Tag Archives: homeschool

Our old friend, dyslexia

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I have talked before about our second son, Farmer Boy, and his struggles with dyslexia.

The year after he was diagnosed, we had Little Cowgirl screened as well. We knew she was too young to get an extremely clear picture, but her results came back as a pretty convincing “probably so.”

Her journey so far has been much less difficult than her brother’s for several reasons. First of all, she is not as severely dyslexic. Secondly, she is not a self-flagulating perfectionist. Third, I knew ahead of time she might be dyslexic and approached teaching her from that angle. Fourth, she has never been learning in an institutional setting.

Homeschooling, however, cannot escape dyslexia. Like most children, Cowgirl has kept up just fine through our kindergarten and first-grade work. Then, like most dyslexic children, she started to show signs of struggling once we got into the meat of our second grade learning. When we first started learning about dyslexia, the psychologist screening Farmer Boy told us that most children are not diagnosed until closer to fourth grade. They typically begin falling behind in second grade, require extra help through third grade and are finally tested in fourth grade.

First grade went so well for Little Cowgirl that I allowed the whole magical year to drift by without stopping to be thankful. Her phonics program was a good fit and I knew I was teaching her in the method she needed if she were dyslexic at all.

Second grade, all twelve weeks of it so far, has been humbling. Parts of it have felt like starting over, and most of the new material has been like a wall made of brick. It is hard for me to say this because I always want to put the best homeschooling foot forward – I want everyone else to see how well it’s going for us. It’s also important for me to be honest in this space. That doesn’t mean I’ll be posting the details of our worst day ever (I”m a best day ever sort of gal). But it does mean I’m going to cop to it when something is weighing us down.

I am very thankful to be homeschooling, she doesn’t have to continue struggling through some of the things that aren’t working. She doesn’t realize that I’m switching out and dialing back some of her grade levels. She is happy to be in second grade and looking forward to her First Reconciliation and First Communion later this year.

I also realize that she is young. She is younger than the other second graders. Her motor skills are in a different place. Her experience is less.

If I could go back and do it over again, I would still begin her kindergarten lessons when she turned five. She was ready. I would still use the same phonics curriculum.

But I would probably have planned this year differently.

Homeschooling has been like every other part of parenting (for me, anyway): A constant guess. I base my decisions on what I know about each child and their situation, line that information up with our ultimate goals and pull the trigger.

I’ll let you know in about twenty years whether or not we even came close to the target.

Homeschool Progress Reports

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We are always trying something new. A recent success at our house: Take a day off from lessons to evaluate how things are going.

We called it student-teacher conferences.

It was a beautiful autumn day. Everyone played outside as one child at a time came in to the kitchen table for a special snack and some one-on-one time. We talked about the first ten weeks of our school year, with special emphasis on: “What are we doing in school that you love most?” and the predictable “What do you like the least, and why.”

It was a revealing and helpful set of meetings. Like parent/teacher conferences from days of old (when we were in regular school), it was a great overview of the trenches from those actually shoveling in them. It was wonderful to see how empowered the kids felt in discussing their schooling. We went a single subject at a time, talking about what they enjoy and where/how they felt they are learning the most. When we arrived at the “what is sucking” portion of the meeting, we made suggestions and brainstormed ideas for changes. We made plans for implementing those we liked best.

I wrote down everything they said.

To wrap the conference up, we went back over the notes I had made and listed our new plan of any changes we wanted to make.

This was a great way to introduce some concerns I have been having (you haven’t been practicing typing/your spelling is atrocious/I think this math is too hard for you) and helped invest the children in the changes we are making to our routine for the next quarter of the school year. An added bonus was the renewed excitement with which everyone approached the new week following our conferences.

Have you done any recent evaluations of things around your ponderosa? If so, how did it go?

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Pioneer Day, Part #3

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This is the final installment of our homeschool pioneer day trilogy. It seems appropriate to do a bit of evaluating now that the activity is over.

In terms of educational value I think our pioneer day was a wonderful learning experience. It is similar to the way I am using notebooking in our homeschool; we weren’t really learning anything we hadn’t already, we were simply putting into practice things we had already learned about. It gave us a chance to really cement some of the ideas, notions and concepts that had come along with our study of westward expansion.

