How do I supplement Moving Beyond the Page?

The Moving Beyond the Page (MBtP) folks say there is no need to supplement their curriculum beyond math and phonics and from what I understand from talking to others in the online MBtP groups, that is often true.  However, *I* needed to supplement the 5-7 (when my daughter was PreK/K and son was in 1st grade) and 6-8 levels (K/1st  and 2nd grade, respectively) beyond math and phonics, just because of my own kids' idiosyncrasies, the modifications needed to be made in order to combine kids of two different levels into one program, and how our life is arranged.  So please take everything I say here with a huge grain of salt, it is only my own experience and I've not heard of anyone else who does it this way.  In some ways I have a love-hate relationship with the program because of this. 

Before I get to specifics I should probably also explain that I am a major research junkie and I have and do try to read everything I could get my hands on about different homeschooling philosophies.  I have ended up taking ideas from Well-Trained Mind (classical education), Charlotte Mason, and unschooling methods.  Bravewriter's The Writer's Jungle and Pickert's Project-Based Homeschooling was also very influential.  Most of the ideas I took from these materials are rather intangible, however, and while they definitely influenced how I tweak MBtP, it is difficult to express how this looks in practice.  But I'll try. 

So, without further ado, how *I* modified and supplemented MBtP 5-7 and 6-9:

• Per MBtP guidelines, math and phonics.  My older child came to the program already a fluent reader, so he skipped the phonics. 
• We did not do any of the printing practice or spelling portions of the program.  My kids have limited stamina for the physical act of writing, so we learned to form our letters through our “writing practice”.  We skipped the spelling for my older child because he is leaning toward being an intuitive speller, working on it in-context.  And the younger one couldn’t read yet so spelling seemed like putting the cart before the horse.
• Scribing the answers.  Some of the lessons have a lot more writing than my kids could handle.  I would decide on the fly which ones the kids would write themselves, and which they would dictate for me to scribe.  
• Compression.  Sometimes we did hit a lesson or series of lessons that were truly too easy.  The last unit of the 6-8 was like this for both my kids, they both already had a very good grasp of this introductory science unit.  So we just went through it really fast.  We still read the books, but we skipped a lot of stuff and did only the demonstrations that seemed extra fun or new to us.  This often meant we did two lessons in a day. 
• Additional books to “up” the information and difficulty level for some of the nonfiction selections of the progress.  For example, when the younger was using the MBtP title The Usborne Children’s Picture Atlas, I gave the older one DK Geography of the World.  This way they both could do their own research at the level they needed. 
• Our daily “writing practice”.  Both my kids keep spiral notebooks for daily “writing practice”. This is so fun!  Some days the kids are writing something related to the MBtP materials, some days they are doing copywork, some days freewriting of their own choice.  The notebooks are very satisfying to look through later—you can see the skills progress before your eyes in fast-forward!  
• Additional science study.  There’s nothing wrong with the MBtP science, but my scienc-y kids want MORE.  So we also use Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding (BFSU) as well as a lot of unit studies and interest-led science projects, materials and reading.  This is another post in itself.
• Additional history study. Ditto the above! Chronological history study also appeals to me to help the kids gain “pegs” on which to hang future learning. We started out using SOTW but it didn’t work out so I just made our own booklists.  This is yet another post by itself. 
• Additional literature and poetry study.  See Brave Writer materials above.  J

So you might ask, why do MBtP at all if there's this much change from it?  I ask myself that a lot.  For now, we're continuing with it because:

1.      On busy days, even if we only get MBtP core stuff done, I feel reassured that at least we made some progress;

2.      it gives me a framework for studies to connect subjects and think of subjects I wouldn't have come up with on my own;

3.      and the kids continue to enjoy it. 

I am not at all wedded to the program though so who knows, we may get two weeks into the 7-9 and I'll throw it all out the window once and for all.  ;) 

Poetry Thursday

Who Am I?

The trees ask me,
And the sky,
And the sea asks me,
                   Who am I?

The grass asks me,
And the sand,
And the rocks ask me
                   Who I am.

