September 5 update

What a week! Actually, what an amazing last few weeks. Now that everybody else is back in school, it's just us, and I honestly LOVE the time I spend - even fighting with Monkey.

So let me update you on him. The one child I thought would embrace the entire homeschooling thing has been a pain in my hind end about it. He resists reading, writing, and even math at times. I've been a wreck because I feel like he needs to be pushed some because he's so smart, and I'm still sitting in my public ed mindset, but I am feeling those things slowly fall away. S L O W L Y.

We spent time grounded for refusal to work, which worked, but honestly it was horrid thinking that because he won't sit and do school work he couldn't be a kid. I tossed things around in my head - bounced things off my husband and others both in and out of the homeschooling community. Everybody has their own philosophies, and it's time for me to create my own. I reflected back on the Lambert family mission statement. And I scaled back.

What is my primary focus academically. My kids need to be able to communicate effectively and master this world. In order to do this, they have to be able to read, write, and understand mathematical concepts. So that is what I started scheduling. If we could get through a half hour of each, we'd be doing well.

Now, what to do and how to engage them using their strengths.

Monkey still resisted, but he seemed to appreciate only three things on his school work load. I bit my fingernails wondering what would happen, but to my utter shock, once the timer went off after thirty minutes of writing, he set it again for another thirty because he was in the middle of writing his logic puzzle! He didn't complain much about his math and has made great gains in both his math facts and his ability to determine when to use multiplication and when to use division from a word problem. We discussed key words, and he easily separated his word problems and began solving them using his grid and a white board marker! And today, Saturday, he knew he had some makeup work to do, and he got right up on the chair in the kitchen and read a book out loud to me while I made my breakfast. After I sat down, we read a non-fiction trade book about real-life pirate hideouts with a promise to finish it Monday.  This is HUGE success compared to two weeks ago! Oh, and all of a sudden, he is pulling the guitar out several times a day to strum on it. I'm thinking he and I are going to have to search for some youtube videos on guitar playing!

The minute I told Dragon we needed to choose a writing assignment, she spent hours working on a play she would eventually like to video tape using her . . . wait for it . . . DRAGONS, of course.  As for math, I'm thinking that she may NEVER be able to do multiplication the "old fashioned way" because the steps are too similar and she loses track and makes mistakes due to stress and concentration, so we went back to using the array. She gets the concept, but she STRUGGLES with not making mistakes in simple calculation. The last few days we have really focused on rechecking answers. It's laborious and cumbersome, but it's worth it when she says, "Wait, its right?!?!" with a HUGE smile on her face. She continues to read, but I worry about her reading fluency and accuracy. I'm having her read out loud more to me, and I feel like this is helping, as we are discussing the current book much more with both of us reading together. She also didn't put up a fuss today when she had to read to make up for minutes we had lost yesterday while we partied it up with our new co-op friends.

All in all, I'm proud of the progress we are making. I wish I could say that things are working out exactly as I had envisioned, but like everything in life - they are far from my vision. Our basement isn't a cute classroom, my kids are not the eager learners I had hoped they would be, and I don't take them to Chicago to museums weekly. BUT - progress is being made on many levels. We are learning to listen to each other, play together, work with each other, tolerate each other, and we are making new friends. We are exploring places we might not have explored, and we are all happy.

I'm also so thankful for my new community of moms and kids. The most precious thing this week was watching Dragon walk off with a group of twelve to fourteen-year-old kids into the zoo at Phillips Park while we sat watching the youngers play in the sprinkler park. She's so unbelievably happy. She can be herself, and nobody cares that she wears sweat pants and stripey socks with crocs to the water park. She can play with the youngers, and its okay, and if she wants to she can hang with the olders. She also stretched her legs a bit and made a trip to the public school for morning choir on Friday. She loved it so much, she's planning to make this a weekly trip, which makes her musical mom and dad super proud! Oh, and she spent all day Tuesday making applesauce with my mom, which was a very special experience for them both!



So all-in-all, all is well. We have a seriously busy week this week. We plan to work on Labor Day because we have friends coming Tuesday. I think we will visit the big library downtown in the morning with them and then head out for a picnic while C goes to horseback riding. Wednesday our plan is to catch horse racing at the Sandwich Fair, and Morton Arboretum on Thursday. I have a plan to hit the Field Museum to visit some of the cool animal exhibits Friday. I'm hoping to still do this - cell phones and ipad in hand, so that they can capture a bit of their trip and share it.

Hope all is well with everybody!

Monkey Boy's First writing assignment

Getting this child to write ANYTHING has been a trick, but we finally decided he could write logic puzzles to use his mathematical/logical strength to support his complete resistance in linguistic. He doesn't really like reading, but he HATES writing.