Most importantly, it kept the children’s interest in history on the level of ‘rabid’ and helped with my goal of making history fun and enlightening. Some of the conversations we had during our pioneer day included how the pioneers felt, why they made the choices they did, how the natives felt and why they made the choices they did. We talked about which parts of the pioneering adventure would fun and how much of it would be terrifying and perilous. We talked about ‘real’ history vs textbook-type history. And we felt like we were part of it.

A day of pretend time travel like this can be as detailed or as unplanned as a family wants. As usual, somewhere in the middle worked really well for us.

The children all asked if we could do reenactments like this again, and asked what periods in history we would be studying next year.

And finally, for your viewing pleasure: A Taste Of Pioneer Day.

Homeschool Pioneer Day from Closeenoughblog on Vimeo.

How fun is that?!

Pioneer Day, Part #2

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We spent a lot of our time traveling in our covered wagon when we began our pioneer day. We are fortunate to have acres of virgin pasture behind our home, so besides opening and closing a couple of gates (and the fact that our animal had a motor) it felt pretty authentic. I, for one, had a wonderful time except that I did not enjoy tramping through tall grasses in my pioneer dress. Those weed seeds are not comfortable when stuck to ones stockings.

We stopped at the old water pump next to the pond, and (pretended to) fill a bucket for the animals.

As I try to do as much as possible in our homeschool (despite my tendency toward being a control freak) I let the children choose the route, the activities and the timeline of our journey. I did, however, make it very clear that if they ran out of gas they were on their own in hauling a gas can down to the pasture. (They watched the tank pretty carefully after that declaration.)

It was a perfect, beautiful morning.

We drove – I mean traveled – all over the place, changing our route to get around ravines, muddy patches, thorns.

I was so glad to have saved this costume my mom (an incredible seamstress – she made my wedding dress as well) made for me to wear during a play in high school. Little Cowgirl and I sewed the rest of our costumes, which is saying A LOT considering the fact that I don’t really sew (mostly because I don’t really know how).

Shooter and Farmer Boy were much less into their costumes – but I know they felt very ‘pioneer.’

After an hour and change months of traveling, we reached the perfect place to homestead. We unloaded our wagon, built a temporary shelter out of our canvas (ahem, sheet) cover, and got to work.

The young men took turns plowing the field,

and raking up hay to feed the lawnmower and stick horses animals over the winter.

Little Cowgirl got to work on gathering burning materials for the fire and cleaning potatoes for lunch.

We boiled potatoes from our garden, then added chunks of ham and cracked in a few eggs.

We ate in the grass and wiped our plates in buckets of water drawn from the sink in the utility room well.

Then, we harvested our REAL LIFE patch of sweet potatoes so we would have some root vegetables to get us through the winter. Cowgirl clipped the vines for us.

As an aside, this is the third year I have attempted to grow sweet potatoes and the first year I’ve had any success at all. I think this year makes up for the two years of failures.

If I were a county fair sort of person, that purple ribbon would be mine, em effers. That is all.

After the harvest, mommy was pretty much D.O.N.E. with pioneer day, so she took a long, hot shower and sat down at her macbook. (insert contented sigh) My young pioneers, however, had so much fun they decided to sleep outside without a modern tent. The littler one made it until she could hear the coyotes. The biggest one came in when it started to thunder at around 3:00 am.

But the next morning, they were back outside immediately. Everyone wished pioneer day could last forever.

This is still not the end, one more installment of homeschool pioneer days is yet to come!

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Pioneer Day, Part #1

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To close out our study of westward expansion, we had a pioneer day last week.

For those of you unfamiliar with my specialized educational vocabulary, that means we pretended to be pioneers all day long.

This wasn’t a part of our planned curriculum, it was an idea that evolved on its own during our history studies.

We talked about having a pioneer day many times during our first weeks of school. It came up often during some of our ‘extracurricular’ studies about what pioneers ate, how they traveled, what they did each day. The children kept saying it would be fun to try some of these things. Because we are used to the flexibility homeschooling gives us, we never really picked specific day once we hatched our plan, we just kept preparing a few things here and there and once we had everything we wanted ready we checked the weather forecast and dropped our finger on the most beautiful day of the week.

