! Ways to teach the basics while gardening and practicing permaculture!

It's been 5 months since I've posted in this thread! Yikes!

A lot's gone on! We raise a gosling, three ducklings, and two chicks. We learned a lot more about acids and bases, and volcanoes, and phonics and numbers.

School's started back up, and our school is awesome! They've supplied us with great curriculum, and supporting us parents online (with no required Zoom meetings for the kids--hallelujah!), and I'm really loving the structure/support of knowing what to teach, and then the freedom to teach when works best.

For example, before school actually started, they let us come by the school and pick up a BIG box full of curriculum and workbooks and math manipulative. My kids were excited about it...so we read all 20 chapters of their fiction book (The Wild Robot), and spent hours working on phonics and math. The kids were excited to see all their new stuff, and I was totally going to ride that wave of excitement!

On Monday we spent 2 hours working on math--they were interested, so I figured I'd just focus on that. Wednesday we worked on Phonics over an hour, as well as history and music. I just kind of play it by ear, and we get done what we need to do, when it works best for them. I love it!

Here's pictures of what we did through spring and summer, starting off with testing PH with a cabbage indicator.

LEFT to RIGHT Country Save laundry detergent, oxygen bleach, ash, baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, dish detergent, soil, kombucha, vinegar, citric acid

(The laundry detergent has a PH of 11! ...one more reason why NOT to eat Tide Pods, or anything else like that. And to Clean with Cleaners You Can Eat, whenever possible)

Nicole Alderman wrote:

I'm really loving the structure/support of knowing what to teach, and then the freedom to teach when works best.

That's what I loved about distance education teaching with #2 Son. With his learning disability, some subjects really exhausted his brain, so we'd work in the morning when it was too cold for me to be outside and then again in the evening when it was dark by 6 pm or earlier. He learned better and I got some outside stuff done - win-win.

I often find that kids, especially the very small ones, love to munch on things they find in the yard, and with a little guidance they pick up on it very quickly and safely! A great starting point for permaculture. Here's a video of a toddler learning and grazing on various things in the back yard with a small person's gusto!  

Hey all!
So my wife and I have started a series called Homestead Learning. We noticed a huge gap in Homeschool curriculum when it comes to kids being raised on a Homestead. Everything is completely out of context for them!
Our series is still in the beginning stages, but we have 3 books so far, two Handwriting Practice Books, and an Interactive Homestead Journal, all available on Amazon. Please do check them out, and let us know what your kids think of them!

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When I suddenly found myself homeschooling (it was that, or Ritalin) we decided to make something every day.  The first thing we made was a sort of hanging decoration, made from a worm-hole ridden partial whelk shell and several small shells, from our recent trip to the beach.  We hung the small bits from the big one, through the holes, and then put tiny, shiny stickers all over it and hung it up.  Sometimes the "making" happened in the kitchen, sometimes it was a card that we could send or bring to someone...sometimes, you just get out the play doh XD.  It added a happy note to every day.

Another daily thing was a walk outside in the morning; it was just a circuit around the circular driveway, stopping on the edge of the lawn to pet the soft moss, or look into a bird's nest, etc.  Slowing down to really see the little things, nudging a slug, picking flowers...as the seasons change there is always so much happening.  We didn't let our daughter have or play electronic games and etc.  She got into that later; it's such a good thing to allow a child to have Wonderment and Contemplation.  Children are natural contemplatives.  

Betsy Carraway wrote:When I suddenly found myself homeschooling (it was that, or Ritalin) we decided to make something every day.

My husband was homeschooled for the same reason. His school wouldn't let him back on unless he was on Ritalin. It's terribly sad that schools would do that! I like your idea of making something every day. I haven't been as crafty with my kids as I could be, and the years are flying by so fast. Time to make more memories and more things!

Jay Angler wrote:Call me old fashioned, but I really believe that getting kids to memorise the basic math facts makes it far easier for them to learn complicated math processes when they get to higher grades.

