School Starts Tuesday

I've got the little butterflies going as I think about school starting Tuesday. I think if it were just with my kids, it wouldn't be a big deal because we have been doing things here and there. But it's having the two oldest come back, trying to set up routines and schedules and get them working and all that. I feel so unprepared. lol.

I've spent lots of time fleshing out ideas and looking at our resources and coming up with rough plans and the like, but part of me wants to know what the first week will look like, and I can't really do that. First of all, I don't even know if we'll have our resources from the school board by that point. Second, it'll be a weird week. Let me babble here for a bit:

Tuesday: I actually don't know at what time the kids will be coming for sure. But they're usually here by 8 with my niece showing up any time between 8:15 and 8:30. Now that I write that, I think I need to adjust the schedule I'd been thinking of, which was our work period would be from 8-11. It should perhaps be from 8:30-11:30. Does it really matter? Well, yes, because we need a set time for our work to be done at or the 12yo will... how do I explain this? He needs the structured limit in order to work. Otherwise each day will be, "Can we stop now?" Even if it's only 10:15. Otoh, if I simply say 3 hours every day, we can start when it fits well to start and we go 3 hours. That could be better. (I've always felt more comfortable in my homeschooling with routines rather than set schedules.)

Back to the point of what's going on Tuesday: the kids will get here at some time, we need to look over what they will work on this year (which will be made harder without the resources), I'd like the 15yo to set herself a schedule to start with (she's going for credit and needs to make sure she plans her time well) but it's just to get her going as she explores the various topics that will make up her program. The only requirement I will have of her is that she do French, math and reading each day. Other than that, it's up to her. We also need to get binders organized, discuss field trips they want to go on, discuss rules like the need to work for 3 hours in the morning and what will go on in the afternoons we're home (niece will take a nap after lunch, during which point it will be reading/writing time and then I'll read aloud to them from something we can discuss) and go to the library. We usually go to the library Tuesday afternoons, but we have the Not-Back-to-School park day that afternoon.

Looking at the list, I'm not sure it will fill up 3 hours. Mind you, it will undoubtedly take us an hour for the library in terms of travel and our time spent there. So, 2 hours? Yeah, that should work. I should plan in some other things. If we have 'empty time', the 12yo will resort to playing, being goofy or rolling on the floor because he doesn't know what to do with himself and usually doesn't self-initiate things (other than play and goofiness). So, really, HE's the one I need to make sure I keep occupied.

Wednesday: (blank mind) I don't think we have anything planned that day. No, we don't. I have no clue. We'll only have 2 potential work days next week--Wed. and Thurs.--because we're taking off Friday to go get ds' cast removed first thing in the morning then we'll do something fun in the afternoon. I know from experience that trying to insist on work when there's no chance of routine setting in doesn't work well. Maybe I should plan on read-alouds (Story of the World, a novel, a French book), a science experiment, I don't know what else. I think the 15yo will be ready to jump into work, though. Maybe I just have to play Wednesday and Thursday mornings by ear.

Thursday: See above for the morning. In the afternoon, park day.

Friday: Ds' cast off. Then either an outing or a little party. One of the things that need to be discussed on Tuesday--do they want to have people over this early in the school year?

After writing all that, I don't know that I feel anymore certain about next week than I was before. It's uncertainty that bugs me. And yet I can deal with uncertainty just fine most of the time. So what's the problem? I guess my main issue is that I fear the 12yo will move towards everything but work and stay there. He is my main source of stress. But honestly, if we took next week entirely off, other than getting things organized and the like, it would be fine. I think.

I think I'm just going to have to see how they are next week. Maybe plan for an hour of work for the 12yo for Wed. and Thurs., just to get things going a bit. We could also go to Goodwill on Wed. and see if we can get the Shakespeare the 15yo will be doing for English and maybe some other stuff.

It would be so much easier if the 12yo were motivated to learn and progress, but he's caught behind so many difficulties and fears and tries to avoid it all and drags others with him. However, it has been two months of summer and maybe a good break has made him more willing to get started. I guess I'll just have to see.

More On Sameness

One thing I love about the Montessori approach to education is that it doesn't look at all children as being the same and doesn't treat them that way either. While some modern Montessorians have become somewhat rigid in their approach (and apparently this has always been a problem in North America), Maria Montessori was highly flexible, focusing on the individual child. Where one child might be presented with every material under the sun because that's what he wanted, the child who didn't want any presentations and spent his time observing what everybody else was doing was allowed to do so. Unfortunately our society's desire for sameness can contort the Montessori Method, as much as it can affect what we do with our individual children.

There was a link on the Yahoo! main page this morning for a news clip about short people and human growth hormone. The mother interviewed all but said that they gave their son HGH because they didn't want him to continue growing up short and being made fun of. [Homeschooling or a good Montessori classroom would probably have ended that mockery!] That as an adult, he would have difficulty in the business world as well as "find[ing] a wife". [Doctors predicted he would be 5'5" as an adult and now predict he'll be 5'8".] They also interviewed a man who is 5'3" who wishes he had been able to have the hormones as a child and had his own son have them. I can't recall how tall he grew to be, but around 'average' height.

Isn't it ironic in the 'land of the free' there is so much focus on individualism, yet when it comes down to it, they just want to be the same as others?

I also found it sad that that man grew up to be so bothered by his height and that the boy and his parents did what they did. I then thought of recent things on TLC I saw on primal dwarfism and kids who were very happy with who they were. And I thought of Danny DeVito, who is only 4'10"-5' tall. He seems like a man who enjoys life and his height certainly hasn't impacted negatively on his career.

We are not all supposed to be the same. While we all share in common characteristics, be it how we are physically or the schooling we decide for our children, there is nothing wrong in being different. I don't think we should aim to be different, because then I wonder if we are being true to ourselves, but however we are different from others should not bring shame or ridicule. And that shame and ridicule that we may feel should not lead us to something as drastic as giving perfectly healthy children hormones so that they can be like everyone else.

Celebrate who you and your children are for the individuals that you are.

Second attempt at pictures

If Barbie can do math, so can you!
(Jane, you are a horrible influence! Anybody wishing to see what I'm talking about should visit the Escaping the City blog in my links section. She has wonderful pictures there, and not just of Barbie!)

My actual desire was to have some commonplace object in there so that people can see the approximate size of what I have. Unfortunately, my mind thought first of Barbies, due to Jane's site, and there were Barbies on the floor, so... It was inevitable. :)

As I wrote in the comments section of another post, they are 8mm beads. So, each 10-bar is 8cm long, not including the wire sticking out. I used round fishing tackle beads bought from a company in Ontario. There are other chains that complete the set, but I've decided not to do them.

Well, well...

It's funny how things work out.

Ds got up, saw his subtraction workbook out, picked it up and came to inform me that he was going to work in it. I asked him if he wanted help. He said yes. So we worked a bit on that and dd came down. I asked her if she wanted to work on math, too. She said yes and went and grabbed her math workbook. None of us were dressed for the day nor had we eaten brakfast yet. It was only about 7:15 when ds started.

So, they each did about 30-40 minutes of math this morning!

Babble

Only two days left this week. Then the long weekend and then back to the grin on Monday.

I feel kind of bad that we didn't get into the school groove already, but I knew that it would be difficult with my nephew here. He changes the routine and wants to spend his time interacting with his cousins, which is totally understandable. We still did lots of educational things, when I think of it, but I had hoped to have a routine in place before school starts so that I wouldn't have to focus on a morning school routine AND the school routine with the two oldest here.

--

It's only supposed to get up to 15C today. That seems so cold after the 30C we had the other day!! We'll still go to park day, though. But I'm thinking I may wear pants.

--

School. I thought about my post the other day and don't want people to think that nobody should send their children to public school. My main point was that if you are interested and you have those two primary fears, you don't really have to worry. It's also a bit of a rebuttal to those who are against homeschooling. I don't think public schools should by any means be abolished. There are all kinds of reasons to send a child to school. The typical criticisms of homeschooling, though, just fall through when you look at them deeper.

--

My environment was not improved upon yesterday at all. I did not sleep well the night before, then the weather was crummy, then my niece was tired and crabby and clingy... Things compounded. The school room is done. I've begun tackling the school shelves and even picked up a few things in the basement. I don't think I'm going to go for decluttering at this point in the basement--just get bins back on shelves and whatnot.

I'm finding for the school shelves it's difficult to plan out how things should be. My niece is now getting into everything so some things aren't safe. A classroom Montessori environment, even for toddlers (there are some part-time toddler programs out there, not here, but in other places) is totally focused on the age group occupying the classroom. Everything that's there is for the children. The shelves are the right height for them, the chairs and the tables, the materials are all displayed for them. My environment is somewhat different. I've got this 18mo toddler, then an almost 6yo (he's at the end of the 3-6 group), then my almost 9yo (falls into the end of the 6-9's or the beginning of the 9-12's), then the 12yo (academically in the 9-12's, but otherwise in the 12-15's) and his sister (in the 15-18 range). What would be ideal for the toddler limits everyone else. If I put everything up high so that my niece can't touch what she shouldn't, then ds can't reach it. If I put everything out thining of him, she'll get into stuff. *sigh*

100-chain

I felt like providing some pictures.

The Montessori math materials are very cool and very useful in allowing a child to practise and discover things. Here is my 100-chain, spoken of a couple of weeks ago, full out for the 100-count (I didn't put the labels) and folded to show that 100 is 10-squared:

(Edited to add: my chain is about 1m long. You can now imagine how long my 1000-chain is! I don't know if that is standard length or not, but I know the 100-chain isn't too far off standard.)

