Easy Way: Not Always Entertain Your Child with Busy Work.

Moments like these I feel like I have been let in on a little secret. Don't you? I love watching children in their natural state playing and perfectly content. Here my son is playing with his Batman umbrella and an old McDonalds Happy Meal box. Doesn't get any better than this on a wet cold rainy day.

It can be exhausting for moms and dads alike to be constantly trying to keep their child engaged and entertained with one thing or another, especially if you have an active child like we do. I remember as a child my mom telling me go outside or your room or something and I looking for her to give me something to do. When she didn't those were the most creative and fun times of my life. I could be anyone, live and do anything, in a world that was all my own, made by me, for me. As an adult I often find myself trying to get back to that place and when I do, that is a happy day. To be able to see your child making that world for themselves truly is a sliver of happiness in life!

 Play truly is the work of children! Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and good morning Monday.

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Keeping up with the Curriculum

(Above, Found bird nest in our grill. Little loved all the speckles)

When I was pregnant with our little my hubby said: "I want our boy to be home schooled." At first I laughed. I had always had a career and didn't see myself being able to balance working full-time and work a secular job. But the more we talked about it the more I realized it was a good idea, although at the time I had no idea how we would accomplish such a big task.

(Left, Little loves puzzles)

I don't know about you, but I tend to over think things. Sometimes I make life a lot more complicated than it really is. It kind of like when you car breaks down and you don't yet know what is wrong with it, and you think the absolute worse. You've been sitting there waiting on a tow truck for two hours and before you know it you've determine you might as well scarp the car because you just know it's the engine and the tow truck driver says ma'am are you sure it's not just out of gas. And you remember you had been going over your to do list in your head and forgot all about checking the fuel gauge as you drove past five gas stations. Yes, well we have all been there in one scenario or another. At least I hope I am not the only one!?!  Well that is what I did with home school. I spent nearly five years research home education until I figured out that it wasn't about textbooks, schoolrooms, worksheets, test and grades It's about learning. It's about life. It's about happiness.

So what about keeping up with curriculum? Yes, it is hard to keep up with it all. But in a totally different way than I ever thought. My child has so many interest that we are trying to keep up with that sometimes it is difficult to keep up with it all, but it is awesome. I am amazed everyday that this amazing five year old has so much desire to learn and it just keeps growing. I think about all the planning and time that goes into creating textbooks and curriculum when the school could just stop and listen to their students every child would have a love for learner and they would have created lifetime learners. Children have a unique curiosity that is a true and legitimate curriculum.

(Below, Little Finger painting)

Is Playing Superior to Education?

Friday’s are always pretty relaxed around here. If someone took a quick glance they would probably think we weren’t schooling our little. But in fact, at closer examination my little is learning and growing, do I dare say it, more than the average school kid in the general education today. Why do I say that? Perhaps if you took a deep hard look at your own memory of being in the classroom. I know for me I was in a classroom with thirty plus peers and was bossed all around all day by my teacher, even though I considered her to be a nice person. I feel more often than not, from Kindergarten (sometimes before) school children are conditioned to feel like adults are dominate and they are to be respected, but lowly children do not deserve the same respect. I bought into this logic from day one despite every effort my mom made for me not to.

My mom was sort of a self-proclaimed women’s liberal. She once told me she was the first girl in her school to wear pants, which I thought was pretty cool. She majored in subjects that were predominately just for men and scored at the top of her class. In her elementary school years a teacher through an eraser at her for talking, but that sure didn’t stop her. If anyone knows my mom she is probably still talking on that same sentence from elementary school. Hahaha! (Hope she doesn’t read that).  I guess as a child I didn’t have that same will. I wanted nothing more than to please authority. I see nothing wrong with that so long as the person exercising the authority is not abusing it, but unfortunately there are those that do.

I loved school. I mean I Loooooooved school. I remember my kindergarten teacher visiting our house. My mom and I were clueless as to why she was coming over. When she arrived she was full of compliments about me and said I was unlike other children she had taught. I had the highest level of comprehension they had ever scored for and wanted to know what my parents were doing at home that made me different. I remember my mom’s reply: “well we treat her like an adult.” I didn’t really fully understand this until I started researching education for myself. In a sense she was saying she didn’t dumb me down. My teacher Mrs. Summerall seemed impressed and told my mom that I would make a good mother or teacher someday. :D Ironic huh!?!

