Just a few short weeks ago, Pomme was eager to learn to write.  She was frequently “writing”, by which I mean she was making little circular-ish shapes and squiggles in neat left-to-right lines.  And she had learned a few specific letters — she stunned me one day a few months ago, in fact, by writing a perfectly legible “mom” on a Valentine’s envelope she had prepared for me.

But anything beyond a few of the simpler letters was beyond her.  She loved to trace letters, and we would write out entire sentences for her to trace.  But no matter how many times she traced a particular letter over and over, as soon as she tried to do it on her own it fell apart.  Her muscles just weren’t yet able to remember the sequence of motions.

This is not worrisome, of course — she’s only 3!  But it was a little frustrating for her, since she so wants to learn.  And frustrating for me, since most handwriting instructional books, being intended for older children, don’t feature a lot of tracing.  They go pretty quickly to forming letters on their own without that crutch.  So my hopes of finding a program to save me the time of writing out things for her to trace all the time were quickly dashed.

I did find one possibility — A Beka’s K4 handwriting program is designed for this younger age group and does have lots of tracing.  It’s also not “ball and stick”, which I despise with a white-hot burning passion (there is a choice between ball-and-stick manuscript or cursive).  I still waffle between d’Nealian printing and just plain old cursive first… and if cursive first, traditional style or Italics?  But for now, I would be happy with anything single-stroke and not ball-and-stick.

Any program we used would also have to focus on lower case letters first.  Which, fortunately, most these days do… but not all.  Any of the tracings that I’ve done for Pomme myself, all the letters that we’ve worked on learning so far, have all been lower-case.

Then a couple of weeks ago, everything changed all at once.  We were registering her for her dance classes, and I had signed a credit card slip.  As she often does, she announced that she wanted to sign too.  I’ll usually take the regular receipt and let her “sign” that, which is usually her little pattern of circles and squiggles in a neat left-to-right line.

But that time, she wrote her name.

Now I should mention that she’s been typing her name recently, and working on learning the spelling by heart.  She logs in to various computer games with her name and had just really mastered the complete spelling by herself.

But to write it by hand all by herself, that was another matter entirely.  And what’s more — she wrote some of the letters in capitals.  Which I have never taught her.

My guess is that she learned the capital forms from her computer games.  But it’s still a difficult task to transfer making a shape by clicking points with a mouse, to forming it with a pen by hand.  And she did it flawlessly, without asking for help, with no advance “practice”.

Not long after that, we were doing the first unit of Meet the Masters.  The project for this unit is to make a portfolio to store your artwork, and to decorate it with a palette featuring the names of the artists which will be studied in the programme, and your own name.  I let her write it all by herself.  She doesn’t yet know how to spell her last name, so I told her each letter, but she wrote them independently:

Now I realize that by posting this picture I’ve exposed her real name to the world, but I was just so proud I can’t help it!  She also cut out the palette by herself except for the worst of the inside turn (top left of this picture) which I finished for her.

So now my plans for a handwriting program are up in the air.  She is able now to write without tracing!  So maybe we’ll give Penny Gardner’s Italics program another go.  Or maybe I’ll splurge and buy Cursive First.  Or get Barchowsky’s Fluent Handwriting, I love their emphasis on rhythm… either the regular or the beginner’s workbook… Or maybe we’ll still get A Beka but go with K5 instead of K4.  Or maybe K4 is still a good choice.  Or maybe… or… or… ARGH!!

So much has happened too, so many interesting adventures and changes and cute little moments.  I’ve been tending to post little blurbs on Facebook, or on any of the yahoogroups I’m a part of, rather than properly write things up for the blog.  I should try to remedy that.  Not that there’s anything wrong with Facebook or Yahoogroups… those are more immediate.  This has a more… permanent feeling about it.

All I’m going to mention today is about how Pomme is doing.  I’ve mentioned before about how I learned from my mistakes with Flipper in regards to early academics.  To quote myself:

I am a staunch and vocal advocate of letting preschoolers PLAY to learn, that there is no rush for academics, that forcing early academics on children not yet ready for them causes much more harm than good.

I have approached Pomme’s preschool years with the same amount of pride and certainty of the correctness of my beliefs that I used to have in regards to turning Flipper into ‘My Little Prodigy’.

But the universe just isn’t that simple, is it?  Pomme has turned out to be the complete opposite of her brother, a child who at only 3.5 years old adores and demands worksheets, math lessons, and just more and more academics.

I’ve been greatly informed by Waldorf philosophies this past year, and I know that the ‘pure’ Waldorf approach to a precocious preschooler is still to not provide them with academics.  The belief is that their precociousness is a sign of an unbalance that must be corrected for; that they still need to be in their dream world until age 7 in order to be healthy.

