Just a couple shots of Brendan and Tess at work. They have enjoyed being back to school as well although it seems that your siblings’ work is always a bit more enticing than your own. All in the younger set are working on taking turns and not enthusiastically shouting out answers or stepping in to “help” each other over much. There are far worse problems for teacher/mom to have than fighting over ‘getting’ to do school work though lol!

This game was too easy for Brendan this year:

Tess is fascinated with Jars and Lids but not quite able to turn them properly as yet. We introduced these at the exact right time:

“Pancakes” made of sponges are transferred from cookie sheet to their cardstock shadows. This was tricky for Brendan. It was quite sweet to see his determination however. You can see his left hand behind his back. I explained that he was to use his spatula to move the pancakes into place so he is being very careful not to use his hands.

When children in a Waldorf kindergarten misbehave, it usually means they have “fallen out of the form” of the moment. How can we recreate the form around them? I have found a number of things that work well. For example, if a child becomes too loud or too silly at snack time, I stand behind him and begin straightening the chair, fixing his place mat, cup, plate – in other words “re-forming” the space around him.

So begins this exerpt from Beyond the Rainbow Bridge. It explains so nicely the “why” of orderliness, namely the effect of the environment on the child. It wisely suggests that by creating order around a restless or unruly child we can help instill ordered behavior from the outside in. It helps us ‘save our no’s’:

If we save our “no’s” for situations where children are doing something dangerous or when they may damage someone’s belongings, they will more readily listen to those “no’s” when they are necessary. If we use the word “no” too often or indiscriminately, children soon learn to ignore it

Montessori for Everyone has gathered a number of posts elaborating on this theme. As she says, “A little bit of thought goes a long way.” I have given more than a little thought to environment as we begin a new school year, especially since our school room was visited by my one-man wrecking crew on a couple occasions this summer (“Oh puzzles! Oh beads! Oh…!”) I trust that reforming this space will reap even more benefits than the reforming of the other rooms that has happened so far.

A couple tidbits from Montessori for Everyone:

Go for form and function
In the Montessori prepared environment, every part of the room should be beautiful. While there are often budget limitations, it’s important to use attractive, sturdy shelves, tables, and chairs. Whenever possible, materials should be “real” (wood, glass, bamboo) and not plastic. The children will rise to the level of the materials, and show more care in handling them if they are good quality.

We have been gathering real wicker baskets to replace plastic storage where possible. I would like to eventually get some fabric crates as well.

Control the environment, not the children

Like was said before. Do more of the one and you need to do less of the other.

and finally, my mantra

Less is more
Don’t cram the shelves till they’re overflowing. This is confusing and bewildering to the children, and makes it harder for them to make good work choices. Better to put out a few exquisitely beautiful materials than a shelf full of mediocre ones. Better to have one gorgeously framed painting than a wall full of cheap posters.

Some days I am pretty certain Susan and I were separated at birth. She has posted another installment of her reflections on home education. These are written from the perspective of having now grown children. To me, these are some of the very best kinds of reflections. They have the benefit of hindsight and the fruits of her labor are evident now. In other words, when women in her position speak – listen to them.
: )

Among this post’s gems:

Homeschooling is really not the difficult, complex, scary thing some people make it out to be. It doesn’t require a degree, complicated plans, paperwork, and tedious record keeping. It can be simple, relaxed, and lovely.

this one really hit home this week:

Keep learning yourself, even if it’s about just one thing-

and this one reminds me of what I am forever reminding myself – Be what you want them to be. Because….

Because, besides prayer, the three most powerful tools in a homeschooling parent’s toolkit are:

1. Example
2. Example
3. Example

There is more. Go see.

I am trying to upload more consistently this school year. We have really enjoyed being “back to school”. It is a simple routine but one strewn with lovely touches which have gone over very well. Here is an example. For first grade we are finishing Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons as we have done for the previous six first graders. The lessons include letter practice. Instead of printables destined for the trash we are making main lesson book pages of the best work.

First, we take small crayons and make stripes to serve as general guidelines. These help corral the letters without putting undue pressure on young hands. Then a few of each letter indicated in the lesson are practiced. In this way we can employ some of the creative techniques we love without having to entirely reinvent the curricular wheel. Small adaptations make a world of difference for the child and save a lot of hassle for mom. Before scrapping it all and starting over, see how you can make what you have in hand work in new ways.

Here is a recent grade three narration about Leonardo Da Vinci with illustration. It was dictated to me and then written by the student as is usual at this age. Laura Berquist explains.

This process results in a retelling…that is truly the child’s own work, but the separation of the composition of the retelling and the physical act of writing make it a much less burdensome procedure.

