For my second profile, I’ve asked a fellow homeschooler in our co-op group, the one I used to call Super-prep Co-Op Mama. I’ll be calling her Eclectic Mama (with her approval) here even though she says she’s a Fake Unschooler because when we looked up the definition of unschooling, it didn’t quite fit. I understand why she wants to call herself that, but her curriculum method is really more eclectic.
Almost Unschooling Mama has 2 kids, 6.1 girl in kindergarten and 2.0 boy. I would sum up her philosophy as Reading, Math, and social skills is non-negotiable, for everything else follow the child’s interest.
Why Homeschool and How Long?
At first, Eclectic Mom was going to go the public school route. So the time her first child was 18 months she was researching preschools. However, from her research she decided to skip preschool and send her daughter to Montessori charter elementary schools. She spent a lot of effort during her daughters preschool years searching for social activities for her daughter because socialization is one of her main educational goals.
Another year or two goes by. She was still researching her elementary school options during all this time, and due to all that research, decided that she didn’t really want to send her kids to public school either. She discussed with her husband. He started with “Please don’t homeschool our kids“, to “Please don’t send our kids to school“, from what she was telling him from her research.
Other than Chinese, she has been intentionally homeschooling now that her daughter is officially in kindergarten. For “preschool”, they just did more day to day activity, with no intent or planning to teach her specific topics. Eclectic Mama plans to homeschool all the way to college.
Where the Children Get their Chinese
This is a 100% Chinese household. Her children’s first and strongest language is Chinese. Their home language environment is 100% Chinese. The children watch Chinese cartoons like Dr. Seuss, listen to Chinese preschooler magazines like 星期八 and 巧虎 (QiaoHu).
At age 2.5, her daughter (child #1) joined a Chinese playgroup that lasted till she was 4, when the other children all went to all day preschool. That’s when Eclectic Mama started her FB Chinese-English Bilingual Homeschoolers in America Group to find other Chinese homeschooling parents. This year, her daughter goes to our weekly Science and History co-op as well as another Chinese afterschool group with her old playmates who are now in kindergarten and have time in the afternoon once again. The after school group’s aim is to learn Chinese together. Eclectic Mama joined these two groups to provide a social environment for her daughter.
Her daughter’s Chinese is at a very strong native level. Because she had been planning to send her daughter to English public school, she wanted to make sure her daughter learned her Chinese before 5. Hence she started teaching Chinese characters to her daughter from age 2. Her daughter now recognizes about 800-1200 Chinese characters, recently learned zhuyin, and is reading at Level 0 Chapter books. (Note: This is the story of a lot of ABC or 1.5 generation parents who understand how easy it is to lose your Chinese once you start school.)
Eclectic Mama doesn’t go back to Taiwan for the immersion experience.
Where the Children get their English
Before kindergarten, her oldest was exposed to English through her extracurricular fun classes such as art and music. In the last year, her English greatly improved through a weekly phonics class. She also has a few English playdates. Eclectic Mama isn’t in a hurry for her daughter to learn English. She felt her daughter’s English needs to be at a conversational level for socialization. It enables her to take English classes, increase her opportunity to make a variety of friends. For that reason she added more English exposure in the last year.
Now that her daughter’s in kindergarten, Ecelectic Mama reads English books to her daughter every day. Her daughter is reading Early Reader books like Little Bear and Harriet and Mudge.
Daily Schedule for #1
Homeschooling is on a year round schedule. They don’t typically do summer camps. Eclectic Mama doesn’t prep except for the co-op and she doesn’t keep a log of what she has covered.
The actual time her daughter spends in the classroom is probably about an hour daily. Please note this is just a general observation of when schooling usually happens. She does not impose a start time on schooling.
9:00am – Gets up and gets dressed herself, goes off to read
9:30am – Eats breakfast.
10:30am – Homeschool for an hour in Chinese and Math.
11:30am onward- Free play or pursue whatever interests her. Classes and co-ops.
Her Curriculum for #1 for 2015-2016
Eclectic Mama blogs in Chinese about what they use in each of these subject areas. So I will be linking to them wherever I can. In general, learning and memorizing facts are not too important for her. Rather, she wants her daughter to think critically. For example, history is not about memorizing dates and dynasty names, but to understand why something happened.
She only has very set ideas curriculum for Chinese, English, and Math. Again, for her those 3 subjects, plus socialization, are most important. For everything else, she exposes her daughter to the subject through her classes and co-op. If her daughter wants to pursue knowledge in the area outside of class, she will help guide and find resources. Otherwise, she has no pre-conceived idea that must master certain topics in these subject areas.
Practical Life – Daily living: wiping tables, wiping windows, folding laundry, putting own dishes away after every meal, dressing self. Life skills: sewing. Grace and Courtesy: saying hello to adults. The children have no chores right now.
English – Read to daughter, asking her daughter to read to her. Goal is to get her daughter to have conversational English skills. She also watches Daniel Tiger and Blues Clues periodically.
Chinese – Read to daughter, asking daughter to read to her. Her daughter is at Level 1, reading Lulu and Lala currently. (She learned zhuyin last summer.) She doesn’t feel it is important for her daughter to learn to write Chinese, but her daughter has recently expressed an interest so she may do something in that area.
Science – Science and History co-op 4-5hrs/1x/wk. Her goal here is for her daughter to have fun exploring science concepts. So she does not ask her daughter to fill out work sheets at home or do any type of “work”. They watch topic related videos if her daughter expresses interest.
History – Science and History co-op 5hrs/1x/wk. Similar to Science the goal here is to have fun with the topic.
Math – Math U See. After trying out several curriculum, this is the one they’re using now. They usually do a few operations or math games each day.
Art – Chinese art class 3hr/wk.
Music – Bell class 1hr/wk. She does not make her daughter practice outside of class. They do music classes because of its benefits to learning. Just like art, her aim is just exposure. She does not have any goals that her daughter must master an instrument.
PE – Ice skating 2hr/wk and gymnastics 1hr/wk. She chooses activities that builds strength for her daughter. So another possibility is swimming. She doesn’t feel they get enough physical activity currently.
Socialization – Science/History Co-op, Chinese afterschool club, extra curricular classes.
Next year, she may add a bit more grammar into her language curriculum.
If She Had Advice
“Homeschooling is flexible, don’t get stuck thinking inside the box?”
(Note: So true! It took me a year to learn that you cannot duplicate what you see in schools you don’t have the same student dynamic, and also the same teacher-student dynamic. Homeschooling, by default, has to be different.)
Getting Time for Herself
She goes to sleep with the kids, then wakes up in the middle of the night to surf the web. She doesn’t usually go out at night.
Eclectic Mama says that she often finds that she can do 2 out of her 3 ‘jobs’, (cooking, cleaning, or teaching), at a time. She needs some time to herself after completing two out of the three. (Note: After I heard her say that I realized it was also very true for me!)
