Why You Should Read Every Day

   

I find this graphic fascinating and enlightening.  I showed it to Sirah today to encourage her to keep up the good progress she has recently made in reading.  Our children have to read an hour a day from the time they are good independent readers, usually first or second grade.  So if the student who reads 20 minutes a day during the school year reads 1,800,000 words by the end of sixth grade by my calculations (according to their standards) our kids will have read somewhere around 5,400,000 words by the end of sixth grade.  It really goes to show you how the numbers add up.  I am not sure exactly how accurate their numbers are but I recently did a quick calculation for Sirah as she reads Andrew Clements novels.  It appears she reads at a rate of about 33-40 words per minute.   Going with the lower number 722,700 words per year for about 5 years would be 3,613,500 and the higher speed an hour a day adds up to 876,000 words per year and 4,380,000 words between second and sixth grade.  So the study numbers are not that far off as I imagine the rate per minute would only increase.  I have not timed Maria recently but I can not even hazard a guess at how many words she reads over the course of a year and over the course of her education.

Sirah and I talked about how these numbers can be applied to different skill sets and educational goals.  She loves art and swimming and we talked about what these numbers mean for practicing both art and swimming strokes.  It was a great conversation starter.  Do you encourage your kids to read every day?  If not, why not?  Do you read every day?  If not, why not?  Even 20 minutes a day makes a huge difference and you and your kids can start right now.

Hug those babies
Tenniel

Reflections on a Decade of Home Schooling

A decade of homeschooling will ring in the year 2013 as will a decade of this blog.  When I first started this blog back in 2003 I wasn't really sure why I was doing it.  I think only my husband and the kids' grandparents read it.  I meant it sort of as a record of our journey through homeschooling.  At times it was exactly that, at times it has been a personal record, at times a place for lesson plans and reading lists.  

Today I spent some time back on the first few posts of this blog and I was struck by this one I wrote and how true it still rings today.  I wrote this when the kids where 4 and 2 and in the womb the very first month of this blog. I realize looking back how much of who my kids are today was present back then.  They have grown and matured, as have I, still much is the same: their current learning styles, their unique interests and approach to life were in part obvious back then.  From June 2003

The early days...    Before I started formally thinking about homeschooling I've always been teaching my kids both informally and in more formal ways as was age appropriate. My first was subjected to so much in utero as I was finishing my masters degree in Communications Studies and coaching intercollegiate debate throughout almost my entire pregnancy. Serona's favorite early baby pastime was reading science fiction and fantasy books out loud to her while she laid on his chest. Then we moved across country and I found myself at home with a very young child as my only companion and I talked to her and with her almost all day long and not in baby talk either. We moved through our days together and I explained and labelled everything in her world and mine. When we went to the grocery store, each item we put in our basket was named and described. This is a pepper, it is red, it grows in the ground, etc. This continued and has only gotten more detailed as they got older. Serona thought a good challenge word for her when she was two years old was Anti-disestablishmentarianism and we are very proud of the fact that at age three she could name her president, senator and governor and recognize them by picture. But the thing is we never saw this as odd, until others were shocked or surprised. 

We just always have had the philosophy of sharing the world with them and taking them to places others might not take their kids and teaching them by experience. They've been at political rallies, speeches at universities, formal talks by activists and religious scholars, band performances at bars, drama productions, a star wars convention and numerous other "unusual" places to find infants, toddlers and preschoolers. They have done amazingly well and have learned so much from their experiences. They have waved signs on election day and participated in campaigning, they have heard the president and first lady speak in person, and have shook hands with Ralph Nader. Sure they had their moments at some of these events - but overall they were extremely well behaved and received many positive comments from those around us. I can't help but believe that this has contributed to how well adjusted and smart they already are.

