Practice Scholar... help?

Well, in case you're wondering, I haven't had a baby yet.  I'm at 39 weeks today.  I love this time of anticipation and knowing I'll be meeting a new little miracle soon!  The reason I haven't been posting very often has more to do with a greater need for sleep and because I've been trying to get more read.  I'm one chapter away from finishing a wonderful book a friend recommended on education called Norms & Nobility: A treatise on education.  It is not an easy read and I want to write about it so I can assimilate some of the thoughts into my own words.  We'll see if I get to it.

I'm going to sprinkle this post with some pictures of our latest doings even though they are un-related :-)

Camping in the backyard (the kids and their dad - I slept in my comfy bed, thank-you very much!) I did join them for s'mores.

I've also been trying to read about scholar phase.  Little Spice has decided she wants to have some "Scholar Days".  For those of you unfamiliar with A Thomas Jefferson Education, there are different phases of learning.  A child starts with "Core" as they learn to discern truth from error, wrong vs right, work vs play, and those core childhood lessons.  As they mature, they begin to fall in love with learning.  In this "Love of Learning" phase, they explore the world and get curious about the things in it.  They read and play at learning.  As the child matures, they enter the "Scholar Phase" in which they become interested in deeper study.  A child in deep in scholar phase will want to study 8-10 hours per day.

Playing at the dinosaur park last week

This often sounds really strange to people because in our culture we sort of do this backwards.  We put our young children in school and into a lot of educational experiences and classes when they should be playing and learning core values, but as they get older we expect them to play more and have more fun.  This creates the fairly new term of "teenager" instead of youth preparing for adulthood.

Anyway, that is a very poor synopsis of the phases, but there's a lot of great information on it here if you are interested.  So, the reason for that tangent is that little Spice has been asking for more study/reading time.  She has a lot of responsibilities at home and she feels like she is not getting enough time to read and study.  This signals to me that she is ready to become a "Practice Scholar" and, since I have never had a child in this phase, I've been trying to re-read some things about it so that I don't mess anything up.

Ray was scared of all of the growling noises and big dinosaurs so Spice and I took turns holding him.  I was eventually able to get him to sit in the stroller :-)

Apparently, I am supposed to offer her "Scholar Days".  She can pick on any given day if she wants it to be a Scholar Day or a Love of Learning Day.  On Love of Learning Days, she follows the family schedule.  We work together, do devotional, etc.  On her Scholar Days, she has a stewardship she is responsible for and she can spend the rest of her day studying.  She thought this sounded wonderful.  I wrote down her responsibilities so that I could see how much time she was spending on work and what I should have her keep as a "stewardship".  For those of you with scholars at home, how much work is appropriate?  Here are her responsibilities on a Scholar Day:

Mornings:
-Clean zone and room in the mornings (10 min)
-Get ready for the day (10 min)
-Walk dog (10 min)
-Deep clean some aspect of zone (Mon-walls, windows; Tue - zone bathroom; Wed - zone mop, Thr - dust and vacuum zone, dog's bath; Fri - none, Sat - ask dad where he needs help) (25 min).
-Weed and clean outside zone (15 min)
-Put away laundry pile (10)
-Kitchen job after meals (10 min per meal x 3 meals = 30 min)

Afternoons:
-Feed and walk dog (30 min)
-Quick clean zone and room (10 min)
-Get ready for bed (10 min)

Is that enough? It adds up to about 2 1/2 hours.  She no longer has to help with the family work project and some or the family weekly jobs (except her zone ones listed above).  This gives her from about 7am-7:30am (scriptures and journal) 9:30am-4:30pm (with lunch in between) and 8pm-9pm for study time.  That adds up to 8  hours of study.  I was thinking that a scholar would be given a bigger stewardship, but I don't see where she would have time for any more work if she is to have enough study time. Maybe her current stewardship is enough.

