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