For a long time I just moved through life this way - teaching in the teachable moments and making it very real to them in ways they could understand. When our daughter was three she seemed to need more - her options would have been to go to a "preschool" which in most cases is paying for daycare and play with other kids, or to spend over $500 a month to go to a Montessori or Waldorf program - who actually do teach young children. So we decided just to increase our formal working with her at home. I began more structured (not to structured though - it is me and she was 3 after all) teaching. We picked a letter a day at first and then settled on a letter a week to learn about. We would make lists of words that started with that letter, keep a cardboard box that she filled with things that began with that letter, made collages from magazine cutouts of objects that start with that letter and practice recognizing and reading that letter. We would pick themes to go with the week, A week we visited an apple orchard, made apple pie, apple soup and learned a song about apples. B week we learned about bears and made our kitchen table into a cave and hibernated. C week we watched clouds and read "It looked like spilt milk" and so on the list went. She loved it, we had plans and my son then 1 1/2 started to get interested in it as well and we moved through the days learning and having fun, without too much structure but enough to keep us organized. By three and a half she was really ready to want to start reading on her own and we began trying to foster that desire. 

My son is a completely different child with a completely different learning style. He is a very active child and easily bored, he needs hands on experiences and had little patience for sitting still. I found that I could meet both of their needs when "teaching" in the way I did. I could read a book about a subject and then have hands on experiences or objects that my son could learn from. I began to realize that this enhanced and stretched both of their learning styles while meeting the needs of each of them. I would spend more of the hands on time with my son making sure he understood what we were doing then and more of my attention went to my daughter when we focused on more bookish teaching techniques. Yet each was able to get what they needed from the lesson and a bit extra as well. It was and is a very natural combination of teaching and learning for us. 

Being a pretty left brained individual I have found it more challenging to teach my younger son - but that is good as it stretches me too and helps us all to have more well rounded experiences. While flash cards and books were very effective in teaching my daughter colors and language - they did very little for my son. However playing with certain toys, letting him touch and see green leaves and oranges and our little cardboard sound box worked very well for him. Music and art and anything physical helps him learn and we utilize that in our life teaching experiences. I have many teachable moments with him playing in the yard that I need to take advantage of and in those moments I really see the advantages of homeschooling as both my kids would be likely lost in the "system" for completely different reasons. My daughter would go largely unchallenged and quickly become bored and my son would be forced to learn in a method that is not conducive to his learning style and would probably be left behind or misunderstood and mislabeled. 

I am so thankful for these early experiences we have had for they have shown me the benefits that teaching our kids at home can offer our family and has given me the confidence that we have naturally been doing that at home all along. I have learned so much about each of my children and myself through these experiences and that can only serve to enhance our education throughout our lives. As we stand at a crossroads where we are making a choice to "homeschool" I realize that we made that choice a long time ago and that we have been doing it all along, we are just choosing to continue and improve upon that. 

Our days are no longer filled with Letter of the Week, colors and preschool activities.  Now we have chemistry, fencing, engineering club, and swim team to fill our days.  Still it is amazing how much is the same about our approach to education and life.  We still find ourselves moving through life taking advantage of the natural teachable moments. It is my job to find and create more of them now.

We still choose to homeschool ten years later and I suppose no matter the educational choices we make we will always continue to homeschool.  I am thankful for this past decade and all we have learned and discovered together.  I look forward to the next decade and all that it may bring.  Ten years from now if all goes according to plan our homeschool days will be finished with our youngest in her first year of college :) When I started I certainly did not think I was signing up for two decades of homeschooling but now I can't imagine anything different. 

Kiss those babies,
Tenniel

September - November Humanities Reading

Below is a list of books read for a 20th Century High School Humanities Course.  These books were read between the months of September and December of 2012 and deal with the years 1900-1930.  More to follow throughout the year.  Order is not relevant.

