A Most Excellent Reading Buddy

I have heard that children gain confidence in reading aloud when they do it with a dog. The dog serves as their audience: a quiet, still, nonjudgmental audience. 

Tuna isn't a struggling reader, but when I brought her home from school, I noticed she lacked confidence in her oral reading. We're working on that, and we've already seen quite a vast improvement. 

I know that Tuna loves cuddling Diego while reading. She strokes his silky ears and curls up next to his warm body, and reads to him (and me). 

This little dude doesn't mind the attention, either. 

Derpy Men Suffer Baldness

I am the smartest woman alive!

At least, that's how it feels when I successfully teach a child long division. 

I was worried, because when our beloved Fred introduced long division this morning, Tuna's face contorted and she promptly blurted out, "This is hard."

I asked her how she knew it was hard when we hadn't covered it yet.

She told me she'd seen a friend doing it at school. 

"Well, you haven't seen Mama do it yet, and I say it's really easy!"

Bay chimed in that she, too, found it easy. 

I asked Tuna to please hang in with me and give it a chance. We read our Life of Fred chapter, but her scared math face didn't leave. 

So, I took a piece of paper and a marker to the kitchen counter (seems to be her preferred thinking spot lately) and asked her a question. 

"Does McDonald's sell burgers?"

She looked at me as though I'd grown a new head, and answered, "Yes, why?"

So I wrote for her:

Divide

Multiply

Subtract

Bring Down

D

M

S

B

Does

McDonald's

Sell

Burgers

She giggled, and I explained to her that those are the only steps she needed to remember to do long division. 

And then, I showed her a few examples with numbers into the millions, so she could see that no matter the size of the number, the steps are always the same, and they are always broken down into simple problems. 

So she did a few herself. Occasionally, she would start to write the her numbers in the wrong spots, but that will come with practice.

The point is, she understands. 

And so, in typical silly Tuna style that comes about whenever the light bulb turns on, she came up with her own mnemonic phrase:

Derpy

Men

Suffer

Baldness

...and escaped to the third floor to play Minecraft, giggling all the way. 

Our Unschoolish Week

Feeling rather like we needed a break (and gradually finding ourselves drifting toward unschooling), we took it easy this last week and a half. We've been keeping up with Life of Fred, which Tuna loves. And, though we're a bit "behind" where I wanted to be (because it's a library book that needs returning), we're still reading On the Banks of Plum Creek.

Other than that, we've been taking it easy. Tuna spends much of her time watching Minecraft tutorial videos, playing the game, talking to me animatedly about it, and making plans for her future with Minecraft. She and Bay cooked us dinner last night: whole wheat spaghetti with homemade meat sauce. It was fabulous.

Bay is gearing up for our trip to Munich next week to see Justin Bieber in concert. She's so excited! We bought her standing at the stage tickets for her birthday. So she and I will hop a train to Munich and see The Biebs. I am less than thrilled about this. She's been a fan since Biebs was a nobody on YouTube. She knows everything about him (really, it's a bit stalkerish the way she talks about his monotonous life details). She's been asking for tickets for years. This year, we live close enough to take her. I want to make a day of it, and see some of Munich as well.

We're just living life. It's amazing how much education comes from just doing and being.

The other day, Tunas asked if she could use my rose pin (it's a cake decorator item that you make a frosting rose on before placing it on the cake) and my meat mallet to "mine" her rock collection. My counter was covered in bits of rock, but she opened up some rocks and had a look inside.







Bay has been spending lots of time outdoors, wandering town and meeting locals. She's met some German pals, and takes the camera everywhere. It's interesting to me to see what she sees. Here are some of her images:

Another exciting event recently was the Daddy-Daughter Dance. The kids had a great time with their Daddy, dancing the night away:

cute shoes

This is what I get for asking them to NOT make silly faces...

And yep...Bay is taller than her Daddy, even without her heels on. 

We've got a busy week coming up, including a trip to Frankfurt to pick up our chihuahua, Diego. I'm so excited about that! I haven't seen my baby since I left him at my mother's house to move to Germany...five months ago. I can't wait to hold him again!

Little (Minecraft) House on the Prairie

Tuna loves to learn. In January, when I brought her home from school, she hated school and had no motivation to learn anything. This is no longer the case. My goal of instilling the love of learning and discovery has been met and surpassed. 

I am happy. She is happy. It's a wonderful feeling. 

As I write this blog entry, she's working at the computer to build a Little House on the Prairie scene in her Minecraft world. 

the inside of her log home, with bedstead

We finished reading Little House on the Prairie today, and she watched a couple episodes of season one of the show named for the book online. Then, she started playing Minecraft and decided to build herself Little House scene there. 

Tuna's Little House garden

When building the hearth, her log cabin caught fire and she worked feverishly to put it out, remarking to me that it was "actually a scene from the book since the chimney caught on fire in the book," and asked if I "remember the prairie fire?" before repairing her cabin with stone. 

the outside of her log home after fire damage forced some reconstruction

She added several elements that show me she loved the story and was paying diligent attention while I read. That is plenty of payment for the pain to my throat of reading all those pages aloud. Though she did read aloud, too, about a page at a time, now and then, most of it taxed my vocal chords. 

Tuna's well. There's a cover for it, too. 

I love the form of homeschooling we've settled into, which is on the verge of unschooling. It works so well. Perhaps one day, we will be full unschoolers, though I do see us teetering on the verge for the foreseeable future. 

Whatever works. 

Tuna's cattle

Gentle Nature Study

I like the nature study aspect of Charlotte Mason-style homeschooling, but until recently, I felt like I was forcing it. Like it wasn't natural, being in nature. 

