Thursday, March 19, 2009

Hiatus - family posts resume 4/15/09, informational 4/30/09

I haven't posted in a while, and need to explain why. I just started full-time work again, and need a little time to adjust before I return to blogging. I'll restart family posts on April 15th (Wed., Fri., and Sat. posts), and restart informational posts on April 30th (Mon., Tues., and Thurs. posts).

I'll be using the time to adjust to my new work schedule, to reconnect with my family and help DH adjust to being primary parent again, to do some research and find cool stuff, and to pre-write some articles so that I don't have to drop the blog as soon as things get busy. That way I'll always have something interesting ready, even if I gt swamped.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Lesson plans, 3/9 - 3/16, 2009

For indoors activities: We will probably get some more work done on the alphabet project we started this week - coloring letters, cutting scrap paper while FatherBear cuts the actual letters out, and then gluing them onto brightly colored construction paper.

Another great activity that I want to do more next week is folding laundry with the girls. MonkeyGirl and I did this today, and I could see her improving her sorting skills, motor skills, listening skills, AND her ability to follow a multi-step process, like folding washcloths, on her own. Not bad!

For outdoors activities: I will probably do at least a little gardening with the girls. Well, MonkeyGirl, at least. FairyGirl shows no interest in getting her hands dirty.

We are also considering building a sandbox next week, depending on how my interviews go and if / when I start work. The work involved is:
  • - Remove the fish from the pond and put them in our little fountain-tub until we can find a new home (girls can't help, but should have lots of questions from watching us).
  • - Remove the water from the pond. The girls probably can't help safely with this either since the pond is pretty deep. However, when I started the process last week, MonkeyGirl was very interested in watching and had a lot of questions.
  • - Clean the pond. The girls can probably help with this, but I'm not sure that they will both be interested.
  • - Put the sand in. The girls can help with this.
  • - Put up the tarp and weight the ends.
  • - Remove the barriers around the pond so that the kinds can easily get in and out.
It's a nice medium-sized project. FatherBear is probably the best one to work on this anyways, and the girls are getting old enough that they can play on their own outside if they get bored.

We've been talking about setting up a little swing for them, so maybe we'll do that first to keep them entertained a little more.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

No post today

Sorry, but I'm a little overwhelmed right now. No one in our household is employed right now, and we desperately need someone to get a job in a really tough market. I had one interview yesterday, and have two more tomorrow and really need to study today so I can walk in to these interviews prepared. This means that today's post won't happen.

In the meantime, here is another cute picture of the girls - this one is at Home Depot. We headed in to price play sand and wood for bunk beds.



The girls loved the flowers, and really enjoyed watching the swallows that live inside the Home Depot. They've never seen birds indoors anywhere else.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Online lesson planner from Home School, Inc.

Many people homeschooling their preschoolers don't really need a lot of organization, but occasionally it comes in handy. I honestly don't believe most preschool families need much in the way of structure, but for those that do, you might want to check out Home School, Inc.'s online planner. This is a nifty little tool for quickly recording simple lesson plans and courses online. Go to the link, and click "Free Web Based Planner" to check it out. The interface isn't gorgeous, but it's functional and pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it.

Online recording is nice because you can access it from anywhere, making it easier to communicate with a working spouse or friends who are doing a class with you (OK, at this age it's really a playgroup). It's also no-paper, which is nice for clutter-prone people like me.

This tool might be especially useful for parents with many children at different levels, who may want to record activities for their Tots to do while they work with older children on activities that just aren't fun for the younger ones. Another group that might find this useful are families which are splitting homeschooling duties in some way, just to organize the communication.

If this is more structure than you need, but a simple list of things you want to try or paper calendar just isn't quite organized enough, consider using Google Calendar. You can create a calendar just for homeschooling and share it out to friends who use Google Calendar. You can even overlay it over other calendars you create. For example, you could make one calendar for homeschooling, one for daily life, and one for the father's work schedule, and then view one, two, or all of them at once just by selecting their check boxes.

We've used the Home School, Inc. tool for our family, and liked it when we were dividing homeschooling work. Now, however, I'm doing all the homeschooling. I just have a file on my computer desktop called "ToDo_projects.txt" that contains a list of things I think would be cool to do with the kids some day. Each week I pick out a few to try to get around to and then do half of those and a bunch of stuff that never made the list (like, this week we've decided to put in a sandbox - which wasn't on the original agenda).

