Each Day? - the typical ideal homeschooling day for us

our current ideal day 

stretch, write down or record sleep dreams, write waking thoughts into a journal

then drink healthy fluids to cleanse the body

breakfast, upload anything that needed to get uploaded from day before

throughout day, spend time in the garden 

Drawing plus handwriting  

Chemistry TextBook, Math TextBook, Computer Language Textbook

Foreign Language throughout the day , 5 to 10 minutes at a time

Exercise Video of Some kind (two or three of them)

Audible Book or Youtube Lecture

Make Dinner (for us this includes make and post dinner video)

Eat Dinner, break time watch show, talk, listen to something fun)

Research misc topcs from history to stuff going on in world, to different projects we are workign on learnign about

Write in a Blog or Make a post: recipe, thoughts, respond to messages/emails/connnecting to other people 

Make snacks throughout day

Brush Teeth

Ideal topics covered in any given day: math, (chemistry/phyiscs/engineering), foreign language, (communication/phsychology/sociology/the world), working on a body required skills, cooking skills, knowledge on favorite topics (computer design for eagle, gardening for mommy)

1225pm - 1228pm 10/05/2020

be good? or be kind!

 

somebody posted this comment on facebook the other day: 

"I have an 8 month-old daughter. I've heard people in her life tell her to "Be good". I don't know this is really an issue right now, but I want to ensure she doesn't grow to believe her value is tied to her behavior. I regularly tell people she is good no matter what she does. What are some alternatives to this phrase I can request people use? How do I ensure they understand the importance of this? So far, my requests would seem to fall on deaf ears."

Comments

I am tempted to show ALL the responses to this post that others put up there bc there were many great answers.. 

this was my own:

Most important is practicing active listening to her her entire life including right now...

                The best advice I ever got was when kiddo was in his infant chair at a restaurant and this old couple came up to me and said, remember you child is always right in knowing what they need. At the time I think they were referring to how a baby always knows itself best if it is tired hungry hot cold needs to pee, poo, doesnt feel well, happy, sad...

 Too often as kids grow up, parents teach their kids to stop trusting in themselves, thinking they knkw better when a child is hungry tired etc... And so many people learn to stop listening to themselves and also stop knowing how to listen to others bc of this. 

Trust your childs instincts of whtwhr they are happy,sad, confused, scared.

 Teach them to NOT be scared of their own feelings. And therefore to not be scared of other peoples feelings. 

Learn as much as you can about active listening and compassionate needs based communication so that you can pass the knowledge on to your daughter.  ---- So that you can feel confident that she will know how to honor and trust and have confidence in herswlf but so that she will also know how to ask for what she needs and will not be afraid to do so.  

I personally truly began the journey when I read a book about nonviolent communication by marshal rosenberg just after kiddo was born while at the same time reading a parent effectiveness training book by gorden which introduced me to the concept of going past compromises to finding win-win situations.. Which requires a lot of listening skills..

 On top of that when kiddo was older we also listened to a book on playful parenting and another one I think called "growing capable people" by H. Stephen Glenn  --  Which kiddo asked us to relisten to several times with him on our road trips whenever he found we werent understanding him enough.. 

Dont be afraid to learn about communication over the years with your daughter listening in, and sharing the learning with you 

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Tip for Non-Religious Homeschoolers - getting started plus Phonics and Reading Recommedation

I wanted to share this conversation with folks just in case you have the same question and just in case my answer to our friend might also help you as well:  

Hi K, "How are you? I have a friend who is homeschooling his kindergartener as a last minute decision and he's having trouble finding secular materials for reading, especially around phonics and spelling. I was wondering if (a) you could recommend good sites for non religious homeschoolers and (b) if you'd be willing to let him get in touch with you? Cheers, R"

My Response Sept 02, 2020: 

Kiddo learned phonics from an app called www.readingeggs.com

we also started a blog which we are finally starting to actively write in with helpful hints about homeschooling: https://homeschoolingjournalforeagle.blogspot.com/

homeschoolingjournalforeaglepilot

homeschoolingjournalforeagle.blogspot.com

You sent

about an hour ago

we also started a youtube channel, not that we have posted too much about homeschooling on there, but we plan to do some more soon: KrinEtEagle Journeys https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjDHz1Sm22qFCM_QEz-Vv3Q

KrinEtEagle Journeys

youtube.com

You sent

about an hour ago

note: even though they are not religious, I STILL highly recommend they get a lifetime membership with the HSLDA group.. yes, true, there magazines are mainly geared for religious folks, BUT they will HELP ANYONE out homeschooling when it comes to legal matters, and once you start homeschooling, there are ALWAYS going to be people who question this or that and there is always the risk of someone calling cps bc they think the kids should be in school. and if this happens, you want a lawyer who specializing in protecting your homeschooling rights: plus its important to know the laws for your particular state .. if he is starting from the beginning it is much much easier! https://hslda.org/legal/

