And we are back

The holidays passed with lots of good family time. Time to connect and enjoy each others company. One of the things I love about holiday times with our big, busy family.

We are back and we are having fun. This term I decided we are going to make a lot more things. This will give us hands on experience which is great for learning and memory and also those times where we can just have brain rests. I have tried several different ideas for brain rests for Jet and some work while others just do not. Hands on activities are awesome and work well.

We have said goodbye to the 1820 settlers and are moving on to discover the world of the Voortrekkers and the Great Trek.

A friend noted last night - " Do they still do The Great Trek?"

I totally get her reluctance. We were fed a steady diet of skewed History in relation to these events. However, the approach that the History curriculum we are using has taken, is a liner approach. it builds up events from the beginning and moves through the events in a timeline kind of way. One thing overlapping and or leading to the next. I love this approach as we are building a complete picture of time and events that will lead us to the present day.

So, we have marbled paper, baked rusks , drawn an ox wagon and read a whole lot. 

#learningisfunagain

Books Galore

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It is not that he did not read before we home schooled.

 No, that is not quite it.

It is just that he his reading has more than doubled. I am talking about reading books FOR school. 

I struggled to decide on our English Language curriculum for Jet and as yet am struggling to settle on anything really excellent. However, the one thing that our Language program introduced us to, was some different sorts of books.

In addition to the 5 books in the program, I ordered a whole stack of other books from another selection. We are gradually making our way through those. In addition to these books, jet has read some books from our History Program and of course we are reading aloud the books that introduce the history to him ( and myself) through literature. 

I have a whole stack of excellent reads that I am giving him to do some theme thinking and book reviews  on and he is ploughing his way through those too. 

The thing with ADHD kids is this one difficulty with reading. If they love reading, then the tricky thing is to find books that hold their interest. Jet loves reading but we often struggle to find books that will grip him.  He struggles to try a new book, especially if it might not look as if it will grip him. This approach to school, for him, is excellent because he is getting exposure to a wider range of books that he might not have read by choice. 

Right now he is devouring the excellent read , "Wonder" by R.J. Palacio. I doubt he would have read it before but as his school reader, he is devouring it and loving it. This after having read a Footprints read alone book which is part of our History program and whilst reading a book , just for fun! Three at once. That is unheard of for this chap.

We are so enjoying this excellent way of doing school with books and stories. The books are exposing him to some great , new language and ideas.  Reading for learning is definitely a win.

Language is indeed an art

http://www.africansuccess.org/docs/image/Mhlope400.jpg

English language as we call it in SA is known as Language Arts in the USA. It took a while to get used to this in the world of homeschooling.

We settled on an American curriculum called Learning Language through Literature. The purple book level is what we decided on for Jethro. There are 5 books that are to be read throughout the course of the study.  It has been good fun getting into some American literature  including some poetry. The work has a weekly method to it and includes skills such as letter writing. It has been good but it has not totally hit the spot for us. 

Alongside it I have been using our Platinum Caps grade 5 textbook and Oxford textbook. A couple of weeks ago we embarked on a poetry slot. First we set off with Caps poetry and ended with a section from LLATL. Boy, what a poetry blast we have enjoyed. Jet has been writing up a storm of poetry. We have really enjoyed learning and sharing all sorts of poetry types including Gcina Mhlophe live poetry and of course some modern Slam Poetry, South African style. Jet has found his happy place!

I am in search of some good South African books for kids ages 12-15. If you know of any, please share them with us.

Loving homeschooling with English - the South African way!

Crazy Kid

This is Jethro,, actually known as Jet by those who love him.
He is a great kid, full of fun and adventure. The thing is, we didn't know that about him, until we homeschooled him.
Today we visited a market. It was noisy, full of people and weird food. All the things that would have previously been enormous barriers to entry for him.
Before we went, I talked him through it.

Afterwards he concluded that it had been fun doing something new.

What has shifted for THIS kid.

Two things....

Trust.... He trusts our judgement all the more deeply since we decided to bring him home.
Energy.... He has way more energy to deal with difficult situations. School sucked his energy daily and now he has freedom to try the new. This has been an enormous shift for him and for us as a family.

Thank you Lord.

Jonny Clegg... Here we come.

The snapshot!

