You are currently browsing the monthly archive for March 2011.
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Big changes coming in our homeschooling. High School.
How? What? How much? Grading? Credit units?
Big questions swirling around. Turns out I can’t sleep when my brain is popping and fizzing, so I’m not getting as much sleep as I’d like. Writing down my ideas rather than letting them swirl yesterday did seem to make a difference in how well I slept last night. That’s a good sign.
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In Manitoba, a student needs to have a minimum of 30 credit units to graduate. There are 17 required credits including math, LA, and Phys Ed in all 4 grades. A credit is roughly 110 hours of course work.
I’m feeling a little overwhelmed. A little like the gentle pace of deep, slow education has got to change. I don’t want to have a hurried and superficial approach, yet I’m unclear how to make a transcript that includes ‘time for lots of thought and personal space’.
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But the things I’ve learned about calculating credits have actually inspired me and given me a feeling of possibilities. For instance, we can read books like What Color is Your Parachute, College Without High School, and 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens and call it “Career Exploration”. It’ll be a half-credit. Work Study credits mean that Sandra could get a part-time job and earn credit. Independent reading courses mean that reading ecology books and writing about them can be a credit. Dance can be a fine art course. Soccer and running can be Phys Ed. We’ve even found courses that teach literary analysis through Tolkien and through classic films.
It turns out that brainstorming within the paradigm of credits might make us more creative.
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Still feel a little flutter of apprehension about all this, though. We’ve always chosen to do less rather than more and let things sink deeper. We’ve chosen space for thinking over jumping through workbook facts.
Any thoughts from those of you who are citizens in the Land of High School?
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“If you hear a voice within you say, “You cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”
Vincent van Gogh
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What limitations are you refusing to accept?
Friday and Saturday I was at a homeschooling conference, and miracle of miracles, it was exactly what I’d hoped it would be. The majority of sessions I attended were motivating and useful. I was able to peruse the resourced I’d hoped to see. I found resources I hadn’t known I wanted. I felt refreshed and stimulated.
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I bought only a few things, but they’re exciting me with possibilities for new unit studies and projects.
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dropping down to fix a mistake
not scary
fabulous
15 rows of a sweater didn’t need to be completely redone
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“Patience is also a form of action.”
Auguste Rodin
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What needs your active patience?
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some days, the schedule is wrong
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waiting for spring
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intimate: adj
1: a intrinsic, essential
b : belonging to or characterizing one’s deepest nature
2: marked by very close association, contact, or familiarity
Today we had a field trip that was both intimately small and about our deepest nature.
We are studying human anatomy right now. Sandra was 5 the last time I did this topic. That’s a long time ago. Looong ago. What happened was that I went a little too matter-of-fact in an attempt to keep her from thinking the topic was icky. Instead I overdid the realism and now she thinks the topic is icky. Every time I discuss learning anatomy at a level beyond that of Kindergarten she backs away in horror.
But we need to cover this topic. So I decided to start with the least icky part possible: the skeleton. No ooze. No wobble. No hints of the dissection table. Just Lego-like parts. We’ve been covering the internal structure of bones themselves as well as learning their names. Not too heavily. We’ve focused on short and frequent lessons. A few minutes every day adds up and we now know quite a few names in a way that we should be able to hold onto. We’re even collecting facts for a board game we hope to design.
While I’m always tempted to invite all the homeschoolers for 100 km to a field trip (as I manage the local support group and feel obliged to make it the Funnest Ever), I kept it to just us. I called up a small x-ray lab. (Field Trip Tip: The smaller the facility, the less likely you are to deal with overwhelmed cogs-in-the-machine that have no time or authority to invite you for a field trip.) I was hoping for 10-15 minutes with a little explanation of how the machine works, maybe a peek at an x-ray or two if it wouldn’t violate privacy, and a connection between the subject matter and someone employed in the field. What I found was a man delighted to talk to us, interested in our questions, and excited to show us some of the awesome ‘I get to look at the insides of people!’ aspects of his job. We spent 90 minutes there, taking a few breaks as people needed x-rays.
We saw breaks, screws holding bone together, sinuses, the air bubble in someone’s stomach, the growth plates on a toddler’s fingers, and a whole series of normal bones. It’s one thing to see it in a book and another to peek inside someone’s body. It cemented so many things for me. Oh, and I assume for the kids, too.*
Mike is getting a thank you card. And some cookies. Or a pie. Or all three. He made my day and my skeleton unit.
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*What, you think I’m not homeschooling to fill in my own gaps?!
Perhaps it’s the madness of waiting for spring in the grimness of March, or being on 4 hours of sleep yesterday, but I signed up for 2 test knits for Woolly Wormhead and I decided that I needed to over-dye the yarn for one of them.
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It used to be this.
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Madness or otherwise, it made me happy.
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…and longitude! Ha ha!
(Perhaps I shouldn’t blog when I’ve had insomnia. Lots of knitting got done between 3:30 and breakfast, but my brain now feels like a pickled caper.)
It’s part of our Mystery Class geography explorations. Lots of fun. It looks like we’re further north than any of the mystery locations we’re tracking and that’s got us intrigued.
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“Sometimes people tell me I am changing the world. Well, of course I am. You are too, we all are. One day, I simply started doing it deliberately.”
Amanda Jones
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How is your life changing the world?
