The Frustration of Thinking Differently

Oh, my goodness. How do you teach a child whose mind works so much differently than yours? Sometimes when he is thinking, I wish I could take a magnifying glass and see what is going on in there. His mind works with such different gears than anything I’ve ever seen. It frustrates me to no end, but is also holds endless fascination for me. Ever since he was little he sees things that the rest of us don’t. If he shares his thoughts, then “aha!” we cry as we view for just an instant what he sees all the time.

I should have known how frustrating this would be way back when I tried to show him the idea of subtraction using grid paper. I tried to adapt to his visualization by using manipulatives. I cut out the number of squares in a long series to represent the first number, cut out another line of blocks to represent the other, and then place them one atop the other to show the difference between the two (like Cuisenaire rods). We would then cut the longer one so that the two rods were the same length and then count up the number of boxes in the cut off piece and there was the answer along with a visual representation of difference. But no, he had some way that he knew how to work it. He had no interest in looking at it the traditional way. I cannot even begin to show you his process because I still don’t understand it.

Today is this same battle just with a different part of math. He is working on division. The book has recommended that he round the divisor so that he can best begin to estimate his answer. Of course that just helps you to come up with a guess. You still have to multiply by the divisor and subtract, but he thinks it’s easier to multiply his guess by the approximation he used, calculate the difference between the approximation and the real divisor, multiply that by the guessed number, and then add or subtract as necessary to come up with the remainder. Gee, I wonder why he is frustrated . . .that is an awful lot to keep in your brain. I can’t seem to get him to understand that writing down the process of math is not cheating. I tried to show him that while this strategy may work with 628 / 23, it would be very difficult when we got to 6457 / 432 and that we were really focusing on the process of division not necessarily just the product (or in this case quotient). No, he insists that his way is better. After watching him struggle, I finally insisted that he did it the proper way and he completed the entire set of problems in just a couple of minutes. Of course I will admit that the most frustrating part is when he gets it right with his way of thinking and his explanation, while it may be the longest possible way to come to a solution, is correct.

Of course to compound the issue, he has to think – outloud. Now I don’t mean adding or subtracting outload. He has to hum or bang his pen or play with the walkie-talkies. He has to think with noise while I’m trying to type and the repetitious noise makes my brain want to explode. While I think silence does the same to his. He doesn’t like others to make noise, but he can sing an opera as he solves his problems. It is funny how we all have our different styles of learning. Clearly ours don’t line up that well. But on the otherhand, I cannot imagine what would happen to this child in public school.


“Genius . . . is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.” -Ezra Pound

Wake-up - It's Schooltime!

I tried to get Jacob back on track today after a week of camp. We got down to our math lessons and then he asked for a break. Zonk, he was out. I originally said we would take a half an hour break, but 2 ½ hours later, I had to wake him up so that I could go pick up his sister at theater camp. When I looked at his sleeping face, I remembered my pediatricians voice, “Let a sleeping child lay.” This freedom in schedule has definitely been one of the benefits of homeschooling.

Back when we were in school, I remember when Jacob started kindergarten. My daughter had been gung-ho, but I knew for him it would be a different story. Sure enough, even a half day of Kindergarten was too much (I cringe when I even think about full day Kindergarten. The parents may be ready, but most children are not.). Often when he came home on the bus, the bus driver would have to wake him up so that he could get off.

Now our life is set by the rhythm of our lives and not of the artificial school bus. I don’t think anyone appreciates the later morning schedule more than I. I don’t mind getting up, but I sure am not ready to put my best foot forward at 7 am. However, I am happy to read together at 10:00pm.

The other benefit of this schedule is that they can bend around their father’s schedule. My husband travels frequently and often has late night meetings. The kids miss him. So if our regular schedule prohibits them spending time together, we just change it. Homeschooling has definitely allowed for a better relationship between the kids and their father.

A schedule should meet your needs. You should not be a slave to your schedule.

What benefits have you found from homeschooling? How has homeschooling benefitted your family schedule?

Homeschooling - A Journey for the Whole Family

One of the great things about homeschooling is that it is not just how you educate the kids. It is a lifestyle for the whole family. Learning becomes a way of life for the family. The parents don’t always teach and the children aren’t always recipient of learning. It is a joint effort: A path that the whole family takes.

Today, for example, was a day for my son to do the teaching. During his time at Boy Scout camp, Jacob learned how to fly fish. Yesterday, he and my husband went to buy him a fly fishing starter kit with a gift card that my son had received. Jacob practiced his casting for a bit and then my husband wanted to try so Jacob started teaching him. It was a great sight to see, the two of them working together. We had planned on going for just an half an hour, but ended up there for two or more. It was peaceful and quiet. We had time to just chat.









