Mom Is Teaching

Independence Day is this Friday in the US. There will be fireworks, parades, games, and lots of fun. Oh, and did I mention the fireworks? That’s the boys favorite part. Seriously, every holiday should include exploding things in the sky.

Since you can make any day a learning experience, including days that involve explosions, I thought I would share a few resources for this Forth of July. Just a few sites that have games and ideas of things you can do with your kids.

• Start off your day with my Red, White and Blue Breakfast. Trust me, it’s yummy!
• The Teacher’s Corner has a collection of 4th of July Activities and Lesson Plans you can use.
• Kaboose has some fun games and quizzes for the 4th.
• Apples 4 the Teacher has a lot of great info from coloring pages to facts on the Revolutionary War.
• Homeschooling at About.com has a fun list of online games for the 4th.
• For younger kids Enchanted Learning has some great activities and craft ideas.

Lots of fun stuff that you can use to keep kids entertained all day, which might be helpful if you’re having family over for the 4th. Word search puzzles and watermelon eating contests are much better than fighting over who did or did not eat the last ice cream bar. Does anyone have any fun ideas up at their blog? Let me know and I’ll add you to the list!

Independence day, 4th of July, kids, fun

I had planned to mention this last week but it slipped my mind. Beverly of the About Homeschooling Guide is starting the Summer Reading Club up again for 2008. The goal is to have your kids read at least 500 pages this summer. That may seem like a lot, but books can quickly add up to that much and more.

The reading club officially started on May 30th but you have until August 31st to get your list in. All you have to do is track the books your child reads over the summer and the number of pages for each book, then add them all up for your grand total. Send in the list plus $1 to cover postage and your children will receive a certificate, stickers, and a prize in the mail.

Don’t forget to visit the sign up page first to make sure that your kids are all signed up and ready to read. My oldest got pretty wide eyed at the thought of getting stickers for books. Stickers! I’m not sure that we will reach 500 pages since he is still reading very short books, but if we don’t make it I will probably buy him those dinosaur stickers he keeps drooling over at the store. He’s easy to please.

If you haven’t checked it out yet Kate has a list up of other reading programs for the summer that your kids can join in. If anyone knows of any other let me know and I’ll add them to the bottom of this post.

reading, books, reading program, home education

I know that there are some beautiful families that have kids who love each other and respect each other and never, ever fight.

Mine isn’t one of them.

It’s a common parenting task, whether home schooling or using public schools. Pulling the kids off of each other as they slug it out over the blue hot wheels car even though there are three others just like it a few inches to the left. What? Don’t tell me your’s haven’t done that! Well I know I’m not alone here, from a comment by Suzanne:

I am the mother of a previously HS child, who I then sent to public school Kindergarten, and now he’s coming back home.
I am not nervous at all about HS’ing again. I am just trying to figure if I should keep his 7 year old sister home for 3rd grade. THAT gives me a lump in my throat, can I handle two….or will I spend my days settling the warring factions of sibling rivalry? I would love to hear your thoughts on that.

Ohhh sibling rivalry. I have more than my share of that around my house. Mostly the boys love each other, like for instance when my oldest hugged and kissed his brother last night after a painful collision with the coffee table. But there are still those moments of brutal screaming, crying, and threats. Most of that coming from me while they are wailing on each other over the littlest, mundane things.

I’m pulling out my copy of Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too this weekend to reread and try to adjust myself. I find I have to do that every so often so I fall off the sane parenting track. This is obviously why I’m an only child.

So what’s your parenting tragedy for when the kids are fighting and fussing?

parenting, sibling rivalry

I saw a few people talking about this on a couple home educators lists I read. People are wondering what to do to mark the end of the year, or the passing from one grade to the next. Do you have a big celebration, do a small graduation ceremony with local home schooled kids, not even notice it?

In one group a mom mentioned that she takes a picture of her kids at the end of each year and lets them decorate a frame to hang the pictures in. She has a long row of images going down her hall showing off how they have changed. I thought that was a great idea, and I might steal it a bit for my own. Since I love to scrapbook I make a little  mini-book to showcase a few things from the year. A few pictures that I had taken, a list of the books we read, and a few notes here and there about interesting things that were done. Though something like that is more fun for me than for anyone else.

So what do you do to celebrate the end of another year? Do you have a family tradition that you do each year, or just let the kids decide how they want to mark the event? I’d love to hear what kids of ideas everyone has on this. Those who don’t do anything special I would love to know why not, if there is a specific reason or if you just don’t see a need for it. 

graduation, end of year, celebration, home education

This week’s Works For Me Wednesday theme was to share what doesn’t work for us. Though I didn’t get a post up here, I did share one at my personal blog that I thought some of you might be interested. It is about bribing kids to get a desired result and how the short term benefits are outweighed by the long term problems, such as diminished internal motivation.

