Learning Through Play

Recently, a few moms decided that our community could use a nice children's museum. They acquired some space for it downtown, and with the help of donations and many hardworking volunteers, the partially completed museum is now opened four days a week, as they raise funds to finish the remaining exhibits.

On Thursday, while Becca attended her princess ballet camp, I took Hannah and Ben across the street to the museum. We decided to become charter members, partially because we would love to have Hannah's birthday party there in the fall, but mostly because I want to support such a worthwhile effort to improve our community for families.

The kids had a blast! After walking through the museum first, to see all the exhibits, both kids started out in the gardening section. Two large raised boxes, filled with shredded rubber "dirt," plastic gardening tools, flower pots, and plastic flowers provided a fun place to dig and play without the mess of real dirt. Hannah loved this section the most and spent quite a bit of time there.

Ben's favorite section was, of course, the musical pipes. Once he figured out how to make music by hitting the ends of the pipes with the foam paddles, he enthusiastically composed his own music, hitting higher on the pipes for rhythm and hitting the ends for musical notes. He jumped back and forth from end to end, moving to the beat of the music in his head.

Both kids enjoyed grocery shopping in the little market. I smiled as they loaded their carts with fruits and veggies and other healthy choices, with only an occasional treat. Maybe they are learning something from our food choices?

The laughed together as Ben scanned Hannah's carrot as he pretended to ring up her purchases.

Both kids also enjoyed the baby doctor section, though Hannah got into it more than Ben did.

Ben preferred turning all of the dials to playing with the dolls.

Finally, the kids finished out their time in the vet exhibit. Ben played with the real stethoscopes, while Hannah doctored the various animals. She posed happily with the snake, which she has learned to love since we began reading Harry Potter this year. I think she wishes she could speak "parseltongue."

We had a wonderful time at the museum, and I had to drag them away when the time came to pick up Becca. I am sure we will return many times throughout the year, especially on those dreary days when we cannot be outside. I love that it is located less than ten minutes from our house, and we can visit it any time we want, without needing to plan ahead. I am thrilled to have such a fun place in our community!

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."

Taming the Dragons

We unexpectedly bought a new bearded dragon last week. Actually, we purchased a new, larger cage with a nice stand, and the young bearded dragon came with it. He is a pretty little beardie, with touches of orange around his ears and down his back. At first, I wanted to name the new little guy "Eustace" after the boy who becomes a dragon in C.S. Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. However, this little beardie has proved to be a not-very-tame dragon! After much debate and discussion, we finally agreed to name him "Norbert" after the baby dragon Hagrid hatches in the Harry Potter series. As Hagrid oohs and ahs over the baby dragon in the movie, the little dragon sneezes and sets Hagrid's beard on fire. We all decided that this name fit his character much better!

Since then, Josh has been valiantly attempting to tame the little dragon, while he is still an adolescent. He picks Norbert up and holds him almost every day, and we feed him Phoenix Worms and collard greens by hand. We try not to frighten him, but he is still adapting to his new home. When Josh holds him, he puffs out his beard and turns very dark, and he gapes at Josh, trying to prove that he is boss. If Josh is not careful, Norbert gets a nice, hard nip in there, too. Through all of this, he was never so fierce as when he noticed Trogdor, our old, mellow bearded dragon meandering past his cage one afternoon.

 

What a display of dominance he put on! His beard was jet black as he puffed it out and glared at Trogdor, who does not care one bit about the tiny, ferocious new dragon.

At the same time, we have been attempting to tame our three little dragon-children, as well. Now, obviously, our kids are much sweeter than Norbert, and we love them quite a bit more, too! But, recently, their dispositions have been somewhat dragonish, especially when they do not get their own way. Ultimately, we try to address the heart issues behind their misbehavior and bad attitudes so that they will eventually desire what is right. However, in the meantime, we have had to adopt our own dragon-taming techniques to deal with day-to-day problems.

