Pre-homeschool chat - Page 3

[itsrtimedownhere]

does anyone have any ideas on how to teach about thanksgiving without lying ("the pilgrims helped the indians become civilized and the indians gave the pilgrims corn and everyone was thankful!") but still in a way that they can understand?

[bandgeek]

Originally Posted by itsrtimedownhere

does anyone have any ideas on how to teach about thanksgiving without lying ("the pilgrims helped the indians become civilized and the indians gave the pilgrims corn and everyone was thankful!") but still in a way that they can understand?

I'm considering just telling the truth. I don't feel like it's necessary to go into the gory details, but kids often understand more than we think they will. I'll probably also tell him that I don't celebrate thanksgiving for the intended reasons ("the pilgrims helped the indians become civilized and the indians gave the pilgrims corn and everyone was thankful!"...as you said LOL) but for personal reasons (It's nice to sit down with family before the chaos of christmas sets in and just have a nice dinner together). We make our own traditions and his nothing to do with the pilgrims and indians, just as for us, christmas has nothing to do with baby jesus.

[lurable]

Originally Posted by itsrtimedownhere

does anyone have any ideas on how to teach about thanksgiving without lying ("the pilgrims helped the indians become civilized and the indians gave the pilgrims corn and everyone was thankful!") but still in a way that they can understand?

We're Canadian so it's different for us, but I always approach Thanksgiving as a harvest festival. I may, at some time, discuss American Thanksgiving. DD asked about why Snoopy was wearing a funny (pilgrim) hat so I explained a bit then, just about the pilgrims and Native Americans and treaties. We'll delve more into it at a later time but that's what we do for now.

[onyxravnos]

For the next couple of years my plan is to just do a little 'study' of native americans (teepees, clothing, art, etc) and then a little one about pilgrims (covering the same sort of things) and then for the week of thanksgiving do a lot of turkeys and corn and 'being thankfull' type things.

That way the big 'things' of thanksgiving are covered and although not presented all together as ds gets older he will start to recognize that they are connected and when the time comes i will start introducing the history of thanksgiving.

[itsrtimedownhere]

i like your idea, onyx. i think that's what we'll do.

[Stacey B]

Originally Posted by jenfl

Hmm. Well, we were TV-free from the start, which I think is probably a really different thing than trying to pull TV out of your life. We've recently started introducing TV for very specific things (a movie when sick or on a long [6-hour] car ride, Sunday football with Nana), but she just doesn't even see it as an option the rest of the time.

Unfortunately we were until this past summer when we were packing up to move (and now we're moving again in a month, this has got to stop).

I like the idea of a random activity list. I think at this point my main goal is to find more kids ds age when we get to the city, it's hard being his main friend all week long.

[ILoveMyBabyBird]

anyone have any advice on how to get your so to teach a second language to dc? My dh is Indian and hindi is his native language and i have asked him numerous times to teach ds (and me) but it never happens. Ds and i have picked up some words here and there, but we are nowhere near where I'd like to be. Many words i picked up when we were in india, you'd be surpised what you can learn when you are submerged in it for a while, had we been there for longer than a month, more like 4-6 months, ds and i would probably be able to hold conversations now...I just don't know how to convince dh to teach though...

[greenmamapagan]

Maybe instead of "teaching" you he'd be willing to set aside an immersion time where he only speaks to you and DS in Hindi? DH speaks quite good German, I can read it quite well (it used to be useful for my job) but can't speak it to save myself and we've done this occasionally. We haven't done it for ages but DD has learnt quite a bit. Just today she randomly said "Wasser für dich?" I'd start small, maybe just a meal-time because if you/DS are really confused he could probably easily make himself understood by pointing

[LuxPerpetua]

Originally Posted by Stacey B

I have a ds who is 3.5. We are planning to hs as far through as possible. There is part of me who would love a nice concrete schedule the reality of our schedule and ds is that we mainly follow an unschooling philosophy when it comes to learning. We learn together and through our daily lives. When my son is interested in something we follow that vein. Right now we do a lot of counting everything in our lives and identifying the letters around us.

We are about to move from the woods to the city where there will be a lot more opportunities. For now there are lots of arts and craft projects, trips to the library, hikes, baking and cooking, and storytelling. I wish I had about two more hours of activities or something a day for us to do because ds recently has been asking for movies a lot and too often I say yes because I have run out of things to do.

