How to be a homeschool-parent-mensch

"If it be not goodness, the will is virtue, in the etymological sense of that word; it is manliness." -- Charlotte Mason, Ourselves (Volume 4)

In other words: Menschliness.

Mini poster and further explanations found on Life Without Pants; blog (outside of that post) contains adult language.

The post at Life Without Pants refers to a book by Bruna (not Brenda) Martinuzzi, The Leader as a Mensch: Become the Kind of Person Others Want to Follow. From her website: "Martinuzzi takes the reader on a transformative journey to a way of living, self-discovery, and personal strength that translates into becoming a person who authentically inspires with empathy and confidence—and successfully motivates others to follow by example, a mensch-leader."  I also liked one of the reviews posted there: “Bruna Martinuzzi has distilled the essence of what it takes to influence and motivate others, not by the exercise of authority, but through the example of ethical and admirable character. She doesn’t just tell us how—she helps us understand.” — Mark D. Lange, Christian Science Monitor

So what does that have to do with homeschooling parents? The attributes listed in the above poster, which are summarized from Martinuzzi's book on leadership, can be taken as characteristics of good teachers, and also of good parents. I won't paste the explanations as given on Life Without Pants, but here are my own (homeschooling) takes on the list.

1. Give people gifts other than those that you buy.  LWP mentions the gift of "A reason to care," among other things. In November I wrote a series of posts here about the gift of discipline, including this one.. We invite, we offer, we give; we don't invade or impose.

2. Become a talent hunter. See #5.

3. Share ideas and information that can enrich. Don't keep all your good ideas to yourself. Homeschooling parents seem to understand this naturally...hence the existence of support groups and the publication of many "how we did it" books and magazines, not to mention the Carnival of Homeschooling.

And of course it applies as well to what we actually teach. One way we frequently start our day here is with our homeschool "principal" (Mr Fixit), who tunes in closely to current events of all kinds and who is usually good for a "weekday update."

4. Spend more time in the “beginner’s mind.”  Put yourself in the student's place. What would you want to know about a topic? What would be a good way to communicate a particular idea? What points should you explain first, and which ones does your student need to discover for him or herself?

5. Don’t tell people what they can’t (aren't able to) do.  Marva Collins is a prime example of ignoring "can'ts," and so are John Holt and John Mighton.

6. Minimize the space you take up. LWP interprets this as referring to focus and lack of clutter, but I actually see another meaning in it: what Charlotte Mason calls Masterly Inactivity. That is, the focus is put on the student, rather than on the teacher. The student gets to ask the questions instead of just answer them.
7. Become a relationship anthropologist.  Maybe like this? "Justice can best be grasped through the prism of three generations. If I want you to treat me justly, I must imagine you and your parents and your grandparents in context. If we want to treat each other justly, we must imagine each other in context - you and your parents and grandparents; and me with mine. I must battle as hard for me to “get” your story as I battle for you to “get” my story." (Trustcounts.orghttp://www.trustcounts.org/just3.html)
8. Be happy for others. At the L'Harmas retreat last fall, Tammy Glaser told the story of a boy in their community school with a particular set of special needs, who was also hypersensitive to noise. On one occasion, when he demonstrated how far he had come by doing some kind of classroom presentation, the rest of the students all clapped for him...quietly.
9. Get rid of grudges. Allow second, third, fourth chances. Don't let past tensions spoil a good learning opportunity.

10. "Help others caress the rainbow," which means "Inspire hopefulness." One way to do this: include books that inspire in your homeschool curriculum: poetry, fiction, biography.

11. Make people feel better about themselves. No matter where they come from, no matter what's happened before. Give them opportunities to succeed, and let them know they're smart.

12. View promises as unpaid debt.  And don't promise what you can't follow through on. "How do you become the kind of person others want to follow? By being a person that people trust." (LWP)

How to fail at teaching--and it's more work to fail (School Education)

At the end of School Education, Charlotte Mason does talk very specifically about what a curriculum based on her "educational manifesto"--she jokingly refers to it as the Children's Magna Carta--would look like.  Or what it did look like in 1903, twelve years after the Parents' National Educational Union had begun to offer a formal curriculum.  I tend to think of this time in the P.U.S. as sort of its adolescence, if childhood was the beginning period in the 1890's, and maturity was sometime in the teens through the time of Mason's death in 1923.  Middle age?--the still-going-strong nineteen-twenties, thirties, forties, probably till after the war.   Declining years would be the time of increasing school standardization, changing culture, and other things that seemed to de-popularize PNEU methods, at least for a while.

