Birds and Creations

We're still bird watching, although we aren't seeing any new ones around our house anymore.  We did discover that a robin laid eggs in the nest on our front porch. 

It was very exciting for a few weeks, and we watched her (from the window) eagerly.  The excitement ended a few days ago, though, because she disappeared.  The eggs aren't hatched, so I guess we'll miss out on the baby birds that would have been.  It actually makes me sad to think that those eggs were abandoned. 

Anyway, I took a couple of pictures of the kids' creations during school time the other day.  This is Logan's rose.  He did it entirely by himself, and it was 100% his idea.  The white things are thorns.

This is Annie's "building".  She very meticulouly placed each and every piece.

The Phases of Learning: Core

Part of what appealed to us when we decided to use the TJEd method for our home education, were the "Phases of Learning" that were presented.  The idea is that people naturally follow the same pattern of progression in how they learn.  It made sense to us, and as I listened and later read about the phases, I could clearly see how I naturally went through the first three phases myself.  They are: Core, Love of Learning, Scholar, Depth, Mission, and Impact.  Here's one sentence about each, and then I want to put down my thoughts on the Core phase.  Core phase is the part of life when a child learns about the most important, central values in life and embodies them.  Love of Learning phase is a time when a child becomes curious about everything, and desires to study a wide variety of academic subjects.  Scholar phase is a time when a change in maturity takes place; a youth in this phase begins to focus deeply on a few subjects of interest.  Depth phase is a time for an adult to take that study deeper to prepare for his life's mission.  Mission phase is what it sounds like: actually fulfilling that mission.  Impact phase is changing the world to be whatever it should be for your posterity. 

Core phase begins right at birth.  When I have a baby I don't worry about teaching him anything right off, but he is learning nevertheless.  From the first moment, he is learning about love and how his environment feels.  He's held, kissed, fed, cleaned, and made comfortable.  He quickly attaches to those who take care of him, and if his needs are being met, he feels safe.  He begins to smile and interact.  Before long, he learns essential skills like eating, walking, and talking.  As he grows, he learns how to relate to his parents, siblings, and others around him.  He learns that relationships are important, although he doesn't realize it consciously.  He internalizes the values that are taught in his home.  If his parents pray, he believes in God.  He tests cause and effect, "What will happen if I jump off the table?"  He learns about right and wrong, good and bad.  He experiments with adult roles through play.  This is the time where he is developing his core.  

Our core is what defines who we are and what we will be.  From Leadership Education, "Core Phase is the basis of an education.  It is the basis of a family, and its generations.  It is, in short, the foundation of a person-who he or she is and what he or she can and will become.  During Core Phase, we lay the foundation for all learning and service in the child's life." 

If I were to ask myself what the most important things for me to teach my children are, my answers might be something like, "To understand our Heavenly Father's love," or, "To want to serve others," or, "To know they are children of God."  My answers would not include reading, mathematics, biology, etc...  So while they are young, I think it's vital to focus on those very important lessons.  I need to ask myself what is essential for these little ones and do it.

The things to focus on in Core phase are: right and wrong, good and bad, true and false, relationships, family values, family identity, family routines and responsibilities, accountability, and the value and love of work and play.

When too much time is spent in academic pursuits, a young child may become confused about what is most important.  Here's another quote (because this book says what I want to say so concisely), "When we give inappropriate attention to academic achievement during these phases, it can teach our children that they dislike academic achievement because everything is hard and boring, and/or offer our children an alternative source of self-worth that is inferior to a genuine and positive self-concept resulting from living according to true values such as faith, good works, and accountability." 

Not that there isn't a time for academic learning.  I read to my babies from the very beginning.  We discuss anything and everything academic in front of and with our children.  They can't help but learn about the things Jim and I study.  My four year old wants desperately to learn about the solar system right now, so we've been learning about it every day.  He wants to be like his dad, and so he pretends to be a father.  He loves books and is making progress every day with his reading.  (Today he sat down and read several pages of a book!)  He asks a million questions every day, and many of them are about science or engineering concepts; I really don't know all the answers.  :)  While these things are important, he still needs most of his time devoted to developing his core.  The biggest deal for me right now, is to not stress out about academic achievement!  My goal is for him to love learning (the next phase) for his lifetime, and I believe now is the time to prepare him for that.         