What do you do to organize your homeschooling (or do you like to be structure-free, and how does that work for you)? I know Carisa tells all here - do you have a link to a blog post where you discuss your style of organizing?

Monday, March 2, 2009

Structure

When people talk about structure and preschool, one thing that may come to mind is the public schooling structure, where children get very little time to play freely. However, most people planning on homeschooling their preschooler know that this is too controlling for preschoolers, and know that play is learning for toddlers and preschoolers.

At the same time, the decision to "homeschool" our preschoolers implies an intention to add some academic structure that we didn't use with our infants. There are three areas I see parents structure when they decide to homeschool: Time, activities, and spaces. Each of these is a continuum. Families can be at various levels of structure on any of the continuum, and can also be at different levels of structure on the same continuum with different children.

Note that these are my own thoughts, and I am not an expert on child development or education or anything. But still, maybe this will give you some food for thought about what schooling really is and how you can expand or simplify your child's schooling.

Structuring time: Schedules and routines

Structuring time is when a parent sets aside some time to do something with her child. Highly structured time is a schedule, moderately structured time is a routine. Parents can even eschew structuring time for school purposes altogether. For example, a mom can just do activities with her child whenever the mood strikes her or can focus on child-led play by creating a good environment and following her child's lead.

Reasons for structuring time include:
  • The parent prefers schedules or routines
  • The child prefers routines, or doesn't adapt well to changes in routine
  • If homeschooling duties are split between parents (e.g., one parent plans and the other teaches), then schedules or routines can help keep communication coordinated
  • If older children have their time structured for homeschooling, structuring time for preschoolers can simplify the parent's work and thinking during lessons
  • The parent has a philosophical preference for schedules, such as the belief that the ability to follow a schedule is important for even young children

Reasons for not structuring time include:
  • The parent dislikes schedules or routines
  • The child doesn't care about a routine, or "acts out" if things become too "routine"
  • A family is going through a lot of transitions or one that does not have a clear daily routine may find that structuring time can be very difficult
  • The parent has a philosophical preference for unscheduled time, such as a belief that the best learning happens naturally as a part of daily life

Structuring activities:

Structuring activities is when a parent decides in advance the activities that she will do with her child in advance, maybe preparing some materials ahead of time. Again, there is a continuum here. On the more structured end are curriculum, which usually also structure time with a daily or weekly schedule, and which may themselves be more or less structured. Also at the high end are activities like crafts, lapbooks, or unit studies - which can be very structured activities or lightly structured, depending on the specific activity. In the middle are activities like games, gardening, and cooking that are flexible but still have a "right" and "wrong" way to do them. Then there are even less structured free-play activities like texture trays, play doh, and trips to the park. Note that structure for activities can come either from a creative parent, or from a third party (like a curriculum), or a parent can even combine their own activities with others that they pick-and-choose from a third party.

A family might choose to structure very few activities. For example, a mom might schedule the hour after breakfast to be "preschooling", but might simply spend that time living normal life attentively with her child by talking about what they are doing. Alternatively, she could set up an environment designed for learning, with books, blocks, posters, and more, and just follow her child's lead whenever her child became interested in something. However, most parents structure at least a few activities when they decide to homeschool, such as outings to museums.

Reasons for structuring most activities include:
  • The parent loves to plan or come up with activities
  • The child loves to do activities and is able to focus well on one thing for a period of time
  • The parent isn't confident about teaching, doesn't know what kind of activities might work well, or wants another expert involved in teaching her child (these parents can benefit from curricula)
  • The parent doesn't like to stay "on guard" looking for learning opportunities
  • The parent wants to direct her child's learning
  • The parent wants to target a specific developmental area, maybe because a child is lagging behind a little or showing greater-than-normal interest
  • Some fun activities just require structure (such as setup, or following directions)

Reasons for structuring few activities include:
  • The parent doesn't enjoy planning or following a structure
  • The child doesn't enjoy one activity long enough to justify planning it
  • The parent doesn't have time for planning
  • The parent is confident that her child will develop and learn without specific educational activities
  • The parent prefers child-led learning philosophies

Structuring space: Learning environments

Structuring space for schooling means setting up an environment where learning happens naturally, even without much explicit teaching from parents. A highly structured environment may include lots of books, access to safe kitchen tools, facts posted all over the house (the ABCs, numbers, and shapes would be appropriate for preschoolers, as well as simple words), dress-up clothes, blocks, sensory play equipment, craft supplies, and indoor garden, cleaning supplies for kids, and more. Such a home may also have places for active play, indoors or out. A highly structured environment may also have fewer negative influences. Perhaps there will be no TV, for example. Even children enrolled in a school will benefit greatly from an environment structured for schooling at home, as a lot of the value is in the always-available, child-led nature of a structured environment.

