combined junior and senior kindergarten class.  I'm talking about a room full of kids aged 3-12.  A room where the older kids interact with younger kids, lead them in games, help them.  And where younger children observe the behaviour of the older children, learn from their example.

Aren't taught social skills, but they learn them by example.

I'm not trying to paint an idealistic vision of what can be.  I know that when kids get together they aren't always like that.   And yes, I know that children will learn undesired behaviour from each other just as quickly as the desired. But what I'm saying is, that kids learn better from other kids, and I have seen first hand the good that can come of that kind of environment.

One thing I remember most from my time as an ECE working in the toddler room is when I heard another teacher saying to a parent when a child bit or hit another child "Don't worry. It is a toddler room, it is bound to happen".

And it is bound to happen.  It is bound to happen because in a room full of children the same age, children have less opportunity to learn from each other and it become the teacher's job to teach social skills.

My view is that maybe social skills are easier to learn from a setting where they can observe the interactions of other, older children and learn from their example.

Okay, off my soapbox and on to the point of this blog.

So how do we combat the social aspect of school?

We leave the house.

No, seriously, we really do.

Contrary to popular belief, homeschoolers do a variety of things other than stay at home and school!

We have participated in a host of activities in our year and a half of homeschooling.  I started a co-op last year, and while it didn't really get off the ground we met so many wonderful families who continue to participate in activities that I plan.

We participate in nature programs in High Park, go on regular play dates, join group trips to parks, pioneer village, art workshops, the ballet and plays, hiking and music classes.  We recently went to a weekly drop-in free play time that the kids loved.  And on top of all that, the kids have cousins that they play with at least twice a week and both are enrolled in weekly gymnastics classes.

And yes, I am always there, where ever they are.  My kids just feel safer knowing I'm there.  My oldest hangs out a bit while he gets comfortable with new situations, my youngest goes right off and does her own thing, coming back frequently to say hello or tell me about what she is doing. And I cherish the times we are at a program with an instructor because for those two sweet hours, I get to be just the parent while my kids go off and enjoy the knowledge of someone else!

We are social. Sometimes I wish we didn't have so much to do!

So that's that in a nutshell.  We aren't recluses.

The Bouviers don't live here.


Cheers!

Marina

What do you do all day long?

"What do you do all day long?"

That is the standard question I get when I tell people I homeschool.  Well, that and "Aren't you worried that they won't have any friends?".  A few readers have recently asked me how I homeschool, so I thought I would create a series of posts that reflect what we do during "school".  I use that term loosely, and you'll see why as you read on.

Firstly, I don't follow one theory or method or curriculum.  We are a hodge podge of everything and anything I can get my hands on that looks like an interesting way to learn something.  I create a lot of my own materials, use a variety of teacher resources, and more often then not, just muck about until we've learned something about something.

I'm not an unschooler, although when it comes to history, geography, science, art and music, we could technically be called unschoolers, because what my kids are interested in is what we are learning about when it comes to those topics. Right now we jump from topic to topic, based on interest.  Next year when my oldest is in "grade one" I intend to follow a more classical approach to these topics.

But I'm not a classical education guru either.  I do love the structure of learning in a classical education, and I  I use many of the ideas.  Mostly though, I like how classical method structures learning through history.  If you follow history like a story, starting from the beginning and working toward the present, you can cover many topics in detail.  And because it is chronologically presented, everything ties together and makes a lot more sense for kids.

One thing that I AM a stickler for is reading and math.  Those topics are what make up table work at our place.  My biggest focus this last year and a half has been to get my little man reading.  We have done this through phonics worksheets and simple reading books.

And today, that was the main focus of our school time.  While we always start each day with some reading, today's focus was all reading and writing.  We don't have a schedule, we don't follow a plan, and i don't have a checklist.  Today, my little man felt like reading. Tomorrow will be something else.  The next day might be everything.  What we do really depends on our mood.  But we ALWAYS do some reading.

Here is what we did today! (We didn't have any outings planned today, so it was just us.)

