Getting Creative

Last week our local homelearner’s drop-in started up again after a two month delay due to a civic strike (we use a community centre space). It was great to see our old friends again in this playful setting. DD got to work right away painting. She loves painting, but I confess I don’t like the mess (particularly a concern when DS gets involved). It started off several days worth of creative artwork.

The next day was another homelearner’s activity group, put on by a group not far from us (we’re so fortunate to have three active homelearner’s groups in our immediate area). Held twice a month, this is an incredibly well-organized event: they rent a room in a hall and fill it with tables piled with activities. There are all sorts of crafts, board games, areas for babies and toddlers, a warcraft table for the older kids, and lots of other fun things. Some activities are always there, but others vary. This time they had Halloween cupcake decorating, complete with cupcakes and dozens of candy items. There was also a table loaded with small wooden items such as toy chests, lighthouses, frames, etc. made of unfinished wood, with lots of acrylic paint and supplies. DD picked out this chest and painted it (with, of course, a dinosaur theme).

On the last occasion DH had taken the kids and DD made a mosaic picture frame. This week we grouted it. The finished product is shown here.

While I was uploading the camera images for this post, DD – who had been sitting at the dining table doing I-didn’t-know-what, called me over to see her solar system. Although she had gotten some of the planets out of order she did have all of them, and added Earth’s moon as well. Here they are after we’d rearranged them in order:

Fraser Institute Report on Homeschooling

The Fraser Institute is often referred to around here as “a right wing think-tank”. Every year they publish a “report on BC schools” that ranks all the schools here based on numerous categories that experts spend the rest of the year arguing about. I had no idea, therefore, that they also produced a report on homeschooling in North America back in 2001. And that, according to the second edition of this article, just released this month, their 2001 homeschooling report was one of the most downloaded files in their website’s history.

The report, which basically is a review of all the published studies out there regarding homeschooling, is very pro-homeschooling in it’s findings. Among the findings that didn’t surprise me is that the average homeschooled child is one grade level ahead of his schooled peers in early elementary school, reaching 4 grade levels ahead by high school. It also didn’t surprise me that homeschooled kids are more involved in their communities, watch far less TV than their schooled peers, and demonstrate less problem behaviours in social settings.

What interested me was the finding that it didn’t matter whether either parent was a teacher, in terms of the benefits of homeschooling. It makes sense since, despite popular misconceptions, homeschooling parents generally don’t “teach” their kids the way teachers in school do. Rather they serve as guides and a route to resources. I was surprised to learn that socioeconomic status did not affect the outcomes of homeschooling either. While the academic performance of schooled children is highly correlated with socioeconomic status, that correlation does not hold up for homeschooled children. I always assumed that parents with higher education and higher socioeconomic status would be more inclined to homeschool. And yet it seems that it actually would be better if more low socioeconomic class families homeschooled – it is apparently an impressive way to gain your child advantages that they will likely never get in public or private school.

From the Executive Summary section of the report:

• Many studies, Canadian, American, and international,
have found that home schooled students
outperform students in both public and independent
(private) schools. One US study found that
home and private school students perform comparably
well, and that both maintain a strong advantage
over public school students.

• Home educated children enjoy no significant advantage
if one or both parents are certified teachers.

• Surprisingly, several studies have found that home
education may help eliminate the potential negative
effects of certain socio-economic factors.
Though children whose parents have university
degrees score higher on tests of academic achievement
than other home schooled children, home
education appears to mitigate the harmful effect of
low parental education levels. That is, public
schools seem to educate children of poorly educated
parents worse than do the poorly educated
parents themselves. One study found that students
taught at home by mothers who had never finished
high school scored a full 55 percentile points
higher than public school students from families
with comparable education levels.

• Despite a widespread belief that home educated
students are not adequately socialized, the preponderance
of research suggests otherwise. The average
Canadian home schooled student is regularly
involved in eight social activities outside the
home. Canadian home schoolers watch much less
television than other children, and one researcher
found that they displayed significantly fewer problems
than public school children when observed in
free play.

