Desperate times call for desperate measures. Today I pulled out one of those over-achiever-super-Pinterest-mom-who-has-it-all-together type tricks and made cloud dough. The word “sensory” should probably go in there somewhere if I were an early childhood education major or a therapist.
Anyway, they seem to be enjoying it!
It’s been a while since I updated about the chapter books we’ve been reading. Books we’ve read with Anna since my last update include Mary Poppins, A Bear Called Paddington, Winnie the Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Read-Aloud Treasury, The Lighthouse Mystery, Mountain Top Mystery, Schoolhouse Mystery, Caboose Mystery, and Houseboat Mystery. The last five are Boxcar Children books, and David has been reading those with Anna. That has become their special thing. I read the others, usually right before nap time. I used to put Sarah down for a nap earlier than Anna and then read with Anna, but lately Sarah has joined us and has done pretty well.
I’ve been a fan of Pooh for a long time, but I just discovered Paddington. He’s wonderful! We’ve only read one book, but there are lots of them and we plan to read more. The Raggedy Ann and Andy stories were sweet, a little sappy at times, but still pretty good. Anna liked them, and she and Sarah got a special surprise when I gave them my Raggedy Ann dolls (I had two) from my childhood. Mary Poppins is very interesting—pretty different from the Disney movie. There are actually several books in the series; I’ve read the first four myself, but only the first one with Anna so far. While I find the movie’s portrayal of Mary Poppins’ personality more likeable, the books include many magical moments that I’m glad I didn’t miss—P.L. Travers had an amazing imagination!
I seem to have a new habit of collecting book lists. As I muddle my way through children’s literature, thankfully there are many who have gone before me who like to publish online their lists of favorite books for children. There is a lot of overlap, of course, but with each one I seem to find more books I want to check out. We won’t run out or reading material for a while! Or ever, really. There are more good books out there than we could read in a lifetime—and most of them FREE electronically or through the library. It’s astonishing.
Once, a long time ago, Anna and I were sitting at the kitchen table, and the topic of rainbows somehow entered the conversation. She said, “I wish we could see a real rainbow someday.” I said, somewhat absentmindedly, “Well, maybe we will, someday.”
She suddenly got this look of shocked surprise, then a smile of delight slowly crept across her face as she said, “Rainbows are REAL?!?”
“Why, yes, honey, rainbows are real.”
(Pause.) “There are REAL rainbows?”
“Yes, there are!”
Where had she seen rainbows? In storybooks, of course—usually fantasy-themed stories about fairies and princesses and such. On kiddie paraphernalia along with balloons and hearts and teddy bears. At the face-painting stand at carnivals. But a real one? What a sweet surprise to find out that something so wonderful as a rainbow really does exist!
Ever since then, I’ve been wanting her to see one, but we never were in the right place at the right time. (It might have something to do with the fact that if it’s raining, we usually don’t go anywhere!) But tonight, the moment finally came. Ladies and gentlemen, Anna’s first rainbow:
Anna took 2 weeks of swim lessons at Hendrix last month. She had fun and learned a lot! She still isn’t quite to swimming on her own yet (more than a few feet, anyway), but she is SO much more comfortable in the water than when she started and is well on her way. The first day, she didn’t even want to put her face in the water, but by the end, she would hang onto the side and dunk herself 10 times in a row.
I like the way Hendrix does lessons. Instead of diving up by “class” where each kid is supposed to be at the same level and learning the same thing, they just take the kids that signed up for that time slot and group them by age 4 to a teacher, then the teacher works with the kids at whatever level they are and whatever pace they need, leading them through the same progression of skills as far as they can get.
Here are some pics:
Anna was great at floating on her back!
The grand finale—jumping!