When Jacob gave up the rod to George, Jacob warned him not to flick his wrist and crack the line. Jacob did a wonderful job showing how to move the rod with his full upper arm. George tried, but Jacob had to remind him again. No sooner was the warning out of his mouth, then crack, crack, the fly was gone. Jacob helped his father tie on a new one.




It was a wonderful day of learning and a successful day at that, the men caught two fish. I figure later in the week, I will take him to a stream to practice more.

It May Just Be the Book

My son is a very reluctant 11 year old reader. I continue to read to him. I encourage him to read aloud to me. However, even the word, “reading” throws him into fits. He will do almost anything in his power to avoid reading. He is very frustrated reader, but I don’t think he realizes how far he has come. He will tell you that he is not a reader because he cannot read every word that he comes across. My argument of course is the opposite; since he can read most of the words he comes across, he is a reader.

Lately though, he has diverged from his normal aversion to reading. He has actually been calling in books from the library. He has come by a series by Edge Books. The book titles include: Bowhunting, Camping, Canoeing, Deer Hunting, Duck Hunting, Fly Fishing, Freshwater Fishing, Hiking, Ice Fishing, Pheasant Hunting, Saltwater Fishing, and Snowmobiling. These titles are right up his alley. The series is only written on a 3rd –4th grade reading level, but he is reading on his own and enjoying it enough to request more. The books are not too long and therefore do not intimidate him. The subject matter touches on his “manly” passions and interests. The print is large and easily readable. It is broken up into reasonable chunks. These books are wonderful. I hope they write more.

Does anyone have other recommendations for reluctant readers? Especially boys?

Quotations I hope my son never finds about reading (notice they are all written by men):

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.
Sir Arthur Helps

Reading musses up my mind.
Henry Ford (1863 - 1947)

What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real.
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

The Nautilus of learning

Learning is not a linear operation. It is not like a book that you should begin on page one and follow through to the end. It is like a grape cluster. Does it matter which one you eat first? Actually, I visualize learning like a nautilus shell. We are first introduced to something new. Perhaps we learn the first few facts. Then we may go away and learn and do other things. Inevitably though, the idea comes back and we learn more. We continue in this pattern over and over, building on what we knew and acquiring more. This pattern actually makes the learning more memorable and relevant. The newly acquired information forces you to reenter all the previous chambers that you have built up. Each chamber relies on the one before and sets precedence for the one to come.

Consider this as you plan your lessons for your children. Be willing to do things “out of order”. It is ok not to understand things 100% the first time. As you build your shell, other encounters will help you better understand the information that you have already amassed. Perhaps it will be the not understanding of something that truly interests you that causes you to go back and learn about it, like a young lad who sees the rocketship streak across the sky and then chooses to study aeronautics, physics, engineering so that someday he can make one fly.

Like a beach our minds can be full of shells. Each at a different point of development. Some stacking one atop another. All waiting for us to pick them up.

Summerhill

One of the most interesting books related to alternative learning is Summerhill. I encourage you to read it. You may not agree with all the ideas in the book, but it will open your mind to a new concept in learning. This is especially important for parents considering homeschooling that have never experienced alternative educational ideas. If you do not start to stretch your mind to the possibilities in learning, you will find that you just repeat traditional schooling methods at home.

Some of you may find the premises of Summerhill appalling or too permisive, but you will be impressed by the results. Summerhill is an actual school that still exists today in England. Students, age 5 -18, have been attending this school since 1921. It was founded by A.S. Neill on the premise that children are autonomous units and as so deserve respect and rights. Neither the state nor parents should oversee a child’s learning. A child should be responsible for their own education both in direction and content. While as a homeschooling family, your goal may not be this radical, some of A.S. Neill’s may cause you to think differently about education and thereby how you plan to shape your day.

This is a book which you may wish to purchase, because I will bet that you will dog ear the pages and highlight passages. You will put it down in disgust, but return to it to review the ideas that it presents.

“I would rather Summerhill produce a happy street sweeper rather than a neurotic Prime Minister.” A.S. Neill
Let us know what you think of Summerhill. Would you send your child there? What ideas might you implement from this school into your own life?

Do You Homeschool Through the Summer?

