Batty About Bats

One of the reasons that fall is my favorite time of year is because it provides so many cool topics to learn about. This year, as my family has been looking forward to Halloween, we’ve been studying up on bats. As always when I plan a unit study, the library is my first stop. Some of our favorite bat titles included:

1. Zipping, Zapping, Zooming Bats by Ann Earle (Let’s Read and Find Out Science series)

2. National Geographic Kids Bats! by Elizabeth Carney

3. I am a Little Bat by Marta Prims

4. Stellaluna by Janell Cannon

5. The Magic School Bus Going Batty: A Book About Bats by Joanna Cole

All About Bats

After reading our books, we did a bat fact sorting activity. I printed out a list of statements about bats, some of them true and some of them false. The kids cut out each statement and determined whether it was a fact or a myth, and glued it under the correct heading.

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Then we did an activity to teach the kids about how echolocation works. I cut a piece of large poster board in half and made two large cones that looked like megaphones. I had two kids stand about six feet apart facing a wall, but kind of angled towards each other, so that the two kids and the wall were making a V, and gave each a megaphone. The first kid pointed his megaphone towards the wall and whispered semi-loudly into his megaphone. The second kid pointed his megaphone towards the wall, and put his ear up to the megaphone. The idea is that the sound will bounce off the wall and back into the second megaphone. You can hear the whisper really loudly. It's cool. And the kids loved it.

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Of course I had to throw an art project in the mix. You can’t have a proper unit study without an art project.  First I gave each of the kids a black piece of construction paper, and a few bat cut-outs. They decided where they wanted the bats to be, and I helped tape them in place (use masking tape so it won’t rip the black behind when pulling the bats off later). Then we got out our sponges and our paints and went to town, making sure we sponged all around the edges of the bats. When we were done we pulled the bats off. To finish it up, I made a nice outline around each of the bats with permanent marker.

Because I wanted to practice some handwriting, I had each kid write down three things they learned about bats during our unit, and I incorporated it into the art project by gluing the painted bats and the fact sheets onto a large piece of construction paper. Then we taped them up on a closet door where they will remain as part of the Halloween decor until the end of October.

Preschool Shapes

A new school year means another session of preschool co-op at our house. We get together with a couple of other families in the neighborhood and each of the moms takes a turn teaching. It’s a great way to make friends, and for the kids to have an opportunity learning from people with different teaching styles. This is our fifth year doing a preschool co-op as part of our home schooling, and we’ve really enjoyed it.

Recently when I hosted, we learned all about shapes. We started out with a gathering activity. I brought out our sets of Wedgits and Magna-tiles, so the kids could explore building with shapes as they arrived.

Once everyone was there we sat in a circle on the floor, and I handed each child cut-outs of the four basic shapes; circle, triangle, rectangle, square. We talked about each one, and said how many sides and how many angles it had. Then I would describe a shape by saying something like, "I'm thinking of a shape that has three sides and three angles." And the kids would have to hold up their triangles.

When the kids had the basics down pretty well, we talked about how shapes can be different sizes or colors but if they have the right number of sides and the right number of angles they are still a square (or whichever shape). We played a game where the kids came up and picked shapes of different sizes and colors out of a brown paper bag; they had to decide which shape it was, and then put it on my flannel board under the right category (circle, square, triangle, rectangle).

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Then the kids needed some wiggle time. We went outside on the driveway where I had drawn large shapes with chalk. We walked around the perimeters of the shapes singing Hi-Ho the Dairy-o and changing the words for each shape, like this: "A rectangle has four sides, a rectangle has four sides, two are short and two are long, a rectangle has four sides." Then I gave the kids chalk and they practiced drawing the four different shapes.

For a snack I gave them pretzel sticks and had them try to make their shapes out of pretzels too.

After snack we did a cutting/gluing activity. They attempted to cut out the shapes and glue them onto another piece of paper and then color them. Depending on the age and skill level of your preschoolers this activity might be really easy or really hard. My four-year-olds did great, and my three-year-olds struggled.  An alternative to cutting might be to cut out the shapes on cardstock and use a hole-punch to punch holes around the perimeter, then tie a long piece of yarn to one of the holes and have the kids “sew” around the shapes instead.

