Ann Leach

After reading Homeschool Adventures: Learning through Field Trips by Melissa Calaap, I knew field trips were going to be a regular part of our homeschool journey. Hands-on learning, experiences, talking with people on site.. that is where deep learning happens. And honestly, field trips were the best days of my own public school experience. Hello Ft Wayne Children's Zoo, Amish Acres, and Cotton Bowl Parade. My local homeschool community regularly organized park days, the occasional trip to the museum, IMAX movie, and other one-off meet-ups, but there wasn't a regular set pattern of field trips on the caliber of what I was looking for. So I had a decision to make. Did I sit and wait for others to create the opportunities I was looking for or did I do it myself? Now, coming from the public school background I came from, my first inclination was to wait for others to come up with the idea and organize it. I mean that's how it worked at the schools, right? In fact, the school a...

What is home ed? How does homeschooling work? Will my kids be behind? How do I choose a curriculum? Will my kids have friends? and more are all questions that get asked when parents start looking into home education for their children. So where is the place to go to get all this information? Where is the best place to learn about the topic of homeschool? My friend, there is not one place to go. There just isn't because home ed is as varied and individualized as the families that choose it. And even within families with multiple children, it varies. And that is one of the many, many benefits of home ed. So where to start?  And that, I can help you with. There are many, many resources for learning about home ed and they come in different media, so go with works for you, for where you are right now. And later, once you know a bit, then push yourself into something less comfortable. FILMS Class Dismissed -  http://classdismissedmovie.com/ Self Taught -  https://www.selftaugh...

As I am doing some reading this morning about the importance of community, being active in a community, building a community, and then tribe - building one, the importance of having one, etc, the book Isabelle has, written by Joy Wilt, called A Kid's Guide to Making Friends comes to mind. The book talks about three types of friends: Acquaintances, Playmates, and Best friends; and how they are different from each other. It's very specific. All three types of friendships a re important and serve different roles in our lives, but it's important to recognize that they are different and require different amounts of energy and maintenance. The people writing about community and tribes aren't seeing the differences and are blending the two. At least to me. A community is a network of acquaintances, playmates, and best friends who all share a common purpose. The connections are more casual than formal and generally require a minimal amount of energy. The purpose is w...

 Home educating, unlike school educating, looks different each day. I mean we do have routines - morning routine, chickens, cleaning, and laundry - but the details of each day are unique, depending on activities scheduled, energy levels, motivation, interests, and so much more.  This week we have activities planned: grocery shopping, a trip to the library, book club, a hiking meet-up, park day, and game day; but we also have a lot of free time to do whatever we choose. Lessons are planned for math, copy work (language arts), Newsademic (current events), the human body work book. We may or may not get to them each and every day. And that's ok. Life is so much more  than workbooks. Like this morning, while I am writing up this blog post, Isabelle is in her room listening to a Fabulous Five story on CD from the library, while she is getting dressed and making her bed (ok that's my plan she's actually playing with her dolls, getting them ready to go to book club).  ...

Home educating wears so many disguises. Sometimes it looks like books and papers all over the dining table. Other times, it is a week of adventures with very little book work. Most of the time, it is somewhere in between. This week, for us, was filled with adventures, and exhausting, but we loved it. Monday, Kenn and I attended an all day training class and Isabelle spent all day at a home educating friend's house. she packed her lessons in her backpack, and somehow managed to come home with them completed while also enjoying a whole day of play. Tuesday, Isabelle and I left early (for us) for the city to meet up with the home ed group and watch the Pandas documentary at the IMAX theatre which is in the Melbourne Museum. Of course, we stayed on to play and chat with our friends. It was a long and gratifying day, working on friendships. I think we were finally home about 4:45, just in time to start supper. We completed one lesson on the train. Wednesday is Park day. A...

.. and oh how I am struggling! How's that for an opening line? Ha! My struggle is not new. Moving from full-time employment outside the home to all the time stay-at-home mom has been the hardest thing I've ever done. It has been nearly 20 years, and I am still sorting myself out. I get bored. I get lonely. I get a lot done. I lose motivation and get nothing done. I just don't know what to do with myself! So it's been 20 years, why write about it now? I'm writing about it for a few reasons: 1) I'm sure I am not the only one with this struggle - feeling totally overwhelmed, and at loose ends at the same time. 2) I'm not happy living this way! It's not fair to myself, and it's not fair to my family. 3) I've been doing a lot of thinking and writing the last couple of days which has resulted in some self-awareness that is going to make the changes I make stick this time. What I knew about myself before is that I function better with structure...

