Week of May 19th

This is our first official week of summer vacation. Not much has changed, though. The boys still have most of the day free to play and work on their projects. The only difference is they won't be working on math or handwriting until school starts up again in August. They are still taking piano lessons and practicing daily. 

 Monday

Mostly hanging out and not doing much. We went for a walk in the morning.
I played Super Mario Bros on the Wii with Ben.
After Monster Jam on Sunday, Tommy decided he wants an RC monster truck.
We read aloud from our Edison biography, a part where young Tom wants to buy chemicals for his laboratory, so he does jobs around the neighborhood to earn money. Tommy decided he wanted to do the same thing, so he washed my van to earn money towards his truck.

Tuesday

Outside play
Video games (new geometry and spelling games on my iPad)
Went out to lunch as a family with Daddy
Tommy made a mini monster truck race track out of dirt
Read aloud from Edison biography. Learned about slavery and the Underground Railroad.

Wednesday

Video games (too many, in my opinion!)
Outside play
Edison biography read aloud

Daddy finished reading Harry Potter aloud to the boys

Thursday

Exploratorium.
Watched some YouTube videos about learning basic Spanish.

Friday

Park day with homeschool friends
Watched Harry Potter for family movie night. We have a rule that we have to read the book before watching the movie. The boys seemed to appreciate seeing the story come to life on the screen. 

Monster Trucks

Last Sunday we went to a monster truck rally. That's within the realm of things I never considered part of my future. Tommy has always been interested in monster trucks and I've either tried to ignore it or passively try to talk him out of reading more monster truck books, with the thoughts 1) You've already read every book about monster trucks, can you finally pick something else to be fixated upon!? 2) There's nothing educationally valuable about monster trucks. They are just grown-up toys. 

But since I've been reading more about unschooling, I discovered the concept of feeding kids' passions. Not discouraging their passions because they aren't 'good' or 'educational enough'. I've been doing a lot of discouraging passions. I never say, "That's dumb, don't be interested in that", but I will just ignore it as much as I can, hoping it goes away. Lately I've been trying to be a lot better about being respectful of the boys' interests. So when Tommy asked to read more about monster trucks, because he'd already read all the books our library owned, we tracked down every book on the topic in the entire library district (thanks to inter-library loan). He looked up YouTube videos about monster trucks. He read articles about them on the internet. 

When I took a step back and looked at who my child is, I realized that Tommy has been interested in monster trucks ever since he was a baby. He's always gotten monster truck books from the library, even before he could read them. I've just dismissed it as "one of those boy things" that kids eventually grow out of. I never took it very seriously. But lately I've been trying to take their interests more seriously. I've been talking to them about the things they love and why they love them. I've been joining them in learning more about their passions. They love it when I take an interest in the things they love. :)

And so I had the idea to take Tommy to a monster truck show. Originally it was to be for his birthday, but there were only two shows happening, one in a few weeks (from when I started looking into it) and the next one wasn't until January 2015. We opted for the show in just a few weeks. 

Fast forward to the day of the show: Tommy was absolutely over-the-moon excited. He practically trembled with excitement and happiness at seeing the monster trucks drive around, do jumps, crash cars, and smash into things. I almost cried to see him so happy, his eyes alive at watching everything going on. 

I've truly learned that the things my kids are interested doesn't have to make sense to me. It doesn't have to be something I'm interested in. But it is worth it respect them as individuals and to join in with their interests and learn together. It is so worth it!

And then, the topic of educational value... Just in the past few days he learned about marketing, economics, math, advertising, geography, business ethics, not to mention suspension systems, aerodynamics, geometry, physics (force, mass, acceleration). I couldn't possibly have come up with a unit study of all these things if I tried. Tommy has learned so much just through his interest in monster trucks. 

Since the show, Tommy has watched more YouTube videos about monster trucks. We've learned about how the whole Monster Jam franchise works. He built a mini monster truck arena out of dirt for one of toy monster trucks. He decided he wants to buy himself a RC monster truck, so he's been doing chores around the house to earn money towards it. 

So much for monster trucks not being of any educational value. 

Last Day of School!

Thursday was our last day of school. Since we're unschooling, the last day of school isn't as amazingly exciting as if the kids were in a regular school. It wasn't even as exciting as when they were normally homeschooled, where we could finally shuck our schedule and indulge in days of wide open freedom. But I maintained the tradition of having a "last day of school" celebration so they would have some way of marking the end of one 'year' and the start of a new one, when we start up again in August. The only thing different about "school year" vs. "summer vacation" will be a few minutes of handwriting and math each day. That's pretty much it!