Back to the Environment!

I have 4 days left to get our school environment (aka house) into shape. It's actually usually kept fairly well off, there are just certain rooms that get neglected. Since the environment is so important in Montessori education, I've really got to get myself in gear.

What I have left to do:

• finish the 'school room'
• take care of the school shelves in the family room
• declutter the bookcases in the living room (not get rid of stuff, just move it to the basement for rotation or something)
• the laundry room
• if possible, the basement--get rid of some toys and get the toys back in order

I should be able to get the school room done no problem today. The school shelves might be a bit trickier because I haven't figured out what I actually want there, but I could definitely store things we don't need right now. Decluttering the bookcases should be fairly easy. So, my plan for today, other than errands, is to finish the school room, declutter the bookcases and put away unnecessary materials from the school shelves.

In terms of actual school stuff, I'm going to wing it today. The weather is turning for the worst and it's never a good time for set plans. So, if I can get in some letter work with ds, great! If we can make some brownies or cookies and I can show ds and nephew how to wash the dishes by hand afterwards, great! If all we manage to do is watch a Magic School Bus video that is due today and go to the library, that's great, too. If I can manage to sneak in a short nap, even better! ;)

On Homeschooling

It's been interesting reading a few things here and there recently on websites, forums and comments made in blogs. What's caught my eye the most are those on homeschooling.

There are some ignorant, rude folks out there who like to bash the whole idea and warn you that without a doubt, your children are going to grow up without a single social skill. (Conversely, if you plan on pulling your child out of school, even if it's just for a year, apparently they'll have no social skills left after that year. ?!?!?) They'll tell you that your kids won't fit in or will be weird or whatever. (Had an interesting conversation at a park day a few weeks ago on this very thing: yes, our kids will be weird because they likely won't be all caught up in the typical teen culture and since that's what everybody expects teens to be like, anything that doesn't fit in with that means, according to homeschooling naysayers, that they will be weird and socially inept. They don't get that it's really like having grown up in a different place entirely.)

There are others who are curious about homeschooling, who are pulled toward it but have doubts. They worry if they'll be able to actually teach their children. They worry if their children will have any friends and if they'll have a good social development. Some are convinced that they'd be removing a chance for their kids to grow up well and decide against it. Some seem to want their kids to lead the same lives they did ("I remember prom and boyfriends and this and that and I want my kids to have that, too.") Others simply have the concerns and remain in doubt.

The good news is that worrying a bit about it means that you do care about what's best for your kids and you're not making a decision based on just what you want.

Are your concerns truly valid? Or are they concerns that society around you spouts out as some unalterable truth?

Let's take if you can teach your child or not. Do you think you could teach your child how to add 2+2? I think any parent able to read this blog of mine would say yes. Can you teach your child the letters of the alphabet (sounds first, remember! (See blog entry below!))? Can you teach your child how to tie his shoes? Can you teach your child to read? Here you might go, hm, I don't know. Most teachers have a format based on a particular program. They don't have any special training necessarily on reading and they simply make use of the program they've found. There are lots of recommended programs for homeschoolers. Are you intelligent enough to follow directions in a book? If so, then you can use a program to teach your child to read. And you only have one, maybe two, at a time you might need to teach. The school teacher has a class full, which is why she got the classroom training (teacher certificate) before being there.

If you are capable of learning, then you are capable of teaching what you've learned. There are plenty of resources out there that help people teach things. There's no reason you can't use those resources, too.

As for the social aspect, if you were to homeschool, were you planning on putting your child in a room by himself all day long? No? Oh good. Because if he's interacting with a single person, voilà, social skills use. If he's got siblings, even more social skills use. And I'll add, it's likely multi-age social skills use instead of what goes on in school: 12 years (13 if you count K) of social skills use primarily restricted to children of the same age. Which do you think is probably better as an adult? Being able to talk with people your age or being able to talk with people of various ages? Which situation is actually more reflective of life as an adult?

Add to this family interaction your ability to go out during the day with your children. There are fewer people in the stores and at the library and all kinds of places. This means that your children have a better chance of actually interacting with the cashier and the librarian and whomever. Add to that any extra-curricular programs you might put them in. Add to that any homeschooling activities you may participate in or families you may get to know and do things with.

Think about this further: where are your children more likely to be able to use and develop a wide variety of social skills? In a classroom where at least half the time is spent sitting in a desk responding to a single adult's questions and silently doing work? Or actually interacting with other people? Different people, too, since no homeschool activity ever has the same people each time.

I'm going to throw out another question (I like asking questions of people! I wonder if it was my own teacher training!): have you bought into the common belief that kids need to be around other kids the same age all the time in order to be able to interact properly with others? Please think about this for a moment. How long has the current model of the classroom been around? (Answer: about 150 years, but perhaps not even quite that as I think the early public school classrooms were multi-aged classrooms.) How long have people been around? (Answer: much, much, much longer.) Does it logically follow that human beings actually need to have that sort of situation in order to become adults who can work with others?

I've become convinced that part of our society's naysaying against homeschooling is the persistent desire for sameness. I think it would be advisable for many to read The Giver and see where the goal of sameness can end up. Not that I think our society will ever get to that extreme, but both the society in The Giver and our society have this particular bent on developing one model of a person and anything outside that model just isn't right. (And if somebody doesn't fit within that model and is/was homeschooled, it's automatically assumed that it's homeschooling's "fault".)

If somebody's shy, it's not good. Why? Because people are all supposed to be out-going and personable. But why? What would be so great about not having any shy or reserved people at all? Is that really, really a problem? It means that those people will be aimed towards activities and jobs where their personality fits just right. If everybody was a social butterfly, we'd have a lot of unhappy people in jobs which require you to kind of be on your own.

If there are academic issues, this is apparently a bad thing, too. And if you're homeschooling, it's assumed automatically that it's because you're homeschooling. It doesn't matter that we are all different and will want different things out of life and some of us may never, ever use math beyond basics as adults or that some of us will never spend any time writing as adults, other than filling out forms.

Why do we want perfection so badly? I don't think there's actually an answer for that question, but it's got to be asked.

And it ties back in with what I said above: people worry about the 'right' (perfect) thing to do about their child's education. Many people who would be awesome homeschoolers never jump on board because they're afraid of not being able to create the model that society says is 'right'. But there is no single right model! Not for schooling, not for a person. It's okay to be different. That's what schools kept trying to teach us, especially as teens trying to be like everybody else. But it's not just teens, it's everybody (okay, not EVERYbody) wanting everything to match up to some supposed ideal: have this many friends and first boyfriends and this much social contact and this type of training and these grades and these skills...

I think of Thomas Edison. His mother pulled him out of school after a month or something like that. She allowed him to be who he was. She did not insist that he become a 'well-rounded individual'. And good thing, as he probably would not have been the scientist he was if she'd had.

I realize this is a lot of babble and it may be entirely incoherent. It's also very long and I'm impressed if you've made it this far. (Leave a note in the Comments if you have!) My point is this: there is nothing to fear in homeschooling. Yes, there are considerations to make: what will you use to teach your kids, what sort of structure, how will you provide them with social opportunities beyond the people in the household, etc. The things society fears about homeschooling are fears not based on any rational truth. Or as one lady I knew online told me, FEAR stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. These falsities appear as realities to a lot of people. If you're intrigued by the idea of homeschooling, don't let them deter you from exploring it further!

I'm Pooped!!

This has nothing to do with Montessori nor homeschooling. It's just me needing a break.

It's 1:43 as I write this. I left the house just before 9:30 this morning, spent about an hour and a half with my 2 kids at AMA to get membership and insurance (they had a fire alarm or something before I got there and that held up all kinds of stuff). We got to Office Depot just after 11am, did some school supply shopping (okay, there is something about homeschooling ;) ), went to Tim Horton's for lunch, then dropped off books at the library, then went to Sobey's for a few groceries, then came home, unpacked the groceries, realized that we're having allergic people over tonight so put the cats in the basement, vacuumed, sprayed Febreeze Allergy all over, threw a sofa blanket into the wash, got the dishes running and finally sat down. I've basically been on the go for 4 hours. I'm not used to this!

I'm going to give myelf another 15-30 minutes to just vegetate in front of the computer. Then I'll go do whatever cleaning I should get done before company comes--the bathroom, the kitchen, pull out the toy cars. They'll be over at 5 so I've got lots of time.

Poor kitties are complaining in the basement... :(

Progress?

I forgot to do the magazine file on the filing cabinet yesterday, but I did take care of the top shelf on the desk. The base part of the desk now looks all cluttered and junky. I might have to take care of that, too. lol.

I began the adventure in the school room. OMG. I think it looks worse now than it did when I started. lol. I pulled a bunch of stuff from the shelves so I could go through them and I'm not done that part. I'll hopefully finish that today and can begin tackling the desk. I thought the den would be harder than the room, but I was wrong! I honestly feel like I haven't made any progress in that room, although I know I have. It's just such chaos at the moment.

