Homeschooling by Daddy

OK, so I guess I kind of inadvertently took the summer off from posting on this blog. But don't think I was giving up on it. We just got very busy with all the summer traveling and being outside. I suppose if I was to take an entire season off, the summer is a good one, what with the children being out of school and all.

Anyway, when I first came up with the title 'Homeschooling by Daddy', it was more of a joke because I overheard a very 'manly' conversation upstairs between the men of the house...phrases like dropping the kids off at the pool and cutting the cable or taking the bread out of the oven were being used. I've given up trying to stop the passing on of this kind of language. If Zach is going to agree to the homeschooling, then I suppose I have to let him give his two cents.

However, I do have to give Zach credit as far as educating our son goes. On our cross-country trip this past July, Zach more than earned the title. As I wrote about in my other blog, Jacob really didn't want very much to do me with on the trip. He was all about Daddy. I had been looking forward to using our trip as a big learning experience for Jacob, but since I wasn't really allowed to talk to him much of the time, let alone look at him, Zach did most of the talking. Whenever we stopped at a new destination, Zach would pull out the US map and draw another few inches of his little line. Jacob loved this ritual and always gladly joined in. The two would then have a discussion about where we were going, where we had been and all sorts of facts and interesting highlights about these places.

I think Jacob learned a ton on our trip. Zach really did an awesome job of explaining things on a three year-old's level - of which I never had to tell him to do! He's really come a long way in being a good teacher to Jacob, and I can tell he really enjoys it. It was a great experience for all of us, even though I was stuck in the back with no one to talk to. There were moments when Jacob would let his guard down and we got to enjoy the time together. Everyplace we went we talked about what we were seeing with the idea of learning in mind. And we didn't want to come home.

Anyway, Jacob is still talking about the places we went to, and we're continually reinforcing for him things we learned, talking about states we went to, looking at them on the map. Jacob and I constantly go back through the pictures, reminiscing about what happened that day or another. I'm hoping that by doing these things, Jacob comes out of it with an actual, living memory of our trip, and not just a memory of us talking about our trip in the years following.

The Books, The Influences

Yikes, that was a while back...I never got around to finishing this post, but of course collecting books is a lifelong thing, so when would it ever really be finished. Maybe I can update it from time-to-time. Well, it's really September now, and even though I started this is May, I'm cheating and changing the posting date because, if you know me at all, you know I'm kind of anal. The future me isn't going to like to see that 'July 2007' is missing from the nice little archive listing on the side. So the past me (the one who wrote it in May) is gifting it to July. Although not reflected in what is written below, the last time I consciously thought about adding to this post was in July. So there. A nice, tidy explanation.

5/24/07
For a while now I've been wanting to record these all in one place, as the books I have which are related to homeschooling seem to be scattered all about this little house. Some of them have been recently acquired for use as actual homeschooling references, others are books that aren't even necessarily related to homeschooling, but in one way or another, influenced my decision to homeschool. It's a nap day for Jacob, but as the clock approaches 4pm, I'm anxious to get up there and see about trying to wake him, so this is going to be real quick and possibly disjointed.

1) My Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn - I had the prequel to this book sitting on my shelf, leftover from an anthropology class I ended up dropping before I got around to reading the book. It wasn't til a couple years later, when I was pregnant, that I picked up Ishmael and read it. It totally changed the way I looked at everything. I can't explain this in better detail because it's been a few years and only the general message of the book remains. I did pick it up again and read it maybe 2 years ago. It still affected me, and I love how you can do that with some books - pick them up years later and still love it, but totally experience the effect in different ways because you are so different from when you first read it. Yikes, I'd better cut to the chase...yeah, so I read My Ish after that and that the central character is a 12 year old girl, so it seemed to examine the authors viewpoints from a different perspective. Again, I can't exactly say what it was about the book, but I realized from reading it that I believed in a more natural, 'it takes a village' mentality to education. And that book explains this part of me. It was the first book I read that made me consider homeschooling, even though it isn't a homeschooling book. I guess that also explain part of the 'organic' approach to learning that I have...I find my own paths to the same conclusions that other people have made.

The Influence Books

2) The Natural Child, Jan Hunt

3) The Continuum Concept, Jean Liedloff

4) The Unschooling Handbook, Mary Griffith

5) How Children Learn, John Holt - but really all his books (which I haven't fully read all of but I'm pretty sure I'm in line with them).

The actual homeschooling books:

The Homeschooling Handbook, Mary Griffith
Homeschoolers' Success Stories, Linda Dobson

The Library Books

The Homeschooling Book of Answers, Linda Dobson
Parents' Guide to Alternatives In Education, Ronald E. Koetzsch Ph.D.

The Activity Books

The Ultimate Book of Homeschooling Ideas, Linda Dobson
Kitchen Table Play & Learn, Tara Copley & Andrea Custer
Great Explorations, Amy Nolan
Great Greek Gods and Goddesses, Patricia Rowe Gilkerson & Kathy Zaun (for much older kids)

The Idea books

Re-Creative, Steve Dodds

The 'Text' Books

The Garden Book, Wes Porter
Sugar-Free Toddlers, Susan Watson
Healthy Kids, Marilu Henner
(my sign language books)
My Amazing Body, Pat Thomas
Baby Animals, Treasure Press
Explore the World of Forces of Nature, Anita Ganeri, Ill. Mike Saunders
My Big Books of Animals, Gerald Durrell

The Answers Books

Big Questions Little Kids Ask, Dr. Rita Book
How Do I Know? Questions and Answers About the Senses, Robert Carola
Big Book About How Things Work, Joe Kaufman

Lessons In Coin Rolling

Jacob and I rolled his coins today. When the bank is full we roll them and he gets to pick out a toy or something else to buy. Instead of doing that today though, Jacob just wanted to put the money into his savings account at the bank. I was so thrilled. Anyway, multiple lessons took place during the coin counting. Here we have counting and learning about coins, amounts that they are each worth and how many of them make up a dollar.


These are the state quarters. I talked to Jacob about each state and discussed the ones we'll be going to on our cross-country trip in less than a month. We talked about who the men are on the coins. That covered geography and history.

Here Jacob is working on his fine motor skills.

The final tally was $25. I was really looking forward to getting the cool Bob the Builder birthday set at Target...but this is even better. Jacob's learning to save money and we really don't need anymore toys.

What the Hail?

We had a mini hail storm here the other day. I guess I haven't really seen that much hail because I thought it was pretty cool, as did Jacob. We set to collecting as much of it as we could from the ground when the storm had passed (not to mention the hail that was actually in our house, due to the fact that the addition windows still don't have screens on them).

Afterwards we looked up hail on the internet and learned all about it. We visited this website, and holy crap do you see the size of that hail?? And we went here. If I was more disciplined I probably would have come up with an activity for Jacob to do, but considering his age I think decifering the technical science speak and translating it into three year old terms was enough for one lesson.

Mothers' Day Project

I was waiting to post this until I had taken the 'after' picture. We used cement, a heart-shaped mold and some shaped pieces that I bought for this purpose, as well as broken up terrcotta pot from the backyard, stones we found and colored glass. We gave one to Zach's mom (pictured in the 'maling of' picutres) and one for my mom (the finished product). Jacob loved this, of course, and I think it will be a project that we do again.