Finding rhythm

I have spent the past 2 weeks  planning and executing our new life rhythm. The idea of the importance of rhythm comes from the Waldorf or Steiner method of schooling. On a basic level, rhythm can be equated to a schedule, but there is much more to it as you delve deeper into Waldorf methods. Like everything we are easing into this slowly with the hope that I can feel successful and not too overwhelmed.

Waldorf methodology is something that has appealed to me for a long time but also something I wasn't sure we could reproduce in a home setting. As I browsed curricula, though, I kept coming back to Waldorf. It's entirely possible that we will never be 100%  one label or another, and I'm pretty comfortable with that! But there are many amazing ideas from Steiner that ring true with me and that is why I have chosen to start using this type of curriculum. 

From the great source of Wikipedia: 

Waldorf education is based on anthroposophy, a spiritual philosophy developed by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Child development is seen as taking place over three seven-year stages, each with its own developmental emphasis on the principles of willing, feeling, and thinking. Throughout, Waldorf education places a strong emphasis on integrating academic, practical and artistic pursuits: the head, the heart, and the hands. The approach emphasizes the role of the imagination in learning. Formative assessment is generally preferred over summative assessment, particularly in the pre-adolescent years. 

What really appeals to me is the focus on each child as an individual, the stress of the connection between the child, his parents, and his world, and the importance of child readiness in education. Everything is so rushed in our society. Steiner really believed that the home and education should reflect the child's developmental stage and that children needed to be protected from potentially damaging societal influence. Obviously we realize that our children cannot be contained within a perfect BPA-free plastic bubble, but it also rings very true to me that they need not be exposed to many things that are in the media and news at this age. Why should my 5, 6, or 11 year-old need to be exposed to rudeness, anger, and hatred to toughen up for the world? Why would I want television and mass marketing dictating what my kids want to wear, eat, and do? To me a much better option is to help them to grow and become secure in themselves, our love for them, and their love for each other. Once armed with a strong sense of self-worth, they are automatically tough enough to handle the world and it's challenges.

This was important to us before Waldorf and is why we don't watch TV, listen to the news around our children, or play violent video games. Another huge benefit of limited media was apparent over the Christmas season. Without commercials and media to tell them they needed a whole bunch of stuff, our children simply don't beg for it. They each made a Christmas list, but they included things like trumpet lessons, a handmade nativity set, and a monkey costume.

The house has been generally happier and calmer with our new rhythm. It takes more work and planning ahead than I am used to, but the payout is much better days. The kids know what to expect for their daily lessons, (each evening we write out the next day's agenda for each child), what we will be eating for each meal and snack, and what activities are planned for the evening. Each day is also assigned a special 'task'. Mondays are cleaning and shopping days, Tuesdays we go to the community center for homeschool classes, Wednesdays are baking days, Thursdays we do some sort of handwork, and Fridays we paint. Everyday we go outside. Everyday we have a circle time to focus ourselves for the day. And of course each week so far has thrown us a small loop, like illness or extra field trips, but we work that into the rhythm and have so far been doing really well with it.

Lessons are taught in blocks; right now Sports Nut is working on maps and culture. Each day he also has a small amount of math practice, reading time (we are working up to 5 minutes per age year a day), and journal writing. Drawing Diva's lessons are short and generally include a story, form and letter drawing, drawing or painting about the story, and retelling the story in her own words for me to write down. Because she can already read, we also throw some reading practice in for her as well. Waldorf begins at first grade and age 7. It also begins very slowly with letter introduction, but by the time the kids are Sports Nut's age, the material is up to a level we would expect in public school. So we are slowing down and trusting the method for now. 

New year, Still Here!

