Spring Break (so far)

Yesterday was our first day of Spring Break, and I won't lie.  It was hard.  Too much free time.  Not enough structure.  I'm sure many folks think the homeschool family would see no difference between vacation and school.  Those folks would be wrong.  Without the schedule of school, the kids ended up bickering WAY too much.  Bleh.

So today, we are being a bit more structured about this.  Nothing like school, but also not hours and hours of free time.  The boys did spend about an hour downstairs with some LEGO creations.

 The brown paper around the outside is the force field.  The bricks are an island in the middle of the ocean.  That's the republic gunship on top of it.  (I knew that without asking!)

Close up of "the island."

After they had been down there about an hour, the first squabble arose.  I quickly transitioned them.  Everyone got to do one chore and then it was on to the next activity, which I hadn't planned...Luke came up with it.  BOX CREATIONS!

The boys have been reading a lot of Calvin and Hobbes lately.  Yes, they can be a little obnoxious.  But the imagination portrayed fits perfectly in this house.  Both boys found boxes in the garage and the creating commenced.

 They only just barely fit in one, so they decided to make two.

 Blurry, but still adorable.

 Paul is working on the dials for his time machine.

Luke is inside his transmogrifier - it's a Calvin and Hobbes thing.  When he pops out of it, he has been transformed into something different.  So far, I've seen a bunny.  It's fabulous.

After box time, we headed down to a new to us library in Clackamas.  The Daddy-Man found it and highly recommended it.  Sure enough, the boys spent an hour perusing and then reading.  We were able to obtain a card and checked out about twenty items, including a new Humphrey book and a new Calvin and Hobbes.  Delightful.

On another note, I've been reading a bit lately about education, including this article, What's Worth Learning in School?  I won't do a full commentary here, but I feel strongly that despite some of the obvious challenges with homeschooling (no personal time and no personal time), this journey does seem better suited to address the issues that are arising in education right now.

High stakes testing.  Teach to the test?  My kids have never taken a test.  Luke will be required to take his first standardized test this spring.  It will be a non-issue because I have refused to focus on it.  I have that luxury.  My job doesn't depend on it.  But Amy, what about your homeschooling "job."  Doesn't that depend on Luke passing that test?  Yep.  It does.  But guess what?  By spending the last four years reading high quality books to Luke (thank you Sonlight) and doing math with Luke, he is going to pass with flying colors.

Sometimes folks ask me, "But Amy, if your kids have never taken a test, how do you know that they are learning?" Well, every once in awhile while we are reading together, one of them will ask a crazy profound question or make an amazing inference, drawing a connection with an earlier era or another area of study.  That's how.  I don't need to make them take a multiple choice test.  I don't need to require a formulaic and painfully boring paragraph.   Memorizing every fact that I read to them is not how I want to measure their learning.  Right now, at nine and seven, I am satisfied with their ability to converse about what made Elizabeth I a radically better ruler than George I, or how the beginnings of Islam and Hinduism are similar/different from the beginnings of Christianity.  I'm not kidding.  We've talked about those things.  Crazy?  Yep.  Amazing education?  We think so.

End rant.  Stepping down off soapbox.  :-)