Triumph Again!

Today we went to the library, and Logan grabbed a random book off the shelf.  He asked me if it was a good one (I'm picky about what I'll read over and over and over and over and over to the kids), so I looked at it and told him it was.  Then I suggested he try to read some of the words in it; it was a very simple Dr. Seuss.  He sat down, I continued perusing, and seconds later he says, "Mom, this says 'ant'!"  He then turned the page, quickly sounded out the next word, and said, "Mom this says 'ants'!"  Yes, it was the same word with an extra 's', but he did it!  My heart seriously leaped with joy.  He felt pretty triumphant.  He said he was done reading at that point (I think he was worried about finding harder words in the book...some fear of failure), so he didn't try anymore at the library, and we somehow forgot to check out that book.  He's starting to read, though!   

Triumph!

Logan LOVES books.  He will spend hours looking at them, and would happily make me read to him all day long if he could.  Even as a baby he would spend hours looking at books.  I remember when I was pregnant with Annie, had no energy, and he knew it.  We literally spent most of our day reading books for the last three months because he took full advantage of the fact that I wanted to sit on the couch...he was only 16 months old!  When he was two we bought a set of magnetic letters for the fridge, and a foam set for the tub.  Then we only put out the letters of his name.  We didn't push it at all, but it took an incredibly long time for him to recognize those letters.  Memorizing the alphabet took forever as well, again without pushing; I really think it was difficult for him.  Annie picked it up a lot quicker without any help from me; the comparison is only to reaffirm that it was difficult for Logan, not that Annie is smarter or anything like that.  She's not anyway.  They both have strengths that the other does not have.  :) 

So, a few months ago I felt impressed that it was time to start focusing on reading with Logan.  We usually spend a few minutes each day with letters and their sounds, and sometimes we try to sound out words together.  Once he is tired or frustrated with it, we stop.  He and Jim have special reading time together some evenings.  They even picked out some of the simplest library books to read together and they are OFF LIMITS to everyone else.  Progress hasn't been fast, but it's always been a positive time for Logan.  I can tell it's really hard for him to understand the letters and their sounds.  Lately he keeps telling me when he recognizes a letter sound in a word he hears or says.  "Mom, snake starts with S!"  That's been awesome to hear.  Then, yesterday, he had a triumphant moment.  He was sitting on the floor staring at a bucket that had writing on it while I fed the baby.  I heard him saying something very slowly over and over, but wasn't really paying attention until he asked me about it.  "Mom what does that say?"  Then I realized he'd been sounding out the word "all".  He'd tried so hard and had read it all by himself!  He's sounded out words with us before and with our prompting, but this was his first attempt to read something on his own.  Well done bud!      

Noses and Eyes

Here's another activity that I pulled out the camera for.  We were learning about what our noses, eyes, ears, etc.. do and how they are different for animals.  We made it hands on by making pig noses and frog eyes.  The pig noses came out so cute, that I'm planning to use them to put on a play with these kids, "The Three Little Pigs".



Another Bird

Before I forget the name of our latest bird friend, I want to record it.  This is where I'm keeping track.  We have a couple of birds making nests on our outside lights.  They are house finches.  :)

The Beginning of Our Journey- Conclusion

I left my last thoughts hanging with some questions that I feel like I've found the answer to.  These are the questions I put in that post:

"How could I avoid the battle?  How could I inspire my kids to have self-motivation?  How could I teach children of so many different ages?  When would I find time to plan all those lessons?"

Ultimately, the real question is how do I teach my children to love learning?  As I've pondered on it, and as I've gone to seminars and read books (the ones I recommended in the earlier post) some things have clicked for me.

Here we go.  I hope this makes sense.