	Brave New World	Huxley, Aldous
	The Complete Sherlock Holmes	Doyle, Arthur Conan
	The Hobbit	Tolkien, J.R.R.
	Animal Farm	Orwell, George
	The 1920s from Prohibition to Charles Lindbergh	Feinstein, Stephen
	The 1930s from the Great Depression to the Wizard of Oz	Feinstein, Stephen
	The Great Depression	McDaniel, Melissa
	The Great Gatsby	Fitzgerald, F. Scott
	Duke Ellington	Venezia, Mike
	The Long March: The Making of Communist China	Allan, Tony
	A Nation Is Born: World War I and Independence, 1910-1929	Nelson, Sheila
	The Causes of World War I	Allan, Tony
	Winston Churchill: British Soldier, Writer, Statesman	Haugen, Brenda
	Notorious Americans - Al Capone	King, David C.
	The Wall Street Crash, October 29, 1929	Woolf, Alex *
	The Magnificent Ambersons	Tarkington, Booth
	World History Biographies: Gandhi: The Young Protester Who Founded a Nation	Wilkinson, Philip
	Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller	Miller, Sarah *
	Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition	Blumenthal, Karen
	Prohibition	Dunn, John M.
	World War I	Gregory, Josh
	The United Nations	Ross, Stewart *
	Titanic: Voices From the Disaster	Hopkinson, Deborah *
	Nineteen Eighty-Four	Orwell, George
	Heart of Darkness	Conrad, Joseph
	Maria Montessori: Teacher of Teachers	Shephard, Marie Tennent
	Genius: A Photobiography of Albert Einstein	Delano, Marfe Ferguson
	The Russian Revolution (20th Century Perspectives)	Allan, Tony
	The 1900s	Batchelor, Bob *
	Marie Curie	Borzendowski, Janice
	The Wright Brothers: First in Flight	Dixon-Engel, Tara
	Paul C'Zanne	Venezia, Mike
	Monet	Venezia, Mike
	Something Out of Nothing: Marie Curie and Radium	McClafferty, Carla Killough
	The Jungle	Sinclair, Upton
	Kitty Hawk: The Flight of the Wright Brothers	Hossell, Karen Price
	Albert Einstein	Heinrichs, Ann
	Henri Matisse	Welton, Jude
	Henry Ford: Automobile Manufacturer And Innovator	Temple, Bob
	The Naacp: An Organization Working To End Discrimination	Santella, Andrew
	20th Century Day By Day	Daniel, Clifton
	Timelines of the 20th Century: A Chronology of 7,500 Key Events, Works, Discoveries, and People That Shaped Our Time	Brownstone, David
	Art Of The 20th Century The History Of Art Year By Year From 1900 To 1999	Ferrier, Jean-Louis
	The 1910s from World War I to Ragtime Music	Feinstein, Stephen

Making History Interesting to Teens

Maria made the mistake of telling me last year that she does not like history, she finds it boring.  You would think by now my kids would know better, or at least be able to predict what will follow a statement like that :)

I have spent the last few weeks creating a high school 20th Century Humanities course for this fall.  Each month we will focus on a single decade 1900-1909, 1910-1919, etc all the way through 1999.  We will study historic events, famous people, inventions, science discoveries, art, music, literature, film, television, and philosophy.  The goal will be to prove to Maria that history is fascinating and linked to everything else going on in the world at any given time.  The course will be interdisciplinary and have both breadth and depth.  I have been having a lot of fun putting the class together. 

I have learned through my years of teaching that most learning occurs when students are engaged, interested and having fun.  They rarely realize they are learning because it is just so interesting.  This is the goal and so far I think I will be able to accomplish it with her.  Yesterday I spent the day looking at 100 years of art selecting our works for the year.  You really learn a lot about a culture when you spend a day doing that.  Today the focus was music, the day before literature and inventions.  I can already see trends and patterns across just these few subjects.  Connections will be formed all semester long and hopefully carry with her throughout her life. 

The key is finding the hook.  I thought my way in would be through film and literature.  As I prepare though I realize in her case it will be through science and inventions.  So many amazing things happened and were developed last century.  Science played a critical role and she will enjoy that part being the scientist that she is.  The literature will be interesting and fun, the music telling of the cultural changes but as I prepared I realized there are so many more connections between science, inventions and history this past decade that I am getting excited to discover them all and help her along the way. 