The most common question that I get at this time of the year is “Do you homeschool throughout the summer?” The answer is that we homeschool throughout the year. First, I’m a little hazy on exactly the difference between homeschooling and living. Secondly, as I do know what they mean (Do you do “school” work?), by spreading the work out through the year, I don’t have to worry about how much we get done every day. I look at it as a simple division problem. Even if I give schools the benefit of the doubt and calculate using a 6 hour day of learning (please note that some people calculate it as low as 2 hours per day),

6 x180 =1080 hours per school year;
1080 / 365 days per year =2.96 hour per day.

Yes, before you ask, we school through the weekends too. Don’t think that I am a slave driver, because I am nowhere near that. Actually, it is exactly the opposite, by doing a little every day, we can be more relaxed and worry less about if we’ve done enough.

Little Extra:
Today I overheard a prep teacher working with a student at the library. They were discussing Latin and English vocabulary. The teacher was recommending that the boy start keeping flash card on new vocabulary words. Now I understand this when learning a foreign language, but English. How about just integrate the new words into your everyday conversations? Truthfully if you have to refer to a flash card to remember a word in your native language then perhaps it is not a very useful word.

Homeschooling in a Family of Teachers

I will admit that it is difficult to be a homeschooler within a family of teachers. I now dread family gatherings like Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving, because I know somehow my children’s education will come up – “Do you use a curriculum?” “ Will you let her go to high school?” “How is Jacob’s reading?” Ugggghhhhh! The same questions every time.

Today, my daughter and I went to the beach cottage to see this side of the family. It was great to see aunts, uncles, and cousins, but then it started. The questions started and then my cousin showed me how her 7 and 5 year olds could recite all the states in alphabetical order and the 7 year old could also recite the Presidents in the order that they served. (Please note that I do not take anything away from their accomplishments. Their recitation was amazing and very, very cute.) Not one adult in the room could compete. However, I think that is the point. Knowing this information is not relevant to life. In fact, later I overheard my aunt, the children’s grandmother, telling a story that when the younger boy when reciting the states was saying, “Mr. Sotta, Mrs. Sippi”. Proof that he doesn’t even understand what he is saying (If you want to try a similar experiment ask your child to write down what he or she thinks he/she is saying when he/she recites the Pledge of Allegiance.). They offered to get me copies so that I could use it with my children. I just put on a polite smile and thought “this is why my children aren’t in public school.”

Could my 11 and 13 year olds stand up and match this feat right now – no way. They probably couldn’t list all the Presidents or all states – period (could you?). They could get most of the states if asked to make a list (it is always the last one or two that are a bummer) , but I’m confident that they could name and place every state on a map. For those Presidents that they could name, I’m sure they could tell you several interesting facts about them. It is a question of memorization vs. knowledge.

Now I would agree that putting facts to lyrics does help with memorization, but I think that it has to be used properly. There needs to be background information and knowledge to make this anything more than a cute trick. It is the difference between an actor reading a script and Socrates giving an address.

What I really need to know now is what excuse I can use to skip Christmas? Do you think that I could claim to have converted to Judaism? Or maybe I should just have the kids start memorizing now, “Alabama, Alaska, Arizona . . .”

Great Geography Website

I always look for new and interesting ways to make my son learn the core subjects. My daughter is a lot like me she reads a lot. She would fill out workbooks for FUN! My son is like my husband – if it looks like schoolwork in any way shape or form, he wants nothing to do with it. But this changed the other day when I came by an anomaly- a website that made geography fun, http://www.sheppardsoftware.com.

Although I agree with the basic idea of unschooling that we will all learn what we need just by participating in life, I also believe that there are certain number of things that you don’t “need” to know but that you should know as a cultured human being. I believe that being able to place all the states in the United States and a fairly strong knowledge of their capitals is one of those things. For my son though, reading, remembering, and being able to place the states (and or the capitals as we have been challenging ourselves) is very difficult. He has learning challenges especially as it relates to reading and processing (Some days the way he works out his math confuses me and I know what he is doing.) . Truthfully, it was kind of embarrassing the first time that he completed the beginner level. I thought, “Come on, you know this. We’ve been there.”. “How could I ever put him back into public school? They would laugh at him and me.” But the game really caught his interest and while his first game was dismal, he was willing to play again and again until he received a higher score.

