this woman’s work

Noah: Well first we take some buttons and then you don’t tell anybody
what number you’re thinking of. And then take a calculator and I type
down the words on the card and then I see what number it is you’re
thinking of! And that’s the end of the story.

Dawn: Noah and I were playing his board game Math Race and then I went and got some notecards and we decided to solve the mystery of 10. I got out our buttons and I lined up 10 white buttons. Then above that I lined up 1 blue button and 9 red buttons. And on and on. Noah got out his calculator and did the sums and then counted the buttons to make sure he was right. We used the notecards to write down the sums. 7 + 3 = 10 and then 3 + 7 = 10 all through all of the combinations.

He thought that was pretty fun so we also solved the mystery of a couple of other numbers. Then Noah had a new idea. He wanted me to think of a number and then put down a sum in buttons. So if the number was, say, 9 I might put down 7 yellow buttons and 2 green ones. Then he used his calculator to figure it out and I always pretended he was wrong and then he counted the buttons to prove it to me. Because Noah is all about pretending, we decided that this was for the championship of the world and he was a Pokemon (which one changed with each sum) and I was Jessie of Team Rocket (aka “the bad guy”). He thought this was so great that we played a little with Daddy that night.

Today on the way back from the dentist, Noah was talking about the difference between Junior Great Books and religious school at the temple.

“It’s strange,” he said. “Because at Junior Great Books you can do crazy things if you get there early but it’s a whole different thing at Religious School. At Junior Great Books the early kids fall down the stairs and say that Buddy [the cat] pushed them but at religious school they want order.”

“That’s true,” I said. “At Junior Great Books the kids are really teaching themselves but at religious school, the grown-ups are doing the teaching and they want things to be a certain way while they do that.”

“They’re both fun,” my wise boy said. “But they’re very different. When the kids are teaching themselves, they don’t really need as much order. I like a little bit of order but not too much all the time.”

In religious school, the kids are learning about the holidays and they’re learning some basic Hebrew. They teach the same things over and over but they stress different things in each year. Judaism is very complex; there are lots of layers. He goes to religious school because I want him to learn the prayers and the rituals, especially because I can’t teach them correctly — I’m having a tough time learning them myself. I also want him to take for granted that he’s Jewish. The religious part of it — the whys and the why nots — I’m happy to do at home.

He’s great and he’s funny. He’s got a sniffly cold and he hasn’t had one in about a year so he was completely thrown by it. Noah has always had a keen sense of smell and is bothered by smells that the rest of us don’t notice. Yesterday he came upstairs complaining about his nose and I told him he had a little cold and that he should drink a lot of water and take it easy to give his body some time to recuperate. And I gave him some echinacea. He went back downstairs and then came up again, wailing, “But Mommy, when you said I had a cold, I was terrified! And I can’t smell!” He asked for a warm bath so I put some eucalyptus oil in and that helped him feel better although he’s still pretty stuffy.

He’s taken to writing all of a sudden. He’s not asking me how to spell things but he’s trying to figure it out. He has no idea, really, how to spell the words he’s writing but he’s not faking it like they do when they’re smaller either. He took his notebook downstairs and was dictating a letter to himself. I could hear him saying, “Happy birthday to you. I hope you have a nice party. I hope you have a big cake.” Then he brought it up and I thought, “Do I fake like I can read it or do I tell him the truth?” I couldn’t remember exactly what he thought he was writing so I asked him to read it to me and he was disappointed that I couldn’t tell on my own. Then he went down and started writing some more. “This time,” he told me. “I’m going to do pretend writing!” When he brought his notebook up again it was filled with the alphabet written in order over and over again. I think the “real” writing took a lot of effort and he was annoyed that he hadn’t done it in a way that I could understand it so he shucked it for awhile and went back to the apparently more satisfying alphabet writing.

Last night after he was asleep, Brett and I went down to watch TV and his notebook was out so I glanced in. He had a lot of the alphabet and then some more of his special dictation. His handwriting is getting more legible but I still can’t really tell what he’s trying to say. Except for “Sam”, which he’s writing as “Sem.” He’s been playing a Pajama Sam game from the library so he drew a picture of Sam then tried to write his name.

There’s something so touching about his careful, cramped letters!

That Myria column must’ve hit a nerve because I’m getting a lot of email about it.

I’m getting back to my unschooling roots. We’re still doing unit studies in a way. I plan activities for the week with an eye to whatever Noah is interested in. It helps me be organized enough to actually have things prepared for Noah to do it he wants to. This week it’s dogs because there’s a dog exhibit at the art museum that we’re going to check out on Thursday. This morning we read about dog communication and now he’s chasing Peanut around trying to get her to “talk” to him.

I’ve chucked the phonics lesson. They never sat right with me and then I reread my John Holt and regained my confidence to say to hell with them. Noah *is* reading but I have to resist my urge to get him to read harder, faster, better, more. I was reminded that one of the reasons Noah isn’t in school is that I think most learning goes on behind the scenes and I didn’t want him tested or evaluated all of the time, but that’s just what I’ve been doing.

I was really struck by the part of How Children Learn where he talks about the ways that in “helping” kids we actually limit them. I thought about the ways that I was “helping” Noah read and realized that I was just pissing him off. When I told him that when he asked what a word was, I would tell him from now on instead of showing him how to sound it out, he said, “Thank goodness!” That was a little humbling.

We went to the observatory on Saturday night as part of an event put on by our synagogue. It was so great. We had a ceremony (called havdalah) first and then looked at all the astronomical displays and then went to check out some small telescopes and the big one under the dome. I resisted the urge to say, “Are you getting this? Have you seen this? Do you understand this?” You know, it’s this thing I do where I start spouting definitions and information under the guise of conversation but really it’s teaching with a capital T.

What I love about unschooling is that the kids get to take what they want from their experiences. I don’t know what meant more to Noah. Looking at the stars? Saying the prayers over the lit candle with four wicks? The cold? The majesty of the dark night? Was it science or art or religion or simply family love? I can’t decide what things are for him; I have to divorce myself from my expectations.

I see him growing so much. He has so many big, interesting ideas. He is so excited about everything!!!

My mother-in-law sent me a lovely email. I’ve got a blog for Noah’s homeschooling activities for the grandparents and my inlaws have been huge homeschooling supporters. This is what my mother-in-law wrote after reading the blog for the first time:

I love it and will follow everyday…..how really, really fortunate and blessed Noah is to have you two as parents……wow, no wonder he is always pretty consistently happy……How do you feel if I from time to time forward some of these to [her friends]…they will love to feel apart of “school” in such a wonderful way again. ?? Keep it up, I am absolutely entranced with the whole thing

Isn’t that great? And she’s right; Noah is really really happy.

I don’t think Noah would be very interested in this yet but if you have any Laura Ingalls fans out there, you might want to get in on this wagon train project: Westward HO! It’s a little like the Oregon Trail computer game. This is from the front page:

Load those wagons……..kiss the kin goodbye………get ready for adventure, drama, comedy, tragedy, and fantastic learning as we hit the Oregon Trail and head out west! Back for its ninth year, this simulated journey allows classes to travel the trail as part of the Westward HO! Wagon Train. In classrooms across the country, collaborative families, based on real families from America’s past, make daily decisions (travel and fate scenarios are provided by the project moderators) that will influence their safe arrival in Oregon.

My homeschooling friend did this with her (then) kindergarten-aged son and they really enjoyed it.