When the child is finished telling his story we talk about why it is written as it is. Where are there capitals? Why are some lines indented? Where are the punctuation marks? Why? He is encouraged to pay special attention to those things when he copies his words onto his main lesson page.

We have moved away from typed narrations to those that can be completed by hand for several reasons. I have found typed narrations to be revisited less often. They have a bit of a colder more sterile effect. The child tends to have less “ownership” of that type of work than he has of things he produced with his own hands. It is also a precious keepsake of imperfect letters and heartfelt drawings that came from inside of him.

Since there is a limit to how much small hands can produce it is necessary to practice summarizing. I remember reading years ago that many small children can retell (at least in the moments right after hearing the story) in exhausting detail but struggle with identifying main/relevant ideas. Discussing the composition with the child as he retells goes far in helping develop this necessary skill.

Later he is asked to illustrate his entry. If he does not yet feel comfortable drawing certain things then a representative drawing is perfectly acceptable. For instance a simple rainbow watercolor for the story of Noah works just as well as several detailed people and animals which may be frustrating for little ones. A plain black pot would work to illustrate the Stone Soup story. Whatever is chosen, have them try to fill the page with color. As you can see the tendency, particularly the younger the child, is to make single, tiny pictures in the middle of the page. We gently help to move them out of that habit as time goes on.

For these narrations we are using the three-day rotation described by Laura Berquist, Marsha Johnson, and others to increase retention. We tell the story (or they read it) on the first day. The next day the child retells and copies his story to page. The last day an illustration is added. The result is that the story is very solid in the mind afterwards. Slow and steady wins the race. Focus on doing a few really well rather than making pages for every experience the child has.

Fire up those printers gals! This one is incredible. I so have to get my sidebars updated and when I do this will be there.

A friend wrote reflecting about a family member who had chosen a very dry academic program for her little ones. We have talked before, she and I, about how fleeting childhood is. Certainly however our warm feelings for this transitory time in life is not the only reason to cherish and make the most of it. The foundations laid now are those which later experiences – academic and otherwise – will be built upon.

David Darcy says this:

If we deprive children of their childhood in a misguided attempt to harvest quickly what naturally requires time, they may reach adulthood not knowing how to communicate their ideas, how to cooperate with others, how to listen and compromise, and how to access their own innate creativity.

If, instead, we allow time for children to engage in the learning activities that are most natural to childhood, they will, at appropriate times, be able to learn all of the other skills we expect of students. They are more likely to be happy, healthy, confident and creative. Given the choice, why not choose to let children be children?

I would go further and say that later academics are often MORE successful given a rich, solid foundation in childhood. International testing seems to bear this out. Finland, which has ranked first in such testing does not start its children in school before age seven nor do even the high schoolers there have more than 30 minutes of homework. This slower start nets them greater academic achievement later on. Dr Moore was telling us this some decades ago.

Does this mean no Montessori trays and holding them back? No. It means not pushing little people into two dimensional work prematurely. It means lots of hands on, real life experiences. It means a solid grounding in image-rich stories and basic skills (academic as well as organizational and personal) from which to launch and soar later. It means trusting that childhood is not something to be gotten through but there for good reasons. It means that while there is a lifetime to read War and Peace, there is this little window of time to enjoy Tomie de Paola together and to make lovely crayon drawings. Don’t miss it.

Check out this youtube from A Little Garden Flower on chalkboard times tables. Simple as can be and very pretty. Can be done on paper as well using a pencil (or crayon) and string compass instead of chalk.

This question has been asked three times this week so I am going to answer here as well for what it’s worth – which probably isn’t much lol! There are as many ways to educate well as there are children being educated. Ours is one way. If it resonates with you, then wonderful, I hope it is helpful. If not, that is ok too.

There were a couple different ways this question was posed. First, which history book do we use? This one has been raised a few times in regards to a few different age groups. The answer of course, is different when addressing different ages and stages. A few things remain constant however. When thinking about history and teaching history I always remember Dr. Ruth Beechick’s words in You Can Teach Your Child Successfully.

Children’s understanding of time is just beginning to develop. History teachers who have been on the job a long time know that this is so.

(Dr Beechick was a giant in the homeschool world when we began teaching our children and we have been blessed by her sensible, simple, approach. It is a pity the likes of such wise mentors has been largely eclipsed by new publications and voices espousing complicated methods which intimidate so many parents or convince them that there IS in fact a “right way” to “do history”.)

A young child struggles to wrap his mind around today, tomorrow, next week, and next year. To a 5th grader “when I grow up” is as far away as his birth. It equals a lifetime. It is not uncommon for the elementary child to confuse Grandma’s youth with George Washington’s era or wonder if there were castles and knights when Jesus was born. The actual dates are essentially meaningless to them. He is still wrestling with numbers as well, trying to make sense of math facts and times tables. Those tools are still unwieldy in his hands.

