Montessori Homeschooling

Tessa's first year of school, age 13, from her parents' point of view

2010-12-19T11:52:00.004+13:00

In 2010, Tessa decided she'd like to experience school, and enrolled in a Montessori adolescent programme. Our feelings about the year are mixed.

On the down side, the school day is long. Tessa comes home from school tired and drained more than I feel is to be expected. I would be in favour of a reduced school day because of the opportunity cost to students of time spent on schoolwork, which could be spent pursuing their own study. Unfortunately, the school Tessa goes to holds the opposite view and chooses to extend the school day to 7 hours plus approx 1+hrs/day of homework plus homework in the holidays. In my view, a school issuing homework for the long, summer break is saying to students, we don't trust you to make good choices about how you spend your own time, and the work we come up with is more important and valuable than your other activities.

Homeschooling parents sometimes worry about whether their children are keeping up academically with school children of the same age. I can offer some reassurance: I believe it would be difficult for any homeschooling child to make less progress in maths than Tessa has made this year. This is greatly frustrating as Tessa has always loved maths, especially geometry. I wonder if maths is particularly well-suited to a mix of one-on-one instruction and independent exploration, progressing at the pace of the individual learner, because maths is so much about grasping new concepts, exploring them so as to fully comprehend them, and then building on them with further new concepts.

Tessa's school began the year teaching French as a second language but failed to secure a replacement French teacher when the first one left so switched to Spanish, after a break during which there was no foreign language teaching. Now, just as Tessa has reached a point in Spanish where she is beginning to really enjoy it, the school has decided that Mandarin would be a better language to teach and is hoping to offer Mandarin rather than Spanish next year. The year before Tessa joined the school, her classmates were taught Italian.

If different Montessorians were asked to list the principles of a Montessori education in order of importance, the lists would probably vary. To me, freedom (with responsibility) is the most important element of a Montessori education. Sadly, there has been almost no freedom of choice for Tessa and her classmates in their schoolwork this year. I believe the students would get a superior education if they were allowed to choose their own subjects and topics for study, and study those topics in their own ways.

But, on the plus side, Tessa has had the privilege of being part of a community of wonderful people: two classroom teachers and an outdoor education teacher, and 14 students aged from 11 to 15. I feel grateful to have had these lovely people in my daughter's life. The school has made it a priority to build a strong sense of community; the year started with a camp, another camp took place in the middle of the year, and the class holds a community meeting each week to discuss issues and make decisions together.

The students are expected to take a lot of responsibility for organising some of their activities. This has given rise to great learning experiences, including creating a menu plan with shopping list for the class's second camp; designing, pricing, constructing and maintaining a hen-house; all aspects of running various fundraisers; and holding a presentation of their work at the end of each term, at which the teachers keep very much in the background.

Tessa has had to venture out of her comfort zone on a few occasions, interracting with different people in the community: interviewing a local resident about the history of our suburb; discussing purchases with staff at the local hardware store; visiting residents in a retirement home.

Despite the down sides, Tessa wishes to return to school for another year, so we will be trying to make the most of the positives, and to support Tessa to minimise her involvement in optional school extras and do her homework efficiently, to free up a little time to pursue her own interests.

Josiah's school work while away

2009-08-26T09:45:00.002+12:00

Josiah and the rest of the NZ team travelling to the Climbing World Youth Champs were asked by the coaches to bring school work. The kids do a couple of hours of school work each day while away, partly so that the kids don't get "behind" and partly so that everyone gets some quiet time each day.

My first thoughts were to provide school work relating to the trip (e.g. journal, foreign language work): it seems a little crazy to travel across the world and then spend time doing algebra problems etc. In the end, we put together a mixture of activities relating to the trip and ordinary school work so that Josiah can do what he feels like at the time.

Keep a journal

Ideas to write about:

How is your climbing training going?

What training have you been doing?

What climbing have you seen?

How is the team?

Where have you been?

What did you do there?

What did you see?

What are your thoughts about the country you are in? About the people, the landscape, the buildings, streets, vehicles, food, language, anything else.

How are your attempts to use German / French going?

Foreign language

Keep a record of words and phrases that you learn and their meanings, in the languages of each country you visit.
In the phrase book of the language of the country where you are at present, find a useful phrase. Write it down and practise it. [We bought German and French phrase books before Josiah left. He and Tessa had fun with them.]

Spending

Keep a record of what you spend. Add 3.5% to every purchase made with the Prezzy Card.
Notice prices and convert them to NZ dollars when you are shopping:
1 Euro ≈ NZ$2
1 Swiss Franc ≈ NZ$1.30

Maths lesson

Read Gamma Maths [photocopied pages]. Practice each new problem type as you go.

Maths practice

Create maths practice problems from the list. [Josiah and Tessa each have a list of types of maths problem to practice, from which they choose three types each week; they create their own examples.] Write the date in the table each time you do a problem. [Photocopied pages of problems from earlier chapters of Gamma Maths also supplied.]

Language worksheets

[Rod and Staff's Building Christian English series.]

Reading

Take notes and/or use a highlighter while reading.
Science [Pages photocopied from Real Science for Kids Chemistry Level II.]
History [Pages photocopied from Kingfisher History Encyclopedia.]
Penguin Guide to Punctuation.

Hectic Year

2009-08-24T19:48:00.000+12:00

It's been a hectic year so far. So much so that important things have been neglected. I have not put the time into our homeschooling that it needs. It was a big job helping Josiah to get organised for his trip to Europe for the Climbing World Youth Champs but obviously worth every minute. Other time-consuming endeavours could have been done differently. Helping our local climbing gym to hold one of the National Cup climbing competitions that Josiah and Tessa love competing in is fun and worthwhile but I took on more than was sensible (homeschooling almost came to a standstill for three weeks around the time of the comp) and I will be careful to play a smaller role next year. Deciding to propose a One Day School for teen and pre-teen homeschoolers a few weeks before Josiah left for Europe was pretty silly, as preparations for Josiah's trip didn't leave me with spare time. Never mind; I found an enthusiastic teacher and eleven kids are attending for the rest of this term. The first day was last week and Tessa absolutely loved it. I think it will be great opportunity for her (and Josiah when he gets back) to be part of a community of learners. And hopefully I have learned the lesson that I really only have time for one project at a time on top of normal life! Normal life is full! In order to be able to re-focus on the kids, I need to be disciplined about taking on only one extra activity at a time and small extra activities only.

I need to have more discipline about the structure of our days too. One of the great strengths of homeschooling is the flexibility it allows to follow the children's interests and timing. But with flexibility comes a need for self discipline; otherwise nothing gets done at all. The kids and I have always preferred to have a schedule but we are (I am) not very good at sticking to it.

Josiah is going to the Climbing World Youth Champs!

2009-08-01T18:13:00.004+12:00

A rare double post; my apologies to anyone who reads both my blogs. Josiah is heading off as part of the NZ Youth Climbing Team to the Climbing World Youth Championship in Valence, France, in August. We are all very excited! We have set up a blog to enable friends and family to follow Josiah's journey.

Update

2009-04-30T15:37:00.000+12:00

It is the first week of the second term. After a very busy two weeks' "holiday", which included a climbing trip away, work for the kids' climbing club, a visit from one of my lovely nieces and none of the gardening I had planned, I am enjoying getting back into our "school" routine. It's been raining all week, one of those weeks when I truly appreciate the homeschool lifestyle: it's so much nicer to be snuggled up on the couch reading together than having to go out to school and to work.

We are continuing much as before. Tessa found the quantity of independent reading she was doing in the first term onerous so she is rejoining Josiah and me for history work rather than continuing on her own, and may do the same for language.

I suspect I am clinging to my language plan in the face of evidence that it is not working well for Tessa. We are reading through R L Trask's Penguin Guide to Punctuation, an outstanding resource. The explanations are clear and detailed, with lots of examples throughout. But Tessa wants to be doing. She would rather do punctuation activities than read about punctuation. I have been creating a language worksheet for the kids every week to enable them to practice what we have read about, but Tessa is unimpressed. I've had another look at the Montessori Research and Development Punctuation manual and will make use of some of those activities but they only cover a few uses of punctuation. Over the holidays, I purchased Rod and Staff's Grade 6 English textbook, Progressing with Courage from the Building Christian English Series, which is recommended in The Well-Trained Mind. It looks good. Maybe I should give Tessa the choice to finish the Penguin Guide to Punctuation now and then move on to Progressing with Courage, or leave the Penguin Guide to Punctuation till she is older and start on Progressing with Courage immediately.

The indoor climbing competition season is just getting underway and will keep us very busy for the next two terms, attending out-of-town competitions, helping to run a competition at our home gym, and the kids training hard. I have never yet succeeded in keeping basic routines going when life gets really busy or when I get sick. I have this hope that Josiah and Tessa will carry on tidying their bedrooms and doing their daily chores when I don't manage to check up on them. But sadly they are happy to suspend normal practice at the first hint that I am doing so. I am trying to simplify my expectations of the kids so that even in busy times it will be easy for me to ensure that the basics get done. I don't mean that I am cutting back on my expectations, just that I am organising them differently to make them easier to check:

Morning routine: tidy bedroom (not entirely - just check for clothes, dishes and rubbish); clear the work table in the living room. Must be done by 11am.

Chores and whiteboard. Must be done by 9pm. The whiteboard is stuck on our fridge and is where I note any extra tasks the kids need to do, e.g. if I notice they have left something outside, rather than interrupt whatever they are doing to insist it be dealth with right away, I just write it on the whiteboard.

Weekly task list of independent school work. I need to work out an appropriate deadline for this and negotiate the consequences of failing to meet the deadline. Some weekends, Josiah has still had half his independent work to do and has only done it at all because I've nagged him all weekend. The last week of term, neither Josiah nor Tessa did all their independent work.

Another expectation we have of Josiah and Tessa is that they leave the kitchen and dining table clean after they make themselves a snack. Sometimes they clean up without being reminded but often they wander off leaving a mess or do half the job. It's a hard one to police because often I don't notice the mess till a considerable period after the event, and often there is conflict about who is responsible. It's impressive how strenuously each will deny the possibility that they could be responsible for crumbs or spilt milk on the kitchen bench.

Montessori Printables

2009-03-19T11:47:00.009+13:00

Websites with Montessori printables for download

Montessori Materials

Livable Learning

Montessori Material Makers

My Montessori printables

Fraction circles

Fraction circles: whole to sixths

Fraction circles: sevenths to twelfths

Print onto coloured card and cut out.

Grid paper in Montessori hierarchical colours

Grid paper in Montessori hierarchical colours

This is a grid, colour-coded in the Montessori hierarchical colours, for children to record addition, multiplication, subtraction and division calculations on.

Montessori decimal fraction board

Decimal fraction board - file 1

Decimal fraction board - file 2

To make the decimal fraction board, print both files onto card. Cut the right hand margin from the first file. Glue the files together so that the right hand edge of the first file lines up with the left hand border of the table on the second file. Laminate.

A variation on the Montessori decimal checker board

A variation on the Montessori decimal checker board

This is a miniature, more abstract version of the Montessori decimal checker board. By the time I introduced multiplication of decimals to my son, he was moving very quickly from the concrete to the abstract on new maths concepts. I did not want to spend a lot of time making a decimal checker board for him to use maybe twice, so I made this quicker variation.

How to use

Please note: these instructions will only make sense to people familiar with the Montessori decimal checker board. To learn about how decimal numbers are taught in the Montessori curriculum, see a Montessori manual such as Montessori Research and Development's Decimal Manual.

Write the multiplicand horizontally along the centre of the checker board and write the multiplier vertically down the centre of the checker board (or vice versa).

Work out the product in each square of the checker board as you do when using the basic checker board: one row at a time, always starting at the right and moving to the left. Write each product in its square.

Just as with the basic checker board, any product greater than nine needs to be rearranged: the tens removed and one unit for every ten placed in the square to the left. Obviously digits written in pencil can't be “removed” and “placed” as straightforwardly as bead bars can. The best way to get around this will depend on the individual child. The rearranged forms of the products could be worked out on a fresh copy of the decimal checker board, with the child referring back to the initial copy each step of the way.

Or the products could be erased one at a time and rewritten in their rearranged forms. Or, as my son chose, the products could be written in their rearranged forms initially.

Finally, just as with the basic checker board, all the tens need to be swept together and added up, all the ones swept together and added up, all the tenths swept together and added up, and so on. In my decimal checker board, the row above the centre line is the base row. Squares above that row should be swept diagonally down and to the left; squares below the base line should be swept diagonally up and to the right. Of course once again figures written in pencil cannot be “swept” as easily as bead bars can. My son did the addition in his head, writing the result at the bottom of the page one digit at a time. Some children may wish to write the addition problem out on a sheet of grid paper to work out. Or the decimal checker board could be cut into rows, the rows realigned and then added together.

The prerequisites for this work are the same as for the Montessori decimal checker board: the child needs to be comfortable with addition and subtraction of decimal numbers and multiplication of decimal numbers by whole numbers, and needs to have had an introduction to multiplication of decimal numbers by decimal numbers to the extent that they have worked out:

0.1 x 0.1
0.1 x 0.01
0.1 x 0.001
0.1 x 0.0001

0.01 x 0.1
0.01 x 0.01
0.01 x 0.001
0.01 x 0.0001

0.001 x 0.1
0.001 x 0.01
0.001 x 0.001
0.001 x 0.0001

In fact, some children may enjoy filling out a blank copy of my variation of the decimal checker board before beginning work with it.

Some children may appreciate the extra cues that would be provided by a colour-coded decimal checker board in Montessori hierarchical colours. An editable version of my decimal checker board is available for anyone who would like to add colours. If you make a coloured version and would like to share it with others, please leave a comment; I am happy to host or link to a coloured version.

Montessori Manuals

2009-03-19T11:43:00.003+13:00

Manuals for ages 3-6

Discovery of the Child - Maria Montessori.

The Montessori Method - Maria Montessori.

Teaching Montessori in the Home: the Preschool Years - Elizabeth Hainstock.

Basic Montessori: Learning Activities for Under-fives - David Gettman.

Shu-Chen Jenny Yen's online Montessori albums.

Don Jenning's online Montessori albums at the Montessori Teachers Collective.

Montessori World Educational Institute online Montessori albums.

InfoMontessori's online Montessori albums.

Manuals for ages 6-12

The Advanced Montessori Method volume II (also called The Elementary Materials) - Maria Montessori.

Teaching Montessori in the Home: the School Years - Elizabeth Hainstock.

Don Jenning's online Montessori albums at the Montessori Teachers Collective.

Division by a 2-or-3-Digit Divisor: a Montessori-Style Teaching Manual - Lisia Grocott.

Montessori Research and Development Montessori manuals available for purchase. I recommend the Montessori Research and Development manuals reservedly. Montessori homeschooling with my children, I have used the Decimals, Fractions, Maths, Geometry and Language manuals for 9-12. Both children have thoroughly enjoyed the maths and geometry activities. I do not believe there is a better programme available, Montessori or other, for teaching elementary maths. However, the Montessori Research and Development manuals I purchased in about 2003 are riddled with errors. Many of the activities are explained poorly and required modifying before I could present them to my children.

What is Montessori?

2009-03-19T11:41:00.002+13:00

The prepared environment and the role of the teacher

In my opinion, the prepared environment is the base of a Montessori education. It is through the environment that the adult helper attempts to meet each child's individual, changing needs. The environment is clean, orderly and attractive. To begin with, the adult entices the child to work, through presenting and re-presenting a variety of activities, waiting patiently for the day when one of the activities will “call” to the child, and the child's concentration will be caught.

When that happens, the adult must quietly step back. The adult's role now is to protect that fragile concentration from interruption, for in the early stages, if it is broken, days or even one or two weeks might pass before the child's concentration is caught again. Even a friendly “How are things going?” or an awareness of being observed might be enough to shatter the child's concentration.

The child begins to make choices based not on surface appeal and whatever catches their eye but based on a deep inner desire to explore certain activities. The adult's role is to observe and consider, changing the environment and making new presentations and re-presentations based on the child's needs. The child will not be in this perfect state of knowing his or her own needs all the time; sometimes children will be slaves to whims. The adult must learn to distinguish between indiscriminate choices and the choices that stem from a genuine inner need.

Trust the child

I think the hardest task of a Montessori teacher or parent is to trust that children will educate themselves if allowed to follow their own interests as described above. According to Maria Montessori, there should be no compulsion. Children are invited and enticed to work, not coerced.

Respect

Closely tied to trust in the child is a great respect for the child. Not only are children treated with respect in all interactions, but their concentration is also respected. Adults do not interrupt a child who is absorbed in work, and children are taught to avoid doing so too.

Children's ability to care for themselves and the environment is respected. It has been observed that children derive enjoyment and a sense of pride and self worth from being able to look after themselves and their environment. To that end, presentations of practical life activities are made and children are premitted to do as much for themselves as they are capable of and as they want to.

The principle of respect encompasses every aspect of a Montessori environment. As well as respect between people, there is also respect for the things in the environment and for everything in the wider environment of the world. The Montessori materials are treated with care.

"Help me to help myself"

It is acknowledged that help can be a hindrance: when a child is capable, but only just, of doing up the buttons on a jacket and is trying hard to do so, it would be quickest to take over and do the task oneself, but that is not what the child wants, nor is it actually helpful to the child.

If a child completes a task or activity, ignorant of some sort of error, the child is not corrected. Instead the adult makes a note to re-present that activity at a later time.

The materials

Maria Montessori created a set of apparatus from which children can discover for themselves, and then practise, many different concepts. Even complicated mathematical concepts such as calculating cube roots are presented concretely with physical apparatus so that through seeing and building for themselves, children can reach their own understanding of each concept.

Blog Admin

2009-03-19T11:38:00.003+13:00

If you visited my old website, you will probably want to ignore the next three posts. My old website ceased to exist a while ago when the ISP that was hosting it free of charge underwent restructuring. I have decided to post the articles I had on the website here on this blog and link to them in the sidebar so that visitors new to Montessori homeschooling can find them easily at any time.

In the sidebar will be links to:

What is Montessori?

Getting Started Montessori Homeschooling

Montessori Manuals

Montessori Homeschooling Photo Album

Montessori Bells Online

Montessori Printables

Catch Up

2009-03-13T11:26:00.000+13:00

Josiah is enjoying maths. To combat boredom a few days ago, he decided to work out the surface area of a regular square-based pyramid of height 7.5cm and width across the base 5cm. He does this sort of thing from time to time; he whiled away part of the three hour ferry trip from Wellington to Picton at the start of our summer holiday with calculating the prime factors of 4444.

Our "free choice" days are proving a hit although they are a little chaotic with both kids wanting my attention at the same time, and with other activities interfering because our weeks have been busy. Josiah is spending most of each free choice day working on a science fair project, studying how much prey spiders catch in their webs. Tessa, with her free choice days, has started a blog and learned to crochet, among other things.

Tessa is enjoying working more independently. To begin with she took notes of all her independent work, but she found that tiring and is now taking some notes and meeting with me to discuss the rest, so that I get feedback on her learning.

I am very impressed with Real Science-4-Kids Chemistry II. I wish there was a Real Science-4-Kids Physics II.

Planning

2009-03-11T18:52:00.002+13:00

Just discovered I forgot to post this after I wrote it at the end of January ...

I did some school planning yesterday, working out a loose timetable and list of weekly activities. It all looks much more manageable and appealing than the workload we set ourselves last year; I am beginning to look forward to getting started. We are continuing with many of the resources we used last year but will be working with new science material: Real Science-4-Kids Chemistry Level II.

At homeschool camp last year, listening to other mums talk about how their families homeschool, I began to wonder if Tessa would like to do more of her work independently of Josiah and me, maybe in her bedroom. Just before the end of the school year, I asked her what she thought of the idea and she leapt at the opportunity to try it out. The trial went well and she is enthusiastic about working on her own this year. We will still do a daily literature read-aloud together - the three of us - and we will do French practice together (game of Fish), and seeing as both children are doing the same science course, we will do the science experiments together. As before, I will present Tessa a new maths lesson each week. For the rest, she and I have drawn up a weekly task list and she will work through the items on her own.

It means a change in the way I observe and check on Tessa's learning. Reading is an element of several of the subjects we study: History (The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia); Language (currently Penguin Guide to Punctuation); French (Hugo in 3 Months - French); Science; Bible. In the past, I have read aloud to the children and have seen and heard them taking in and processing the new information. Now that Tessa will be doing the reading on her own, she is going to take notes as she reads, for her benefit and mine.

Free Choice Days

2009-01-27T16:54:00.001+13:00

Today, Tessa wanted to brainstorm with me ideas for her Free Choice Days (one "school" day a week). This is what we have come up with so far:

Music lessons (of the teach-yourself-from-a-book-or-DVD variety) - piano / guitar / recorder / ukulele / singing.

A patch of garden.

Science fair project.

Sewing, knitting, crochet, etc.

Art lessons.

Write a book.

Projects: animals; history; geography; space / stars.

Make a movie.

Photography.

Reading non-fiction.

Political campaign: write to government, newspapers, radio; make posters, information pamphlets.

Programming project - make a game.

German, Maori, Latin, Spanish, other language.

We both think it looks like fun. In fact, Tessa has got started already: as I write, she is doing piano activities from John Thompson's Piano Course.

New School Year

2009-01-21T10:05:00.002+13:00

The new school year starts in two or three weeks. I'm excited about the changes I have planned. At the end of last year, there were two things I knew I wanted to do differently. The first was the number of subjects we were studying: as well as what I see as our core homeschooling subjects - maths, language, science and history - Josiah and Tessa were working on Latin, French, typing, programming, Bible reading and critical thinking and we were reading various books together. It was too much; everything felt crammed in and bitsy.

The other change I want to make is to have more fun. For whatever reason, I feel we didn't have as much fun with "school" work last year as we have in the past. I floundered when I tried to identify what would grab the kids' interest. And sometimes I didn't try: as the kids get older, I feel more pressure to have them cover the same material other kids cover at school, rather than study what interests them. I might be making a gross generalisation here but I believe part of the problem was also that teenagers and pre-teens are more demanding and negative than younger kids.

