The all-day learning window

Recently I wrote about “the 15-minute learning window,” a way that homeschoolers have learned to tap into “teachable moments” and condense learning into smaller packets. It works really well with subjects that you feel your child needs to work on but is not really driven to learn at the moment.

Horse drawingThen the other day at our house, I watched a great example of a complementary phenomenon unfold before my eyes. Instead of doing anything else she was “supposed to” do, my daughter spent much of an entire day working on one subject diligently. We had no need for the 15-minute approach: she was so totally self-directed, all I had to do was sit back and watch.

How did this happen?

A month ago, I was thinking about our year and wondering how I could tap more into my daughter’s interest in horses. She’s a very obsessive learner, which means it’s easy to get her to do things having to do with her current interests, but very difficult to get her to do much else. But she loves almost anything horse-themed, and I was thinking it was too bad there wasn’t some sort of horse-based curriculum.

Any seasoned homeschooler reading this will know that this statement begs the question: have you actually googled that?

I did google it, and came up with a hit for an “Equine Science” curriculum from Winterpromise. This is a Christian homeschool curriculum company, and though we don’t teach a Christian curriculum, this package looked great and another search told me that their curriculum is known to be accessible to other homeschoolers. I usually avoid packaged curriculum, also, because she never uses enough of it to make it worth the money. But I had a hunch this one might hook her so I decided to try it.

So far, this curriculum is perfect for my horse-obsessed girl. She happily did the first week’s assignments, which included reading history and science materials, answering scientific questions about the equus species, and doing some horse anatomy drawing. The next day, we were watching a documentary assigned for my son’s documentary-making focus group at his homeschool program, and she asked, “Can I go on to the next week in my horse curriculum?” Then she happily planted herself in front of the video—reading, doing activities, and watching the video all at the same time. (This is a girl who thrives on multi-tasking!)

Happy kid, happy mom.

This is the very best thing about homeschooling: When your child finds something she really loves, she doesn’t have to stop doing it. It’s not like her equine science class ended after 50 minutes and she was forced to go on to math. She just kept doing the thing she wanted to do, and spent a happy afternoon learning.

A former homeschooling mom told me that after she sent her kids back to school, never again did they come home from school asking to learn more about something they were studying. The 50-minute chunks they were fed in school were like junk food—they came home feeling full of learning, but were starved of intellectual nutrition. I don’t think that this has to be the way school works, but it certainly is one of the predictable results of presenting a rigid curriculum that has no time to stretch with a child’s fascinations. If only all kids could have days like the one I gave my daughter simply by letting her do what she wanted to do. It was a beautiful scene to watch and enjoy.

Real chemistry for kids

Once upon a time, learning the details of the elements was “serious science” and left for older students who had the math skills for chemistry. But these days, parents and educators are seeing the value of teaching kids to enjoy science well before they are able to delve into the details.

I was very impressed by Conrad Wolfram’s 2010 TED Talk about math education. He talked about how he got his elementary-aged daughter doing calculus on their computer. No, she isn’t a math super-genius—she was using modern tools so she could access the fascinating application of calculus without having to be able to do the computing required.

The ElementsThe traditional sequence of learning holds that kids “can’t understand” the theoretical ends of math, science, literature, or any intellectual pursuit without having the basic skills that underlie the theory. So in our schools, we require our kids to be able to do long division before we start them on algebra, and we expect them to be interested in how plants grow long before they start wondering what plants—and everything in the universe—are made of.

Wolfram’s talk clarified for me what a lot of homeschoolers (and some brave teachers) have been doing with all sorts of disciplines, not just math. We are literally flipping education on its head, rejecting the traditional pyramid shape of Bloom’s Taxonomy and refusing to start at the bottom, where kids learn facts and basic skills. Instead, we start somewhere in the middle, either at “analyze” when our kids ask a great question or at “apply” in order to have fun through experiential learning.

My daughter has always been interested in chemistry (perhaps she inherited that from her Grandpa, who literally “wrote the book” on polyvinylidene chloride (PVC)). Fundamental to her interest in chemistry is what has had the scientific-minded mixing and stirring, heating and agitating for thousands of years: fascination with the way substances react with each other.

So last year we started on the study of chemistry, not the kid-chemistry you see in “science fun for kids” books, but the actual study of what atoms and molecules are, and why they interact and react the way they do. I am not taking a stand on whether my 9-year-old understands what we’ve studied the way an 18-year-old would—that’s actually of no great concern to me. She has a good number of years before she will have to take a test on this stuff. What I will say, however, is that she has been inspired and excited by what she’s learned, and there is nothing more thrilling than to see a child make a prediction, do an experiment, and laugh with joy at the fact that her prediction was dead wrong. She might even be able to remember why her prediction was wrong, but I see that as less important than the joy she has taken in learning about the building blocks of the universe.

Below are a few of the materials we have used. If you can recommend others, please leave comments!

