Educational Ideas For Christmas!

Well, here in Canada we are in full Christmas mode. Unlike Americans who are thinking about Turkey dinners and stuffing with pumpkin pie right now, we had our Thanksgiving last month. Many houses on our street already have Christmas lights up and on. Some homes have Christmas Trees up and in the front window already ready for gifts to be placed. The community lights are being turned on. Wreaths hang off street lights. Stores are full of Christmas items. Our TV's are bombarded with Christmas commercials.

My Dad has been asking what the kids want for Christmas for a couple of weeks already. So, I'm researching what the kids might like that falls under more of an educational status rather than just regular toys. I have updated our book list on our blog and plan on adding a spot near the bottom to show some toys and games of interest. I don't know about your kids but with our kids they each have their own personal interests and skills. Austyn is a building and Science. Zoe is anything creative and games! So in each instant they have definite educational interests that we can encourage through some educational toys that I know they will be very excited about having.

Here are some ideas I came up with that I think our kids would love.

For Austyn: Meccano RC Race Car, Architecto, RushHour, ZomeTool, Science Magic, Straws Connectors, Crazy Forts, Snaptricity... legos and megnetics are also always welcome in this home!

  

For Zoe: Some of the building sets above she'd also love to have for her own (straws and crazy forts) along with Cranium Cariboo, Sequence for Kids, A puppet Theatre, Puppet making kit, More dress-up clothes, tierra making kit.

 

 

There you have it! Some educational toys that my kids would love. Hopefully this helps out the grandparents. What would your kids love for Christmas?

I love this site for ideas: http://www.youtube.com/user/MastermindToys

“Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”~ Plato

The Possibility of Unschooling

It has been a challenge to find good, free unschooling reading material. Our libraries here are lacking for homeschool material. I've lived in other places and have not had the troubles that I've had here. Many of the books we search for from our reading lists just don't exist here. After much searching online I finally found a book that is available at our library on unschooling and I'm really enjoying it. It seems to be a good introduction to unschooling so far.

Austyn enjoys the stories from Ambleside as well and some of the reading material suggested on Ambleside Online we have at home since we were following The Well-Trained Mind. From what I've read so far we can unschool and use these reading materials.

I am a planner and like some structure. I hope I'm okay with letting go and just being there to help my kids explore and expand their knowledge.

Here is the book I'm reading.

“Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts which other men have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life.” ~ unknown

Charlotte Mason (Ambleside Online) Trial

We've only done this style for a few days. I love the little stories and how beautiful they sound when they are read aloud. The problem I am having is that the messages in the stories are sometimes way off from my own personal beliefs. Now, I want to make it clear that I am okay with my children thinking differently as long as they choose to (as adults), but while they are young I find it a dangerous thing to have them believe that they should just listen to what people tell them and believe what they have to say "Have Faith". Here is an example of a story that I had an issue with the message.

It is a cute story where a butterfly leaves a caterpillar in charge of taking care of it's babies when they hatch on the cabbage as her dying wish. The caterpillar doesn't know how to take care of baby caterpillars and assumes that they are going to come out as smaller versions of their mother (tiny butterflies) and are different than herself. She consults with a lark to ask how she will do this and the lark tells her that they are actually going to be caterpillars like her and later they, like the caterpillar, will turn into butterflies. All they need to eat is cabbage just like her. The caterpillar doesn't have faith in the larks words but later finds that the lark was telling the truth and that she really should just have faith.

Pariables of Nature, A Lesson of Faith:
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/gatty/parables/parables.html#faith

I turned this story around a bit by just leaving it up to Austyn to decide if we should just have faith when someone tells us something. He answered "No. we should not". I told him that some people do just have faith and that is okay for them, but that it is never a bad thing to question what others tell us and "Critical thinking" is always a good trait to have. It is okay to look for his own truth in the world. He doesn't just have to believe what others tell him no matter what the caterpillar's conclusion was.

As an after-thought I also thought that one of my beliefs is that we are all one (oneness). The caterpillar sees his truth as the only way and so does the lark and the butterfly. The caterpillar believed that the eggs would be different than her. In truth, they are all the same. They all have their own experiences and truths from those experiences. Just because the butterfly, the caterpillar and the lark all think and see something different doesn't make them all that different at all. And in nature they all work together as a whole (one).