March, April, May always brings me into a time of self-reflection. Looking at who I am and who I want to be. Looking back and looking forward. How am I doing? Can I do better? How can I do better? This year, along with my personal goals and achievements, my marital goals and achievements, and parenting goals and achievements, I am also looking at how I am doing in facilitating Isabelle's learning as we are home schooling. Overall, it is going well, but it isn't without its challenges with the largest one being not even a home schooling issue, but one of my own personal issues and how it is playing out in the realm of home schooling. And that is sequencing. Sequencing, simply is planning. Putting a series of events into a proper sequence to achieve a desired outcome. During my stay in a mental hospital for treatment of clinical depression a year after a drunk driver collided, head-on, with the car I was driving, an IQ test was administered to me which included two sequenci...

Home Schooling 101: The Essential Handbook by Mark and Christine Field Coming at choosing which methods to use as your children learn Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, History, Art, Music, et al. from a Christian perspective, the authors have written a good and helpful book. Or if you're not looking for that Christian perspective, but just different techniques and curriculum which are available, it is also a helpful book. But I am going to pull 3 paragraphs out to discuss. These paragraphs resonated with me and will have a strong impact on the rest of my years home schooling and parenting. The next aspect of your child's language arts program is that of attentive listening skills. have you ever met someone who appeared to not listen when others spoke? They may have poor social skills, or maybe they never experienced the joy of being listened to as a child. Children learn to listen through conversation. They talk and you respond. You talk and they respond....

"Learning all the Time" by John Holt Our public school system and mainstream culture wants us to believe that children can only learn what they are taught, by teachers, preferably in a classroom setting, but when we sit back and observe children, we can see that they are, in fact, learning all the time. They were learning long before we enrolled them in school, preschool or started teaching them at home. We don't have to teach a child to sit up, to stand, to walk, to talk, to hold a spoon. They are born as natural learners. They observe and copy. They self-teach. Our role is to model, to facilitate, to encourage (but not overly much), and to observe and do our own learning. Great book. I highly recommend it to teachers and parents, well to anyone who has anything to do with children. What are you reading? Ann

Isabelle and I will be visiting Italy, France, Sri Lanka, England, Jamaica, and Vermont this week as we gather ingredients for our apple pie as we read "How to make an Apple Pie and See the World"! Of course we'll locate those locations on our world and US maps and read about their cultures and languages. We're learning Italian this year. I will have to see how many of the other languages we can find on Duolingo. In our language studies, we'll touch on humor in writing, repetition, and pantomime. In art studies, we'll learn about drawing street scenes, humor in art, and contrast. For math, in addition to the math learning loop I am setting up away from our Five in a Row studies, we'll see subtraction in action and learn about liquid and dry measure. And finally in science, we'll play with salt and evaporation and learn more about fresh food for health. In my own reading last week, I came across a teaching method called...

We have always planned to homeschool; although that's really "we" in the Imperial sense because you and I know it means "I" would be doing the homeschooling. And while I've always wanted to homeschool and my belief that homeschooling is a superior way of educating than public schooling, I haven't always believed I could do it. Because you see, parenting a preschooler has been very very difficult for me. And I just didn't know if we could get through homeschooling. My go-to parenting book I mean there were days when she was just so demanding of my attention. And all I wanted was to be left alone so I could escape on facebook or read a book because I was so bored being home all day, every day. But she was bored too. And it was so unfair!! (We both had moments of playing the unfair card.) All the homeschooling books I picked up at the library. But we just keep plugging away, don't we, as stay-at-home parents because regardless of the ...

Homeschooling:  Made contact today with a homeschooling co-op here in Allen County that I didn't even know about.  We're welcome to join, even at this late date in the school year.  There are only 3 more class sessions, but I'm excited to (hopefully) meet some of the other parents and get Isabelle involved in some activities and play groups. Finding this group has re-energized me toward homeschooling this autumn rather than enrolling Isabelle in public schools. Antiquing:  Isabelle and I took a big stroll through the Antique Mall  in Wapak this morning and saw LOTS of goodies, including 1 Kitchenaid and 4 Sunbeam stand mixers; and 2 Corning Ware electric skillets - 1 with the skillet and 1 without. This is a photo of the Kitchenaid mixer. Pinterest:  I do love pinterest as a means of collecting articles that I may want to come back to at some future date.  But it tends to be a really big collection and not a lot of doing.  So I'v...