Cutting back is proving straight forward. We'd already dropped critical thinking, with the intention of picking it up again when the kids finish the programming book they are working through. We are discontinuing Latin. It makes sense to restrict our family read-alouds to one book at a time. Typing will be next to go. Josiah has finished the online typing course we've been using. Tessa will finish it soon. I must observe the kids' typing to make sure they are hitting all the keys with the correct fingers but as long as that is happening, I see no need to continue with typing courses: the kids will get practice through doing some of their written work on the computer.

What I am excited about, and where I hope the fun will be reinjected into our work, is an idea I have to set aside one whole day a week for work the kids choose entirely themselves. I am imagining that they might do one big project that takes a whole term, or lots of different things - something different each week. They might do more work on a subject we are already studying: science, French, etc. Or they might come up with something completely different. On the first kids' choice day of term, I plan to ask Tessa and Josiah to put together a proposal on how they would like to spend those days for the first term of the year.

Camp!

2008-11-26T08:54:00.002+13:00

I have a new hero: K, who last week ran the inaugural (AFAIK) Wellington Home Schoolers Family Camp. What a fantastic time! Judging by the fact that the few small homeschool events I have organised have always ended up being twice as much work as I expected, I imagine this was a huge job, and I am grateful she did it as well as deeply impressed at how she managed to combine "well organised" with "relaxed and flexible". (I can do the former but not the latter.)

Our Camp, at Brookfield Scout Camp in Wainuiomata, started in the late morning on Wednesday. Those of us camping put up our tents; the rest unpacked into cabins. After lunch were icebreaker games, followed by an orienteering activity provided by Brookfield. The orienteering took us all over the camp and was an ideal way to quickly get familiar with it, including discovering the swimming pool, confidence course and lots of little tracks through the bush.

After tea, more games, the older kids wanting to stay up playing, us parents not wanting to spoil the fun but eventually rounding the kids up and off to bed. It was lovely hearing a morepork close to the campsite and tuis in the dawn chorus but I was very cold.

Thursday mid-morning, more families arrived to join us for the day. We broke into groups according to the children's ages and began the rotation of the four activities of the day: abseiling, kayaking, confidence course and treasure hunt. It was at this point that Josiah met one of the several new friends he made at camp; this one shares his name, which created amusement for the two of them every time either was addressed for the rest of the day.

I spent the day supervising the kayaking on a small, still lake, which was enormous fun, though also challenging because a tiny island and a jut of land into the lake meant it wasn't possible to see everywhere at once. The little ones were lovely, some of them kayaking by themselves for the first time, their faces shining with pride and excitement. Of course the only two children to fall in came from the oldest group. That group, which included Josiah and Tessa, was a lot of fun though. They were very adventurous - clambering from one kayak to another out on the water and pushing a wooden raft around the lake.

Tessa twisted her ankle on the confidence course. Unfortunately Tessa's high pain tolerance and correspondingly mild account of her injury, combined with how busy I was at the kayaks, meant that all I did was murmer sympathetically. I didn't look at her ankle till we got home on Friday, at which point I discovered it was considerably swollen. Since then, we have been putting ice on it regularly, wrapping it up firmly, elevating it and trying to get Tess not to walk on it too much, but it is still swollen.

On Thursday evening, we sat around a campfire, having a hilarious time singing songs and later toasting marshmallows. Josiah doesn't eat marshmallows because of the gelatine, which is an animal product, and the processed sugar, which he tries not to eat much of. He toasted pieces of banana instead. When some of the younger kids noticed this, they were astonished and went around telling people about it in shocked accents. But soon the banana toasting caught on and as the marshmallows ran out, there were a few keen kids toasting pieces of banana.

Having learned my lesson, I wore polyprops under my pyjamas and a woollen hat that night and was a lot warmer.

Friday it was time to pack up, but there was also time to play and time for a last swim in the very cold pool (the kids - not me).

Best thing about camp: all the conversations I had, making new friends and getting to know people better. Seeing the kids play together in large, friendly groups, laughing and having fun. I also enjoyed being outside in the sun, the peaceful kayaking and bush walks, and the bird song around the campsite.

Unfortunately I was too busy having fun most of the time to take photos, so all you have here is Josiah and a friend, their faces covered in shaving cream and burger rings during one of the icebreaker games on the first afternoon. The game involved teams of kids throwing burger rings at shaving cream clad targets, the winning team being the one that managed to hit their target the most times.

Review: Schedule

2008-10-11T19:00:00.003+13:00

Schedule

This has been our daily schedule, followed four days a week:

First activity:

History or Science; twice a week each.

Second activity (the major new presentation of the day):

Language, Maths or Latin lesson; once a week each, which leaves one slot free for a miscellaneous activity.

Break.

Literature read aloud; daily.

Next activity:

Latin practice, Critical Thinking, or reading aloud from Bible or climbing book; once a week each.

Independent work:

Touch Typing, Maths practice, Writers Workshop or Programming; once a week each.

Chores; daily.

I think this is 4 - 4.5 hours work but it's hard to be sure because of the problems we've been having.

The order of activities is working well. I would like to insert daily copy work or dictation in before the "Independent Work". Things get problematic when one child finishes an activity before the other is ready to start the next, and during the break. In those free moments, the kids get absorbed in a book or a game or playing on the computer or playing cards or playing outside, which they then don't want to stop. If they decide to have a snack, it turns into a main meal which can drag on for more than half an hour.

I'm not immune to this myself: if the kids are both busy working, I'll take advantage of the time to write an email or do some other chore, which then ends up taking longer than the kids need to finish their work, so they go off and read or play etc. Then when I attempt to call the kids together for the next activity, there are moans and groans and complaints: "I want to finish my chapter," "I'm hungry," "I'm tired," "I don't want to."

Our "four hour" work session ends up taking all day and the complaining tires me out and depresses me.

The solution I would like to try is to restrict activities available during free moments to things that are easy to break off or don't take long. What comes to my mind is several activities that should be part of Josiah and Tessa's climbing training but have been neglected:

Cardio exercise, e.g. jog around the block.

Yoga / stretching.

Exercising antagonistic muscles (i.e. muscles not used climbing - exercising them helps prevent injury): press-ups, dips, shoulder presses, reverse wrist curls.

Climbing drills on our home boulder wall.

Climbing strength exercises: pull-ups, dead hangs etc.

Alternatively, the kids could do their chores during free moments so they don't have to do them later.

I think if we are more disciplined, i.e. can keep the work session to around four hours, there should be no need for a major meal during the work session. We start almost immediately after the kids finish their breakfast, so a snack in the middle should comfortably see them through till the end. In that case, the "break", instead of being a long meal, could be just ten minutes preparing a small snack and then I could do the literature read aloud while the kids eat. That would eliminate the difficulty I have calling the kids back to work after the break. I can easily grab my snack while the kids are working.

I will also need to restrict the activities I do when find myself free while the kids work: nothing that I am not willing to stop at a moment's notice. I dislike breaking off tasks part way through - so unsatisfying. But there are some things - mending, crochet - that lend themselves well to being picked up for a moment and dropped again.

Review: Language Resources

2008-10-02T09:03:00.001+13:00

The kids love books and love reading. To study language, we do the activities in the Montessori Research and Development Language manuals, which we all enjoy. We have recently completed Elementary Language Volume III on word study and are about to start Volume IV on punctuation.

I would like to give the kids more opportunities to practice writing and to improve at it. Once a week, we have "Writers Workshop". Some weeks the kids work at a writing project: a story or a play. Some weeks they do an activity from Wordsmith Apprentice, which is a resource I like very much: the activities are fun and practical. It's good to have Wordsmith Apprentice to fall back on when the kids don't have any writing ideas. I have also been allowing the kids to use Writers Workshop time to write emails and cards and other practical life writing tasks. I have wondered about stopping that practice and having those things get done outside Writers Workshop time but I think it is good to place value on routine writing - to encourage the kids to get in the habit of writing notes to friends and relatives, and lists of things to do, etc. And those activities add variety to our Writers Workshop time. Maybe variety is the key and as long as writing emails isn't all the kids do with Writers Workshop time, it is fine to continue including practical life writing tasks in the work session.

Tessa likes to write. Josiah has done some lovely pieces of writing but he still finds the writing of a sentence a momentous undertaking. I think both would benefit from writing more. In line with Montessori's idea that a good way to develop a skill is to perform activities in which the skill is isolated, I wonder about having the kids do daily copy work or dictation - so that they don't have to think about composing at the same time as writing. We could start with just a sentence a day and build up. It needn't be boring because there are so many interesting books in the house to copy from.

Review: Touch Typing, Critical Thinking and Programming Resources

2008-09-30T23:44:00.001+13:00

Touch Typing

For many months, the kids have been working their way through the lessons and games at Free Typing Game. I just leave them to it but I should really watch them from time to time to make sure they are not developing bad habits that will be difficult to break later. I recently noticed that Josiah hits the "c" key with his forefinger. I have tried to convince him that this will cause him problems later but he is sceptical.

Critical Thinking

We are working through Anita Harnadek's Critical Thinking Book 1. It's sometimes interesting but often just slog. It is more removed from real life than I expected. Before we started, I thought we would be looking at real pieces of writing and analysing them "critically". But a lot of the samples of writing used for analysis are just nonsense: "Either you don't have five legs or you have five legs." Few of the examples are interesting. I am wondering whether we would get more out of the book if I purchase the Instruction/Answers Guide or whether that would be throwing good money after bad.

There are enough interesting new concepts to make it worth continuing with and we are only on chapter two: it looks like the later chapters might be more practical.

Programming

Three or four weeks ago, we began using an outstanding resource: Learn to Program by Chris Pine. Josiah and I began reading through it together and doing the activities but Josiah liked it so much that he continued in his spare time and is now chapters ahead of me. Tessa chose to read and do the work independently from the start and is also well ahead of me.

The writing style is a joy to read. The explanations are satisfyingly thorough and are straightforward to follow. The activities are fun and build on each other. The book is available for purchase in pdf format, which saves the cost of postage for people like us buying from overseas. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

Review: Latin and French Resources

2008-09-29T22:54:00.002+13:00

Latin

We have one lesson to go in Latina Christiana! Studying Latin, even just for a year, has been a really good thing to do. It has been fun and has given us a fascinating introduction to some of the roots of the English language.

I recommend Latina Christiana which is yet another resource I learned about from The Well-Trained Mind. The lessons are straight-forward and the information interesting. We enjoyed the activities on English derivations most. Some of the Latin quotes for memorisation are boring (in my opinion) so we chose different quotes from the Internet. Josiah and Tessa rebelled against using recitation and writing to practice vocab so I wrote all our vocab on cards and we played Fish every week instead.

I plan to continue weekly Latin Fish games next term so we don't forget the vocab learned.

French

Rather than continue with Latin, we are going to replace it next term with French. We have chosen French because the 2009 World Youth Climbing Championship will take place in France, and Josiah hopes to try out for the NZ national team. There are no guarantees he will make it onto the team of course but just the possibility seems enough reason to learn some French It has often frustrated me that I don't know how to pronounce the odd French phrase in books so I am looking forward to getting started. I learned a little French when I was an exchange student in Germany many years ago but I can't remember a word of it

I have ordered Hugo French in Three Months with CD. It is aimed at adults and from my previous experience of Hugo Spanish in Three Months I know it will not be ideal for the kids: I will have to modify the lessons. But the popular language courses for children, Rosetta Stone and Power-Glide, cost about three times the price of Hugo and from studying their websites, I am not at all convinced they are superior.

Review: History Resources

2008-09-28T23:17:00.001+13:00

Our main history resource is another book recommended in The Well-Trained Mind: The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia. As we read it, we each choose details to note on our timeline. I love it; I am learning so much. The kids also borrow Horrible Histories books and magazines from the library on whatever period we are reading about in the Kingfisher Encyclopedia. When they are especially interested in a period, we take a break from the Kingfisher Encyclopedia to spend time reading books and doing activities related to that period.

The literature I choose for reading aloud is often chosen to connect with the period of history we are studying. This idea is straight out of The Well-Trained Mind and many of the books I choose come from lists in The Well-Trained Mind. We are currently studying the 1600s so have been reading Don Quixote and The Three Musketeers.

I think it could take us all of next year to finish the Kingfisher Encyclopedia because as we get to modern times I imagine there will be a lot the kids want to investigate more deeply.

I can't remember what resources The Well-Trained Mind suggests for high school history but I know what I'd like to do: I'd like to read aloud some of the excellent history books for adults I've come across:

Vaka Moana: Voyages of the Ancestors - The Discovery and Settlement of the Pacific.

Michael King's Penguin History of New Zealand.

Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom.

Perhaps not a rigorous high school history course, just to read books like those and discuss them, but so interesting!

Review: Science Resources

2008-09-27T18:05:00.000+12:00

We are currently reading How the Body Works and doing some of the many experiments suggested. I really like the How it Works and The Way it Works books by Readers Digest and DK, which are recommended in The Well-Trained Mind. I wish I'd discovered them earlier as some of what is covered in these books, my children have already learned from other sources. Tessa lost interest in How Nature Works because of that so we left off part way through the book.

How the Body Works has enough detail new to us to keep us interested. When we've finished it, I think I will preview the other How it Works books we own (How Nature Works and The Way Science Works - which is mostly Physics) and a similar book on volcanoes, mark the pages that cover topics Tessa and Josiah are unfamiliar with, then work through just those pages with the children.

After that (next year, I suppose), Real Science 4 Kids: Chemistry II, which I have already purchased.

Review: Maths Resources

2008-09-26T21:51:00.002+12:00

Last day of term today; a good time for a general review. Our schedule has not been working well for the last few weeks but I'm going to start with a review of the resources we are currently using ...

Maths

Josiah

Working through the Montessori Research and Development manuals. I modify the sequence a lot to suit Josiah: there's a lot of repetition that he would hate, and some concepts are only partially explained. Josiah gets annoyed when I present him with a maths rule without offering him a proof, or at least a good explanation of why it works. But I am not at all tempted to switch to a different maths curriculum: Montessori Research and Development's partial explanations of why things work are more than I've seen in any other maths curriculum or text book. I have been using the Internet successfully to fill the gaps in presentations.

We have just finished Elementary Maths Volume III, which concludes with calculating square roots. Not sure whether to go to Elementary Maths Volume IV next or finish Elementary Geometry Volume III, which we did some work from earlier this year but didn't complete (if I remember rightly). Might show Josiah the contents pages of each and let him choose.

Tessa

Tessa asked to be introduced to algebra, so that is what she has been working on for the last couple of months. We started with some activities invented by a Montessori teacher, which I read about on the Internet years ago and now can't find again. The activities use two identical, small trays with the "=" sign on a card in between them. For the first activity, on the right-hand tray there is a number of counters, and on the left-hand tray, an empty container representing "x" the unknown quantity, and a number of counters. The teacher explains that the two trays contain equal quantities and must remain equal. Therefore if we take away a number of counters from one tray, we must take away the same quantity from the other. This means that we can find out what quantity the empty container represents by taking away the counters from that tray and taking the same number of counters away from the other tray.

There are similar activities to demonstrate how to solve algebra problems with subtraction, negative numbers, multiplication and division. Tessa had fun with those and is now comfortable solving problems abstractly on paper.

Next I made up my own activity to demonstrate that the unknown quantities in algebraic equations can represent real things.

Since then, we have been working through the algebra chapters in Alpha Mathematics. This text book is aimed at kids two years older than Tessa, who have more familiarity with numbers and operations than Tess. But she is doing really well, working everything out.

We could continue, but it is probably a better idea to move to something different at the start of next term. I'd like to give Tessa a refresher course on the checkerboard. Then work through my "division by a two digit divisor" activities. That would take us to the end of the year.

Every week, I write up a sheet of maths practice problems for each child so that they get enough practice at new concepts to cement them in memory. I try to vary things to keep it fun and challenging.

Both kids have begun recording new maths concepts, with explanations, examples and notes on how to perform operations, in a notebook. The geometry notebooks the kids produced while working through Montessori Research and Development's Elementary Geometry Volume II were such lovely reference books that I thought it would be worth doing for maths too.

I'll post on other subjects over the next few days.

A new term

2008-07-20T22:19:00.011+12:00

It's been a long time since I've posted - things have been busy. The new term starts on Monday so I am making plans. Mostly, we will carry on as before, but one change needs to be made, namely to give higher priority to our time working at home. One of the things that stands out about our homeschooling last term is that we didn't do a lot of it. We had two trips to Christchurch, one for a funeral, one for a climbing competition; the kids had a trip to Tauranga for another climbing competition; and there were birthday parties and other activities. Each of the trips away took out more days than was strictly necessary (packing, recovering) and yet I assumed we could also fit in our usual extra curricular pursuits. It was our time homeschooling at home that shrunk.

This term, I'm aware we can't "have it all": something (other than homeschooling) has to make way for the days spent preparing for and attending the next two climbing competitions. It won't be easy; we already try to be efficient about shopping and errands - doing them on the way to or from other outings. We are already hard pushed to find time for the field trips, homeschool events and social visits we'd like to participate in. But I think if I identify four "school days" each week and mark them as such in our diary, that will help me to avoid over-committing us.

Josiah and Tessa have both expressed a desire to take music lessons next year. The thought of fitting those into our lives too makes me very nervous.

Anyway, the format of our "school days" has been working well, so we'll stick with that for now:

Reading

Morning Activity

Snack and brief break

Reading

Afternoon Activities

"Reading" means me reading aloud to the kids:

History: The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia and library books on history.

A novel, currently Lee Raven: Boy Thief by Zizou Corder.

The travel blog of friends of ours.

Other miscellaneous things to read that come up, such as interesting books, news articles or Wikipedia pages.

"Morning Activity" means one of:

Maths

Language

Science

Latin

"Afternoon Activities" means two of:

Maths practice

Latin practice

Writers workshop

Touch typing

Critical thinking

Miscellaneous activities that come up, such as making birthday cards, get well cards, etc.

Maths thoughts

2008-05-15T22:50:00.001+12:00

Last week, I gave Josiah a Montessori presentation showing that a number is divisible by nine if the sum of its digits is divisible by nine. Part way through the presentation, Josiah started talking about using other bases to check divisibility by other numbers than nine. Instead of exploring Josiah's ideas, as all teachers know we should in these situations, I ignored the interruption and pushed on with My Plan. Fortunately Josiah was not put off that easily and once we had finished with the presentation, he spent some time on his own exploring divisibility using different bases. What had occurred to him was that just as a number is divisible by nine if the sum of its digits in base ten is divisible by nine, a number is divisible by, say, "a", if the sum of its digits in base a+1 is divisible by a.

Josiah tried an example, checking whether 764 is divisible by seven by converting 764 to base eight and then adding the digits. If their sum is divisible by seven then 764 is divisible by seven.

I thought the conclusion Josiah reached after his investigation was interesting: he commented that knowing that a number is divisible by seven if the sum of its digits in base eight is divisible by seven is not in fact all that useful seeing as it's quite time-consuming to convert a number to an unfamiliar base. This is borne out by the fact that he didn't actually do the conversion to base eight correctly. He came up with 1214; the correct figure is 1374.

Sadly, looking at the page on which Josiah carried out the calculation, it is not possible to follow what he did. I have tried to instill in the kids that their maths working should be clear and easy for someone else to follow because I remember at university that in tests and exams, points would be given for correct steps in a problem even if the final answer was wrong ... but you didn't get the points for correct steps if the steps you took were not clear!

I think it's great that to Josiah, maths is something that you explore and analyse. When I was his age, maths was something that I enjoyed (and did well at) but I simply followed the steps I had been taught - it didn't occur to me to explore or even to think about what I was doing.

VIP

2008-05-02T20:36:00.001+12:00

Josiah and I met in the bathroom doorway this morning, each clutching a towel, each intending to jump in the shower. I'm sad to say that despite my education by immersion in the books of Maria Montessori, John Holt, Grace Llewellyn and others, my first thought was that it was my right to go first because I am the grown-up; as if somehow it was more important to get my day started than Josiah's. I'm pleased to say that those first thoughts didn't make it as far as my lips. After a pause, I said, "Shall we toss a coin?" At which Josiah, realising that if I went first, he could go back to bed with his book, magnanimously offered to go second.

Trampolines

2008-04-16T19:10:00.006+12:00

One of the children at our last Unschoolers Group meeting left in an ambulance. Seven years old, he had been wrestling on a trampoline with half a dozen other kids (including Tessa), had launched himself at another child, missed, and hit one of the trampoline springs with his forehead. The result was a large, and freely bleeding, gash. The trampoline did have pads to cover the springs but they had come away in places. Except in advertisements, I don't know that I've ever seen a tramp with the pads all neatly in place.

As it turned out, we could have stopped the bleeding and taken the invalid and his mother to the hospital ourselves, but in that first half minute when you have to decide whether or not to ring the ambulance, there was no way to know.

I have heard of fingers being severed by trampoline springs. I have heard of a baby or toddler double-bounced right over protective barriers, breaking a leg on landing. Josiah once landed badly off a trampoline and hurt his neck. Yet, there I was, inside chatting with friends, trusting that my children and others would use common sense on the trampoline. Now that I think about it, Josiah and Tessa, like most children, don't have much in the way of common sense!

So, Josiah, Tessa and I have been having discussions about safe use of trampolines. Children love tramps so much, it would be a shame I think to avoid them altogether, despite the risks. But I am inclined to restrict Tessa and Josiah to boring, one person at a time, jumping-in-the-centre-of-the-trampoline-only trampoline use.

Our young friend is recovering well, thankfully, though he may have a lasting scar.

