Last week I was a total home-body. My daughter and I had colds, but my desire to stick close to home was more than that. The kids and I huddled in the house, reading books, watching TV, playing games, moving furniture and cleaning out closets.

I liken it to that nesting instinct women have before giving birth. I know that the next couple of weeks bring new classes, co-ops and sports, throwing us back into the social circle we’ve been a bit absent from lately. And, last week, I knew I needed some nesting time to prepare for it all.

This is the first year in my homeschooling journey that I have structured plans. I’m inherently an unschooler, and feel confident in that philosophy. But my recent exposure to some wonderful books, programs and inspiring friends has lit a fire in me. Additionally, my son has asked me to do more “school” with him. (Excuse me while I pause and revel in the fact that my son loves to learn…)

So I did some prep work for this year. I now know why other homeschool moms scour the Rainbow Resource catalog each year. There are some awesome books and activities that I’ve been missing out on. While I still won’t sit my kids at a table and “do school,” I am looking forward to curling up on the couch and sharing some of these materials with them:

With Cassie (1st grade):

• Five In A Row: Each week you read one book with your child every day for five days (hence “five in a row”). The teacher’s volume gives you five book-related activities that span social studies, language, art, math and science to do that week.
• Math Games
• Art, geography, and other activities with our homeschool co-op.
• Piano, Tap Dancing, Gymnastics, and Karate classes, as well as Ski Club.

With Logan (6th grade):

• History Odyssey: Ancient world history program (Cassie will listen along to some of this).
• Holt McDougal Math (online videos).
• Ready, Set, Write!
• Web Design and Technology clubs with homeschool co-op.
• Art, Philosophy, Civics and Marketing/Economics activities (and whatever else we come up with!) with homeschool co-op.
• Baseball, Lacrosse, Skiing and Cooking class.

Writing it out like this makes it seem like so much! But our schedule is balanced and has lots of down time built in. I’m excited about this year. Do you have a plan for homeschooling this year?

This is a guest post by my husband, Paul Entin.

If Age of Empires III wasn’t called a video game, it could be called an economics simulation. Then it could be used as a tool for learning instead of dismissed as a waste of time. In this PC game, each player starts a colony with an explorer and seven settlers. To survive and thrive, settlers must set to work gathering berries and hunting for food, cutting down trees for buildings and mining metals for money. As the colony grows, more settlers arrive. Hunting and gathering are
replaced by farming and domesticating livestock, mining is replaced by banking and woodcutting is replaced by factory production. A market promotes the efficient conversion of commodities and money from one to another – minus a percentage as a brokerage fee. And all of this needs to be humming along while accounting for the colony’s defense against the colony on the other side of the plain. It would be impossible to win at this game without understanding several fundamental principles involving economics, defense and government. And lo and behold, these principles are learned and retained simply by playing the game. No textbooks required. For example:

1. Everybody contributes. Every person living in the colony needs food and shelter. Everyone is, to some degree, a cost to the colony. Therefore, every member of the colony needs to contribute, or in economic terms, needs to produce goods. A settler who isn’t farming must be building or mining or otherwise producing. An idle settler is a burden draining the colony of resources. So destructive idleness is, in fact, that the game alerts the player if a settler is left idle between tasks. Watching TV, lounging by the pool and vacationing on the beach are economically unthinkable. If you’re not helping, you’re hindering. There certainly aren’t any inspectors, administrators or other officials living off of the work of others.
2. Opportunity cost. Since resources are limited and costs are involved in gathering resources, how the limited resources are allocated requires careful, thoughtful decision making. Should the available wood be used to build houses to support and attract additional settlers or to build a mill to boost agricultural production? Should the available gold be invested in technological improvements that boost production of goods or in raising an army to protect the colony? Each purchase is at the expense of another purchase and each decision has consequences that impact everyone in the colony. Now don’t forget to consider that military personnel require food and shelter but don’t contribute in terms of economic production. With a finite amount of population permitted (200), each soldier represents one less settler able to produce goods.
3. Sustainability. The game starts with numerous head of bison roaming the plains, a number of gold mines and lush forests. But eventually, these resources will be depleted so alternative methods of production must be found. Domesticating livestock, farming and using advanced materials, for example, must be considered and they must be considered before resources expire, not after everyone is starving.
4. Technology is good. Settlers can cut wood at a given rate but investing in a log flume and sawmill boosts the production rate. Settlers can plant a farm but studying seed technology boosts the production come harvest time. Raising an army of musketmen is fine but improving their weapons with rifling allows the same number of soldiers to more effectively defend the colony. It would be unthinkable to believe that it’s better to use a lot of human labor to perform a job slowly when a few tools can help fewer people perform a job faster and easier, freeing the human labor to contribute in another area.
5. Value of services. It’s common for politicians and TV commercials to slam “transaction fees”, “brokerage fees” and “convenience fees”. We’ve been told for decades that providing services should be free of charge as if they offer no value. In Age of Empires, players are grateful for the ability to instantly exchange one type of commodity for another. This ability has value. The market where these transactions occur wasn’t built there without cost and for this ability to trade goods, a transaction fee is paid. This fee pays for the service being provided – the ability to easily exchange goods. It is no different than a credit card company offering the ability to write a check for instant access to cash and earning a percentage for both the service and for bearing the risk of extending credit. Yet people have been taught to become irate when required to pay for services like these, though without them our economy could not function as smoothly.
6. Deterrence. At first, while I was carefully and methodically sending my settlers hunting, gathering and building, my opponent’s army would quickly arrive and destroy my colony. Game over. Then my 11-year old son, who convinced me to try this game, explained how to prevent it. “You don’t need to raise a whole army – that’s too expensive – you just need a few soldiers so the other guy won’t attack.” Aha! A deterrence. The opposite of which I’ll call an invitation. It’s a concept that’s self-evident to a pre-teen but seemingly alien to our leadership in Washington D.C.

