A Hidden Habitat

I haven't written on this blog for a very long time now... almost 5 years now. In fact, I haven't written much at all in the past year. But, I miss it, so I may try keeping up with this blog again, if I can find the time.

Hannah is wrapping up her freshman year at the local high school, which Ben will also attend when he is a freshman next year. Becca is finishing 6th grade, and Kayla will actually be old enough for kindergarten next year!

I have been furthering my own education a bit as well. In the fall, I completed classes to become an Ohio Certified Volunteer Naturalist (OCVN), and this spring, I attended the Environmental Education Council of Ohio (EECO) annual conference. I have loved nature education since I was in college and worked at the Philadelphia Zoo. Though my certification was in Social Studies Secondary Education, I always had a longing to teach about nature and wildlife. Because of this passion, I have been volunteering a lot at our local nature center. I recently helped with a 5-week nature journaling program for 4th graders at an urban elementary school, and I will be assisting with many field trips at the nature center this spring. I love it!

I have also been incorporating even more environmental education into our homeschooling. This week, Ben had to take the state Geometry test on two separate mornings as part of his preparation for entering high school. The beautiful weather inspired me to take the rest of the school day outdoors.

We walked around our property and talked about nature - what we saw and what we wondered about. Becca kept dashing around looking under rocks and logs for red-backed salamanders, which we find all over our property. She did find a few, including this large gray one and one that measured only an inch from head to tail.

As we rounded the "hairpin," as the kids call the sharp bend in the walking path around our property, we glanced at all of the logs in various stages of decay next to the path. "Hey," I told her, "you should see if you can flip one of those really rotting logs and see what you find underneath." The log ended up being so rotten that it pulled apart instead of turning over.

 First, we noticed patches of white fungus spread across the inside of the log.

As we looked closer, we began to see even more signs of life: a tiny mushroom, a spider web and a small brown spider, myriads of tunnels with reddish brown ants scurrying through them, a salamander, a centipede, a beetle, and five or six of these beautifully colored millipedes. An entire miniature ecosystem lay hidden within an old log on the forest floor.

We decided to examine the millipedes a little more closely before returning them safely to their

rotting log. We learned that they are called Euryurus leachii, or Leach's millipede, and they primarily live in decaying hardwoods. Apparently, they even glow under a black light, though we didn't have the opportunity to test that out.

Becca, in particular, seemed to love this investigation. She and I talked about all of the things she had found, as we walked back toward the house. She wanted to find some way to demonstrate what she had learned. At first, she mentioned drawing a picture, but then we discussed other ways she could model the hidden habitat we had discovered. When we got inside, she instantly collected her craft supplies and got to work. I love her final results!

On the outside/front, she used green yarn to create a soft bed of moss with patches of bark showing through. She added a turkey tail fungus to the edge.

The front flips up to reveal the inside of the log, where she drew a millipede, ants and their tunnels, a centipede, a worm, a spider and a web, a mushroom, and streaks of white fungus.

I look forward to doing even more nature exploring with the kids in the future. I am amazed at how much we can learn when we begin to ask questions and look beneath the surface of what we see.  Just as we had to peel back the layers of the log to see the hidden world inside, we can also discover hidden realms of knowledge by just taking the time to stop and dig a little deeper into the world around us.

And the First Month Flies By...

As I write this blog post, I cannot believe that we have already completed more than a month and a half of school! The year has been both fun and frustrating at times, filled with lessons from life and not just lessons from books.

We have traveled quite a bit - to the zoo, the children's museum, Cedar Point, and COSI. Josh took Hannah and Ben to see a football game at Virginia Tech, and I took Becca on an autumn excursion to my parents' cabin. We even drove to Grove City College for a friend's wedding and spent some time with a wonderful family near Pittsburgh. Somehow, I still managed to squeeze in a few photo shoots as well!

During this crazy month, we lost our sweet kitty, Barky, to an illness called FIP. He was young, and his sickness and death were sudden and unexpected. We took some time off of school to love him for a couple of days and then grieve our loss. The kids made memory boxes and have learned a lot about death and loss and sadness - life lessons I never expected to teach them this year.

