Team Gray!

Maybe because I’m a homeschooler, I don’t have the mindset that some will learn, some will not. At home, if a child doesn’t learn, I re-tool it until the child learns. I have to, because I’m it. There’s not somebody in room 12 that will connect better with my child next year, or whatever.

This week has consumed me, trying to figure out what works. It felt like I found out more about what doesn’t work than what does. Group games did not work with 5-8 year old girls, for example. Inevitably, someone would flatly refuse to play–dramatically, in the middle of the room, no less–while other girls would just wander away from the game and do something else. None of the younger girls understood any of the robot games, or the bus route game, which consumes me to this day. I am constantly mumbling to myself how to make a better bus route to better work the algorithms of physically walking through a map to accomplish a goal.

I still don’t understand why the girls made such a big point of tearing up all the construction paper we’d taped to the floor.

We found out that the 8-12 year old girls liked the group games. This group didn’t do so well with exploring their computers without internet. We never did get the internet filtered enough to let them explore it. The 5-8 year olds liked playing with the paint program, and were thrilled with clip art. Some of them were even excited to make a bar graph in Excel.

I was disappointed to find that most of the kids did not like to be challenged to think. This being the beginning of summer break, most of them balked at busy work as well, but some were glad to have that to do.

I also found out that Curtis’ theory of “if you bore them, they’ll be productive” bore out for some. And some girls flatly refused to participate in any computer activity.

I will be racking my brain trying to figure out how I could have reached them. I just know it.

Next week, boys. I wonder what differences we’ll see.

I just came in from riding my bike–celebrating the later sunset, you know. I’d hoped to see some bunnies–they come out in the evening. As I rounded the corner toward my house, I saw two bunnies jumping on a neighbor’s driveway. They were playing. One jumped higher than the other, and as I rode past, I saw that the high jumping bunny actually jumped over the other one. They were playing leapfrog!

continuing the fatherhood theme, here’s one of my favorites of Curtis and Esteban