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Math as art
November 14, 2006
I've been wondering lately if I shouldn't be doing more "school" with my children, specifically Celine. Homeschooling is so individual for each family which is the beauty of it but I've found myself lately comparing our schooling un-structure with other homeschooling families we know. Comparing notes and progress is not a bad thing, in fact I've come away with some great teaching tools from asking other moms what they're doing with their kids. But once in a while I have niggling doubts that maybe we should focus more on academics - you know, sit down and "do math" etc... Forgetting the fact that Celine can read 150pg chapter books in one afternoon and has started teaching Damien and I from her knowlegde. And that all three kids love memorizing scripture, take interesting photos, can sew a basic stitch(even Brienne), and understand intutively why we need to care for God's creation. During the past few days I have forgotten or not valued the 1000 other facts, understandings, skills and character traits my children have gained in our homeschool adventures.
This morning I was stuggling with these thoughts of inadequacy but determined to push the thoughts aside as the kids and I tackled the day. Our main job was to tidy up from the weekend and generally get our life in order for the week. Sometime mid morning though we encountered an interruption to our work that set my mind to ease regarding my children's lack of structured education.
We were cleaning up and came across a bucket of damp clothespins that had been taken off the clothesline outside a few days prior. I gave Celine the job of laying them out on the table to dry. I continuued vacuumming and checked a few minutes later on her progress, ready to assign the next chore. Celine had laid the clothespins out in a pattern and was grouping them. I sat down to admire her design when she informed me she was counting them by 2's. A light clicked in my head "aha, a teaching moment" and I set down my cleaning and we proceeded to have fun grouping, regrouping, counting & multiplying the clothespins. Laurent didn't want to be left out so when Celine and I were done he & I counted up to 10 and then his numbers started jumping around and we all had a good laugh. While Laurent and I were counting Celine took care of Brienne by teaching her letters, numbers and shapes (all on Celine's initiative). Brienne was thrilled with all the attention from big sister and proudly showed Daddy her numbers and letters at the supper table.
Laurent and I wrote numbers and when I tired of the whole scene (sit down schooling does not hold my interest long which is one reason I don't take this approach with the kids) and returned to cleaning he continued - only with a creative twist, see drawing above. If you look closely you'll see a backwards 5 in the boy's shorts. Well, that's where the picture all started. Apparently Laurent saw shorts in the number 5 and took off from there. I just love that creativity. Who says math can't be art?
What a lovely reminder I had this morning of why we've chosen the path we have and how it really is working for us. My children truly are learning all the time and not just when these "school moments" pop up.
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barbara on Nov. 18, 2006, 10:24 a.m.
Renee, I am not sure what your theory is on homeschooling. Could you enlighten me? I am sure children can learn a lot on their own, especially with a trained teacher-parent as yourself to catch the 'teaching moments' as they come up.
But at some point, I think, you will have to present some formal teaching if you want your children to have the option to go to a higher level of education, leading to a good paying job, especially Laurent, who will probably have to support a family of his own, some day. In the old days, some people could 'fly by the seat of their pants', getting good paying jobs and even owning their own businesses, with minimal education, but the world is ever changing and having a sound, formal, education gives people more options, and opportunities, in our modern, high tech world. Even when adults learn on their own, not having documented training can hold some people back from getting paid more for the work that they do. And some jobs, e.g. teaching, medicine will not hire anyone without the formal training.
Girls also need to have some training in good paying jobs, even if they plan to be stay at home moms. Girls never know if they might need to work to support their families. Husbands can get injured and be unable to work, or may not be able to work for other reasons. Divorces force many women to become prime income earners.
So, I think you might need to think about how to assess when it is time to start edging toward more formal education and when informal is not enough. You will need to know how to address the situation when learning by observation is exhausted. I don't know. Maybe the child will tell you, somehow. There are probably some tests that are available to tell you how your child compares, educationally with children of the same age? Stats or something like that. There may be some Distance Ed programs available on line that allow the child to learn as fast as they like (sort of a Montesorri approach). Learning from computers allows the child to move ahead at their own speed and eliminates human interferance that can turn a child off learning. At least, there are probably some curriculum guides for homeschool moms that would guide you in what your child should know by certain ages. How you teach the material, is up to you. You can teach it formally or informally, and how the material is presented is up to you too. I do know that some people (I think Seventh Day Adventists) believe that children should not receive a formal education until they are seven or eight years old. Their children seem to learn very quickly at a later age, and catch up very nicely with children who start formal education earlier. Because they are more mature when they begin formal education, they seem to have a more mature intention to learn.
The fact that Celine was teaching Brienne letters and numbers tells me something. It tells me that Celine thinks its perfectly natural to teach a 3 year old, formally, if the young child is interested and willing to learn. So take a cue from Celine and don't be afraid to teach those babies when the interest is there. No pressure. Just keep it fun and quit when the interest wanes. Keep it short and sweet.
So, good luck with your informal approach. Keep us posted on how it's working.
Anonymous on Nov. 19, 2006, 4:21 a.m.
Regarding our theory on homeschooling, I don't really have one except that I think it's better than public school. But I do have ideas & theories about learning. This site fairly accurately represents how I feel.
First I want to make very clear that we have given considerable thought and research to schooling, learning and education. I have been studying and reading about this subject for 13 years. In order to go against the flow you have to have very good reasons to do so and have enough confidence to defend your position and carry through your convictions.
