You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2007.
This is where Cassius wishes we lived
One of the most exciting things about homelearning, is when your kid develops a passion for something, and you can watch and help them as they follow it to their fullest ability. Cassius is spending all his time drawing. He has filled one sketch book and is onto another. He has a special set of pencils, erasers, and a sharpener, which he carries around with him everywhere, along with his book, so he can draw every chance he gets.
I’ve noticed that Cassius’ intense drawing has helped him in other areas as well. For example his writing ability is getting quicker and neater. Another thing I’ve observed is that he has been spending more time in imaginative play. This may not be connected at all to his drawing, but for some reason I feel that it is. It’s wonderful to watch your children lost in the world of their imagination. It’s such a short stage of life, and I’m glad Cassius has so much time to just play.
Imaginative play is easy to overlook, especially when you are always looking for “educational” activity. I have to record 25 educational hours for Self Design, the distance learning program Cassius is enrolled in. I’m surprised to find that I could easily record 50 hours even on weeks I felt he was doing nothing. Self-design considers play to educational – which is one of the great things about the program.
As a side-note, school kids may spend 25 hours a week in a classroom but they only spend 20% of that time “on task”, which works out to only 5 hours of learning a week.
Toot toot!
This means train. He chants “toot toot ride”, “boat ride” and “bus ride” like a mantra.
Guy
That’s Cassius
Big Guy
That’s what he is. If you say the word baby or you’re a (insert anything here), He’ll say I a big guy! If you won’t let him do something, he throws himself on the ground protesting, I a big guy. He really wants to be big.
Nooooo Waaayyyyy!
This means No.
Okaaay Mom or Okaaay Dad
This means Yes, but just because I’m feeling generous.
Mow mow & Bow wow
Cat & dog respectively. This morning he said tittytat for kittycat. He also likes to pretend to be a dog, especially when we are walking down the sidewalk. I’ve actually had people ask me if he can walk.
Caaww Caaww
This refers to a crow or any other bird
I do it!
This means he wants to do it himself- it meaning everything.
A Bee
I kept thinking he was terrified of imaginary bee’s, then I figured out he was saying help me!
Rat can cook?!
He said this after watching Ratatouille. He seemed to be thinking if a rat can cook, so can I!
Cassius volunteered this week to participate in a study for the KID Studies Centre at UBC : Personality traits, Behaviour, and Social Perspective Taking. He did quite a few studies when he was a baby for the Infant Studies Centre.
“The study lasts about 60 minutes and is presented as a series of stories and games. These stories and games are commonly used in research to assess children’s ability to recognize what others are thinking and feeling.”
I didn’t get to watch but I had a look at the materials they used. I find empathy to be Cassius’ strong point – so I’m sure he found it very easy. He said it was really fun, and wants to do it again.
I found it funny because the whole thing was designed for kids who go to school. Many of the stories presented to him involved school. I had to fill out an hour questionnaire and most of the questions involved whether or not your kid wanted to go to school, whether he did his homework, and whether or not he gets upset when I leave him.
Here’s a hilarious list someone posted on HS-Van. I’m afraid to admit I related to it.
This week at our weekly homelearners drop-in the theme was numbers. I brought all our Miquon Math and Noble knights of knowledge stuff.
“So you’re not an unschooler then?” One of the mom’s commented to me.
I replied, “Oh yes, this is unschooling math!”
“How does that work?” she asked me.
My answer was something about how Cassius wanted to do it, but ever since then I have been thinking about what makes math unschooling math. I found in my research of unschoolers that many don’t use any curriculums or text books – except for math. The curriculums that they do use seem to focus, not on memorizing and getting the right answers, but on exploring the beauty of math. Math is beautiful, and full of amazing patterns.
Now, I believe that kids will learn what they need to know about numbers through their daily life. Cassius and I are always talking about measuring, banking, prices, and millage as they come up in our day. But perhaps the beauty of math is something we might not notice unless we are given some tools and time to fool around with it (I certainly didn’t learn about it at school). Of course forcing beauty on someone is pointless – which is why I find interest to be the key to learning.
There is a great chapter in Free at Last , the Sudbury Valley School, about how it only takes around 20 hours to teach kids who are interested, what schools cover in six years. “Because everyone knows,that the subject matter isn’t hard.What’s hard,virtually impossible, is beating it into the heads of youngsters who hate every step.”
Thinking about the beauty of math reminded me of an inspiring article I read in the September/October issue of Life Learning magazine: What Really Matters: The Curriculum of Beauty by David H. Albert. It did remind me of what really matters. It is always interesting to think of what we are really teaching our kids
You can download PDF versions of past and present issues on their website
Cassius bounces and walks around in circles when he’s happy. He bounces especially high when he finds something funny. He’s done it since he was born. I remember watching a Buster Keaton movie at the Art Gallery with him when he was three. When it got to a chase scene he started jumping like crazy and laughing his head off. Everyone was laughing at him – especially at the end when he looked at me and said “I think I pooped my pants!” Now that’s a funny film.
The reason I mention this, is that Cassius is VERY interested in things that he finds funny, and what he’s interested in, is what he learns. Funny motivates him to learn when nothing else will. He’s read his kids joke book out loud to me three times! He copies jokes out of the book by hand to give to people. He’s really enjoying his the Spongebob typing CDROM, because he thinks it’s funny. He loves BrainPop, a kids website that has educational animations on any subject imaginable- because he finds it hilarious. He thinks the characters Tim & Moby and funny, but not Rita & Casey – so he won’t watch any of their films.
Cassius begged his Dad the other night to do some Madlibs with him. Madlibs is a word game where you’re asked to come up with words that are nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. to fill in the blanks of a paragraph. You don’t know what the paragraph says before hand so of course it ends up sounding very silly. Cassius thinks it’s the funniest game in the world.
His Dad sat on the couch filling in the blanks while Cassius literally bounced in a circle coming up with words. This is where I admit that it was really driving me nuts and I told him to stay still several times. He continued to bounce (I don’t think he could stop if he wanted), and it occurred to me, “He’s learning grammer and he’s so happy about it he’s leaping with joy!” Then I had a vision of him in a classroom being forced to sit quietly and still in a desk all day and I thought, “If bouncing helps you learn, bounce away!”
