I decided to call the blog, "Homeschooling: The Education of Lori Pereira" because that's what it feels like to me. In addition to ensuring that the kids learn what they need, I am learning quite a bit along the way. We spend very little time formally doing school, but it just seems to be happening......My biggest issue seems to be staying out of the way. I am spending way more time than I thought I would looking at myself, my beliefs, how I handle situations, how I've been influenced by culture and how my behavior influences the kids than I ever thought I would. Plus, I'm learning so much from the kids. It's giving me a new perspective on me.
We've chosen to make technology an integral part of our journey. We've had lots of discussions in this house about how much technology is too much at this age, spurred on by Waldorf families/beliefs in our circle of homeschool friends. We've decided that it's an important part of our journey, and like anything else, it depends upon how you use it and the place you allow it to have in your life.
For example, Hayden's current passion is geography. We found an awesome iphone app called "Stack the States." It is interactive, requires the user to answer questions about states in order to earn states to stack. When your stack reaches the bar and holds steady for a few seconds, you earn a state for your own map. The graphics are cute, and the states have faces that change when you touch them, along with a bit of personality. Hayden has taken to this and learned all of the states in the US in no time. The awesome thing is though that he's transferred his enthusiasm from the computer to other venues. We have map puzzles and have talked about people who live in various states as well as various landmarks. He's also starting to get a good grip on the capitals.
The follow-up app for us was "Stack the Countries," which is the same concept, with a broader range. He's been through Europe, North America, South America and is working on Asia. It's giving us a great foundation to work from, exploring the world. One of the things it's given him that I never had is a sense of the difference in size among the countries. I picked up some books at the library yesterday and when he saw the atlas, he said, "Ooh, give me that one."
I do have to say that I was a little surprised when I read the article about Waldorf schools (link below) and how some of the leaders of the technology giants don't introduce their kids to technology until sometimes age 8 or 9. But as my husband and I continued to talk about it, we came to the conclusion that we would prefer to introduce our kids to technology over the schools if our kids were in school. At home, a lot of human interaction and other activities accompany the use of the computer.
Anyway, our kids by no means sit at the computer (or phone) all day, but it has provided us with benefits I could not have imagined.
My other favorite (as everyone who knows me knows) is Reading Eggs (readingeggs.com). This program has pleasantly surprised me many times. It is phonics based and offers 120 lessons to teach the kids how to read. My son finished 100 lessons in 4 weeks just because he enjoyed it so much. I thought it would take me 1 1/2 years to teach him what he learned in 4 weeks. And if having a reading child doesn't significantly change a homeschool journey, I don't know what does. Then just as we finished that up, they added a spelling component. We're slated to finish that up just before Christmas and now they've added a reading comprehension module for older kids. I'm not sure how he'll take to that one, but it is teaching a lot of good skills. We haven't explored it fully, but so far it's teaching alphabetizing, looking things up in dictionaries, parts of speech, comprehension, and vocabulary.....
This week, we're starting to head in a new direction as we begin to explore alternative forms of making energy. I found what I think is going to be a great website to help us explore, http://learn.kidwind.org/. I'll get back to you once we spend a little more time exploring.
