I'm going back to school!

I am going to fully do Naia's 12th grade Build Your Library curriculum with her! This does not include math, science, or French. It does include American History, Literature and Composition, Government, Economics, and Photography. We are both going to read Bill Bryson's updated version of A Short History of Nearly Everything. We will mark it all up with different color highlighters, summarize/write narrations.  I'm actually pretty excited. How am I going to do all of this? Here's the plan! I will wake up around 6 and get in 2 1/2 hours of reading before making breakfast for Lela. Wednesdays will be completely dedicated to Naia and BYL until after lunch. I usually have quite a bit of free time on weekends (for now). I'm not sure how time consuming it will be (I think around 15 hours per week). I have asked Naia to ask for three full weekdays off from work so she can complete the assignments. She keeps a planner and will create her own homeschool schedule around her work schedule. In addition to BYL, she will complete Khan Academy's Financial Literacy and continue with French. We will be looking at FAFSA and culinary school for the near future.

Here are the books used in just the first four weeks of the curriculum. I have done the first five days so far and I love it. The only book I don't like is that little red one called American Politics. 

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Mirek and Taven are in public school. So far it's going well for Mirek. He likes it, has made friends, and is excited about his assignments. Taven hasn't said much. His first football scrimmage was a little stressful for me as the quarterback maybe completed three passes. As a receiver he completely relies on the quartback and this is such an important season for college recruitment. It's really just out of my hands and I don't feel like there is anything I can do. Between UIL transfer rules, needing a car to get to another school, the cost of private schools, etc. there are no other options. I am crossing my fingers and I hope this QB can pull some passes out of his ass.

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Eaden is working at various dance studios/schools and is teaching all dance classes and styles at a local YMCA. She will also be a personal trainer at that same YMCA. She plans to move to L.A. next summer. Right now, she is preparing for Europe. Ade, Naia, and Eaden leave after Labor Day. They had to remove their Edinburgh trip from London, but are still going to Paris. I am super excited for them to hang out with their cousin Soraya from Germany. She is 20 years old and will be staying with them for the London part of the trip!

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Lela will have a routine in place with me four days a week. It will look roughly like this:

9-1:30pm (M, T, Th, F)

Breakfast- I prepare and she wakes up and comes to the table to eat it. This has worked perfectly the first week and Naia joins us.

Storytime (1 hour) - Lela and I take turns reading from literature (historical fiction I read and her choice she reads). I read picture books (she still enjoys these), science biographies, Usborne books, and A Really Short History of Nearly Everything. During this time she may narrate and I write down her narrations. She may copy these the next day for handwriting. We will write as neccessary on our historical timeline, locate places from our reading on the globe/maps, and put stickers in our sticker book for every book read.

Main Lessons (1 1/2 hours) - All About Math, All About Reading, All About Spelling, handwriting/cursive and journal.

Lunch - Lela prepares. So far, we haven't really been hungry enough to make lunch so we just grab a snack and head outside.

Outside (1 hour min) - Fun with Nature, Kids Nature Book, 1,000 Hours Outside journal, garden, color outside, ride bikes, hike (learn to name 10 birds, 5 other animals, 5 trees, 5 wildflowers, 5 wild fruits).

On Wednesdays, Lela will still wake up and have breakfast at 9, but can do what she likes until lunch. I will be working on and discussing Naia's curriculum with her. From 12:30-2:30 (after lunch), Lela and I might do a science experiment from Biology for Every Kid, geography games/map art, board games, drawing, embroidery, paint, Pinterest ideas, clay, music, kinetic sand worlds, play dough, slime, etc.

Side Notes: Lela and I will start with a Great Depression theme. Our first read aloud is Turtle in Paradise. We are going to read about American Girl Kit and watch the movie. I also have a few nonfiction titles on the Great Depression. We have a camping trip scheduled for November at Garner! We may also take a closer last minute trip if work and weather allow. 

Our biggest challenge will be Lela waking up. She is a late riser, but this has to happen because of my work. I should not have to work before 4:30 which means I need to be ready to go by 3:45 (some days I don't have to be there until later). I had been making dinner before I left, and should still be able to most days. My schedule is different each week though and comes out on Thursdays. I will have to plan dinners around that. Easy ones or ones the kids make on longer work nights and more time consuming ones when I don't have to be at work until later or on weekends. Edited to add: Lela woke up and came to the breakfast table on time every day last week!

