Morning Time

I've mentioned that we don't have a lot of structured learning time for our preschool this year, but there is one thing I do structure, and that's our morning time. I learned about the concept of "morning time" from Pam Barnhill, and the basic idea of it is that it's a time you have dedicated each day to learning that the whole family does together. I'm only teaching one kid (although Sierra certainly likes to find ways to be part of it!), so I see it as my opportunity to add just a little structured learning time into our day so I do the things that are most important to me.

Our morning time is probably only ten minutes long at the most, which I think is good for this age. I only include things that Rhonda and I both enjoy, so that she's always excited to have morning time. I do usually try to do it in the mornings after breakfast, although we sometimes end up doing it at other times of day. For Rhonda, I think she just views it as a special time that we get to snuggle up and do something together, which we don't always get at other times.

This is what our morning time looks like right now:

1. Primary song. I'm just going through the Primary songbook and singing the ones I know in order, so that I never get bored singing the same one. I used to try to teach Rhonda a song, but she doesn't like to be required to sing, so now I just sing to her.

2. Prayer. I noticed that, like most little kids, she would often say the same things over and over again in prayers, so now before we pray we plan the prayer together. I ask her, "What do you want to say thank you for?" and "Who do you want to say please bless?" She does often say the same things and the same people, but I try to encourage her to think of different things and people sometimes. I give her the chance to say the prayer, and if she doesn't want to then I say what we planned together.

3. Poem. I read the day's poem aloud from A Poem for Every Day of the Year. It's not a kids' collection of poems, but I think it's great for kids to hear beautiful language in poetry even if they don't really understand it. (I think kids' poems can be great too, but I'm personally really enjoying this collection so it's a great daily ritual for me, too!)

4. One page from the Illustrated Stories from the Book of Mormon. I read her one page and then ask her to tell me one thing she remembers from the story. Sometimes she needs a lot of help remembering something, but I try to challenge her to think of just one thing (I don't think it's a problem of memory or attention, just the challenge of putting it into words). Then I'll usually go back and re-tell the part of the story again in my own words. I think she often doesn't understand the stories very well the first time so she likes the repetition.

5. A Spanish word from Spanish At Home. I read out one Spanish word and a phrase with the word in it. I'm not trying very hard to teach Spanish (I'm not willing to dedicate the time or money to that currently), but I'm trying to incorporate it into our day whenever I remember. (Which isn't very often, but at least I'm reading one word a day!) Sometimes Rhonda repeats the word, but I don't require her to.

If Sierra is cooperating, I try to have a half hour of reading time right after morning time. We've been reading Magic Tree House books lately and Rhonda is really into them! I started just reading one chapter a day, but she's been insisting we read several chapters at a time and today we actually ended up reading the entire book because she never wanted me to stop. It's exciting to start being able to read chapter books with her! What are your favorite chapter books for younger kids?

As you can imagine, it can occasionally be challenging to do morning time with a toddler running around. Usually I'll pull out a puzzle or our little keyboard--something that can occupy her for a few minutes of time. I also think consistency has really helped; the more we've done morning time with Sierra around, the better she's become at entertaining herself for a few minutes.

I've experimented with adding other things to our morning time, but this is what works for us right now. I plan to add more in September. It's important to me right now that Rhonda really enjoys our morning time and that we have an opportunity to ease into "school." I've learned that it works best for Rhonda if I don't require her to do very much. My only true requirements are that she listens, and that she's reverent during the prayer. Obviously, this will change as she gets older. She's definitely the sort of child who prefers to observe, and I want to give her space to do this and not make morning time stressful for her. It's a time that we both love and value in our day.

May Highlights

May was a really fun month for us! At the end of April, Mom and Dad came to visit us. We went to see Hamilton, fulfilling a major dream for me. We had lots of other adventures, including a bread and chocolate tour of Dallas and taking the kids to parks, libraries, and bookstores all over town.