But anyway, what she's describing here is not too far off from the format of the term programmes I'm more familiar with, those of the 1920's and early 1930's.  There are some book differences, especially in subjects like mathematics and grammar, and some of the subjects aren't as fleshed-out here as they were later on, but the overall shape of the curriculum had been pretty much set by this time.  In fact, she suggests that the PNEU had now been "beta-tested" enough in private homes to be recommended to classroom teachers.

Buried in those notes just before the end of the book, she gives a list of six causes of failure in education.

a)  Too many oral lessons.
b)  Too many lectures.
c)  Too many "text-books."
d)  Focusing on any intellectual motivation other than the desire of knowledge, e.g. prizes, liking the teacher
e)  Too many gadgets, manipulatives and models
f)  Too many "Readers."

Four out of those six items on the list are basically the same thing: read books, real books.  Isn't that a relief for teachers?  Maybe not such good news for textbook publishers, but doesn't that actually take the pressure off the rest of us?

You do not have to know everything. You do not have to spend hours Googling information and activities to teach the circulatory system or the Elizabethan stage. You do not need to buy out the teacher's store, or have every science kit in the homeschool catalogue. You do not need a rack of expensive teaching posters, or a boxful of stickers. You do not have to depend either on your own superior knowledge, or on the availability of the latest technology.  It seems to me that you'd have to put more effort and money into these less productive activities, than you would in simply offering a generous serving of books, sauced with some real things and other "affinities."  It's less burdensome to do what's more productive....to let the students dig for themselves.

(photo found here)

For some reason that reminds me of one of John Holt's books*, where he had bought a Polaroid camera and decided, on the spur of the moment, to unbox it and try it out right there in the classroom. Here's a package, here's what's in it, here's the camera, here's the instruction booklet, let's try it out together. What's this for? What if we try that?  Can I do it too?  This may sound like it's getting away from Charlotte's emphasis on books and natural objects, but here's my point:  this activity came out of something real.  It did not take John Holt hours to plan.  It did not come with worksheets or a quiz afterwards.  It did not come in a package marked "Afternoon with a Polaroid Camera: Oral Communication and Technology Objectives."   It wasn't a lecture, it wasn't even an oral lesson--it was an experience with a real thing that grownups were using. Yes, the kids enjoyed it partly because they liked John Holt, but what they really wanted to know was what was in the box and how it worked.

Charlotte repeats her point on page 247, the last page of the main text:  "that the young people shall learn what history is, what literature is, what life is, from the living books of those who know."  Yes, she says, many of the best schools did use books, but, in her opinion, not enough of them, and they didn't make full use of them.  So she adds appendices to show "how a wide curriculum and the use of many books work in the Parents' Review School."**

*Holt's book What Do I Do Monday? has some fantastic ideas for getting kids engaged with concepts such as size, speed, and strength, using "real" measurement tools.

**What the Parents' Union School was called at that time.

(For related posts, click on the Volume Three label below.)

How I became a math teacher?

The question mark in the subject line is deliberate.  I am a very un-mathy person.  I like Scrabble, cryptograms, word-based logic problems, crosswords; I shy away from number puzzles.  Not that I can't do math or handle numbers, at least in the everyday world; it's just that if I were sign up for a course in something that interested me, it probably wouldn't be math.  My idea of probably the dullest job in the world is accounting.

But teaching math--that does interest me.  Ever since I started looking at math curricula and homeschooling The Apprentice (and the later Squirrelings), close to two decades ago, I've been fascinated by the history of how math has been taught, especially over the last century, especially at the elementary levels.  I was there for a lot of it, good, bad, and ugly. What might be abstractions for some are clear memories for me.  I liked this, I learned from that; or not.  This teacher knew how to get math ideas across; that one made us fall asleep.

And I like teaching elementary math (and basic algebra and geometry) at home, seeing the girls learn new ideas and gain confidence in their numeracy. Even when they struggle or complain that math is hard or boring...that's a challenge.  I like being able to work at our own pace, and to use whatever's handy for illustrations.  I like feeling free to just say "here's the rule, here's how you do it" when that makes more sense than endless demonstrations and discovery learning.

