Home schooling can be PHUN!
March 27, 2009 > No Comments
The following is guest post from Della over at Dwelling In the Land. I have been following her blog for almost a year now and it always inspires me to try and add some fun into our homeschooling. I’ve learned a lot about lapbooking from reading her blog and hope to post more on that subject here over time.
Della is very upbeat and always tries to see the humor in all aspects of children, homeschooling & life.
I hope this guest post inspires you to add some spice in YOUR homeschool. And please feel free to leave a comment on how YOU keep things fun and interesting.
When Amanda approached me about writing a post on keeping school at home fun, I had to chuckle. Though we do have a lot of fun, we also have our share of battles and bad days as everyone does. I get this a lot on my own blog “You must have so much fun!” I like to keep my blog positive, finding the humor in everything. Therefore, I don’t often blog about the times I’ve lost my temper, screamed, cried over reading lessons, thrown a fit when an experiment went all wrong. Well, in an attempt to keep it real, I want to get this out of the way. I’m not Superwoman (gasp, I know) and I’m not Miss Know -it-all or Madame Got -it-all-figured-out and I’m pretty sure I’ve never been the recipient of World’s Best and Funnest Mother…okay. Whew, now that that’s over with…
What I write here is what is working for us at the moment and I realize that not everyone can march to the beat of the same drum, and I’m cool with that. But my hope is that I will encourage those of you who feel like you’re ready to throw in the towel. I hear it so often and it breaks my heart. Worn and frazzled Momma’s who are about at their wits end and don’t know how to dig themselves out. They long to be excited…to find what works…for things to click. I’ve been there and still find myself in that position. I want to inspire, spark that desire you once had or, maybe never had.
It is a privilege and a great responsibility we take on when we make the choice to educate our children at home. It is both an exciting and scary journey. There are days that will go so smoothly you can’t imagine a life without your children learning under your thumb. And there are also days that make you question your sanity…and all the days in between.
I have felt that it is most important that we, as mommas/teachers be excited about school, as children pick up on it and will mirror our enthusiasm. But I’ll be the first to fess up and admit that there are a lot of days I have trouble getting excited, and it shows in my kids.
Enough Coffee Talk, let’s get down to the Nitty Gritty…
NO ONE reads children like a momma…period. When you’re with your kids 24-7, day in and day out…you tend to learn a bit about their personality, likes, dislikes, quirks.
People ask me when I began home schooling and I tell them from the time the kids entered the world. And it’s true. We are constantly teaching our children things…some good and some bad. Education does not take place exclusively between the hours of 8 and 3 Monday through Friday. The fabulously smart Charlotte Mason advocated Education as a Life and I say “Amen!” Every moment God blesses us with what we ought to be teaching our children. And what we teach them needs to be beneficial and serve some good purpose. Taking every opportunity to enrich their lives is essential.
But how do you make it fun?
Well, firstly you have to realize that it can’t always be fun and the kids have to know that to. There will be times in school and in the bigger scheme of life that we all have to do things we don’t want to. To not prepare your children for that reality is a bad thing.
Know Your Child’s Interests
My son likes anything on wheels, Lillie like princesses and girly things and Chloe likes to take off her diaper in public. Sometimes the things they are interested in won’t make sense to you. But you have to be aware when their eyes light up at the mention of something.
You could be reading a book on Columbus and at the mention of the ships, your son gets a dreamy look in his eyes. Snatch up the opportunity and be willing to switch gears. Check out some books, build a model ship, do experiments with water and the science behind why ships float. Learn about astronomy and navigation…the sky is the limit!
Know Their Limits
Ability does not always equal CAPABILITY. I have found that with my oldest daughter (she’s five going on thirty) , she has the ability to do a lot of things, she’s got the smarts, she’s just not always capable of the task. For instance, she could learn phonics (she had the ability), but she shuts down when it comes to phonics. She’s a sight-reader, plain and simple. Her memory is staggering. I used to beat my head into the wall everyday trying to do phonics work with her. She just shut down and I’d get so frustrated and cry and act like a real fool.
