HeatherW | Heart of the Matter

August 31, 2010 By HeatherW 6 Comments

Our ten year old daughter loves to sew! She’s been sewing for two years now and though I do sew, I’m no expert so I thought I’d share how we have fueled this passion for our daughter.

After we discovered that she had an innate skill with a sewing machine (through her grandmother), we had the good fortune of having two sewing class offerings at our homeschool co-op which we certainly took advantage of that season. Since then she has been sewing various projects at home and we have been sending her to a refashioning, cooperative sewing classroom for a few sessions/events throughout the year as time and finances allow.

I’ve learned a few things along the way from which I think others can learn.

The first thing is to just provide the materials for creating sewn items. There are a lot of products on the market that you can start with if you want to identify an interest or just get things started. Klutz kits are a great resource for both machine and hand sewing starts. Beyond that, you’ll need the basics- sewing machine, thread, fabric, pins, scissors (designated for fabric), seam ripper, hand sewing needles, and a marking pen. Simple patterns and tutorials are available on the Internet so you can begin with not a lot of investment.

I have encouraged my daughter to pursue both hand sewing and machine sewing and we make it part of her everyday experience.

One thing to remember when sewing (and with any other handicraft or art experience) is that the process is sometimes just as important as the product.

That is sometimes a cliché in the art teaching world, but it holds very true at our house and I have recently learned a great deal from it. My daughter and I are very different in terms of our creativity. I love to craft just like she does, but I am more product oriented. I love to create because I want to see that finished product.

My daughter is a creative person from the inner most part of her personality.For her, creating is the key thing and whatever product comes out of that will be just fine. She finds more joy in the journey!

This is really something to think about when you begin a sewing program in your homeschool. Will you be product oriented or process oriented or a bit of both? Ideally, my daughter will begin her creative process with a goal in mind, but often she likes to dive right in and she’ll enjoy the outcome no matter what happens. I have to remember this as I navigate this passion with her.

The sewing cooperative she attends truly takes this to heart and there are many lessons learned from how they operate. Sewing is a creative endeavor that has a reputation for being steeped in many rules. This classroom aims to develop the children’s creativity while teaching them some basic sewing skills. At home I work on more finishing skills with my daughter, while in the classroom she can immerse herself in that creative process and we’ll enjoy whatever she brings home. Recently she made a sundress, and she is currently working on a black velvet dress with a black polka dotted fleece bodice!

In the classroom, they encourage a lot of the kids’ own designs and visions for things and they don’t make so many rules as to discourage the excitement. At home, I make sure she practices and we at least talk about how to make a more “finished” looking product. On her recent dresses, she decided a hem would be appropriate while on other items, she will go with a raw edge. All the while she learns while doing and as she matures, I know the more meticulous pieces will fall into place.

Some resources we have enjoyed are:

Klutz Simple Sewing
Sewing School Blog
Bend- the -Rules Sewing by Amy Karol
Bend the Rules with Fabric by Amy Karol
Simply Sewing by Judy Ann Sadler
Betz White blog- I use her tutorials for projects.
The Polka Dot Chair- has a tutorial each Tuesday

These days, your grandmother’s kind of sewing is not at all the norm. I love how my daughter enjoys learning this skill while satisfying her need to create. I can hardly wait to see how her work matures as she grows older.

Heather is a homeschooling mom of four kids ranging from middle school to preschool and wife to a handsome chemical engineer. Before raising a family, she taught middle school science (with a BS in biological sciences) and has a masters degree in curriculum and instruction secondary education. Now teaching at home means the chance to provide the extraordinary for her children. She’s been homeschooling five years and you can read about those adventures on her blog, Blog She Wrote.

August 10, 2010 By HeatherW 8 Comments

Recently, as I was planning some school time with my daughter, I decided it would be fun to bring back The Year of the Dollhouse. Perhaps some of you know about my blogging friend Lynn and her idea to play and make a homemade dollhouse with her daughter everyday for a year a few years ago now. My daughter was 7 then and we did make some renovations to her house and did some playing, but it faded away. As I thought about what would make this school year special, I asked her if she thought doing another Year of the Dollhouse might sound fun. Now that she’s 10 my plan is to teach some home making skills through our creating and playing at the dollhouse. I pulled out a journal and began some dialogue with her. The journal is for us to plan and talk about our activities with the dollhouse and she loves it. Grammar correction is off limits in our journal allowing her to be free to communicate with me without a critique.