I read through my FlyLady emails this morning. One caught my attention about FACE and I don't remember if it was in the message or on her website, but I read about just starting where you're at and not trying to catch up. I've kept putting off all the Quicken things because I felt the need to catch up. Actually, it's more that I have dayhome receipts to take care of and wanted to have it all organized in Quicken so that I could just print off a report come tax time and have it all organized. But that would mean putting EVERYTHING in since Jan. 1, 2006. You can imagine how I wasn't too keen on doing that. The message today made me realize that I'm making things far too difficult for myself. It'd be better for me to just start Quicken where I'm at and then go through all the collected receipts (which aren't all dayhome receipts) on the side. I can put the information into a spreadsheet and it'll be MUCH easier than trying to get everything into Quicken at this point.

I've begun the Quicken process by getting all my accounts and certain automatic transactions in. Tomorrow I'll put in all the details from the recent statements. After that, daily updates as needed and I can begin going through the massive collection of receipts. (See, dh thought I was putting everything into Quicken so he'd pass off the receipts to me, and I kept keeping them because I thought I would start Quicken...) It's such a relief to know that this is all actually going to be taken care of and I won't have receipts flying around and cluttering up our precious school/home environment.

Environment Plans for Today

Since we seem to be very slow in the mornings this week, I only did some school stuff on Monday before my niece and nephew showed up. The kids have done other stuff through the week, but I haven't been doing the months of the year as I'd planned and I haven't done any letter work with ds. Things are just so non-routine around here at the moment that I find it difficult. It'll be easier as of next Wed. when dh has to return to school (he's a jr. high teacher--and yes, it was because of teaching jr. high that he thought of homeschooling!) and he'll be up before 8am. Because he'll be up earlier, I'll get myself dressed earlier and be ready to start things. I'll also be getting the kids up at a set time, maybe 6:45-7. You might think I'm cruel, but they're usually up at that hour anyhow!

As for my environment plans today, I need to finish off the den. It's just about done. See? This is what I have left to do.



There were two plastic bags full of paper stuff and other stuff sitting on the floor to the left of the filing cabinet. The black file stand (or whatever it's called) was completely full: the stuff on the top level was the equivalent of 3 levels. There was also a large pile where the planner is sitting. I need to go through the magazine file and put the planner pages (sitting next to the planner) away.

This area needs some tidying. Most of it is receipts. I was supposed to be keeping up-to-date on all this stuff by using Quicken, but I haven't been. Argh. The receipts will go in a receipts file and everything else will go where it needs to.

Ideally I'll do the desk drawer, too. At some point, ALL of the files have to be gone through, but that won't be now!

Since that shouldn't take too long, I'll tackle the 'school room':

You can see this doesn't look like a room that says, "Hey, come spend some time in here!" It's actually a lot better than it was, though! It needs to be nice because it's supposed to be a kind of retreat for those who want to work without any noise or distractions. Also a place to just go lie down on the futon if need be. I expect the 15yo will end up working a lot on her laptop up in this room since there's just too much activity a lot of the time downstairs. I'll have to look into getting a better chair upstairs. I think one of our kitchen chairs with a pad on it would be better than that crummy office chair (it cost me a whole $20, I think, but is about 13 years old!!).

I'm going to have to figure out what I want out of this room as part of the kids' environment. Since I now have to have art materials out of my niece's reach, I had thought about putting them up here, but I think that'll be a pain for the kids. So maybe on the shelves in the family room and some of the materials from there could come up into this room? Although, maybe this room should just have all the textbooks and workbooks and all that. Hm... Decisions, decisions! It has to have all the junk removed from it first, so I'll deal with that and then figure out what to do with the room. I think I do want to move the futon so that it's on the wall next to the door. It opens up access to the bookcases (one of which isn't actually a bookcase) and will probably prevent the continual accumulation of stuff right in front of it.

Time to go eat. My tummy is grumbling!

Whew!

It's taking me much longer than I expected to go through all the stuff in my den. The two bags of stuff next to the filing cabinet are more or less done. That is, I've sorted and organized but haven't necessarily put them away in the greatest spot: the bookcase in the den. It'll have to do for now because I need more binders to organize some of the stuff properly. The big piles on the filing cabinet have been taken care of. There's a magazine file left to go through (it doesn't actually contain any magazines but various school items) and the top shelf of the desk has to be done. THEN it will look like an enviting place to work in.

I've lost my enthusiasm for it today. I need to work on something else or just go read or something.

ADDED: I have to say that a TON of paper got recycled!!

Some pictures

These are my Long Rods, aka Red Rods. I made them from something I found at Home Depot, then painted two sides red and the other two sides to be the number rods. This is actually a no-no in Montessori, but since I have limited space and resources, I think it's better than not having the materials at all.












These are the long rods set out in the maze formation. Next to it is Ariel, dd's "kitten".

















These are my alternative cylinder blocks. As I mentioned in one of the comment sections, the blocks are supposed to have 10 cylinders in each block and they're supposed to be knobbed. They're also supposed to be about 3-5 times bigger than what I have (sorry, I didn't include something to give a sense of how small mine really are--each block is less than a foot long).

My blocks came with colourful cylinders: a red set, a green set, a yellow set and a blue set. Had I left them that way, they could have been used for a Montessori activity called The Knobless Cylinders. But you lose the whole point of the cylinder blocks if they are different colours and I wanted the cylinder blocks more than the knobless cylinders. (Besides, these cylinders are so small, many of the knobless cylinder activities wouldn't have worked out.) At some point, the child is supposed to be able to mix two sets together and visually figure out where to put each cylinder. If it's colour-coded, you get one in the right place and the rest of that block is easy. So, I painted them all brown. You can see the paint is coming off one of the cylinders sitting out front.

Each set has a different set of cylinders. The ones I have out are all the same circumference, but different heights. Another set has growing circumference and growing height; another growing circumference and shrinking height; another is all the same height but growing circumference.

Enough of that for now. I need to get ready for the day. And tackle those den piles. :D

The Environment

The environment means something very different to the Montessorian than it does in general usage. The environment is where the children are.

My environment has been slowly degrading over the past few months. I'm beginning to loathe it. Time to take a stand!

I've signed back up with FlyLady, but I have to say, I'm just feeling rather frustrated with her. SOOOO many adverts for her products. argh. I may just follow the tips on her website in terms of preparing Morning and Before Bed Routines and gradually work up to all the other stuff.

Here's what frustrates me most about my home at the moment--that is, what I need to tackle before school officially begins on Sept. 5:

-the den: horrible piles on the filing cabinet, clutter/papers on the desk
-laundry room: all kinds of stuff just laying on the floor or put in a shopping crate to keep it tidy looking (that is, visual proof of procrastination)
-the 'school room': this is the room where the two oldest put their bags, where various texts are kept and other stuff. It became the storage area while we were repainting. Not everything has left and more stuff has been added.
-the basement: this is probably the scariest of all. Toys everywhere. Too much stuff in general. Dh is going to bring the junky, falling apart desk down there to the dump--that'll help open up the space a bit. But what is really needed is a toy sorting, with a bunch being chucked or given away.
-the bookcase in the living room should be tackled, too, as it's stuffed, but a lot of the books don't even have to be there
-the school shelves (in the family room) need to be reorganized

So, my plan for today: work on the den piles this morning. I have errands to run today but I should be able to get all the stuff sorted and put away properly this morning. This afternoon, I'd like to tackle the school room. I think I'll do it all crisis cleaning style so I don't get too overwhelmed: I'll set the timer for 15 minutes, then do something else for 15 minutes, then come back.

First, though, I need to go take the promised pictures of my long rods and cylinder blocks!

Sensorial Time!

Well, it seems the slight rearrangement of our family room causing my long rods/number rods to be more visible has created a desire in ds to work on sensorial items. He woke up this morning, asked for a movie, I said no, he then went into the family room, saw the long rods and decided to do the maze setup. He then saw the lone cylinder block I had left out to show to my niece (18mo) sometime and asked where the others were. He's now dumped all of the cylinders and is working on putting them all back.

As I said in my other post, we're ready to get back to work!

It's Sunday

That means tomorrow is Monday.

I'm smart, ain't I? ;)

With Monday, we are finally going to start something regular for school. I feel now that I'm ready to begin, the kids are ready to begin and I see so clearly now how things fell through before because I was trying to force things when we weren't ready.

I'm very ready to start! Summer's taking too long. lol.

Dd (8) and I had a talk yesterday. What it resulted in is me learning her desire to do more work with me instead of me showing her something quickly and expecting her to do more on her own. I never knew how much that stressed her, but it does. She's a perfectionist and panics. I mistakenly thought that because she was capable, I could just have her do it on her own. I see now how shaken her confidence is and that it will have to be built up before I can expect her to do some things on her own.

So, we decided together to start school tomorrow. We'll do one thing in the morning before my niece and nephew arrive. I'll hopefully be able to do some letter work with ds before they arrive, too, because he does really want to learn his letters. It will be a nice way to make our way to the official school year.

It's interesting, though--I think our conversation must have released 'something' in dd. She began writing a story last night. She hasn't sat down to write in weeks. Writing (in English) is something she has a certain amount of confidence in. Although I could never tell her to just go off and write something. Silly me expecting her to be able to do that with other areas.

Sunday seems like a good day to plan the week. [A huge pause occurred. Nothing is coming to me. lol.] What shall we do this week? I could start dd on math--place value. Or perhaps start showing her different ways to work on math facts. I want to hold off on the French phonics because I'd really like to double her up with the 15yo and I don't have notebooks yet for her to do the writing in. What else could I do with her? I could check out social studies topics and maybe start one of those with her. Or maybe play some games with our Canada puzzle map.

