I meant to post this earlier, because the first workshop was tonight.  But better late than never — Next week, Judy King from the South Shore Waldorf School in Nova Scotia (the closest Waldorf School to us) will be presenting a talk on “Rhythm, The Root of Discipline: Insight on Healthy Daily Rhythms.”  Details and registration at fredkid.com.

Tonight’s talk was by Marieka Chaplin, a local Frederictonian who has taught at the South Shore Waldorf School.  She’s also part of a local group looking into the possibility of starting a Waldorf School here in Fredericton.  I imagine a huge part of that is just finding out if there’s enough interested parents who could afford it.  And so, spreading the word about Waldorf, in order to get parents interested, is a primary undertaking of theirs right now.

Anyway, the talk was advertised as being about Movement in Early Childhood.  And she did talk about it.  But I’ll be honest — the talk was more an advertisement for Waldorf in general.  Which is fine, I guess, but I was hoping to get more specific and practical stuff about how to incorporate Waldorf-style movement into my childrens’ lives.

On the plus side, though, I had the great thrill of being in a room filled with like-minded people, including several homeschoolers.  Despite being back here in Fredericton for nearly two years now, we still don’t know very many other homeschoolers, so it’s reassuring to know that they are out there.

I even got up the nerve to introduce myself to one young lady who wants to homeschool her young daughter, but is understandably nervous.  It’s such a great leap to take when you don’t have strong resources around you for support and encouragement… and heck, just plain old information.  We ended up talking for a long time and will keep in touch.

Would I send my kids to a Waldorf school if one opened up here?  Probably not, I’ll be honest.   Especially for preschool/kindergarten.  The speaker tonight was making it very clear how the kindergarten environments are designed to emulate, as much as possible, a warm and loving home environment.  Why would I choose a mere emulation when I can provide a real warm and loving home environment?

But, would I take advantage if they offered day programs as an option, rather than only full-time enrollment?  Hmm.  That, I would most certainly consider!!!

We actually started a little form drawing — just curves — the last couple days of last week.  And it’s obvious how much he needs this.  A simple, regular, large curve from him is alternately too narrow, too pointy, too small…

There was also a nice confirmation on Friday of the effectiveness of including story in the work, as recommended (nay, as insisted upon) by Waldorf methods.  When I wanted to do one more form (consisting of a half-dozen curves in various locations) and he balked, I started relating the curves to dolphins, his greatest love.  This one is a dolphin leaping out of the water, this one is a dolphin diving, these ones are two dolphins kissing.  He grinned, lost his grumpiness, and eagerly drew the form himself, telling me the story of his dolphins as he went.

Great for form drawing, and for everything.  I need to remember this, it obviously works for Flipper.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how the day goes.  We’ll probably be experimenting with the plan for a little while yet, but basically we’ll do form drawing for at least an hour, along with his math and french and spelling and call that a ‘main lesson.’  Then after lunch, we’ll do some art and some knitting and some pottery — he’s eager to try a kid’s pottery wheel we just picked up.  Music time and a walk in the morning as well… and a visit to nanny and grampy’s… Yikes!  I’m exhausted already!

Since I’ve only just joined, I’m not sure yet how many of the discount opportunities will be available to Canadians, how great a value it will be, whether or not there will be any sneaky surprises waiting to pounce.  The main reason I joined was to get the Homeschool ID Card available to their members.  It’s customizable, includes your child’s photo, it’s free to print out yourself, or $7 to order a professionally-printed laminated card.  What a great idea!

Flipper was going to a friend’s house at lunchtime today, so he did most of his schoolwork this morning.  Since we’re following a kind of Charlotte Mason approach lately, most of his work is very short little things… he read a couple pages in an archaeology atlas and told me about them, read a chapter in his new book Island of the Blue Dolphins and told me about it, did a science lesson (NOEO, which involves reading a couple pages then writing a short summary), did a wordsearch puzzle on Canadian provinces and capital cities… really the only thing that is usually time-consuming is his math, and that’s only because he’s so distracted and fidgety it takes forever to get through the lesson.

The warmup wasn’t too bad today, he enjoys the puzzle numbers challenge.  The division facts practice sheet, however, is the big time killer.  He’ll start off with “I don’t know how to do this!!” (he’s known how to do division for at least 3 years), then start saying “what’s 4 divided by 24!!!  That makes no sense!!” (the question is 24/4)… before finally settling in and doing one question.  Rinse, repeat.  Or he stops to talk to his sister, blaming her for distracting him.  Etc etc.