The wind tells me
At nightfall,
And the rain tells me.
                    Someone small.

Someone small
Someone small
                    But a piece
                                  of
                                  it
                                  all.

~Felice Holman 
found in The Tree That Time Built

First Year Reflections

It's been about a year since we started the homeschooling journey.  What a year!  It began almost suddenly, out of necessity and the realization that the available public school would not work for Mr. K.  In hindsight, that shouldn't have been too surprising.  We've always known he was wired a little differently from his age-mates (upon seeing a lobster in a tank for the first time at about 11 months, he signed "fish-bug"), but that didn't become as drastically obvious until he was thrown into a class with 23 others.  But this is not the post for a detailing our problems with "the system".  This is the post about how this first year of homeschooling has been eye-opening and how we are finding our way through.

My usual instict, before I start any new thing, is to research the heck out of it.  Then at somepoint my gut says, "ok, you know all you need to know for now, jump in and come back and fill in the gaps later when you find out what they are."  Because we pulled Mr. K out of public school fairly quickly, I could not do as much research as I might otherwise about homeschooling methods and local resources.  No matter.  The internet swooped in to save the day.  I found a couple message boards and online communities to ask questions and find a place to start. 

The first thing I discovered, is that just like public school or anywhere else, making friends and finding your community can be hard.  We don't fit in with the conservative Christian homeschooling community, which, like in most places, is the majority around here.  It did take a little while, but I'm hooked in now with a secular network of open-minded, diverse homeschoolers in our region and made some good friends who we have much in common with. 

The second thing I discovered, is that OMG homeschooling can be big business!  There are dozens of books on methods, a million different types of curricula, piles and piles of available enrichment materials, and vast websites exhorting you to why one particular thing is better than all the others.  Many people have very strong opinions about the "right" way to homeschool, and many of those people are very articulate and well-reasoned, and it is easy to lose the forest through the trees and forget what works for your kids and family, and the reasons why you chose to homeschool in the first place.

The third thing I discovered, and that I hope to continue to re-discover and re-evaluate in the coming months and years, is that my children are by nature curious, eager to learn, and a joy to be around.  I knew this before, I did, when they were both toddlers and then pre-school age.  When both kids were small I found a used copy of "The Unschooling Handbook" and read it, embracing many of the ideas within as the way we'd raise the kids when they were tiny and into the school years.  Then I lost this knowledge when Mr. K started having trouble in the kindergarten, reacting to his increasing behavior problems with additonal strictness and more rules, just the way the public school did.  This was the wrong approach--what really needed was more room, more time to learn according to his clock, not according to an educationally basic but rigid schedule with mandatory "circle time" that was torture for his wiggly self.   He needed to learn in his hands-on, bookish, accelerated way and be treated respectfully, treated more like the man he will someday be...what's that old line: I am raising adults, not children.  Something like that. 

A last thing I discovered is that the types of methods and curricula that work best for us are open-ended and highly adaptable.  Extensive scriptedness is DOA.  Anything that talks down to a child's intelligence will be given at minimum an eyebrow and likely the boot.  Work that exists in a vaccuum from other things we are studying or from our lives will be quickly viewed as busywork, so any of the "skills" such as writing that may come slower need to be done in a relaxed and loving manner and integrated with other interesting studies.  The kids are pretty self-motivated for their ages, and interesting projects and work that can be child-driven is wonderful, but I need to stay rightthere for guidance and support.   On our "this works" list for us right now is MBTP, BFSU, Brave Writer/The Writer's Jungle, and Math Mammoth.  For now, we have turned out to be eclectic but Charlotte Mason-y homeschoolers with strong respect for both Unschooling and Classical schools of thought.  Most of our learning comes from good books and hands-on activities, and wonders never cease, the kids actually seem to enjoy working together, most of the time.

If I had to predict the future (and of course I can't) I think that the kids may get more Unschooly as they age and can take more responsibility for their own learning.  Someday, they may even want to return to public school.  We'll cross that bridge when it comes.  I don't know exactly where we are headed, but this last year has been endlessly interesting and rewarding, and I look forward to seeing where we go next.