Mind Mapping for Clearer Thinking & Planning

I have been able to witness my fifth grader grow so much as a writer in the year and half that we have been homeschooling. He has a lot of strengths in writing, including stamina, a great vocabulary, and a tendency to try to emulate specific techniques of writers he loves. His writing has become vastly more coherent than it used to be, now with (mostly) correct punctuation and few run-on sentences. 

That said, left on his own he tends to dive into a piece of writing, then as he works on it, digress into long sections on whatever details fascinate or amuse him most. While I'm certainly impressed that he can write at length and stay happily engaged on one piece for days and days, I know the area in which he needs to improve is overall, big-picture organization. This year I wanted to help him learn to make a good workable plan before he starts a piece of writing, something that would keep him on track while he wrote, reminding him of what really belongs and what doesn't, what he's already written and what he still needs to cover.  

This fall one day, I quickly showed W how to make an outline, using Roman numerals to list the sections he wanted to write, and letters for the important points within those sections. He tried to make an outline for an informational piece he was to write. It got pretty messy, with no white space, lots of words and details crammed in and curling all over the page, and the order in which he thought of things and wrote them in the outline not matching the order in which he would eventually want to write about these things. He hadn't yet learned how to choose just the important key words to jot for this planning stage, so that was part of the trouble. He also didn't like having to make this outline, recognized that it was a bit of a mess when finished, and didn't refer to it much while writing his piece, but instead ignored it and did most of his thinking and planning as he went, as usual. 

One of W's outlines, that wasn't very user-friendly, before learning about mind maps

That particular writing piece came out alright in the end. But the extent to which the written outline format wasn't a guiding, useful tool to him made me look to alternatives that might better help him organize and plan. That's when we started to learn about mind maps.

Mind maps have helped a lot! Mind maps are another way to plan a piece of writing, or to organize thinking on a topic. A mind map is a graphic organizer. It's a refined version of a simple brainstorming web. A mind map uses unlined paper. The main topic is in the center, possibly with a little symbolic drawing to accompany it. Shooting out from the main topic are branches for each of your main subtopics. Each branch is in a different color and could also have an image accompanying it. From the end of each of the subtopic branches, you might have one or two or more small lines branching out to show details about that subtopic. There are some good explanations and samples of mind maps at several different web sites:

• https://www.mindmapping.com/mind-map
• https://www.tonybuzan.edu.sg/about/mind-maps/
• Also, a Google images search for "mind map structure" shows a lot of examples 

A practice mind map exercise: mapping things he likes

A traditional outline is linear, list-like, reads from top to bottom on lined paper-- and works well for many of us. Mind maps on not linear. By using color, images, and words, and using space creatively on a blank sheet of paper, mind mapping uses right-brained skills as well as left. Perhaps smart people who struggle with organization like my son, or anyone when working with a topic that feels particularly confusing or nebulous, would find mind maps helpful. For those who write as they plan or for whom ideas come in random order, a mind map can be a way to create order out of chaos. It's easy to add another branch, or another detail to a mind map in progress. It is also easy to see and work with the whole that a mind map presents. The end result sticks more because it's visual.  

W and I have been reading Mind Maps for Kids by Tony Buzan a few pages a day. The book is filled with examples of how to use mind maps, juxtaposed with more traditional ways to do the same tasks. It is interspersed with little exercises to stop and practice the skill, so it's a quick and active read. (It also has some little jokes and brainteasers sprinkled throughout to give brains a break from the mapping work every now and then.) It is published in Britain, so there is some vocabulary we've gotten to discuss as we go, like revising=studying, and maths=math. 

Mind map about a story about a vacation

The thing about using mind maps, or any type of outlining, to plan writing is that one needs to stop and think before diving in. Which are my main points and how many of them are there? How can I summarize each one with a key word or two? What is the supporting information I want to be sure to include for each section? 