Unfortunately, not all my teachers were as nice as Mrs. Summerall.  I breezed through till the second grade. Oh Miss Dixon. She hated me and I didn’t know why. I was an excellent reader. I could read even before I entered Kindergarten. I loved to read. She constantly told me I could not read well. She had me put in Special Education. While all the other kids in my class are having fun in physical education I was stuck in a tiny trailer classroom with kids that couldn’t read mostly because English wasn’t their first language. The assignments they gave be in there I completed in seconds. The Special Education teacher said “I don’t know why you are here.” Neither did I other than I knew my teacher didn’t like me and I didn’t know why. Ms. Dixon belittled me daily and ruined my self-worth and confidence. I am not real sure what happened, but my mom came to the school and straighten Ms. Dixon out, but it was a little too late. The damage was done. My following school years Ms. Dixon would go out of her way to be nice to me, which really was a joke. I think her conduct towards me bordered on abuse, if not abuse itself. You can see some reasons why we homeschool I don’t want anyone reflecting their damaged view of children onto my child.  It took much reflection as an adult to discover my worth again, but I am happy to say I have recovered, but sometimes those thought still creep in there today and I am still correcting the mistakes I made early in adulthood based of those feelings of lack of confidence and self-worth.

 

So what are we doing today? Well today we are playing, yes playing. He is five years old and really what better thing could a five year old be doing than playing, having fun and enjoying life. I must mention that play he is doing involves Lego. He has been playing Lego for nearly five hours straight and anyone that knows anything about Lego knows that these are important brain building tools, that at the primary level that can be applied to language, literacy, mathematics and geometry, various engineering, design and technology-based subjects. In addition it increases lateral thinking ability, improves communication, three dimensional thinking, critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, organization, planning by construction,  develops fine motor skills , hand eye coordination, duplicate complex patterns, develop scientific and technological solutions, learn to plan, learn to evaluate problems, follow directions with logical thinking and reasoning. So next time your kids are playing and you want to pull them off to do “more important things” think again and let them play.

Today's Top 10 Questions from a 5 Year Old

 

 

 

I read somewhere that the average 4 year old asks over 400 questions per day. I have no doubt that is true. Here is a list of the top 10 questions my 5 year old asked me today.

1.       What is that private thing that I came out of when I was a baby?

                Answer: It’s called a vagina.

                                He replies: Ha-ha that is sooooo funny.

2.       Mom do boys have vaginas too?

 Answer: No only girls have them.

                                He replies: That is too funny.

3.       When was the television invented?

Answer: good question, let’s look it up. (The answer was actually more complicated than I ever imagined)

                He replies: Whoa, that a long time ago. That’s funny, right!?!

4.       Can we eat our own poop?

(The mom in me wants to just yell, NO! But the teacher in me knows this is a good question)

Answer: Yes you can, but it is a waste product that can make you sick, even by just eating a little bit can make you sick.

                Reply: -Breaks out in laughter- (and….leads into the next question)

5.       Can guinea pigs eat their own poop?

Answer: Some animals do eat their own poop, but this is because they need to in order to fully digest it. So sometimes guinea pigs do eat it for the nutrition that is still in it.

                Reply: Whoa that is so funny.  –Giggles--

6.       Why do we have wrinkles on our fingers?

(Had to look to see what he was talking about)

Answer: Those are called joints. They help us to move our hands and be able to grasps things.

                Reply: Oh, cool. That’s why I can use tools so good.

7.       Why do you make so much dust when you are cooking?

Answer: That is steam. Steam is water that vaporized and helps to heat the food so that it cooks.

                Reply: Oh neat! J

8.       Are all fruits and vegetables healthy?

Answer: Yes, they all have different nutrients and vitamins in them that make us strong and healthy so that is why it’s good to eat different kinds.

Reply: EVEN CUCUMBERS, TOMATOES, BANANAS AND CARROTS? (Those are his favorite!)

Answer: Yes, those are very healthy!

9.       What is a whirlpool in a river?

Answer: its water that is rotating really fast and typically objects are drawn into it. It happens sometimes when water called currents is moving in opposite direction as each other and they meet and cause a whirlpool.

                Reply: That takes stuff in the river and drags it down to the bottom.

10.   Do Rhino’s eat their own poop? (Seriously, another poop question!?!)

Answer: (Had to look this one up) Yes, Rhino’s do eat their own poop.

Reply: That’s so gross –laughing his head off-

So there is some of the questions my little has asked today. Share some of your kids funny and interesting questions.

Calming Down from the Storm

After a two eventful years of tragedy and things starting to calm down. I have found myself without a job. I also found myself very sad because I miss my folks. I started thinking about our life and what we wanted. I remembered our dream about homeschool. My son now 4 years old and I were finally free to do what we wanted. Sure money problems still existed, but I was not emotionally, spiritually or physically able to return to the workforce after all we have been through we needed some peace, sometime to figure things out for ourselves. I wasn’t feeling confident about being a homeschool mom yet so I enrolled our son in abcmouse.com. He loved it and breezed through pre-k.

