In which we take up homeschooling

I might have mentioned awhile back that I was thinking about home schooling again - well, here we are. The older two are going to school, eighth and ninth grades. But the 11, 9, 7, and 5 year old are staying home with me. They asked for it.

I couldn’t bring myself to commit until we actually arrived here. “I’m thinking of home schooling” I told anyone who asked. But really, the fact that I didn’t research schools before we left means that I already was committed. And I packed home school books in our advance shipment, so we could start as soon as we set up housekeeping.

My ambivalence about admitting we were going to home school may be partially rooted in a fear of the work. I knew I’d have at least one student who would rather read than practice math facts. I knew I’d be saying no to a lot of things I’d like to do. But I also didn’t have a lot of confidence in the schools here. I don’t have any basis for that, other than repeated testimonials from other Navy spouses about the problems in the public schools. But I haven’t met anyone who sent their kids to the Catholic schools, so I don’t have any first hand insights.

Now here we are homeschooling. And so far, other than one reluctant learner who regularly threatens to run away if he has to do anymore writing and one student who likes to claim to have done work that she hasn’t, school is going relatively smoothly. The older kids leave for the bus at 7:30, so everyone is up and mostly dressed by then. On the days when I jump right into action, everyone seems to cooperate better. But the days when something happens to distract me – a phone call, a late alarm, a message to respond to – we have a hard time getting on the rails. As soon as a moment arises for someone to slip away to play Legos, it’s had to return to learning.

So a peek into our days: Rise early to exercise and make lunches for the older boys. Shower, get dressed, and eat breakfast before the younger kids are awake enough to start playing. Then get their stack of books from the closet and start the day with a little reading aloud. If I can catch them while they are still half asleep, they’ll sit and do school for much longer.

That last sentence reveals we are not unschoolers. I make the kids do worksheets and coloring pages, even though at heart I would like to dismiss these as unnecessary and have the kids do more experiential learning and more writing of their own. To my dismay, I have yet to birth a child who likes writing.
It’s interesting to me, if not to anyone else, to note how my approach has shifted since we home schooled last a couple of years ago. Much of what we’re doing is the same: We’re still doing Saxon Math for the 4th and 6th grader, although I haven’t been keeping up with mental math and the timed drill sheets. For the younger two, we’re using MCP, as we did last time around. It seemed to work, and I’m too intimidated to try a new program. I’ve got the books; keeps it simple.

Along those lines: I’m trying to avoid looking on the internet for home-school ideas. That was one of my pratfalls last time around. Too many good ideas translates into too little consistency. Focus, focus, is my mantra.

The biggest distraction: History and science materials. When we homeschooled in Virginia, we did a lot more subjects together as a family. I read history and science out loud and the kids illustrated what I read or answered questions. We went to art classes and science classes at a co-op and at museums. Here each kid is a little more spread apart, so the 6th grader works independently, while I follow up more carefully with the 4th grader. I read aloud to the 2nd grader and kindergartner, but they distract each other and don’t want to illustrate scenes from history.

So my approach to history and science needs a little more structure. We’re sort of taking a classical approach to history – we just finished a spending about 4 weeks on Egypt, and now we’re moving to the Ancient Middle Eastern cultures. But I have all these good materials: The Story of the World book I, A Child's History of the World by Virgil Hillyer, the Seton Before America book, the Catholic textbook All Ye Lands, Usborne Explorers books, Eyewitness books, Greenleaf guides, historical novels, etc., etc, etc. My own bookshelves are a distraction. I keep looking at all these books, but the kids ignore them. Although I have in my head a trajectory of what we want to cover this year, I really need to cull through my stuff and figure out what we’ll focus on, and then try to figure out how to make it interesting to my younger kids.

Here’s another shift: My older boys were verbal learners; they could sit and read and absorb the material. My younger kids need a more kinaesthetic approach. They love crafts and projects. Some of the Story of the World/Greenleaf ideas like making relief maps from salt dough and playing dress up appeal more to them than listening and making timeline illustrations, whereas the olders found crafts unnecessary. Since I’m not naturally crafty, I have to put more thought into this.

The same thing goes for science. I’m trying to keep it simple by using the Abeka science books for 4th and 6th grade that I already owned. Although I like the classical idea of focusing on one discipline at a time, this more traditional approach makes it easier for me, although since we are on a tropical island, doing some of the suggested activities like collecting leaves and flowers is a little more difficult because our varieties are so different from what is in the book. No seasons here. But I think the days are shortening. I was wondering if that would happen here or not. I guess we are enough north of the equator that we’ll notice a little solstice shift.