For our last activity we did pattern block pictures. Each of the kids got a cookie sheet, a pile of magnetic pattern blocks, and a laminated picture to fill in. You can find lots of free pattern block card printables online, just Google search “free pattern block printables”. The kids seemed to really like this activity, and when they finished with one picture, they asked to switch out for another one. We worked on these until it was time to go.

I sent each child home with a bag full of paper shapes, colored sticks, and a piece of string. If they want to practice their shapes at home, all they have to do is set out a paper shape, pick out the sticks that match the color of the shape, and then use the sticks to frame the outside edge of the shape. The string is for the circle.

We had a lot of fun doing shapes preschool. A few of my ideas I found on Pintrest, a few I came up with myself, and a few of them I found in this cool book called Getting Into Geometry put out by the AIMS Education Foundation. It’s a fun book with all sorts of activities that teach 2D and 3d shapes using all the senses.

Learning With Traditions

One of our family’s favorite Fourth of July traditions is to get up SUPER early, and drive to a nearby town to watch a hot air balloon launch. They spread out the balloons on a large grassy area, while spectators pile in, filling up the spaces in between. It’s cool because you can get right up close and see all the action. My kids love it.

This year, (being the obsessive unit-study guru that I sometimes am) I decided to put together some activities for the kids, to get us all prepared for our big day.

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First we headed to the library, and checked out a few books on hot air balloons. Our favorites were The Big Balloon Race by Eleanor Coerr, The Amazing Air Balloon by Jean Van Leeuwen, and Hot Air: The (mostly) True Story of the First Balloon Ride by Marjorie Priceman. In these books we learned some great vocabulary words, a little bit about how hot air balloons work, and some cool historical facts.

We made sun-catchers; a simple craft, but one that is always a big hit because it’s doable for kids of all ages. We usually do these in the fall, with apples or pumpkins, but this craft is easily adaptable to whatever your needs are. This time we made hot air balloon sun-catchers.

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• Find a black and white template of a hot air balloon that you like. Doing a Google search for “hot air balloon template” will give you some good options. Print it on card stock.
• Use a thick black magic marker to make the outlines about half an inch thick.
• Cut out around the outside and inside of your template, so that all you’re left with is the black out line.

• Place the outline, black side down, onto a piece of clear contact paper. (You can find contact paper at WalMart in the kitchen section by the shelving paper.)
• Use colored tissue paper of your choice, rip it into small pieces, and press it down onto the contact paper to fill in the clear spots of your template. It’s ok if the tissue paper pieces overlap each other.

• Take a second piece of contact paper and press it down on top of the tissue paper layer. Then use scissors to cut out the outside edge of your template.

• Hang your template up in the window where lots of sun can shine through.

My husband got into it too, and helped the kids construct a mini hot air balloon out of trash bags, tape, string, and a plastic cup. He used a hair dryer to inflate it, and taught the kids about how hot air rises and that’s why balloons go up.

Over all, I’d say the unit was a success. The kids had a good time, and maybe even learned a little bit too. It made our hot air balloon launch tradition all the more exciting.

Moon Mania

The kids and I have been loving a new science series called “Let’s Read and Find Out Science”. The series covers all kinds of science topics; weather, space, animals, human body, dinosaurs, physics concepts, and more. They are so fun! So far, I am thoroughly impressed with how much information they provide in a simple way for kids to understand. Most every book comes with some sort of experiment, or further learning activity that you can do at home with things you already have. It’s genius! And I feel like I learn a lot too.

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We’ve been on a space kick lately…more specifically a moon kick. We’ve used two of the Let’s Read and Find Out books for our study. The first book is called What the Moon is Like.  It taught us about how the surface of the moon is covered in dust, and how meteors hit the moon to make big craters. Then we filled a Tupperware container with two inches of flour and sprinkled it with a thin layer of cocoa powder, to represent the moon’s surface. Next we took marbles and dropped them into the container from about five inches up. The marble hitting the flour is supposed to look similar to a meteor hitting the surface of the moon. I've never seen a meteor hit the moon, but our marbles definitely made craters in our flour. It was fun.