What Josiah appreciates in a friend

2008-03-19T20:28:00.003+13:00

The kids did an exercise from Wordsmith Apprentice today, writing application forms for "unusual jobs" such as "friend" or "hot air balloonist". Tessa wrote application forms for the positions of "old person" and "dog walker" and had me fill them out. Apparently I am unsuitable for either position. Josiah gave me permission to copy his application form here:

Top Quality Friend

Full name:

What do you want to be called:

Age:

Date of birth:

Max climbing grade-

Indoors route:

Outdoors-

Bouldering:

Route:

Are you a technical climber:

Is climbing your favourite sport:

Do you want a friend:

What do your friends say about you:

Tick the following that represent you

Kind

Encouraging

Trustworthy

Acceptance

Do you think global warming is bad:

Do you support Greenpeace:

Do you do stuff against global warming:

If yes name some if no why:

If you don't believe in global warming why:

What do you have to say about arthropods:

Wordsmith Apprentice then asked the kids, do you think it's good that we don't have to "apply" to be someone's friend? To which, Josiah answered a definite "Yes".

PS Josiah asks me to mention that he wrote the application form by hand, then I (Lisia) typed it up, then Josiah edited it on the computer.

What a week

2008-03-16T10:27:00.000+13:00

Geoff's and my 15th (!!) wedding anniversary. Tessa's birthday. The kids' climbing club AGM, at which I volunteered for too many jobs ... when will I learn not to do that? Two trips into Wellington, one for the unschoolers group meeting and one to Te Papa which was where Tessa wanted to go on her birthday. Tessa's party. Geoff starts a new job on Monday. And I have a bad cold. (Josiah has the cold too: Geoff and Tessa got it first and are mostly recovered, then Josiah got it, then I did.)

You can imagine the state of the house The kids are pretty good about doing daily chores if I remind them and check up on them but when I'm too busy or feeling too unwell to do that, the chores don't get done at all, which is disappointing. I suppose they too have been busy. And unwell. But being unwell hasn't stopped their usual pursuits, except for Monday when Josiah felt ill enough to want to lie reading on the couch most of the day and agreed he shouldn't go to Boys Brigade. To my mind, if they are well enough for normal pursuits, they are well enough for chores!

Instant information

2008-03-15T09:26:00.002+13:00

Reading aloud to the children from Kingfisher's History Encyclopedia on Tuesday, I read "The Mongols dominated Asia for 100 years during the 1200s, creating the world's largest-ever empire, ..." Josiah immediately responded, "I don't think that's true: I think the British Empire was the largest empire." I acknowledged that the book could be wrong: the size of empires is one of those things that are hard to define exactly, and I prepared to continue reading. Josiah was not satisfied and requested we find out. I agreed to help him do so, thinking we would look it up later, but Josiah insisted we find out on the spot. So I put aside the book, went over to the computer and was soon reading Wikipedia's List of largest empires. (I had thought I would have to read Wikipedia's British Empire and Mongol Empire pages, but Wikipedia seems to have everything these days.) Sure enough, Wikipedia agrees with Josiah: the British Empire was larger, though the page discusses the difficulties in measuring empires in general and the Mongol Empire in particular.

What struck me about this incident was that Josiah took for granted that we could and should immediately find an answer to his question. His is the first generation for whom instant information has been accessible during their school years. If, at Josiah's age, I had wanted to know which empire was larger, I would probably have asked my parents or other adults around if they knew. I don't think they would have known. Then I might have looked through the books and encyclopedias we had at home but I don't believe we had anything that would have answered this question. So my next step would have been to use my local library but to be honest I would only bother to do that if I was especially interested in the question.

How to Get Started Montessori Homeschooling

2008-03-07T11:08:00.005+13:00

Nicky asked about this in a recent comment. "Where to start" is a question often asked at Playschool6 too. Here are my ideas on how to get started Montessori homeschooling ...

1. Read a brief overview of Montessori

Dr Montessori's Own Handbook by Maria Montessori is the best place to start in my opinion because it is a quick read and an excellent synopsis of Montessori. There are some lovely anecdotes from the earliest Montessori classrooms, which give a picture of Montessori in practice.

An even briefer overview of Montessori can be found on my website.

2. Read an introduction to the materials and activities

Elizabeth Hainstock's two books: Teaching Montessori in the Home: The Preschool Years and Teaching Montessori in the Home: The School Years are condensed Montessori manuals. They do not include as many activities as other manuals but this means that they can quickly be read from cover to cover, giving the reader a view of the Montessori progression, which I think is valuable to get early on.

3. Support groups

Playschool6, Montessori homeschooling discussion.

Montessorimakers, discussion on making Montessori materials.

4. Observe the child and start making and collecting materials

Observe your children. What are they interested in? What absorbs them? What causes them annoyance? What activities in their daily life are they striving to master for themselves?

Start preparing materials for Montessori activities. Any Montessori activity you think your child will be attracted to. Maria Montessori stressed that although her activities are designed in logical sequences, building on each other, the best order in which to introduce them to an individual child depends on the child.

Montessorimakers is a great source of information on different ways people have made Montessori materials.

There are a number of websites offering printable Montessori materials for download.

5. Start presenting Montessori activities

If the child enjoys an activity, allow them to explore it and work with it freely; then, over a period of days and weeks, continue with the activities that follow on. If the child is frustrated, put the activity aside for a while; try something easier next time.

I have found that doing Montessori at home means the adult needs to initiate more activities than a Montessori teacher in a classroom might. In a classroom, the children get ideas for work from watching each other. At home, the adult getting an activity out and working with it attracts the children to the work and reminds them of the choices available.

6. Observe the child and the environment and remove obstacles

Anything that hinders the child ... tv; playstation; toys that are just getting in the way and not satisfying the child; clutter. There might be more specific obstacles: a bulky jacket that makes it hard for the child to make full use of their hands; the child enjoys sweeping up spills but can't open the cupboard where the brush and pan are kept.

7. More information

Check out the Manuals, Books and Links page on my website for more exhaustive Montessori manuals than Hainstock's books.

One of the books that has helped me most in my homeschooling is Maria Montessori's Discovery of the Child.

Chapter 27 of The Absorbent Mind by Maria Montessori is all about the teacher's role in a classroom of preschool children new to Montessori.

A note on reading Montessori manuals

Montessori manuals (often called albums) give step by step instructions for presenting activities. I often find the steps hard to follow if I just read them. I have learned to read Montessori manuals with the Nienhuis catalogue open beside me so I can see what the materials look like. If I have the materials for the activity or similar materials, I have them beside me too, so that I can follow the steps with the materials. If I don't have the materials yet, I use pencils, paper and scissors to make makeshift materials as I go along.

Freedom in education for the 10-13 age group

2008-03-05T17:10:00.000+13:00

I have found myself facing a dilemma. Tessa has continued to be reluctant to start work some days, though once started on an activity, she is enthusiastic. Times like this, when I find myself cajoling the kids to go along with my plans, challenge my commitment to freedom in education. It's all very well for me to say Josiah and Tessa's homeschooling is self-directed and they are free to choose their own work. But when Tessa says repeatedly, "I don't feel like it now; I'll do it later," I get nervous and grumpy, worried that "we're not doing enough," and I become inflexible with both kids.

An exercise I have done once or twice in the past that I think would help now is to imagine what sort of education I would provide for Josiah and Tessa if there was no such thing as school, if there was no society norm in terms of the content and timing of education that I felt pulled to conform to, no legal requirements that I'm obliged to conform to. My answer to this question is different now than it was when Josiah and Tessa were younger. During the preschool years and the early primary school years, I think the ideal is to provide a Montessori environment at home, with the children free to choose their activities from one moment to the next, the adult working alongside, introducing new activities and re-introducing old in response to the needs and interests observed in the child.

For Josiah's and Tessa's age group, it seems to me that choosing work from moment to moment is no longer necessarily the best way. By now, a lot of the children's work is ongoing, e.g. learning a foreign language. Planning and working to a schedule have become, in my opinion, necessary elements of Josiah's and Tessa's work. I am happy for the children to direct the decision process on the content of what is studied, the methods used and the timing and format of study sessions. The problem I'm encountering is what to do when having made these decisions, the child then declines to carry them out.

I wonder what unschooling parents do if a child plans a programme of work and doesn't carry it out. I'm not talking about a child changing plans, like discovering through experience that they enjoy maths more if they do a big session once a week than if they do a little each day and changing their timetable accordingly. I mean when the child simply says, no, I don't feel like it after all.

My feeling is that my role of facilitator and helper in the kids' education includes being the stick-to-your-plans police. I am happy for plans to be renegotiated at any stage, but not on the spur of the moment in the middle of the work session.

I discussed some of this with the kids today and we have negotiated a revised schedule with a more definite finish time each day so the kids know they have some guaranteed free time after the study session. Tessa expressed concern that we hadn't included time for crafts in our plans, at which Josiah suggested that we add a time slot for "miscellaneous activity" to our weekly schedule. We have done that, and Tessa seems more cheerful about it all. I'm just hoping that Josiah's idea of a miscellaneous activity is not a game of chess with his mother

Birthday celebrations

2008-02-26T16:36:00.001+13:00

Birthday season is coming up. Tessa and Josiah and three of their cousins have birthdays in the autumn. I get a bit stressed over it all, maybe because Josiah's and Tessa's birthdays are close together so I end up organising two celebrations at once. And maybe also because some years I haven't been good at setting reasonable limits. We've ended up with a party with friends and an excursion somewhere out of the ordinary and a special dinner. There were birthdays during the kids' preschool years when I made three cakes: one for the party with friends, one for the dinner at home with extended family and one to take to school. (The party wasn't on the actual birthday so we didn't eat three cakes in one day ) Even in recent years, I've sometimes ended up making two cakes.

So in preparation for this year's round, I have come up with a list of options I plan to offer Tessa and Josiah:

A cake (note the use of the singular). An excursion somewhere special with a guest or two.

A cake. A special dinner at home with a guest or two.

A cake. Dinner out with a guest or two.

A cake. Afternoon tea and activities at home with a group of friends.

A cake. Afternoon tea and a visit to a playground or similar with a group of friends.

I would like to place a further stipulation that the last two options, which potentially involve me supervising and entertaining a large group of children, are only on offer to each child every second year - one year to Josiah and the next year to Tessa - so that I don't have to do two big parties within a few weeks of each other.

Maybe occasionally there could be an added option: to choose one of the expensive package parties offered by every kids' venue in town.

I wonder if I am being ungenerous limiting the options this way. I like birthday celebrations to be special and fun, but too much complexity and expense makes it seem like a day of excess to me.

Our homeschooling year begins

2008-02-16T22:39:00.002+13:00

Our homeschooling year has got off to a pretty good start. Tessa was nervous about her first Technicraft class (sewing, cooking, woodwork, metalwork and art) at the local intermediate school, and I was nervous on her behalf. But she loved it. The teacher was very friendly, making every effort to help the children feel comfortable. Climbing lessons have started up again, and the homeschool Chess Club.

Josiah has been keen to get to work at home. He has begun work on his project for the science fair. He did a project two years ago comparing how fast bananas ripen in different environments. It raised more questions than it answered so he has planned a modified experiment looking at the same question. Last time, I forgot to get Josiah to write his hypothesis until after he'd carried out the experiment, which meant he had to write what he had thought would happen and why, while knowing what had in fact happened - sort of a strange exercise. So this time Josiah's first task is to write a background, plan and hypothesis. Only problem is, although Josiah has decided how he plans to run the experiment and has worked out what results he thinks are likely and why, putting so much information down on paper is a mammoth effort for him. I don't know how to help him and yet ensure that the finished product is in his words not mine. At the moment, I am trying to write up in very lean note form what he has told me, with the idea that he can use my notes to get himself started. I want to make sure that the formation of the sentences is his.

Josiah has done a couple of maths lessons with me. We've all enjoyed reading about the vikings (history). We did the first critical thinking lesson in our book and the first language lesson I'd planned - prefixes. We haven't re-started Latin yet and Tessa hasn't done any maths or science yet ... she's been hard to motivate, still in holiday mode. Both kids have spent whole mornings in bed reading - they are hooked on the Warriors series at the moment.

I realise now that although the kids and I discussed what to work on this term, we didn't talk about our schedule or discuss how many sessions of each subject we would aim to carry out each week. This left me at a bit of loss when Tessa was reluctant to get to work. Will have to sort that out with them.

The other adjustment already called for is to my plans for our language work this term. Josiah wants to write a long story. I am thinking of suggesting that we alternate how we spend our language sessions: one week a Montessori lesson on prefixes, antonyms, homonyms etc, then the next week "writers workshop", we each work on a piece of writing of our own choice.

A friend brought a copy of Wordsmith Apprentice along to Unschoolers Group last week. It looked a lot of fun; I think I will try to get a copy of that to offer the kids as a writing activity. Josiah's story will keep him busy this term but Tessa might like to try Wordsmith Apprentice and Josiah might try it later.

More Planning 2008

2008-01-28T14:13:00.000+13:00

In addition to deliberating the core subjects, a few days ago I asked the kids to consider a list of other work and activities available, both outside classes such as climbing and musical instrument lessons, and casual activities such as visits with friends and going for bike rides, and either order those activities from highest to lowest priority or group them into those they would like to do this year and those they are content to forego. The results of this exercise emphasise how hard it is going to be for me to achieve my New Years resolution to do less. Both kids came up with three activities they are currently happy to do without: music lessons at home, art lessons at home and learning a musical instrument. Everything else on the list, they hope to have time for.

Climbing is a high priority for both of them, as are visits with friends. Unschoolers group, technicraft classes, Boys Brigade and family excursions also placed highly. In addition, Josiah had "down time at home" fairly high on his list, which surprised me a little, and Tessa had bike rides rated highly. Josiah said he would have ranked bike rides higher but he knew he would get a weekly bike ride in the summer months - getting to Boys Brigade.

The children's outside commitments will be:

Climbing		(2 lessons a week plus 2 training sessions)
Unschoolers group		(fortnightly)
Tessa:	Technicraft class	(weekly for the first half of the year)
Josiah:	Boys Brigade	(weekly)

If the children want to, they will also be able to enrol in school holiday programmes during the autumn, winter or spring school holidays:

Acting Antics

Inverlochy Art School

Swimming lessons

My preparation is going well ... in fact it's done! I have decluttered our shelves of resources and done the reading and practice for the first activities in each of our core subjects. School term doesn't start till 7 February; it's great to be ahead of things for once!

When we first started homeschooling, we tried to ignore the school terms, working, relaxing or holidaying when it suited us best. But these days, while we do take advantage to some extent of the flexibility homeschooling offers, we find it most convenient to follow a work routine during term time and a holiday routine during the school holidays, because of the various term-time classes the children attend. We will, though, be starting "work" early this year, either at the end of this week or Monday next week: Josiah has requested a gradual start to work rather than launching straight into it on day one of term.

Planning 2008

2008-01-26T12:58:00.000+13:00

This week I have begun thinking about the coming school year, what topics we might cover and what resources we will use, and discussing the possibilities with the children.

I think our core subjects will be:

Maths, geometry

Language

Science

History, geography, people

Latin or German

Critical thinking

Cooking

At the end of last year I had the kids fill out a survey form to identify what they had enjoyed most about last year and what they would like to do this year. Josiah asked to do more algebra and identified grammar as what he enjoys most about our language work and Latin work. Tessa wants to do algebra too, wants to study animals, enjoyed language and Latin work and would like to learn German, loved our history work and is looking forward to reading more about the Middle Ages, and would like to do more critical thinking activities. With all this in mind, I've come up with a list of the preparation I need to do before "school" starts:

Maths

Tessa

I'll have to look at what Tessa was doing at the end of the year - I can't remember! I have a feeling she was not quite at the end of a sequence of geometry activities and also that I had a couple of presentations planned on negative numbers following up on some introductory work she did. Unfortunate that we left off in the middle of things. It probably is worth finishing those sequences off - won't take long - before starting a new topic ... which will be algebra. I'll hunt out the sequence of activities I used to introduce Josiah to algebra.

Lately, we have practised times tables in the car. This seems to be an effective way to memorise the tables so we'll continue with this.

Josiah

... wants to do algebra. I'll have a look at the Montessori Research and Development maths manual I am working through with him to see if and when algebra comes into it.

Last year, Josiah learned to perform large multiplication and division of decimal numbers. But not having practised that work since, he would probably struggle if asked to perform a complex calculation now. I need to work out a way to make sure both children practise large calculations from time to time. Tessa isn't working with decimal numbers yet but is in the same situation as Josiah in that she has learned to perform large multiplication, addition and subtraction problems, and division of large numbers by a single digit number, but doesn't practise these calculations often enough to be confident every time.

Science

Tessa

... hasn't decided yet whether or not she will do a project for the science fair. I've told her that she must decide before the start of term. We will do any science fair project right away at the start of the year. I'm determined to have the work for the science fair out of the way within a month or two of the start of the year, rather than the science fair dominating our science time for the whole first half of the year as it has in previous years.

Tessa wants to learn about animals this year after learning about plants last year, so we'll be working through the relevant sections in How Nature Works by David Burnie.

Josiah

... is planning a follow up project to his entry in a previous science fair, further investigating how fast bananas ripen in different environments. When that is done, we will likely spend most of the year studying chemistry. I have purchased Real Science 4 Kids Chemistry Level II for Josiah and it looks great. I am a little nervous that Josiah would prefer to study some other area of science this year ... Josiah was deeply interested in chemistry about two years ago and thoroughly enjoyed exploring chemistry at that time. We moved on to other topics (physics and then onto phylogenetics or cladistics) but I think the interest in Chemistry is still there and that this is a good point to follow it up further.

Language

There are two Montessori Research and Development manuals that we have yet to look at: Volume 4: Capitalisation and Punctuation and Volume 5, which looks to be grammar. But before we start on either of those, I think the kids would enjoy finishing the manual on Word Study. A couple of years ago, we did the activities on compound words, suffixes and prefixes but for some reason we stopped there. The manual also has activities on antonyms, synonyms, homophones, homonyms and homographs. I don't know what homophones or homographs are so it will be one of those cases of learning with the children

I also plan to ask Josiah to come up with some language or writing goals for the year. He doesn't yet write easily and he would like to be able to - he recognises how useful that will be to him in the future. I think it could help to have some specific goals; we could then come up with a plan of activities that will enable the goals to be achieved.

Latin / German

Tessa would like to learn German but I don't think we have time for two foreign languages. So my plan is to finish Latina Christiana Book I, which we started last year. That will probably take till the middle of the year, then we'll switch to German. Much as we are enjoying discovering the connections between English and Latin, I think completing Latina Christiana I will be taking Latin as far as any of us want to take it at this stage.

So then, come the middle of the year, I will be faced with the same problem I've faced every other time I've looked into teaching the kids a foreign language: the most recommended language curriculum I know of, Power Glide, is very expensive. Although most of the teach-yourself-a-foreign-language books available are aimed at tourists and don't have strong writing and grammar components, the Hugo books look pretty thorough to me, and are a lot cheaper than Power Glide but they are aimed at adults and I'm not sure how much fun Tessa would have with it.

Critical thinking

Time to start the book I bought last year: Critical Thinking Book I by Anita Harnadek.

History, Geography, People

Kingfisher History Encyclopedia plus library books and activities.

Starting with the Middle Ages.

Cooking

One evening a week, kids to alternate.

New Years Resolution: Do Less

2008-01-25T13:21:00.000+13:00

My chief New Years resolution for this year is to do less. It might sound a bit odd but I really feel that we did too much last year. Too much of my time with my children was spent helping them get ready for climbing, Boys Brigade, technicraft class, guitar lessons, unschoolers group and visits with friends, at the expense of time available for us to do things together: walks, bike rides, reading, talking.

This resolution won't be easy to achieve. Josiah is one weekly activity down this year because his technicraft classes have finished, but Tessa has the same number of outside activities as she had last year. She has decided not to continue with guitar lessons at present, but begins technicraft classes this year. What I am tentatively thinking is that I will try to keep every second weekend, on average, free of outside commitments, for us to do something together as a family, and that during the week I will try to limit each child (and myself) to one outside activity on top of the regular commitments of climbing, Boys Brigade, technicraft and unschoolers group. We'll just have to see how that goes. Unschoolers group is such a big outing (most of the day) that it might be best not to have an extra mid week activity on the weeks when we attend unschoolers group.

Progress on my other New Years resolution is not going well. I'm sure planning ahead is the key, but I don't like cooking and therefore the temptation to procrastinate is high.

New Year's resolution: cook proper meals

2008-01-19T22:05:00.000+13:00

One of my two New Year's resolutions this year is to cook more proper meals. Last year, our routine of having a main meal in the evening went out the window because we were out three or four evenings a week, climbing, during our usual dinner hour. We tended not to feel like eating anything substantial early before going out. Sometimes we would prepare something that could be easily reheated when we got home, but often we just had a makeshift meal when we got home - toast with hummus and tomatoes (or the kids preference: peanut butter) or weetbix with fruit and nuts. This year, I would like to make sure the kids get proper meals most evenings. I think the trick is to plan ahead. If it gets to evening before Geoff or I think about what to do for dinner, chances are it won't be much. So my goal is to decide in the morning, or possibly after dinner the evening before, what to cook for dinner. And to do some of the preparation early in the day especially on those evenings when dinner has to be put together quickly when we get home late in the evening after climbing.

Parenting on holiday

2008-01-17T12:05:00.000+13:00

We are back from three weeks touring the South Island. We had a fantastic time but its nice to be home. Our 100sqm house seems spacious and peaceful after living out of a car and two small tents for three weeks and sharing bathrooms and kitchens with a whole lot of strangers.

I found parenting on holiday a challenge. The usual consequences for inconsiderate behaviour were not applicable. I think we did reasonably well at finding ways to give each other space and time alone to refresh: Josiah would often disappear to the camp TV room (I think he viewed as much TV on this holiday as he did in the entire previous year), Tessa would go for a wander around the campground and Geoff and I would read our books. A couple of times, Geoff and Josiah went climbing while Tessa and I stayed behind for a rest. But it was a busy holiday - lots of climbing and sightseeing and socialising. In hindsight, we didn't always get as much down time as we needed. Tessa lost it a couple of times. That's challenging enough to handle at home where we can all go off to different rooms for a while then deal with the problem after a break.

