Homeschooling

As insane as this may sound, i've been researching homeschool. Not full fledged homeschooling where i have to deal with all the maniacs 24/7 but partial homeschool so the they can actually learn something. This is mainly for the little ones but even 2nd grade Elmo would definately benefit.

What a difference a generation makes. In my school years, sure there were kids whose parents spoke another language with them at home but in school all the kids spoke english. There were very few in ESL and those picked up the language real quick anyway but now, my kids' teachers tell the immigrant parents to read to their kids in their own language. Seriously, how the hell will that help them learn english when their native language doesn't even use the same alphabet! This same teacher said the Elmo was at the top of her class in reading yet she stumbled on simple 3 and 4 letter words. Mind you her reading has greatly improved mainly due to her love of read and writing but still, they don't even have their own text books and reading books in school. Its all just photocopied pages out of a book or the internet.

A couple days ago there was an article in the Toronto Star that said the Toronto School Board was trying to create a uniform homework policy because kids are waaaayyyyy overburdened by homework. Where the heck are these schools, cuz i'm moving there. Elmo gets one page, front and back per week.. Maybe 10 minutes per week with 20 minutes of solo reading each day.

A.G. is almost 3/4 of the way thru junior kindergarten and has just started writing her name on her own. For some unknown reason she tries to read from right to left (the time). She is interested in books so that helps.

Snuffy is also "reading" it starts with "once upon a time" mumble, mumble, mumble "the end." But he does have more patience to sit still so i'm going to do the pre- curriculum on http://letteroftheweek.com/. It involves learning letter sounds, shapes, animal themes each week and mainly new songs/rhymes, most of which is on the website and then we can get a couple books from the library to complete the theme each week. I think it will be fun without being too overwhelming, its all about 1 hour per day.

For Elmo, since she loves to read so much I was looking into the American Girl series. Some homeschooling moms on BBC highly recommend them b/c the are written from the perspective of a 9ish year old and are set during a time period of American history. This can help build different discussions and more research about the events featured. I'd also like E to learn how to type and get more exposure to computing. It amazes me how much is out there in terms of homeschooling topics that never get addressed in the public school system simply because of a lack of resources and the sheer number of kids.

I love reading Janis' Unschooling Blog. Unschooling is mainly child/interest led learning that doesn't follow a set curriculum or (for the most part) use conventional book learning. I personally don't feel that that alot of the stuff kids in ps are made to regurgitate are necessary for real life but i do think much of the book learning is valuable. I digress, back to Janis' blog, many of her learning activities are family outings and hands on doing. Over the easter holidays I had the kids decorate a hard boiled egg each (with markers). Did they ever have a blast, all 3 sat around the table for about an hour with one egg, coloring, recoloring, dropping, peeling, eating, saying it was disgusting, throwing out after proudly showing daddy their eggs.

Its things like this that I look forward to. Them being so proud of their accomplishment and their desire to do it rather than having to do it. Another thing we saw on Janis' website are the homemade birdfeeders, I'm going to have the kids make it to hang from the tree infront of our house.

I wish we had more time to go on little family day trips. We took the kids to the Maple Syrup festival at the Kortright Center, the kids really enjoyed the hike and the major sugar rush lolly pops daddy got them. I can't wait until i'm off for the year!