The Road Not Taken

If you have been to my website you will have seen this post before. I'm changing my homeschool page a bit and needed to take it off. So I'm posting it here so it will still be available.

I often think of Robert Frosts poem "The Road Not Taken" when I consider our decision to homeschool over fifteen years ago.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

I remember looking down that road and wondering where it would take me. Was it safe? Would I ruin my children if I homeschooled them? Or was it possible that if we were brave enough to take that less traveled road that I could do something better for my children.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

I consider now the nature walks, the wonderful books we've read together, the amazing discussions we've had and all the mornings we sat at our kitchen table sipping hot chocolate and waving to the other children as they trudged through freshly fallen snow to get to school. And my heart longs for the simplicity of those early days of homeschooling.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

The opportunities that first step into the lifestyle of homeschooling could not be seen from that place where I stood when I made the decision. Our world opened up to new possibilities for learning and doing things we never would have had the space in our lives to accomplish.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Oh! It has made all the difference. My beautiful children know who they are. They are confident in many things that I hadn't learned until I learned it with them. They know how to take on a challenge and succeed. They are happy and our family is strong.

It has made all the difference.

Art Appreciation Notebook

         
Norman Rockwell made life look interesting. He took the most ordinary and added characters that make us smile. The work of Rockwell and other artists can be appreciated by creating an art appreciation notebook. Years ago at a Charlotte Mason conference, Erlyn Barlocher gave a presentation where she taught how to do this. I’ve may have made adjustments to what she taught there, but here is what we’ve done.

Choose an artist and find prints of several paintings. You will study one painting every week. Using paintings from the same artist for six weeks in a row brings familiarity with that artist’s work. One place to find collections of paintings is in calendars. It's most exciting when I find them discounted because it's several months into the year and they are surplus.

Use the following schedule outline of activities to develop your notebook. There are activities for four days, giving you some flexibility in your school week.

• Day 1 - Memory Drawing. Students study the painting for a couple minutes, trying to memorize as many details as possible. The painting is hidden and the students draw the painting from memory
• Day 2 – Narration. Again the painting is pulled out and they study it for a couple minutes and then put it away. The purpose in this is to train students to pay attention to details. The student then narrates the details of what they saw in the painting. If they are young it may be more effective to have them narrate verbally while you type. As they get older, let them record their voice and then write it down. They will help them become more comfortable with the process the more they do it and soon be writing their own narrations with no trouble.
• Day 3 – Write a Story. This was always the favorite activity of the week. Show the painting again. Let them study it for a couple minutes and put it away. Each student writes their own creative story about what they saw in the picture. They tend to get very creative and sometimes silly. With the younger ones it may be appropriate again to let them narrate their story verbally while you type. Give them as much time as they need. If you are concerned about staying on schedule, plan this activity at the end of your school day or some other time when you have more flexibility.
• Day 4 – Final Drawing. This time you keep the painting out for the entire activity. They study the painting, imitating the details in their own final drawing. They should be given as much time as they need to make this drawing as nice as possible.

Note: Finding the paintings can be the most challenging part of this activity. Do you know other places to find inexpensive prints?

Flexibility in Using Story of the World

Story of the World can be a great resource, especially for homeschoolers who feel unsure about teaching history. In these books, Susan Wise Bauer has written about for events and people in chronological order, which can help you know what to study.

            However, after using it for a while, many are finding that students get bored with just reading a little about each person or event. They realize the need to dig further into a subject to help students connect with people that lived long ago. The Activity Book helps with some of this, but there is more you can do to keep history alive while using Story of the World.

            Don’t be afraid to use this or any other text as a guide and only a guide. Most of us chose to homeschool because of the freedom it offers in meeting individual needs of our students. You may not cover every event and person in Story of the World in the slotted time, but your students will connect with history on a different level if you are willing to let go of the rigid schedule and explore a bit more.

            As you make your plan for the year, go through Story of the World, or whatever other text you might be using, and choose key people or events you would like to explore in more depth. When you get to these, go to the library and find everything you can on this topic. Look for books on each child’s reading level. Consider putting Story of the World aside completely for a week or two and read together allowing your children the pleasure of discovering the interesting tidbits that will bring a person or event to life for them. Lapbooks are great way to delve into this information. Making a few lapbooks every year was always about the right mix for my children.

