Confessions of a Supermom

Well, today was tax day on Guam, and as usual, I was down to the wire on getting them finished. But I was successful. The tensions that lead up to tax time for me, always leave me a bit drained afterward. As a result, I arrived home from the day with a raging headache.

Alas, Supermom cannot take time off for headaches, so I whipped up dinner (teriyaki chopped steak with rice and peas). After dinner, I was resting my chin on my hands at the table when Cassie brought over an alphabet stencil card and asked me what it was for.

She stood before me in stained shirt and shorts, grubby hands clutching the plastic purple stencil.
"You need a bath." I said, before answering her original query.
"You mean a shower, " she said, since our new house doesn't exactly have a bathtub, more of a high tiled large shower stall.
"Bath...shower.....whatever. You need one before bed." I answered.
"You mean like other kids get before bed?" she asked.

Uh, oh. My supermom status was at risk here! I had been found out. No regular nightly baths for my kids? Truth is my kids are always in the water - whether at our beach office or at a swimming pool, and so often the rinses after swimming sufficed for their daily bath time. But sometimes, like today obviously, where Cassie had had an active day playing at the office, inside and outside, riding her bike and attending jump rope class (she can now do "kriss kross" jumping!) a real bath was necessary.

But before bath time, we needed to address the alphabet stencil question. I found an old bill on the table and flipped it over to the blank side and showed her how she could use the stencil to write her name. That lead to her wanting to try and she wrote "Mom" and "Dad" after a few hints on how to find the letter "d". Some letters just like to give kids trouble! From those two words, Cassie proceeded to find and strace out "Adam", "Stephanie", "Eric" and "Kevin", (learning some important phonetic rules along the way). Her interest in the process lasted through some cat names too - Daisy, Pillage, Wafflebox, and Nobby.

At one point during this impromptu writing lesson, Eric came along and bet me $5 he could write "Pteradactyl aquarium of the legends in industries" with less than 10 spelling mistakes or "wrong letters" as he put it. So the game was on. He made it with only 8 wrong letters and then wrote the sentence "Thanksgiving plan doesn't work out as expected." with only 3 mistakes. So as soon as I get some more money in hand, I owe him.

What I loved about this evening is that both children enthusiastically initiated a learning task appropriate to their level. More learning occurred in that half hour of interaction than an entire day in school would have accomplished.

Bath time happened (shower actually). Chocolate cookies were baked and eaten. Legos were played with, and now one child is asleep curled up on a bean bag chair while the other is reading a science book "Kid's Ask Where" and sharing tid bits of knowledge with me as I type. My headache has abated and it's time to call it a night.

Who's Business is it?

In the past few weeks I have had various people comment on my children and their future plans. It seems that people are concerned that my children seem directionless and too "shy" to amount to anything. Hence the title of this blog post.

I have been homeschooling my kids for over 20 years, with a few minor forays into public or private schools. Over the years I have come to follow the unschooling philosophy. It suits our lifestyles, my personality and the personalities of my children -- which are varied.

My oldest son was very self motivated. Taught himself to read at 2 1/2. Knew what he wanted (most of the time), and how to get what he wanted. During his stint in private school he saw his own learning gaps and figured out how to fill them in. Now at 24, he is an active member of the US Air force and has just CLEP tested his way to an associate's degree. He's currently taking a break from his learning to assess just where he wants to go before declaring a major and pursuing his Bachelor's degree. Unschooling was ideal for him as it allowed him to pursue his own interests and excell in them.

