August Homeschool Recap

In spite of a very disruptive few weeks, we were able to get the school year off to a good start. In good news, Laurel found a kitten in our neighbor's garage. This poor thing was crying for days and Laurel finally coaxed her out and gave her some food. She was covered in fleas and only 3 pounds. We combed out all the fleas and took her to the vet to see if she had a chip. Our librarian gathered up all the books on kitten care that she could fine. We could not find an owner, so....we have a cat now. We named her Shadow and she's a very frisky and social 5ish month old kitten now. In less good news, M broke his arm and had to have surgery to repair it. The first few weeks of recovery were kind of rough, as it was his right arm and he basically could not use it at all. He had a lot of appointments at the hospital and could not drive, which in pandemic times involved some childcare gymnastics. Luckily, he did not have any complications and it's healing up really well. 

So how did we manage to start school despite all of this? First we started the year off with a celebratory breakfast on our porch with our neighbor Marlene. We drafted a schedule to give each kid 1:1 time with me on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Mondays and Fridays are reserved for outings, which at this point is just visiting relatives or friends, or going to a local park to play or hike. We also do group lessons at 3pm every day. Sometimes this also includes our neighbors. They joined us for a science observation activity. 

Laurel started a fifth grade science unit I downloaded from the Core Knowledge Foundation about matter. She designed a little science experiment with cotton balls that didn't work out how she thought it would, but was a good exercise nonetheless. Everybody started working through Khan Academy for math. Laurel and I are also working through a history course on Khan Academy. This month we learned about primary and secondary sources, and analyzing  context and bias. We listened to Franklin Roosevelt's inaugural speech, and then watched some of Joe Biden's and Donald Trump's speeches from the party conventions that happened in August. We finished listening to the book Wild Robot Escapes by Peter Brown, which is a sequel to Wild Robot. I highly recommend this book, it is a beautifully told story and raises many interesting questions about artificial intelligence and what makes something alive. We used the Arrow Guide from Brave Writer for discussion questions and copywork. Music ended up being mostly about synthesizers and recording layers of sound on Garage Band. We read a variety of articles on civilizations in South and Central America and watched a documentary on Machu Picchu. We learned a little about Hinduism and ordered a version of the Ramayana. We talked about how religion can influence a society and your life, even if you personally don't practice that religion. Laurel took a class on Outschool about the legend and lore of black cats. Marko and I started working through a program called Handwriting Without Tears. M reads stories to the kids at night. Norse Myths are in steady rotation, as is James Herriot's Treasury for Children (and we just found the old BBC series, which is delightfully wholesome television).

What I love about homeschooling is that once you set up a structure and some minimum guidelines for what must be learned or practiced, you can give yourself a lot of room to pursue whatever topic sparks interest. For this reason, I'm never really sure what the kids and I will talking about during their 1:1 time, or what they will pursue during their own time during the day. Marko tends to want to know lots of things about the ancient world, myths and legends. Laurel is more curious about American history from the 1800s and early 1900s. Max is very observant about our neighborhood and home and likes to explore these places in more depth. I check off what they are reading and studying about on our subject/book log so I can see if there are things they "should" be covering that their natural curiosity is not leading them through. Based on that log, we need to add more art and music. My neighbor just happened to send me a link to some fabulous art project ideas, so I think we'll do some porch art classes in September. 

Homeschool 2020

I'm actually excited about starting the 2020-2021 school year.  Last fall was rough trying to figure out curriculum, balancing work and travel, and getting used to spending a LOT of time together. (Now the whole world can relate to that last one, since everyone went through it in March.) Eventually we figured out a manageable and enjoyable rhythm. We will be using Brave Writer for Language Arts, Khan Academy for math, and a sort of modern Charlotte Mason approach for Science, Social Studies, Art and Music - basically using trade books instead of text books and just doing a lot of reading and discussing (what CM calls narration). I ordered copies of What Your Second Grader Needs to Know and What Your Fifth Grader Needs to Know, which served as helpful anchors last year. Each day, the kids will do some math, reading, writing and physical education and then we'll rotate through geography, history, civics, music, art, safety and anatomy, and science on a weekly basis. This week, we rearranged some furniture and I'm sorting through things we have lying around the house....musical instruments, art supplies, wood scraps, fabric, games and puzzles to set up some different stations. 