On Saturday we made a spontaneous trip (Us? Spontaneous? Yep, that’s right) down to Pinnacle Mountain State Park for a little outside/nature time on a beautiful day. We had no intention of climbing the mountain, of course, but I knew they had a couple of easy paved trails that might be about right for us. First we went to their very nice visitor center. The girls enjoyed bird watching, bee watching, seeing live baby alligator and a no-longer-live adult one, and several other things. Then we “hiked” the Arkansas Trail through the arboretum, saving the Kingfisher Trail for another trip.
We gave both girls new binoculars for the occasion!
Science lesson in progress—learning about tree rings:
One of the favorite parts of the trip—we came across this tiny (about an inch long) caterpillar hanging by a string in mid-air in the middle of the trail, but the string was so thin it was practially invisible. Anna’s face lit up in amazement and she started giggling uncontrollably. She must have thought it was magic. Can you imagine? I mean, you’re just walking along through the forest and there’s this thing floating in the middle of the air. We did tell her, of course, but it was so fun to see her reaction.
We had two graduations, of sorts, this past week. On Monday, Sarah “graduated” from Mother Goose on the Loose story time at the library. I was kind of sad; we’ve loved the Mother Goose program ever since Anna was a baby. Sarah has really enjoyed it and learned so much. Anna and Sarah do many of the rhymes and stories and songs at home. I didn’t get any pictures, but we had a good last day; Sarah was happy the whole time and participated in everything and enjoyed herself. It was a good way to end. But even though we’ll miss it, it also means twice-weekly library trips will be reduced to once a week, which is nice!
Then yesterday Anna graduated from preschool. She’s had a great two years there, and this year she has made some sweet little friends as well. But again, though it’s the ending of something great, I’m looking forward to the next phase of our lives—homeschooling, which means not just “book learnin'” but all the activities and relationships that will enrich our lives. Here are some graduation day pics!
Anna turned 5 today! She is such an amazing kid and a wonderful blessing to our family. She shows kindness and compassion to those around her and nurtures those who need care. She has an amazing mind and astounds us with what she has learned. She loves her family, and she shows so much love to Sarah that she has far exceeded our expectations of what a big sister could be. She is a joyful child and finds excitement in the most unexpected (to us) things. We love our Anna Elizabeth!
The birthday party went pretty smoothly, despite dreary weather driving us indoors instead of our original plan at the park. I was a little nervous about having 15 kids plus nearly as many adults in the house, but let me tell you, it was the quietest, calmest 5-year-old birthday party in the history of humanity. I guess sweet, quiet Anna is drawn to sweet, quiet friends! There weren’t even any crumbs on the floor after they ate their cake and snacks. It was uncanny. But they DID have fun, I think. We had a couple of games, a craft, the cake and presents, and they enjoyed just playing too.
Here are a few shots of 5-year-old Anna:
We are loving “chapter book” time with Anna, and she’s loving it too. She follows along as we read and tells us if we miss a word. Nothing gets past this kid. Books we have read in February/early March include The Blue Bay Mystery, The Woodshed Mystery, Little Sioux Girl, Betsy-Tacy, and Betsy-Tacy and Tib.
I had never heard of the Betsy-Tacy books, but I think I would have loved them growing up. I loved the Little House books, the Anne books, and other old-timey stuff like that. The Betsy-Tacy books are written in that vein. This New York Times book review is worth a read if you’re interested in them. Apparently, they have a small but very devoted group of fans! I thank our children’s storyteller at our local library for clueing me in to these.
More great books are in the queue… I look forward to sharing next month!
Sarah has fallen in love with the Biscuit books. They’re simple easy readers with very sweet stories and illustrations, and they are perfect for children beginning to read. Evidently, they are also perfect for Sarah, because she’s had us read them to her 16 billion times in the past couple of weeks, and apparently it has started to sink in:
If you know the book, it is even cuter, because she really is getting the words and the intonation right!
