I had about a two hour conversation last night on the telephone with our good friends David and Rebekah in Texas. They homeschool twin boys who are just between the ages of Kelly and Christian. They do an absolutely stellar job in their homeschool. One idea they tried that we are going to implement for sure is their planning method. Currently, I make out the schedules one or two weeks in advance. I list all the things the kids need to accomplish each day of the week, then they figure out how they will get things done for each day. The new method will be to provide weekly goals, let the kids make their own schedule that meets the goals, review the schedule before the week starts, then follow the progress of the schedule as it is implemented. It is a great progression. Another idea they brought up was the possibility of getting certain certifications that require fairly short-term efforts, but that allow the holder of the certificate to work in interesting environments. The two that were brought up are those required for pharmacy and EKG technicians. I am going to look into these and several other great ideas we discussed on the telephone.
Christian and I continued work on the ham radio kit last night. We got all the resistors soldered into place. We plan to continue on to the next set of components tonight. We still have a couple of nights of reading in our evolution book before we can move on to the intelligent design and radio theory books we are going to read aloud next. We also read a novel aloud, but will not read further in that until we go on our homeschool trip to Tennessee in January.
Wow, either of these two way would give me so much more freedom! Right now, with our kids ages, our homeschool is a lot like a public school where I spend a lot of actual hours instructing. To tell you the truth, I really look forward to a time when my kids have more ability to “self-instruct.” It’s coming slowly, the oldest does many things on her own…but just this morning (at 5am) I was thinking how great it would be if I could sleep in for once and help the kids on what they needed once I got up (ideally around 9 or 10!!!) Everyone tells me to enjoy these young years becuase they’ll be gone so soon, but personally I can’t wait until they aren’t so physically dependent on ME. We’ll tuck this blog post away for future years…but for now I’ve gotta go put 2 down for a nap and then instruct the other 3 in their remaining subjects. 🙂
The odd thing about all this is that I got all of the benefit of coming home to teach for a few hours each night while Lorena did all of the hard work during the day. I am amazed at how fast this all has gone. We are actively thinking about the next step whether it be college, a trade, some travel and work, or who knows what. I am wildly grateful for the time we took with the kids when they were young just to be with them, but I hold no illusion about being the one who did all the difficult work. The raising of kids with Lorena has been absolutely the best time of my life and I would not give it up for anything. I have always been one to try to enjoy my age and place in life whatever and wherever it is, but I have the feeling that the kids leaving will put that philosophy to the test. Besides, you have AWESOME kids, not like our little terrors.
It is not lost on me that not only does Audrey spend a lot of time teaching, she also spends a lot of time raising our children. Ken, in our house Audrey is both you and Lorena. This is not lost on me. It is fascinating to me to watch Audrey! There is absolutely no way I could do what she does. What fascinates me most is how she determines their needs and the fashions an educational approach that works for each child on an individual level.
She can intuitively assess a child’s needs and fashion an approach to teaching the child what he or she needs to learn … and it doesn’t have to be one of her own children. She amazes me, and I’m so grateful for her what she does becuase I could never do it in a thousand years.
She tells me I will need to be involved in their upper level math & science, but frankly this terrifies me because while I know what I know I don’t know how to teach it to someone else, especially a child. When we get to the upper level work, I’m really going to need her help.
If homeschooling were left up to me, my kids would be much better off in a government school. 🙁
Eric, I know your family does an amazing job with homeschool and Audrey is very, very good at it. She deals with five kids instead of just two like us, too. The thing that we really appreciate about your personal approach to raising your family is the fearlessness and “can-do” kind of attitude you have in taking on stuff like building a table, a kitchen, an oven, or anything else. I think a HUGE part of any kids education is in the watching of the people they respect do things they love with joy, vigor, and tenacity. You can already see that in your kids. I think it comes naturally to you. I have to work at it because of my inherent laziness. And it is something you really cannot get at a government school with any consistency and without any secular humanist baggage.
On the math and science, Audrey is going to have them so well trained by the time they get to upper level math and science, they will do it themselves. No kidding. I am amazed how infrequently I have to do anything other than monitor the progress these days. I watch it close because it is so interesting to learn what the kids know, but they do most of the stuff on their own. Homeschool people had told me that would happen, but I was pretty skeptical until I saw it myself.
Awwww, *blush* golly! Now you see why Eric is the inspiration behind what I do?!