I liked using our stash of rods and hundred charts and games and software.  I liked helping people who didn't get Miquon Math.  (I still think it's a brilliant primary curriculum.)  I liked reading about people like John Holt and John Mighton who believed that all children could learn math if it was carefully taught.

So does that make me a math teacher?  Well, I do teach math, and as I said, I have been teaching math to at least one child each year, sometimes two, for almost twenty years.  (Sometimes Mr. Fixit has been the math teacher too.) While I'm not a mathematician, did not major in math, do not even have math credits beyond Grade 13 (and I struggled for that one), I seem to have steered the Squirrelings towards acceptable levels of numeracy.  Other homeschooling parents, many without specialization in math, have done the same.

How?  I can't speak for all the other families out there.  For some it might be nothing more than buying a solid textbook or workbook series and doing whatever comes next.  For myself, I just decided that the process of teaching elementary math was not that much more mysterious than the teaching of any other subject.  If I could teach reading, writing, history, there was no particular reason I couldn't also handle elementary arithmetic and middle-school math topics. And since I was very aware of the booby traps and swamps in my own math adventures, I was determined to avoid as many of them as possible, including the infamous Fifth Grade Slough of Despond (girls often fall into it around the time they meet up with Giant Long Division).  If public school gave me only a mediocre appreciation of math, I could do at least somewhat better with my own girls.

Now here's the big point.

In Ontario, scores on standardized math tests are dropping.  Why? Some blame the teachers.  Some blame the curriculum.  Some blame society.  Or the weather.

One proposed solution is to have elementary math taught only by math specialists.  Because even the classroom teachers don't seem to be able to teach math well using the new approaches.  Does that imply that there's a) something wrong with the students, b) something wrong with the teachers, or c) something wrong with the curriculum? Votes?

It reminds me of a situation where an office bought a huge, expensive, complicated copier that required advanced training just to make ordinary copies.  Yes, if you were properly trained on it, you could use it to copy, sort and bind entire encyclopedias, but most of the usual copying chores were much more mundane.  It would have made more sense to buy a simpler machine, and send the occasional complicated jobs to a print shop.  It didn't make sense to blame the office staff, either, just because they didn't want to be full-time slaves of the Copying Beast.  And it wouldn't have made sense to put blame on the clients--because, in the end, they didn't care how big or expensive the copier was--they just wanted their letters and documents.

And what we really need is for schools to teach math (and other subjects), in a way that the teachers can handle, in a way that delivers what the children require, in ways that help them to grow and learn and include numbers and measurement and shapes and mathematical relationships in their lives.  Because they aren't impressed by how big the machine is, either, if it's not working for them.

For them, all you administrators out there. Take it from this question-marked math teacher.

Linked from Math Teachers at Play Carnival #71.

How Way Leads Onto Way: a Two-Days-Before-School Post

You see it frequently in real estate ads: "not a drive-by."  In other words, a house doesn't show so well from the road, or it looks small from the front, or you just really need to get out of the car and have a closer look to fully appreciate the beauty of the property.  Those rushing by on their way to somewhere else will miss out.

Recently the phrase "drive-by thinking" came up.  Somebody referred to the fact that we cannot possibly all put the same amount of thought into every issue that comes at us, or we'd go crazy.   Everybody probably has at least a few "drive-by" topics.  Richard Maybury's first "Uncle Eric" book mentioned this, too: that there are times where you're given some information that may or may not be accurate, but you don't care enough about it to question it.  For instance (I think Uncle Eric said), the fact that you can make a mock apple pie using crackers.  If you're not particularly interested in pies, not a baker, and not short on apples, you're not likely to go to the trouble of verifying that piece of information. It doesn't matter too much to you if it's true.  Other issues, you take a more personal interest in, spend more time and thought on.  A few things, maybe you invest a lot of time on, and then--to come full circle--you find it frustrating when other people just "drive by."  Shouldn't everybody care about whatever-it-is as much as you do?

