Well it's been almost a week since I last posted. I guess I still am a little sporadic BUT I have become better.
Brendon and I have not really got too much done on the back porch since I last wrote. It is a very slow LEARNING process. But the great thing, I guess, is that we ARE learning. LOL We figured out that we needed to put some cross beams between the main beams to support, as well as screw, the tin on to. So that has been our project this weekend. We have more than half of the boards up. We would have finished today but it started to rain. Great excuse to watch the Dallas Cowboys game too. LOL :) Hopefully next weekend we will finally get the roof on. *fingers crossed* I will try to finish the cross boards this week and paint them. I should have known that this would be a 'more than one weekend' thing. It will get finished eventually.
It has been a learning time for Brenna as well --- learning to occupy and entertain herself while Mom and Dad work! :) She is very good at that though and always has been and I think that is very important. I can not stand it when kids are needy and clingy and always need somebody to tell them what to do or entertain them. That's another problem with kids going to school. They are always told what to do, when to do it, how to do it, ect... Kids need time to be by themselves and figure things out and use their imagination. Children in school get very little of that. They can't just be themselves and do things that THEY want to do and discover things that they love and are passionate about. For example, Brenna absolutely loves to draw and will stop doing what she is doing sometimes just so she can draw a picture of what she is doing or what she's learning about. She is a wonderful artist and has become so much better because she's just able to do it whenever she wants - no restrictions. Do you think that if she was in school and learning about Columbus that she would just be able to stop and draw a few pictures about what she thought the Pinta, Nina and Santa Maria ships looked like? Not if it wasn't in the schedule or part of the curriculum.
I have started to become a little obsessed about "unschooling" again, which I think is a great philosophy when homeschooling younger children. I have a book on it that I have read before but am starting to read for the second time. I love reading books again because I think you get much more from it the second time around. It has been a while since I read it anyway. I have talked about unschooling before but for those who don' t know about it, it is basically a child-led learning style. Nothing is forced on the child and they learn about things that they are interested in. A lot of what Brenna and I do right now is considered the unschooling method. She learns so much just by asking questions and being curious about things. Here's a few paragraphs from the book I'm reading that I thought was great:

From the book 'The Unschooling Handbook : How to Use the Whole World As Your Child's Classroom'

Trust That the Child Will Learn

For many people, this last characteristic - trusting that the child will learn - is one of the most difficult hurdles to understanding how unschooling works. "But how do you know that you are covering everything important?" " How do you know your kids aren't missing some crucial topic?" " What if they don't learn all the stuff they're supposed to know?"
This is partly a reaction to our own educational experiences and our observation of school children. Years in school teach most of us to rely on what the experts - teachers, textbook writers, standardized test developers, government officials - tell us what we need to know. Eager, hand-waving "Me, me, call on me!!" first graders become less enthusiastic - even indifferent - by the time they are ten or eleven. Too many times, they are told to settle down, wait until next period, until tomorrow, until next year, we'll cover that later. It doesn't take more than two or three years for kids to quit exhibiting their natural curiosity, to learn to wait more or less patiently - if uninterestedly - to be told what the next "important" thing to learn will be.
Developing the trust that kids can and will learn on their own is usually easier for parents who start homeschooling before their children reach school age. It's hard to watch your children learn to walk, learn to understand and use language, and learn to get into anything and everything within reach, without believing that they are capable of learning about anything they are curious about. Most small children have such a broad range of interests that it's easy to believe they may eventually become curious about almost everything.

This has been a little difficult with me when it comes to Brenna's spelling. She is really doing a wonderful job with it and I know in my heart that she is completely capable of doing the work. There are "moments" though during each lesson that she pretty much has a meltdown and tells me that it is too much pressure and that she hates spelling (usually at the beginning). I push her though and she always completes the lesson. The thing that I have noticed though, is that she is no longer making her little books with stories like she used to before we started the spelling curriculum. She would write things (whether they were spelled correctly or not) and always enjoyed it. She doesn't even TRY to spell anymore. Now it's like she has no confidence in her spelling capabilities. It makes me wonder if what I am doing is completely crushing her desire. Is it better that I stop the curriculum and just let her learn on her own (which was working pretty damn well to begin with and she learned so much)? Or do I continue to force her and end up with a child who absolutely hates writing and spelling?
I really am so torn on this and honestly don't know what to do. On one hand, I love the unschooling, child-led learning but on the other hand it's not like I am asking much of her.
I guess it is really the type of child I have as well. Brenna does learn and retain things very well, which I think is very important (and really is the whole point of learning!), when SHE wants to. For example, she is so into the Magic School Bus episodes right now, which teaches science type things. I have a timer set up and we record all of them. They are pretty much the only thing that she has been watching on TV right now. She watched one on spiders today and while we were outside tonight she saw a spider making a web and was absolutely fascinated. She LOVED it! She started telling me all these little facts about spiders that she learned from the show.

I guess my whole dilemma that I have right now is all of the options that I have when it comes to homeschooling. Do I want to be the type who makes their child sit down and learn things? Or do I want to be the type of parent who lets their child learn things that they are passionate about? Maybe it's a more of an "in-between" kinda thing.

I guess I'll figure all this out just like everything else in parenthood. :)