My second son is an artist and a dreamer. He is the one "people" are most concerned about. Friends and family seem to feel it is necessary to question whether we are doing the "right" thing with him. From birth he idolized his big brother. As a child he was sensitive to sounds, smells and touch. He never liked to play in the sand at the beach. He liked to line his cars up in rows and he liked to keep his toys neat and organized. In 1st grade, his one year in public school, he hid under his desk during times of stress, had few friends, didn't talk to people and was labeled as "shy". His teacher tried to blame my homeschooling him through kindergarten for his behavior. However I had been a preschool teacher, and he had come to work with me for the first 5 years of his life, so was always exposed to groups of children and learning situations. Since kindergarten in Canada was just an extension of preschool, I really don't think he missed a thing. This was just Adam. After we moved to Guam, Adam and Kevin were forced to spend a lot of time together, and with their uncle Mike, (same age as Kevin). Together they wrote their own newsletter and created their own videos. An artistic streak began to emerge for Adam. He loved to draw and create and write stories and poems. At the same time he prefered to keep to himself and did not attempt to make any friends. And he was happy. When he was 11, our family had a little snack shop in the preschool I worked at, and Adam became the main counter attendant --selling the snacks to the parents and children, keeping the shelves stocked, making change, using his organziational skills to keep the counters neat and clean. And daily interacting with people. Still he prefered to keep his thoughts and voice to himself. At 16 he expessed an interest in music and asked for an electric guitar for his birthday. Alone in his room, he taught himself to play guitar and later piano and before I knew it, he was composing his own music on computer. When he turned 18 we declared him graduated from homeschool. Now it was time for him to decide what he wanted to do with his life. He told us he didn't want to move out. He wanted to stay home and work on his music. Since he was such a great asset to our household, helping out, looking after his younger siblings, cleaning, cooking, and (once he got his license), driving them around, we agreed to let him stay home as long as he was willing to help us in our family business. So now at 20 he has composed over 50 songs and compiled them on CDs. He has competently run our northern office for the last year, keeping it clean, maintained, dealing with clients and employees, and handling the finances. He is learning business and management skills that are invaluable. At the same time he is allowed to continue to pursue his music. So what if he still prefers not to talk unnecessarily, or he has no "friends". Sometimes I think his silence is what scares people. They can't understand why someone would prefer to keep their thoughts to themselves.

Then there are the rest of the kids. All different. All unique. And since this is getting so long I'll have to tell you all about them in another post.

More on Writing

Today I was talking with a new homeschooling mom who was very concerned about teaching writing to her daughter. She showed me an example of her girl's writing lessons and my first reaction was "did you write this for her? " The printing was impeccable and the spelling and punctuation perfect.

"How old did you say she is?" I asked.
"She's almost 8."
"And what is your concern?"

I really didn't get it. I saw nothing wrong with this young girl's writing. Sentence structure was fine. The sentences made sense. And the handwriting floored me. I know that often girls are more meticulous than boys but when I thought about my son's handwriting I have to admit I was a little embarrassed. I'm not sure I'd want to show this particular mom a sample of Eric's writing. Especially since she obviously has very high expectations. You see, she was concerned because her daughter had struggled to write this paper. She had complained and whined and fussed. She wanted to go outside and search for bugs not write a paper. Mom was worried that her daughter wasn't up to par with others in her age bracket.

I did my best to reassure her. At the same time, inside of me I wanted to say, "cut the girl some slack!" She has been having her daughter write a daily journal, as well as do all other kinds of writing depending on the curriculum assignments of the day. No wonder the girl was whining! I would whine too if I had to sit for 3 hours a day writing when the world outside was calling me.

Even as a seasoned homeschooler it is hard for me to get parents to understand that this kind of coercive writing is not going to encourage a young child to be creative. She complained to me that her daughter didn't have any ideas for what to write and had a hard time using her imagination. My best advice to her was to ease off. Have her write one story a week. The rest of the time, let her explore her world. As she is given the freedom to do this, I have a feeling the ideas will start to flow.

Beta Testing

Back in January I signed my 9yo son and myself up to be beta testers for a writing curriculum. I was probably too ambitious in doing such a thing. The product, Write Shop Primary, Book C, is a wonderful easy to use writing curriculum for children in 2nd or 3rd grade. Our job was to test and evaluate this product. 

When the intro and first lessons arrived in my inbox, I eagerly printed them out. In my effort to be conservative and thrifty, I printed it double sided and reduced the text to fit two pages per side of the sheet. This was my first mistake! I keep neglecting to factor in, that at 45, my eyes are just not as good as they used to be. As I read through the introduction I found myself straining to read the small text and ultimately straining to understand it! But really this was a visual problem and no fault of the material. So after realizing that I just wasn't getting it, I printed it out again, still double siding the paper, but in it's original font. So much for saving a tree! And now I was a week behind in my "testing" schedule. 

Eager to prove that this unschooling mom could in fact follow and implement a lesson plan when necessary, I proceeded throught the first 3 activities for week 1. Only it took me all week instead of 3 days. Oops. Getting further behind now. Other participants were already commenting on Week 2 lessons and I had 5 more activities to do to finish week 1! Now granted this program is designed to do the Lessons (each consisting of 8 activities, plus bonus levels...I mean extras ...sorry to slip into video game speak, my kids are rubbing off on me) in 3 weeks but we are supposed to be on the fast track in order to finish this evaluation in 10 weeks. Yikes. 

