Take Two

I am a big subscriber to the Moore's methods of homeschooling. For those of you unfamiliar with Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore, they are considered by many to be the "grandparents" of homeschooling. Between them they have, like, a zillion year's teaching experience, have served as university administrators, homeschooled their own children, and have conducted many studies on education and homeschooling. One of the things I really like about their "formula",as they call it, is their blend of work-service-study. A child should have a fair amount of (unpaid) work to do. Chores. Helping with family projects. Working the family business, or farm. They should also be involved with serving others, the elderly, disabled, people in need. And then they should have time for study. If you think about it, their formula is what everyday life was like for people until about the middle of last century. One of the major underlying problems in our society, in my opinion, is a lack of work ethic. I believe children can and should be expected to pull their weight. Period.

So yesterday our church was having a work day in preparation for moving into our new building. One of the things on the list was weeding, so I planned to take the kids over in the morning. It would be a perfect opportunity to both work and serve.

I got Gracie up at 8 and she was not happy. She was pouting about getting up, pouting about working, pouting about eating. We got to the church to find the weeding had been done yesterday. Ok... I found a few small things for them to do, mostly picking up some trash and sweeping the floor, so the time wasn't totally wasted. We stayed about two hours, and during the ride home Gracie announced, "My arms are too tired." "For what?" I asked. "Schoolwork!" Oh boy.

I let her chill for a while. We have been reading a few books about Johnny Appleseed, and I rented the Disney video from Netflix. So we watched the video, and then we read our last two books. She was pretty into it, and after that she spent about an hour making a Johnny Appleseed craft of her own design. She was coloring and cutting and made paper-doll type figures that could stand up. I was pretty impressed, and although we didn't follow any kind of lesson plans, I felt she was getting some history and literature, and then art out of it. Of course, Gracie can make art out of anything. That's the kind of unit-style learning that sounds super cool to me, but I just can't wrap my brain around how to work it all out yet.

Working in the afternoon seemed to work really well yesterday, so I planned on doing it again today. I gave Gracie the run-down when she got up this morning. We ran to the store this morning, then the kids played and had lunch. I got Caleb in for a nap at 1. Gracie was just kind of hanging out, not involved with anything. I told her it was time to start. We read the Bible lesson, which took about two minutes to read and was very story-bookish. It was about Adam and Eve's home in the garden, what kind of animals they might have played with. Then there was a coloring page with hidden animals to circle. This is the kind of "work" she would do for fun, like a "Highlights" magazine, right? Gracie sits at the table and groans. "What's the matter?" I ask. "My stomach hurts". "Ok. Go take a nap. You can come back when you feel better" She explodes into tears and runs, wailing, into her bedroom. I unload the dishwasher. Five minutes later she's back, composed. "I'm ready". Great. We finish the Bible page, which takes about a minute and a half. I'm such a slave driver. Then we have a page of math. Circle the numbers that are bigger than 25. Easy. Not for Gracie. I feel so bad for the kid. She has no idea what it means. She can count to 25. She can count to 100. But she can't make the connection that 100 is more than 25. So I count out beads to try to show her. We use a number chart to find which numbers come before/after, but I'm still not sure she gets it. Math is something we are going to have to take really, really, slow. The page is really short, but it takes about 30 minutes, because I'm trying to help her understand, and she's getting really frustrated.

We break for some chocolate chip cookies.

Now on to language. This is ridiculously easy compared to Math. Circle the words that start with "R". Five minutes. Done.

Social Studies. "I am special". We read how God made us special, and ways to communicate. Draw a line to the part of your body you use to read. Write. Talk. Another Five minutes. Done.

It's 2:40. Everything took an hour and forty-minutes, and that included one meltdown and one cookie break.
Time for literature. We are almost done "Little House on the Prairie". Gracie asks if we can read on the porch swing. Awesome idea, Gracie. We read one chapter, then she went out back to play.

I'm not sure how I feel about the past two days. I don't like telling you Gracie had a meltdown and didn't want to do any work, and that we only spent five minutes on language and she had a hard time with math. But that's what happened. I liked the laid-back, Johnny Appleseed stuff, but we need more content than that. I loved reading on the porch swing. We'll do more of that. And the cookies... I liked the cookies...