On a reading binge

Occasionally, I worry that homeschooling Jack may not be easy.

Those are the days, usually when the moon is in Cancer, when he is being hard to get along with, uncooperative, and cranky. The days when he announces "I hate reading. I don't like food. I hate baby. I like nothing!" How, I wonder, are we ever going to get algebra into this child's head?!?!?



But of course, all children have moods. I'd worry more if he were a Stepford child. (I'd enjoy it, I'm sure -- but I would worry.)

Then there are the weeks he goes on reading or math binges.

A few days ago, Jack started demanding that we read Paddington stories for hours on end. That was fun, and when my voice wore out, he propped himself in front of a bookshelf and read to himself for a couple of hours more. He can't manage Paddingtom on his own, so he read some picture books.

Yesterday, he came tearing into the kitchen shrieking "I found it! I found my blue book!!!"

The "blue book" is his current reader from the Days Go By series. Only he is allowed to read those. He had been refusing. He wanted to read the green book instead. (I think he finds the current book "too easy", but the payoff comes with persistence. Not everything in life is ideal.) The green book is for grade 3. He can read them as fast as he's inclined, but he has to read them in order. That's the rule. He sat down and read to me while I cleaned the kitchen -- 60 pages. I think he may get to the green book one day after all. [laugh] After he'd finished that, he had me read to him for two hours from Wind in the Willows.

These are the days that I think that doing school is going to be relatively easy. If he goes in binges like this at four, then we should be OK. It doesn't take this kind of energy *every* day to get a good education. Just sometimes.

From at Zoo with G...

I am currently focusing on learning about Charlotte Mason's views on education. I would have been very hard pressed to wade through the books ten years ago, because she and her proponents are intent on one specific style of moral education. While I agree completely with the goals, I do find that I have to work constantly to get past the Christian spin to see the sense behind it. I am quite sure I'd have thrown the book across the room in frustration ten years ago. But lately, I have found myself more and more in agreement with many of the views of the conservative movement. Except that religion thing and the political thing - -which I am getting better and better at reading around. It makes me wonder whether, once I have read all the religious books explaining Miss Mason's methods, I shouldn't write one more approachable to the pagan or even secular communities. Yeah -- like I have the time to do that. Maybe once Rod is a famous astrologer making heaps of money and I can retire.

Anyway, Miss Mason sees education not as the filling of a mind, but as the presentation of a buffet of delicious and delightful knowledge for the child to absorb and make his or her own. Her view is that, as educators, it is our job to ensure that the "mind foods" on that buffet are wholesome and nourishing, but after that, we should not put ourselves between the child and the knowledge. We should present it, and then get out of the way. She believed strongly in trusting the child to learn -- her belief was that children are wired to want to learn and that we actually interfere when we try to "teach". That appeals to my sense of how these things work.

She also teaches that education is largely the training of the Will. You know that appeals to me. [grin] She discusses at length how inculcating habits of will is so critical to the child finding happiness and success in life -- and that echoes my own experience. I had no focus in life when i was young - -largely because I rejected what my parents were trying to teach me. Sorry Mom. -- and I didn't manage to find contentment until I had trained myself in useful habits and directed will. I think that a part of it is that as I developed my own will and good habits, I was less attractive to those others who were drifting along as I had been and started attracting people to me who were also directed and focussed. Those are easier people to be around because they largely do what they say they will and are basically content. (If they're not there yet, they're working on it, not whinging.) If I can help Jack to develop those habits sooner rather than later, maybe I can help him skip those very painful, aimless years I had and I see his brothers living through.

Gads -- off to work with me! Have a great one!