Eventually he gets it done, and we move to the main lessons.  Millimeters today, and writing decimals to thousandths.  We love RightStart, how it has interwoven fractions, percents, decimals, and measurements in a beautiful way showing the interrelationships and having it all make sense.  He’s got it mastered to hundredths so far, and yet when we started by me writing 3.28 and asking him to read it, he said “three twenty-eighths.”  Sigh.  This is the frustrating part, when he knows how to do something but doesn’t stop to think, just randomly starts guessing as though it’s something he’s never seen before.

He did remember pretty quickly this time.  I wonder if the glare of death I shot his way had any accellerative action on his mental recovery.  I’m a good mommy.

The lesson itself went fine after that, he already knew that there were 10mm in 1cm, and 1000mm in 1m, so all seemed fine.  Until the first question on the worksheet… it asks to shade in on a picture of a ruler: one dm, plus one cm, plus one mm.  No problem, quickly done.  Then it asks how many mm that is.  He looks at it and starts thinking out loud… “let’s see… 10 hundred and…”  What?  Ten hundred?  Okay, how many mm are in a cm?  “A hundred!”  What?

Glare of death to the rescue again.  I’m a very good mommy.

Finally, he was set to finish the worksheet on his own and I went to do some housework, telling him to come get me when he was done.  It was not more than 10 minutes later he came to me, completed math in hand, cheery and chipper, saying “That was actually fun!!”

Oy vey.

I’m looking forward to the day when he remembers that he finds math fun before the lesson starts, rather than not until close to the very end.  Because this happens Every. Single. Day.

Anyway.  The other schoolish tasks on the schedule today were postponed until after he got back from his friend’s.  So we had a french lesson at suppertime — right now I’m just doing oral french with him for at least a few months, building up vocabulary and ease, before starting over with L’art de lire.  We had previously got into book 2, but it wasn’t “sticking” for him and it was torturous.  I believe that with a confidence in the basics of the spoken language already under his belt, all that writing will be less intimidating.

So far, he’s learned to count to 100, tell time, all the colours, how to say “I love to play the guitar”, a few foods, and some adjective opposites (thick/thin, big/little, tall/short, heavy/light).  He likes doing it this way, and especially the “big” numbers like 97, which literally translates to “four twenties and seventeen”.  Gotta love it.

Finally, his poetry-writing book had him writing a popcorn poem today, so he suggested we make some tonight and he would recite it to us, which we did, and he did.  Grandiose as all get-out in his delivery.  It was a silly little poem and missed the point of it being an exercise in sensory description (how does popcorn feel, smell, look, etc)… It was more like instructions on how you yourself could pretend to be popcorn by curling up into a ball then jumping up high.  But… coming from a hyperkinetic kid, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.

What we didn’t get done today… his cursive, because he couldn’t find the book.  Daily Grams, because he’s done 10 pages since I last checked it so now I have to check it and tomorrow we’ll review any glitches.  And a few things that weren’t on the schedule for today… logic puzzles, Aesop’s fables, art, music.

I’m particularly looking forward to Home is Where You Start From‘s look at Homer’s Odyssey.  As I’ve mentioned, we’ve recently shifted to a Charlotte Mason style with my 10yo son, Flipper.  Into week 5 now and still liking it!  For history, we’ve been doing “introduction to history” things this session (each of our sessions is 6 weeks), looking at archaeology and what history means, as well as a wee bit on the earliest civilizations   Our next session will be Ancient Egypt, and I’m all planned up for that.  Following that, we’ll be taking a session on Ancient Greece, which I haven’t done too much planning for as yet.  I’ve heard about only a couple adaptations of the Odyssey for kids, so I’m very keen to check out all the great ideas in this post.

The Recession Depression Therapy blog has a post on Cookbooks for Kids, and I think I’ll have to search out the Little House inspired cookbook!   I’ve recently been exposed to Montessori’s teachings on little kids in the kitchen, and so my 2yo daughter Pomme helps me a great deal with food preparation.  But I was none so enlightened when Flipper was a wee boy, and boy oh boy it’s a struggle to get him interested in helping.  Or doing anything for himself.  “MOM!  I need you to butter my toast!” is a refrain heard far too often.  One trick that sometimes works is dangling the carrot that girls like boys who can cook… he’s only 10, but he’s already looking forward to finding a wife!  What works the very best, however, is one cookbook we have, a Company’s Coming cookbook for kids.  He’ll do absolutely everything by himself when he finds a dish in there he wants to try.  He even made breakfast for himself and his sister this morning, a toasted “cheesy apple melt.”  I’ll pass, thanks.