After hearing about the journal and the time I was going to spend with my daughter, my 8yo son wanted in on it too. Only I convinced him that maybe the dollhouse adventure wasn’t for him. Instead I suggested, the Year of the Adventure. His first question was, “Do I get to keep an Adventure Log?” And that is how journal time with him has begun. He and I will be reading Treasure Island and some of his favorite Jules Verne books and trying out our own adventures together. He loves his compass and binoculars and is an all American Adventure Boy.

Of course I wanted to find a way to have an adventure with each of my children. I gulped hard and offered to adventure and journal College Football with my 11yo son. He is a HUGE college football fan and I thought this would be a great way to connect with him throughout the season and I could give him challenges as we chat about team rosters and the National Championship front runners. Of course his absolute loyalty to the Virginia Tech Hokies would be prominent.

But, he surprised me by asking for a Redwall adventure instead. So, he and I will be discussing all things Redwall. He has in mind to make meals and write to the author Brian Jacques. I think he is secretly hoping that once this year ends, I’ll have enough planned to teach a Redwall co-op class.

And finally, my 5yo son requested some stories and after further probing, it turns out he’d like to draw pictures and tell me stories that I will write for him and read back to him. What a great idea for my Kindergartner who is too young to journal otherwise. He and I will enjoy time together and he tells a great story!

These, of course, are a version of the Adventure Boxes I shared with you all last summer. I had wondered then if doing adventure boxes and following a passion right during the school year rather than waiting for summer would be a fun idea. The kids won’t be totally immersed in an adventure at the expense of everything else, but it will allow them time to focus on something special they enjoy while getting extra time from my husband and me through journaling and activities.

I’m certain that we will look back with fondness at the memories we’ll make through our Journaling Adventures. What about you? Are you ready to make some memories with a Journaling Adventure?

$Math for the Young$

July 14, 2010 By HeatherW 2 Comments

I was inspired recently to write this post while playing for several hours with my five year old and some Unifix Cubes. He and I had a grand time making patterns, counting, and measuring. It made me realize again how much math we can do while we play and how important playful math is to young, aspiring mathematicians.

Generally speaking there are some widely accepted categories of concepts our children need to have in order to begin a solid foundation in math. They are Numbers & Number Sense, Patterns & Classification, Computation, Measurement, and Geometry.

You can play at any one of those concepts with a good set of counters. Another name widely used for counters is manipulatives. I really like the Unifix Cubes because they attach to each other nicely in only one direction. However, any counter will do- pennies, buttons, bears, legos, duplos (we used to use these a lot). So, if your budget is limited, dig in to the toys already in your house and see what there is to play math.

So, you have your counters and you have your young student, but you aren’t sure about how to play? Here are a few ideas:

Numbers and Number Sense: this category includes counting and one to one correspondence along with identifying sets of numbers. I like to use puzzles to teach counting- either the number match kind or the number train type. Almost all of my kids learned to count to twenty with our number train puzzle. There are so many opportunities for asking questions and counting with a good puzzle. Board games are another way to help kids learn counting. Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, and the Eric Carle games are good games to start with. Dominoes are a great tool for identifying sets of numbers and number matching. Kids love to play games and count.

Patterns & Classification: This category includes collecting like items, sorting, and patterning. I like to have my kids sort buttons into muffin tins. You can sort by color, size or texture and older kids can do more complicated sorting. Establishing patterns is important and you can do this using more formal products or you can make your own. With the Unifix Cubes or duplos you can establish a pattern and see if your student can repeat it. Funtastic Frogs have patterning cards and we’ve all seen bears or dinosaurs with patterning cards.

Computation: The beginnings of math equations- addition and subtraction is in this category. Counters that connect are a fun way to talk about adding and taking away items.

Measurement: Here we are talking about length, volume, time, etc. You can introduce measuring tools and use non-standard forms of measurement with young children. We used long towers of Unifix cubes to do some measuring and we counted the squares for quantifying our answers. Tape measures are a great way to practice counting and measuring themselves against other objects helps for comparison.

Geometry: shape math is what geometry is all about. Identifying and classifying shapes with puzzles, pictures, and shape hunts is always fun.

For readers who don’t want to go it on their own, here is a list of resources you can use with your young math students.

Family Math for Young Children from the Lawrence Hall of Science
Family Math from the Lawrence Hall of Science
Math Play by Williamson Little Hands Series
Play and Find Out about Math by Janice VanCleave
Games for Math by Peggy Kaye
Games for Learning by Peggy Kaye

No matter what you choose to use for math with young children or how you want to go about it, the most important thing is to get down and play! You’d be surprised how much fun preschool and Kindergarten math can be without a workbook and it helps to get kids off to a good start in math skills through play.

June 22, 2010 By HeatherW 3 Comments

How do we strike a balance between maintaining relationship and giving our kids ownership of their work?

