Body rhythms

I am not a scientist and I don't know the theories about body rhythms. I do know that there are morning people and night people and middle of the day people. I know that some people like to eat breakfast, some don't, and some people like their midnight snacks (not me). I know that some women have mood cycles that mirror their monthly cycles (I'm there!) People perform better or worse at different parts of the day.

Lots of teachers think that kids have their best learning time in the morning and schedule reading, writing, and math then, pushing everything else to the afternoons when kids are supposed to be tired.

Mi'ita is not an early morning person. She crawls out of bed anywhere between 7 and 9, later lately because the play she is in has been having night rehearsals and performances. When she was in kindergarten, I would wake her very gently, no earlier than 7, or regret it immensely. I dressed her myself, brushed her hair and teeth, and set her in front of food before she fully woke up. She is a crabby morning person.

If Mi'ita is allowed to wake when she wants and get started on her work when she is ready, sometimes still in bed, sometimes over breakfast, she is a much happier person and gets a lot more work done. Likewise, she is receptive to learning at night. I often read her science and history books as bedtime stories and we have very pleasant conversations until 10 PM. Middle of the day she wants a very long lunch break over a good book. As reading is involved, and often of a subject that I want her to learn about, that is fine with me.

I know lots of homeschooling parents that like to get their kids up and going by a certain time and I respect that, too. I envy parents that have a biddable child that will sit down and get to work when told to. Then you can have all your work done by a certain predictable time and have the rest of the day to enjoy.

I don't have one of those. I could certainly insist that she do it anyway, but I would end up fighting her every inch of the road. Why bother when I don't have to?

Another nice thing about being able to follow my own biorhythm is breakfast. I'm not a breakfast person, but I get hungry at 10 AM, whether I've eaten breakfast or not. When I've had a regular job I often gain weight, eating breakfast when I'm not hungry and a 10 o'clock snack when I am. Homeschooling has allowed me to lose 5 pounds because I eat at home, mostly, and I eat when I am hungry and not when I'm not. Lovely. (I could still lose another 15...)

Teenagers apparently have different sleep needs then the rest of us human beings, too. They actually need more sleep then younger children, not less, and their sleep cycle shifts. They want to go to sleep later and wake up later. High schools have been trying to compensate for this, but bussing, afterschool activities, and parental needs have made it impossible for most schools to change much. Homeschoolers that have understanding parents can totally deal with this, though.

When I was in college I had a green mohawk and I wore bazaar clothes because I could. After college I knew I would have to dress for work.

I figure homeschooling is like that. Later, she will have to arrange her schedule around someone else's needs. Now she doesn't, though, and let's enjoy it!

A schoolroom of one's own

When I told my friend, a Title I teacher, that Mi'ita and I were going to homeschool this year, she gave me some advice. "Have a schedule and a specific spot, not the kitchen table, to do your work."

She then went into detail about a fourth grade girl she had taught who had been homeschooled up until that point and then enrolled in school because she still didn't know how to read. She blamed it on the mother not actually teaching anything ... because she didn't have a schedule and a spot.

I then dutifully went home and transformed a section of my thankfully large living room into The Schoolroom with a whiteboard, bookshelves, two desks, and a lizard cage. The Schoolroom is now the Keeper of Materials.

Where do we actually work? We do latin in front of the TV and on the coffee table, because it's a DVD program. We do German, Swahili, and Carmen Sandiego Math Detective on the computer. We do history and writing in bed. We do science in workshops, on walks, at the pet store, and at school. We do math at the kitchen table with breakfast. We do art on the dining room table because it is big. We are actually papermacheing Cerberus in The Schoolroom because he is a long term project that needs his own spot.

What is our schedule? We get up and get breakfast and math done. Then we do latin. Then we do whatever it is that we want to do for the rest of the day. We are not often idle, but we definitely meander throughout many things--library, math games, writing, art, history. I let the day play out and only impose an activity if we find ourselves at loose ends, or if a Halloween party is looming and we need to get some stuff done for it!

What have I discovered? You definitely do not need The Schoolroom, but you do need a Keeper of Materials space.

I hate school!

That is so weird for me to say.

I was a teacher for 13 years. I loved school all the way up to 5th grade and then again in college. I volunteered in Mi'ita's classes every year. When I was asked once what I liked best about my job, I said I loved all the hugs I got from my students. I only decided to homeschool because the local public school options tanked and there are no private school options here.

Mi'ita and I were roped into joining what would have been her 4th grade class on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Mrs. M is a great teacher. They are doing the fun things when we come--science and social studies. It's just that it's a scheduled activity that interrupts what we're doing. Today we were papermache-ing our 3 headed Cerberus for our fabulous Halloween party. I wanted to get some poster sized drawings of the different gods of the dead going and some captions to explain all this stuff. But no, we had no time because we had to go to school.

Mi'ita was ready to quit this morning, too. "Do we have to go?" I should have jumped on it and said, "NO! Let's just quit." But no, she had her TAG class (talented and gifted) that she loves and that I want her to continue, and then I said that we would go to Mrs. M's class one last time and tell her that we were quitting. Of course they were starting a new unit on rocks, which Mi'ita adores, strange child, so now she wants to continue again. And really, I know nothing about rocks (no interest, I confess) and I'd really like her to get more systematic and scientific about her interest in rocks--identifying them, classifying them, organizing them. Mrs. M is a big science teacher and so this is all good.

It's just that it interrupts everything!

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.

Whew, we're not in school.

Ah, those school days. Up at 7, cranky and uncooperative. Breakfast, dressed, off to school by 8. Pick up at 2:48. Seriously. Who thought of 2:48? Home, snack, off to ballet, dinner, homework, bed.

Homework at the crankiest, most tired time of the day. Usually ends in tears or arguments or both.

Today? Awake by 7, reading in bed until 8. Breakfast and math. Long division takes a while, so we're at it until 9:30 or so. Latin flashcards in the car on the way to get my hair cut.

Why is there never time to get a haircut on the weekend?

Home for lunch. Walk to the library. Practice multiplication facts on the way. Spent a couple of hours at the library. Ice cream on the way home because she met her weekly goal last week. Dinner. Built a mammoth bone hut afterwards out of cardboard and cloth (pictured here, with her in her caveman dress that she sewed the other day.) Discussed why ancient people built their shelters on the east Asian steppes out of bones and hides. Bedtime stories about venomous animals. Read for an hour or more.

I didn't have to be anywhere at 2:48.