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The Energetic Learner.

You know the one… you probably have one at your house.

It came as such a surprise to me, after a couple of years of schooling my very academically compliant daughter to have our school room invaded by a loud, bouncy, seat-work-challenged boy. Why is it so often the boys?

I have at least two that would be candidates for medication if they attended “out school,” as they call it. It is not that they have an attention deficit, it is that their attention is divided. They are interested in so many things at once that sometimes focus is our biggest challenge.

I prefer to call them my “energetic learners.”

The ones that have to move and groove. The ones who rarely, if ever, finish a printing lesson with both cheeks planted on the chair. The ones with a million questions about a million things I’ve never even thought of.

Do you have one? Does schooling him (or her) drive you crazy? Me too. Especially in the winter.

One of the great blessings of having the ability to home school my children lies in the freedom to craft an educational experience that is unique to each child. Hannah’s school need not be Gabe’s and Gabe’s need not be Elisha’s. The content remains the same, the method of delivery varies. I am far from having this all figured out for each of my children, but I have learned a thing or two along the way that might be of use if you too have an energetic learner at your house: (more…)

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Teaching Writing to Young Children

For many parents, simply that title is enough to strike fear into their hearts.

Writing:

• That hated high school subject.
• The chore most dreaded following Christmas (WRITING those thank you notes).
• The most nebulous portion of the SAT (how DO they actually grade those essays?).
• The college class we all put off until the last possible moment and yawned our way through.

Writing.

Some say it can be learned. Other’s say it’s a gift. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, although leaning strongly toward the “learned” camp.

In the new millennium, few people truly write.

• E-mail doesn’t count.
• Neither does your grocery list.
• Nor does that note to get your kid out of gym class… no matter how creative your explanation of his sprained ankle was.
• Most of us don’t even write letters, much less memoirs, or articles or books.
• Most of us sit down at a computer, or stare at a blank paper and ask the same question we asked in tenth grade: “What do I write?”
• Or, we know what we want to write, but are disappointed with the end product because we lack the mechanics as well as the art to really do our ideas justice.

It is difficult.

It is bad enough to struggle with one’s own writing. It is entirely another thing to, with great fear and trepidation, try to teach our children to write.

It is one of the most frequently asked questions. One of the greatest concerns of home educators: HOW can I teach my child to do this terribly difficult thing that I myself find mortally painful and am only marginally successful at?

The 3 R’s

The answer, is blessedly simple. I call it the three Rs (no, not those 3Rs)

They are as follows: Relax, Read, Respond. Of course, this is a highly simplified version, but it will carry you quite a long way.

RELAX!

The first, most necessary thing, is for parents to take a deep breath, and relax. If your children see that you are terrified of this and that you think it is the hardest thing ever, they will adopt your attitude and you’ll all be miserable.

• STOP looking at what curriculum everyone else is using.
• STOP freaking out about what kind of assignments your child is NOT completing.
• START engendering positive feelings about writing in yourself and working towards a “print rich environment,” as the professional educators among us would call it.

Attitude is everything. Relax. You can do this.

READ!

Next, read. Read, read, read, READ to your children. If you’re pregnant with #1 read to her. If you’ve got ten around the dinner table, read to them.

Whether they are toddlers and it’s picture books or they’re middle aged kids and it’s Ben-Hur and the Colonists (our two right now, though not in the same book, of course!) or whether they’re young adults and it’s the Wall Street journal for dinner time debate.

Read to one another.

This is perhaps the single biggest factor in teaching a child to write. Why? Because it is through reading that vocabulary is developed, that the differences in style between Mark Twain and E.B. White are appreciated, and that the flow of good language washes over the ears and into the hearts of young children.

Writing styles are not developed in a vacuum.

A teacher cannot expect a child to find his voice, literarily speaking, if he has not first listened to the voices of many others.

It is the same as teaching a toddler to speak. They listen for nearly two years before they find much to say for themselves. Why do we expect children who have not “listened” adequately to be able to “voice” themselves on paper?

Do not make the mistake of assuming that once your child is functionally literate and is reading “Captain Underpants” or some such pop-culture nonsense that your job as family reader is over. It is our job as parents not only to direct the literary diet that the child himself consumes, but to continue to spoon feed him (force feed if necessary!) the good stuff as long as he’s under our roof. Even adult children like to be read to… I know, I am one!

RESPOND!

The third R is Respond. Having been read to in a relaxed environment, the child should, after a period of time, be asked to respond.

This does NOT necessarily mean in writing.

• A four year old can respond to a paragraph long passage from Aesop’s Fables by retelling the moral of the story.
• A seven year old can retell a whole chapter.
• A nine year old a whole book… if you have enough time to listen!

The first response that ought to be required of a child is oral.

Have your little children narrate (re-tell) what they have heard you read. Then ask them what they liked best and why. In this way they will parrot the style of the author, use new vocabulary in context and form a personal connection with the literature. Make it relaxed, light hearted, and fun.

When children get a little older, say seven or eight, they can begin writing short paragraphs. It is at this point that most kids start to cry, and some mothers too. The child, if he has been read to enough, will have lots to say and an active imagination… but the mechanics of writing will still be difficult.

What’s a mom to do? Stand over the child and yell? Steal the joy of writing by making him rewrite fifteen times to dot all the Is and fix punctuation?

No! It’s so much simpler: have the child tell you what he wants to write, you faithfully transcribe his words, and then, he copies it neatly into his writing book.

In this way a child enjoys the creative aspect of writing. He learns proper form (by copying yours). And he has none of the negative reinforcement of that dreaded red pen that haunts you to this day. This approach should take you through the first several years. After fourth or fifth grade, the child will quite naturally start writing on his own, for fun, and at that point, you can begin a formal writing course, without fear.

Until then, Relax, Read and allow your child to Respond. Relax.

What has worked (or not) in your family to inspire your kids to love writing?

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I’m spending a lot of time around American kids this summer. We’re hanging out at a campground in southern Massachusetts while Daddy works a contract for a few months and every week provides a new crop of families to observe, kids to play with, and opportunities to make friends, learn and grow.

It’s a sociology experiment of sorts.

We’ve met a few amazing families with really great kids. And we’ve met some others. Of course any cross section of society is made up of a selection of individuals, and individuals are, well, individual. Even so, some generalizations can be made and I’ve made one as I’ve held down my beach chair and kept my kids from drowning: (more…)

My husband and I always knew that one day we would be homeschooling our children as we have been working towards the goal of long term family travel since before they were even born. We didn’t know, however, that we would decide to forgo public education entirely!

Our oldest son was due to start Kindergarten in September of 2010. Our estimated departure date for our travels was for sometime in 2011. We had the discussion about whether we should put him into Kindergarten and then take him out when we were ready to leave or if we should just keep him out and homeschool him.

After many difficult discussions and soul searching we decided to enroll him in our local public school. This was a very hard decision for me, one that I really wrestled with and even after it was made I was never entirely comfortable with it.

Then something happened that made us change our minds: Our Ministry of Education changed the laws so that Kindergarten was no longer a half day program; it would be a full day one.

Call me the crazy, but I could not bear the thought of having my son away from me for so long! I wasn’t ready for it and I don’t think he was either. Homeschooling was back on the table, we just had to figure out what kind of homeschooling we would be doing. (more…)

Not long ago we encountered the Hudson Family, Michael, Nadine, Desmond (10) and Lenny (8), when they left a comment on one of our posts. Their international family is on an open ended world tour that currently has them in Mexico. We’d love to introduce them to you! (more…)