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The second book we used was called The Moon Seems to Change. It taught us all about the phases of the moon. Inside it gives you the step by step directions (with pictures!) on how to make all the phases of the moon using an orange, a pencil, and a flashlight. We took turns being the sun (person holding the flashlight) and the earth (person holding the orange). After that, we had a little snack to go along with our lesson. We did phases of the moon a second time, using Oreo cookies. I had a rough go of it, trying to keep our moons from being gobbled up before I could snap a picture. :)

My kids enjoyed these activities. I can tell because while I was putting the boys to bed, my five-year-old told me he wanted to set his watch for 12:00am so he could get up and check on the moon, to see which phase it was in. I love it! We'll see if he follows through. I hope he does.

Gettin' Your Game On...

This year winter in our area has been extreme cold coupled with a bad inversion, which means we’ve been spending a lot more time than usual indoors. With a Kindergartener, a Preschooler, a toddler, and a bun in the oven, dealing with the pent-up energy has been quite the challenge for me. We’ve had to change things up a bit around our house to be accommodating.

Probably the most successful way I’ve found to keep everyone happy, is to turn our learning into games. I try to do this more or less all year long, but during these cold weeks it seems to be the saving grace keeping us from going insane, while still allowing us to accomplish some resemblance of “school”. I’ll share three of our favorites, because I think they are fun and can be adapted to a variety of subjects.

Nerf Gun Matching

This is a pretty simple game. I made a homemade dice with simple three and four letter words on it, and printed out pictures of each of those words and taped them onto small paper plates. Then I hung the paper plates up on the wall. My Kindergartener has to roll the dice, read the word, then using a Nerf Gun shoot the picture that best matches the word he rolled on the dice. You could also use this game for matching capitol and lower case letters, shapes, colors, math problems, counting, etc.  And you don’t have to use a Nerf gun either, a ball or a paper air plane would work just as well.

Swat the Bug

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For this game, you’ll need a poster board, a fly swatter (or two depending on how many players you want playing at the same time), and about 20 bug shapes cut out of a variety of colored paper. Glue the bugs onto the poster board. We happened to be talking about simple words that start with D the day we played this game, so on each of my bugs I wrote a D word, but again the possibilities are pretty endless. Then I made cards, one card for every bug. In our version of the game, we had two players. I drew a card and read the word ‘dog’, then the two players had to find the bug with the word ‘dog’ on it and swat it. First one to swat was the winner.

Fish-collage

Gone FishingI saved my favorite game for last. I like this game because all three of my kids can play together without my having to change the game to adapt it for one level or the other…it already comes that way. You’ll need several sheets of craft foam in different colors. Trace a simple fish pattern onto foam and cut out. How many fish you make is entirely up to you and how long you want to fish for.  I made about 30. My Kindergarten has been working on the “when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking” rule. So, on one side of each fish I wrote words like road, laid, beat, etc. that I wanted him to practice. My preschooler is just starting to sound out simple words, so on the other side of each fish I wrote words like cat, dog, mom, etc. And my toddler is working on her colors, hence the different colored fish. I stuck a metal paper clip onto the nose of each fish. Then I had my Kindergartener make me a fishing pole out of Trios (but anything long and strait would work just fine) and we tied a piece of yarn to it, and a circular magnet onto the other end of the yarn for a fishing pole. Next we filled up the bathtub and dropped the fish in. The kids took turns catching the fish, and either reading the appropriate word for their age level, or telling me the color of the fish, depending on who was fishing.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom: An ABC Kick-Off

One of my favorite ABC books is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault. It is simple, colorful, and rhythmic, and my kids have a blast with it. We’re doing ABCs for preschool again this year, focusing on a different letter each week. But first, as an introduction to the alphabet as a whole, I’m going to start our year off with a Chick Chicka Boom Boom unit. And I wanted to share some of the ideas we used last year that were successful.