I heard last week that Ontario public-school testing has shown a drop in elementary-level math scores over the last few years.  The suggestion was made that "regular" elementary teachers shouldn't be teaching math at all, but should be replaced by specialist math teachers.  I read this in the newspaper at about the same time that I was reading an online article about the "right" way to teach Charlotte Mason elementary math...which, while it interested me as most CM things do, also made me wonder (naturally) if I'd gone about our children's math teaching all wrong.  Maybe I messed things up, and that would be logical.  In many people's eyes, I am a complete amateur...an amateur with almost two decades of homeschooling experience, but still a scanner...an extreme generalist.  I have no right to be teaching middle-school math, or music, or science.  (I might be able to squeak though on the writing major.)  But, according to the crtiics, neither do the "qualified" generalist teachers have the right to be teaching math!  I guess that makes me feel better, or at least in good company.

Two days before school starts, I have library books on the coffee table about polymer clay, mosaics, and crafting with string. I also have a vintage copy of the Oxford Book of English Verse, and the 1987 travel book Heidi's Alp.  I'm reading Phillip E. Johnson's Darwin on Trial, George Eliot's Romola, and Todd Oppenheimer's The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved.  I'm thinking about Christian martyrs in Rome, Charlemagne, Corot's early painting of the Colosseum, and the rules for a math game (not to mention the load of laundry in the washer, the electrical work we need to get done, and the Apprentice's wisdom teeth).  I'm happily discovering that our local library's website lists DVDs not only of the 1984 BBC production of Coriolanus, but of the film Castle, based on David Macaulay's book; and that they have a copy of Rosemary Sutcliff's book Outcast.  (They're not generally very big on Rosemary Sutcliff.)

I care about a lot of things, and I have to, if I'm to get a homeschool year together that contains more than one subject (and have a life outside of that).  I could spend all summer focusing on just one subject area: science, or math, or something.  However, there's no way I could go into that much depth for every part of a "generous curriculum."  In at least some subjects, I'm always going to be, if not driving by, at least stopping only for a short look.  I cannot be an educational expert on Byzantine art, the Spanish Armada, mitosis, irregular verbs, vectors, and antinomianism.  Way leads onto way, as Robert Frost said, and on some things we may never come back.

But here's the point:  that's okay.  See the photo of John Holt with his cello?  He didn't start that until he was almost forty. He never let what he didn't know keep him from trying to find out.

I can't know as much about a lot of whatevers as a specialist does.  My life, so to speak, has an awful lot of drive-bys.  I slow down where I can, and sometimes I get to climb out, take my time and explore.  In the meantime, life goes on, and another school year begins.

"Corrie, we don't know where the road leads, do we?" "No, Andrew, we don't," Corrie replied, "but let's go there together."  ~~Brother Andrew, God's Smuggler

A Month with Charlotte Mason, #2

Post #1 is here.

So let’s go back to the opposite of utilitarian, what we’ve called leisurely. We have the usual definition of leisure as spare time, fun and games, something easy, what you do to relax; there’s Lynn’s definition which included ceasing from anxiety and contemplating higher things; we have the Roman idea of space set aside for thought or conversation; we have Northrop Frye’s idea that irrelevance is not necessarily a bad thing; we have the key phrase “without which we cannot be fully human.”

So if we put them together, we might define leisure in this way:

Having the freedom (time, space, opportunity) to discover what makes you fully human.

But then we also have that very odd connection with our word for school, a place where you’re made to go, listen to what does not interest you, do what you wouldn’t choose to do for as many years as the government says you have to. Why does that just not seem to fit?

And you may wonder what all this has to do with homeschooling. Many of us have kept or taken our children out of school precisely so they wouldn’t forced to be just another brick in the wall. But since utilitarianism is a big part of our culture, and the schools most of us were taught in reflected a utilitarian educational philosophy, it can sneak into our homeschooling. It might show up in worrying too much about provincial/state standards, or basing our criteria for learning on how many booklets children have filled in, or on how well they construct bar graphs and learn their spelling lists. Or we can react to this and go with something that has much less rigidity, a much less parent-directed kind of learning-without-school, where the children are making the decisions about what they will learn and how they will spend their time. John Holt (in Freedom and Beyond) described a cartoon showing a kid in a child-centered school who asks his teacher “Do I have to do whatever I want again today?” But that’s not exactly what Charlotte Mason envisioned either.