I think what happens when Tessa loses it is a difference in perception. On the holiday, for example, there were days when we went climbing or sightseeing when Tessa would rather have been catching up with friends or relaxing back at the campsite. When we made the decisions about how to spend each day, I considered how the previous days had been spent and how the following days would be spent: my perception was that over a period of days we were balancing the interests of the four of us (and sometimes also the interests of others). Tessa, on the other hand, saw each day, each event, in isolation. Her perception on any day when we didn't do what she wanted to do was that her preferences were being ignored. However unreasonable that seemed when viewed from a wider perspective, Tessa's feeling of not being heard in that moment was genuine.

One thing that helped a little was when, about half way through the holiday, I wrote an itinerary, slotting in our commitments and listing the possibilities for how we could spend each day. I think it helped Tessa to see that although, for example, there would be more days bouldering at Spittle Hill than she wanted, there were other activities to look forward to.

As Tessa feels unheard, I'm determined next time she is displeased to listen carefully to her objections, without interrupting, attempting to identify her points and truly consider them. The other thing I need to do is think of ways to help Tessa work on her self control, and on her ability to tolerate delayed gratification so that she can comfortably go along with the choices of others knowing that she will get to choose on other occasions.

The end of the school year

2007-12-17T21:19:00.000+13:00

We've been crazy-busy lately with lots on and preparations for Christmas. "School" has petered out, giving way to other things, without any sense of completion. I'm going to try to fit a few finishing-off-the-year activities into this last week before Christmas:

History We borrowed a stack of books on the Middle Ages from the library a fortnight ago after beginning the section on the Middle Ages in The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, and haven't even opened them. Will try to spend some time reading those books with the children this week.

Latin Maybe we'll just go over our vocab lists. We could do one more lesson.

Language Nothing formal. We have some great books to read together and for reading alone over the summer. The kids and I are enjoying Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol though Geoff complains it sends him to sleep. (This is a worry as the complaint was made after I read aloud in the car on a recent trip to Palmerston North while Geoff was driving!) The kids have been busy writing Christmas cards (and Christmas wish lists!) as well as writing a contribution each for the family Christmas letter.

Maths/Geometry I don't want to start anything new, so just times tables practice in the car.

Science Josiah and I are nearly at the end of the last chapter we want to read (for now) in Colin Tudge's The Variety of Life. I'll try to finish that with Josiah. Tessa is at the end of a section in her science book; we won't start anything new. Summer being an ideal time for nature study, I'll have a discussion with the children on what we could engage in over the holiday period: bird watching and identification, insect watching and identification, plant drawing, nature journal, plant identification.

A "course survey" for the children to fill out - asking how they found the year's work in each subject and if they have any suggestions for next year. I need to ask myself those questions too but that might be a longer process

The next month is shaping up to be just as full as the last; I don't expect to have time to post often. I hope to be back on board here by the end of January.

Wishing everyone a happy Christmas

A Narrow Escape

2007-12-16T23:36:00.000+13:00

This is Josiah's Star Wars lego stop motion movie, A Narrow Escape. Enjoy

Day plan

2007-12-06T20:51:00.000+13:00

I've started a new practice which is helping me to identify what the children and I want to get done in a day, and to make sure that there is time set aside during the day for getting those things done, including time for me to go for a jog every two or three days. Somehow things had got to a state where I felt that I should be constantly available to the children in case they wanted to do an activity that required my help. I was feeling guilty when I went out for a jog, which is ridiculous.

So, my new practice is to write a loose schedule for the day at breakfast time. First I write in any appointments: "6pm Depart for climbing," "1.30pm Visitor," etc. Second, I set a time for chores and, if we are going out in the afternoon or evening, the time for a snack or meal shortly before departure. The children don't like to do their chores early in the day but we have afternoon and evening appointments at different times on different days, so our evening meal time varies and there is no one time that is always suitable for chores. Chores were tending not to get done on days when we were out around tea time. So now I set chore time either shortly before dinner or shortly before we depart for an afternoon or evening outing. Once that is down on paper, it is easy to see where best in the day to incorporate a work session or two and a decent break.

On the schedule, I leave a large space under "Work session" so that when I go over the schedule with the children, a note can be made of which work they would like to do.

Today's schedule was atypical because we had a friend visiting in the early afternoon and the house was a mess so we did chores and a tidy up in the morning. This shrunk our work session; Josiah wrote his climbing diary, Tessa practised guitar and they both worked on their contributions for the family Christmas letter. Then it was time to grab a quick lunch before our visitor arrived. Here's a more typical example:

9.30am Work session
Latin
Josiah: climbing diary
Tessa: guitar practice
?? Science / maths / history / Christmas cards ??

12.45pm Break

3.40pm Afternoon work session
?? Family read aloud ??

4.55pm Chores
5.10pm Dinner
6.10pm Depart for climbing lesson

Times are all approximate! We use them as guides.

By the way, this weekend is Tessa's last guitar lesson for the year and we've only just thought of including her guitar practice in the work session rather than Tessa practising later in the day. I don't know why we didn't think of this sooner; it makes guitar practice much easier to fit in. Tessa's enthusiasm for practising has fluctuated but mostly been reasonably high. Some weeks, she has happily commenced without me reminding her; other weeks, she has not felt like it. She is very keen at the moment since she came up with the idea of composing a song.

Sleepyheads

2007-11-25T21:54:00.002+13:00

This is what I found when I went to go to bed one night recently. They were so fast asleep that the flash of the first photo didn't wake them and I was able to take a second photo. They like to set up camp in Geoff's and my room sometimes.

Review

2007-11-16T08:36:00.000+13:00

It has been some weeks now since we instigated the idea that rather than working on every subject every week, Josiah and Tessa could do concentrated stints on subjects if they preferred. This is going well: it is allowing the children to really get their teeth into a subject. They've both put time into science work; history has been another focus, and of course, the Lego stop motion movie.

I've begun to be conscious that there's not much maths going on and that Tessa and I have stalled completely in our progress through the drawing lessons in Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes. I have caught myself suggesting activities in these subjects with what is probably a prejudicial frequency. I think it would be helpful to me to review, say at the middle and end of each term, what work the children have done in each subject, mainly so that I don't get tempted to push neglected subjects on a day to day basis but can wait till the children show signs of coming to the end of a stint on one subject then look at my most recent review to identify which subjects have missed out a bit and pull out some activities in those to remind the children of their wider options.

The following is a brief review of Josiah and Tessa's recent work. I actually wrote the first draft of this a couple of weeks ago but didn't get around to finishing it till now because of being on jury service last week. I have put the subjects together in groups that make sense to me.

Maths, Geometry

Not a lot has happened in this area ... until this week: Tessa has wanted to do geometry activities every day this week! She is hooked again. She also did a negative numbers activity a week or so ago. Oh! and Josiah has been doing all sorts of statistical analysis of the Weetbix All Black Stat Attack cards - calculating averages of the various figures in order to determine which players are best on defence, which on attack. I am still finding sheets of graph paper all over the house filled with columns of numbers. Update: Tessa asked today to learn about algebra (the geometry activities she's been doing have involved some algebra). Will have to hunt out the activities I used to introduce Josiah to algebra.

I have put a multiplication chart in the car so that the children can get practice at their times tables by quizzing me and each other. Fun so far.

Language, Latin, Foreign languages

Inspired by the visit of our German friends last winter, Tessa has expressed an interest in taking up German again. Unfortunately, with the end of the year in sight and so much else going on, it doesn't seem feasible right now. I will look into German materials for next year.

Latin is going well. The kids decided they wanted to do one lesson a week, on Fridays. Coming up with English words derived from given Latin words is fun. I'm surprised how well we are all memorising the Latin vocab - I think it's because of the emphasis on English derivations - they help us create an association between the Latin word and it's meaning. I am keeping our Latin student workbook in the car so that we can quiz each other on our Latin vocab while we are travelling around town. At home, it's a bit boring to practise vocab but in the car it is nice to have anything to do.

Not much other language work has happened except for real life work: Josiah's climbing diary, Tessa's letter writing, Christmas cards.

History, Geography

We continue to enjoy reading through Kingfisher's History Encyclopedia. After reading each double page spread, we each choose something to record on our timeline. We are currently at the early Middle Ages. I've begun reading aloud The Once and Future King by TH White - the story of King Arthur. The children tell me they have previously read a library book about King Arthur, and have also read about him in Horrible Histories.

Somewhere recently (The Well-Trained Mind?) I read a reference to a book on how coats of arms were designed in the Middle Ages - the idea being that after reading the book, children could design their own coats of arms. Sounds like fun.

Science

Josiah
Reading about cladistics.

Tessa
Exploring plants, through the information and activities in How Nature Works by David Burnie.

Art, Music

Reading just occasionally The Bible with Paintings which is a collection of paintings of Bible scenes by famous artists, with the relevant excerpts from the Bible.

Tessa's guitar lessons continue; I like listening to her play.

Logic, Politics, Behaviour, Morals, Christianity

Lots of discussion around the recent local body elections.

After purchasing Critical Thinking by Anita Harnadek, I haven't found time to introduce it yet. Too busy just now. Basically the book is a collection of provocative discussion starters. Maybe we will get into these over the summer.

Health, Exercise, Climbing

I had a chat a couple of days ago with Tessa, who is thinking she may write a "Christmas letter" this year. (I write a Christmas letter to distant friends and relatives some years.) When we brainstormed ideas she could write about, I asked her what she likes doing. She replied, "Climbing ... climbing ... climbing." It used to be that Josiah was the one obsessed with climbing but now there is nothing to pick between the pair of them! They are at the climbing wall four times a week, discussing climbing all the time, constantly learning. Josiah has been plagued recently with finger injuries which is reinforcing what we have read in climbing books about the importance of exercising the "antagonistic" muscles (arm, shoulder and back muscles not used in climbing). I need to help both children develop a habit of doing regular antagonistic exercises, especially reverse wrist curls.

This week

2007-11-01T14:51:00.000+13:00

This is turning out to be one of those weeks where life gets in the way of homeschooling, though really that is a contradiction in terms. It seemed most of Monday was taken up with housework - probably only a couple of hours in reality. Geoff and I usually do the housework at the weekend but we were out on Saturday at Karori Sanctuary's Spider Day, and on Sunday, bouldering, which is rock climbing to heights that are safe to climb to without ropes, at Baring Head.

Tuesday morning, Josiah had Technicraft class and Tessa tried to decide on her costume for the Saints and Angels Party on Wednesday night ("a positive alternative to Halloween"). Tuesday afternoon, the kids had a friend over. Wednesday, I didn't do much more than help Tessa create angel wings out of an old wedding veil; you can see our results in the photos. The Saints and Angels Party was fun, though so loud and frantic that I came home exhausted; Tessa ran around with friends, made a bead butterfly and got her face painted; Josiah, with others from his Boys Brigade company, helped run an abseiling activity; I chatted to the friend we went with.

Today, Thursday, was the homeschoolers library class, after which Josiah and Tessa collected a stack of Asterix books to take home and read - not a particularly educational way to spend the afternoon but that's the kind of week we're having. Tessa is going to a birthday party at the pool at the weekend so at some stage we will have to go shopping for a birthday present and, I think, new swimming togs for Tessa - her current pair was too small for her last time she wore them and I think she's grown even taller since then - she seems to be going through a growth spurt.

The Lego stop motion movie

2007-10-26T20:17:00.000+13:00

I have been feeling anxious about how much of Josiah's time the Lego stop motion movie project continues to take up. I'd really like his time to be freed up again for other activities ... maths work, for example! Then, today, I was making a note of the various language work the kids have done in the past few months and I remembered that the stop motion movie had involved Josiah (who hates writing) independently producing a significant piece of writing: the script! For the last few days, Josiah has spent an hour or two each day adding special effects ("laser shots") to the battle scene photos; he still has 28 photos to go, poor kid. Given that that means the movie will continue to take up Josiah's time for another week, I think it would be worth my identifying what I see as valuable in the exercise, just for my own peace of mind, so I can relax about Josiah not having as much time for other work. So ... the Lego stop motion movie has involved:

Story planning, including creation of characters.

Script writing.

Artistic arrangement: setting each scene with Lego pieces.

Photography.

Precision, and attention to detail: for a stop motion movie to look reasonably fluid, the movement of objects from one frame to the next must be small and uniform.

Sound recording.

Team work: Josiah and Tessa took the photos together and recorded the dialogue together. There were several altercations triggered by artistic differences, which the children negotiated their way through.

Patience!! The time Geoff sat on Jabba's sail barge and it had to be rebuilt! And I think the photos for more than one scene had to be taken twice because the lighting or something else wasn't consistent the first time.

Editing: looking at each scene with the photos run together to identify where there were superfluous shots and where there were gaps that needed filling. In a couple of cases, the cast had to be reassembled for extra shots.

Working with software for manipulating graphics: adding in special effects and cutting carefully around objects so that they could be displayed against a different background.

Perseverance: sticking at the boring jobs like adding laser shots to photo after photo.

Self-motivation: although Geoff and I have helped when asked (Geoff more than me), Josiah has received no prompting from us - the driving force has been entirely his.

Okay, I'm feeling better about all this

Keeping tidy

2007-10-13T18:01:00.000+13:00

At one of our earliest family meetings, we agreed that we would tidy up after ourselves before moving from one activity to the next. Why is it then that our living room is once again in that familiar state in which I would be embarrassed to receive unexpected visitors? Let me describe what I see on the floor ...

a miniature soccer ball (lives on the living room floor for convenience so that is no surprise);

a skipping rope;

my gloves (lying where I dumped them when I got home from cycling with Tessa to her guitar lesson and the library this morning);

Tessa's back pack and a couple of library books (lying where Tessa dumped them when she got home from cycling to her guitar lesson and the library this morning)

one complete suit of armour made from cardboard boxes, one incomplete suit of armour made from cardboard boxes and five cardboard boxes which are likely to become armour within the next day or two;

a bead necklace;

a pencil;

a stick (others might object to my labeling this object a stick, preferring to call it a wand; but it did come off one of the willow trees in front of our house);

the sack our two-person tent is stored in (the tent is currently pitched on Tessa's bedroom floor; she's been sleeping in it for the last week or so);

a sleeping bag sack (been on the floor since Josiah returned from a sleepover at a friend's place a week ago and I removed the sleeping bag from its sack to hang it over a doorway to air for a few hours ... the sleeping bag has remained draped over Josiah's doorway for the last week, except when it has sat in a heap on the hallway floor because someone wanted the door shut);

two AAA batteries;

Tessa's slippers;

a piece of paper;

a pencil sharpener;

a photo album;

a sweatshirt of Tessa's;

two scrap book pages made by Josiah and Tessa that have fallen off the wall;

a supermarket bag containing all Tessa's stickers and special art things.

You get the idea and I haven't even told you about all the stuff dumped on the furniture! (Clean laundry, books, plastic bag, my crochet bag, a piece of paper, MP3 player, camera, keys, a duvet, a bag of dried apricots, and more.) Or what is on the hallway floor. (One of Josiah's slippers, Josiah's climbing bag, Tessa's climbing bag, Josiah's backpack.)

Sometimes, sticking to good intentions is just too much. Think I might go and eat some chocolate.

Why Montessori homeschooling?

2007-10-11T19:26:00.000+13:00

A member of the Montessori homeschooling email discussion group Playschool6 is writing a magazine article on Montessori homeschooling and has posted a list of questions for willing members to answer to help her with the article. Some of the questions were on topics I don't think I've written about previously here. In case they are of interest, here are my answers to those ...

Why homeschooling?

The reason we started homeschooling and the reason we continue to homeschool are different so I'll answer them separately.

We pulled Tessa out of a "Montessori" preschool at age 4.5 years because we were not happy with the environment at that school. Children only had limited freedom to choose their own work; the classroom atmosphere was intimidating: "No crying at school" one teacher told a child; low level bullying (kids saying unkind things to each other) was the norm each day when all four preschool classes used the playground together and three of the four adult supervisors sat chatting in a corner of the playground.

Initially, we planned to re-enrol Tessa in the school when she turned 6: Josiah was enjoying his time in one of the 6-9 classrooms with a loving, gentle teacher, although he was often frustrated and hampered by the lack of freedom to choose his own work. But before Tessa turned 6, we had discovered the advantages of homeschooling and decided to continue homeschooling. We waited till Josiah expressed interest in trying homeschooling, which he did at age 7, then he left school too.

Our primary reason for continuing to homeschool is the freedom it gives our children to follow their own interests and timing and to work and learn in their own style. And because we all love it :)

Why Montessori?

Because I agree with Maria Montessori's views as expressed in her books, that children learn best in an environment of freedom with responsibility, treated with respect, with a responsive adult present who observes the child and modifies the environment to better meet the child's needs, removing obstacles and introducing activities that cater to the individual child's changing interests.

How did you discover it?

When Josiah was 2.5 years old, my local homebirth group organised a day seminar on "alternative education". As well as a speaker from a local Free School (Summerhill style) and someone else I can't remember, Beth Alcorn of Montessori World Education Institute spoke about Montessori and demonstrated materials. I was enthralled.

What do you like in this method?

The outstanding learning that is possible when children choose their own work rather than having it set by someone else.

The ease with which it is possible to provide an individualised education for every child, catering to each child's interests, timing and learning and working styles.

The Montessori materials, which, to my mind, are the work of genius, especially the maths and geometry materials. The Montessori maths and geometry curriculum is far superior to any other I have seen. Josiah and Tessa love working with the materials and discovering concepts through their own exploration.

Wednesday

2007-10-10T22:02:00.000+13:00

Lots of work today. We read history together. Tessa opted to do science while Josiah wrote his climbing diary. Tessa read to me from the science book, How Nature Works, then we collected flowers and dissected them, trying to identify the various parts, before grinding the petals to make chromatograms, separating the coloured pigments. The chromatograms weren't entirely successful; we think we misunderstood the instructions and we should have ground whole plants or at least whole flowers, not just the petals, so that there would be a wider variety of pigments in the solution. Might try again tomorrow.

Next Tessa wanted to do maths; it's the first time she's initiated maths work in a while. I presented an activity on adding and subtracting negative numbers, which Tessa quickly mastered. I'll present the Negative Snake Game to her next; I should probably get it out and practise first - it's been a while. Josiah and I read from his current science book, The Variety of Life. The kids recorded the final lines for their Lego movie and Geoff helped them manipulate the recordings to make them sound like Darth Vader etc.

Everyone in the family except me is reading Artemis Fowl books. I read the first one a couple of years ago and didn't like it at all. I like good heroes. But Josiah heard about the books and got the first out of the library (soon to be followed by the rest). He loves them - is completely hooked - we've found him still reading at one in the morning on a couple of nights. I think he's up to about the fourth book now, and Tessa has started the second so she must like them too. Geoff's just started the first - not sure what he thinks yet.

First day back

2007-10-09T11:56:00.000+13:00

Sort of a productive day yesterday, although the kids had several fights. We read some history. (I need to make our next time line; we have come to the end of the Classical period and are about to start reading about the early Middle Ages.) Josiah and Tessa made lists of everyone they'd like to make Christmas cards for. This may seem terribly well organised; it's just that if it's left till the end of term, Josiah, who doesn't enjoy writing, will have a miserable time getting them all done, whereas if he does one a week, he is likely to have fun. He likes to make cards on Inkscape, taking considerable time over them.

Tessa began work on her Christmas cards immediately, making two beautiful cards, and went on to write postcards to her penpal and her cousins in Nelson while Josiah wrote his climbing diary. Their big plan for the day was to finish recording the sound for their Lego stop motion movie. I'm not sure whether they succeeded or not; they certainly spent a long time speaking into the microphone at the computer but I think for much of that they were just making weird noises to see what they would sound like when played back.

Today Josiah is at his Technicraft Class. I've read with Tessa from a book about writing and from a couple of history books of her choosing. She rejected at first my suggestion to play the Multiplication Snake Game for times tables practice but when I got it out myself to practise the presentation, she joined in and seemed to derive mild enjoyment from it. My next plan for Tessa's maths is to present some activities with negative numbers.

The end of the holidays

2007-10-05T14:00:00.001+13:00

After my 14yo niece went home, I tentatively suggested that the kids might like to get back to our new work schedule even though the school holidays continue this week. That suggestion was scorned. It was maybe unrealistic anyway as it turns out Tessa has three sleepovers this week. And Josiah seems to be having a productive week regardless. He has done some further work on his lego movie. Something made him get out our electric circuit equipment - wires, bulbs, batteries, switches, buzzers etc. He experimented making different circuits, trying to light two bulbs at once: the perfect opportunity to explore what happens when you place objects in series or parallel in a circuit. I hunted out our various science books which have sections on electric circuits and Josiah and I read what each had to say. Not a bad day's work. There are a couple of other experiments Josiah wants to try but we need more parts. [Update: just picked up the needed parts this morning and Josiah is at work building circuits again as I write.]

Both kids are spending a surprising amount of time reading, sorting and playing with the "Stat Attack" cards they've been collecting from weetbix packets and swapping with friends for the last few months. Each card has the picture of an All Black and his "statistics" - year of birth, average tackles, test points, weight, etc. It is hilarious listening to Tessa, who has only watched two or three rugby games in her life and fell asleep during at least one of those, knowledgeably discussing different All Blacks with her brother. Lots of maths is being done around these cards: how many children Tessa's and Josiah's weight (35kg) would it take to make an All Black? (Answer: approximately 3.) Josiah has drawn up a huge table of statistics and is spending long periods bent over a calculator and jotting down figures. I've had a peek at the table and at first couldn't work out what it all meant: Grant Fox is not two years old so why is there a "2" entered for him under age? I think what Josiah has done is rank the All Blacks in each statistic. That would explain why I keep coming across the cards lined up across the living room floor in different sequences.

I have been making use of journalling during the day to identify what I should do next. As I mentioned recently, writing is how I think things through and reach decisions. I have made surprisingly little use of this to control the flow of my days, restricting my writing to bigger picture, analytical writing after the event. Yesterday, soon after Josiah started working with the electric circuit equipment, I wondered if I should join him or if that would be interrupting. I picked up pen and paper and, from across the room so he wouldn't notice what I was doing, just started writing what I saw. I had only written a few sentences when I knew it would be helpful if I got out our science books: Josiah was questioning the causes of what was happening in the circuits he was building.