These days, W thinks through some of these questions, then puts pen to paper to make a mind map. Then, his ideas are visually organized and color-coded before he types his first sentences on the computer (which is how he drafts these days). He still decides as he goes which branches of the mind map he'll write about in which order, but it's all laid out there for him, easy to navigate, so he can stay more grounded and on track. For a fantasy story he's been working on, he made a general plot arc before he began and also two small mind maps: one for the main character, with various facts and traits about him on the branches, and one for the setting. He keeps his notebook open to these mind maps as he writes and I can see the places where the details from them get woven into his stories. I'm looking forward to seeing how he categorizes his information for an upcoming piece he'll write about the Battle of Gettysburg. Each time he makes a mind map, he gets a little better at the process-- a little more organized, a little more succinct, a little clearer for him (and me) to pick up and understand. 

Fantasy story setting and character planning

Fantasy brainstorming

Mind maps are not only for use in planning a piece of writing. Mind maps are useful for kids in planning other things as well, and for thinking and studying such as: 

• Mind map to show/see the main points of a history article/topic 
• Mind map to sort out different quadrilaterals and their attributes. (W and I each tried this, based on an exercise in the book, and it was a great example of how a mind map on the same topic by two different people will come out differently! It all depends on how you think about and organize the topic in your own mind.) 
• Mind map to organize learning of new vocabulary (in English or a foreign language) 
• Mind map to organize spelling words-- by spelling pattern, or root word...
• Map out a novel they are reading and its themes (each theme as one of the main branches, and the smaller branches at the end being examples of how the theme shows up in the book)
• Mind map to plan gift giving to different recipients
• Mind map to plan the components of a birthday party

All of these are ways that mind mapping can make showing ideas, thinking, or studying more fun. 

Civil War causes and consequences map

I was even inspired to try mind maps for myself. I've tried using a mind map to plan out a couple of pieces of writing recently. Even though my thinking wasn't organized beforehand, or sequential, it was easy to create a mind map as I thought through a topic. It evolved organically. Since I didn't begin to write till I had the whole idea mapped out (a step I don't always do), the writing came together a lot easier than some other times. If I had known about mind mapping, the process might have helped me sort out confusing concepts in science class, and it would also have been a great study tool. Rather than making stacks of flashcards or reading through notes until I fell asleep, I might have sat down to a college exam and had a map in my head of the important topics and the connections between them. 

My kindergartner is becoming quite a writer for her age, but I haven't been using mind maps with her. It's certainly important to find ways to help young kids plan before they write. (Young kids tell wonderful, animated stories, but it takes so much effort to write them down, that their written version of the story is often far less detailed/interesting than what they can tell aloud.) But I don't think mind maps are the way to go for this purpose. At least through kindergarten and first grade, the idea of key words as notes (in any format) is too abstract for most 5-, 6-, 7-year-olds. In my experience if they make notes, the notes become their writing, copied word for word, less enthusiastically the second time. I think it's better for young kids to orally plan a story, or get ready to write by drawing the pictures first. More about that another time. 

The biggest selling point for W about mind maps is that they are fun. He says he really likes them because they are fun to make, easy to read, and much more helpful for him than other notes or outlines he has done before. I can imagine being a school teacher of older students and getting tense about kids spending time dawdling about their favorite shades of glitter pens and which pictures to draw before getting down to the business of writing the essay or story at hand. But, we have that time in homeschool. It saves time in the long run because it's a form of planning that W actually likes doing and will do. We are always telling W things like, "measure twice, cut once." There's nothing magical about the specific format of a mind map. It is just one promising way we've found to help get in the habit of slowing down and thinking and planning first before jumping into a project.  

The other day W was sending an email and he mentioned to me the mind map he was imagining in his head about the things he wanted to include in his note. I guess that's the goal of any graphic organizer or framework: to internalize it such that it doesn't need to be written out on paper, but it begins to shape the way we think and approach things. 