Here's his first go. He's pretty proud of it.

Monkey Boy's Floatie Guess

August 5 - Day 3

Here they are getting to work on their contributions to the mission.

Today was an incredibly difficult start. DragonGirl finally made the discovery that even though we were homeschooling, life still has routines. She did NOT want to put on clothes today, and she spent about a half hour crawling around the house with a comforter over her head. Eventually she got dressed when I told MonkeyBoy I'd take him to the library.

He wanted to go to the library because he is avoiding doing any "desk work". Getting him to write a note in his journal or do ONE math worksheet has been an adventure. He's super good at distracting me and then before I know it he's off playing video games and hasn't done one ounce of work. I need to keep an eye on this.

At the library MB only wanted to look at books with recipes for sweets, and we ended up with probably eight books on cookies, cakes, smoothies, and the like. DG would only look at nonfiction trade books on animals. What was interesting, however, is that MB said the next time we went he'd like to get some books on sports. Then hubby asked him if he wanted to play a sport like baseball. When all was said and done, we had discussed several sports, and looked in the park district catalog to find him a basketball league to play on. I'm going to ask him again tonight, but I think he's going to play basketball this fall! I think this will be good for him because I know he's athletic, and the teamwork would do him some good too.

I tried helping DG with her math sheets to no avail. That girl has NO concept of place value. It's so discouraging because I know she was mastering it last year. Even the fourth grade stuff she couldn't do.

What was amazing today was our work on our mission statement. I took the kids outside because I didn't want to feel stupid using my teacher persona. We have a house full of people right now, and I often wonder if they think I'm an idiot when I work with the kids. :)  We chatted about the mission statement, and then I gave them both a big sheet of paper to write down things they were happy about and looking forward to in homeschool. DG wrote in words, which surprised me because she's usually super visual and artistic. MB drew, which also surprised me a bit, but I went with it. When all was said and done, we put all of their thoughts together, and DG even started rhyming things. Our final mission statement is this:

The Lambert family (sort of) likes to learn. Our house is our school. We go lots of places and meet lots of faces. We do school every day, but we like to play. School is going to be fun.

I loved this because I felt like it really embraced what my kiddos are about, and yet it also reflected my thoughts about their schooling.

Our final activity today is our Wednesday Thank You notes. Each Wednesday we will choose one person to send a thank you letter to - I wrote one to my parents as a guide, and then they chose a person to write to. The goal here is to get used to the letter-writing process, including addressing and stamping. MB lost momentum at the end, but he managed to stick it out until the stamp went on. I didn't even have the heart to make them do a reflection in their journals today because it was two o'clock before we finally finished, and they'd been going since before nine.

I was really pleased with a lot that happened today, and I'm looking forward to settling down into a good solid routine and lots of learning. One thing I need to remind myself to do is to allow them to choose their reading. This is SO HARD for me because I feel like they should be reading fiction constantly, but for some reason each of them chooses nonfiction. And MB - a cookbook? But he's been doing that for years . . . I need to come up with ways to embed some good reading strategy instruction, so I'm thinking maybe some newsela articles or Reading A-Z stuff. I need to release a bit and just feel them out, but I feel like I'm not doing my job if I don't instruct - instruct - instruct. Public school mentality. I must shed this. I must. Until next time!

Day 1

Today went well. Monkey Boy has great theory and philosophy of math, but he goes so fast he makes calculation mistakes that piss him off. He can read and figure out word problems in his head and knows what he has to do but can't explain it. He needs better grasp of basic math facts. Also, he loves racing the clock, which is interesting because he feels like he needs to go fast all the time. But then he makes careless mistakes. The timer is funny. He wants it on all the time.

He was not thrilled about decorating the journal because he "hates art" so I guess this means I need to get a little sneaky in how we present art to him. I'm thinking linear and geometrical art. Something mathematical. Donald Duck's Mathemagic Land comes to mind, and I may have to pull that out tomorrow. He also didn't respond well to dancemat typing, so I'm going to get him onto typing.com, which is a little more straight forward with no frills. I think he will like it better.

He did make a funny comment about writing in his journal. The dreaded question - How many sentences does it have to be? I told him that he needed to write enough to communicate what he wanted. Of course, he wrote one sentence. My response to his journal will hopefully spur a few more tomorrow. 

Dragon Girl has been wildly independent. Got to work on that journal Sunday night, actually, and it's all decorated with pictures - front and back. She has no sense at all of the order of operations, but she LOVED graphing x,y patterns once she figured out how to READ the directions. She struggled with directions BIG TIME. She also finished the first three levels of Dancemat today as well. Oh, and she asked for a piano lesson; we got about 20 minutes in and she was done, but she does have 3 new tunes to practice.

