What Good is "12 year old Polish"?

Recently, a monolingual speaker asked me "how good" my Polish was. I did not feel the need to get into my insecurities about losing fluency in my heritage language, so I responded with a truth that dodged the question.  I said, "well, it's my native language, so..."

And even though what followed made me feel insecure (unbeknownst to him), it did force me to consider what my language goals are for my children, as well as accepting my own languge competence.  He talked about bilingual immigrants whose native languages plateaued at a 12- to 14-year old's level.  I believe he was referring to the limited vocabulary of an adolescent versus an adult.

The moral of his story was that employers do not want someone with "12-year-old Spanish" or "14- year-old Vietnamese."  The nerve he touched without knowing or meaning to was what I've long been aware of.  I cannot move back to Poland and pick up where I left off when I migrated at age 8, in part, because I do not have the vocabulary necessary to land a job.  I have often wondered what the point of knowing Polish was if I couldn't become a translator with my current level of the language.  I've wondered the same thing about my third language, Spanish, but at least there isn't the emotional association to that language.

But having reflected on it, I have to disagree with this person's assessment of the uselessness of knowing a language less than fluently.  Even without perfect fluency, another language allows me to listen to (or read!) news from a different perspective.  English monolingual speakers could accomplish the same thing by watching not only American news but also British, Canadian, Australian, etc.  Imagine the additional perspective though of being able to learn first hand what non-English speakers have to say about world events.

Knowing another language less than fluently also allows one to enjoy cultural experiences more than when depending on translations.  Music, theater, foreign films all lose something in the translation. One doesn't need a college-level proficiency in a language to experience these cultural expressions.

Travel also becomes more meaningful (not to mention easier!) when one can read the menus, signs, directions, etc. in the language of the country one is visiting. Starting even a basic conversation with the locals allows a dimension unattainable by mere eye contact and smiling.

So what's the point of knowing a language if you don't know it fluently?  Employment is not the singular goal of language aquisition!  Income, wealth, status, none of these are the reasons I'm raising my kids multilingual.  My reasons are much more nuanced.  I want my kids to have an additional lens through which to experience the world. And that's not even mentioning the benefits to brain chemistry of knowing multiple languages!

Perfection - in language aquisition, overall academics, or life in general - is not the goal.  If my kids can enjoy the various benefits of experiencing the languages they know, who's to say they won't catch the polyglotal bug and embark on a lifetime of langauge learning for the sheer pleasure of it?

Regardless, one of the most important benefits of multilingualism is the understanding that there is more than one way of seeing anything.  This is a skill that easily transfers to all areas of life, and it simply cannot be measured in dollars and cents!

Reality versus Idealism in Multilingual Parenting

On the one hand, I knew that once we started to homeschool our eldest, we would be depending on more English and that keeping up with exposure in Polish and Spanish would be more and more challenging.  On the other hand, I had naively hoped that homeschooling (verus delegating our kids' education to a school system) would allow us to use our native languages as part of the instruction.

Yeah, that sounded nice in theory.  In reality, it would take serious effort to gather materials in our native languages, not to mention added expense.  Especially as we depend a lot on our library, 95% of the materials we get are in English, the other five are ASL dvds and Spanish language books.  Zero Polish.  But even when we do find a book or video in the target language, I do not know sufficient vocabulary to explain concepts other than the very basic ones.

I'm better able to express myself in English.  Even though Polish still has an emotional effect on me, it is not my primary language.  I cannot fully be myself in Polish.  When speaking with my mom, it is usually 75% Polish and 25% English.

What concerns me is that we are starting to use more English than Polish or Spanish just in everyday conversation.  It's easier and faster not to have to translate for the other parent to grasp the gist of our interactions.

That's not to say that we're abandoning the goal of raising our kids multilingual.  But I do think it's important to keep our rather modest purpose in mind. It's not to send our kids to university abroad, where they can study in Polish or Spanish.  Or to find employment abroad.

We just want our kids to be able to understand the equivalent of the news in each language, to make themselves understood in the respecive communities, and to have basic literacy that they can build on if they so choose when they are older.  Also, just the mere exposure and use of the languages, however limited it may become, does wonders for brain development, creativity, perspective, musicality....  So I have to remember that fluency is not the goal, and that's ok.

Catholic Ecclectic Unschooling?!

I recently have had two realizations about our approach to homeschooling.  I'm slowly starting to take ownership of it and finding what works and what doesn't.  I'm glad that I'm using these preschool years to do this trial and error, so that once we start to report for kindergarten, we can hit the ground running.

Here is a list of subject areas that I am currently working with when planning out lessons for our preschool.

1. practical life skills
2. sensorial
3. literacy
4. numeracy
5. nature/science
6. culture/geography
7. health
8. physical education
9. music & music appreciation
10. art & art appreciation
11. languages (ASL, Polish, Spanish)
12. literature & poetry
13. religion (faith, morals, liturgy, prayer)

I come back to the way I utilize lesson plans after first discussing the first big overhaul of our approach to homeschooling, faith.

At last Sunday's homily, our pastor drove home the point that Christ needs to be at the center of our lives, and that religion cannot be merely one of the areas of our life, something I've been guilty of for sure.  The first thing that popped into my mind was that we needed to rethink our homeschooling approach. I pulled out the book on Catholic homeschooling that I got at the Catholic homeschool curriculum fair we attended and started reading.

We always said that we decided to homeschool for various reasons, none of which were religious.  But that doesn't mean that we are stuck with a secular homeschool for life!  One of the things that really struck me so far from the book was relating how children sent to secular schools to learn "real subjects" and only hearing about God's presence in their lives on the periphery come to think that God has nothing to do with what they're learning in school!  Science and History in particular have a way of pretending that God doesn't exist that is detrimental to a person's world view.

As catholic Christians, we believe that God created the universe and everything in it.  There is nothing science can discover that doesn't directly point to the glory of God!  Evolution (a theory, by the way, not fact) can nonetheless point to the fact that God's days are not limited to our 24-hour-periods, and perhaps the creation story is not something that happened thousands (or millions) of years ago, but rather something that is ongoing.  Just like God forms us in our mothers' wombs, but He doesn't stop working on us after birth!  To study science without acknowledging God's hand in it is to betray our Christian world-view.

