Viral Homeschooling: Reflections on the Homeschooling Life
I rearranged my furniture the other day so that, instead of facing a white wall, I can now look out 4 different windows on 2 sides of the house while I'm on the computer. Well, apparently, Mother Nature thought she'd be helpful and give me Something to Look At -- or maybe the old gal was just bored and it brought out her sense of humor. Black humor, mind you. Twisty, turny, practical joke kind of humor. Because, what does she do? Seeing as yesterday was the first official day of spring (after a long and VERY dreary Ground Hog Day kind of winter with snow past my you-know-what). She sends more my way last night. And not just any snow. Oh no. 10 inches of the frozen white stuff, complete with gusting, shifting winds. A regular blizzard. Hohoho, thanks Mother, very amusing. I was actually hoping for a view of birdies, squirrels, maybe some new green grass and spring flowers. Comprende? Now behave yourself. You've had enough fun for one year.
Anyway, it's perfect reading weather, so I'm sitting here, off for the day because it's Good Friday, all cozied up in my favorite blanket, a cup of hot chocolate warming one hand, and a copy of Mary Griffith's Viral Homeschooling: Reflections on the Homeschooling Life in the other. Sadly, it's taken me nearly a year to sit down to read this book. Now, I've known Mary a long time -- I just counted; 13 years! Geez Louise, can that be right? -- and between her good nature and the fact that she knows exactly what this past year has wrought for me; namely a divorce after 26 years of marriage, 3 moves, 3 new jobs, 1 name change, 1 car accident, quitting smoking, an old, trusted friend stealing $7,000+ from me (translation: yet another court case, but this one may last forever) plus a jolt of double empty nest syndrome -- I'm pretty sure she understands and forgives my post traumatic brain farts. In fact, I'm sure of it. That's just how Mary is.
She's also a fun (and funny) person to talk to. And read the writings of. This latest book of hers is about being done with homeschooling. You know, that day when the kids are finally off to college or work or marriage, and you get to look back on all those years of home learning. What brought you there, the mistakes you made, the things you learned, the fun you had, what you would've done differently. How homeschooling's changed you, how it's affected your kids. I'm just finishing the first chapter, Introduction: The Making of a Famous Homeschool Author and I'm already chuckling. It's a time I remember well; when she suddenly went from being simply 'Mary' to being ::::insert drum roll here:::: THE Mary Griffith. An overnight sensation. Wow. I was suddenly the friend of An Honest-to-Goodness Celebrity.
In chapter 1, Mary wrote:
"It's not as if I deliberately set out to become a Famous Homeschool Author. It was very nearly an accident that I wrote my books at all. ....When The Homeschooling Handbook was first published, my daughters were only 13 and 9. Neither I nor my family was prepared for the response [the book] received. I'd spoken at homeschool conferences before, and at not-back-to-school information nights, but always before I'd been just another homeschooling parent.... But now that my book was in print, and people could order it from Amazon or walk into a local bookstore and pick a copy off the shelf, many in my audiences apparently believed that what I had to say was more credible and more important than it had been the previous month....
Suddenly parents asked questions I didn't know how to answer: How many and which types of arithmetic problems should their six-year-old be doing each day? What time should their nine-year-old be going to bed? If they required their kids to keep journals, what should they make sure their kids wrote about? How could they keep their kids from watching TV or ingesting sugar products when they were at other people's houses?
My daughters thought all these questions were hilarious. Kate, the then-13-year-old, was the one who came up with the "Famous Homeschool Author" label for my speaking persona, and she managed to invest that title with all the ironic, pitying contempt that a 13-year-old can muster for a deeply uncool parent so obviously lacking the skills and expertise expected of any grown-up, let alone someone who was supposed to know what she was talking about. Christie, nearly four years younger, was more direct: "Mom, why do they ask you things you don't know?"
Oh yeah, I remember. I still to this day will once in awhile greet her with a reverent, "Am I speaking to THE Mary?" when she answers the phone. LOL, this is gonna be fun.
When Do The Children Play?
Boy, I've been gone a long time, haven't I? I know, I know. Sorry. My brain blanked out there for awhile. It's been such a year, the poor thing needed a vacation.
I ran across a great little article called Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills recently on the Unschooling List. It really struck a chord with me because I've long grumbled about parents who feel it's a good idea to over-schedule their kids' time. From toddlerhood on -- heck, babyhood in some cases, Junior's daily life pretty much requires its own Blackberry. Things start out simply enough, with a few play dates and play groups, maybe some 'enrichment' classes (I never got this; aren't all classes enriching?), but then good intentions go awry and suddenly its somehow necessary to outdo the Jones' with this blur of soccer practice, dance recitals, after-school programs, piano lessons, tennis lessons, fencing meets, karate competitions, summer camp, bible camp, scouts, Sunday School, planetarium visits, museum excursions, ad nauseum. Holy Time Crunch, Batman. When does the kid get time to just be a kid?