Tomorrow I have a doctor's appointment in the morning, so I'm going to leave them a few things to do and then we are off to go grocery shopping. They both chose one recipe and wrote down the ingredients needed, so I need to add those to the list. They're also planning to cook their chosen meal! I can't wait for that either.

Pardon the play by play, but I wanted to get down as much as I could remember before I run off and get things started for bedtime.

Day 1 begins tomorrow

So I've been doing tons of research on homeschooling and unschooling and making connections with homeschoolers in the area. I've decided to start tomorrow with some schooling because I want to have the flexibility to take time off, and my general overall philosophy is going to be all year school. My kiddos will get used to it - I'm convinced.

So tomorrow is our first day, and already we have made plans to leave and go swimming in the afternoon. To get in our exercise I'm going to encourage them to get on their bikes and ride over to the pool (it's about a 2 mile ride).

In the morning I'm planning to have them decorate their "mom and me" journals with a collage of pictures they can cut out from magazines and then write me their first note. Their journals will be a quick and simple note to me every day - and they can say anything they want or ask any question they want. I'm predicting a little bit of resistance at first because they both hate to write, but I'm hoping with a little pressure and some fun back-and-forth responses that they fall into it and just run with it! My goal is to reassess at the beginning of September to see if I need to tweak this idea.

Also tomorrow I'm going to get them both logged on to typing.com or dancemat and get them working on typing lessons. Dragon Girl will also choose 2 of 4 pages I'm going to set out for her for math (5th grade) and Monkey Boy will choose 3 of 5 (2nd grade). I'm already looking at the fifth grade stuff and wondering if I'm going to frustrate her with it. That makes me a little sad, but this is why I'm taking this year off - to help her build some skills in a nonthreatening way. Not sure how Monkey is gonna do, but we shall see!

A Fast and Furious lesson

Some people might consider it thick of me to write about a movie I recently saw and compare it to my own life, but if you know me at all, I live for a good story with a good message. You also know that I can't pass up a good story with a good message that involves fast cars.

Hubby and I went to see Furious 7 today on the IMAX. I can't remember the last time we've been to see a movie on that screen, and I had been looking forward to our date all week - partly because of what we were planning and partly because we got to go - by ourselves.

I went with the knowledge that it was going to be sad. I was fully prepared with my stacks of Kleenex to cry my eyes out, as even my tough eighth grade boys told me this week, "The end was sad, Miss." What I wasn't prepared for, however, was the solid message that I brought away from it. From the beginning to the end.

At the onset of the movie, we watch Brian struggle with dropping off their adorable little guy at school. Mia, his wife, confides in her brother Dom that she is worried Brian "misses the bullets", as he was once an FBI agent, and has participated in action packed schemes with Dom time after time after time. Misses the bullets. The action. The job that he once did. But he has a family of his own now, and Dom's response was so simple. He's like a bell that just keeps ringing - movie after movie after movie. Family.  Family is what is important. Family.

I cried several times throughout the movie - as Mia told Brian to be safe and to come home.  As Dom told him to be safe.  As Brian told Mia on the phone that if she didn't hear from him in twenty-four hours that she should move on.  No, then I bawled - assuming they would kill him off in the movie.

But at the end - (this is a spoiler, so if you don't want to know, stop reading now) - after the entire fiasco was over, they all watched Brian and Mia play in the water on the beach with their son. Dom breaks proscenium with his audience slightly and becomes Vin Diesel and yet still Dom.  He talks about how nothing matters more than family. About how they will always be brothers no matter what.  About how bullets and action mean nothing. Family and love are what is important. And we get the feeling that if we had been part of Vin Diesel's family - he would have driven a muscle car out of an airplane at 10,000 feet for us too. Every one of us.

I equate this to my transition right now. I'm struggling with fear. Mainly fear of the unknown because I've always been a planner and a person to make the safe decisions. Although Brian moves from a risky life into a safe life - it was out of his comfort zone. He and I are somewhat parallel in that respect - him moving from action and bullets into a low-key life (haha!) of raising a family and me moving from financial safety of a full-time job into one where I'm juggling my children and a part-time job and hoping to make ends meet. But we both have one thing in common. We are making changes because we now (God, it's taken me THIS long to realize this?!?!) realize that before anything - our family comes first.

I'm actually embarrassed to say that there were times in my life where I put my job before my family. I loved my job as a teacher, and I loved some of my children like I loved my own children. But those days have stopped, and, it's painful to say it, but I refuse to ever. Ever. Put my job before my family. Again.

