Not Inadequate

This is the season of curriculum planning for all of us homeschoolers.

Yep, here we are, dragging ourselves away from the Rainbow Resource catalog to plow through the last unfinished bits of products we bought last year, while getting excited about next year and the shiny new books that will soon arrive on our doorstep.

Will those shiny new books inspire shiny new attitudes in our children? Will they leap from their beds, get themselves dressed, start Mommy’s coffee and then sit quietly and read Homer (in the original Greek)? Will my son develop a newfound passion for double-digit subtraction and impeccable handwriting?

Will I be able to take a shower before noon? Sometimes?

Hope springs eternal.

Am I right or am I right, ladies?

ANYway, in honor of school planning, I am going to talk about my love for All About Spelling.

I LOVE All About Spelling. Did I say that already?

It will be my spelling program forever and ever, amen.

When I was looking for a spelling program, I was overwhelmed by all the choices out there. I read every single review of every single spelling program I could find, scrolling through pages and pages of opinions on sites like Home School Reviews, Cathy Duffy Reviews, and The Homeschool Lounge.

What took All About Spelling to the top of my list was that it consistently received very high marks from a huge variety of moms and students. Moms who homeschooled from the beginning liked it. Moms who pulled struggling readers/spellers out of public school liked it. Moms who had kids with dyslexia or other learning disabilities liked it. Moms who had kinesthetic learners liked it.

What is so different about it? It uses a multi-sensory approach to learning. We work orally, with flash cards, with the letter tiles, or with regular old pencil and paper. It has all these different avenues built into the program, and that makes it easy to connect with the visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner. Even though I’m not entirely sure what kind of learners I’ve got, I know this is going to cover all the bases.

Here’s why I like it:

• It is organized. It progresses in a very logical manner. This appeals to me, because I am logical and like to do things in a Neat and Orderly Fashion. In fact, the phrase Neat and Orderly actually comes out of my mouth on a pretty regular basis.

I’ll bet if my husband made a top ten list of Ways in Which My Wife is Annoying, hearing “guys, let’s do this in a Neat and Orderly Fashion,” all the time would be on it. IF there were such a list.

But there isn’t.

Right, Sweetie?

Speaking of organization, I like that AAS teaches all the letter sounds of all the letters. Sure, after the first few Explode the Code workbooks Big knew the basic letter sounds and the short vowels, but wondering when to introduce the 4th sound of U or the 3rd sound of Y stressed me out a little. Should I teach all the sounds all at once or would that be overwhelming? On the other hand, saying, “Hey! You mastered all the sounds! Guess what? – There’s a bunch more!” seemed like a dirty trick. Besides, my son was advancing more quickly in reading than he was in our phonics workbooks (Workbooks! Gah!), and got frustrated when the words did not follow the phonics rules we had covered so far. Luckily, All About Spelling answered those questions for me and I could stop wasting all my valuable freak-out time on vowels.

With both Big and Little, I used Explode the Code Books A, B, C and 1-4 for beginning phonics, and then transitioned pretty much exclusively to AAS. All About Learning Press has also released a program called All About Reading, which coordinates with All About Spelling to create a comprehensive learn-to-read-and-spell extraveganza. I am still researching my plans for next year, and am looking into All About Reading Level 1 for Little.

• There is no student book. Only a teacher’s manual. This is a plus to me, because we can work through each chapter at our own pace, rather than trying to do a certain number pages per week or Mommy’s schedule is ruined and Mommy will have to stay up late, compulsively reprinting new schedules instead of watching The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

I allow approximately a week and a half per chapter. Some chapters we work on for 3 days, some take 6 or 7 days (10 to 20 minutes per day). Plus, no student book means no badgering these children to write, no listening to these children whine about writing, and we can work at the speed of their brains, not the speed of their hands. (Of course, if you have kids that aren’t so averse to writing, you can spell on paper.) No student book also means no consumables, which means I save everything for my daughter and avoid buying more stuff.