Books

Wonderful Life with ElementsA friend recommended The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, and given how much use it gets, I should have sprung for the hardcover edition. This book has taken up residence on the table behind the couch (where we keep current reading materials) for a year and a half, and it’s still going strong. The author is a collector of elements, and book is a fascinating compendium of his collection, from an old Kodak camera made with zirconium to a tube of toothpaste made with radioactive thorium.

A new addition to our library is Wonderful Life with the Elements, which just came out from No Starch Press. This little book is a charming translation of a Japanese elements book for children, and benefits from retaining many of its Japanese characteristics. The elements are identified not only by their Latin names (with real International Phonetic Alphabet transliterations, which is rare and very much appreciated in this house)—we also get Katakana transliterations and the Kanji characters for each element. Though we are unlikely to use these features in any practical way, I love the cultural connections this book makes. Even more, the book looks at elements from a variety of less common viewpoints. It starts with vivid graphical illustrations of how much of each element is present in various domains, from the universe to the sun to the oceans on Earth. It also explores the difference between environmentalism (caring about what we do with elements because of how it affects the balance of life on earth) and understanding that except for exploding nuclear bombs, what we do makes no difference to the elements themselves. Each element is given a persona with different body shape, hair style, clothing, and other features to denote the features of each element. My daughter is enjoying reading both of these books side-by-side!

We bought The Disappearing Spoon: And other true tales of madness, love, and the history of the world from the periodic table of the elements on the recommendation of other parents. Our daughter listened politely to one story then asked to move on to something else, but I know that other kids have enjoyed it so I’m recommending it anyway!

Posters

We love the Periodic Table of the Elements in Pictures, free if you download and print it yourself or available for purchase pre-printed. Completely different than the visual approaches of the two books above, it also offers food for thought and imagination, while also presenting factual information. This poster taught my daughter about the Noble Gases.

You can buy a poster and more accompaniments to the first book above at periodictable.com.

Curriculum

We have really enjoyed using the free Middle School Chemistry curriculum from the American Chemical Society as the spine for our studies. Although my daughter, who isn’t a great fan of handwriting, didn’t complete all the worksheets, we have worked through most of the experiments, which are designed to be easy to do at home or in a badly equipped school. The curriculum also links to online multimedia displays, many of which are basic moving diagrams that show the interaction of molecules, but some of which are really simple but effective demonstrations of the physical properties of various molecules. Our favorite is the popping water balloon.

Online fun

No budding chemist should miss the hilarious videos of The Periodic Table of Videos from the University of Nottingham. Featuring university chemists doing weird, dangerous, and sometimes amusingly boring things with the elements, these videos create unforgettable illustrations of the properties of the elements.

My daughter loves The Happy Scientist, who does a wide variety of videos on science subjects. (Fee-based but very reasonable.) She based her science fair experiment last year on his video of making a density column.

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“From School to Homeschool” now available

My book, From School to Homeschool, is now available as a pre-release direct from the publisher, Great Potential Press. It will be available from retail stores and as an e-book after November 1.

From School to HomeschoolThis book stems from my experiences as a “reluctant homeschooler.” When my younger child dragged me into homeschooling, kicking and screaming (that’s me kicking and screaming, not her!), I was completely unprepared. Many of the homeschooling resources I found seemed particularly unsuited to my family, our kids, and our outlook on education and learning. I muddled through our first couple of years, wondering why school didn’t work for her, what our homeschool would look like, and how I would know what success would look like.

Through the help and support of my local homeschooling community and the online community of gifted homeschoolers, I slowly got my footing, and realized that although each child is different, there is a commonality of experiences that builds a shaky foundation for all of us to stand on. I started to write about those experiences, benefitting from advice and ideas from the many parents out there who are so sharing and supportive to others.

This book is the result of those years: not a homeschooling manual full of specific homeschooling resources, but instead a guide to understanding what homeschooling is and can be, how we can get to know our children’s needs better, how homeschooling can bend to suit the varied needs of gifted and asynchronous learners, and what success looks like for families who had formerly considered prestigious schools and high grades as markers of academic achievement.

If you would like to be on my mailing list to receive notifications about the book, speaking engagements, and other publications, please visit my contact page.

The wonderful world of Diana Wynne Jones

In the past, my kids and I had read a couple of random selections by the recently deceased British author Diana Wynne Jones, but we had never gone in depth into her large body of work until this summer. We were inspired by our book club, when another mom took a guest turn and announced we were going to be discussing Diana Wynne Jones’s work… all of it! We weren’t required to read all of it, but once we got started, we couldn’t stop.

Enchanted Glass
Enchanted Glass was a late novel for Diana Wynne Jones, offering a new world in which magic is woven into everyday life.

We started with The Enchanted Glass, a wonderful little novel that reads like the great beginning to a long series. Unfortunately, Jones died soon after this novel was released, so no more installments are forthcoming. The characters, however, live on in my mind, and while reading the rest of her books, I am getting a sense of where she might have gone with them.