I remember my first interdisciplinary class, my high school senior art class.  We only combined history, art and music but it had a profound affect on my understanding of the world to be able to see all the connections.  I have always approached my kids education with an interdisciplinary/unit study flare but this will be our first year studying exclusively this way.  Only her math curriculum and chemistry class will be outside of this class.  I was tempted to bring my younger kids into the study, it certainly would be easier for me, yet I know this needs to remain just a high school level class.  The 20th century saw a lot of events, art, music, and historical figures that one needs to have a certain level of maturity to grasp and handle emotionally.  I know Maria is ready for this and the others are not, so they will have to wait their turn. 

I was disappointed to discover there was no curriculum already made that could do what I wanted.  Still it has forced me to make it truly what I want as I develop everything from scratch.  There are many wonderful resources available so mostly I am compiling a big spreadsheet of lists and material to study.  We will focus on primary and original sources whenever possible.  Most of the original material is readily available thanks to the internet and the library.  I will report back at the end of the year letting you know if I found a way to make history interesting to teens, or at least to my teenage daughter. 

Teenagers are Amazing. Stop Judging Them so Harshly

I have always loved teenagers.  Everyone tells me that will change when I have my own.  So far we are doing okay but we are only a month into the official teen years.  People told me to hate two year olds and I did not.  I actually found two to be a magical and interesting year for my children.  I will go into the teen years positively and take it as it comes. 

My own teenagers are not the motivation for this post, teenagers in general are.  I thoroughly enjoy teenagers and I am at a loss as to why more people do not enjoy them as well.  Sure they are loud and at times rude and rambunctious but they are always interesting.  Teens are fascinating as they learn to navigate the world around them as themselves and not as who their parents told them to be. The teenage mind is interesting to watch a problem and see their creative ways through difficulties.  Yes they can be impulsive but often that is because we allow excuses for them to fall back on. 

For anyone who thinks they dislike teenagers I challenge you to get to know some teens.  Really get to know them and ask them about their interests, joys and hardships.  Learn about how they balance school, work, sports and friendships.  Ask about their goals and dreams and how they plan to get there. 

I always tell people my favorite age people are 15-22.  So much happens in those years.  The mind is developing, strategizing, understanding, negotiating, and it is amazing to witness that process.  Conversations, debates, and discussions are very rich with individuals in this age group.  Opinions alternate between firm, fluid, unsure and firm again.  People in this age range are trying to figure out who they are, what their place in this world is, what this world is all about and what it really should be like.  They love to engage on issues of religion, politics, sexuality, money and all the world's biggest issues and questions.  Adults are foolish to not engage and learn from them and help teens and young adults learn from them and see the world from other perspectives. 


I am a tutor.  I primarily work with teenagers on their study skills and their ACT test prep.  The first question I ask them is what sports or musical instruments they have played.  I ask about their favorite movies, music, books and video games.  I work hard to find connection points with each of my students and to help them feel comfortable with me.  The only part I dislike about my job is that when I am successful I work myself out of it.  When my students succeed they stop working with me and I miss getting to know them and see their success and journey. 

I watch other adults look at teenagers with disgust or cross a street to avoid them and I am saddened.  Our culture needs more cross generational relationships and the adults in this culture are doing little to connect with the teenagers and young adults and be active parts of their lives.  If I was a teen receiving looks from adults like I observe I would not want relationships with adults and I would likely continue behaviors that were repelling the adults. 

Our home school group meets at the beach every week.  Several times this summer I set up in the middle of the high school/college zone.  It was interesting to see how the teens served as "adult repellent" with no other adults wanting to be anywhere near them.  Yes they smoked, yes many of them swore, yes they gave me incredulous looks at first.  A strange thing happened though after I smiled, returned a football that landed at my feet and they realized I was not going away.  They spoke to me, they smiled, they seemed to have cleaned up their language some and even spoke a little softer.  I did not ask them to, I did not encourage them to, I did not even really interact with them. 

I work with many teenagers and every one of them is unique and interesting.  They are totally amazing and special people.  They are polite, kind and engaging.  They just want people to treat them with respect and kindness.  They want people to believe in them, build them up, support and encourage them.  They don't want to be talked down to, belittled, or prejudged.   They care burdens and walk hard paths.  They want to do hard things, be challenged and will respond to the opportunities laid before them. 

