Light bulb moment

I had a light bulb homeschooling moment today. I realised the error of my ways in applying ‘school learning’ to homeschooling. I had set my ten year old son a book report assignment. I chose ‘James and the Giant Peach’ because I found it on a recommended reading list for grade fivers and we have all previously listened to and enjoyed two other Roald Dahl novels as audiobooks. I thought he could do a book report at the start of the year and another at the end of the year so we would have comparable samples. 

Cohen understands the importance of ‘samples’ in proving that we are providing a high quality education” come report time. He has no desire to return to school and dutifully began to read the book, but without the joy that usually accompanies a new book for him. My little book worm slogged his way through half of the novel before I asked him to start filling in a book report template. Title, Author, Illustrator, done. He skipped the middle section and went straight to the bottom of the sheet and answered the question in messy handwriting, Would you recommend this book to other people? ‘It doesn’t give you the motivation to keep reading so no.’ 

I let it go at the time, slightly huffy that he had ‘ruined’ my planned English sample. I suggested a couple of times that he pick up the book and keep reading it so that he could get it out of the way. I didn’t push, there was no real time limit on making it happen. Meanwhile, he read several other books. Sometimes whole books in a day. He would read while I drove. Take books to the Doctors office. Sit on the couch and read while his brother and sister watched tv.  But he still didn’t read the Dahl novel.

Today I was working at my jewellery bench, listening to Julie Bogart on The Homeschool Sister podcast and on her Brave Writer podcast. I’ve been watching the Australian HimHomeschool Summit live videos on Facebook this week too. So much fell in to place for me about letting go, guidance, learning in the world and resisting returning to schooling ways.

 I ran upstairs and grabbed Cohen’s things from his homeschool basket and asked him to meet me in my studio. When he saw his book report and the novel on my desk he sighed. I explained that I had realised that he really didn’t need to finish reading the novel. I said we could finish the report together and I would scribe, as he doesn’t love writing by hand. I started asking him the questions about the book - setting, character descriptions, summary - he narrated them to me with a wonderful memory for details and grasp of the plot. The last two questions he couldn’t answer - Moral of the Story and Conclusion - so we wrote that he didn’t know because he hadn’t finished reading the story, but he imagined that the good people lived happily ever after and the bad people died, as in other Roald Dahl books.

I put the pencil down and told him we were done. I said if I were to mark this, I would give him an A+. He had grasped the concepts in the book, could narrate the plot, applied prior learning, and independently used the word ‘motivation’ in his recommendation. He thought he should get a B or C for not finishing the book. I laughed, how often I haven’t finished a book! Life is too short for bad books. Everyone has different taste. He wrote an honest book report. I offered him my hand in a high five. He jumped out of his seat and hugged me instead. 

Afterwards, he sat beside me while I worked at my bench and we kept chatting. There are so many advantages to working one on one with a child, especially one you know so well. From now on I won’t be choosing any of his reading. I’ll be working with him to follow his interests in our own way.

I read this Cohen to get his approval before posting it. His only comment was that he wished I had worked all this out before I got him to read half the book! xx