Likewise with history.  To look at the events of human history without addressing the role of sin, virtue, and the human longing for something greater than itself is to again miss entirely how God is present in our daily circumstances.  Not that He orchestrates what happens, but that He is there with us.  That people turn to Him, and He listens.  That people turn away from Him, and He forgives (though not without meting out justice).  Eliminating God from a history curriculum is pretending that humans don't need God.  Again, this is a total contradiction of our Christian world-view.

Other subjects also can either serve to build up the spirit of a young Chrisitan or not.  What we read penetrates our imaginations.  Are we reading about what is true, good, and beautiful?  Or are we reading merely what has always been taught?  Just because certain works of literature are famous doesn't make them crucial to read.  Likewise for art and music.  I agree that there is an element of cultural competency that needs to be addressed, meaning that a person's education ought to prepare them to at least be aware of the existence of things that have shaped our society in meaningful ways - for better or worse.  After all, we study wars rather than ignoring them because of the violence, death, and evil it portrays.

But if presented without any commentary from the perspective of the catholic Christian parent, the child is left to possibly conclude that anything famous in the secular world is "good", or "true", or "beautiful".  I don't know if I completely agree with the adage, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".  Some things are just plain ugly.  The same applies to what is good and true.  We live in a relativist society.  I am certainly a victim of this mentality.  There is no objective truth, therefore there's no objective goodness. Virtue is whatever best suits me, the individual.

***
I'm returning now to the idea of lesson planning.  I tried unschooling for several months when Antonio was born, and I was amazed how Natalia continued to learn in various areas without my so much as lifting a finger.  Yet after those few months, I decided that we couldn't unschool long term because one of the motivating factors for me to educate my children at home is that I get to teach them!

So I make lesson plans.  I try to make sure certain subject areas are covered.  I attempt to figure out the best schedule to implement.  And over and over I realize that everything always looks perfect on paper, but never works out in real life.  Finally it occurred to me that while I love to plan and organize, I also love to stay with a natural flow of learning, following whatever sparks Natalia's curiosity.  I tried to sit down with her and do X for a set amount of time one time, and it immediately felt artificial and not at all educational!  Perhaps this will change as she gets older.  But for now, for preschool, I'm starting to understand what my homeschooling method really is, and it's not any of the official methods out there.  I've said we're ecclectic before, but I think I fially understand what that means to me.

Ecclectic homeschooling to me means several things.  1) I make plans and goals so I know what to look out for in terms of library materials, outings, etc.  I plan and organize because I enjoy the very process of planning and organizing.  I do not intend to meticulously implement any of my plans, and I expect them to be altered and updated periodically. 2) I observe the natural interests and inclinations of Natalia.  I answer her questions and find resources for subjects she shows an interest in.  I do not interrupt her indpendent play unless absolutely necessary (say, it's time to leave for church).  3) I return to my plans periodically and take note of what has already been learned.  I then can move on to the next set of goals in a given subject as I reimagine the lesson plans.

So there is definitely a strong component of unschooling that remains.  I think the only thing that isn't "pure unschooling" with us is that I do have subjects in mind for Natalia to be exposed to, and certain skills and knowledge that I do intend for her to learn.  Nothing we do is done against her desires, though.  She is loving memorizing various things, so why wouldn't I take advantage of this stage of her development and try to surround her with things I think are good for every person to know by heart?  (Basic geography comes to mind.  She knows her contients and oceans, and we're slowly moving into the concepts of countries.  I'm not sure that she would've become interested in geography if I hadn't brought it up and if I wouldn't continue to bring in resources to build on this interest.)

I like labels, and perhaps that's what this is for me - a labeling of what was all along.  Ecclectic unschooling with a hint of classical?  Because I am drawn to some of the features of the classical approach/Charlotte Mason.  What finally did it for me and forced me to cut my emotional ties with CM is the feeling of guilt over not spending hours outside.  It just isn't for us, not where we live.  I couldn't shake the guilt, so I shook the label instead!

I also think that unit studies may be making an appearance.  As I think about incorporating God into our subjects and not just keeping Him in "religion", I instantly think of making unit studies around the liturgical year.  I see unit studies as supplemental to a core curriculum, though.  I don't want to tie myself to the idea of forcing ever subject into every unit study.  History and science may need to unfold along separate timelines!

I'm probably overthinking the whole preschool homeschooling thing, but it's for a good cause - the whole education of both my kids.  I think Antonio will benefit from this time, as I will hopefully have an idea of what crucial elements to include in his preschool in a couple of years.  I also think Natalia will benefit because by the time we have to officially report her home education in two years, we will have ironed out the details and can hit the ground running without having to second guess ourselves.

Speaking of state reporting, I had to finagle the terminology a little to get from the list of mandatory subjects to the list of our home school subjects above.  The mandatory subjects in our state are as follows:

1. language arts (literacy, literature/poetry)
2. math (numeracy)
3. science (nature/science)
4. social studies (culture/geography/history)
5. health (nutrition, safety, hygiene/disease control, exercise, rest, stress avoidance)
6. physical education (gross motor skills)
7. art (& art appreciation)
8. music (& music appreciation)

Confession time  - the title to this post just occurred to me, so I think I will address the nuances of this "methodology" in a future post.

Sending Kids to Daycare and Preschool

I assumed that, as a stay-at-home mom and future homeschool educator, I wouldn't have to deal with the decision of sending my kids to daycare and then preschool.  But one by one, more and more playdate moms have started revealing to me that they're sending their kids to some sort of organized school-ish environment, if even for a few hours each week.  My first shock was when other stay-at-home moms started doing it.  My second shock came when a future homeschooling mom likewise revealed that her elder child will be starting preschool in September.  Note that "shock" does not mean "disapproval".  It just wasn't on my radar.  I assumed that only working-for-pay moms sent their kids to daycare or preschool, out of necessity.

But I would be lying if I said the thought of sending my own daughter somewhere outside the home for "enrichment" never crossed my mind.  In fact, it has recently crossed my mind as I lamented having to stop any serious preschool homeschooling with the birth of Antonio.  During my pregnancy, I really enjoyed not only sharing various educational lessons with Natalia, but also documenting them and being able to see how she's learning.  Then I gave myself a couple of months after baby brother's birth for unschooling, and again I was pleased when I went to document these months to see how Natalia was learning without any advanced thought given by me to planning out what she should learn.

