That’s how a lot of things sound when you first say them; like cool ideas. It’s the curse of being an idea person; you have a lot of ideas. Most of them are great. Most of them would be helpful. Most of them would improve our family life in some way. But all of them take more than being written on a list of things to do.
Move the bushes in the front yard. Build storage equipment / shelving in the garage. Convert the MB closet to a bathroom. Create a “Jack and Jill” door into the existing MB bathroom. Move the dining room table and hutch into the family room. Convert the existing dining / living room into a family great room. Build a kitchen island. Install a backsplash on the kitchen walls. Repaint the 1st floor rooms. Paint the MB for the first time. Clean out the garage completely. With the exception of building an additional bathroom out of a closet each of the projects on this list could happen today. I have the know-how. I could find the money. But there are two things I don’t have; time and energy. Here’s a list of what really needs to be done and is occupying the “urgent” spot in my mind. Sort and deliver the laundry. Clean the bathrooms. Flip the king sized mattress in the MB. Kids’ schoolwork. Empty a file cabinet and move a shelving unit in the schoolroom. Science Olympiad files & supplies organized in said cabinet and shelving unit. Dinner. Dishes. Shopping. Laundry. I guess it is progress on my part that I am looking at the first list as not doable because of the second. Some things really are more important. However, there’s one more list that needs to be posted here. These are the things that I am actually doing while I'm not working on the second list. Sit and watch a parade my son is marching in. Let the kids set up a tent and camp in the back yard. Make sure the A/C is working and reinsulated as needed. Make sure everyone is getting vitamins everyday. Watch Anne of Green Gables and Saving Mr. Banks. Go to church. Stay late at church while my daughter sells hot dogs with the youth group. Spread new top soil in the yard over the tree roots that are popping up. Plant two tomato plants and some marigolds. Take my son to baseball practice. Cut the grass. Dump extra dirt in areas that have had erosion. Plan a trip to grandma’s house and get pool passes. Encourage kids to “finish” the chair painting project we started last year. I guess it’s ok to not do so many big idea projects. In the long run, I’m probably making the right choices as far as impacting my family. Parades, baseball, and camping in the backyard are more my style anyway of what being an active parent means. And the chairs are starting to look pretty cool. They will be real heirlooms when they are finished even if that isn’t until next year.
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Here’s a question from a fellow soccer mom, “I would like to pick your brain on what you do for summer for math -if any?” (Her boys are in 5th grade and younger attending a local public school. She knows I homeschool our kids.) Being in charge of my kids’ entire curriculum I find there really is no need to supplement. Whatever I give them, usually in the form of complete curriculum, is part of their regular studies. (It's not like summer comes and school is over so I give them something else to work on. You couldn't use a year long curriculum as a supplement anyway.) I do understand your question though about kids slacking off on learning. It's just that with our completely different format I have more freedom to address the need in other ways than just adding supplemental studies. If you're curious about how we handle it, our school year starts on August 1st and runs through the first full week of June. That reduces our summer "break" to about 7 weeks. Yours is nearly 3 months. During our extended length school year we're working on traditional subject studies mostly 4 days a week with the 5th day being devoted to extra curricular and group activities. Technically, that stuff is considered "school work" too but since our "school" is not all in one building, or even one town, it helps to schedule that way to facilitate all the driving. My kids just don't have as long of a time to forget as much over the summer and our involvement in so many other programs doesn’t kill us given our relaxed schedule. (For example, we regularly get home after 9pm on Wednesday evenings after Awana and sleep in most Thursday mornings.) Back to your question of how to keep your kids active in math over your long summer break. There are online math game type programs that offer great practice. I'm sure you could google any aspect of math and find a bunch. Here are a few we like. When Sophia was younger she enjoyed Times Attack. http://www.download366.com/timez-attack?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Download366.com---USA---Juegos&utm_content=Timez-Attack&utm_term=Get%20Timez%20Attack%20free Ray and his Scout buddies like to play Cool Math Games though for some of them it is a bit of a stretch to say they are math. I know they are. It's just what does throwing paint splattering water balloons have to do with any type of calculation? Whatever. They are boys. The games are fun and there is a math element. http://www.coolmathgames.com/ I don't know how young your little one is but we used a lot of Arthur's Math games in the lower grades. That was a CDrom based program. http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=arthur%27s+math+games&tag=mh0b-20&index=software&hvadid=2065314099&ref=pd_sl_7ogdzqie9s_ee We also had Reader Rabbit on computer and now wii. (They do have math even though there is "Reader" in the name.) http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dsoftware&field-keywords=reader+rabbit+math&rh=n%3A229534%2Ck%3Areader+rabbit+math However, my favorite way to boost math skills, and what I'm recommending to you, is in real life settings. My kids shop with me. I'm always challenging them to compare prices, calculate price per serving, look for specific size containers, keep a running total of our bill in their heads while the food is still in the cart. That is the real “Everyday Math” in my opinion, how we are constantly using it. Then at home they are each responsible for things like cooking meals and running laundry. There's tons of math applications in those jobs. We're doing yard work now; mowing, weeding, trimming, planting, etc. It's all about calculations.
