Traditional Teacher Tries a Week without Textbooks

Written March 3rd, 2013

This traditional home school demands a break from textbooks!  Using school books helps teachers meet objectives and introduces new concepts, but educators need to balance these guides with a variety of  teaching methods.  After a long winter, our family needs time outside of the textbook box.

Visual and auditory learners may feel comfortable with their nose in school books, but also desire diverse lessons.  The kinesthetic (hands-on) learner craves movement and use of manipulatives.  Creative students enthusiastically learn while they produce something original.

I make every effort to meet the needs of our family with a combination of teaching approaches: my own lessons that I share on this blog, units, games and learning with literature and the Bible.  I use textbooks to teach phonics, spelling, catechism, grammar, and math, but add unique enrichment. As helpful as our formal school books are, we wanted to see what it would be like to learn without them for a week.

The following is a chronicle of these school days.  Please leave a comment if this approach to learning is typical in your home school.  

Monday, March 4, 2013:  Our home school day was relaxing and pleasurable.  Dismissing textbooks from our plans presented a few challenges, but thus far I recommend a respite from textbooks if you are in need of change during your school year.

The children's math involved a race to solve math problems on the white board.  Interestingly, my
first grade twins instinctively helped one another count coins, rather than competing.  They learned math facts and cooperation skills.

  


Reading literature with my children this morning was delicious.  Without structured comprehension, I agreed to the children's requests for "one more chapter" or "one more picture book."  The little ones and I read books by Kevin Henkes and I began a unit starring Henkes's spunky mouse Lilly.

100! The special milestone of our hundredth day offered a perfect platform for theme learning.  We created posters with gigantic 100s, the boys sorted ones and tens and built huts and boats with exactly one hundred Lego bricks.  My girls and I sorted ten snack bowls to create a giant 100 SNACK for the whole family to share.

When asked about our day without textbooks the children responded enthusiastically.  They enjoyed games and Legos; and my little ones loved Lilly.  My oldest did not miss grammar and spelling.  The twins were thrilled to skip sounding out words.  Their elation matched my concern about getting behind.  Why do I focus on getting through certain skills by a specific age when I will have my children with me for several years in home school?  


Tuesday, March 5th:  Our country road was buried in snow this morning and so were the school busses.  No school in our small town meant little home schooling. The shovels and sleds
received more attention than our books.

My older children worked on social studies units.  We played a wonderful geography game that we do not usually have time for.  My own weekly Bible lesson completed our faith formation.  To avoid spelling workbooks I led a family spelling bee.  

After reading Lilly's Big Day we continued our Kevin Henkes Unit.  The twins noticed their little sister's sunglasses, a princess cellphone, her socks, an orange and a bottle of water on the coffee table.  Her treasures reminded them of Lilly's.

We were thankful we left room in our schedule for units and literature this week.  

Wednesday, March 6th, 2013:
We accomplished a great deal of learning despite the absence of textbooks.  I am missing formal spelling curricula (All About Spelling) and trying not to panic about math, as we continue to review.  We played a new iPad app called Spelling Test introduced on Curriculum Choice.  The children record the spelling word so that they read it, hear it and spell it.

Emily and I devoured two chapters of Pride and Prejudice today; and we continued reading Benjamin's and Ryan's books.  The older children and I followed with this literature lesson:

They drew a picture of their favorite literature character on the top two thirds of notebook paper.  On the  bottom third, they added four strong adjectives to describe the character.  If the children could not provide a strong adjective, they looked up their "boring adjective" in a thesaurus to replace it with a better modifier.  This notebook assignment was as "clever" as Father Brown, and much more "riveting" than an adjective worksheet.

Our family tried SQUILT today.  It is an idea geared toward music appreciation and we throroughly enjoyed it, thanks to Mary at www.homegrownlearners.com.

Through reading literature exclusively my objective for literature appreciation was met this week.  I believe in the importance of a good phonics program too.  My younger children will be using their formal phonics a week from today.  What do you think about combining phonics with literature appreciation?

Lilly is as spunky as ever
when her baby brother, Julius
arrives on the scenes.

Thursday, March 7th, 2013
Ryan  was excited to share his Keynote about Italy with his siblings.  "Family publishing," researching, computer skills and writing were accomplishments from this project.  This afternoon we practiced flash cards in math and reviewed decimal concepts. For faith formation, we prayed the rosary by a warm fire in the living room.  Another gift from home education.

Sadly, prayer did not calm my nerves.  I am beginning to miss our school routine.  Yes, I felt we needed a break from our usual curricula.  However, removing the textbooks has made it difficult to set any routine.  The children are beginning to feel a bit discombobulated; as they are not certain about my expectations through out the day because their books in some subjects are missing.

If you are one of those brave souls who rarely opens textbooks in your school, how do you follow a routine when your curricula and lessons change often to follow student interests?  


Friday, March 8, 2013
We finished our week free of textbooks, full of themes, literature and my own lessons.  My children reflected that they enjoyed parts of our school week.  Although I teach my children using a variety of philosophies, this week, without textbooks, we had more time for reading literature and playing games.

Our week had its challenges too.  My children are accustomed to learning with themes, literature and textbooks. Surprisingly, they missed our routine with the textbooks.  At times, they were unsure of what was expected of them.  I am not versed in teaching every subject using notebooks, units and themes; and I felt a sense of uncertainty with some of the objectives I tried to teach.  I still believe that math and phonics must be taught with teacher's guides!

Does having a larger family make learning without textbooks more difficult?  I think so.  An educator who approaches teaching in a less traditional manner will say that an absence of teacher's guides and student textbooks requires more planning and creativity.  Creating lessons for six children in all areas of academics requires an extraordinary amount of time.

Our family came to a conclusion about this week's experiment without textbooks.  We like our routine and I see more benefits in partial use of textbooks than I did before this week.   These helpful guides keep us on track, especially when we are learning new concepts.  We will continue enjoying literature and interest themes to foster enthusiasm, but we are taking our textbooks off the shelf and going back to a combination of what works for our little corner of the education world.