If I love bananas, I will naturally buy bananas.  Then I will eat them and buy more.  If we have bananas in our home, my children see me enjoying them, and I offer them to my children, odds are they will at least try them and will probably learn to like them.  If I hate apples, never buy apples, and never offer apples to my children they may never learn to like apples.  I use this approach when I teach my children principles of our religion.  I've long been a believer that I can't force my children to embrace prayer, a love of the scriptures, etc... but that I can teach and inspire them by example.  My children love to pray and they believe in prayer.  That is because they have seen me and my husband praying every day, and because we pray as a family.  They have observed from birth that prayer is important to us.  We encourage them to pray and explain why we believe prayer is important, but we don't force them to do it.  If I were to force it, I think they might rebel and decide that prayer is a chore.

One of the key ingredients to TJEd is "inspire, not require".  We learned about this in the first presentation that we attended, and that's when our answers started coming.  To inspire also can mean to lead by example.  Once this clicked for me it changed my whole perspective on teaching my children.  I realized that they way I teach my children our religion is by example, or I inspire instead of require when it comes to that aspect of our lives.  Of course that can apply to an academic education!  I will not learn something that I don't want to learn, but the way a person presents something and their excitement for it might peak my interest.  My children will not learn something they don't want to learn.  I cannot force them to listen.  I cannot force them to think and process information.  The way I approach something can peak their interest and motivate them, though.  So, if I want them to like bananas I will buy and eat bananas.  If I want them to understand the importance of prayer, I will pray on my own and with my family.  If I want them to love learning, I will study and learn with them!  This is one of the things that is so different about the TJEd theory/ method and if makes a lot of sense to me.  When I read these books and went to these classes, I was surprised that the very first step was to focus on my own education!   

Children are naturally curious about what is going on around them, and often value the things their parents value.  What messages am I sending my children about what I value?  If I only work or study when I have to, but spend all of my spare time in from of the tv what do they learn that I value?  What do they learn about work and studying?  If I read an awesome book and share my excitement about it during our dinner conversation what do they learn about what I value?  If I am curious about the recent disasters in Japan, and I decide to research earthquakes and tsunamis, are my children going to be curious too?

This is the hardest part about inspiring.  I can't inspire someone else to love learning if don't love learning.  So I might have to do some studying until I feel that very real light that comes from learning, and I need to keep it up.  If I do love learning, though, I believe I can inspire my children to love it.  If I do study, I believe my children will be much more inclined to study.  And if my children are feeling inspired, they will have the self-motivation to learn.  Then hopefully we can avoid the battle.  So far my children are loving everything we do in kidschool, and are very willing to learn.  I'm new at this, but I believe I have a good beginning.

That's one "ingredient" and there are more.  That's the one that stood out to me the most, though, and changed my way of thinking about home education.  As for the questions of teaching children of so many ages, and preparing lessons, I will briefly address those here, but elaborate later.  A child who is self-motivated to learn can have a lot of choice in what they study; then it will be more meaningful because it's what they are interested in.  No one can teach my child anything if he doesn't want to learn it!  There is also an "ingredient" of "structure time not content" which means to set aside a specific amount of time for learning each day, but allow for great flexibility in what is studied.  This makes lessons planning a lot easier.  So I set aside our morning hours for kidschool, and we have a basic routine with it, but our learning activity can be anything.  We don't have to work on reading every day for 30 min., then math for 30 min., etc...  If we are super curious about whales today, we can devote all our time to studying about whales, and it's going to be a lot more meaningful.  If we decide to work on addition, but it quickly becomes tedious and we're all getting frustrated with it we can move on.  As children get older and are more independent, they are able to study more on their own leaving mom for more time with the littler ones.  That helps with teaching different ages.

I don't like that last paragraph, but I'm not sure how to explain these thoughts so briefly (which is necessary for me right now).  Anyway, I guess this is the end to my introduction on the why and how we homeschool.  Upcoming posts will better explain the how.  (I really need to learn how to write conclusions!)