                                                            Picture courtesy of abcmouse.com

I began doing a lot of reading and researching and honestly it all was overwhelming until I started to edit it down to what fit for our family. Our son was becoming a bit bored with the kindergarten abcmouse.com, he wanted to do more things than just be on the computer. I came across Five In A Row and decided to introduce the books and activities I gleaned from the book and he just became engrossed in it, to go along with it I let him be as much a part of what he was learning as I was.

                                                        Picture courtesy of fiveinarow.com

Before we knew it school had become so natural that my son really had no idea that he was actually doing any kind of schooling which defined success in my book, he was learning so much, but equally having so much fun. It was amazing. It had me thinking more about this learning lifestyle and how it effects how I parent.

 

Learning to listen to a child…

I was the proud owner of a new business, my own boss. I thought it all out, more time at home, more time with my child, more time with my family. Now let me go ahead and bust the bubble. If you have a full-time brick and mortar service or retail oriented business that is successful or requires a certain amount of open hours then every client is your boss, you are not your own boss, you do not set your own hours.  Sure you can do those things, but if it doesn’t suit the clients they will find somewhere else to shop to suit their needs.

I didn’t want to make the same mistakes with my little that I had previous so since he loved his day care I let him still attend, but I got to drop him off usually and sometimes got to pick him up. He loved seeing me more and I felt that we were reconnecting and he was a lot happier. But I learned in my absence he was not as happy as he wants was at his daycare and before long I got a note that another child had bitten my child. It was a small bite and not very noticeable and I felt like the daycare had taken appropriate action, but I kept him out of “school” for a few days until I was sure. He went back to school and everything seemed fine, but before long the same child took a bite out of my sons scalp and all I got was a note. When asked what would be done, they said if it happens again they will place my son in a different classroom (a lower age group of children). Why my son, he didn’t bite anybody. They said they couldn’t put the biter in with younger children. For months my little one stayed with family or went to work with me. We tried to make it fun, but he would get bored be there on long days as my business we open 12 hours a day. It was incredibly stressful on all of us.

Time passed and I was told the daycare had a new owner/director and the biter was no longer there, so I he started to attend again, but my child was incredibly unhappy. I thought it was just because he had gotten used to being with me or with family. He would say he didn’t like the other kids, but I ignored his pleas because he was just acting like a “child” and got spoiled staying with me and family, plus this was normal, right? One day I went to pick him up early and my little was on the playground, but over in the corner and looked sadder then I have ever seen him in his whole life. He looked broken and fearful. I questioned his teachers to find out why he wasn’t playing with the other students. They said your child is really shy. I had seen my child interact with other children within our circle and complete strangers children at jungle gyms, my child was not shy. I told them, my child doesn’t have a shy bone in his body. They just struggled their shoulders. I questioned my child as to what was going on, but he said nothing. But the pleas not to go to school started getting even worse. A couple days later I got a call from one of the teachers at my sons school who said I am family of the owners of the daycare and I work here, but I felt you should know there are some bad things going on at this school that I don’t approve of but I need my job so I don’t say anything, but I your son is too sweet to be here and if it were my child I would get him out of here. I then talked to my son and determined he was being bullied and hurt by other students, but I honestly have no idea what was going on in that daycare/school.  I just know after removing my son, within no time the place was shutdown and I am uncertain why to this day.

I learned a valuable lesson from this. My child had something to say and I needed to work on our communication.

The Toddler Years

With the encouragement of others against my gut I placed my little guy in a local government funded (I paid, but some parents got to use the daycare services free paid by the government) daycare. The thought of doing so made me so nervous and out of sorts. But wasn’t this normal to ship your kids off to daycare? For me it didn’t feel natural, but my toddler loved it. He made friends, did arts and crafts, brought home things he made for mom and dad, was taking naps, which reaffirmed that everyone else was right and I was wrong.  This perceived thought led me to making my next big mistake.

Welcome to the Big City

 picture courtesy of: en.wikipedia.org

My baby was doing so well and he had started nursing less and less at a year and half old I got an infection which forced me to stop nursing and I felt a need to help my hubby pay the bills. Under the false reality that my child was in the best place he could be I took a big city job. I never realized how miserable this would make our family. I felt like I lost the connection with my son the moment I made that terrible decision. I stopped nursing and at the same time took a job that required that I had to take him to his grandparents, still asleep to his grandparents house at 5 am, I would carpool with the hubby to the city to work all day and fight traffic to and from, not getting home usually till 8 or 9 pm in the evening.