Through all of this, we are actually making progress with school work, too. Hannah is flying through her math again, and Ben has finally mastered his addition and subtraction facts and is moving on to more difficult problems. He spent the first few weeks making and practicing flashcards from + and - 0 through + and - 9. Now, he is doing much better with his math because he has the facts memorized and no longer needs to calculate each problem in his head. Both kids like Spelling Power, although I have to keep reassuring Ben that he is supposed to get words on the pretests wrong - otherwise, he would never learn anything new!

Social Studies and Science remain the kids' favorite subjects (I will share more of those lessons in later posts), and they love doing Spanish a couple days a week, too.

For reading and language arts, we are working our way through First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind. Ben just began Level One, and Hannah just completed that book. They love the simplicity and repetition and are learning quite a bit. They especially love memorizing the poems in the book. We have been reading longer chapter books together, too. We just finished reading The Secret Garden and then listened to the Focus on the Family Radio Theatre version and watched the movie. I ordered James and the Giant Peach yesterday and hope to begin it in a week or so. I think it will appeal a little more to my adventurous Ben, though he also appreciated the lovely story in The Secret Garden.

I love our Bible curriculum this year. We are using a book called Our 24 Family Ways. Each "family way" is a kind of rule for the family follow, though really, they are more like ways of living. Each "way" has five daily lessons, a coloring page, a brief story intro, a character quality, and a Bible verse to memorize. The lessons are short enough to hold the kids' interest, but deep enough to make them think. Even my littlest has memorized the verses, and the verses are often fairly long - 2 or 3 verses at a time. Still, with repetition, they have learned the verses and the family ways very well. I also posted the family ways on our wall where everyone can read them, and when a child needs a "break" (like a time out), he or she sits and reads through the ways and then tells me which ones were not followed. I love that they are specific and thorough and well-grounded in Scripture. We begin each day with the Bible lesson and prayer, focusing on God right from the start.

Finally, with a few exceptions, I have designated Fridays as "Project Fridays." Each Friday, we put aside our regular school work and tackle a project, either together or separately. All three kids created beautiful lapbooks on the animals of their choosing, and we have begun working on making our own movie together. Our next project will likely be a "Space" lapbook, inspired by the content of the story they wrote for our movie script. These Fridays have been the most fun and educational school days, and I hope we can continue them all year!

So, as the first months of the school year fly by, hopefully I will more faithfully update this blog and share what we are studying and experiencing. As the blog's title proclaims, "learning is life" - and we are certainly spending most of our time living and learning together!

Newspaper Column: Is Homeschooling Overprotective?

I recently wrote a column for my local newspaper about my homeschooling experience. It generated quite a bit of interest and email, so I have decided to repost it here to keep it available for further discussion, since the newspaper will archive it in the next few weeks. I'd love to hear people's responses in the comments section of the blog.

Is It Overprotective to Homeschool Children?

"Recently, I watched Disney's "Tangled" with my family. Mother Gothel, the movie's villain, keeps Rapunzel locked in a tower, supposedly to protect her from people who would steal her precious gift -- her hair. In one song, Mother Gothel assures Rapunzel that danger lurks outside the tower and that she must stay in the tower forever to avoid the hurt and drama of a world too frightening for her to handle. As I watched the movie, I jokingly said, "Isn't this why we homeschool?"

Although my husband chuckled at my comment, I did consider whether my reasons for homeschooling bore any resemblance to the self-serving motives of the movie's villain. Many people stereotype homeschooling parents as overprotective and controlling, and indeed, in some cases, this accusation may be true. However, as I discovered when I first researched homeschooling as an option for our family, people who homeschool vary as greatly as people who send their children to private or public schools. As one of the diverse group of parents who chooses to homeschool, how do my motives measure up? Am I doing what is best for my children, or am I tiptoeing closer to the Mother Gothel method of child-rearing?

On one hand, all healthy parents protect their children. To some extent, I do desire to shelter my kids from anything that might harm their developing identities and faith, such as bullies, inappropriate conversations and labels. I want to influence them at their most moldable age, cultivating a strong faith and value system that will enable them to withstand peer pressure and make right choices when they grow older.