In all of my years of teaching and tutoring I have learned you always teach up.  Students long to be recognized, they long to have someone notice the specialness within them and help bring it out.  Students will always rise to the challenge when encouraged and supported.  I still believe Aristotle was right and work hard to help all my students realize I am only helping them discover what they themselves already knew.  It is not about the teacher, it is the student who knew and just needed a little help getting it out of themselves.

Teenagers want the adults in this world to realize they are just as capable and hard working as fellow adults.  Teenagers want to be treated like adults but also be given some breathing room to be allowed to make mistakes and screw up along the way, they are still learning.  Treat teens with respect and you will be amazed at the results.  You will meet some really interesting and amazing people along the way. 

Reflections on Eight Years of a Reader

I have kept journals for each of my children since I was pregnant with them.  Their journal is a place I record important times in their lives, funny stories I want to remember and advice I want to give them years later.  These pages are made up of moments I want them to remember, a picture of their childhood without all the snapshots, just my verbal descriptions.  

Occasionally when I write in these I skim back over past years and see where they have been and where they are now, even in their young lives you can begin to trace paths and see how each experience led to the next.  I was doing that recently when I came across an entry that stuck with me.  I wrote in Maria’s journal on January 22, 2004 when she was 4 years old.  

“Today was a special day.  It was as if the light bulb just clicked and you truly got it.  I was so thankful to be a part of it - to be there to help and to see you read your first words and whole book.  Your first book was “Al” by Primary Phonics read on January 22, 2004.  I truly hope this develops into a passion for reading much like your father and I both have.  You love being read to and your excitement over reading yourself is contagious.  You are so proud of yourself as you should be - not many children read at the age of 4.  Thank you for sharing your life passion and learning with me - it truly is a gift I cherish and am so thankful for.  Love, Mommy.”

Part of why this entry struck me was the timing in relation to recent accomplishments in Maria’s life.  In February 2012 she took the ACT (College Entrance Exam) as a twelve year old.  As I drove her to the college where she took her test I was struck by the fact that just eight years ago I was witnessing her learning to read independently and praying for her to have a passion for reading.  

It was this very passion that led her to take the ACT in the first place, to experience a challenge in reading.  As I dropped her off in a classroom of juniors and seniors in high school and walked away I wondered if what she was doing was right for her.  I am not a fan of grade skipping and I am not a tiger parent, yet there I sat with my 12 year old daughter taking an exam to determine her college readiness.  

Of course I knew she was not taking it to try to get into a college and her reasons for taking the test were sound.  I am glad she had the initiative to do so and I was so proud of her for being brave enough to give it a try.  As  I sat at a coffee shop a few blocks away I wrote her a long letter about her journey that brought her to this point.  I shared some of what I hoped would follow which continued with the theme of lifelong passion for reading and being a lifelong learner.  I have no journal entry from this day because I wrote a letter and handed it to her when she got in the car after the exam.  

I asked her reactions to the test and she said “It was fun!”  Not what I expected, though I probably should have.  She said the math was hard because she had not even learned half of it yet and science was too time pressured but the rest of the test was fun.  As I drove away I was thinking about how much can change and how much stays the same in eight years.  Maria has always loved reading and she devours books of all types.  She has had a lot of freedom to read as often as she wants and if the 10,000 hours to become an expert rule has merit I am pretty confident she has achieved that level or is very close to the threshold :)

We recently attended ceremonies on the campuses of Northwestern University and Hamline University to celebrate her accomplishments on the ACT.  Taking that test and her results have opened many new doors and possibilities to her for her present and her future.  She has discovered some new things about herself and her potential and plans to use them well.  She is as excited and motivated as she was eight years ago when she first learned to read.  Her enthusiasm is at times contagious.  Now though my messages to her are a bit different.  

From my journal entry after we received her ACT scores.  

