A Sample of Our Not-at-Home Schooling

IS homeschooling a family learning around the kitchen table? Well, the beauty of homeschooling is that it can be whatever you want and need it to be. I've been on an extended rant these days about the NON-sheltering, NON-isolated benefits of homeschooling. This post is, in part, a continuation of those thoughts. And in part it is a shout out to my friends, to whom I keep saying, "We're so busy," though when asked I can never seem to remember more than one or two of our "extras."

We are, in fact INCREDIBLY busy by our standards. I do not mean to imply busy is best. This year may simply be what our family needs to make up for a few pregnant school years where I did a lot of laying on the couch as a literal "captive audience" to the kids' spontaneous performances.

For whatever reason this year has packed itself so full, so far so good. We are maintaining our sanity (though we are only a month into it). And I feel like supporting my kids in their learning adventures and pursuits is exactly what I am supposed to be doing, so it is satisfying too.

For the record, here is what we've got going on:
Mondays: our most sacred cleaning day (which with older kids has turned mostly into cleaning morning), piano for my oldest daughter, and Makers Club (programming, mixed with robotics mixed with electronics and engineering mixed with imagination) for my oldest son... and we're looking to add tennis to the mix and, for 3 months out of the year, a ballet lesson taught by me for my youngest daughter ....

Tuesdays: Once a month we host our beloved Culture Club here. Otherwise there is just ballet, ballet, ballet. Literally. Ballet lessons at the ballet school for my son, before which I'm teaching a ballet lesson for my daughter and her peers, and if interest expands beyond the class on Monday, adding to that a beginning ballet class for my younger daughter's peers. PHEW!

Wednesdays: Once a month we hit Biography Club. Twice a month the girls go to American Girls Club. My son is starting a journalism class on this day next month and thereafter working on our community's homeschool newsletter, AND he has a weekly ballet lesson Wednesday night.

Thursdays: Boys Science Club is in the mornings. (So many boys in the club have little sisters in American Girls that this will morph to be on the same day which will really free our Wednesday mornings. Wow!) And the boy who wants to be a professional dancer has yet another ballet class too. Looking at adding a tennis lesson to this day as well. (Twice a month my daughter has a church group called Activity Days on Thursdays. My son's scouts should also be added to the mix, though I'm not sure what day. They are waiting for the critical mass of boys to have birthdays to reboot the program... I think.)

Fridays: To give him the best edge, I am teaching this son ballet Friday mornings. After which I've tried to keep the day free for weekends away and fun field trips. (Destinations on the calendar and to be reviewed include the Dinosaur Park in Ogden, the Monastery in Huntsville, and the Air Force Base Museum. Recently we've hit the Orthodox Church, the Hare Krishna Temple, and a couple of museums in Provo I reviewed for this post.)

You know, when I put it all down like that, it doesn't seem too bad. Maybe I'll stop telling everyone I'm SO busy. Maybe we're just mildly busy, though busier than WE have ever been. I'm pleased with our schedule because each activity represents a quality learning opportunity for my kids AND a chance to get in that all important socialization. More beautiful is that there is only ONE night where we aren't together as a family - Wednesday night, due to my son's latter ballet lesson. Every other night our evenings are free to enjoy dinner and life and our family and friends together! We are also incredibly blessed to have such a great group of homeschooling friends right around us, so while we may not be home, we aren't more than 5 minutes away.

Some say we homeschoolers are an isolated bunch. I submit that if that is so, it is by choice, and not by the nature of homeschooling. Others say it is ambitious to homeschool. When I think of the peace of our family getting to enjoy one another almost every evening, without the pressures of homework or running like crazy people to get our kids to their extra-curricular stuff, I think homeschooling is the answer for those who rather take a moment with the people they love to soak it all in.

When Life Gives You Zucchini, Make Zucchini Pie!

Now isn't that better advice for those of us here in Utah, who are a lot more likely to get zucchini from life than lemons?! So here is yet another recipe to add to the collection on my blog. And like the others, a bit unconventional and boundary-stretching. But only if you want it to be. It is so delicious, you may want to keep the zucchini a secret and just call it "apple pie."

From my mother (and FOR my mother who called me because she'd lost her recipe):

Mock Apple Pie
1 pie crust
5 cups peeled, sliced zucchini (peeling and slicing zucchini by hand is infinitely easier than apples! I use the giant zucchinis this season produces with gusto, and just scrape out the inside stringy, seedy part after I've got the zucchini in half crosswise and again lengthwise.)
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 c. real lemon juice
3/4 c. water

Boil zucchini, sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice and water. Simmer 'til soft. (I haven't scored myself a monster zucchini yet, so it's been since last season that I made this, but if I remember correctly, I don't add nearly that amount of water or lemon juice. I give the apples a good splash of lemon juice - after all, it's part of creating the flavor. And I pour a bit of water into the pot, but I keep in mind that I am making a pie filling, so I rather steam and keep all the liquid than need to pour some of the sugar away before I bake it. THAT said, pie fillings are really about taste anyway, so you could eyeball ALL the amounts and adjust according to preference.)

