Archive for the ‘Homeschool Advice’ Category

“One Thing” High School Style Part One
(or what happened to Cozy Learning?)

Lots of moms are very comfortable with what I might call “cozy” learning during the early years. “Cozy learning” is that unhurried longer look at a topic of interest using our natural appetites to guide us in our study. So, for instance, if bird calls entice, a cozy learner packs an apple and a bottle of water in a backpack, loads the stroller and sling into the car and ties the shoe laces of her other three under-ten year old kids as they head out to the hills to hike. She hands out the free field guides she got from National Geographic when she renewed her subscription. When the four-year-old exclaims, “Mom, look! That’s an American Crow!” pointing simultaneously to the photo in the book, the happy homeschooling mother contentedly reflects on the day as a success. Learning happened.

Cozy learning, then, is that wonderful intersection of real studies combined with natural lifestyle (yummy snacks, walks, long looks, snuggling under blankets, fires blazing, soft music, enjoyment of art – both admiring masterpieces and finger painting-cheerful enthusiasm when learning the structure of the ear canal or the shape of a teepee or how to skip count 7s).

By junior high, the coziness starts to disappear. It happens slowly. This odd notion called, “Now it really counts” moves in and takes the cozy learner hostage. With the gun of college prep requirements aimed at the homeschooling parent’s transcript generator cautiously saved on the hard disk, panic and doubt ensue.

Sure she knows a Picasso from a Monet, but will that really help her get into college?

He’ll read any novel I hand him, but I can’t get him to take interest in current events. Doesn’t he need to care about his world and understand how to interpret the events of today to make it as an adult?

And math. Oh. My. Toothbrush! What will I do? My kids stopped loving it and I stopped knowing how to teach it and don’t they need at least three good years of it to get to college?

I’ve barely scratched the surface of the concerns. Writing, history, economics and believe it or not, some moms even stress over PE and Health. They look at the college admissions list, remember their own high school days and immediately lose all the love of learning they’ve cultivated for the last eight years. Enter Madam Textbook and Master Year-Long Program.

I totally get it. I yielded to the pressure like any good mom. When my oldest two were in 8th and 10th grade, I got “serious” and planned a program that would have them studying like good students for several hours a day, writing narrations, reading meaty books, preparing oral and written reports, all while being tutored in math, of course. Within eight weeks, my daughter (the 8th grader) told me she hated her life. My 10th grader looked at me one day and said, “If this is what college will be like, I don’t want to go.”

Good thing my hearing is fine. My nerves, however, were not and I did what I do when my plans fail. I freaked out. You see, the one thing I’m not good at – looking at a miserable child and doing nothing. We started over. I went back to what I really believed about education. Deep down I knew that what you hated to do did not educate you. It harmed you and your relationship to that subject (and the person requiring it). I also knew that any subject could be engaging if the learner bought in (believed he or she needed to learn it) and the delivery was compelling.

So I rethunk a lot of things at that point. My “rethunkings” will be posted in installment two: How I turned four years of fulltime “college prep requirements” into four years of doing one thing at a time.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, General, Homeschool Advice, One Thing | 5 Comments »

The “One Thing” Drum Beat

The One Thing Drum Beat

For two years, my kids got stuck in Ancient Greece. Try as I might to drag them into Rome, they dug in their heels and kept reading myths. We read them in every version we could find them. Correction: my kids read them. I read the first myth book aloud to them and then they took off finding alternate versions of the stories.

They not only read myths, they wrote them. They drew the gods and goddesses. They discovered myths from other cultures and compared them to the Ancient Greeks. They found references to gods and mythology in Shakespeare. They were overjoyed when they realized that painters love Greek mythology and became expert in identifying the stories in paintings and sculptures when we went to the art museum.

In short, they saturated themselves in mythology. I fretted a bit at the time. Shouldn’t we be reading Plato? Wouldn’t it be better for them to understand the role of the city-state and democracy as conceived by the Greeks? What about moving ahead to Egypt and Rome and into the Middle Ages? They wouldn’t budge.

I gave in. (I’m like that.) So over the course of two years, mythology dominated our homeschool experience. We certainly continued to do the things we usually did (math, language arts, reading aloud, poetry tea times, trips to museums, parks and the zoo, science-y projects, co-op). We watched the history channel occasionally. But for the most part, if you ask our older kids about those years, they will tell you: we studied mythology.