• Though the long-term effects of home schooling
are less well studied, both Canadian and American
findings on previously home schooled adults are
encouraging. Canadian home-schooled students
report a life satisfaction score well above their public
school peers. American studies have found indications
of a wide range of non-academic benefits
from home schooling.

A full copy of the report can be found here.

A life of their own

Kids in school strike me as having their own life. Actually, I think kids in daycare already have their own lives – a whole day’s worth of experiences that the parent is not present for, most of which they won’t hear about. The child has a myriad of little mundane experiences that one might struggle to frame into a sentence that sounds remotely interesting, and yet these are all such a huge part of the child’s development.

But even without daycare, kids eventually go to Kindergarten and then in Grade 1 they start their full-time days – five days a week, six hours a day. That’s almost a full time job. By this age at the latest it is safe to say that the child has their own life, one the parents are no longer really a part of in terms of the experiences that make up those days. Find blogs written by mothers of kindergarteners and you will read all of them coming to grips with the fact that their little kids are growing up and venturing out into the world without them.

I can’t shake the feeling that there is something very wrong about a 5 year old having “a life of their own”.

Every day at around 3 pm a river of adolescents and teenagers flows past my house as the local high school and elementary school disgorge their charges. I watch these kids and I wonder about the things that happened during the day, what they learned (and I mean Life learning, not whatever was dictated to them in Social Studies that morning), and how much of that day the parents will never hear about. I look at the smaller ones and think that they just seem so young to be so fully occupied in an activity that takes them away from the rest of their family, out of the daily workings of their community, and isolated with a bunch of kids whose only shared characteristic is that they were born within a year of each other.

My kids are 3 and 5 and they want mama. If you ask them to do any activity and offer the possibility of me being there with them they will jump at the chance. It won’t always be that way, and I plan to savour it and indulge it for as long as it lasts. One day they really will have their own lives, having attained them by choosing their paths and being allowed to mature slowly, and gradually adjust to more time away from home and family. They will be allowed to venture out a ways, but will have open arms waiting for them when they suddenly feel the need to pull back a bit and snuggle closer to home.

I feel sorry for today’s kids, given a life on their own from the time they are still so very young. What is the rush? Why do we push them so? I’m so very grateful that my kids aren’t caught up in all of that. A life of their own? Not now, thank you. My kids still need me, and thankfully I can be here for them.

Bug Hunters

I finally found the charger for my camera battery, so today when we went to the park we brought it with us. We found several interesting insects and took photos of them. Later at home DD looked through her Insects of the Pacific Northwest book and we sought to identify them.

This little fellow was so small that it was hard to photograph well. It was the first one DD found in her book – its a Long-horned beetle called Brachysomida californicus. I confess I was a bit doubtful at first, but after thumbing through the tome with her it was concluded that she was spot on. Other candidates (based on the irridescent green colour of the carapace) were the Green Ostamid beetle (but the head was too large and ours did not have noticeable jaws), and the Lamellicorn beetle Dichelonyx spp. whose short antennae did not resemble our bug. Later on I privately changed my mind and now think that we found a Green Dock Beetle – the photo in the book made it hard to compare, but I considered the reported sizes (5 mm versus 11 mm for B. californicus); you compare the bug to DD’s thumbnail and see what you think. Regardless, the process of comparing features of these similar-looking species with the bug in our photo was, I feel, what DD got most out of the exercise (without realizing it, lol).

The next bug was immediately recognizable by DD as a Stinkbug, but she already knows from experience that we have several varieties around here. Once again it was she who found the identity of our rather large green model in her book. It’s an Uhler’s Stink Bug which grows up to 14 mm in length. It looks very similar to the Western Red-Shouldered Stink Bug, but on further discussion DD was quite convinced that our bug lacked the characteristic red band across the shoulder seen in the latter species, and instead was a picture-perfect example of the former: “pronotum and abdomen edged with white to pale yellow”.