She had a "Scholar Day" on Wednesday.  This is how she used her study time: she did about 30 minutes of math online, she practiced typing with an online program for about 15 minutes, she wrote in her journal, read her scriptures, practiced piano for about 30 minutes, practiced spelling for about 15 minutes, talked to me about study skills (and I had her write down some ideas), and she read The Lord of the Rings (with a dictionary and notebook near by) for pretty much the rest of the time.  She loved it and said she wanted every day to be a Scholar Day.  I told her that she would probably need some Love of Learning Days in between, but that she was welcome to pick when she wanted one.  She knew some friends were coming over yesterday so she chose a Love of Learning Day so that she could play with them. 

Anyway, I don't want to mess this up so I would love any help or advise on this.  How much work is appropriate?  I'm also trying to figure out what the difference is between what the learning looks like in each phase.  My friend that came over yesterday told me that the way she differentiates a Love of Learning Day from a Scholar Day with her son is that her son has a plan on Scholar Days and follows through with much of his plan.  On a Love of Learning Day he just kind of goes with what he feels like doing.  I think this will help me see the difference.  How do some of you differentiate?

As for the other children, Bud is pretty solidly into Love of Learning (right now he is re-reading The Hobbit in his room).  He recently read White Fang and his insights about the book were pretty amazing.  He has read all of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and would like to re-read them again as well.  He loves observing nature and is often telling me about the habits of the wildlife in our backyard -even the chickens.  He thinks he has figured out their "pecking order", but he keeps watching the changes.  He takes very good care of them as well.  He likes to play physical games a lot also and that is mostly what he does when friends come over (sports, field games, bikes, plasma cars, etc).

Little Miss is mostly into Love of Learning, but she enjoys Core phase plenty too.  She just finished re-reading Heidi (in two days), she picked up James and the Giant Peach last night and finished it this morning.  Before that she read Candyshop War (not normally the kind of literature I would have available, but they were pretty inspired to read a Brandon Mull book after his presentation a couple of weeks ago), and before that she was reading the Lord of the Rings. She made it 3/4 of the way through the book, but finally got bored with it and put it down for something lighter.  Right now she is in the backyard with some young neighbor friends and Bazinks playing that they are all hamsters.  She has been liking to do her reading outside in the nice weather and it is not uncommon to find her up in a tree with a book.  She is also starting to practice her writing.  I'm glad she took her time on wanting to write - it is much easier to teach her to write now that she has read so many books.  She practices the piano, but is not interested in lessons.  She just likes to play by ear for now.

The girls on a daddy-daughter date to see the play Annie

Bazinks is solidly in Core phase.  He loves being read to, playing in the yard, racing in his plasma car, and following the bigger kids around to do whatever they do.  He likes to practice his letters when the older kids are writing.  Sometimes he complains when everyone is reading because he gets bored, but he is coming along on his reading lessons (we're not very consistent on them, but he's getting there).  He likes playing with his little brother as well.

Ray is a funny little character.  I need to write his birthday post (it's almost been a month since his birthday!) so I'll get to that soon (maybe).

It was hard to trust this learning process at first.  I worried about them not being "caught up" with everyone else if I didn't make them do their math everyday or if they weren't doing worksheets.  The kindergartners around here write a lot at school so Little Miss and Bud seemed to be behind in some respects, but once they chose to learn it, it's been easy for them to catch up (they are not completely "caught" up in writing I don't think, but it doesn't matter much to me because I see how fast they progress).  Little Miss hasn't done any formal math lessons yet and I'm not worried at all.  In fact, I think they are somewhat a waste of time at her age!  I would never have said that a few years ago, but I'm seeing a lot of value in letting them focus on core values when they are little and then advancing to learning activities as they are ready.  It's been a beautiful process to watch.

Rock has scout camp tonight so I better go fix dinner before he has to be on his way.  I have a several things I would like to write about lately - we'll see if I can get to them before this baby is born - or maybe after?  We'll see how it all goes.

Rock taking a picture as he rides 100 miles in the Tour de Cure.  He did great - his training paid off!  Way to go hun!