Daily Schedule Quirks

A holiday weekend makes me think about and shake my head at our homeschooling schedule. When we started homeschooling back in August I told the kids they needed to be out in the cabin by 9 am. That was my way of imposing some sort of structure on their lives, and I thought they would need that to get them up and going some days. In over 3 months of homeschooling, Aurora has only been late twice (she slept in, and I didn't wake her up), and Denver hasn't been late once. Besides a rare comment about our "time" it is all intrinsic for the kids: they get themselves up, they get themselves breakfast and they head out to the cabin and start working, sometimes well before 9:00.

Denver sets his alarm for 7 am on "school days." I've tried to convince him to get up later when he gets to bed late, but he has a very strong need to be "regular", so the alarm goes off every morning and he lays in bed and reads for an hour before he wanders downstairs and grabs some cereal, toast or oatmeal for breakfast. If I am already out in the cabin working he'll come out and join me; otherwise, he'll hang out in the house reading until 8:30 or 9:00 when he makes a mad dash to get to the computer before Aurora.

Aurora wakes up early too and often she'll get breakfast and eat in bed (aaaargh! I'm trying to break her of that habit!) while reading. Other times she's obviously wiped out and sleeps till almost 9:00, particularly when she had 3-4 hours of sports practices the evening before (basketball, climb, kayak, more basketball....). The darkness doesn't make it easy to get up in the morning either, since it is dark out till after 9:00, and before it's over it will be dark till 10 or later.

The kids choose which subjects they want to do in what order, and I only vaguely know what their preferences are since that's their business, and they get all their work done every day: math, reading, writing, Russian, typing and drawing are daily activities, with science and social studies assigned on a looser weekly schedule, again, at their option to get it done when they want. It only becomes a problem completing it if we have an unexpected day off, in which case they generally double up assignments the next day or get it done over the weekend.

Choosing to Learn About China

We are 3 weeks into our unit studying ancient China. When we started the lesson I did a K-W-L with the kids (what do you know, what do you want to know, then we're supposed to do what did we learn at the end). Between the two of them they couldn't come up with 5 things they knew about China--present or ancient. Thus I put together a series of daily activities about China, building their knowledge about the land, customs, dynasties, government, etc. We hit the halfway mark in the unit yesterday, so I wanted to change gears from mom-directed to them directed. I figured that now they knew enough to make some choices about what really interests them about China. I was curious to see what modality they would choose: PowerPoint? Craft? Project? Research Paper?

When I popped the question to Denver, his immediate and enthusiastic statement was, "I want to study Chinese inventions!" Yes, that sounds like Denver all right! He knows exactly what he likes and is interested in. We threw things back and forth and we decided he would research 2 inventions per day for the next 10 days of school and write up a paragraph on each one. When he is done he will have a list with descriptions of 20 inventions that the Chinese developed in ancient times. Very cool. I wouldn't have thought of that!

Aurora was a little more hesitant. I threw out some ideas because she didn't seem to be "biting." I suggested cooking Chinese foods (I don't like that food), then some other ideas. Nothing stuck. Finally she suggested studying Chinese plants. With a little more prodding the topic got morphed into a study of Chinese remedies. Once again, this wouldn't have occurred to me, though it sounds fascinating and I look forward to seeing what she comes up with.

Aurora never had any interest in "Social Studies" before we began homeschooling this fall. Our studies of ancient cultures has piqued her curiousity and she now puts it right up there with math as her favorite subject! It warms my heart to know that this homeschooling "project" has developed a previously untapped area of interest. That was one of my goals. Check!

Fresh Starts...and the Joys of Today

I've been blogging about life in Alaska for a couple of years and it never occurred to me to start another blog until a few weeks ago it crossed my mind to start blogging about our family's recent venture into homeschooling. I have plenty on my plate: why add more? Well, the thought has persisted and I haven't been able to shake it, so here I am. My thought is to drop in every day or so and just share how things are going on our homeschooling journey. It is mighty personal...don't know if you will find this interesting. If nothing else it will be a record for my kids (from mom's perspective!) of the homeschooling journey.

Today I was so excited to get an email from a mom I ran into at the Homer Library. I saw her checking out every single book they had on Egypt and had to crack a joke about us homeschooling families "cleaning out the library," since it was just over a month ago that I checked out every single Egypt book! Anyways, we got to talking and I guess her daughter, who is the same age as my daughter, is studying ancient civilizations this year, same as us. So we have decided we're going to get together and do some activities together! I'm excited! I've been wanting to collaborate but haven't found anyone else who is studying the same things as my kids (same level, same book, etc.).