However, having a baby in the home who loves attention and physical proximity but doesn't care much for baby carriers has proven to be quite challenging.  At best, we have been able to take full advantage of our local library, both in terms of exploring lots of books, especially on nature, but also classic children's literature and even Spanish, as well as the occasional storytime where Natalia interacts with the librarian and other children.  And while this is all fine and good for the time being, I am not satisfied with this arrangement long-term.  And so when one mom after another started sharing with me where they are sending their kids, suddenly the idea arrived on my radar.

I immediately thought of Montessori preschool.  I knew that if I ever sent my kids to preschool, I'd want it to be Montessori.  I love the environment and philosophy behind Montessori.  We've incorporated various Montessori-inspired activities into our daily living over time.  I also like that the children are not segragated by age but that they are in a three-year age group, where younger children can learn from older ones, and the older kids can practice leadership skills while helping the younger ones.  But one internet search put the idea of Montessori preschool idea to rest.  Tuition.

A couple of moms have been praising the co-op preschool they've selected for their kids, and while I like the idea of spending most of the time outside, focusing on social interactions rather than premature academics, and the fact that it's a tiny fraction of what a Montessori preschool costs, I hesitate.

First of all, I would have liked to have been able to send Natalia somewhere right now, over the next few months, until Antonio becomes less clingy and I am freed up enough to take over homeschooling again.  But it seems that unless I were satisfied with a daycare, all preschools start and end along with the public school year, and there's a comitment generally for the school year.

But there's more.  I also do not like the idea of surrounding Natalia with other kids who, like her, have yet to learn proper social interaction skills, and let them influence each other for better or for worse.  One-on-one is one thing.  But in a classroom setting... and without my presence, it comes down to this: who knows what she'd actually be learning from her peers!  Name brands?  Disney characters?  Attitudes towards toys, food, clothes, hair, the list is really endless.  The whole point of me staying home, first of all, and then homeschooling is to maintain control over what my children are and aren't exposed to. (I use the word control here not in a Type-A personality way, but in the it's-my-responsibility-and-perogative-as-parent way.).  The point is for me to not delegate the task of raising them to others, whose values I may not share.

In addition, giving Natalia a regularly recurring time away from home would also limit her exposure to one of our minority family languages. (I say one of them, thinking here of Polish, because her Spanish exposure is mostly tied to when Oscar is home, which wouldn't change if she were to attend preschool.)  Especially during the first 5 or so years, language exposure is critical if we want fluency for our kids.  There is no need for us to worry about English for our kids, because we live in an English-as-majority-language community.  But if we want to safeguard our minority languages, we need to seek out more opportunities in Polish and Spanish, not less.

I understand why public (or even private) school-bound kids' parents may want to give their kids "a head start" by enrolling them in preschool.  Expectations for school kids has risen to unrealistic levels, so that arriving in Kindergarten on the first day of school, kids today are already expected to know the alphabet.  I disagree with such premature academics.  I didn't start to learn to read until I was 6 or 7, and I dare to say that my reading and writing skills are much better than most public school graduates, not to mention that I'm literate in three languages.  I don't say this to brag, but to prove a point - so-called "delayed academics" works, and it works better than premature academics.

But other than academics, school-bound kids also have to prepare for the social aspects of school.  For better or for worse, kids these days don't just go to school to learn (in fact, I doubt that's actually the reason for many anyway), but to make friends, try to fit in, learn what the mainstream says about what's normal and appropriate, and essentially lose themselves to group-think in many cases.  Bottom line, kids headed for school do need to be prepared for what that environment is like.  Standing in line, raising your hand before speaking, asking permission to go to the bathroom, taking turns with limited equipment or supplies, etc.  Without these skills, schools would be even more chaotic than they already are.  (Though not all agree, as the likes of Sudbury schools have started popping up more and more.)  As future homeschoolers, my kids have no need of these skills, especially not at age 3 or 4.

And so I conclude that in the end, the best decision for our family is to keep on trekking with what we've been doing.  Staying home together, building on family relationships as paramount, and only supplementing the value system we live at home by playdates and group events for kids.  That is enough.

Preschool Week 7

Outside Time

We grab what we can in regards to outside time.  We are certainly not outdoorsy people at this point, at least I'm not, but I try to celebrate every occasion we have to be outside.

Getting a jalapeno plant for daddy's dinner.

Observing moss and tree roots.

Watching a far off bird soaring.

Watering our pine trees.

We made a rainbow!

Language Arts 

Tea time!
I've started our version of tea time during breakfast to help encourage Natalia to stay at the table and feed herself, as this has become a daily struggle for us.  I collected all the books that have poetry I can see us using later on for copywork and memorization, and I've started reading from them during breakfast.  Below, we had breakfast outside, and we read a fantastic book in Polish that was all in rhyme, with wonderful illustrations, and lessons in geography as well as some character formation.

Social Experiences

In addition to her weekly Skype session with my mom, the biggest socializing took place at the end of the week, during Daddy's birthday party.  Natalia was a champ, and has confirmed my suspicions that she is an extrovert, meaning she is energized by being around other people.  She met a ton of new people, and enjoyed spending time with some friends as well as family.

 


Nature Study

Growing cucumbers!  I bought a little kit at the dollar store and we prepped the soil and I had her push in the seeds and water them.  We essentially put it into a mini green house (closed plastic bag) and set it on her windowsill, where it's getting plenty of sunlight.  To our surprise, the seeds started to germinate within 48 hours!  Now a week later, there are five tall sprouts that she gets a kick out of checking on every day.  Here's hoping we are able to keep it going and end up at the harvest :)

 

Math

Natalia pointed out the number "0" on her daddy's birthday card.  Unprompted.  We had recently read a numbers book a couple of times that starts with the number zero.  I'm loving how these early math skills are just sufacing on their own! She's got a solid hold on the number "1", pointing out she's got one dog, or there's only one cupcake.  We have been reading another book on numbers as well where we go through and point out on each page how many of some object are on any given page, which combines repetition of the number from that page.