After my parents went home, we took a weekend trip to Utah for a family wedding. We also got to visit the Pralls. We loved seeing family and the kids had a great time. Doug got to be a groomsman in the wedding and he gave a great toast and had a lot of fun.

Toward the end of May, it really started feeling like summer! Our neighborhood pool opened, and we also got out the backyard unicorn pool, which the kids have loved.

For Memorial Day, we went out to Tyler State Park with some friends. We swam in the lake and had a potluck lunch. I had a major planning fail and didn't bring swimsuits! I'd assumed that the lake would have a shore, and that the kids would just wade out into it rather than actually swimming. Well, the lake was so high that it went all the way to the sidewalk, and there was no shore to speak of. It was more like a swimming pool. Thankfully, the park had a store nearby and we found swimsuits for us all. It was worth it! Rhonda had so much fun that she didn't want to leave. Sierra didn't really swim (we didn't have a swim diaper for her), but she had a blast running around.

May Cookies! I got to do three different cookies in May:

May Books! 

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman. I really liked this book about marriage and it made me really grateful for the marriage I have.

All the Money in the World: What the Happiest People Know about Getting and Spending by Laura Vanderkam. I was actually looking for a different book by Vanderkam at the library, but this was the only one they had and it piqued my interest. I liked the way it challenged the advice commonly given by finance experts. This book doesn't really give specific advice; it just offers different ways of looking at money in our lives.

Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind by Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire. I didn't enjoy this one much, although I did end up finishing it because it was so short, and I kept expecting it to get better. (The page count you see on Goodreads is misleading; a vast number of pages at the end were dedicated to the list of references. The page count of actual content was under 200.) It took me weeks to finish it, though. I couldn't quite figure out why the book was so boring, but I think I just don't like creativity being analyzed down into discrete categories of the "kind of person" who is creative. Much of the information wasn't really applicable to a creative person. Some of the chapters were just about the kinds of personalities that creative people tend to have--but you can't just change your personality to try to be more creative. Even that does sound like it would be interesting, but it just wasn't. I personally prefer a more mystical approach to creativity, because I think creativity is mystical. As much as these writers tried to convince me that they have creativity down to a science, I don't think modern science understands creativity nearly as much as these authors seem to think.

Emma by Jane Austen. I haven't read this book in years, and I was delighted to find that I still loved it even upon re-reading. However, I was more uncomfortable with certain things. I'm looking forward to discussing this with my book club next month.

No Doubt About It by Sheri Dew. I think Sheri Dew is such an amazing, inspiring person and I loved this book.

The Gown: A Novel of the Royal Wedding by Jennifer Robson. This novel about the women who embroidered Elizabeth II's wedding dress is just as wonderful as I hoped it would be. It was also more serious than the subtitle would suggest; it is, after all, a post-World War II novel. But don't let that deter you! It was a great story. However, it is a novel--none of the main characters are based on real people, mainly because we know next to nothing about the real women who embroidered the dress.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I've been meaning to read this book for years and I absolutely loved it. That said, I'm not sure everyone would enjoy it. The story is very sad (for good reason). At times, the culture that Hurston is writing about is hard to understand. But it really made me think about our country and its past. I read it on paper, but if I would recommend to most people to try an audio version. Hurston writes all the dialogue in a strong dialect which was hard for me to get used to reading with my eyes.

Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir by Ruth Reichl. I love Ruth Reichl and was eagerly anticipating this memoir of her years as the editor in chief of Gourmet magazine. This was such a fascinating read about the way she first completely revamped the magazine, then tried to save it in its final years. Reichl is an amazing writer and the way she tells this story makes me wish very badly that Gourmet were still around and I could subscribe to it. I think I want to be Ruth Reichl when I grow up.

This was a great reading month for me! All the great books I was reading kept up my momentum and I read a lot more than I usually do. Here's hoping I keep up the streak!

