By Tasha Chinnock
This week as I looked through our files from the year, I was really amazed at all we have done and all we have learned. Looking back at the work the kids did in that first week, I couldn’t believe my eyes at how much better their writing, their reading, their coordination and their comprehension has gotten. They started out preschoolers, and they are ready for first grade. But the greatest success I think we achieved this year is that all three kids LOVE school. When I told them that we were done with school for the summer I expected to get cheers of excitement, but instead, all I got were questions. “Will we ever do school again?”, “Why can’t we just have school all summer?”, “Can we start first grade next week?”
Another thing that really surprises me is that I did it! I believed them when they told me that I could, but I didn’t ever think it would be easy, fun, exciting—in short, it’s my favorite thing in my present life. I’m not exaggerating. If I could spend my whole day doing school with the kids and my whole evening preparing for the next day’s class, I would be totally happy. I love telling Dane everything we did when he gets home from work. I love showing off our projects to people who come over. I love telling my girlfriends, who aren’t sure they want to undertake a life of home schooling, about all the interesting things we get to do and make and see and read. I love watching Huyler and Ardara’s mouths work through a word, and being able to almost SEE the wheels turning inside their heads. I love to see the light come on in their eyes when they understand something they have struggled to understand. I love to see their pride in remembering something they learned a week or a month before. I love thinking of a way that “just might work” to help them learn something and having it WORK. But finding out that I am an adequate kindergarten teacher isn’t even the best part.
The most valuable thing that I am gaining from teaching my kids at home is a relationship with them. I feel like I understand them and know them so much better now than I did 8 months ago. I have learned how their minds and hearts process things. I have been astounded by their wisdom and sincerity. At the beginning of the year I was baffled by Huyler’s lack of attention, his difficulty in listening and responding to adults, and his apprehensive approach to learning. Now I see that he needed more structure, attention, and reassurance to succeed. He has gotten that through our school routine, through his Awanas club, and through the one-on-one time I could spend teaching him. He is no longer afraid to try or the possibility that he might fail, because he knows that I am here to help him if he makes a mistake and that he can learn anything if he keeps trying. In spite of all the warnings I got from well-meaning friends that “Boys learn slower than girls do”, he is learning to read faster than Ardara, and his hand-writing is almost as neat as hers when he takes his time and tries. Then there is Ardara. She is so smart, I wondered if she would be bored by the pace we would need to take for Huyler’s best interest, or feel left out because I gave him more attention. But what I found was that Ardara loves to help Huyler learn. She rejoices with him when he gets answers right. Her artistic side just takes over while I help him through an exercise, so pretty much every worksheet she did this year is covered in doodles. In the areas where Huyler catches on more quickly, we often find ourselves waiting for Ardara to finish her intricate coloring of the pictures on the page before she is ready to move on to the next thing. One area where Ardara has improved a lot this year is her ability to accept criticism. At the beginning of the year she would literally get furious with me if she got an answer wrong, drew a letter backwards, or missed a number in counting. She was just devastated to be told she did something wrong. I was able to adjust my approach to correcting her so that it was more encouraging and gentle. But I also just sat down and talked to her about learning being a process where we are expected to make mistakes in order to learn from them. I explained that if I never showed her a mistake, she would keep making it all her life. But because she hated to see a red mark on her page, it would always stick in her mind and keep her from making the same mistake again. My other concern was August—how would I be able to keep an eye on him, to teach him anything, while I was working with Huyler and Ardara? I was delighted to see how much of the kindergarten curriculum interested him. He didn’t care as much for the worksheets, but he loved the experiments, stories, bible lessons and crafts. When we would come to a part that was over his head, he would just quietly go to the book shelf and get a dry-erase book or a puzzle or something else that he enjoyed and sit on the floor by my feet working on it. He was hardly ever a distraction, and what is more, he seemed to pick up a lot of what Huyler and Ardara were learning, so that he now knows the sounds of all the letters and can match capitals and lowercase much of the time.
In summing up, I guess the whole point I am trying to make is that our year was a greater success than I even thought possible. I can’t wait for next year—in fact, I’m not. We have lessons planned out for the whole summer (see pg. 3 “Reading Reflex”). I’m so thankful that I have the privilege of teaching my own children. And I’m so thankful for all the positive support all of you have shown me. Your participation and encouragement have gone a long way and I hope you will continue to enjoy being a part of the Chinnock Education Experience.
