Tales from Cat's House of Homeschooled Kits!

People always ask me if we school through the summer. The answer is yes but differently. In the summer it’s a passion free for all. We use our time “off” to really dig deep into where the guys have the most interest. For us it’s art. My mother is an artist and instructor at a State university. Needless, they have grown up drawing, painting, creating with abandoned.

My son Owen has his own comic strip Mr. Mushroom. It follows our fungus formed magical paint brush toting hero as he confronts bad dreams, monsters, and heat waves. He came up with this on his own during the Homeschool Association of California Conference last August. Since then he has gone on many adventures and is currently facing off with a squirrel that is trying to take is home, a giant acorn.

Gene is the Manga master. He started drawing from the get go. I still have a green marker on blue paper that he drew at age two. He spends these days creating his own supplemental characters to his favorite video games, anime cartoons, and his own stories. He is now so picky, that he regularly goes through his works and takes out items that are now non standard. I think they are all great. 

They do so much more than drawing, or painting. The talk, plan, write, and think. It’s that last one that is so important. Really using their brains, getting into story arcs, character development, motivation, all kinds of things that make stories engaging and relevant. 

Over the years I’ve heard their growing up in the words that they say. It is wonderful to be near by listening. From the early days of Pokémon catching fruit and robots finding missing parts, to the rise of Mario, and now Meerkats as warriors. I am so proud of their creativity, self direction, and humor. They are birds set free to fly. I love to watch them soar.

I’ve been thinking a lot about education, and learning. We, the royal we, say we want to children to have a good education. That isn’t the same as wanting children to be life long learners. It seems to me that education is about content, while learning is about skill and ability. This fits into the whole idea of content standards. This isn’t learning, this is what a student should know by a certain grade. Learning is a whole other deal. 

Learning is the process by which we education ourselves, it is the bridge. To learn is to know how to read, write, and calculate. If I acquire these three foundation skills, I can learn any content I find interesting. On a deeper level, learning is access. If a student, has these basic skills they have access to knowledge. As the saying goes, knowledge is power.

If I can read even at the 5th grade level, I have access to the news around me in newspapers. If I can write, I can respond, file a complaint, make a plan, or leave a note. Calculating allows me understanding and control of my own money, and time. That is a tremendous amount of power both personally and community wide.

When students have trouble learning, we blame the skills but maybe the content is the issue. When I wanted a pony I read everything about horses. It didn’t matter that reading was time consuming and difficult for me. I wanted to know it all, how else can a young girl persuade her parents if she can’t answer every question. That’s loads of motivation. My reading improved for sure but that wasn’t what I was thinking about. Some people need that consuming motivation to get them really moving with a new skill.

There has to be enough skill to have basic access. Then practice takes over and the skill improves. The idea is to get struggling students to want to cross the bridge. For my own kids the topic was video games. For my sister it was history. For my husband it’s space. Everyone has something. Watch your learners and talk to them. You are sure to find out their hot topics.

It can be diagramed like this:

PERSON __________SKILL_________MOTIVATING CONTENT

Student  _________reading________ Harry Potter

Grandparent ______writing________family stories

Father________calculating_________allowance 

When your learner or you, for that matter, are having difficulties with something new, diagram your bridge and see if you are putting the right skill to the right content. You may need to shift things around for a specific content to be accessed. This is where learning types, knowing how you or your student learns, is important. A student my write well but must first hear information before using it in writing. That’s another topic. 

A side benefit of this process is learning connectedness. Students often ask “Why do I need to know that?” or “When am I going to use this?” When individuals see how skills and content are connected, they are less resistant undertaking new assignments. They also make connections between new and prior knowledge much faster. This goes a long way to making learning enjoyable and life long.

When you sit down with your student, learner, whoever, ask “Is my goal to acquire new content?” If the answer is yes, then choose the skill that best bridges the gap. If your goal is to practice a skill, find the most entertaining content to get the student over the skills bridge. Then have at it. Either way, students will be more motivated and gain a deeper understanding of how and why they learn.

Video games get a bad rap, can be all consuming, and expensive. My guys can so into a game  they forget to eat or pee. At the same time, they stimulate so many ideas and cooperation. They work together to find solutions t beat the came. On the monetary front, every time a “new” version of something comes out my kids want to have it. Thankfully they have allowance. If they have the money, they can get it if not well, there is always next week.

Games have been at the center of many heated conversations in our house. My older son would spend all day every day playing them. The older he gets the more he wants us to treat him like an adult, which to him means “Let me do what I want.” School work doesn’t get done, chores don’t get done, exercise is not even on the radar. 

They can be my friend when some critical things need to happen. If something has to get done and the guys are in their “We don’t have anything fun to do!” mode, I let them extra game time so I can focus on the issue and resolve it. It’s like the box of phone toys my friend kept on a shelf. When you have to be on the phone, down they come, the toddlers are enthralled because they don’t see these all the time. The mission gets accomplished quickly and without distractions.

Then there is the cost. Games for the Wii are about $50.00 new. Handheld game system games run about $30.00. This is very irritating when a “new” version comes out. I say “new” because I’m convinced that only 5% of the game is different from the last release. They have us parents over a barrel. 

It may sound like I hate games. I do have a healthy disdain for some of these video induced side effects. Surprisingly, each of these has major upsides! The all consuming foe has taught my boys about budgeting time and getting things done. They figured out that getting what needs to be done, done, they are free to do what they like. I also noticed that their time spent drawing and playing out side is on the increase too.

Friend, well, that is pretty much the same. However, like on the foe side of things, they game out. We used the games while traveling. After the first delay, I was so thankful they had something to keep them occupied until the plane arrived and it was time to board. After a while they wanted to read and tell each other stories. Later they wrote some of them down!

As for breaking the bank, they’ve learned a great lesson there too. They have learned to budget and plan for what they want. An essential lesson in the current financial climate. They have set priorities for games, movies, books, and other things they’d like to buy. They will even pool their money of items that are more expensive, cooperation expanded! 

Mostly what amazes me is how much they did on their own. Yes, my husband and I set limits and some goals for school work, but my kids have really internalized how to get things done. They have practiced wise spending, cooperation, responsibility, creativity, and critical thinking. It is easy to write something off has all bad for you, brain-mushing, and a waste of time, but it isn’t always totally true.

THis is my first blog on A2Z. I hope you all enjoy reading it. You can check out my other blogs and websites at:

http://catbaaloo.com

http://dyslexicat.catbaaloo.com

http://cats9thlife.blogspot.com/