I modified the forms we used last year for tracking what subjects we covered. For each month the form has a place for checkboxes for each subject and you just mark off what days you did them. On the back, there is a book list to write down what the kids read. Each month, we will gather whatever journal entries, writing samples, tests, etc. that we think are reflective of what we've done and stick them in a file folder until May. In May we'll go through our work and choose pieces to include in the portfolio. I know now from going through an evaluation, that this will meet the legal reporting requirement, at least for the evaluator we used this past year. I guess they vary a bit. 

Laurel will need to take a standardized test this year. I decided to not think too hard about this one and will just sign her up for the Stanford-10, which is one a friend used last year. I ordered a test prep booklet for her. 

But how do I decide what lessons to actually teach? Brave Writer has guides to go along with novels so we just read them together and discuss the points. It also has writing projects laid out, so we'll do about one a month. The only preparation I do is to read them in advance, and then I actually do the activities alongside the kids. When we do Khan Academy, I sit with them and basically watch them do the problems. I occasionally provide tutoring if they are stuck, but the website itself provides hints and and extra videos so I try to get them to use those first. Khan is limited in the number of unique practice problems so I bought each kid a basic Spectrum math workbook for extra practice if they need it. 

For the other "subjects," I have a file folder for each one and if I come across a video, book, podcast, event, or place to visit then I'll stick in the folder. Once a week, I pull the folder and just do the next thing. It's a little haphazard. We aren't exactly going through the centuries of human history in an orderly manner. Last year I had them keep daily journals and they would usually write or draw (or sometimes dictate to me) things about what they were learning and reading. This year we're going to work on making timelines to understand how things fit together so hopefully this will help. Last year I reviewed the state standards every month or so (searchable at pdesas.org), just to make sure we weren't skipping over something really important. I also have a few units from Core Knowledge Series and I use some of the tests and writing prompts to assess how Laurel can read and write clearly about a topic on a fifth grade level. 

Anyway, so that's the plan. I'm sure 2020 will come along and f*** that right up, but for now, we're going with it.

In Case We Want to Remember This

....and I'm not really sure we do. Nonetheless, this blog has served as a journal for many major milestones over the past 14 years and what is happening now is significant. 

We've been homeschooling and working remotely for over a year now, so when the pandemic first hit, we did not experience a major disruption. M was still able to work. The kids carried on with school. We have an 1,800 square foot house, a small yard with a jungle gym and a 600 acre park nearby. And of course, we have each other, probably our biggest asset. We were not isolated or lonely during stay at home orders.

Our routine did change a lot. The kids used to spend one day a week with my parents. I used to work at my aunt and uncle's restaurant. We used to take my mother-in-law to the library and out to lunch every other week. We regularly got together with my extended family. We were trying out some new homeschooling groups. The boys went to a three hour gymnastics class on Fridays. Laurel went horse riding or to Girl Scouts every week. M took the boys to an indoor skateboarding park and Marko went to a bunch of all day camps there. We spent lots and lots of time at the library and public parks meeting new people. Most of our road trips were planned around trail races, where we got to see our friends and meet new people. When we traveled the kids would immediately find some awesome family in the campground and start playing with them. We miss all of these things terribly. 

We planned to relax things a bit after a few weeks in the "green phase," but the uptick in cases made us change our minds. So where we are right now is basically where we've been since May. Visiting with people in small groups, mostly outside. My aunts have this social distance set up for their pool so everyone can visit and use it but not be close to each other. (They even drew a map!) Mask up if you have to go in to use the bathroom. Mask up if you share a car. Our kids are playing with a few other kids in outdoor settings. M is running with a couple of people a week. We went swimming in a pool at a state park that was not very crowded. We've gone camping a few time and just used our own bathroom instead of gas stations while we were driving. Basically, we try to be outdoors for all interactions.