I've stopped calling it Nature Study with Tuna. I just bring her places and she checks stuff out. Since I took the pressure off, nature study has become a regular, normal part of our life. 

Today, we went for a walk to the pond. The walk felt wonderful. We were having a sour morning, and we were both stiff and cranky. A mile and a half walk was just what we needed to get our blood pumping, our muscles working, and our moods going in the right direction. 

It's unseasonably warm here, and the sun is shining! We got a healthy dose of vitamin D today. The sun seldom shines in Germany in the winter. When it does, it's glorious. It's something worth dropping everything and getting outside, especially when it's accompanied by mid-50F temperatures!

So Tuna and I went to the pond. We brought some lettuce and stale bread for the mallards that inhabit the area, and our camera, of course. 

Letting go and just letting Tuna explore was the best decision I could have made. She discovered so much today, some of which I just take for granted. For instance, she didn't know, before today, the motion that ducks' feet make under the water to propel them. Clear water and a family of ducks provided that lesson. She wondered where the fish went in the winter, so we discussed how they hibernate at the bottom of the pond. 

She took the camera and photographed what was interesting to her. I've shared them here in this post. She loved the ducks best, and was impressed with the coloring of the male mallards. She liked the moss and the lichen she found growing on the trees. And she was impressed with all the moss growing on a craggy old rock. 

It was a peaceful time spent in the sunshine with my Tuna. We plan to go back at least monthly to observe the changes as winter gives way to spring. 

The Questions People Ask

Being human means being curious, so naturally, people ask questions when you tell them you homeschool. 

I could never spend that much time with my kids all day. They'd drive me nuts! How do you do it?

Homeschooling is peaceful!

Yikes. This is a touchy subject. I don't want to step on your parenting toes, but do you hear yourself? You don't want to be with your kids? I mean, I get it. Everyone needs time alone, away from their kids, or at least with others their own age from time to time. But I love being with my kids. And homeschooling has made that time even more peaceful! That's right: homeschooling gives our family more peace and more love. 

Family time at the lake. Peace and learning. 

Is it hard?

No, not really. Not in practice. I found it much harder to try to figure out homework assignments with weird directions, math textbooks that teach in strange manners, and teacher's instructions that often contradicted themselves. Homeschooling is easy in comparison. 

Sure, there's planning involved. And if you think too deeply, you could stress yourself out about whether or not your child was meeting the same goals as his or her public school peers. But I don't do that. I don't compare. They're two different groups, homeschoolers and public schoolers. Comparison isn't fair or reasonable. We just plug along at our own pace and never mind what the kids in the big brick building are doing. 

So, what curriculum do you use?

The girls checking out a website together

Okay. So this is one that homeschoolers tend to ask each other, at least as much as public school parents ask. It's murky, and requires tact. My direct answer is usually that I create my own. Homeschoolers frequently will rattle off the name of a big homeschool curriculum. As for me and my kids, we tend to do our own thing. Telling people that leads to the next question:

Do you have to be qualified to teach your own children?

Living abroad provides many life lessons which can't be obtained with any text.

This one bugs me a little, but I shrug it off. It feels like my own qualifications are being judged. They probably are. People are judgy. Whatever. I tell them that the laws depend on the state you report to, and usually leave it at that, if possible. 

How does the government know you're actually teaching your kids? Shouldn't there be some sort of test?

Learning doesn't have to mean testing. 

Oh, dear. This one bothers me, too. I usually prattle off the same answer as above, with the state determining the rules for testing/proof of progress. All the while, I am seething on the inside because my tendency is to view this as an insult to my character as well as my children's. Besides, tests don't give a complete picture of learning. 

Where do you "do" school?

Learning happens everywhere, even in a kayak

Where don't we? Let's see... Today, we pushed together the love seat and couch, covered them in blankets and pillows and made a nest. We sat across from each other and read, watched a documentary, and did some writing. 

Above: Tuna learning to shuck corn at Jimmy Carter's boyhood home in Georgia.
Below: Bay feeding the corn to the mule on the farm. One of our "field trips" earlier this year

Other days, we work at the kitchen counter, dining room table, floor, park, car, library, museum, historical site... We "do" life, not school. Learning is a side-effect of living. 

Life IS learning! Learning some German history at a castle ruins. 

We don't have a school room. I thought we might, at first, but that quickly stopped working for us. We like to move around. We like to explore. And we don't use any textbooks to do our learning. 

Bay expressed an interest in photography, so I set her loose with a good camera in Savannah. She has an eye for it!

What about socialization? 

Well, what kind of homeschooler would I be if I didn't include this question in the mix? Truth is, my kids are probably under "socialized." Tuna is an introvert and the only time she sees other kids is on the rare occasion she plays outside with them (she prefers to play on her own) and the once a week Girl Scout meeting. No, this doesn't worry me. She prefers her family, herself, and other trusted adults as company. I am not concerned. Bay is on the opposite end of that spectrum. She loves being with people. She goes to a teen center once a week and hangs out with her schooled friends after they finish their homework most evenings. She has no extracurricular activities at this time. We are not the sort of homeschoolers who shuffle kids to and fro to expose them to tons of activities. We let them decide for themselves and we limit their activities. Some seasons, we have no structured activity at all. And we think that's a good thing. 

Aren't you worried that they're going to be weird?

my little homeschooled weirdo ready for Halloween

Aren't all kids weird? It would worry me more to think of them growing up to be just like everyone else. We embrace our weirdness here. We encourage you to do the same. 

There's no uniform when you're a homeschooler!

What questions am I forgetting? What questions are asked of you?