While we were at work my parents got to wake up with my little boy, dress him, feed him, play with him. Then they would take him to daycare where he would spend 4-7 hours of his day. Then my parents had the pleasure of picking him up, getting him a snack, asking him how his day was, watching him grow, feeding him dinner, playing with him, bathing him, changing his clothes and putting him to bed. By the time we got home usually my baby was asleep. This was our schedule pretty much 6 days a week, except my hubby got to be off with our son on Saturday. My child withdrew from me. He barely spoke to me. He wouldn’t come to me, he would barely look at me. He expressed in his own way that he was angry with me.  I was heartbroken, but still unclear what do and was advised it was just an adjustment and it would straighten itself out. As weeks of this turned into months this pain in my heart became unbearable. It had destroyed the connection I had with my baby, to the point I wondered if he would ever forgive me and/or reconnect with me. In addition, the strain started to affect my marriage as well. We barely spoke to and from work and I usually cried to and from because I missed my baby. My husband told asked me one day: “why are you doing this?”  I confessed that I would rather live in a tent in the woods then spend another week away from my child. He said: “Let’s get you out of the city”.  Almost overnight I was presented with a business offer in our local town and I accepted and put my notice in. Finally I was out, finally I could reconnect. I hoped it wasn’t too late.

Littlefoot Farm & School... Blog Introduction

Hello and welcome to my new blog page. I am a life learner mom of one. I am a writer and a poet. I am a designer. I am a wife. I am a child of the true God, Jehovah. I am a farmer and gardener. I am an artist. I am human and I make mistakes. I am a friend, a daughter, a niece, a granddaughter and a cousin. Every day we grow and learn on this journey we call life. Feel free to grow and learn with us on this life adventure.

What is a life learner to me? A life learner in my opinion is someone who learns from the people, places and things in their environment. This also includes people, places and things introduced intentionally into ones environment. To me it also means being gentle and kind to all people, including oneself and all living creatures. To me a child is not an inferior person. They deserve consideration and even respect. This does not mean I do not believe in discipline. Discipline is important, but it has its place and it is often overused and abused in the current system of things. I speak to my child as I would any other human being I encounter (perhaps with more love though :-D). What does that mean? Well when we our scheduling our day/week instead of saying: “we are going to do this, this week.” I say: “So what do you want to do this week?” I include him in the decision making process and in return he listens to my ideas and together we come up with a great week of fun and learning. My child is only 5 years old, but I have found since I implemented this style of treating him as a partner in his own life and learning. His ideas are more educational, interesting and fun than anything I could have came up with on my own let alone found in a textbook.

As I stated my little is five. So we really are just beginning and growing. So let me tell you a little bit about how we came to be where we are right now. When I was pregnant my husband said he wanted to homeschool. I loved the idea of it, but didn’t see how it would be possible because we both worked full-time. I breastfed until my little was a year and half and I got infection, right about the time I started a long distance job in which meant leaving the house at 5 am and not getting home until 8 to 9 pm in the evening (sometimes even much later if traffic or weather was really bad). This wore on me greatly and I missed my baby too much. My child was in a daycare during this time and beyond and started out loving it, but soon it got to where he would beg not to go and I got a phone call from a staff member that told me that something was fowl at the daycare and I had a sweet kid, to get him out of there. I didn’t hesitate and never took him back.  My little did ABCmouse.com for pre-k and he loved it. He completed nearly 50% of the Kindergarten portion, but he was desire to do more hands-on activities. So we held off on the online program and I order Volume 1 of Five In A Row. I absolutely loved it and so did he, but in the meantime I had done a lot of research and reading about radical unschooling, unschooling, homeschooling, etc... None of these titles describe what I feel out style is exactly and that is okay because we are all different, right?

So what do we do all day? Everyday varies, but everyday we are learning, but the neat thing is we are not doing it forced or out of obligation or to prepare for a test. It is amazing to be learning about real things, education that will benefit our child for the rest of his life. Because he is partnering us in his educational journey we are taking an adventure of discovery his passions and interest and watching him really connect with the things he is learning. I am so excited to be a part of his amazing journey and in turn discovery a lot about myself and our family. I love the connections I am feeling with them.

In addition we are working on developing our little farm and make our farm provide for us. We hope this blog will include many tips and stories about the various things we are doing and hope to do in the future, including, but not limited to, raising farm animals, making soap, making candles, homemaking, cooking, recipes, fermenting, canning and so on!

Why did I name my blog Littlefoot Farm & School? When my husband and I got married we bought a small patch of land and our first pet was a goat. Yes a goat!!! We named him Littlefoot and eventually we began to call our home Littlefoot Farm and now that we are homeschooling we call it Littlefoot Farm & School. Learn more by following my blog.

My purpose for this blog is to keep a record/diary of our learning experience, share and inspire other families. My intention is to create some blog post about our past journey over the past “school year(s)”.  Then I would like to do a blog post about each day of our life learning if I am able to keep up that is. I also hope to write about the ups, but the downs and challenges too. I will also include things we are doing in our life that may not seem like “homeschool” but as a life learner it all applies: like recipes, family experiences, pets, farming, gardening, homemaking, financial subjects, etc. I like to write book and website reviews too.  If you ever have a question or a topic for me to write on I would love to hear from you.