Archive for the ‘Homeschool Advice’ Category

Use writing in your lives

How to use writing in natural, life-affirming ways

I had a question about what program I would recommend to a child who has recently come out of school and is dysgraphic and a perfectionist. Of course, my first thought is to scrap programs. This kid needs a zoo pass and Legos!

What to do about writing, though. He is struggling and fears it. Of course! We all avoid those skill areas where we are weakest.

To start changing the narrative around writing in your family, even before you buy Jot it Down or Partnership Writing, make writing more interesting, more useful, more fun right now in your home.

  • Put Post It Notes all over the bedroom door of your child. Fill them with comments about his or her strengths, jokes, silly word pairs, brief memories of their exploits, hints about the fun you will have at winter break, questions of the universe (“Who am I and why am I here?” “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”), aphorisms… You decide. Put these Post-its all over the door after the child is asleep and see when he or she finally notices them. You might leave a stack of Post Its and a pen somewhere nearby. See if the child reciprocates. Some will.
  • Use lipstick to leave love notes on the bathroom mirror for your kids.
  • Create a treasure hunt—that rhymes! Send your kids hunting for some treat with clues you design. Then later, ask them to make one for you (on your birthday!).
  • Tape words to items in the house—any words. See who notices first.
  • Play with refrigerator magnets.
  • Mail letters to your kids. Text your kids. Facebook chat with your kids. Even when you are all sitting in the same room (hilarity will ensue!).
  • Write margin notes in the books they are about to read—like, “This was my favorite part” and “I can’t believe she did that, can you?” and “When you get to this section, come to me. We must discuss.”
  • Leave notes in a teenager’s car with cash: “Here’s three bucks for a hamburger! Enjoy.”

USE writing in natural, life-affirming ways. See how it changes the feel of writing in your home.

Go for it! Now Today! It’s far more likely you will grow writers if you live like this than if you tirelessly work on paragraphs. Paragraphs will come, once everyone is friends with writing.

Write for Fun!

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Care Less

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-woman-resting-drink-hammock-image42325933

I don’t mean to be “careless,” but rather, to “care less” (two words). In other words, can you lean back, figuratively put yourself on a porch swing and let your feet dangle as you glide back and forth, not a care in the world—while you homeschool?

Can you relax your jaw, lighten your tone, notice the puffy clouds floating by?

We are so invested in how our kids respond to what we offer them, and how we guide them, that sometimes we jinx the outcome! They stiffen or put up their defenses to avoid having to live up to our expectations.

Think about it: Have you ever felt pressured to like a certain meal someone made for you, or felt you were going to owe such a big show of gratitude for a favor done, you almost wished the person had just not “helped” you?

This may be your kids! It’s tough to know on some intuitive level that my mom’s happiness is contingent on how well I enjoy the lesson, or book, or curricula, or activity, or field trip. The part of us that wants to have our own original experience resists/balks at the pressure to make the “giving person” feel good.

You know what I am talking about—think of your mother or father-in-law or next door neighbor who stands back waiting to be thanked. How do you feel about the service rendered? A little resentful?

Kids have big emotions. They need room to feel and express. It’s never about you—these reactions to books or lessons or strategies for learning. How can it be…really? Who doesn’t want to be loved by a parent, to feel the parent’s approval?

Yet they resist what we offer them when two things happen:

  1. They feel they owe you more than they will get out of it for themselves.
  2. They feel nervous that they can’t live up to your expectations.

So care less. Unschoolers use a term called “strewing” – the strategic placing of unattended items in the way of a learner—allowing a child to explore the item or book or movie or game—unattended, independently, privately.

Other ideas:

  • Do the activity, workbook, lesson, game without the kids, without announcement. Get involved by yourself, in front of them, without a word.
  • Ask your child for help—in any arena. Does this sound like a good program to you? If you could be in charge today, what would we be doing?
  • Openly judge flops with a sense of humor. “That collection of manipulatives must have been created by someone with 12 fingers!”

If the house is filled with tension, try one of these:

  • Disappear. Go into the other room and read a book or page through a catalog, or make yourself a snack.
  • Grab a blanket and curl up on the couch and doze.
  • Head outdoors (put the baby in the backpack). Walk, exercise.

Do not judge a day or week or month gone wrong. Care less. You have tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow. All you have is time. Take the time you need, trust the process, care less about the minutia of today.

Brave Learner Home

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You are not alone

Tired

Homeschooling is emotionally taxing. No matter how many practices you put into place, no matter how much you “let go” or unschool or relax, no matter how well you love your children—homeschooling is demanding. It requires a level of daily investment that for most people depletes them.

