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I took Emma the Wonder-labradoodle for a walk the other day. She is now wearing the cone of shame, and though she is doing well with it for the most part, she was starting to look a little depressed...so I decided a walk was in order. I invited Demi-Sky to come along, thinking we could get in a little good conversation.
He did, and we did.

At one point in the walk, Demi-Sky said, "Mom, I'd like to learn English".
Amused, I replied that he already speaks English, and very well. He went on to explain that he was desiring to learn the mechanics of English. A light bulb went on in my head...these are the moments I live for, as a homeschool mom.

Sky began a story club with Meg and Josie 2 years ago, the purpose; to encourage the girls to write creatively and to better their writing skills. They each work on their respective stories, Sky included, and then every once in a while they read each other's continuing stories and offer critiques, or just enjoy. 3 days ago, Demi suddenly wanted to write a story on the computer. It's a joy to watch him working on it, creatively making a story-world. It's very rough, very creative...spelling-wise. I loove it.

My philosophy for language arts has been that less is more while in the younger grades. We just started using a language arts program for Demi, Amie and Teddy late last Spring..we took a break for summer and have continued on with it this fall. Sonlight Language Arts 2 fits well with my gentle LA philosophy, I've been delighted with the small portions of work for each day. It's good, solid LA without overwhelming. I am not an unschooler, I'm more of an electic/Charlotte Mason homeschooler with a classical bent...but for LA, I tend to run closer to the unschooling thought; for me, less is definitely more while young - I concentrate first on the mechanics of learning to read, and then aim for a joy of reading.
**The unschooler part of me stood up and cheered when Demi took the gentle bit of learning, began to apply it for his own creative interest and then asked for more instruction to improve his creative effort. Love, love, love it.

"Demi, I think you are asking about learning more English Grammar", I replied. "Yes, we can do more of that, in fact, the worksheet you did today on exact verbs was a grammar lesson." - and then I watched the lightbulb go off in his head, I could see the wheels churning as he considered the fact that mom doesn't make him to do schoolwork just to torture him, but that it was stuff that actually might be useful....

I love being a mom, and better, I love being mom who is always right.

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire" -William Butler Yeats

Grammar material I have used and found worthwhile;

** Sonlight Language Arts 2

** Flashkids writing workbooks

** Growing with Grammar 3, 5 and 6

Labels: homeschool, school year 09