Tag Archives: the kids

children, homeschooling, imagination, siblings, Uncategorized, unschooling December 9, 2015 1 Comment

A few days ago, a giant box arrived with a Christmas gift for the kids. Foster spied it outside first and called “dibs” so he could have the first shot at playing with it. So I when it was emptied, I respected his “dibs” and gave it to him alone. As you can see from the pictures above, he didn’t keep it to himself for long. He realized quickly that playing alone isn’t as much fun as designing a tank and fighting a war with fellow soldiers. They all had their roles to play. Katie helped with the tank design and decoration, Foster used his knife to carve holes for the front guns, Jonah and Parker had missile launchers so they could walk alongside or behind the tank. Theodore was allowed to drive the tank with Foster. I’m not sure what their exact jobs were once they were navigating the battlefield.

I shared one of these pictures on social media yesterday with the hashtags imagination and homeschooling. I should have added siblings to the mix.

Recently, our decision to homeschool has once again been questioned. Even after 8 years and obvious success, there are naysayers who either don’t approve or just really don’t understand.

So when I labeled the picture #homeschooling, I wanted to double check myself. Was this 3+ hours of experimental, imaginative, building, teamwork play able to happen because we homeschool? Couldn’t any 5 siblings ages 4-11 have an experience like this?

The answer is no. While it is possible they could, it is not likely. Children, once grouped with peers for a number of years, do not “play” with much younger children and they have less tolerance and patience with their younger siblings.

Foster and Katie have their patience tested multiple times daily by the three younger brothers. The reason they persevere is because these three younger brothers are also their most common companions and playmates. They don’t have to just deal with them for 3 hours at night and then escape them to be with their same-age classmates for the majority of their days. They have an internal motivation to get along with each other.

The other reason this is not likely to happen is because time is finite. Our schoolwork is usually done by noon. This gives ample free time for this kind of creative play. Unfortunately, not only are kids in school all day following a tight schedule, they are often times overscheduled afterschool with sports, music lessons, church activities and more.

If there is no unscheduled, being at home with nothing to do time, then children won’t have the opportunity to turn a heap of cardboard into a tank, a yard into a battlefield and brothers into an army.

 

NaNoWriMo2014, four stitches and Halloween

3 year olds, children, writing November 1, 2014 Leave a comment

What in the world is NaNoWriMo? It stands for National Novel Writing Month (it happens every November) and I am participating this year for the first time!

I’m excited, nervous, determined and intimidated but I’m doing it.

It’s about time I stop talking about writing a book and start writing it.

I had planned on using yesterday, October 31st to move a desk to my room and get a little nook set up so I can have an official work space, however, Jonah decided a trip to Children’s hospital ER would be a better way to spend the first 5 hours of our day.

He is three so nothing, and I mean NOTHING, that he does should surprise me.  I’ve been through this 4 times before, 5 if you count when I lived with my 3 year old brother who tried to die several times but is a living, breathing 23 year old right now.

He comes into the kitchen, while I was trying to finish my coffee and read a message from a fellow mom/writer I’ve recently met.  He had on footy pajamas and decided it would be a good idea to go outside in the wet and cold and jump on the trampoline, which I tried to discourage by saying no, but as I said, he’s three.

He decided to go out anyway, except he couldn’t get the door to open.  He got angry, I was laughing inside thinking “curses! Thwarted by the door again!”  When I made no move to leave my coffee and open the door for him to do something I already said he couldn’t do he grabbed a heavy kitchen bar stool and threw it down to, I assume, make the level of his anger evident. However, he dropped it on his big toe.

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The ER visit was fun.  It took 4 adults holding him down to get the 4 stitches he needed.  After the wrestling, screaming match the nurses and “child specialists” brought him a popsicle and left so we could wait on paperwork for the next 20 minutes.  I was sweating and stressed and needed the down time before lugging him back out of the ER and down the street to the ER parking lot which has moved further away since the we were there for his burned hand a few months ago.  I thought it was interesting that he got offered his choice of popsicle but nobody asked me what kind of coffee and chocolate I would like after such a disturbing experience.

We made it home by midafternoon and the weather started to get uglier.  My kids had costumes and they weren’t very happy about the fact that it was 45 degrees and starting to rain.  We invited a couple of friends down for pizza and trick-or-treating anyway.

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It was cold and wet and the 10 pounds of candy I bought didn’t get passed out.  Halloween 2014, the first one in our new house and new neighborhood is in the books.