The Thinking Mother ponders about Self-Directed Learning Moments, and how not every “teachable moment” has to involve parental interference.  Once again, I find Montessori parallels… Dr. Montessori observed, very wisely I think, that parents and teachers should not automatically jump in and help, cheer on, encourage, enrich, advise, or otherwise interfere when a child is absorbed in something.  We want to help, it’s a natural impulse, but in fact we’re breaking their concentration.  Since learning this, I’ve found myself having to restrain my impulse to ‘jump in’ with Pomme fairly often (although like any habit, this has gotten much easier with practice), wanting to show her how to do something, or — even worse — just do it for her.  I’ve been gratified, amazed, and enlightened to see that when I just sit back and let her do her own thing, she’ll figure it out on her own.  Not only does this foster confidence and independence, but it’s practicing her own problem-solving skills.  Of course, if she gets frustrated and ASKS me for help, I will.  The idea is not to never help your kids.  It’s just to realize when they really do need help, and when they just need some time to work it out for themselves.

And finally, Dad’s Homeschool Blog sings the praises of StumbleUpon as a search tool for homeschooling resources. I’ve been using StumbleUpon myself for awhile, to help promote my articles at Eco Child’s Play as well as my little blog here.  I’ve also randomly stumbled through their listed sites, and have found some really amazing things.   I’m a bit annoyed right now, in fact, that my latest Firefox upgrade seems to have deleted my StumbleUpon toolbar, so now I have to go find it and install it again.  Such is life, I guess.

According to her, the one on the bottom is a cat, the one at the very top is a pig, and the rest are whales.  The spots are eyes.  She has labelled her drawings before (usually as whales lol), and she has drawn circles, spots, and lines before.  The new thing this week was deliberately making spots to represent eyes, using different drawing techniques to represent different parts of a whole.

She has also started to be able to trace shapes within a stencil.  I’d love to get the set of Montessori metal insets for this purpose, but can’t really afford them right now.  For now, I picked up a $1.50 wooden craft frame with an oval shape (which you can see in the picture), and we also use Flipper’s drawing tools triangles.

She loves to use Flipper’s dry erase board, and that’s fine by me.  It’s easy to clean the dry erase marker if she ‘misses’ the board, and she can erase and do it all over again, getting lots of drawing practice without leaving mountains of scribbled paper.

One Montessori item we did invest in was a set of wooden place value number cards.  I had initially put them out of her reach, because she’s not really ready for those kinds of math concepts yet.  But she found them and took them down and has been happily playing with them for weeks.  She sorts them by size and colour, identifies what digits she recognizes (for instance, she’ll say “one zero zero zero” for the one thousand tile), and practices putting them away:

We haven’t “instructed” her on anything with these, she has created all her own activities with them.

In fact, just after this picture was taken of her putting them away, I turned my back to her to focus on the stove and dinner.  When I turned back again a few minutes later, I assumed that I’d see them all put away, or perhaps taken out again to repeat putting them away.  What I saw instead, was this:

How cool is that?

Anyway, as I said, she likes to identify what digits she knows so far.  She has a wooden number puzzle which has pictures under the digits.  For instance, there are four dogs under “4″, seven hippos under “7″, etc.  At first, she would solve the puzzle just by fitting the shapes, but soon made the association with the animals.  She would pick up the puzzle number “7″ and say “hippos!!”  One exciting day (exciting for me as a proud mama), she saw a number 7 in a completely different context, just a regular printed digit 7, and very enthusiastically said “hippos!!”

Ah, the first step… the recognition that this particular shape, or symbol, represents something.  It didn’t really matter that she hadn’t yet made the connection with the symbol and the concept of quantity.  What mattered was the concept of symbol itself, of one thing standing for something else.  And what’s more, this 7 did not look exactly like the one in her puzzle, which is slightly cartoonish.  So she was recognizing that it was not the size, or the colour, or style, or the wooden-ness, or the texture of it that mattered… it was the basic shape itself.  Very, very cool indeed.

