Block Upon Block

It is no secret that I’m not at all a fan of the Ontario Liberals education initiatives. They campaigned on full day junior kindergarten and have further plans to continue along the “early education” path. In reading a recent article, this particularly part jumped out at me:

It recommends that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty make the neighbourhood public school the hub of every community, where parents will get everything from prenatal advice and nutrition counselling to childcare for those under four, full-day kindergarten, and before and after school programming. Its doors would be open from 7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., its hallways filled with parents, infants, school-age children and grandparents, Mr. Pascal said.

By placing all these services under one roof, parents can minimize the difficult transitions that disrupt their own lives and the lives of their children, while allowing teachers and early childhood educators to focus on a mixed program that in the long run will boost literacy, graduation rates and post-secondary participation, the report says.

I feel like I approach schooling and community from a completely different world view than our current provincial government. I don’t believe that the government or a school system should have control or even that significant of an influence over a family’s life.

In Deuteronomy 11, the Lord is exhorting his people. He begins with “Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always.” After continuing to encourage his people to obey Him, Deuteronomy 11:18-20 states, “Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the LORD swore to give your forefathers, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.”

In Ephesians 6:4 we read, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”

Our God-given responsibility as parents is to train our children in the Lord. Frankly, that is not the job of the school system, nor does the public school system want it to be. The schools that the government runs are in the business of raising good citizens. The problem is that sometimes our definition of what a good citizen is is going to differ. Parents are entrusted with children, not the government and I don’t believe it is in the best interest of families to hand their young children over to any system. God choses parents for each unique child and handing jurisdiction over our children to others—even trained “professionals” cannot adequately replace what God has intended.  The report even admits that some of the major goals are to “boost literacy, graduation rates and post-secondary participation”. While admirable, and really, nothing I’m prepared to argue against, these are goals that are for the good of the future of the province.

The trend towards “the earlier the better” for placing our children in the school system has been something that has concerned me for years. I have a solid conviction that children—especially small children, should be with their parents. I cannot fathom that it is better for a child of 3 or 4 to be in a class of 16-25 other children than it is to be at home. I cannot understand why artificial “playing house” could be considered better than a child standing on a stool beside Mommy learning what goes in the cookie batter next or that clearing a toy table is more educational than clearing a table with Grandma.

I’m also highly bothered by the idea that the school system should be offering prenatal and nutitional advice. I suppose since children are supposed to be spending so much time at schools rather than in their homes, it only makes sense under this plan but does this not raise alarm bells for anyone else? There are wildly varying schools of thoughts about nutrition and prenatal care in Canada. Which methodology will be adopted? What happens if a family’s personal philosophy in either area clashes with the standard advice? Is a standard going to be set that professionals know more than parents about their own children?

Maybe the thing that has me most disturbed is a new thought this article has generated: is a trend going to be set that community is something that should be formed and overseen by professionals? When I think about the utopian vision of “centres” that are “the hub of every community” it makes me feel frightened rather than excited. Have we thought about the implications of having state-raised children? Are we really going to be so quick to give up on what should be natural and normal: parents having responsibility for their own children from the earliest years onward?

At this point, I’m grateful for the limping economy that will keep these plans from being implemented in one large swoop. I’m hoping that it will buy time for parents to be educated that there are things more important than education and child-rearing being made “easier” by the government.  I feel like I need to add a caveat to my thoughts: what I’ve shared is not criticism of parents who have made the choice to put their children into the school system.  Though it is not my choice,  and though my bias, as someone who strongly believes in home education, is obvious, I believe that it is the parent who should chose how their children get educated and trained, not the government.   The educational ideology that the Ontario Liberals have been sharing over the last couple of years makes me wonder what they think the role of parents should be.

We try to lapbook different topics once or twice a year and this year our subject was the Underground Railroad.

The topic was the same for all of the kids but the required work for a lapbook ranges according to the kids’ ages. Each of the kids worked very hard and their finished lapbooks have a place on our “history shelf”–after all, they are beautiful to look at and full of great information! Here is a glimpse of the kids work.

This was Peter’s first lapbook and he enjoyed making it. He enjoys looking at the finished product more.

Rianna has done quite a few lapbooks now and they get better each time! She puts a lot of detail in each one.

Heidi is a very creative person and her lapbooks showcase that.

It has been a long time since I’ve blogged. I do have a delightful excuse–a new baby–but I am hoping to be a bit more faithful.

I’m going to catch up by posting some pictures of the larvae/butterflies that we observed this spring. It was a wonderful experience for us and had appeal for all of the kids. A definate must repeat!

The larvae.

A chrysallis is formed.

The butterflies emerge.

