Owl Creek Academy: Oh How We've Grown

Owl Creek Academy Started with a 2-year-old 7 years ago. He and I sat on the floor and learned letters together, then we learned the sounds together. Every day there was learning about other things as well, especially geography and science. He still loves science. A few years later, we had a more formal school. Sitting at the kitchen table, we use worksheets and textbooks. We learn what the standards require each year. The older Tbomb gets, the less this works.

We now have 2 students that both love to learn. Snapper still loves worksheets, but she is also very hands-on and is a wonderful problem solver.

The way we've been doing school is ok, but not wonderful. It leaves us with the want to do more. We want more hands-on impromptu learning, like what we used to do. When a question is asked, we run with it instead of having to say. "Well, let's finish the worksheet, and then we will look that up."

Learning happens all the time and should not be squashed by the need to complete a set of demands. My kids love learning and are interested in everything. We are changing things up for next year so that we do not continue in this rut and it ends up killing my kids' love of learning.

We will still have some worksheets, to make sure we stay on track for reading, grammar, math, and things like that. The workbook will be the foundation that we will build on- instead of everything being a worksheet, we will have a couple a day and it will be more about me making sure they understand it than it will weather they can finish the worksheet or not.

The biggest change will be for writing, social studies, and science. I have a list of topics and instead of having them planned out with worksheets, we will be learning how to research and exploring each topic ourselves. It is important that kids learn to learn and learning to research is part of that.

We will also be using our Kindle Fires in homeschool next year. We have not done this before, I've even made sure that we had hard copies of the books we were reading. No more. (In fact, I gave the classics away and purchased them on Kindle). I have found amazing apps that are globes, dictionaries, and so much more that we will use. They will be handy and learning can happen all over instead of just at the kitchen table with textbooks. Also, now when they want to know about a country, they look at it on their Fires instead of not wanting to pull out the maps.

I've been preparing our supplies for next year, but the only changes I've implemented for the kids are the changes to their Fires and so far, they are loving it. Every day, they tell me something they have learned from one of the apps I've installed.

I'll be updating as I finish more preparations, but I will leave you with one question that I asked myself just today: Does a child learn more about a squirrel from reading about them, putting food out for them, and observing them, or from answering questions on a worksheet?

Mine were very excited to hang the squirrel feeder after we read an article about them today!