First Day of School

A couple of weeks ago, Gracie announced that she wanted to start school when the big kids did. We have been planning to homeschool our children since before they were born, so you might think I would have been ready, but Gracie is only four and a half years old right now, so I had planned to wait another year to start "school" with her. I was left scrambling a little bit to come up with school activities for her.

I finally decided to use resources we have on hand: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann, Phyllis Haddox, and Elaine Bruner; handwriting worksheets created with StartWrite handwriting software; activities from The Three R's by Ruth Beechick; fun lapbook activities from Homeschool Share; and lots and lots of library books. School will last for an hour or less each day.

Gracie has been excited about school every morning this week. I hope that her enthusiasm lasts! Drew sits happily in his high chair and colors, does a craft, or plays with Play-Doh while Gracie works on her reading and writing with me. It will be interesting to see how things work out when the new baby arrives in October!

Lapbooking Links

As Gracie gets closer to school age, I am starting to look for some fun "school" activities to do with her occasionally. This fall another mom recommended lapbooking to me. Gracie loves to cut, color, and glue things, so I think it will be a good fit for us.

Lapbooking on Squidoo provides a good introduction to lapbooking and has a lot of links.

Homeschool Share has some free lapbooking resources. I especially like their templates.

Homeschool Helper also has a nice lapbook page with some templates.

Lapbook Lessons has some free lapbooks.

Mini books

For purchased lapbooks, I like In the Hands of a Child. I hope to purchase their Type It In Template Pack sometime soon.

When will I go to real school?

This morning as we were driving down the road, Gracie saw a school bus filling up at the gas station, and asked, "When will I go to real school?" Gracie knows that she will be homeschooled, but as she sees friends her age going off to preschool, and her older friends climbing aboard the big yellow bus, I think she feels like she is missing out on some grand adventure.

This is not the first time she has asked, and I am never quite sure what to tell her. How do I explain to a 3-1/2-year-old that spending her days with her mommy and her little brother, reading books together, doing chores, and experiencing life is about as real as it gets? How do I reassure her that she will learn to read and write and do math and have adventures and field trips and friends even though she will be homeschooled? Are there any books that explain to a young child how much fun homeschooling can be?

This morning I told Gracie that she would get to go to school at our dining room table until she was ready for college.

"Then will I get to go to real school?"

"Yes, Gracie. Then you will go to college." She seemed satisfied with that. For now.

Keeping up with the News

I am not good at keeping track of what is happening in the real world. As a stay-at-home mom, my kids keep me fairly busy. For a while I just didn't think that knowing what was going on was a priority for me.

This week I have been thinking a lot about A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver Van DeMille. I have realized that I should never stop learning myself, especially since Drew and Gracie will be learning from my example as they grow up and I become a mentor to them.

One of the things that a mentor should encourage is helping his or her student learn to apply knowledge gained from the classics to situations in the real world, in a way that helps others. How will I be able to teach Drew and Gracie how to make real-world applications if I have no idea what is going on in the real world myself?

Having come to that realization, I began looking for the "perfect" news source. After some thought I realized that I was actually jumping right back on the "conveyor belt," looking for someone to tell me what to think. I need to just start reading and thinking about current events and the more I read and learn, the better I will be at evaluating what I read.

My husband always seems to know what is going on in the world, so I asked him where he looks for news. He said he usually looks at CNN or MSNBC, so those will be my starting place as I try to pay more attention to the world around me.

How do you keep up with the news? If you have a favorite news web site, please share it with me!

Getting Off of the Conveyor Belt

I have been asking my husband to read A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver Van DeMille ever since I finished reading it earlier this week. We plan to homeschool Drew and Gracie, and this book describes the kind of education I would like for them to have, so I thought it an important book for him to read. He finally picked it up this evening before dinner, and has barely set it down since. I'm sure he'll finish it tonight.

Near the beginning of the book, Van DeMille describes three systems of schooling: conveyor belt education, professional education, and leadership education. To describe these systems briefly, a conveyor belt education teaches a student what to think and emphasizes conformity to textbooks and standards; a professional education teaches a student when to think, applying knowledge in specialized situations; and a leadership education (what the author calls a Thomas Jefferson education) teaches a student how to think.

I am a product of a "conveyor belt" education. As a student, I was very good at memorizing the textbook and repeating it back for exams. I rarely had to think or form opinions for myself. I wish I had learned how to think instead.

I have long forgotten much of what I learned in school, and I know there are huge gaps in my education. I always excused these gaps before by claiming that the ability to look up information was more important than the knowledge itself. Now I'm not so sure that's true. If I'm not constantly learning about the world around me, about history and human nature, and making that knowledge a part of myself, a part of my life, I won't have a strong basis for any decisions I am called upon to make. This kind of education takes time. I can't look into a book to find out what I should think. If I don't work on my own education now, it won't be there to call upon when I need it, and I won't be able to set a good example for Drew and Gracie.

I am in the middle of reading a few books, but once I'm finished with them I plan to dive into the classics to see what I can learn from them. Stay tuned ...

Old habits are hard to break ...

but I managed to leave my computer off all day today! (I did sneak a few minutes on my husband's computer first thing this morning to check some library book due dates and renew a couple of books online, though.) The only drawback is that I need to review our family's budget plan and spending for July and August and now that I have the computer on I'm too tired to do it. Maybe I'll work on it tomorrow.

This week I have been reading A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver Van DeMille. It talks about how the system of education in America is broken and how each individual needs to take responsibility for his or her own education. Van DeMille asserts that it is impossible for one person to educate another, but that a great teacher can inspire students to educate themselves and help them follow through. The two types of teachers are mentors and classics.

I borrowed this book from the library via Interlibrary Loan, and I am actually reading through it for a second time and taking notes before I have to return it. I'm sure I'll have more to say about it once I have had a chance to finish reading and digesting the information. It has been very inspiring to me ... I can't wait to get started improving my own education.

Preschool -- Necessary?

I have two children: a one-year-old son and a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter -- call them Drew and Gracie. People have started asking me if Gracie will be starting preschool this fall. I just smile and say she will be staying home with me. I realize that she would probably enjoy preschool, and would possibly even learn some things that she would not learn at home. I even had one friend tell me that I would be doing her a disservice (by inhibiting her social development) if I keep her home. But I am not convinced.

When did preschool become a normal -- perhaps even necessary -- thing for our children to do? A few days ago I was thinking about it and I realized that almost all of my friends' children have gone to preschool for at least a year before starting kindergarten. I guess I'm feeling a little bit uncomfortable by doing something different.

What do you think? Is preschool necessary? What would Gracie gain by going to preschool that she could not learn by being home with me?