(There's no end to this list.) As a teacher and parent of a high schooler I would encourage you like this. First, in their summer break your kids need a break. That September to May school schedule was originally put in place to facilitate kids working on family farms in the summer. That's a completely different construct than sitting at a desk. Use the time to let your boys get physical. Their bodies need it. Second, this is 1/4 of the year and it's all yours to do with as you like. Train your boys up on how to be men. Let them learn what it means to be conscientious, godly, contributing providers. Teach them how to care for a family and home. Let them build stuff with real materials. (I'm thinking about getting a trampoline and assembling it as a family and maybe a fire pit. Not in the same spot of the yard.) Then while you're doing life with them you can work in any topics you can think of, including math, and they'll experience the application rather than have it be just theoretical. That's my 2 cents. Thanks for asking. :) Brenda G. PS: One side benefit to doing life together as a family is the ability to call "All hands on deck" in an emergency. Last week we had everybody on board searching for a missing Ipass (rf transmission device allowing us to use express lanes on the tollway) ("communication"). We looked everywhere and it was nowhere ("Language arts")! Just when I was about to give up and replace it my son found it. Actually, it found him. We were bagging groceries ("geometry") at the bagging counter at Aldi ("volume") and it fell out of our bag of bags ("economy"). To this day I still have no idea how it could have gotten in that bag ("transportation") which is stored in the way back of my van ("mechanics"). But there it was crashing in all it's plastic glory on the industrial tiled concrete floor ("physics") when I asked him, "What was that sound?" His reply, "It's the Ipass! How'd that get in there?!" We recently had the privilege of being guests at Great Lakes Naval Academy on a field trip with one of our local homeschool co-op groups. I have to say this was one of the best field trips we've been on all year possibly even worth nominating in the "Best. Field. Trip. Ever." category. I could go on in great detail of why that is but really what explanation does visiting a Naval base, eating in the galley with hundreds of sailors, and touring a training ship need? (My family even enjoyed a personal escort by the M.P.'s when we were lost and undocumented in a restricted area.) What we saw, learned, and experienced is what you'd expect a group of field trip kids to learn on a Naval base. That we were able to go on such an exciting hands on field trip while our brick and mortar counterparts were sitting in desks is yet another topic about the general real life nature of homeschooling which I will also forgo here. However, sharing this cool experience with some moms whose kids attend public school sparks an interesting and repeated response. More than one who knew I took a high school freshman on this trip, and saw the picture above, asked me this. "What was the age range of the kids on that field trip?" Followed with 100% certainty by, "How do they do that? How do they present material on a field trip that all kids in that age range will benefit from?" To a one these moms do not think it is possible that high school students could learn anything worthwhile or that they don't already know while attending a field trip for elementary kids. They also think all the material would be over the heads of the elementary kids if it were directed at a high school level. Funny. It didn't seem like a challenge for our 1st and 2nd Class Boatswain Mate guides. (See sailors in photo above.) They're probably used to a multi-level format given the fact that everybody who goes into the Navy goes through their base. Do you know what kind of diversity of backgrounds enlistees come to the military with today? Check out this list. High school drop outs. High school graduates. People with some college experience. College graduates looking to do something different. People with technical experience. People with no technical experience. Immigrants with little English. Native English speakers. Americans speaking all sorts of regional dialect and accent. (One of our guides was from New Jersey.) Law enforcement enthusiasts. Farm kids. Inner city kids. Jocks. Brainiacs. etc. It truly is a microcosm of society overall what you see in the military today. These Boatswain Mates teach the enlistees day after day graduating thousands term after term. They did just fine with our kids too. But we've been on other exciting field trips this year with the same multi-level group