I've been imagining other uses for mind maps that might be fun to try out myself-- mind mapping vacation ideas, aspects of important decisions, new organization systems, holiday menus, or other events. Basically, any time I make lists, which might not always be the best way to see things clearly. The possibilities are endless.

Finding our New Groove for Year Two: Homeschool Schedule and Space

One thing I've always loved about teaching is that you get a fresh start at the beginning of every year. As I begin our second year of homeschool this year, I feel that same sense of renewal. 

We had a great first year of homeschool last year, but we're in a pretty different place as we start year two. For one, it doesn't feel as surreal to be spending each day with my own children-- though I'll never take that for granted. 

Also, last year my son struggled with several things: in the very beginning he had a rough time with the idea of not being in school with his peers. Last year was one of the first times he was asked to do challenging work that required real effort, and we unfortunately debated a bit about that, but we also worked hard to find strategies to help him focus better. Now that this is more of a way of life for us and he's past the difficulty of the transition, he frequently talks about the perks of homeschooling and how much he likes it. W's not surprised or irritated by the work I ask him to do. He's become so much more confident and responsible and self-driven, and he's proud of that. The good start we've had to year two is in no small part because he has fully adjusted to homeschool. 

Then there's me. Coming from years in a school system and my own education there, it took me a long time to fully realize that at home we often could and should do things differently.  

And the biggest change of all: last year I was homeschooling just one fourth grader; this year both my kids (a kindergartner and now-fifth grader) are home. I am finding myself thankful that I was able to start with one kid and then transition to homeschooling both my kids, especially with their disparate ages. My five-year-old is so excited to "do kindergarten" every day. Just this weekend she worked out a word on a hiking trail sign and then exclaimed, "See, I knew I could do it! I'm doin' kindergarten!!" as she punched the air and marched off ahead of us down the trail. Her spunky energy for learning and growing is contagious, and we're all delighted by the big-kid skills she is soaking up at lightning speed recently, from shoe tying to bike riding to spelling words phonetically.

This year we aren't doing everything differently from last year, but we've made some changes. I've chosen some new curricula (and opted out of buying curriculum in some cases), changed the space in our house that we use, and breathed new air into the routine we follow each day. I'm loving the new groove we are finding together this year and thought I'd share about it.

Schedule

It seems there are as many ways of scheduling the day as there are homeschool families; it all depends on your philosophy. A few weeks ago, I listed some of my own current guiding principles for making a schedule. We went through several revisions of our daily routine last year simply due to changes that came up. Over the summer, I put a ton of thought into what our new schedule would be. One of my big questions had been, how do I teach two kids, at very different ages, while giving them both the attention they need, and without me going crazy? Staggered lesson times has been the answer (see below for details). 

I've been asking the kids their input regularly on what they like about school so far and what they wish was different. I want us all to feel good about the day. I try to convey to them something I learned last year-- we can always change the routine, so they can always tell me if they have ideas of better ways to do things.  

When I made the schedule, I sketched in time frames for everything just to make sure it was feasible (for example, "8:30 - 9:15 math"). Then I removed those exact times before I printed it. My oldest, especially, really likes to know what to expect for the day and looks at it regularly. I didn't want him, or me, being too driven by being "on time" or "behind" or "ahead." I wanted us to keep our priorities straight by focusing instead on learning, finding good stopping points, and completing quality work. It is working. Sometimes we've decided something is just too much/too long and we'll put it on the agenda for the next day, but for the most part, math or anything else is done when it's done each day, and then we move on to the next thing. Our schedule is more about the order and flow of things, and less about where you can find us at any given time. Below is my current "master" version with both kids on it. (I hung on the wall one copy with only W's columns on it and one copy with only M's columns on it, so they each have an individual version they can look at which is a little less busy.) 