Turns out, hours of unstructured play is like chicken soup: it's natural, it's good for you and it just works. "It seems that in the rush to give children every advantage — to protect them, to stimulate them, to enrich them — our culture has unwittingly compromised one of the activities that helped children most. All that wasted time was not such a waste after all."
Oh, and while you're at it, here's a song, Where Do The Children Play? by Cat Stevens -- a blast from my high school past, no less -- to listen to while you read. Even more apropos today than when it was released. One smart dude, that guy.
Tea for the Tillerman
Cat's classic CD. Worth every penny.
Radio Free School Blog
Tantrum space for unschoolers by, for, and about
people who eschew factory learning.
Science and Math and Giggles, O My
ClickSchoolingI heard
Get one, fun, educational website recommendation a day! Monday-Math. Tuesday-Science. Wednesday-Language Arts. Thursday-History & Social Studies. Friday Virtual Field Trips. Weekends are for Electives-Art, Music, Foreign Languages. A Yahoo list sponsored by Homefires (a real homeschooler) and moderated to maintain integrity.
Desert Island Homeschooling
The situation is: "Your family is stranded on a desert isle, with no internet, no TV, no libraries, and zero access to the type of community resources you usually enjoy. You're going to be there long enough that you will want to have a box of STUFF to keep the kids occupied. And because you expect to go home one day, you want the STUFF to relate to the wider world, not just your immediate situation. What would you take?" Homeschool mom Kathy Ceceri is attempting to write a book and looking for our thoughts and ideas. Share yours with her (and all the listees) on Home Education Magazine's Writers' list. You can view Kathy's entire book outline on the Files page of Emergency Homeschooling.
Homeschool Comics -
Schools Are for Fish
A new one is posted every Monday. This isn't
'curriculum', you say? Sure it is. Just like
everything in life. Think 'social satire'. Think
'sociology', 'understated', 'wry', 'misconceptions'
and 'succinct'. And now you have a whole weeks'
vocabulary list to boot.
I don't know about you, but it's time for a music
and drink break. I'm dying of thirst.
Cindy's Song of the Day
This is learning, too. I taught my boys LOTS of
stuff this way. For instance: Can you name one of these duet singers just by
listening? Wasn't there some sort of scandal about him? (And why would
his revelation matter, anyway?) What are the
lyrics saying? Isn't the composer famous? What other
songs has he done that you know? What movie is this song from?
Wasn't it based on a hit play? Which came first,
the book or the play? Should we
read one and then rent the movie to see how
they differ? Why did they change things or leave
them out, do you think?
It's fun! Try it!
Love Potion
#9 - The
Clovers
One site says it's The Clovers. A few others say
the band is the New Seekers. I don't know which
one is right.
Elinore - The Turtles
Or "Eleanor", if you prefer. I've seen it both
ways. Do your kids know any other songs by The
Turtles? I'll bet they do. From commercials.
:rolling my eyes:
Napster
Listen to a song 3 times before you buy. Purdy
cool.
The Homeschool Mom's Math Page
From games to worksheets, for your littlest one, to
your senior in high school. This is one totally
amazing math page. Kudos to Mary Ann and all her
hard work!
I Hate
Mathematics!
Yikes, me too. After many textbook tries. this
ended up being the main math book we used from
grade school right up to college. Filled with fun
facts, laugh-inducing games and silly activities to
teach math without giving mom a headache.
Steve Spangler Science
Experiments
A cool hands-on library of Steve's most requested
science experiments, recipes and projects from his
weekly television appearances and live
presentations throughout the country. Lots of nifty
science goodies and gadgets to order, too.
The Way Back Machine
Do you remember something on the 'net that doesn't
exist anymore? Life Magazine? Old Compuserve files?
Sites dedicated to the Baby Jessica tragedy? The
original (and ghastly) RMEC website? If it was was
once in cyberspace, but has since gone the way of
glam-rock and computers the size of your living
room, it's on Way Back. If you're not sure how to
teach history, this is a really cool way to ease
into it. Even just browsing around brings up some
amazing things you never knew!
Kidlet Warning: This site is not rated G.
West River Academy - the Unschooler's
Best Friend!
School the way you want! Choose the curriculum that
suits you! (Or, choose none at all.) Hassle-free
support, low tuition, fully accredited K-12 with
High School Diploma Program. Operated since 1993 by
Peggy Webb, a 20-year veteran homeschooling mom.
Call her at (949) 492-5240.
The songs on this site are copyrighted by their respective artists and are placed here for education and evaluation purposes only. No profits are made on this site from their use. If you like what you hear, purchase the song from iTunes or buy the entire CD and keep great music alive!