Is this enough? Too much? I have no idea. If I follow the news, the world seems like it's ending. If I sit on my porch and watch what is going on outside, everything seems normal except people are wearing masks. I definitely would like to see more people. I also definitely don't want to get COVID-19. Not sure the two are mutually compatible. 

Someday I might think this was ridiculously conservative. Do you remember that time we basically stayed home for six months for no reason, lol.

Someday I might look back think oh, I'm so grateful I had the foresight to protect my children from a disease that left so many dead or permanently disabled. 

At this point, there's really no way to tell which of those future scenarios is the real one. Everybody's gambling on one of those two outcomes. 

Writing in Homeschooling

Writing is my favorite, so I was pretty bummed last fall when it turned out to be the absolute worst part of homeschool. They hated it, resisted any activity, called it stupid, would copy things off a cereal box just to get "credit" for the assignment, and cried. There was lots of crying when I tried to teach writing, from all of us. Not a good situation.

Three things helped me turn this around and get my kids to actually produce some decent writing, without fighting.

The first was a mindset adjustment on my part. I listened to a bunch of Brave Writer podcasts and experimented with a less is more policy,  not just with reading but with every subject. I asked the kids how much writing they thought they could do or how many math problems they could manage. I went with whatever they said on a given day, even if it was "1." This was magic. In terms of writing, it meant that I assigned far less writing than I thought prudent, but they still ended up with plenty of pieces to choose from to include in their portfolio.

The second thing I tried was "Free Write Fridays" - there is a whole series of Friday Free Write blog posts on the Brave Writer site with prompts. This is roughly how Julie Bogart describes doing this activity. Once a week, I would read a prompt, set a timer for 8 minutes, and we would all (including me) sit down and write. When the timer went off I would ask if they wanted to share. If they did fine, if not, fine. We put the pieces in an envelope. After doing this for 8 weeks, I gave them their envelopes, which at that point had 8 drafts in it and asked them to choose one that they wanted to revise into a longer piece. Not the "best" one, but one with potential to be something good. Then we started to move through the writing process with that piece. TWO months to get to the revision part for ONE piece of writing. And they could see that lots of the writing they started was worth abandoning. One of my kids suffers from crippling perfectionism, and this helped to reinforce the idea that not everything you produce has to be perfect, but if you want it to be really good, it's not something that happens on the first try. We humans generate a lot of garbage. 

The third thing I did was let them use Google Docs, including the Voice to Type and spelling/grammar check. Basically, they talk to the computer and it transcribes it for them. The feature is pretty accurate, but still makes lots of mistakes. They have to read it back to themselves to see if it captured what they meant. This tool helped them to see that they had great ideas in their heads, or sometimes they would get what they thought was a good idea onto the page and realize it wasn't as great as they thought. I could also get onto their document and leave my own feedback or suggestions and then they could take it or leave it. Does this even count as writing? I thought it was cheating at first. But then I saw that the kids were focused on different elements of writing instead of getting held up on spelling and phonics and paragraph construction. If you are familiar with the 6 Traits Framework, Voice, Ideas, Word Choice and Sentence Fluency are all important features of great writing and these emerged in their pieces. 

It was a nail biting experience for me to reduce the amount of writing I assigned. I felt negligent and anxious about it. But by June, I could see that they actually were learning to write, to revise their writing and to write across different genres. 

Little Things At the End of June

Last night we had a campfire at my parents' house and the kids ran around and caught lightning bugs. We roasted hot dogs and watched storm clouds blow in. We didn't get home until 10, which is very late for us these days. Other than the weekend we picked M up from the end of his trail run, I haven't been out after dark in months. Max slept fitfully and in the morning when he woke up he told me he had swallowed a Lego and he was really worried about it being caught in his throat. But then he seemed to wake up a little more and we figured out that was just a dream. 

I worked at the restaurant for a little while today.  I was alone and only prepping food and cleaning things up, which is the lowest-stress situation you can have while working in a restaurant. The basement is filled with bar stools and chairs, removed to spread out the customers. I listened to several podcasts in a row without interruption, a rare experience for me. 