Video games have come a long way since Space Invaders and Asteroids. And while vile, cop-killing, Grand Theft Auto-style games capture the headlines, hundreds of other games that don’t grab headlines would be labeled educational if they simply weren’t so much fun to play. Parents need to rethink their perception of video games and stop lumping everything on a computer or console as a wasteful diversion away from productive, educational activities. It may be time to recognize that some video games are both productive and educational and it’s their extra element of fun that makes the learning process so effortless.

This week my son jumped over another hurdle in our homeschooling journey: The Presentation.

Whenever we’ve had an opportunity to do something performance-related, Logan has shied away. I never pushed because I understand his personality. Then last month our homeschool co-op organized “Pick a President Day” (which got snowed out and is re-scheduled for this week).  Each child was to create a short presentation about a President. Since Logan has had an interest in movie-making the past few months, I had the idea for him to create a movie instead of actually standing up in front of everyone.

At first, he still resisted. This time, I pushed a little. One thing I do think I am good at is recognizing when it’s time to push my kids. I have a pretty good feel for when they are ready and my instincts are usually correct. So I started some research myself. I started talking about our chosen President (Truman) and asking Logan what he thought of some ideas I had for the movie. And he started to respond.

We worked together and he did a great job on the video (see below). He’s still a little hesitant about showing it tomorrow at our co-op. He asked if he could leave the room when it’s played. But I have a feeling he won’t.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of homeschooling is learning through living. Instead of sitting in a classroom and reading about things, my kids are on a permanent field trip.

Monday night we went to a living history dinner. A restaurant in our area serves period food, shows you how it was prepared, and has important historical figures and musicians wandering around to chat with you. We enjoyed dinner with Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.

Jefferson was extremely engaging and talked for a good amount of time with the kids. My husband asked him what he thought young people could do to be involved in politics and take action, and this was his answer (excuse the poor audio quality, we were in a restaurant):

(Please watch the related videos and check out more from Thomas Jefferson – he was really excellent.)

I was surprised at the crowd in the restaurant. It was almost exclusively older adults. A friend of mine (another homeschooling Mom) went on another evening and observed the same demographic. Does this mean that younger people, and even middle-aged people, are less interested in history? I’m puzzled why parents aren’t flocking to take their kids to this sort of event. I suppose most parents have to address sports and homework on a Monday evening.

I think homeschooling parents are much more active than other parents in seeking out these unique activities. We can’t rely on a school for field trips and assemblies – we need to create these opportunities. And we do! My kids, and their friends, are exposed to so much and are able to fully immerse themselves in activities that interest them.

In a couple weeks, we’ll be taking a “Wok ‘n Walk” tour of Chinatown in Philadelphia. Chef Joseph Poon offers three-hour walking tours that include a fortune cookie factory, a temple, a vegetable chopping demo, a full-course Chinese meal, and more. These are the amazing types of things we get to do all the time. And during the week – when there are no crowds!

I love my life.