Art & Music Appreciation

We put in a frame a print out of a lovely painting I found on A Well-Trained Heart, and we talked about it a few times.  I'll leave it on a low shelf for another week and then swap out the image. The idea is just to expose her to beauty.  We're not doing artist study per se right now.

We practiced singing the happy birthday song in English, Polish, and a little bit Spanish (it's too long still) in preparation for Daddy's birthday, which was on Friday.

Crafts

We've been neglecting these as I've tried to figure out how to be more deliberate about the types of crafts we'll be doing.  But this week, we made a birthday card for Daddy!

 

She was also surprised by a bouquet of carnations from one of the birthday party guests, so we got to do some flower arranging as well!

Independence

We had a rough day early in the week, and upon reflection, I realized that I need to fill Natalia's love bucket before expecting her to feel comfortable playing independently.  So rather than trying to get through my to-do list first thing in the morning, I've started reading to her during breakfast (while pre-loading her spoon and encouraging her to feed herself - something she's stopped doing a few months ago, presumably a regression in anticipation of becoming a big sister), and then I give her my attention for about an hour before trying to do anything that would require her to entertain herself.

In related news, she's started wanting to go on the toilet more, and I've had to bring out the toilet seat reducer, something I thought we had another year before I'd need.  I still supervise her bc it's a bit flimsy, plus I don't like the idea of giving her free access to the bathroom without supervision for safety reasons (I'm thinking falls, as the cabinets are child-proofed).

ASL

Among the guests at Daddy's birthday party, there were two deaf coworkers.  Not only did Natalia get to see the entire office using sign language, but when one of the deaf coworkers came to say hello, she signed that she remembered him! It blew my mind!

Spanish

Natalia got to practice her Spanish with someone other than Daddy.  She was able to see the usefulness of the language (just like ASL above) outside of just our home, by speaking Spanish with her aunt, uncle, and several cousins.

Preschool, Second Week

Ok, so I'm glad I already consider myself eclectic in my approach.  I'm fine-tuning what goes into our preschool curriculum as we go.  This is precisely why I wanted to start homeschooling early, way before any stress of accountability loomed over my head, so that I could iron out the details and have the freedom to try different things and abandon what wasn't working.

LANGUAGE ARTS

So first off, all academic pre-writing activities have been shelved. We are focusing instead on read alouds, love of books (including proper care of books), exposure to different topics and a wide range of vocabulary in all three languages, and basic letter recognition.  This last one I'm keeping just because I think exposure can't hurt, but I am not trying to get worked up about younger kids already knowing many (if not all) of their letters by name and/or sound.  So what, I say.  She is operating in three oral languages and picking up sign language.  There is no way we can compare her to her monolingual peers at this point.

The second week of preschool, the letter of the week was "Dd", which she assigned to Dino and sort of called the capital letter dinosaur's letter.  Throughout the week, though, she was noticing and pointing out "capital B" (from the previous week) everywhere - on food, in print, her toys - and was very excited whenever she saw it.  I followed her lead by also pointing out lower case "b" occasionally, as well as the letter of the week "Dd", but I think the two sound too much alike right now.  She started looking for "her letter" on her own, so "Nn" became the letter of the week for week three.

I stopped reading from the Bible after a few attempts.  She wasn't liking my reading aloud while she played, and at times, she preferred to sit and flip through a book on her own, narrating the illustrations or even reciting memorized bits of text.  I think this is a good sign - shows that she is taking ownership of her books and the ability to access the information on the page.  Potty time seems to be the best time to do read alouds, as she asks for it, and those books seem to be her favorites.  (I keep smaller books in a container next to her potty, while the larger books are in her book rack in the play room.)

MATH

So we are counting together every chance we get, and she initiates counting as well, but there is still no direct one-to-one correlation between the number she says and the number of items she indicates.  So she might point to one finger and say "one", then point to the next finger and say "two, three", then say "four" with the third finger, go back to a finger she had already counted, etc.  It seems like she likes to count up to 10, no matter how many actual items there are.

As far as activities, we did work on sorting pompoms in an egg carton, though Natalka wasn't really wanting to put them in their own rows.  We also did a shape sorting activity, which went a bit better.  We focused on the square, circle, and triangle, and I gathered some household items, toys, flashcards, and had her put them by the correct shape decal.  Even though we technically still have a number and shape of the week, that is mainly for the purposes of putting those flashcards on the refrigerator, which we can review periodically throughout the week.  I'll be working on more activities that focus on shapes and counting in general, rather than sticking to the number/shape of the week.

SCIENCE

This past week we had a great nature study.  On Friday, we got into the right frame of mind by reading a book on farm animals and doing the corresponding puzzle.  On Saturday, we visited my sister's farm, and Natalia got to pet a goose, watch sheep get fed, and rode a miniature pony for a bit.  She didn't want to leave, and a tiny toad came to the rescue by distracting her enough to enjoy yet another aspect of nature, right in her hand.  Lucky for the toad she didn't smoosh her though!  She got a couple of home-grown squash from her auntie for the road.

 

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Ok, so it turns out Signing Time will need to be something we budget in, as only one full 30-minute episode is available on YouTube, and it no longer runs on PBS.  However, Natalia loves this series, and has been asking to watch it again and again.  Generally, she'll watch the "Welcome to School" episode for 10 minutes or so, practice the signs, and be done.  Or she'll want to see some of the shorter clips they have.  She has internalized several new signs and uses them throughout the day, which delights both her parents, but I think her dad in particular.  Some of her newest signs include: crayons, pencil, paper, backpack, pay attention, and the signs for the names of the two kids in the video (Alex and Leah).

CRAFT & SENSORY

Since realizing it's too soon to push academics, I've decided instead to focus on crafts and sensorial experiences.  This week's crafts included an unexpected tie dye design on paper towels, created using melting ice cubes with food coloring.  This was a bit messy, which is how we ended up with the artwork, bc I was bringing in paper towels to help absorb the melting water.   At the end, she even created her own activity by rubbing the different color ice cubes on the black and white butterfly designs on her placemat, thereby coloring them.  You can see in the photo below how she has her rag ready to go in her left hand for clean up to prep for the next color.