So maybe we'll skip some activities to speed things up. One activity is a Daily Writing Activity, or Guided Writing Practice. The accelerated schedule would mean we would have to do two of these a day. So we skip the second one. Thankfully the consensus from the group is in agreement on this. Granted every day we are supposed to do the GWP as a warm up for the rest of the lesson. Eric found this hard to do everyday. And since our educational philosophy balks at "forcing" a child to do something, I tend to let it slide. Eric does write everyday. But it is what he choses to write. He has a whole video game/comic book series going on in his head day and night. So as the muse hits him he draws these out - cartoon style with more drawing than writing. But a story is being told, so I encourage this form of writing. However, it is not what the curriculum requires....

It's been three weeks now and I have basically let this "project" slide further down the hill of procrastination. We have several things that have occurred in our lives - my husband started working for a new wedding company which means more work & more stress as we all adjust to his new schedule. I've had to assume more responsibility at the office. At the same time I've been battling depression and weight issues and trying to get to the gym more often. And we decided to move from our beach house. We have given ourselves lots of time to do this move, but it still requires us to do some planning and packing and lots of cleaning. Needless to say, making sure I do a lesson everyday with Eric has not been happening. 

But all is not lost. The ideas in this writing curriculum are really valuable. I sure could have used this and implemented it well when I was teaching at ECA last year. I will highly recommend this to anyone looking for a good writing program for their children. 

How does an unschooler utilize such a great program? Ideas!! I collect books, curricula, magazines, e-books, lesson plans, etc. so that I can strew them before me kids. Yesterday I told Eric that we really needed to crack down and do some story writing and that tomorrow we would start. Later in the evening I asked Cassie where Eric was and found out he was in the bedroom working on one of his Whiskers stories. When I later checked, sure enough he had written two full pages. His spelling and punctuation where non existent but the sentence structure and thought were wonderful. 

Using hints and pointers from the Write Shop program, I photocopied Eric's story and we used the copy to edit his spelling and punctuation. Then I showed him how to open up Word and type this on the computer. He has just recently been playing with typing on the computer so this is great practice for him. At first he was silly and started banging on the keyboard, typing gibberous.  I have to be careful not to get exasperated with this behavior as it is part of his personality to try to irritate his mother. So I walked away saying "never mind, I can see you're not ready for this" which made him stop and say "no I'll do it proper now" and he began typing his story. He managed to work for about 10 minutes dilligently before he grew tired, announcing that it is much harder to tpye than to use a pen. I showed him how to save his work. 

So in one day's time we covered "computer capers", "editing", and we also went back and did one of the lesson activity pages from lesson two - the secret file. We are waiting on his dad's opinion on whether to pursue turning that into a real story due to the "RRRRRRRRR" rating Eric gave his story (due to extreme blood he said - the hero is decapitated and the monster drowns in the ensuing blood). 

We may not be the best beta testers for this program, and we may not be following the lessons to the "t" but Eric is having fun and mom is learning how to roll with the flow. 

The New Reading Method

I've been reading John Holt's book "Teach Your Own". He quotes from the Chicago Tribune (1977) a story about the new reading program that has been 10 years in the making. "A program that may be the pacesetter for the nation...". It involved 500 elements or skills that children needed to learn in order to learn to read. They whittled that down to 273. John Holt was incredulous about this new method, and describes his own learning to read process:

 

 "When I taught myself to read, I didn't learn 500 skills, or even 273; I looked at printed words, on signs, in books, wherever I might see them, and puzzled them out, because I wanted to know what they said.  Each one I learned made it easier for me to figure out the next." (page 17, Teach Your Own)

This was essentially how my first son taught himself to read before the age of 3. He asked questions about letters, asked me what sounds they made, read signs at the grocery store, made me read the same books over and over as he puzzled out the words. 

Further in John's book he talks about other reading programs and classroom situations where children were not allowed to read certain books because they weren't at that level yet. He further describes a substitute teacher's success at implementing a silent reading program to a class and having children suddenly interested in reading....because they were allowed to read a book! What a concept!! 

Can you imagine a class situation where a child enters a class and is told "No Johnny, I'm sorry you can't read that book. It's on the 3rd grade reading list and you are only in 1st grade." In a sense this is what happened to my son. He entered Kindergarten already reading and writing these wonderful stories. His spelling and penmanship were atrocious, but I figured that was what school could teach him. His teachers had other ideas. The poor boy was bored to death being forced to stay with the class, do phonics worksheets, and read simple sentences like "the cat sat on the mat". When I asked for him to be moved up a grade I was told he was "socially immature" and therefore not ready for the 1st grade. Because he was a loner and chose not to interact with a classroom of "babies" as he put it. Thank goodness I learned about homeschooling. Today that socially immature child has just been promoted to Senior Airman in the US Air Force, a full 6 months ahead of the normal schedule for such promotions. 