Our tour of Canadian history has made a several week stop at the Underground Railroad as we’ve studied it in detail and are now working on a lapbook about it. We enjoyed reading The Last Safehouse as a family and Rianna quite enjoyed reading Underground to Canada as personal reading. During our daily read aloud time I’ve been reading a biography of George Washington Carver. I really wanted the children to realize that while the Underground Railroad was a good work, it wasn’t a magical fix for black people in either Canada or the United States. Justice is more than just an amendment or a new law.

In the neat type of miracle timing that I can never quite manage on my own, in Rianna’s vocabulary today she had to read a story on Rosa Parks and the bus boycott. This led to an interesting discussion on segregation and I read the kids Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter from a Birmingham Jail. This always makes me cry, and while I don’t relish making my children cry, I was happy that it moved them, too.

Through-out our tour of Canadian history we have come face to face with injustice that has been faced by others; not just black Canadians and Americans but the Canadian native tribes and many ethnic groups as well. Learning history is so key in children learning life lessons. Eccesiastes 1:9 says, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” The horrible injustices we see in the world now are not new, and the incidents of injustice that occurred in our country’s history did not occur for the first time here.  I hope that reading the parts of our history that don’t inspire us with heroic acts or noble deeds will help all of us grow in compassion and understanding. That is more important to me, in schooling my children, than the memorization of pertinent facts.

I’m in the midst of lesson planning for next year’s history right now and I’m quite excited about what we are doing. I love history, so every time period we study becomes my favourite for a while and then I gladly move to the next. We are doing ancient civilizations next year and between Egypt, Persia, Assyria, Babylon and Greece there is enough scope for the imagination for anyone. I got a few resources on modern Iran, too, to compare a bit.

Rianna, my oldest, will be in Gr. 6 and will have a heavier workload than the others. There is such a thing as exasperating, though, and I’m trying to be careful to balance things. I don’t want to overload her, but neither do I want to keep absolutely all reading/writing assignments history focused because I think that will kill some of the joy for her. My compromise for Rianna’s schoolwork is that I’m dropping some of her extra language arts because I’d like her to be able to focus on some fun things like re-writing Greek myths and also because I’m introducing her to a more in-depth style of outlining in her history reading. She will still have more then enough language arts with defining words from various periods and writing about some of our historical discoveries. I’m still keeping some of the more “fun” language arts like Wednesday’s journal activity and our Tuesday focus on letter writing. Learning new skills is hard work, but keeping the topics as interesting as possible and trying to keep fun where I can is important to me. It seems that often homeschooling parents can be very concerned about school work being enjoyable when kids are younger but when we start to “buckle down” with older kids we think that all fun has to disappear. I don’t think that has to be true. I think you can enjoy learning all of your life.

Heidi (Gr. 4 next year) is going to re-write some Aesop’s fables this year for a combination of language arts and history. She has a great sense of humour and I think that she will be able to showcase it in her fables.

Humour, like fun :), is important not to leave out of your school day. History lends itself to a lot of great read alouds and I try to read aloud a history title every day but I’m careful not to have it the only book we read. A book like James and the Giant Peach, Charlotte’s Web or at least some nonsensical poems adds a much needed touch of laughter to the day, too.

I’m not finished dreaming and scheming about next year’s lessons yet, but I’m feeling good about what I know so far.

There is a lot of larvae in our house right now. The amount should dwindle as the week winds down (and the others who ordered with us pick theirs up), but we’ll still be left with 5 of our own. What are we doing? We’re watching the life cycle of painted lady butterflies.

There are all sorts of interesting websites on butterflies: The Butterfly Website, Enchanted Learning, Yukon Butterflies, Butterfly watching in Ontario, All about Painted Ladies, and this website with all sorts of fascinating Painted lady pictures to get you started.

This is the 3rd time we’ve ordered larvae and even though we’ve “been there, done that” I’m very glad we’re doing it again. The level of understanding my bigger children have brings new fascination to observing these creatures. I’m also enjoying the enthusiasm of small Ben, age 5, who would carry his larva around all day if I’d let him.

This will be an exciting few weeks in our house, and an opportunity to not only learn about metamorphosis but also about the habitats of the Painted Lady. I imagine we may even add a new periennial or two in the garden as we research what plants they like the best. I love hands on science!

I’ve been re-reading the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder to my big girls before bed. We were reading Little Town on the Prairie one evening and came across a chapter where a man was giving a “Fourth of July” speech and referenced the Americans beating the British in battle:

“A few barefoot Americans had to fight the whole of them and lick ‘em, and they did fight them and they did lick them. Yes sir! We licked the British in 1776 and we licked ‘em again in 1812…….”