What we (don't) do for preschool

I tell people that Rhonda is homeschooled for preschool. And, well, that is objectively true: she's not going to an outside preschool.

But honestly? She's not really getting "schooled."

When it comes down to it, my philosophy for preschool this year is kind of to not really do preschool.

Now, there are certain "school-ish" things I've been doing, more to get her excited about learning and to ease us both into the homeschool life. We have morning time everyday (more on that later), we go on nature walks (when we can), and I've been putting a lot more emphasis on chores and what one might call "life skills" (learning to cook, clean, and do things for herself like get dressed and brush her teeth). We read aloud a lot (still not as much as I would like because #toddlerlyfe). We've been playing in sensory bins lately. She also takes a dance class.

To some people, this could seem like a lot of activities for someone who supposedly isn't "doing school," but conspicuously absent from this list are the things that one might typically expect a child to be taught in preschool: reading, writing, and basic math (or at least numbers).

If Rhonda were really interested in learning to read, I would teach her now. And to be honest, I have been a little impatient in the past and started trying to teach her, but she quickly lost interest and didn't want to do reading lessons after a few days, or just goofed around instead of following my instructions.

Rhonda knows all her letters and their sounds (or at least, she's learned all their sounds in the past even though she may have forgotten them by now because we don't review them all the time). If she were ready to read, she could read. She has all the necessary building blocks to start; she just doesn't want to start building.

And from everything I've read, that's perfectly okay and normal. The Read-Aloud Handbook taught me that many children actually aren't cognitively ready to learn to read until the age of six or seven. Rhonda can certainly wait until at least kindergarten age to learn to read. And let's be clear: if she were in public school, this wouldn't even be her last year of preschool. Since she was born in December, she still has one more year of preschool before she would be admitted to a kindergarten class. So the way I see it, I have at least two years that I must force myself to calm down about whether or not she can read before I can allow myself to freak out and convince myself that she will be the only adult of her generation who never learned to read and will live under a bridge the rest of her life. What I'm saying is, I'm cool, guys. 

I'm also definitely not convinced that there's any good reason to start teaching handwriting before a child even gets a handle on reading. It doesn't even make sense to me. Certainly, a child who doesn't learn to write until the age of six could very quickly catch up to her peers. Now, again, if Rhonda really wanted to learn to write, I would help her. She has shown some vague interest in the past, but I've tried to let it just be natural instead of jumping in and making her do writing drills.

As far as math, all I feel inclined to do at this point is help her read numbers up to 100. Sometimes we do really basic addition. And when I say we "do" it, I don't mean I sit her down at the kitchen table and start writing out equations. I mean that maybe she's playing with blocks, and I say, "Oh, you have two blocks. Here are three more. How many do you have now? One, two, three, four, five. Five blocks! Two plus three is five." She may not even participate in this conversation (although she does, more often than not). These are the kinds of things that I think most parents do without even thinking about them.

Next year, I do have a lot more fun stuff planned (more on this to come!), but I'm still not planning on teaching reading, writing, or math--or at least, I'm not planning on making a plan. I'll look for more informal opportunities to teach math, and when Rhonda decides she's ready to read, I'll start teaching her at whatever pace she likes.

I do admit, although I'm not too worried about the math and writing, I'm not nearly so easy-breezy about waiting to teach reading; the thought of letting Rhonda decide when reading instruction will happen kind of gives me heart palpitations. Our society does not smile kindly upon late readers, especially homeschooled ones. But the mantra that always calms me down is something my mom said to me: "No child that loves books as much as Rhonda does would not learn to read." And that's the truth: Rhonda just loves books. I know few children her age who love books as much as she does. She would love to be read to for hours every day, and at some point almost every day she can be found quietly sitting and looking at books. I have no doubt that someday, she's going to say to herself, "I have just got to know what these words say, and I don't want to have to wait until Mom is ready to read to me. I want to read it myself!" And whenever that day comes, we'll start learning to read.