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The Passionflowers were in bloom at Kickerillo.

Gulf Fritillary

Gulf Fritillary caterpillar.

Impressive tendrils.

Monarchs near Lakewood Crossing. There is a small area that was cleared (by Harris County Flood Control I assume). It is covered in these Heliotrope and the butterflies, moths, and dragonflies are all over it.

I had been noticing these Muscadine grapes on the trail and went back with a bag in hand. The vines are way up high and impossible to reach, but I was able to get some that had fallen to the ground.

Deer at the YMCA.

A couple of pictures from our first day.

Some of the books we are reading during storytime. She also now has a chapter book I am reading to her that just came in from the library. It's called Turtle in Paradise.

Lela and I have been taking pictures of various plants, trees, and animals. I will have them printed out and she is going to make identification cards. These will be the ones she memorizes. It's a work in progress and I will update next Sunday. I also forgot to take a picture of her 1,000 hours outside journal. I will do that next week.

Life with Lela

This post is all about Lela. I didn't plan it that way. I just don't see much of or hang out with my other kids. Eaden is finishing up her personal trainer certification, working as a dance instructor, and still dancing a lot. Naia is always working. Mirek is prepping for his little school experiment and finishing up his online courses. It is an accredited program for 8th grade so that he can transfer into public school without having to take credit by exam. He will have the same counselor as Taven. I guess they go by last name instead of grade. I am happy about that because he is the one person at the school I talk to and he is kind and helpful. Anyway, I do see my kids. We do live together. We are just not always living and learning together like we used to. It's me and Lela now. Actually, I don't see Taven. I see him for 10 minutes when I drop him off in the morning and then 10 minutes when I get home from work. I sometimes see him on weekends. Is it not mind boggling that we have normalized sending our kids away from us like this for 13 years and letting them be majority raised by their peers and random adult strangers locked inside of a building? It's so weird when you stop and think about it! Apparently, very few people think about it. 

I had a rewards system going with Lela, but it fizzled out after a few weeks. It was ultimately ineffective, not to mention too expensive. I should have known that learning doesn't work that way. Obviously, I do know. It was a constant struggle to wake her up for lessons, but so simple when it was for a bike ride. Lela has to find intrinsic motivation. Rewards, punishments, because I said so, do not lead to anything worthwhile. It will come. I am worried about her not having that family homeschool environment though and I am unsure how to replace it.

We have moved on to a more unschooling style like I have done many times in the past with my other children. Our learning comes from living life together and making things that are real and useful. For example, instead of science workbooks we may create a garden journal or keep a nature journal. Instead of writing or reading comprehension workbooks we write letters, keep a diary, and read and discuss real books. 

I do tend to stick to basic math lessons, but once the kids get to the higher math it is up to them if they want to continue or at least at what pace they want to continue. However, Julie Bogart put out a new podcast yesterday about building math confidence through life, play, and curiosity. I've already read a lot about that sort of thing, but it has seemed easier for me to stick to a short lesson per day from a structured curriculum. I know I need to branch out and become more creative when it comes to math. We will see... I will check out the podcast.

Lela is active. She wants to play both outside and inside. She loves to ride bikes, hike, play board and card games, make art, imaginative play, etc. I am trying to include her in everything I do like shopping, cooking, gardening and household chores. The older kids will say things like "mom make her do her lessons" or "you didn't let us do that."  I think they are delusional because I most certainly did let them "do that." A huge difference in how we homeschool is that we used to do a lot as a group. It was fun and loud and there was a community. Lela is alone. Also, there were most certainly long chunks of time where all of the kids experienced a more unschooling style.

I think about what Lela does enjoy and build on that. Besides what I mentioned above, she does enjoy me reading to her, now space/astronomy sine the Artemis mission, and writing letters back and forth with me. I think gameschooling could be something she really enjoys. There was a mom blogger years back who had an entire blog devoted to gameschooling. Her blog was My Little Poppies (which seems to have been hacked). I don't want to spend a bunch of money (any money), but we do still have a game closet I can revisit.                                 