This final photo is of my personal favorite right now. I first found one on the balcony of our old apartment when I last visited to move out the few remaining items we had left there. It was so large and beautiful, with it’s surprising number of variations on brown. I wished DD had been there to see it. But I’ve since found a couple more on our balcony and today we managed to get a good photo of the creature, though it still doesn’t do justice to the depth of colour variation. I ended up identifying it – my eagerness and enthusiasm beating out DD in this case (and I confess we are closely matched). It’s a Western Conifer Seed Bug, a member of the Squash Bug family. According to the book they are not seen often as they spend much of their life in the tree canopy, but apparently they are not immune to falling out of those trees, one or two of which are within close reach of our balcony (though the same can’t be said of our apartment balcony – still, we discovered that they fly very well).

This type of activity is a perfect example of the joys of homelearning. I seem to have the same mental setup as DD – we love to identify and classify! It’s an activity that I would never take the time to do if not for her lead, but I’m truly enjoying myself. I have to sometimes restrain myself from taking over; I want to let her lead the way. But then again I don’t think it’s so bad to teach her to “share” the learning experience as well!

…and the best part about homeschooling

As a complement to my last post I thought I’d write about one of the best things about being a homeschooler – the thing that most people think about least, IME, but which I think makes the hugest difference between us and “the rest of society”.

My friends whose kids go to school (most of them are just starting Kindy this year) are finding themselves joining the rat race. They get up early, whether they want to or not, whether they had a good night’s sleep or whether a little one kept them up in the wee dark hours of the morning. They are on a schedule and absolutely MUST be out the door by a certain time – a concept which is completely lost on most of the five-and-under crowd. They rush, they cajole, they fret…and then they’re off! They commute through traffic getting kids to school and/or daycare (and since we age-segregate they are likely in different places) and then either go to work themselves or try to fit whatever errands they need done into the next couple of hours.

Then they rush to pick up their kids, since you can’t be late for that. If you are one of the working crowd your kid probably goes to some “after school care” program. If your kids aren’t in an after school care program you are now probably driving them to various activities (you know, the stuff they *really* want to do). If you’re lucky, you all get home around 5 pm and then somehow you have to magically conjure up a healthy, home-cooked meal. By the time you eat, clean up the kitchen, prepare for the next day (packing lunches, making sure clean clothes are to be had for all, etc) it is probably time to get the kids to bed.

I know people whose 9 year olds have over an hour of homework a night. I know people whose kids participate in at least 3 or more after-school “extracurricular” activities a week. I honestly do NOT know how any of these people do this and still manage to spend some meaningful time with their children. I do know that many of these people are constantly under a state of mild stress from Monday to Friday. Even if you feel content with your lot, it is stressful to be on a strict timeline all day. I do know that these folks’ weekends are usually chock full of activities while they try to spend some quality time with their kids, not to mention run all their errands and houseclean.

Well me and my family….we don’t live in that world. We get up whenever we feel like it – early if we’ve had a good rest, and we sleep in if we haven’t. I almost always cook breakfast: homemade pancakes, homemade waffles, french toast (usually with homemade bread), or on a lazy day I make soft-boiled or fried eggs. The kids sometimes watch cartoons in the morning, or get started with a game while I do a few things around the house (like painting a wall, or vaccuuming, or whichever of my many projects I’m currently working on). Then we get ready to head out for our day, the planning of which happens on the fly and generally revolves around the weather. Yesterday, for example, despite a grim forecast we awoke to a gorgeous fall day with not a cloud in the sky. So we headed out for a walk in the forest. As usual, there was plenty of parking and we had the place virtually to ourselves.

We are usually home by 3 o’clock, before the gaggle of school kids pour out of their institutions and begin the part of the day that really interests them – off to clubs and sports practices and rec centre classes. Meanwhile I’m getting started on a slow sauce for dinner, or prepping veggies, or perhaps reading a book with the kids or playing a game. While others are trying to fit “everything else” into the precious 2 hours between school and dinner, our day has ended and we are relaxing. DH comes home and plays with the kids while I finish up dinner and serve it, then he cleans up while I play with the kids. Then he and I can generally sneak in about 30 to 60 minutes of computer time (or reading or knitting or whatever) while the kids wind down before bed. Usually by 9:30 they are asleep and he and I are getting ready for bed ourselves.