When I first heard about homeschooling after becoming a parent, I kept hearing that homeschooling is about relationship. To be honest, I really didn’t get it. Now that I’ve been homeschooling for five years, I understand it more. Homeschooling allows you to invest in the relationship between you and your child without all the distractions of being out of the house all day and doing hours of homework, in addition to all the other influences that vie for our children’s attention!

I subscribe to 4 homeschooling magazines. In at least two of the recent issues, there is an article about our kids having ownership of their work. I find in our school that things go better when my kids “own” what they are working on.

But how do we let our kids be independent learners and foster that ownership (giving up the micromanagement of their school day) and still maintain the relationship building that comes from homeschooling?

It’s taken me some time to finish my thoughts on this because this really is a question that I’m still working out in our homeschool. So, I’ll have to ask you to bear with me as I think through the various thoughts I have on this. Much of our success in homeschooling is really based on us all working and discovering together as a family. That’s not to say I don’t let my kids work independently at all, but I do take an active role in facilitating most of the lessons.

At our house math, unit studies (with any discipline), geography, etc is done all together. I present the lesson and then the kids do work at their own level. It’s important to model the discovery process for our kids. As their teacher, we have an opportunity to model and coach our kids in how to find answers to questions. Last month, I wrote about doing science in this fashion. One of the things I enjoy about homeschooling is the excitement the kids have over finding something new. It’s a climate we seek to foster in our home.

Ownership is twofold really- there’s the idea that our kids “own” what they are working on in the sense that they feel a personal investment in their work. Then there’s the ownership that really speaks about our kids being responsible for assignments on their own.

There is value in both. As our students grow older, it’s important for us to teach them how to “own” their work and how to work independently to complete assignments.

However, I think successful independence is only built when our kids feel ownership of their studies. To that end, ownership follows suit when we actively pursue discovery with our kids and model this for them. Likewise, too much independence doesn’t foster collaboration and discovery with others- it lacks relationship.

As you choose curriculum, be mindful of how much independence versus collaboration you prefer in your school. I can modify almost anything to suit my needs, but there are certain programs that make it very difficult because they are too far in one direction.

What is it you value in your homeschool? Is it purely to make sure your kids can do as much as they can on their own? Or do you enjoy fostering independence while discovering together? How are the choices you’ve made in curriculum and planning reflected in your homeschool? Do you have a good balance? Or is there room to improve on relationship vs. ownership?

May 18, 2010 By HeatherW 5 Comments

When I was considering what the topic of this month’s article would be, I thought it might be time to write about science – considering that’s my professional background.

In my experience talking with homeschoolers, some (though not all) tend to be timid about science – either because it was not a strong suit of theirs in their own schooling or because they don’t like it!

My challenge for you this month is to allow your kids to do some investigation. Go out of your comfort zone and present your kids with a problem and some materials to rise to the challenge. Giving your kids ownership of the investigation will take the pressure off of you and put it on your students to find an answer to the problem at hand. Feel free to join in on the fun and be a part of what unfolds. I like to watch portions of the time my kids are working on something so that when they get to a sticking point, I can offer some direction without giving any answers. Here’s a secret: That’s a great way to facilitate an investigation without always knowing all the answers yourself.

Present your students with a question (related to a point of current study) and allow them to decide how they would find the answer- scientific method anyone? Experiments don’t always have to be recipes from a book. Career scientists don’t always follow someone else’s directions. They design their own procedures to answer a question they have.

In the same authentic spirit, I really like to have my kids design their own data charts. Being able to choose a way to record information based on what they will be collecting is a great skill to refine. This also allows you to be spontaneous without always being prepared ahead of time with a lab sheet.

Or you might choose to give them an investigation unrelated to your studies, but related to one coming up or something they’ve been interested in or asking a lot about lately. Maybe they’ve asked why some things sink and some things float too many times! Sometimes I’m inspired by a magazine article (Homeschool Enrichment usually has science to try with our kids in each issue) or by a vendor newsletter I receive suggesting different ideas for investigations. I’ve been known to be sparked into action by what I hear my kids doing. Such was the case when we decided to find out the velocity of a marble traveling along the marble roller coaster. I was finishing up some things before our school day began and I heard them building an elaborate roller coaster course. They were having such a good time at it that I knew breaking off and sitting down to school might be met with some resistance. So, I shouted down to them and asked if they’d like to find out how fast their marble was going. A resounding, “Yes!” came the reply.

What followed was a meeting to determine how we might be able to find out the speed of the marble. Essentially, my kids helped to derive the formula for velocity based on what they could measure. We had to measure distance and time the marble if we were to find the speed. We talked about the pros and cons of the different ways they could measure the length of the track. We determined how many trials we should take. Once they began, they faced additional obstacles but they pressed on to find the data they needed.