            Another thing to do with your history study is to create a timeline. There are many ways to do this. Here are a couple ideas for creating yours:

1.      Create a large timeline to hang on the wall or around the entire room. We once made a timeline that went down our stairwell, across and back up the other side.

2.      Use a notebook to create your timeline. See My Book of the Centuries, available at The Learning Cottage if you want a simple and inexpensive way to create yours.

            As always, remember to enjoy the journey. If you are dragging through each day and hating it, then it’s time to change things up a bit. The beauty of homeschooling is that there’s more than one way to learn history.

           Do you have any other ideas for bringing history to life?

Animal Notebook

I've been looking back through the homeschool projects we've done over the years and I came across our animal notebook. It's interesting to look at it now and see some of what the kids added to the notebook. I'm also noticing things we could have done to make it even more effective.

When they were younger we used to buy a yearly pass to the zoo and make alot of trips, learning all we could by visiting the animals. My children were so fascinated with animals that whenever I gave them a choice of a non-fiction topic to study, they almost always chose an animal.

The animal notebook started as a collection of animals we studied. It started when I only had two young children. As they grew and more children joined our family we pulled it out again later and  added more. When we studied a particular animal we woould make a page where we cut out all the pictures of that animal that we could find. The kids each drew their own pictures of that animal which are a precious record of their drawings now. We included a fact sheet that listed all the information we learned about the animal. The questions we tried to answer with each animal were as follows: 

• What do they eat?
• Is this animal a vertbrate?
• How do they deal with the cold?
• How many babies do they have at a time?
• Where do they live?
• What color are they?

 Looking at this list now I can think of lots of other questions we could add to it. But when we started it, we were probably looking for something basic, since they were still very young.

The one thing that really strikes me now as I look at it is that I should have had them all writing something to add to the book. A creative story about that animal or something they learned. Even if they told me the story and I had written it down that would have helped them with their writiing skills. But overall if there is one thing I regret, its that I didn't require them to write enough.

It's fun to look back through projects like this. The bring back memories of different times in our homeschooling lives.

Tell us what fun project you are working on with your children.

Hands-on Learners

Kinesthetic learners are exhausting. They have to be doing something all the time. If their hands are not busy they will find something to do with them…tap on the table…pick on their sister…you get the idea. If you have hands-on learners you know what I’m talking about.

As the mother of six active children I've always looked for ways to enhance the learning of my children by letting them do. We love games and manipulatives that provide an active approach to learning. File folder games, lapbooks and other activities keep their hands busy and their minds focused on the subject at hand, helping them to comprehend and learn effectively.

I love to come across new ideas for making it hands-on; like the one in the picture. Here's how you do it. You'll need a round piece of cardboard. An easy way to come up with this is to buy the cardboard cake holders like the one pictured above. You can find them in the cake decorating section and they are intended to put a round cake on before you decorate it. They usually come in a stack with several to work with.

Choose what you want to focus on whether it is times tables or synonyms and antonyms as in the example above. I chose to put synonyms on one side and antonyms on the other. Write these systematically around the edge. Then, on clothespins, write the answers that will match up to each item around the edge. Because I made mine two sided, I wrote answers on both sides of the clothes pin, but carefully colored the edge of the clothespin on the side where the synonym answers are.

When they play, they pull all the clothes pins off the edge of the cardboard and mix them up. Then the goal is to get each clothes pin back where it belongs.

Any time we can give variety to learning it helps keep the mind open. For example, yesterday while teaching one of my piano students, I asked if he had worked on his theory. I've never been crazy about theory workbooks, but it came with him from his other teacher and so I've assigned it. However, he never does it. He said yesterday that after being in school all day the theory seems too much like school work. Sitting down to the piano and practicing was okay, but he just hate doing the theory. I pulled out the music Wrap-ups. If you've never seen these they are a great tool when children are drilling facts that must be mastered. I handed it to him and he was excited. I asked if he wanted to work on the Wrap-ups every week at lessons or take it home. He wanted to take it home and practice it every day. Now instead of begging him to do theory he made the commitment on his own to work on it daily. I love it when a child enjoys learning.