So the irony is not lost on me that my last post was intended to ease the worries about how we were managing and then I dropped off the face of the blogging earth for 3+ months. Never fear, we are still here and still doing great! Life got very hectic with obligations and holidays but we have started a new year and a new routine. As much as we loved and needed our de-schooling and un-schooling months, during that time I was doing a lot of searching for some kind of balance between life learning and structure. Sports Nuts especially thrives when he has some sort of routine to follow and anticipate. We were also running around so much that it was often easy to feel exhausted and short-tempered. This was apparent in both myself and the kids. A positive outcome of our unstructured time was that it really helped me to relax and realize that the kids are learning everyday, no matter what I do. The are hard-wired for it. They crave new knowledge and new experiences. If allowed, they enjoy experiencing new things. A wise friend with grown children reminded me as we were beginning to question the conventional school path that life was not a race, and that my kids were not losing. I have been repeating this to myself over and over again while I search for our next schooling adventure. It is so easy to get caught up in worries over whose children are where in school, what other kids know might know in comparison to mine, and where my kids 'should be' according to their age. I remind myself that the constant testing and comparing was part of what turned us off of conventional school. I remind myself that in Sports Nut I have a product of a system that pushed him too hard, too fast, and without regard to whether or not he was ready to learn. I remind myself that by being unhindered by the stipulations put on today's teachers, I am able to cater to my kids' exact needs and wants. There is no race, we are not losing.

Thursday add-on

For a better picture of how cool flexibility can be:
Today I had planned on helping the younger girls with their chores and some school work while Sports Nut was at band. Then Sports Nut and I would bake banana blueberry muffins and do school work while Drawing Diva and Mini Marvel played. Instead when I got up, the girls' mattress was in the living room; someone had wet the bed. The girls had stripped the sheets and Sports Nut brought the mattress down so we could sun it outside. I helped the girls get their sheets into the washer, started their bath, and waved Sports Nut off to band class. By the time Drawing Diva and Mini Marvel were clean, dressed, and breakfasted, Sports Nut was back. He came in so excited to tell me about the new notes and terms he had learned this morning. He was also anxious to compose his own song. I gave him the option of cooking or composing and he chose composing. He Googled sheet music and printed blank sheets for himself, found an unused binder and some plastic protective pages, and set to work on his symphony.
Meanwhile Mini Marvel and I set about this muffin-making business. She now has a new word in her vocabulary: improvise. We were out of wheat germ so we improvised and used wheat bran. No sour cream to be found in the fridge so we improvised with yogurt. Drawing Diva couldn't allow Mini Marvel to have all the fun so she came to the kitchen to assist. Drawing Diva can now tell you that there are 4 sets of 3 and 3 sets of 4 in 12. Three bakers can each pour four sets of batter into a twelve-cup muffin tin. All this while being serenaded by a budding trumpet extraordinaire.  All awesome, although none of it was planned. All learning, although none of it is from a book.

So, how is it going?

This is a question posed to me at least once a day. I'm amazed at how many different ways the above 5 words can be spoken to ask what is basically the same question. I am asked sympathetically, by those concerned by my terrible, last-resort choice; excitedly by those who think our new life is fun and adventurous; guardedly by those who know I'm crazy but feel the need to pretend I am still redeemable; earnestly by those with a genuine interest in the journey. Depending on the asker's inflection, my answer varies in length and depth, but mostly revolves around AWESOME. Not awesome as in always perfect and easy, but rather equated to inspiring, exciting. My kids are awesome. It's just that simple. Taking away the pressures of school and rigid schedules has allowed me to appreciate that more fully. I am no longer responsible for shaping my children into someone else's view of normal and that is extremely freeing. Sports Nut is having fewer anxiety-incited meltdowns and I have more patience and empathy to pull him back to a good place when a meltdown occurs. Drawing Diva is confidently creating art and stories and trying to run the show. Mini Marvel is still her amazing self, unencumbered by others' expectations.

