Wind Rose Homeschool Academy Blog

On Day 3 of school, we went on our first field trip to a local park with a lovely little lake.  We started with our typical morning meeting-- but in the grass surrounded by water and the sound of the wind in the trees. We read this poem by Emily Dickinson: To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee One clover, and a bee.  And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few. We then briefly talked about what a revery is (a daydream) and the prairie ecosystem where we live. The children spent the next four hours, exploring, picnicking, pretending --a true revery-- and kayaking on the little lake.  As they played after I had finished taking them out in the kayak, I listened for questions the children had about the nature around them, careful only to listen rather than answer, to allow extended time and space for wonder. One of the children is reading the book Magic by the Lake , and the children reveled in the daydream of the lake granting wishes about saving polar

Names matter.  Names are important.  They communicate our values and hopes.  They are a choice.  They are how we say, "This is what this thing is and what it means to us and what we hope it means to you." The weight of choosing the right words carries into all of our work with our children.  In his book Choice Words , Peter Johnston shows the power the language teachers use have in the way children learn and think about themselves. He writes, "Teachers play a critical role in arranging the discursive histories from which these children speak.  Talk is the central tool of their trade.  With it, they mediate children's activity and experience, and help them make sense of learning, literacy, life, and themselves."  Naming our group was a responsibility of much consequence; we were naming ourselves and our children, setting our roles in place.  Thus, we weren't going to take the naming of our homsechool group lightly. A wind rose is very similar to a compass r

Our first day of school as a homeschool group is just 5 days away, and we planning our first few weeks of mini-lessons, discussions that will set the tone for the first year of our learning together.  We are reading and organizing ways to introduce engagement, passion, curiosity, and growth mindsets. We will begin our collaboration time each day with a morning meeting, as many classes around the country do.  And that first day, there was a time in my past when my main goal for was to make sure all the rules were clear: No interrupting lessons, no getting up without permission, no late work.  I once started off the year with a lot of "No's".  I can only imagine my former students going home after that first day, plopping down on the couch, and feeling completely uninspired. This year, day 1, I have nothing planned.   Inspired by this Spring 2014 article from Teaching Tolerance, I am planning nothing for our morning meeting, other than asking the students two questions: