Trip to the zoo + interest led learning for a 10 yo

Yesterday we spent the afternoon at the zoo. We met up with cousins and brought a long some friends. It was a fun day of learning and observing. 

Natalie and I were discussing what she may want to learn more about this year. Normally we take learning week by week, but I thought a bigger picture question might elicit more discussion from my more reserved child. She is interested in programming, web design, and earning money. Of course my stem child chooses topics I am not an expert in. So, we have a challenge on our hands. 

Good news about a challenge. This challenge has allowed for some nice discussion between the two of us. Also, we were able to explore the web together and search for some tools to help Natalie learn more about her interests. This is what I am purchasing as a result of our discussion:

We are excited about this .99 cent book! Natalie is excited because it will help her create a blog for all of her science videos. I am excited about the writing she will get to do. 

Natalie is VERY excited to learn how to do web design. I am hopeful this program will teach us both! 

I am not sure how this book will be embraced, but the title and the lemonade stand won Natalie over! She is extremely interested in money. How to make it. How to keep it. How to spend it. No, this last one she has down already, but the rest are all true.

This title describes Natalie. She has BIG ideas. She doesn't express her excitement as the kids on this cover do, but she likes to explain why her ideas are important. We are excited for this book to arrive. 

I am excited for Natalie to be able to explore these interests. I have to say this is NOT like any curriculum a 5th grader would be studying. Instead of checking my blood pressure and freaking out about the fact that we are not following a curriculum, or even a typical school model for learning, I am pleasantly calm and excited about what Natalie has chosen to learn. I am thrilled to see sparks of interest flying instead of the stares of dread and despair. 

Self-directed learning + the high school years

I am a little hyper focused on my oldest at the moment, probably because she is entering what would be her high school years. I might be worried that letting her be self-directed could totally screw up the rest of her adult life! Trying to ease my fears I have been taking notes on everything Olivia has been spending time on during the month of August. 

My notes are simple and very basic. I use sticky notes and a spiral notebook. Yep, that's all I use. I title a page with what might be a standard high school topic like English. Anything that Olivia does relating to the subject of English is written on a sticky note and stuck to the English page. Once the page is full I start another page. This has been helpful in a couple of ways. First, I stand back looking at her accomplishments and realize that my fears on self-directed learning have been just that my fears. Also, these little sticky notes allowed me to do some research on further material that I thought might interest Olivia. 

Here is a peek at what Olivia has requested to learn.

Last year Olivia read and enjoyed Writing Magic and Spilling Ink. She has informed me that she enjoys Seize the Story more. She does not like the writing prompts in this book, but prefers the overall information more and incorporates the information with the 30 day writing challenge she is doing. 

Olivia has used One Year Adventure Novel program. It sparked more of her passion, but didn't help generate ideas, a sense of individual writing style within her. She did love the outlining framework of the program, but feels she needs more as she continues writing her novel. We are hopeful this title will assist, we haven't read it yet, but it has strong reviews.

Olivia is excited to have this reference book sitting on her desk and bed as she writes. 

Through our discussions about what Olivia wants to learn, do, and become it became clear that she desires some guidance and insight on the business of writing. She is excited to dive into Stein on Writing. This is a book we previewed from the library and decided we needed it on our shelves.

Olivia has enjoyed her writing books so much, that when I brought the title Writing Irresistible Kidlit to her attention she jumped at the chance to bring it home. We haven't used it yet, but it again has some strong reviews and we will update how the material in this book works for her. 

Now that Olivia has chosen books that she is interested, and I can physically look at her plan,  my fears have dissipated. We have decided to call this self-directed course English 9 - Novel Writing and Literature. An official title for the start of our home made transcripts if she needs them.

I want to learn from the books she has pulled together.

Project Organization

I have been spending time organizing books. I have learned one thing through this process. We have a lot of books! 

I have decided to organize our novels by genre (a suggestion from The Book Whisperer) and all of our reference books by subject.

 I believe as interest and passion strikes this method of organization will make it easy for us to browse through what we have in our personal library before racing to the public library, used book store, or Amazon. 

Prior to diving into student directed learning I kept all of our materials organized by core. I have slowly been pulling out each core filing our reference materials by subject and color coding, covering, stamping, and shelving our literature by genre.

 Yes, the process is a bit time consuming, but I am pleased with how the organization is coming together. 

I am getting ready to make a trip to our favorite used book store A Good Book. I have a list of books I am looking for to add to our library. I know I said we have a lot of books, but seriously can anyone have too many? 

Olivia came to me yesterday asking if she could check with A Good Book and see if she could volunteer or do some type of internship there. I am excited to see what we can get set up for her. I am amazed at how her passion for reading and writing is pushing her to explore activities beyond our four walls. She also found a few writing classes at the community college she is interested in taking. Now we are doing the research to find out how or if we can take a class, what hoops we need to jump through, if her age is an issue, or if we can audit the class. Olivia has much to do over the next few days.

Natalie and Ella enjoy going to A Good Book as well. I am sure they will find a gem or two. They are enjoying spending time with friends this week and working a bit on a little game we like to call tidy up your room. There have been outdoor water fights, berry picking, and back yard fun. I hope they enjoy the nice weather as long as it lasts. 

After our trip to A Good Book  I will have more good books to add to our library! I have read most books that are in our library. I like to have a few in there that the girls read first, because I love having them come to me and say, "Oh, Mom, you just HAVE to read this book." These requests bring about some of the best literary discussions we have ever had. 

The Book that Got Me Thinking

We have used Sonlight curriculum from the beginning of our home school journey and I love their program. My kids have always been surrounded by GREAT literature, but they weren't loving learning like I had hoped. Don't get me wrong they enjoyed most of what they read and were learning a tremendous amount, but there were LOTS of things they weren't. They weren't excited about learning. They weren't exploring their passions. They weren't even excited about what they were reading. So, I started looking for new ways to help my girls get excited about what they were learning. That is when I stumbled upon the book The Book Whisperer. 

This is a story of a teacher and her approach to teaching a love of reading to children by - gasp- allowing kids to choose what they read. As a certified teacher who is use to all students reading the same novel, this was an enlightening concept.

When I brought this idea to my kids they LOVED the simple thought of choosing what they read. I followed the model outlined within the book, which has students choosing a certain number of books from different genres, and gave my kids their own page to log the books and genres. It was a great year of reading for my girls and opened up my mind to an entirely new methodology for student learning. 

I began to ask myself questions throughout this past year. If my kids are reading and learning by choosing their own books, why couldn't they learn other subjects this way? How could I approach the idea of learning differently? What kind of proof would there be if this new way of learning was actually working. 

As I witnessed my oldest daughter Olivia express a love of writing, I slowly allowed her to spend more time writing. Not just writing, but writing what she wanted. I went out and looked for books she may enjoy to help guide her. If she liked the book she would use it, if she didn't it was fine to let it go and move on to something else. The more I let go of being in charge of teaching, and simply began facilitating and cheering her on, Olivia truly began to grow as a writer. 

After witnessing Olivia's success with self-directed learning, I decided to take the plunge and test it out with all of my kids. I have been nervous, terrified, worried, and amazed with as my family has transformed our school at home to an environment where passions take flight and learning does not feel like school, or anything that is dreaded...well maybe math isn't a passion, but it is the one topic my husband and I are not comfortable being self-directed. Maybe we will get there some day, but for now we are learning O.N.E.'s way a step at a time.

When does school start?

This is the question I am getting at least once a day. My response is simple. We haven't stopped! 

This is new for us. Last year we started school the third week of September. This meant our home school went until the end of June this year. When we started our experiment with interest led learning this past spring I never envisioned us not taking the summer off from "learning". What I have learned through our experiment is that truly EVERY day is full of learning whether we call it a school day, holiday, weekend, or even summer break. 

I find myself paying attention to what my girls are doing throughout the day in a new way. I look at their activities and categorize it within core or elective subjects. My kids are completely unaware of what I am doing, they simply feel I am mesmerized by their activity! I do this because interest led learning is still new for us, and the certified teacher in me twitches at the thought of our relaxed approach to learning. By categorizing and taking notes I keep the twitches at bay and open up my mind a bit more to the fact that my kids will choose to learn every day. 

Today Olivia chose to:

• write for the 30 Day Writer's Challenge
• read Fault in Our Stars
• three hours of dance class

Today Natalie chose to:

• tend the garden
• research Jar Pendants and calculate the price of supplies and cost per each pendant
• two hours of dance class

Today Ella chose to:

• play Club Penguin - reading
• text friends - writing
• read messages on Facebook -read and write
• three hours of dance class 

I guess I could say we are "officially" starting back the third week of September, maybe that is a more comfortable answer for friends and family to hear.

I am counting everything we are doing this summer, over weekends, and late night research sessions that fits within a subject category as learning. "School" is not what my families learning experience looks like.

Maybe I have a hard time answering the question, "When are you starting school?"  because our experience doesn't look or feel like "school." My children and I learn and add to what we learn every day. We enjoy it. Therefore, I don't ever see us "starting" school again. Instead I see us continuing to learn. 

Summer Learning

We just returned from a 24 day adventure in Pocatello, Idaho! My girls spent three weeks at ArtsQuest Summer Theatre Camp. Below you can see Olivia. as Flotsam and her sidekick Jetsam in the production of The Little Mermaid Jr. It was a fabulous experience!

Olivia. is home schooled and officially a ninth grade student. She is choosing what she wants to learn and we used this summer experience as an elective credit. She spent over 150 hours taking acting, voice, and dance classes. Plus she experienced the audition process, hours of rehearsal, and finished camp with five performances. It was an amazing experience and she can hardly wait to start it again next summer!

New friends were made. I am thankful my kids have Facebook and Skype to keep in touch with their long distance friends. They have a group Skype scheduled once a week. Natalie and Ella take part in this as well.

Natalie and Ella also took part in camp. Natalie played the role of Violet in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Ella was a little blue haired Oompa Loompa. 

Here they are standing side by side! It was an amazing experience for all.

What's next? How will the kids fill the rest of their summer hours? 

Well, first everyone came home from Idaho and took a break for about a week. After some much needed sleep and down time everyone has slowly started to fill their time with their personal interests once again. 

Olivia has been reading, writing, making vocabulary lists of interesting words as she comes across them. She is fascinated by new words, and likes to try them out in her writing and in daily conversation. She has been researching the mobs of the 1920's - 1940's as well. 

Natalie has finished up her rainbow cake video from her experiment in June. She has been reconnecting with friends, swimming, and this past week has been exploring dance classes at a new studio. 

Ella has been playing, experiencing moments of boredom after having three weeks where every moment was filled with classes, rehearsal, and activity. She has started making more videos again, swimming, and taking dance classes as well. 

I have been reading, creating this blog, and a website for our tutoring business. I have been continuing to work on projects at ArtsQuest. I ordered a juicer which should arrive any day, and I am looking forward to using my new juicer and getting some exercise back into my routine!

Looks like we have plenty to keep us busy.