OH! I remember she had wanted to learn the months of the year. It's something we've never really looked at. That sounds like a great thing to work on this week. She already knows the first three so only nine others to learn. I'll make some month cards and we can work on the circular layout I learned about from a Montessori teacher. You place the cards like in a circular formation so that the child learns to think of December as being before January. You then play games to put them in order or try to recite them from memory or ask things like, "Which month is after May? Which month is two months before September?" Things like that. The goal is not just plain recitation but a genuine understanding and knowledge of the year. If I had twelfths for my fraction circles, that would be another way to work on it. But I don't. So why'd I bring that up? Who knows!

Differences

I didn't think about it much at the time, but did think of it later, about the differences in the Montessori approach to beginning reading and writing and the traditional school approach.

While working with my nephew yesterday, he knew the name of every letter, but when I asked him if he knew the sound, he was totally lost. I realized that in a traditional school kindergarten, they will focus on having the kids know all the names of the letters by the end of the year.

It was later on that I realized how unfair this was to him and all the other kids. If they had been taught the basic sounds of the letters this year instead of all the names and no sounds, he would be reading and writing simple words! All of them would be. Why do they do this to kids? Why is it so blindingly accepted that kids need to know the alphabet in order to learn to read and write? It's simply not true. Knowing the name of the letter provides valuable information for somebody who can read and write but is totally useless for the child who is learning to read and write.

I then, of course, felt guilty that my nephew learned all his letter names at school and I had done very little with ds all year in that area (both were kindergarten this year). But ds was far more interested in math and spent time learning to read and write numbers, read digital clocks to us (to the point of annoying us--imagine being on an hour-long trip in your vehicle and your 5yo is telling you the time with each minute that passes...), loved working on addition facts and was even introduced to subtraction... Every attempt at doing letters was met with little enthusiasm until recently. I guess I'm trying to console myself that it's ok that we're only starting just now. Especially since he'll be learning the sounds before the names. In that respect, he's no further behind than my nephew, really.

But back to my point: if you are going to be teaching one of your children to read, please, please, please teach them the sounds of the alphabet first. Knowing the names doesn't help them at all! Don't believe me? Then try this:

The word is

cat

If you teach your child the names of the letters first, your child will say:

see--ay--tee

I don't know what a seeaytee is, but it sure isn't even close to reading the word 'cat'.

If they know that c is /k/ and a is /a/ and t is /t/ (not 'tuh', but /t/), then they can look at the word and say, "/k/.../a/.../t/ cat!" They can also use their knowledge of the sounds to write words they want to write, even if they're not spelled correctly. Knowing the names of the letters only helps them write if you tell them which letters to write. They can't figure out words for themselves. Essentially, it initially disempowers them because their focus is so much on the names and not on the sounds.

So promise me you'll start with the sounds, okay? Great. :D

Old Activities Die Hard

It's interesting how activities that called to a child in the past can pop up suddenly again.

I was slicing up a banana for my niece so that she would stop digging her nails into it to pull off pieces and ds (almost 6) decided that he wanted to slice a banana to eat. This has always been a favourite activity of his, something I first showed him when he was about to turn 3 or he had just turned 3. He hasn't sliced a banana in a long time, but boy did he enjoy himself!

My nephew (6yo) got in on it, but not with banana slicing (something he was never particularly attracted to): the Sandpaper Letters. While ds was playing something my nephew wasn't interested in, my nephew complained of not knowing what to do. I said we had lots of things to do in our house and listed some. He wandered around the family room and looked at the school shelves, spotted the Sandpaper Letters and asked to do them with me. Those were a favourite of his when he was 4 and coming to me each day during the school year. We probably haven't done them in over a year and a half!

I find it curious that both boys would be spontaneously attracted to an 'old' activity today. Still trying to figure out if there's some reason why that I've missed...

Fascinating Creatures

I decided to make muffins this morning while the boys were outside playing. My niece was in the kitchen and I decided to get her involved and let her try to stir the batter. Not an easy feat as it was very thick, so we did it together. I put her down to take care of something and she wanted to stir more, so I held her up to stirt more. I put her bacj down, siad, "Wait a second," and pulled out the muffin tins. Next came the cutest thing: she remembered from the one other time I had had her help me put the papers in, so she got herself seated next to the tins and waited for the papers to come. I found it so fascinating, seeing for myself the sense of order Montessori had observed in young children. It can only take one time for something to stick as being the thing to do! I also was intrigued by the change in her approach. The first time, she kept doubling up papers in a hole and I would take one out and put it in an empty cup. This time she didn't do it even once. She thought about it at the end and hesitated, but then put the last paper in the empty cup.

Children are fascinating!

A Non-Montessori Week

Dd is attending a day camp all week. I saw yesterday how this will affect everything. She has to be there at 9, so we got her there, it was a perfect time to go play in a playground with the others, so we did that, got home around 10, which meant it was past time for a snack, the boys and my niece played a bit with dd's Barbies, then it was lunch just after 11, my niece went for a nap at noon and it was quiet time for the boys. She got up after 2 and we had to leave around 3:30 to go get dd. It's going to be like this all week.

I could probably still do some Montessori stuff. I just haven't been sleeping enough and am too tired to be enthusiastic about it. I may have the 10yo next week and am thinking maybe I'll just hold off doing things until then. I can get some potting soil this week and some other things set up and start doing some more structured activities next week when our time isn't quite so strange. But I feel like I'm wasting and have wasted good time this summer to do some great activities with them. I think part of it is that I don't want to force them and my nephew seems to only want to engage in highly active, noisy play.

On the other hand, I think now is the time for me to develop the habit of doing at least one thing each day with ds. I'll propose a game today to find some things around the house to test if they are magnetic or not. There. My one thing. I'll report back later. :)

UPDATE
I did it! Yay! They loved it and it calmed them down for a bit. Unfortunately they are now totally insane. We did not go for a walk nor did we play at the park today. We should have. But now my sil will be showing up sometime within the next 30 minutes so I can't really go anywhere.

Cookies!

Practical life activities are one of the easiest things parents can do with their kids if they make room for them to do so. Last night, ds helped me with things to prepare supper. The night before, it was dd. This is something new but it's because I've decided to make an effort to invite them to come help me. Ds felt so big last night!

Today, they'll be invited to make chocolate chip cookies with me. We're going over to someone's house this afternoon plus we have plans on the weekend with family and want to have cookies available. They love making cookies, so it'll be a great activity for this morning. Particularly on this cloudy, rainy day.

On the topic of practical life, it just hit me that the laundry has to be done today so that we have clothes for the weekend. Another thing the kids can help me with!

If you're looking for some good PL activities for a 3-6yo (some are even suitable for younger kids), check out Shu Chen Jenny's site.

Nothing much done

I've been suffering from fatigue, sleeping problems and headaches the past few days. Darn PMS has hit hard this time. I don't feel like doing anything. I'm grumpy with the kids. The mugginess from the weather is affecting me, too. I've got to pull myself together so that I can have a decent day with the kids!

Montessori Read and Write

I managed to get this book for very cheap from someone a year or so ago. It is a fantastic book for anybody wanting to working on beginning literacy activities. It is chock full of great activities, tells you the rough age you can first work on it, materials you need and how to do the activity.

This week, I'd like to play different levels of the I Spy game with the kids. This game is just like the game most of us have played with colours, but instead it uses sounds. It starts as simple as holding a single object, like a pencil, in your hand and saying to the child, "I Spy with my little eye something that starts with /p/." (Say the sound, not the letter name.) The next stage is to have two objects in front of you, each starting with a different sound, so maybe a book and a cup. It builds up to analyzing sounds in simple words where the kids have to think about beginning and ending sounds or all the sounds in a word. I'd also like to make letters/sounds books with the boys. I've got a bunch of magazines and catalogues saved for cutting out and lots of paper and glue so I think I'm set!

From Rutherford House

I know this is a Montessori homeschooling blog, but visiting Rutherford House is part of our 'going out' that is so strongly encouraged for Montessori elementary. :D That's my story anyhow and I'm sticking to it.

Here's a closeup of something we picked up on our first visit to Rutherford House and our first attempt at ghost hunting. It was what is called an orb. This is not like the dust/humidity orbs that many people online seem to think are something other than normal flash effects. I can't tell you how many photos I've seen of people getting all excited because 'there are orbs everywhere!' but they're just dust orbs...

Anyhow, what we learned in our studies is that dust orbs are round (meaning, almost perfect circles) and usually have a nice ring as the outside edge. They are also a single colour, white or off-white. The photo below does not have any of this:

As you can tell, it's not round, it has no ring, it's not even white or close to white and is in fact multicoloured. It even almost looks like there's a face but that could just be something with the wallpaper in behind playing in with the 'orb'. I have NEVER had any other picture, in the who-knows-how-many we've taken, on this camera do this. Looking at it now, I still get chills from it. Probably because of other things that have happened in that room and knowing that Hattie Rutherford passed on there. After discovering that when looking through the pictures at home, we absolutely had to go back!