On the other hand, it is a very teacher-intense program. There is ZERO preparation, and all the lessons are scripted and very specific about how to get the point across; but the teacher must be there, working with the student. This is not a drawback for me since my kids are very young at 7 and 5, and I have to be there for most of the other subjects, too.

• The letter tiles. Again, the letter tiles allow us to learn to spell without all that pesky writing. They both like to work with the tiles. I don’t know why exactly – something about them is fun. Pretty much everything is more fun than some dry old workbook that makes your hand hurt. Fun means I don’t have to cajole them into doing spelling. Fun means they ask to do spelling. Fun means spelling isn’t even really considered schoolwork. Fun makes it a win all around, is what I’m saying.

• It is a mastery program with lots of review. As we work through the chapters, not only do our spelling words focus on the phonics rule just learned, but there are also spelling words from previous chapters. There’s lots of built-in review to ensure that the rules really sink in.

I know talking about rules sounds dry and boring; but truly, it’s not. They are delivered in a way that makes the student feel empowered. Because they are not merely learning how to spell a long list of individual words, but learning how to decode ANY word they come across. We tend to think that spelling the English language is confusing, but in reality, 85% of our words are spelled phonetically or with specific spelling rules. There are not as many “sight words” as we’ve been led to believe.

All About Spelling focuses on both phonics and rules, and does so in such an organized way that I no longer worry about sight words or gaps. Rather than having kids memorize lists of words, AAS teaches the how and why of spelling. I feel confident that by the time we have completed the entire program, my kids will be able to read and spell almost any word they are confronted with. This is the absolute best part of the program, in my opinion.

• Other Awesome Features. AAS has their own set of readers that correlate with the spelling lessons. They also have a forum where you can talk to other users and ask questions. I think it’s a great resource and have used it a couple of times. Marie Rippel herself (the author of the program) has responded to my questions and emails with amazing promptness. All About Learning Press is family-owned and I like supporting small business, so that’s a bonus to me. Also, there are no grade designations. We started from the beginning, but if you have older kids, it’s nice that AAS does not label each step as a grade, but rather as a level. It is arranged by spelling concepts, so it’s only logical to start at the beginning – older kids can do this without feeling like they are doing baby work.

I really can’t think of any cons to this program, except that some people think it’s a little on the expensive side. I don’t, because readin, ritin, and rithmatic are huge priorities to me and I don’t mind spending money on them; and also because there are no consumables which reduces the cost dramatically, depending on how many kids you want to use it with.

I’m also happy to try to answer any questions you might have about how we use the program, so feel free to email me if you need more information.

You may have noticed that I have a link in my sidebar to All About Spelling. When I placed my order last year, I raved so much about the program, the owner (that’s right – the owner took my order) asked if I was an affiliate. After much thought I decided I believe in AAS so much, I would give it a shot. The links in this post are affiliate links, and if you are inclined to place an order, feel free to click through from here. I have received no compensation for this post, I really do love it.

It sort of depends on what part of the schedule I am looking at.

If I look at Spelling, it’s depressing because Big is STILL on Lesson 1 of the Level 2 book. But he is not technically, officially, in 2nd grade yet, so whatever. I mean, IF I cared about things like grade levels. Which I don’t. Because I am free from the tyranny of labels! (On good days, that is.) Little is flying through spelling. She is very bright. Although am sometimes mystified by her inability to tell me the short /e/ sound, when she can accurately read the words “Rosylipped Sculpin” in The Seashore of the Pacific Northwest.

If I look at Vocabulary, it’s awesome because Big has finished Wordly Wise 3000 Book 2. Also because I finally figured out how to communicate to him what I mean by writing your answers in complete sentences. Or in our case, saying your answers, since we do so much orally. I told him to pretend he was a reporter who had gone out to do research and was now back home, telling the Clueless Person Who Doesn’t Know Anything (e.g. me) all about it. I don’t know why that clicked with him, but it did. It seems like such a small victory, but I am excited about it anyway; previously I had been beating my head against a wall inanely saying, “complete sentences” like he knew what the heck I was talking about.