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My boys seem to interact better with a little bit of visual stimulation, so when I make a unit study like this I usually try to incorporate some sort of a bulletin board aspect that we can leave up all week long while we do the different activities. For Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, I made a large palm tree out of construction paper, laminated it, and taped it up to the side of the fridge. Each day as we read the story together, the kids pick up magnetic letters out of a pile on the floor, and have them climb up the coconut tree. I’ll admit their favorite part is to knock them all off when the tree gets too heavy.

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In the story, it is the lower case letters who climb the tree, and when they come crashing down, the capital letters come rushing to the scene to make sure everyone is all right. This part of the story provides a great opportunity to do capital/lower case letter matching. We used our letter magnets and put up all the capitals on the fridge in alphabetical order. The kids took turns drawing a lower case letter out of a bag and then matching it with the right capital.

Sometimes, I like to throw a little drama into the mix, and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is an easy one for the kids to act out. The kids took turns standing on a chair pretending to be the coconut tree. Whoever was not the coconut tree would find the appropriate letters as I was reading the story, and hand them up for the coconut tree to hold. In the end the coconut tree gets too full and all the letters come crashing down. Then the kids switch places and we do it all over again.

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Anyone that knows me, knows I’m a sucker for handprint art projects. My kids get a kick out of them too, and so we can make handprint art out of almost anything! Coconut trees are no exception. All you need is a piece of card stock, green and brown poster paint, and some alphabet stamps and ink pad (I think we got our stamps at WalMart for pretty cheap.) Paint the child’s hand green and arm brown, have them spread their fingers wide and press down onto the cardstock. Use some brown thumb prints for coconuts, and the alphabet stamps and ink pad to make the letters climb up the tree.

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In another activity, we combined fine motor skills and math and came up with coconut counting. Basically, I printed out cards with empty coconut trees and a number in the top corner. The kids had to cut out the correct number of coconuts and glue them onto the tree. I was a little over ambitious our first go around and made cards numbered 0-20, but I think 0-10 would have been more appropriate for the attention spans I was working with. They can count to 20, but cutting out 20 coconuts was an entirely different story. Live and learn, right?

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Our last activity was everyone’s favorite by far, probably because it was edible. Using 4 apple slices, 1 Pepperidge Farm Pirouette stick, 3 pieces of coco puffs cereal, and a handful of alphabet cereal, we made our own chicka trees. They didn’t last long, but they sure were cute.

Once There Was a Snowman...

by Krystal Swan

We’ve finally gotten some real snow, here in “Happy Valley”. To celebrate, the kids and I have been working on a snowman unit to practice our comparing words like “big, bigger, biggest”.



Our first project was a paper plate snowman. The kids received one paper plate for each letter in their name, plus one for the head. I had my four-year-old write his own letters, and my two- year-old traced letters that I cut out for him. And since I needed three snowman, for comparison purposes, I made one for my one-year-old as well. Once the letters were made, we hooked the paper plates together on top of each other to look like snowmen and decorated them with hats and scarves. Then we hung them up and use words like biggest, taller, smallest, shorter, etc. to describe the snowmen. We did sequences too, “Ivan’s snowman is tall, Adelia’s is taller, and Lincoln’s is the tallest of all!” 
  


Another day we did thumb print snowmen. We dipped our thumbs in white paint and pressed three thumb prints together on black construction paper to make snowmen. I let the kids do as many snowmen as they wanted. Then we decorated them with faces and scarves and arms. Then, using the opposite end of the paint brush, I had them dip it in white, and make as many snowflakes as they wanted in the sky. Then we used a piece of chalk to make the ground for the snowmen to stand on. Once our paintings were dry we filled in the blanks on the poem by counting the number of snowflakes and the number of snowmen. The poem goes like this: "______ little snowflakes fall into sight. While ______ little snowmen played all night." Then decide if you have more snowmen and less snowflakes, or the other way around. 


 

For a fun snack, we made snowmen-kabobs using bananas for the body, an apple slice and a grape for the hat, pretzels for the arms, a strip of fruit leather for the scarf, an orange sprinkle for the nose, and cake icing for eyes and mouth. I thought they turned out really cute, and they were tasty too! 
 

We made a marshmallow snowman, and talked about which circles had more marshmallows and which had less. We also talked about big, bigger, and biggest circles.

