in case you were wondering...

In one of our more recent weekly meetings I asked each of the girls, "If you could decide how the school day went, how would you do your learning?" Gracy's ideal school day would be her reading books all day. She'd just read novels that happen to have facts woven into them. She'd never look at another worksheet, test, or report again. When I asked her how I would know she learned anything she said, "I'd just tell you the stuff." Maggie's perfect school setup is nothing but field trips. She'd go to a different museum every single day. She doesn't care what she'd have to do to show me she learned things. She'd be fine filling in worksheets, taking tests, writing reports, or whatever. As long as she can go look at things and flip up the "fact flaps" she'd be happy. Both of these are completely opposite from our current workbook style set up.

I asked because I wanted to know, but now we have some changes to make. We're just starting this homeschool thing, and we're going to have to find our style. I want it to be a style the girls enjoy as well as learn from. I don't want to mimic school and teach to the test. I don't want them to learn things only long enough to regurgitate it at the appropriate time only to later be lost forever. Why bother learning it at all if it never sticks?

So what will we do now? I started researching alternative teaching methods, learning styles, and on-and-on....our new plan is a hopefully harmonious blend of both the workbook school and the free flowing school the girls would create.

On the days I work, we're going to stick with the more self-guided workbook learning. I typically add educational games (both online and not) and small projects to these to make them more interesting all ready. These will also be the days they work on their typing class, and get in a little extra reading. They are going to slightly increase the amount of work they do on these days to make up for not doing this work on the days I'm home.

On the days I get to be home with them all day, we're going to change things up a bit. We're going to keep the math and spelling workbooks going on these days, and they will also still have to get in their daily reading. We'll also set aside time to work on things they may be struggling with if extra work is needed. The rest of the day will be more hands-on child-led learning. We're starting with graphic organizers AKA lapbooks.

Gracy has a life long fascination with the ocean, so she's starting a study on starfish. She's checked out every book about starfish from the library, searched a bunch of internet sites and has been taking excellent notes. I can't wait until she starts to put together her visuals, because it sounds like she has some really neat ideas. I was excited to have her giving me fascinating facts she was learning every couple of minutes. She was having so much fun, I had to force her to stop for lunch!

At the beginning of the year, Maggie expressed an interest in learning more about the US Presidents. I figured this was a great starting point for her. We started by talking about mind mapping. Being a visual learner, she jumped at this and started right away. I found some graphics of the presidents to print and she's taking off with it. I think she all ready knows WAY more about the presidents than the average American. Two highlights from her: When she was comparing two pictures of George Washington, she was commenting on which one made him look younger. (Who does that?! I never thought about George Washington looking anything but old!) And then she saw a picture of Chester Arthur without facial hair and she noticed! "Hey! That guy has crazy facial hair in my book!" Yikes. How many people even know he was a president let alone that he had "crazy facial hair"?

The girls have also decided to work on a topic together. They picked dolphins, and I'm sure Maggie got only a little pressure from her sister on that one! But they were having so much fun on their individual topics today they never got around to starting it.