The child

I was reading the following rather cynical, but very true, comments today from The Child in the Family by Maria Montessori:

What is the child? He is a reproduction of the adult who possesses him as if he were a piece of property. No slave was ever so much the property of his master as the child is of the parent. No servant has ever had the limitless obedience of a child required of him. Never were the rights of man so disregarded as in the case of the child. No worker has ever blindly had to follow orders as must the child. At least the worker has his hours off and a place to go for compassionate response. No one has ever had to work like the child, who must submit to an adult who imposes hours of work and hours of play according to a rigid and arbitrary set of rules.

and

The idea that the child is a personality separate from the adult never seemed to occur to anybody. Almost all moral and philosophical thought has been oriented toward the adult, and social questions about childhood itself have never been asked. The child as a separate entity, with different needs to satisfy in order to attain the highest ends of life, has never been taken into consideration. He is seen as a weak being supported by adults, never as a human being without rights oppressed by adults. The child as a human being who works, as a victim who suffers, as the best of companions, is still an unknown figure.

These quotes above struck me because the idea they touch upon was something I was thinking of the other day. Children are not really respected as people in our society. Neither by the schools nor by adults. We've spent too many generations seeing children as nothings who need to be molded into somethings instead of already seeing them as somebodies. And as parents, too many of us do not really see our children as 'separate entities', as people who know and see things differently from us. I know I'm often guilty of it. When I'm able to really see my kids as their own persons, it changes things in me. It makes me less likely to force something that doesn't need to be forced. It makes me more likely to try to understand them the way I might try to understand an adult. It helps me see them as truly amazing and fascinating people, completely contrary to that one mom who wrote an article about finding her children boring.

I need to read more Montessori literature these next few weeks to restock myself so that I can spend more time seeing the kids, including the school kids starting in Sept., for the people they are. I also need to spend some time today and tomorrow planning activities for this coming week. Thinking about the Montessori philosophy and observing my nephew's increasing loudness and hyperactivity during last week have made me see that he needs something else but just doesn't know what it is. It's my job to try to find that something that will satisfy him.

Skill of observation

I remembered today how important it is to really just observe the kids. It's such a cool thing to do--just mentally sit back and just watch them. No judgment, no interfering, just watch what and how they do things.

I can't remember now the specifics, but I was with my niece and was observing what she was doing. Children are so fascinating when we can take the time to do this. And it was then that I realized that I hadn't been doing a lot of observing lately. A lot of thinking and trying to plan and wondering, but not a lot of observing.

Just before lunch, I sat back and was reading from "Non-Violent Communication" which had been recommended on a Montessori list. Rosenberg, the author, writes, "The Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti once remarked that observing without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence." Isn't it interesting that on the day I remember how important observing is I go and pick up a book that makes such a comment? :) I can not help but think of Maria Montessori being a pure genius in her observations, able to see clearly what was going on and nobody else being able to prove it without extensive research until some 80 years later. Modern research on learning and development proves much of what she learned just by observing children. [I've realized there is little coherence in this paragraph, but just rambling from one idea to the next. My apologies.]

Back to observation. It's a skill that I think the school system simply expects kids to have but not really aim to teach them. Kids are supposed to observe what's going on and follow directions and a multitude of other things that teachers take as a given and when students don't, they think the student's not paying attention. It's just that they don't know what to pay attention to.

I think there's good reason that Maria Montessori and Charlotte Mason both stressed the importance of developing attention, both encouraging nature as one of the means. For Mason, it was the primary means of developing the skills of observation, which automatically develop attention. There is so much to be learned, without being 'taught' simply by knowing how to observe and have that attention.

Where am I going with this? I don't know. The dryer just beeped and dh's cordless electric screwdriver is making noise and I've lost my train of thought. I think I'll blame it all on the rain instead. :D

What's on for today?

I've somewhat scrapped the idea of presenting something each day this week. Yet it's working okay. Ds pulled out an alphabet puzzle yesterday and we talked a bit about some of the sounds he's already worked on. The kids have been drawing after lunch. My niece has been fairly easy going the past couple of days.

We had a little field trip on Wed. to Rutherford House, a local historical museum, the house of a former Premier. I can't go there without some strange thing happening, be it on camera, on tape recorder or just 'feelings'. This last time, it was major tingling in one arm, then I turned the other way and the other arm tingled the same way. I turned back and the first arm tingled badly. Left that hallway and my arm ended up hurting with pain actually going through to my back. And again, as usual, weird stuff in Hazel's room. I was standing in this one spot watching the kids try on the various 1910-ish costumes and hats and it was like energy building up around and in me. Hazel's room is one where the oldest and I found a 'cold spot' one day. The air itself wasn't cold, but we were cold when we stepped in this one spot. It then disappeared and I ended up finding the same intense cold in another part of the room later. I'm not sure I believe in ghosts and hauntings, but I can't deny that there's some strange stuff at that house.

I still want to have something ready for when the boys move into hyperactive. It's like something clicks and they feed off each other while annoying everybody else around them. Probably pulling out the magnets or another science kit would work well. I should review the experiments and the story for the first Great Lesson (Montessori) and be ready to do that on Monday. The boys will love it. Dd, who's already seen it twice, probably wouldn't mind it either.

What's the first Great Lesson, you may be asking? It's about the beginning of the universe, solar system and the Earth. Although the original lesson is entitled "God Who Has No Hands", some teachers change it a bit so it doesn't have anything to do with God. It's kind of a shame because it's supposed to be an impressionistic story, not a religious one. Anyhow, the story involves showing them some experiments to sort of see the science behind some of what went on. One of the experiments is to have a wide bowl of water and you sprinkle confetti-like pieces of paper (I use the stuff from our hole-punch) on the water to see how the particles are attracted to each other. You can find out more here, but warning, it's a bit slow and some of the photos weren't archived. (I'm still sad that Don Jennings has left the Montessori world and his site behind...)

Back to today...

I was going to go grocery shopping, but I hate going shopping when it rains because everything gets wet, plus I'll have the 4 kids with me if I go. I think we'll stay in and I'll pull out the 'construction box' (basically, a box fulled of recyclable/reusable materials like plastic containers, egg cartons, boxboard boxes, etc.) and paints and they can create. And watch a video or let them have some XBox time. Or both. lol. There won't be any sending them off outside or walks with the dog or park time today!

Ha!

I had left the 100-chain out on a little placemat (although that's bad of me because it was just laying on the floor and not put away) and dd started playing with it. I told her it was for counting and she went, "Yeah, yeah," but I started counting and the boys were coming up the stairs at that point and continued counting with me and putting down the labels for 10, 20, 30, etc. It was great! I showed them how the 10 tens folded together into a 100-square and my nephew said, "Cool."

Ha! (That's a Ha! of delight! And that I knew they would love the chain!)

A mixed day

It's been kind of strange today.

The kids were just so content playing and going for walks and to the playground on Mon. and Tues. that I decided to just play things by ear today. It probably wasn't the best decision given we were out late for supper and a movie yesterday, then I was awake at 5am, but we often make poor decisions when we're tired, don't we?

At breakfast with ds (dd was still sleeping), I did some work with sounds/letters, cutting some strips of paper, putting letters on them that he is familiar with and then telling him we'd play a game. I had him find me the different sounds and he did very well. We then used the sounds there to figure out how we would spell the French word "mal". No problem and he was so excited by it all! I have to do my best to do a little bit each day because he does love so much learning these things.

After that, with dd up and nephew and niece arrive, my time was focused on keeping my niece busy so that she wouldn't be all unhappy when her Dad left. She got busy with stuff and the others were playing happily, so I folded some long-awaiting laundry, in front of them. The rest is kind of blurry (which is a shame--it's only 12:20pm as I write this; morning wasn't that long ago!) but I know at one point, ds and nephew's play became very rowdy. My heart sunk. It was what I had hoped to avoid. Once their play moves into rowdiness, that's all they tend to do: hyper, dangerous, destructive, LOUD. Since the weather had improved a bit, we went out for a walk and came back for lunch. After lunch, I insisted on quiet time so that my niece could fall asleep, but also it's just a great routine. The three sat down drawing and colouring. Ds is off with dh at the store and the other two are still quietly drawing, whispering to each other now and then about what they're drawing. Very nice. :)

Totally separate from all of that was some of my thinking today. School is viewed as a place to help a child develop into an adult, right? But how many schools are set up in a way that actually would allow children to do that in the best manner possible? Most schools require children to sit in small desks most of the time, without being allowed to get up when needed (not without permission, anyhow), not being allowed to talk to others for help or advice (because that would be cheating) and so much more.

Also, the idea struck me that if school is a place to help become an adult, how come the kids are surrounded by so many kids the same age most of the time? Families worked well in the past, for the most part, in raising kids to be decent adults because the kids were part of something bigger, they functioned in a large part as apprentices in the home; in essence, they learned how to be adults by emulating adults and having a chance to practise those skills, either under the supervision of an adult or as the supervisor of young children. Most schoolchildren are basically apprentices to the kids around them. Nobody tries to be like the teacher! Okay, except maybe on in each class, the one who's considered the nerd/teacher's pet/take your pick.

No wonder we have so many problems in society today! I really do think that all kinds of societal problems would not be present to the same extent if it weren't for mandatory schooling and the general use of public schools.

Montessori schools, for the most part, are quite different from the traditional school. The kids are, first of all, in a mixed-age setting, usually in a 3-year grouping, but some elementaries do the full 6-year grouping (I would love to see that in action--having 12yo's helping 6yo's to read and whatnot! how wonderful!). There are two adults present in a class. The kids can get up and move around when they need to, can study when they're ready to, participate with the kids they want to, or be totally alone if they want to. The focus is on the kids and not on the teacher. The junior highs that stick most to Montessori guidelines have the kids participate in businesses or farms or sometimes week-long apprenticeships once a year in a willing business. Montessori education recognizes the child's inherent desire to learn what he needs which will be part of who he is as an adult.