Reasons for highly structuring spaces for learning include:
  • The parent enjoys creating an environment for learning
  • The child strongly enjoys independent play
  • The parents have an irregular schedule and do not always have predictable free time for teaching their children hands-on
  • The parent has a desire to round out structured learning with easily accessible unstructured learning

All parents, homeschooling or otherwise, should have at least light to moderate structure for learning in their children's environment. For example, there should be some books and some toys that use creative skills (like blocks, dress-up, or safe kitchen tools) where kids can get into them.

Reasons to limit structuring spaces:
  • The family lives in a small space and doesn't have room to go all-out
  • The parents don't want their home taken over by homeschooling
  • Structuring spaces takes time and/or money
  • The child is learning well with the current amounts of structured space, possibly through scheduled teaching time or activities.

So . . .

How do you structure your homeschooling? Do you structure time, activities, or spaces?

Our family is funny because FatherBear and I tend towards very different teaching styles, and MonkeyGirl and FairyGirl have very different learning styles. FatherBear prefers to have lesson plans handed to him, and to use a routine. When he is the primary parent (when I work full-time), we go light on structuring spaces and I create a lesson plan and schedule that he can implement (moderately structured activities, highly structured time). When I am the primary parent (like at the moment) I use moderately structured spaces, only lightly structure our time, and moderately structure activities.

Since FairyGirl likes routine and doesn't need a lot of stimulation to be happy and learn, she thrives when FatherBear is primary parent, but I need to take special care not to overwhelm her. MonkeyGirl, on the other hand, can get bored and will act out frequently with FatherBear if he doesn't break the routine occasionally for her (such as by having her take her nap in a new part of the bedroom every few days), but with my style she is excited, engaged, and very well behaved.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Everyone got sick

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get many pictures this week. First of all, we only just located a decent camera that we could borrow partway through this week. Then, everyone got sick with a lovely little fever. However, we did get outside in the sunlight a little yesterday, and I had a little energy to do some fun things with the girls.


The girls playing with a truck. The greenery in the lower right is the Christmas tree that we are letting dry out for firewood. We'll get it cut up one of these days, now that the weather is warming.

~~~~


This is our garden. The girls helped me plant a pea seed (and then I planted a few more - the sticks mark where they were planted), and I gave them a toddler-sized lecture on how the seed would become a plant. Apparently, they absorbed it because they offered a prayer for the pea plant last night. And, uh, those balls are dumped all over because I don't have anything growing there and I need to clean out the ball pit container. It's been sitting out in the weather all winter.

~~~~

The water in the picture below is being pumped out of a pond. See, we have these three ponds that were hooked up in this beautiful water garden with koi and goldfish when we moved in last March. Then the pump broke. Then we had this big snow that knocked down the nets protecting the ponds - and before we got them back up, a heron ate all of the fish. Since we didn't really want a drowning hazard to begin with, we're pumping all of the water out of the ponds and turning them into sandboxes (maybe a gravel pit for one). Hopefully we'll finish this up today.

This is MonkeyGirl listening to me explain what I just told you. She then spent the next hour telling me that she saw meanie crows eating goldfishes. I finally explained to her that the bird eating the fishes wasn't a crow, it was a heron. We'll have to Google for pictures of herons tomorrow so she gets a better grasp and quits accusing those innocent crows.

~~~~


This was my last attempt at being educational yesterday. I laid the girls' food out in interesting ways to give us something to talk about at dinner. Shapes, colors, and so on.

~~~~

Next week should be more interesting, between finishing the sandbox, gardening, getting the ABCs posted inside, and picking up bunk bed materials. Wow, that's going to be busy!

3/2/09 ETA:
Tot School
Forgot to add this post to Tot School!