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Eleven Years Ago By Rebecca in Learning in Freedom October 23, 2009

It wasn't until a recent move that I found one of our learning journals from about eleven years ago - a three ring binder that contains some of the activities my now seventeen year old son did when he was in about first grade. He graduates high school this school year.

What were we doing eleven years ago today? I don't know, I can't find that entry, but here is what we were doing eleven years ago, yesterday, according to our learning journal:

"...Today is Thursday, October 22, 1998. Schools are still closed. This week most everything is shut down because of the flood. Yesterday we went to the Plaza Club to eat and look at the flooding. It was horrible. We are very blessed to not have been affected directly. This is the worse flooding Victoria has seen in about one hundred years."

Today, as my seventeen year old called me to his room to read his latest poem I shared with him a few of his stories that he had written eleven years ago.

I have a stack of these dictated stories. They served as our "readers." We need to engage our children more! Just let them tell us their crazy ideas and put them down in writing so we can show it to them when they are seventeen...

What great memories this journal offers! And THIS is the most important part of "home schooling:" Creating good memories.

Eleven years ago, for school, I printed out a little activity sheet for my son each day. It required a little math, a little reading, and a little writing. It always contained a few sentences about what we learned, where we went, or who we saw. I wanted my son to read and then to try to write these sentences on his own.

This "copywork" served as language arts as it offered practice with spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Copywork also helped us review what we had learned throughout that day as well as, and I didn't realize this until eleven years later, creating a concrete record of our life and our activities during those years.

I see entries about the big flood of 1998, an explosion at Formosa, and dozens of entries about time spent with loved ones who are no longer with us.

It reminds me that we should write something ANYTHING each day because eleven years from now it will mean something! I promise! Because eleven years ago these entries were simply daily activity sheets and this journal was hidden away for eleven years. Eleven years later it means so much more.

Here are a few samples from our learning journal:

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Copywork:

My name is M__. Today is Tuesday, October 20, 1998. Schools were closed today because of the flooding here in Victoria, Texas. Many people had to be evacuated from their homes as the river rose to above 31 feet. Our electricity and water will be cut off tonight and we have a curfew.

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Copywork:

My name is M__. Today is Friday, October 9, 1998. Today we talked about the numeral zero. Zero stands for nothing. Zero is important because it serves as a placeholder. It helps us know that 100 is one hundred and 10 is ten. We also talked about one's, ten's, and the hundred's place. I gave mom a numeral that was so big she had to talk about the trillions place! Zero helped us keep our place with such a big numeral.

Tell which numeral is in the one's place:

2 14 26 89 100

Tell which numeral is in the ten's place:

2 14 26 89 100

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Copywork:

Today is Tuesday, October 13, 1998. I looked up Pajama Sam on the World Wide Web and my mom read the definition of autism. Mom has been reading about autism because a boy in P.E. is autistic. Tonight we have a C.H.E.C. meeting. A representative from Ron Paul's office will talk to us about "Good Citizenship" and how we can learn about it.

There are seven days in a week. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

There are 12 months in a year. January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December.

There are 60 seconds in a minute.

There are 60 minutes in an hour.

There are 24 hours in a one day.

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Here are some samples of some stories or poems that my son dictated to me eleven years ago:

The Wall

I saw my wall talking to the other wall.
It said, "Hi, is it rainy today?" The wall said, "Nope, but I felt something on my back." And the wall asked me, "Who's back there?" "My mom and my dad holding my baby sister and my baby brother. My dad is holding my baby brother and my mom is holding my baby sister." And the wall said, "Why? I have a baby that I don't hold. But she is crying all the time." I said, "I don't hear her crying." The wall said, "That's because she is asleep. You want to know when she wakes up? 10:00am."

What is amazing, and I'm sure it is a coincidence, is that this was written before I became pregnant with his baby brother. He only had a baby sister at the time. Isn't that wild?

The Couch

A boy was washing his couch. When he was done, he sat on it. He began watching TV. The couch said, "Get off of me!" The boy said, "I didn't know that you were alive!" "Everything is alive." said the couch. And then all the furniture said, "Hi." They began saying their names. One said, "I'm Jack." Two said, "I have a baby, but, he is asleep. Be quiet." "Why?" asked the boy. "Because we don't want to wake up the baby." The boy said, "Who wants to wake up furniture? It's JUST furniture! And that's all it is!"

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