One day, they were done. We moved onto Ancient Egypt, Rome finally fell and we trundled into the dark ages. A highlight of that period: listening to Seamus Heaney recite “Beowulf.” A deeply satisfying period.
—

Sometimes when we look at our homeschools, we want to be able to check off the chronological list of historical moments. We imagine that if we read the historical fiction, tie it to a timeline and discuss the major events in history, our children will be educated. We move them along, making sure we “cover” the whole Middle Ages in one year, or whatever.

Yet education has to do with investment and retention, the ability to generate meaning from what is being studied.

Many kids can’t make heads nor tails of time. Last week feels like a month ago. Christmas is ten years away. But history is all about time and imagination, the ability to put yourself in someone else’s place and know it as it was. If we move too quickly through history, we risk information overload and a deliberate disconnect from the material in favor of “getting through it.”

We have a running joke in our family. I majored in history, but Jon recalls historical dates and events better than I do. I can tell you a lot about trends, the philosophical conditions of each period of history, how people lived and what they wanted or knew. He can tell you what year the government was overthrown in Guatemala. (And a lot more than that too.)

Even as a history major, though, knowing the facts of history has not been key to my success as a student, as an adult, as an educated person.

What’s been useful to me is knowing how to learn, how to analyze, what to do with the information once I have it, how to make connections. By allowing my kids to wallow in mythology for two years, they discovered a way into history that helped them imagine other times and places, that prepared them for other literature and religions from historical periods of the past. It created an anchor point from which to examine other cultures.

In applying the “one thing” theory to other aspects of homeschool, pay attention to what “hooks the jaw.” If one of your kids becomes utterly fascinated with weapons, use that fascination as the access point to look at history. I remember when Noah spent six months watching World War 2 movies with his dad. He also drew tanks and guns into a sketch book. We read some historical fiction from that time period as well.

“One thing” implies trusting that the immersion in one topic that really interests will lead to all the learning necessary. There’s that spill over of developed vocabulary (genocide, Aryans, socialism), calculations about numbers of people (Holocaust, Normandy) or years (when the war started for whom and when it ended) and months (military campaigns) or distances (how far is it to fly from Japan to Pearl Harbor and on how much gas?), geography (which countries existed where and when and for how long), alliances, philosophy, and economics….

Knowing how these fit together in one period is enough for a long time. It provides the right frame of reference for future historical studies. When absorbed, the next war or period examined will automatically be internally compared to this first one. Momentum is gained when you yield to interest. Real learning takes place and created connections point to the next phase of study.

Brave Writer online class: Writing a Greek Myth

Posted in General, Homeschool Advice, One Thing | 8 Comments »

Scheduling The Writer’s Jungle

Scheduling the Writer's Jungle

Some of you wonder how to use The Writer’s Jungle once you’ve got it. You wonder how to make a schedule that will help you execute your intentions yet also allow you to realize that you have in fact covered material that benefits language arts and writing. I’ve given the following advice when emailed or asked these questions.

The Writer’s Jungle is set up so that you can do one chapter per week (particularly the first 9 chapters). The first chapter focuses on language arts. I usually suggest reading the chapter and then actually doing the suggested practices (just one or two to get started).

So often we homeschool parents are in such a hurry to “get through” stuff, we miss the chance to really take our time and learn how to do things, to really enjoy them and make them successful one thing at a time.

From chapters 2-9, you will want to schedule (to your heart’s delight!) a week for each one. You can read the material and then execute the task, exercise, or writing idea that goes with each one. These chapters focus on the writing process and they are the ones you will return to again and again as you repeat writing tasks (like forever…).

The rest of the manual can also be used one chapter at a time. Read it over the weekend, think about how it would be useful to you in the coming week and then *actually do* what it suggests.

  • Word games
  • Poetry
  • Reports
  • Turning an assignment into a high quality writing topic

…these are all worth doing and can be scheduled.

For parents and kids who struggle with writing and the teaching of it, I suggest in the intro to the second edition a practice that has helped lots of Brave Writer parents: the eight-week freewrite.