On my way home, the man who panhandles on our corner gave me a sack of sandwiches for the kids. I thought it was a very nice gesture, sharing what you cannot use yourself. 

I'm not spending as much time on my front porch as I used to. We have air conditioning now so when it gets very hot we just turn it on and go about our business. Before we had air conditioning it would become too hot to do anything and we would sit on the porch with our feet in buckets of water. Just sitting for hours.... chatting with the neighbor or painting with watercolors or counting cars. It's the end of the month and there are moving trucks everywhere. One is parked across the street. The trees block my view of the porch, but I can hear a man talking loudly on the phone in Spanish. 

There are fireworks going off, of course. From all directions.

There is a man shouting into the booth at the gas station for a particular brand of cigarettes. 

There is the whoosh of a bus pulling away from the stop. Bass from a passing car rattles the flowerpots. 

Everyone going about business as usual. It seems fine, but there's also a sense of anticipation in the air that I can't quite identify. What will happen next? We're all thinking it, but afraid to say it out loud. 

First Homeschool Evaluation

Evaluations for homeschool were waived this year, but I decided to schedule one anyway. I felt if I went through another school year without knowing if my paperwork was adequate, it would stress me out too much. Plus, I wanted to recognize and validate Laurel and Marko's hard work in some way. They wrote letters and I wrote a summary and we put samples of their work in plastic sleeves. It was very satisfying to see them holding the completed portfolios and talking about what they had learned. We met with the evaluator on her back porch and did elbow bumps instead of hand shaking when we finished. It turns out she also went to Pitt to be a reading specialist and we knew a lot of the same people! 

As new homeschoolers, we ditched a lot of what we originally planned. I did a ton of planning and fretting last summer! I even went to a homeschooling conference. Thankfully I didn't spend a ton of money on things we didn't use, but I definitely filled up my computer with files.

I ended up not doing a lot of daily lesson planning in advance. Instead we followed some routines (math, reading, writing and physical education every day....all other subjects once a week) and I would log what we read or did on these monthly log forms. Basically I just jotted down the title of the book or video and maybe a short note about an activity. I sat down with each kid one-on-one every day, but not for very long. We kept a lot of goal lists in our notebooks and referenced them frequently. We came up with some ways to make sure M got to work with the kids. Every few months I would glance over the standards on PDESAS just to see that we were on the right track or if there was something I should steer us towards by finding a book or video on a subject. 

The best mid year purchase I made was Brave Writer Arrow guides, but I also got a lot out of the (free) Brave Writer podcasts.  Julie Bogart's advice that "help helps" and "joy is the best teacher" really helped me break some of my worst teacher-y habits. I used to make kids struggle for so long on their own when they didn't know what the hell they were doing because I thought it was good for them to figure it out on their own. It was painful for everybody. She also helped me trust that my kids could actually master skills and content without doing massive amounts of repetitive work. The key is to spiral back and have them review things periodically. Waiting until my kids were in a good head space to tackle hard material was revolutionary. They become incredibly easy to teach and we both end up learning and having fun with each other. And that last part is really the thing that I'm going to focus on during the coming year...learning new things is fun and a great way to build a relationship.

We had a lot of adventures this year and it was wild to hear Marko and Laurel tell about watching a video on the Spiral Jetty and then driving down a dusty dirt road to actually see it in person. "It's art made of rocks! You can walk on it!" But even these months stuck at home, Marko learned to use a dremel and Laurel learned to double or half recipes and everybody made some music and read a million books. 

The big regret of this year was not connecting with other homeschoolers as much. We traveled a lot and then when we came back the pandemic kind of killed the opportunity for meetups or homeschool classes. We are still in touch with school friends, but it's a really challenging time to foster friendships with children.

Relationships

When the stay at home order was initiated in March, we didn't have a hard time adhering to it. Some of my kids had fevers during those first few weeks so we stayed home to keep our germs to ourselves. We already homeschooled and M had all the equipment to work remotely. During the fall, we left town for 2 1/2 months, so it felt a little bit like that...just our little pod of a family, intensely sinking into relationships with each other. Yes, we missed our friends and family, but it wasn't a hard thing for us to do. As it turned into two months, and then three, we started to really miss our gymnastics classes and horse riding. We cried when Girl Scout camp was canceled. We missed our usual routine of sleepovers with grandparents. 

