Homeschooling Using Pinterest

Son and I this summer in downtown
Chattanooga, Tennessee.
My real man is behind the camera. LOL.

So usually how I wind down in the evening is either by writing or pinning. Yes pinning on Pinterest. I can't be the only one that pins on pinterest! Of course not or else there wouldn't be so much there. Well this week my little saw me looking at Pinterest and asked me about it and so I explained what it was and how I used it. So he wanted to pin some stuff too. Now mind me, this is my, me time. I am not wanting him to jerk the laptop away from me and I lose the little time I take for myself, but I also didn't want to say no and I knew this wasn't a game or anything that would hold his five year old attention span long.


So this is what I did.  I set up a board this week that is just for stuff we plan to do this school year. Then I allowed my son to go through all of my homeschooling pins I have been collecting and select the ones that interest him the most. Now Pinterest has a feature where you can move pins from one board to another. So that is exactly what I did. I moved the ones that he wanted to do and a few I know he needs now to this current board for this year. He picked some amazing stuff and I think I am just as excited as he is! I am so happy he asked me about Pinterest and we were able to do this together. If you don't already try asking your kids what they want to do for school sometime? I do it often and the answer always surprises in a good way. :-)

Feel free to follow me or any of my boards on Pinterest.

What is with all the twaddle?

My son age 2, Curious George Party
"Having A Ball"

Recently I was in an online homeschool group who named certain book series as twaddle. What is twaddle? Twaddle to me is books that lacking meaning and are useless. Some of the books they listed as "so called" twaddle were great classics that my son and our family have greatly enjoyed in both the current, as well as when we were children. I guess if I thought hard on the subject I could give a long list of books that I would consider twaddle, but regardless I ask what does it really matter? If your child is reading and enjoying the book does it really matter that whether the book is classic, filled with big important words or has a lesson?

For our family the answer is no. For us it is about the love of reading not content so long as it's healthy. If my son enjoys reading endless amounts of stories about mischievous monkeys or superheros galore or more books on robots I raise the point, HE IS READING. It is not playing xbox or Nintendo. He is not watching television (not that there is anything wrong with any of this either). I think sometimes we as humans develop such strong opinions on what is and what isn't and how this or that should be or shouldn't, but the fact is our reality is not always the reality of others and sometimes it does us a great deal of good just to let go sometimes and enjoy what is actually good in that moment without questioning every detail of whether it conflicts with our personal opinion. Learning can happen anywhere and anytime if we let it happen.

Curious George
image found on google

The Homeschooling Style of Unschooling

When I first heard this term unschooled about three years ago, I thought that is CRAZY! Parents actually NOT schooling their children, that is just awful! Well the more I read about it and learned the more I realized my initial perception of what unschooling is was nothing like what I thought. It may make up the 1%, but it has nothing to do with the other 90% - plus. Basically speaking unschooled is just a style of homeschooling. If you spend anytime surfing online you will find, what feels like, a zillion different homeschooling styles. All of it can be a little overwhelming and confusing when you start researching if you let it. I have even found there are different types of unschoolers as well.

(Above, mom and son playing Indians)

So what is an unschooler? Well it varies from one family to the next so I can only speak from our family. A general definition IMO is: An unschooler is a student of life that learns from ones environment, things of interest and persons surrounding them and ones they may meet. Instead of having a teacher a parent is more of a facilitator. Unschoolers are not typically anti-school or anti-education, but just the opposite. They desire for each child to take an active role in their own education and pursue the styles of learning they best relate to and apply them to their interest of study. They do not force or manipulate the student to learn, but help the student to identify his/her love of learning and help them achieve their learning goals.