We don’t usually do anything on the weekends. We avoid the crowds and the rush. I do my shopping and errands during the week. We have long, slow lazy mornings playing video games and doing household projects (or out in the yard when the weather is nice).

I love this lifestyle, and I truly feel sorry for all the people who are caught up in the rat race. Life is short, and to spend 5 out of every 7 days running around trying to meet deadlines and pickup times, fighting traffic, and if you are lucky you might get to spend a half hour or even a full hour with your kids just playing and hanging out….well it is just tragic, really. I think most people don’t question that this is just the way it is. But then you meet homelearning families like myself, like all the families before me who inspired me, and you realize that we all make choices in our lives. And those people complaining about having no time with their kids have made that choice, too.

The unpleasant side of being a homelearner

Yesterday we had a visit from MIL and SIL. I mentioned that DD was in the SelfDesign program this year and tried to describe it. I was met with the usual slew of questions and doubts. I confess I gave a rather lengthy speech (which my husband said sounded like proselytizing) about the philosophy of self-directed learning, which I think led to some uncomfortableness all around.

SIL didn’t say much – her DD is in a private Catholic school because SIL thinks this is the best education around (and cheaper than regular private school), not because she wants a Catholic upbringing for her daughter. MIL expressed her disbelief that children can be relied upon to learn all they “need to know” on their own accord. She, like virtually everybody else who has been brainwashed by our education system, believes that there are things kids need to learn for their own good that they would never want to do on their own, such as practising handwriting or performing calculus. My attempts to address these concerns were met barely concealed eye-rolling and that look people give you when they think you are crazy.

Overall it was a very unpleasant experience and I confess I am truly fed up with all of it. Schoolers never have to justify sending their child to school. Nobody questions how kids are learning, what they are learning, or even why when they are sent off to these institutions. It seems that the curricula set by our school boards are treated as an Absolute Truth. Most people appear to just blindly assume that at any particular grade level the things they are required to learn are for Good Reason, and nobody ever seems to question it. But as a homelearner I am constantly bombarded with questions and skepticism. Not that any of the people challenging me have ever read a single article or book about homelearning, nor do any of them appreciate the evidence-based nature of Natural Learning. It’s like they think I just made it all up myself!

I know part of this is my own fault. I am passionate about Natural Learning and, as a very verbal person, I tend to go on and on at length about it. I can’t stand the thought that somebody has misrepresented in their mind what I’m doing, and so feel compelled to correct their presumptions. Unfortunately I am feeling more and more like I’m doing so at my own expense. I’m tired and frustrated with these conversations and wish everybody would just leave us alone. But that means I basically can’t talk about it with them. The only person who is excited and supportive of this is my father, which is something considering that throughout my childhood he was the strongest proponent of my own education and my achieving academic success (sometimes to a fault). I need to just be content with the knowledge that most people think I’m nuts and ruining my children, and let time supply evidence to the contrary.

I feel I’ve been down this road so many times before: cosleeping, attachment parenting, extended nursing, gentle discipline…all things that have gone against the grain, against the mainstream beliefs about how children grow and learn and develop, what they need, and how best to deliver it. And what I also find in common between my parenting choices and my education choices is that the opposing, mainstream views are based on a negative view of children that vastly underestimates and shortchanges their natural abilities and proclivities. MIL and those like her believe that kids need to be forced to learn things “for their own good” and that we have an obligation as parents to be taskmasters and dictators, pushing them against their will and breaking them to our authority to do so. Frankly, mainstream parenting and education sucks all the joy out of being a parent.

Somehow I have to learn to let go, stop trying to convince everybody around us that we are doing a good and wonderful thing, and just carry on content in our choices and our life. Based on my personality it is a very difficult thing to do. But if my experiences yesterday taught me anything, it’s that this is a much better objective to hold than trying to convince ignorant people of something that is obviously way too far outside their comfort zone. It takes strength and courage to question the mainstream way of doing things, and I suppose most people are happier hiding their heads in the sand. Fine, let them stay buried.