Hum A Few Bars
Click here to listen to Cindy's song of the day whilst you read. (opens in a new window)
There i something I've always wanted to do on a website, and that's to create a place that would remind you of my home, had you been over for a visit. I mean, isn't that what I'm doing anyway? Inviting you into my world? Yeppers, I sure think so. So, if you were here, this is what you'd find. Nothing fancy (or matching, at this point), just a down-home, simple place. Full of warm colors, good smells of candles, cooking and (right now) orange juice, and me sharing my two favorite things in the world with you. I have no idea if this will work, but hey, I had no idea how to do a statewide homeschool conference, either. It came off beautifully, tho. And that's life for ya. Or more apropos, that's unschooling.
My first favorite thing: Writing. I started writing at the age of 0, I think. According to my grandmother, I popped out of the womb, already in love with words I couldn't even read or write yet. As a baby, whenever I'd start fussing, Gram would read to me or tell me stories of her childhood, and as soon as she'd start talking, I'd grow quiet and calm. When my pudgy little hands finally figured out how to grasp a crayon, I advanced to scribbling on anything and everything handy; napkins, scratch paper, placemats, the sidewalk, the insides of books. I drew picture after picture of princesses with pointy cone hats and veils, extremely big teeth (I liked toothy smiles, apparently, but never got the hang of drawing them) and for some reason, my gals were almost always walking up or down stairs. I scribbled long pages of text, telling the story of what each of my princesses were doing, but don't ask me what I wrote. Maybe a hypnotist could go that far back in my little girl's mind, but I sure can't. By my teenage years, I was into composing lovesick / angst-ridden poetry and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night short stories. I had one published once, but it's not competition Stephen King would ever have to worry about or anything. Adulthood was filled with children, working and homeschooling, and writing about homeschooling. (if you're really interested in what I've done previously, see About Me in the sidebar)
My second favorite love has always been music. From toddlerhood on, music, both current songs and what they now call "oldies", enthralled me. Elvis would come on the radio, for instance, and I'd stop pulling myself up on the furniture, my eyes wide, and listen (He still has that affect on me sometimes. Except, I know how to walk now). Music became even more a core of my life because my parents bought a beer bar/restaurant combo in Wisconsin when I was 4. I grew up there, in an apartment above it, til the age of 14. My job, besides waitressing in Gram's restaurant, was to take care of the 45 rpm records that came off our jukebox. I think I was about 6 or 7 when I started doing this. The reason my mom picked me (over my 2 older sisters) for the job is because 1) I was forever bugging customers for a dime for the juke, 2) I knew what song was going to play "as soon as the needle hit the record", and 3) they could never find me to do my waitressing. I was either singing and dancing by the jukebox, or holed up in the apartment upstairs, glued to the hi-fi (that's a stereo to you youngins) or my AM radio, listening to a warbly, static-filled WLS out of Chicago.
When I was 15 and had moved to Colorado, I got this hankering to be a radio d.j. My mom suggested that I find out what the job was really like before diving in. Good idea, mom. (It wasn't the first time she suggested an unschooling route for learning something, but I'll bet she'd be surprised to know that how she taught us kids to learn had a name.) So, I spent my entire 15th summer calling up the d.j.'s on my favorite radio stations and talking to them in between songs. It was fun, interesting and ultimately disheartening to find that the d.j.'s don't determine most of what they play. 90% of it is pre-chosen by the programming manager. PMs, according to the disc jockeys, attended meetings, wrote reports and calculated what amount of radio play each song would get, to appeal to the right audience and generate good revenue. Ugh. I neither wanted to wade thru statistics all day or play someone else's list of songs, pretending that I liked them all. I wanted freedom, maybe even my own radio station. Like the rockin' one Stephen King eventually started.
Perhaps I'll get rich enough one day to have such a thing. I'll invite you over. In the meantime, this is all we have. Welcome to Cindy's Place.
The songs on this site are copyrighted by their respective artists and are placed here for education and evaluation purposes only. No profits are made on this site from their use. If you like what you hear, purchase the song from iTunes or buy the entire CD and keep great music alive!
Radio for Un-schoolers
I didn't even know that this existed until just today, and it's been around for 6 years! Six! Geez Louise, man. Where have I been?
Radio Free School, is radio for unschoolers, broadcast by an unschooling family in Canada. They come up with a variety of speakers (oftentimes on-the-fly) and any number of topics. A new show is broadcast every Wednesday. If this week's show doesn't float your boat, browse the archives on their website. Also check out their blog, which begins, "Tantrum space for un-schoolers at radio free school, the weekly radio show by for and about people who eschew factory learning. Open season on all things we might bump up against."
LOL. Check it out.