Little Cowgirl is helping cut the pieces for her pioneer sun bonnet.

We made a pioneer dress and sunbonnet for Little Cowgirl (here is the bonnet pattern we used), the boys spent a lot of time deciding whether they were going as pioneers, mountain men or indians. In the end, they chose to be pioneers, which worked out well because they built us an awesome covered wagon.

The afternoon before pioneer day they disappeared outside. When I stepped out to check on them, I found they’d built a frame onto one of the lawn mower trailers. They even attached some baling twine ‘reigns’ to the back of the mower seat.

We planned what foods we would be eating and gathered up supplies.

Our supplies included great-grandmother’s egg basket, corn stalks for burning in a fire pit, and old pans for cooking over the fire.

Each child has suggestions for how our day would work. The boys were very focused on the mechanics of the day; what we would bring, what our route would be, what work each person would do. Cowgirl spent lots of time thinking about the story-telling end of our game; who her character was and how each thing that happened was going to effect the plot of her imaginary day. She asked to be an orphan we found along our journey, explaining that her family had died of illness (she said small pox) and that all she had were two pots. The boys thought it would be great to pretend our pots had fallen out of the wagon during a river crossing.

We rose with the sun to put on our attire, load our wagon and head off onto the great trail of history.

We adopted a girl who had been orphaned on her journey west, and were so thankful she had some pots.

We ate cold johnny cakes for breakfast and I followed the wagon as the boys steered it back into the pastures behind our house. We sang patriotic songs and hymns while we traveled and we talked about the months of journeying we had done to reach this point.

Our single-wagon train.

Stay tuned…more details (read as: pictures) from our pioneer day adventure still to come.

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Five Reasons To Read ‘Growing Your Homeschool’

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I know I’ve talked a lot about contributing to the group blog “Growing Your Homeschool.” It’s been a great experience that has introduced me to lots of other wonderful bloggers. Here are five reasons you should take a few minutes to browse our site:

1) It’s packed with ideas for learners of all ages and all schooling situations.

2) The contributors are from a wide variety of backgrounds, philosophies and homeschool approaches – there is something for everyone.

3) It was nominated for a blogging award last year!

4) It has lesson plans, craft ideas, useful tips and deep thoughts.

5) I’m posting there today, about five reasons to give notebooking a try.

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Notebooking: Our First Try

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Here is a video in which I talk for FAR too long about our first round of notebooking this year ever. I guess you should get a beverage of your choice first because it is seriously longer than I’d intended, but I just love to talk. Sorry about that. Also, I have no idea why the sound gets off-time, but I could see it happening AS I was making the video and have no time idea how to fix it. It catches back up at the end. SO irritating and unprofessional (like me in real life!).

Notebooking: our first try from Closeenoughblog on Vimeo.

The links I talked about in the video are here:

How to make a notebook, the tutorial

The Notebooking Fairy

I didn’t mention (but also like) Notebooking Pages. I did purchase a package deal that included an ebook from the Notebooking Fairy and a basic membership. It may not be as useful with out the membership, and I’m certainly not going to say you need either one in order to notebook (though it only cost me $10).

Do you think notebooking is something your family would have fun with?

Five Reasons I’m a Great Homeschooler

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As a follow-up to my recent confession about which parts of my life fit poorly with homeschooling, here is a list of ways I am most compatible:

1) Constant activity energizes me.

I always have too much to do because I love being busy and involved. I love watching my children learn, and I love sharing so much of their growing up. I have fun researching curriculum, planning our year, witnessing their growth first-hand. I also like the children watching their father and I work hard, managing the business and home, having a ‘bird’s eye view’ of how things work from our perspective. Mostly I love being together all the time. I love people and being with them – so when the children leave home I may have to sew myself to My Farmer (don’t warn him).

2) “All in” is how I come to the table.

Though at first it was a completely foreign and wholly frightening thought to be in charge of my children’s’ education (that was always someone else’s job!), I have embraced the challenge and put my back into it. What we do at our house isn’t perfect (secret’s out) but it’s full of good and getting better all the time. I not only can take, but I kinda like all the pressure involved in being the person making the choices for my children’s learning.