When the zucchini is soft, pour the filling into the unbaked crust and top with crumb topping. Bake at 325 for 25 minutes. Let cool. This pie is perfect to eat strait and a bit warm. It's actually not as good with ice cream.

Oh, so here's the crumb topping:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
6 tbsp butter (at room temp or just a tad cooler)
1/4 tsp salt
Mix it all up 'til it's crumbly.

Now, does this recipe have a metaphor? Absolutely! Are all homeschooled kids special or gifted? Yours may be. Mine are about as average as zucchini. But with a little creativity and willingness to think outside the box, I am hoping to help them become something surprisingly remarkable! Enjoy the pie, and your own creative, unconventional process of parenting! If you have a hit recipe for turning out fantastic, sweet kids, be sure you share it here! :)

"The World is Our Classroom" - A Field Trip Guide to Utah County

"The World Is Our Classroom"

Does that sound familiar? We discovered this weekend it is BYU's motto.... Or at least it's directly under the main "Brigham Young University" sign on campus. Who knew?! So BYU, and by extension ALL good Mormons, should embrace the possibility that homeschoolers have the best opportunity to learn for their augmented access to the world! Right?

Okay, I'm just kidding about the "all good Mormons" bit, but we here in Aggie land had no idea that BYU was so supportive of how we are trying to educate our kids.

Yes, we got out into the world, and this weekend we spent some time in Utah County. We rarely find ourselves there and were delighted to discover so much to do! So if you are like us, here are just a few destinations to get you started! (This pales in comparison to the field trip guide to the Salt Lake area. It's not to say there is less to do than in Salt Lake. WE just don't find ourselves in Provo very often, so here is where we started!)

Destination: BYU Museum of Art
Time: Mondays-Saturdays all year long
Cost: FREE
Review: I must confess the state of my people for this museum. My little 2 year old was under-slept and was howling to be let out of his stroller so he could run around and attack the exhibits. My older 3 were hungry. So we did NOT spend the time the museum deserved. So, as we sped through, warding off melt-downs of various kinds, I was able to appreciate a few things. First, the cost. Free is hard to beat. Unlike the Museum of Art at the UofU, this one is ALWAYS free. It is a tad smaller, but MY kids don't have the kind of art appetite that takes in a whole museum of art anyway, so the small size was just fine. We were there for "Cut," an exhibit featuring 40 historical costumes from movies. So we got to see THE ACTUAL clothes Johnny Depp wore playing Jack Sparrow. Hard to beat. Well, actually ALL the lovely, historic gowns beat Jack Sparrow's get-up. And it was cool to read which stars wore what. I could go on and on about how thrilled I was my fashion-interested girls saw this, but this was just a temporary exhibit. It seems the museum brings in some great stuff from around the world and is worth it! Visitor parking is on the north-east side of the museum and is very convenient.

Destination: Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum at BYU
Time: Mondays - Saturdays all year long
Cost: FREE
Review: This museum was actually our first stop. We parked in the Art Museum's parking lot and walked up the ramps (my kids called them the "Disney World of Sidewalks" - gotta love small pleasures!) to this museum. (If you do the same, the entrance to the building is on the east side. OR if you want to park closer, there is a lot on the north side of the Life Science Museum you can park in and get a pass for once you come inside.) This museum was lovely too. Free is hard to beat. And the displays feature mostly the real animals (dead and stuffed, obviously) so you get a sense of scale, which is thrilling for animals like elephants, giraffes and leaping lions and standing bears. The museum doesn't overwhelm the visitor with too much information to take in. My kids just wanted to run from animal to animal to see who would first spot the next cool thing. I'm sure we'd learn more on a second visit. THAT said, I don't know that there is so much there a third would add a whole lot. We probably spent between 60 and 90 minutes there. If the kids had slowed down, we could have learned more and maybe even been done in 2 hours. I must say, I preferred this over the zoo. First, you could get closer to the animals, and second, how often when you go to the zoo are the animals just laying around? Here, they were up to much cooler business (albeit very frozen business). Other notes: we missed the live animal encounters, but those do happen daily; and there is a good nursing spot in the basement ladies bathroom, but otherwise the basement isn't worth going down to see. Oh, AND we were there on a Saturday morning and it felt almost like a ghost town - so lovely to have it almost to ourselves!