I don't mind that others believe that they should just have faith. I don't mind at all. I just believe that in todays world the idea of just believing what people tell us could be harmful to a young child. This could set them up for abuse. I don't even mind if other parents disagree with me on this point. We all have our beliefs. I can respect that.

I think that at some point we do just have to believe or disbelieve in something that we can't prove, but for a young child this doesn't make much sense to introduce. It just won't work in our home. I think I will need to check all of these stories before reading them to the kids from now on.

"Allow your deepest truths to be altered. Alter them yourself, for goodness' sake. I mean that quite literally. Alter them yourself, for goodness' sake. Because your new idea of Who You Are is where the growth is. Your new idea of What Is So is where evolution accelerates. Your new idea of the Who, What, Where, When, How, and why of it is where the mystery gets solved, the plot unravels, the story ends. Then you can begin a new story, and a grander one."~ Conversations with God, Book 3

Chalk Pastel Pictures

 

Today, while we were waiting for friends to visit us for a play date the kids were so eager that I wanted to keep their minds off of it for a while. To do this I suggested we do some drawing and we could use my "special" pencils. I have some chalk pastel pencils that I pulled out for us to use. We sat down in our basement and drew away in our art books. They seemed to really enjoy it. Above I organized the pictures to be under the child that drew it. So, Zoe's picture shows and then her drawings and then Austyn's picture and then his drawings.  I love the imagination in my kids. They draw such imaginative pictures!

“A picture is worth a thousand words.”~Napoleon Bonaparte

Book Sharing Monday

The Amazing Pop-Up Geography Book by Kate Petty and Jennie Maizels

 is a great book! It's exciting to kids because of how it has so much interaction and is brightly coloured. It has a full globe that comes out and becomes a sphere. The page we spent the most time on was the page above. It shows how far it is between cities and at the bottom you can see approximately how long it would take to get from point A to point B by traveling different ways. Austyn liked the snail. It took over 200 years to get from New York to Tokyo by snail. LOL!!

Planning! That is what I do.

Planning for special occasions
I thought this would be an appropriate time to talk about planning that goes into our activities sometimes. Right now I'm planning Christmas activities for us. I need to come up with books, crafts, themes, trips, etc. There are details in this as well. What do I want to focus on? This year I'd like to look at Christmas around the world and Pioneer Christmas. I want to make cards, send cards out, make gifts, make crafts, bake cookies and other treats, go to some local Christmas events and read about some history of Christmas. I want to look at other holidays around now like Hanukkah.

Planning our homeschool experience with different styles
I also went through a period where our homeschool actives were not being enjoyed as much as I'd have liked by Austyn. I researched as much as I could without having to purchase books and set up a simple schedule for following Charlotte Mason for the next month to see how it goes. I'll be borrowing some unschool books as well and will be unschooling with CM. Trial and error is what we are doing and it's not all that uncommon for the first year or so. There are so many different learning styles and as a homeschool mom I need to see what works best for my kids and also what works for our family.

Planning for our local homeschool groups
When we want our kids to be involved in extracurricular activities it's important as a homeschool mom to get involved in those activities if it's possible. I have two small children and find it easy right now to help out with some activities outside of our home, so I'm also planning activities for our homeschool groups.

Work?
It may all sound like so much work but I find it fun most of the time. It really doesn't feel like work. It feels like parenting. I'd research to decide if my kids are getting a shot or to find out when they lose their teeth or what I should do for a cough. I research and plan recipes to decide what we will be cooking for supper. I research and plan where we might want to go for our family vacation. I research what to do for good parenting practices. These are all a part of parenting and so is educating our kids. To me it is all the same. As any mom would understand... you do what you need to do for your child. This is what moms do. I don't see homeschooling as any different than any other parenting practice and believe that if we(parents) were not pushed to believe we are not able to educate our kids we'd all just do it naturally. We did for thousands of years until only about 200 years ago. It's in our nature.

“God could not be everywhere and therefore he made mothers.”~Proverb

FV Homeschool Public Speaking Event

 

The public speaking event went well. They started with the youngest and went up to oldest, so Zoe was almost the first to speak. She spoke about her two kitties. It was so cute. Austyn didn't feel comfortable going up but enjoyed watching.

These images only show some of the kids there. It was just about a full house.

“We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.”~ Stacia Tauscher