The "Home" in Homeschool

Two years ago, we bought our first house - a cozy, cottage-style house in the same neighborhood where we had had an apartment for 13 years.  Frankly, I thought we'd never move out of the apartment.  It had high ceilings, two bathrooms and two bedrooms, the large master having been converted (via a loft bed) into a studio, office, bedroom combo.  We were very Japanese in our use of space.

My husband's studio set up in the old apartment

Sleeping loft and office in the same room

The house isn't that much bigger, but it does have a separate space for my husband's studio, a back patio, big enough for a table and a fire pit and no downstairs neighbors to complain about Liam's love of jumping (unless you count the possum family in the crawl space).  It also has a back sunroom that we've converted into a gym with a large punching bag, a small trampoline and TRX bands -  all things that had been shoved into various corners of our old apartment.

At around 1400 sq. feet, It's small enough to take care of easily, with just enough spaces for each of us to be able to retreat away from each other - which is of the utmost importance.  We all work at home.  We are ALL at home all day.  Together.  We would have undertaken this adventure with or without the house, but I am good and truly grateful that we have that little bit of space.

When people are thinking about homeschooling, they may have some sort of picture in their minds about lessons around the diningroom table, but our version of school is very, very mobile.  Lessons happen in every room and outside.  Any given lesson can last up to an hour - a pretty intense period - even when it's enjoyable.  For Liam (and for us), it's crucial that we have our own "break rooms."

Besides the constant search for new programs and experiences, we've been tending to the long-neglected outside of our house, painting, planning landscaping and other little projects.

House before  

House after paint job - awaiting new landscaping

We've also had the chance to go to summer movie openings, visit with friends and play on the street with very cool neighbors (who have been very patient and kind with us regarding the scary lawn).  

We're fully settling into our lives here and it's both hard work, and extremly liberating at the same time.

We have to make sure not to lose the whole summer to projects.  Gotta make time for at least one more trip to one of Liam's favorite places.

  Surf's Up!

Homeschool Summer Camp

I was digging around for a camp that might interest Liam, while still working with our extended homeschool model.  I found the perfect thing in DIY.org (https://diy.org).  The site itself is a series of self-directed skills with different challenges.  Kids can pick a skill, complete the challenge and then upload a picture or a video of what they've done. Other kids can watch and comment and they can even earn virtual badges (or shell out for real ones), like in Scouts.

To support the fantstic free site, they started offering 4 week, online camps.  You pick a camp and each day a video appears with a demonstration or a challenge from the councelor.  Kids complete challenges or post questions and the councelor will answer/comment.  They can also see and comment on each other's work.  Camps run for 4 weeks. The first camp is $10 and then it's only $40/month after that.  I signed Liam up for Stop-Motion camp and he's been having a blast!  Here are some of his films:

This one was done with a friend!

In addition to Camp videos, Liam has been really into the Sesame Street parodies of movies and TV shows.  He's done a few of his own, based on his love of the Spiffy Pictures (Jack's Big Music Show) and Noggin logos:

The Stop Motion Camp is finishing this week.  I think we'll do the Music Camp next!

Improvise

In 1988, I started studying Improvisation at Second City in Chicago.  I was terrified.  Text was my friend.  I loved delving into the richness of the words, playing with sounds and finding hidden meanings.  Acting without a script - my MAP - was daunting.  So daunting that I actually got kicked out after my first semester in Second City's training program.  What I learned, that finally got me back into Second City and has helped me ever since, was to let go and trust my instincts.

On stage, trusting my instincts and playing to my strengths (characters in particular), allowed for magical connections and amazing scenes to develop.  When it works, the feeling is like being hardwired to everyone else on stage, almost as if we are all thinking as one being.  If it sounds a little like a religious experience, well, it is.  And audiences are swept up in the joy of the discoveries being made on stage - they get wired in too.

Later, I learned how to transfer that mindset to teaching.  There is a strong improvisational component to a great class.  The teacher has to listen to what each student needs and bring something to the group that addresses the individual and group needs in a way that elevates everyone.  Again, when it works, it is an exhillarating feeling.

"When it works" is the key phrase.  Every improviser and every teacher knows the heart crunching feeling of it "not working."  The trick is to evaluate, and move on.  As one of my favorite Second City teachers said, "you may walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, just don't build a house and live there."