And our last big project was a yarn stitched snowman. This one was great for fine motor and concentration skills. You just take a big paper plate and a little paper plate, and punch out holes, then you use yarn to "sew" around the edges. My kids were most excited about gluing the buttons on. Once they were on we compared the buttons, "Are there more red buttons or yellow buttons?", “Are their less orange buttons than red buttons?", "Which color of buttons are there the most/least of."

And of course, Once There Was a Snowman, is a great song to use for this unit.

Once there was a snowman, snowman, snowman
Once there was a snowman, 
Tall, tall, tall
In the sun he melted, melted, melted
In the sun he melted
Small, small, small.

Maybe tomorrow we can finish up the unit by going outside and building a snowman with all the fresh snow we're getting at the moment.

You can leave your thoughts, comments or suggestions here on my feedback page. Thanks!

- Krystal

Jack o'Lantern Senses

One of my favorite ways to teach something is to incorporate a bit of holiday fun into the lesson. Lucky for me, this route is extremely easy to take when you’re teaching younger ones. Fall and Halloween are two great reasons to celebrate, and can provide many different avenues for learning. Today I’d like to share our favorite Halloween lesson: Jack O’Lantern Senses.  Basically the idea is to teach the kids about their five senses using a jack o’ lantern and some fun Halloween activities.

Materials Needed

-Black construction paper
-Clear contact paper
-Scissors
-Orange tissue paper, cut into small squares
-A jack o’lantern pattern (use this link or a pattern of your own, you’ll want the outline to be thick) 
-Flashlight
-A pumpkin, top cut off and guts scraped out (save the guts in a separate bowl)
-Pumpkin seeds (the ones from the pumpkin above will work nicely)
-Soy sauce
-Lemon juice
-Cinnamon sugar
-Seasoning salt
-Scented jack o’lantern candles pumpkin and licorice (you can find these at WalMart for $0.39 each)

*Separate the pumpkin seeds into four groups. Put them in separate parts of a muffin tin. Sprinkle one group with soy sauce, one group with lemon juice, one group with cinnamon and sugar, and one group with seasoning salt. Bake the seeds at 350 degrees stirring every 3-5 minutes until seeds are dry.  Keep the seeds in their separate groups.

What to Do

Cut out the jack o’lantern pattern so that you are left with the outline and the eyes, nose, and mouth. Trace those pieces onto black construction paper and cut them out again. (Depending on the age/skill level of the kids I’m working with, I usually cut out the outline of the jack o’lantern and the eyes, nose, and mouth for them, and provide them with a plastic sandwich baggie with all their pieces tucked inside.) Also, cut out two squares of contact paper big enough to cover the whole jack o’lantern.

Peel the backing off of one of the squares of contact paper and stick the outline of the jack o’lantern onto the sticky side of the contact paper. Explain that this is the jack o’lantern’s skin. Talk about our skin, and how it covers our whole body and allows us to feel things when we touch them. Pass around the pumpkin and let the kids feel the pumpkin skin, the stem, the inside of the pumpkin, and the bowl full of pumpkin guts. Talk about the different textures that their skin is feeling: smooth, bumpy, hard, scratchy, wet, slimy, etc. 

Next have the kids stick on the jack o’lantern’s mouth. Have the kids point to their mouths and ask them what they have inside. Have them stick out their tongue. Ask what they use their tongues for. Explain that our tongue has tiny things all over it called taste buds that help us to taste the food that we eat. Let the kids try each group of pumpkin seeds, one group at a time. Explain that the ones cooked in soy sauce are bitter, the ones in lemon juice are sour, the ones in cinnamon sugar are sweet, and the ones in seasoning salt are salty.  Have them vote on their favorite taste.

After that, talk about ears. Explain that we have something that the jack o’lanterns don’t have, and that is ears. Have all the kids point to their ears. Ask what we do with our ears. We listen. Have all the kids stand in a line, or a circle, and play a wiggle game. Give the kids directions such as, “If you can hear me, touch the top of your head.” Or, “If you can hear me, turn around in a circle.” And so on. Change your voice, so that sometimes you are speaking loudly and sometimes you are speaking softly. Then tell the kids that we can also hear music with our ears. Teach them the song, Mr. Jack o’Lantern by Alene Dalton, Myriel Cluff Ashton and Erla Young.

