Peanut Schooling

It's a little different only having this guy for homeschool (although with the other two kids around, it's not as different as it probably would have felt.) We've settled into a little bit of a routine--which mostly looks like a non-routine. With only one kid, I don't feel a lot of pressure to get certain things done every day, or in any particular order, so I usually let him pick how he wants to start his day. At least until we've missed math for a day or two, and then we get going on that. Peanut likes the online math program we picked for this year--Beast Academy, but not as much as he likes reading and writing.

We've tried to fit in some game playing--some academic, some more for fun (but the crazy creatures from Bears vs. Babies seemed like a fun Care of Magical Creatures activity--and we love anything that fits in our Hogwarts theme.)

More often than not, I have to let go of a lot of my plans for the day so he can just write, and write, and write. He's on a creative writing kick and is churning out books in a way that would make any publisher thrilled. I figure who am I to stand in the way of creative genius (and someday, when he's a published author, I don't want him to talk about how he had to sneak away to write because his mom thought he should be doing something else all the time😂.) If homeschool has any advantage at all, it is the ability to let kids work on their passions. And honestly, when he gets an idea for a story in his head, he can't think about anything else, so trying to drill him on multiplication facts or reading about the civil war is pointless--he won't hear any of it anyway.

Peanut is definitely influenced by whatever he has most recently read (I remember being that way at his age, too). He's been reading Magic Treehouse books and then promptly wrote 2.5 Magic Tree Fort books in 2 days. Reading through the first one, I was completely blown away with how well he captured the voice and format of the original books, and his use of sentence length and word choice to keep things exciting and go with the intensity of the situation was impressive. This boy is an author!

But in between his writing spurts, we have done a few other things. We needed a fun start to a Monday, so he pulled out the shark tooth kit and worked on digging the teeth out while we listened to the first Harry Potter book on audio.

He also did an online class on Johnny Appleseed with some of our favorite teachers--Nana from Chalk Pastel Art, Miss Cindy from No Sweat Nature Study, and Miss Mary from Squilt Music. He listened to folk music, drew a map of Johnny's travels, and learned about apples.

I'm glad he enjoys these classes--they encompass so many subjects and are a good way for us to mix things up. This class prompted a request for books on Johnny Appleseed and an apple for a snack, so the learning kept going to rest of the week.

We've also been doing our Hogwarts learning. I'm really loving how simple, but how effective this curriculum feels. This week, we had a copywork payday--an aha moment that perfectly illustrates the beauty of a simple practice. Peanut copied a passage from Harry Potter that involved several commas, including a pair that set off a non-essential clause. I asked him if he knew why the commas were there, we talked about it briefly, and then moved on to the next topic.

Later that afternoon, he wanted to read to me from a 2 page description he had written about a new animal he invented, "Ice Lion's scientific name, Venator mortiferum, means 'deadly hunter.'" He paused after that sentence and commented, "I did the comma thing like we talked about this morning because the name is extra information." And that right there is why copying down someone else's writing can help teach the mechanics of writing. I'm sure he could have learned the same thing from a punctuation worksheet, but I don't think it would have been as much fun, and he probably wouldn't remember the lesson as well as he does from Harry Potter and his own creature invention. And so, we will continue to put on our robes, talk in (terrible) English accents, and immerse ourselves in the world of Harry Potter. 

Back to Science

We're on our third week of science classes. It's been a lot of back and forth with deciding what these classes would look like this year. My original hope was to have live classes for those who felt comfortable, and an online option for those who didn't. I was getting excited about expanding my business--online classes meant I could take students from anywhere! And even the challenge of finding ways to approach the topics and bring them to life over a screen sounded like it would be good for me. 

But with the way things have gone in our area this summer, it wasn't feeling safe. I debated holding class outside, in our backyard, which sounded a little better than bringing 15-20 kids a week into our home. But the more we looked at it, and the more we tried to find a way, I realized I was going to need to hold all my classes online. Our family has just done too much to avoid this virus to make anything else practical. In the end, the charter schools all announced that they wouldn't pay for any in person classes this semester  (which affects 5 of my students), and the crazy smoke issues we've had from all the wildfires would have made outdoor classes impossible the past two weeks, so it was the right decision for sure.

And with moving all my classes online, in the end, instead of growing my business, I just combined my online only class with my current classes. A couple weeks before class started, I was at that make-it or break-it spot. I had lower than normal enrollment in my classes, so unless I started advertising and pushing hard to get more kids in my new online Wednesday class, I was going to be doing more work for less money. This just isn't the year for me to be able to handle the extra time working. And I'm so glad that I made that choice because 3 weeks into this school year, I know I'm maxed out. This is not going to be an easy year for any of us.

But back to science--I did hold optional outside classes for the first lesson at a local park so the kids could pick up their supply kits and we could look into the characteristics of living things. There were only a few families interested in this option, spread between two classes based on age, so it was really easy to set each family up under their own tree with plenty of distance and yet they could still see my props and hear me. 

And then, I returned to my online set up at the kitchen table. It's gone okay, and I feel more prepared for teaching this way now that I've had a few months practice and planning time. Each student has a binder of worksheets and interactive notebooking pages that we will use this semester, as well as the supplies for various labs and hands-on activities we will be doing. It's sometimes a challenge to help them find the right supplies for class (following directions is rough!), but we're all learning. And I'm really trying to provide variety in our activities --we've split into breakout rooms to brainstorm, taken online quizzes and answered polls, done guided experiments, watched videos, used note-taking guides, and colored and cut and glued. As always, the youngest class is the toughest, but I'm trying to keep their interest and make science fun--which really is my only goal for that age. 

After three back-to-back classes, I'm beat. I've also felt oddly let down the past couple weeks. I think the sheer amount of energy it saps from me to teach through a computer--repeating instructions over and over because someone always misses it the first 3 times, trying to sound alive and excited to keep the kids engaged--while not getting much back from the kids leaves me feeling pretty sad at the end of it all. When we would be in person, I got to engage more with the kids, and hear their jokes, and laughing, and enjoy a certain amount of positive energy from the group being together. That's all gone now and it's hard. My kids are all pretty great, but they just don't get the same chances to talk among themselves as they work, or respond to my questions easily. Some of them won't show themselves on the screen for more than a minute or two, some don't like to answer questions. (Some, like Peanut, won't stop talking, which presents it's own set of problems😂.) Most can't type fast enough to make the chat box helpful, and my youngest class can't really read, so everything visual has to be in pictures.  But we're making it work for now and just pray that we'll be able to meet in person again before the end of the school year.

Sunset

When the air is bad, and you are desperate for outside time, you'll drive to the beach just to watch the sunset for an hour.

We were feeling pretty desperate to get outside for a bit, and the AQI in Santa Cruz looked pretty good, so after all our normal Sunday church stuff (online church, family meeting with Rara) and and early dinner, we headed out. Turned out Santa Cruz beaches were closed for the weekend, so we had to go further south to Rio Del Mar, but we found a parking space (which is a little bit of a miracle) and got an hour on the beach with the beautiful sunset.