The final product spent the night drying and hardening on the window; we're putting it in her portfolio to see if it keeps.

We also had a sensory art with home-made edible paint.  We watched a video on how to make it, and Natalia asked to do it even before I had a chance to suggest it, so we mixed food coloring with cool whip, and she had a good time finger painting for a good 20 minutes.  Her creations are currently on display in her room.  We froze the remainder for a future use.

 

Since this is coolwhip based, not sure how long we can keep it...

MUSIC APPRECIATION

This week we listened to Chopin during meal times.  We watched a few performances as well.  And I realized this wasn't going to work, as it involved too much exposure to the laptop, which was only reminding Natalia of the other things she could ask to watch.

ART APPRECIATION

The same goes for art.  We focused on Leonardo DaVinci's "Mona Lisa", "The Last Supper", "St. John the Baptist", "The Anunciation", and "Vitrusian Man", but none of these compared to the interest she had shown to the very first piece of art from last week (Boticelli's "The Birth of Venus").  And again, since we were using the laptop to bring up the images, she started asking to watch other things instead.  (The good news is that she usually requested Signing Time.)

In my last ditch effort to save Art Appreciation, we also watched several videos of people painting a landscape and two portraits.  I'd say these were moderately interesting to her at best. I would still like to use classic art exposure, but it will have to wait until we budget in postcards that they make for this purpose, so that this can be separated from screen time.

SOCIALIZATION

Another jam-packed week for socialization.  Monday, we went to Walmart together, Wednesday to Safeway, and the skills we practiced were walking on the right side of an aisle, watching where we're going so as not to run into people, saying hello when addressed.  I also try to have her help at check-out time, by having her put something on the conveyor belt and hand the cashier money (we are trying to go back to the envelope system, which will have the added benefit of letting Natalia have real world experience of the money-for-goods system that we use in our society).  She was upset about Daddy going to work every day, so this will also tie in nicely when it finally clicks that we only get money thanks to Daddy going to work to earn it.  It's still a ways off, but it's never too early to start teaching money management.

Returning grocery cart.

Friday, we went to a music class at the library, which was a bit of a flop.  She wanted to sit at the computer instead after the first song.  She did laugh, and dance, and participate, but she had the computer on her mind the whole time.  Plus, the other kids were mostly a few years older and their dancing was putting their limbs awfully close to her face on several occasions.  We ended up leaving a few minutes early, and she got a couple of minutes on the computer (which meant I brought up a Word Document and let her type large colorful letters).

We also met up with a lady whose son is Natalia's age (who also has six year old and 6 month old daughters).  There was no chance of looking at any books to check out, as she made a bee line for the two dinosaurs sitting on the table in the kids' corner. She read one book to them, but the rest of the time it was all about her sitting next to me on the sofa playing with the dinosaurs, while the little boy kept bringing me books and putting them on my lap and wanting me to comment on them.  It was a bit chaotic and reminded me why I am questioning the benefits of these gatherings.  The adults really weren't able to have a proper conversation, the kids didn't really interact, and I couldn't get home fast enough for some much needed peace and quiet.  There was another, bigger girl, there who at one point came up to take one of the dinosaurs that Natalia had let go of, but she only dropped it on the floor and went back to her seat.  It looked like she was bored and wanted Natalia to come after her, so I tried to encourage her to go play with her, but that wasn't happening.

She also had lunch Saturday with my parents and Sunday with Oscar's mom, and we went to church and Lowes as well.  All in all, I find our every day outings to be much more conducive to teaching proper social skills - like eye contact, responding when being addressed, etc., than putting little kids together in a room and spending the entire time correcting their behavior.

PHYSICAL FITNESS

This was another great success, as Natalia spend a good deal of time in the hotel swimming pool after visiting my sister's farm.  Saturday evening, she was exibiting incredible trust in Oscar and doing all kinds of bouyancy experiments I've never seen her do before.  Sunday morning they went again after breakfast.


I think by the end of August, I will have ironed out the major wrinkles and have a pretty good curriculum in place.  The goal is for preschool to be running smoothly, with activities prepared and ready to go in advance, so that there isn't much disruption between baby brother's birth and the end of the calendar year.

Starting Hodgepodge Preschool - Overview

August 1st marked the first day of our "official" start to preschool.  Natalka will be turning 3 in November, right around the time her brother is due to be born, so I thought it'd be a good idea to get our feet wet with some sort of a curriculum/schedule, so that we can take an inevitable break from brother's birth to the end of the year, and start up again in January, that time officially PreK-3.  I plan to work on PreK-3 through June, take July to reassess and plan for PreK-4, which would start up in August.

I have decided to focus on a mostly Charlotte Mason approach to homeschooling, though I am not a purist by any means.  Still, calling myself ecclectic doesn't do much in the way of helping me organize and plan the curriculum, so since CM resonates with me the most right now, that is my starting point.  CM doesn't advocate for prematurely early academics, so it took a bit of reading up on various approaches to preschool to come up with some concrete things we can do.  To be honest, what I'm currently taking from the CM method is Art Study, Music Study, Nature Study, and an unschooling approach to habit training (in that it's not "on the curriculum" but in the back of my mind).  Since Natalia does show an interest in reading and counting, I've started with some preliminary academics without pushing it, just to see how it goes for now.

Here is the line up for this week, what was planned, and how it was received.

LANGUAGE ARTS
My goal for Natalka is to continue to nourish her love of books and reading, continue to expose her to a wide vocabulary in all three languages, and to give her more practice with writing utensils in preparation for pre-writing practice starting in January.

Writing - the plan was to have a different pre-writing activity every day.  The first day was tracing the shape of our letters of the week in a tiny sand box (really corn meal and some other fine grains that were left over from the kitchen).  But that ended up being a much better sensory activity than pre-writing activity.  Attempting to connect the dots on the chalkboard reminded me that this is a bit premature for Natalka.  Instead, we will be focusing on fine motor skills and manipulation of various writing utensils without worrying about what it "should" look like.  We will revisit pre-writing in January.

Narration - I hoped to start a Narration book for Natalka where I ask her to tell me about some experience, and I write down verbatim what she says. This is a pre-writing activity in that she can see her own words being written down to be read later, and with time, narration will turn into her own writing, after a time of dictation.  However, as soon as she sees me trying to write, she wants to do her own writing and not talk at all.  We'll revisit this in January.

