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Tina P.
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| Posted: Jan 04 2006 at 7:28pm | IP Logged
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My daughter accidentally had strewn a book the other day. It was called "I Did It with My Hatchet." My daughter was looking up a reference in it and left it on the stairs to go 1/2 way up (we have tall bookshelves that sit on the middle landing). I surreptitiously watched my 3 yob pick up and flip through that entire book.
I've read the several posts on strewing and while I understand the interest in something new, I can tell you from experience that (perhaps because we have so many) my kids are just as thrilled for me to strew books from our shelves. We have a bigger children's library than the ones we have to actually drive to at home, but the kids don't *see* them until I lay them around.  My husband usually starts his "Everything has a place..." speech and puts them back  which upsets me because I've just found all these related books (for example now I'm centering on the Civil War since we've just read Caddie Woodlawn and are now reading Magical Melons) from several shelves around the house and who knows to where they disappeared once he reinserts them into shelves. Ugh!  I only *just* unshelved the Civil War books. Hopefully, he won't get into that stack until the interest has waned. 
From having read those posts Leonie, I can barely BELIEVE that some of your kids would NOT be interested in Legos. There are times I would like to hide them away for several months because they turn into such a mess (same thing happens with Playmobil). If our house started on fire, I think my kids would grab those two sets of toys before they made a run for it.  My kids sometimes get frustrated with legos because they're so small and therefore are sometimes hard to snap together.
I'm still not quite there, though on how learning is accomplished through building with legos or pretending with Playmobil. I guess with the legos there is color-matching potential, building, symmetry ... what else? And the Playmobil is role playing? I believe they learn about history a bit, as they ask me questions while they're using their different sets.
I'm not much of a project-type person. I seem to be more of a get-three-square-meals-a-day-and-keep-the-house-from-implodi ng person. I'm certain that we need to lose some *stuff.* Or at the very least, we need to hide about 2/3 of it and swap it out 3x/year.
Gosh, I'm sorry. This post jumps all over!  I guess I'm trying to understand this lifestyle to which I am drawn. My boys are fighting me so hard on doing their table time school and when they come to me with interests I am so tired from all the pressure they put on me that I can't address their interests properly. How do you know learning happens? How can I bring back the love of learning into my children's lives?
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Tina, wife to one and mom to 9 + 3 in heaven
Mary's Muse
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amyable
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| Posted: Jan 05 2006 at 12:01pm | IP Logged
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Tina P. wrote:
| My husband usually starts his "Everything has a place..." speech and puts them back which upsets me because I've just found all these related books ... |
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We had that problem! What worked for us here were several big wicker baskets. I put related books in them and leave the whole basket in a traffic area  . When they seem to be ignoring them in that area, I move them. It really seems to work, and dh thinks things are still "neat" that way. It's not as "strewn" as it could be, but it's a good compromise here.
Tina P. wrote:
I'm still not quite there, though on how learning is accomplished through building with legos or pretending with Playmobil. I guess with the legos there is color-matching potential, building, symmetry ... what else? And the Playmobil is role playing? I believe they learn about history a bit, as they ask me questions while they're using their different sets. |
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I have trouble with this myself ... my feeling (however wrong) is that you can learn SOME things by playing with legos or playmobil, but not as much as some people claim! But what do I know, we are relatively new to all of this.
Tina P. wrote:
I'm not much of a project-type person. I seem to be more of a get-three-square-meals-a-day-and-keep-the-house-from-implodi ng person. I'm certain that we need to lose some *stuff.* Or at the very least, we need to hide about 2/3 of it and swap it out 3x/year.
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Yes, yes!  It may be hard, the kids may complain, but I heartily believe that stuff, even what others might consider "good stuff" is still, well, just STUFF and when it makes it difficult to live it needs to go! There's theology behind this but my mind is mush right now. We have done some major declutters and I still want to do more.
Tina P. wrote:
| I guess I'm trying to understand this lifestyle to which I am drawn. |
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You and me both!