However, my children are still quite young. They still need to hold my hand when they cross the street. If they reach adulthood without me ever allowing them the freedom to test their beliefs or permitting them to move beyond my arm's reach, then the healthy shelter of our home would become no better than Rapunzel's imprisoning tower. I do want to build a strong faith in my kids, but I want them to test that faith and make it their own long before they leave home. For this reason, even though I homeschool partly out of a desire to minimize negative influences, my protection will decrease, and their freedom will increase, as my children grow up.

In fact, as I consider my motives, I realize that my main reasons for homeschooling come from freedom and not overprotection.

First, I want to free my children from labels. In order to accommodate a variety of kids, schools dispense many labels. Fidgety little boys become known as troublemakers. Intelligent students are "gifted," which seems positive, but as a former "gifted" student, I felt pressured to only pursue academics and not the art degree I desired, even though I now do more art than academics. As an "advanced" student, I believed that art should remain a hobby, while my intellect should become my identity. Moreover, peers label each other, often in harmful ways: geek, klutz, clown, different, unpopular. I want my children to cultivate their own interests and abilities, without having to fit into a predetermined mold created by the school or their classmates.

Similarly, I appreciate that homeschooling allows my children to work at an individual pace, regardless of age or grade. My daughter completed two full math books this year, because she grasped the concepts quickly and enjoyed her work. My son barely finished one. He understood addition well, but I realized, halfway through, that he was counting the numbers in his head instead of memorizing the facts. I stopped working through the book to practice the facts until he could solve them quickly, without counting. With individual instruction, the kids can work quickly or pursue in-depth projects in their strengths and spend extra time mastering their weaknesses.

Additionally, my children have the freedom to learn outside of a school building. This year, we studied at a cabin in the woods, Malabar Farm, the zoo, the theater, museums and more. The kids attended a homeschool co-op, took ballet classes, and used math to double a recipe from China, which we cooked as part of a geography unit on Asia. Homeschooling gives us the freedom to learn creatively, outside of the classroom.

After much thought, I concluded that, unlike Mother Gothel, I desire to help my children leave their protective tower. Through creative instruction and exploration, I hope to help them become wise adults, capable of taking on a sometimes scary world, of thinking critically and making their own choices. I do not homeschool in order to hoard these precious gifts for myself. Instead, I desire to nurture them and release them, so they can use their gifts to make a difference in the world."

Finding a Routine

We started school officially on August 25th. The kids excitedly got dressed in new clothes, made their beds, and hurried outside for pictures. In fact, they finished their breakfasts and sat at the table for school about 20 minutes earlier than required, because they were so anxious to begin!

Through some experimentation, we have come up with a good routine. Each day, after the kids finish their breakfasts, they come to the school table and open their folders. Hannah and Ben put stickers on their charts for accomplishing three things - making their beds, cleaning their rooms, and getting to the table on time (by 9:00 am). Then, all three kids work on the few worksheets I put in their folders the night before. This allows them to get started whenever they are ready and provides a few minutes for me to get out my materials for the day. Once they finish, they return the work to their folders and put their folders back on the shelf. Becca loves being included in this and actually cries if I do not give her school work to do!

After this, we start our real school day. We begin by reading and discussing a Bible lesson from a wonderful book, entitled Mighty Acts of God by Starr Meade. We pray together, and then we review the calendar and the rules for our school:

1. "Children obey your parents." (Colossians 3:20)
2. "Be kind and compassionate to one another." (Ephesians 4:32)
3. "Do everything without complaining or arguing." (Philippians 2:14)
4. "Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry." (James 1:19)

From this point on, each day varies. We usually do math, and we alternate science and social studies. We have time outside, art lessons, stories, projects, and we always have a morning snack.

After lunch, Hannah writes in her journal while I put Becca and Ben down for a nap and eat my own lunch. Then, Hannah and I spend the afternoon working one-on-one. Nearly every day, she completes a "Raceway Step" in Sing, Spell, Read, and Write and takes a test on any spelling words she did not already know from the previous day's lesson. Amazingly, she has only needed six spelling words so far this year: cheap, chocolate, which and witch, and whale and wail. She sometimes has free-choice time to work on crafts, do puzzles, or read, and then we end each day with me reading aloud to her from a chapter book. She has completely fallen in love with the book I chose to begin the year - The Wheel on the School by Meindert Dejong. Every day, she begs me to keep reading, and we often do not end our school day until 3:30 or 4:00!

