Write about an autumn day from a leaf’s perspective.
Image by Jewel (cc cropped)
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Archive for October, 2014
Friday Freewrite: If you were a leaf
Your Secret Homeschool Weapon
You thought I’d tell you what your secret weapon is in the first sentence? Oh heaven’s no. You will have to read a bit to find out.
Do you have kids who don’t want to “do school” or resist a new curriculum or say they hate assignments or projects? Maybe you keep telling them that at some point they will just “have to learn to write” or they “can’t write fiction forever” or they “can’t play all day”?
It’s one of those things where you kinda sorta freak out a bit when that resistance really gets going—in the form of fights, tears, refusal to even write one sentence, a willingness to outlast you.
Are we on the same page?
The tendency is to view yourself in those moments as a teacher who deserves respect and authority by virtue of being the home educator. You think you have the right to expectations because you are in charge. You can’t understand why that sweet little munchkin is becoming such a curmudgeon!
Here’s the thing, though. You’re at home. You’re the parent. Your kids know that there is negotiating space. That’s what home is. It’s the one place where “have to’s” have less power. Home is supposed to be a relief from the stress of the outside pressures of life. Enforcing “school” at home feels so contrary to the natural untidiness, lack of schedule-ness that home represents in life.
You need to embrace home as a home educator first—really allow yourself to notice and enjoy its properties (you know, like waking up when you want, wearing pj’s until lunch, or cuddling with a blanket on the couch for read aloud time).
For those formats and practices and programs you wish to see flourish in your home, then, you need to embrace them through that lens.
You ready? Here’s your secret weapon:
Stop talking. Start doing.
In other words, if you want a child to write in a new form, stop telling your child to write in that form!
Wake up, gather paper and pencil, and after breakfast, without a word (that’s the key here), start writing. Write the kind of thing you are expecting your child to write. You might be:
- crafting a thank you note.
- creating a short essay on paper dolls.
- copying a quote from a book you love.
- composing a non-fiction paragraph about Pocahontas.
Your kids may hover around you saying, “What are you doing? When do we start math? Mom, can I have more orange juice?”
You might respond: “I’m writing about Pocahontas. In fact, I can’t remember: does anyone remember the name of her tribe? Can someone get me the book we were reading?”
Keep going.
Someone asks, “Mom what am I supposed to do while you are writing?”
You reply, “I don’t know. What do you feel like starting with today? I’m going to work on this. You’re free to help me. Or you can get going with math. But I’m doing this.”
Then do it. Keep going.
Some will join you.
And because YOU are doing the assignment, you will discover just how difficult it is, too. You’ll have some raw direct experience of just what it is you are asking your child to do!
At some point in the next few weeks of doing a couple of these, you will see that your kids start to participate. You don’t simply flip over to telling them to take over, but you can say, “If you want to work on your own version of this, I’m happy to help you while I complete mine.”
Be open to collaboration, to multiple children doing one project, to everyone helping you with your project. This is HOME. Not school. Not about grade levels. This is about giving your kids a chance to watch a process before they have to engage in it or learn how to do it. This is your chance to model and lead by silence, rather than lecture and enforcement.
Try it!
Image © Sergey Khakimullin | Dreamstime.com
Student Spotlight: Cassidy!
Brave Writer student, Cassidy, not only won last May’s Preschool Powol Packets poetry contest in the 7-9 year old category (she entered a sonnet she wrote for our Shakespeare Family Workshop class) and created a Poet-Tree, she has now authored her own book!!
Roller Coaster: A Kid’s Guide on How to Write Poetry
A kid’s guide to writing poetry, by an 8-year-old kid like you! Cassidy wanted to show other kids how easy it is to write a poem of their own. In this book, she introduces and explains some of the most common types of poems. As examples, she also shares the poems she composed in April 2014 in honor of National Poetry Month. Some of the poems are silly and goofy. Some are clever. You will have fun reading and learning about poetry at the same time!
Congratulations, Cassidy! We’re so proud of your accomplishments!
Poetry Teatime: Hot apple cider, cake pops, and Shel Silverstein
Hot apple cider, cake pops (a rare treat from Starbucks), and the silliness of Shel Silverstein made for an enjoyable teatime this week with my posse of boys.
“Oh, I found one more I want to read!” my eight-year-old squealed over and over before beginning another poem from Where the Sidewalk Ends.
While something always seems to spill and table manners could always improve, Tuesday Teatime is a special treat for all of us.
Sonya
Image (cc)
Visit our Poetry Teatime website!
Focus on the Subject More than the Child
I want to let you in on the fruit of a lot of late night reading and middle of the night insomnia. The question pawing at me like a nocturnal kitten: What works in parenting? I’m plum worn out from the sad accounts of kids who are clearly bright, sharp adults who rendered the verdict on their childhoods: thumbs down.
I know that we parents come into the task completely green. Sure, we were parented, but we rarely feel qualified to be parents on that basis alone. We head off to websites and books, retreats and conferences looking for models that will ensure that OUR children will have good lives and grow up to be responsible, cheerful, good people. We want guarantees, because life is fraught with chaos and surprises (both welcome and unwelcome).
We trust experts and friends and religious leaders and therapists and anyone who seems authoritative and successful in their own right. We trust methods untested. We hope we are doing right by our kids.
What I am starting to see, though, is this odd trajectory.
The kids who claim to have had happy childhoods were not their parents’ projects.
Rather, the children who grow to be successful, happy adults are the ones whose projects were absorbing to their parents.
See what I did there?
In other words—if you focus more on the stuff that you and your kids care about (the big wide world of learning—books, birds, boats, Beowulf, beauty, bobcats, Broadway, battles, buoyancy, bodies, baked goods, Barbies, Bilbo—and those are just some of the subjects starting with the letter ‘B’!), you will create a much more bonded relationship with your children and they will learn how to be competent adults, than all the character training you impose, expect, exact, and create through whatever parenting method you choose.
It turns out that focusing on how to parent your child is less powerful than joining your child in the shared adventure of living.
In the end, what leaves the best impression on your kids is your hearty, enthusiastic participation in the stuff of life—and sharing those experiences with your kids as though they are welcome and a constitutive part of your own experience!
Some of that exploration will be parent led, some of it will be child led, but all of it will be experienced with wide-eyed wonder, a lack of judgment (no more—does Minecraft really count? are Barbies dangerous?), and an investment of real time—time you don’t have—time that could go to other stuff like chores, bedtimes, math pages, and baths.
Our homeschools thrive when learning is what we care about more than parenting. Ironically, being a good parent gets tossed into the bargain, when we do. Punishment, teaching responsibility, lectures about character, holding kids accountable to adult standards of behavior—these don’t seem to produce the results we think they will.
But jumping into the middle of an adventure—reading, playing a video game, building a bonfire, hiking, calculating to produce a quilt, joining a dance company, visiting the zoo every week, playing with words, baking cookies, acting out scenes from Shakespeare—these do more to “parent” your kids than you realize.
Go forth and be interested in life…bring your kids along. They’ll thank you for it when they get older.
Top image by Brave Writer mom, Ariana (cc).
