A beautiful mess

Our baby is now 8 months old. Life is pretty cumbersome at the moment. I am treading water in a sea of cuteness and chaos. I cannot blog predictably, so, I am popping my head up out of the water to note an assortment of things I am learning:

• When I write a list of "things to do", every second item on my list is now, "unexpected job". Most of what I do in a day are things which interrupt my task list. Nappies, coaching children through conflict, dealing with the flood of milk on the kitchen floor, the broken glass. These "interruptions" are my job. If I account for the unexpected little jobs which I have to stop and attend to, then I am less surpised when it takes me four hours to do something which would ordinarily take twenty minutes.

• With five children, it is unusual for everyone to be happy at the same time. There is almost always someone who has an issue in any moment. The more I expect this, the less draining it is. It is still draining though.
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• The very things which make home education difficult are the same reasons why we are doing it. It would be easier in the short term to not have to deal with the inter-personal and attitude complications. It would be nice to outsource some of the frustrations and feelings of inadequacy. But we do want to actively parent these issues, so we remain present in our children's education. It is harder, but it is good.

• The rubbish in our studio will make some great artworks one day. I have made some prints from paint left on pallettes which the kids were finished with. I would also like to make a collage with all the random little drawings that the kids have done over the years. All the gadgets, creatures, weapons, castles, vehicles and maps brought together in one image.

• Minecraft is fabulous for many things. The problem is, those good things might be at the expense of other things which I care about more. We are now saving minecraft projects for school holidays. Since cutting minecraft out of our typical days, the kids are reading for fun again.They are no longer sitting around bored, waiting for when they are allowed to go on the computer again. Cutting off that option means they are once again seeing the other fabulous things around them.

• The studio space is a real gift. It gets used so often. The four year old is able to get out the materials he needs whenever an idea needs to come to life. This didn't happen when the art and craft things were in a box in the cupboard. It is a beautiful mess.
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• The chalk wall is great for me. I find my mind is so cluttered, that being able to write a note to myself, or for the kids to write a note, is a big help. I will often idly stand in front of the chalk wall, feeling like I don't know what to do with myself and the answer is staring right at me. It externalises some of my thinking. 

• It is really hard to sit and read aloud to everyone, or anyone, at the moment. This hurts because it is what I want to be doing most in our home learning environment. I often find I spend several hours in the morning setting up the conditions so I can sit and read to them. Because of unexpected jobs, no sooner do I sit down and there is an emergency of some sort. Or I am exhausted. 

• The stages of life when you need a couple of great, gritty friends are the same stages of life when you've got very little capacity for relationships. God has given us a couple of people like this who keep us afloat. Friends who know our family well enough to just the domestic reins sometimes are priceless. The sort of friends who share our space, eat meals and then blitz the kitchen while we put the kids to bed. The sort of friends who aren't offended when I am too tired to string a sentence together. The sort of people who we don't need to perform for. 

• I've had enough children to realise that these particularly messy, tiring stages come and go. Every month is different as children move through various stages of development. We must not despair. What feels impossible this month might be ok in a few weeks.

• I am also reminded that even when I am tired, or completely not achieving everything I think I ought to, my kids are still learning. Sometimes much more because I am not getting in the way with my own agenda.

• On the really challenging days, I am so glad to be doing what we are doing. I want to be here. I like this mess.

A happy relationship with spelling

I have found two articles which are helping me make sense of teaching and learning spelling. I thought I'd share them, for the sake of those who are anxious about their child's spelling performance. It helps to look at the problem from other people's angles, to work out our own solutions.

Trevor Cairney's post outlines the developmental stages in spelling, along with several spelling strategies. I find it helpful to see the patterns of what is typical at different stages of development, so that I can be realistic and not create unnecessary angst. As always, his blog is a hub of useful links.

Misty Adoniou's post focuses on just one, the morphemic (meaning based), approach to teaching and learning spelling. She highlights that teaching spelling is more than testing lists.

In the very least, this reading confirms my conviction that learning skills in English is best done by spending lots of pleasant time with words, in many different forms, in the company of some more experienced English speakers.

It often feels that when we open a book with a child, the words become little creatures which behave in certain ways and which each have a story to tell.

The value of the chalking wall

Until the recent string of public holidays, we have had a large wall covered in maps. It has been a good reference (and had a lot of visual punch when home school inspectors came to check us out). It has been a nice thing for visitors to look at and talk about-everyone comes from somewhere on a map. Most days there is a reason to look at the world map or the anatomy charts with the kids.