Mr. Jack-o-lantern
Is very round and fat.
He has a yellow candle
Tucked underneath his hat.
It makes his face look scary 
And very, very bright
When he winks and smiles at me
On spooky Halloween night!

You can find the sheet music for the song in the book "My Picture Book of Songs" by Alene Dalton, Myriel Cluff Ashton, and Erla Young. I found a copy at the library, but you can also look it up online.

Next comes the nose. Don’t forget to have the kids stick the nose on their jack o’lantern. Have everyone point to their nose, and talk about how we use it to smell. Bring out the pumpkin and licorice scented candles. Light them and let them burn long enough to melt some of the wax. Have the kids close their eyes, and let them smell both of the candles. Have them vote on which smell they like best.

Lastly, have the kids put the eyes on their jack o’lanterns. In order to do the sight activity, you’ll have to finish the art project first. Use orange construction paper squares to fill in the inside of the jack o’lantern. When all the space is full, take the second square of contact paper and stick in over top. Cut out around the edge of the jack o’lantern. When the art project is finished, talk about how we use our eyes to see things. Take one of the finished jack o’lanterns and shine a flashlight behind it so that the light shines through the tissue paper. Holding the jack o’lantern up to the sun will have the same effect.

You can hang your jack o’lantern sun catcher up in the window to remind you about the things you learned about the five senses, and to make a fun holiday decoration. Enjoy!

You can leave your thoughts, comments or suggestions here on my feedback page. Thanks!

- Krystal

The Reading Road

Growing up, our family library consisted of books on topics you wouldn’t be likely to find on the average person’s bookcase. These topics included rock hounding, rock polishing, salt water aquariums, raising tropical fish and birds, dog breeding/grooming/pedigrees, exotic landscaping, cross pollenating fruit trees, how to build a sauna, gourmet cooking, the best national forests to visit, intricate woodworking, hunting for arrowheads and native American historical sites, how to make sushi, strategies for playing chess, curing your own jerky, hieroglyphics, snorkeling… you get the idea.  My dad was a little bit eccentric and a lot spontaneous. He’d get an idea in his head, read a book about it, and then do it, bringing the family along for the ride. All of this made for some interesting experiences when I was younger.

As an adult, I’m finding that the thing I carried away from those experiences, besides a lot of great memories, is the habit of looking to books when I want to learn about something. As I turn to my own bookshelves I see titles on making bread, square foot gardening, natural child birth, writing poetry, and many other things that interest me.

Naturally, when we first considered homeschooling, I read every book I could get my hands on about educating children, child development, and, well, homeschooling. We’ve committed to homeschooling, but I still do a lot of reading in this area. And although books are not the only factor that went into our decision, I thought it might be interesting to look back at the reading road I’ve taken so far in my homeschooling adventure. I should probably mention that I liked some of these books better than others, agreed with some more than I did others, and found some to be more helpful than others.  What you like and take to heart is completely up to you, this list is merely a map of where I’ve been over the last year. Here they are, in no particular order, the books I’ve read to try and prepare myself for a future of educating our children.

• A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver Van Demille
   
• Creative Home Schooling: A Resource Guide for Smart Families by Lisa Rivero
   
• Science is Simple: Over 250 Activities for Preschoolers by Peggy Ashbrook
   
• Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, and Energetic by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka
   
• Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman
   
• Marshmallow Math: Early Math for Toddlers, Preschoolers, and Primary School Children by Trevor Schindeler
   
• Home Learning Year by Year: How to Design a Homeschool Curriculum from Preschool Through High School by Rebecca Rupp
   
• Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences by Leonard Sax
   
• Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld
   
• Unplugged Play: No Batteries, No Plugs, Pure Fun by Bobbi Conner
   
• Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto
   
• What Your Preschooler Needs to Know: Read-alouds to Get Ready for Kindergarten by E.D. Hirsch Jr.
   
• Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein
   
• Boys Adrift: Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men by Leonard Sax
   
• The Absolute Best Play Days: From Airplanes to Zoos by Pamela Waterman
   
• Preschool Art: It’s the Process Not the Product by MaryAnn F. Kohl

You can leave your thoughts, comments or suggestions here on my feedback page. Thanks!

- Krystal

My First Rollercoaster Ride

Even at the beginning of my journey, I’m discovering what a confidence rollercoaster homeschooling can be. We made the decision to homeschool our kids, and it felt great. The more research I did, the more excited I became about the possibilities spread wide open before me. I assertively began telling anyone who would listen to me why homeschooling was such an amazing choice for my family. I was on cloud nine and feeling great.

At the park one day, another mother was asking me if my oldest was starting kindergarten this year or next. Neither, I explained, we were planning to homeschool. “Oh.” She said, “What program are you going to use?” Program? Was I supposed to have a program? I hadn’t given it much thought. How about the Krystal-Swan-winging-it-program? Did that count? As I struggled to give her some kind of answer, the doubts started creeping in. Was I cut out for this, really? I didn’t even know what program I was going to use. Maybe homeschooling is only for people who are super organized. I thought about how frustrating it was to spend several hours preparing fun preschool activities to do with my four year old, but when we sat down together, he wanted nothing to do with it. What if that’s how every day turned out? And I thought of the other women in my homeschool group who I look up to and admire so much, they all seem to have their acts together. They have time to do things like couponing, and organic gardening, and raising their own chickens; things I only dream about being able to accomplish. And they all have more kids than I do.  My confidence in my ability to homeschool seemed to be taking a nose dive.

I still don’t feel like I’ve been around long enough to give advice, but here are the things that really picked me up and got me back on track this time.

Prayer and faith.  

I’d considered giving up…but only for about three seconds. We have prayed about the decision to homeschool. We know it’s the right choice for us. I have faith in the answers that we were given. For us, I know that quitting is not the answer right now.

Perspective and mindset.  

What am I really trying to accomplish here, anyway? What is the “big picture”? Those are two questions I tried to answer for myself. At a Park Day, the topic what to do with your baby while you’re trying to teach the older kids came up. One of the ladies shared an article with us called The Baby IS the Lesson by Diane Hopkins. This article had such a positive influence on me. I’d been focusing on and stressing about the wrong things. I also came across this scripture in Mosiah 4:27;

"And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength. And again, it is expedient that he should be diligent, that thereby he might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order."

and realized that by comparing myself to the other homeschool moms I know, I was trying to run faster than I am able.

Schedule and style.

It also became apparent that I was trying to schedule too much at once. I’ve been trying to decide what I want for preschool next year. Whether I want to keep it informal like we have been, or if I want to try having a set amount of time each day where we’d do school, with a certain list of topics to cover, and things to learn, etc. I’d seen examples of elaborate ways of scheduling a school year online, and had been attempting to copy them. If that style fit my personality type, all would be fine and good, but it doesn’t. Not at all. Once it occurred to me that instead of stressing myself out trying to keep to an outrageous schedule, I should be scheduling only what I was willing to stick to, my life got a whole lot happier.

Resources and mentors.

I’d be sunk without awesome resources and mentors. My sister-in-law, Lisa Goff (who writes The Living School Room column) is such a wonderful example and encouragement to me. Knowing that she is willing to answer my endless questions makes a huge difference. My homeschool group is amazing. It’s so nice to interact with other people who have/or have had the same concerns, questions, experiences, and problems that I have. And even if we don’t come to any immediate conclusions, we are there for each other.  Homeschool sites, blogs, and newsletters on the internet are great resources to turn to when I am fresh out of ideas. It’s helpful to connect with other homeschoolers all around the world and see what works and what doesn’t work, or to find a new approach, or an activity that’s already been planned out.

These few simple things are getting me back up to the top of the hill. Thankfully, even after a little dip in confidence, my excitement for homeschooling is still there. What kinds of things help you on your roller coaster rides?

You can leave your thoughts, comments or suggestions here on my feedback page. Thanks!

- Krystal