It took two full days of tears (mainly mine!), to convince hubby to get our cat. He doesn’t hate animals, but lived in a pet-less household & doesn’t enjoy sharing space with them. That said, he loves our cat & she is crazy in love with him.

So, yesterday, when we visited the pet store & the kids begged me for a snake, you will note my reply in the title of this post.

To his credit, he did not say no, nor did he say yes, he said, not now. And, it’s true. The kids don’t help with our cat’s upkeep, beyond feeding her on occasion.

But today finds them cleaning their rooms with a gusto heretofore unseen! And singing the, “We’re Getting a Snake” song….

He’s been named Justin, by the way, even though he is still a figment of their collective desires.

My oldest and I are on a panel this weekend, at a Gifted Homeschoolers Conference. In thinking about what might be asked of us, I began ruminating about some of my theories regarding education. I will share a few here, as I debut a new feature, “Theory Thursday.”

I think it’s interesting that we were chosen for the panel, considering I have never used the label “gifted” for any of my children. Not that I don’t think that they are, or have the potential to be, it’s just that it is a label I was stuck with, felt I had to live up to, and generally suffered miserably under, and, thus, not baggage I want to foist upon my kids.

That said, I feel my son is gifted in many ways. He’s been active in robotics since he was six years old. Building sound structures (sounds like engineering to me!), plotting angles for the robot(s) to traverse (geometry, anyone?)…all this is pretty heady stuff for a kid his age.

If I were another type of person, I might fall into the “So now I need to do more…push more!” mindset. You know it…you’ve seen it:

“How old was Katie when she first sat up? Carter was 5 months….is that bad?”

“Caleb can speak already? How old is he?”

“You got into Chi Chi Ginormously Expensive Preschool That Feeds into Ridiculously More Expensive Private School That Fees into Harvard & Stanford? We didn’t get on the waiting list as soon as the stick turned pink, so now I think we’ll end up at Mundane Generic Preschool that Feeds into “Regular” School, The One With No Bright Future, for our genius Sammy.”

Not pretty is it?

And, homeschoolers do it, too. We second guess ourselves and wonder if our children are performing at “grade level.” By whose standards? They very establishment we’ve eschewed to homeschool, hello! At Park Day we’ll huddle together in our portable lounge chairs under the trees as our children happily play elaborate and creative games, and ask each other for curriculum recommendations because we’re afraid Dani just doesn’t “get” Math. And, clearly, it must because we’re doing something “wrong.”

I don’t buy into the grade level thing. Yeah, my kids are in whatever “grade” corresponds to their traditionally schooled peers, but more because it would take me too long to explain to a non-homeschooling parent, otherwise! But, generally speaking, I do what I think works best for my kids. My daughter is an amazing reader, and probably reads at the same grade level as my oldest son and he is three years older. Yet, due to the aforementioned robotics aspect, he probably knows quite a bit about subjects that his traditionally schooled peers won’t get into for another few years (unless they are blessed enough to be in a school that offers such enrichment activities as robotics)!

From my background in Early Childhood Education, I knew that (generally speaking), boys develop manual dexterity a bit later than girls do. Thus, when a friend took me to a curriculum fair the spring before we began homeschooling, I avoided the “Teach Your Child Handwriting in Kindergarten” books (and trust me, there really are some books that preach that out there).

Rather, I taught my then five year old how to knit. It was fun, he’d seen me do it for as long as he could remember, and it built up his hand-eye coordination and his manual dexterity. The result? He has beautiful print. With this early homeschooling success story, you’d think I was chomping at the bit to teach him handwriting exactly when he reached 3rd grade, wouldn’t you? Nope. I wanted him to be well grounded and fluent with his manuscript skills before introducing another concept to master. Why did I have to teach cursive just then? Who would see it? I just followed my own gut and it’s worked out just fine. His handwriting is coming along beautifully as well!

I approach education from a far more developmental perspective, and don’t buy into the “Teach to the Test” mentality that traditionally schooled teachers are mandated to have. While the latter is tied to funding, my style is based on intimate knowledge of my own children, their learning styles, and personalities. I remember all too well, many a night of cramming in college, only to parrot the information on the test and do a huge brain dump right after….and do I remember any of what I studied?

I’d far rather my children be life-long learners with a passion for information than Jeopardy contestants (yeah, it worked for Mr. Jennings…but you get my drift)!  I remember enough bits & pieces to play Trivial Pursuit, however I was not allowed the pursuit of what I wanted to study and what I found interesting, and what, in my mind, would have made for a much higher retention rate.

So, with all that said, welcome to my first Theory Thursday….As Bette Davis said, “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!”

© 2009, Marie Stroughter; All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced without written permission.

Playing catch-up (what’s new??)

Obviously, Tuesday was spent doing what pretty much everyone else in the world was doing: watching the inauguration of our 44th president. The kids thought the pomp was awesome. Loved seeing the remaining presidents (we’ve been studying them), but totally tuned out once the speeches started.

Wednesday was our first Homeschool Choir concert (the next & final one for this semester is Saturday). A few kinks to be worked out, but overall, everyone had a good time! Hubby accompanied the choir (guitar) on a couple of songs.

Today was Advanced Spanish for my oldest, after a morning of “workbooky” stuff (geography, logic, penmanship, language arts).

Today was a low energy day. “School” was an unstructured affair (though one of my three “did school” on her own by assigning herself some reading, math, sight words and more Explode the Code). My youngest decided to do quite a bit of artwork, and my oldest built many wonderful inventions with his Legos (and all came from original ideas he came up with!). My oldest then had his first day of Advanced Spanish class with Teacher Wendy. He loved it (he’s had her as a teacher before). He came away with some homework for next week, along with retaining two new words he learned in class today!

The majority of our Wednesdays are usually spent in “outside classes” and the travel to & from them. We have Homeschool Choir in the morning (about an hour round trip + the hour that we are there), and Spanish class at the Community Center in a nearby town. We round out the day by our weekly attendance at the midweek Bible study held at the church we attend.

The Three are practicing for their Homeschool Choir concert that will take place in a couple of weeks. They went over staging, etc.

The theme for Spanish was Los Gatos (Cats).