I did the same again later in the day when Tessa came home from a friend's place and immediately got out the aforementioned Stat Attack cards to show Josiah the new ones she had got from an exchange with her friend. Josiah was being a bit confrontational, grabbing cards from Tessa's hands to look at them - he had that urgency that kids often get when they want something. I wondered if I should intervene but as I wrote what I was seeing, I noticed that Tessa was entirely unperturbed - perfectly calm. Josiah soon relaxed too and the kids started a game with the cards.

Teaching

2007-09-26T11:23:00.000+12:00

A few days ago a family member asked me how my "teaching season" had gone. School holidays just started here so he meant how had the last term of homeschooling been for me. I didn't understand his question at first. Partly that was because I don't organise our homeschooling into terms ... it tends to constantly change and evolve throughout the year.

The other reason I didn't immediately understand my relative's question was that I don't always associate the word "teaching" with what I do; I forget that that is a word my extended family associate strongly with me. It's funny: when Tessa left preschool to begin homeschooling at age 4.5, she couldn't read. A couple of years later she could, yet I don't think of myself as having "taught" her to read. I think of the achievement as belonging to Tessa. Sometimes I even feel a little miffed that I can't claim the glory for such a wonderful thing, which did after all occur on my watch, but as time goes by I become more and more certain that Maria Montessori was right that if we want to help children's learning then, rather than "teach" children, we need to observe them, presenting activities in response to the individual child's interest - activities that are just easy enough for the child to explore independently and just challenging enough to engender the satisfaction of achievement, activities that entice the child. We need to hold back, allowing the child to work in their own way in their own time, while we continue observing so that we notice when the child is ready for us to demonstrate the next new activity.

Our new, looser schedule

2007-09-25T16:11:00.000+12:00

I haven't really spelled out our new routine, have I? We didn't pursue it for enough days before the school holidays started for it to get properly established and now we have a pleasant break from ordinary routine while my 14 year old niece is here for a visit. This is how I see our days flowing come the end of next week:

Morning meeting over breakfast to establish each child's plan for the day. Originally I thought we might also have a weekly meeting to plan the week but that seems a bit over the top: we can easily discuss any plan for the week at the first morning meeting of the week.

Then the large part of the day is made up in approximately equal parts of free flow time and planned study time. I believe the free flow time is important so that the children can truly go where their interest takes them, have time to think and relax; maybe we will go for walks and bike rides, play games. Plenty of unplanned - spontaneous - study and work has always gone on during our free flow times; the purpose of the planned study time is to enable progress to be made towards the children's longer term goals.

What is different in this from our old schedule is that we used to have a list of subjects we attempted to cover every week, but we have now agreed that if Josiah or Tessa wants to work, for example, just on maths for a while, or just on science and geometry, then that is fine. Every month or so we will look back and if there is a subject that has been neglected, we will make it a priority.

I'm not entirely sure how this will pan out each day. I think I will need the kids to commit at the morning meeting to doing their planned work at a certain time, otherwise I can see end of the day arriving before the kids get around to carrying out their plans.

Despite ongoing efforts to minimise our commitments, we still never have enough time for everything we'd like to do. For that reason, I intend to take advantage of the captive audience the children present during meal times - by reading to them. We all eat dinner together in the evening but other meals we eat independently whenever we are hungry. As long as I notice when either of the children stops what they are doing to eat, I'll be able to sit down with them and read to them. Our history and science work is mostly reading at the moment so that will give us some guaranteed regular time on those subjects. In addition, we have a climbing book we are reading together and the Bible.

Next, we have agreed that chores must be started one hour before dinner or, if we are going to be out at that time, one hour before we depart to go out. This will sort of mark the end of the working day. After chores, hopefully there will be time for me to read to the children - that will be when we read fiction together.

Friday

2007-09-23T14:32:00.000+12:00

My poor transitioning was an issue again on Friday. After breakfast, we got into a discussion about the kids' climbing training. Josiah has brought up several times that he misses being pushed by his coach, who has made the lessons more relaxed lately than they were. When Josiah first joined up there was quite a bit of strength and fitness training: the class went for a jog together and there were challenges to do press ups, dead hangs, pull ups, v sits etc. Josiah and Tessa both got talking about what they wanted from their lessons. When the discussion came to an end, I sat down to note what the kids had said and to develop a list of what they want in their training. That is what I do: writing notes and lists is how I think - how I reach decisions about what action to take. Meanwhile though, Josiah had started on his climbing diary and it wasn't going well; he really needed my assistance. I gave him some half-hearted help but my attention was still on the climbing training lists I was coming up with.

I think what I need to do in these situations is put a metaphorical bookmark in my own activity, eg write it on my To Do list, so that I can easily come back to the activity later and can oust the feeling of urgency connected to whatever it is I've been doing.

Friday was a beautiful day so we thought we'd all go for a bike ride. Josiah seems to have injured a finger tendon though and wanted to rest it rather than use it squeezing bike brakes, so he and Geoff stayed home. Tessa and I had a lovely ride following the Waiwhetu Stream down to a local cafe. We saw several families of ducklings on the way and lots of beautiful spring flowers. We had lunch at the cafe then returned home, stopping to sit on the bank of the stream and eat biscuits we'd bought at the cafe. The only blight on the journey was that the traffic was a little heavier on the way home - we hit the after school traffic - and we were unfortunate enough to cross one of those drivers who think the road rules don't apply when they meet a bike - only when they meet another motor vehicle. Tessa pulled out in front of this driver quite correctly at an intersection and had to slam her brakes on and swerve around the back of the car to avoid being hit when the car moved forwards without giving way. I was slightly behind Tessa and was able to suggest loudly but reasonably politely that the driver learn the road rules ;) My heart hammered for the next few minutes at Tessa's near miss but she seemed unperturbed except for feeling annoyed that swerving had caused her to scratch the back of her leg against something sharp on her bike.

Transitioning

2007-09-18T23:05:00.000+12:00

Daisy wrote the other day about the importance of the inner preparation of the teacher, including identifying our faults. I think one of my big faults at present is that I am very slow to transition; this wastes lots of time. How many weeks ago is it that our routine fell apart? And I have only just succeeded in instigating a new plan. The kids haven't been doing nothing all this time of course - some days, the days they worked on their lego stop motion movie, have been highly productive. But a lot of days have been unsatisfying for all of us.

I'm slow to transition between specific activities too. One day last week, I took the car in for a warrant. I got home around lunch time but didn't manage to do anything with the afternoon. One morning a week, Josiah has Technicraft class - an ideal opportunity for Tessa and me to work together - but when I get home from cycling to class with Josiah, I struggle to transition to focus on Tessa. There are probably steps I can take in that last case: like start thinking about Tessa on my way home and set my alarm for the time I need to leave to meet Josiah so I don't have to clock watch during the morning. I would like to get better at transitioning.

New Plan?

2007-09-05T10:36:00.000+12:00

I have had a cold this week - yet another delay to us getting "back on track". The kids are now positively settled in our current routine-free state. I am beginning to realise that they are unlikely to return contentedly to our old routine (in the foreseeable future at least); therefore we need a new plan (or to decide that we don't want a plan). I am wondering about suggesting a weekly planning meeting with each child, probably held at the weekend sometime, to discuss their plans for the week. This would allow the children to continue to take up their own projects as they have been doing over the last fortnight but would also allow them to set aside time to work towards their longer term goals that tend to get abandoned when we have no routine at all.

The kids' lego stop motion movies are now in post production (the photos have all been taken). Josiah spent about three days shut up in his bedroom with the curtains closed (to ensure uniform light across all photos), setting up scenes then moving the lego, with Tessa as cameraperson and general assistant during most sessions. Geoff set things back by an hour or so on one day when he went in to help with something and accidentally sat on Jabba's sail barge. Fortunately nothing was broken and Josiah was able to rebuild it.

Geoff is to start the next step - putting the photos together into a movie - before the kids add the sound.

Someone is selling a set of cylinder blocks on Trade Me today at the lowest price I've ever seen cylinder blocks. As I mentioned in a post on my other blog a few days ago, I hope one day to run a home preschool / daycare. I can't decide whether this is too good an opportunity to pass up and I should buy the blocks, or it is silly to buy something now, which I will have to store for years before I use it. There's one cylinder missing that I would have to replace and the blocks look pretty battered and scratched.

Lego schooling

2007-08-31T14:50:00.000+12:00

I have given up on homeschooling ;) The kids seem to have their own agenda and do not need me. Josiah has spent the week working on a stop motion movie using Star Wars lego pieces. He got the idea from the Lego Star Wars movie making contest. Some of the movies at the site are quite clever and funny. Josiah sat at the computer all day one day, typing the script for the movie. Tessa has spent much of her week helping Josiah, and the rest doing her own thing, rejecting any suggestions from me.

Well, at least I've had lots of time for other work. This morning, Geoff and I finally got around to clearing a pile of rubbish that has sat behind our garage for months and Geoff took it to the dump. I've decluttered the bathroom, the garage and most of the storage space in our ceiling. Once I've finished the ceiling space, every room in the house will have been decluttered within the last two or three months. Which is not so say there isn't still a lot of clutter :(

What we've been reading

2007-08-24T09:43:00.000+12:00

I have been doing a lot of reading aloud:

A children's novel by Anne Fine (very funny writer).

Kingfisher History Encyclopaedia.

A book on tyrants of the past.

Learning to Climb Indoors by Eric Hőrst.

Adaption and Competition, a book on how organisms become uniquely suited to their environment.

The Writing Book by Jean Bennett, helpful hints for children on the writing process.

Material World: A Global Family Portrait by Peter Menzel, an amazing collection of photos of families from all around the world, photographed with their possessions. The families have been asked various questions, such as what is their most valued possession. Intriguing.

The book I've been reading most of though is The Variety of Life: A survey and celebration of all the creatures that have ever lived by Colin Tudge which is an in depth introduction to modern classification of life (cladistics / phylogenetic systematics / also sometimes called taxonomy though that is really more to do with describing and naming life). It is intended for adults but Josiah and Tessa and I are all fascinated. Because modern classification is based on species' evolutionary relationships to each other, we have been prompted to investigate evolution and the evidence supporting it more closely. An interesting topic.

I found this book after an extensive search for books on classification, impelled by Josiah's renewed interest in the topic. Josiah first explored taxonomy after becoming interested in insects a few years ago. This year, Josiah thought he'd like to explore physics more but our forays into our physics book, DK's The Way Science Works, felt a bit disjointed and failed to grab Josiah's attention. I think if we come back to this book, I will suggest reading it from beginning to end (skimming the bits here and there we've already read) rather than jump around following Josiah's interest. I have a feeling we will get a better understanding of the interconnectedness of the concepts if we read the book in order and will therefore more easily assimilate the information.

So anyway with physics not capturing him, Josiah felt pulled to look at classification again. A few sessions reading Wikipedia led us to the discovery that the Five Kingdoms system of classification is now outdated, so I thought I'd better go in search of books on the modern methods. Books for children on this topic are sadly hard to find. Several books at our local library touch on classification but after a paragraph or two introducing it, explaining domains etc, the books go on to provide general information about animals or plants. So I am excited to have found The Variety of Life.

What we've been up to / Routine cast aside

2007-08-24T09:21:00.000+12:00

Josiah was sick all last week - a real flu. He had fever and headaches some of the time and just felt generally miserable, then after three or four days he put out a rash - looked like hives - and suffered vomiting on one day. He's a lot better now though he still has a cough and is still falling asleep on the couch in the afternoon (looks so sweet). He's a very good patient - just sadly tells you all his symptoms, in a questioning voice as if wondering what should be done about them. He spent most of the week on the couch in the living room, either dozing or listening to stories (recorded off the radio or read aloud by me). Most days I encouraged him to bundle up warmly and go out for a (very) short walk; I've come to the opinion that lying down all the time makes a sick person feel more unwell and that getting outside has a rejuvenating effect.

Before Josiah was sick, we had friends staying with us for a few days and, as you know, we hadn't long been back from a trip away. Our routine has not survived the multiple disruptions of holiday, visitors and illness. Tessa has abandoned our usual pursuits and is doing her own thing - reading, writing, creating stories and decluttering her bedroom. Oh, I forgot! She did some science with me on Wednesday. Funny how despite the fact that I value those things she is choosing just as highly as I value maths activities or anything else on our list of weekly activities, there has been a stress in me all week about the "problem" of our lapsed routine. I didn't stop to notice what was happening; with my head down, I worried about what wasn't happening.

It seems we always have to start fresh after any disturbance ... maybe I should go with that - ie use each disturbance as an opportunity to reassess our routines. Wait and watch first. For my own sanity and in the interests of keeping our house a pleasant place to be, I might have to instigate an immediate negotiation of the more basic elements of our routine (regular toothbrushing, chores, putting washing away, and guitar practice because the teacher expects regular practice) but for the rest, I could wait and watch. If Tessa had bounced back into our routine the day after our visitors left, would she have had the time and inclination to read and copy out two of William Blake's poems on Wednesday, and would I have overheard Tessa and Josiah discussing Blake's poetry together on Thursday afternoon as I was tidying up before dinner?

Although I like to think that the children determine their own routines and how much of a routine to have at all, with my help where it's wanted, I'm sure that sometimes my indoctrination causes me to manipulate things - to push certain subjects and activities that I can't help thinking of as "core subjects". Perhaps these post-disturbance, routine-forsaken times are a window into Tessa's and Josiah's true educational needs.

To go or not to go

2007-08-23T10:44:00.000+12:00

I can't decide whether to go with the rest of the family to an upcoming climbing competition or have a weekend to myself at home. In lots of ways it makes sense to stay home. For the last few years I have felt that I am perpetually staving off burnout. This means that often I do not give my activities the energy they need ... I'm only half present. A weekend to myself isn't going to solve that but of course it would help in the immediate term. The weekend-long climbing competitions (which have become a regular occurrence in our lives over the last 18 mths) are intense; I come away exhausted although I enjoy them.

But I would like to be there to support the kids at the competition. The competitions are a big thing for them.

Funny things kids say

2007-08-06T09:29:00.000+12:00

Coming home from climbing in the car on Friday evening, Josiah and Tessa discussed strategy for playing Paper Scissors Rock. Listening to them you would have no idea this is a game of luck.

When informed that it was time for chores one day recently, Tessa objected, admonishing me to remember Mary and Martha: "Some things are more important than chores, Mum." I don't know what it was she was equating to listening to Jesus.

A holiday up north

2007-08-02T09:04:00.000+12:00

We have been away for a week on holiday. The holiday started a few days before we left really, with the purchase of the last Harry Potter book the day it came out. True to our intentions, we abandoned all non-essential activities for the duration, doing little else but read (in my case) or listen (in everyone else's case). I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't yet read the book so will only say that our family is agreed the book is excellent - very clever, deeply absorbing. Those Christians who avoid the Harry Potter books, believing them harmful in some way, I completely fail to comprehend. These are books I would be happy for my children to read again and again, because of the morals and principles interwoven in the story.

It was more tiring than I expected, reading aloud all day for four days (even though I didn't in fact read all day: Josiah had Boys Brigade and Technicraft class to attend and we had to pause to sleep and eat and pack our bags for our trip). But it was lovely to read the story together as a family rather than fight over who got to read it first and have to avoid talking about it so as not to spoil it for the others. We were still reading Harry Potter when we left for our holiday so once we were underway, I read in the car, finishing the book somewhere past Taihape. The journey flew by.

The purpose of the holiday was to travel with our German friends who are visiting NZ at present. We met them at Whakapapa Holiday Park on Mt Ruapehu, my favourite camping ground in NZ because of the beautiful beach trees. Opening the curtains of our cabin in the morning to find myself looking into forest was a treat.

The weather was cold and wet so we didn't drive up the mountain but walked to Silica Rapids - lovely. Whakapapa Holiday Park couldn't fit us in the next night so we stayed at Ski Haus, a backpacker in National Park and the filthiest accommodation I've stayed in for a long time; I would not recommend it!

The next day, we enjoyed a beautiful, peaceful walk around Lake Rotopounamu. In places, young rimu grew in clumps, creating a veil with their leaves. I thought I saw a whitehead but couldn't be sure.

After a sit in De Brett's hot pools at Taupo ("aaahh") and a few trips down the hydroslide it was on to Tauranga, where Josiah and Tessa were entered in a climbing competition - the fourth and final event in the National Cup Series. The climbing was excellent - very entertaining to watch, especially when two of the under 16 climbers clipped into their final clip while hanging from the ceiling by one hand, and when Josiah and Tessa's teammate, B, attempting to dyno (dynamically move to a distant hold) to the button at the top of the speed climb, pulled a hold right off the wall and fell away with it in his hands! The third competition we've attended this year, it was nice to get to know some of the families from other regions a little better.

Lots of the categories were close, including Josiah's (under 14). Josiah and S both topped out in the first climb, then got to the same point in the second climb, so were level going into the final. They both climbed beautifully in the final, hitting difficulty at the same hold. S managed to push forwards and touch the next hold before falling, which Josiah didn't. Josiah was delighted with his climbing, enjoyed getting to know S better, and now can't wait for the next comp.

Tessa, finishing sixth of eight, would have liked to place higher. She loves being part of the competition crowd though, and I hope that as she matures, she will begin to develop goals which are more about aspects of her climbing and how she feels than where she places. I have yet to see her climb her best in a competition; I think that is because the competition setting is still new to her - lots of people cheering loudly, the formality of it, strangers belaying her and checking her rope - it's all distracting, makes it hard to focus on her climb.

Josiah and Tessa's coach, Z, won the Open category, which gave him a win for the series too.

We got home Monday evening; Josiah just had time for dinner before heading out to Boys Brigade. Then he had Technicraft first thing Tuesday morning. I used Tuesday to unpack, tidy and do laundry. I had decided before we went away that Wednesday would be a scheduled holiday. Back to work today (Thursday) I guess.

All the photos on this post were taken by our friends, N and K.

A Taste of School

2007-07-16T08:29:00.000+12:00

There were some interesting things about having Josiah and Tessa attend a four day drama course last week. For them and for me it was a taste of what it would be like if they went to school. The class ran from 9am-3pm - normal school hours in New Zealand primary schools. Josiah and Tessa's commute turned out to be long - they left home at 7.45am and didn't get home till nearly 4pm; we know a few school children who have long commutes like that - one family who sends its children across the city each day to get to a Montessori school and another family who lives out of town and drives in every day to work and school.

I knew Josiah and Tessa would arrive home tired so we decided that they wouldn't have to unpack their bags immediately but could have till 5.30pm to relax and recover. Then at 5.30, they unpacked and repacked their bags, put away any clean washing and did their usual chores (their chores aren't time consuming - only ten minutes worth for Josiah and five minutes for Tessa). Then dinner. They made their lunches after dinner. By that time it was about 7.30pm; they had free time again until 9pm which was the time we agreed on for getting ready for bed. The first two days they spent maybe half of their free time doing "homework" - memorising their lines for the play.

Those first two days felt surprisingly relaxed. I began to think that maybe schooling families do have time for most of the activities I worry we'd miss out on if Josiah and Tessa went to school.

On the second two days of the drama programme, Josiah and Tessa had climbing in the evening. I told them they didn't have to go to climbing if they didn't want to and they laughed at me. It made for much busier days. To get to climbing on time, we had to have dinner earlier - 5pm - which meant the kids had to start chores earlier, which meant they didn't get long to relax and recover when they first got home. It was all a bit much: they managed to unpack their bags and make lunch for the next day but Josiah got upset when asked to do his usual chores as well. I reluctantly agreed they could have two days off chores. The only time they had for practising their lines those days was on the train; luckily that was enough. There was no time for anything else; Tessa didn't practise guitar all week. I wonder how school children fit in homework on days they have after school activities on.

Tessa was very tired at the end of the week - her eyes were red when she said goodnight to me on Thursday night. She had no regrets though! She and Josiah both had a fabulous time at the drama programme.

I've heard homeschoolers say they think sending their kids to school would be harder work than homeschooling. After this week I kind of agree.

Things to Do

2007-07-09T13:33:00.000+12:00

Things to Do

The kids are at a drama holiday programme four days this week. I am off duty between 8.00am and 3.30pm :) Lots of things I want to do with my child-free time but at the top of the list is rest - read novels, nap, read, eat nice food. So I don't know how much else I'll get done. Here's the rest of the list:

Latin: flick through the book (Latina Christiana), read the first section more thoroughly and plan how we will start.

Tessa's maths: go over her next presentation, which I have a feeling is nearly the last in a section so may need to read through the next section in the Montessori album.

Write to my sister and maybe send something nice - she had an operation a week ago.

Write to my aunt - haven't been in touch for ages, would be nice to catch up.

Decluttering: this is ongoing and always needs doing. I decluttered the bedrooms and living room a month or so ago. The kitchen and our two storage areas - garage and ceiling space - need doing. We have friends coming to stay next week; I'd love to have most of the decluttering done before that.

Gardening - the place is getting weed ridden. I'd also like to work out a way to fit gardening back into my weekly routine.

Geoff and I decided last week on some changes to our donations due to a change in our income - I need to arrange those changes.

And a few items hanging over from my last "To Do" list:

Josiah's maths: read the next section in the Montessori album and prepare the next few presentations.

Josiah's geometry: ditto.

Tessa's drawing: read the next chapter in the book (Mona Brooke's Drawing with Children) and sort it into presentations.

The new term starts next week but it will be a disruptive start for us. The first week of term, friends come to stay for a few days. The final Harry Potter book is due out in a couple of weeks; the kids and I decided long ago that when that happened we would have a "Harry Potter holiday", reading the book over a few days. Then the kids have a climbing competition. I'll try to continue with our usual routine on days when we aren't reading Harry Potter or entertaining guests - maybe getting through our "weekly schedule" in three weeks rather than one.

