Holiday Blues

Here we are again less than a month until Christmas.  A time when people should be full of joy and giving.  All I see is kids who are asking for more than parents can give and a big deal about spending money.  

So many times I see parents going into debt to buy that one gift a child wants.  It seems to me that we have changed the meaning of the season from one of joy and giving to one of commercialism and greed. I did this, even though in the past I have tried to teach my kids that it is a time of loving and giving. Perhaps we should have made something instead. 

 

 

Even I have fallen prey to this feeling of needing consumerism to show that I care.  When my girls were little we used to go to the mall and pick a child in need and get a gift for them.  Something fun and educational because that’s who I am.

In years past I have made gifts to give out and been excited to see them opened. I am not sure when I lost that joy.  Now I fret over choosing a gift, spending money I don’t need to spend, to make the right impression.  I know I am not alone.  

I say bring back the feeling of the season. Bring back the joy and love.  Bring back the spirit of giving.  Bring back a time when just spending time with people was a gift in itself.  We are so busy we forget that giving our time and energy to another can be a gift.

Time to shake off the holiday blues, so give your time freely, love freely and remember that in the end a bigger better gift is no replacement for true joy.

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Heather Garcia

Change It Up

After homeschooling for years I have noticed a pattern.  Right as we hit the “holidays” things get busy and our schedule seems to get off track. Both my son and I start to deal with some boredom. I start to conserve time by trimming off this or that, but a couple of years ago I had an idea.  What if I changed it up?  

One of the many joys of homeschooling is it can vary from family to family even child to child.  What works today may not work tomorrow and that is ok.  It took a long time for me to get there and to find out how to work with it instead of against it.

So we do a lot of learning on the go.  We do a lot of “off hours” learning.  We take advantage of life to help us learn.  Best of all it’s a joint project.  I think I learn as much during these times as he does.

I did a little research to see how other moms break the cycle and change up homeschooling.

1. Do a topical study.  Use a holiday to study the history, or the change in seasons to discuss the weather.
2. Read together.  No matter the age taking time to read together can bring you closer and help a struggling or unenthusiastic reader.
3. Do a service project.  Find a senior center and read to seniors or just adopt a grandparent. Help at a soup kitchen, or even make lunches for the homeless.  

This is just a taste of what I found that others are doing to change it up, but even things such as a change of scenery can revive and recharge you for the rest of the year.

Posted by

Heather Garcia

Tech Addiction

It’s funny. I have a husband who spends all day sitting at the computer and almost no time on the computer that is not work or personal project related, where as I am a self-professed social network addict.  I am working on this flaw. I have seen it in my kids and I am not a fan.  How can I ask them to stop if I am on Facebook 24/7?  So I need to learn to turn it off. The world will not end if I miss a text message, email or status update.  

Park play dates have turned into mom’s checking phones, teens checking phones and kids running around. We have checked out of personal contact and into a safe world of make believe.  

We crave that hit of dopamine we get when we check our phones.  We need to be connected to everyone on our friends list.  When did this happen?  Why did this happen?  Social skills are an afterthought.  No one writes personal notes anymore.  

We have a tech free dinner table.  This is a must.  We come together and sit down to eat and talk about our day.  No room there for Facebook or Twitter.  No room for Snapchat or text messages.  I think we need to do this more.  My husband has been saying this and I have been fighting the wave.  

I am not afraid to admit my guilt, but I am ashamed that I have let myself get this way.  Now it’s time to take a hard look and figure out how to get out of the hole I have dug myself into.  So I issue a challenge.  Put your phone down and talk to the people in your life.  Your friends, your family, the stranger next to you in line.  Look your cashier in the eye when she says hello and respond.  It will enrich your life.  

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Heather Garcia

Fall Co-op Wrap Up

 

Another successful co-op is in the books.  We would like to extend a huge thank you to the teachers, assistants and clean-up crews that made this all possible.  Also a thanks to Kristie for making this run so smoothly.  We are always looking to improve on our success, and as such the ideas from the board are already flowing.  If you have any ideas feel free to comment here or send a message to the board.  

With such a diverse group I am always happy to hear from teachers and parents how much they enjoyed co-op but I have to tell you there is a special place in my heart when the kids say “thank you” on the last day of class.  

I loved seeing all the creative costumes for our trunk r treat. It seems like everyone had a great time and the pictures are all fantastic. It was great seeing a mix of allergy safe and traditional treats given out.

Each session the classes get more and more creative and interesting.  So make sure you are thinking about what to teach in the spring.  I know it seems far away but I think that it will be here before we know it.  

We are currently looking for a new location for our spring co-op, hopefully in Wake Forest.  If you know of anywhere we might look into please feel free to let us know in the comments or send a message.   

Again thank you for a fantastic fall co-op.  Let’s see how we can top this one for spring.  

