Yikes, I forgot about this blog!

Wow -- I just realized I haven't updated here in almost a month.

What are we currently working on?
Research paper about the election - I am making Dakota research it on the internet and then he is writing me a paper answering some questions I have come up with. I will share those with you tomorrow. Off to bed now...

Unschooling vs Traditional Schooling

I got all of Dakota's schoolbooks in that I had ordered from Books-A-Million (2 wks ago!) while we were out of town last weekend. I can't believe how long it took for them to ship the books. We got back in town on Sunday so I decided to start with the new curriculum "Heart of Dakota" on Monday.

Monday morning started out great - that's Dakota reading the 1st chapter in the book Grandpa's Box. He loves anything having to do with wars and history and the 1st chapter starts right off talking about that so it immediately grabbed his interest. He wanted to keep reading but I wouldn't let him. I told him "No, we have some other things to work on, you can read some more tomorrow." We argued.

History
We moved on to History - he was supposed to design a shield and draw some symbols of faith to display on a coat of arms he would be making later in the week. It took lots of encouragement to get him started on this because he hates the way he draws. He is a perfectionist. If he can't draw something that looks professional the first time out, he doesn't even want to try. He doesn't quite get the concept of PRACTICE! He finally gets started and I let him work on it for almost an hour...three shields later I finally say "Okay, honey you have done a great job with ALL your shields, but we need to move on to something else." We argued.

Bible
Next was Bible Story - Ephesians 6:10-20 - The Armor of God
We opened our Bibles
I read a verse
He read a verse
He stops and says "Mom...I KNOW this story...I've read it like 1000 times. You've already taught it to me like 1000 times! Why do we have to go over it again?!"
(He's right...I've not only been his teacher but I was his Sunday School teacher from the time he was 4 yrs old until he was in 4th grade and I DID teach him all these stories...at home, at church, at church camps, at VBS...)

Research
Our next topic was Research and we were supposed to Research "coat of arms" in either a dictionary, online, etc and answer some questions pertaining to the "coat of arms." Awwww, finally! Something he readily agreed to without argument! He loves researching things on the internet...and he loves anything with history so he was eager to start looking this up. But...once again, this turned into an hour long project because he then begin researching OUR family history to see if we had a "coat of arms" and when I suggested he do this later AFTER we finish school....yep, you guessed it - we argued.

I'm completely exhausted with him at this point and we still have Poetry, Bible Study, Math, Language Arts and Science to do.

Poetry - we read a poem together and answer some questions - easy enough - done

Bible Study - this was fun - our verse was Psalm 1:1-2 and we are supposed to memorize it. To help with the memorization they suggest putting hand motions to all the words. We had a good time doing this. It really helped too! The next day we both rememered most of the verse because of the hand motions!

Language Arts - Working on sentence structure - he's a lazy writer (because I haven't required him to be "perfect" about it before) so now I am working on making him a better writer...if that makes sense. He doesn't always remember his punctuation at the end of sentences and he doesn't use commas...he knows to do it, he just doesn't. So that's what we are working on right now.

Math - this was easy because we are working on his times tables - he doesn't know them very well and I have decided to take one set at a time and do them every day until he has mastered them. He's getting there! So today was just flashcards and drills as it has been the last 2 weeks.

Science - we read the 1st 3 pages in the book "One Small Square: Arctic Tundra" but he was supposed to trace a world map and color in the areas of the arctic tundra - forget it - we'd been at it for over 4 hours and we were both whooped!

My Dilemma

Now that I have given you a breakdown of my Monday (and pretty much how the whole week went) let me tell you my dilemma.

For the last several years I have mainly unschooled Dakota. What is unschooling you might ask? Here's a definition I copied off an unschooling website:
Generally, unschoolers are concerned with learning or becoming educated, not with 'doing school.' The focus is upon the choices made by each individual learner, and those choices can vary according to learning style and personality type. There is no one way to unschool.

He has grown and advanced from year to year in this manner of learning...his way. I've taught him that if he is interested in something to go for it, research it, learn about it, absorb it - which he does! In a sometimes obsessive way. I laughingly tell him he's like a dog on a bone sometimes when he is chewing over some new "material."

This has been our way of life for the last 4 years. There are areas though that he is just not interested in (math and spelling) and he's probably "behind" his peers in these two areas and this concerns his daddy/my dear husband. It concerns him because he doesn't have the patience to work with Dakota like I do and if something were to happen to me Greg worries about what he would do with Dakota. I truly understand his point of view and I feel like I need to better prepare Dakota, for college or dual enrollment which he could do in the next few years if he chose to go that route.