Bragging

2007-07-05T08:44:00.000+12:00

Josiah woke up in the middle of the night a couple of nights ago. This happens from time to time. He usually has a snack and reads a book or plays on the computer for a while. This time, he decided to try to find the square root of 73! You have to laugh, don't you? We haven't done any Montessori activities on square roots yet but have discussed the term when working with squares, and I think Geoff may have shown Josiah a bit about square roots.

In the morning, Josiah brought two sheets of grid paper in to me covered in working and led me through what he had done. (He had to lead me as the order of the calculations on the page wasn't the order he'd done them in). He had written down:
8² = 64
9² = 81

Next he had calculated 8.5 x 8.5, found that was less than 73, so calculated 8.6 x 8.6. Continuing like that, he calculated:
8.55 x 8.55
8.545 x 8.545
8.546 x 8.546

coming to the conclusion that the square root of 73 is approximately equal to 8.545. (In fact it is closer to 8.544; there were four small errors in Josiah's myriad calculations - all in the carrying. He does the carrying in his head. Hmm, will have to work out how to point out to him that this isn't working for him, without diminishing his pride in his late night achievement.)

After that, he went a bit off the rails, calculating the difference between 8.546² and 8.545² and calling that the "remainder". Oh well, I think he did amazingly well doing all that on his own.

Next he created a few vector addition problems for himself on grid paper, each time working out the sum of several vectors. Once again, this isn't something we've come to in the Montessori sequence but something Geoff has shown Josiah.

Winter Homeschooling

2007-06-30T18:18:00.000+12:00

Here are a few pictures from a cold winter fortnight.

Josiah snuggled up on the couch reading about Julius Caesar.

Tessa cooking dinner.

The third photo was taken one day after we had had a particularly overloaded few days and I decided to schedule a holiday. Josiah and Tessa listened to a Harry Potter book on CD all day. While listening, Tessa knitted and Josiah played computer games from time to time. I can't remember what I did.

I was fascinated that Tessa's knitting had miraculously perfected itself since the last time she attempted knitting. Previously, her knitting has looked like most beginner knitters', i.e. with tension varying hugely and the occasional hole or tangled stitch. This time Tessa's knitting was flawless and beautifully even. All I can conclude is that she has developed improved finger control. Maybe all the climbing helps, LOL. I am reminded of a story in Discovery of the Child by Maria Montessori - where Montessori describes how the ability to sew completely eluded one child until Montessori thought to offer her a paper weaving activity. Once the child mastered paper weaving, she returned to attempts on sewing which were successful this time. Montessori wrote:

I realised that the necessary movement of the hand for sewing had been prepared without sewing, and that before teaching it is first necessary to find the way to teach. This is particularly true when it is a question of gaining facility in movements. ... In this way one could set himself to a task and be already capable of carrying it out without ever having directly put his hand to it, and he could complete it almost perfectly at the first attempt.

I thought that one might be prepared to write in this way. p194 -195

As a matter of fact, Tessa's handwriting, which has always been pretty untidy, has suddenly improved too. When I commented on this to Tessa, she said she'd simply decided to write more neatly.

Evermore

2007-06-29T14:21:00.000+12:00

I haven't heard many stories of what homeschooled children have done once they've grown up. This one is lovely, I think. The successful New Zealand band, Evermore is made up of three brothers who grew up homeschooling in Fielding, a small North Island town. Their attitude to their career is very much what I hope for my children: their focus is on facing new challenges and enjoying their experiences.

Kathryn Ryan interviewed them in an absorbing interview on Nine To Noon. (That's how I heard about them.) I would have put the link to the podcast here but I have just discovered that National Radio only keeps podcasts up for a week :( You can listen to one or two rather more trite television interviews on the Evermore TV page on Evermore's website.

You can also hear some of their songs on the Evermore TV page on the website. I love Light Surrounding You though if I was the lead singer I would want to work with a singing teacher to learn about other ways to use my voice.

What We've Been Up To and Things to Do

2007-06-28T22:27:00.000+12:00

Lots to write about but I don't seem to be finding much time to write. Quite a bit of the last fortnight was spent by me investigating various books recommended in The Well-Trained Mind. I ended up buying a bunch of them - on critical thinking, Latin and science ... the largest purchase of homeschooling resources I've made since buying several Montessori Research and Development manuals a number of years ago.

Since the science fair, we have carried on with our usual routine with one significant variation. We slept in several mornings and I was feeling guilty about not starting "work" at a "reasonable" hour, until Geoff made the comment that we could just shift our day forward. What lead to us sleeping in is that we often have activities on in the evenings: Boys Brigade finishes at 9pm, the kids' climbing classes and other climbing sessions take place in the evening. The kids come home hungry and buzzing; by the time they've eaten and wound down it's often 10pm. It doesn't seem right not to let them sleep until they wake naturally. So we are trialling a new system: I potter around by myself until the first child gets up, then I check on the other child - who is usually awake - and encourage them up for breakfast (I want the kids to breakfast together because it's working so well me reading history etc. to the children during breakfast). After that, we continue with our daily routine. We'll see how the late start pans out.

Both kids are pleased to be starting new science work. Tessa and I are reading How Nature Works and doing the experiments. Josiah and I are reading the chapter on forces and energy in The Way Science Works. Josiah hasn't so far wanted to carry out the experiments - I think he imagines them in his head and finds that sufficient. So far the experiments have all had obvious outcomes; maybe he'll want to try things for himself when we come to experiments outside his experience.

The kids continue to be absorbed in ancient Greece and Rome, both reading Horrible Histories books on the era as well as listening to me read in the mornings. Tessa has designed a Roman slave outfit which she plans to make.

Josiah keeps uncovering new ground with maths and geometry - I'm struggling to keep up.

There are several things I want to get done in the next day or two:

Re-write our daily schedule according to our new plan (i.e. flexible start time). The kids (and I!) like having it on the wall to check during the day.

Type up the training plan Tessa developed to prepare for her next climbing competition, and work out how to help her stick to it without taking it over.

Read the next section of the Montessori geometry manual and prepare the next geometry presentation for Josiah (probably won't be needed before next week). I don't even know off hand what topic is next in the sequence - we've just finished looking at the areas of polygons.

Prepare Josiah's next maths presentation (may be needed tomorrow) - investigating greatest common factor.

Think about the kids' bedtime routines, both for nights when they are out in the evening and for evenings at home. When the kids were younger I read to them, then supervised teeth brushing and getting into bed. These days, with bedtime being a couple of hours later, I am very tired myself (more-so than the children). I tend to just say goodnight and leave the kids to get to bed. But this isn't working as some nights they do not brush their teeth at all and some nights they are still playing in their rooms, not yet in their pyjamas, at 10.30pm at night! I think I need to accept that they need supervision at the end of the day. Maybe if I make sure I get some time to myself in the early evening so I'm not totally exhausted later on, and set aside 20 minutes to see the children brush their teeth and get into bed - maybe we could sing a song in bed or pray together or something nice to make it less of a chore for us all.

Read the next chapter in Drawing with Children and divide the lesson into a series of presentations.

Science Fair

2007-06-22T14:21:00.000+12:00

Today was the homeschool science fair. It was quite small: about nine or ten exhibits and 25 - 30 children. Here is Tessa with her exhibit. I think I mentioned a while back that she chose to plant lettuce seeds in four different soils in an attempt to find the best soil for this purpose. I was quite chuffed that the lettuces grown in my home made compost did the best.

Josiah's project came to nothing as no wetas have yet made use of his weta hotel. We are wondering if wetas are disinclined to move home during winter or if perhaps our neighbourhood cats have eaten the local population - we often see cats in our garden at the moment.

Tessa worked so hard over the last fortnight putting together her exhibit that I half expected she would be put off the idea of doing a project next year but both children were inspired by attending the science fair. They talked all the way home in the car about what science fair projects they might do next year and are still discussing it now.

This is our third year attending the science fair. I'm always amazed at what children and their families have come up with. This year there was a young boy who (presumably with some help) had made string instruments demonstrating the three ways of changing the pitch of the note produced when a string is plucked. He had strings of varying weight strung across a wooden frame - the pitch got lower the heavier the string. He had identical strings strung across a frame at varying tensions - the pitch got higher the tighter the string. He had a frame strung with identical strings held at the same tension but the frame was triangular shaped so that the strings were all different lengths (like a harp) - the pitch got higher the shorter the length. There were several other exhibits equally fascinating.

Climbing competition at our home wall, HangDog

2007-06-07T10:34:00.001+12:00

We had a great weekend at the climbing competition. Tessa climbed well in her first two climbs but she was disappointed in her climb in the final. Josiah climbed outstandingly in all his climbs. The judging was hard work: you stand looking up at the climbing wall till your neck and back ache. Complete concentration is required in order to notice every movement of the climber's hands so that at whatever point they fall off you can provide an accurate report of which hold they made it to and whether they only touched it, had a firm hold of it or moved on beyond it. You must also keep an eye on the climber's leg movements in case they put a foot out of bounds. But it was a good learning experience; the supervising judges whom I assisted were all very helpful. Geoff worked the entire weekend, belaying, spotting, organising the ropes, and at night (till the early hours of Saturday and Sunday morning) assisting the route setters. He slept most of Monday.

Josiah and Tessa were invited by the climbing wall staff to stay and help put the holds back on the walls on Sunday evening, setting new routes. This is something Josiah has been very keen to experience - they were both thrilled. Here is Josiah route setting from the scissor lift.

We came home exhausted and have achieved very little in the three days since. There is something to be learned here I think ... next time we have anything this big on (e.g. if we go away for a few days) I will trial scheduling two days' "holiday" immediately afterwards. I think if I had done that this time - not attempted to follow our normal routine until Wednesday - we might have felt ready for work on Wednesday. As it is, we are still low on energy and it's Thursday.

Josiah and Tessa both have colds today, Josiah's quite nasty, so I've told them we will have a holiday today except for a few things that need to be done (Thursday is the day we photograph Tessa's science fair project lettuces and she notes their appearance and measures their leaves). Hopefully we will be fully back on board tomorrow.

Thursday

2007-05-31T20:52:00.000+12:00

Didn't get much done today :( I seem to be fighting off a cold again. I wonder if my immune system is down because I've been eating lots of sugar; two weeks ago I won a raffle of chocolate bars and packets of sweets. Nearly all gone now.

Tessa decided to have a pyjama day: she didn't get dressed all day. Here she is watering her science fair project lettuces this afternoon.

Tessa injured her finger climbing a few weeks ago. It didn't seem serious at the time but it hasn't come right so this morning I made an appointment with a "hand clinic" (I wouldn't have guessed there was such a place but a climbing friend recommended it when he looked at Tessa's finger). The only appointment time available before the climbing competition Tessa is due to climb in this weekend clashes with Josiah's Chess/Games Club. By the time we'd sorted out how he could still get to that, half the morning was gone.

I finished reading to the children the book on Hannibal I've been reading to them all week. (Fascinating story - thirteen years on the march in foreign lands, crossing a mountain range with an army which included elephants, numerous battles ... all in the hope of preventing Roman control from spreading to his home city Carthage ... ending in failure!)

I think I mentioned already: we have been starting each day with me reading history aloud to the children, and finishing each afternoon with me reading fiction to them. Reading non-fiction together has always been an element of our "school day" whenever the children lead that way. I used to read to them every evening as well but that has fallen away over last year because of Boys Brigade and climbing. We are all pleased to have found a way of bringing more shared reading back into our routine. It's got me thinking though: there are other things I'd like to read to the kids too. I haven't read to them from the Bible for ages, and there's a book on climbing that we've talked about reading together. I'm not sure whether it would be best to read history three mornings a week, the Bible one morning and something else one morning, or whether it would be better to read history for a week, the Bible for a week, history for a week, something else for a week.

This afternoon, the kids both made birthday cards for their grandmother, did their daily observations of their science fair projects, and Josiah wrote his climbing diary. I confess, I retired to my bedroom feeling under the weather, reading Emma by Jane Austen. I got up in the mid-afternoon to pop out for vegetables, then read to the kids (Eragon by Christopher Paolini) and cooked dinner.

Perhaps part of our lack of productivity is that we are focused on the climbing competition coming up this Saturday and Sunday and all the preparations for that. Josiah and Tessa will both compete. It is one of a series of four national competitions, this one hosted jointly by our own climbing club, DynoMites (cool new website by Geoff!!), and our home wall, HangDog, so Geoff and I will be assisting in various ways. I'll be judging some of the climbs, which will be ... interesting considering that I don't ordinarily notice exactly which hold was the last the climber touched when I watch other people climb.

Time

2007-05-25T21:28:00.000+12:00

There has been a discussion at Playschool6 this week on organising time. This, combined with the fact that we have been crazily busy since our trip to Christchurch, led me to consider setting a figure limit on how many activities we do in a week, rather than continue cramming everything we want to do into our diary. I discussed the idea with Josiah and Tessa and we decided to trial a limit of "climbing plus four" for each of them and "climbing plus two" for me. (Climbing is our main outside activity - we all climb regularly.) For each week, I am drawing a tally in the margin of our diary to keep track of where each of us is up to.

It might take a few weeks for us to settle down to the limit we've agreed to as we already have a lot booked, but I feel we are (or at least I am) already benefiting from the intention. When a friend of Josiah's rang on Wednesday to invite Josiah to his birthday party this weekend, I immediately agreed that Josiah could go - I don't think it is right to stick to our new limit rigidly when something special comes up. But when entered the party in our diary and added the fifth tally mark to Josiah's tally for this week, I was naturally prompted to think through the implications of Josiah having an overloaded week ... I would need to lower my expectations of him at home to give him time to recharge between events. So just having the limit, even if not stuck to, is helpful ... I think sticking to it will be even more helpful ;)

Our new daily schedule needs a bit of tweaking. We've developed a habit of sitting down on the couch to read together first thing after our respective morning routines (i.e. about 10am). The kids are preferring to follow that with their independent work, sometimes leaving it till late afternoon to ask me to work with them. By that time, I am starting to think about preparing dinner and collecting the clothes off the washing line. So I think I'll suggest to the kids that we set appointment times to work together. As they prefer to do their independent work first, we could make the appointment times 12 noon, 1pm, 2pm and 3pm or something like that.

Real Lives

2007-05-25T21:26:00.000+12:00

I have just read Real Lives: Eleven Teenagers Who Don't Go to School edited by Grace Llewellyn. These accounts by teenage unschoolers of how they spend their time are intriguing and inspiring. I am struck by how independent the teenagers are in their work ... their parents seem almost uninvolved. Maybe "uninvolved" is too harsh ... the teenagers mention enjoying lots of discussion with their families - often at the dining table - but the teenagers seem to do most of their chosen work alone or in the community or with tutors. And directing the work - setting it up, researching options - is done by the teenagers themselves too. I get the impression that the parents of some were more directly involved in the homeschooling when the children were younger.

Thursday

2007-05-12T16:43:00.000+12:00

I have a cold - my first in quite a while. The cold comes on top of the house being a mess and us all feeling tired after a busy trip to Christchurch for a climbing competition. (The photos on the left are Josiah and Tessa climbing in the comp.) I decided to take a day's "sick leave" today.

The kids spent this morning snuggled up at opposite ends of Tessa's bed, each absorbed in a book. Tessa is reading Physik, the last in the Septimus Heap series by Angie Sage. It just came out in the last couple of weeks; the kids have been anxiously awaiting its release since they read the first two books in the series.

I spent the morning in bed too, listening to Radio New Zealand National and doing the mending - very peaceful.

Josiah and I got up in the late morning. He started work on his climbing diary and I finished the unpacking and did a bit of a tidy up. I've told the kids I'll read to them when they've done their chores but I can't hear any sound of chores being done :(

We had a great time in Christchurch. It was lovely to see my 99-year-old grandmother. The kids climbed well, Josiah coming second (of four) in the under 14 males and Tessa coming fourth (of eight) in the under 12 females - in her first sport climbing competition. Josiah was mostly pleased with his climbing, though he did get nervous during his final climb because he so wanted to do well. Every competition he learns something new; this one he made the fascinating (to me) discovery that you climb better if you don't care too much about the outcome. Desperately wanting to do well is a distraction from the things it's important to focus on - like technique. I don't have personal experience but I imagine that this is different from many sports where focusing on a desire to win is an extra spur.

Tessa says she didn't feel competition nerves. She loved being a member of the team and being identifiable as such in her team t-shirt. Last year Tessa was just a spectator; the competitors from other regions didn't really notice her - they were too busy interacting with their fellow competitors. This year Tessa was naturally included in conversations about the climbs. By lunch time on the first day, she was part of a noisy bunch of kids from all over the country, playing hide and seek and other games between climbs. I knew she felt right at home when I heard her bickering with one of the boys she'd met that morning.

Plato

2007-05-01T22:06:00.000+12:00

Felt smugly aware this morning of looking like the ideal homeschooling family, as we sat on the couch together, me reading Plato(!) out loud to the kids, who were fascinated. I never would have thought one could read Plato to a ten year old and have them understand and enjoy it. (Not that I'd ever read Plato before myself - I just had a prejudice that it would be "too hard" for children.) I got the idea to read Plato from The Well-Trained Mind which is full of unexpected recommendations on materials to use in homeschooling.

Later, I gave Josiah a presentation on sentence analysis. At the end, he asked me to continue and show him the next presentation in the sequence (he'd seen the symbols for adjunct adverbials and was curious to know what they were about). Despite a quote from Donna Bryant Goertz's book Children Who are Not Yet Peaceful - which I can't find now but which goes something like: "I make my presentations as short and enjoyable for the children as possible" - ringing in my head, urging me to hold back, I "followed the child" and gave Josiah the next presentation. Sure enough he lost interest half way through. It was a brief presentation, so we carried on to the end without mishap but I was sorry to have lost the chance to finish with Josiah wanting more.

Back to work

2007-04-26T13:43:00.000+12:00

Sorry for the long silence. As usual we overcommitted ourselves during the two weeks of school holidays. The kids had friends over often and went visiting lots. They stayed at my mother's one night, along with my mother's partner's niece and nephew whose company Josiah and Tessa always enjoy. Tessa did a course of swimming lessons. They went on a zoo sleepover with friends (I'm not sure if the fabulous time the kids had at the zoo was worth the cost to the rest of us in suffering Josiah's all too accurate gibbon imitations at frequent intervals ever since ;) ) Add to that the regular Unschoolers meeting and our climbing sessions and I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that getting back to “school” this week is turning out to be a struggle. The kids are in need of recovery time.

They are enthusiastic enough about the work, but are taking all morning to be ready to start it. Literally. All morning. I have always had difficulty finding ways to hand over to Josiah and Tessa the responsibility for being ready to start work at our agreed start time. To make it their problem not mine if they are not ready. None of the “logical consequences” I've come up with are really all that logical, and all of them require me to police things more closely than the kids or I enjoy.

The kids would be happier I think if we didn't have a start time but just started work whenever they feel ready, which might be two or three o'clock in the afternoon. The problem with that is that my energy runs out by mid-afternoon. I find it very hard to be alert, focused, patient and observant at that time of day. Also our activities end up having to be hurried so that dinner can be cooked in time for Josiah to head out for the evening (he climbs three evenings a week and goes to Boys Brigade another evening).

A few ideas are coming to mind as I write this. I might institute a kitchen closing time half an hour before our “start time” in the morning, since a lot of why the children aren't ready is that they linger over breakfast. I know a few families who have a kitchen closing time in the evening to facilitate getting off to bed at a reasonable hour. Something similar in the morning might help us.

New schedule

2007-04-08T12:02:00.000+12:00

The loose schedule that had been working mostly well for us since about October last year started causing strife a week or two ago. The kids became slower and slower over their morning routine and academic work, objecting unpleasantly when I attempted to call them back to task. I felt disheartened by all the negativity for a few days but then realised it was time for a change.

What the kids seemed to be asking for was to work in shorter spurts alternated with breaks. So, together we've made a list of what we'd like to get done each day and the new plan is that just one item on the list has to be done each hour. This means we won't be finished till late afternoon some days but allows the kids to stop and play or read when they feel like it, which is how they seem to want things just now.

We trialled the new system the last two days before the Easter break and everyone was happy. Here's the daily task list:

Chores.
Guitar practice (Tessa only).
One activity from our weekly work list.
A second activity from our weekly work list.
Independent work (Josiah: climbing diary first priority).
Family reading.

Our weekly work list is a list of the main subjects we are working on this year – it's where I note the next presentation for each child in each subject. So an activity from our weekly work list is usually a presentation from me. The subjects are:

Geometry
Maths
History
Language
Critical Thinking
Science
Latin
Art / Craft / Music / Photography

I've warned the kids that I find it hard to drop whatever I'm doing mid-flow so we are trialling a system where the kids let me know at least 30 minutes in advance that they'd like to work with me. This is the only aspect of the new plan that didn't go so well last week: I misjudged how long some activities would take. Twice I told Tessa I'd be ready for her at a certain time but was still mid-activity with Josiah at that time and once the same thing happened the other way around. The kids were very tolerant and hopefully I'll get better at working out how long to allow.

Tuesday

2007-03-27T22:12:00.000+12:00

Not such a good work session today. I woke up tired. Daylight Saving ended just over a week ago and most mornings since then, I've woken refreshed before my alarm has gone off. Oh well, even if that effect only lasts a week, it's nice while it does.

Josiah wanted to do geometry today so I gave him a presentation on inscribed and circumscribed figures. As we finished, Josiah started drawing a lattice of equilateral triangles using a stencil. Once he had half a page full, he challenged Tessa and me to find all the possible hexagons on the page. (We both missed one; Josiah had to show it to us.)

It just so happened that the next presentation in the geometry manual was about making shapes with different numbers of equilateral triangles and comparing their surface areas. So I told Josiah off for giving me the presentation when I'd been planning to give it to him next week ;) and suggested that I show him the rest of the presentation. He was keen so we went ahead and compared the surface areas of a rhombus (two equilateral triangles), a trapezium (three equilateral triangles), a larger equilateral triangle (four equilateral triangles) and a hexagon (six equilateral triangles). Josiah enjoyed the work but it took a while.