Our routine has worked very well, and the kids like knowing what to expect each day. Our clock chimes each hour, which helps them keep track of the time and measure the day. They all enjoy school days quite a bit, and I try to alternate desk work with more active learning so they do not get bored or worn out.

Additionally, I love school days as well. I enjoy directing their education and seeing them discover new things. I love that my kids can solve for an unknown, explore in-depth science, and read books at their reading level instead of their grade level. And, I especially appreciate that I can study God's Word with them each and every day and watch them mature into independent thinkers and kids with character! Though I am exhausted at the end of the week, I am thankful for the chance I have to educate my own children. The blessings far outweigh any difficulties...

Goodbye to School

I very much look forward to homeschooling Hannah next year. Because of that, I am surprised at how sad I feel as her school year comes to an end. Today, when I picked her up from her last day of school, I had to fight back tears as I said goodbye to her wonderful kindergarten teacher and Spanish teacher, and I could see that they felt the same way. I never questioned their love for my sweet Hannah, and I knew they cared for her well when she was at school. Our decision to homeschool is the best thing for our family next year, but I also know we have given up something very good in exchange, and I will miss the school quite a bit.

Wrapping up the school year actually began last Friday with the kindergarten "Knowledge Fair." Each kid could choose a topic and create a display to teach others about that topic. Hannah chose Sea Creatures. Though I sometimes had to convince her to spend time after school working on it, for the most part, she enjoyed this project. We borrowed some lapbook printouts from www.homeschoolshare.com to organize the material, and she created a nice display to set up in the kindergarten room to explain what she learned.

She also brought her stuffed manatee.

After the Knowledge Fair, the kindergarten kids had their promotion ceremony. They all lined up while their teacher spoke. The kids had decorated their hats at home the week before the ceremony.

One by one the teacher called their names, and they walked across the stage. Their first grade heart partners took their hands and walked them over the bridge to officially become first graders.

They lined up and sang "It's a Small World" together before dismissing to their parents.

Hannah has loved her teacher so much this year! In fact, she often calls me by her teacher's name, and she ends nearly every journal entry with the words, "I love Mrs. F!"

I could not have asked for a better kindergarten year for Hannah, even as I am glad that we will be homeschooling together as a family next year. I will miss the school very much and I am sure we will keep in touch with many of the wonderful people we met there. Her experience has made her into a better student and me into a better teacher, and I will always be thankful for our time at the school. We are sadly, but confidently, moving on to our next adventure!

Learning "On the Go"

Between sick kids and Josh's MBA class, I have not spent much time doing "formal" school with the kids this month. However, we have spent a great deal of time learning.

I have discovered that Ben enjoys when I read the Magic Tree House books to him, since some of the words are still a little difficult for him to decipher on his own. Plus, he likes asking me constant questions while I read so he can understand the information better. After reading the first book in the series, I skipped ahead to Thanksgiving on Thursday, in order to coordinate with the season. Ben and Becca liked the story, but I think some of it may have been a little over their heads. Additionally, Ben practiced reading The Story of Thanksgiving by Nancy Skarmeas. This is an excellent, simple book that explains clearly why we celebrate Thanksgiving. I only had to help him with a few words, like "Pilgrims" and "Plymouth," the first time through, and he read it perfectly to his preschool class a few days later. I was very proud of him. He is blossoming as a reader, and though he does not read as avidly as Hannah, he definitely enjoys it.

For fun, we have watched our Charlie Brown Thanksgiving DVD multiple times this month as well. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving mostly just makes the kids laugh, but The Mayflower Voyagers is wonderfully educational and has helped the kids understand what the Pilgrims faced in order to settle in the new world. The first time we watched it, they marveled loudly over the length of the journey and expressed sadness about how many of the original settlers died. Now, they impress me with the random facts about the Pilgrims that I often do not even remember from the film.