Why homeschool?

The question "Why do you homeschool?" is one that has so many answers, I hardly know where to start. As a new homeschooler (and one that doesn't get questioned very often since my oldest is only preschool-age), I haven't really honed my answer yet. There are so many reasons that I homeschool, ranging from reasons specific to my child, reasons based on my own experience, reasons based on what I know about public education...the list goes on.

But the other day I was reminded of an experience from my childhood that helped crystallize one of the major reasons I want to homeschool, in my own mind.

Sixth grade was the last grade I was ever in public school. One thing I was very excited for in middle school was taking a middle school science class. In elementary school, we didn't have science--just "social studies," which somehow was supposed to encompass history, science, culture, and I don't even know what else. But middle school was different. Middle school had an entire hour every day devoted specifically to science!

When I entered the science classroom the first day, I looked around in wide-eyed wonder. The room was lined with what looked to my eyes like a serious laboratory: there were sinks (presumably for washing chemicals off one's hands), beakers (presumably for mixing potions in), and complicated charts and posters (presumably based on the science we would learn in class). I was pumped. I was going to do real science experiments!

The first day of class wasn't quite what I envisioned: rather than breaking out the chemicals, we were lectured in lab safety. However, despite that, my excitement only grew. We were learning about how to be safe around chemicals and other science stuff, which surely meant that we would be knee-deep in chemistry, biology, and physics in no time!

For what felt like weeks, we continued to drill the lab safety rules into our heads. We made posters about lab safety. We memorized rules. (It was probably only a week or two, but to me it felt like ages. Also, did we really need a week or two to memorize rules like "Keep your goggles on at all times"?) Surely, once this was over, we would get to the good stuff!

No such luck. The only actual science thing I remember studying that year was the way you draw mountains on a map. (Another thing I remember so distinctly that we must have spent weeks working on it.) I can think of few science subjects that would be less interesting to an 11-year-old than how to read maps of mountains, yet apparently this was a vital topic in sixth grade.

We didn't mix potions. We didn't drop objects off the tops of buildings (like they did in my beloved Sideways Stories from Wayside School). We never so much as washed our hands in those ever-inviting sinks. Ironically, we never actually had reason to follow the rules we spent the first two weeks memorizing.

Now, I can't say I blame our teacher for not wanting to hand dangerous chemicals to a pack of unruly 11-year-olds. Perhaps she even had cool experiments planned, but concluded that we (aka the other kids, because I was busy trying to prove how mature and rule-following I was so we could get to the good stuff) were too rowdy and would never follow the rules. And she was probably right. If we'd been allowed anywhere near chemicals, someone in that class probably would have had to go to the emergency room.

But I don't want my kids to have to spend a year quietly decoding boring mountain maps while they're waiting for something interesting to happen. (Not that mountain maps are objectively boring--but if you're a kid who wants to pour some chemicals into a beaker and instead are forced to read mountain maps for weeks on end, they are definitely boring.) With homeschooling, we get to do the interesting stuff. If my kid says they want to do a real science experiment, we can. Because we're not working with a class of thirty insane kids. And honestly? I'm pretty excited myself to pour some vinegar over baking soda.

Problem Solving + Staying in Bed

I recently read the book How to Talk so Kids will Listen and Listen so Kids will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, and so far, it has truly changed the way I parent day-to-day. I've read a few parenting books in my day, and usually I'll think while I'm reading, Wow, these are great ideas! This book is really going to help me! But then, in the moment I actually need those brilliant ideas, I don't remember them. This book is different. I still make a lot of mistakes, but I also remember what to do a lot, even in moments when I'm frustrated or angry.

One of the things the book recommends is to problem-solve with your child, when it comes to a recurring problem that you haven't been able to fix using smaller strategies. You sit the child down (in a peaceful moment, not at the time the problem is occurring and everyone is cranky), and you say, "Look, we have a problem. You don't want to stay in your room at night after we put you to bed. But Daddy and I want you to stay in your room. So, let's come up with some ideas of how we can solve this problem."