This was a great lesson in physics and math and we spent the next day calculating and presenting the data and talking about how we did it. All of that good science came from suggesting to my kids they find out more about what their marble was doing. Instead of pulling them away from the fun, I nudged them in a more productive process while doing something they love. We answered the simple question, “How fast is the marble going?”

Another approach is to give them a book of experiments that speaks to their level and let them read through the procedure and try it out. Even if you aren’t inclined to enjoy this, chances are your kids will love it. There are so many good resources for this approach. I’ll name a few series that I really enjoy and use a lot.

Usborne has several series of books that are geared to experiments such as The Big Book of Experiments and The Usborne Book of Science Activities which are offered in three volumes.
Janice VanCleave books- Mrs. VanCleave has written numerous books on various disciplines of science and math that provide directions for students to try out the science and even provide a simple explanation as to why it works that way.
DK Publishing also has a number of books on science activities usually with extensive pictures of each step along the way.

The big take home message is to try and provide an environment in your homeschool that invites questioning and allows your children to investigate an answer. Some of our finest homeschooling moments have been experienced this way. We once did a very large experiment involving the scientific method and experimental design all from asking, “Which variety of popcorn is the best?” We had ordered many different varieties of gourmet popcorn and as we sampled them the kids asked that very question. This led into an extensive discussion of how we could find out. What followed was The Popcorn Pop Off Extravaganza and The Results.

Try not to be intimidated by formal processes and lots of planning. Just let your kids ask the questions and begin a conversation with them on how they could find out an answer. You never know…you could be inspiring a future scientist and the more you facilitate, the easier it gets. Everyone will look forward to the next big question and how they might go about answering it.

April 20, 2010 By HeatherW 15 Comments

The other day it was such an unusually warm day that while we were out for a walk in the afternoon; we turned toward the school and decided to enjoy the playground. When we arrived, there was an afterschool program there which was called together to return to the school building shortly after we got there. What followed was almost 10 minutes of the teacher coaxing the students to put their coats on and wait in an orderly fashion to go inside. “Whatever your parents sent you in is what you need to be wearing,” was the teacher’s direction. This initiated comments from the kids about whether their parents had actually been home to send them to school. If they had it, they had to wear it. So, despite it being nearly 60 degrees outside, there were students dressed in snow bibbers and winter coats. Finally, the teacher was satisfied and they followed her back into the school.

This scenario brought a flood of things to my mind as I reflected on my days as a public school teacher and on our homeschool. It reminded me that scenes like this are carried out all day long in a school building. Well behaved kids waiting on not-so-well behaved kids to get themselves together so the group can move on. It seemed absurd to me that the teacher felt the need to adhere to convention regarding outdoor gear so stringently. Yet, I do understand the teacher’s perspective. In order to make sure all the requirements are met, all the students must comply.

It was this thinking that led us to take our son out of school five years ago half way through first grade. Though he was reading fluently, he had to fill out every phonics activity. Instead of meeting him where he was skill wise, he had to stick within the convention of what was happening in that building at that grade level at that time. There was no room for stepping outside that convention. What was that about? I can only think it was about making sure that all students could meet the standard. It didn’t matter that he was well beyond the use for phonics. It was a benchmark that needed to be met by everyone.

But before we point our fingers at the traditional classroom and its “assembly line education”, let’s take a good look at our homeschools. It turns out we can be vulnerable to the same weakness. We have the option to choose curriculum, but what does that choice look like? Does it look like traditional school content which takes place in a home? Does it allow for flexibility? Do you find yourself constantly struggling with a particular child based on the work he is required to do?

When I was a classroom teacher teaching upwards of 170 students a day in a science classroom, I had to stick with convention. Teacher directed labs and well orchestrated movement around the classroom with neat data collection sheets and experimental procedures were necessary. They allowed for safety with 37 kids dissecting frogs and it enabled me to measure easily where each child was based on how they performed within the parameters I set. Teaching that many children a day many times meant sacrificing the notion that the student could design something himself. It was too hard to individualize instruction.

However, I think we run the same risk with our kids at home. Just take my daughter for instance. She is an out-of-the-box thinker. She hates convention. She follows her own rules. When I give an assignment, I have to be careful to evaluate her work with specific criteria, but HOW she gets there isn’t always an issue. She may choose to go about something so differently from the way I would. But is it wrong to go about things differently? One way may be more efficient and if you’ve asked for the most efficient way, then by all means the child did not hit the target, but many times that isn’t our goal. Our goal is simply did the child complete the task and is it correct? Not “did they do it my way”, but “did they do it well?” There is a huge distinction there.