I don’t agree with this 100%.  But I do let it inform my decisions.  We make sure that Pomme still has LOTS of creative play time.  While we are indeed doing “work,” it takes a very small part of her day.  Most of her day is still off in her own fascinating little world.  She even brings her imaginary friends with her to “school,” and helps to teach them what she herself is learning about.  She still spends her time building barnyards out of blocks, turning her playsilks into dresses, running around barefoot in the backyard, digging in the sandbox and making mud pies.

But when I do ask her “would you like to do school now?” her response is almost always a resounding “YES!”  In fact, the other day, we sat down to do what was really the first time I’d ever really pulled up a structured work day for her.  More than just an informal math lesson, more than just a match-the-numbers worksheet or two.  I had a whole program laid out:  Cuisenaire rods work; reading practice; TBB Seasons unit study activities; and a RightStart math lesson.  I was honestly just curious to see what would happen.

What happened:  She did everything, then demanded more.  I had printed out enough of the TBB activities to last most of the week, but by the end of our school time that one day I only had 2 sheets left.  She had traced letters, tallied survey results, made a bar graph, learned about temperature and coloured in thermometers, sorted seasonal activities, learned about what trees need to grow, and completed most of a “colour by shapes” picture.

It was three hours since we had started before she showed signs of slowing down.

And we weren’t finished yet.  When it was bedtime, she saw her unfinished picture and declared she wanted to finish it.  I let her do a few more shapes, but it was soon apparent that she was being so deliberate and careful with it (she’s extremely careful to colour properly, and within the lines), that we’d be up all night if I really let her finish it.  She wasn’t happy, but I told her she could get right back to it the next morning.

That night, she stayed in her room all night (which is about 50/50 these days).  I peeked in on her in the morning just as she was starting to wake up.  A few minutes later, I checked again… and she had set herself up at her little table, and was dutifully colouring her picture.  She didn’t come out until she was finished.

I believe that she has recently passed over another of those little bumps of development, something has “clicked”.  Three weeks ago, she could not independently write most letters, but loved to trace them.  Suddenly, a few days ago, she started writing letters by herself, correctly, that she had never even been shown how to write… had never traced.

Two days ago, we had started a RightStart math lesson but didn’t have time to finish it.  So yesterday, we reviewed the first part of the lesson then did the rest of it.  She wanted more.  We did the entire next lesson.  She wanted more!  We did the first part of the next lesson before she decided it was enough!

Today, we started Meet the Masters, a great art program.  We’re trying the age 5-7 program for her, I think she’ll be able to manage it.  And since Flipper is doing the same program but at the older level, we’ll be able to do the actual projects together — there are modifications for the different age levels but it’s a similar project.

There are three parts to each lesson.  An interactive slide show online with me narrating the script.  Then a ‘worksheet’ to learn about a certain art concept related to the current artist.  Then the project itself.  These can be done all in one day or spread over a few days.  The whole lesson start to finish could be an hour to three hours.

She did all three parts today for the first lesson.  Then she wanted to do the next one right away!  It wasn’t possible, unfortunately, since they were about to head to grandma’s for the afternoon.

I’m just flabbergasted.  And excited.  Could she really be this easy?  But I’m also keeping my feet on the ground, and staying cautious.  I still have to be careful not to overdo it (since I know I have the tendency), and I have to realize that this might be temporary!  She could very likely go through phases where she does not want to “do school” at all, and I need to be prepared to respect that!

In the meantime, though, I’m going to enjoy the ride. 

However, within a few days, she wanted back into her own room again, and has stayed there ever since.   I think that means it’s been a whole week in a row now?

Getting her to sleep is getting easier, as well.  I wouldn’t say easy, she still would obviously prefer to stay up!  But she doesn’t fight staying in bed.  She squirms and fidgets and fusses a bit, but never tries to get up and leave.  She’s completely co-operative as far as getting ready for bed and getting into bed — it’s just the falling asleep part she resists!

Most nights it has ended up being daddy who stays with her until she falls asleep.  When I stay with her, she sometimes just wants to nurse, and (sadly, I confess, with some sense of guilt but knowing I need it for my sanity) I’m deliberately weaning her from the bedtime nurse.  She will usually accept a glass of milk instead, and/or merely holding the booby (what a lifesaver that trick has been!), but sometimes she’s still just too wound up when it’s mommy around.

Of course, the occasional evening when daddy gives up on her EVER settling down, so I go in to take a shift — she settles for me practically instantly, leaving him shaking his head in bewilderment over my magic mommy powers.

And that’s how it generally goes… she fidgets, fusses, squirms, kicks, rolls, chatters, plays, and then as soon as she settles and stays still for more than about 5 seconds, she is OUT.  Asleep, off to dreamland, dead to the world, just like that.

