W has also been reading several Disney themed books that his Aunt gave him (thanks Noreen!) On a recent trip to Falmouth to visit Grandma we stopped in at Eight Cousins, one of my favorite book stores, and we bought The Big Dipper by Franklyn M. Branley which is a wonderful introduction to astronomy and star gazing while also being a challenging yet readable book for W's level. He now he enjoys looking out for the stars at night and has been able to spot the big dipper. I would highly recommend this book to Kindergarten age children and plan to seek out more books in the Let's Read and Find Out Science series. Last year we enjoyed What Lives in a Shell? from the library, but I think that now that W is doing the reading he may get more out of it.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Summer Reading & Stargazing
We are reading Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne to W for storytime. He has been enjoying it so much that I think we will start The House at Pooh Corner soon, or rather as soon as I can find it, since it is likely packed away in a box at the basement in the house. Also I want to introduce him to the poetry collections also by Milne. I can't wait until we and our books are all under one roof! W also enjoys the Disney movie The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which stays true to the spirit of the book.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Kindergarten Lesson Planning
We will move to NH at the end of August, and W will begin homeschooling Kindergarten this September. Our main curriculum for this fall will revolve around Five in a Row and the Math-U-See primer. We are also planning a unit study on Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. W loves the "My First Little House" books so I can't wait to share the originals with him. Combined with some gardening, cooking, crafts, history, science and geography from FIAR, along with several phonics and early writing workbooks, I think it will be a pretty well rounded curriculum. We joined a wonderful forum with local homeschoolers and I can't wait to set up a play group and coop activities once we get settled in.
I picked up several teacher planning books at the Target dollar spot similar to the one I used for PreK last fall. They have blocks for each day of the week and make it easy for planning. They should help keep us organized. After the move I am hoping to turn our old changing table/shelves into a work-box style education station where we can keep all of the current books and supplies organized and at hand.
One surprise of moving to the Live Free or Die state is that there are actually more legal restrictions on homeschoolers. For age 6 and onward NH requires an annual evaluation along with your annual letter for intent to homeschool, while in MA you merely need to send the letter with your intent to homeschool to your local school district. Granted, some MA towns are more homeschool friendly than others, but I was certainly surprised that moving to NH means adding extra restrictions.
Often we hear that there should be more standards and tests, although please ask yourselves the question of who makes these tests and sets the bar. Every child learns differently and has different talents in life, and I see homeschooling as a way to more naturally express these talents and focus on their interests. Learning is about context as well as content, cramming meaningless dates into your brain when learning history does not spark a love for history, yet spending time to understand the events and how they affected people often does.
I picked up several teacher planning books at the Target dollar spot similar to the one I used for PreK last fall. They have blocks for each day of the week and make it easy for planning. They should help keep us organized. After the move I am hoping to turn our old changing table/shelves into a work-box style education station where we can keep all of the current books and supplies organized and at hand.
One surprise of moving to the Live Free or Die state is that there are actually more legal restrictions on homeschoolers. For age 6 and onward NH requires an annual evaluation along with your annual letter for intent to homeschool, while in MA you merely need to send the letter with your intent to homeschool to your local school district. Granted, some MA towns are more homeschool friendly than others, but I was certainly surprised that moving to NH means adding extra restrictions.
Often we hear that there should be more standards and tests, although please ask yourselves the question of who makes these tests and sets the bar. Every child learns differently and has different talents in life, and I see homeschooling as a way to more naturally express these talents and focus on their interests. Learning is about context as well as content, cramming meaningless dates into your brain when learning history does not spark a love for history, yet spending time to understand the events and how they affected people often does.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
New Hampshire Vacation
This past weekend we took a trip up to the White Mountains area of NH with Jacob's company. He took the day off Friday so first we went to North Conway and walked around and browsed a few of the shops. We ate lunch at the Up Country restaurant. We never know what to expect with the boys when taking them out to eat but they did okay and the meal was nice. Then we checked in at the hotel and relaxed and watched the Red Sox game. The boys were so excited about the hotel so that made it a bit tough to settle them down that evening.