And a thousand thanks to Mary Nix at the HEM Support Groups Blog, which is where I found (snitched? stole? hijacked?) this info. She's a font of good information, she is.
The Sound of Learning
A couple of friends asked me, of all the inventive names I could've come up with for this new blog, why in the world did I pick The Sound of Learning? Now, I'm only guessing, but I'm assuming they meant to imply the name didn't sound inspiring. Too simple, perhaps? Too Plain Jane? Or maybe they couldn't associate it with anything familiar.
To me, picking the name was all about association.
I've been homeschooling a long, long time. Since 1993 in fact. And yep, my kids are grown and gone. But, I'm still homeschooling. I homeschool myself. Maybe that sounds funny, but homeschooling isn't just about educating kids. It isn't only about grades K-12, or yearbook pictures, or passing the SAT with a 1400, or donning caps and gowns. These are just arbitrary timelines and society's so-called important milestones. It's about sisters and brothers, uncles and aunts, and in-laws. It's about quietly getting up at O-Dark-Thirty to watch a sunrise in your jammies, holding cups of steaming, homemade hot chocolate. Days when you figure out there must be a better way to open a new bag of flour other than ripping it wide open and having it go POOF all over the kitchen. It's about the lifelong friends we accidently meet when the car breaks down on the side of the road. And it's about parents as well; the journey homeschooling takes us on, slowly changing us along the way, taking us by surprise. We discover that, despite everything else going on in our lives, we [ahem] old folks still love to learn. We find that waiting for a simple baking soda and vinegar 'volcano' to erupt, or spending days composing silly lyrics out loud with a 6 year old, to a song that will never be published, all because her older brother has taken up some very out-of-tune guitar-playing (absolutely sure he's going be the next Eric Clapton and thrill us with his award-winning music videos on VH1), delights us more than any outside career ever could. Our days are a crazy patchwork quilt, filled with 1001 little, tiny learning moments that inspire, intrigue and spark our rusty imaginations into gear like the days we celebrated single digit birthdays. Most days are full of bursts of laughter. We collapse into bed every night, exhausted, but never having felt so good about the world or so close to our children.
That's what I was thinking about when I named this blog. All the laughter, all that fun we had. I don't think I've ever laughed so much, or been so creative, or learned as many things, as when I homeschooled my boys. All those nutty things that happened (most of them unexpected), the constant kid-noise, the endless questions and chatter, the impromptu field trips - now, that's The Sound of Learning.
Homeschooling shouldn't be a chore. It shouldn't give you a headache. And if it does, hey, back up, change a little and try something different. What have you got to lose? Learning is fun, it should make you and yours happy. To quote a famous line from a popular movie, ". . . And I'm not talking about no – Mmmhh, this tastes like real butter kind of happy. I'm talking about … Julie Andrews, twirling around like a mental patient on a mountain top kind of happy now. That’s the kind of happy I’m talking about."
My sentiments exactly. And I did do some twirling around at times (yep, there are a few home movies, and nope, you don't get to see them), but thinking about Julie Andrews led me to another thought; The Sound of Music. My eyes lit up. How perfect! How apropos! I mean, think about it. First we see her on that mountaintop, singing one of the most joyous songs ever written, an ode to the day, an ode to every new experience that comes her way. She does try to contain herself, to behave and follow all the rules, but the girls' so full of life and plain ol' unabashed happiness, it's a continuous battle. She's basically a square peg trying to fit herself into a round hole because that's the way she thinks she should be (sound familiar?). Her fellow nuns know it, and they shake their heads in bemusement, asking How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? They see that's she's got to stop forcing herself into that round hole and find another way. Wisely, the Mother Superior sees it as well, and decides to send Maria away on a task, to give her time to think and discover who she is.
And what Maria accomplishes in that temporary assignment, just by being herself! My, my. Quietly balking at whistle calls and regimentation of the children, making clothes out of what's handy (fairly ugly drapes), teaching the kids to climb trees, row boats, learn music, sing songs, put on a complicated puppet show, deal with personal fears, first heartbreak, and finally, that you can't just run away from your personal problems and expect them to go away on their own. Does this sound like a homeschooling family, or what?
For those of you that don't know, Maria is a real person. And this is the true (albeit Hollywood-ized) story of what happened to the blended von Trapp family. Of course, they didn't burst into song every 15 minutes (I don't think so, anyway), but it's definitely a great family movie I'd recommend watching. We did. Then we read the book for comparison. It ended up being the springboard to a fabulous history lesson. Not to mention world culture, geography, modern media, and songwriting (Hoping it would help the kid improve his sour guitar playing. It didn't. Oh well, mistakes are learning, too.).
The Sound of Music - The Sound of Learning. It should always feel this way. For me, it still does.