She will stay in her room until anywhere from 1am until 7am, but usually joining us sometime between 3-5am, after going to sleep around 9-9:30pm.  After the adventure of her heading downstairs looking for us one night early on, we invested in a nice pressure-mounted baby gate to block off the bedroom hallway once we all go to bed.  Most nights she comes in to our room on her own, occasionally she wakes us up with a single cry — just enough to alert us to her state of wakefulness and await our arrival to rescue her.  She is not scared to wake up alone, not since the first night or two when it was new and unfamiliar.

Her bed in our room has quickly turned into a storage area for laundry waiting to be sorted, and a favourite nesting spot for the cats.  One more week of this, however, and we will move it into her room… the final step in the grand process of her achieving Nighttime Independence.

Well, technically I guess you could say the final step is when she stays in her room all night, every night, and even takes herself to the bathroom (usually she tells us when she comes in that she needs to pee so we just do a quick potty with the BBLP) and back to her own bed… But those are all things she will just do on her own at some point, and there’s not much we can do to either accellerate or delay it.  Moving her “real” bed into her bedroom is the last concrete thing that we need to do.

Just thinking about it, it feels so final, so like an ending.  But really, it’s a beginning, as she takes another big step leaving babyhood and entering true childhood.  And she will always be welcome back into our bed, whensoever she needs it.

Pomme has become fascinated with weather and day/night recently.  Every morning, she asks if the sun is up, and bedtime is becoming easier because she has associated “sun is down” with “time for sleep.”  She’ll be merrily playing away, we’ll tell her it’s time to get ready for bed, and she resists.  But if we say “look, the sun is down!” she will look at the window and reply, “Oh!  The sun is down!” and will co-operatively — if not entirely happily — come along to get ready for bed.

It’s also been raining a lot lately.  Lately?  All summer, and now into fall, really.  “Oh, it’s raining outside!  I need my rubber boots!”  “Oh, sun is out now!”

I can’t wait until she gets a load of snow!  Of course she’s seen it before, and she knows what it is, but her level of awareness is just orders of magnitude higher than last year.

I don’t have pictures to post yet since I haven’t actually made the chart yet, just saved and printed it so far.  You can see pictures for yourself at the blogs linked to above.  Basically, it just says “The weather today is:” with a space to add the right weather symbol:  cloudy, raining, sunny, snowing, thunderstorm, etc.  You leave the chart on the fridge and add magnets to the symbol pieces.

I can already imagine Pomme getting up in the morning and running straight to the window to check today’s weather and place the appropriate magnet.  Off to the craft store we go!  (Um, we need some magnets hehe…)

While all that was going on, on what otherwise would have been his first day of middle school, this was our day:

Slept in until about 8. Took our time having a healthy, hot breakfast.  No rush to get anywhere.  On to the “school day”:

Math: Lesson and practice on finding prime factors, practice on finding equivalent fractions, least common multiples, and adding unlike fractions.

Science:  Lesson on cellular biology.  Lesson on cetaceans, taxonomy of animals.  Watched videos of whales surfacing and free-diving with whales.

Grammar and Spelling:  Two practice pages on spelling rules, sentence combining, direct vs. indirect object, capitalization and punctuation, verbal analogies.  Daily list of 25 patterned spelling words.

Handwriting:  Began a new handwriting program to work with Flipper’s bad writing habits and difficulties — “Italics, Beautiful Handwriting for Children.”  Did the first two lessons.

French:  3 pages of written translations and exercises.

Phys. ed:  Running around outside, doing pushups.

Home ec:  Helping mom with washing walls, doors, and appliances; bringing in garbage and recycle bins; tidying the kitchen, doing laundry, cleaning his room, taking out the compost.

Music:  Practice on his electric guitar.

Poetry:  Tuesday Poetry Tea-Time, sharing cookies and iced tea and reading classic poetry to each other while practicing proper manners and politeness.  Well, mostly.

Reading:  Sitting outside in the sun, reading the latest in his current favourite book series.

Civics:  Watched Obama’s address to American kids online, discussed his reaction to it, and how it related to us in Canada.

All this and lunch too.  Probably about half of his work is independent, I don’t have to be actively “teaching” him or hovering over him for many of his lessons.  And he was finished everything – including “non-school” things like helping around the house, tea-time, and guitar practice – well before the neighbourhood kids were home from school. Total “academic” time was about 3 hours, maybe 3-and-a-half.

For most of the rest of the day, he played Civilization III on the PC, and regaled me with his tales of wiping Germany off the face of the earth (eeps!), learning that Kyoto was not just a misspelling of Tokyo, and finding the natural resources needed for steam locomotives to be developed.

He went snorkeling in the bathtub, helped me put together his schedule for tomorrow (his idea!), and went to bed with no homework and a smile on his face.

Whew!  A productive, happy, interesting day!