Since science was one of the subjects I taught at our co-op, you’d think I’d jump right back into that curriculum I had come up with. But it was geared toward a group setting with a short lecture, a demonstration and then an experiment. (I taught physics for middle schoolers, even though that was my weakest discipline. I had to do a lot of relearning. Same thing with Latin – even though I came up with all this stuff for the classroom last year, now with just 2 students, one ahead of the other, I’m finding it difficult to make things interesting.)

With the younger two, we had been reading one of those Little Nature Readers for science, which bored even me, and supplementing with library books. I have to admit I prefer Magic School Bus. Thorough for the age group and entertaining. More hands on activities for science are something to add to the plan. But I know in school they would be doing very little science in kindergarten and 2nd grade, so I don’t feel quite as driven as I did when my older kids were learning.

Ironically or not, for my favorite subject, language arts, I tend to rely on workbooks. I want to find or devise a unified language arts program, and I know some of them already exist but I’m falling back on pre-existing material. I like the Charlotte Mason idea of narrations and copywork and dictation, so I sometimes have the older two read and retell a story, but I’d like to work out an arrangement where I come up with spelling words that have a phonetic relationship or are enrichment vocab words that come from the reading selection for the week, so that one lesson could be a dictation from the reading that includes spelling words as well as an illustration of the grammar lesson for the week. My sixth grader does Lingua Mater, which I like for the most part, although it’s not enough reading material, and the grammar seems basic for a middle school text. I also bought him a diagramming book that we both like – makes grammar a game almost and brings out language’s structural beauty. I treated myself to Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences by Kitty Burns Florey, which I just started. It’s not quite as fun as Eats, Shoots and Leaves, but I’m not far into it yet.

Religion is the one subject that seems to be a more natural learning experience. Since the kids are doing the Faith and Life books at CCD, we’re paying more attention to the liturgical year at home, looking up the saint for the day or reading from a book like My Path to Heaven by Fr. Gregory Bliss, with the intricate illustrations by Caryll Houselander, and stories about how you can be like the pilgrim who tries to take the cart across the bridge and gets stuck or like the pilgrim who sells all his attachments and crosses the bridge with ease. It’s religion class for me, too - and more time to pray. And we even do crafts: the second grader is making a ten commandments book, the fourth grader is making a rosary book, and the sixth grader is illustrating the creed.

The rest of the day we fill with piano practice, quiet reading time from an assigned book, trips to the pool and the library, occasional geography lessons. Some days we do a little art appreciation or look up pictures that go with a history subject or the saint of the day in one of my art history books. This is a Charlotte Mason addition that I didn’t do with the older boys. I also just bought Mona Brookes’ book about teaching kids to draw, but we’ve only done two lessons and neither time did the kids seem interested in trying. I love the image of all of us sitting down to draw with quiet music playing and the kids focused and trying their best, but this remains a figment of my imagination.

In fact many of my home school plans remain imaginary. Most days the kids either rush through their work just to get done, or disappear to go play before their work is finished. My second grader especially despises anything that resembles work. I wonder if home schooling is the right choice for him. He didn’t have behaviorial problems at school, but at home he throws temper tantrums and threatens to run away and throws things as soon as he is frustrated. My biggest daily challenge is trying to remain calm in the face of his storms. I don’t succeed often. This takes a lot of the joy out of the whole project, and makes me question whether or not I should be doing this at all. We’re all miserable when I have to argue with him all morning. Everyone else gets whiney waiting for me. Then I get whiney waiting for my husband to come home.
The other challenge is saying no to invitations. I keep getting email and facebook notices about spouses’s club events: boonie stomps, book club, dive club, lunch bunch, events to raise money for charity, Bible studies. Since most of the military wives don’t work, and everyone is far from their families, the military community plans a lot more social events here. I probably wouldn’t go to most anyway, but I have to admit that there are a lot of days I’d rather go diving or on a boonie stomp than stay at home trying to keep a seven year old from losing control.

Now that I've written this, I have to admit that our current home schooling experience isn’t so different from our previous experience. Our routine is similar, but with the two girls now fully involved, we are much more organized. They do school like it’s a game, which actually is kind of nice. The biggest thing we lack is the great community of Catholic home schooling friends we had, although we’ve met quite a few other homeschooling families who attend one of the evangelical churches on the island. They’re all very nice, but since they don’t let their kids read Harry Potter or trick or treat, I fear they might consider my kids a bad influence. So we miss the friends we’ve had who have been almost like family who encouraged us in our trials. But people are always coming and going, and we’ve only been here a short time; we’re sure to find a community of friends soon. In the meantime, my goal is to try to forget the tantrums and record in my memory the pleasant moments on the couch when we all are reading and pouring over illustrations, when everyone is happy and engaged.