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Homeschool Bunny
Nov. 15th, 2008 04:38 pmWe’re trying some home school preschool with a couple of friends, in addition to the Montessori he gets while I’m at work. The friend who did the research chose a Waldorf curriculum from Oak Meadows. It involves lots of stories – about the letter or number of the week, or something going on outside - followed by art or craft projects and pretend play. This week we focused on the letter E and Ears. We were supposed to make bunny ear headbands and pretend to be bunnies. Mr. FP put on the bunny headband he’d made at Easter, and decided that I should be the predator. After successfully using his long bunny ears to hear my approach and get to a safe place several times, he invited me to his birthday party. There he told me to ask before borrowing his toys. He also gave me a large bag of dead bunnies and made me promise not to eat live bunnies again.
( deep thoughts on homeschooling right now )
In other news, I just need to sew up my very first sweater for me. And I’ve learned how to make easy felted bags from thrift store sweaters, links to which I will try to post when I have time to look them up again.
( deep thoughts on homeschooling right now )
In other news, I just need to sew up my very first sweater for me. And I’ve learned how to make easy felted bags from thrift store sweaters, links to which I will try to post when I have time to look them up again.
Deconstructing Penguins by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone The Goldstones ran a kids’ book club at the library, starting with second grade and going up. They believe that kids need and deserve good literature, not just a quick read, and that giving them the tools to dive into their reading will pay off. In this manual, they go over the key parts of analyzing a book – figuring out which characters are protagonist and antagonist (even when it's not obvious), finding the climax, looking at the setting, determing the underlying message. For each of these aspects, they examine a couple of the works they’ve done with kids. They start with Mr. Popper’s Penguins and Charlotte’s Web, but include things like The Giver, The Call of the Wild and Animal Farm. They also go into some practical aspects of running a book club, like picking a time and how to get people to talk. I was a little disturbed at how their interpretations of books came out so final sounding, especially as they were talking about how literature can mean many things to many people. That may be a hazard of writing down a discussion as they do. Still, it’s good for its intended purpose, as well as talking about children’s classics and being a good overview of critical reading. Parents and teachers who want to pass on a love of reading take note.
Teach Your Own by John Holt & Pat Farenga This is the latest edition of one of the great classics of homeschooling, but it has valuable ideas for anyone with children, even if you send them to school. From extensive work with children and schools, Holt challenges the popular idea that children need to do work they don’t like to be educated, and that schools are the only places that know how to teach. Children will retain what they learn best when they explore what they are interested in most, and when they learn things because the knowledge is necessary in their social group – he gives the examples of Gypsy children who learn to play in the family band not by being taught but by being given an instrument and being put on stage with the rest of the family. Teaching to a test rewards those students who forget what they’ve learned only after the test. If you’re short on time and not planning on homeschooling, reading the preface, introduction and the chapter “Living with Children.” This has sections on the nature of children and moving beyond the popular “savages vs. precious innocents” dichotomy; parents tendency to add “okay?” to statements that are not choices; tantrums, and alternatives to gold stars. Other chapters cover reasons to take children out of school, quite good retorts to standard objections to homeschooling, dealing with learning disabilities, and how to begin homeschooling yourself. I'm still not convinced that kids will explore everything they need to know on their own if given guidance, but, sadly, his premise that what schools do best is to take kids' joy out of learning seems spot-on. 