Today, I had one of those turn-around moments - one that started out sucking and then revealed itself to be brilliant.  It was time to read a story.  Liam likes the "Frog and Toad" stories, so we chose a new one, "Cookies."  Unfortunately Jake, our cat, had followed me into Liam's room.  Liam is obsessed with Jake and can't keep his hands off him - well past the point Jake enjoying the attention.  I've been working on Liam giving the cat some space, but the efforts are always short-lived.

As we started the story, the cat wandered over and Liam kept stopping to pet and coddle him.  The most he could manage was a line or two before dropping the book to get to the cat.  My annoyance grew as he continued to ingore my requests to give Jake a break and think about the book.  Finally I promised that Liam could pet the cat as much as he wanted, as long as we finished the story first.

In the next few lines, I realized that the story was about willpower.  I had been so busy trying to control Liam's behavior, I hadn't been listening to what the story was about (first rule of improv - LISTEN!)

Frog and Toad could not stop themselves from eating Toad's delicious cookies and had to develop a strategy to help them resist.  It was too perfect.  We made it through the story and I asked Liam what "willpower" meant.  He couldn't remember, so we went back into the story and found it.  The great thing about "Frog and Toad" is how explicit they are: "Willpower means trying hard not to do something you really want to do."

You just used willpower not to pet Jake!"  I was able to teach Liam a new word, connect him to the text and help him understand an important concept.

Here's to improvisation and the joy of discovery.

Oh - speaking of discoveries - we found this great site for our Summer excursions.  A site dedicated to letting kids explore their interests and forming a community of like-minded learners: diy.org

Liam has been doing the animation challenges:

Now that 3rd grade is over, I have to look at what we've done, assess what's worked and what hasn't and trust my instincts to move on to 4th grade.  As my favorite director always says, "be focused, joyful and relaxed."

Tears of Joy

Last night, after Liam had gone to bed, we heard him cry out for a tissue - a ploy he often uses to prolong bedtime.  "Get it yourself.  You know where they are!" my husband called.

But then I heard it, genuine sobbing - nothing put-on, something deeply sad.  We both hurried to his bedroom to see what it was.   "I have to stop crying,"  he said.  After some cuddles and reassurance, we asked what was making him sad.  "Chocolate Toast Crunch is the saddest one, " he sobbed.  We asked why it was sad, and he described the commercial by singing the theme from "2001 A Space Oddessy" and saying they all get eaten."  That's pretty much the theme of all of the "Toast Crunch" commercials.  Was there something especially distressing about this one?  Liam couldn't give us more than that and had really worked himself up.

We asked if he wanted to watch some TV with us and he did, so we all realaxed and watched an episode of "Dr. Chris Pet Vet."  It had the intended effect of shaking off whatever had gripped him.

When he was back in bed, I Googled the "Chocolate Toast Crunch" ad to see what might be upsetting him.  "Well,"  I said to my husband, "the song has kind of a monster vibe to it - maybe it was too dark for him."  We both agreed that whatever it was, there was some meaning attached to it, which was a GREAT thing.

In the morning, he was back at it.  As soon as he was on his computer, he brought up that spot.  He was alternately laughing hard, then crying.  And it hit me.

"John,"  I said to my husband, making coffee in the kitchen, "remember when he started crying tears of joy, when you transposed that song on the piano?  I think that's what's going on here.  He always says, "laughing means it's funny," so I think he must believe that crying always means something is sad.  But he isn't sad at all, he's delighted beyond belief with something in this spot."

John went into the bedroom and introduced the concept of "tears of joy."  I heard Liam repeat it, "TEARS OF JOY."  But what was causing them?

Here's the original commercial:

What Liam heard:

A few minutes later, he'd dragged the spot into Video Pad to play with it and I saw what had caputred his imagination.  He heard another song inside the song the squares were singing - Somewhere inside "Thus Spake Zarathustra" he heard the PBS Kids theme song!  He edited it and played it back for me.  We were blown away by his imagination and his editing skills.

Just when I had been feeling guilty for having to spend so much time in teacher training and leaving him on his own this week, he showed me that he'd taught himself how to edit to create a new song from existing pitches in another song.

Tears of joy, indeed.

Finding Inspiration

The past few days have been spent on WebEx presentations by BrainPop and STMath - talking about new features and teacher resources.  It felt good to learn new things and see new possibilities.  We're upgrading to the 4th grade level curriculum on both programs (while maintaing access to previous levels on some subjects).