3) Different doesn’t scare me.

I have been different my whole life. We all are, if you really think about it. I was lucky enough to have parents who encouraged me to keep myself rather than work to conform. This holds true for being willing to try homeschooling (which was tough), but also for my family going ‘it’s own way’ rather than modeling ourselves after the other homeschooling families we know. It frees me to abandon things that aren’t working well for us, or even to replace something that seems to be okay if I suspect I’ve found something better.

4) I am overconfident.

I truly believe that I can do an excellent job educating my children. I feel that any mistakes I make (and there will be many more to come besides those I’ve already committed) are correctable.

5) Flexibility has become one of my strong suits.

It’s okay with me for things to change. Whether that’s our schedule, our entire curriculum, our day or just this moment, I can roll with the punches. I can be flexible with my expectations of others (and of myself) and I am getting better all the time at noticing when flexibility is more important than sticking. I like the continuous ebb and flow of what we are doing and I’m thankful for the ability to live this way.

I think the number one reason I’m actually good at homeschooling is that I love, love, LOVE reading out loud and discussing literature. I did not list that, however, because I’m not sure it’s as important to my family’s chemistry as the other items. There are lots of other ways to learn – reading living books is the way my family enjoys most (so maybe this fits under #1 or #3). Do you fit in any of these categories?

Five Reasons I’m Not A Great Homeschooler

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There is no such thing as a perfect fit. How often do we find ourselves saying, “Well, in a perfect world…” but the ellipsis itself answers the question. Here are some reasons I’m not the world’s best homeschooling mother.

1) I have too much to do.

We run a large (comparing acres to number of employees) family farm. I do a large chunk of the office work, along with being ‘on call’ to run parts, people or vehicles at any time. I’m not sure it adds up to 40 a week, but it’s not too far from that. I volunteer in our Parish. I run (almost) every day. I blog (albeit inconsistently). I am obsessed with nutrition and want to make everything from scratch and have sliced, fresh, *living* food every day. I’m sure I don’t’ have to explain to you that there just aren’t THAT many hours in a single day. So I’m constantly juggling what needs to be done RIGHT NOW and what can wait a few days. Which brings us quickly to number two:

2) What can “wait a few days” is typically housework.

I have an entire category named “our house and the drudgery that is cleaning it.” Seriously, need I say much more? I try to stay on a schedule but honestly, it is never going to be as important to me as the items I just listed in my first reason. Which is such poor way of managing life because the secret here is that I absolutely HATE when the house gets away from me. It makes me crazy. And depressed. And I’m mortified when someone drops by, which is always (literally, without fail) one of the two weeks of the year I’ve literally let everything go.

3) Lack of patience.

Many of you who read this are going to laugh. How could a person who homeschools be impatient? Many of my friends will protest, “You are SO patient! I’ve seen you! You handle your children so well!” And to you my dear friend I say, could you please-please-pretty-pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top come and hang out at my house all the time? Because I am ever so much more patient with an audience.

4) I am overconfident.

I tend to be like this in every aspect of my life until reality (or having a baby) knocks me back with a hard punch of humility. I have an “everything is going to work out just perfectly” attitude about most everything, most of the time. It’s unrealistic and unfair. It sets me up for disappointment, and worse for disappointing.

5) Can anyone say scatterbrain?

My mother is still horrified because I admitted to her that (already) once this year I forgot to take my sixth grader to band. I mean it – completely forgot. Didn’t even realize it until the next day. I’ve done the same thing with tutoring. And playdates. And a dentist appointment. Once, at the end of a school year, I found an entire piece of curriculum I’d purchased and totally forgotten to use at any point. It wasn’t written on my schedule, so I never thought of it again (even though it was sitting right there on the school shelf alongside everything we were applying each day). Honestly, that’s quite ridiculous.

So there you have it. The top five items that create a poor fit between myself and our lifestyle. Yet I’m doing it, and it is going really well. Proof, once again, that if I can homeschool, anyone can.

Predictably, you can look for a post about why I’m great at homeschooling coming soon.

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