While Flipper was doing this, Pomme wanted in on the action too, of course.  She insisted on doing the same handwriting pages as Flipper, so I printed out a page for her too.  Doggone-it if she didn’t start writing beautiful “i’s” and “j’s” and “l’s”, just like that.  Shall I remind you she’s not yet 3?

She also practiced flower arranging, spoon-transfer of marbles, getting herself dressed and undressed (multiple times), emptied the dishwasher, sorted and dealt playing cards, counted on her fingers, watched Totoro again and told us all about it, acted out parts of the story, introduced us to yet another new imaginary friend, helped clean the kitchen, and “read” poetry to us at tea-time.

Now at this point, I should specify that we “do school” year-round, taking breaks and vacations whenever it’s convenient for us.  So sometimes we’re not working when kids are in school, and other times we are working when kids are not in school… which some people think is kind of weird.  But whatever.  That’s the freedom of homeschooling. We don’t have to take two months off just because it’s warm outside (we just move the lessons outside as much as possible!)  So today was not a sudden “first day back to classes,” Flipper has been “working” all summer.

But we don’t do as much over the summer as you might think, since there are summer camps, trips to visit family, gymnastics four days a week, and long lazy days where you just decide that sitting in the sun with your feet up is the most productive way to spend your time.

What did I do today? Other than working with my kids when they needed it, of course, I made cookies for tea-time, started planning fall repertoire for my band, did some laundry, cooked meals, did some gardening, goofed around on the internet, and actually updated my blog!

Homeschooling totally rocks our world.

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. 

I was recently tidying up and went through one of our rather large piles of Flipper’s old workbooks. These are generally the “homework helpers” type, that you can pick up in any bookstore, rather than any specific curriculum. I was going through them to sort into those worth keeping as “records” or for sentimental reasons, those worth saving for Pomme to use because they’re still mostly unused, and those that should just be recycled.

In this particular pile, there were about 5 to save for Pomme, 3 to keep for posterity, and 16 to recycle.

Looking more closely, I realized that this particular pile of books was all for the preschool to kindergarten level. And this was only one pile, there are more elsewhere in the house. That’s when I became embarrassed.

I have learned so much, my attitudes have changed so much over the years. I now understand that learning is about so much more than worksheets. I am a staunch and vocal advocate of letting preschoolers PLAY to learn, that there is no rush for academics, that forcing early academics on children not yet ready for them causes much more harm than good.

Staring down this evidence of my own horrific history was humbling, to say the least. Here before me was the record of my misguided attempts to “encourage” Flipper’s giftedness, to develop my own little star, my young and brilliant intellectual to prove to the world what a great homeschooler I was.

I recall with shame the yelling, the forcing, the manipulating… I yelled at him when he didn’t do something correctly, I forced him to do worksheets when he didn’t want to, and I manipulated him into doing them by threats and ultimatums. With very few exceptions, he hated these books, and I made him do them anyway, and I told him how disappointed I was when he didn’t live up to my expectations.

And now, we both are living with the results. He grew to detest work of any kind. He came to resist any attempt at formal learning. He became lazy and unmotivated. His spark of curiosity dwindled. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen with homeschooling!

Over the years, of course, I learned, I understood. We relaxed. I gave him more freedom and we discovered that learning can be accomplished through so many other ways than worksheets. We went through many periods of complete unschooling, setting formal studies aside altogether. And so things are much better now, we have reached a level of cooperation, we have reached a point where he is willing to do the worksheets and books where necessary, in a nice balance between academics and relaxed life-learning.

But it has been a long and difficult road. I recognize how a great many of his struggles and antagonism toward learning — especially anything involving writing — are utterly and ultimately my fault, for failing to allow him to develop according to his own natural drive in the early years. The level of guilt I feel brings tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. I look at young Pomme, so fresh and pure and full of keen curiosity and a desire to learn, and hope to God that I have learned my lessons and do not make the same mistakes with her.

And yet, there is also a message of hope in this. The mistakes I made — and which many parents make, I’m sure — are not irrevocably indelible. Recovery is difficult, but possible. We still struggle with Flipper’s lack of self-motivation, but I have every confidence that we are now on the right path and in the long run, he will be fine. He will be excellent, in fact. Just as a child who is “damaged” by years of not fitting into a public school system can be “healed” when they are pulled out, a child who has been “damaged” by a poor beginning in homeschooling can also still find healing.

And so I write this as an apology to my son. I am sorry for the mistakes I made when you were very young, I am sorry for forcing work on you that you were not ready for and did not need. I am sorry for the mistakes I continue to make, and I promise to you that I am learning from every single one of them. I hope that you are able to recognize that I am only trying my best, and I hope that you will be able to forgive me, and that you will grow into an independent and strong young man, curious and eager and ready to take on the world and learn everything you can about it.