In Home Education, she said that parents needed to begin thinking about education by asking themselves “Why must the children learn at all? What should they learn? And how should they learn it?” And that after they had considered these questions, they would be in a position to direct their children’s studies…as long as they started in the right place, following a few truths about human beings and natural laws that you can’t disobey without causing damage, and starting and ending with the One who made those laws.

(Disclaimer here: I have unschooling and "very relaxed homeschooling" friends, and I am not denying that for some people, some of the time, a de-toxing approach works very well. But we're talking here about why CM isn't the same as unschooling.)

Why I won't unschool

Joanne Rendell published an "Education" piece in the May 3rd Toronto Star, called "Why I Won't Send My Son to School." A note at the end states that a longer version of the piece appears on babble.com, and yes, it does.

The comments on the article are, both surprisingly and unsurprisingly, largely negative. I find it surprising because of the large number of unschoolers who would probably post some support for Rendell after reading the article. Unsurprising because of the general public's somewhat mistrusting take on homeschooling in general, much less the kind of unschooling that Rendell describes.

Now given that this is still a very young child, I have no issue with most...well, some...of her "uncurriculum." Playing in the dirt with other kids--natural thing for a little boy to be doing. Going out to a bar with his mother and her partner late at night--not so much.

But I would never want to "unschool" my own children. To each his own, as one of the homeschoolers commenting on the article said. But I couldn't do it, and I take issue with some unschoolers' position (implied or explicit) that unschooling is the Great Step Beyond Regular Homeschooling that the rest of us haven't been savvy enough to catch onto. Much like the idea that Regular Vegetarians aren't vegetarian enough for vegans and all the rest of the very-specific-dieters.

Yeah, I've read John Holt. In fact, I pretty much started with his books. I can understand why he got frustrated with teaching and schools. I survived all the fads and experiments and weaknesses of 1970's public elementary schools. Old books, new books, no books, desks in rows, classrooms without walls, headphone listening centers, smelly tempera paints, the first VCRs, repeating what you already knew, kids getting the belt, activity cards, kids getting their mouths washed out with soap...tell me why schools shouldn't work and I probably lived through it.

I'm a fairly flexible homeschool teacher myself, especially now that I only have one at home full time. We spent way longer than I'd planned today working on a math activity that Crayons especially enjoyed. And we'll catch up on all my great plans, another day.

But if I unschooled...or, if you prefer, I let my children self-direct their own education, picking and choosing all or most of what they learned and when...I'd miss the small coincidences like finding a book about our term's artist at Winners. I'd miss the satisfaction that comes when someone's given me their best exam narration ever.

They'd miss out on Hidden Rods,Hidden Numbers, unless I left it where they would sprain an ankle falling over it. It's not the kind of book that screams "pick me up and use me." No cute graphics, just a tiny-print introduction and three series of student-created Cuisenaire rod logic puzzles. Crayons and I are going to be working through a couple of them every day until the end of the school year.

They'd miss out on some of the great but ugly books we have. Our copy of Cue for Treason looks like the old one shown here on Amazon. What kid would pick that up without major coercion? But it's a great adventure story--a bit too violent maybe for Crayons, yet, but sooner or later.

I doubt they'd find their way to Plutarch without some help, or perhaps even find their way out of the kids' fiction section at all. I loved to read when I was young, but when I was Allowed The Adult Card in around the eighth grade, I had absolutely no idea where to start, what to read, how to read it. The first two books I brought home turned out to be an adult-content education in themselves although probably not what my parents would have expected.

How shall we then expect our children to find their way through what's out there without some nudging and even some direct "Here, I want you to read this," or even better, "Here, let's read this together?" I have no doubt that many unschoolers say those same things and still consider themselves unschoolers. Maybe the only difference is that I write it down six months ahead of time. Maybe.

I might not ever get to let my kids know that they should be "Still achieving, still pursuing, / Learn[ing] to labor and to wait." I have no doubt that many unschoolers read those lines too, and interpret them in their own ways. Maybe the only difference is that I have no philosophical problem with helping the labour along a bit.

Maybe.

Saturday yard-saling

Mr. Fixit was feeling well enough for a short jaunt to a church sale this morning.

He found a walkie-talkie. Crayons found a Barbie. Ponytails found a couple of things.

