Homework

Homeschoolers don't have homework, for obvious reasons.

Mi'ita's little ballet buddy was complaining about the mountain of homework she has, thinking that she may have to quit ballet because it is too much. She has 3 math worksheets and a page out of her math workbook, spelling, and a speech she has to give tomorrow. She says that she spends almost as much time on her homework (about 2 hours per night) as we do on our entire "formal" part of homeschooling--math and languages. (We unschool everything else.)

I don't really know much about teaching math. This is the first time I've ever done it. Spelling I do know something about, though.

Spelling is tricky. There is ample research out there that says that memorizing lists of spelling words is not effective at improving spelling in regular situations, no matter what grade you get on your spelling test. Not much actually works, really. What is recommended is doing a lot of reading. Good readers are usually decent spellers. I find for myself that writing a lot helps, too, especially on the computer with the spellcheck on because it gives you immediate feedback.

The bad thing is that public school teachers have a huge amount of pressure to improve their students' spelling. The pressure comes with standardized tests. I don't think they test spelling independently. Maybe a little. What they do test is writing samples where the piece of writing is graded in four areas--voice, conventions, ideas, and organization. Students usually do adequately in voice, okay in ideas, eh in organization, and bomb in conventions. Conventions includes punctuation, spelling, paragraphing, etc.

So they give a lot of spelling tests, and a lot of spelling homework. I would guess that half of what Mi'ita has gotten in the past was spelling. It doesn't help any, according to research, but at least the teachers feel like they are trying.

I don't know if doing pages of math worksheets helps math competence. My friend says no. I know that it certainly convinced Mi'ita that math bites. I tried to find some research on this subject but it's more than I can wade through in an evening. My gut feeling is that using math in real situations and tackling one big problem that takes a lot of thought to solve would be more effective than a bunch of math problems. I'm not sure about that, though.

A lot of parents get all weird about homework, too. Some insist that teachers aren't doing a good job if there isn't a lot of assigned homework--they call in and complain to the teacher, requesting homework. Knowing that the busywork that is sent home isn't effective at helping their child learn would come as a blow to a lot of parents. They would probably still insist that doing the homework instills "discipline" even if it doesn't instill spelling or math skills. Playing a game with their kid wouldn't feel like work, nor would a teacher be able to grade it. I wonder if a lot of the pressure for homework is a grasp to help their kid get a good grade.

Grades are things that I have very happily jettisoned.

Anyway, I think it's tragic for Mi'ita's ballet buddy to quit ballet because she has too much homework to do. Is the value of the work done more than the value of taking ballet?

Where's my schedule?!

I find myself panicking regularly about the lack of organization of our homeschooling.

I had such a lovely plan laid out in the beginning. I had the white board easel all set up with math, Latin, spelling, handwriting, dictation, science, history... It was beautiful. Granted I felt a bit uneasy teaching such rote work like grammar and spelling. Those things are hard to learn and there is tons of evidence out there saying that memorizing lists of spelling words helps no one. I figured those details could work themselves out, though, as we progressed.

My little Mi'ita blew the little white board easel out of the water after two days. It took a week before it was abandoned completely, but abandoned it is.

What is our schedule now? Well, we do math and Latin first thing in the morning. We read history at night in bed. On Mondays we spend the afternoon in the library. Other than that, we do this and that, depending on our moods. I have my list of "weekly requireds" for ice cream on Mondays. She needs to have 4 math lessons completed that week, 4 Latin, one science, one history, all her library books read, and a new writing posted to her blog with art (photography accepted.) German and guitar are on the list, too, but her guitar teacher has yet to start lessons for the year and the German program just arrived and we haven't installed it yet. She always earns her ice cream, my greedy Gus, but she is usually finishing her story Sunday night.

Our days are full, for sure. Today we did math and Latin, then spent the morning setting up our El Dia de los Muertos ofrenda. She did some writing for it, and we discussed a lot about Mayan culture, and about the Greek display we're planning. In the afternoon we went to the library, played in the park for an hour, worked on a papermache three headed dog Cerberus, then went off to play practice for the play she is in. Since she is only an extra, I am teaching her how to knit between scenes.

We have a Halloween party coming up and we've planned an ancient cultures' view of the dead theme. Mayan, Greek, Egyptian, Celtic, and Japanese displays will be set up with their views of the afterlife, their various gods of the dead, their ceremonies and food. We've tossed all "regular" schoolwork out the window until November 1st. Except math and Latin, of course, and writing.

My friend told me that I would "have a blast" homeschooling my kid. I didn't to begin with, but it sure has been fun lately. But I worry and I fret. History has become our overreaching theme that everything else fits in. I love history, of course, and so does Mi'ita. But what about science? We are learning science as it relates to history. Early hominids, Neanderthals, Euclidean geometry, and how that Greek guy measured the earth, radiocarbon dating. All that is tangential to learning the history. And what about writing? Can writing once a week really be enough? I can't think so, but I can't get motivated to push it more.

I'm reading her My family and other animals, a book about an English boy growing up in Greece in the 40's or so and being very lackadaisically homeschooled or taught by tutors or left to run amok. His running amok is quite educational as he was a budding zoologist and spent all his time studying the fauna of the island. I read it and think that his math lessons are really distracting him from the real lessons of learning zoology.

I am also reading The Dan Riley School for a Girl, a book about a father who homeschooled his daughter for a year because she was lazily and unconcernedly floundering in middle school. He had a schedule, with times on it no less! Which his headstrong and rebellious daughter followed! I am jealous.

And I am torn. My daughter is learning. She is playing to her strengths--reading and history and curiosity about the world. She is busy with ballet and a play she is in. She goes to once a month all day science workshops taught by experts. She is learning Latin, for gosh sakes!

But we don't have a schedule. And I gave up trying to get her to memorize spelling. I worry and I fret.