Life, Homeschooling, Rambling

[fairjennet]

It was a supremely ordinary day today, but a rather nice one. It was full of mom things. I cleaned the house, went to Wal-Mart for groceries, praised crayon drawings, raced the kiddo to the mailbox, and even took him to Target to buy a toy. The trip to the toy aisle reminded me so much of what it was like to be a little kid. I remember bargaining future chores for toy money just like the kiddo did today, and I remember my own mom sighing and saying, "Are you sure you really want this toy? Are you sure you don't want to save your money until you can get something better? It's a whole month of taking out the trash with no allowance..." I felt so much like her when I repeated that little speech. I don't remember my mom very well, so I just love those flashes of memory.

This evening, I cooked dinner and wrote lesson plans. I discovered the best activities over at the BBC school website. This one fits in perfectly with the unit on ancient India in the kiddo's history book. The whole BBC school site is amazing. All I can say is that the Brits must have a better educational system altogether. These activities are designed to fit in with their national curriculum, and the little snippets of curriculum standards they include make me want to download the whole "Key Stages" document. It makes so much more sense than the "Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills." Apparently, Texans are supposed to be essentially confused.

Anyway, we're having fun with his Social Studies/Language Arts stuff. This week was Robin Hood, reviewing European geography, and introducing encyclopedia use. (Funny how much more he liked King Arthur, the little snob! :D )Next week is reading Ananzi stories, writing poems, and a review of African geography. After that we get to do ancient India, more geography review, and then tigers with the encyclopedia. Then on to ancient Greece!

Homeschooling has always been exhausting, and I'm starting to realize how unprepared I am to be a teacher. Sure, I can teach the stuff--it's not rocket science--but I find myself wishing I had studied early childhood education. There must be some sort of secret to making sure everything is taught the way it's supposed to be taught. I don't want to teach him the way I was taught in public school; I want him to be interested. Yet, I also know that we need to cover a bunch of stuff that isn't very interesting--at least it isn't very interesting to me. I'm trying really hard to get Larry to take over the math and science. He actually gets excited about it, and I'm just sitting there saying, "Are you done with your worksheet yet?" *hee* Maybe we should just move to England and stick the kiddo in a public school.

Comments

[phyncke.livejournal.com]

You know that lesson plans are available online, right? That can be a really helpful tool for teaching at home. Really creative lessons and such.

I would expect home schooling would be hard. But go you! If you need any help...I was a teacher in a former life. Let me know. Active lessons are best.

Worksheets are death in math. You need manipulatives. What grade is he in?

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

That's quite amusing as the English state school system is frequently regarded as being among the poorest in Europe - the British have a reputation for being taught how to pass exams, being linguistically backward (compared to the bi- or trilingual Dutch, Belgians and Scandinavians, and especially so now that only 3 years of foreign language teaching is compulsory), grammatically deficient and generally unprepared with useful work skills! If someone was moving to Europe for the sake of education, I'd have to suggest a German or French school! Better still, go to Singapore - the British-Singaporeans I've met have been astonishingly well educated.

Out of interest, how do you teach foreign languages when homeschooling? My French and German teachers were all fluent in their language, having spent years or even decades living and often teaching in countries where the language is spoken natively, so I learned the languages as much by just talking with them constantly about movies we'd seen and interests we had as by any formal exercises.

BTW, do you mean "public school" in the international sense (as in state-run) or "public school" in the British sense (i.e. top-notch independent school like Eton, Rugby, etc. charging £10,000+ per year fees)? ;)

[jaiden-s.livejournal.com]

I'm going to side with Eni. British schools are not bad, but are also not stellar. What IS good about British schools is that there are national standards. The US is moving that direction, but right now, each state has separate standards, and they leave it up to the districts to interpret.

I'd say just do your best. Kids respond to teachers who are caring and enthusiastic, both of which you are. :)