Reading Nook

Reading - read aloud from the Bible during breakfast; read aloud poetry during lunch
Essentially, it worked better to read aloud during free play instead of during meals, as we actually have other things planned for mealtimes that became more of our focus.  I am counting anything that has a consistent rhyme to it as poetry.  Both the children's Bible I'm reading from and the majority of poem books I have are in Polish.  Perhaps next year I can try to incorporate English poetry.  Spanish poetry will be the most tricky to find, as most of the books I'm finding in Spanish are mere translations from the English, poetry or otherwise.

Polish Bible for kids, book on colors

We have also established what I think is a better location for Natalia's reading nook.  We brought her book rack into her room and set her Ikea lounge chair next to it.  (The spot used to be occupied by her potty in the daytime, and a bucket of small books.  Now the potty and a stack of small books remain in the bedroom and that set up is working well.)

Book rotation continues.  Every week, I swap out her books from her book rack, potty stack, and church bag, so that she is never overwhelmed with choices and always has something different to catch her interest.  I'm keeping out her children's Bible, a Montessori Letter Work book (with lower case letters), and an I Spy Little Letters book (with capital letters), which we reference together on Monday with the letter of the week.  We also look for the letter of the week in her blocks, puzzle, on the alphabet chart, and then we point and sing the alphabet song together daily. This is looking like a great exercise for Natalka, as she is finding "capital B" and "lower case b" without even being prompted.

Letter and number books we use to locate our letter/number of the week

current counting books

MATH
My goal for Natalka is basically that by her 3rd birthday, she would recognize and name basic shapes and colors and rote count in all three of her languages 1-10 (she counts up to 20 right now, but I want to focus on consistency, no skipping, and all three languages before counting too high when she doesn't yet have the correlation of those numbers to real world objects).  I'm not really worried about her recognizing the numerals just yet because that is too abstract still.

In her book rack, I've decided to keep out the books on "math" (mostly counting), a Montessori Number Work book, and an I Spy Little Numbers book, so we can reference the number of the week together. I also have a Colors book by Scholastic, A First Discovery Book that we'll keep up until we master colors.

window decals teach shapes, colors, word recognition

                               
Today I also marked her letters, number, and shape into her cheese on her sandwich, which she really seemed to enjoy finding, so I'll try to incorporate that into a meal every week.  We got some really cool window decals that help her review her shapes, and rather than focusing on one shape at a time, she just reviews all of them whenever the mood strikes.  She does this with her shapes flashcards as well, which include little shape cutouts I made for her to match. We do have a flashcard up for the week on the refrigerator for the letter, number, shape, and color of the week, and she stops by there to review on her own as well.

SCIENCE
Nature Study - If our climate cooperated, we could go on daily nature walks and observe the real deal. But since that is rarely the case, I'm trying to find ways to still keep it real (versus virtual) but indoors.  A trip to the Pet Store, observing clouds (a bit of a flop for us this week), bird watching (no one wants to move into our awesome bird house, maybe when we finally hang up our bird feeder...), etc.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE
ASL - We are watching one 30 minute episode of Signing Time per week, the whole thing Monday, and then 10 minute increments the rest of the days to try to keep Natalka's interest.  I am not counting Polish or Spanish as a "foreign" language for her, as these are native to her just like English.  Plus, I'm benefiting from learning more signs.

CRAFT
This has been tricky, as I'm not very crafty.  But I'm trying to bring something from one of the other areas of study into a craft.  This week, we used cotton balls to "paint" clouds on some paper, and we also glued some cotton balls down and then painted them.  She did not love this, so we moved on to playdough designs.

SENSORY ACTIVITY
This week we had two.  One was the mini sandbox with fine grain for the kitchen, which she enjoyed for a couple days before I had to confiscate it as she started going crazy making a mess.  Obviously, we need to reevaluate where sensory play will take place, because I do not want to limit her.  We moved today's sensory to the craft room downstairs, as it has a tarp on the floor.  Today we tore paper and put it into a container with water, and then we stuck the wet paper onto a metal chair, the container, each other.  We are leaving the paper in the water and will check on it later.  Hopefully all the ink will come off and we can then read her Magic Schoolbus book that discusses this process of paper recycling.  When finished, we will compost the paper.


MUSIC APPRECIATION
This week we listened to Bach for Babies during meals, but since we had started this last week, I was getting tired of it, so midweek we switched to some classical music on organ.  She likes turning the music on, as well as swinging her head to her favorite parts.  The goal is to prepare a different composer for each week, and just listen, perhaps trying to make out which instruments she can hear.

The goal for now is just exposure and appreciation.  Eventually, we will want to recognize the composer and pick out which instruments we hear, and later be able to compare composers by musical features we hear.

Natalka now has a musical instrument corner set up with the following instruments at her disposal whenever she likes: keyboard, guitar, gong, xylophone, flute, triangles, harmonica, maracas, castanets, chimes, and "drumsticks" (though the makeshift drums, two different sized tin cans, are kept separate in the closet to minimize noise pollution on mama's ears!).  I also decided to keep the one book she has on instruments in the basket with the smaller instruments.  It's a coloring/counting/Spanish book, so a little bit of everything.  She knows how to turn on the keyboard by herself, but it is tricky to turn it back on if it is silent for a while, so that's something we're working on.

musical corner

instruments found in the musical corner

Musical book that doubles as a....

...Spanish counting and coloring book.

We of course sing the alphabet song pointing to our alphabet chart, and we try to sing "In the Morning (Give me Jesus)" every morning before getting out of bed.  I'll need to incorporate more songs into our repertoir, as I hear her humming and singing to herself during play, and she's gotten a couple complements on her keeping melody.

ART APPRECIATION
Every week we will focus on a different artist, and each day we are studying one of their works during meals.  This week is Boticelli, and we have studied "The Birth of Venus" (her favorite), "Primavera", "The Adoration of the Magi" (too busy and I found it creepy), "Fortitude", and one she picked out from seeing small icons on the computer when I was bringing up the others: "Mars and Venus".  Monday after studying "The Birth of Venus", later in the day she asked me to recreate the piece on her dry erase board!  Of course it wasn't up to par, so she erased the most offending part and said that wasn't right.  I asked if she wanted to go look at it again and she ran to the computer!  Then she had me try to draw it on paper.  I was amazed how much interest this generated.  The other paintings have not been anywhere near as exciting for her.