Saturday morning we woke up to downpours. At breakfast we were still deciding if we should go for it and do Storyland that day or not, but we decided to go for it. When we got to the park it was still pretty bad, so we bought ponchos. Why do the adult ones come in yellow with the Storyland logo plastered all over yet the kid ones are plain white? :) We dressed the boys in swim shirts which turned out to be a very good idea, in addition to the weather there is a splash pad there. Anyway, after about 15 minutes the skies cleared up and then there was occasional drizzle but the rest of the day was actually quite nice. They didn't have the usual crowds due to the weather so there were fewer lines for rides and W loved riding on the Polar coaster, many spinning rides and the flume. C enjoyed the Storybook portion best which was more toddler friendly, and the rest of the time he was in the stroller. After we got back to the hotel, C took a nap and W and I had fun swimming in the pool while Jacob watched C and read.
Saturday evening we went to the dinner at the Mt. Washington Hotel, and along the way back to our hotel afterwards we stopped at an ice cream shop with a playground in the yard. The rain seemed to cool things down also so the humidity was a bit more bearable.
On Sunday we went back to North Conway and went to the Conway Scenic Railroad, where Thomas the Tank Engine had an event going on. (We had picked up tickets for this on Friday). C especially liked seeing Thomas. W was a bit grumpy for part of the day, but between the long car rides, the excitement filled weekend, sleeping pattern thrown off and being sick earlier in the week I am sure there was a reason, so we tried to make the best of the situation. There was a train ride with views of some mountains and a river, and tents set up with various activities for the kids. They also had a tortoise which the animal handler said was estimated at 50 years old, and expected to grow much larger. W said she moved really fast so he petted her but then kept his distance. After Thomas we visited a couple more places in North Conway including the local library book sale. Later we headed home but first went along the Kangamangus Highway to enjoy the scenery.
We are on the cusp of closing on a new home in southern NH, and by late summer we should be moving. W begins his homeschool Kindergarten after the big move once we get settled and into our routines. Needless to say we are all excited about the move and having a bigger yard. We will post much more about the move and our transitions in future posts on the blog.
Friday, July 2, 2010
School Learning and Real Learning
A fresh graduate with a Master's Degree, I took an entry-level job in technical support at a software company. I spent a little over a year in this position, answering questions about over 80 products, most of which I had only a passing familiarity with. I always preferred getting customers "off the phone" as quickly as I could so that I could research and provide help through e-mail.
I found the position stressful and was happy to transfer into a non customer-facing position, but I gained more technical expertise in that year than any other year of my career, and probably more than my six years of collegiate education put together.
What sticks out to me now is the manner in which this learning took place. On our first day, we were not put in a training class or lectured to, but given a project to develop. We were given two days to complete it, and coding it required that we would learn a wide swath of our flagship program. After a couple of token orientation classes, we were put on the phones within a few weeks.
Each support case presented an excellent opportunity for learning. A real person had a real need that had to be met in a time-sensitive manner. In turn, I had various resources to help the customers: a database of "solutions", other support engineers, and most importantly, the products themselves. Occasionally, I would even have to disturb a grumpy developer. Some cases were trivial or easily answered, but most represented a little project and challenge. Given the motivation to learn an area in order to satisfy a customer, the right resources, and clear, attainable goals, I served many cases and learned more about 80 products than I could have imagined possible.
But even when I transferred to a new position, I was still stuck in a school frame of mind with respect to how to learn. I had just experienced a year of incredible learning, and I should have thought more about why that was, and how it was different than school. I wanted to learn about our internal software systems that I had not previously used, and how did I go about this?