This is where there's a huge hole in public education, with the interminable government/school focus on test results. Test results tell us nothing. Even the curriculum imposed on all kids is ridiculous. What makes a difference in an adult is not how much they know about elementary math, science or social studies, but do they know how to learn, think, reason? Are they self-motivated? (How can you be truly self-motivated when your success in school depends entirely on your grades?) Can they manage finances? Do they know how to work hard for a good purpose? These are the things that matter.

Dh asked me yesterday how long I planned on homeschooling for. I said I'd like to see our kids at least finish grade 9 at home. But, honestly, I think I'd like them to do it all, if possible, at home. They'll be able to get most of their school work done fairly quickly plus have lots of time to volunteer and/or work, actually have a part of the real world out there instead of the supposed real world of school. That will be much more like university life than high school is. That's assuming my kids go to university, of course, but if they don't and they've already begun working in a field they enjoy, it'll because they'll have had the opportunity to do so.

Okay, enough of my babble today. My niece is probably on the verge of waking up anyhow!

How come...

...my plans usually fall through?

My nephew showed up today with a bunch of toys and the kids wanted to spend time with him playing, plus my niece has to be watched constantly because I don't want to ruin the recently painted walls with the baby gates. So, this morning, instead of my intended activities, I don't think I did any of them. I also forgot about my niece's nap and the conflict with library day--if we go to the library after lunch, she will fall asleep on the way there, only sleep about 10 minutes, then wake up once we get there and not get enough sleep. If we wait until she's done her nap, we won't have time to go to the library. I decided to go this morning, which cut back on our time to do things.

My niece played with playdough for quite a while, as did ds. But I had forgotten how much time she takes up and without the oldest kids here, I'm basically the one who's got to supervise her the whole time.

Some pluses for today: my niece drank from her little shot glass, she played with playdough, she helped clean up stuff, I let her walk in the mall instead of pushing her around in the stroller... Some good things.

Oh, a funny thing, too: she was going up and down the stairs, following one of the cats and had decided to walk forward down the stairs. She held my hand and took one step down, then held out her arms so that I would carry her down. A Montessori concept came to me, though, that children should only be helped as much as is needed. I knew she was perfectly capable of doing the rest but she was used to being carried everywhere. So, I just stood there with my two hands held out so that she could hold them to walk down. She gave me the funniest look when she realized I wasn't going to budge on it. Gave this little grimace and rolled her eyes up. Probably trying to figure out how she could convince me.

The cat then flew back upstairs so she was distracted and went back upstairs. When the cat went back downstairs, she held out her arms for a millisecond, then turned herself around to crawl down the stairs backwards. Another time going down, she held my hands and walked down forwards. Didn't attempt again to have me carry her down.

We did go to the park after lunch and I had hoped to let her walk the whole way there, but I swear it would have taken an hour to do so and the whole point was to get to the park so ds, dd and my nephew could play. So, she walked a bit, then I pushed her in the stroller until we were almost there and then let her go for it.

hehehe. She's making sympathy-seeking faces because I just told her booboo when she had put her fingers near the inside part of the door hinge. Now she's flat on the ground and licking her arm. Toddlers are strange creatures, I tell you!

Plans for today

I only had my niece and nephew for a few hours yesterday. Not enough to start up any sort of routine or work with them on anything, especially since we only got back from being out of town about 2 hours before they came!

I will have them the full day today and am hoping to do a few things. I need to find a small box in which to put my *Sandpaper Letters, the **100-chain and a few books to read to them. I also want to pull potting soil out of the shed and the kids and I will repot a poor plant of mine, probably while my niece is having her nap. If the weather is okay, we'll also take a nice walk with the dog, who's not only slowing down a bit in her old age, but is simply out of shape because we never walk her.

I haven't re-read enough of Montessori from the Start in the activity sections yet to have something prepared for my niece, but she's super clingy right now and will probably just hang onto me for today. I'll have to just have her 'help me' do stuff. :) One of the things we are doing today is going to a dollar store to try to find some things for her little shelves in the kitchen: a little glass pitcher (probably a creamer), small matching bowls and plates, small cutting board and a cloth placemat with matching napkin. If I can find those today, then later in the week I can look for a small chair for her for at the little table we have. Although, I should test it out today with the little stools we have--the small table may actually be too big and the little chair may be pointless.

**For those unfamiliar with Montessori**
*Sandpaper Letters are letters cut out of sandpaper and placed on a board or thick paper. The 'teacher' tells the child the sound of the letter, they come up with different words beginning with that sound, then the teacher shows the child how to trace over the sandpaper in the way we would write the letter. This allows the child a very sensorial experience in learning the sounds of the alphabet. I will add that children in Montessori usually begin writing simple words before they begin reading.

**The 100-chain (one of several available chains in a classroom, but one of only 2 in my home) is made up of 10 bead bars, each with 10 beads on them. These bead bars are part of the Golden Beads material, on which Base Ten sets are based. The kids love these chains and it gives them practice in counting up and down by 1, as well as counting up and down by 10 and it can be folded to show how 10x10 makes a square, or 10-squared. There are little number labels that go at each joint, where one bead bar meets the next. I also have a 1000-chain which is so long, it doesn't fit straight out anywhere in my house! That will wait until they're pretty good at counting on the 100-chain.

My Montessori Journey

How did I get to this point of having a blog and trying so hard to homeschool Montessori style?

I first learned about Montessori almost 5 years ago. I was looking after a kindergarten girl and it was supposed to be a sort of homeschooling type situation. This girl was very active and only wanted to play, play, play. The only thing I 'knew' about Montessori was from signs on daycares that said the Montessori was "learning through play." I checked out some books from the library--David Gettman's Basic Montessori and Elizabeth Hainstock's Teaching Montessori in the Home: The Preschool Years. I discovered Montessori wasn't at all what I thought it was.

The simple learning activities described in Hainstock's book made me want to know more. Gettman was beyond me at that point because of my ignorance of Montessori. (I later ended up returning to Gettman and borrowing the book so much from the library I bought myself a copy.) I then read The Montessori Method and was hooked.

What Maria Montessori discovered and her whole approach are just so sensible. It excited me that this woman believed so much in children and respected them so much and also believed that adults have to try to step out of the way most of the time. Her approach to education is not to force feed like the standard model we have available--it's all about the individual child's personal needs. The adult's role is to observe and to get to know that child as well as the child knows himself, and then some. To help when help is needed, but only as much as is needed. To inspire by 'planting seeds of interests' but to never force a certain thing to be learned at a certain time.

Montessori reminds me a lot of unschooling in that there is so much focus on the child and the child's freedom to work on what he wants to work on. Where the major difference is, is that Montessori believes in planting seeds (essentially, presenting some sort of curriculum, even if the child isn't going to stick to it) and also in steering the children towards work, work that forms the basis of the child's future self as an adult. And of course, in a classroom, there are a ton of materials available for the children to work with, but this is because the focus is on providing the children with an environment in which they can work fairly independently, but with work that they are actually attracted to, not stuff they 'have to' do.

Too many distractions and I've lost my train of thought! This is just a brief look at why I love Montessori!

Music

Dd did group violin lessons this past school year and just never really took to it. She enjoyed it and did well, but was never terribly interested in practising more than she needed to to be able to play the songs given to her and never just experimented making music with it.

I hear her in the background now playing "O Canada" by ear on the piano. Near the end of her violin lessons, she was practising most of her music on the piano during the week instead of on the violin, all by ear.

I believe she picked the wrong instrument to study last year...

Montessori from the Start

I've got "Montessori from the Start" out from the library at the moment. I had taken it out some time ago and written down some notes to prepare things for when my niece, whom I look after, would be around 18 months old and older. Well, she's starting back on Monday and is about 18 months and I can't find my notes!

A word of warning to any potential parents with babies who are trying to follow Montessori and read this book: there are some things in it that many Montessori parents I know outright reject. I can't remember them at the moment but it is with some trepidation that I re-read parts of this book because there are some things in it that I find do not at all fit in with the Montessori model of respecting the child's 'natural laws' of development.

Anyhow, I'm going to have to speed through the sections in this book that I will be able to use in the near future since my niece will be back with me in 3 days!

When you need a camera...

...you never have one!

We went to the park this afternoon for a bit of outdoor time and there were two jackrabbits hanging around. I managed to sit down in one place and stay there for quite a while, with one getting within 10 ft of me. Then one got scared off and ran onto the path of a little woodsy area and I went to have a look and he was sitting there, beautifully tall, greenery all around him, but him in the middle of this path worn away by human feet. It was bordering on majestic. I'm not sure I've ever so badly wanted a camera before and not had one with me!

The kids were very interested in these two who were hanging around. It made me think of how kids, all of us, really, love so much seeing real things. Learning about a jackrabbit in a book or seeing a video about it is not nearly as interesting or exciting as seeing the real thing.

Of course, now the Montessorian in me wonders how I might be able to link this to some learning activity...

Sonlight

What does Sonlight Curriculum have to do with Montessori homeschooling? Well, it can have quite a lot to do with it, actually.

Sonlight encourages a literature-based program. So does Montessori, in addition to the use of specific materials. Going through Sonlight's catalogue made me realize just how much I was not taking advantage of the literature around us as part of the children's education.