I probably should have taken a break at that point but I was conscious that Tessa had been left to her own devices for a significant period and it seemed important to get her working as soon as possible. Maybe yesterday's high productivity had got me overly focused on getting things done. After I finished the geometry with Josiah, my thoughts were about what Tessa and I “needed to get done”.

Tessa requested a language presentation. Over recent weeks, Tessa has revised all the parts of speech; for today I had prepared the first presentation on sentence analysis (verb, subject, direct object). The work is not challenging so there was always the risk that Tessa would be bored but the novelty added some excitement. Unfortunately I was focused on just getting it done and was also hungry and kind of distracted after the long geometry session with Josiah. Tessa was unfocused which got me annoyed. Somehow we got through the work with Tessa still smiling at the end but I could have done better.

I'm not sure what to do when Tessa is unfocused like that. She requested a language presentation but then didn't give it her attention. Frustrating. I don't know what the best response is.

Anyway, after that I realised my mistake in carrying on when I needed a break and we all stopped for a snack.

Tessa had also requested a drawing presentation so later she and I did that. She's really enjoying the drawing activities but is discouraged by how much better my work is than hers. I remind her that I've had 35 years to develop my hand control and hers is improving all the time – to try not to compare her work to mine. She seems to accept that. The activities are designed to be demonstrated by an adult so I can't see any other way around this problem for now. True to his intentions, Josiah did not take part in the drawing lesson but lay on the couch reading Arthur and the Invisibles while we drew.

Tonight I'm determined to be in bed at a reasonable hour. And for tomorrow I'm determined to observe the children and respond to them rather than focusing on what I think we should achieve. This is supposed to be fun!

A good day

2007-03-26T22:01:00.000+12:00

A productive day today after a social weekend catching up with family and friends. Both kids are invalids at the moment. Tessa hurt her back trying to lift Josiah yesterday. She is recovering fast. Josiah has a tiny cut on his foot which seems to be infected and is hurting him so much that he limps everywhere. We've tried putting various things on the cut (plus had a swim in the sea yesterday) and will keep an eye on it.

Tessa and I did some geometry this morning, then Josiah chose to do science. The science fair projects are still on hold until we purchase materials (must do that soon!). Last week, Josiah and I found the last of the definitions Josiah wanted to know in his study of taxonomy of insects. He is ready for a change. While Tessa was at gymnastics last week, he and I went for a walk and discussed the options. He's decided to look at physics for a while, starting with astronomy. I got How the Universe Works (a Readers Digest / DK book recommended in The Well-Trained Mind) out of the library and we read the introductory pages today. It looks good to me ... too soon to say if Josiah will get hooked on it.

Josiah is decidedly not hooked on the drawing lessons I've been giving from Mona Brookes' book Drawing with Children. A couple of minutes into a lesson last week, he refused point blank to take part any longer. He says he doesn't like realistic drawing, only abstract drawing. The point that most of the techniques in the lessons could be applied to abstract drawing did not find favour. He asked not to have any more drawing lessons and for me to please get some clay sometime for him to work with. I guess I survived to the age of 35 without any drawing skills; I won't push it on Josiah but will carry on with Tessa who is enjoying the work.

Back to today ... a neighbour, “B.”, came over mid-morning to play for a while. He came over a lot last week too. I think he is about three, maybe four (when I asked him how old he is, he said “Six,” which he most definitely is not – maybe he doesn't know). At the end of last week, I hunted out of the ceiling some of our old preschool materials to offer him. So today, after he'd spent time playing with duplo, I showed him spooning marbles from one bowl to another. He seemed to like it. He kept pausing to say, “My turn!” patting his chest, in a pleased way. (In my presentation, I had used the standard Montessori phrase: “I'll have a turn first, then you can have a turn.”) He was so cute carrying the tray carefully just as I'd shown him and putting the material away on the shelf. Because of lack of space and lack of trays, the activities are not on individual trays – instead there are a few trays stored near the shelf, behind an arm chair. After B. put the bowls back on the shelf, I thought he might just leave the tray on the floor, but he remembered where it went and appeared to achieve just as much satisfaction from putting everything away tidily as he had from doing the activity.

Tessa and I hunted out some of our old story books and I read a couple to B. and Tessa. Then I sent B. home so we could do some more work without interruption. History was next for us. After initial enthusiasm, both children have been a little bored with history the last couple of weeks so I've been moving through the material rapidly. They are excited that today we reached the founding of Rome and the beginning of Classical Greece. These are civilisations that Josiah in particular wants to know more about, especially how they fitted together – what were the interactions between the two civilisations and did they have some part in each other's demise? I don't know much about it myself so we'll be off to the library this week.

In the afternoon, Tessa played with B. again. She was mothering him a lot – I heard her say “No, B.” from time to time in an I'm-being-so-patient-and-mature voice. B. seemed to be having fun and I had other things to do so I didn't interfere.

Meanwhile, I had a look through the library catalogue for books on Ancient Greece and Rome, then mowed the lawn, cleaned all the windows outside and some inside, and cooked soup and bread for dinner! A lot of afternoons disappear without me achieving anything and I'm so pooped at the end of them that cooking dinner seems an insurmountable task, therefore it was great to get so much done. I don't know when the windows were last cleaned ... a long time ago.

(By the way, when I say I "cooked" bread, I mean I spent ten minutes dumping ingredients in the breadmaker :) )

When I came in from mowing the lawn and cleaning the outside of the windows, I had a glass of juice. Tessa asked if she could have one too (the juice is bought for making smoothies; to drink it on its own is a treat). I said the juice was for people who'd been exercising and needed the sugar – she could have some if she went for a run round the block. So she did! She didn't change out of her brand new best outfit – a pink skirt and white shirt given to her at the weekend by her grandparents - but did put sneakers on. Next I saw Tessa, she had a very pink face and glass of juice in her hand.

Getting children to tidy up after themselves vs not interrupting their concentration

2007-03-15T09:53:00.001+13:00

Two aspects of Montessori philosophy that I like are encouraging children to take responsibility for themselves (e.g. to clean up when they make a mess) and not interrupting children's concentration. However, I've found that in practice these two principles sometimes clash. I would notice that one of the kids had had a snack and left their plate on the table but when I went to ask them to put it away, I would find them absorbed in an activity – I didn't want to interrupt their concentration. The result was that I did more cleaning up after my children that seemed right and I interrupted their concentration more than seemed good.

With a purchase a while back, we received a promotional mini-whiteboard with pen attached to stick on the fridge and it occurred to me that when I noticed tasks the children had left undone, I could jot them on the whiteboard rather than interrupt the child immediately. This has been working wonderfully for us. We agreed that checking the whiteboard would be added to the children's morning routine and that they would check it at other transitional times – like when they are getting ready to go out somewhere. I love that it's cut down on my nagging of the children to tidy up after themselves.

This morning there are three entries on the whiteboard: Tessa is asked to remove her hairbrush from the bathroom basin where she left it; Josiah and Tessa are asked to put away some papers they took off the noticeboard and left on the coffee table; Tessa is asked to sponge up the chocolate that ended up on the back seat of the car when she ate a chocolate bar there.

Age of empires

2007-03-14T10:12:00.000+13:00

I finished making a timeline of empires. It was a worthwhile task – we've all spent time looking over it. I think it will be a useful resource to refer to in our history work for some time to come. One interesting fact stands out on it: if there was an “age of empires” it was from about 1000-2000AD. That period is thick with empires. The Age of Empires game is set in a period comparatively free of empires.

Tessa bounced a ball on the timeline only a day after I made it, causing a small tear in one side :( So I got it laminated.

***

Lots of people visited this blog last week; thanks for taking the time to have a look :) Please feel welcome to say hello and leave a comment any time.

Cell phone farce

2007-03-07T14:08:00.000+13:00

Josiah hurt his finger on the way to climbing class last week. He and Tessa had taken the bus there. They take their scooters with them to shorten the time it takes to get from the bus stop to the climbing wall, and Josiah had jammed his finger in his scooter when he opened it up, similar to shutting your finger in a door. After a couple of minutes the kids decided to phone and tell me. It turned out that Josiah's phone wasn't working (the battery cover had come loose but he didn't notice that till later) and Tessa had somehow managed to turn down the volume on hers so that they could hardly hear me.

The first phone call I got from Tessa's cell phone, the kids didn't say anything to me – I could hear them talking to each other but couldn't work out what they were saying. I said “Hello” a few times, getting louder and louder each time, then they hung up. I wondered why they had phoned or if they had even meant to and tried not to worry. I wasn't left in suspense for long. The next time they called I could hear them but all they said was, “What? I can't hear you.” I couldn't help laughing: didn't they remember that it was they who had called me?

I shouted into the phone, “What did you want to say?”

“Yes. I can hear you,” shouted Josiah. We got no further than that. He passed the phone on to Tessa.

“What did you want to say?” I shouted again.

“Yes,” Tessa shouted.

I was beginning to wonder if we would ever get anywhere but after a few more exchanges, Tessa got back on track and told me that Josiah had hurt his finger. She wasn't sure what to do next and I heard her ask Josiah, “What do you want her to do?”

More muffled conversation between the kids. “I'll call you back,” said Tessa and they hung up again.

A couple of minutes passed before they called again and asked me to come and collect them.

“Where are you?” I shouted. (Geoff tells me that shouting into a phone is pointless – they are designed to neutralise shouting somehow.)

Tessa must have got used to the low volume as we managed a somewhat disjointed conversation to establish where they were. I would have liked to ask for details about the injury but could see it would be stressful for them to continue on the phone so I trusted that if it was serious they wouldn't be phoning me - Josiah would be upset enough to attract the attention of passers by.

Sure enough, though the finger was too bruised to allow climbing that day, it was perfectly fine within three or four days. Even Josiah laughed when I told him my side of the phone conversations.

A working week

2007-03-03T16:31:00.000+13:00

We've had quite an academic week now I look back on it. For history, I read aloud a few pages from Kingfisher's History Encyclopedia. Josiah and I are fascinated. Tessa is a little bored because she knows a lot of it already from her own reading and previous work we've done. Nonetheless she wants to “start at the beginning” of human history this year rather than skip forward to a period she's unfamiliar with. I think as a compromise, I will not suggest any follow up / extension work until we get onto material new to Tessa: each session we just read a few pages, discuss as we like, and enter one event each onto our timeline. It's nice that so far both children have known, before I even ask, what they'd like to enter on the timeline, and that what stands out from the reading is always different for each of us. Josiah was interested in the first cities and Tessa was struck by the thought of New Stone Age avenues of standing stones in France.

Josiah wants to know which empires overlap and what order they came in. There's a long list of empires at Wikipedia. I've bought a couple of large (A2) sheets of graph paper. If I tape two together, I think I could quickly make a timeline of empires. Or maybe I should try to fit that information on our main timelines.

Both kids used the cuisenaire rods for maths. Tessa created times table problems then laid the appropriate rods end on end in a long line (e.g. for 6x7 she laid out six seven-rods in a line) then underneath laid out ten-rods and if necessary one other rod to “read” the answer from. So in the example I mentioned, four ten-rods and one two-rod fitted underneath the “problem” so Tessa could see the answer is 42. A variation on the Snake Game.

Josiah and I built the decanomial with the cuisenaire rods so that Josiah could transform it to the tower of cubes of each number. He loved it. Next week we will be looking at the algebraic decanomial. He's continuing to take time now and then to study the graph paper decanomial he filled in last week, looking for patterns.

For language the last few weeks, I've been going over each of the parts of speech in turn and giving the kids sheets of sentences with missing words. Where words are missing, the kids either write a word, in the appropriate Montessori parts-of-speech colour, or choose a word from a bunch of Montessori-coloured words I've written on stickers for the purpose. Now that we've gone over most of the parts of speech (just conjunctions and interjections to go) I've re-introduced the grammar boxes. The kids are both enthusiastic about all this work which contrasts greatly with their attitude to similar work in the past. I don't know what is different for them but I'm not complaining!

The science fair projects are halted because we need to purchase materials. Josiah and I are reading about the taxonomy of insects at Wikipedia. We are taking lots of notes because of all the new words we are learning (heterotroph, eukaryote, ventral, dorsal). Josiah dictates and I write.

The books I got from our library on critical thinking are not suitable to work through with the children (though ideal for me to learn from). So the kids are just having fun with books of logic puzzles and other puzzles for now.

We still haven't started the activities in Mona Brookes drawing book but I am finally ready – will start next week.

I am reading Holes by Louis Sachar aloud to the children. We are loving it; the kids beg me to keep reading. We will probably finish it tonight; I can't wait to find out what happens. A warning: there is some violence and suffering described in the book - I would recommend this book for age nine or ten and up, not for younger children.

Making geometry materials

2007-03-03T16:00:00.000+13:00

I spent part of last Saturday making the “Metal” Squares out of foam. I'm quite pleased with the result but disheartened by the fact that they took a few hours to make and the children's work with the Squares is likely to total only the same. I can't think of an easier way to make materials like these. I printed out the outlines Suzanne has kindly made available on her website, and glued those outlines to foam using a glue stick. Then I used my paper cutter to cut along the lines. Being all straight lines, it was easy. The glued on paper peeled off cleanly afterwards.

Tessa was excited to have new materials to work with; both children seemed to mildly enjoy the first activity with the Squares – an introduction to congruence. I think the children will find the coming presentations on similarity, and equivalent surface areas interesting.

The first week

2007-02-22T20:55:00.000+13:00

I'm pleased with how things are going so far. On the downside, not having been well prepared before the start of term I am constantly on the back foot – often preparing activities in the evening which I want to show the kids the next day. It would be great to get ahead. I think in a week or two I will have got through the backlog of tasks that I put off while my mother-in-law was sick (like finishing my last two assignments for Book 2 of the Aperfield Montessori Course and assisting Geoff with work on the climbing club website that Geoff and I offered to do ages ago) and I will have more time.

On the positive side, the kids are enthusiastic in their work, glad to be moving into new topic areas in several subjects. Both children have initiated projects for the science fair. Tessa has decided to raise lettuce seeds in different soil types to discover which is best. Josiah is going to make a weta hotel and observe the numbers and kinds of weta that use it.

Maths with Josiah has been interesting this week. Yesterday, I began to present the Geometric Decanomial. (This is an activity involving arranging squares and rectangles of grid paper into the decanomial formation. Each square or rectangle has a number written on it corresponding to the product it represents, e.g. a two by three rectangle represents the problem 2 x 3 and has “6” written on it.) Josiah very quickly got bored and declined to proceed but suggested a variation on the activity: for me to draw the decanomial formation onto one large sheet of grid paper and for him to write the products into the squares and rectangles.

Today I dutifully drew up the decanomial as Josiah suggested. He wrote in the products in the top row and the left hand column, i.e. the one times table. That was boring so he lost interest and said that was enough for today. I teased him jokingly that he'd be able to tell his friends that for maths today he did the one times table. (He liked the joke.) I suggested he fill in the squares on the diagonal. He complained that that was easy too but began writing the products in. I moved on to something with Tessa, beginning to doubt the value of the activity for Josiah.

After writing in the products of the squares, Josiah came over and handed me a piece of paper with “4096” written on it, saying, “This is 64 squared. [He'd used a calculator to get that.] Let's have a race to work out 65 squared.” Giving me the piece of paper, he added, “You can use this.” We had our race and afterwards Josiah showed me how he had reached his answer by adding 64 + 65 + 4096. He took me over to the decanomial and showed me how he had noticed that each square was larger than the previous square by the length of the larger square plus the length of the previous square.

Basically in his own words he was pointing out that (x + 1)²= x²+ x + (x + 1). We discussed it a bit, superimposing, in our imaginations, one square on the next square and looking at the column and row remaining uncovered. We did that with a few squares then left it, me feeling a lot more satisfied of the worth of the activity! Isn't Montessori great :)

Things to do

2007-02-11T21:37:00.000+13:00

I wrote this on Friday but didn't get round to posting it. I have done most of the things on the list now...

A list of the things I need to do to be ready to start "school" on Monday:

Look over the recommended supplementary reading lists in Well-Trained Mind for history, language and science. I might photocopy these lists and keep them permanently in our library bag.
Make a set of cards for the kids to look over when they aren't sure what to do with their independent work hour. These cards will just be a reminder of options - each will have a single phrase on it, e.g. "maths practice".
Put together an ancient history time line ready for the kids to enter significant dates.
Language is the subject I'm least prepared for. I need to read ahead in the Montessori albums. I suspect that the grammar work to come will assume a mastery of the parts of speech which Josiah and Tessa don't yet have. The grammar boxes, which I spent hours making, were never popular with either of them (I think I missed the boat, making the boxes after interest had passed). I'm thinking I could easily make some puzzles using the cards I made for the grammar boxes.

I'm reasonably ready for tomorrow :) Tessa is in a state of pleased anticipation :) Josiah has got behind with his climbing diary and now has three entries to complete. He'll be determined to get those done before Tuesday so that the backlog can't get any bigger (we'll probably climb again on Tuesday). This unfortunately means he will not be an enthusiastic participant in any other activities until the climbing diary is done. I'll talk to him about the diary first thing - see how he wants to do it and work around that.

Bouldering

2007-02-11T13:12:00.000+13:00

I haven't posted a photo for a while so thought I would show you this pic of Geoff at the top of a climb he did yesterday at the Baring Head Rock Hop.

That's Josiah at the bottom of the rock complaining to me about my ban on high climbs like this one. I told Josiah Geoff wouldn't have been allowed to climb up there either if his mother was present to see it. Josiah suggested I go away and then his mother wouldn't be present and he could do this easy climb.

I won that argument but Josiah and all of us had lots of great climbs. The Rock Hop is a bouldering competition; that means all the problems are (supposedly) safe to do without ropes. Even being a few metres up made me very tense: I much preferred the traverses.

Shedules and routines for the year ahead

2007-02-09T11:35:00.000+13:00

Josiah and Tessa are keen to carry on with the routine we followed at the end of last year:

10am - 11am: I work with one child; the other works independently.
11am - 12 noon: I work with the other child; the first works independently.
12 noon - 1pm: We all work together.

Work happens naturally outside those hours too.

I'm thinking I might make a set of cards for the kids to turn to for ideas during their independent work hours. The cards would say: maths practice, writing practice, typing practice, revision of foreign language vocab (if we do a foreign language), puzzles.

Tessa has made herself a schedule showing which subject she will work at each hour. She's made schedules in the past which have been abandoned after a week because they were crammed with unrealistic expectations of how much she could get done in a day. This time, I built the framework for a timetable, with the days of the week across the top and times down the side, then instead of just leaving Tessa to fill it out, I gave her slips of paper, each with a subject idea written on it, and asked her to choose one slip of paper for each time slot. I think the result will be manageable and Tessa loves it.

At the end of last year, it seemed to me that Josiah had reached a new stage with his work - that he would like to plan ahead rather than just choose activities as he goes along, so as to make progress towards his long term goals. I brought this up with him a few days ago but what I'd expected would be an exciting discussion of the possibilities this year holds for him turned tense. Josiah didn't like the sound of some of my ideas; it all seemed too much to him. It quickly became apparent that a schedule was a bad idea but Josiah thought a task list might be helpful. To take the pressure off, I refrained from making suggestions about what to put on the task list ... with the result that writing is not on it (except for keeping his climbing diary up to date)! Oh well, I will sneak some writing into our group sessions. I wonder what Maria Montessori would do in this situation. Any thoughts anyone?

My plan for the year

2007-02-06T20:39:00.000+13:00

The school year starts tomorrow. Have been doing lots of thinking about how we will do things this year but with our recent bereavement having drained our energy and taken up most of our time over the last few weeks, I am not ready to start tomorrow. Will continue having slow, quiet days of recovery, till next week I guess. The weather has been great so we have enjoyed swimming at the beach or river many afternoons.

I have been reading The Well-Trained Mind and, being a persuadable sort of person, am now a classical education convert. I think classical education could be merged easily with Montessori since classical education is mostly about what is taught (and when) whereas Montessori is about how it is taught. (That's not quite true since the materials in a Montessori environment should be chosen in response to the child but I think with a few adjustments the materials for a classical education would appeal to my children.)

Here are my thoughts about what we might use this year:

Maths

Montessori maths sequence.

Geometry

Montessori geometry sequence and origami maths.

Language

Montessori language sequence plus writing practice.

Science

Last year, I formed the intention of starting this year by inviting both children to do a project for the local homeschool science fair. Josiah enjoyed his science fair project last year though it turned out to be a lot more work than anticipated and took over other school work for a while. Maybe I'll wait a few weeks till we're settled into a routine before bringing up the science fair. ... Later: Hmm maybe it would be best to do any science fair project now so as not to interrupt our science work later on. Also, I haven't yet purchased the science books and materials I want to work with this year.

Josiah

Last year, we began working through DK's The Way Science Works. We still have lots to do there but the book is mostly physics, whereas Josiah's current interest is chemistry. I think I will set The Way Science Works aside to come back to later. For chemistry The Well-Trained Mind recommends the Smithsonian Chemistry Set MicroChem XM 5000 which does look good. I'm looking for somewhere that sells it in NZ; I found one US website that would post it to me for US$200 lol. The manual that comes with the set is available online along with a contents list, so I could gather the materials myself and follow the manual. Or I could buy a different set.

Tessa

Although we haven't entirely finished Kingfisher's Science Around Us, I think it's time to move on to something fresh. Tessa's science interest is nature, which fits well with what The Well-Trained Mind recommends for her age: Reader's Digest's How Nature Works: One Hundred Ways Parents and Kids Can Share the Secrets of Nature. I'm trying to get hold of a copy second hand, otherwise will buy it new.

History / People Studies

Not sure whether to get Story of the World vol I or Kingfisher's History Encyclopaedia, both recommended in The Well-Trained Mind. I've reserved the Kingfisher encyclopaedia at the library and will decide once I see it.

For further exploration, I'll use our local library and the primary source lists and other book lists in The Well-Trained Mind. There's currently an exhibition on ancient Egypt at a local museum; Tessa is very keen to see it.

Art, Craft, Music and Photography

Tessa is enrolled to take beginner guitar lessons.