Often, we as homeschoolers, are plagued with the shadows of our own educational experiences. How often do you second guess yourself because you feel like maybe you should be doing “more” with your kids? Or maybe you are chased by well-meaning “others” who remind you constantly about conventional means of education.

Our homeschools do not need to look like everyone else’s. They need to be our own and not held in by convention. In fact, whenever I have the opportunity to speak with others about our decision to homeschool, I always tell them that homeschooling is tough sometimes. It may mean family members are upset or you get a lot of criticism from any number of sources. However, having my kids miss out on all the extraordinary (and the ordinary) experiences that come with being educated at home is not worth it- simply for the sake of convention.

So, I want to challenge you.

In what way is your homeschool conventional? In what ways is it unconventional? Does the “conventional” get in the way of you discovering your kids and their abilities? Their strengths? Their weaknesses? Why do you do school the way you do? Do you desire to change anything but feel like maybe you shouldn’t for some reason? Is it a good reason? Or is it simply convention?

Feel free to leave convention behind and dig in for something extraordinary!

Heather W is a homeschooling mom of four kids ranging from middle school to preschool and wife to a handsome chemical engineer. Before raising a family, she taught middle school science (with a BS in biological sciences) and has a masters degree in curriculum and instruction secondary education. Now teaching at home means the chance to provide the extraordinary for her children. She’s been homeschooling five years and you can read about those adventures on her blog, Blog She Wrote.

March 5, 2010 By HeatherW 5 Comments

If you’ve ever had an accelerated reader in your home, then you know it is a challenge to keep up with what they read and to keep them in books. They read everything and anything they can get their hands on and as a parent you are constantly on the search for a good read for your child.

In my experience, there are three things that present the most difficult hurdle when you have a student who reads voraciously.

First is finding books that are emotionally appropriate for their reading level. Just because a student can read what kids in high school are reading when he is 6, doesn’t mean he should. Worse than reading books that are no longer challenging, is reading books that are inappropriate for kids of a younger age.

The second is pre-reading fast enough to find out if a book is off the mark for your child or not. At our house, my husband is the pre-reader. Unencumbered with the daily tasks of homeschooling and being a fast reader makes him a prime candidate for this job. If I see a book or series of books that I think might be appropriate, I bring it home and set him to work. In one evening he’ll be able to tell whether or not our son should try the book. He’s read a lot of good books over the years and it gives my son the incentive to read it. Once his dad has read it, then he knows that he can share what’s going on in that good book with him. We’ve seen some wonderful conversations over the years that have begun because of a book they’ve shared together.

If you don’t have a good system in place for pre-reading, then there are other ways to be more certain about a book choice. One is to ask around. Ask family, friends, and online homeschooling forum buddies about a book. Chances are someone has some experience with it and can tell you about the book.

Another way is to get your hands on some books about books. My favorites include The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease , Honey for a Child’s Heart and Honey for a Teen’s Heart by Gladys Hunt. These authors have specialized in sharing good books with their audience. The Read Aloud Handbook is all about reading good books to your children even as they get older, which is another topic all to itself, but in it there is a bibliography of good books.

As my oldest son enters the adolescent world and has been at this reading thing quite a long time, my focus has turned to books for older kids. Gladys Hunt has come to my rescue with a book written about good books for teens and how to use them to communicate with your teen. Reading is a good way to connect with your children and it will continue to be true as they enter their teens. I’m hopeful that since we have a well established culture in our home of discussing books, it will continue to be an outlet for our kids as they get older. Another good source is The Kid’s Book Club Book by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp. This book not only has a good reading list, but it shares how to organize and carry out a book club for various age groups of kids.

The last thing that I find to be a challenge with an accelerated reader is that as they grow, they get more discerning. This is actually true of any reader that has been exposed to good books whether or not they are ahead of the reading game. I have observed over the years as my son has read a lot of good books, he has little tolerance for books which are not. As Gladys Hunt says in Honey for a Teen’s Heart, “Excellence has a way of eliminating inferior products.” In practical terms, this means that finding a good book gets a little harder especially since they read so quickly! That’s all the more reason to find a good source of information on books.

Finally, I’d like to point out that typically we think of early readers as being “accelerated” readers. They head out of the starting gate at a full run and keep a steady pace. Keeping them in good supply of appropriately challenging books is a key to nurturing the early start. In addition, you can have accelerated readers that begin reading more on a typical schedule for emerging readers. Once they catch on, they begin to read everything in sight. Just because they didn’t start super early doesn’t mean they haven’t caught up to the fast pace of reading books and don’t have the capability to read more difficult books.