I had an interesting conversation with some homeschooling moms the other day. We were discussing responsibility and teaching our children that X needs to be done to get Y benefit. The other two moms have schoolwork that they require their children to complete each day and suggested that this schoolwork was the child’s “job.”  Their feeling is that children need to learn – through various responsibilities that include schoolwork – that you need to complete your responsibilities, even if you don’t love them, in order to get paid and succeed in life. And by succeed, I mean having enough money to house, clothe and feed themselves.  The basics.

I agree largely with this assessment. Children should understand that life is not free. Every individual should produce something to get something in return. Where I disagree is that parent-imposed schoolwork is a necessary part of the equation.

I explained my philosophy that there are other ways to teach responsibility other than asking a child to complete assignments that may or may not be interesting to them at that moment. I am a huge proponent of letting learning happen when the child is truly motivated by a topic. I’ve seen it work in both of my children. They both learned to read with almost no help from me. They learn from engaging in life. I expose them to a lot and when I see a spark, I jump on it. Unschooling parents have been called lazy, but I think it’s actually more work than following a curriculum.

Responsibility and accountability can be taught in a natural way by asking your child to be a productive member of the household. Letting them do things for themselves and assist with appropriate household responsibilities is an important part of growing up. Learning is also an important part of growing up. Children want to learn and be productive. They want to be like adults, they want to model us. Given the chance to freely explore their passions, kids soak up knowledge like the proverbial sponge.

While I know where I stand on my schooling philosophy, the “responsibility and routine” theme of our conversation kept haunting me. My kids have responsibilities (that don’t involve specific schoolwork), but they don’t have a routine. Their responsibilities aren’t even routine. People talk about kids being overscheduled, but mine are underscheduled. Not in the sense of having things to do – we do plenty of classes and activities – but I am very loose with our day-to-day routine. Eating, sleeping, getting dressed – these are often optional and negotiable. We eat when we’re hungry, get dressed when we need to, and sleep when we’re tired. Sometimes this works for us. Sometimes the lack of structure leads to boredom or arguing for the kids and a tendency for me to spend a little too much time with my laptop. Maybe a bit more structure would benefit us all?

Yes, yes. The “studies” all say that children – and adults for that matter – thrive on routine. One thing I am really looking to improve is my focus. I might sit at my laptop for an hour while the kids are occupied, but I’m not fully present or getting any work done. I’m staring at my email or browsing through Twitter and Facebook. On the flip side, I might be doing something with the kids and not be fully present with them because I’m doing chores or thinking about a blog design I’m working on. And perhaps by not scheduling in specific “schooling” time, I am missing an opportunity to expose them to even more.

Ah, the elusive balance.

A lot of ideas are running through my mind. I’m creating lists and loose – but tighter than our current – schedules. I’m easing into this idea of structure and I’ll be sharing my journey here in future posts. I’d love to hear how you structure your day, especially the homeschoolers/unschoolers out there.

I’m teaching a web design class to 11 kids (ages 10-13) in our homeschool co-op. Yesterday they learned about the “font” tag and worked with different sizes, typefaces, and colors. Once they mastered the basics, they started asking questions.

“What happens if you add the color codes together?” One boy experimented, adding {font color=”#FFFFFF+FF0000+660099+FFFFCC”} to his HTML document. Inexplicably, the color came out yellow. Interesting.

“Is there a “light” tag?” Not that I’m aware of. “But check it out…” And he showed me how using the “light” tag as an opposite to the “strong” tag produced a thinner, lighter font. Huh.

I’m sure there are logical explanations for these results. I don’t know everything about web design. I explained to them that a lot of the things they were trying out might work on their own computer, but are not valid HTML tags and would likely show up differently on different browsers and operating systems. It led to a discussion (that I hadn’t planned until a later point in the class) about how designers are often frustrated by the different standards used by different browsers (curse you IE!).

At the end of class, one boy quietly showed me the background color of his web page. It was a brownish-yellowish-greenish color that looked like baby poop. He told me he put {body bgcolor=”crap”} in his code. We laughed hysterically.

That kind of “crap” would get you detention (at a minimum) in any school. But I was thrilled. The kids were using their brains, taking the next step, testing the limits and making a connection. These are the times when I am overjoyed to be homeschooling and interacting with such an amazing bunch of kids.

Most readers of this blog know that I homeschool my children. Many also know that I sent my daughter to preschool this past year. Now that preschool is over, several people have asked me if I’ll send her on to kindergarten in a traditional school. My answer is no.

Preschool was fun. Playtime, with some education and social etiquette thrown in. It was a good experience for our whole family and it actually taught me to more fully embrace homeschooling. I learned that as much as I yearn for more “me” time, I like being with my kids and sharing their learning and growing process. There were several times that Cassie shared something she learned at preschool and I’d get this prickly feeling, like, “Oh, you learned that? I wanted to teach you that.”

