Finally, finally, finally some science!

I have been waiting impatiently for Mi'ita to turn to science. We have been saturated in history since August! I like history, don't get me wrong. I would be sad if she were so interested in science that she ignored history. But I've been worried.

This morning I gave up my hands off approach to science. Freeschooling is supposed to force feed only the basics of math, reading, and writing. All else is interest driven. I've been suggesting this and that scientific activity all along, but so far her interests led her to history.

Today I pulled out Usborne's How Nature Works and said that we really need to do a little science. She was finally nonresistant and we sat down and "looked for good experiments." Of course the experiment that she was interested in was getting a pet turtle. We headed over to the Wee Beasties reptiles pet store and talked to Brenda the herpetologist for a good hour about turtles and tortoises. We finally decided it wouldn't be a good pet for us, but we learned a ton and a half. Did you know that Darwin got a tortoise in the Galapagos Islands named Harriet that just recently died, over 200 years old? Apparently they don't really get old, like we do. They die of other things, but not old age.

After the herpetologist, we had some down time and I found her nose deep in How Nature Works again, learning about skeletons. I pulled out a pamphlet about fossils on Oregon beaches and we headed down to the beach to look for fossils. We looked at a lot of rocks, I read the pamphlet out loud while she built a sand castle, and we found a rock that some tube worms had burrowed in, but no fossils. Found some bivalve and gastropod shells, though, and talked about that.

Bedtime story tonight I gave her the choice of a science book and a history book. She chose a different science book about snakes. Now she has her hopes set on a pet corn snake.

I am so relieved that science has made a comeback.

Shifting gears again

Mi'ita's thoroughly sick of ancient history.

We were going to study Africa because we're going, then the Persians, then the Romans, then the Mongols, then China, etc, heading forward and around through history. But she has no interest in ancient history anymore.

I forgot a simple fact of children. They need variety. Sustained interest in a subject is rare. We've been studying ancient history since August and it's almost November.

I thought for a change we could head into science. I've been feeling terribly guilty at how piecemeal our science study has been. She is interested in Nazi Germany and the middle ages, though. I wanted to get out of the Euro-centric history, too. Oh well. One of the tenants of freeschooling is following their lead. I'm not really ready to teach Nazi Germany to a 9 year old, but we can do it.

Scope and Sequence

Scope and sequence is an educational term that teachers use to describe what and when things will be taught. This ensures that certain subjects won't be over covered and others under. In science, for example, elementary school teachers are famous for spending lots and lots of time on zoology and almost no time on physics, chemistry, magnetism, etc. When you have a different teacher every year, having a scope and sequence makes sense.

I have no scope and sequence for science so far. This is part of freeschooling, the homeschooling model where she is obligated to learn the absolute basics (reading, writing, math) and is allowed free exploration of all the other topics. Mi'ita attends every science workshop we find out about, but hasn't really been interested in pursuing it at home.

History for some reason has become our focus and we've developed a sort of loose scope and sequence for it. Schools tend to radiate from the child outwards. Kindergarten is all about me and my family, first grade about towns and local history, fourth grade is state history, fifth grade is US history, etc.

The classic method of homeschooling turns this on its head and goes chronologically from ancient history forward, simultaneously studying ancient civilizations around the world. Since we started with classic homeschooling, we started with this chronology.

I like the idea of chronological history. US history, I think, makes a lot more sense if you have already studied democracy in Greece, tyrants, monarchies, religious persecution, and so on. What our country is came from this history of Europe.

Where this breaks down, though, is in studying all the civilizations of a time period simultaneously. You get a bite of Egypt in 2000 BCE, jog over to China in 2000 BCE, trot over to the Mayans in 2000 BCE, swing over to the Greeks, etc. Then you do all those folks again in 1500 BCE. Then again in 1000 BCE. Etc. This leaves you with a great sense of what was happening in the world at a certain time, but it fractures the history of one civilization.

I developed a method that I thought would work well. We started with hominids and stone age people. Then we went into the Egyptians, the first civilization in the world. Instead of skipping around to all the first civilizations of each region, we stuck with Egypt until it was conquered by the Romans. This means we learned a little about their Persian and Greek conquests, too. Then we moved into the Greeks, which were the first civilization that conquered Egypt thoroughly (the last eight Pharaohs were Greek.) Then I was going to stick with Greece until they were conquered by Rome, taking a foray into Persia along the way, since the Greeks and Persians very much influenced each other's history. Then I was going to stick with Rome until they were conquered by the Mongols. Then I was going to skip over to the Mongols and China, sticking with Asian history for a while until that came to a natural conclusion. Then I was going to come over to the Americas and learn about their ancient people. After I covered all the ancient people, I was going to work on the middle ages, using the same format.