Tina P. wrote:
My boys are fighting me so hard on doing their table time school and when they come to me with interests I am so tired from all the pressure they put on me that I can't address their interests properly. How do you know learning happens? How can I bring back the love of learning into my children's lives? |
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This is the imploding point we reached last week, the week that prompte my dh to come to me with an ultimatum that I need to change, that prompted my prayer request of a day or so ago. 
One thing that has been helping me is a lot of soul searching on just WHY I felt under pressure. I listed some things to my dh and he cleared up some major misunderstandings on my part. One small example from our life was I was feeling very pressured to come up with varied, nutritious meals and was hitting brick wall after brick wall between pickiness and food allergies. I told dh this and he said, "Dear, I have been bringing the same exact lunch to work for years now. And liking it (he packs his own). What ever made you think I care about variety?" Hmmmm, he had a point there, and many other points besides.
He helped me realize that our oldest may NEVER be college material and that is OK (even though everyone in our extended family would freak!!). It is really OK and I don't have to stress every second trying to turn her into something she's not. Or trying to force her to do math. He reminded me that, truly, love is the most important thing. If I get her to do math and have not love, what have I got? (my apologies to St. Paul )
Obviously, I don't have many answers, lol - just wanted you to know you are not alone!
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Amy
mom of 5, ages 6-16, and happy wife of 
The Highly Sensitive Homeschooler
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Willa
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| Posted: Jan 05 2006 at 12:16pm | IP Logged
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Tina P. wrote:
| I guess I'm trying to understand this lifestyle to which I am drawn. My boys are fighting me so hard on doing their table time school and when they come to me with interests I am so tired from all the pressure they put on me that I can't address their interests properly. How do you know learning happens? How can I bring back the love of learning into my children's lives? |
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I know how you feel, Tina... that's how I had started to feel last year. My recent babies haven't come as fast as yours, but they have been medically difficult babies and we've been spending a lot of time running to emergency rooms and trying to work our schooling around hospital stays. Hospital stays are emotionally disruptive and the homecomings are often mini-newborn type experiences because you are bringing the sick child home needing all kinds of new care and vigilance and attention, because he is still quite fragile and you are SO glad to have him there with you (again). It consumes time, energy and emotional resources.
Also, we had three highschoolers.....Anyway, I personally responded to this unpredictable cycle by making my academic planning as predictable and streamlined as possible. Sort of like a Flylady for the homeschool -- baby steps in every subject every day, a checklist that the kids could follow on their own if I was gone, no surprises, no rabbit trails.
They did not protest much; they saw that was what we needed to do to survive; and there were some benefits.
Their schoolwork did not take all day by any means so they still had plenty of time to explore interests, but I didn't have any energy to help them or even be interested in what they were doing. My day was worked out so that I hit the floor running, worked with the youngers in the morning, the teenagers in the afternoon, and fit nursing, meds, tube feeding, therapy and the like in between. I felt like I was always pushing on to the next thing.
Sorry that none of this really answers any of your questions. This summer I started feeling how much we were missing. The younger kids had a very strong "work/play" cycle. They would rush through all their "school stuff" so they could basically coast. They thought of academics as their "chores" and me as their taskmaster.
I have 7 children and not a lot of energy and I find I can't juggle all the plates all the time. That is, if I'm focused on being the "teacher", then I can't focus on being the "mom". If I'm lesson planning, then the housework gets behind. I just have to acknowledge that my life works better if I focus on different areas at different times.
So this fall I've been focusing on getting my housework habits in order (Sidetracked Home Executive's card system has worked for me best, recently) and on being a mom and mentor/facilitator for the kids. These are both disciplines for me. It's hard to me to deal with house maintenance systematically and cheerfully, and it's hard for me to interact with my kids' enthusiasms and brainstorm about how to build on them, rather than just say, "Uh-huh, that's nice, OK, have you made your bed yet?"