We celebrated by going to Jamba Juice. We sipped our smoothies and talked about what fun things we'd like to do during the summer. This is the list the boys came up with: 

- water park

- beach

- point Lobos

- Carmel

- get ice cream

- go see a movie

- Jamba Juice

- Take pictures

- family adventures

- buy a monster truck wheel (???)

- plant a tree

- playdates

Afterwards we went to Target to pick up some summer goodies, like a Slip 'n Slide, some water balloons, and bubbles for Lucy. It was a spicy hot day in the Bay Area, so the boys set up the Slip 'n Slide as soon as they got home.

Week of May 12th

Monday

Boys went to my moms group at church where they attended their class for 6/7 year olds.

We read aloud from our Thomas Edison book. In the part we read, young Tom was sent to school when he was 7, but the teacher couldn't deal with his quirkiness and constant questions, so his mom homeschooled him. This sparked a really good conversation about homeschooling.

Read aloud from a book about the Golden Gate Bridge (we spent Mother's Day in San Francisco and drove over the Golden Gate Bridge). Then we watched a documentary on YouTube about the building of the GGB. This led Tommy to want to know more about earthquakes.

Tuesday

Schoolwork.
Played outside most of the day.
Lots of read alouds.
Watched YouTube videos about earthquakes, roller coasters, and jet cars.

I know that some people have children who read all the time and it's no big deal. While my children are able to read, it's rare to find them actually sitting quietly and reading a book. But lately I've been seeing them reading a lot more often, and it makes me so happy!

Wednesday

Schoolwork. Piano lessons.
Legos while listening to history read-aloud (Story of the World, Vol II).

Lots of outside play.

Thursday

Last official day of school!
As part of our last-day-of-school tradition, we went to Jamba Juice to celebrate and then to Target for summer goodies.
Outside play with summer goodies.

Friday
Early morning Mythbusters. Tommy found a new show called West Coast Customs on Netflix. What could he not love about a show that is all about taking apart cars and putting them back together in amazing ways? We spend the morning looking up YouTube videos about custom cars and hot rods and talking about it.
Tommy built a monster truck rally out of popsicle sticks.
Outside play.

Week of May 5th

Monday

Tommy woke up early and made chocolate chip cookies. All by himself.
Schoolwork. Started a cursive workbook by Handwriting Without Tears. Spent fifteen minutes practicing cursive on the white board (by their own choice!)

Played in a tree and set up a house. I am amazed at how well they get along when they are working together on a project.

Tuesday

Schoolwork. 
Practiced times tables while they worked on their tree house.
Played at a friend's house down the street for a few hours. 
Watched several YouTube videos about carnivorous snails and color changing octopuses. This led to several other videos about cephalopod mollusks and how gills work. 
Finished reading our Benjamin Franklin book and started a biography about Thomas Edison.

Wednesday
Origami.

Schoolwork. But only a little bit since they both chose to do the bulk of it earlier in the week. Works for me.
Monster truck videos on YouTube.
Piano lessons. 
Lunch at Erik's Deli.
Playground.
 Library.
Tommy found books about monster trucks, Lego building, Karate, and bridges. Ben found a Lego StarWars book. This sums up their personalities pretty well.
Sent a myth idea off to Mythbusters and Tommy learned how to draft an email.

Thursday

Watched Mythbusters in the way-too-early morning. Learned about viscosity, newtonian fluids, and other things.
Tommy made meringue cookies. Realized his recipe doesn't work out well, so we looked up a new one. Watched a video about how to make French meringues.
Legos.
Lunch while I read a biography about Thomas Edison.
Tommy made paleo brownies. They turned out pretty well considering they contained no flour and almost no sugar.
Playground.
More monster truck videos.

Friday

Monster truck videos on YouTube. More Mythbusters. 
Park day with homeschool friends. Tommy used several jump ropes tied together to make a "pulley" to hoist children up a swing set. I'm sure they learned a lot about physics (but since I know almost nothing about physics, I'm not sure what that would be!)

Week of April 28th

Monday

This week got away from me, so we didn't do as much reading as I had hoped we would. The kids were still recovering from their sickness over the weekend, so Monday was pretty mellow. 

I was working on dinner that afternoon while Tommy was working on something at the table. He says, "I wish I had some gun powder.... Hey, mom, do we have any gun powder?" I told him no, we didn't, and went to see what he was up to. He was arranging a pile of matches in a circle, like a tiny bonfire inside a metal pan. He asked permission to light them. I told him he could, but he'd need to wait for Dad. Mark took them outside and let them light the fire. They have experience with lighting matches and being around fire, so they know enough not to get burned! This led a long discussion about the properties of fire and air, as well as the chemical that go into making matches. 