I guess I can say I am thankful that I have come to this revelation while my children can still benefit from me making this realization. I also hope that I can make up for lost time and provide my children with what they need from here on out.

And although I cannot thank Dominic Torreto for helping me realize this, I can thank him for reminding me that what I am about to do is the right thing to do.  Mainly I have to keep telling myself this because I get lost in the worry and anxiety that I'm not going to be able to provide, financially, what I have promised I can provide while providing an education to my children full of curiosity and rigorous learning. I left the theater tonight not only telling myself I cannot wait this long to see a movie on the IMAX again, but also reminding myself that what Dominic says is the truth.  I can feel my energy shifting into a different mindset, and I love who I am becoming.

I won't miss the bullets. I won't miss the action. I won't miss the feeling of contribution, and I certainly won't miss the institution. And I also won't, in ten years, say that I missed out on some of the best years of the lives of my two children.

Why I have chosen to keep my children out of the system

I met today with a woman who looked just like me a few months ago - at a complete loss for what to do next.  She's a public educator, just like me, and her entire being screamed for relief.  She also has two children, and what I heard from her loud and clear was her discomfort at sending her soon-to-be kindergartner  into the public education system.  And most of the private schools don't provide much comfort either.

Our original intention was to try to join forces in a new business venture that would hopefully keep the two of us out of going back into public ed permanently, but as we talked, we moved into the idea of homeschooling.  She'd considered it, but after we talked, I kind of feel like she's really considering it now.

Why am I leaving?  Why am I sheltering my own children from the public education system?  Those answers are easy. Philosophical differences.

When I first became a teacher, I felt like it was my job to teach.  To teach kids to toe the line.  To teach them to be responsible citizens. To teach them respect.  It was my job to have an orderly, yet creative classroom where each student wrote their first and last name on a paper, and points were granted for sheer effort.  This was during a time and in a place where my students' lives were not dictated by long orange busses, and they could arrive at school an hour beforehand and stay for hours afterward.  And they did.  I built a lot of relationships this way.

I can recall walking with a group of kids down a side street in Berwyn - shaded by trees.  They chatted loudly as we made our way to a classmate's house.  He'd recently been hit by a car and was stuck in his upstairs apartment because he was wheelchair bound for several weeks.  Another pair of kiddos (cousins) - when I worked on the east side of Aurora - never went home before me.  If I stayed until six, they stayed and walked me to my car.  They cleaned lab tables and took care of my fish.  Whatever I asked, they did.

As time went on my philosophy transformed. I also had children of my own.  It was at this time that I began to see education from the eyes of a parent instead of from the know-it-all eyes of a teacher in her first five years of teaching.  I'd never been satisfied with my grading system until I changed it to reflect mastery of the subject instead of number of complete homework assignments.  And when RtI started I thought I had died and gone to heaven.  Finally.  A way to track our kiddos through data-driven means and to find out which ones were just merely getting by and which were actually making progress.  And a way to fix them all!

But education today is like missing an exit on the expressway.  We were good for about two years and then we missed the turn off.  While we probably should have taken a look at the amount of data we were processing, instead we continued to plow down the busy expressway without even glancing at the warning signs as to what was ahead.  Today we collect data - so much of it - that our children become numbers.  They identify with the numbers, and they are miserable if the numbers don't tell them what they need.

I'm a mathematical gal, but even I know when it's time to put away the spreadsheet and look into the eyes of the child sitting in front of you.  That child may likely be one who can't take a test on a computer or had a bad morning before this very important assessment - or, heaven forbid, doesn't give a rats hiney about the test.  I had a girl last year ask me, "Miss, how did I do on this one?" (referring to the progress monitoring test she had just taken).

"Well," I replied, wishing I had had some better news for her. "Your score actually went down this time."

She smiled at me in a resigned way and said, "Yeah, I figured so.  I wasn't really feeling it today, Miss.  I have better things on my mind today.  See ya tomorrow."  And she turned and walked away, shoulders slumped. 

I spent a lot of time that year looking at numbers, and, frankly, I'm exhausted by them.  They make me happy when they say what I want, and they make me want to stab myself with ball point pens when they don't.  But here's something that never makes me feel that way.  When I teach a kid how to figure out the right way to make a "b" and a "d", and I see him doing it under the table when practicing his spelling.  Or when I walk into a session and tell one of my kiddos that we are going to work on spelling, and he asks if we can practice nonsense words today so that he can get the skill down.  That never gets old. 

And that is what I want for my children.  Who better to serve that to them than me?  And this, my friends, is why I am sheltering my children from the public education system.