On another thread I mentioned that I call ourselves "seasonal" homeschoolers. For everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn sorry.... anyway, you know the Biblical passage. If I think about my role as partly being responsive to what's going on with us at X time in our lives, it keeps me from the horrible extremes I used to deal with in my earlier homeschool years -- OH, I've been unschooling and now I realize that all those classical educators have kids who can WRITE IN LATIN and mine can't!" "Oh, no, I've been using workbooks and now my kids' love for learning is forever destroyed!"
I think when we are looking at our kids and our situation, some of these things don't seem quite so BIG. It's hard to explain. Let's say you and I spend 6 months or a year trying to foster our kids' love of learning. So we back off the academics and follow rabbit trails. Well, perhaps that was exactly what our family and situation needed at that time, and anyway, we had the courage to experiment, try something different, develop flexibility and pay attention to our kids at a certain time in their lives. Those things don't go away -- they are good life things. They can be built on.
This is turning sort of random and I can't seem to pull it together but maybe something in it will help. I hope so.
About knowing "how learning happens", when I look back over last fall I realize I can hardly put it even into a journal. The most helpful thing I read is Julie's post on another thread about "meta-messages" She talked about her kids digging in the dirt and learning various things.
One big "theme" in the last fall has been my daughter's interest in musicals and music in general. She has watched many, many musicals, studied them, written out the choreography, practiced the songs on various musical instruments. Furthermore, she has taught her little brothers many, many songs. My 3yo and 6yo have a wide repetoire of Irish folk ballads and Broadway standards.
When I watch her teaching the preschooler to sing the whole Magical Mr Mistofeeles song, no, it doesn't look like academics to me. It's hard to say how I could put it in her college transcript. But it DOES look like the kind of human multi-skilled endeavour that most of us have to be engaged in throughout our lives in our family and workplace.
Theoretically she has enough time to do this AND a bunch of college-prep stuff. And we ARE trying to keep up with college prep, because that's what she wants. But I find that when I am slaving over planning the perfect intensive college prep program and keeping micro-track of her academic records and so on, I have little energy left to be part of the musical aspect of her existence. I don't even notice the "other" parts of our existence which may be just as important to her future if not more so. Anyway, that's just an example. I am finding it really hard to explain.
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Willa
hsing boys ages 11, 14, almost 18 (+ 4 homeschool grads ages 20 to 27)
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Kathryn UK
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| Posted: Jan 05 2006 at 3:19pm | IP Logged
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I think I may see what you are getting at Willa ... if we put being tuned in to our children's interests and strengths first (mindful parenting?) first, then our academic approach - be it unschooling or more structured - becomes less important. We can mould it to fit the child. If we put academic style and plans first, then we are likely to end up squashing our children into a box of our own making and to undervalue their individual talents, especially if they don't fit the academic ideal we are aiming at. Is that close?
I have been very much enjoying this discussion, and it has helped me to be far more aware of being more mindful of my children and their individuality. I can't see myself ever being an unschooler, even on the loosest definition, as I simply function so much better with structure; I can see that in the past I have too often made the mistake of trying to fit the child to the structure, rather than the other way round. Over the last year or so I have been far more aware of adjusting my educational plans to suit each child's strengths and weaknesses, and of focusing on encouraging rather than requiring them to follow the plan. This conversation is helping me to put all this into much clearer perspective.
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Kathryn UK
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| Posted: Jan 05 2006 at 3:22pm | IP Logged
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Hmm ... I think all these unschooling discussions are merging into one another. I thought I was replying on another thread .
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ladybugs
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Kathryn UK wrote:
| I think I may see what you are getting at Willa ... if we put being tuned in to our children's interests and strengths first (mindful parenting?) first, then our academic approach - be it unschooling or more structured - becomes less important. We can mould it to fit the child. If we put academic style and plans first, then we are likely to end up squashing our children into a box of our own making and to undervalue their individual talents, especially if they don't fit the academic ideal we are aiming at. Is that close? |
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This is beautifully said, Kathryn!
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Maria P
My etsy store - all proceeds go to help my fencing daughters!
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Mary G
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Willa -- you are amazing! Your posts always make me feel like "see, I CAN do this!" Thanks so much for your soul-searching responses to things.....blessings to you and yours.