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Some quotes from books I've been reading...

Emerson: "Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradicts everything you said today...Insist on yourself; never imitate...[I am always telling myself not to speak because I change my mind constantly.]

Stolen Focus By Johann Hari: "People who can't focus will be more drawn to simplistic authoritarian solutions-and less likely to see clearly when they fail...[I would say school with it's bells and rushing to wake up and get ready and not getting enough sleep contributes to the same stolen focus as social media]...What we are sacrificing is depth in all sorts of dimensions...Depth takes time. And depth takes reflection...We need to strip out our distractions and to replace them with sources of flow...How do you find meaning when your day is filled, from 7AM to 9PM when you go to bed, with somebody else's idea of what's important?...If your attention is constantly managed by other people, how can it develop? [Naia and Mirek were talking about flow states a while back at the ice rink. Mirek was practicing stopping over and over and said he got into a flow state. Then Naia said her and a co-worker got into a flow state at work and it was "crazy." Mirek said he also gets into flow states at MMA.]

I Love Learning, I Hate School By Susan Blum: "A four year college degree required to work at the MET, mostly guaranteed the hiring of a middle class employee...What you need to know can be learned by trying to do it...Outside school, where do deliberately misleading options present themselves in time limited form?...[Taven complained about the multiple choice questions like this immediately after starting school]. Test prep advice may be useful but it has very little to do with actually learning anything...

Reasons Not To Worry By Brigid Delaney: "To work out how to live well, to really think about what a good life meant, was a solid investment in our one unique life [paper idea for Mirek and Naia]...

How To Do Nothing By Jenny O'Dell: "Bioregionalist thought encompasses practices like habitat restoration and permaculture farming, but has a cultural element as well, since it asks us to identify as citizens of the bioregion as much as (if not more than) the state. Our 'citizenship' in a bioregion means not only familiarity with the local ecology but a commitment to stewarding it together... Our very idea of productivity is premised on the idea of producing something new, whereas we do not tend to see maintenance and care as productive in the same way...[I love the idea of maintenance. I can take pride in maintaining what I have (home, garden, etc.) instead of always looking to upgrade or replace.]

Dumbing Us Down By John Taylor Gatto (reread): "Right now we are taking from our children all the time that they need to develop self-knowledge...I am confident that as they gain self-knowledge they'll also become self-teachers and only self teaching has any lasting value...Alienation from community life quickly causes indifference to almost everything...

The Underground History of American Education By John Taylor Gatto: "Education is a helix sport, a unique personal project...If you aren't making it up as you go along, you aren't doing it right...All pedagogical theory is based on stage theories of human development. All stage theories of child rearing talk in averages. The evidence before your own eyes and ears must show you that average men and women don't actually exist. Yet they remain the basis of social theory, even though such artificial constructs are useless to tell you anything valuable about your own implacably non-abstract child...

"I don't think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we're looking at right now." -Artemis II astronaut Reid Wiseman

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A typical dinner.

I enjoyed the Sunday Chronicle and there were enough games in there to last me months. I prefer getting my news this way. Slow, local, and fact checked. Not so much the 24 hour "breaking news" and certainly not the attention sucking rage inducing no nuance forms on social media.

Hike at the creek nearby.

Tennis on the weekend at Taven's school.

The Arboretum.

Easter art.

She watched some Bob Ross.

I printed out pictures from my Instagram download and started a picture album. I only printed 100 of the thousands but it is so much more than we ever had growing up.

Letters Lela and I have been writing to each other.

I am fully re reading my road trip/unschooling posts and they are making me a little upset. Like I lost that way of life. I know it came when the older kids found their passion and that started taking up so much time, but how is that fair for Lela? It's not. And now I have this dang job, which I need to pay off this stupid credit card, but I cannot ever go camping. I may get a weekend off, but I don't find out until the week before and weekends are often full at campgrounds months in advance. I never get off weekdays except Friday. I might get off next Monday and could do a last minute Sunday-Tuesday trip...

Update! I got off on a Monday!! We were able to camp last minute at Brazos Bend! My next goal is Garner before summer...