of kids and similarly coming out of it thinking what a great experience it was. So maybe it's not the highly qualified Sailors. Maybe it's the context itself. Maybe it is possible for multi-level kids to learn different things at different rates during a single presentation. Part of our tour of the USS White Hat included a visit to the sleeping quarters down below. Here's a list of what the kids experienced down there in somewhat of an ascending order of complexity. You can imagine the younger kids would absorb a progressive amount until it is over their heads at a variety of stopping points. Down a steep stair ladder. Dark and cool. Skinny hallway. Room with lots of bunks. Red night lights. Bulk head doorways. Big door knobs. Bunks, called "racks", stacked, three high, in multiple rows. Firm mattresses. Privacy curtains. Lockers with bunk numbers. Sleeping shifts explained. Smells described. Navy Uniforms. At sea conditions. Crowding. Isolation. Dedication to country. Being away from family. Sleeping in different climates. Kids are amazing. They are always learning even when, or especially when, material isn't necessarily packaged and presented to a target group. They just learn what is right in front of them especially if they are interested in it or it is being presented by interesting people. They learn what they can then stew on it. The youngers may have learned less than the olders on this trip but that's OK. The olders may have been called on occasionally to help the youngers and that's OK too. We were there as a group of families who care for one another. It was a shared experience that kids across the age spectrum can talk about in future. It wasn't a slide show in a classroom that no one at home will have a reference point about. It was an adventure. These sibling groups and their friends all climbed into sailor racks below decks on a ship and felt what it is like to sleep like that. They'll never forget that. Then there's the general things multi-age field trip groups learn no matter where they are.
So my answer to the moms who asked how they can learn like this is, "They each participate in and take from the activity what is age appropriate to them individually. As a bonus, by experiencing it together they share a memory and can interact on it in future. Really, how could kids learn without the benefit of the variety of reference points their multi-age friends bring to the experience? Wouldn't a single age field trip have a huge risk of being boring? When is there ever really a homogeneous group anyway? Aren't there always kids in a classroom setting who just can't get it and others who just can't get enough? Anytime you have a group it is multi-level. Our levels are just a little more spread out. Besides, what future study possibilities or topics of family conversations are there for kids who don't have all their siblings and a parent along on a field trip?" Would my 15 year old daughter prefer her other high school friends on a field trip over her 7 year old sister? Of course! (And you can see her high school friend right behind her on the ladder stairs in the picture. You can also see her caring for the safety of her younger sister by letting her climb up first.) 20 years from now who will she more likely be able to talk about this experience with? Friends come and go but family is forever. Lest you think this is a fluke and only a setting as complex as a Navy ship could possibly interest such a wide age range of kids, here's another example: Three kids on the same trail ride through a natural area. Each finds and brings home something different, something that has value to them and they are uniquely interested in.
By the looks on their faces I'm sure they each think they got the best prize. I asked them at the time of writing this which items they would most enjoy having. The youngest could appreciate only her item. The middle liked his the most but could be interested in one other thing. The oldest saw value in all three but she only put effort into her own collection. This is a good example to me of how kids pick up what interest them and have an increasingly broad ability to look beyond their own interests. PS: Totally unrelated to the topc. While we were at Great Lakes I have to say it was also quite exciting to park near a real life NCIS Crime Scene Unit van and realize their office must have been near by. I am a huge fan of the show so I took a picture of "the truck". Hopefully this won't get me in any more trouble. (After I had driven a few blocks away I realized it would have been a better picture for me to be standing in front of the van. I'm sure it would have humiliated my kids had we gotten in trouble doing that.)