We continue to limp along in Math, and Big has come around to the Awesomeness that is flash cards. He actually ASKS to do them to warm up before we begin our bookwork. I don’t know what is going on there, but I’ll take it. We are in the middle of Chapter 22 of Math-U-See Alpha. Four more chapters to go. *sigh*

First Grade math: it might kill me.

We’ve read The Story About Ping and Blaze and the Forest Fire for Literature (we are doing both sets of First Grade Literature from Memoria Press).

For our family read-alouds, we finished Pagoo, which has to be one of the best books EVER. We all LOVED this book. People have told me how great Holling C. Holling is before, but I was like, “come on, they’re kids’ books, how special can it be?” But it IS special. The sentence structure, the vocabulary, the pictures he paints with words, the illustrations… they are all fantastic. I think I will order Paddle to the Sea.

We also finished Hello Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, and Mrs. Piggle Wiggle’s Magic. I love Mrs. Piggle Wiggle!

What else…. I still have not managed to boil a cabbage for science, which makes 4 cabbages now that have rotted in my refrigerator for those keeping score at home. But we torment a lot of wildlife at the beach, so that’s science-y….right?

Geography. Driving all over the country is going to have to suffice for now. Plus I have an atlas in the car. When they want to know something, I chuck it at them and go “figure it out, dude.” Super! Homeschool! Mom!

Anyway. That’s not as impressive as I’d hoped. I would like to be finished with everything by next Fall. Aim High! That’s what I always say.

Hope your school year is going well, peeps.

Stolen Borrowed from The Natural Child Project on Facebook. Awesome.

So the other day I commented on a Pioneer Woman Homeschooling post – which I never do, because there are usually a zillion comments and I would be comment #33652 and who reads that far down? No one. That’s who.

Anyway, the question was Why Do You Homeschool the way You Do?

I commented that I was a combination of relaxed and classical, and that each person has to find their own way and blah-blah-blah.

Then someone asked me why and how I had chosen that route, and it really got me to thinking.

I choose to be flexible in certain subjects, like science because my children are very young (7 and 5) and I think at this age fostering curiosity is more important than content. My kids are insatiable when it comes to science, and I’ve can see they gobble up more information with a relaxed approach than with a scheduled one. It’s BECAUSE they have such an intense interest in it that I am able to be relaxed. They seek out information on science subjects at such depth and at such a pace, a scheduled program would actually interfere with their learning. I can hardly keep up with all their varied interests, frankly. (and this is where I spare you yet another link to the Geoduck study) (sorry, couldn’t resist).

We did do a scheduled science program at one point, but Big was so interested in volcanoes, that he really couldn’t care less about the workbook I bought. Finally, in a blinding moment of clarity, I realized that saying “hey, put down THAT science book you love so we can do THIS science book you hate” was patently ridiculous.

On the other hand, my son is not very into math (so he says. I remain unconvinced). But I know that math is an extremely important subject and I have to be a lot more insistent to get that done. Math is not optional, and it’s the first thing we do every day. If he were super interested in Math, I might find myself being more relaxed, simply because his interest would outpace any schedule.

And in writing all that out, I had a mini-epiphany: HOW I’ve been deciding which subjects can be relaxed and for which ones I need to be the task master. It’s all about The Children!

(Quelle surprise!)

If their interest in a subject is so intense, and so consuming, then I really don’t need to do much more than facilitate their discovery. Books, factory tours, television specials, notebooking pages… I merely find the materials, toss them around (literally – on the table, on the floor, on their nightstand), and get out of the way. (this looks like a good place for a geoduck link). Actually, I shouldn’t say “merely.” Finding enough stuff to satisfy a 7 year old boy who has an intense interest in something is quite a lot of work. In many cases, I’ve had to close a perfectly good Pinterest window to search online for things like Barnacle Printables. Selfish Deb finds that quite annoying, but Super Homeschooling Mom Deb beats her into submission at least 75% of the time.

Sixty percent of the time.

