Going to the birds...

Eliana has always loved wild birds. When she was about 4 we were in the yard one day and she said, "Listen! I hear the birds! Do you hear them? They are saying "We're so happy God made us! We love Him!".

She still loves to watch them and listen to them "praising God". The other day I had an idea to look for a place online where she could identify and read about the birds we have in our yard and I came across this great site, What Bird.
They have a lot of information about over 500 different birds including detailed illustrations and recordings of their calls. There is also a game where you can look for and identify different birds on different habitats. The three older kids spent a good part of the morning on the site and then went to this page and printed off pages of state birds and flowers to color.

Unit Studies

Here are a couple of links for unit study sources that Natalie sent to me:

The Homeschool Mom


Christian Unit Studies

A Lesson Learned in the Hundred-Acre Wood

(wow, this ended up being a lot longer than it seemed in the five minutes I thought of it!)

Miranda and Benjamin were watching The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh while I prepared lunch today and I caught myself listening to the story from the kitchen. They were at the part where Tigger and Roo get stuck in the tree from bouncing too high. As I listened my overactive brain (can't even let my cook in peace!) started noticing how this particular scenario has been played out over and over with children and "big people".

Everyone knows that Tigger irritates the heck out of Rabbit, I think mostly because he just can't understand him.

He asks, "Why don't you ever stop bouncing?!"

Tigger's reply, "Why? That's what Tiggers do the best!"

Tigger has just as hard a time understanding why Rabbit is so picky about his garden. "Obsessive compulsive" is probably a little over his head.

Of course one day his penchant for bouncing gets Tigger in trouble and although Roo falls safely down to the others Tigger is too afraid to try.
And what does Rabbit do but take advantage of his weakness and manipulate him into promising never to bounce again if they help him down. Once Tigger is on the ground however he forgets his promise and naturally wants to express his relief by jumping for joy. Rabbit demands that he honor his promise and Tigger is cast into despondency. The vibrancy completely out of him he shuffles away, head down and shoulders drooping.

The other animals start to feel bad because they liked "the old, bouncy Tigger". Then comes the important part: Rabbit realizes that by taking away Tigger's bounce he's taken away a part of Tigger himself and he admits he liked the old Tigger better too.

In the middle of his subsequent happy dance full of bounces Tigger grabs Rabbit and says, "Come on Rabbit, let's you and me bounce!"

Rabbit is astonished. "Good heavens! Me bounce?"
"Why, certainly! Look, you've got the feet for it." Tigger tells him.
"Come on, try it. It makes ya feel just grrreat!"

And Rabbit finds that it does indeed feel great to bounce.

All those times when Tigger was annoying him with his useless bouncing Rabbit could have been enjoying the experience with him. It didn't really bother Tigger that it got on his nerves it just made Rabbit himself more and more irritable.

Do you see how this mirrors our relationships with children? So many times kids annoy us they aren't really doing anything wrong, just something we personally don't like. We don't have any good reason why it bothers us but since we are in authority we can make them stop. We make them change who they are so that it is more convenient for us.

How much are we missing out on because we're too busy hoeing the garden to stop and enjoy life a little? I've decided to try bouncing with them for a change.

[I caught myself earlier this morning reminding Eliana to "act her age" and resolved to put a note on the fridge reminding myself that if a child is acting in a certain way then that is something kids their age do…Very obvious but easily overlooked. Plus I think we get hooked on these easy things to say without really realizing they aren't logical.]

Who doesn't love free stuff?!?

Here are a few site I have found that have free printables. If you have a printer, some folders and good organization you could almost get by without work books at all.

TLSBooks is organized by grade.

Learning Page has some really nice stuff! You need to be a member to access all of it but it's free.

KidZone and FirstSchool both have lots of neat activities, FirstSchool is for preschoolers or kindergarten.

There are more sites, some have less, some have more. I will post another list once I organize all my bookmarks.

Early Reading: Wow, Great!.....or not so great?

We've had our share of reading struggles in our house, even with Daddy. He doesn't read to the kids much because he doesn't like to read. He can, and quite well but he doesn't enjoy it at all.
When Eliana was 4-5 I tried to start pushing her to read mostly due to outside pressure that that's what she "should be" doing. She hated it. She would refuse to even try. So I waited....and waited...
At 6 she showed a little more interest so we started slowly. Sounding out signs on the side of the road, writing grocery lists together...Now at 7 she will pick out a book like Green Eggs and Ham and sit and read it on her own. I've started finding children's books in the bathroom, lol. So maybe she's not "at grade level" but she likes reading and I'm hoping that as she progresses she will love reading like I do.

Here are some good articles on early education, particularly reading:

What should a young child be learning?