Oh, but you meant how is it going academically? We are doing well. Some days are very busy with activities and we don't get around to doing any 'school'. Some days the kids are in a great sponge-like learning mode and we do lots of 'school'. We are learning to adapt to each other's moods and styles. We read a lot. We play a lot. We have two new exciting research projects proposed to us by friends who are business owners. Classes taught by other homeschool parents began this past Tuesday at our community center. Sports Nut is dissecting a frog, learning about medieval times, and taking acting and a 'crazy concoction' classes. Drawing Diva is also in the medieval times class, as well as art, dance, and hands-on science classes. Mini Marvel goes to Best Preschool Ever in the afternoons and has amazing adventures everyday. Today we are attending the first session in a three-part series on wilderness survival and Native American history. It will be a beautiful day to be outside walking, listening, asking, and thinking. The kids will bring their nature journals to take notes and cameras to take photos. Although our days typically have less that 1 hour of structured, school-esque activity, I am confident that my kids are learning and growing. So yeah, we're good, thanks for asking.

Misnomer

Home. School. Since neither word really pertains to what we're doing here, I find it odd to keep calling it that. Compound words should equal the sum of their parts yet so far, this one does not.

Let's start with the first part: home. It is 9:40 on Tuesday night. I have not written since last Monday basically because we have not BEEN home. It's possible that I may have, in my slightly overzealous ambitions,  managed to enroll Sports Nut and Drawing Diva in practically every current non-overlapping homeschooling opportunity in the community. In the past week we have attended gymnastics, science classes at the nature center and hands-on museum, swim and gym classes at the Y, parks days, a festival, and gone camping. Historical museum classes start soon, as well as parent-taught class days at the community center. Luckily some activities are only monthly, but since they all started in the past week and a half, we have been very busy. Both Sports Nut and Drawing Diva are loving it. I love that they can get tons of extracurriculars during the day so we have the evenings to spend as a family at home.

Second part: school. We are doing very little of what most people would consider to be 'school'. We have followed no curriculum to this point; even the literature and writing texts I purchased have surfaced only a few times. We rarely sit down on a schedule to complete workbook tasks or projects. All three kids have a cubby of scant supplies including a good pencil, a notebook, and a folder. With those three materials they have written stories, drawn countless pictures, taken notes, made lists, and constructed a few random paper objects. I have not chastised Mini Marvel about proper letter formation, drawn attention to Drawing Diva's phonetically correct but misspelled words, or lectured Sports Nut about proper pencil grip. What has followed is a wealth of unhindered creativity and an excitement to produce work. Once they have put the time and effort into their own work, they often will ask me for the help or advice I had to sit on my hands not to force on them in the first place. Love it.

Sports Nut starts his day with band and comes home fully of energy and enthusiasm to show us what he has learned that day. The blaring trumpet usually brings the sisters down, who have been playing upstairs since waking. We eat, we look at the day's calendar, we talk, we discuss wants and needs, we compromise, and it seems to work.

On Sunday,  Sports Nut had trouble figuring out 7 times 7. I pointed out that it was important that he know math facts like that and he agreed.  Yesterday he got out his notebook and a Montessori style multiplication tool we have and methodically worked out a section of the times tables. Today he recopied them in a different way, as a website I had found suggested. Tomorrow he said we should make flash cards. Hooray.

At the library today, Drawing Diva confessed that many of the easy reader books were too silly and she didn't enjoy them. I showed her the juvenile non-fiction section and she elated. So many books and so much information, NONE of it silly. Perfect.

Mini Marvel has begged me to help her learn some of the more difficult tasks on the chore chart, whereas in the past she has shirked most responsibility, claiming she is the littlest and therby exempt. Today she chose cleaning the cat litter, so down to the basement we went with bag and scoop in hand. I opened the top of the box and showed her how to scoop up part of the litter, shake the loose litter out, and dump the clump into the bag. "Like a treasure hunt!" Um, yes. I suppose. "Ooooooh! I got a good piece. Get off, dirty litter, leave the great big shiny lump for me! Oh Mama, I think it's poop. Or is it urine? Oops, that one fell on the floor. Oh, use the scoop again? Don't pick it up with my hands? We have a TON of treasure!"

I shall leave you with that tonight. More anecdotes to follow shortly, if time allows ;)

I guess you can't escape Mondays

I'm trying to figure out why Friday didn't feel like Friday yet today was definitely a MONDAY. It may have something to do with the evening's multiple extracurriculars, or that it was Mini Marvel's first day of afternoon (read: no nap) preschool. But even when I first woke up this morning it just felt like a Monday. The day progressed into a stereotypical Monday as well.