Now a word of warning before I make my next statement: I think phonics is good and important and knowledge of rules and such is handy and allows more freedom for kids to pick up any old book and read it. There’s the disclaimer…
That being said, sight words also play an important role. I realized that the reason Lillie was frustrated is because she is the type of child that likes to master something…quick. She likes the satisfaction she gets from reading a book as opposed to stumbling for 30 minutes saying “buh, buh, at…bat”. So, I dropped the phonics flash cards, ditched the computer games and pulled out a book. Made some sight word flash cards and set to work. We mix it up. One day we’ll do sight words using the Three Step Lesson (Karen Andreola‘s brainchild). If we need to burn up some energy, I write the words on Post-Its and stick them on the walls in the living room and we have a “Word Hunt”. Other days, I just sit her down with a passage and a highlighter and she starts reading. The words she knows, she highlights, the ones she doesn’t go on index cards and are the focus of our next “Word Hunt”. If she comes to a word that can be sounded out, we do that. So, you see, we don’t dismiss sounding out. I choose to do “Word Families” with Lillie because it enables her to read a greater variety of words. We also “chunk” words which means break it into smaller parts. We keep lessons short (10-15 minutes at the most) and we do a different activity each day to keep it fresh!
Be Flexible
Your school does not have to mirror public school! I don’t buy prepackaged curriculum. For one, I can’t afford to buy something and it not work, not to mention I would feel like I wouldn’t have as much flexibility which is one of the reasons why I chose to home school. There have been times that I have been reading a book aloud to the kids and found that it just wasn’t working for them. For example, we are studying Lewis and Clark. I checked a chapter book out and got about 4 chapters in and Lillie just got bored. I stopped and asked her some basic questions and found that she knew the basics of the Louisiana Purchase and the expedition. So I didn’t finish the book and went on to a smaller book I had on Sacagawea and the kids liked it much better. When something isn’t working, drop it like a hot potato. I’m not advocating entertaining your children all the time, but school will go smoother if their attention and interest is perked.
Activities are Good
It will take some planning, but find some fun projects to tie into the material to break up the monotony of just reading and doing worksheets. These have their place but they shouldn’t always reign supreme. This is why unit studies are so wildly popular. I write my own, but they can be purchased and that will save you some time on planning. Some other things we do are lap books, mini-booking and note booking. There are tons of resources out there on these and I have found them greatly effective.
When we did a lap book on apples, we studied about apple parts, Johnny Appleseed, how cider was made, and William Tell to name a few. We did apple prints and pretended to be William Tell by throwing bean bags at apples sitting on top of heads I drew and taped onto a chair to see who could knock it off (beanbags were safer than letting them shoot a bow J ) It was kooky, but the kids had a blast! All the activities centered around the topic and the kids learned a wider variety of information. Now, beware of overloading your child and yourself…it can be easy to accumulate too many activities.
I could write a lot more, but I hate to take up so much space!
If I could plug myself here, check out my blog as there is a lot of good info and links and lots of pictures of the madness!
In closing:
- Don’t be afraid to try things.
- Don’t be afraid to change things!
- Pray Pray Pray for guidance and patience daily.
- Don’t run from the fun!
- Find what works and
- Don’t quit till you do
- NEVER NEVER give up!
Have a blessed day!
Thank you Della for a wonderful post!!
This post is linked to Finer Things Friday and A Beautiful Life Friday. Having fun learning is one of the finer things in our lives!
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March 27th, 2009 @ 3:44 am
We don’t homeschool (maybe someday…) but a lot of these ideas can be used at home at any time. Thanks for sharing!
March 27th, 2009 @ 8:18 pm
A very inspirational post! Thank you!
March 30th, 2009 @ 3:47 pm
Thanks for sharing that!