I am struggling with finding a happy medium with using curriculum and still letting Dakota learn the way I've taught him to learn and the way he actually learns best...in an unschooled fashion. For instance, last week when he wanted to continue reading that book Grandpa's Box and I made him stop because we had to move on to other work....that goes directly against everything I ever wanted to do in his schooling. If he wanted to sit there and read the whole entire book that day...why not? Why shouldn't I let him? How many times have we become so absorbed in a book that you just can't put it down? It's not often he picks up a book and reads like that...he is such a video game nut so I should have been thrilled he wanted to keep reading and just let him read to his heart's content!

In the drawing part where he had to draw a shield and a coat of arms - it took so long to get him started doing it because I have to encourage him and talk him into "just doing it" and "practice makes perfect" - then after he works on it for awhile I make him stop. That is crazy! I was kicking myself later that day because I should have let him sit there and work on it as long as he wanted to...he WAS practicing for gracious sake!

Same thing goes with the Research on the internet...people get paid big bucks for being able to research things online. I know many, many people who don't even consider the internet when they are needing information. Here's my 12-yr-old who can find his way around the internet for everything! He can research with the best of them and LOVES doing it. He gets started researching one thing and it leads to another more equally interesting thing and then here comes mom....SQUASH! Ugh, I was kicking myself about that one too - why did I stop him from doing that?

Do I sound like I'm being hard on myself? You know what Dakota told me yesterday?
"Mom...quit being a mom!" (as in give me a break and lay off!)

Hmmm, I guess we've had a rough week.

Okay so I was wrong...

I decided not to wait until next week to start school. I had been telling Dakota we were going to start this week and I wanted to start regardless if I had all the materials or not. There is plenty he needs to work on so I figured we could just get busy on some other stuff besides the Heart of Dakota curriculum. I ordered the 5 books I need from Books-A-Million on Monday so hopefully they will be here next week.

Math
I have taught Dakota his times tables but he doesn't remember them because it's not something we went over and over again so I thought we would start out with "relearning" those. I wasn't sure where to start - what he remembered or what he needed help on so I just started quizzing him on all the times tables. Once we got done with that it was the craziest thing - he was struggling with 4's (you know -- 4x7, 4x6, 4x9....) but some of the higher numbers he still remembered.
I was glad to hear that though because it won't take him too long to memorize those and once he does we can move on.

Spelling
I've been using a book Natural Speller by Kathryn Stout to teach Dakota spelling the last couple of years. We tried the whole phonics thing for several years because that is how I learned and I still remember the rules and I've always excelled at spelling. But he was not getting it. He hated that. Ever since I switched to Natural Speller he does much better.

I started out on Monday going through the "homophones" word lists just to make sure he knew how to spell each word and how to use each word correctly in a sentence. (Homophones - words that sound alike but have different meanings. For example: sea, see; horse, hoarse) We knocked out a bunch of words because he knew them all. He only had to work on a few - four I think. I was pleased with how well he did!

Writing
I handed Dakota a notebook and gave him 30 minutes to write or draw whatever he wanted. This is completely out of his comfort zone. He hates writing and he doesn't feel comfortable drawing. He likes to draw but he is a perfectionist and when it doesn't come out like a Picasso
work of art he gets upset and won't draw anymore. I knew if I forced him to get started and assured him it was all good - no grades given, no criticisms, whatever he drew or wrote was completely up to him - then he would actually take longer than 30 mins.

One hour later I had to make him put down his pencils so we could move on to something else. I promised him he was going to have this time everyday to continue his "masterpiece." :-)

Heart of Dakota

Preparing hearts1

I am using Preparing Hearts for His Glory from Heart of Dakota publishing for most of Dakota's schooling this year.

Sent from BlueOrganizer

I heard about this curriculum from my blogging friend Sniz. After looking into it, I was immediately drawn to the history and the way the curriculum weaves Biblical history into world history from creation to the mid 1900's.

I had planned on beginning today but I'm so out of sorts lately with the move into our new house 2 weeks ago. I had failed to even open this book since I received it in the mail just before we moved. I had forgotten I needed to order some additional books to go along with the manual I got in. I went to Books-a-Million yesterday after church to see if they had the 4 books I needed, but of course they didn't so I guess we'll be waiting until next week to start now.

This morning I got on Books-a-Million online and went to order the 4 books. My total came to $47.00 and that included free shipping since my order was over $25.00. You know me though...always on the lookout for a bargain! Before I hit the "submit" button, I googled "Books-A-Million Coupons" and I saw one for $10.00/$50.00 order and it didn't expire until 9/23! Whoohoooo!! I actually need more books, but I was just settling on purchasing 4 for now. So I went back in and added another $6.95 book to my order and with the **new** coupon my order came to $45.00!!

Costs me less to buy 5 books than it did to buy 4! I'm a happy woman!

Oh yeah....stay tuned because NEXT WEEK we are definitely getting started!

2008 School Year

We are going to begin our school year in September due to the fact we have bought a new home and will be moving the last weekend in August. I've already packed all of our school books/supplies in boxes so it would be a little difficult to start school right now anyway.