Liam is currently finding inspiration in the idea of parodies.  He was binge-watching the Sesame Street parodies of current movies and TV shows and has been coming up with his own ideas, starring his favorite characters, Gator Boys (shadow puppets we perform before bed) and Spiffyman (an original character based on Spiffy Pictues logo).  He loves wordplay.   His favorite is "The Thirsty Games: Throwing Ice" a "Hunger Games: Catching Fire" parody.

He's also learned to piggyback his own character designs onto other people's  MITScratch videos - changing characters and dialogue, but keeping the backgrounds and actions.  This is a pretty common practice on Scratch, with animators attributing their videos to several previous versions.  It's something he figured out all on his own.  Here is a short Spiffyman video piggybacked onto a previous creation by another animator.  He actually knows enough code now to create this level of animation himself.  I hope to tease that out of him in the next few days.




Today, I found a great quote on Facebook, that really describes the biggest challenge that Liam faces.  Liam is missing step three at the moment.  While this is meant to be an inspirational quote, it works quite literally as well.  Without the ability to assign meaning and create our own story, we can be happy in the moment, but we aren't actively creating our future.  Slowly, an awareness of past and future is creeping in for Liam, but he's a few steps away from weaving it into a story.

Today, we watched a new lesson on digital animation on the upgraded BrainPop program that talked about Flash Animation.  Liam learned Flash from a brillaint teacher a couple of years ago.  As I'd hoped, he lit up when he saw the video and said, "I'm going to make a Spiffy film tomorrow in Flash!" I can't wait.

Here's to inspiration - wherever we find it!

When Did THAT Happen?

I was hanging a wet washcloth to dry on the railing above the tub and had a flashback to a railing filled with wet underpants.  It was during the "Three Day Potty Training" when Liam turned 3.  I remember how worried I was that Liam's communication delay would make it hard for him to follow the directions.  Day one,  we used 18 pairs of underpants.  Day two, we used 8, Day three, we used one.  It worked!

A three-year-old Liam, self decorated with a Blues Clue

Today I watched my nearly 9 year old dash to the bathroom to answer the call of nature without hesitation and get ready to meet another challenge - taking a bath by himself.  Getting his hair all wet has always been tricky.  Although we recently installed a detachable shower head, so he could hold it and wet/rinse his hair, he still perfers to wash it in the tub, so I've been pushing him to follow all of the steps himself.  And today, he did it.  Yes, I had hang out and remind him of WHAT to do, but he managed it by himself.

Nearly nine and enjoying "foamy gloves" in the tub

And, how did we get to the end of a school year so fast?  On Monday, Liam reached 100% completion on his ST Math program.  He's still enjoying doing the "Challenge" lessons until we switch to the fourth grade curriculum on July 1st.  Lessons on BrainPop Jr. and BrainPop ESL continue on and I even catch him logging on his free time to play the games and re-watch favorite video lessons.  Wasn't it just the day before yesterday when I was worried we wouldn't have enough materials to work with?

Today, we needed to pick out new frames for his glasses and he easily answered the saleswoman's questions and had very strong opinions about which frames he liked (the black ones).

I'm looking forward to a day in the future when he dissapears into the bathroom and emerges clean and dry and I'll wonder again, "when did THAT Happen?"

English as a Second Language

Ever since Liam was little, he's loved English as a second language sites.  The simplicity and repetition helped him to learn colors, shapes and letters well before preschool.  He even went the other way and learned the alphabet and number systems of several other languages and some simple words.  Here Liam uses his "Oobie" puppet to recite the Greek alphabet:

We were reviewing the online program that Liam likes, BrainPop, to see about buying a subscription to the next level, when we noticed that they had an English as a Second Language (ESL) program.

Like the other BrainPop programs, this one stars the robot, Moby and his new friend, Ben.  There are short movies with optional subtitles which play out scenarios in which the characters use different parts of speech naturally in a conversation.  After each movie, Liam can practice the new parts of speech and take a quiz and even play related games.  

He loves it (especially Moby, who only speaks in "beeps") and I've found him going to the site on his own to play games. He even seems to be grasping pronouns better since we started playing on the site.  The good thing is how easy it is to revisit each lesson.  With every viewing, Liam takes in more and more.  

I'm not sure if speech teachers working with Autistic kids have used this strategy, but it's really making sense to Liam.  I'm just glad we've found a fun way to fill in some of the gaps and help Liam expand his ability to take in and express bigger ideas.  