Wait! Did I just say that? ("Soccer is too short". Nine years ago, when I first became a soccer mom, it was all I could do to try to fit soccer into our busy schedule. Soccer is a lot of work. Here's a list. Register before the early bird deadline expires. This cycle has been going on in our family for nine years with three kids. In total I have been responsible for my kids playing in 252 games; 140 with Sophia, 84 with Ray, and 28 with Lisa. (If you are familiar with the WAA recreational league schedule you konw it is actually impossible for me to have attended all of these games as they are usually held on the same days at nearly the same times but different fields spread throughout the entire school district. I am grateful so many kind moms have "adopted" my kids when I needed to be at another game due to schedule. My husband and mom have taken turns sitting on the "parents' side" cheering (or, in my mom's case, from her "skybox" parking in the elevated handicap spaces along the side of the fields). I know I have not actually been at all 252 games. But, I have been the primary parent responsible to get the kids to all of those games so I am crediting myself with the burden. And that's what it was, a burden. The whole pcrocess was a pain and seemed like an interruption to our routine. I knew soccer was a good tihng for my kids to experience on so many levels so I was committed to facilitate it. But it just wasn't easy and took a lot of time and effort away from our regular things. So much went on pause during soccer season. There was no grocery shopping or house cleaning. Homework was shifted laster and later. Dinner plans? Ha! My goal was to get through soccer so we could get back to our regular program. Then, sometime last Fall, it hit me. Outside of church, the activity with the biggest continuity in our lives is soccer. It is not the thing that interrupts our regular life. Soccer runs parallel to my kids' childhood like the guardrail along Lake Shore Drive. It spans the length of my kid's childhood as everything else comes and goes. There are plenty of sights to see, figurative exits and on ramps to take, even a beautiful beach for relaxation. But my kids are on their road of learning and growing at the same time they are in soccer. Soccer gives them something to bump up against while they learn to navigate the speed traps and pot holes of life; a chance to try out those 19" rims and shine up the new paint job they worked on between seasons. Now don't get me wrong. We are not soccer freaks. Although we could, we have chosen to not play in a traveling league, on a club team or school team. (Nothing bad there. It's just not us.) Outside of P.E. in school, I myself have never even once played on a sports team of any sort. My husband is a soccer freak. He played in his youth and college days. He was a varsity soccer coach at a university after he graduated. Since immigrating to the US he has been an IHSA referee, coached a JV team at Elgin Larkin High School, and our son's 1st grade WAA recreational league team all while still playing in multiple adult leagues. He continues to play in both indoor and outdoor adult leagues, usually two but sometimes three leagues at a time. He is 50 years old and he is a soccer freak. Come to think of it, maybe he's on to something. What do any of us do for the better part of 50 years that is worthwhile? And what are we learning from doing that activity for so long? How does it affect us? More to my point, any activity that goes on for that long in a life starts to define a life, doesn't it? So it occurred to me sometime last Fall, probably because I was anticipating the end of my high school freshman daughter's time in this league, that soccer has been the constant in my kids' childhood with everything else fitting in between seasons. I started to ponder what my kids have learned participating in this recreational league. Here's another list. (I like lists.)
It's probably all premature nostalgia but, as I think about my oldest daughter aging out of this recreational league and heading into a co-ed high school league made up of serious players, I'm thankful she has had opportunity to learn so many life lessons on the field. I'm thankful for all the people we have met through her involvement with this program. I'm thankful for the volunteer parent coaches who reorganized their days, even leaving work early, to get to the practice fields and lead these kids. I'm thankful for the volunteer assistant coaches who filled in the gaps. I'm thrilled that my daughter's "best school friend" is still a girl she met on the White Eagle team in 5th grade. I'm glad she found the courage to face 9th graders when she was in 7th and developed the maturity to lead 7th gradres when she was in 9th (while on the 7th-9th grade league). I'm even glad she played against boys when WAA didn't have enough girls teams to round out the schedule. Today is May 18, 2014 and as of yesterday soccer is over until the Fall. I am honestly thinking right now of how I can get us through all the programs and plans on the schedule so we can get back to soccer. My focus has completely shifted from soccer being an interruption of our daily routine to that of it being our long term routine. We come back to soccer, two seasons a year, while we continue to grow and advance through the grades picking up and dropping different activities here and there. In September there will be a new pair of shoes, a newly designated water bottle, maybe a new ball, and a new field with 10 new friends waiting to be made as they experience soccer together for another season learning principles that can be added to my list. All this is what I mean when I say, as a soccer mom whose perspective has changed in the process, "Soccer season is too short." . . (PS I'm seeing this as a soccer mom but I suspect, except for the outdoor weather benefits, the same life lessons can be learned in any team sport played consistantly over the course of a childhood.) |
Brenda G.Enjoying the journey through my kids' childhood as a home educating mom. (And no, I don't have time for a blog but sometimes you just gotta write.) Archives
April 2019
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