True Vyne School of Nature

What sort of cruel person would make her children start school in July? That would be me. With five years of home schooling under my belt, I‘ve realized the need to school earlier every year, because somewhere after mid-March standardized testing, my teaching efforts fizzle. All I want to do in April is be in my garden. Last year, my dear husband gently started school on August 1 for our children while I was in Santa Barbara. This year, I’m happy to announce True Vyne School of Nature is now underway before August.

Last week, Buck and I tore apart the home school room. No more flies, hardened play dough, or turned over potted plant dirt on the window sills, a stuffed vacuum bag of crayons and pet hair later, oodles of part-way consumed workbooks burned (why did I keep those so long?), twaddly books tucked away in a box for the used book store adds a pleasant order to a room meant to store the delicious secrets of learning.

True Vyne School of Nature has not only a fresh room, but a fresh outlook on academic endeavors from our somewhat delight directed approaches before. I chose books and activities this year which will challenge my children to go deeper than we’ve ever gone into academics. And I have only two moments of slight twinges of regret so far. First, my oldest will attend a co-op one day a week and study his materials for his courses the rest of the week. Once I opened and explored my new and excellent materials in the mail for my other boys, I wondered if I’d could have accomplished the same goals as the co-op with the same supplies I’d ordered for home. The second regret came after attending a meeting with a Charlotte Mason expert. She had an uncanny grasp on CM pedagogy like no one I’ve ever spoken with before. Somehow she imparted a holistic way to accomplish the method to include all the variables I could not figure out. My regret comes from giving in a bit to a few more textbooks than I’d like this year.

My dear home schooling friend Claire helped me tremendously in setting the day to day structure of learning. Every child has a basket with necessary materials for a few weeks. Everyone has been assigned a color; Tator bright green for all his bursting energy, Wise One blue for his placid nature, Pooh Bear pink for extremely obvious reasons, Peace purple for his majestic presence. Children’s baskets have their color of ribbon tied about for easy recognition. Books are placed inside the baskets with colored masking tape on the spine in children’s colors. Days of the week also sort pages of assignments with paper clips in books. Monday=green for a fresh start. Tuesday=blue for the long week ahead. Wednesday=purple for things looking a little more rosy and bright. Thursday= yellow because we‘re slowing down. Friday=orange because our family never really stops. The colors and systems make the education of four more manageable for me.

Friday I spent a few hours organizing Tator’s work with the paper clips. Last night I worked for three hours on Wise One’s assignments over the next two weeks. Peace has a fairly light workload until his intense courses start. He’ll be working on typing, read great books, a little math review, and join us for science and history.

What to do with Pooh Bear? If she could have her way, she’d like to be an only child for me to sit and read to and do endless workbook pages ( please, no) beside her. She quickly has become an “assignment” on each boy’s to-do list. Peace is to draw from Draw Write Now with her. Wise One is to read a story book to her. Tator will do math with her. I’m trying my fourth reading curriculum with her called Talking Letters. Last year, she begged me to teach her to read so I dragged out the tried and true methods from the boys (Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, Sing, Spell, Read, Write, Reading Reflex). She made her way to the blending part in each curriculum and got completely stuck. I can see she just doesn’t have it all put together in her busy little girl brain to bring it all together, so before she could feel terribly frustrated, I just switched her to something new. I’d wait to do reading with her altogether until next year, if she didn’t want to try so badly. We’ll see how that all turns out after this next Talking Letters go round. Talking Letters attracted me at the home school fair this year with it’s simple beauty. The letters tell stories.

One of my students is coloring on my bed, so perhaps I’d better attend to her while it’s quiet as the boys are all still fast asleep.