We are going to homeschool. This isn’t news to a lot of people, but I thought a “we’re homeschooling” blog post was in order. You know, to make it official and everything. :)
I never thought I would do it. Although I have a great many friends who homeschool, for years I completely closed myself off to the idea, without any good reason. But what I was experiencing was that resistance that builds up more and more the closer you get to surrendering yourself to the very thing that you’ve known all along that you should do. Do you know what I’m talking about? Once I un-dug my heels, I went from “I’m not even going to think about it” to “ok, it’s a viable option that should be considered” to “actually, this looks pretty good” to “it is absolutely crystal clear that this is the right thing for our family.” Now, I can’t imagine doing anything else.
Are we committing to homeschooling both girls from K–12th grade? Not necessarily. Schooling is something that should be re-evaluated as the years go by. We want to make sure we’re doing the right thing for each child each year. But at the moment, I envision homeschooling for at least the younger grades.
Why are we homeschooling?
My initial reason for looking into it was this: I love being with my kids, and I don’t think our 5-year-old needs to be shipped off for seven or eight hours a day, five days a week, to learn what she needs to learn. Five years old is still little. She would be spending more of her waking hours away from her family than with it, and that is not ok with us. And that demanding of a schedule would not be good for her physically or mentally, as she is a child who needs LOTS of rest and lots of quiet time away from overstimulation. Seriously, we would never see her except on weekends. She would have to come home, go straight to her room for some “down time,” emerge for dinner, then take a bath and go to bed so she could get enough sleep to do it all again the next day.
I love being a stay-at-home mom, but I think I was expecting that when it came time for school, I would be more than ready for several hours a day to do what I wanted to do. But do you know what I want to do? Be with my kids! I love reading good books with them, making homemade pizza with them, taking them to the library, watching them learn and grow, helping them discover things. Now don’t get me wrong—I love time by myself and cannot function well without it. But right now, the primary chunk of my day needs to be with them, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Another reason to homeschool is to embrace my child’s individuality and give her the education that is right for her. For some reason, every child in the U.S.A., whether from a penthouse in Manhattan, a ranch in Wyoming, a ghetto in Los Angeles, or a suburban home in Conway, is expected to learn the same things at the same rate at the same time, regardless of ability, interests, learning style, learning rate, cultural background, home environment, or personality. However, some children whiz through a concept while others need several weeks to understand that same concept, after which time something “clicks” and they’re ready to soar ahead. Some kids learn by seeing, some by hearing, some by doing, most by some combination of those. Homeschooling will let my child learn what she needs to learn when and how she needs to learn it. (For instance, she can now read a chapter from a “chapter book” on her own and then tell us what happened. And it’s still 6 months before kindergarten would even start. I just don’t see a kindergarten classroom being the right fit for her.)
At this point I had better address one of the questions homeschooling parents get asked most often—what about socialization? Somewhere along the way, we’ve accepted the idea that the best way to socialize a 5-year-old is to sequester him in a concrete room with 29 other 5-year-olds and one adult for 35 hours a week for nine months out of the year. But do 5-year-olds really learn good social skills from other 5-year-olds? Homeschooling families have the opportunity to help their children develop even better social skills by interacting with people of all ages in the real world. As families get together with other families, kids learn how to relate to older kids, younger kids, and adults. They get to go out into society and watch their parents conduct business in various settings and even take part in those interactions where appropriate. Families can do community service together, learning how to love and serve people who are different than they are. And there is time for these things because children aren’t being pulled out of their families and out of society for such a large chunk of the day.
So there are some of our reasons. There are more, but this post is long enough, and I’m fairly certain it won’t be the last one. I suppose that from the above paragraphs, some of our goals could be summarized as follows: to strengthen the family rather than fragment it, to treat our children as individuals with an education tailored to their needs, and to prepare them for real life by living real life in the real world.
(A number of good books and conversations with friends are helping me to develop my ideas about education and what homeschooling might look like for our family. One book which I have found particularly helpful is Upgrade by Kevin Swanson, in which he discusses 10 principles that make for a successful education, such as individuality, one-on-one instruction, and life integration, to name a few.)
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