Having said that I will address your concerns. Your post sounded like you assumed we hadn't considered higher education for our children or the necessity of having decent paid employment. I would like to respectfully say, please give us more credit. We ourselves are university educated and plan that our children will be prepared for that route IF THEY decide tHEY WANT to pursue that. If they choose another course of higher education or career training we plan for them to be prepared for that option as well. In either case as our children get older (early to mid teen years I'm guessing) they will need to apply themselves to acquiring skills and mastering subjects that are required for the direction they want to go in. Nothing in our schooling philosophy contradicts that. At this point in their education the foundation is being laid for them to be open to learning, to ask questions, to think and creatively solve problems. On a very practical level Celine is reading, learning to write, learning basic math, history, geography, biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy... The list is honestly too long. I'm not sure exactly what we could be missing in there.
Your comment "You will need to know how to address the situation when learning by observation is exhausted." indicates you don't understand how we are educating our children. It is ridiculous to think that children solely learn how to read, write, compute, grow vegetables, sew, memorize etc... by observation. Our children learn these things by doing them. It's just that our "doing them" generally looks different than formal schooling. Just because the form is different does not mean it isn't happening. For example: Celine likes to sew, so I'm teaching her. But sewing isn't just using a needle and thread. It's following directions, making a pattern, understanding proportions, measuring - all of these mathematical concepts are part of a basic elementary mathematical curriculum.
"At least, there are probably some curriculum guides for homeschool moms that would guide you in what your child should know by certain ages. How you teach the material, is up to you. You can teach it formally or informally, and how the material is presented is up to you too." This is exactly my point. Re: curriculum guides, there are many out there, I haven't investigated them because quite frankly I don't care what most grade 2 students are learning. Celine is an individual with her own interests, skills, talents, strengths and weaknesses. My job, as her parent and teacher is to build on those things. I'm more interested in HER progression than I am comparing her to other children. Someday, ages 10, 11, 12 or later, I will maybe need to pay more attention to curriculum guides but that will just be a natural progression of our children's schooling. If they require testing, formal courses etc.. to meet their educational goals then we will pursue those things.
"It tells me that Celine thinks its perfectly natural to teach a 3 year old, formally, if the young child is interested and willing to learn. So take a cue from Celine and don't be afraid to teach those babies when the interest is there." Of course Celine thinks it's natural to teach. It happens all the time, it is not limited to the classroom. I am teaching my children constantly - through instruction (this is a seed, this is what a seed needs to grow, this is the type of soil needed. This is 1/4 of the apple, lets cut it in half now what do we have - 1/8th) and my own example (seeking out knowlege, reading, researching, asking questions, discussing). I HAVE taken my cue from Celine and thus teach her and Laurent and Brienne when they are interested, which is pretty much all the time. It simply is that the way I "teach" my children does not look like formal "teaching". But quite frankly all the talk of "teaching" I think misses the point. My goal for our children is learning, and sometimes that requires my direct instruction.
Have faith that we hold our children's best interest as our guide. Otherwise, why else would we do this? It's certainly not for financial gain, prestige, status or other forms of acceptance.
That's pretty much all I have the time to respond to. I think I answered most of your concerns. If you are interested in reading more check out:
I should preface these links by saying that many of them talk about unschooling. We are not philosophically unschoolers (I won't go into the nitty gritty details) however we approach education very similar to unschoolers.
Life without School David Albert Excellent author What about college?? Learn in Freedom One of my favorite how to homeschool books Peter Kowalke A real life college educated unschooler FAQs
I've also talked about our "school" style in previous blogs I've written.
http://www.tougas.net/node/34 http://www.tougas.net/node/27 http://www.tougas.net/node/398 http://www.tougas.net/node/749 http://www.tougas.net/node/9 http://www.tougas.net/node/623
becky on Nov. 19, 2006, 10:06 p.m.
I hadn't read the comments until just this afternoon, but this morning as I was in church I thought about your blog Renee. Thank you Damien and Renee for being the parents you are to Celine, Laurent and Brienne....keep up the good work!
barbara on Nov. 21, 2006, 10:03 a.m.
Sorry if my old fashioned observations sounded critical, they weren't meant to criticize, but rather to try to understand this different way of educating the children. In the above links, the FAQ was the most helpful in explaining this type of education. Up until now, I thought that homeschooling was formal instruction done at home instead of in a public or private school. I had never heard of anyone 'unschooling' until you. Truly. I have no valid opinions on whether I think it is a good way of learning since I know of no one who has gone through this unschooling system and was happy or unhappy with the end result.
Except for Dad. Dad taught himself to play guitar using music books and then went to Red Deer College to take formal lessons. He started his formal lessons at Grade 5 level of guitar. So Dad learned the first 4 grade level lessons at home on his own before he felt he needed formal guidance from a music teacher. The problem with this for him, was that although he can play at a Grade 5 level, there are many big 'holes' in his music theory knowlege, concepts that he did not learn on his own that are haunting him even now. Basic music theory knowledge that he is missing from his self learning years, that shake his self confidence a little. He is finding it very hard and quite frustrating, backtracking to learn the music theory that he missed in those first 4 years of self instruction. A person can also develop some 'strange, self-taught techniques' in playing an instrument (or even in teaching oneself computer programming), that are very difficult and frustrating to 'unlearn' when finally deciding to take formal instruction with a professionally trained instructor. I have also learned through experience, that in most jobs, no matter how good you are are doing a job, even if you do the work better than the next guy, your pay scale will be based on proof of formal education taken through an accredited school, unless you work for yourself. I know there are always exceptions to this, but generally, they really are exceptions. So, I have to admit, I am still having problems thinking outside of my 'box'.
renee on Nov. 21, 2006, 12:33 p.m.
Not all homeschoolers "do school" the way we do. Most homeschoolers do some variation of school-at-home. We know families all over the schooling spectrum.