The adventure continues

Since last week was such perfect weather, and the neighborhood children were all on Spring Break, the kids were able to play outside most of the week. Thursday we had our first annual park-a-palooza. I surprised the kids by taking them to Civic Park in the morning to play while I walked. We were joined by our friends and continued to play for a while. Then we told them it was time to leave and drove to another park. They had no idea what was going on, but were thrilled when we pulled up to the next place! In all we went to 4 different parks and had a picnic lunch. It was a great day. Next time the kids get to plan which parks we go to.

Aiden is currently working on having a top rated game on game star mechanic. He just finished making a 100 level game (the previous high on the site was 50 levels), and now he's setting his sights on the top rated prize. He talked with me about things he could do to meet the goal. In the end he decided that he should spend more time playing and commenting on other people's games in order to drive more traffic to his games, and less time creating new games. He also thought that his comments and ratings should be polite and helpful, otherwise people would be unhappy and not play his games. It was a very interesting conversation, and I was pleasantly surprised at how insightful he was.

Zoë has a couple of projects going. Yesterday she decided she wanted to learn how to draw better, so we checked out lots of drawing books from the library and she spent the evening drawing. She's decided that she would like to have an art exhibition of her work, and is in the beginning of planning the event. Also, today she decided that she wanted to start her own blog and webshow. So I set her up with her own blog which she has titled "Zoë's Awesome Life." She's working on her first post. For now I've told her that prior to publishing anything either Tom or I need to proof read it. I'm not going to fix grammar or spelling errors, but rather looking for inappropriate content while she learns the rules of sharing on the internet. It will be interesting to see where these things go.

I've been busy modeling learning behaviors by trying to figure out photoshop creative suite. Wow, is that challenging! Here's a look at my first attempt. Obviously, I have a lot to learn. My hope is that one day I can use my creative juices to help make covers for Tom's writing. In the meantime he gets to be an evil wizard on the run from Azkahban.

Self Evaluation and Reflection

I've spent the last two months wrapped up in some self-evaluation. It all started from a deep feeling of dissatisfaction that I couldn't quite put my finger on. I've finally discovered that the unhappiness is coming from my desire to maintain control (which of course is just an illusion) over my family and the kids education, coupled with a desire to explore my own interests. Thus begins another evolution of our homeschooling experience.

I've noticed as two years have passed, things have slowly changed around our house. When the kids were first pulled out of school we had a strict curriculum that we followed daily. As time went on I noticed that the curriculum wasn't enough. The kids either plowed through the material quickly, weren't interested, desired more than the curriculum had to give, or were sick of doing the same things. So I slowly began to steer away from the curriculum in order to continue to foster their desire to learn. I began to give them control over how they spent their days, but required certain things to be finished at the end of the week. This seemed to help for a bit.

Eventually, before I even realized it myself, the kids were showing me signs that even this plan was not enough and I was still controlling all the information and learning. Then we started exploring topics of their own interest. I began to set up lego mindstorm challenges, hosted a chemistry jeopardy game, encouraged them to build Rube Goldbergs again, and began reading everything I could get my hands on about learning styles and child led education.

Two weeks ago, in an effort to encourage their own exploration, I moved all of our school supplies into Zoë's old bedroom. They happily helped me carry everything up from the basement, and helped organize the room. They even made a sign for the door and named the room the "Explore Room." Within minutes they were diving into everything. It was absolutely amazing to watch this unfold! Their excitement was contagious.

Since then I have said nothing to them about schoolwork or provided them any ideas of things to do. Instead, I have sat happily with them in the Explore Room doing my own reading and research. Anytime they have a question or want to play a game, I put my things aside and help them. I have been silently watching their ideas unfold, and wow what ideas they have!

They have made all kinds of animal masks using paper plates complete with short plays with their new cast. They started studying American history, used the invention kit to design their own car and spring, learned about the human body by dissecting their human model, learned about the fifty states by playing the scrambled states game, spun the globe and started researching the country that their fingers landed upon, and read countless books. All of this in only a week during which time both of them have been sick and running a fever. Never once did I make any suggestions. I have only encouraged them each step of the way. I was feeling great! This is what learning should be like!

That was until yesterday when control reared its ugly head again. Aiden decided he wanted to teach the dog how to play dead. Instead of letting him figure it out, I got online, printed out instructions and found videos for him to watch. I should have known from his lack of interest in watching the videos or reading the instructions that he didn't want my help. Instead I ignored the signs and continued offering my thoughts on his process. I was so caught up in "helping" him that it wasn't until too late that I realized what I was doing. Finally after about 20 minutes of me butting in he shouts "this is just too frustrating, he's not making any progress and I can't do this." I watched him go from an enthusiastic child with a brilliant idea, to a deflated, unhappy shell. My desire to control what and how he was teaching the dog created this and I couldn't take it back.

I debated what to do now. Finally, after a talk with Tom I decided to apologize to him for impeding his progress and let it go. So while we all ate dinner together, I told him I was sorry for butting into his idea, and would be trying very hard from now on not to do that again. He seemed pleased that I noticed and apologized for my behavior. I can only hope that he'll go back to his idea of training the dog new tricks again.

When we originally started homeschooling I was worried that I couldn't teach them everything they needed to know. Now two years later what I'm really learning is how to get out of their way and let them teach me! There's no such thing as knowing everything. What is most important is continuing to foster their natural desire to learn about the world around them on their own terms, thus enabling them to learn how succeed on their own.

New Year, new start

I refuse to make new year's resolutions, but I have always loved the feeling of a fresh start. It's a great time to think about all that you have accomplished and set new goals. I realized this year that it was incredibly hard for me to think of any personal accomplishments. I had no trouble thinking of all the things the rest of the family has done, but for some reason it was difficult to come up with anything for myself. Although that's not a terrible thing (I do create the environment for the family enabling them to be so successful), I would like things to be slightly different this year. So I'm working.

I'm not sure that I could even think of half of the things we've done since my last post. A few highlights were Zoë's book one piano recital, she finished her math level, we've started an anthology writing group with the Nuehring girls, Aiden is halfway done with Algebra 1, and I've continued to tweak our school days.

Words can't even begin to express how proud I've been of Zoë these last few months. She has been the poster girl for perseverance, dedication, and hard work. She set goals for both piano and math back in August and managed to meet them both. I have always known that she can do anything she puts her mind to, and the past two months have just reinforced that. It has been truly amazing (and exhausting) to help her succeed.

Aiden has hit one of the crossroads we (and lots of other people) call the dip. He's working to learn a Bach Minuet in G and has just hit his first struggle. I've watched in the last couple of months as his playing has become stagnant or even gotten worse. After thinking about things, I have realized that this is probably the first time in his life that he is doing something he actually finds difficult. The problem is that it seems to be the same for math too. He's finally working with concepts and things that take him time to understand, and he is really struggling. On Tuesday I sat down and had a long talk with him about all of this. I explained to him that these kinds of things are the biggest reason we've decided to home school them. No matter how smart someone is, the thing that sets us apart is how we get past these struggles. They were never going to find these struggles in school, and therefore never learn how to handle them. We discussed measuring success in smaller increments, and just keeping your head down and plodding along one thing at a time.

He seems to be doing a little better the last few days. Perhaps just having the chance to voice his frustration has helped some. I don't think he was even exactly sure what the problem was, but recognizing that all of us go through this can't hurt. If I can teach him how to get out of this dip, that will be the best lesson he can learn his whole life.