(Okay, yes, this is exactly the problem we were having.)

You get out a piece of paper and a pen and you write down every idea. THIS IS IMPORTANT, PEOPLE. Sorry to yell, but personally, I didn't think this would be all that important with a child that doesn't know how to read yet. But guess what? Kids that don't know how to read still love to see an adult treat their ideas as important enough to write down.

You might say, "How about you go to bed half an hour earlier?" Probably, your 4-year-old will protest, but you'll say, "We're not deciding what to do yet. We're just writing down ideas." Excited by the prospect that everything will get written down, your 4-year-old may come up with this brilliant solution: "I'll keep getting up." You bite your tongue and write it down.

Finally, when all your ideas have been exhausted, you read through the list with your child. Both you and the child have veto power: if anyone doesn't like an idea, it gets crossed out. If you both like it, it stays.

Whenever I've gone through this process with Rhonda just the two of us, we've managed to come up with a good solution. This time, I was kind of stumped. I didn't really have any good ideas. Thankfully, I'd involved Doug this time, and he had a brilliant idea: What about a sticker chart (like the kind we used with potty training)?

That was the winner. And guess what? It worked. Most of the time, Rhonda stays in her room at night! When she gets 7 stickers (currently; I plan to increase the amount gradually), she gets to have a special outing with Doug or me.

I tell you this not because I think I'm a brilliant parent who just does everything right--honestly, I just want this here so that in a year, when I'm probably due for a re-read of How to Talk so Kids will Listen, I can look back on this and remember that this actually works. Kids want to be part of the solution! They want to have control over their lives (surprise, surprise).

In fact, I've been using this strategy so often and so successfully that the other day when I was complaining about how Rhonda doesn't always stay in her room during quiet time (a time I desperately need for my own sanity), Rhonda looked at me and said, "Mom, I want some solutions."
"Huh?" I said helpfully.
"We need some solutions! Like with bedtime!"
And I realized that this time, she was asking me to sit down with her and make a list of ideas. It blew me away! Quickly, we decided together that she could also get a sticker for staying in her room during quiet time. So far, it's worked--and I really am staying much more sane. Even a 4-year-old can take some responsibility to make things work.

New Blog!

Hi family and friends!

I haven't been blogging for quite a while now, but I've been thinking it would be nice to have a little place to chronicle our adventures in homeschooling, parenting, kid stuff, etc. and possibly share it with family or anyone else who's interested. My pictures often get lost in the black hole of the hard drive that holds our millions of pictures (all the good and bad ones, including the 462 pictures I took of the kids swinging on the swings that one day), and although I like to use Instagram to share pictures, I often find myself wanting to write more than people actually want to read on Instagram (including me).

I've learned from experience that I have a terrible memory when it comes to my kids. When I was pregnant with Sierra, and shortly after she was born, I kept asking myself, "When do babies start eating solid foods? When do they roll over? When do they crawl? When do they sleep through the night?" Despite the fact that I had already gone through all of this with Rhonda, I hardly remembered a thing about babies. There are many things I've already forgotten that I wish I'd written down somewhere.

Now that I'm doing preschool at home with Rhonda, I've been itching to record what we've been doing. I write it down in a notebook at the end of the day, but I don't write much, and it feels kind of impersonal, more of a record if the Authorities come calling (which they obviously wouldn't for preschool, but whatever). I do write in a journal, but that's just for me, not really for family stuff.

So, the idea of the blog was born: a place where I could chronicle our activities with plenty of pictures and plenty of words, with the plus that family and friends could take a look if they were interested, and a nicely condensed and curated collection of memories I can look back on in the years to come (when I'll surely be asking myself, "What the heck did we do for preschool?"). Welcome to Hubbards at Home!