The goal for now is simply exposure and appreciation.  Eventually, we hope to be able to recognize by artist and title the various works we study, and later, pick up on nuances of a painting to guess the artist or compare artists.

SOCIALIZATION
So I have finally determined what this means to our family and how we ought to go about it.  I struggled for a while in trying to figure out the ideal number of playdates per week that I should be setting up, only to finally realize that the point is not mere peer exposure.  The point of socialization is to learn how to get along with others, learn what's approrpriate behavior, how to share, how to take turns, what the standards of politeness are in our society, etc.  None of these things can be learned from fellow students of socialization, ie. her peers.  I've noticed that she is very observant of the behaviors of others, and if we don't monitor what she is exposed to, she will begin to copy undesireable behaviors.  So I ditched the idea of trying to organize X number of playdates.  Instead, I'm focusing on exposing her to different situations with different people of any and all ages.

for some reason the air that comes out of the vents is fascinating

Yesterday, she had an actual playdate with two younger friends who came over for several hours.  She fell asleep on her own watching her dinosaurs movie, and slept for 14 hours! (Granted, she did wake up for a potty break and needed to be talked back down to sleep, since we are night-weaning again after three of her molars messed up our previous success.)  Also this week, she joined me and her dad at my midwife appointment, went with us to the pet store to look at the animals and go in with our dog Bigos for her vet appointment, and I'm pretty sure we hit a few stores at some point as well.  I'm drained from all the socializing, so I'm planning a playdate at a library class for next week, with a store run earlier in the week, and that's it for next week.

I think what Charlotte Mason and Maria Montessori would call habits training falls under this category.  We are focusing on manners, being helpful, and independence.  Help with cooking and chores likewise falls under this category.

PHYSICAL FITNESS
This is probably more for me than for her, since she runs around all day, but I have on the schedule a daily yoga session, walk, dancing, or (if I'm not feeling like participating) an obstacle course set up downstairs that includes a tunnel, a balancing board, parallel bars her daddy made for her, a hula hoop, and a coupe car.

So I'm quite pleased with our first week of Preschool, and I'm glad to be getting my feet wet long before any accountability is required.  I will try to add a few photos soon to help illustrate what we're up to.

Point of Heritage Language Transmission

I've never considered not speaking my first language, Polish, to my daughter.  It's the most natural thing in the world for me.  All my early childhood memories are in Polish, and I get to relive many of them with my daughter now, in large part because we are using the same vocabulary.

But I know there are families for whom passing down a heritage language is more of an effort.  I also know there are adults whose parents didn't pass down their native language, and are now adult heritage language learners.  In other words, they are studying a technically foreign language, but their motivation in choosing said language is because it is the language of their ancestors.  Maybe they want to feel better connected to their ancestors, and being able to communicate in the common language, or even just read the thoughts of others who share with them a common history, without dependence on translations, does that.

So I got to thinking; what would be my motivation for teaching Natalia Polish?  Is it just so I can feel more like her mother by parenting her in the language of my own childhood?  Or does it go beyond that?  Does my motivation have anything to do with the future?  Or just our current family life?

Let's look at the facts.  We do not live in Poland, nor do we intend to move back.  Only one of Natalia's parents is Polish, and Polish is not the language in which Oscar and I communicate, so it's not our family language - English is.  Yes, Natalia has a more natural connection to her grandmother (my mom) through their common knowledge of Polish.  But does knowing Polish benefit Natalia in any way outside of the family?

Many years ago, my father was involved in a tragic and very serious vehicular accident.  My mom was left to care for him and figure out a new normal without the support of family (no relatives live in the US other than us three kids), and the people we all considered friends of the family all turned their backs on us.  My parents were involved with the Polish church when we first arrived in the States.  No support came when we really needed it.  Americans speak of meal trains, visitors, donations.  My family got none of that.  The Polish community failed us.

And when we return to Poland for visits?  We are looked at as strange Americans, no longer "purely Polish" because of our strange ways.  This applies to relatives and strangers alike.  Again, the Polish community wants nothing to do with us.

So why would I care if my daughter learned Polish or not?  It's not a global language, like English or Spanish, both of which she also knows.  It's not a language that will give her a particular leg up in a future career, like Arabic, Mandarin, even Russian.  It's not a language that will help her study medicine or law, like Latin.  Polish is spoken by Poles in Poland, and a few heavily Polonia-populated areas elsewhere, like Chicago.  There's not really a pressing socio-economically political reason to know Polish, though I know some non-Poles do study Polish, which must be based mostly on some personal interest in the culture.

While my siblings both know Polish, they do not use it on a regular basis outside of the nuclear family, much like me. And we speak English with each other. My brother has a son in Kindergarten who is not being spoken to in Polish. Let's be honest: If I don't pass down Polish to Natalia, it will die with me, as far as our branch of the family is concerned.  This may bother some people, but it doesn't really bother me.  Polish isn't an endangered language.  There are plenty of other families, families with a truly vested interest in the language (like living in Poland!) who are keeping the language strong.  I'm not worried about hurting Poland.

And really, I don't think I'm worried about hurting my family either.  My parents have one grandchild who speaks English to them, and they love him to pieces just the same.  And no other relatives have any meaningful contact with us.

So is Polish a mere novelty?  A reason for bragging rights among monolinguals?  That's not how we operate.  We speak our languages to her because they're our native languages, and that's what naturally comes out of our mouths.  We don't care if monolinguals are threatened by that.  It would be more of a burden to avoid our languages than to engage in them as the situation dictates.

Instilling in Natalia early childhood memories IN POLISH is how I hope to help her feel more "like" me, her mom.  She is mixed race, and American society will treat her accordingly.  If it has been an effort for ME to maintain my Polish identity among white Americans who would happily have me assimilate completely into the mainstream and be one of them, with no hint of the traditions, worldviews, or preferences of my original culture, then how much more impossible it would be for Natalia to be accepted as having a birthright to her mom's Polish heritage?!