The younger the child the more he thinks in images. Your best bet is to work that to your advantage and share with him epochs. Help him to get a good picture of what bible days looked like, what Vikings were like, how a knight lived, who the pilgrims were, who built American log cabins, and who were the Indians they met. These things DO stick in their minds. They will not be able to sort them all out til much later but that isn’t our goal in the beginning. Initially you want to tell fascinating stories complete with vivid images and light a fire for all the vastly different ways people have lived through time. Children will marvel over folks who thought and felt so much like they do and yet who dressed and worked so differently. This is our goal. Impart the wonder.

As Dr B says:

Through stories children catch on to the idea that people lived in the world before they were born and that their times and doings were different from ours.

The best ingredient… is the excitement of the parents. That at least is sure to have a lasting effect on children’s interest in history.

In later years – ideally middle and upper elementary grades – you can begin to discuss sequence in more depth. I don’t use a perfectly scaled timeline at first but the children retell the stories we read and we bind them together in order of occurrence. That way they can see that Jesus came after the pyramids but before castles and Grandma came after George Washington but before men walked on the moon.

This is a good time to introduce a history “spine”. A text book is necessarily limited in it’s ability to effectively transmit wonder. When you think of it, how could the stories of billions of people be told effectively by any one book? Many texts are also plagued by revisionist history, a desire to interpret the past according to our own biases and contemporary understanding. What a good text CAN do is to provide a framework into which all those images and stories can now be sorted so they will become a cohesive whole. A text without years of stories and images is dry and lifeless at best. Stories and images with no framework can become random trivia lost due to the child’s inability to pull them all together or to make connections.

So, in the early years we read widely and much. In middle elementary grades we begin to use texts – usually classic texts in our faith tradition – as a spine to organize our studies. We do not expect to cover an entire text in one year. Rather we spread out a text over a few years and add picture books, biographies and historical fiction to the mix to flesh out the data more completely. Bear in mind that in high school and college the student will usually employ survey texts that will sum up all that came before. So this is a process.

Remember also:

Since there is no widespread agreement on what should be taught in each grade you can be assured that you will do no lasting damage to your own curriculum by making adjustments that fit your situation.

This seems to be the most difficult concept for most adults to grasp. Surely there must be a correct order in which to teach history? Nope. I tell you truthfully. Nope. If you are skeptical then order catalogs from several major publishers and compare the scope and sequence of each. You will discover that one begins with the beginning of time in grade one and moves forward in strict chronological order each grade. Another will begin with local and family history and move outward to more abstract information. Others begin with American history and give world and ancient histories a nod in junior high. All will assert that their way is critical to success and may even suggest that failing to adhere to their system will lead to disaster. This is just not so.

Share the wonder, provide a framework, and trust that the stories which have captivated generations will work their magic on your children as well. Just exercise discretion. A first grader is likely to remember about as much cold hard history as you recall from that time in your own life. Work with their natural development and things will go ever so much better for you both.

A good list of picture books for history is here and here

Laura Berquist’s Mother of Divine Grace School is one of the few Catholic correspondence programs to employ this approach.

Rainbow Resource Center sells numerous literature and activity based history studies from varied publishers. A quick google search will turn up tons more.

I got an email yesterday saying that the Home Educator’s Tutor magazine had been bought by a new publisher and is changing formats for re-publication. Instead of a periodical it will be a series of spiral bound (to lay flat) books. The first is due out soon and the rest in 4 month intervals.

We subscribed for a year when it first came out. I loved having everything at our fingertips in one binding – the Shakespeare story, the art appreciation prints, the music, the poetry, Plutarch etc. for more information check here.

I apologize for the tardiness in addressing many questions. We are pushing hard this summer while I am still mobile. Pregnancies have historically brought me to the couch by this time so every day has been a rare blessing. (For some odd reason I think the goat’s milk has had a miraculous effect on the contractions because the last pregnancy was also much better than the first 7) Even without the contractions however, we seem to be fielding a series of minor and not so minor challenges which keep a person on their toes. I have never been more grateful for a workable routine!

As I have said, self-direction plays a big role in that routine. To help explain what that means (and as importantly what it does not mean) I am quoting some text from different sites.

First

“the Montessori method is characterized by an emphasis on self-directed activity on the part of the child and clinical observation on the part of the teacher (often called a “director”, “directress”, or “guide”). It stresses the importance of adapting the child’s learning environment to his or her developmental level, and of the role of physical activity in absorbing academic concepts and practical skills. It is also characterized by the use of autodidactic (self-correcting) equipment to introduce various concepts.”