My little lady started off the school day today.  Her schooling has been her own choice.  She wants to do everything her big brother does. So I got her a collection of dry erase books and some basic preschool activity books, and we work on counting and colours with toys, blocks and legos. She also knows most of her letter sounds already because she is a sponge and picked it up from little man last year.

Here she is doing some colour matching.

Her favourite activity is cut and paste.

Doing some mazes.

And, back to cut and paste.

Then, she was done for the day.  And it was little man's turn.  They are almost always at the table at separate times.  

Start off the day with reading.

These are the books we read for school.  He REALLY enjoys them and the illustrations and basic text are great for emerging readers. I'm really amazed at how quickly he is working through them, and how he is really picking up words independently now.  

Next up: Sight words.  

These are little booklets that we cut out and put together, each focusing on one sight word.  He really enjoys doing them, and I like that each book gets him to read the word, write the word and look for the word in a word search, plus it exposes him to other words with a picture cue. 

(I have no clue why this silly picture will not centre, and after five minutes of cutting, pasting, clicking and cursing, I'm giving up.  Annoying, isn't it?)

Sight words have been a sticking point for my little man, because it really annoys him that words don't follow the phonics that he has been taught.  His exact words were "Well then why did you teach me the letter sounds then!?!".  He brings up a valid point.  Many homeschoolers aren't bothered with phonics and readers and teaching reading.  They allow their children to develop the skill on their own through time and exposure to written word, and I really admire that ability to let go.  

I can't let it go.   

I need to know that he is learning to read.  I'm anal like that. And I feel that learning the letter sounds provides a strong base for literacy, because even if it isn't a phonetic word, if you sound it out you can sometimes make out what the word is.  Regardless, we've done it, and despite his initial grumps and groans when it came to sight words, he is really enjoying it now because it helps him read books other than his Bob readers. 

By the way, while this is going on at the table...

This is going on in the living room:

Legos have taken over our home.  It is an addiction, and one that I am happy to let them indulge in. 

And lastly (for table work anyway) he did his picture and copy work. 

This involves him drawing a picture of anything he wants (this time he needed a bigger page than the box at the top of his working page because he was drawing an Angry Birds scene), and then he tells me a sentence about it, I write it out and he copies it.  Simple stuff.

And in case you were wondering, while he was doing this, this is what was going on in the living room:

Apparently she felt she wasn't done with work yet, so she found some colouring activity books and started doing those. Mazes are a bit of an obsession of hers now.  

That was the "school" part of our day.  Then we threw on our snow suits and spent the afternoon playing in the snow!  Three hours actually.  My legs are still frozen. 

And we learned a lot playing in the snow.  It wasn't the best snow for making snow balls, so we got the spray bottle out and sprayed some so it would become packing snow.  This evolved in to a whole conversation about the making of snow and why sometimes it is sticky and sometimes it is fluffy or powdery, which then carried the conversation over to lake effect snow and what that is, and then a big conversation about skiing and snowboarding and sledding and the types of snow that would be best for those sports.  

See? We learn a lot more away from the table then we do at the table.  

That is the beauty of homeschooling. You really are learning all the time!

After I finally convinced them it would be nice if Mommy could save at least one leg from frost bite (to which they said I should get warmer snow pants.  They seem to have an answer for everything these days.), they settled in with some hot chocolate and a DVD while I made these for dinner: 

Cookie cutter pancakes!!!  

They may look cute, but they take forever to make.  Whew!  Almost there. 

After dinner (just when you think we couldn't cram anymore learning in to the day), my little man found a book about bridges and wanted to make some with his toys.  We pulled out the tinker toys and away he and little lady went, building and taking apart and rebuilding, trying to make the structure as strong as he could.  He came to the triangle answer all by himself, "They are the strongest, Mama.".  And after describing each of the models he made based on the pictures in the books, he came to some very good conclusions and observations. I was impressed with the thought process.  

And after bath and a book, they are asleep.  

A day well spent in my books.

Cheers!

Marina