Hi, Phey. We have homeschooled all along. When my kids were five, we did almost no structured instruction of any kind. We took walks in the woods, we read lots of books, we visited libraries and museums, and we did some crafts. There was lots of free time for unstructured play.
Kids at five really learn by play. There is tons of research on this, and if you want to know more, Google “importance of play,” or read anything by Peter Gray. When we were five, kindergarten was all about play. Recently, schools have been pushing instruction down into younger and younger grades, and it is not good. When your son is trying to make a catapult, it is more about process than product. His playful, creative process is setting him up eventually to make great discoveries one day! I think kids know that they need to play to learn at that age, and that is why they resist direct instruction (which pretty much all five year olds do, especially bright ones).
When my kids were that age, they did do some “school.” We had subscriptions to places like dreambox.com, readingeggs.com, and time4 learning. (Neither of mine were reading at 5.) They would “play” on one of these sites for 15 or 20 minutes about four times per week. My son also loved practicing times tables with Timez Attack, and he played through all of the Fritz and Chesster chess CD’s that year. As they have gotten older, we have increased “school” time. By about fourth grade, they were doing 1 to 2 hours per day, three days per week. Finally in sixth grade, my DYS dd 11 will be doing considerably more than that.
How does that work, doing so little? When dd 11 took the Explore in 5th grade, she blew past the DYS cut, even getting a perfect score in English. I believe she ceilinged in English because she had read, and read, and read. Whenever she wanted, whatever she wanted. She had read much more than she would have if she had been in school, because she wouldn’t have had the time.
So much learning happens in informal ways. Kids learn a ton of math from crocheting, doing Legos, knitting, cooking, etc. They learn about science by observing the world around them, especially in nature. And they learn the mechanics and nuances of language through talking, asking questions, and reading.
I do understand about these huge ideas that totally outstrip ability! That must be one of the hardest things about being a little kid. When he was seven, my son decided that he wanted to be Shelob for Halloween. He didn’t want some cutesy spider costume. He wanted a five-foot high, animatronic, remote-controlled, fully operational walking giant spider that he could climb into and control from behind its glowing, red eyes. He could imagine it walking down on street, frightening all the little kids. He was really obsessed with it, and it took some time for him to realize it wasn’t going to happen. Yet. (Although maybe someday, he will work in movie special effects, who knows!) I always find it difficult to know what my role as a parent ought to be when one of these grandiose ideas comes up. Should I help him execute it in and “adult” way, by maybe buying a kit to build a catapult? Should I merely encourage him to think about the project by asking open-ended questions? Leave implementation totally up to him? I will tell you that my son drew many schematics and drawing for his Shelob costume, and I am certain that he learned a lot doing those!
By the way, if you do want to go back to the catapult, I remember us using these instructions one day.
http://spaghettiboxkids.com/blog/easy-to-make-catapult/. It worked great! We spent a long time hurling cotton balls toward a bowl that day. If you want to do something slightly more involved, but still easy, google “spoon catapult.” There are many variations online.
If I were you, I would enjoy these last lovely days of summer, and the cool fall weather to come. I would wake up without an alarm and allow your son to do the same. Linger over breakfast, and see what questions come up. My kids ask the most amazing questions at breakfast. (Yesterday, my daughter had this whole thing about Schroedinger’s cat, and how you could know if the cat were dead and alive if you used a Geiger counter, but then quantum objects behave differently than non-quantum objects, because the cat can’t really be both dead and alive, but a particle can simultaneously exist in two states at once, so really the question is, how does the quantum world interact with the non-quantum world? Me, on my first cup of coffee: “Hmmmm.”) I would scour local meadows for migrating monarchs. Download a mushroom ID app on my iphone, and go for a walk in the woods to see how many species we could identify. Look up some historical recipes and do some baking. (Did you know you can easily make hard tack, staple food of pirates?) Grow crystals in the kitchen from alum, salt, and baking soda. Watch videos about topics that interest him on Brain Pop. Browse
http://papertoys.com/ and download some projects to cut and fold.
The GREAT thing about homeschooling is that it can be driven by pleasure and passion. I had a great homeschooling moment this week. I was at my daughter’s choir, and there was a thirteen or fourteen year old girl sitting reading Les Miserables. She wasn’t very far through the book. Next to her was a copy of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. My first thought was, how great that the local schools are assigning actual literature. I pictured this poor girl having waited until the end of August to begin her reading, and needing slog through it with only weeks to go. Because I am that type of person (to the endless annoyance of my children) I started talking to her, asking if that were her summer reading. “No,” she said. “This is my second time reading it.” A little while later, her mom came in, and I put it together that this was one of the homeschooled kids in choir. She was reading Victor Hugo purely.for.pleasure.
THAT is why I homeschool.
As for screens, that is a tough one. I know some homeschooling families that allow unfettered access to all screens, and some families that don’t even have a TV (fewer of those). I believe every family has to come up with the solution that works for them. Over the years, what has evolved for us is a fairly limited use of screens. When my son was younger, I had a half an hour of TV per day rule. But I didn’t always apply it consistently. Some days, I would be enjoying the quiet so much, one half hour show would become two. And sometimes even three. And it wasn’t always the same half hour. It was usually when he asked, or when I had something I needed to do. Behavioral psych teaches us that the most reinforcing kind of reward is an intermittent one, and that is exactly what I was doing. I was intermittently rewarding him for asking for TV. So what did he do? Asked for TV all.the.time. He didn’t learn to self-occupy at all, because there was always the tantalizing possibility that he might get some TV. So I eventually went cold turkey on TV. Amazingly, it worked great, and he started getting better at playing by himself.
These days, (kids are 9 and 11), no TV is allowed during the day, except for the occasional educational documentary. They watch an hour of fun TV each night with me and my husband. Computers are for school. My kids both take online classes (CTY, Athena’s Advanced Academy, OnlineG3, EPGY, etc.). My son takes a video game design course online too. They can check e-mail or surf youtube for a limited time each day only. We don’t have time limits on that activity, just a common-sense limitation. Of course, sometimes we all need to rot a few brain cells, and there are times when one of the plays some computer game for fun. But if anything starts taking too much time, or it seems like someone is getting obsessed with something (myself included), I know we need to reevaluate. I finally downloaded Mineccraft onto the Ipad, but use is strictly limited to things like the long wait between games at chess tournaments. But that is just what works for us. You might strike a different balance.
Sorry this has been so long! I hope some of it has been helpful.