From the website:http://usmilitary.about.com/od/airforce/l/blafrank.htm

here is a description of what that entails:

Senior Airmen (SrA) wear a chevron of three stripes with a silver star in the center. Pay grade is E-4. Personnel serving as SrA are in a transition period from journeyman/worker to NCO. They must develop supervisory and leadership skills through PME (Professional Military Education) and individual study. All SrA should conduct themselves in a manner commensurate with established standards, thereby asserting a positive influence on other airmen. The SrA must, at all times, present the image of competence, integrity, and pride. The official term of address is “senior airman” or “airman.”

I'm thinking he rose above that kindergarten label. 

Over the years I have encountered many new reading programs. Currently on Guam there is much debate over D.I. - Direct Instruction - which is a reading method that was originally developed for underprivileged communities. It was brought to Guam several years ago and has been forced upon the public schools as THE learning to read method that will improve test scores for the children of Guam. All that I have seen it do is take away a child's love of reading by making reading a rote exercise. Other subjects like art, music, science, and social studies have been set aside as the DI takes up too many hours of the instructional time in school. So at the cost of the arts and sciences, Guam's children are forced to endure the most boring teaching method around.

In John Holt's book he predicted that in 10 years there would be a new reading program. That was back in 1981 in Chicago. Twenty-seven years later I'm sure there has been more than one new program. What will the next new one be?

 As a homeschooler, I never need to know. I will continue to teach my children to read successfully using the method that works. Reading books, books, and more books. 

Happy Swapping

'Tis the season to start getting rid of STUFF. I have too much of it as it is. As the children get older I need to start letting go and cleaning out. Each year they accumulate more and more items via gifts or just acquiring. And with Christmas coming more stuff is going to appear.

Some is much needed like new clothes, or to replace broken items. And some is just for fun because we can. It is nice to be able to give your children something they really want. Why not? As parents shouldn't we desire to give good gifts to our children?

With those two thoughts in mind, here is my brilliant solution to the too much stuff syndrome. I have good quality used baby toys, mostly from Discovery Toys that I acquired as demo toys for my business, and of course they were well used by my own kids. The great thing about Discovery Toys is they are good quality and therefore, even after being well used, they clean up great and look almost brand new. Lots of play life still left in them. Now I could probably sell them at a garage sale for $1.00 a toy. Or I could do a trade with a family that has a new baby in the house, but whose 10 year old son has outgrown his bike. A perfectly good bike that my son could use. What is one man's junk is another man's treasure, right? (or woman's).

So here is my challenge to all you who read this post. This Christmas start up a toy swap with your friends, or a dish swap, or linen swap or whatever kind of swap you can think of. The bartering system is a viable option. You can clean out your cupboards at the same time as helping someone else clean out theirs. Happy Swapping!

Twilight, the book

Okay my 14yo just gave me her feedback on Twilight, the book. We have yet to see the movie as she wants to finish the book first. At first I wasn't into letting her jump on the Twilight bandwagon. After all, she is sweet and innocent and do I really want her to start reading love stories? Especially ones involving vampires? Unfortunately I'm fighting a losing battle as she will grow older. She will want to read some romance stories. And inevitably a vampire will be involved. 'Cause that's what's out there.

Confession time. I bought the book and read it first. Okay, I'm just a teen at heart. I love reading the teen books. I bought and read and encouraged my children to read Harry Potter. I like an easy read. I can get lost in a good book.

Which is why when I first picked up Twilight and started to read it I was wondering what the big thrill was. It didn't really "grab" me at first and I didn't finish the book with an insane desire to jump to the next one. Not like other books I've read. But it was okay.

So I asked Steph what she thought.
"At first I couldn't figure out what I didn't like about her (the author) style. But I got it now. It's like fan fiction."

"Fan Fiction?"
"Yeah, you know, I read a lot of it online. Some is good and some is not so good. But it reads like a better fan fiction......"

She confesses to me that maybe she feels this way because she just finished reading four Terry Pratchett books. Whose writing style is far from Fan Fiction style. I'm reminded that this is the child who read Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame for fun when she was 11. Who started reading Redwall books at 7 and missed out on a whole genre of books written for 7-9 year olds because she skipped right on over them. Who listens to French operas (in
French of course) because "the language is soo beautiful...."

Such discernment for a 14 year old.

Our mutual consensus is that Twilight has an interesting story line, is easy to read, but doesn't make you go "oh wow" and want to read and feel the taste of the words on your mouth.

I'm sure the movie will disappoint me, as it has others by not following the storyline properly, but it does sound like it will be a fun vampire movie.