Companion Post to Rebecca's America: The Story of Us

I want to start by saying that Rebecca has given me full permission to publish her first draft of her America piece, now that she knows the word she misused in paragraph two. As a matter fact, she has taken to reminding me daily that the Revolutionary War was started by "mobs of angry prostitutes" because she knows she gets such a laugh out of me. In our family, there are four of us always trying to go for the biggest laugh -- dinnertime is crazy!

So before I get, "What is she teaching those poor children?" I must say that Rebecca now knows what the word prostitute means, and I don't feel her new knowledge means she has anymore chance of becoming one (but that's another blog post . . .) Remember, she's 10 years old. I love hearing parents' stories of how kids learned certain new words. Feel free to comment and share! Is language acquisition innate as Noam Chomsky suggested, or learned as Jean Piaget suggested? Hmmm . . .

Rebecca's post made me realize that in my pursuit of explaining what we do for homeschooling, I never covered how I went about teaching my kids to read, write, or learn vocabulary. I have spent the last few weeks since she originally wrote this post, trying to figure out what I did or did not do. Unfortunately, researching this topic started a huge reorganization project around the house as I've been frantically looking for some key books and notebooks from several years ago. We're just finishing up the project, and I now have ELEVEN full bookcases in a house that is under 1200 square feet (thanks Ikea!) So as a side note, if you're considering homeschooling your kids, be prepared to turn your house into a small library/school.

So here are a few of the key things I think I did in the language arts arena (which I admit is probably the subject in homeschooling that I have been the "loosest" in teaching):

• From the time they were babies, I talked to them incessantly. Yes, I am a "Chatty Cathy" by nature, but I think this made a big difference in their learning the spoken word. This is why they make you go into language labs to listen to audiotapes to learn a foreign language -- you want to learn the language, then you must listen to the language.
• From the time they were mobile, I took them to the library. We did story-time every week, Read Your Way to the Ballpark every year, saw movies and puppet shows there, etc. And yes, we brought home bagfuls of books every week, which were always a pain to keep track of and haul back and forth, but I think it was good for them to select their own books, and be exposed to a variety of different subjects.
• I read to them before they could read. And when I was tired of reading, I made sure they had books on tape and CD to listen to -- they loved working the equipment, too.
• I keep a stash of books and magazines in the car and the bathroom -- I find these are two places that they'll spend hours reading in.
• I never said no to a Scholastic book order. Yes, homeschoolers get these, too.Who doesn't love Scholastic Books!
• They've always kept journals, and I save all of them because they love reading them later on. They also keep photo-journals of their vacations and scrapbooks.
• Whenever they write something, I read it with them, and we find their mistakes together conversation-style. I never found the red-pen process to be at all helpful since then they aren't involved in the finding part of the proofreading errors.
• We look stuff up in the dictionary (frequently), we all have our own dictionaries at our desks, have dictionary.com bookmarked on our computers, and know how to use the "tools" section of Word.
• I let them read whatever they want. I LOATHE the AR (accelerated reader) program in schools. If I want them to read a certain classic that they haven't shown an interest in, then I let them watch the movie, see the play, or find a related subject that sparks an interest in the book (for example, Patrick likes fencing so we pick plays with famous duels.) 
• The only spelling book we ever used was Natural Speller by Kathryn Stout.   I love this book because it teaches Latin and Greek roots, prefixes and suffixes, and patterns of words. I can tell what Rebecca was thinking with her "prostitute" and "protester" mix up because she knows "pro" has a Latin origin meaning "before" in both words. In prostitute it is combined with "statuere" which is "to cause to stand" and in "protester" it is combined with "testari" which is "to witness." I myself, never realized how much the two words had in common! If you've seen America: The Story of Us, that particular scene is a little confusing with the imagery, if you know what I mean! Watch it if you haven't seen it! This documentary is a great chronological overview of American history with frequent commentaries by notable people. The kids are both working on American history blog posts to correspond with July 4th patriotism. Check back to find out how else the prostitutes have contributed!