I found a Magic School Bus book in French at the library a week or so ago and decided this week that as part of our science work, I would read it to the kids. It's MBS In Orbit (not sure if that's the English title or not). We started it the other day and finished it today. It was a little bit like giving a mini-lesson on astronomy. We then pulled out a French Usborne book I had on space and were able to flip through it, looking at connections with the MBS book. The kids loved it. (Incidentally, both MBS and Usborne books are highly used in Sonlight, but uninfluenced by Sonlight, I had already bought the Usborne book sometime ago and we regularly take out MBS books.)

I wish I had had some sort of hands-on follow-up activity for them. Perhaps I could quickly get a collage set on the solar system together for ds or maybe some planet cards or something for dd. Although, he was particularly interested in the birth of a star, so perhaps something with that? I don't know. I'll have to think quick so it can be ready for them for tomorrow.

In any case, I highly recommend the Sonlight catalogue and may be buying a bunch of books from them, particularly books that are hard to find elsewhere (they've got some good things in there!) The Core Curriculae they have truly aren't suitable for someone really wanting to follow Montessori, but the literature selections they have likely can't be beat elsewhere.

Hump Day

It's Wednesday today, "Hump Day". But with summer days blending into each other, it's hard to tell one day from the next.

I didn't do ANY of the reading and sound work I had wanted to do yesterday. No, that's not true, I did start reading a book to the kids, finished the first chapter, then discovered it was due that day. Oh well. The kids spent a lot of time drawing yesterday, which I'm certainly not going to interrupt for reading or sounds. And despite the heat, which actually wasn't too bad yesterday, they managed to go out and jump on the trampoline.

So, today, will I get to the reading and the sound work? Hopefully. I have to go to an appointment soon and can do some stuff with them when I get back. Unless they're busy with productive stuff, which I refuse to interrupt unless necessary.

School Year Planning

Inspired by another blog, I decided I would work out a bit my plans for the coming year:

15yo (grade 10)

ELA 10:

• school textbook (for short story, poetry, essay, etc. required reading and required responses),
• one novel study (to be determined--at the moment both Animal Farm and Something Wicked This Way Comes look good, but I want to check out Random Passage as it seems to be historical fiction set in Newfoundland, one of the 15yo's favourite places, plus it ties in with her required Canadian history studies this year),
• one play (to be determined)
• feature film (to be determined)
• Sequential Spelling
• maybe some us of the highest levels of spelling words in Writing Road to Reading
• haven't decided about grammar yet
• may use my mother's old Latin and Greek Roots book (that's not the title, but something like that) and have also been toying with the idea of Joy of Vocabulary too
• general reading/literature: whatever she wants; I'd like to encourage her to read The Chrysalids; I'm also hoping to read to the kids Who Has Seen the Wind

Pure Math 10:

• use of school textbook (either MathPower or Addison Wesley)
• additional work on weak areas (fractions, math facts)

Science 10:

• school textbook for Science 10
• topic titles sound confusing: Energy and matter in chemical change (essentially, chemistry); energy flow in technological systems (physics?); cycling of matter in living systems (biology?); energy flow in global systems (environment?)

Social Studies 10:

• school textbook and hopefully some related historical fiction or some biographies or journals to make things a little more interesting
• topics: Challenges for Canada (includes a bit of history and lots of government study) and Citizenship in Canada (politics and legal matters, essentially)
• I'm adding in Canadian geography

French:

• personalized program to help her work towards grade 10 level of French Immersion outcomes; if she can make it to around the grade 8 level in her reading and writing, I'll be very pleased as she's got fear blocking her from believing she can read and write in French at a high level; her grammar is very good already and she's just about at grade level in terms of grammar coverage
• there will be phonics/spelling work (modelled after Writing Road to Reading), plus a weekly reading assignment, a weekly writing assignment, and probably 2 or 3 days of grammar work a week
• once a week, time set aside for watching something in French or listening to something in French, in addition to my reading aloud in French each day

Other than that, she hasn't totally decided on options and will pick some in September.

12yo--grade 7

ELA

• Literacy Power E
• Writing Road to Reading
• haven't figured out for sure about reading books for him; probably various Usborne and Eyewitness books from the library, some simple biographies (on Edison would be a great choice--science-oriented PLUS a homechooler!), and among various ideas, the most likely candidates for fiction: Encyclopedia Brown, The Whipping Boy, The Littles, Frindle
• I'm going to have him do written narrations (CM-style) for his writing for... hm... maybe until Christmas; it'll be one of those things where I'll have to see how things go; I should maybe still have one day a week or something where it's complete free writing so he doesn't get too used to having specific topics all the time
• will see what's available from our school board, too

French

• specialized program to cover topics from grades 4-7 FSL, specifically getting him reading and writing; nothing too difficult as it is FSL, not French Immersion

Math

• MathPower, supplemented with ActiMath7, JUMP Math fraction workbook (in the publications section), extra work spent on mastering math facts and personalized worksheets as necessary

Science

• quick overview of provincial topics (going more in-depth where interests lie): Interactions and ecosystems; Plants for food and fibre; Heat and temperature; Structures and forces; Planet Earth
• possible TOPS units
• other science experiments, topics of interest

Social Studies

• Canadian history from beginning (before Confederation) to the present
• Canadian geography (provinces, capitals, major cities, major lakes, rivers, bays, etc.)

Religion

• I may have him follow our school board's resources; have to check them out, first

almost 9yo dd and almost 6yo ds

I'm following mainly the Montessori approach and sequences for LA and math, with LA modified for French. Dd will also work on German using our province's curriculum for grades 1-2 German Language Arts.

Science

• mixed with the 12yo's where possible (for example, Planet Earth)
• specific topics for ds: seasons, needs of plants and animals, senses
• specific topics for dd: waste and our world, wheels and levers, plant growth and changes

Social Studies

• Canada: history, geography, Prime Ministers, etc.
• world geography (continents, oceans, North America)

Everything else is more or less child-directed!

Whew! That was long and took a long time to finish.

New School Year About to Begin

Although our school year doesn't officially begin until Sept., I'm kind of starting early. Yet I feel nervous at the prospect of doing so.

I will have my niece (18months) and nephew (6yo) with me during the weekdays for the month of August. My nephew was with my long-term in the past and on occasional days off from school. I don't want things to be the complete free-play they were before, but I'm nervous about if I'll be able to change things.

What makes me nervous? That I could be doing something wrong. Too much perfectionism in me. I also wonder if I'll be able to entice them into some fun learning activities.

As I write that, I think--but Maria Montessori said they were free to do what they liked as long as it was right. There's no harm, really, in them playing all day long. If I can come up with a lot of different things for them to do and invite them to them, things should be just fine.

But what should the different activities be? That's another thing that gets the nerves. Let me come up with some ideas:

• 100 chain (both boys have loved the chain in the past)
• science activities--but what specifically???; magnetism is always good and I have a bunch of different magnets and activities we could do for that; I have various science experiment books and although it's a shame the experiments are not better organized according to domain, they would still make good activities; and even though my nephew will be off to school in Sept., I could still do some sort of planter box gardening or similar with them.
• repotting the plant and cleaning its leaves
• baking/cooking (I even have a kids' cookbook that has very easy recipes)
• Great Lessons, particularly the first one with the various experiments
• read stories to them
• play I Spy
• go for walks with the dog
• go for walks in the ravine and collect leaves, then sort and learn the names of the types of leaves
• what should I make available for my niece?

They are scheduled to start next Monday, which doesn't leave me a lot of time to decide what to do. I have some notes somewhere on good activities for 18mo's; I'll have to see if I can locate them.

I essentially want to get our general school routine in place in August. I will have the 10 for either the last week of August or the last two weeks in August and I want things made fairly routine by that point so that when she comes into the mix, she, too, can just hop right in, learn while having fun, maybe pick some things she'd really like to work on before heading off to school.

I should perhaps think a little more about the routine I want in place and maybe even post something. An idea:

• Arrival: put away shoes, coats, bags; pull out niece's toys
• Story time: read a story to them and discuss
• Activity: ideally, I will already have an activity of some sort ready on the kitchen table. I'm thinking, too, I should make my school shelves really prepared for the boys so that, after we're done the activity, I can invite them to see if there's something else they would like to do. That means that the 100 chain should be out and I should also check to see if my 1000 chain is done as it would certainly be exciting for them to one day see that on the shelves!
• Depending on how long that lasts, perhaps snack and outdoor time at this point. Go for a walk, head for the ravine, go on some sort of nature scavenger hunt, etc.
• Try to have another activity at this point? Especially if only one activity was done before the little break.
• Before lunch clean-up; prayer; lunch; after-lunch clean-up. Perhaps another story time at this point?

Well, some thoughts to get me started!

Attacks on Homeschooling

While this blog is supposed to be focused on Montessori homeschooling specifically, I've decided to incorporate just a little on homeschooling in general.

There is an article currently on the CBC site about homeschooling called Minding Your Own. It's a very simple article, not meant to go too in-depth, but some of the naysaying comments really irked me. It's just so typical of people who know little about homeschooling who come up with some sort of reasoning to say something against it.

What I really don't get is today's focus on socialization. Actually, as I write that, I do get it. Why? Because it's almost too obvious that most kids will have better academics at home in a tutorial situation. There has to be something to criticize homeschooling about, mustn't there? And so people come up with really questionable ideas like a child won't handle other teachers and the structure later on if he's homeschooled, or the parents have neuroses. (Yes, one of the people in the feedback section actually said that!!!) We, as a society, have been brainwashed to believe that everything must be given in childhood the same way it will be later on. Except for when you are working and enter real life, because of course, except for teachers, nobody's job functions on bells ringing every 40-90 minutes to change what work you are doing. It's a wonder people don't start encouraging school to begin at birth, where the babies can go off and follow a schedule with bells!