First, as a method of positive reinforcement, we began using a system of "Daddy Dollars." I recently learned about Daddy Dollars from a friend, so I googled it and found some wonderful information, including a link to a site where I could print my own dollars with my husband's face on them!

The kids earn up to three Daddy Dollars each day by behaving well during school time and at Bible time in the evenings. They can also earn Daddy Dollars by doing extra jobs to help me out. When they save up enough Daddy Dollars, they can use them in the Mommy Mart, purchasing items such as 15 minutes of video games on the cell phone, balloon animals (made by me!), and back scratches. So far, the system works fairly well, though we are still smoothing out some of the details.

In addition to this, we have implemented a more formal chore schedule for the kids. Every day, they must make their beds, clean their rooms, and pick up the toys at the end of the day. Also, each child has an individual job to accomplish each day. Hannah washes breakfast and lunch dishes, Ben feeds the cats and sweeps the kitchen, and Becca sets the table for dinner. They mark off their chores on our calendar, and on Saturday, we pay them one quarter for each day they accomplished all of their chores, plus a bonus quarter if they did their chores every day. So, they can earn up to $2.00 each week. For now at least, the kids enjoy having chores and earning an allowance, and I appreciate having some help with daily jobs while also teaching them responsibility.

However, with this allowance, we have also instituted fines for talking back. Perhaps because of their age or because we have not been consistent enough with discipline, our kids have developed the bad habit of talking back every time they do not get their way. Their behavior reminds me of little Norbert nipping at our fingers whenever we approach him. Anyway, now, whenever the kids talk back or use inappropriate words, they have to deposit a quarter in my "I'm-a-rude-piggy bank." I have accumulated quite a collection of quarters - enough to fund allowances for a long time - and the kids are gradually learning to rein in their tongues.

Finally, I adopted something I once read on an ADHD website to address poor table manners. At each meal, we light a candle. That candle remains lit until someone uses poor table manners, and then we have to blow it out. Once the candle melts completely, we take a family trip to Chuck E Cheeses as a reward. Obviously, the candle burns down more quickly the longer it burns, so the kids have incentive to watch their table manners very carefully and even nicely remind each other without me having to nag and punish. This has been very successful so far, especially when we remember to light it and blow it out consistently...

Hopefully, consistent, firm, loving discipline will tame all of the dragons in our lives, from the fierce little bearded dragon, to the dragonish attitudes and behaviors of the kids. In the long run, however, we hope that the dragon will learn to enjoy interaction and not merely tolerate us, and that our kids will internalize good choices and responsibility without needing constant rewards and punishments. Overall, though, I appreciate having a plan, a consistent approach to deal with the everyday difficulties and to make our home a more pleasant place to live - for both people and pets!

Language Learning

Today, after Sunday School, Hannah told me that Ben's teacher said that Ben had been writing in Spanish on the chalkboard. I asked him what he had written. "'La mujer,' 'Las mujeres,' and 'Él come,'" he told me.

"Did you put the accent over the 'e'?" I asked him.

"Yes!" he replied. "If I didn't, it would have been 'the eats' instead of 'He eats,' and that wouldn't have made any sense." I smiled, pleased to hear that he understood at least a part of our recent language lessons.

At the school Hannah attended last year, a native Spanish speaker taught all of the elementary students Spanish several days a week. Kindergarten kids learned fun songs, colors, numbers, and other simple words and phrases. Hannah loved learning a new language and picked it up fairly easily. Because of this, Josh and I had been discussing buying Rosetta Stone software to continue the language learning from an early age.

In college, Josh took several Spanish classes, but he has not spoken the language in many years and has forgotten quite a bit. I have taken many Spanish classes as well, and I lived in Bolivia with a Spanish-speaking family for eight weeks in college, but I, too, am very rusty. Additionally, I do not always pronounce the words perfectly, especially because I cannot roll my r's correctly. I could teach the kids a good amount on my own, but I would prefer them to learn proper pronunciation and inflection from the very beginning, instead of needing to correct bad habits later on. So, we finally decided to look into the software.