This week as I looked through our files from the year, I was really amazed at all we have done and all we have learned. Looking back at the work the kids did in that first week, I couldn’t believe my eyes at how much better their writing, their reading, their coordination and their comprehension has gotten. They started out preschoolers, and they are ready for first grade. But the greatest success I think we achieved this year is that all three kids LOVE school. When I told them that we were done with school for the summer I expected to get cheers of excitement, but instead, all I got were questions. “Will we ever do school again?”, “Why can’t we just have school all summer?”, “Can we start first grade next week?”
Another thing that really surprises me is that I did it! I believed them when they told me that I could, but I didn’t ever think it would be easy, fun, exciting—in short, it’s my favorite thing in my present life. I’m not exaggerating. If I could spend my whole day doing school with the kids and my whole evening preparing for the next day’s class, I would be totally happy. I love telling Dane everything we did when he gets home from work. I love showing off our projects to people who come over. I love telling my girlfriends, who aren’t sure they want to undertake a life of home schooling, about all the interesting things we get to do and make and see and read. I love watching Huyler and Ardara’s mouths work through a word, and being able to almost SEE the wheels turning inside their heads. I love to see the light come on in their eyes when they understand something they have struggled to understand. I love to see their pride in remembering something they learned a week or a month before. I love thinking of a way that “just might work” to help them learn something and having it WORK. But finding out that I am an adequate kindergarten teacher isn’t even the best part.
The most valuable thing that I am gaining from teaching my kids at home is a relationship with them. I feel like I understand them and know them so much better now than I did 8 months ago. I have learned how their minds and hearts process things. I have been astounded by their wisdom and sincerity. At the beginning of the year I was baffled by Huyler’s lack of attention, his difficulty in listening and responding to adults, and his apprehensive approach to learning. Now I see that he needed more structure, attention, and reassurance to succeed. He has gotten that through our school routine, through his Awanas club, and through the one-on-one time I could spend teaching him. He is no longer afraid to try or the possibility that he might fail, because he knows that I am here to help him if he makes a mistake and that he can learn anything if he keeps trying. In spite of all the warnings I got from well-meaning friends that “Boys learn slower than girls do”, he is learning to read faster than Ardara, and his hand-writing is almost as neat as hers when he takes his time and tries. Then there is Ardara. She is so smart, I wondered if she would be bored by the pace we would need to take for Huyler’s best interest, or feel left out because I gave him more attention. But what I found was that Ardara loves to help Huyler learn. She rejoices with him when he gets answers right. Her artistic side just takes over while I help him through an exercise, so pretty much every worksheet she did this year is covered in doodles. In the areas where Huyler catches on more quickly, we often find ourselves waiting for Ardara to finish her intricate coloring of the pictures on the page before she is ready to move on to the next thing. One area where Ardara has improved a lot this year is her ability to accept criticism. At the beginning of the year she would literally get furious with me if she got an answer wrong, drew a letter backwards, or missed a number in counting. She was just devastated to be told she did something wrong. I was able to adjust my approach to correcting her so that it was more encouraging and gentle. But I also just sat down and talked to her about learning being a process where we are expected to make mistakes in order to learn from them. I explained that if I never showed her a mistake, she would keep making it all her life. But because she hated to see a red mark on her page, it would always stick in her mind and keep her from making the same mistake again. My other concern was August—how would I be able to keep an eye on him, to teach him anything, while I was working with Huyler and Ardara? I was delighted to see how much of the kindergarten curriculum interested him. He didn’t care as much for the worksheets, but he loved the experiments, stories, bible lessons and crafts. When we would come to a part that was over his head, he would just quietly go to the book shelf and get a dry-erase book or a puzzle or something else that he enjoyed and sit on the floor by my feet working on it. He was hardly ever a distraction, and what is more, he seemed to pick up a lot of what Huyler and Ardara were learning, so that he now knows the sounds of all the letters and can match capitals and lowercase much of the time.
In summing up, I guess the whole point I am trying to make is that our year was a greater success than I even thought possible. I can’t wait for next year—in fact, I’m not. We have lessons planned out for the whole summer (see pg. 3 “Reading Reflex”). I’m so thankful that I have the privilege of teaching my own children. And I’m so thankful for all the positive support all of you have shown me. Your participation and encouragement have gone a long way and I hope you will continue to enjoy being a part of the Chinnock Education Experience.
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