Posted by

Heather Garcia

Entertainment Vs. News

We live in a time where we have a 24 hour news cycle.  We are constantly bombarded with information.  News has become a loose term meaning anything that will get ratings, clicks or views.  I worry that the upcoming generation will not be able to tell news from entertainment. In a world where I have to tell my son to fact check everything he sees, I wonder how to teach him what true news is.  

I have taught my kids, all three of them, to question everything.  Told them to read both sides of a story and that the truth is somewhere in the middle.  In a political climate where it seems the fringes are yelling the loudest, I have to wonder if the up and coming generation will even be able to tell what is real and what is a fabrication.

Fox news, MSNBC, CNN, The Blaze, they all have an agenda.  It is almost impossible for someone to be completely objective.  It’s the language used or the tone, even the images and lighting will change how we see a story.  News is like a big game of telephone.  I can see something live on one station and look at three others and see something different  - but it’s all the same event.

In a world of sound bites and 140 character tweets, how do we as parents teach our kids to find out what really happened?  Even being homeschoolers, our kids have inherited our biases. We all view the world through our own experience.  We have people watching comedy news shows and getting tweets for news.  Facebook news feeds give us an overview and we don’t bother to read the whole story before we share it and make our decisions.

I think that the only way to combat this is a continuing open dialogue with your kids about what is going on in the world.  Teaching them to see both sides of a story.   With our current political cycle let them read all the candidates views not just the ones you agree with. Teach them to do the hard work of researching a topic to find out all sides of any issue. Teach them to be informed in conversation, not to regurgitate sound bites. Teach them the importance of facts over feeling in the events happening in our world.  This brand of critical thinking has become a lost art and I fear for the future if it is not taught to our kids.  

Posted by

Heather Garcia

Set Phases on Run

That we love our children no matter what goes without saying. That said there are times when we don’t like them, or more precisely the phase they are in. The times when they were/are babies and they don’t sleep because they are colicky, or the terrible twos, the four going on forty phase. I remember the “I don’t need a nap” phase. That one was very hard on this frazzled mom. When my teen daughter went through her goth/emo phase, I was pretty sure that the tri-state area would run out of black eyeliner and hair dye.

Any parent with more than one kid knows each one is different and goes through stuff in their own way. My special needs daughter was obsessed with Adam Lambert to the point that we avoid the name and music at all costs. Even more trying was the Harry Potter phase where all she would do is read, we had to fight to get her to eat, or do any school work at all.  

My son’s lack of desire to read was another trying phase. Mostly I think because I wanted him to read more. Now he reads but still on his terms.

The big thing to remember is that no matter what phase your family is going through at the moment, this too shall pass. Even if it seems that you will never again go to the bathroom alone, or have a quiet bath.  Remember that eventually they will grow out of that movie you don’t ever want to see again, and they will probably not even remember being so wrapped up in whatever the phase is.  

So take heart moms.  The eyerolls, the sighs, and the defiance are phases that will pass and there will be the next parental hurdle to get over. In the end that is why we have things like Wake Forest Homeschoolers, so we can talk to other parents who have gone before and survived to share their tale.

A Path Less Structured

“Unschooling is an educational method and philosophy that advocates learner-chosen activities as a primary means for learning. Unschooling students learn through their natural life experiences including play, household responsibilities, personal interests and curiosity, internships and work experience, travel, books, elective classes, family, mentors, and social interaction.”

When I started my journey into homeschooling I would never have thought that Unschooling would be a path for me.  I am a structure kinda gal.  I have color coded notebooks and learned math on graph paper to keep the lines straight.  We started with a curriculum that basicly told me what to do every second of the day. At first I got right down to it and my son was less than receptive.  Then I started to make “modifications” to what they were doing.

The last year we did this we struggled and were losing our love of learning… Both of us.  So I made the decision to totally change how we functioned.  I had met some unschoolers and I was unsure of how I could make this work for us, I like structure and my son needs some.  The great thing is I met some wonderful people who taught me that just because I am Unschooling does not mean I am unparenting. This helped me a lot and I learned to make my way slowly to a less structured education for my son.

I am not an unschooler but I am working that direction.  I still have some things that we can’t seem to let go of, but I am learning that doing worksheets and taking tests is not the way my son learns.  I have let go of the “schooling at home” mentality for the most part, and embraced that we learn things everyday all day in many ways.  

Seeing my son’s joy in learning return has been a blessing.  He is a smart kid (if I do say so myself) and I much prefer the return of the curious kid who enjoys learning.  To this end, we have incorporated group learning such as co-ops and group classes.  Living history is a gift from the gods.  Family discussions over dinner yield many hours of education and family bonding that we would never see otherwise.  

In the end I learned that maybe a path less structured is the way to go for us.  Who knows where this might lead?  Wherever it goes we will enjoy the ride.  

Posted by

Heather Garcia