In the midst of all the goings on with my husband's job, I got the letter from the Board of Education telling me when my first semester homeschool review would be. I pinned it to the cork board beside my desk and put it out of my mind while we were figuring out our lives and getting through the Christmas festivities. I picked up the letter on December 26, and saw the date of our meeting. January 6. 11 days. Isn't that earlier than last year? I realized then that I didn't have very many "tactile" things to show the nice lady at the BOE and prove what my boys had learned. And I panicked.
In my head I had lists of what we had talked about, where we had visited, things we had studied, read, and accomplished. But bringing in a photo album, and a list of books we had checked out of the library wasn't going to cut it. How was I going to convince the BOE that my boys were learning?
The first thing I did was write down the lists that were in my head. There. That looks like we've done something. Then I went to the container that has all of our projects stored in it. Ok, so it would be unwieldy to bring in the paper plate owls, but the owl acrostic poems and research drawings would be good. Darn it, I should have kept the placemat from the time we were learning about fractions and pie charts at a restaurant. That would prove some math..... I had the sheets with the "pay for play" problems (previous blog) on them. This was proof that they were doing "things," but it still didn't look like enough. So......
I broke out the worksheets. Yes, this woman who had embraced the concepts behind unschooling as being beneficial for her children and making her house a happier place, was photocopying worksheets on parts of speech and multiplication tables. And I made the boys complete several of these sheets everyday after breakfast and lunch. They didn't go over as badly as I thought, mostly because they hadn't really had to do any since September. But I made them do a lot of worksheets in language arts and math during those 11 days. I felt sheepish because I wasn't purely unschooling anymore, and because I felt as if I was trying to fool the BOE.
I went to the review, and I passed. I showed her the worksheets, and explained that we had a more child led curriculum especially in science and social studies. She said great, good job. We had a conversation about what she was looking for, and she briefly explained that to me. She also let it be known that the criteria get more strict as the children get older. I got the BOE list of curriculum guidelines that I can use as a checklist for the future.
Since this was review time, I went home and evaluated how I thought the first semester went. I was happy with our unschooled life and how people comment on how mellow and content my boys seem. I was glad that my kindergardener liked doing division problems, and made up his own sheets of problems if I didn't have any handy. My second grader's reading was greatly improving since he wasn't forced to read things that he wasn't interested in (the LEGO catalog was perfect for my reluctant reader). I even liked how easy it was to prove that my boys were learning with the worksheets that we did in the days after Christmas. I didn't like feeling rushed to prove that we were doing what we were supposed to do.
So now I am trying to balance the different approaches to homeschooling to make it work well for my family and the powers that be. Most mornings each son will do a worksheet or two, sometimes more, depending on their interest and patience that day. They have the rest of the day to unschool. They still have to do the pay for play sheets to play video games. I also bought a diary to write down everything that we do that shows they are learning. I write down what worksheets we do as well as when we play Cadoo or watch an episode of The Secret Life of Machines as a family.
So today we did two worksheets on Martin Luther King Jr. and read a book on Rosa Parks. I feel that these are important things to learn about, and I can mentally check some things off the "things they HAVE to learn" list (reading comprehension, check; social studies, check). They then played chess against each other (critical thinking, check), and designed a Scratch game (art, science, reading-- check, check, check). Tomorrow we'll do some math worksheets, or maybe we won't. Perhaps instead we'll play LIFE, and one of the boys can be the banker. Then, I can give a big check for math, too.