We haven’t done anything to “correct” her animal associations.  All we do is add to it… when she says “hippos!” for 7, we say “yes, seven hippos.”  Over time, she is picking up on this concept and has now substituted the real number name for most of the digits.  She identifies 0, 1, 5, and 7 consistently, 4 most of the time, sometimes mixes up 8 and 9, or 6 and 9, but she’s got the idea.

We have another set of smaller place value cards, that I made myself for Flipper before deciding to buy the wooden set.  She loves to pull them out of the baggie they’re stored in and sort them, and label the digits she knows.  As you can see in this video, she still uses the animal association for some numbers:

So that’s it! A week in the life of an unschooling, self-determining, Montessori-inspired 26-month old.

This teacher is quite rightly questioning the whole rationale behind this child being in her class in the first place, as well as the things she is still supposed to do — and not do.  For instance, she asks, “Why do I need to give a final exam to a child who is severely disabled and is simply here for “socialization?”"

Ah, the S-word.  Immediately, my homeschool-issues radar perks up.  A teacher is complaining about a child who is not suited to this particular class and is there for ‘socialization’.  Interesting.

And it continues: “Why do I have a young person in my room, a room already filled with twenty-five other people, who is here strictly for socialization?”

Well, now.  From the criticisms and questions usually aimed at homeschoolers, I had just assumed, you know, that school was indeed where kids are supposed to get socialization.

The reader comments shed some light on this: “… the primary purpose of a core academic classroom is learning, not socialization.”

Ohhhhhhhhhhh…. really?  Is that so?  Funny, that’s not what they tell the homeschoolers, is it?

“There are plenty of opportunities for socialization in other, non-academic settings that will not disrupt instruction and handicap the general education learners.”

Ya know, I think the homeschoolers have been saying this all along…

Oh, and while we’re at it, this post is also highly illuminating about the troubles frequently encountered in typical schools beyond the “socialization” issue.  Here are some highlights:

“Why does the caseworker not comprehend this obvious failure in strategy?”

” I have long since learned that the administration doesn’t care if my kid is terrrorized because she doesn’t have a diagnosis.”

“…no one in power cares about the ordinary kids.”

“….in my own 6th grade classroom…. [one child is] so consistently disruptive that if he’s not isolated in a far corner of the room he’ll completely disrupt the learning of those around him. He still manages to whack kids with rulers, or burst out crying (a 12 year old!) when you tell him to do the same assignment everyone else is doing…  I spend so much more time thinking about [him] than about how to get nice quiet little Susie to speak up in a literature discussion…”

“As a regular ed teacher with an ineffective co-teacher (he doesn’t SEE anything going on in the room and focuses on the working kids who talk not the non-working kids throwing things) – I feel your pain. I write up the offenders and work to get them out of my class so I can teach the rest.”

“It’s just a matter of time before we have lawsuits against teachers for not teaching their students. Also, tons of lawsuits against school districts for denying their children the education they’re entitled to due to the few who make it difficult.”

“It took 1 1/2 years for me to get my daughter out of a classroom that has a violent disturbed child.”

“[My daughter's] behavior is also deteriorating. Starting about this time of the year we have regular conversations about how just because you can behave that way at school doesn’t make it acceptable at home.”

“We currently have a second grader that is mentally disturbed and not getting any sort of treatment or medication. He is constantly making death threats toward his classmates and teachers.”

“It would also be nice if the kids could learn something every day, but that is probably asking WAY too much.”

I love that last one in particular.  Follows right along with my post on “Unschooling and Holes“… Homeschoolers who are not radical unschoolers, but follow at least some sort of schedule or curriculum plan, often get worried or feel guilty if we “miss school” for a day, or skip a particular topic once in awhile, or don’t get through everything we’d meant to.  Once again, we are reminded that it is no better in a typical public school classroom.

Oh, and lest anyone think that this issue is discriminatory towards kids with special needs, this comment clarifies that it is not:

“As a special ed teacher and the parent of a kid with learning disabilities, I do believe in inclusion for children who are capable of doing grade-level work with additional academic support… Students who are incapable of learning in this environment, even with special education support, should not be placed in these classrooms.”

Photo Credit:  Chris Campbell via Creative Commons Licence

There is very little that we have actually ‘taught’ her.  She knows lots of things, of course, including some “academics,” but for the most part it is things she has simply absorbed.  Things that we have more directly “taught” are always under her direction — repeated as she insists, dropped when she wants to move on.  And so she is learning the alphabet and numbers from wooden puzzles (and still identifies the digit ’3′ as “cat!” since the puzzle shows 3 cats under the puzzle piece), and can count ‘by rote’ to 10, and count groups of objects accurately up to about 4.