I shared that my thoughts were influenced by a book I read called Punished By Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes by Alfie Kohn, one that I think a lot more parents should read. Kohn has several other books on education and children that are worth looking for, both for parents with kids in school and those choosing home education.

I written before my list of the Top 10 Books Every Homeschooling Parent Should Read, but I’m going to have to amend that to add Alfie Kohn to the list. Anyone looking for some summer time reading should check out the list and see what strikes their interest. And don’t forget to check out some of the books by Kohn also. His other books The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing, The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools and The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and “Tougher Standards” are three that parents should definitely read through no matter how they choose to educate their children.

So go, read my post and leave me lots of comments. Then look for some Alfie Kohn in your local library, he’s definitely worth checking out.

books, home education, Alfie Kohn, education

If you’ve never visited Education.com you really should. It’s a great site for parents looking for information for more information on their kid’s education. Everything from preschool to high school is covered. Reference articles, informational sources, and advice.

I recently got an email from Jessica Hopkins of Education.com telling me about their homeschooling section which has articles on socialization, curriculum, tutors, unschooling, and much more. There are even articles for parents of gifted kids and those with special needs, two areas that are often glossed over or ignored on general home education sites.

I thought I would toss this site out there as another valuable resource for parents to use. The articles cover more than just educational topics, with topics such as shyness and fitness also covered across the site. It’s one of those sites that is perfect for all parents to check out, not just home educators. So check the site out, spend some time digging through all the information they have to offer, and think about joining in the community section to share with other parents.

parenting, education, home education, websites

As the school year draws to a close for some a new wave of home educating families are stepping up. The ones who either made it through the year of public or private school and are switching to home education, and the ones facing enrolling their children in school for the first time next year and deciding to stay home instead. As the year stretches into the summer there will be more and more parents suddenly doing the “OMG I’m not sending the kids to school, what will I do” freak out dance.

I love Tammy’s response to one parent’s fears on perfect homeschooling. Things don’t have to be perfect, in fact nothing ever really is. But who would want perfection anyway, that’s pretty boring if you ask me. Spontaneous chaos is what gives moms a chance to shine, and where the most important lessens are often learned. Even if you feel like hyperventilating when it’s happening.

It’s totally normal to be hyper when you’re starting out something SO new, an interesting, and BIG, and fun, and scary, and all that. So, enjoy it. Sign up for everything, get really going. Then, when you feel yourself burning out, back out, do less stuff, and relax. Whether you start by relaxing or start by going into overdrive, you’re still doing a great job and learning about your role as a homeschooling parent.

I think even some experienced families get a little freaked out with each new year. The kids are older, they may be requiring something new, younger children might be getting old enough to start some things, regulations and requirements might have changed, or anything else can throw perfectly sane parents into confusion.

I saw a few other blogs linking to this list of benefits of home education. Some were saying that when things started feeling stressed and they were questioning enrolling their children for next year this list made them relax. So I thought I would pass it on as well, something to help you de-stress and breath.

home education, education, school, parenting

Week #4 of the Green Hour Challenge, this week things are coming into focus for our nature study. This week we are supposed to choose a specific area to study for the remainder of the challenge. Since it is spring and things are blooming everywhere here we choose to stick with plants. Though I am sure that incects and animals will wander in as they are needed.

This week on our nature walk we found and brought home two things to explore and learn more about.First this robin egg that we found on the ground. The top of the shell was broken, but the insides were still intact. There wasn’t a baby bird inside, but there was a clump of something floating in there.

Next we found these purple flowers growing in a huge patch. I’m still not sure exactly what kind of flower they are. I couldn’t find them in the Handbook of Nature Study and searching online by their description brought me about 500 different types. I’m just not that patient to dig through them all. But I learned of a great online resource for exploring animals and plants. eNature.com has free field guides online thousands of species that you can dig through.

This week we were supposed to read pages 10-11, 13-15, and the introduction of the area we are exploring for the challenge. I’ll save you my analysis of it this week, mostly because the kids are not interested in letting me type this morning.

nature, nature study, green hour challenge, home education

I mentioned earlier that Earth Day was happening during TV Turn Off Week. If you are planning on celebrating this year I have a couple of lists with ideas that you can use inspire you.

If you would like to try some recycled crafts this Earth Day I have a short list of ideas that you can take a crack at. There are lots of fun things that you could try that did not make the list. If you have some fun recycled or earth friendly creative projects let me know and I’ll add you to the list.

The next list is sites you can use for teaching more about Earth Day. From lesson plans to helpful information these are the sites that will help you in talking about the earth and the environment to your kids. If you know of any other great sites let me know about them!