Destination: Allan Hall Museum of People and Cultures at BYU
Time: Mondays-Fridays
Cost: FREE
Review: No review yet. I didn't realize it wasn't open Saturdays. Boo! Oh well! Hope to hit this one soon!

Destination: Provo City Library
Time: Standard City Library hours
Cost: FREE
Review: This was the spur of the moment back-up when we discovered the Museum of Peoples and Cultures was closed. I am a sucker for old buildings! This one is the origin of BYU - the old Brigham Young Academy. (And if you are a fan of the Great Brain books, the school Tom Fitzgerald actually attended. Cool!) So the building was fun. And it had a great children's section that the kids killed a lot of time in. I really like "The Attic" - a gallery on the 4th floor. The exhibit we caught was of original "Loony Tunes" still gels. The kids were thrilled it was cartoons, and we learned about how cartoons are made. Again, this exhibit is not permanent, but it looked like more cool stuff was to come.

Destination: Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork
Time: I think your best bet is to hit one of the many festivals hosted at the Temple
Cost: Tours are free, though donations are encouraged. Food is cheap - $6 for an adult plate; Festivals are also cheap.
Review: My son told his Sunday School class today about our experiences at this Temple yesterday. I wondered what they thought. There may be some people who feel children shouldn't be taken to places or events that don't reflect their beliefs. But it's hard to experience the world as any sort of classroom with that attitude. We seek after the virtuous, lovely, and of good report. We found it at the Krishna Temple. We were there for India Fest. We loved the relaxing music and we were entertained by the dancing. Before the entertainment began and between performance segments we explored and learned. We saw believers in the act of worshiping. We were invited to be blessed by the priest, and were, though we didn't understand what was said. We learned the Hare Krishna believe sound is an inlet to the soul. And we had our own beliefs affirmed - namely, that we are eternal beings clothed in bodies and that we find peace by being in tune with the divine. The girls LOVED the temple - they thought it looked like Jasmine's palace. I read reviews of it being run down, dangerous, and creepy. Here are my thoughts about those reviews. First, I think they clean the place up a bit before major events. Second, that such a place even exists in Utah without a large, tithe paying congregation is nothing short of miraculous to me. And third, it IS NOT Jasmine's palace. So it may not be worth the journey if you are an adult in search of a fantasy. BUT if you are interested in seeing and learning whatever the people and place have to teach in the moment, I bet you will come away with something beautiful. (If you go outside of an event, find someone to answer questions. We were there before things for India Fest got underway. Perhaps folks were busy, or at least I assumed they were, because no one stepped up to help us, point the way, or answer questions, and there was little informational or instructional literature laying around. I'm interested in going back just to have my many questions answered!)

Destination: Museum of Natural Curiosity in Lehi
Time: I don't know that there is a less-crowded time to go...
Cost: $15/adult; $12/child 3-12 years old
Review: (this was not on our most recent trip to Utah County, but part of our summer adventures. Read more about them here.) So if it isn't yet abundantly clear, I am a cheap skate, and first of all: OUCH! Wow, does that price tag sting! So if you've plopped down $51 dollars like I could have, you'd better have a great time, right? (Well, I was a guest with my sis-in-law who has a Thanksgiving Point membership, so we didn't pay THAT much. And STILL it WASN'T cheap.) We went when my sis-in-law hoped it would be less crowded - the middle of the week, around 4pm so right at dinner time. Our plan was foiled. The place was CRAWLING with kids! I couldn't imagine it MORE crowded. (I'm sure it could have been. I just have low crowd tolerance.) Anyway, my kids don't suffer from the same throng-phobia so they walked in, their jaws dropped, and they thanked me before doing anything, for bringing them to the best museum of their lives. They LOVED it! They climbed, crawled, leaped, sprayed, reached, jumped, felt and saw as much as they possibly could. We were there 2.5 hours and could have stayed longer but we were STARVING. If I had it to do again, I would plan 4+ hours at this place and bring food for a picnic if we get hungry. That said, though the kids would be thrilled, I don't know that I would do it again. Of all the museums, this one delivers the info in the most fun, engaging way. But there isn't a lot of info to deliver, so outside of the fun, physical nature of the exhibits, my 11 year old isn't going to learn a lot. Not enough to merit 2 visits. But that assumes he DID learn on the first visit. And in a place so packed, though you may want to take your time for some fun and simple instruction, if you do, 12 kids will jump in front of you, or 3 toddlers will be wailing where you are standing so trying to teach or learn anything begins to feel incredibly futile. (Speaking of toddlers, having one is a blessing. Going to a place this crowded with anyone else besides a toddler makes the protective mother in me cringe. It's a stranger-danger nightmare.) So yes, in my kids' dreams we go back. And IF we do, it will be a SCHOOL DAY from like 2-6 (to avoid field trip throngs), and either dad will be there or my two year old won't.

