Summer Pondering

I have been trying to decide whether to change my mode of record-keeping for the summer. There is this article on Unschooling Recordkeeping. But part of my reason for being attracted to unschooling is because so much of life doesn’t fit into little subject compartments. And ahem, to be honest, the kind of learning my kids tend to do does not fit there either. Rarely do they have a pure “math” experience, for instance. Last summer, Kieron became proficient at mental decimal math by looking up things on Ebay and Lego and adding in shipping. During the fall, he learned quite a lot about fractions by helping me bake. But this sort of thing seems diminished, somehow, to me, by calling it math.

Then there is this Unschooling Record Keeper. It lists things like movies watched, books read, discussions, field trips, evidence of progress, and so on. I think this is a bit closer to how I’d like to keep records during the summer. Maybe the idea is to list the books, games, experiences etc and then later compile them somewhat by subject IF I think I need to.

Today Clare and Liam got digital cameras. Liam got a camera for an early 21st birthday present. He will turn 21 when we are in Ireland! So I gave the camera to him today so that he could get used to it before we leave. Clare used her savings to buy her camera. It was on a half price sale at Amazon. I was going to upload a picture but I seem to be having trouble with the logistics. Anyway, I’ve noticed in the past few days that my older kids can read instruction manuals better than I can. This is a useful life skill.

The last couple of days we have been playing a game sort of like Bingo called HEART — the board has names of various saints by chronological order and the cards you call have some info about the saints. THe nice thing about this type of game is that even the littlest ones can play and it doesn’t really matter if they lose interest and walk off.

I have been reading a whole pack of Montessori at Home books, trying to get ideas for things to plan for Aidan (and Paddy) next year.

Some of the habits we built up during the school year have been sliding recently. I know it is because I have been doing all this decluttering and organizing and am distracted.

The teens have watched several Humphrey Bogart movies recently:

Casablanca
Key Largo
African Queen

Paddy has been so much calmer since we went back to twice a week video games. The other day he said “I am invisible and I am everywhere. I can do anything. I am called God!” This is a bit disturbing theologically : ) but it showed that he is processing the endless replies I give to his equally endless questions about the qualities of God.

Aidan helped me rake today. I make it my goal to haul off 7 wheelbarrows of needles, twigs, etc to the burn pile, every day. Today he helped me shovel the debris into the wheelbarrow. At first, most of it slid off his shovel, but after a while he learned to grip it and lift it, using his hemiplegic left hand as well. He has an unerring instinct that tells him when he’s done something worthy of pride. He has so many good qualities: great work ethic, great confidence, great initiative. I only managed 5 wheelbarrows today, but the slowing down was worth it to see him mastering the job.

Catch-Up

We’re still here; it’s just been busy and we all ended up with a cold. No one has done any formal academics. I am going to give the boys one more checklist for them to finish in the next week and then we will switch to summer schedule.

Aidan turned 8! On Saturday, but he was sick that day. We had his celebration on Monday. His main present was a Walmart umbrella stroller. He has longed for one of these for the longest time. He rides in it occasionally (he’s small for 8) but the main motive for wanting it is so that he can push it everywhere — upstairs, downstairs, and on the driveway. Our guess is that he loves to see the wheels move PLUS it provides a very slight balance assist for him, which makes it easy for him not to “posture” when he’s walking. We know the posturing bothers him — a matter of his hand flying up in the air to compensate for his unevenness of gait — because often he lodges the hand behind his back like Napoleon.

He is thrilled with his CostCo cake — our unhealthy and supersized-America birthday tradition here.

Monday was a bit of a nightmare because after seeing the dentist (Brendan and Clare) and orthopedist (Aidan) and running to all kinds of stores to get various things we needed, on a very hot valley day, we headed back up our mountain, and lost power partway up. We didn’t have our cell phone, because I had ever-so-sensibly suggested Kevin take it out when we brought the car to the shop last week, and he had forgotten to put it back in. The CHP man (who is our neighbor, incidentally) eventually swung by and told us it was vapor-lock. Our fuel had gotten hot enough so that our Chevrolet wasn’t reading its presence. He told us to wait 30 minutes and try again. A forest ranger gave the little boys some water bottles (we had already drunk our water) and we waited on the (hot) hill on the other side of the guard railing. That was fun– not.

