We have a busy day today, and yesterday was full too, leaving me little time to write. Yesterday evening was the 5th story club. Liam read a couple of sections of his, then Clare read, then I read some of Kieron’s and some of mine, then Liam read a rather long section of Brendan’s. This [...]
Aidan has a gift for challenging himself, in his good time. Last fall our old vacuum cleaner died and we got a new one. Aidan was terrified of it. At first, he cried whenever I brought it out of the closet. All this winter, whenever it came out, he would run into the master bedroom, [...]
We didn’t seem to have a whole lot of strewing this June. I’m going to call this post “planting seeds” instead of strewing because I notice that a lot of the neatest things that happen here come out of tiny, almost imperceptible or else quite casual beginnings. Photography This month, getting a camera was a [...]
It has been hot and unusually humid up here in the mountains, Brendan remarked on how high the barometer was, and today the weather finally broke and there was rain and some thunder. We have acquired a habit of going outside after dinner when dusk is falling, to avoid the heat of the sun. Aidan [...]
Cindy at Apple Stars wrote a beautiful post bringing out some aspects of teaching special needs children that I had skipped too lightly over in my post on Readiness. She writes: “However, I take exception with trying to connect these ideas with more challenged children, such as those with autism (not high functioning or Asperger’s), [...]
I found the MotherStyles book at our tiny local library and was skimming through it yesterday evening while outside keeping an eye on the little ones. The basic idea is to find your Briggs “type” and apply it to the way you mother: “MotherStyles helps you break through the myth of the perfect mother and [...]
On my other blog I collected the homeschooljournal conversations going on about readiness. On a message board, someone mentioned Piaget and questioned whether it benefits a child to assign “accelerated” or above-grade-level work. I’ve read some Piagetian theory in the context of special needs education…. just a very little. One very interesting book that talks [...]
That’s how hot it’s supposed to get in town during this weekend. Help! So glad it’s about 20 degrees cooller up at this altitude. In the car today on the way back from the homeschool group meeting, Clare told me about High Noon which they watched earlier in the week. She and Sean both reacted [...]
This is the way our days have been going recently. I have been going to sleep pretty late at night so not waking up until about 8 am. I spend a few minutes checking email while the younger kids wake up. Then I go downstairs and make breakfast and do some cleaning (since Aidan’s surgery [...]
I’ve been reading old discussions about unschooling; for example, here and here. One concern that seems to come up often with unschooling is to do with “laziness“. A lot of people seem to think that unschooling might work well if the child was naturally diligent or motivated, but that not all children are naturally that [...]