To which Rianna immediately piped up, “They did not beat us in 1812.” You see, we’ve recently studied the War of 1812 and while we are not British, since it happened on Canadian soil, this is a victory most Canadians claim. This started an interesting conversation about how that war looks very differently to the people involved: to the Canadians it is a victory, to the Americans it is where they got their national anthem and the name of the White House and to the British it was really just one battle in a whole series between the French and the English.  We concluded that history is best studied and understood by looking at all sides of things, not just our own.

Note that this was not during a history lesson at all–it was just talking because what we studied stayed with them and a book that was not meant to reinforce a lesson sparked a reaction. I think I like this part of school best of all…when I can see that what we learned really clicked.

Yesterday our co-op group made hardcover book covers out of old wallpaper samples and cardboard. Next week we’ll sew the paper inside of them with dental floss. I love doing crafts with the kids that teach them to make something of value out of things people throw out.

I learned about making hardcover books from The Ultimate Lapbook Handbook by Cyndy Regeling. Besides doing things that teach meaningful recycling, I think that we do a good thing when we help our kids make something they are proud of to display what they have learned. I really enjoy the various ideas Mrs. Regeling gives to present the kids’ work. I know that our kids love to pull out the lapbooks they’ve made to look at them. We definately plan to keep utilizing lapbooks and all of their variations in our schooling.

I’m not sure what the kids will do with the books that they make, but I know that there is something inspiring to my bigger girls about writing in a nice notebook (that and a good pen go a long way in inspiring me, too). I’m sure that using a book that they made themselves (whether for their own stories, drawings or musings) will be even more satisfying.

I’ve been part of an active large homeschool group. I was in leadership for several years until I needed a change. I am now part of a co-op that is small but is meeting our needs wonderfully.

A large group can offer many opportunities that are great for a homeschooler and I feel like I benefitted a lot from being involved. I have to say, though, that what I’m experiencing this year has been a joy that I would not miss out on. Why is the small group the thing for us?

1. intimacy

Our children can get to know the other children without wondering who will be around next week. They can become friends rather than “kids who see each other sometimes”. I can get to know the other parents rather than just be aquaintances. I love that it is a whole family group so that our kids of various ages can get to know each other. While kids of certain ages tend to gravitate to each other, I love that we don’t have the “8 and 9 year old” group and the “12 and up” group.

2. choice

We can chose to do things that suit our children and we can listen to them when they’ve had enough. We’ve made it a point to commit a day and time but not to plan actual events too far in advance. Sometimes there is a trap to say that since something is working we need to keep going…not allowing for the fact that it may be something that works well in the short term, but not in the long term. For instance: our children loved doing papier mache with other children and we worked on it for 3 weeks. It went really well, but to declare it a “papier mache group” would have worn down all of the children and taken the joy away. This year we’ve done a wide range of activities from hiking to public speaking. We’ve also had fun simply enjoying playing games with each other.

3. investing in each other’s lives

I actually don’t mind planning activities at all. I like to facilitate interesting things for my children to do. Part of why I found my leadership role in a large group draining is that when I spent that much time investing in other peoples’ lives, I did hope that they might be willing to do the same. The nature of a large group, though, is that if you have 20 or more families their interest in being involved is bound to vary. That is normal and okay, but at this stage in my family and my homeschooling I was looking for people who wanted similar things to me. Part of why we are a co-op is because we co-operate together in doing activities.

4. commitment

I’ve touched on this earlier but what is unique about this group is that we are committed to attending. In a large group there is a temptation to view each activity as optional and fit it in if you want/if your day goes well. There is a place for that but it is not what we wanted. Of course people go out of town or get sick and can’t come. That’s just life. Overall, though, our desire is to keep getting to know each other and keep doing things together. We make decisions as a group about when we are going to meet. If/when we take a summer break (it’s likely), we will decide that together. It’s nice to know that when you are making the effort to get out of the house (something I don’t even want to do in January) that others will be joining you.

At different stages in our homeschooling lives we are looking for various things. There may be a time that I’m also seeking an acedemically oriented co-op. Going on field trips certainly helped to inspire me when I was first beginning to homeschool. Right now what we’re doing is exactly what I’m looking for and I’m excited about that.

There is a saying that when March comes in like a lion it goes out like a lamb and if it comes in like a lamb it goes out like a lion.

My children asked me if that was true and I really wasn’t sure it was, so we decided that we will keep track and see. To do this I made a March calendar out of construction paper and Robin, my husband, printed me some lamb and lion pictures from online.We’re going to put a lamb or a lion on each day in March and see how it plays out.

Today is a lamb-like day, so if the proverb proves true, it should be stormy on March 31st. I’m rather hoping it is wrong this year! I like easy, fun like this that help make school memorable.