Self-correcting material allows children a greater measure of independence and efficiency in their work. They are not waiting on the teacher and can see at once when they have made a mistake so there is no repeating it and thus reinforcing an erroneous habit.

In Montessori programs, children do not work for grades or external rewards, nor do they simply complete assignments given them by their teachers. Children learn because they are interested in things, and because all children share a desire to become competent and independent human beings.

Montessori children enjoy considerable freedom of movement and choice, however their freedom always exists within carefully defined limits on the range of their behavior.

Although the teacher employs less direct instruction she is nevertheless a vital part of the process. She must be:

Authoritative: The teacher is firm at the edges and empathetic at the center, the kind of adult who responds empathetically to children’s feelings, while setting clear and consistent limits.

Observer: The Montessori teacher is a trainer observer of children’s learning and behavior. These careful observation are recorded and used to infer where each student is in terms of his or her development, and leads the teacher to know when to intervene in the child’s learning with a new lesson, a fresh challenge, or a reinforcement of basic groundrules.

An Educational Resource: Montessori teachers facilitate the learning process by serving as a resource to whom the children can turn as they pull together information, impressions, and experiences.

Role Model: Like all great teachers, the Montessori educator deliberately models the behaviors and attitudes that she is working to instill in her students. Because of Montessori’s emphasis on character development, the Montessori teacher normally is exceptionally calm, kind, warm, and polite to each child.

How does that play out daily? She is to:

Respectfully Engage With The Learner: The Montessori teacher recognizes that her role is not so much to teach as to inspire, mentor, and facilitate the learning process. The real work of learning belongs to the individual child. Because of this, the Montessori educator remains conscious of her role in helping each child to fulfill his potential as a human being and of creating an environment for learning within which children will feel safe, cherished, and empowered.

Facilitate The “Match” Between The Learner And Knowledge: Montessori teachers are trained to identify the best response to the changing interests and needs of each child as a unique individual. Because they truly accept that children learn in many different ways and at their own pace, Montessori educators understand that they must “follow the child,” adjusting their strategies and timetable to fit the development of each of their pupils.

Environmental Engineer: Montessori teachers organize appropriate social settings and academic programs for children at their own level of development. They do this to a large degree through the design of the classroom, selection and organization of learning activities, and structure of the day.

These principles are not limited to Montessorians however. It is explained here that Charlotte Mason felt similarly. Four CM goals:

1) Children should be free in their play.
2) Organized Games are not play. (let them use their imaginations)
3) Personal Initiative in Work. (give them time for their own projects)
4) Children must stand or fall by their own Efforts. (allow children to fail)

These principles are summed up in a term Mason coined, Masterly Inactivity:

Masterly Inactivity is taken up in Volume 3, Chapter 3. The key to avoiding stress for Mom! Train your child, develop Habits, and then let them go. Attention to the training in early years is the key – do not allow children to develop weak or bad habits that must be changed. This is not Unschooling – the child is trained in an area until the parents know that they may be left unsupervised.

From Vol. 1, pg 134; “the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose.”

Therefore this is no willy nilly approach. Thoughtful preparation prefaces the learning, however, ultimately the learning must be done by the student. For the busy homeschool mom this means that you can set the stage at the beginning of the year and the children can soar no matter what life throws at you, and it has thrown a good deal at us over the years – 13 moves, ten pregnancies, twice as many surgeries, deployments. School goes on however and goes on quite smoothly with delightful literature, judicious amounts of drill, music, engaging hands on activities, LOTS of outdoor time, and handwork, which I hope to discuss in greater detail before summer is over.

There are options for all of these that allow mom to jump in and out as needed. They can be done at flexible times of day. Some of our best progress during difficult times with Dad gone, mom in bed, or running back and forth to a hospital were in the quiet evening hours. Think outside the box. Standing before the class daily is not only not possible for many folks but as Montessori and others have discovered it is also one of the least effective techniques. Therefore, don’t feel obligated to recreate this scenario. Don’t feel that you have abandoned teaching or sold out either. It is simply a different road, one which has taken us some truly lovely places.

Note: As a rule it is best to keep everyone in your line of vision even when they are working independently. The younger the child the more crucial this is. Remember the scripture, “Children left to the themselves bring shame to their mothers.” This is where freedom within limits comes in. Keep them busy but keep them close so you can observe carefully for this is the critical component if you are to facilitate effectively. Little foxes spoil the vine. Just as self-correcting material prevents the repetition of academic mistakes, close contact with mom prevents the repetition of undesirable behavior. I have learned the hard way at times so I don’t preach from on high. “An ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure” and all.