Mama Squirrel found books, because this particular church sale almost always has a wonderful book corner. Also a brand-new set of Christmas-coloured table runner/napkins/placemats which Mama Squirrel would have no intention of putting on her Christmas table but which might work very well for gift bags or other Christmas-fabric crafts. Also a brand-new set of two cocoa mugs plus cocoa mix, final destination still unknown. Also a couple of part-sets of nice stationery.

The books are:

Jacob Two-Two and the Dinosaur
Jacob Two-Two's First Spy Case (Mama Squirrel and Crayons just finished Jacob Two-Two and the Hooded Fang) (Review comments: These are fairly amusing but contain a bit too much grade-school potty humour for MS's taste. The Hooded Fang is probably the best of the three.)

The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler (M.S.'s copy disappeared awhile back)
Hymns for Primary Worship
Freedom and Beyond, by John Holt
Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner
Making Men Whole, by J.B. Phillips
Extending the Table: A World Community Cookbook, by Joetta Handrich Schlabach (the 1991 followup to The More-with-Less Cookbook)

And my favourites out of the pile:

Selected Burns for Young Readers, published by Geddes and Grosset. Amblesiders and Martha fans, check this one out! Nice big print! Glossary of Scottish words in the back! An introductory biography of Burns, and introductions to each of the poems! Lovely.

Songs of the Saviour, and Out of Doors Nature Songs, both by Annie Johnson Flint. Paper-covered, tied-with-cord booklets of her poems, published I-don't-know-when by Evangelical Publishers in Toronto--I'm guessing the early twentieth century, though.

Waving our homeschool catalogues, or, are we really prepared?

Jacci M at The Educational Life has a thought-provoking post about the naïveté shared by many new homeschoolers (green as grass, right?): how can we, without formal teacher's training or experience, dare to say we are prepared to teach our children? Her solution is a good dose of Charlotte Mason's books, and I'd go along with that.

However, I'm not so sure that we, coming into homeschooling, are necessarily as unprepared, or as different from any other new teachers, as her scenario suggests:

She [your child's imagined teacher] smiles a cheerful smile and explains that this will be her first year teaching. Although she went to college, she really has very little actual training in education. Her degree was in history. She did very well academically, though, and has always loved children. She babysat a lot as a teenager and was the oldest of four children. She's looked through teacher catalogs a lot, too, so she feels that she's fairly ready. Understandably, you're a little taken aback. Has she ever taught a child to read? What about handwriting? Does she have experience there? Or math? Did she receive any training in teaching math to young children? What are her thoughts on children's literature? Does she know how she will make sure the children are processing what they are reading? Her answer to all of your questions is, basically, "no". She seems very relaxed about it, though, and very matter-of-factly says that she has the curriculum the school system provided, and she will just learn along with the class.

Yeah, I know, that's how the school system and a lot of non-homeschoolers see us. As if we hadn't yet penetrated the mysteries of learning...as my husband's grandmother used to say darkly, just wait, you'll see.

However, is this hypothetical homeschooler much different from any other first-year teacher? Where I live, a B.Ed. is a post-grad degree, so every new teacher has a bachelor's in something or other--same as this story--plus One Year of Teacher's Ed. Is that long enough to make you an expert in teaching? If lacking one year of university classes and a couple of practice-teaching sessions is all that separates me from a first-year "professional teacher," I don't know why I should feel much behind. In my own pre-homeschool experience (that's up until The Apprentice was four), I would include all the babysitting and so on (and don't make light of that) plus several years of Sunday School teaching, volunteering in what was then called a TMR class, tutoring a special-needs student, directing camp arts and crafts for a summer (yeah, me), doing library music and movement programs for a summer (yeah, me again), volunteering at my toddler's weekly community-centre program, and taking several relevant university courses (developmental psychology, children's literature and so on). Had I ever taught anybody to read?--not from the ground up, unless you count playing school with my little sister. (Did that end up mattering?--well, no, all my Squirrelings have learned to read, with or without my help.)

But even more important than that--I had the luxury of a couple of years of "apprenticing" before I jumped in myself. I went to homeschool meetings and at least two conferences during that time, and I listened. And yes, along with talking to the real-life homeschoolers at the meetings, at church and down the street, I had the privilege of "meeting" Charlotte Mason, Ruth Beechick, Gayle Graham, Valerie Bendt, Mary Pride, Cathy Duffy, and other teaching parents who had written down what they'd learned. Oh, and John Holt. By the time I was ready to, figuratively, take my place at the front of the classroom, I had a very good idea of what was and wasn't going to work for us, and even some idea of why.

