Parent-Teacher Conference

Other than talking to myself, I have never been to a parent-teacher conference until today. I had to meet with our kids' Chinese teacher to see how they are doing. What she told me pretty much lines up with what is true at home - Ethan knows more than he gives himself credit for, but he could be doing even better if he slowed down and was more careful, and didn't let his fear of being wrong get in the way. Megan is extremely motivated to do well and works hard. She memorizes things easily, but she gets easily distracted, especially when she has a friend with her (and her best friend is in the class).

But over all, the teacher enjoys having them and thinks they're doing well. Yep, that sounds like what their homeschool teacher thinks too. :)

Another Reason to Homeschool

Almost every day of the week, our kids get a phone call from a neighborhood friend asking them to play capture the flag at 3 or 3:30. There's a sunken tiled circle at the center of our neighborhood where 15-30 kids ages 6-15 will converge to play unsupervised until the sun goes down. They generally come home dirty, sometimes with scrapes, always with stories about triumphs and losses.

Contrast that with this article about a recent ban on balls at a school in Canada, and I'm on the side of "I'm so thankful I homeschool" today. Not only that, but I guess I should be thankful I homeschool in China! I hear more and more stories of schools in the U.S. banning anything that might injure a child. Tag? They could trip! Handstands? Head trauma! Monkey bars? Never!

It's sad that safety seems to be becoming the value that trumps others - play, creativity, freedom, independence, survival skills. So thankful that homeschool allows our kids to have fun!

All Kinds of Learning

"So, today school is cleaning?" asks Ethan.


It started as a consequence for fighting during school, actually. I decided they needed to do some manual labor instead of bickering with each other. Then Megan remembered that she has wanted to clean out her toys and sell some of them for awhile, so she tackled that project. We haven't seen Ethan's carpet in quite some time (don't worry, it's only a 1x2 meter piece - we don't let him get THAT messy) so he set about organizing everything I pushed off onto the floor while I vacuumed.

Ethan remarked that he wasn't going to finish his schoolwork as a result of all the cleaning. I told him that cleaning was taking the place of school, hence the comment.

I went on to tell him that cleaning teaches us to be responsible for our belongings, keeps our stuff from getting too dirty, and in the process helps us find those things we've been looking for.

Why am I telling you all this? Partly to remind myself that learning isn't just about school.

Homeschooling vs the Dog

One of my greatest hesitations about continuing with our dog journey is whether or not it's feasible to homeschool. The problem? She's most active in the morning, and our schoolroom is upstairs. We haven't allowed her to go up there because she's not house trained yet and I value my carpet. Not to mention she's a distraction. She had down times when we put her in her crate, but she can't possibly stay in there from 8-12 every morning. The Dog Whisperer would disapprove.

We tried several options the first week and a half. We tried doing school in the living room. We tried the kids doing what they could upstairs with me watching Scout, then cramming in whatever we needed to do together while she was sleeping. It's all felt quite chaotic and frustrating, and a lot of things have been dropped.

This morning I wrote in detail on the board what they both needed to do. None of it was really anything I HAD to be there to do with them, although some of it (history) I normally do. I decided for our sanity and to keep a less stressful atmosphere in the house, it would be better to let them try to do it on theier own.

Three and a half hours later, they are done with their work. I'm not quite sure how to feel about this - Jubilant? Dispensable? Dubious? Relieved?

I know there will be days when it isn't this easy, but in addition to watching the dog, I was able to go get supplies for a baby shower and buy more Coke Zero (necessary for survival). So it seems that we might able to continue homeschooling after all. Lucky dog.

Mama Said There'd be Days like This

Actually, my mom doesn't really give me advice on homeschool, but she's a wise woman and a life-long educator, so I'm sure that if I skyped her right now she'd say, "Oh well. Tomorrow's another day." It started off pretty well - exercise, great talk with Erik, super yummy oatmeal with raw honey, flax seed and cinnamon (a daily joy), then it all kind of went wacky.

In between determining which kind of worms our new little pup has (finally nailed it after a discussion with the vet - roundworms. Bonus: I now know how to say different kinds of worms in Chinese), cleaning up to make sure we don't get the worms (he said don't worry), escorting a VPU from our office to a friend's house, and planning my teaching time for this afternoon's co-op, homeschooling my own children sort of went out the window. Occasionally I would throw a worksheet or a book at them like, "Here! Learn something!" Thankfully they are pretty independent learners, and they can recognize when mommy needs a little space. We didn't end up doing half of what we planned to do, but it'll all get done eventually.

Now I'm inhaling a salad while waiting for kids to show up at our house (one came 40 minutes early - it's her first time and her mom didn't know how long it would take to get her here) before I throw some stuff in the slow cooker for dinner and head off to teach.

Tomorrow is another day.

A Good Day

Today was a good homeschool day. It was a "the stars aligned, birds sang, flowers bloomed and the peasants rejoiced," kind of day. I felt like I saw the kids learning and they were having fun doing it. They worked hard. I hardly worked.

Now they are outside playing a "wear us out so we sleep well" game of Capture the Flag with about 20 neighborhood kids ranging from age 6-14. That doesn't even include the family with 5 kids and the other family with 6. Yeah, we really worry about socialization here.

To all who wonder if homeschool is a good choice, today I say yes. :)

Accents

Our current "read aloud" book is The Island of Mad Scientists, by Howard Whitehouse. It's subtitled, "Being an Excursion to the Wilds of Scotland, Involving Many Marvels of Experimental Invention, Pirates, a Heroic Cat, a Mechanical Man and a Monkey," which tells you a bit about the humor of the author. This is the third in a series - we finished the second one last week and jumped straight into this.

The reason I bring up this book is that whenever I read books, I try my best to do different voices for the characters, particularly if it's obvious that they should have different accents. I mean, can you really read Lord of the Rings and not do Gollum?  

I committed to this during the first book of the series which wasn't difficult because although it was set in Britain, all the characters were British aside from a southern American. I can do decent British and Southern accents. 

By the middle of the third book, we've added a lot of variety and it's been challenging to keep up. At last count we have standard British, cockney British, Scottish, Indian, German, imaginary "Chiligriti" accent, southern, Canadian, robot, parrot, and most recently, a Russian pretending to Scottish. On top of that, there's male and female voices. Sometimes I get mixed up and it comes out as some kind of accent no one ever uses. But it's fun to try!

Another day in the life of a homeschool mom.