For those of you who are video free or at least have video free days how do you do it with out burning out??

Well, I think a lot of it is that we are used to a slower pace than most people. We only go somewhere on the weekends usually since we only have one car. We are Waldorf so our days have a rhythm. I also agree with allowing children to experience boredom. I've generally found that if I'm really needing something for us to do and we can't go outside, then baths or baking are good options. Also playing with food coloring (mixing it with water and pipetting it onto paper towels, or mixing it with cornstarch and water, or making playdough). Hide and Seek games are also good.

[onyxravnos]

Originally Posted by ILoveMyBabyBird

anyone have any advice on how to get your so to teach a second language to dc? My dh is Indian and hindi is his native language and i have asked him numerous times to teach ds (and me) but it never happens....

I would 'strongly encourage' your dh to only speak hindi to your dc. Point out how important it is that they pick it up now while it's easy and there is NO proof that it hinders learning english or creates accent when they speak english .

I've noticed a lot of Indians tend to not teach hindi (or one of the other indian languages) beacuse they fear their children wont 'assimilate' into american culture. Not True. Although he may not 'get it' stress how important it will be to your child(ren) later in life when they can speak to their grandparents, or visit the location of their farthers heritage....

[major_mama11]

Hi everyone! I'm glad to see this thread!

DD just turned 4. We are pretty much unschooling for preschool. We may start doing more formal school-y stuff when she gets to official kindy age (almost 2 years away, since she's a November birthday). She's pretty self-motivated at this point, and I don't go out of my way to do much more than provide learning opportunities and materials, such as workbooks, alphabet books, beads to count, computer games like Starfall when she requests them, etc. She hardly ever requests to do workbooks, but then some days she'll work in them for 20 minutes or so. We go on nature walks in the nearby woods most days, unless it's too yucky outside.

When/if we do something more formal eventually, I am leaning towards literature-based curriculum like Sonlight, just based on her personality. I bought a few of the books from the Sonlight P 4/5 list, and she loves them. She LOVES being read to, for as long as I will agree to it. She is also especially obsessed with story-telling, always requesting "Nice, sad, mean, scary, nice at the end" stories. and she has recently started telling her own hilarious stories in exchange for the ones that all the adults in her life tell her.

When I feel like we're not doing enough formal stuff, she will let me work on writing letters and numbers with her. She can't read yet, other than a few sight words, but has taught herself to write most of her letters by copying from a Dora alphabet book with a magna-doodle attached (I didn't realize she could already write them until I started actually watching what she was doing with that magna-doodle). She loves painting, coloring and also playing with beans and similar sensory activities. Mostly she just does free play though.

I let her watch more DVDs than I would like to (usually 2-3 hours a day), but I tell myself that this is temporary, while baby brother is small, to keep her from interrupting his naps with the random exuberant yelling she does when she gets bored...

Sometimes she gets really into something, usually science-related- for example, at age 3, she got really obsessed with digestion and would watch a short online digestion video which ended in a cartoon man producing cartoon feces... however lately she is just into being read to for her preferred activity. I guess she's kind of in a "taking it all in" phase...

[major_mama11]

Originally Posted by bandgeek

I'm considering just telling the truth. I don't feel like it's necessary to go into the gory details, but kids often understand more than we think they will. I'll probably also tell him that I don't celebrate thanksgiving for the intended reasons ("the pilgrims helped the indians become civilized and the indians gave the pilgrims corn and everyone was thankful!"...as you said LOL) but for personal reasons (It's nice to sit down with family before the chaos of christmas sets in and just have a nice dinner together). We make our own traditions and his nothing to do with the pilgrims and indians, just as for us, christmas has nothing to do with baby jesus.

I agree. I haven't said anything about Thankgiving, other than being a day when we eat yummy food with family, but when she has asked me if Santa is real or just a story, I have been honest with her...

[itsrtimedownhere]

we ended up renting charlie brown's thanksgiving. it was a double feature with "the mayflower voyagers". we ended up using that as a jumping point to talk about what happened.

i let charles schultz to my dirty work. :P

[greenmamapagan]

Welcome major mama11. Our girls sound a little similar, DD has occasional anatomy/physiology kicks. I guess it is quite interesting. She also currently has a bit more screentime than I would like in order that DS can go to sleep in peace .