Josh called Rosetta Stone's customer service before completing his purchase, because he wanted to ask about the differences between the homeschool version and the personal version. Ultimately, we chose the homeschool version, but calling the company gave us another benefit. Rosetta Stone happened to be having a special, where we could buy all five levels for about $100 cheaper than the best price we found online, and we could spread the payments out over five months without paying any interest. Of course, we jumped at the chance, and the software arrived only a few days later.

I set up the kids' profiles and allowed them to attempt the first lesson. At first, they struggled with the format a bit, but they quickly got the hang of it. I ended up printing off some of the worksheets after the first lesson and teaching them some of the concepts myself, in order to give them a foundation for learning the grammar and vocabulary. Then, they restarted the first lesson and did much better the second time through. Once they had completed all of the follow-up portions of that lesson, they understood very well. In fact, Ben's chalkboard exercise in Sunday School assures me that he has learned quite a bit. Happily, the kids beg for Spanish lessons each day, so I know they enjoy it, too!

In addition to this, in Hannah's language arts curriculum (First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind), she has just progressed from learning nouns to learning pronouns. This fits perfectly with our Spanish lessons! A few days ago, as I read the dialogue from the book, explaining how pronouns take the place of a noun, I took advantage of the opportunity to tie in some of the Spanish learning. Once we completed the practice sentences in English, I added, "Instead of saying, 'La mujer come,' you could say, 'Ella come.' Instead of saying, 'Los hombres comen,' you could say, 'Ellos comen.'" I continued with examples for all of the pronouns she had learned up to that point. Her recent Spanish lessons served to reinforce her English grammar, and her English lessons helped her comprehend her Spanish more completely. In many ways, a second language is improving her understanding of her first language as well!

Overall, I am glad that we decided to move forward with our purchase of Rosetta Stone and add a second language to our homeschool curriculum. I already have begun contemplating ways to use the language in more practical ways. I know I have an open invitation to bring my family to Bolivia to visit my Bolivian family in Cochabamba. Also, our church leads mission trips each year to a small village I once visited in the Dominican Republic. Perhaps, we can take such a trip when the kids are old enough? Until then, I am simply happy to pass on an ability that I love, a language that I once hoped to speak every day but never had the opportunity to use regularly. And, who knows - maybe the opportunities will come for our whole family, once we all speak the language well. At the very least, the kids will have a very useful skill, as they grow up in a world where more people speak Spanish than English, and in a country where Spanish could easily be the second language. I am excited to see where their love of language may take them...

A Passion for Piano

This summer, we sadly learned that our piano teacher had gotten a job with a local school district and would not offer lessons any longer. Though the kids enjoyed piano, I had to fight with them nearly every day to get them to practice, and I decided to wait a while before pursuing it again. I worried that I might kill their love for music by forcing practice before they were ready. On the other hand, I also wanted them to learn the discipline of music, a skill they would eventually appreciate, especially if they decide to pursue music as a vocation some day.

Throughout the fall, the kids continued to practice their old songs and pick out new songs, so this winter, I decided to attempt lessons for both kids again. This time, a friend of ours agreed to provide lessons in our home for a reasonable price, which worked out much better for us with nap schedules and schoolwork and my broken leg.

Initially, the kids still resisted practicing, but I built regular practice time into our school schedule, and they enjoyed taking a break from normal school work to practice for a while. Plus, the piano teacher allowed the kids to choose prizes from her prize box whenever they practiced consistently that week, which provided some extra motivation. Ultimately, however, making lovely music on the piano became their motivation.