Earth Day is coming up April 22nd, if you are thinking about sharing this day with your kids I hope these ideas help!

home education, Earth Day

Are you up for a fun challenge? April 21-27 is Turn Off TV Week over at Unplug Your Kids. Think you can turn off the boob tube for an entire week? If so join in the challenge!

Take a week off from TV, or if you already don’t watch try to take a week off of other “screen time”. Share it on your blog and then come back in a week and share how it went. Did you notice any changes in your kids? How about in yourself? Who lost weight from not sitting on the couch as much? Are you going to continue the no-TV time or run back to all the shows you missed.

Any bets that Lost fans won’t be able to make it?

The challenge comes during the week that Earth Day falls in, so you can also think about how much electricity you are not using by keeping the TV off.

Turn Off TV Week, tv, television

Week 3 for the Green Hour Challenge and this week we started drawing.

This week we talked about starting a nature journal, and this time my oldest was more excited about it. I told him that he was free to pick anything he wanted and we could talk about it and he could draw pictures of it. Leaves were on his mind a lot this week so I had him choose several different kinds that he liked. Instead of drawing we did some basic leaf rubbings with a crayon. We only did one page to begin with, but he’s excited to go out and gather some more leaves and do several more pages.

From the leaf rubbings we ended up talking about white clover, since those leaves he liked the best. In the Handbook Of Nature Studies one of the things mentioned about white clover is that bees use the flowers for their honey. So we pulled out the honey off the shelf and had biscuits and honey for a snack. Nature is sweet.

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Week 2 (for me) of the Green Hour Challenge. This week we went outside and took some time to quietly pay attention to the nature around us. Getting my boys to be quiet outside is tricky enough, but we did manage to have some moments listening and looking around us.

When we were out part of the challenge was to ask them to describe some of the things they saw, heard, and felt. There was also an optional nature journal, though my oldest wasn’t interested at all. But I did record his answers to the questions for this week.

• One word to describe something they heard - tweeting
• Two words for something they saw - flying birds
• Three words for something they felt - soft, warm wind

This week’s reading was page 15 and pages 23 and 24 of the Handbook Of Nature Study. Page 15 has a short part of the field excursion as part of the nature study. This section notes that you do not need a long period of time set aside to study nature, it can be done in short 15 to 30 minute trips.

It is a mistake to think that a half day is necessary for a field lesson, since a very efficient field trip may be made during the ten or fifteen minutes at recess, If it is well planned. Certain questions and lines of investigation should be given the pupils before starting and given in such a manner as to make them thoroughly interested in discovering the facts.

Pages 23 and 24 covers more on how to use this book. The Handbook Of Nature Study, though thick with information, was not meant to be a field guide. The books is more useful as a guide for parents and teachers to help their children learn more about nature. One thing to use the book for is to help inspire your kids to learn more about what they see and hear in nature, but not to make it tedious work.

If the questions do not inspire the child to investigate, they are useless. To grind out answers to questions about any natural object is not nature-study, it is simply “grind,” a form of mental activity which is of much greater use when applied to spelling or the multiplication table than to the study of nature.

As more things are blooming and more animals are coming out I’m looking forward to taking an active interest in noticing them and learning more. We also have a small garden growing which brings a lot of nature to study right to us. Right now it’s just bugs and worms, but soon it will be butterflies and small animals. And of course the vegetables growing themselves.

nature, nature study, home education, homeschool, home school

One of the common points against home education is that kids are removed from the positive and negative aspects of schools. “But how will they learn to deal with bullies?” is a line too often repeated, often under the assumption that there are no bullies outside of the classroom environment for which children to learn from. This assumption is of course both false and absurd. For starters if the only place to learn how to adapt to bullies is in the school setting then perhaps learning to deal with them is not a useful thing to learn, one that is not really needed in the world. However we know that bullies can be found everywhere and that the chance to be bullied occurs far too often in everyone’s day. You don’t need to go to a special building to find it.

I recently read two articles on bullying. The first dealt with bullying in the schools, this wonderful experience that children not in schools are missing out on. Billy Wolfe, a 15 year old boy, was repeatedly bullied and tortured in school by his classmates. They physically hit him, emotionally tortured him, and humiliated him endlessly with no consequences. After all, kids just need to learn how to deal with bullies, right?

Not long after, a boy on the school bus pummeled Billy, but somehow Billy was the one suspended, despite his pleas that the bus’s security camera would prove his innocence. Days later, Ms. Wolfe recalls, the principal summoned her, presented a box of tissues, and played the bus video that clearly showed Billy was telling the truth.

Though this did not stop the bullying, or erase the torture that had already been inflicted upon Billy. And the lesson was already taught well to the other students who laughed as Billy was suspended and the bullies walked free with bragging rights. Suddenly I have an urge to reread Lord of The Flies.