On an impulse, I sent the maps to the hallway and painted the giant wall with chalkboard paint.

Everyday since, I have found a new surprise on the wall. Every visitor has left their special mark. It is an invitation to play in our space; to teach and learn with us; to remember useful things.

It is also an easy way to encourage written communication for the kids. When they want me to remember something, they can write it on the wall. My husband drew up a plan for the week and we both knew what we were working toward. When I wrote my own task list of housework, I was delighted to find Steve had crossed a few jobs off the list for me.

There have been some spontaneous lessons between father and children about perspective drawing. When one visitor drew a rose, one of our kids copied it. Another visitor introduced games based around writing words backwards. !gnilleps rof noitavitoM. It has encouraged drawing on a vertical surface which is good for some low muscle tone among our children. The wall is a place to draw temporary things, which is good for perfectionists who are paralysed by permanence.


I used Murobond Society Inc Chalkboard paint in Ship Chandler (a delicious chocolatey brown). The chalk wipes off effortlessly with a damp cloth to look like a normal wall. I am very impressed with the product. I am tempted to paint a few more walls with it. I have limited myself to a handy rectangle of chalkboard in the laundry for listmaking. The cubby house will get a dose of some of the fruity chalkboard colours available at some stage. It is lovely to start the new year with useful novelty!

Image from here

Some weeks...

We've all been sick and tired and volatile. So, the kids have watched a lot of DVDs. No, actually, they have just watched a lot of How to Train Your Dragon. Every time I tried to read something aloud, my body and patience gave way. It felt like a giant, but unavoidable, waste of time. Across the sick week, there were little surprises which reminded me that even slow, sick weeks can't stop the learning.

When I was finally able to turn off the screen, the kids had another set of shared stories to play with. Mr 4 has been inspired to construct some props based on the film. Mr 8 is interested in the extra footage about the animation process. Miss 6 was happy to walk away from the movie when she spotted me hunched over some watercolours. We had a nice, spontaneous, still life painting experience. The story is laced through pretend play, conversations, Lego constructions and drawings.

I need to be on the couch and sick every now and again, to see that kids are great learners even when I am sick. I do prefer our usual routine, though!

The studio evolves

Here are some photos of the studio, just to document the changes and the reality. A reminder that this is what we started with:

Below is a glimpse of how it looks most of the time. Since the kids appreciate the space, they are generally alright about cleaning it up. Our next step is some display wires running across the room, to hang artworks and objects from. No one has quite settled into a particular project. We are in the "experimenting with materials" stage. We need to keep tinkering with the storage so that space can be clear for making.

1981 The same but different

This is an episode of The Phil Donahue Show from 1981, complete with ads. A friend shared a link to this on facebook recently. It is fascinating, amusing and at times, a little disturbing. The discussion about home education; the objections, the responses, the methods, the misunderstandings are all so familiar. I appreciated reading some of John Holt's work a couple of years ago, so it was interesting to see him participate as a guest on this episode. This clip is from the John Holt Growing Without Schooling site.

The kids' studio

Inspired by Project Based Homeschool; Mentoring your Self-Directed Learner, by Lori Pickert. I've been brave. I'm learning to say "yes" to my kids' creative projects. My reason for saying "no" was usually because the materials were packed away in a cupboard. I am mostly doing fifteen things at a time and didn't want to multiply my work. I didn't want to deal with what might happen when five children and new media find each other in a confined space. If I'm going to be a "yes" mum and stay sane, then our set up needed to change. Our dining room is now a studio.

The floor is tiled. It is next to the kitchen, so I am able to work and be near the action. The materials are all visible and reasonably easy for the biggest kids to reach. The floodgates of inspiration can open as we gaze on those jars of paint and brushes and wax and paste and buttons and markers and empty frames. 

The tv cabinet is now storage space. The four biggest kids have a desk each in this room. My old favourite lounge is there for when I want to read aloud, or nurse the baby, while they make. There is a series of boxes ready for collage and crafting. It is an easy way for the kids to sort and put away scraps. Everything is old, reclaimed, or from the charity shop (which is the case for most of our furniture). After using the space for a while we will add in any necessary shelving and hanging/drying/displaying racks. It's a living design project for the kids and us. 

The fun thing has been letting the kids take ownership of their own little studios within the studio. They have chosen what they want on their own desks. The label printer was discovered and most objects have been labelled. This was a good little self initiated exercise in writing for Miss 6. Mr 8 is keen to build a bit of a cage around his desk to keep toddler fingers out. We're still discussing the terms on that one!