The Waldorf Approach to Reading

Ten Ways We Misunderstand Children

This article is by Jan Hunt, founder of the Natural Child Project. I do not necessarily agree with everything the Project promotes but I do think there is a lot of good that can be taken from it.

Ten Ways We Misunderstand Children

1. We expect children to be able to do things before they are ready.

We ask an infant to keep quiet. We ask a 2-year-old to sit still. We ask a 4-year-old to clean his room. In all of these situations, we are being unrealistic. We are setting ourselves up for disappointment and setting up the child for repeated failures to please us. Yet many parents ask their young children to do things that even an older child would find difficult. In short, we ask children to stop acting their age.

2. We become angry when a child fails to meet our needs.

A child can only do what he can do. If a child cannot do something we ask, it is unfair and unrealistic to expect or demand more, and anger only makes things worse. A 2-year-old can only act like a 2-year-old, a 5-year-old cannot act like a 10-year-old, and a 10-year-old cannot act like an adult. To expect more is unrealistic and unhelpful. There are limits to what a child can manage, and if we don't accept those limits, it can only result in frustration on both sides.

3. We mistrust the child's motives.

If a child cannot meet our needs, we assume that he is being defiant, instead of looking closely at the situation from the child's point of view, so we can determine the truth of the matter. In reality, a "defiant" child may be ill, tired, hungry, in pain, responding to an emotional or physical hurt, or struggling with a hidden cause such as food allergy. Yet we seem to overlook these possibilities in favor of thinking the worst about the child's "personality".

4. We don't allow children to be children.

We somehow forget what it was like to be a child ourselves, and expect the child to act like an adult instead of acting his age. A healthy child will be rambunctious, noisy, emotionally expressive, and will have a short attention span. All of these "problems" are not problems at all, but are in fact normal qualities of a normal child. Rather, it is our society and our society's expectations of perfect behavior that are abnormal.

5. We get it backwards.

We expect, and demand, that the child meet our needs - for quiet, for uninterrupted sleep, for obedience to our wishes, and so on. Instead of accepting our parental role to meet the child's needs, we expect the child to care for ours. We can become so focussed on our own unmet needs and frustrations that we forget this is a child, who has needs of his own.

6. We blame and criticize when a child makes a mistake.

Yet children have had very little experience in life, and they will inevitably make mistakes. Mistakes are a natural part of learning at any age. Instead of understanding and helping the child, we blame him, as though he should be able to learn everything perfectly the first time. To err is human; to err in childhood is human and unavoidable. Yet we react to each mistake, infraction of a rule, or misbehavior with surprise and disappointment. It makes no sense to understand that a child will make mistakes, and then to react as though we think the child should behave perfectly at all times.

7. We forget how deeply blame and criticism can hurt a child.

Many parents are coming to understand that physically hurting a child is wrong and harmful, yet many of us forget how painful angry words, insults, and blame can be to a child who can only believe that he is at fault.

8. We forget how healing loving actions can be.

We fall into vicious cycles of blame and misbehavior, instead of stopping to give the child love, reassurance, self-esteem, and security with hugs and kind words.

9. We forget that our behavior provides the most potent lessons to the child.

It is truly "not what we say but what we do" that the child takes to heart. A parent who hits a child for hitting, telling him that hitting is wrong, is in fact teaching that hitting is right, at least for those in power. It is the parent who responds to problems with peaceful solutions who is teaching his child how to be a peaceful adult. So-called problems present our best opportunity for teaching values, because children learn best when they are learning about real things in real life.

10. We see only the outward behavior, not the love and good intentions inside the child.

When a child's behavior disappoints us, we should, more than anything else we do, "assume the best". We should assume that the child means well and is only behaving as well as possible considering all the circumstances (both obvious and hidden from us), together with his level of experience in life. If we always assume the best about our child, the child will be free to do his best. If we give only love, love is all we will receive.

Another new blog.

This is certainly a great era in which to homeschool. Not only did our mothers have to deal with it being illegal in a lot of states during the '80s but information on how to homeschool was scarce. Slowly books came out on how to teach your kids and organize your life around homeschooling. There were conferences you could attend. But you had to have the money for the books and the conferences if you were lucky enough that a speaker came to your area.

But now we have the internet....in seconds we can find information on just about anything we could think of. Some people say you don't even need a formal curriculum to homeschool because there are so many things online that you can use.

I have come across many things myself and thought I would start this blog to share them. I probably wont be posting many personal experience stories or telling you how you should teach your kids. My oldest is only 7 so it's not like I have loads of experience, yet. Also, a lot of what I share will be more from a relaxed, "unschooling" perspective since that's "how we roll". ;)