Fifty percent of the time… Look, Selfish Deb is fierce, but she is weakening now that I devote 23 minutes a day to self-improvement.

On the other hand, if they just really aren’t into a subject I think is important, like math or phonics or spelling, then I am way more insistent and diligent in getting that done. There is a minimum acceptable amount of ability they will have by the time I’m done with them, and that’s not open for discussion at this point (that minimum is quite high, so don’t get your panties in a twist thinking we’ll finish up with arithmetic and call it a day).

On the third hand, if they aren’t super interested in a subject I feel is Not Essential To Life, like certain sports or artist studies or music lessons, then I’ll probably let it go. (AFTER I’ve given enough of an introduction to the subject to make sure they really aren’t interested, that is. I don’t want any passions going undiscovered because I’m too lazy to arrange an art lesson or a gymnastics class).

Now, I’m sure I’m probably (as usual) preaching to the choir; and y’all are like “DUH, Deb, we know! You may as well tell us about that little box you can put all your music in!”

But it was new realization to me, and I like to write it down when I figure something out. That way, when I am planning next year and trying to figure out if I’m an abject failure because I don’t want to plan a composer study, I can give myself a stern talking-to and remember how I had it all figured out in March.

Plus also, I usually feel that Relaxed and Classical are diametrically opposed and I am only a few years away from driving myself to the brink of sanity. Maybe having some kind of logic behind it will stave off the men in white coats for a while longer.

Somewhere in there, anyway.

In the last couple of weeks we:

• Devoted ourselves to learning math facts. Which basically meant we did no schoolwork at all except flashcards. We’d run through several small sets of flashcards, then I’d set the timer for an hour. He could play during that hour, but when the timer went off, he had to come over and run through the flashcards again.

We did that all day, every day, all week.

So we may have thrown the schedule out deviated from the schedule a tiny bit, but he knows those facts COLD.

And during several of the free hours? He asked for index cards and made flashcards for his sister. Which she happily learned in a split second.

• We also read Pagoo, by Holling C. Holling. An excellent book, I highly recommend. It fits right in with the impromptu mollusk study that I’ve been roped into doing we’ve been working on.

• Visited a Shellfish Processing Plant. It was fantastic. And I’m not saying that sarcastically at all. We had a private tour with the head of education, Jennifer. She was truly amazing. She was young - in her twenties, probably - and enthusiastic. She directed the information at the kids – she spoke at their level without talking down to them. That is a rare quality in my experience.

The tour itself was quite interesting. Shellfish are amazing creatures.

And I don’t just mean the geoduck.

Which we got to hold.

Yep. Should have gotten a picture of that.

Here’s something interesting: Geoducks wholesale for $35 a pound. So there, all you people and your rude thoughts about them.

Motherhood is a choice you make everyday

to put someone else’s happiness and well being ahead of your own

to teach the hard lessons

to do the right thing

even when you’re not sure what the right thing is

and to forgive yourself

over and over again

for doing everything wrong

-Donna Ball

So.

Today.

I knew it was a mistake the minute I said it.

“Look how many checkmarks Little has on her schedule compared to how few you have.”

I do schoolwork with Little first, usually. For one thing, she has a sweet attitude and is always ready to come and get some one on one time with mama. For another, Big has spent the last two years working while Little mostly played, and he I think he feels like he’s getting away with something if she goes first while he is still absorbed in Legos.

Big’s attitude, on the other hand, is one we are working on. He moans and groans when it’s time for school. Every day starts with a negotiation – I’ll do this, but not that or if I do two of these, I get to skip all those. I usually arrange the schedule to allow for the wheeling and dealing. I’ve come to understand that he likes having a say in what he does, and if I agree to two pages of math instead of three (having only written two down on the schedule anyway), then everybody wins. And I’m fine with bagging the schedule entirely when he wants to spend an entire day researching and sketching geoducks.

But today, in an effort to motivate him a little by pointing out that his sister had accomplished a great deal in less than an hour (because she doesn’t harangue me until I wonder if a Law background wouldn’t have better prepared me for homeschooling), I made him feel like crap instead.