It is so much easier to let the kids be creative when the space is committed to it. Once again, time is also the factor. Pulling out paints only works pleasantly when we are not going out soon after. An uncluttered schedule makes space for so many good things.

Unexpectedly, I have found that I am happier with a creative space nearby. It is less predictable, but I get to watch the kids do beautiful things. I'll keep you posted!
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Learning to empathise with new writers

I really want my kids to feel comfortable writing. There is something about writing which untangles thoughts. I can't think something through thoroughly without writing about it in some way. There is also the outwardness of writing. Words let us open our mind to others. Writing gives thoughts permanence.

But most of us don't start writing with ease. The more we write, the better writer we become. It takes practice and it takes time. Calm, unhurried time. Writing is driven along by purpose. None of these things can be fast tracked.

Writing is complex. Thoughts need to become words. Words need to be strung into sense. Sense needs to be knit into a sentence and another and another. The sentence needs to get through arms, hands and a pencil onto a page. The pencil needs to make marks on a page which make sense to someone else. There are a thousand rules, from the sounds which are formed when they combine in different ways, to the order which words ought to march in, to the punctuation which set the pace of those words.

And, when it is all new, it is hard to remember all the parts at once and by the time you get to the second word you have forgotten what you were trying to write in the first place and it is all very stressful and you know you have made a mistake so you will stop because this is not working and not fun and you are not sure why you have to write anyway when all you want to do is go and finish your cubby house in the lounge room.

Deep breath.

I had always assumed a child who is great with verbal language, and a ravenous reader, would love to write. At the same time, I imagined that a child who took more time to become a fluent speaker and reader would find writing more difficult. It's wonderful how often chlidren turn our assumptions upside down.

I have had to learn to slow down and study my kids when it comes to writing. I am learning where their writing stress points are. I am discovering which contexts and purposes generate a fruitful writing experience for each individual. When they are having a writing experience they feel good about, I need to make sure I don't fiddle with the delicate ecosystem the happily writing child is growing in.

It is precious to have a friendly relationship with writing. We're working on small goals so that it's not unnecessarily laborious. I would rather do a little bit of cheerful writing related work with children regularly, than a stressful slab. That way, it is more likely to become something they just do everyday, like reading and eating and brushing their teeth.

I have tried a few things which have been positive:

• Not tackling every aspect of writing at once. Treating skills separately. Handwriting. Typing. Composition.
• Choosing a favourite sentence from a favourite story and copying it.  While reading The Hobbit, riddles were favourite things to copy. We only did this once or twice a week for a couple of months. It was enough to help our son feel better about handwriting. It was a nice way to linger in well crafted phrases too.
• Sitting with a child as they narrated a story. I would write it down exactly as they spoke it, without corrections. This is good for children who are not yet reading or writing, but also for early writers. That way, hands don't have to keep pace with brain. Very fun for the scribe too!
• We would read back the narrated story on a different day. The child would notice irregular sentences. This introduced them to the concept of editing and drafting. It lets them approach their text as the author and the reader, scribbling all over a page as words are rearranged, removed and replaced. This is something Donald Graves was keen on.
• We have some story telling cards, which the kids would lay out (as many or as few as they wanted). They order the pictures to create their own plot. Then they would tell the story as they went.
• The three biggest kids began telling each other stories and recording them on video. This was fun. This allowed composition to happen away from the hand writing and conventions of written language. It also didn't require me to sit down and write.

Mostly, we are building our friendship with writing as we read a lot of great books. I'd love to hear writing experiences others have had!

The Barefoot College

This is a fascinating story of education being done differently for the good of some of India's rural poor. The Barefoot College was founded by Bunker Roy. You can listen to an interview with him here. 

Kids answering their own questions

I have really enjoyed reading, Project-Based Home Schooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners. Lori Pickert succinctly (and with much more experience than me) articulates the views I've been forming over the years. I won't summarise her work, since it is worth looking at her blog and the book itself.

As a result, I have a few new habits I am working on. I have already mentioned that I think it is important for children to learn to ask good questions. The complementary skill is to be able to pursue answers to their questions. I got to practice this with Mr 4 year old the other day.