I liked the idea of sticking with a civilization throughout their reign until they fell to a foreign power. The foreign power then becomes the next focus, starting at their 'beginning', relating that to what we already know about what the previous civilization was doing at that time.

We took a break for Halloween. Halloween's focus for us was historical, too. What are the Greek's beliefs in death? The Egyptians, the Mayans, the Celts? And, to top it all off, how did we come to celebrate Halloween in it's current form here in the US? The people who come to our party will be learning! We're also going to be making jello red blood cells. :-)

After our Halloween party on Saturday, we were going to finish up the Greeks and take our foray off to Persia before heading into Rome.

Then we find out we're going to Tanzania in the spring on Safari. We're switching gears again. We'll finish up Greece, quickly, and then study sub-Saharan African civilizations. There is a ton of info out there on South Africa and apartheid, but not a whole lot about Tanzania. But we'll get there, and maybe now we can work in more science.

Zoology, of course.

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!

Taking a page from my mom's book

My mother was a 3rd grade teacher for a hundred years before she finally retired. When she started she was terrified of teaching science because English was her forte. She had never taught science before. She eventually lost her fear and became Washington State's Science Teacher of the Year (go mom!) She had this lovely philosophy--if you don't know, make it up.

Well, I didn't know a lot of stuff driving eight hours through Oregon and northern California. I wanted to drive so that Mi'ita would get the scope of our country. California is huge. We live in a temperate rain forest and driving down I5 is showing her the land. So, here I am talking very knowledgeably about forests when I know diddly squat.

"We live in a temperate rain forest, Mi'ita," I intoned pedantically. "This area in southern Oregon is a semi-arid mixed deciduous and evergreen forest. See the oak trees and the ponderosa pines? Semi means half and arid means dry. It isn't a desert here, but it's much drier than where we live."

"See that stand of dead trees, Mi'ita? There are some pine beetles eating the trees. Loggers took out the mixed trees and planted a monoculture. Mono means one and culture means the plants that live there. The pine beetles eat the type of tree that the loggers planted and since there's only one type of tree, they are wiping out forests. If there were ten different kinds of trees, then only one tenth of the forest would be damaged and the animals would still be able to live there."

"Look at this dried up riverbed, Mi'ita, and how low Lake Shasta is. California must be having a drought. It's probably global warming."

Go ahead and laugh. Then tell me what I got wrong so that I can straighten her out.

Marine science day

Today was our first homeschool workshop--marine science day at the local science center. Mi'ita went off to dissect squid, do fish prints on T-shirts, dig fossils, and such. I went to the parent workshop on how to teach science.

That was interesting. A big part of the workshop was how to build equipment to do field studies. I wish they had talked more about what to do with that equipment, but "there are a lot of materials online that address that." Mi'ita is not a field study type of girl. If she could do it with a group of her best friends, sure, she'd be all over it. If not, she rather sit and read about it. She's not a particularly active child.

Homeschooling is a natural for active children, though, especially ADHD boys. Very active children sit in classrooms and inwardly scream while trying to sit still all day. Outwardly they disrupt the class constantly, drive their teachers insane, and keep anyone from learning much. Take those same active kids outside, give them butterfly nets and turn them loose to capture and catalog bugs or some such and they are in their element, learning a ton, and teaching everyone within earshot what they learned.

(On a side note, while helping monitor recess at the school I watched one of the teachers chase all the boys out of a weedy patch in their field where they were trying to catch bugs. Why? They were well within the boundaries, doing nothing dangerous, and learning about bugs. Granted they were probably not particularly gentle with said bugs, but crickets and grasshoppers are hardly an endangered species.)

I'm digressing.

One project Mi'ita would enjoy that I learned today is using modeling clay to build undersea features then make a contour map of it.

Directions:
Build a seamount, rift, bank, and/or a canyon with modeling clay in a clear, flat-bottomed dish. Tape a ruler to the inside and a sheet of acetate over the top. (Cut a small hole in the acetate first.) Poor water into the dish through the hole in the acetate, half a centimeter at a time. Looking directly over the the dish, draw the waterline on the acetate (permanent markers work better then overhead markers because they don't wash off when it gets wet.) Repeat until everything is underwater. What you've made is contour map of a seabed.

Relaxing

We've slowed WAY down.

Today we got a little history and math done in the morning. We did PE at 11, and walked the dog to the skate park and then to the beach and built a sand volcano. We picked up a friend on the way home and got in at 1. Then we did art for a couple of hours, and tried to write something afterward. She had writer's block, so we didn't get more than a paragraph done. That's it. Two hours of PE, two hours of art, half and hour of math, 20 minutes of history and writing.

This week has been a walk in the other direction. We started with the classical education model, which bombed spectacularly after one day but took a week to die. I've been reading about the other homeschool models, letting her have more say in what we study, and trying to loosen up some.

