New Year, New Time to Shine!

Welcome to the Journey!

A second newsletter, when I never imagined being interesting enough people would sign up for one. Kinda surreal.

This newsletter will be another organic work in progress. It will grow with my daughter, Aurora, as I use this to help me catalog our foray into formal learning. I want her to have a tailored learning experience, one that supports her strengths and works to work around or overcome her weaknesses; one where we can tailor our lessons to her interests so that we can foster her love of learning instead of stifling her individuality.

This will also be a journey into how I integrate these lessons and new lifestyle, as I work toward several long-term goals.

Thank you if you choose to subscribe. I promise to keep this valuable, to the point, and entertaining!

Year of the Wood Snake

Next week begins the New Year, and I’m looking forward to what it will bring.?

One of our goals this coming year is to work on an open-ended, freestyle learning schedule for our 4 year old daughter. Since there was some interest in my other newsletter and this ties in with another project I’m working on, welcome to my second newsletter!

This will be devoted to homeschooling, specifically more of an unschooling/child-led learning style. Aurora would be classified as having “Pathological Demand Avoidance” or as I and many others prefer to call it, a “Pervasive Drive for Autonomy”. This means the tried and true methods of teaching don’t always work; if she’s in an emotional state, any type of “authority” trying to establish hard boundaries severely backfires.

I grew up with the same; I was difficult to deal with in school because of it, though I was extremely intelligent and often beyond my peers in development. There was one memorable incident where I ran away from my teachers and hid in the woods behind school (very unsafe, as they were known to have vagrants camping out and we didn’t have a fence around the property at the time). Overall, I turned out ok, but I also had the luxury of attending a private school with smaller classes and more personalization. Our local public school is known to have issues with accommodations, so we have decided to homeschool for now.

If you’re interested in homeschooling, or already do, I’d love to connect! I feel like, especially in America as the public school situation deteriorates, more people will be choosing this route. I’ve even heard of teachers that have broken away to start co-ops or coalitions to help more people feel confident in their homeschooling. The ability to tailor the curriculum to your child’s interests and strengths in certain subjects is extremely appealing, and overall a better option (when able) for neurodivergent kids. They get the 1-1 oversight they need and don’t have to deal with all of the social anxiety of fitting in at school or dealing with bullies.

If you’re struggling to think of activities or lesson plans, follow along on our journey as we develop a curriculum over the year and implement this schedule. I’ll share the ups and downs, the wins and losses, and you’ll have a template for how this will work, as well as access to activities and guides. Please note - for now, these lessons and suggestions will be for a 4-5 year old, but I do plan to expand on offerings in the future.

Stay tuned, this is just the beginning!

Ideas for Schedules and Lessons, Based on the Lunar New Year

We will be working off a type of "loop schedule". This is a schedule where you determine your core concept classes (like English, math, history, science, etc.) to include every day and then other subjects (history, art, music, etc.) are covered on a rotating schedule. If you only have time for the core lessons that day, then you "skip" the extra lesson for the next time and then just go to the next subject the time after.

I want to focus on building English skills (reading, writing, grammar) and math skills this next year. Aurora is already reading, though she has trouble telling us exactly how much she can understand. And she's shown an aptitude for learning math easily, so I want to expand on that this year.

Our lessons will try to integrate these two concepts into the other subjects I want to cover, as well, such as history, culture, science, and general creativity.

One of the greatest things about homeschooling is its versatility - it is also one of the most frustrating. If you need inspiration for lessons or full curriculum ideas, here are some we are planning to work on this month:

• Reading books on the Lunar New Year - these will cover history and culture, as well as English skills like reading. Use these to inspire writing lessons - can you write your own Lunar New Year tale? What about a haiku or similar poem? Focus on grammar, punctuation, and handwriting skills.
• Watch a lion dance - watch several lion dances (there are a ton on YouTube); these are history, culture, and arts lessons. Can you create your own lion dance? What about creating your own costumes? Look up what the lion dances mean and how they originated.
• Use an abacus - one of the first calculating instruments, these are great tools to teach math to littles. Show them how an abacus can be used to help with math problems and work through simple addition and subtraction problems with them.
• Introducing the Chinese Zodiac - this year will be the Year of the Snake, but do you know the history and myth of the rest of the Chinese Zodiac? This can be a good lesson to take outside if you have an assortment of animal figures (or pictures), play a hide and seek game to find all of the animals. Or do a local "seek and find" - how many of the zodiac animals can you find in your neighborhood or around your house?
• Create "fireworks" - you can use baking soda and vinegar to create simple "fireworks" (or if you don't want things to explode, just make volcanos). This is a simple and easy science experiment to show how chemicals react and how they can be used in a variety of ways.

There are a ton of ideas out there for practical lessons that integrate several subjects into a fun learning experience.

What other ideas can you think of, based on these or the theme? I've got a lot more, but you'll have to check out my website (coming soon) for more info!

#ChineseNewYear #LunarNewYear #LearningAndGrowing