But most of her “learning” is in practical areas, and this is most definitely from following her lead.  She demands to learn how to do things.

Following Montessori’s admonitions of letting children do things and not interfering, she is allowed to do many things not normally thought of as toddler activities.  I have learned to allow for the extra time for her to accomplish something, rather than feel a need to hurry her along by helping out.  I have also learned to stand back and let her make mistakes, and watch amazed as she figures it out without my diving in to ‘save’ her… or, if she cannot yet puzzle it out, she will calmly come to me and ask for my help.  And so I meet her only where she needs help, and not just where I assume she needs help.

And so before she was 26 months old, she was able to almost completely dress herself.  She sometimes gets her pants on backwards, and has a little trouble with shirts sometimes.  But she can pick out a complete outfit, underwear, socks, and all, and get herself ready independently.  And if you dare try to help her before she’s truly in need — watch out!

Some of her non-typical toddler activities include household things like vaccuuming, folding laundry, emptying the dishwasher, and drying dishes.  She is allowed to cut paper with scissors and slice cheese.  And she even helps me at the stove, stirring macaroni, turning hot dogs, mixing scrambled eggs.  Before we even get to the stove, she insists on helping to measure and pour ingredients, mixing and stirring it together… and cracking eggs!

So I’m sharing this video I took of her cracking eggs into a bowl the other day when we were making a white chocolate layer cake.  She actually cracked 3 eggs this time, I only caught the 3rd on video.  The first few times she helped with the eggs, a few weeks ago, she got a few little bits of shell.  Now she’s perfect every time.  She even puts away the empty shells and returns the carton to the fridge when we’re done. 

So what are we doing, and why?  For the most part, I’m really just getting more organized.  Getting some long-range (and medium-range) goals for what we want to accomplish homeschool-wise.  And incorporating some more varied ideas and topics.

I’m a huge fan of unschooling.  In retrospect, I wish I’d been more unschooley with Flipper when he was younger.  Maybe he’d have better self-motivation now.

But that’s water under the bridge.  Right now, he thrives best with a certain amount of structure and direction — but not too much.  And he’s getting older.  He’s almost 11.  He’s ready to start to dive into some more complex and intricate subjects.  Things that you would have to spoon-feed to younger kids.  Things that there’s really no pressing need to teach to younger kids.   He’s not a ‘younger kid’ anymore though.  Those teen years are coming up quick.

Plus, he’s been asking more questions about these more complexd ideas.  So, the time is right to get more organized.

Next question — why Charlotte Mason?  That’s pretty interesting, actually.  We’ve been using NOEO Science this year, and it’s been amazing.  He loves it, does his daily work independently, with enthusiasm and — say it with me — self-motivation.  NOEO uses a CM-inspired methodology, where the kids “narrate” their lessons rather than complete fill-in-the-blank or question-and-answer worksheets.  Usually he will draw a picture and write a few sentences about whatever topic he’s read about that day.  Each lesson is very short, so it holds his attention and isn’t overwhelming.

I have just been loving this approach for him, it fits his style so well.  So I decided to research some more on the CM philosophy and see if it was something we could incorporate more into the rest of our ‘schooling’.   I quickly found that much of it is stuff that we were already doing — or that I’ve been wanting to do.  I found some resources to help me figure things out, and started the plans.

Yesterday, our entire “school day” took about 4 hours.  That’s including the break we took for lunch, and about an hour where he decided to play outside.  In that time, we did math, Canadian studies, french, grammar, literature, logic, ancient history, poetry, and music.

Today we spent slightly less time than that, again including lunch.  He didn’t play outside, but he was having a cranky, unfocussed morning and it wasn’t until halfway through the subjects that he finally settled in.  We did math, Canadian studies (geography), french, grammar, cursive practice, literature, Aesop fables, and… um… and music.

Once we’ve got the routine down, I think we’ll be able to get the “bookish” stuff done in under two hours.   There’s a couple other things we’ll be adding in as well, or modifying as we progress.

I’ll post more details and what approach and resources we’re using with the different topics another day.  Right now, I’m just excited that we’re getting so much done, with really very little resistance and complaints from Flipper.  He even said “this is more fun than I expected” while tracing border lines on his Canadian geography map for today…