Right now we’re working through all the books in the Chronicles of Chrestomanci, a group of inter-related novels about storylines that take place in a series of related worlds. Most of the books feature the wonderful and slightly ironic figure of our “contemporary” Chrestomanci, Christopher Chant. (Chrestomanci is the title of a British government position in a world much like ours, so the series features different inhabitants of this job.) We love this Chrestomanci not only because he never fails to deliver as a dapper gentleman who is most focused and dangerous to his foes when he starts to look “vague.” We also love him because we get to know him as a boy, and we sense over and over how his experiences stick with him as he deals with all the magic-wielding children who come his way.

Jones’s most well-known series are probably the books related to Howl’s Moving Castle, which was made into a well received animé film that has, if I remember correctly, very little similarity to the book itself! The books are enjoyable and fanciful, if not Jones’ deepest work.

The interesting thing about Jones’ career is that it never took off in the way that her rabid fans think it should have. She was a steady, respected presence throughout her life, but her books have never inspired lines at midnight outside the book store, or high budget films that become the must-see film for every kid.

Part of the reason for this, I think, is how internal Jones’s books are. Things do happen in the books, but the plot is seldom the focus of the book. Instead, what happens inside the characters—both major and minor characters—is the main focus and the beauty of these books. The kids in these books are desperately trying to hang on amidst events that they have little control over. The adults are flawed and real, only sometimes doing what the kids need them to do.

Another reason the books may not generate the fever of a series like Harry Potter (which owes a lot to Jones’ work) is that she made some major marketing mistakes: She doesn’t have a clear line between good and evil in her books; she doesn’t feature one character as the focus; she doesn’t have a single plot line that keeps readers waiting for the next installment. Instead, her books dip into the lives of groups of characters. She has great respect for her characters, even when they do bad things. She creates characters and worlds so vivid that they live in on the reader’s mind, even when she has gone on to a new world and a new set of characters.

Having now read over half of her books, I can’t recommend them more highly for your kids of any age. They draw in little ones who love the beautiful descriptions. They entertain the kids who like humor and offer enough action and pyrotechnics for kids who crave such things. They help kids understand motives—their own and others. They respect children and adults and all the complex situations we find ourselves in.

For me, Diana Wynne Jones’s books are simply some of the best that you could read with your kids. She has been a fascinating companion to have in our car, inspiring a number of great conversations and ideas.

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Book Review: A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children

A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children
James T. Webb, Janet L. Gore, Edward R. Amend, Arlene R. DeVries
Great Potential Press, 2007

Parents often wish their children came with an owner’s manual. If there is anything that comes close to being an owner’s manual for parents of gifted children, this book is it.

The authors comprise a who’s who of experts on gifted children. James T. Webb, the lead author, is perhaps the best-known writer and speaker on gifted issues in the United States. His more recent book, Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults (also written with a team of experts), outlines the specific psychological pitfalls gifted children face. The other three authors, Janet L. Gore, Edward R. Amend, and Arlene R. DeVries, add both depth and breadth to Webb’s solid credentials. Together, the authors have worked with gifted children in almost all capacities.

The book serves first as a very good primer for a parent who is facing questions about raising a gifted child. The first two chapters define giftedness and explore common characteristics of gifted children. In doing so, they answer two questions that often accompany a parent’s first forays into the gifted literature: First, is my child gifted?, and second, how is my child different from other children?

The authors point out that the diagnosis itself can cause problems for gifted kids and their parents. From dismissive comments by other parents such as “all children are gifted,” to misunderstandings from educators like “bright children don’t need any special help,” gifted children and their parents face a lot of opposition as soon as their children are identified.

The second goal of the book is to teach parenting and educational approaches that work as an approach to all children, but are even more important when working with the needs and intensities of gifted children. Chapters on communication, motivation, and discipline outline an approach that takes into account both the child’s age-appropriate emotional needs as well as respecting the child’s unusual ability to process and understand information.

The parenting sections of the book expand into gifted-specific problems: How do the parents of gifted children help them in relationships with their peers? How does having a gifted child affect the relationships of siblings? How can a family’s values support a gifted child? And most importantly, how can a marriage survive the complexities of parenting a gifted child?

A Parent’s Guide only touches upon aspects of aspects of raising a gifted child with twice-exceptionalities such as learning disabilities, mood disorders, and ADD/ADHD. Parents who suspect that their gifted child may suffer from concurrent problems will do well to read Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults after getting an introduction to the issues in this book.

Finally, the book devotes chapters to the educational needs of gifted children, as well as working with other professionals. The educational section gives a blueprint for looking at schools — what to expect in traditional schools, private schools, gifted programs, and gifted schools. There is a short section on homeschooling, a popular choice for parents of gifted children. More useful is the information offered about teacher training for gifted issues (most teachers receive no training), gifted programs in schools (which may or may not serve a gifted child’s needs), how to work with the school administration, and how to advocate for your gifted child.

A Parent’s Guide is a great starting point for educating yourself about the needs of your gifted child and the possible pitfalls you may face as you raise and educate him or her. However, more important than the actual information in the book are the pointers to how to learn more about giftedness, schools, and your child’s emotional health and educational success. If you’re just starting down the road to helping your gifted child, especially a younger child, this book offers a straightforward “owner’s manual” that will guide you through the challenges you and your child will face.

Now available