By reading text. I printed out the 200-page user's manual and committed myself to the mental drudgery of reading it cover to cover. This was, after all, how I had been taught for more than ten years prior to my job: plod through mind-numbingly boring textbooks and hope to retain enough "material" for later use (in the case of schools, for tests). There is no real justification for learning the material and no reason to think any part of it is more important or relevant than other parts. There is no goal to strive for, and no hope for real satisfaction (perhaps other than having reached the end of the book). I continued in the face of these obstacles because I believed learning has to be painful, and that I must be doing something useful through this work.
I am thankful that this attitude did not last the full 200 pages. Given that there would be no real "test" like in school for whether I retained any of the material, I eventually gave up on the endeavor, frustrated but wiser.
There is certainly a place for reference and textbooks, but it is not as the primary vehicle for learning. It is a failure in the school system that led me to think otherwise. Textbooks, exercises, lectures, homework, and tests: whoever thinks this is the best model for real learning must think of the brain as a passive slate to be filled with endless facts at the discretion of teachers. But when there is no real motivation or interest, and no hope for satisfaction on the part of the learner, the brain functions more like a sieve.
I found the position stressful and was happy to transfer into a non customer-facing position, but I gained more technical expertise in that year than any other year of my career, and probably more than my six years of collegiate education put together.
What sticks out to me now is the manner in which this learning took place. On our first day, we were not put in a training class or lectured to, but given a project to develop. We were given two days to complete it, and coding it required that we would learn a wide swath of our flagship program. After a couple of token orientation classes, we were put on the phones within a few weeks.
Each support case presented an excellent opportunity for learning. A real person had a real need that had to be met in a time-sensitive manner. In turn, I had various resources to help the customers: a database of "solutions", other support engineers, and most importantly, the products themselves. Occasionally, I would even have to disturb a grumpy developer. Some cases were trivial or easily answered, but most represented a little project and challenge. Given the motivation to learn an area in order to satisfy a customer, the right resources, and clear, attainable goals, I served many cases and learned more about 80 products than I could have imagined possible.
But even when I transferred to a new position, I was still stuck in a school frame of mind with respect to how to learn. I had just experienced a year of incredible learning, and I should have thought more about why that was, and how it was different than school. I wanted to learn about our internal software systems that I had not previously used, and how did I go about this?
By reading text. I printed out the 200-page user's manual and committed myself to the mental drudgery of reading it cover to cover. This was, after all, how I had been taught for more than ten years prior to my job: plod through mind-numbingly boring textbooks and hope to retain enough "material" for later use (in the case of schools, for tests). There is no real justification for learning the material and no reason to think any part of it is more important or relevant than other parts. There is no goal to strive for, and no hope for real satisfaction (perhaps other than having reached the end of the book). I continued in the face of these obstacles because I believed learning has to be painful, and that I must be doing something useful through this work.
I am thankful that this attitude did not last the full 200 pages. Given that there would be no real "test" like in school for whether I retained any of the material, I eventually gave up on the endeavor, frustrated but wiser.
There is certainly a place for reference and textbooks, but it is not as the primary vehicle for learning. It is a failure in the school system that led me to think otherwise. Textbooks, exercises, lectures, homework, and tests: whoever thinks this is the best model for real learning must think of the brain as a passive slate to be filled with endless facts at the discretion of teachers. But when there is no real motivation or interest, and no hope for satisfaction on the part of the learner, the brain functions more like a sieve.
Monday, June 28, 2010
ice skating recap
W recently had his last class for ice skating lessons at a local skating rink. (W is pictured with the red mittens and Cars helmet). He was in level Tot 2 which was a beginner class for kids 3-6 who were not familiar with skating. It ran for six weeks, and for the first couple of weeks it was almost painful for Jacob and I to watch our little boy falling down so much. After the second class he had wanted to quit after feeling quite discouraged but I am very glad he decided to stick with it (I think the cardboard Zamboni that one of the instructors gave him certainly helped.) :) I was afraid he was doomed with my lack of natural grace, but gradually he got more confidence and ultimately he could skate around on his own. He did mostly marching, a bit of gliding, and he was finally able to get himself back up when he fell down. Most importantly, he had a good time with it.
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