Mr 4 loves belts. Belts make him happy because they allow him to carry swords and daggers. He recently lost his precious belt. There has been a time of grief. At a visit to the second hand store, he found a new (old) belt. We bought it. Outside the store, he tried it on and realised it was too big. He was a bit emotional. I almost stepped in and suggested we take it to the leather shop to get more holes punched in it. But I had just been reading this,

Remember to let your child's ideas take precedence. Try to maintain a calm, open attitude and allow him to own his own excitement and interest.
Don't take over. Don't flood him with your own ideas; write them in your journal and save them for later. You may not need them, or your child may come to them on his own. Or, your child may have better ideas – ones you never anticipated. He may take his learning in an entirely unexpected direction. Keeping track of your own ideas can help you stay alert to possibilities, but make sure your child is focused on his ideas, not yours. Let him make the discoveries, and let him chart his own course. Project-Based Home Schooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners pp.86-87

So, I shut my mouth and calmly asked for his ideas to solve the problem. There was no real hurry to find a solution. It was a great opportunity where his motivation was high and he could test all sorts of ideas until he found one which worked for him.

At home, Mr 4 raced to the stationery box and pulled out the hole punch. This did not work. Again, he was a bit emotional. As I fed the baby, Mr 4 talked through some other ideas he had to make holes. He tried (carefully?!) stabbing the belt with kitchen scissors. It did not work. He considered finding a needle from his sister's sewing bag, but it could not be found.

At this point, I asked if he could think of anyone else who might have suggestions. No ideas. So, I asked what the belt was made from. As he felt it, he realised it was the same as the stuff we got from the leather shop recently. Then, he put the information together and realised we could ask the people at the leather shop for information and help. But Mr 4 wanted holes in his belt immediately.

Next, I "wondered aloud" about how we get holes in other hard surfaces. He looked around the room and talked about how we make holes in timber. He suggested a "screwdriver". So, without saying what I thought of his suggestion, we decided to look at the tools in the garage.

And there it was. Mr 4 spotted the power drill. We worked out what we would need to put under the belt and took it inside to see if the power drill was our solution. I helped steady the drill while Mr 4 went to work. The drill worked wonderfully and Mr 4 was satisfied being able to lead himself through a complex problem to a solution.

The biggest challenge for me was to stop myself saying, "That won't work because...". The other challenge was saying, "yes" to the messy, unpredictable, meandering process. I'm glad I went with it. It was a buzz for both of us. Small steps to a new habit, I hope.

"Children want to write"

I can't remember hearing about the late Donald Graves before. I found an old book about his Australian tour in 1980. Published in 1981, it's as old as me.

I resisted the urge to dismiss what looks out of date and found wonderful guidance and reassurance. It is helping me to mentor my kids into written communication in a way which doesn't kill their confidence or love for communication. You can read an article by Graves here. I have found the following observation to be true in my older children,

Very young children, ages 5 through 7, have very little difficulty choosing topics, especially if they write every day. As children grow older and experience the early effects of audience, even under favorable learning conditions, they begin to doubt what they know. From that point on, all writers go through a kind of doubting game about the texts they produce. They learn to read better and are more aware of the discrepancy between their texts and their actual intentions. If, however, overly severe, doubting teachers are added to the internal doubts of the child, writing becomes still more difficult. From here.

We often panic about the mechanics of writing (handwriting, punctuation, spelling, grammar) and hurry children through what could be a really rich learning process if we gave them time, space, freedom and encouragement. I will post in the near future about what I am doing to develop writing with my kids.

I was reading an interview with Donald Graves and like his response to this question. It sums up my teaching and learning aspiration; learning alongside my children.

Q: If you had to choose one thing teachers should do when teaching writing, what would it be?

Donald: Write yourself. Invite children to do something you're already doing. If you're not doing it, Hey, the kids say, I can't wait to grow up and not have to write, like you. They know. And for the short term and the long term, you'll be doing yourself a favor by writing. All of us need it as a survival tool in a very complex world. The wonderful thing about writing is that it separates the meaningless and the trivial from what is really important. So we need it for ourselves and then we need to invite children to do what we're doing. You can't ask someone to sing a duet with you until you know the tune yourself.

So, my first step in helping my kids grow into writing is to slow down and write myself.

On my reading list

I have some reading to do. I thought I'd share it in case anyone wanted to join me. 

• A research paper about the academic and social effects of home schooling in Canada and the United States, downloaded from here.

• I linked to Project Based Homeschooling yesterday. I am looking forward to reading the book on Mentoring Self Directed Learners. It's on my Kindle ready to read.

• Reading Literacy, Families and Learning has motivated me to read, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, by Anthony Esolen. It is also on the Kindle.

Now, where are my glasses and where is my cup of tea?