Of course this type of bullying continues unchecked into adulthood. The second article I read dealt with the adult bullies we so often face in the workplace. The typical bullies, the “cool kids” of school who gain more power by holding down those that they see as lesser than grow into the bosses that torture their employees. Adult bullies learn to adapt their tactics into what will fit better into the adult world. They realize that many of the ways they can torture people as children themselves will not work as adults, so they change tactics. Yet it is still bullying just the same.

This month, researchers at the University of Manitoba reported that the emotional toll of workplace bullying is more severe than that of sexual harassment.

Some may read this and feel that it is a perfect reason to keep kids in school. After all if bullies are so prevalent in the workplace than surely kids need to learn how to deal with them in other controlled settings such as school. Many home schooling families would be quick to point out that bullying also occurs are the park, the play group, the club, and even in the home giving home schooling children many chances to learn how to handle bullies.

For my family we have a different idea. I don’t want to teach my sons how to deal with bullies. In schools students who are bullied have limited options. Too often adults look the other way, bullies continue with what they are doing. Years through middle and high school teach students two things. 1) The bullies will get away with it and rarely punished, 2) those bullied will be punished. Learning to deal with bullies often means sinking to their level and becoming a bully as well or learning to turn away and pretend it is not there. Those values exist into adulthood.

I don’t want to teach my sons to deal with bullies. I want to teach them that this behavior is unacceptable, that hurting others in any way does not make them “cool”, that they don’t have to fit into the crowd and that standing out does not have to be painful, and that they do not have to become the kind of adults that use words that hurt as much as fists. They can be better. If that means keeping them out of the bully-rich environment until they have a solid foundation built up and a strong enough personal base to stand up to those who use power-over, then good. They will be strong er for it in the long run.

For a good discussion on bullies both in schools and in the workplace read both the post The bullying epidemic and the comments that follow.

bullies, bullying

If you are doing the Green Hour Challenge like me or just enjoying taking your kids outside to enjoy nature you might be thinking about carrying a notebook or sketch book with you to keep track of things. Jotting down notes of what you’ve found, sketches of animal tracks or interesting birds, or even just saving some flowers to investigate later are all helpful with a good notebook to use.

So for today’s Works For Me Wednesday I’m pointing you over to Kim at Relaxed Homeskool who wrote about some great little notebooks she just got called Field Notes. These beautifully simple books are a step back from the constant flow of technology we have today, and that’s what makes them great. Imagine, writing instead of typing! They have a great deal going on right now too. Their Three Pack includes 3 of the notebooks, a pencil and pen set, and extra “goodies” for only $9.95.

Of course if you would rather you can make your own books to use. Scroll to the bottom of this post on making picture books for a video tutorial on making your own hardbound book. You can use this to make a nice blank book with a thick spine to carry with you and send the kids out with. The process is easy enough that you can include the kids in the book making fun, let them decorate their books anyway that they want.

This is my tip for this week’s Works For Me Wednesday, click the link to see what other great tips people are giving.

books, book making, notebooks, writing, nature, Works For Me Wednesday

It’s Spring! Which means crazy weather as the warmth and cold mix and mingle. Here in Oklahoma that means tornado season starts picking up. I thought I would put together a few links and ideas about tornadoes if anyone was interested in doing a unit study on them. Tornadoes really are amazing, hypnotic acts of nature. That is, when you’re not in the line of sight of one.

• Tornado guide from the U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Weather Service A great guide on what tornadoes are, what causes them, and some safety guidelines.
• The Tornado Project - A little bit of everything, worth check out for images and videos.
• National Geographic has Tornado lesson plans for kinds in K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12 grades.
• Make A Tornado - A fun project for younger children (K-5) to make their own little tornado in a bottle.
• Tornado! - Lesson plans for older kids (grades 6-8) from Discovery.
• Tornadoes Lesson plan - Short lesson for Junior High and High School aged kids, teaches them to predict tornadoes and includes an online quiz at the end.
• The Fujita Scale of Tornado Intensity - Explains how tornadoes are rated and what puts the “F” in an F4.

A few good tornado books to look for would be

• Under the Whirlwind: Everything You Need to Know About Tornadoes But Didn’t Know Who to Ask - Jerrine Verkaik
• Tornadoes - H. Michael Mogil
• Storm Chaser: In Pursuit of Untamed Skies - Warren Faidley
• Do Tornadoes Really Twist? - Melvin Berger, Gilda Berger
• Tornadoes - Jean Allen
• The Weather Book: An Easy-to-Understand Guide to the USA’s Weather - Jack Williams

If you don’t live somewhere that tornadoes are a hazard, or just want to check them out from the safety of your couch, just search for tornado footage on YouTube. There are several videos online of real tornadoes in action, such as this video that will put your heart in your chest a couple times as they record a tornado ripping right next to them. You can also watch live footage of the recent tornado that ripped through Atlanta.

tornado, tornadoes, weather, lesson plans