I don't know why these idiotic comments have gotten me so. I thought I had gone past that, and just saw that people just don't know what they're talking about and that's that. I think it was how far some of them went in their attempts to cut down homeschooling. I'm used to the whole "how will you teach them things they don't know" and the socialization issue, but pulling in far-fetched reasons as they did... Just irks me. I wish these kinds of things could be conversations instead of comments simply left on a website. It would then be potentially possible to have these people see the silliness of their comments. Although not necessarily--some people will dig in their heels regardless of how idiotic a belief may be.

*sigh*

A year is done

Our school year is done. I had the 10yo for the last time yesterday and could not help but break down after she left. I hope things go well for her in school. (Although, her mother said that if it went really poorly, she'd make the hour-plus-long drive to school each morning and then again after school each morning!)

And yet, it's just the school year that is done. My children's learning isn't. Dd has pulled out her writing folder and has said that we 'have to' have a set time for Writers' Workshop again because she's not getting her stories done and that she wants daily exercise, particularly stretching. It's time like these when I feel I've done something right in my Montessori implementation that she would choose these types of work. Without me even insisting that she work. It's also times like these when I see how much Montessori resembles unschooling. While Montessori does require work and the directress to present a lot of things to each child, it's the child who chooses his route, for the most part.

I think it's going to be a great summer. :)

Revelations

I was thinking yesterday about how much I had fallen away from Montessori and it really bothered me. I considered root causes of changes in the past few months, knowing that my difficulty sleeping enough since the time change has certainly affected things since I'm not quite so mentally spry and flexible and all that when I'm too tired.

My thinking finally took me to a point of asking myself: What are you doing???? In a flash, I could see how everything was intertwined: my lack of sleep, my gradually taking charge more and more, their continual move away from work... I knew my highly structured plan was a mistake. If the 10yo fights everything I think she "should" do before next school year, how is that going to help her since she won't really be learning it well? If the 15yo's mind has really shut off math for now, is insisting she do some going to help? NO!

So today, a fresh start, even though there are 10 school days (including today) left. I am going to provide more things (including SOTW reading time, which I did yesterday and it was great; I also read some Shakespeare-related things and they loved it) and work with them. I'll sit down with the 10yo and talk to her about the different things that she could work on that would help her for next year and let her plan out some things. I'll sit down with the 12yo and talk about his reading, writing and math (I may still require some writing as it's something he will NOT willingly do! EVER!) I know he wants to do some science things, so I'm going to look over this little kit we have today and maybe do some. I'll sit down with the 15yo and talk about her math and what we'll have to do if she doesn't improve on some of the skills before school is out. Her main interest right now is actually studying for her learner's licence and that should probably be encouraged!!

Right now, though, I'm going to find a world map to print off so the kids can see where the teams they've been watching for the World Cup are from!

It feels good to be moving back on track!

The Best Laid Plans...

Here I am, quite ready for my sort of mini-summer school approach for the next two weeks and the 10yo shows up today and isn't feeling terribly well and is coughing a whole lot. What to do? My primary focus for the next two weeks had been on her.

I think I'll go ahead with stuff anyhow. Even if she doesn't participate, the way I've set up the French lessons for the next two weeks will still work if she's just hanging around listening (lots of repetition) ; I can also maybe leave some stuff out today. I can still stick to my French, Math, LA, Social/Science/Read-Aloud plan for the others.

The littlest things can sure throw you for a loop!

So NOT Montessori!!!

I've been struggling for a while to feel that what I'm really doing is Montessori. I feel like I'm drifting further and further away but am becoming more aware of what is going on and what I need to change. I'm going to have to do some inner and outer preparation this summer as I really want to 'get with the program'! I had been moving towards where I wanted to be for a bit, but I find that the 12yo became highly disruptive this year (or the opposite, would just loaf and do absolutely nothing which still required my attention), which encouraged the 10yo and dd to be more unfocused and less self-directed, as their attention was pulled towards him. As I write this now, I realize that a lot of his behaviour was probably motivated in having attention drawn towards him and I was fuelling that as I tried to keep him in line. If he were in a Montessori school, I think things would work fairly well for him as he'd have people to buddy up with for work and there would be an environment where there would be lots for him to do. I don't have that, unfortunately, and really moved far away from Montessori with him and think I pulled the others that way, too.

That said, however, the next 2.5 weeks (not even--last day will be June 27) of school, if not highly guided, will fall into the kids playing Lego all day while they listen to me read. This wouldn't be so bad, except that with one severely lagging in language and math skills (the 12yo) and another lagging a bit and absolutely HAVING to know certain things for school next year (the 10yo), I realize I've hit a crunch and there is just a lot that has to be done in the next two weeks. Also, the oldest has certain things that would be best done now instead of waiting until September.

While going over the school curriculum here, I see that there will be lots of holes if I don't at least show certain things. Fortunately, a lot of the work will benefit the others, so here's my plan for this week:

The first roughly 30-40 minutes of school time (after our silent reading) will be for French, going over all the stuff expected in grade 4. Some of it she knows, but some of it's very formal stuff that we haven't touched and almost none of it has been tied to written components. This is something they can all participate in as it will be review or even new learning for some of them. There can be lots of role playing for it and I'll make available the written component somehow (word cards, word lists, something, plus worksheets from Enchanted Learning).

After that will be math. I've put together a few things for a gr. 4 test covering local school curriculum so we can go over that and make sure she's covered everything. All of them need to work on their math facts and I'm going to have the 12yo simply work on computation (or math topic of choice) and the 15yo pick a few questions for review each day. Dd can pick what she wishes in her math workbook. With the crunch on, I'm not showing anything new for right now.

After that will be LA. I have NOT been doing Spalding as I had planned and it is first thing on my list for our LA time. The 15yo and dd can pretty much do as they wish during this time, but the other two are going to work on Spalding, then a bit of reading using what they've learned from Spalding, plus just to practise reading aloud, then the 12yo will work on writing something while I do Sequential Spelling with the 10yo and then she will write something. I may simply guide her through a book report this week as she's never done one and it will be a good writing activity for her.

(The order of the subjects may be changed to best suit students' needs that day.)

This should take us to about 10:30, at which point we can check our Tomatosphere plants, maybe do a little science activity or SOTW or read-aloud time. I also need to find time then or in the afternoon to go over music elements with the 10yo so she won't be behind in music class next year.

Whew! Not Montessori at all but with 'outside' requirements in place, it's got to be done.

Constant Changes

It's funny how life throws things in to change one's plans!

Dd and the oldest no longer have to do the math tests. This means that I can back off a bit* on the math review with the oldest and dd can pretty much do as she chooses with math. The 12yo still has some of his math test to finish. The 10yo is actually supposed to be doing a math test, too, at some point, but we haven't received the materials, so I may have to create my own so that her school next year has a sense of where she's at.

I haven't been able to find the books I wanted at the library to do Shakespeare. I've got a couple of other resources; perhaps that will be okay. With various activities going on and the kids now finishing on June 27 (which will be a send-off party for the 10yo), we don't have much time to get a play done.

Other than that, it's a rainy day today. That means we'll either be stuck inside here or we'll have to go somewhere inside as our scheduled homeschoolers' park day will be cancelled. We'll see. My plans for this morning are, after silent reading, to do a bit of math, present some English and French phonics in a sort of Spalding style, have the 12yo and 10yo write something, I'll read to them from Among the Betrayed and hopefully from Story of the World, which I haven't read to them in a very long time, despite my plans. (They've wanted to listen to the Among the... series instead!) Perhaps we'll get started on a Twisted Shakespeare story and they can act it out. I've also got a brownie mix we could do and a bunch of stuff for them to do crafty things, if they wish. I should maybe pull out board games and the like, too. Always have to be fully prepared on the rainy days to avoid chaos!



*(I don't feel I can back off completely with the oldest as she really hasn't mastered a lot of the stuff from this year and she's supposed to have a certain competency to be able to do the level of math she wants to do next year for credit. Of course, I could always let her decide and if she does nothing, then we have to do a review in September, but her main reason for balking at doing the review is that she "can't remember anything" (that's the whole point of the review--to have things come back to you!) ; it's fear of failure stopping her (and a poor view of herself with math), not simple lack of interest. We can do one type of problem each day and even if it doesn't get a full review done, it'll be better than letting her avoid it all completely, I think. To be even more Montessorian about it, I'll have her pick from the review section the type of problem she'd like to do.)

The Final Stretch

We had our year-end review this past week. It's so great to have that done and out of the way. This leaves us with a month of school left (until June 30th). The oldest and my dd still have to do math tests and the now 12yo has to complete a math test, but has the option of doing it over the course of several days. The oldest needs to do a full review before the test, though, and only has until this coming Friday to do it. After that, she'll be free to focus on studying for her learner's license, something she's determined to try to get before the school year is out.

Once all that is out of the way, I'll be giving French phonics lessons, recorder lessons, have Sequential Spelling time each day for those who want it, writing time each day and I'll hopefully be able to present some things for science as well as get a lot in Story of the World read. Oh, and our regular read-aloud and individual lessons or work encouragement for things like math and reading. It'll be a busy month.