• Contracts and work samples
From Afehandbook
Work samples vary with intesity and style in our house hold. Our boys Luke Brad and Charley are 10 year old triplets, in therory and traditional schooling one might expect their work samples to be realitivly the same due their age. At first the boys did specific worksheets for specific areas of study, I quickly realized they were bored and Not having fun learning. Afterall for us this was one of the main points to home school in the first place. I decided to just start going places the farmers market, hikes, GPS treasure hunts, the ocean on stormy days, lexington damn durring the summer when the water is low enough to walk right out into the spill way. All of these activities lead to all aspects of learning , I take a ton of pictures paired with dictation of them retelling what they did. They sometimes bring sketch books and draw what they see or where their imagination takes them. Last spring they all made a diagranm of possible garden sites complete with what vegetables would go where, we discussed sun direction and exposure and how close the water source was. They also each designed a brick bbq voted on which one was best then built it and used it that very night.
What we turn in just may be a sketch but the process is so much more. I feel like it is more important to create a thinking environment in which paper flollows naturally. We create a lot of paper just doing everyday things, a shopping list, researching how much a wanted item costs then saving up and buying it. Planting a garden along with hand written vegie markers. Taking pictures of baby plants emerging then checking them weekly. We have three types of learners in our home so for us we alsways must do it to learn it, Charley the doer may produce a simple sketch but mainly he will want to talk and talk and talk about the process the where when why of it. Luke will write a book on the subject or make charts and graphs. Brad will draw a series of well thought out drawings. What they do on paper in completly different from what they have actually learned.
Our goal as parents is to give them the tools to learn it in their head, the paper is secondary. In other words we don't put much envasis if any on the "grade" of any given piece of paper. We also let them lead us, in second grade they wanted to learn about Ancient Egypt we spent a few weeks , rented a few videos, had lunch at an ethiopian cafe( which we thought was pretty close to what acient eptians may have eaten), and visited a museum.
It was fun then they were done. Now fifth graders they are learning about it all over again in Nancy's class with a complete different intensity and depth. They yearn for all the details of the anciant civilization. So the work sample flux and change as they grow. Our boys recently decided they wanted to do work sheets , so we do math english and science. It does make it easier for me, but they can do them so passively along with a tv or a computer game on pause. Worksheets produce a lot of paper but it lacks in the experience of learning and communicating with each other.
When they didn't do worksheets I often had them do a few the day before a meeting so they would have something to show for each area of study. Now that they are produceing a ton of paper work i worry about them activly laerning something. Stacy Hatfield