Homeschool Laws By State

hslda.org

You sent

about an hour ago

knock on wood that he never goes through a divorce, but if they do, being able to find a lawyer who knows about homeschoolign is also important.. when Scott went through that midlife personality change and divorced us, the first lawyer we had turned out to be completely incompatible with us bc she knew nothing about homeschooling.. even the cps worker we had knew more about the vagaries of homeschooling then she did, and the hslda ended up being our lifesaviours bc they helped us find a lawyer who specifically was versed in homeschooling laws and divorce and who would back us up and defend kiddos rights and who would actually listen to kiddo. (okay, yes, he was a bit religious, but despite kiddo being a devout atheist, he thankfully was extremely diplomatic with the lawyer bc that lawyer fought tooth and nail for kiddo's rights to keep being allowed to homeschool and to make sure his voice got heard in the divorce.

You sent

about an hour ago

btw, I am deeply honored you thought of us.. thank you for that. I am deeply humbled and grateful to you for thinking of us as a goto person with knowledge about homeschooling

You sent

about an hour ago

oh.. one other thing, about that readingegg.com app: I found that kiddo learned more if I actually did the app with him and made it more challenging while we did it together asking him lots of questions while he was learning. he has fun learning it because it was a game, I just made the game more challenging. oh.. and another note: so, when it came to reading/spelling/etc kiddo went through a deeply rebellious stage bc everyone was harping so about reading.. esp scott and mom.. that kiddo literally went on a boycott at age 3 and refused to read anything at all. which is why I had found this app in the first place.. so I could say to him, "okay, i hear you, you don't want to do any reading or practice reading, how about you play this fun game with me instead.. (and i was very very careful to NOT mention that the app had anythign to do with reading and just stressed the fun activity he could do with me.. and he ate it up.. after a few weeks playing it with him, and feeling assured he was in the habit of playing it the more challenging way, we let him just play it on his own.. next thing I knew, he was reading hard magazines on airplanes (his passion at the time) all on his own. and never looked back...

You sent

about an hour ago

the point is.. to stress to your friend to let the child goes at the childs own pace.. and to not get bogged down on regulatons of what is "expected" in order to be smart.

You sent

about an hour ago

oh, and one other thought: spelling: so if his kid goes through a stage where they don't want to spell correctly, don't worry about it too much.. they will eventually grow out of it. For YEARS, kiddo was completely adamant that he was not going to spell the "correct" way but rather that he wanted to only spell phonetically (or his own made up version way if he didn't know the phonetics).. for example "tion" he spelled "shun" (((now, this did actually have its benefits because it actually ended up bringing to our attention that at times he literally wasn't hearing certain consonant combinations (mostly bc we weren't enunciatiing very well). We used to get on his case about it but then eventually just backed off realzing it was one of those pointless battles, bc he heels were dug in fierce.. but then on his own, one day I realized he was actually making an effort to spell correctly all on his own. Now I don't know if had anything to do with his sudden interest in the evolution of language when he started trying to create his own language,,or because he was starting to do more writing to friends and a book he was writing and a blog post he wanted to write and basically just wanting to communicate his ideas to stranger via writing.. but one day I was reading something he wrote and realizing that he was caring way more about spelling and grammer then I did.. the point made, is on his own, through his own need for effective communication, he learned to appreciate it far more then even me.

You sent

about an hour ago

anyways, not sure if you want to pass this all on to your friend. I think I am going to repost all the thoughts I just sent you about homeschooling thoughts in that homeschooling journal blog I mentioned earlier, so he might be able to see all these thoughts there as well

a follow up thought about spelling: even though I rarely go back and fix errors bc of some silly ocd quirk I have been having lately of being enthralled by the typing errors and the autocorrect mess ups (which I know, it can make what I write very difficult to read and understand somtimes -- so my apologies if you are reading an unedited version of my writing (which most of it is these days). but anyways where was i going with this thought?

oh yes, right..spelling. those rare times I go back and fix my spelling, something I have found useful to do if I didn't actually know how to spell the word, is to not just simply click the correct spelling, but to actually go back and MANUALLY fix the word. I've noticed that when you manually go back and fix a word, that it helps the neurons in the brain make the learning much more effective.

anyways, just a random thought.  

okay.. i so hope my writing and the sharing of our thoughts helps SOMEONE out there.  we do so hope you will find joy in homeschooling and help your kids find joy in learning..

btw, just a thought, if you are a kid and you are wanting to convince your parents to allow you to homeschool.  there is a great link providing data on homeschooling here: https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/

this data actually was one of the original reads that helped convince me that i was on the right tack that i wanted to go on for my children.   that and listening to teachers and reading forums about the difficulties teachers were having.  

though mostly it was watching kiddo thrive on learning his passions..  though i personally think the reason why he thrived is because we did everything we could to steer him away from videogames and help him to pursue his interests 

plus watching the Sutra Mitra Ted Talks also helped me a lot to convince me to keep homeschooling