Oddly enough it was Sports Nut, with no heavy load of scheduled activities, who had the hardest day. Husband has a pictorial analogy for Sports Nut's seemingly-unprovoked-but-often-high stress levels. According to Husband, we all walk around with a bucket that collects all of our tension for the day.  Certain calming activities can act as a drain for the bucket, and certain stimulating activities can fill the bucket up pretty fast. An overflowing bucket equates to a mental meltdown. For some reason Sports Nut wakes up with an almost-full bucket sometimes. The slightest thing can overflow his bucket and the result is basically a lost day. Today his bucket was filled to it's rim before Sports Nut even came downstairs. He broke a glass before breakfast and although I was tooting my own horn internally for being so calm and rational about it, one glance at Sports Nut showed me that my placid reaction went unnoticed; he was already toast. He went to band, came home, and went back to bed. Although we eventually did a small amount of schoolwork today, most of his day was spent in recuperation (bucket-draining).

My guess is that Sports Nut's current anxiety is coming from the huge change in our daily routine. For nine+ years he has attended daycare or school where his every move was monitored and his every minute was planned. I am forcing him out of his comfort zone by giving him some control over his learning, control that he is not yet capable of owning. In the home school world, this is known as a decompression or deschooling phase, and it takes time. It's difficult because I want our new world to work for him, help him, and make his life easier, and I want it happen now! Instead I need to trust the process and find the patience to let it happen gradually.

On the upside, Drawing Diva had a great day. She and I spent about 30 minutes one-on-one going through her math and literature work and it is really exciting to watch things click in her mind. The classical approach to teaching was made for children like Drawing Diva and she loves the repetition and predictability of the exercises. She also very willingly sat through a video from our library on sentence structure even though once I started it I realized it intended for much older children. Good thing Drawing Diva is also a lover of words: predicate is now part of her vocabulary. Tonight was her second soccer practice of the season and her first-ever Daisy Scout meeting. Both groups are affiliated with the local elementary school so Drawing Diva can meet and keep up with peers who live in our neighborhood.

Mini Marvel loves preschool. Heck, I love preschool. We found Best Preschool Ever four years ago when searching for a preschool that would fit Drawing Diva's personality. Best Preschool Ever is a Reggio Emelia inspired school and as soon as we walked in the door the first time I knew our search for the perfect place for our daughters was over. Drawing Diva attended the school for two years, and Mini Marvel began her third year today. She has a few BFFs in her class and was so happy to be back with them. At this preschool, Mini Marvel is allowed to be her complete and total self. Her whole day consists of art, music, outdoor time, free play, and often a special guest like the naturalist, the yoga teacher, or the dance instructor. If Best Preschool Ever went up to twelfth grade I would be one happy mama. Mini Marvel had such a great time that she fell asleep in the car on the way home and had to be woken up in time for dinner.

So I am ready for this crazy Monday to turn over into tranquil Tuesday. Husband worked last weekend so he could take a couple of weekdays off and we are going camping tomorrow. The weather looks good and we should have the lake to ourselves. Can't wait. (although I suppose I should have been packing instead of blogging...)

Week one is in the books!

Today is Friday, and strangest bit of today was waking up and realizing that this Friday had no particular weight to it. I was not exhausted from a long stressful week of commuting children to and from school and activities. I was not elated that tonight would be the first of the only two nights of the week that we did not have to fight over homework assignments. I was not concurrently craving and dreading the upcoming weekend for both the time we'd get to spend together as a family as well as myriad of activities we usually felt we had to cram in to two days. It was just Friday, the day that came after yesterday and before tomorrow.

The week has gone well. I had read a homeschooling blog a while back written by a mother of 5 homeschooled children. One of her tips for starting a new (sane) school year was to start with a plan for two basic subjects and let the rest come naturally. All for sanity, I had decided that our two core subjects would be language arts and math. For language arts we are using First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind. This is a 'classical' approach. We started at level one for both Sports Nut and Drawing Diva. The lessons are very concise and require the student to answer questions in full sentences. I consider this to be an important skill and was surprised that both of my kids lacked the ability to take my question and turn the words around into a responding statement. By today they are getting better at it, and have memorized the first short poem. I was a little concerned they would think this book dry, but the short length of each lesson lends itself to likability.