“While it is true that your composite ACT score and all your subscores would get you into most colleges now, we would not encourage you to or let you go to college now :)  As I tell you all the time I am pro balanced life.  I want you to excel in school and do well but I also want you to enjoy swimming, youth group, and just having fun with your friends. I want you to keep your whole life in balance even as you pursue your passions and gifts....You are extremely self motivated and disciplined.  You set very high goals for yourself and work harder than almost anyone I know to achieve them.  Set your goals for a whole and balanced life where you still pursue your passions and talents becoming a lifelong learner and person who is happy with the whole of her life.”

I am very proud of Maria but not because of the results of a single test.  I am proud of her bravery, her discipline, her hard work, her passion and talent and her willingness to try new things.  I am proud of how she attacks a problem and faces new challenges.  Her test results show this more than anything else.  Her test results just confirm what we have known about her for a long time.  

Her journey of reading may seem incredible to some from learning to read to a perfect reading score in just eight years and it is quite an accomplishment!  When I reflect though I realize she was given freedom and encouragement and support to explore and pursue her passions and talents at the rate that was best for her individual personality and motivation.  She is very hard working and always willing to try new things and challenge herself.  

Each child has their own bend, talent, passion and motivation level.  As parents we need to encourage and support those passions in our children and give them the freedom to explore on their own and provide new challenges to help them rise to the next level when they seem to be leveling off or stagnating.  This is one of my favorite parts of home schooling.  Having the freedom to give my children freedom and room to grow and become who they want to be.

I have enjoyed walking this eight year reading journey with my daughter and I look forward to seeing what the next 6 years bring.  It will be fun and interesting to see where she decides to continue her journey when she takes the ACT to actually apply to colleges and heads out the door to one, if that is the path she chooses to follow.  A lot can change in six years but then again a lot can also stay the same :)  

Kiss those babies,
Tenniel

Teaching Older Kids

When I started this blog so many years ago I was in the middle of the preschool and toddler years.  I threw my creativity into teaching the alphabet, learning life skills and experiencing the world.  Most of my posts were made up of field trips, letter of the week games, and surviving life with three kids under the age of 5 while beginning our home school journey.

Here we are 8 years later and this blog has a very different tone as my life has a very different tone.  I never would have believed I had more time for things like blogging back then but I simply did.  I know someday again I will.  I can not bring myself to close this blog down no matter how little I blog because it is such a part of us and our home school journey.

Yesterday was a great home school day here.  We are wrapping up a school year and getting ready to find our summer rhythm.  Typically at this time of year my responsibility winds down and I have less and less to do with the kids.  This year is a bit different though as Maria has decided to do an independent study in Chemistry through the summer.  She is working through a high school level course with what looks to be a college level textbook.  Yesterday I spent the afternoon teaching her how to outline a textbook and take good study notes.  I actually even used our chalkboard :) As I taught her these skills I thought back to my own educational and my freshman year Biology teacher who taught me the outlining and note taking process I still teach my students.  A great big thank you to her!

Maria thought I was a bit rigid at first and this was a very different experience for her.  I am not often "rigid" or particular in my teaching.  Overall the experience will be good but it is much harder than anything else she has ever done and it definitely challenged her.  Not the reading, not even the material, but rather the concept of taking study notes and keeping an actual notebook for a subject.  I made her start a three ring binder just for Chemistry with sections for Notes, Vocab, Problems, Labs, Questions, and Misc.  The idea of having all those sections for just one subject was foreign to her but she understood the logic of it by the end of our session together.

We worked together on outlining the first chapter of the text and I wrote out her first chapter vocab/definition list so she can see what it should look like each chapter.  She learned the best format for keeping good clear visual notes and is learning how to write in keywords rather than all complete sentences. I demonstrated how she should pick out the key concepts and have her notes follow along with her text.  As we worked together I explained that this system she was learning would be key to both high school and college studies and the difference good note taking skills can make.

Maria is a very cooperative student and hard working so she was a joy to teach, honestly.  As we worked together I found myself getting filled up as well as I watched her learn a new important skill that was hard for her.  It has not always been easy to challenge her as a student so I cherish the moments when she faces true challenges that she has to work her way through.  She is a bright light at those moments burning furiously until she figures out the task and can settle into her new rhythm.

