Home School

I thought I would put a few pages from Mozart’s math work that she is doing at home for our records, those who like to discuss home school and Grandma’s pleasure. DaVinci is going to take this book into the teacher because the math there is just ridiculously slow for her, so a total waste of time. I am worried that she might be getting bored with school and it is the best place to get the immersion. At least with the language arts she is learning cursive and improving her Spanish reading. We will continue it at home, but it would be nice if she was learning something in math class at school too, but if not we can carry on.

I think of her more as a reader than a math kid, but she does well in math too and enjoys visual spacial things like puzzles, tanagrams, and legos. She likes science too and we need to do more of that at home. DaVinci works with her on the math because he is also strong in that area. She gets the concepts quickly
and I think is doing very well for a child who just turned six this fall and we don’t spend  much time on math. We should probably spend more time on math because it does not feed itself like reading does,
but she does not initiate math like she does reading usually.

I consider all of her reading as part of her home school because so much is learned thru reading and just absorbed without endless worksheets. She has been pouring thru books like “The Great Brain”, Little Women”,”Ms Piggle-wiggle, her MANY American girl books, Nancy Drew, Beverly Clearly books, Judy Moody books etc. She has been enjoying her Tin Tin and Asterix comic books and a nonfiction comic style one called  “Its so amazing!” which is a great book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies and Families. She also likes folk tales and is enjoying reading stories from “Tatterhood and other stories”,The Maid of the North-Feminist folk tales from around the world”, Usbornes “Stories from around the world” and her favorite at the moment in this genre “The lady of ten thousand names-Goddess stories from many cultures” which she zipped thru.

So quite a variety and range and those are just ones that I see lying around in this room as we have them all over and she often has several going at once. I probably should keep a proper list of what she reads, but she is constantly reading and rereading or telling me she just finished one, so it is hard to keep up, let alone stay ahead of her. I am glad that she is a passionate reader and bookworm and it does run in the family. It does my heart good to see her lost in a book on her own choosing as I know how well that will serve her and entertain her in life. I let her pick from what is lying around or in bookshelves here
and try to have only good literature to choose from. I do miss our regular library visits which always added to our choices, but I am glad I hauled all the books I did and all the studying I did for choosing books and dvd’s.

I love books, so I really enjoy her passion for them and discussing them and reading out loud together (usually in the evenings) too. Last night we read about the reconquest of Spain (and discussed how
that applies to the history of our village and home here) and “Amanda Beans Amazing Dream-a mathematical story”. We have a huge pile and bookshelves near the bed to choose from and can
easily spend a couple of hours reading to each other and cuddling why we read silently too.

She is a very active, verbose child, so silent reading together while cuddled in bed is a calming activity for both of us as my nature is much more introverted (altho I can be very gregarious so I am sometimes mistaken for an extrovert). By the end of the day after dinner, I need the time to rest and be in a prone position for a while. I enjoy reading out loud too, especially books that are made for that and still have fond memories of reading poetry out loud with my family of origin in my childhood.

So I hope she will remember these simple but magical moments together and pass them onto the next generation. How lucky kids are these days to have sooo many wonderful books & I have gained such an appreciation of children’s literature since having a child. I was very flattered when our local librarian thought I was studying that at our local university. Nope (altho I think I would love that), just had a child and found out there is so much to learn with that responsibility. I enjoy home schooling, community based learning, and travel based learning for all that I learn and experience in the process as it makes
me look at life differently and enriches me too. The internet makes it all so much easier today and I appreciate the home school as much as the travel communities which are priceless resources.

Her Spanish reading is really coming along and that is exciting. She is reading every night aloud with DaVinci in Spanish, they take turns. She seems to be enjoying reading aloud in Spanish more (she had mostly wanted to just listen before we came here) and I think it is a direct result from being in a dominant Spanish environment.

I do read “Story of the World” most every night which is a nice history curriculum. (http://www.peacehillpress.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=2)  She loves to do the projects in the workbooks which we do from time to time. We did the first book of ancient civilizations last year and are doing the middle ages this year, but we have brought them both and their workbooks with us. We can also now use the web to supplement as we did before. They have been great for travel.

I have a whole pile of home school things I still have to sort thru and organize. We are going to make some shelves out of bricks and boards, but have not quite gotten to that as we have been slowed down with getting the internet and lap tops connected. (I actually got one up yesterday which made a big difference). We do a lot of unschool style learning which is basically just following her lead and answering her questions and facilitating her to find ways to get the answers she wants and do critical thinking and problem solving. So that way, just about everything is a living classroom.

I do want to find some more time to set up regular work in science, geography and art and have some good books for these topics. I just have to organize it for here and also for on the road which will be one of my projects while here. We do lots of map reading on the road, but I would like to involve her even more as she is good at it and has always had a very good since of direction. There are so many good things online and she has some great educational software so we are thinking of getting her a laptop
of her own for xmas (since her dvd player has not worked well here). We haven’t been doing English workbooks lately.

I showed her a book I brought from prufrock press yesterday that were on sale before we left. (http://www.prufrock.com/) It was called “Thinking Stories” and was in English and Spanish with activities and she loved it and basically completed it in one setting including giving some to our house guest as a present. Luckily I got a series of these, because it is typical on how she goes thru things quickly and intensely if she likes them.