The love of learning

The boys are playing lego's, which they have been doing for the past two hours. Now they have the Story of the World playing over the loudspeakers as they play which is talking about the creation of South Africa and the politics of race that went into the government. In a little bit I will let them know that it is time to "start" school. "Noooo!" they will protest as they don't want to put down their latest creation, but we will indeed gather around the table and begin.

"The sun is in my heart
It warms me with it's power
It wakens life and love
In bird and beast and flower"

That will begin our day. I think it is a sweet opening verse and it brings us together every morning, uniting us in a lovely approach to the day.

We move into looking at our calendars and then our maps. This lasts anywhere from five minutes to twenty depending on what we start talking about before we move onto math, or our math book portion, of Life of Fred. I read one chapter and when it's over, "Noooo! Read another!" they will protest as we love the funny little world Fred brings to our days. We work with math manipulatives, which they love, and do our math minutes (a worksheet) which they love to check over.

Next up is typically a story or a poem. We read it, talk about it, and sure enough, "Noooo! Read some more!" they protest as we start to draw a pictorial representation all comparing what parts of the story we chose to draw. They write a paragraph (Oliver, three sentences and Austin, five) and present them to me and one another. I read their paragraphs saying the words they meant to write, and then they love for me to read them the way they actually wrote them as they find their own words hysterical before editing and talking about the different parts of a sentence, correct punctuation, and catching common spelling mistakes.

"Can I read first?" "Okay, you can...but I get to tomorrow..." This starts our read aloud time when we all get on the couch and they bring over their favorite books. They read, the reader getting to sit closest to me and the other on the other side if they choose to listen. Austin also has spelling words to study and his cursive to practice. We do letter blends that we make up words for and spell correct words for in their writing books.

On Thurs. and Fridays we bring in social studies and science "Do we get to do chemistry?!?" Oliver consistently asks. We use workbooks on Fridays rather than long stories together. Sometimes we bring out other books we have on the subjects...architectural books to look at buildings of the societies we are studying, animal books to talk about the nature observations we've talked about. We bring out our Animal Food Chain game, Bananagrams, or play simple card games.

These days, they are some of the simplest and most peaceful I will ever remember with these two. I would love to say that the above routine has resulted in an explosion of knowledge, that the boys are flying high in literacy and I just can't keep up with what they know in math, but the reality is we are much more main stream than that. We talk about the same mathematical problems for a week during our manipulative time. Austin's reading is most likely behind his peers if he was to go into a school. They like writing, but spelling is still very much based on phonetics and many times u's take the place of a's and w's fill in for u's.

What is undeniably exploding is their love of, and confidence of reading, of learning. This is absolutely thrilling to be a part of. I can't tell you how many times we've been out for a day on the way home they say, "I just want to get home and curl up with a book." After watching friend's who have children who can read chapter books by the dozen and knowing I was the same at a young age, this road to reading has been perplexing to me, though not that concerning as I see such desire and progress. We have brought out some Little Critter books along with Berenstein Bears and the boys LOVE them! It had me remembering some of my favorite times as a girl...a big stack of books next to my little foam chair, sometimes with a little snack on my lap and endless amount of time. Just because I could read chapter books, I still loved reading picture books, finding the little hidden treasures in each page, exploring each illustration before turning a page, and now I get to relive that thrill through the eyes of these boys. They pour over their Highlights magazines, Little Critter books, and Peanuts comics. They giggle and share what they read. They negotiate who gets what book in the car, and they believe they are good at it!

Austin told me, "Spelling is sometimes hard for me, but I'm a really good reader." "Yes, honey you are," I say. "You are a good reader, Austin, but I read faster than you." Oliver says. "Yes, Oli, you read faster than me, but I read more than you." There is no competition. They compliment one another in their achievements as well as feel pride over their own. They are great readers because they love to do it. Because they want to do it. Because they love books so much that their free time is usually filled with a book, if not legos.

"Mommy, I must have gotten my reading gene from you," Austin tell me as he knows reading is one of my favorite past times before continuing, "I like that, and I also like that I didn't get a texting or facebook gene from you." He's smart, and he's funny.

This love and excitement they have for the lessons we are doing is something I am nervous to see disappear if they go back to school. I would love to think that school would do nothing but build that sense of success and confidence up, but in reality when one is in in a room of 25 rather than 2, weakness as well as strengths will realign themselves and I'm wondering if that would take away from, or possibly add, to their learning experience? Will they keep their love of learning as their lessons become more textbook and less literature based? Will the different reading groups help or encourage? I'm not sure. We have such limited experience (yet a positive one!) in a traditional school, but now that we have such beautiful days that I KNOW are working, I am reluctant to get fully on board with the kiddos going back to school, Chris being even less so. However, that is still the plan. The kids say they want to see what it's like, though not this year. We fully support it verbally towards the boys as I want them to feel nothing but excitement if that is the shift we take, and it would be exciting! But, we'd most definitely be losing out on these magical days of ease, curiosity, and learning that are taking place at the moment. These days that we've learned to love so much.