When he finally took a break, I jumped in. I told myself that I would just brush up on my skills. Well, let me tell you that these Geography games vary from beginner to quiet advanced. I believe it was the Cartographer level when you have to try to place states in their proper location on a blank outline map and when you put them on the map they disappear. Being from the Northeast, I rocked the New England and the East Coast, but properly placing Wyoming and Nebraska proved to be a real challenge. Or you can take it a step farther, rotating and resizing states before placing them on the map. Hmmmm! Maybe I’m not Smarter than a Fifth Grader. I won’t even begin to divulge my scores on naming European countries. I don’t mean the typical Spain, France, and Italy, but all those Eastern European countries that didn’t even exist when I went to school. So now my son and I have to battle for use of the computer to play the Sheppard Software Games. This experience has reminded us that one of the great things about homeschooling is that it is a game that the whole family can play.

PS. If you go to the mind games, I’ll warn you that Castle Defense is addicting too.

I didn’t tell you to do it . . . Getting your child to do schoolwork

Most parents of picky eaters will admit that they find ways to hide vegetables in their child’s food. Tons of us have hidden their medicine in jelly, ice cream, or pudding (goodness, one brand even markets theirs as a popsicle). But many of you don’t realize that we homeschoolers hide the teaching / learning of school (we homeschoolers don’t consider it “hiding” it; we just believe that it proves our point that learning isn’t the property of schools and certified teachers). Even my kids would be surprised that one, I/we do this and two, that they comply so easily. The secret is . . . I don’t ask.

Their computer games do - My daughter lover her RP (role playing) games. What does she have to do to participate? Write. What does she have to do to be included well in the RP’s? Write well. This is from the same girl who told me, when she was asked to write something creative, “I can’t write!”

Their Scout projects do – Today as my son works on his Community in the Nation patch, we read Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” and then he had to respond in writing. You can only imagine the response I would get if this was an assignment. Instead, he is begging me to sit down with him.

Their theater classes do – Memorize a poem or speech for lessons – NOT INTERESTED. Memorize a play – She won’t just memorize her part but everyone else’s too (You never know when an understudy might be called in.) When she had to write a monologue for the theater group, she couldn’t get pen to paper fast enough.
Their minister does – Ask them to give an oral report and suddenly they are must, but have an opportunity arise for them to speak in front of the congregation and you would think that they were grand orators.

You get the idea. It is like the difference between chores and a job. The kids hate to mow the lawn but have a few neighbors offer to pay them and they’ll willingly give up a whole day. Some people may call my methods deceitful trickery; I call it using my resources wisely.

Homeschooling a Teen - Space Required

My daughter is part of a summer theater group and she is gone every weekday from 7-4. I think my teen is enjoying the break as much as I am. Her absence leaves me home with her younger brother, who is affectionately nicknamed “Buddha”. He is definitely calmer, quieter, and requires less of my intensity. As an added benefit, my daughter comes home full of information about her fun filled day. “We sang.” “We danced.” “Nate said. . .” “Did you know . . .?” I can’t stop the flow of information (nor would I want to).

Teenage homeschooling, especially homeschooling of a Type A personality, has certainly changed our routine. I am no longer enough. I have had to give her a little more freedom, more chances to interact with others, and more opportunities to explore her identity. Please note we are by no means reclusive homeschoolers. We are active in the society around us through church, Scouts, and volunteering. The difference is that now she doesn’t want my husband and I around (and I don’t mean, just across the room or come find me when you’re ready to go. I mean, completely and totally without parental oversight - - - I try not to take it personally). She wants to be in charge. She doesn’t want me to overshadow her. She doesn’t want me to correct or restrain her. She wants to be known for herself. Thus every morning, we are trekking to the commuter bus so that she can catch up with her theater buddies and ride to camp.

Please understand, I wouldn’t want it this way every day, for say 180 days; but for 4weeks, this has been a great break for both of us.

printmaking

There is one great thing about being trying many things - you have the supplies to do almost anything. The other day, my husband was carving a watermelong whale (he claims not to be artistic, but you should see his pumpkins at Halloween). He needed carving instruments. Because we are in the process of moving and have many boxes of "unneeded" things set aside, the Halloween carving kits were already packed, BUT leave it to the Homeschooling, Girl Scout leader. I had a linoleum printing kit still unpacked (why that wasn't packed but the pumpkin carving kit was I don't know). I pulled it out for my husband and he finished his project. Like many homeschool projects though, my son was inspired - tools, carving, art. HMMMMM! I cut him some linoleum and off he went carving away. The next day, I pulled out my bryer, paper, and ink. He could not understand why he should print more than once. Then, we spent the next day making cards. I was so impressed with his artistic talent- His eye at putting things together. These cards weren't like the kindergarden bunched tissue paper that every mother posts on her refridgerator claiming that she has a Picasso on her hands. These were usable pieces of art. I think he was even suprised. Now we have to find more Speedball art supplies to try some more printing.