And it's not just Americans who present an obstacle to maintaining a Polish identity.  Us Polish-born Poles, we don't tend to sympathize with second/third/fourth/fifth generation ethnic Poles who do not speak Polish.  Especially if they are ethnically mixed, as undoubtedly most Polish-Americans past the first one or two generations are.  It's not enough to have Polish DNA.  It's not enough to look Polish.  It's not enough to claim a Polish identity.  Fellow Poles will judge you based first and foremost on your Polish language abilities.  For Natalia to have any chance at all of being accepted as part Polish, she must know the language.

Why would I want that for her, you might ask?  If Poles are so judgmental, why do I care if Natalia can possibly be accepted by people who are that closed-minded?  Ah yes, that is the question, isn't it? But it goes back to what I said earlier - regardless of our faults, I'm still one of them.  I'm still Polish. And I want to be able to share that with my daughter.  I don't know if we'll end up having similar interests.  Hopefully we'll have similar values.  But here's a way I can guarantee that we have something in common that bonds us together as mother and daughter, something ongoing, something meaningful, in that language is the song of the heart.  I want to be able to literally listen to the lyrics of a Polish song with her and have us both be able to reflect on its beauty and/or meaning.

That's really it.  That's my whole motivation for teaching her Polish.  I don't think being Polish is any better than being any other nationality or ethnicity.  I consider myself a citizen of the world, and I hope that she will likewise consider herself a citizen of the world, not limited by the circumstances of her birth, ancestry, or upbringing in how she identifies herself.  I want to give her a sense of Polishness as an additional layer, an option.  It doesn't take anything away from the myriad other identities she can claim for herself.

But having been born to me, a Polish mother, she has a birthright to a Polish identity.  If I give her nothing else Polish, I will have given her the key to unlock any and all other Polish resources, should she ever want to explore them.

In Praise of Mixing Languages

We are raising our daughter to be multilingual.  We are not following any strict approach to that end. We are doing what comes naturally to us.  Luckily, my husband and I have always agreed on passing down our native languages to our children.  I am impressed with families who take on multilingual parenting as a challenge, as a goal that they have to work hard to reach.  Maybe only one parent is motivated to encourage bilingualism.  Maybe the language at hand is not native to the parent(s).  So I guess in those situations it makes sense to have a strategy in place, such as one-parent-one-language (OPOL) or minority-language-at-home or some other system that keeps the "second" language at the forefront of parent-child interaction.

But in our case, we just speak to our daughter the way it comes naturally.  And this means that we mix languages.  I speak Polish to Natalia.  But I also speak Spanish, so when my daughter is interacting with my husband (who speaks Spanish to her), I often chime in when invited (by her) in Spanish, and generally repeat myself in Polish.  And my husband has been picking up more and more Polish since hearing me speak it with our daughter, and wanting to know what we're saying.  (Especially when she addresses him directly in Polish!)  We speak English to each other, and there are times when we address our daughter in English as well, either as a repetition of something we said in our native language, or when we're around English-only speakers.

Natalia has already shown that she understands there is more than one way to say the same thing.  She will pause and think for a moment and then repeat the same thing in another language, often accompanied by the ASL sign as well.  This generally happens when we are having a hard time understanding what she's saying, either because she is a relatively new speaker and her language is still being finessed, or because we are thinking in one language and not expecting to hear what she's saying in a different language.

Recently I read that some children develop a language-person association which can prove to be problematic when they refuse to allow that person to communicate with them in a language other than the one they came to expect.  As I read this, I realized two things.  1) I didn't think our mixing languages was a bad thing, but until I read this research, I didn't think it was a good thing either.  Now I do see it in a positive light.  And the reason is related to 2).  I have a mild case of language-person association when it comes to my mother.  I grew up hearing her speak to me in Polish, and I always replied likewise.  As I became an adult, the topics of conversation became too complex for me to know the advanced or specialized vocabulary in Polish, so we started to code-switch between Polish and English.  But when I hear my mom speak all English (to others), I feel funny about it.  It doesn't sound like her.  It's like I don't know the woman I'm hearing, because the woman I know to be mother, well, she speaks Polish!

Likewise, I've found it is problematic in mixed-language gatherings such as holiday dinners when I try to include everyone at the table in our conversation by saying what I have to say to my mom in English.  These prove to be very short exchanges.  My mom responds to me in Polish, while I keep trying for a few more turns in English.  Then I just sort of hope the English-only guests strike up a conversation among themselves so that we can continue in Polish without anyone feeling left out.  So there is definitely something to be said for how limiting it can be to be so used to a certain language with a particular person that hearing that person speak a different language actually presents a communication blockade.

Since reading about language-person association among bilinguals, I've been consciously aware of mixing languages with my daughter, and it doesn't give me pause anymore.  I didn't lose any sleep over it before, but I did always think about how I am "not supposed to" mix languages.  I no longer think that.  Instead, I think about how in the future, my daughter will be able to have a smooth conversation among my in-laws with me there, all in Spanish, with no problem.  And how we will be able to do likewise with her dad and whatever Polish he will have picked up by then, and she won't be distracted by the words coming out of his mouth.

I suppose this was never going to be a problem in our family because we speak English to each other, so our daughter has always heard each of us speak both our native language and English.  But now even more so, I'm happy to chime in with Spanish, or read her a book in Spanish instead of insisting that her dad does it.

At two years old, she communicates best with me because I speak all the languages that she does.  But even so, there are words she learns in Spanish and ASL from her dad that I am not familiar with and have to rely on his translation.  In close second is her dad, who certainly knows what she is trying to say more so than any other person outside our immediate family.  I do worry a little when she isn't being understood by her peers or other adults, but I try to remember that there are monolingual kids her age who still use such a strong "baby accent" that they have a hard time being understood.  I think with time, these things will straighten themselves out, and in the meantime, we will have established a strong bond in multiple languages.

When I think back to my childhood, part of what makes me fond of those memories is that it involves my "mother tongue".  It's like balm to my soul to hear Polish spoken on familiar subjects.  It's that same sense of reminiscing that I hope Natalia will have about all the languages we are using with her in these her youngest years.