I encourage all parents suddenly thrown into homeschooling to think outside the box, as Nicole has demonstrated above. I think that our more active kids may really benefit from learning certain skills by doing them 'bigger' involving more of their body.

I couldn’t agree anymore emphatically with you, Jay. As a seventh grade math teacher, I always begged the six grade teacher, “If you don’t teach them anything else, at least teach them the multiplication facts.” Of course, they’re supposed to learn that in fourth grade but that’s beside the point. If my students know their multiplication facts it’s easy for me to teach them what -8 times 4 is. If they don’t know the multiplication facts they’re trying to figure out what eight groups of four is and it takes so much longer.
I look at math kind of like reading. There’s the phonics group and there’s the sight reading group and they’re at odds with each other all the time. I believe you need both. You need phonics to sound out the very hard words and you need to know some sight reading words. I’ve had some kids in seventh grade, sounding out the word the, because they were taught only phonics reading.

Nicole thank you so very much for all your lovely ideas for homeschooling the young ones! My grandchildren ages 8 & 7 will be living with me in a couple of weeks and I am excited to teach them all about life thru the lens of permaculture! I realize your post was a few years ago. I would love to hear more about what you are doing now with your older babies! I will post as I get started with the kids.
Thank again for your generosity in time and sharing!
Danielle

Danielle Baird wrote: I realize your post was a few years ago. I would love to hear more about what you are doing now with your older babies! I will post as I get started with the kids.
Thank again for your generosity in time and sharing!
Danielle

I look forward to seeing your pictures!

Thankfully, my 6 & 9 are still interested in a lot of the same sorts of things. I thought it might be interesting to see their perspective on the subject, so I asked them what they thought. Here's what they said,

You teach us phonics outside.

We learn how to gif and hot to garden

How to use tools

We play

We learn at Tree Fort House

We dig in the sandpit

We go on walks and "learn what nature is and how to interact with nature and how to not kill nature"

We pick up trash

We talk about where and how to make a cellar

About a month ago, someone had asked here on permies about how to teach Ethnobotany to kids. I posted a lot of pictures and activities of what we did to teach how plants have been used traditionally here.

One thing we try to do is do our normal school work learning outside if the weather permits. Sometimes it's too cold and damp to do workbooks or coloring outside, but I'll often read them their history book or literature book while we go for a walk down our street. They actually pay attention really well during these storytime walks, and we'll discuss what we're learning as we walk.

I find history the easiest to use nature to teach. For example, when the kids learned about Captain Hudson and his crew being given spruce needle needle tea to fight scurvy, we went out and picked and ate some. I love finding traditional skills that people used during the time period the kids are learning about, and we do that.

Last year the kids were learning about the Colonial period, so bought some milk paint from Real Milk Paint. I just got the little "sample size" containers, and that was more than enough for them to have fun making signs with the same type of paint Colonial people used.

My kids painting their own signs with milk paint.

This year, they're learning about ancient times, and so we made milk paint from scratch using Earth Pigments instructions on how to make Milk Paint with Lime and ordered pigments are the same hues that people used in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.



I ordered them here Earth Pigments. For making black, we ground up charcoal and added it to the milk paint to make black. This is actually how people made it in the past, and it works really well!

Since we're part of a homeschool co-op, I didn't feel too bad about ordering so much pigment, as I'll be leading a lesson for their whole co-op on historical paint and all the kids will get to take turns grinding charcoal and painting!

Another thing we've been doing is creating another garden bed. The kids decided to join in, and they enjoyed trying out the different tools (cultivator hoe, small shovel, and loppers) to figure out which tools were most effective for digging out salmonberry/blackberry roots. I loved seeing my daughter learn, hands-on, which tools were the best suited for which tasks.

Using tools is a great way to learn about how leverage works!

Sorry it's taken me so long to reply to your post! About every sentence or two, someone has needed something, and I've had to keep trying to come back to this. I've probably forgotten some of the activities we've done recently. If they come to mind, I'll try to post them here!