And you CAN learn a lot by browsing teacher catalogues--both the homeschool-friendly variety and the other kind. The best homeschool catalogues have detailed and sometimes critical descriptions and comparisons of the products (does anyone else in Ontario still miss Lifetime Canada/Maple Ridge Books?). And the other kind...well, as I've said before, you can at least learn from them what you don't need.

Besides, you're not presuming to sit in front of a class of thirty, waving your catalogue as qualification; you are planning to provide the brain-food for your own children. This week, this month. You do not need a teaching degree to follow Ambleside Online's Crisis Plan, to read them a chapter of Understood Betsy and play "Cup of Twenty." Homeschooling methods are, and should be, somewhat different from public school ones; remember that we don't have to slice bread with a chainsaw.

So while I would strongly agree with Jacci's advice to new homeschoolers (learn from the best parent-teacher-education resources you can get hold of, including Charlotte Mason's works; strive to understand what and why you do what you do; learn the best methods you can and base them on solid educational and spiritual philosophy), I would also like to reassure those who want to homeschool and maybe feel like they're not qualified (didn't finish college or whatever). Understand that being your children's parent, in at least one sense, qualifies you. Yes, you can learn more; and no, a browse through a catalogue is probably not enough to get you going. But you can learn, and much better and faster than the teachers' unions and other naysayers would like you to believe. (Feetnote: Jacci's not a naysayer, just to clarify that.)

Math and More (Part Three)

(Part One, Part Two, Part Four, Part Five)

Since I was talking about Ruth Beechick’s booklet An Easy Start in Arithmetic, I should have mentioned as well that its last page is “Ways to Use the Hundred Chart,” and there is a small hundred chart on the back cover (in addition to the poster-size one that’s included with the booklets). Hundred charts are a great way to enrich a math program without doing worksheets; in fact, we did a whole year of kindergarten math for Ponytails without any written work at all. There’s something about those ten rows of ten that not only helps with counting, adding and subtracting, but reinforces place value ideas as well, especially when kids learn the trick of adding or subtracting tens (go up or down a row) . When they’ve learned that, then adding fourteen becomes “add ten” (go down a row) and then “four more” (four spaces to the right), without any fuss about “carrying the one.” And the nice thing about hundred charts is that they can be useful in any size: tiny (like the one on the booklet), bigger (a handwritten chart or a page-sized printout from the Web—Donna Young’s site has printable hundred charts), or really big. We have a poster-size hundred chart from the teacher’s store and also one that we made on poster board with detachable (Velcro) number disks.

Bible Lessons

For many people, Bible is as much a part of a basic curriculum as reading and math. I could assume that most people have a Bible around and that they could make up a simple program of reading Bible stories to their children, as parents have done for hundreds of years. However, since I was trying to stick to the books in the shopping bag, I was limited to a paperback copy of “The Great News: The New Testament, New International Version.” This actually works out fine, although for a third-grader it might have been nice to have slightly larger print. The bonus about this edition of the New Testament is that it comes with a 71-lesson “Reading Plan to Get You Started” in the front, which works out to just about two lessons per week (maybe reading on one day and reviewing or notebooking on the next). This goes beyond the simplest stories; it starts with “Who is Jesus?” and goes on to “What is Christianity All About,” “What is Real Faith,” “How Does God Want His People to Treat Others,” and “What Stories Did Jesus Tell?” I like this approach because it’s a bit of a change from just reading straight through one of the Gospels, and it lends itself to keeping a notebook as well. I might even use this myself next year with Ponytails.

History, Geography and/or Social Studies

The lack of history resources in the bag might make this the weakest part of the curriculum, although that would be pretty easy to fix using online or library books. However—sticking to the bag and the teaching resources—I decided to try something different. Teaching Children includes both a “regular” Social Studies outline and an “alternate” one for grades three through six, written by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay. In the alternate outline, third graders spend a lot of the year exploring what’s around them; not in a dumbed-down “Mr. Neighbourhood Policeman” approach, but in an inter-disciplinary program that combines local and comparative geography, local history, natural history, and what you might call cultural anthropology and sociology. In other words, they find out where they live, who lives there, and what’s around them. John Holt once suggested something like this too; someone asked him how he would tutor a boy who lived in an unusual natural environment, and he pointed out that it would be foolish not to take full advantage of every bit of local exploring, beach-digging and museum-lurking that they could squeeze in—that this would benefit the boy in ways that his book lessons never could.