 Later Tommy wanted to melt chocolate chips into a mold to shape them into a piece of candy. First he tried putting them on a plastic lid and put it in the toaster oven. That didn't work because the plastic melted along with the chocolate chips. Then I suggested a metal plate. That worked, but the shape wasn't interesting enough. So then I showed him how to melt chocolate in a saucepan with a bit of milk (almond milk, since we are dairy-free). Then we poured the chocolate sauce into this donut mold and stuck it in the freezer to cool down. Tommy put the garnishes on!

Tuesday

On Tuesday it was wicked hot in the bay area, so we went to the coast. Our first stop was Monterey Bay Aquarium.

 Then we went to the beach. Tommy found a fish (already dead) and put it in his bucket to get a closer look. We never did figure out what kind of fish it was. The boys had a lot of fun playing in the waves. They were still a bit weak from their weekend illness, so we weren't able to stay at the beach as long as I would have liked. 

Wednesday

This was a mellow day. The boys did a bit of regular schoolwork and had piano lessons. After lunch we unexpectedly babysat the children of a friend. I love having wide open days so we can have the flexibility to help friends out when they need emergency babysitting! The kids (twin 3 year olds and a 1.5 year old) had a lot of fun playing together. It gives me the warm fuzzies to watch my boys play so well with children that are much younger than them.

While the kids were here, Tommy decided he wanted to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. He made most of the recipe by himself (I helped by making oat flour in our food processor). I realized that he is getting so capable of making recipes that I need to make him his own binder to keep all of his favorite recipes in. Otherwise I find my piles of papers torn apart from him searching for a favorite recipe!

Thursday

On Thursday we went grocery shopping, then headed to the park for a playdate with Lucy's playgroup. The boys met some friends there and played and scootered all over the park for about an hour. This was another very hot day, so we headed home and spent most of the rest of the day indoors. I pulled out this "In case of emergency" building set and the boys created structures with it for most of the day. We also watched several TedEd videos about tsunamis, the physics of ketchup, the chemistry of cookies, and the history of video games.

Friday

On Friday we went to the San Francisco Symphony for a special children's performance. I look forward to this particular field trip all year long. I love music so much and I want the boys to learn to love it as well, or at the very least be able to appreciate it! Earlier in the week we listened to the music that would be performed (pieces by Scott Joplin, Antonín Dvořák, Aaron Copland, and several others) and read the composers' biographies and stories behind each piece of music. The boys don't look very happy in this picture because I had to wake them up very early so we could leave the house by 7:00am!

It has been our tradition to go to other fun places in the city after the symphony. This week I was fighting off some kind of bug and was too tired to go anywhere else. So we went Krispy Kreme on the way home, then stopped by Mark's office at Oracle. That night we let them stay up as late as they wanted while we caught a TV show. Around 9:30pm we went outside to find them like this: 

Doubts

Today I had a conversation with an older homeschooling mom. I respect her opinion and I admire the way her children have turned out. I was telling her about some of the struggles I've been having with my oldest since I started homeschooling him a few years ago. 

My oldest son is gifted and has several overexcitabilities. He has all the classic symptoms of ADHD, but he doesn't actually have ADHD. That fact is both a blessing and a curse. It means that we have the daily struggles of ADHD, but the 'fixes' for the actual condition don't necessarily work for him. He also has dyslexia and dysgraphia, as well as some hearing issues. My experience with homeschooling him has left us both in tears, and has seriously strained our relationship. 

I relayed some of these struggles with her, and her advice was that perhaps he needed more structure. More training to sit still. And I should increase the structure over time, because boys especially need more structure as they get older. And I need to focus on character training - instilling the character traits of working diligently and practicing self control. I left the conversation shaken, as if my worldview was upended. 

I totally agree with her in theory. But in practice, more structure has always caused a strain in my relationship with my son. There have been so many days that both of us end up in tears: he because he's so frustrated with doing the [very tiny amount of] schoolwork I've given him, and me because he's acting out and being obstinate. One particular week, not too long ago, was so bad that I actually looked up tuition prices of some private schools in our area and dreamed of sending him there. That bad.

Do I tell myself that I know my son best and know what he needs? Or do I trust the advice of a homeschooler with twenty years' more experience than me? Am I not being a good Christian homeschooler by allowing my son basically total freedom with his education? Am deceiving myself and buying into a secular worldview without realizing it? Am I using his giftedness as an excuse for poor behavior on his part and looser rules on my part?

At this point I don't know. And so I will do what I do when I simply don't know what to do: I will pray and ask God for wisdom to show me how He wants me to educate my children. Because in the end that is what matters the most. 

 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. (James 1:5)

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7)