Now we know some more things about COVID-19, but not really that much more. A hundred thousand people died in just the United States so far, it will easily double this year. We have no idea if people who get mild cases actually suffer long term consequences. We don't know when a vaccine will be available, if you can get it more than once, or even really how to treat the various presentations of the disease. New advances for treatment are being made all the time. I try to focus on that, and not the politicization of the pandemic. 

What I love is how our friends and family adapted to this situation and logged on to Zoom to visit with us, or met us in parks, hung out in our backyard or called us on the phone or wrote letters. Even our librarian has written to us! My kids feel so loved and a sense of connection despite the physical separation. I hope that people will continue to foster a sense of togetherness.

Calendar Pages

I have a giant paper calendar hanging on the side of the fridge, and today all the old sheets spilled out from it and scattered all over the floor. This particular calendar was started in July of 2019 when we were brand spanking new to homeschooling, and overly optimistic about what we might do with our newfound freedom from school. The pages are chock full of appointments and lessons and classes and overnights at my parents and week long trips to the Poconos and lots and lots of trail races. Funerals in Maryland and Girl Scout camping trips and penciled in times to go grocery shopping before the camping trips because cooking for 100 requires a lot of grocery store trips. Then there is a blank October sheet, because we were on a road trip for that entire month, but you can see us hopping back in immediately following that road trip, all through the winter months, also known as birthday season in my house. The March calendar starts off full...a trip to the Smithsonian museums and Girl Scout cookie sales and gymnastics classes. The activities after mid-month are half-erased. April is blank except for notations where we picked up groceries or otherwise went out into the public world. For personal contact tracing purposes, I think, although that seems a little silly now. May has a variety of Zoom meetings penciled in, as we've begun to accept this way of doing things. But mostly white space.

The days don't feel like white space. There is a lot of trying to stay one step ahead of the kids, and their chaos and messes. Failing horribly at this, of course, because reactionary parenting is for amateurs and won't get you anywhere. We have a lot of unfinished landscaping projects and mud is everywhere, little muddy footprints tracking up the stairs. Muddy fingerprints along the edge of the door frame. There are so many dishes. Every day I say a prayer of thanksgiving for the dishwasher.

It's simultaneously fine. We did a book exchange with some friends and they sent the most delightful books. The food is very good, every day. We currently have a lot of turnips and I baked them into a gratin tonight, alongside a roasted chicken, and spring greens mix salad. And that's just a Tuesday. On Sunday, M and Laurel baked a pie with the best crust I have ever tasted. The kids craft elaborate worlds in Legos and swing upside down on the jungle gym while chatting with our neighbors over the fence. Homeschool is fizzling out, but everyone is doing great at math. We are digging deep into our collection of books and recently discovered that none of us had read the Wizard of Oz yet. M made me a bird feeder out of scrap wood and a whiskey bottle and it's absolutely captivating to watch who comes to visit.

It's a train wreck in slow motion on the outside, but a nice warm cocoon in here. Next month is the last page of this calendar. Should I get a new one? I don't know what to write on the pages.

April Update

Homeschool update? Well, everything is canceled. We planned to drive to Tahoe in June and then loop up through the Pacific Northwest. Hit North Dakota on the way home, a state M and I have never traveled through. We were in search of wild mustangs, high peaks, cool summer temps and a chance to travel again with all those lessons learned from our fall journey. I had so many good recipes to try. Have you heard of powdered butter? Anyway, all the races are canceled so we are staying put until further notice. Maybe forever. A lot of people keep saying "when things go back to normal," but I'm not sure that's a useful expectation to hold right now. This week we are closing out Stella by Starlight, working through an Art Assignment on paper weaving and homecraft, and following our whims of creativity. I've been following a permaculture course and digging a sort of swale/water abatement channel in the backyard. Laurel started ukulele lessons. Marko is building a wooden box and learning to use the drill, screwdriver, hammers, saws and sand paper. Max is experimenting with the synthesizer. M has set up all his guitar pedals and amplifier. Laurel is about 80% proficiency on 4th grade math and expects to finish it up by June. Marko finished the 1st grade math around Christmas time, but continues to practice with addition and subtraction facts. I feel confident that they are at or above grade level in all areas except writing. They produce plenty of comics, shopping lists, thank you cards, newspapers and plays, but getting them to write an essay response to a question does not yield excellent results. I'm pretty satisfied with the overall growth everyone made academically this year, and I feel like we worked out a lot of kinks in our schedule and plans. I have a good idea of what books I want to order at the beginning of the next school year.