We will continue to touch base throughout this course to make sure her Chemistry notebook is coming along and she is maintaining good study habits.  Yesterday was an excellent start and I am proud of her.  I am excited for moving into this next step of her education with her.  Next year we will be working together on a very cool interdisciplinary modern history course that I am developing for her now.  I am glad she is learning these skills now in Chemistry so she can easily use them next year once they have become habit.

Home schooling her through high school does not scare me, it excites me.  I know there will be challenges to be sure just as there were when they were little.  Somehow I feel more up for the challenges of chemistry and high school history than I ever did for the playdough, paint and sparkles from the younger days.   I have always loved working with older kids and everyone keeps telling me that will change when they are my own, but so far I don't see it and just like the "terrible twos" that we called the "terrific twos"  I believe a lot of it results in how you approach it.  I will not be scared of the teenage and high school years, I will be ready, I will expect challenges, but I will embrace them and be excited for them.  Besides I do love teaching older children, so why in the world would I not love teaching my own.

Kiss those babies!

Starting with the end in mind

Lately I have found myself having many conversations about our educational philosophy and how we made the choices we have on our home school journey.  I keep coming back to the same answers.  We started with the end in mind.  We knew what we wanted our kids to achieve and experience in their education and what we wanted them to be prepared for, then we worked backwards.

We wanted our kids to grow up to be life long learners, confident, well rounded, contributing citizens who were ready for college.  Each family will have a different picture of their end for their unique kids an that makes sense.  Each family will then need to find their own path to reach it.  The one thing I would add, stepping up on soap box, is all kids should have the right to be prepared for college.  Over recent years I have heard more and more, well my kid does not want to go to college, or probably will not.  That is fine if they choose not to but as educators and parents it is our responsibility to make sure that option is open to them and to give them rigorous enough studies and schooling experiences to leave that door wide open for them.  Let them make that call their senior year, but make sure they have the option open to them, stepping off soap box now.

Back to our little unique family.  Well rounded life long learners, that is our ultimate goal.   I tell my kids this often and I sometimes remind myself of it daily when their unique learning styles are driving me crazy.  To build life long learners you need to help kids fall in love with learning and knowledge, something that I believe is rarer in our modern educational system.  This does not mean making school "fun", but rather rewarding.  Making the child take ownership and feel pride (the good kind) in their achievements and successes and giving them the passion and determination to see through the hard things and the boring things to make it to the rewards.  A life long learner is someone who loves to learn and just can not help but to continue to learn and grow every day of their life, long after they are required to work on their education.  This is what I want for my children and for my students.

When I talk to my children about their education I often share our overall approach to their education.  I explain how in the end I want to give them three skill sets to help them in their lives.

1. Research
2. Data Analysis
3. Communication

Life long learners need to be able to find information on any topic they want to learn about.  Research skills are important.  Being able to find data now is not hard, being able to find good and relevant data is.  The first goal is teaching the kids how to find out information about whatever they need and giving them the reading skills to be able to understand it.

Having information means nothing unless you can distill it and know how to utilize it.  Data analysis is very important for any life long learner, high school or college student, or any employee who needs to deal with data.  Having the skills to allow you to take raw data and comprehend it in useful ways is essential.  Here I talk to my kids about the skills of discerning fact from opinion, discovering bias, finding connections across disciplines and learning to add new information into your current understanding of the world.  Learning to take the good and apply it in your understanding of a situation, a subject or the world at large.  This is the second skill set I want them to excel at.

Lastly having knowledge is not that useful unless you do something with it.  I want my children to be able to communicate effectively in the world about what they know.  They need to be able to speak, write and present effectively.  In our world that still includes written essay type communication but more importantly it includes things like power point, twitter, facebook, video presentations, and learning to communicate in every available media.  So in our home school we work on our communication skills.

In the end if my children end up with these skills, the classes and schooling they need to be successful in college and they have had a well balanced life filled with friends, sports, service, church, and other activities we will have achieved our goals. 

Remember your goals are different than mine but I encourage you to think through your own goals for your own family.  Start with the end in mind, work toward those goals and the rest will fall naturally into place.