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MaryG
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my website that combines my schooling, hand-knits work, writing and everything else in one spot!
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Leonie
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| Posted: Jan 05 2006 at 7:23pm | IP Logged
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Tina P. wrote:
From having read those posts Leonie, I can barely BELIEVE that some of your kids would NOT be interested in Legos.
I guess I'm trying to understand this lifestyle to which I am drawn.
How do you know learning happens? How can I bring back the love of learning into my children's lives? |
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Yes, strange as it may seem, my youngest two need to be reminded that Lego exists!
My own personal belief is that learning happens anyway - even if I don't notice it or direct it.
This belief is very reassuring. 
It *is backed up be my experience - try to go a day or a week wthout learning. It's impossible!
It is also backed up by my reading on education and learning - David Gutterson's "Family Matters : Why Homeschooling Makes Sense" is very supportive of this concept.
Personally, I think that, if someone is interested in unschooling, they could take it on as a learning project. Now, I know you say you are not big on projects but this project can just involve no required schoolwork for a time, setting up a rhythm for chores and to ensure that we all spend time together each day and then just live and learn together.
Think about some fun things that you would like to do or read with the kids. They will all involve learning and/or rabbit trails! Some fun movies to watch. Some cool music to listen to. Something yummy to bake or fun to make. Some time for the kids to just play, perhaps while you are doing something else or with another.
Try this project for a period - and also aim to set aside time each day for you, to read and reflect and journal.
The energy you now spend on lessons, you can spend on doing things or being there with your dc, including the time spent doing all the daily necessities in a large family.
The time you spend on planning now could be time spent ( 10 minutes a day?) on journal and read time. For you.
Remind yourself that you don't have to live this lifestye forever. You can make changes at any time. But give it a period of time to *see how it feels and how learning can and does happen in daily lie.
Hope there is something in here to help!
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Leonie in Sydney
Living Without School
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Rachel May
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Tina P. wrote:
| I'm still not quite there, though on how learning is accomplished through building with legos or pretending with Playmobil. How do you know learning happens? How can I bring back the love of learning into my children's lives? |
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I am feeling my way towards a balance between the structure I need and the freedom to pursue interests that the kids need much as Kathryn says.
Kathryn UK wrote:
| If we put being tuned in to our children's interests and strengths first (mindful parenting?) first, then our academic approach - be it unschooling or more structured - becomes less important. We can mould it to fit the child. |
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One thing I have done is chosen to let legos be a part of our learning experience, not an after school toy. I'm planning on spending some time hereWeird Richard this summer so I can get some more creative ideas. This year we chose Math U See which uses Lego like manipulatives, but also provides a structure for me. We have taken breaks, but we come back to it afterward. For other subjects, I have tons of pictures of things like the Wright Flyer, a Metro Station, a parish church, and Golgotha that the boys have built after field trips or church trips. What helps them is that we allow them to leave the legos out all the time. My husband came up with the idea of the DLZ--the De-Legoed Zone--which is most of their bedroom. Then one large corner is separated by duct tape. The legos may not leave that zone. Maybe once a month I help with clean up so I can vacuum under them, but otherwise they are always available.
Can you tell that the “Lego” in the thread title is what caught my attention?
Leonie wrote:
| Personally, I think that, if someone is interested in unschooling, they could take it on as a learning project. Think about some fun things that you would like to do or read with the kids. They will all involve learning and/or rabbit trails! |
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Inspired by this forum I have started doing this. Sometimes I come here and ask for suggestions to supplement our curriculum. I also watch what interests the kids--recently it was “March of the Penguins”—and then brainstorm how to make it cover a variety of subject. These have turned our to be our most exciting learning experiences where everyone runs to the table to learn to draw a penguin and practice writing a few sentences or make up a penguin dance to a piece of classical music I’ve picked. I think Leonie’s suggestion is a great way to add a little unschooling spice into your school.
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Rachel
Thomas and Anthony (10), Maria (8), Charles (6), Cecilia (5), James (3), and Joseph (1)
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: Strewing yet again and Legos
