I have written before that my former teaching career is my biggest obstacle in our homeschool. I had an ah-ha moment recently that attests to this fact.

John started in a couple of month ago asking if we could do lapbooks. He is my cut and color in the lines boy, while Olivia is definitely more of a free-spirit, draw my own picture, can’t sit-still-and-cut-long girl. So what does any mom do when a request like this is made? I found us a cool volcano lapbook and printed out enough pieces for everyone to do their own.

And it worked great, for about half the lapbook. Half-way through John was tired of the project and it didn’t take Olivia nearly that long to be over it. Of course, I pre-cut quite a bit and helped them along — lots of work for mom too. When it was over Olivia declared she didn’t want to do another lapbook. John asked when we were going to do the next one. Turns out, he was just tired of that one.

So the boy likes them, but not in large quantities. I think there is value in some of the components as narration alternatives or for conversation sparks. There was no way, though, I was going to do two more for the next subject.

Then I found this brilliant idea. This mom prints out the lapbooking components and her kids share the work. So simple, yet so genius. Who said that the kids each have to do their own of everything? (We are also using her big binder idea instead of making lapbooks.)

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Happy when we work together.

So that is what we have been doing for the past couple of units. For example, we were studying pumpkins during our Cinderella unit. We did a sink/float experiment and read Pumpkin, Pumpkin all about the pumpkin life-cycle. Then we gathered at the table and Olivia did a lab sheet for our experiment, drawing a picture of what happened and then narrating the results for me to write down. John added some of his own thoughts to the oral narration. In the meantime, John completed a color and cut project that demonstrated the pumpkin life cycle from seed to ripe fruit. We put the pieces on green yarn (vine) and stuffed them into a pumpkin pocket we made. At the end of the day, both kids could pull out the vine and narrate the life cycle to Dad. And both kids were content and proud of what they created.

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John would have barely tolerated the lab sheet. Olivia would have tried to quit half-way through the craftier project. In the end we achieved the result we wanted — both knew the material. I think this is cooperative learning at its finest.

The more I let go, the more I learn — really, really.

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