Reason # 2: Exposing Children to the World

This post is long overdue as being one of my tallest homeschooling soap boxes. My frustration boiled over recently as I read an article in the Deseret News titled "Back Home to School."

The following is a quote from that article: "Some parents express a desire to shield children from inappropriate influences, while others argue that isolating a child makes them ill-prepared for the realities of a diverse society."

I contend these statements are not mutually exclusive. Yes, many parents with children schooled at home AND in the public school system desire to shield children from inappropriate influences. My goodness! Much of our laws are designed to do just that! From drinking ages to movie ratings, we can all agree that children are not developmentally suited to handle all things all the time.

Now some of us, going along with the state law model, have decided that children SHOULD follow similar maturity patterns and pacing. Let them all drive at 16. Let them all see explicit nudity at 13. Send them off for 7+ hours per day, day after day at age 6. If your children follow these broad generalities, I have no criticism. 

But if parents, looking at their children as individuals and not as an average demographic, choose to shorten or extend some periods of various protections, why are so many willing to thumb their noses at that choice? Who best determines for YOUR child what an inappropriate influence is?

Now to the point that "isolating a child makes them ill-prepared for the realities of a diverse society." I couldn't agree more (except to point out that it would be more grammatically correct to argue either that "isolating children makes them ill prepared" OR "isolating a child makes him or her ill-prepared). Bad grammar aside, why on earth would we champion a school system that segregates elementary students not only by age, but also by subject aptitude? What kind of broad exposure is this?

Furthermore, to those folks who live in rural Utah, let's be honest. How diverse are the populations of our elementary schools? Don't most of your child's peers at school live in your neighborhood, enjoy roughly your same standard of living, and adhere or at least acknowledge most of your core beliefs?

So when we say we are exposing school kids to "different people with different points of view," what we really mean is "different people from our corner of town, that are the same age and excel or struggle with learning in similar ways." Now, is this what we are calling the non-isolation that really prepares children for the "realities of a diverse society?" After all, in most work places, employees aren't within a few months of the same age. They don't all commute in one huge vehicle from the same corner of town. And they don't all share the same knowledge, experience, and skill set. That being so, how exactly does school prepare children for the realities of our diverse society again?

"Now Stephanie," you interject, interrupting my rant (and spelling my name wrong again!). "The diversity in elementary schools may, in fact, be minimal, but you must concede it certainly exceeds the diversity in your family." (Nice comment! See, you are a poet.)

THIS is what I have to say about THAT.

The article quoted a woman who had been homeschooled growing up who felt her 'isolated worldview that resulted from learning at home was not necessarily a positive experience for her and her siblings.' She concluded "there's also something to be said for being exposed to different ways of thinking."

True. And I can hardly question the reality of this woman's experience. BUT must it be the reality for any other homeschooling family? Only if they chose to make it so! In another post, I argue socialization is the FIRST reason to homeschool your children. In that post, I expand the vision of homeschooling beyond a family gathered around the kitchen table reading text books. If that is the approach, might not a parent match a teacher, breath for breath, in worldly, diverse fact spewing? (And as some parents may try, how are their children worse off for having this brand of "world exposure" from a parent instead of a teacher?)

But homeschooling can encompass so much more! (And with budget and time constraints placed on schools, be EASILY more than is offered there.) Though we are not yet like the homeschooling families that travel the country and the world, my elementary-age children have 60-year-old NON-RELATIVES they count as friends. They have been to meditation circles and synagogues. We go to cultural events - the celebrations of the holidays of other countries, pow-wows, drum circles. And do you know who we tend to run into as we are OUT in the WORLD having EXPERIENCES rather than sitting in a room at a desk? Other homeschoolers. I don't know why this tends to be so. Perhaps the kids in school have too much homework to do, and too little time for any of the exposure the schools hold so dear. As it turns out, if you live in rural Utah, though the schools may be a safe place, if you really value exposing children to the world, homeschooling may just be the BEST bet!

Little Sister dressed as Moroccan Bride for Big Sister's presentation on Moroccan Weddings

PS As I have mentioned elsewhere, I don't believe homeschooling is the best choice for everyone. And I do respect the thoughtful choices parents make in the best interest of their children. We all know kids who seem to be damaged by their upbringing. Some of those have been homeschooled. Some have been public schooled. This post is to dissuade reasoning people from concluding homeschooling (a very large umbrella over a very diverse group) must necessarily lead to a diminished exposure to diversity in points of view. Let no one pride himself in open-mindedness and label all people who approach education differently as being isolated or close-minded.