It’s also suggested that the third graders “adopt” a missionary family or project and learn more about the country involved, correspond with the family and so on.

Of course this doesn’t come all ready-packaged for you, and in some ways it may sound like the vaguest part of the curriculum—go out together, do field trips, find out the names of the roads and the trees and the early settlers, and keep a scrapbook. Some of us might think we could cover our entire local area in one or two trips; others of us would immediately worry about how little we ourselves know about local birds, pond life, railroads and so on! As I said, you might not like this idea at all and then you’d have to fill in with other history and geography books. However, I do think it is suitable for children of about third-grade level who aren’t too interested yet in names-and-dates history (plus it would make a great ongoing activity for Friday afternoons). Can I tell you a funny story about this kind of exploring approach to social studies? A long time ago (I think The Apprentice was in the second grade), I read the book Who Killed Canadian History? by Jack Granatstein. Since the book dealt mostly with the weaknesses in secondary- and post-secondary-level education, I e-mailed the author to ask if he had any recommendations for teaching the elementary grades. Mr. Granatstein graciously wrote back and said he didn’t know a lot about teaching second graders but that his recommendation would be “Forts. Visit forts.” So there you have it.

As for the missionary/other countries side of the curriculum: I thought of three possibilities for this. One came out of the Child of China book that is included for literature; I found a unit study of Ancient China, by Judy Wilcox, written for homeschoolers, that’s meant to take twelve weeks and which sounds like a great addition to the last part of the year’s curriculum. Of course you have to buy that first (grin). Or you could buy the e-text A Child’s Geography, Volume Two: Exploring the Holy Land, which covers several Middle Eastern countries.

Or you could just go with whatever resources you know best: missionaries or organizations you know yourself or that your church supports.

How does that sound?

In the next post I'll talk about science and finish off with some extras.

Outgrowing

I'm packing a box of books to take to a homeschool support group meeting this weekend. I've done that lots of times before--given away extras from library sales, children's books we were done with or just didn't need. But this box is different. This week I took a look at my small shelf of how-to-homeschool books and realized that I was done with some of them.

Not ones I didn't like--these were ones that I did like. Did read. Did use. (Well, not the ones that I used so hard that nobody else would want to read past my scribbles and notes.) And when I looked at them, I realized that I'm done with them.

I have to be careful with that, because I don't mean that there's nothing else I could ever learn from those particular people. I'd love to hear some of them speak at a conference or maybe read something else by them. But somewhere along the way, I absorbed or processed what they were saying in these books; learned from it, and then branched out from it. I don't mean, either, that I'm now such an expert homeschooler that I have no more to learn. Maybe there will be some new how-to or why-to books that come along. But these particular books deserve a second or third life helping somebody else get going.

There is the book I bought at a conference when I was very pregnant with my second child, which was also the only conference I've ever been to with Mr. Fixit; we drove all the way to Mississauga (near Toronto) to hear Diana Waring speak, and buy grade one books for The Apprentice. I saw a particular book on creating curriculum and wanted it SO badly...and we bought it. And I used it. Actually that one I'm keeping...one of those notes-in-the-margins casualties.

There's also the fat everything-you-need-to-know book that I bought, new baby in tow, later that same year when I found (with amazement) that a local bookstore carried a few homeschooling titles. It's been updated since then and now comes with a CD-Rom; but maybe somebody else can still use it. It's scribble-free.

And there's a John Holt book, and How Do You Know They Know What They Know (I guess now I know), and Homeschooling for Dummies. (I got that one as part of a boxful at a rummage sale.) I already gave away my 1995 Cathy Duffy curriculum guide.

Going through them is a lot like packing away outgrown baby clothes, or giving away a tricycle because the baby is now riding a two-wheeler. Like the baby clothes, I never really thought I'd get to the point of not needing them. But the kids are getting older...and we've been homeschooling for almost a decade now. There is a point where you can stop looking at your student driver's manual, right?

Still it does bring on just a little sigh of something passing.