I have purchased Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes. Will start with that when it arrives.

Critical Thinking and Logic

The Well-Trained Mind recommends introducing children to this subject in the middle years. I think Josiah and Tessa would enjoy it. My local library and the National Library don't have any of the books recommended in The Well-Trained Mind but lots of others on this topic. Will have a look at what's in my local library before purchasing anything.

Am wondering about spending time on this subject for half the year then switching to Latin – I think the kids would be daunted by two new subjects at once. There was a teach-yourself-Latin workbook I noted at last year's homeschool fair, which I thought I would enjoy and hopefully Tessa and Josiah will too.

German / Spanish

Tessa and Josiah say they do not want to do a foreign language this year :( I think they are daunted by the hard work. Looking at the draft schedule we've planned together, I think there is time for at least one session a week but I'll wait for an opportune moment to suggest it again.

Exercise

Plenty of this happens by itself: climbing, cycling, walking, swimming, yoga, and muscle-strengthening workouts.

* * *

Will write soon about how I plan to use these resources – our schedule etc.

Homeschoolers isolated from the real world

2007-01-19T11:36:00.000+13:00

In a couple of her recent blog posts, Daisy rebutted the surprisingly commonly held view that children who homeschool are isolated from the real world.

Sometimes I think if I could isolate my children I would. Despite homeschooling, I have failed to protect my children from unsavoury aspects of the real world. From neighbouring kids, my children have heard pretty much any swear word you can think of. Out visiting, they've watched adult television, been fed high quantities of processed sugar, trans fats and salt, and have been exposed to restrictive gender stereotypes. Gathering with fellow Christians, they have come across the view that limiting the freedom of homosexuals is a higher Christian priority than combating poverty. Just this week, our six-year-old neighbour brought toy machine guns into our home that keep a record of how many times each shooter has been shot. 'You wanna kill me? You wanna kill me?' taunted our neighbour as he waited for Josiah to reset one of the guns ready for a new gunfight.

What homeschooling does allow a family to do is to take as long as we wish to discuss "real world" issues as they arise, exploring them from various angles, reaching our own opinions and choosing our responses to each.

Another reason not to go to school

2007-01-14T10:46:00.000+13:00

Stuff reports that the teachers struck off by the Teachers' Council disciplinary tribunal in its first 14 months of existence include:

"Three who had inappropriate relationships with students.

"Four who inappropriately used laptops.

"One who imported child pornography.

"One who tried to intimidate and injure a 15-year-old.

"One who bruised his six-year-old grandson's head.

"One who indecently assaulted a girl.

"Three who faced drugs or drink-drive accusations."

Allowed to continue teaching is the boss of a child care centre where young children were slapped, force-fed, and ignored for long periods when they cried. This teacher is required to retrain but the course she is required to attend is 50 hours! That is just over one full-time week. Also allowed to continue teaching is a woman convicted three times of drink-driving.

The thought of large numbers of children being under the authority of these adults - in their sole care - day after day for a year is disturbing to say the least. What kind of impact does such a teacher have on a child's life?

WWW

2007-01-02T21:53:00.000+13:00

Watch, wait and wonder.

Always nice to see Maria Montessori's methods being practised and promoted, even when those doing the practising and promoting appear to have no idea that Maria Montessori went before them. The psychotherapists behind this programme run sessions where they ask parents of infants to:

"Get down on the floor with the infant;
"Follow the infant's lead;
"Not initiate any activities him- or herself;
"Be sure to respond when the infant initiates but not to take over the activities in any way;
"Allow the infant freedom to explore, whatever the infant wants to do is okay as long as it is safe; and
"Remember to Watch, Wait and Wonder."*

Summer holidays

2007-01-02T20:34:00.000+13:00

What did my son who hates writing do with this rainy day of his summer holidays? He spent half of it writing a letter! Not even a compulsory thank-you-for-the-Christmas-present letter. He finished those yesterday and asked me this morning who else he could write to as he wanted to do another Inkscape letter. Josiah and Tessa have been exploring Inkscape for the last couple of days, creating shapes and adding text and colour.

Meanwhile, I read Eoin Colfer's The Supernaturalists, one of Josiah's Christmas presents. Josiah and Tessa each read it in a couple of days so I thought it might be gripping and it was - absorbing and fun - reminiscent of an action movie. I liked it much more than Colfer's earlier book Artemis Fowl, which in fact I didn't like at all; I like to be inspired by the virtue of fictional heroes, not depressed by their unpleasantness.

It was great to see Josiah spontaneously writing several sentences. I had begun wondering how to encourage some academic work over the holidays with the children having got out of work mode. I'm glad now that I didn't come up with anything. I think the children needed a quiet week to recover from a busy end to the term and the family gatherings over Christmas. They have been reading till late at night, getting up late in the morning, reading some more. Josiah has worked on his globe puzzle and played lots of chess with Geoff. Tessa has created a bed and various other accessories in anticipation of the delivery of a doll she's purchased in an online auction. She's also played outside a lot despite the bad weather, sometimes with a neighbour or with Josiah but mostly on her own. Tessa and I have been for a few walks, and played a game of cricket with a neighbour (if you could call it cricket considering none of us can bowl accurately).

I won't try to instigate school work at this stage but will "watch, wait and wonder" for a while instead.

I certainly needed a quiet week. I have felt burnt out for most of the last three weeks. I have been getting up late and have skipped some of my morning exercise sessions, which means I start the day feeling that I've already failed at something. Hopefully some rest time will be what I need to get re-motivated.

Boxing Day

2006-12-26T14:10:00.000+13:00

I hope you had a lovely Christmas Day. We spent the day at Geoff's brother and sister-in-law's half-finished home, set on a hill between pine trees and native forest. The rata was in full flower (see photo).

Josiah and Tessa think a building site is a great place to spend a day: they clambered around in the rafters, frightening their mother and their aunts and grandmother but not their dad or their uncles.

Some of us went for a walk through the bush after lunch and came across a black fantail. I hadn't seen one in years, and for the rest of the party, this was a first, so it was a nice Christmas present :) Geoff took a perfectly sharp photo of a twig with a soft black blur behind it, which is really a more honest portrait of a piwakawaka (fantail) than the one in the link above, since piwakawaka are constantly on the move.

We had planned to go picnicking today, Boxing Day, but woke up to drizzle so have had a quiet day at home instead. Geoff pointed out an hour or two ago that we should never plan anything for Boxing Day: this is the easiest day in the year to keep children entertained - because of all the new stuff. Tessa has been trying out her new art supplies and writing thank you notes. Josiah showed his face for breakfast but has spent the rest of the day in his bedroom working on a sphere-shaped world map puzzle. I find it interesting that although he generally craves more interaction than the rest of us combined, he always chooses to do puzzles on his own in his bedroom rather than out in the living room. I wonder if there are other activities which he would like to work at in his room in preference to the living room.

Tessa and Josiah were each given NZ$50 by their grandmother. Josiah has 'banked' his with his dad and shown no further interest in it. (I mean, he values and appreciates it but has no interest in spending it yet.) Tessa, when she heard we weren't going on the picnic today, asked if we could go to the Boxing Day sales, but as I would consider that a particularly painful form of torture, I declined her request. She's not sure what she will buy - there's nothing in particular that she desires at the moment - but she feels an urgent need to spend the money; it will be gone by the end of the week. This is always the case when she earns or is given money. Sometimes she regrets her hasty purchases but still she can't resist making them.

This is the second Christmas Geoff and I have not given the children presents. Last year, Josiah and Tessa were doubtful but content to trial a parental-present-free Christmas. The advantages we've noticed are that the children enjoy presents from other family members more and that Geoff and I are able to give them presents at other times during the year when their need is greater. There doesn't seem to be a downside. (Thanks to my friend Katrina for leading the way on this.)

I think I've eaten seven chocolates today. Similar amount yesterday. Luckily there aren't anymore.

Sad family news

2006-12-06T09:42:00.000+13:00

We learned on Monday evening that my mother in law, who has had two incidents of cancer in the past, has a new tumour which is inoperable. She has been told by the oncologist that she is unlikely to survive six months. She is very calm and accepting; I think she's been expecting this since her first diagnosis of cancer six years ago.

We told the children on Tuesday night. Tessa is very upset. Josiah is silent; I don't think he's really taken it in. He doesn't seem to want to think about it. It's hard to know what to do for the kids to support them. I don't want to be melodramatic, making things harder than they have to be, but I'm conscious that this worse than anything I experienced in my childhood - Josiah and Tessa have been very close to their Nana since we moved here six years ago.

Tramping and more geometry

2006-12-01T09:13:00.000+13:00

The first half of this week was unproductive for all three of us. I felt tired and low on energy. I think it was partly because the house is a mess. We were away tramping in the Tararuas at the weekend and so didn't do our usual weekend cleaning, and what's more came home with piles of wet gear. I spent most of Monday unpacking, washing clothes and finding places in the garage to hang the packs and other gear to dry.

The tramp was great. Usually when we go tramping, we sleep in our tent; the kids were keen to experience a back country hut so we stayed at Totara Flats hut (which, with it's gas stoves (!) is pretty flash for a back country hut). We walked out in heavy rain on Sunday. It was surprising to see how quickly the rivers and creeks rose. A few hours later and we might have been unable to cross the rivers.

The years of trying every trick in the book to keep Tessa enjoying a walk (or rather to distract her from the fact that she was walking) seem to have paid off. She led the way out on Sunday and to be honest, my preference would have been for a gentler pace :)

* * *

So after a slow start to the week, we had a better day today: Josiah asked for a geometry presentation, Tessa asked to join in and Josiah welcomed her! (I think he feels less concerned about his position in comparison to Tessa since I pointed out to him the break from Montessori geometry he had while we did the Origami work.) The presentation nearly brought us to the end of work with transversals. Tessa has enjoyed discovering all the relationships between the various angles formed. Josiah has found it somewhat ho-hum but at the end today, he pointed out with enthusiasm that if I told him the size of one of the angles, he would be able to work out all the rest without measuring them. So I set each child up with a challenge to do just that and Tessa was pleased to find that she could work them all out too.

Josiah took the bus to climbing as usual today then remembered half way there that his climbing coach is away so there's no lesson. Some of the older kids were planning to turn up for a practice regardless but Josiah didn't feel comfortable yet joining in with that more casual arrangement. So he got off the bus at the mall and hopped on the next bus returning this way. I am pleased that he's confident dealing independently with little mishaps like this. He's had one or two others. The very first time he took a bus on his own, it deviated from the advertised route, missing the stop Josiah intended to get off at! He simply got off at the next stop and texted me, telling me the name of the street he was on. ... Of course it would have been more helpful if he'd noticed it was 'Walters St' not 'Watters St' ;) 'Watters' did seem an odd name for a street and I got a little panicky when I couldn't find it on my map. Happily Josiah spotted a familiar railway station half a block from where he was stranded, so contacted me again to let me know.

By the way, the Wikipedia page on the Tararuas which I linked to above when I mentioned our tramp there includes two photos taken by Geoff!

Thursday

2006-11-27T22:25:00.000+13:00

Not a great day today. The kids fought during breakfast, something they've been doing a lot lately. It seems to be a bad time of day for them. Then Josiah got upset when he learned that Tessa is ahead of him in the sequence of geometry presentations.

The children started the Montessori 9-12 geometry sequence together about a year ago. Josiah moved ahead to begin with then Tessa got ahead recently because she had a burst in interest which coincided with Josiah taking a break from the sequence to work on origami mathematics instead. The issue arose today because Tessa was asking me for another presentation, which would put her even further ahead. I argued with Josiah, pointing out that no one doubted his maths ability and that what Tessa did had no effect on his progress. He remained upset. He copes very well with the fact that Tessa reached fluency in reading about a year before he did and that she writes more easily than he does but I think the idea that she could pass him in a subject he considers his speciality was a knock to his dignity and self confidence. The truth is that he will fly ahead in geometry within a few days, whenever he feels like it – he has no need or inclination to linger over the presentations as Tessa enjoys doing.

The origami maths has been fun and Josiah and I have both learned a lot. I'd like to carry on with it but will have to find time to make the origami maths presentations as well as, rather than instead of, Montessori geometry presentations.

I don't like that Josiah compares himself to others, especially his sister, so much but am not sure how to help him. Will have a look at Alfie Kohn's book No Contest: The Case Against Competition when I've finished with Punished by Rewards. This morning, conveniently for me, Tessa suddenly remembered she wanted to bake biscuits for the tramp we hope to go on this weekend and asked to do that first, which defused the situation.

Later I gave Josiah a geometry presentation, during which he complained unceasingly that the presentation was boring, though he didn't want to stop. I probably should have stopped and declined to work with him while he was being negative; I felt very discouraged. What do others with an interest in Montessori do in response to negativity?

As a long term response, I will adjust the presentations to suit Josiah better, leaving out parts of them. I would like a good immediate response too.

All in all I was ready for a lie down after lunch ;)

My other blog and the new site feed

2006-11-27T19:37:00.000+13:00

I have found myself wanting to write posts about aspects of life not directly connected to Montessori homeschooling or parenting. I don't think many of my fellow Montessori homeschoolers will be interested in these so I have decided to start a separate blog for them.

***

So far I have been irregular at posting here; I think that will continue. Therefore, I've put a link to a site feed at the bottom of the left hand column for your convenience :)

Tightening up the work session

2006-11-19T13:06:00.000+13:00

I wrote an earlier post about our current morning schedule. Over the last few weeks, our morning work session has shrunk as Josiah and Tessa have become later and later being ready to start. Also activities like reading novels and playing on the computer have crept into the work session. So, at our latest family meeting on Wednesday evening, I suggested some restrictions. The kids agreed enthusiastically. Which I find interesting. I guess they know now the rewards in satisfaction and enjoyment of a good work session, hence their agreement with my proposals, but that knowledge is not in their consciousness when they wake up in the morning. Instead their thoughts revolve around immediate gratification: “Hmmm, I think I'll finish this Asterix comic before I get up.” Or their consciousness is not engaged at all and they follow whims: if Josiah comes across a ball on his way to breakfast, he stops for ten minutes to kick it around. Hence they need assistance from me to keep them to their chosen plan.

We start our work session at 10am. This may seem late ... I appreciate having the time beforehand to do an hour's exercise, check my emails and do a few admin chores. In theory, starting late means that the children have time to get their household chores out of the way but in reality, they lie in bed reading and then get up and play games.

Both children are night owls – full of energy in the evenings and slow to start in the morning. For that reason, I feel fine about keeping the late start that suits me so well but hasn't been ideal for the kids recently. They can have some time reading and playing when they wake up. What I think will make a positive difference is having a deadline after which there is no more reading and playing, only having breakfast, clearing it away, having a wash and brushing teeth. We've agreed on 9am as a deadline, with confiscation of books and toys being the consequence of any transgression.

We've also agreed that during the work session (10am - 1pm) there will be no:

fiction reading
toys
unapproved games
unapproved websites

Maybe I should put “unapproved” in front of the first two items too – Shakespeare and others might be exempt from the ban on fiction reading :) By toys, I really only mean Tamagochis; I can't think of any other toys Josiah or Tessa is interested in just now.

I've been reluctant in the past to exclude fiction reading from the work session because in my opinion fiction is as valuable as non-fiction – I have learnt as much from reading fiction as from reading non-fiction. But when Josiah spent an entire morning reading Harry Potter the other day, I don't think it was because he was loving every moment and didn't want to stop; I think it was because he couldn't be bothered thinking of something else to do. He agrees – he wants to do something a bit meatier during the work session.

Like so much in the life of my family, the state of our work sessions seems to go in waves. We have productive work sessions for a while, generating much satisfaction and enjoyment, then our motivation wanes – usually after a break from our routine such as a week full of commitments or a week of illness – and the children become disinclined to attend my presentations. Then something jolts us to make a decision to put more energy into the work session again. The instigation for change doesn't always come from me as it has this time. Sometimes Tessa will say, “I want things to be more school-like!” and she'll write up a timetable of subjects and activities for each day of the week. Sometimes one of the children will be inspired by work their friends are doing. Sometimes a topic will absorb one of the children so deeply that it takes over everything for a while.

Junkfood

2006-11-17T09:49:00.000+13:00

Junkfood. Children's screen time. Everyone agrees the former is unhealthy in anything but a small amount. And many of us think the same of the latter. Yet in both cases, there are so many definitions of “a small amount” that our apparent agreement is illusory.

To our family, junkfood is anything with:

refined sugar
refined flour
non-naturally occurring trans fats
high salt
high fat

And to us a small amount is about one serving in a day, four or five days a week - plus the odd piece of chocolate :) One serving might be a muffin, a slice of cake, a biscuit, a muesli bar, an ice cream, a sugary drink or a couple of handfuls of potato crisps or salty crackers.

In reality we probably have nearer two servings in a day than one, partly because everything has been supersized in recent years so that a slice of cake in a cafe and an ice cream on a stick are twice the size they used to be. Now and then we buy pizza, Indian takeaways or supermarket instant meals, probably containing every item in my junkfood definition above :( (Cooking is possibly my least favourite chore; I wish there were such a thing as healthy fast food!)

Most of the time, we don't wish to eat more junkfood. Even the kids agree in principle that they are happier with our current amount of junkfood consumption than they would be with a greater amount. When we find ourselves in situations where larger amounts of junkfood are on offer, as we frequently do (such as when visiting friends), Josiah, our budding athlete, is the strongest willed at resisting it. The rest of us struggle and I really feel for Tessa, who - not surprisingly considering she is only nine - can't say no, then suffers the after effects: short temper, low energy and depression. (The rest of us suffer as a result of her short temper too!)

What motivated me to write about junkfood this week is that Tessa spent a good part of last weekend visiting friends who, as they usually do when she visits, offered Tessa lollies, an ice cream, potato chips and a sugary drink. I'm absolutely certain that family believes they consume junkfood in “a small amount” but I can't comprehend how they work that out LOL.

Junkfood seems to be an ingrained part of socialising, so that even people who ordinarily eat very little junkfood serve it up to their visitors. I've done that myself: baked a batch of muffins or a cake because I was expecting visitors, though in the last year I've begun to come up with healthier alternatives such as grapes, watermelon, crackers and hummus.

I don't like it that junkfood is handed out in large quantities at events for children. At the Hutt City Council holiday programmes Josiah and Tessa used to attend, the children are given a steady stream of lollies throughout the day as a reward for “good” behaviour. On two occasions this year, Josiah's Boys' Brigade group played games which involved scoffing large quantities of food – once ice cream, the other time potatoes. Another game involved coke being poured into the player's mouth – though Josiah did say it was hard to swallow any. (You gotta be grateful for small mercies :) ) I'm sure some reading this are thinking, “It's only occasional. What's the big deal?” My question is, why have the games at all? What is gained from them? The answer is obvious: they're fun. Well there are surely countless equally fun alternatives that have the additional virtue of not making the participants feel ill.

It seems to me that the rhetoric around junkfood focuses on the damage junkfood does and the need to avoid it but people's action is a long way from reflecting that sentiment. Children, most of whom have not yet developed the willpower to self-regulate their consumption, are offered large amounts of junkfood in all sorts of situations. Often it's offered in a way that makes it hard for parents to step in and restrict their children's intake.

I'd love it if junkfood handouts disappeared from children's groups and events but I can't imagine what it would take for that to happen.

Karori Wildlife Sanctuary

2006-10-28T21:46:00.000+13:00

Saturday. The first sunny day day in a while. While I was out cycling this morning, everyone else decided that we would go to Karori Wildlife Sanctuary today, travelling by bus and train. When I came in, I walked into a Christmas Day-like atmosphere – the kids were hyped up, excited, talking non-stop. It was hard to get them to pause long enough to take in a suggestion to pack their bags.

The holiday atmosphere prevailed while I had a shower and we all packed our bags and made lunch. Nonetheless, Tessa found several things to object to forcefully. She didn't want to take her climbing harness out of her backpack. She didn't want to put on a t-shirt under the long long-sleeved top she was wearing, in case it was hot later. She didn't want to pack a warm top in case it was cold later. (New Zealand weather is very changeable.) She didn't want a sandwich for lunch.

I guess Tessa is just desperate for more authority over her life, but boy is it tiring when she expresses that while we are getting ready for an excursion which requires certain preparation.

We got through it and were still cheerful departing. Our journey involved catching a bus, a train and another bus. At the train station, we bought 10-trip tickets for the second bus ride. Josiah asked to look after the child 10-trip. I knew Tessa would want to too so I thought about it for a moment then said that as Josiah had been in charge of paying the fares on the first bus, Tessa could have a turn this time. (They each have their own 10-trip card for the train.) Josiah proceeded to object and whine for the next five minutes, with me trying to explain my reasoning in between objections. Eventually, I asked what he would do in my place. He talked this through for another few minutes, finally deciding that he concurred with my decision.

He genuinely couldn't see the “fairness” of my choice initially. A reminder to me not to assume that our perspective is the same.

Blogging is great. At the time of the events above, all I could think was how annoying it was that Tessa was “making things difficult” and how unpleasant Josiah's whining was. Only writing about the events afterwards could I see more to it.

We had a lovely walk in Karori Sanctuary. Geoff took this photo of one of the tuatara we saw – gorgeous.

Ducklings and Tamagotchis

2006-10-27T19:09:00.000+13:00

I thought I'd post photos of the ducklings we've been watching and feeding bread to each day. Tuesday morning our shallow creek was a raging torrent after a storm Monday night. On the reserve, I saw what I thought was the mother duck on her own. Whether it was the mother duck or some other duck, she was distressed. She flew back and forth over the creek, quacking non-stop for about 30 minutes. I felt sure the ducklings must have been lost in the storm. When the kids got up, I gently told them what I'd seen and what it might mean. Tessa kept saying, “Maybe they found somewhere to shelter. Maybe they were swept downstream and their mother will find them.” Then lo and behold in the late afternoon, the mother duck reappeared with all twelve ducklings! We went out in the wind and rain to feed them. Here they are on a sunnier day.

The Tamagotchis continue to be popular. They might be rubbish but at least they bring brother and sister together.