An accidental curriculum

The other day, we wandered through our lovely, old, understated, unpretentious town centre. We stopped to chat with the lady who works at the leather shop. As we left, she kindly sent us away with a free bag of scrap leather. All sorts of hides from all sorts of creatures, in many colours and textures.

Since then, we have been plaiting whips, wearing leather head bands and collaging leather artworks. We now need to go back and ask a few technical questions about tanning and manufacturing.

This accidental experience has added another coat of mental paint to our understanding of things we've been reading lately. It's fun to stumble into learning and experiences we weren't expecting.

Similar, but different, is the "curriculum of curiosity" in this post. I would love for our learning life to be more like this. But my sanity is only welcoming so much curiosity at this stage. And that is fine. It's nice to have a picture of what we'd like to grow toward.

The power of boredom

It's hard to be with bored kids. It brings out the worst in them and the grown ups.

There is an assumption that parents ought to entertain their children. I'm not sure where it came from, but it seems to be a default setting that parents feel responsible for amusing their kids and kids often expect to be amused. Wherever it started, advertising certainly feeds it and feeds on it.

It is especially tiring to be with a person, or people, who lean on you for amusement all day every day. So I refuse to be amusing. I love to relate with my children and do things with them, but I refuse to fix boredom. It is my children's own responsibility. It is a life skill they need to learn. I couldn't home educate if I felt I needed to entertain five children all day. But it is a messy skill to learn.

Our culture assumes boredom is bad. We're a busy society. Perhaps slowing down feels like failure? We're also an amused society. People make lots of money from fueling an insatiable desire for amusement. We confuse amusement with happiness and are led to believe that we can buy it. It starts in babyhood, with thousands of toys which do all the playing and performing for the baby. I guess it takes new forms at every stage of development and every stage of life.

Have we dis-empowered kids by training them to rely on complex objects and other people for amusement? Have we taught them to depend on goods and services which need to be bought? Have we robbed them of the opportunity to work out how to amuse themselves freely? Have we accidentally taught them that the imagination is not enough, that it is boring?

On the days when the children are twitchy and bored, I am trying to see the great opportunity before us. If  we slow down and let ourselves get bored, then we have made space for some interesting, creative and unexpected skills to grow.

Trevor Cairney has a great post on Stimulating Children's Imaginations: Creating Time, Freedom and Space

Learning super powers

I'm learning that education is built from really basic bricks, but which ones are essential? What do our children need to learn? There are some things which technology and a changing economy are making redundant. So, what is absolutely essential, regardless of change?

At the moment, I think our kids need to be able to read, think, imagine, evaluate, and communicate. 

So, they need to be able to read. I mean more than decoding words. I mean enjoying making sense of what someone else is communicating.

They need to be able to imagine. They need to be able to use what they have read and experienced in the past to see what is real and true and to have an expanding picture of what may or may not be possible.They need to be able to find new ways to solve new and old problems. 

They need to be able to evaluate. A world of rapidly increasing information and communication demands that our kids be able to work out if something is important, true, beautiful or useful.

By "communicate", I mean taking whatever is at their disposal (words, print, imagery, actions, objects) to say whatever they need to say to someone who can benefit from it. Kids need to be able to write, to be able to put words together in a way which is meaningful to themselves and someone else. They need to be able to talk, listen and ask good questions. 

Skills. Super powers. Tools to chip away at life with.

Will they always feel like they are learning super powers? No. Sometimes skills start to come before motivation. At the same time, the way we learn these skills must not slaughter kids' pleasure in using these skills. I am finding this is something that someone else cannot teach us. It's not the same everyday. It's not in a curriculum we can buy. It is a product of studying our own children and trying out new things together.

I'm finding that becoming fluent in these super powers is messy, relational, unpredictable, sometimes ordinary, sometimes spectacular. The skills grow in fits and starts as they are used. The skills are learned in a culture of joyful doing; fun reading, eager talking, attentive listening, inquisitive questioning, wild making, free playing, real writing. 

Next time we are labouring over that word or sentence or problem, I'm going to remind my kids, and myself, that we are growing super powers.

What is on your list of "essential things for kids to learn"?

image Nail and Twine Photography

What is school for? Seth Godin on education

Seth Godin writes great stuff. I haven't read enough of it. I won't summarise what he's on about, you can easily enough look at his blog and work it out.

After enjoying Godin's insights for a while, I was glad when a virtual acquaintance sent me a link to his manifesto on education. You can get a copy in a version that suits you, for free, here.

Is school obsolete?

An amazing story and fascinating research. Inspiring for our own parenting. Inspiring for our interactions with children in our communities, local and global.



TED