Here’s how it works

  • You and your kids freewrite once per week (a Friday works well).
  • On the Thursday before that first Friday, have everyone freewrite a list of topics he or she knows really well.
  • Then on the next day and the seven Fridays that follow, select from the list a topic for writing (or use a freewriting prompt from the blog posted every week) or the writer may choose a totally different topic that means something to the writer that day.
  • Set the timer for a length of time that is reasonable (younger kids – 5-6 minutes, older kids 10-15 minutes). When it dings, stop writing.
  • Offer to share your writing (as modeling) and invite the kids to share theirs. *They don’t have to.*
  • When sharing is done (with or without full participation), thank the kids for writing and have each of you (parent included) put the freewrite into a manila envelope.
  • Do this for a total of eight weeks worth of freewrites.
  • On the ninth week, have each writer open the envelope and take out the eight pieces of writing.
  • Ask the writer to select the freewrite he or she would like to work on for the revision stage of writing. That’s the only one that will go through the revision process.
  • You can then spend the next three weeks revising that one piece.

Effectively you could do this process all year and wind up with four or five high quality writing products that have gone through the revision process while having promoted writing every week of the school year.

One more “check list-y” idea

Sometimes the science and math types are used to measuring school in terms of quantifiable work (grammar, pages, spelling tests, paragraphs written, punctuation taught). I like to recommend making a different kind of check list.

Example:

  • I had a long conversation today with one child about a topic that really interested her.
  • I laughed at something in a magazine article and shared what I thought was funny and why with my kids.
  • I watched TV with my kids and we talked about what we watched (including new vocabulary, the campy dialog – isn’t it always? – and stereotypes).
  • I complimented one child for a great use of a new word, an insight, his sense of humor or the clarity with which he expressed himself.
  • I let one child teach me how to do something I didn’t know how to do.
  • I read aloud to my children.
  • I read one poem with my kids.
  • I paid one child a quarter for identifying a typo in published material. (We’ve been doing this since my kids were little and my 20 year old still calls me to tell me the typos he finds in books! Still wants the quarters too.)
  • I provided stimulation for new ideas, beauty or experiences (cool new book, artwork, nature…).

Sometimes if we just put the intangibles in a list, we’ll be more likely to execute them and believe we’ve actually done something worthwhile.

Brave Writer Online Classes

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, BW products, Homeschool Advice, The Writer's Jungle | 1 Comment »

Freshening the Homeschool Plan

Freshening the Homeschool Plan

This post is for the veteran – the homeschooler who can teach a child to read while stir frying dinner, who has more books in her bookcases than she could ever use, the mom who multi-tasks (violin lesson for one child, reading with another while waiting, picking up yet another child from soccer practice on the way home).

This post is also for the mother who is tired. Cracking open a new set of math books isn’t as exciting as it once was. Her hope that this year “will be different” for at least one of her children has dimmed. She starts to wonder if she’s got the energy to keep planning creative projects for the younger ones when high school kids are demanding intensive attention.

The long haul is a long haul. Make no mistake. Home education starts off as an exciting adventure for everyone, especially the mother. A plan and purpose to child rearing combined with the thrill of quality books and a deepening interest in history and science creates a momentum in the home that few outside the homeschooling movement really grasp. That momentum sustains many families for years, often right through junior high for the oldest child.

Usually, though, about year 8, 9 or 10, the primary homeschooling parent (usually the mom) feels the effects of being solely responsible for the education of her children. There are complaints from your kids about certain subjects and habits, there are the inevitable failures of products that were supposed to transform your child’s abilities in a specific subject area, there is the repeat duty of teaching children to read, over and over and over again (depending on how sizable your brood is).

How do you inject life back into the predictable routine so that all of you can re-up your enthusiasm and commitment to home education?