After the car got going again we headed back up the hill, but it happened again a couple of miles from our house. This time our librarian saw us and offered to take me and the little ones home. We gratefully accepted, though Aidan was pretty nervous about abandoning Kevin. We expected them to follow in 10 minutes or so but it took 30 minutes. We only have the one car so it was sort of a helpless feeling — I almost asked our neighbor to drive me down but finally they showed up.

Tuesday we brought the car back to the shop and it’s still there. So Tuesday let me nurse my cold and catch up a bit on stuff around the house, but mostly the former.

I ought to just have a catch-up category for summer. There doesn’t seem much to write about learning notes these days. Paddy and Aidan are progressing in literacy — I found my Firefox’s desktop icon changed to “paddy” and Paddy has been asking me to point to words as I read them to him, and yesterday was pointing to words and pretending to sound them out.

Themes and Planning

Faith at Dumb Ox Academy has put up a theme-oriented planning post for her 8 year old. That made me go look around for a Waldorf list of themes. I did find this Waldorf Homeschool site that I want to note so that I can look at it later when I have access to my printer.

I often used to use the Core Knowledge units as a basis for my homeschool plans. Basically that stopped when Aidan was born and I no longer had any sort of time to plan activities etc.

This is about Aidan and Paddy next year. Aidan could really use some exploration of themes, now, I think. Paddy could coast along for the ride. I think that with Aidan it makes more sense to pick up on a theme and keep presenting it in different ways, than to go through a literary book when his attention span is not yet there for more complex language.

Ideally I could get Kieron involved in some aspects of it. He’s a lot more advanced than they are but I could see him having fun as a teacher’s helper and also consolidating some skills on his own.

We’ll see — just rambling right now. You would think that after 15 years I would have it all down, but circumstances and personalities change so much from year to year!

Music: Kilkelly

The last two passports came. Whew! Brendan and Kevin can come with us to Ireland after all : ).

Our car is back from the shop but has to go in again next week.

I got some more raking done. It’s funny. Recently, going out there to rake has been the signal for my teen and pre-teen boys to come out and chat with me. Not offer to help — but come and talk. It’s sort of amusing and charming to me. I want that quality time more than I want their contribution to the yard right now. But next week I’m going to make a checklist and get us all working.

I sat on the porch with Kieron and the two little ones today — he said that chatting made up a bit for the disappointment of missing homeschool meeting because the car was gone. That was sweet and a bit sad.

I also spent some time with Brendan looking up football reference books. I noticed how much of this day’s interaction was of the Leaning on a Truck variety (wisdom from Sandra Dodd — I reread it often– and applies to my introvert family in particular).

Clare took some great pictures with my digital.

No academics today. Kieron is reading Five Children and It. I think Sean is in one of his non-reading cycles. He is throwing the football and his dad bought him a jumprope and he’s gotten way fast with it, broken toe or not.

We kept the electronic games off today. It was difficult for Patrick. He is getting over it now though and playing Duplos with Kieron. Everyone agrees that a daily screen time does not work around here; we tried it for two weeks and it just didn’t work. Paddy can not cope emotionally with it and becomes his evil twin self. So we’re going back to twice a week, one day being our “town day” so Paddy does not get pulled into the screen.

Paddy is getting into an aggressive habit with Aidan (another reason for limiting computer games) and Aidan reacts by getting distraught. For the sake of both of them I’m going to start keeping their interactions in the front of my vision. When my older kids were younger and we lived in a small house, it was easy for me to forestall full-scale conflicts. Recently, I’m old and distracted and there’s more space; too much slips by. So I have to remind myself to keep my eye on things. There’s the temptation for me with the electronic entertainment — it keeps them occupied while I get other things done that seem more important in my eyes at the time. But it’s a short-term strategy, of course, and does not pay off in terms of good fruit.