Go me.

Cue gigantic meltdown, the likes of which we haven’t had in a long time.

At some point during his indignant, incoherent, choked-with-sobs-and-snot rant, I got it.

He couldn’t very well choose to do work he didn’t even know about, could he? All he saw was that I brought out subject after subject, and he had no idea how many more subjects there were, or how much was expected of him in each one. He didn’t have any opportunity to prepare for the workload or to feel satisfaction at how he was progressing.

I understand he needs a voice in his schedule, but somehow managed to create the exact opposite result. The endless negotiating? It’s now blindingly clear he was only trying to assert some control over his workday.

And as for the checkmarks on the schedule….  I’m the one who decided to take a week off to focus on Math flashcards. I’m the one who didn’t get the whiteboard set up for proper Spelling lessons until a couple weeks ago. I’m the one who blew off three days worth of work so we could make 367 notebooking pages about mollusks.  I’m the one who allows myself to get battered by the negotiating to the point where I don’t even bother bringing out the Vocabulary book.

No wonder he was indignant.

Happily, the solution occurred to me the minute I understood where I went wrong, and I did not have to lay awake all night, alternating between puzzling it out and berating myself.

He gets his own schedule.

A less detailed version than my master schedule, but his own nonetheless. I am going to list out what I expect him to accomplish in a week and let him go at it however he chooses. We’ll see how that works.

I have high hopes. In spite of being annoyed with myself for not realizing all this sooner, I feel blessed. For I have glimpsed, once again, a little further into the heart of my boy. My boy whom I love.

teeny-tiny, nickel-sized crab on my glove. 

…but somewhere in that murky period where unschooling takes place and I don’t actually cross anything off my schedule.

• Where we are staying in Washington, one of the primary industries is shell fishing. In fact, there are clam net thingamajigs on the beach right in front of this house. We were all quite curious about this, and have discovered that the main fishery here will give us a tour of their operation. We are going on Thursday, and I am already feeling smug that education will be happening next week.

• We spent a lot of time talking about mollusks. Big got up one day, said “I want to do some notebooking” and proceeded to unpack supplies. I was helpless in the face of this enthusiasm, and dutifully followed orders to find worksheets and printables and coloring pages.

We have diagrammed squid, talked about adductor muscles in clams and watched videos about geoduck farming. Big extracted a promise to take him to Pike Place Market so he can see a real geoduck in action.

Ah, the geoduck. For those of you unfamiliar, go ahead and google it. I’ll wait.

Uh-huh.

An entire day spent on that creature. AN ENTIRE DAY. Complete with his own diagrams and drawings and notebooking pages. I would post them here, but they would probably be blocked as Adult Content.

Right?

I mean, it’s not just me… is it?

I awarded myself sixteen thousand homeschool mom points for the geoduck. I kept a straight face all day, people. I deserve it.

• We also learned all about octopus, squid, and barnacles. It is surprisingly difficult to find a decent barnacle printable – if by surprisingly difficult I mean Big harangued me until I finally found two diagrams after over AN HOUR AND A HALF of searching. I also spent a lot of time cutting and pasting pictures and editing info into various word documents. Like, a LOT. Three thousand more homeschool mom points AND a junior biologist ribbon for me.

Unschooling isn’t for sissies, yo.

The Carolina Journal Online reports:

Preschooler’s Homemade Lunch Replaced with Cafeteria “Nuggets”

State agent inspects sack lunches, forces preschoolers to purchase cafeteria food instead

So a GOVERNMENT AGENT is inspecting lunches brought from home and deciding whether they are APPROPRIATE? Shouldn’t she be out, like, inspecting the size of holes in swiss cheese or something truly helpful?

The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs — including in-home day care centers — to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.

When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.

The girl’s mother — who said she wishes to remain anonymous to protect her daughter from retaliation — said she received a note from the school stating that students who did not bring a “healthy lunch” would be offered the missing portions, which could result in a fee from the cafeteria, in her case $1.25.