At our house, nurturing our good readers means having a print rich environment and making sure that trips to the library are a priority. We have so many books home from the library at our house sometimes we wonder if there are enough still on the shelves for others! I’m sure this is a familiar scene in the homes of most homeschoolers. Keeping track of which books come home and encouraging the good stuff is the task at hand. I encourage you to find the resources you need to help your kids make good decisions about books. If you should happen to make a poor judgment, all is not lost. Sometimes those less than discerning moments give us opportunities to have good discussions with our kids.

Enjoy the journey with your accelerated reader. Chances are they will take you to places you’ve not been before through their adventures with books and it gives you as the parent a special role as adventure guide.

Heather Woodie is a homeschooling mom of four kids ages 10, 8, 6, 3 and wife to a handsome chemical engineer for 13 years. Before raising a family, she taught middle school science and has a masters degree in curriculum and instruction secondary education. Now teaching at home means the chance to provide the extraordinary for her children. Between family and homeschooling time, she is working as volunteer staff for MOPS International as an Area Coordinator for NY State. She’s been homeschooling four years and you can read about those adventures on her blog, Blog She Wrote.

January 27, 2010 By HeatherW 5 Comments

Isn’t it amazing how different each of our children can be? As homeschoolers, we get to witness this first hand as we work with our students at home. Out of four children, I have one who can hardly wait to get started and could write pages upon pages of information or story and most of it will look great without much to edit. I have one who is very eager to write and is still a little rough around the edges. I have one who loves to write and won’t take an ounce of instruction on how to do so (let’s hope this improves after preschool!) and I have one who loves ideas and dreaming up stories but has no time for the conventions of writing.

Each of our children requires us to know them well so that we can customize our instruction for them. If you are like me and you have a child who is a very unwilling participant in the writing process, then you know it is a challenge to engage this student in a way that will be encouraging. Hopefully, with some extra effort on our part, we can see some progress.

Photo Credit: Marsha, Other Such Happenings

With my reluctant writers, I find it’s important to make the writing an authentic experience. Is there an assignment with purpose that you can have your child do? Letter writing, narrations on a current topic of study, or a persuasive piece related to something your child wants are a few ways to make the writing meaningful to your student.

These ideas let your student own some of what is in the assignment and it allows you to help them explore different writing applications such a friendly vs business letter format or a summary or a persuasive paragraph.

When I work with my reluctant writer, I try to remember that the process is sometimes more important than the product at this stage.

For example, one of the strategies my 9yo daughter enjoys is using word cards to form a paragraph. Recently, I gave her 5 words having to do with the Underground Railroad. My linear thinking brain assumed she would write five facts about the Underground Railroad thus completing my objective of having her write some facts- something I am hard-pressed to do with my creative, out-of-the-box thinker. To my surprise, what she produced was a fictional story complete with dialogue. She used all the cards. She incorporated the facts. She just didn’t do it the way I thought would be best. However, in the end it was all there and the piece gave us something to edit and talk about and improve upon. In other words, it was a success!

That recent experience brings me to my next point. When working with a reluctant writer, really try to figure out what is going to make this student motivated to write. For my daughter, it’s writing stories and plays. I would like to focus on some other skills, however I can still reach my goals for her while allowing her to explore writing the way she wants to do it. She loves to have her characters talk with each other and I’m all for it as long as she can punctuate it properly. She’s agreeable to learning the finer points of using quotation marks as long as I let her write dialogue in her stories. We both win.

I do not use a formal program for grammar or writing simply because I like to tie our writing into our current unit study. However, what some may consider l lack in formality, I make up for in consistency. We write everyday in our homeschool. Sometimes it lands in our lap. Just today, my 7yo asked if he could write a letter to his grandparents. He wrote a fine letter and our next step is to edit. He shared some great ideas and I did some coaching with him as he read his sentences to me. He did some rearranging and by bedtime thought his letter was ready to mail. I see a few things we can edit tomorrow, but what a great writing assignment.

Photo Credit: Marsha, Other Such Happenings

Finally, I think it’s important to keep in mind why we want our kids to write. My goal for my children is that they will be effective communicators. Part of effectively communicating is writing well so that your audience understands you- whether the audience is reading a paper or reading an email. I choose activities and assignments for each of my children that bring them closer to that goal- whatever that might mean for them at any given time during our school year. Continuing to model and coach kids, no matter how much or little they have written, is critical for the reluctant writer. Experiencing success and building on it makes a good writer. I look for opportunities for my kids to grow and to be successful.

Here are a few resources I use, that in their own way, share something about writing with children which I have found helpful.