You are not alone if you feel that way. You are not doing it wrong, necessarily. It’s important to get relief and to keep working to expand how you homeschool into ways that rejuvenate and support you, so that you don’t end up bored, depressed, or temperamental. But the feelings of significance and investment that you hold in your heart every day are real and carry an emotional toll. I think it’s right and just to acknowledge that.

Just knowing that this is part of the journey of home education sometimes helps. It’s at least a good place to start.

Cross-posted on facebook. Image by Leo Hildago (cc cropped)

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Take advantage of fall

Walk in the forest. Autumn.

For those of you in the northern hemisphere, fall is about to be underway. Energy for activity and education surge in the fall. It’s the “back to school,” “new books” syndrome where the re-enchantment of education is awakened.

Take full advantage of this moment. I liked to plan my most ambitious projects for fall—the report, the scaled model of a fortress, field trips, the brand new curricula that requires me to read the notes and learn the system, the long read aloud novel.

Fall energy isn’t just found in you. Your kids have it too. Summer’s heat is behind you and fresh air and bright skies are inviting. Take some of your schooling out of doors. Have picnics, go to parks for recreation, take walks in the woods or on the beach, go hiking in search of birds or to identify trees. Reward hard work with outdoor activity—even kicking a soccer ball in the backyard every day is a great way to keep the energy going in fall.

In our neighborhood, bonfires are popular and a great way to have family time in a fall evening. Memorized poetry can be shared around a bonfire, or someone might play a guitar and sing alongs can be encouraged. Perhaps teach your kids American folk songs like “O Susanna” and “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”

Candle-dipping, pumpkin carving, star-gazing—all awesome in the fall.

Cross-posted on facebook. Image by Philippe Put (cc text added)

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Avoid the temptation to judge your child’s brain

Image by Yahiliz-blog
I get calls occasionally from public school parents who want to use Brave Writer to beef up their kids’ skill set in writing using BW as an extra-curricular tool. We’re good with that! We’ve had loads of public schooled kids in our programs.

One distinct feature of these calls is that the parents are highly aware of their children’s standardized test scores, IQ numbers, and grades. The system continually assesses students and gives parents sets of numbers to tell them whether or not to be proud of their kids, or desperately worried about them. All this numerical analysis is so unhelpful to the parent-child relationship!

Whether a child scores well or poorly tells us very little about the human being living in the skin of your precious child. Spelling scores tell you nothing about the child’s mind life. Computers can be programmed to correct spellings—they can’t be programmed to tell stories worth reading.

A child’s IQ should never be known by the child (and it if were up to me, by the parent either). Once you label a child’s mind as smart or average or “good enough,” you subtly shift your expectations (even if you try not to!). You will be temped to think that your child either should be performing at a much higher capacity (according to some arbitrary standard of what “educated” means) or that that child should be steered away from rigorous academics due to limited intelligence.

Both of these positions are absurd! Human beings are more than the sum of scores and school practices. Intelligence resides in social skills, empathy, artistic promise, and athletic ability as surely as it does in nailing the reading comprehension portion of a pressurized, fake, standardized test with Scantron bubbles.

(An aside: homeschool kids routinely perform less well than expected on reading comprehension tests, to the mystification of their parents who know that their kids read more widely and deeply than most of their schooled peers. There’s a reason for this. Reading comprehension tests have nearly nothing to do with pondering themes deeply, seeing connections to broader concerns, or extrapolating powerful lessons from the story itself. Reading comprehension tests concern themselves with retaining picky details under pressure. Triple UGH! Useless!)

The best education you can give your child is one where you value your child’s natural strengths as they make themselves known to you. You can’t know them through tests. You already know them through life—you KNOW your children! You are home with them all the time. You know! Honor and love the socks off those rascals!

When you see a child show generosity, say so!

When your kid scores four times in one soccer match, that’s the time you say, “You have incredible athletic skills.”

When your son brokers peace among fighting factions of siblings, you thank him for being a peace-maker.

When your daughter creates a system that streamlines where homeschool tools and books go so everyone can find them easily, you recognize her superbly organized mind!

If you are worried (a child is “behind” in math, for instance), do not test! You know! Get help. Do not limit your child’s chance of success by pre-determining that that child is not good at math or better work really hard or she’ll never make it to college.

Be positive, believe more in your child’s mind than the test-makers, and add brownies. Make a plan, stick to the plan. You are not behind. Your child is not “dumb” or “damaged.” Your child is your child with a set of experiences and aptitudes. Your job is to nourish and nurture them.

Every brain has a genius. Pay attention to your child’s particular bents and you’ll find it. Stop letting school and testing tell you who your child is.

YOU ALREADY KNOW!

P.S. I don’t get all “capital letter-y” very often, but this morning, I just had to.

Cross-posted on facebook. Water writing image by Brave Writer mom, Yahiliz.

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