Through the busyness of this season, I have also discovered the educational value of waiting in the car for Hannah's school dismissal. Just while sitting in the car in the afternoons, Ben has learned how to count by tens and Becca has learned about rhyming words and that "ck" sounds like "k" and not "sk." I often spell a simple c-v-c word, and Becca tells me what it is, or I ask her how to spell a word and she spells it for me. She has become quite good at reading short vowel words and even surprised me today by telling me that "oo" sounds like "ew." I don't even know where she learned that one!

So, in this hectic time of year, I am squeezing education into the extra spaces of my day, by reading and talking and answering an abundance of questions. Looking back, though, I am encouraged to see that my kids are indeed learning, even if that learning does not always resemble "school."

An Overwhelming Gift

You know you are in trouble when:

• Your 4 year old tells you he loves math "more than anything" and eagerly watches instructional videos for a first grade math curriculum, yelling out the answers to all of the teacher's questions.
• Your 6 year old (at the age of 5) read the entire Winnie the Pooh chapter book during nap times and could tell you all about the story.
• Your 4 year old can explain what a chord is and the difference between a major and minor chord and can play many chords on the piano.
• Your 4 year old is also learning to play the classical song he composed by humming it into a microphone.
• Your 2 year old can sound out 3 and 4 letter short-vowel words and read easy reader books.
• Your 6 year old understands how multiplication facts work and can solve single digit problems in her head.
• Your 2 year old wants to know if you (and she) are "real."
• Your 4 year old spends 10 minutes discussing with the dentist how the "suction thing" works and then uses it to suck up a cupful of water.
• Your 2 year old understands how knock, knock jokes work and can successfully retell them, even making up some of her own.
• Your 4 year old asks you why spiral galaxies are made up of stars.
• Your 6 year old (at the age of 4) is asked if she knows what a certain sign means (sign language for "I love you") and she responds in Spanish - "Te amo."
• Your 6 year old can also count to 30 in Spanish.
• Your 2 year old yells out "10" when you ask your older child the answer to 5+5.
• Your 4 year old reads at a first grade level, and your 6 year old reads at a fourth grade level.
• Your 4 year old (at the age of 3) could sing all three verses of the hymn "It is Well" with proper pronunciation and pitch, varying his volume appropriately throughout the song.
• Your 2 year old talks the doctor's ear off while he watches her, wide-eyed, and says she talks like a 5 year old.

I realize that moms have a tendency to overestimate the intelligence of their children. What mother does not want to believe that her child is extraordinarily bright? But, I truly believe that I have three gifted children.

Why does this matter? Shouldn't I just quietly celebrate and keep my "bragging" to myself? Honestly, as a person who excelled in school as a child, I definitely feel the impulse to hide or downplay my kids' abilities in order to avoid the teasing that inevitably comes when a child is different from the norm. However, I am beginning to understand what a challenge giftedness can be. A child who struggles with boredom in school may appear unfocused and unmotivated. A kid who wants to investigate how the world works may do so in dangerous or destructive ways without proper guidance.

Additionally, I constantly wrestle with finding the best educational setting for each kid. Hannah just loves school and all of her friends. She is developing into a little social butterfly! But, she also is not learning much academically, other than Spanish and some science and social studies concepts. In kindergarten, this does not matter as much (and she honestly needed some of the social experiences), but what about in older grades? I want her to be able to learn at a faster pace, delve more deeply into the subjects that capture her interest, and not have her intellectual curiosity stifled by the disapproval of her peers. At the same time, I want to let her be a kid and have fun, without giving her third grade workbooks just because she is capable of completing them.

I think that we may switch back to homeschooling in another year or two for these reasons. When I teach them, I can take them to higher levels while keeping it interesting and exciting at the same time. I can also give them plenty of time for fun and extracurricular activities during the day. Right now, after a full day of kindergarten, Hannah comes home so exhausted that she does not even want to read anymore, and she has no time for other activities she enjoys, like ballet.

Anyway, please excuse this rather introspective blog entry today. My children are such an overwhelming gift sometimes - full of delights and challenges. I pray that I have the wisdom to help them grow, not just intellectually, but also in character and confidence and compassion. I know that they are helping me grow in those areas each and every day!