Games for Writing by Peggy Kaye (lots of different writing games and activities to nudge even the most hardened reluctant writer)
Games for Learning by Peggy Kaye (includes similar games to those found in Games for Writing)
Creating Books with Children by Valerie Bendt (a unit study on making a book with kids- from planning to editing to publishing and binding. Our kids really enjoy this one)
Unit Studies Made Easy by Valerie Bendt (How to write and implement a unit study- with lots of information on the kinds of writing to assign during the study and how to evaluate it)

Perhaps you have another resource to share with us. Please leave a comment and let us know what you have found to be successful with your children.

Heather Woodie is a homeschooling mom of four kids ages 10, 8, 6, 3 and wife to a handsome chemical engineer for 13 years. Before raising a family, she taught middle school science and has a masters degree in curriculum and instruction secondary education. Now teaching at home means the chance to provide the extraordinary for her children. Between family and homeschooling time, she is working as volunteer staff for MOPS International as an Area Coordinator for NY State. She’s been homeschooling four years and you can read about those adventures on her blog, Blog She Wrote.

December 4, 2009 By HeatherW 2 Comments

Right now in our school we’ve been studying the Underground Railroad and The Civil War. They started as little “bunny trails” we wanted to follow after having read the Five in a Row book, Follow the Drinking Gourd. My daughter has taken an intense interest in the topic and we decided at a “conference” (my name for getting the kids together for a meeting to help decide the direction we’ll go in our school- they don’t get ultimate decision making power, but I do empower them to help steer us in the direction we should take together) that we’d jump in with both feet discovering all we could about slavery, the events leading up to the war, and the Civil War itself.

As any good homeschooling mother does, I immediately scoured our library system and ordered up many books on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, and the Civil War as I could find or see that would be good reading for the kids. Once they arrived, I picked them up and dutifully began working on a learning display.

Do you have one of these in your home? I’ve seen many versions. For some it’s the coffee table or a hutch. A place under the window or maybe a piece of furniture in the dining room. I searched for years for the perfect spot. I tried baskets and trays. Finally, a place called out to me. There is an old oak child’s dresser from my husband’s childhood home (and his mother’s as well) that stands behind our dining room table and it has a table runner on top. It is a relatively undisturbed flat surface in our house. We don’t have too many of those and the fact it that is largely undisturbed by our four children makes it the best place in the house to set up the learning display for the week.

The learning display is where I will set up books that go with our unit study. I can put out artifacts or other clues to what our adventures will be for the week. I put up related work there and showcase our current study in a variety of ways.

The kids know they are always welcome to visit the books there and enjoy them. I generally don’t specifically assign them a book from there though sometimes I do encourage them to find a book they like and to look through it. Sometimes I assign a Daily Quest that requires a child to find information there – either in a book or in some other medium as part of the display.

Perhaps some of you already do this, but do not see the fruit that comes from it. Maybe you’ve tried it before and find it difficult to maintain. Or maybe you don’t see your kids using it at all. If this is you, I encourage you to keep trying! I learned long ago that my very “hands on” daughter would see a book on the coffee table that would catch her eye and before long she’d be engrossed. Not only did I see her reading a lot, but she would share what she was reading with great enthusiasm.

That’s when I decided to really use this and work on providing a variety of books and artifacts at the learning display. Is it worth it? As soon my daughter, who is 9, requested to learn more about the Underground Railroad and I provided the books and other items, she started plowing through them and so did my oldest son who is 11. Literally, the two of them have read at least a half a dozen books each on the topic of slavery and the Underground Railroad and the Civil War as well as the biographies of significant people of the time. Does it make a difference? Let’s see. My daughter has been part of a puppetry class at our homeschool co-op this past semester and she made many puppets and wrote just as many puppet play scripts. One of them was about Harriet Tubman- a beautifully written short play about a slave boy who is helped by Moses- the mysterious person who helps slaves to freedom. Her puppet, which she constructed from paper mache, bears the likeness of its name sake. The play was written to portray the character trait of courage.

As my kids read more and more about the topic, I felt myself worrying about them getting ahead of our studies. If they read all about it at the pace they choose, then what will be left to discover during our studies. As I began to get more into our unit, I realized that the prior knowledge my students now held about the Civil War and the events leading up to it, only enhanced our activities as we went along. There was genuine discourse about what they had read as we worked together on an assignment- for example recently an article for a collaborative “newspaper” we are putting together.