The reason I wanted to home school is that Mi'ita is so bright. I really felt that school was not challenging her. I've heard of many homeschooling families whose children learn at very high levels and I want that for her. I thought the classical model could deliver it. I learned different. We could fight for a year and have her hate learning, or we could pick a different model.

I decided that there are two subjects I will teach, come hell or high water: math and writing. The 3 R's, minus reading because her reading is high school level already.

I bought a book of Math Mysteries and for the first time I heard her ask to do math. She also has started her own blog of her own writing and is very excited about it. Check it out: storyperson1234.blogspot.com

Science and history she loves and as long as I don't force feed it, she is game for anything. I read her history books as bedtime stories. I find science experiments that are interesting, I suggest them and she wants to do them, no fight involved. I also have signed up her up for every science camp we come across--fossils, astronomy, chemistry, marine survival, squid dissection. We live on the coast with an aquarium and research center that have programs for children. I figure as long as I sign her up for everything and teach a bit on the side, she's good in science. She just plain loves history, as do I, so we're good there, too. The classical model suggested that we start at the beginning, ancient history, and work forward. We've started at the VERY beginning and there's so much science involved--Neanderthals, early hominids, ice ages, radiocarbon dating. Really, science and history are the same right now.

I'm okay with this. It's certainly not what I expected, but the surprises are sometimes delightful. She loves to learn, really, and all I need to do is get the right things in her hands and help her along the way and we're good.

Joyfully Educating Mi'ita

My friend reminded me that learning is supposed to be joyful. Anything learned by cramming down the throat is not worth the pain, nor is it well retained. That is much easier to do when you have more patience than that of a gnat.

We had a good day today. Mi'ita woke up under the weather, so I was going easy on her. I think we got more done today than we usually do, so perhaps going easy on her is the ticket. I forget that as smart as she is and as well as she reads and understand concepts, she's still a kid. We need to include the arts and crafts. Our first lesson of the day was art, and we sketched her bearded dragon. The last thing we did was build jello models of both an animal cell and a plant cell. Then ate one. Yum, yum.

I also let her watch two Magic Schoolbus videos. The books are good kid science. The videos are crap, in my humble opinion. There are good things to learn via television, but you certainly have to pick and choose. We watched half of a show on human genetics today, and that was definitely worth the modified brain waves.

We went to the library today, too. Every week I make her pick out 1 poetry book, 1 biography, 1 science book, 1 history book (ancient history right now), 1 novel, 1 nonfiction video, 1 art book, 1 folktale/legend/myth, plus whatever else she wants. Since she reads at the adult level, I was picking out for her simple adult books with lots of pictures. Mistake. She likes the format of children's nonfiction and the bite-sized information. She is getting quite good at finding her own materials now, using the catalog and call numbers. I didn't have to help her at all this time, and it was only our second trip. She made good choices, too. I really can't get her to read anything that I suggest, unless I am totally nonchalant about it and really and truly don't care if she reads it or not. She is such a contrary child.

Since we were going at a relaxed pace and had included lots of breaks in the way of free reading time and Magic Schoolbus videos, we went all day until dinner time. We still didn't get Latin in, nor did we walk the dog. She did write a fabulous story about her lizard, though, and spent a good hour on it. We'll see how much I can get her to revise it tomorrow. She wants to build a blog of her own writings, so we'll publish it on the web. http://storyperson1234.blogspot.com/

All in all, a good day.

Adjustments

I was hoping today would be a better day, and it was. A bit.

I've turned math over to Mi'ita's dad. His degree was in math, but that's not the reason. I can teach 4th grade math just fine. She hates math and is evil at math time, and her father has more patience than I do. I happily plunked that little turd in his lap, and he got the tears and arguments today and forevermore. He got a lot more work out of her, too, and more valuable work. I am pleased, and I think the tears and arguments will diminish when she sees that they have no effect. I don't know what all the drama is about. She is perfectly capable of it, the work is not too hard or easy, math comes easily to her even if it's not fun.

Whatever.

There are a lot of math games out there in the world, as my mother has pointed out. I need to get in touch with them.

Science and history have taken some adjustments, too. Thankfully, she likes both those subjects, but she didn't like the way I was teaching them. The classical model suggested that we read, then summarize what we read with illustrations. She likes reading, likes the texts we are using (Kingfisher's Illustrated History of the World, and Usborn's How Nature Works), but she hated the summarizing. Taking a page out of the Magic Schoolbus series, I suggested that she draw a picture, then write captions and a paragraph that went along with it. Basically, a summary with pictures, but now the pictures take the front seat. It worked.

And we're slowing down. We got 2 1/2 hours done today, not including the PE dog walk.