What we've been up to lately

BabyR 21 months on the slide at M.O.T.A.T

Some of you may be aware that we have spent the past 2 years using the ACE curriculum and having decided it was not for us in the long term have started veering away from this over the past month or two. Right now is a time of testing and experimentation as we explore taking a more interest based approach to learning but so far we are all enjoying it and as I think it is working well for all of us I thought I would share one of our days with you all..

As part of our veering away from textbooks etc we made a conscious decision not to focus so much on individual subjects anymore but instead to work towards mastering certain essential skills that are generic to most subjects traditionally taught in school and which will be beneficial throughout the childrens lives.

The skills we selected are...

Reading Skills
Writing Skills
Listening Skills
Comunication skills
Research skills
Reporting skills
Reasoning skills
Problem solving skills
Thinking skills
Character Training
Goal setting
Creative expression

For some of these I utilize workbooks and curricular materials in small managable doses and for others we just use whatever is on hand in the moment and capatalize on teachable moments as they arise. Some days we have scrapped all formal school work in favour of something else which has taken our interest. Although I have found that they do tend to do beeter when I have a routine in place rather than living by the spur of the moment.

The way things are now, most days start with me reading from the Bible and then the children do a little bit of bookwork. They do 2 pages of math for which we are still using ACE, 1 spelling/vocab worksheet (Spectrum) and a page in their Language Arts book (LLATL). All up this takes around 1-2 hours max for ds12 and ds10 and Dd8 is usually all done within an hour. After that we tend to go with the flow and work on something that the kids are personally interested in.

 Ds10's Still life pastel drawing from household plant

At the moment ds10 is wanting to learn about plants and gardening so we have been reading about plants and completing a variety of activities inline with this topic. Yesterday I read from a science book about plants and then he drew a diagram of a flower which he labeled using a picture in a book as a point of reference. 

 Ds10's Drawing of the parts of a plant

After lunch he planted some lettuce seeds in a planter on our deck. this involved weeding out the old plants from last year, turning over the soil, preparing the bed and then planting the seeds according to the instructions on the back of the seed packet.

 Ds10 planting his lettuce seeds

I recently discovered Facebook with the kids and we have had fun on some games in which we have to plant and care for a farm. Ds10 has found this a lot of fun but I have noticed he is learning a lot from it too. For example he knew exactly what to do to prepare and then plant the planter without me telling him a thing. He did it totally on his own while I just watched from a distance.

Dd8 has no particular interest at the moment except for arts and crafts so she happily joined ds10 with his science topic, particularly enjoying the drawing side of things. She also decided to collect some flowers of her own from our garden and press them in her notebook and then draw them, this lead to her doing a pastel drawing as well as the original pencil sketch. Both children are also compiling a notebook with samples of their drawing and photos of any hands on activities and a bit of writing on the topic of plants.

 Dd8's sketches of flowers from our garden

Ds12 is not so science and nature orientated but was content to listen to me read before going off to work on his own project. He is completing a research project each term on a topic of his choosing. He does most of his research online and takes notes which he elaborates on in a written report once he has completed all his research. He then proofreads and edits it before he hands it
in to me. Generally he has 2-4 weeks to completed this type of project. His choice for this term's topic was the 'INK'. He is more of a history and Literature type of kid than science.

Ds12 helping BabyR 21months

On top of this child initiated learning I also have 'The Mystery Of History' which I have been reading aloud to the kids over lunch once or twice a week if I think we are in the right frame of mind to sit and listen.

We also enjoy a lot of interenet searches and we go to the Library every 2-4 weeks and borrow a huge range of books which we read through. We are also trying to go on field trips as seen in the two pictures below.

The kids and friends at M.O.T.A.T 

 (Museuam of Transport and Technology)    

We appreciate having the granparents living close by who are always willing to help out in this area. They have also been taking at least one of the kids once a week and do art or some other hands on type activity that the toddler usually makes impossible at home. As mentioned above, gardening is the flavour of the month so this is where Nana is being a real blessing to us at the moment.

So that is just a few examples of different ways we have been approaching homeschooling without the heavy textbook/workbook or curriculum based focus.