Yesterday, as we were working on the articles for the Camp Kettle newspaper we are doing as part of the unit, my daughter was telling me all sorts of facts. For instance, slaves were starved so they wouldn’t run away. To which my 11 year old commented he thought the slave owners were wrong because it made them want to runaway more. I replied that the idea didn’t work out for the owners and my daughter agreed saying it was one of the things that backfired on the slave owners because it made the slaves try harder to get away. She has a very astute observation about the times back then and was able to do the ad on the page about a reward for runaway slaves. She said one reason that they wanted to do a sign with written names instead of pictures is because the slaves couldn’t read and wouldn’t know when they had been noticed. She was putting descriptions on the sign and said she listed fat because that was a very unusual marking for a slave because they were all very thin.

All the insight she has gained has come from books I’ve left around as available to read! When I think I let them read too much and there will be little left to learn, I remind myself (as a former public school teacher) that this notion of knowing too much about a subject is really a school teacher fear! To the contrary it is fun to talk about these things as we do the activities and learn more about the war. Yesterday we had quite a little discussion on how Harriet Tubman felt about President Lincoln and how she thought he wasn’t doing enough to end slavery. Meanwhile, Lincoln was working on unity and not having the south form a new nation where he would have no control over the issue of slavery. Had the south done that, slavery would not have ended. It was an interesting little debate and I think what made it so in my mind is that I was not having this discussion with my high schoolers but rather my 4th and 6th grade kids who had done little more than read books about a topic they wanted to know more about.

I’m often curious when I see the one to three paragraphs that tell the bare minimum of facts about a person or topic and that are followed by a handful of questions to make sure the student read it right. They are readily available to classroom and home educators alike and my guess is they are used more often than not. This would be a dreadful task for my daughter, but the stack full of real books about a person’s life and times that she could choose and read at her leisure based on a topic she told me she wanted to know more about was a delight! Which begs the question, why do we sometimes settle for less?

Providing a learning environment that is print rich- in all its forms be it fiction, non-fiction, picture book, chapter book, a set of flash cards, an internet site whatever it might be – just might delight your children. Take the opportunity to listen to their interests and just make it available. At first they might need active encouragement that leads them there (like a Daily Quest or a Scavenger Hunt), but once they get there, they will go back again and again.

And then you will see the difference it can make! Perhaps it will be your kids debating the merits of Lincoln’s Presidency at the dinner table one night. All because of an inspiring book.

October 16, 2009 By HeatherW 2 Comments

When we first brought my oldest home from school midway through his first grade year (back in January, 2005), I used to do a Question of the Day with him. Our only goal for him at the time was to restore his love of learning which had been efficiently squelched out of him in his brief public school experience.

My son loved the challenge of reading for information and bringing it back to me so we could talk about it. We kept the questions in a wooden canister that he painted for the task. A few weeks ago I decided it would be fun to bring it back to our homeschool (which has come a long way since those early days) and purposed to get a new box made. I retooled the name too calling it – The Daily Quest.

So, how does it work? Each day I put a set of questions in the box that the kids have to work on together. Usually it is related to our topic of study at the moment or sometimes it is meant as an introduction to a new topic.

The maiden voyage quest was about hurricanes. The kids had to work as a team to come up with the answers. What is a hurricane? What are two other names for hurricanes and where are they used? What is the difference between a tropical depression and a tropical storm? The next day they had to find out what made Hurricane Agnes a particularly harsh hurricane and where the most damage was sustained. They were able to uncover some pretty interesting facts to discuss at the dinner table.

I have some guidelines in place to facilitate the team building process.

They must:

Answer the questions together using reference books and websites.

Try to avoid just Googling the answer. Use websites such as National Geographic for Kids.

Write down the answer.

Work together without arguing or hogging. Work as a team.

Everyone must have a turn being the “recorder” – so it’s not the same person each day.

Everyone will contribute to the answer at dinner time. Make sure you include everyone.

Discuss where you can find the answers and give assignments according to age and ability.

On the Quest sheet at the top of the page I put The Daily Quest title with the date and then I have those rules in a box at the top followed by the day’s Quest. I make a document just for ease.

In practice, I have found it difficult for everyone to have the same level of involvement all the time. So, some days they have separate Quests. For my 7yo I like to have him search out the answer to a Quest in some easy readers related to the topic. We have a learning display in our dining room which is set up with seasonal items and our current unit study. This is an easily defined space for a young researcher. We also have a reference shelf in our school room for just such occasions.

This is not something I put a time limit on. So, the Quest is given during our Morning Gathering Time and the kids can work on it throughout the day as long as they follow the guidelines and they are ready by dinner time to discuss the Quest. It might work better if it was put in our “routine”, but I like the idea that the kids have ownership of when the Quest is sought after. In the same manner, they learn how to manage small tasks on their own without as much structure. Developing this skill is very important as they get older.

So, what adventures will your family embark on daily? Perhaps there is room in your school for a Daily Quest.