So, there really is a name for what I'm doing with my children. That comes as somewhat of a relief. I didn't actually start teaching this way on purpose. It just happened.
You see, I have thirteen children (like people reading this blog didn't know that!) and they're all somewhat......odd. Oh, not odd in a bad sense.....just odd in an atypical sense.
Let me explain. One day lately I took a couple of visitors on a mini tour across the farm and we, of necessity, walked by several rather unsightly areas one of which being a big tangle of discarded aluminum siding left forgotten in an out of the way corner. I found myself explaining, "And that was from the time the boys found a free mobile home in the newspaper."
Blake was probably about 15 at the time he saw a free mobile home advertised in the paper. "You haul it away and it's yours!" He asked Paul if he could go pick it up.
Sure, son. Like what dad would NOT let his 15 year old buzz on over several miles of country roads with the tractor to haul a 15x60 mobile home back home?
So, Blake and Logan come traipsing home and proceed to utterly dismantle it soon after the whole whopping thing came to a halt in the driveway. What they were after was the bare frame. They thought they could make a bale hauler out of it---to haul big round bales of hay from the field back to the farm.
What Blake really got out of it was very sick. And hivey. Whatever they build those mobile homes out of is pure toxic, I think. Once down to the bare frame, they discovered the dumb thing was way too wimpy to use to haul bales, so they cut it apart and hauled it to the scrap yard. (Well, save for the aluminum.)
You'd never know that about mobile homes without personally taking one apart, I suppose.
My children actually have arguments about whether something *could* work and why, sometimes settling it only by checking to see if there was a Mythbusters episode on youtube to prove or disprove it!
My girls were a little easier to teach in a more ordinary way with desks and workbooks and such things. They just took to that. My boys? Not so much. It's probably good God sent my Blake first, although I believe he set the tenor for what was to come for the next ones.
So, here I am.....just a mom trying to select appropriate homeschool materials for my children. I sit and read forums. I read books. I even read through textbooks to see if the material puts me to sleep or not. If I drift off, there is NO WAY my children are going to sit through it. Really.
I am all about educating my children, yes I am. I'm just reeling from the reality that so much of the current traditional approach is lost on my children who would rather be blowing up a building or something rather than sitting with their greasy fingers clutched around a pencil stub circling adverbs.
I'm realizing that of educational models out there, one of the least talked about is the "Projects Based Learning" model. It's actually a google-able term these days. They do it in schools across America with great success. A quote from the site I was reading:
"Kids who are excited about what they learn tend to dig more deeply and to expand their interest in learning to a wide array of subjects. They retain what they learn rather than forget it as soon as they disgorge it for a test. They make connections and apply their learning to other problems. They learn how to collaborate, and their social skills improve. They are more confident talking to groups of people, including adults."
Our family is all about projects. The above quote totally summarizes my children and our life.
Here are some scenarios from this very week. We aren't doing "school" right now, but this is pretty typical of any time of the year:
Brady was sitting at the computer. I said, "Hey, you were complaining that you don't have time to work on your projects outside. Are you sure you want to be on the computer right now?"
Brady says, "Actually, I'm looking up how to fix (this certain thing) on the four wheeler that's out there." Someone we know brought his four wheeler to be repaired by my sons. Sure enough, Brady had a youtube how-to video pulled up and was watching it.
Another guy was here today to talk lawn mower repair with Trent. He told Trent that he was telling his buddy about these kids that fix lawn mowers who have a brother (Blake) who fixes diesel trucks. I think the guy got a kick out of my boys. LOL.
Last night two guys showed up in a box truck to buy four wheeler parts the boys had out in the field. (Oh that UNSIGHTLY FIELD.....that I lament SOOOOO much.....)
And today, Garth changed the injectors in the skid steer engine. This same boy is on speed dial (per se) with the local engine shop. They sell him lawn equipment that comes in as trade-ins. Garth fixes them up and resells them. I can't even tell you how many times he's done that this past year.
Then on Saturday, the boys were listening to "Click and Clack" on NPR. At one point they were talking about '60s Volkswagens being "death traps". I asked Garth about that. Why were they called death traps?
He was telling me about how the heating system was run off the exhaust pipe and if there was a hole in the exhaust, it gave the car occupants carbon monoxide poisoning. Ok, I'm figuring he was telling me the truth about that (sometimes they pull my leg to see what I know!). I have no idea where he picked this information up.
People often ask where Blake learned mechanics. Out in the shop. Not, of course, that we would've begrudged him a "real" (???) education in that area, but he just preferred his own trial and error. I am p-r-e-t-t-y sure his trial and error cost us more $ than a "real" school, but I think he came out having a solid grasp of what he needed to know. LOL. Now he helps the younger brothers acquire their skills and knowledge.
The biggest goal I have for my children is to teach them about God's ways. Additionally, if they will be functional adults in the current world we live in, they will have a nodding acquaintance with the lowly adverb (and other such things). Yes! But they're to know how to use these things in every day life not just for some test. Such things simply must have a tangible, practical use for my guys or they don't want anything to do with it. This mother doesn't let them get by with improperly written Ebay ads or improperly punctuated FedEx labels! lol. (That is not the only experience they get with such terms, btw. This post is long enough without riddling it with examples of every possible scenario.)
Neither do I want them caught in a conversation with someone without some knowledge of other things they ought to know. That's why I constantly keep our home library shelves stocked. My children know I can be a stickler about such things!
Interestingly, our local paper ran an article yesterday about the lack of skilled laborers in our area and how its getting harder to find people with vocational skills vs college degrees without those skills.
"Not every high school student is meant to go to college, and a vocational school is a great place to train them for the work force. It's possible someone could go to college, drop out after a couple of years and then have a tough time finding a job with no skills and saddled with debt, he added. "There should be a greater emphasis to push kids who show an interest in manufacturing" into a vocational school." -Ted Zuercher, vice president of operations of Metal Dynamics
Honestly, I thought I was getting the kind of children that sit at the table and studiously do their school work, you know, like the pictures in the homeschool catalogs. Do these type of children really exist???? Not at my house.
The new school year is coming around the corner. I think I have my ducks all in a row with as careful a balance of fun and drudgery as possible to get them all educated. What a job!
~Colleen