The first term of homeschooling with Jet is done and partially dusted.

It has been a good learning experience for us both.

Snapshots of my learning.

#plan a more end in mind planning structure for the term so we work with the whole picture in mind. This is indeed the most tricky thing for me as I am not necessarily a big picture thinking, yet.

I sat down yesterday and planned ahead with the end in  mind so that we can know where we need to get to. 

# . I have gathered a far wider understanding of the history of our country. Thank you Footprints and also the beautiful Platinum  Caps textbooks. ( yes I do love these!) They are designed for kids to read and so are full of colour and good information as well as excellent pictures and activities to build on.

# a renewed respect for teachers who have a classroom of kids to get much work done with.

# it has been a joy and an absolute pleasure to work with this kiddo. we are having enormous fun learning about microbes in our science group and about Barty Dias in History as well as working through some great geography lessons on South Africa. 

Maths and English are simply full and exciting. 

These photographs are all from our outing to the Slave Lodge in Cape Town . The art is from the wall in the section on democracy. The photograph is of a man whose heritage is from slavery. His surname gives this away. He is named after the month of one of the ships bringing slaves arrival at the Cape.

Snapshots of Jethro's learning include...

# what it feels like to be happy in learning and to enjoy school

# seeing that he actually can learn something he thought was just too difficult

# finding out his strengths and areas of "yet" for himself.

Thoughts

My head is just full of thoughts. Trying to reconcile what we are actually trying to achieve for Jet in education and thinking of the bigger picture, which to my mind is.....

Given where we are in history and given the unknown world we are creating, how can we best educate our children so that they can function well and not only that but contribute successfully in this unknown world?

This is a gigantic question. It is one that I allne do not have the answer to but there are many who are sharing their ideas on this topic. Helping to deconstruct my own educational framework and thus reconstruct something that works is an incredibly painful process. My thinking is in chaos. I am torn between that which ,as an educationalist, I know to be true and yet seeing in reality that something new has come along and is taking its place.

I am wrestling with myself.

This morning Jet and I have revisited maths ,touching on a concept that he was struggling with. Here is the wrestle. If you watch the Ted talk called build a school in the cloud by Suguta Mitra  , you will notice that the notition that we should actually write out long division sums is rediculous. That we can do them is of course a given for me, in that good neurological connections are made in thinking  it all through. Figuring things out and joining the dots seems far more worthy a lesson given that problem solving is going to be the order of the new world. Indeed it is already the order.
So, after maths Jet asks if he can continue on his Khan programming course. For the past hour he has been busy learning to code using functions. A worthy hour.... indeed... on the curiculum ... not really. And so my inner chaos reins on,

What are we to do because we are straddling two worlds. The world of the old and obselete and the new , misty world. Our kids are pioneers and adventurers. They will be exploring the new. Are we giving them the right tools to do this well?

The more I think about it, the more I thknk the Finish approach to education is spot on. Inquiry based, real life learning makkng ALL subjects relevant to actual life so that it all makes sence.

Lets get out of here!

http://belafrique.com/images/experience/khwa-ttu-san-culture-route/khwa-ttu-san-culture-route_1388_lrg.jpg

Our choice of curriculum, especially for History , has been Footprints on our Land. We are thoroughly enjoying the book Ghamka By Eve Merchant. Yesterday we set of to The Natural History Museum to explore the San Rock art and other connected sections.

On route, we swung by some fellow homeschoolers to drop something off. It worked out that they two wanted to join our outing. 

What a fabulous time we had. I set them a question.

What were the pros and cons of this way of life? ( followed by the comment that they thought this was a good question)

We had a blast sharing ideas and checking out the information cards as well as asking lots of questions. 

I just loved the depth and breadth of engagement from all three children and of course am thrilled that Jet is super engaged and interested. 

I love that we can join up our learning and this meant we could also check out the bone section and briefly chat about the types of joints found on the colossal whales.

I am personally thriving on exploring how to make learning relevant and deep.

Learning is fun and people, both child and adult alike, are designed to learn, think, problem solve and grow in our understanding.

This is my aim. The absence of tests and assessments have meant that that pressure is off and we can focus on developing other skills.

For those who have never been to this museum, here is a link to check out.

http://www.iziko.org.za/museums/south-african-museum