[JoyMC]

Originally Posted by ILoveMyBabyBird

anyone have any advice on how to get your so to teach a second language to dc?

my husband is Guatemalan and ONLY speaks Spanish at home. it helps that i'm fluent and he has always done this, so there was no transition period like there might be for you. but DD understands fluently and speaks intermittently. i agree, even if you set a certain time, like meals or when you're all in the car, etc., that he simply is himself in Hindi, that will be so much more organic and effective than trying to have him give you lessons of some sort.

Originally Posted by itsrtimedownhere

we ended up renting charlie brown's thanksgiving. it was a double feature with "the mayflower voyagers". we ended up using that as a jumping point to talk about what happened.

i let charles schultz to my dirty work. :P

ugh, i feel like i need to deprogram what my daughter learned from The Mayflower Voyagers. it's clear about how tough life was for the Pilgrims (body bags and all) but it's very happy-go-lucky in terms of the partnership with the natives. definitely just a jumping-off point.

[itsrtimedownhere]

Originally Posted by JoyMC

ugh, i feel like i need to deprogram what my daughter learned from The Mayflower Voyagers. it's clear about how tough life was for the Pilgrims (body bags and all) but it's very happy-go-lucky in terms of the partnership with the natives. definitely just a jumping-off point.

for sure

[meetoo]

We are having a nice mellow week. Been home a lot because the kids are still sick!!

Some of the things we've been up to the past few days:
-Played rhyming memory
-worked almost every day on the box of locks and keys (matching keys to the right locks)
-Built the mayflower, the ocean, and the speedwell out of Lego
-painted with corn cobs
-cranberry marble painting
-Tried to show him how to make hand turkeys.....that was interesting
-read tons of books
-he read some books to me
-built marble run "machines"
-worked more on his Christmas list (cutting things out of toy catalogs)
-made gum drop and toothpick structures
-played mancala and jenga
-played with lego for hours LOL

and we are about to go make more cranberry bread (yup, it was that good!!) for thanksgiving tomorrow. Have a happy holiday all!

[urchin_grey]

We are pre-homeschooling our 4.5yo. We decided on homeschooling a few years ago but I feel a little more a part of the club now that he's nearly kindy age. Right now, the only school-y things we are doing are Kumon work books and starfall.com. Actually, DS was getting a little bored with starfall, so I got the subscription to more.starfall.com. I never planned on using workbooks or anything, but I thought the little first steps Kumon books were cute so I picked up a couple last year. He wasn't too into them at first because he didn't really like to color or draw until recently. Now he LOVES them. He'd do an entire book at once if I let him so I actually have to hide them! I got a couple more on clearance at Target but the selection is pretty slim so I haven't got anymore for him. There is a co-op going on another site I'm on though so I ordered like 12 (a couple are for my nephew). So much for delaying academics, but Bram has always been into that kind of thing so I'll take advantage of it while I can. He is a super laid back kid himself though, so he'd rather do a work book or puzzle or play on the computer while the other kids are bouncing off the walls. He's always been like that, even as a baby.

I do want to start doing more activities outside of home. Our transportation situation kinda sucks right now though (2 cars but only the 2-door 4-seater is running) so its impossible for everyone in the house to get out. The poor kids haven't let the house more than a handful of times in the past 4 or 5 months. We plan to get a new vehicle (a van!) after tax returns though so then I'll be filling our calendar up. I can't stand not being able to take the kids out of the house. We are all just bored, and you can imagine how quickly my house gets messy.

[boigrrrlwonder]

This would be us. We aren't using a curriculum or anything. Just parenting. I'm still glad that there's this thread, though, since living in an area with free preschool creates a lot of pressure to send my LO to preschool.

[greenmamapagan]

Argh, I had my first uncomfortable hs conversation. We all went to a house-warming yesterday and I met a woman who introduced herself as a preschool teacher and then asked if my DD was "in kindy"? I've had plenty of chats about hs to family (half of whom just don't beleive us but they just smile and nod anyway) and most of our friends either hs or view it a a vaild and normal option that just isn't for them so I've never really been put on the spot like that before. I guess I'd better start practicing.