And the government sees no irony in deeming a sandwich brought from home as inadequate and instead providing chicken nuggets. AND THEN charging the mom for the priviledge of essentially being replaced as decision maker and provider for her child?

What in the HELL is going on in this country?

This story makes me want to weep.

**By the way, I don’t need any help deciding what kind of light bulbs to buy either.

Michigan House Education Committee, February 1, 2012.

Debbie Squires, Associate Director of the Michigan Elementary and Middle School Principals Association

Wow, they scrubbed all traces of the video! Huh. I can’t find it anywhere.

It was a hearing in which she is explaining why her organization opposes online schools or cyber-schools in Michigan. During her testimony, she says, “Educators go through education for a reason. They are the people who know best about how to serve children. That’s not necessarily true of an individual resident. I’m not saying they don’t want the best for their children, but they may not know what actually is best from an education standpoint.”

The quote that really got me though - and I can’t find it anywhere - is she said something along the lines of “if parents want a say in their children’s education, they can express that at the ballot box when they vote for their local board of education.”

So yeah. Just cast your ballot every few years and watch educational reform happen!

• A couple of weeks ago, Big became quite interested in the sea birds around here. So I did what any lazy good homeschool mom would do – had Amazon send me some books, then chucked them at him and said figure it out lovingly sat and discussed birds until I wanted to run far, far away. But that wasn’t enough, because apparently there are about a ZILLION kinds of seagulls and they are all different in only the most minuscule of ways and looking at pictures was not sufficient. Which meant walking down the street to where the birds hang out and stalking the poor creatures until we could figure out if we have California gulls or Herring gulls.**

If going OUTSIDE and BIRD WATCHING and actively engaging in a spirited discussion about the teensy marks on a SEAGULL’S BEAK is not a sign of true love, I don’t know what is.

I am awarding myself ten-thousand homeschool mom points for this bird business.

I should get a plaque or something.

**eventually narrowed it down to either Western gulls or Glaucous Winged gulls, but couldn’t make a final determination, especially once Birds of Oregon revealed that the two groups often winter and “hybridize together,” at which point I lost the will to live we were satisfied.

• We went to the beach on Monday afternoon (is it awful when I say that? I feel like I’m tossing off something really obnoxious, like “I went for a drive in my Bentley to buy a Birkin Bag and some new Manolos like I do every week” because the beach is JUST SO FREAKING AWESOME and I wonder if talking about getting to go there as often as I used to go to WalMart is mean and heartless to all you guys who can’t go too.)

Anyway.

We went to the beach on Monday and walked down a little further than usual and we SAW SEALS.

SEALS, PEOPLE!

FROLICKING.

THERE WERE SEALS FROLICKING IN THE OCEAN!

Not 20 feet from us!

I squealed like I was 7 years old, it was so exciting.

• I realized in the middle of the night that we need to work on Big’s math facts. He needs to get them down more solidly than regular book work is doing for us. I think flashcards, although boring, are the answer. However, there is no dollar store here, and I didn’t bring any (yes, there are PILES of flashcards at home in storage, fat lot of good they are doing me), and I didn’t want to spend four hundred dollars on ink printing them. Finally, it occured to me to check for an app, and what do you know? The kids LOVE them.

I think it’s the phone. It’s novel. Having them play on it makes me twitchy.

Me: are you okay, baby? it’s not too hard is it?

Kids: it’s FINE mom. jeez.

Me: I was talking to my phone.

Here are the apps I like best – Math Flashcards, Math Bingo, and Montessori Crosswords.

• Read aloud Hello, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. Listened to chapter 1 of Ordinary Jack by Helen Cresswell on Audible.com.

• Little flew through All About Spelling Lesson 2; Big sulked through spelling and his uncooperative attitude keeps him on Lesson 1 of AAS Level 2.

• Big sulked his way through Math-U-See chapter 20, but did well on the test. He gets to sulk his way to chapter 21. Little finished Singapore Early Bird Kindergarten Math Book A (could that HAVE a longer title?) and began Book B.