You are a Tigger Homeschooler. Tiggers jump into
homeschooling with both feet, as a grand
adventure. Everything is about learning, and
their days (and houses) show it.
What kind of Hundred Acre Wood Homeschooler Are You?
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I've come to the conclusion that the best way for the kids to learn would be to let them lead, let their interests determine what to do, at least for this year...
We're taking the time to learn what the kids are interested in... I'm leaning more toward unschooling & will probably occasionally give the kids some math worksheets to do for practice from time to time.... we all enjoy reading, which takes up a bit of time as well.
I did a lot of reading about Waldorf homeschooling & I don't think it is a good fit for our family, at least not the older ones. Plus I don't like to sing all the time or do verses...it just doesn't feel natural. We occasionally tell stories & have long chats about this, that and the other.
Teaching the younger ones their letters/numbers/etc. the Waldorf way is fine, but the older ones don't seem super interested, so be it! They have other interests and we will follow that route.
Harrison told me this morning that he feels that he has learned more this year than he did in his 2 years in public school. He loves to read & loves to learn about wild cats (which actually is right along the lines of 2nd grade Waldorf & animal stories) and he likes reading about birds as well.
Evan has been writing a book on the computer. He is using the computer because he does not like to write by hand at the moment. Blame his 4th grade teacher (the spring teacher, NOT the winter teacher) for that!
He also made up a "house" for his Lego Bionicles, which includes a bed, a mattress & pillow (which he sewed with some fabric & stuffed using some fishtank filter fiber) & a blanket. He also colored some paper & covered the box (a playtex tampon box from Walmart)
Micah has been doing various science projects, some which he found in library books...one is titled something like "science projects that you can eat"... he tried making butter out of heavy cream the other day & found out that we didn't have the right type of cream... the whipped cream was still quite yummy! The boys have been using it for various things, topping dinner rolls with it (ick! my opinion) and bananas (yum) and I put a little bit of it into a spagetti sauce.
House Renovating
Renovating is going slowly...some of it is slowed down because we were chasing colds/stomach bugs the last couple of weeks... and the weather has not been cooperative... we had a cold snap last week & it is now starting to warm up, but now it is raining...the drought has broken!
Texas Rain (which was proceeded by what may have been the worst or 2nd worst drought ever):
I wish I had my camera handy last night on the way home from picking up a "new" (used) stove: it was raining pretty steadily & the "Fire Danger/Burn Ban" sign was lit... that would be a great photo to send to the local news stations!
This winter, we had the worst or 2nd worst drought ever... several grass fires erupted, may people lost their homes, etc... a couple of years ago, we had the rainiest spring ever & were within 1 inch of the record rainfall in one of the months... maybe this spring will be the same. I hope we get enough of a break from the rain so that we can work on the roof on the north side of the house!
Card Games
I think I am going to see about teaching the boys how to play casino based on these rules. I used to play it as a child & loved it... it's good math practice... you can do "builds" where you put down a card (say 2, any suit) and say "building 8s" (which means you either have a 6 or other variation adding up to 8 in your hand and other players can take the hand when it is built or something like that, if they have the right cards)...
I'd love to hear about other games that people like playing with their kids (or that their kids enjoy playing).
I'd post a photo or two, but Gary's been trying to get both of our computers networked together & at the moment we can't access Debian, so we are using DSL (damn small linux), which boots off CD rom. He had both of our computers networked yesterday, but something went wrong, not sure why. Not my department! Have a wonderful weekend!
I've been reading (The Guerrilla Learning book by Grace Llewellyn & Amy Silver and one of the things they suggest doing is to think about our own education...
Thinking back to my school days, I think a lot of time was wasted... I always looked forward to when school would let out so that I could do other things, usually my own reading, drawing, knitting, needlepoint or whatever...and if my project was small enough, I would bring it to school & work on it whenever I could. I remember reading Gone With The Wind in 4th or 5th grade & vaguely remember being told to put the book away... in 7th grade, I liked writing for a bit... wrote during classes when I could get away with it...corny stuff, but...
I don't know if I would have gotten more out of school had I been allowed to go to a school with other deaf/hearing impaired kids. I lipread alright, but couldn't lipread everyone & also couldn't lipread 24/7... lipreading gets TIRING! I think my best school experience was in 1990-1991 when I attended Gallaudet University... even though I was not fluent in sign language... (gotta admit that my BEST classes were the ones where the professors would talk as well as sign...)
I didn't really learn math in school because a lot of the teachers would talk with their noses to the chalkboard... real helpful, huh?