Our math plan, conversely, has gone out the window. Those worksheets they had begged for were pointless. Sports Nut completed his in 10 seconds and handed them to me. The majority of the answers were wrong. One page was all subtraction yet he added half of them. Prior conditioning has taught him to finish as fast as he can, answer accuracy be damned. This is not news to me; every teacher for the past 5 years has told me Sports Nut needs to slow down. I was stupidly optimistic that taking him out of a classroom setting would change this behavior. Sports Nut clearly needs time to decompress, so standard math work for him is out at this point.
Instead, we have switched to Building Critical Thinking Skills. The lessons are far more entertaining and actually require thought. The same company makes a math curriculum that we'd like to try, so stay tuned.

I am learning a lot about my children as learners. Sports Nut, for instance, must try something before he believes it to be true. On Wednesday morning he came into my room and said, "Just in case you are ever playing my trumpet, make sure you don't bash the mouthpiece into place. Mr Band Teacher said it will get stuck and you won't be able to take it apart again. So only twist it, 'k Mom?"
Uh, ok, Son. If I ever get the hankering to play your trumpet, I will most certainly take care so as not to permanently lodge the mouthpiece into the instrument.
Time lapse of 15 minutes.
Me to Sports Nut: "Where did you go? It's time to head out the door to band."
Sports Nut to me: "I can't get my trumpet in it's case."
Me: "Why not?"
Sports Nut: "The mouthpiece is accidentally stuck so it won't fit."
Me: "Accidentally?! What did you do?"
Sports Nut: "As soon as I did it I knew it was a terrible idea, but I bashed the mouthpiece in!"
Me, muttering in my head, as I try unsuccessfully to wrench the two brass pieces apart: No, you knew BEFORE you did it that it was a terrible idea! Mr Band Teacher already announced that, and you felt it important enough information to share with me, yet not valid enough information to not test it yourself.

Yesterday we attended a homeschool field trip to the movie theater to watch an undersea IMAX movie. The kids loved it, and now know more about the mating habits of cuttlefish than perhaps necessary. After band, the movie, schooling and a nap for Mini Marvel, we still had enough time while picking up our CSA share to take a leisurely stroll to the back of the farm where the U-Pick garden is. All three children picked vegetables and flowers until their bags were full. In the past we've had to rush in, grab our share, and rush off. This was far more enjoyable. In the evening we were able to go listen to the marching band a the university. We picnicked with friends, listened to the band, played football, and took a walk. Never before have we been able to have such nice family time on a school night. Mostly our evenings revolved around homework fights, angry words, frustration and exhaustion. Driving home at 8:30pm I had that giddy feeling that it was OKAY to be out late. The kids were tired but happy after having a great evening together.

Today we attended a science class at a local nature center. The instructor was amazing and we all learned a lot about insects and then got to run off and catch some. Sports Nut was puzzling over the dichotomous key he was given but once he understood the process, he was figuring out the names of all the bugs the kids were catching. I LOVE to see him truly interested in learning. On the way home he said he wants to construct a similar key for wars. Sweet. There's our first history lesson handed to me on a platter.

My favorite part of today was cooking with Sports Nut. Sports Nut loves to cook, but it has often been hard for me to find the time and patience to let him cook with me. In the old days, school nights were so hectic that if any child stepped into my kitchen while I was preparing dinner he could expect a scene reminiscent of Carrie. But today Sports Nut and I put together quinoa corn chowder for the crockpot, this yummy oatmeal casserole  for weekend snacking, and he made two fabulous loaves of whole wheat bread with toasted sunflower and flax seed. We invited another homeschooling family for dinner and Sports Nut was so proud of his creations and so happy to share them with others.

So far, in the writing of Mini Marvel, "iLovHOMSCOLEN"