Major Leaps

Last week, my husband performed in and helped do sound design for a very good, short student film for a family friend.  We kept a copy and John showed it to Liam.  The assignment had been to tell a story with little dialogue.  The resulting dark comedy had some great sight gags and was scored in part with the song "Shaboom,"  both of which Liam adored.

After watching the film, he said, "I can make a movie too."

We've seen how much he loves visual effects, animation and shooting movies, but this was the first time he'd ever articulated it for himself.

This revelation follows close on the heels of smaller declarations of independence, like telling me, "no, I'm still playing on my computer" when asked if he wanted to join me at the store, and insisting that he be notified any time we plan on doing laundry because it is "my turn to do it."

In a few weeks, he'll be turning 9.  Last year, when I asked him who he wanted to come to his birthday party, he had no strong ideas.  This year, when I asked, he said, "EVERYBODY!"

So cool to see him growing in self-awareness.  Now that he wants to let everybody in, I think I'm going to need a bigger birthday cake.

How's It Going?

Well - it's been almost 6 months since we started the homeschool experience.  When people ask how it's going, I'd love to show them this picture:

Liam is happy and growing (clearly, in more ways than one).  In this Easter picture, taken at our neighbor's house, he's wearing an outfit he picked out - bright yellow pants and a purple sweatshirt and the ever-present Oobie eyes. 

The cast of Oobie - a wonderful preschool show of bare-handed puppets!
 

Liam is doing GREAT with his ST Math progam (now over 80% complete for the year) 

JiJi the penguin's progress postcard showing 80% completeion of the ST Math program from UC Davis

He's been voluntarily choosing reading lessons during our forays onto Brainpop Jr. where we've been using old, favorite short stories like "Frog and Toad" to practice book reports, inference and prediciton.

 

The lessons on magnatism have turned into a fun game of "I'm a magnet and you're iron!" where we take turns chasing each other around the house and sticking to each other.

In his free time, Liam has been exploring "Scratch" and redesigning characters in other people's videos and games.  https://scratch.mit.edu/

He also loves to take videos and then add crazy video effects.

On the home-front, he absolutely insists on doing the laundry (sans folding) and helping with the dishwasher and microwave. What started out as a fascination with the digital displays on the appliances has turned into what seems to be an enjoyable job.  He likes to show off his independence - and has become very clear about claiming his personal space.  All of us laugh when he pushes me or his dad out of his room saying "leave me alone!"  

The neighbor kids have been coming over in the afternoons and on the weekends to ask Liam out to ride scooters on our dead-end street and he enjoys racing out to join them.  And we've continued to go back to his old school two afternoons a week to take advantage of after-school programs in art and computer coding for video games (they use Hour of Code - http://hourofcode.com/us).  His old classmates always greet him warmly and he smiles back.  It's clear he enjoys time around the other kids and an hour or two is about all he needs before wanting to go back home.  

So, in the past 6 months, I've watched Liam grow as a happy, confident kid.  That's how it's going.  

Thank You a Lot!

"Thank you a lot!"  came flying with Liam through the two front seats of the parked car, along with a surprise hug.  We'd just gotten back from a trip to Liam's favorite arcade and instead of the usual dash to the front door, he took a moment to thank me.

I've been savoring more and more moments like this lately.  Listening to questions about increasingly complicated ideas - "what does "weird" mean?"
"It means "unusual."
"What does "unusual" mean?"
"Well, when I turn on the computer in the morning, I expect to hear this sound, "bong!"  If I heard this sound (loud rooster crow) - that would be unusual and I'd say, "that's weird!"
Peals of laughter at the idea of the Mac making rooster sounds.

Watching him eagerly chasing down the neighbor boy on his scooter calling after him, "Where are you going?"  Easy, natural and new.

Giving ourselves time and space to think and just be feels good - healthy.

Because Liam takes after-school classes, I'm still on the mailing list for his old school.  I saw today that his class was going on a field trip.  I've accompanied those trips - hearding teams of chatty, excited children.  Lots of crowd management.  I couldn't help but compare it to the leisurly pace of our last field trip to the La Brea Tar Pits.  We all went together for the special homeschool day.  Small family groups of mixed age children exploring what interested them - taking their time.

He's growing as an artist too.  This is a recent drawing from his after-school art class:

John and I have more time to research, think, plan and take advantage of extended time together.  I've read that the happiest people are those that take time to be grateful.  So, I just want to join my son in saying, "thank you, a lot!"