10/25/22 By way of explanation for a random post in a dead blog, I just want to share the link to this years-old draft with my kids. On Facebook. So I'm finally publishing it. Done. ...I should come back...
2014 Random stuff, and not in order of importance.
This is something I saved from early in the fall, a sample of one daughter's Bible study. Love this method.
School stuff:
You know I am always threatening to
be a radical unschooler, and I did come close to making that jump this
year. But this is Amy's last year of "school", and even though she
practically unschools already, Amy didn't want to mess it all up with
something new. (We did mess it up anyway, but not with unschooling.)
Betz is just starting her high school career, and, having a fuzzy long
term idea about working in health services ?? someday, she wanted to
just do "school" the way that it's commonly accepted. And Emily, well,
Emily is, sorry to say, just subject to whatever I choose for her. So
the unschooling idea was abandoned, and we went for a compromise of
structure: academic co-op.
It
was time. The ACE/School of Tomorrow stuff we were using was what the
kids called "copy and paste" school -- read the selection and answer the
questions, questions which are given in the exact same wording and in
the same order that they are given in the reading. That was easy and
came in handy when we were in a hurry to get school "done" and run out
the door, but not a whole lot was sticking. For us it was busy-work and
an insult to kids' capabilities and creativity. Maybe we weren't doing
it right. (Probably not.)
But
ACE gave us some other problems. One, there was very little critical
thinking involved. So the first (and second, and third) time we were
asked to do something that required a bit of thought, a mutiny nearly
took place. I actually heard accusations -- from my sweet children! --
of torture and such like atrocities! It was very difficult for
them to get over being spoon-fed information and being asked to
regurgitate it back in the same form. Another problem -- I also felt the
need to try to cut the spending. We already have a good library and
plenty of educational stuff around here -- math books, English books,
great Bible and Baptist (church) history stuff -- so we limited our
school spending to just science and social studies and one elective.
Enter
co-op. Our co-op costs only $50 per family per semester, plus books,
which we'd have had to buy anyway. The older girls are taking a tough
Notgrass U.S. Government class and Total Health, plus a creative cooking
class. Emily has ancient history, physical science, and art. The kids
have essays, presentations, reports, speeches, and demonstrations to do.
We are completely out of our copy-and-paste ACE-school element, and
waaay out of our comfort zone! The sense of torture is real! And not
just for the students -- the mother also feels tortured!!! Due mostly to
the dreaded essay questions, all three kids have begged to be allowed
to quit co-op. One even went so far as to ask what terrible thing she could do to be expelled. (The answer was, "Nothing.")
But it got better. That same child, in the middle of yet another anti-co-op rant, told me recently that she'd be really angry at me if I did
let her quit. :) (I knew it.) And so we continue to be stretched
beyond the place we thought we could stand it, and -- we can do it!
We're growing! The essays, torturous as they are, are actually being
completed on time and are getting good grades!
And of
course it's not all bad. It's actually quite good. Each Thursday the
kids are excited to leave the house for co-op. They love every moment
they are there. They love the activity with other kids in their age
group. They're being given the opportunity to use their creativity and
use whatever media they are comfortable with to do their speeches and
demos and reports -- YouTube videos, PowerPoint presentations, even
writing a 1666 newspaper article on Sir Isaac Newton's legendary
discovery of gravity. They love giving their teachers the impression
that they are top students. :)
And I love the fact
that they are responsible to someone else for part of their school work.
For I have discovered that turning that accountability over to someone
else's mom (for all of the classes are taught by moms), the girls have
really become accountable to themselves. And isn't that one of the
reasons why we homeschool, anyway? Ah. Success. It doesn't come easy,
but it's sweet when it does come.