A few ideas to get you started:

  1. Do what you love to do, every week. That sounds obvious, but usually the first thing to go in a family’s togetherness program is a mother’s passions. If you love knitting, keep knitting and take some classes to keep it going. If you suddenly find that learning is your favorite thing ever, find an online school or a university or a community program where you can study a specific topic or area of interest. Do one thing every week that expands who you are and what you think about. You’ll be surprised that there is a trickle-over into your home that comes from being a student yourself in another context.
  2. Join a homeschool co-op, a cottage school, hire a tutor, or use part time enrollment options. You can’t do it all yourself forever and your kids don’t want you to. Find other adults who are passionate about the subjects you either don’t know well enough or don’t want to teach. Kids enjoy getting out of the house and hearing feedback from other adults. You’ll like the break.
  3. Get out of the house and into nature every week. When our kids were little (with strollers and backpacks and diaper bags and juice cups), we tended to get out of the house often (sanity required it). But somehow, once our kids are old enough to carry their own stuff, we forget to leave. We stay home except for outings to the supermarket or piano teacher. Get back to your weekly outings. Walk in the fresh air, visit a museum, hike, bike ride, play miniature golf or go bowling.
  4. Do some of your schooling at Barnes and Noble or Starbucks. Seriously. Take the Friday Freewrite to the mall or the local coffee house. Finish your math for the week at the library or at a park. Do you see a pattern here? Get out of the house more, not just for music or dance lessons and errands.
  5. Pick one project that requires preparation and committed execution to complete. Remember the medieval feasts of your kids’ youth? The building of teepees in the backyard? As our kids get older, we stop doing things like that because we think book work is so important. And it is. But let’s not forget the benefits of being at home. Do extraordinary memorable stuff too. Join Project Feederwatch and count birds every week. Follow through on those kitchen style science experiments. Learn how to compost. Quilt blankets for leukemia patients. Take a vintage dance class every week and prepare for the ball at the end of the year. Train to run in a 10K with your teens. (Psst: the Brave Learner Home’s One Thing Challenges will give you lots of ideas.)
  6. Consult your kids. Ask them what would make them happy this year. What new thing would they like to try, learn, discover, execute? If a 15 year old asks for piano lessons, it’s not too late. If your teen wants to learn to fly a plane, guess what? It’s possible. What about planning some overnights away from home? A backpacking trip, a weekend in a major city, a flight to visit out-of-state grandparents. Remember, your teens are as happy as they are busy. Social life, adventures and a feeling of independence give them the greatest sense of well-being. And if your teen is happy, you’ll be much happier too.
Brave Learner Home

Posted in Homeschool Advice, Tips for Teen Writers | 18 Comments »

Email: To Workbook or not to workbook

That is the question Debbie asked me:

Hi Julie,

I am new to Bravewriter.  I bought The Writer’s Jungle and am going to add the Arrow.  Your style is wonderful and fits so well with current research about children’s learning.  I am excited to start our program this fall.

I have a question about vocabulary that I couldn’t find a direct answer to.  Do you believe in a stand alone program or just learning in context?  Thanks so much for your time.

Regards,
Debbie

My reply:

Vocabulary is best built by reading a lot. Consider not just fiction, but quality non-fiction, myths, poetry, Shakespeare, magazine articles, television (yes, even TV builds vocabulary), movies, plays and more. A rich language environment does the best job of expanding one’s vocab. Some kids still work through vocab books for the SAT etc., but honestly, there is no substitute for a rich language experience which comes mostly through reading, acting and viewing performances.

Debbie responds:

Thank you for your reply.  I thought that was what was indicated in your book but it’s hard to resist the sales line of programs like “Wordly Wise” (my child will be an ignoramus without their sequential program).

And I can’t resist saying just a little bit more:

One quick thought…

When I’ve been in doubt about something and it is inexpensive, I buy it and try it. There are kids for whom working in workbooks is deeply satisfying. I have one out of four (still at home) like that. When she embarks on a workbook program, though, I am very relaxed about it. We do it as it suits her. Sometimes we even skip around in the book or past what she doesn’t feel like doing. But mostly, she enjoys plodding through the
pages and checking them off.

Worldly Wise was tedious to one of my kids (so we dropped it and his vocab is ridiculously off the charts without it – college age now) and was enjoyable for one year for another child. Yet both of these are huge readers, acted in Shakespeare for six years and enjoy poetry and language for its own sake. So I don’t know that it helped (or hurt) their development. I try to pay attention to what they like and focus on how they feel most happy about learning.

If you have a workbook kid, then Wordly Wise might be just the thing. The principle, though, stands. Vocab development occurs through rich language environments. 🙂

Hope that helps a few more of you with similar questions. 🙂

Posted in Email, General, Homeschool Advice | 1 Comment »