I have heard many times that unschoolers do not use a curriculum and if that is the case than our family is NOT an unschooled family. Why do I say that? First of all, I hate labels and much prefer to be called Life Learners or learning from home. I like it better than the term unschoolers, but that is just me. I hate the stereotypes labels put on things. Just like my misconception I had in what an unschooler was at the beginning. In general, when someone asks us “oh where does your son go to school?” I reply “we do learning at home. So back to the curriculum. Some of you unschoolers reading this blog post, I hope you are still breathing while you are waiting for my response about the curriculum. (BREATH!) Yes we use a curriculum. My child loves books and loves a lot of hands on activities and learning new things so I do use a curriculum, although (there’s the but) unlike maybe, a traditional school or homeschool there is no force or manipulation to use the curriculum. If my child said I don’t want to read that or do that, then we don’t, simple as that. There is always something else to learn so why teach them something they’re not ready for yet or have no interest in and will never use? I can see some mouths drop off here and saying: But you have to teach IT, what if they are at their job someday and need it? I can answer that, but first I have to ask you a question. Can you remember a time in school when you had to learn something because it was required to pass the class or test and you had no interest in learning it? Do you still remember it? Some of you may answer yes, but I can almost guarantee that the majority of us at on more than one occasion forgot that concept shortly after that class or test was over because it held no importance to us beyond that point. Yes there is some thought in the fact that it may stick, but if they really don’t like it what is the point of making it stick? Just because they know it, they should choose to follow a career to do something they dislike or should they follow their interests and passion and follow a career in that pathway? There may be an argument there to be had, but that is my thoughts on the topic.

(Above chemistry experiments, left: Density Right: solids verses liquids)

I can remember taking Algebra in middle school for advance credit. In order to pass I had to make an A or a B. I really tried hard to learn the concepts as the overachiever that I was. My teacher told me “you’re just not working hard enough”. That was just not true. She offered me after school tutoring, which I jumped at. I brought my score from a D to a C, which was not enough to get credit for. I was proud of my efforts despite still not understanding what I had learned. With the advantage of the tutoring she gave me the skills to pass the test. Did that mean that I finally got it? Far from it! As soon as that test was over my Algebra skills left the building. Years later while in college learning something I was interested in learning I saw an Algebra concept in action and saw a real life example of it. I learned that algebra equation, although I have never put it to use as my interest have changed, the point is if it’s something of interest to you that you desire to know you will learn it when you need it. There is no cut off for learning. My mother is 56 years old and is a college student. She has been in classes ever since I have known her. She is known for breaking electronic devices until they are not even repairable. She took her computer in to a computer repair shop a few months ago and they said “throw it away”. She took a computer class and repaired the computer herself. Why? Because it interest her and she wanted it fixed. We are all natural learners are we not? At least we were until education and test got in our way.

(Below, Five in A Row, Study of Paris, France, Madeline)

So our little natural learning, unschooling-homeschooling family uses Five in a Row and additional curriculum as well. My child loves it at this point keeps asking for more and more. We also do a lot of Charlotte Mason style learning like nature walks and nature journals and collecting and natural reading. My son loves doing workbooks sometimes too, so you will often see us working in a school workbook. My child LOVES anything hands-on. Last week he was really into volcanoes so I checked out a bunch of books from the library on volcanoes and we learned all about them and built our own volcano. This week I found a chemistry set and every day we have been a different chemistry experiment. Today we read a book about Japan, located Japan on the map, talked about the geography of Japan and the culture and distance from Japan to us here in the USA. He doesn’t recognize that he is doing “school” like most traditionally schooled children because there is not division between our life and school. He is learning every day from the things we call “life” and the intentional persons, places and things we put into our environment as well.  Sometimes, because I am have to retrain my thinking as well, I will say this is for school and our son will ask “that was school?” Ha-ha! He really has no idea what is school and what is not because he is a natural learner and whether he realizes it or not everything is a learning experience and we are all being “schooled” every day, intentionally or unintentional.

 (Below, Study on Volcanoes)

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.

Where We Are Now

I think it is pretty easy to see where you have been and sometimes pretty easy to plan out where you want to go, but sometimes it can be a bit daunting to figure out where you are. I feel like we live in a place that is all of our own and don’t 100% identify with any other learners exactly. And the more I realize that the more I am okay with that.

We usually start our day reading. We have a book of the week (from Five In A Row) that we read 5 times, not necessarily 5 days in a row always. We go to the library 1-3 times a week. We play educational games on the computer, we participate in some of the library activities and my son picks books out that he likes and I pick out some that I think will appeal to him on things I know he is currently interested in learning about or that have to do with upcoming activities that we have talked about doing. We do a lot of nature walks and discovery (Charlotte Mason inspired), we collect things we find and draw pictures of things we see. We love to bug hunt. We have a lot of interesting pets too. We also our very involved as Bible students and teaching and preaching, and helping others. On the weekends we usually go on nature hikes and lots of learning play activities.

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.