You Had To be There

     I had such high hopes for the blog this week. After all, the last several days have been full of all kinds of learning! I was going to post beautiful photos of our book club meeting, trip to the mountains, earth quake preparedness study and more. We started a new book that had the most fabulous opening paragraph that we were hooked right away and we talked about how the author did that. Chester gave his first performance on the piano, for which he practiced long and hard. The Magic the Gathering card game came out again, along with all the strategy, math and reading that goes along with it. Playing MTG inspired Truman and a group of his friends to collaborate on their own card game, complete with artwork and rule book. What a great week, and I admit to looking forward to bragging about it here in my special little spot reserved solely for that purpose.

     But here's the thing: all that happened and I have nothing to show for it. No photos, nothing much written and, while I do have some math pages completed, you're just going to have to take my word for it that it was a week of growth and learning. You just had to be there.

     Book club was the perfect photo op. Fifteen kids, ages 9-12, sat on blankets at the park and discussed The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury. The sun was out, kids shared Halloween themed treats and discussed the complex language Bradbury used in the book. All those gorgeous words! Did you find the book scary? Who was your favorite character and why? What did you learn about the history of Halloween? Would you give a year of your life up to save a friend's life, like the boys in the book did? We played a true or false game with obscure facts about Halloween then broke up into teams and ran a relay race with brooms, pumpkins and mummy wrapping. Finally, everyone was invited to make a tiny matchbox altar for Dia de los Muertos. I was having so much fun I completely forgot to take pictures. Oops, sorry!

     We spent a few days in the mountains with friends and, in between fort building, capture the flag and canoeing, we started a new read aloud book called Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes. You learn a lot from a book that grabs your attention and keeps you up late reading in bed with a flashlight, but it doesn't translate much to a blog. You learn to love literature. Kind of a big deal, if you ask me.

     This was earthquake preparedness week in California. I did not require my boys to write a paper on earthquakes or the San Andreas Fault. That would be impressive in their file of completed work, but we decided to come up with an earthquake plan for our family instead. We spent some time looking online first; we reviewed what causes earthquakes and watched a few videos on the topic. We looked at maps of California and exactly where the SAF is, along with scientific predictions about where and when the next big quake may happen in our part of the world. The boys had a great opportunity to learn about searching for specific information online, what kind of maps give the information we were looking for and why some videos were useful while others were just scary and sensational. We took an online quiz to find out how much we knew about what to do in a quake and Chester made a list of some key things we needed to do in order to be more prepared. After all that research, we were ready to have a drill, which the boys loved and we did over and over until we all felt secure that we knew what to do when the next one comes along. Real learning happened, but can I prove that? I guess everyone will just have to take my word for it :)

     We did our usual "school" work, but we also decorated the house for Halloween, made wrapping paper with acrylic paint and wax paper, memorized a very complicated and long song from Into the Woods, learned about the surface tension of water while making a trap for fruit flies, plowed onward through a difficult piano piece, had a long discussion about who might be responsible for crop circles (aliens?!) and learned just a little more Spanish. It was a full week, but I guess you had to be there!

Celebrating Progress

     So, I've spent a lot of time looking for and measuring "progress" in our homeschooling. The state standards, media and well-meaning friends and family all have marks that our kids are supposed to "hit" at certain ages or grade levels. Multiplication tables? Third grade. California History? Fourth grade. Reading? Well, back in my day that was a first grade box to check but now that box has moved (tricky little things, boxes) and children should be reading in kindergarten or even earlier. But homeschoolers are not, as a whole, fans of boxes,  and I like to think our family is no exception. Still, those voices and concerns are forever lurking.

     That is why, this week, I stopped to remind myself that kids are not machines, arriving at the same place at the same time, and education doesn't look the same for any two kids. Truman has always hated to write. It's a common thing for boys his age, I know, but that hasn't made it any easier for me, as his parent. I love writing, why doesn't he??? Writing is key to being successful in the world, to getting into college or even just being employed, not to mention expressing oneself---- making one's mark! (You can see I might have gone a little nuts about this.) This week, however, I had the presence of mind to remember what I always tell new homeschoolers when they stress about filling the boxes at the "right" time: Be patient. Be open. Trust the process.

    Tru was given a short writing assignment for his science class, in which he was just supposed to write about what they did during the last month. Simple. But this assignment, if given last year, would have seemed overwhelming to him and an extreme form of torture. He would have waited until the last minute and then, through tears, he would have written two or three sentences and forgotten the whole thing. 
    But what a difference a year makes. Is it what some other sixth grade boys in school are doing? That is a question I would have asked last year, but this year, I put a sock in it, as they say. I saw Truman sit down as the computer and have fun playing with the writing program. He asked some spelling questions but, after reminding him of our Mindmapping activity from earlier in the week, I wasn't involved at all. He sat for over thirty minutes tapping away on the keys and I could tell that he felt good when he was done. This was so exciting and, for Truman, signaled a huge leap from where he was with his writing, even a few months ago. 
     Was it perfect writing? No. Did I care? Not a bit. It was short and a little goofy and very basic. But the fact that he enjoyed his time at the keyboard expressing himself, and that he felt successful, was huge! It's the whole point, after all. The beauty of our family's educational approach is that no one is looking over our shoulder forcing us to check boxes on an imaginary timetable. While this is threatening to a lot of people and institutions, it has proven over and over to be an approach that works for us. When I quiet the anxious voices in my head, I see both of my sons making steady progress, while preserving and nurturing their love of learning. 

     In other news, we finally erupted our pretend Mt. Vesuvius. We never got it painted, because it was getting moldy and smelly and our dog had already gotten sick from chewing on it. I let my vision of the perfect "schoolish" science project go and got to the good stuff: making a mess. Chester added his Lego citizen of Pompeii and we talked briefly about acid/base neutralization and got down to business. 

And finally, arts and crafts has inspired a frenzy of paper weaving in our house. Chester enjoys teaching anyone who is game for a challenge. It's patterns, measuring, division, problem solving, art, among other skills. Plus, it's pretty!

     Lots of independent reading took place this week, which isn't that new in our house, but this time it was non-fiction, which has always been a hard sell for my boys. I could have stressed about it and required them to read a certain number of non-fiction books (believe me, I've thought about it), but instead I just waited and let them enjoy reading what they like. When their Dad bought them each a short biography of their choice (Harry Houdini and Bruce Lee) they devoured them and finished both in two days. Then they told me everything I could ever want (and some things I didn't want) to know about these two interesting men. I think they liked knowing things I didn't know and they were inspired by the off-beat lives of two people, passionate about their life's work. The experience had more of an impact than any assigned reading or "Choose a Famous American" project I could have dreamed up. This is what meaningful progress looks like this week, for these boys and for myself.