First, the piano teacher introduced a new curriculum, one that focuses on recognizing intervals and training the ear, rather than simply learning the notes. Ben definitely excels in this area. He can sing, "This is middle C," and actually hit the correct note from memory most of the time. Like Ben, Hannah can also pick many songs out by ear, but cannot yet find middle C without playing the note on the piano first. Of course, even I cannot do that well...

I think their greatest motivation, however, came when I began taking piano lessons, too. Both kids enjoy picking out songs from my piano book, because many of them are "real" songs and not just made-up songs for kids. Hannah especially likes my piano book, because her hands are big enough to play the full chords correctly. She practices and practices, playing each hand separately and then putting them together, and she can now play nearly all of the songs that I can play. In fact, she is probably only a lesson or two behind me. At this point, I would guess that she plays the piano for an hour or two each day, instead of the 15-20 minutes required by her teacher. My biggest challenge is getting her to stop playing and allow anyone else to have a turn!

As I have written previously, I love having a house filled with music. We often have music playing in the background while we do school work, and the kids love listening to music in the car. Some days, Josh pulls out his guitar, and we all sing praise songs, while the kids dance around the room. I have often considered Ben my musical child, but, more accurately, we are a musical family. Ben may have an amazing voice, but Hannah excels at piano, and Becca lives to dance. At the very least, all of our lives would be much less wonderful without music providing a lovely soundtrack to our days.

Toucans and Animal Art

My parents subscribe to Ranger Rick and Your Big Backyard for the kids, and we always look forward to the new magazines each month. Last month, one of the issues included a section about toucans. We read through the article together, learning all about their beaks and how they work. To Hannah's delight, the issue included a page about drawing toucans. Since Ben struggles a bit with drawing and Hannah sometimes struggles with following directions, I went through the page step by step, pointing out how to look at small portion of the image and draw what they see, and not just what they expect to see. Hannah's toucan ended up looking quite nice:

I expressed to Hannah how much I loved her drawing, and she told me that she had learned how to draw a toucan in her "How to Draw Animals" book. She proceeded to draw another picture.

In fact, drawing animals has become one of her new pastimes, and she is becoming better and better with all of her practice. I will share a few of her animal drawings.

An armadillo:

A wombat:

A komodo dragon:

I love watching her artistic ability develop and improve, and I look forward to seeing what she does with it someday - whether it becomes a vocation or simply a hobby she enjoys. Either way, I will always remain her biggest fan!

An Outing At Last

Last weekend, I finally felt like I could get around well enough to venture out to Malabar Farm for the Maple Sugar Festival. We actually arrived very late this year, about an hour before closing. Fortunately, this meant that we could park very close to the wagon pick-up, so I did not have to hobble far through the mud in my walking boot.


The weather was perfect, warm and sunny, with lovely clouds scattered through a blue spring sky. We admired the rural countryside as we rode the horse-drawn wagons into the maple sugar area.


Ben especially enjoyed the ride:


Once we disembarked from the wagon, we walked along the path, where volunteers demonstrated the different ways people in this region used maple sugar throughout history, beginning with the Native Americans.


The kids enjoyed smelling the sweet aroma of the steam emanating from the log trough.


At the next stop, the early settlers had just finished making some maple sugar. The woman carefully cleaned the pot to boil down a new batch of syrup.


The man explained how they created maple sugar by heating the syrup to a "hard ball" stage and then cooling it across a clean, shallow log trough until it formed sugar.


He gave each guest a sample of the fresh sugar. Becca carefully studied hers before happily licking it off of her hand.


Finally, we walked over to the "Sugar Shack" where they still produce maple syrup today. The kids enjoyed hearing about the process and tasting a tiny sample of fresh syrup.


I am excited to finally do more field trips like this again. Honestly, I am glad that I broke my leg in the winter, when the snow and ice would have kept us housebound quite a bit anyway. And, now we have even more to look forward to with the coming of spring. The day turned out to be a wonderful mix of fun and learning, a perfect first outing now that my leg is healing. We could not have asked for a more beautiful day.