I did consider sending her to school. I don’t “get” my daughter the same way I “get” my son. Our personalities clash. And the arguing that goes on between my kids makes me want to find a way to separate them permanently. But none of this is a valid reason to put my kids in school.

A valid reason might be believing that they would thrive and be challenged and be taught to think independently and pursue their passions. But I don’t believe that would happen. I believe they’d learn to mock or shun kids that are different or younger than they are. They’d learn to memorize facts to pass a test and get a good grade. They’d likely learn to be bleeding-heart liberals. And would I be any less stressed? I doubt it. If preschool is any indicator, I’d have my hands full helping with homework (that I’d be pissed off about because subjects weren’t being taught properly), field trips (that I’d rather do on my own in a more leisurely fashion), parties, assemblies, fundraisers and other responsibilities that come with attending a public or private school. And I’d know much less about my kids.

I homeschool my children because I believe they’ll be better off. And because I want to. For awhile I wasn’t sure that I wanted to. But I am now.

So thank you, preschool. It was an interesting ride. But I’ll happily give up the early-morning rush, getting homework in the backpack, scouring the house for a show-and-tell item, and packing up snacks and craft items and permission slips. We do that once a week when we have our homeschool co-op. The rest of the week we’re happy to have leisurely mornings in our jammies before moving on to our field trips and playdates. And the learning? With just a little suggestion and a rich environment, it happens all the time. It’s beautiful, natural, and pretty darn exciting to be a part of.

Did you know that in 1992 Mattel released Teen Talk Barbie who spoke a number of phrases including “Math class is tough!”? Well, that doll was recalled and we all now know from Danica McKellar that math is neither tough, nor does it suck. (I really love Danica. Loved The Wonder Years and love her. She’s way cool.)

Since my daughter is only 4 1/2, I can’t yet get her the book Math Doesn’t Suck, but I can work with her on some fun kindergarten math activities.

• Maths Is Fun: We love the picture addition worksheets — a great way to introduce basic addition to your child.
• Number Time:Unique math worksheets including number ladders, number stories, sequencing, and more.
• SoftSchools: Generate your own worksheets and online games, personalized with your child’s name.
• Kindergarten Math: Lots of simple games your child can play online.
• HomeschoolMath.net: Suggests games, activities, worksheets and goals for kindergarten math. The concepts presented here seemed easy for kindergarten level, so this article may also suitable for preschool math.

My son is studying biology this session in his homeschool co-op science class. I’m really not a science person and particularly not a biology person. Hated it in high school and had to take it twice to pass in college.

Luckily, my husband loves science and has this baffling ability to remember everything he learned in school. (Just realized my daughter has an incredible memory, too. Here again with the cloning.) But I did manage this fun experiment that shows kids how capillary action works in plants.

Celery has special tubes called xylems which pull water from the ground up through the stems and leaves. Just cut a stalk of celery and put it into a cup of water with food coloring. Leave it for a day or so and you’ll soon see the food coloring has been drawn up through the xylems.

Read more about this experiment here.

I’ve tried unsuccessfully for the past three days to post a comment on the Momversations post, “Homeschool: Good or Bad?” So I’m going to post my comment here, cuz I kinda like what I have to say.

I always have to laugh when I hear people debating whether parents are “qualified” to teach their kids. I realize all homeschooling families are different, but I really “teach” my kids very little. We have co-ops and homeschool groups and field trips and classes and activities and sports. And we read a lot. I expose them to as much as possible. When my kids hit upon something they are interested in, we immerse ourselves in it.

My main goal in homeschooling my children is to teach them HOW TO TEACH THEMSELVES. I truly believe that if a person knows how to learn, they can accomplish anything in life. In public (and even private) schools, children are taught how to pass a test and regurgitate information that the government has deemed important. I just can’t see how that benefits anyone. Oh, wait, except maybe the government.

I also want to share Judy’s blog, Consent of the Governed. I recently went through my Google Reader subscriptions and cleared out almost all of them (I was up to 300+ feeds) because I couldn’t keep up and frankly couldn’t remember why I subscribed to many of them. Now that I have only a few, I am keeping up much better and reading the blogs that are most valuable to me. Consent of the Governed is one that I’m glad to be reading regularly again. I find myself sharing, stumbling, bookmarking and clipping almost every one of her posts. If you want to read some common sense political blogging, check her out.