The pandemic definitely changed some things for us. We were driving around quite a bit for activities or to visit people....and shopping for groceries almost every day. It has been very nice to do bulk orders from Frankferd Farms and meat and produce shares from Wild Purveyors. We are doing a lot of cooking from scratch and have reduced the garbage we put to the curb by half. Positive changes we hope to carry on.

M and I plan to give them a summer "break" from all subjects except writing. We will give each of them (and us!) a journal and write together every day. I put "break" in quotes because it feels impossible to tease out what is the Home part and what is the School part of our day. I doubt they'll stop learning over the summer. But we aren't going to log into Khan Academy or plan a STEM week or anything. I'm hopeful we'll do a lot of camping, finish more projects around the house, enjoy a bountiful garden, play a lot of music, read captivating books, make art and eat delicious food.

Poetry Tea Time in a Pandemic

We did some poetry tea time today. I got the idea from Julie Bogart at Brave Writer, whose writing helped me shift our homeschooling into something I enjoy. Joy is the best teacher. although admittedly joy has been hard to summon this week. We have had some significant disruptions in our schedule and are definitely just trying to get used to all being together all the time. I have learned a lot about learning this year and know better than to jam it through. When kids (or you) are stressed, back off. Make sure everybody is exercising and sleeping first. Read every day. Pay attention to each other. Play cards. Stare at the clouds. Once you feel ok in your skin again you can add more stuff in. If your kids are in elementary school, this will not set them back in the least, I promise. 

We skipped a lot of school this week, but I did have a book of poetry from the library, which we get to keep indefinitely I guess. I grabbed the book, our candle and some cookies and milk. It is so simple. Dim the lights, light a candle, give everybody a treat and read. It might only last five minutes at first, and this is fine. I have two fluent readers now, so we passed the book around and everybody read a poem, even Max. (I did whisper reading with him.) The poetry collection was all about small things, so when we were done, I sent everyone off to find a small thing. I told them I would write a poem about each of their objects. Old me would have asked my kids to write a poem about a small object, and they would have groaned and it would have gone terribly. But now I know to try the things I want my kids to do. Anyway, they came back with a horse figurine, a pokemon card and a piece of a jade plant that fell onto the floor. I'm not even going to ask them to write poems yet, I'll just leave out a dish of small objects and we'll see what happens. 

Anyway, here are my poems....

Laurel’s Object: Horse Figurine

The first time I saw her on a horse

It was like I saw her for the very first time

Focused eyes, soft mouth

Moving in tandem with a giant animal

And looking like she had been there always.

You never tire of watching your child as 

The best version of herself.

So if I step on a horse figurine in the night

I will still curse, until my fingers reach down

Curl around the plastic body, feel the trotting legs

Tail and mane flowing, molded to show movement

And then I will smile and think of her.

Marko’s Object: Jade branch fallen from the houseplant

Even in the best of times

A houseplant can be a burdensome ward

If you travel far and close your blinds

If you move it onto the radiator to dust the shelf

And it gets too hot

If you forget you have watered it

And water too soon

Or the other way, both are bad.

It’s a lot to keep track of.

But in the worst of times

A houseplant is a reminder of the way things

Used to be.

When your to-do list said something else.

Max’s Object: Pokemon Card

Stack of cards

Lay them straight

Flip them over

Count to eight

Who will be

The best in all?

Wait and see

Until I call.