Notes: W's columns are color-coded by subject, but M's aren't. I wanted to see when each subject was during the week but didn't have enough colors to do this distinctly for two kids so her columns are unhighlighted just to help them stand apart. Also: we have done other stuff and will do lots more stuff that isn't on this schedule this year-- hikes, field trips, appointments. We aren't locked into this, but it gives us a framework that we follow for the "normal" days. 

What I love about our schedule so far: 

• Morning gathering time together after breakfast. I got the idea of homeschool "morning time" from homeschool blogs all over the internet, and adapted it for us. The big idea is that this is time for all of us to do shared things together to start the day. It sets the tone for the day. It's easy and accessible for everybody. We've studied some artwork during this time (they are loving spotting the details in the book Can You Find It?). I've read aloud some picture books and portions of nonfiction books (we love The Outside Story which gives a week-by-week poetic synopsis of notable plant and animal happenings outdoors in our part of the world). We've practiced memorizing things that are just important to know or relevant to something we are studying (the first thing we worked on was the months of the year because somehow, my 5th grader was not yet solid on the order of the "-ber" months, and followed that up with learning the "30 days hath September..." poem). I use it as a time to fit in anything I am not getting to otherwise-- a news story I've saved to share with them, a picture or video shared by a friend, a necessary conversation or finishing touch on a project. Start of the day is a nice time for odds and ends and general enrichment. 
• The bulk of our day is in the morning. We're all most alert in the morning. It feels good to take care of the core subjects-- reading, writing, math-- as well as several other smaller things by lunchtime. 
• We don't even attempt to do everything every day. Core subjects are four times a week, other things are three or less. I prefer quality over quantity, finishing over being rushed.
• Staggered learning blocks. Of course, there are parts of the day we do together, like art projects. But for the core subjects my 5- and 10-year-old need different things. So in general, during each core chunk of time, I start off working with my oldest first, spending about ten minutes with him, while my youngest plays. She understands she's not supposed to interrupt during the brief time I am focused on her brother. When I'm done working with him, he goes off to write or do math practice or whatever the work consists of independently (usually into the next room). Then I call M over and work with her for most of the rest of that chunk of work time (which might consist of reading with her, or playing math games, or working on letters and sounds). As a kindergartner she can not work independently for long, and the learning activities she needs to do are mostly interactive and dependent on my presence. When I have a moment, I go check on W briefly and answer any questions he has. She has more playtime during the day this way, which feels right. I get one on one time with both of them this way. Lessons are to the point with my oldest this way and can't drag on and on, which is great for both of us. The overall time my fifth grader is spending on any one subject is greater than my kindergartner, which also feels right. (This might not feel so perfect if my kids were closer in age, but it works for us right now!) 
• Outside time before lunch every day. We all need fresh air and exercise and I've been making sure we drop all work, whether it's done or not, by a certain point late morning and get outside for a good chunk of time. I hope to keep doing this no matter how cold or wet it may be some days. We plan bigger hikes and big excursions other times, but this is a time to run around, visit the brook, go for a walk, or play a game outside, and it benefits us all. 
• A nice long lunch time (~an hour) that is realistic and unhurried. This is especially good because several days a week, my husband works from home and lunchtime is a time they love to catch up with him, show him recent accomplishments, or just spend time with him.
• Brief yoga (or meditation or mindfulness) exercises after lunch to settle and refocus for the last part of the day. We like Mind Yeti (you can access some of their activities for free on their web site as well as their YouTube channel), and sometimes Cosmic Yoga (for yoga or mindfulness), or we just do some poses or activities that we all know. We usually spend no more than five minutes on this, but it's nice that it's becoming a habit. Even if W might grumble about doing it sometimes, he settles in once we start and I feel like it is doing him good to grow a repertoire of these sorts of strategies. Just the other day he told me he had used a breathing activity we had done to help him go to sleep at night. 
• Our afternoons are slower with more time to dive into things. We do just science OR social studies and then something else-- music, art, or project time (see below). I am enjoying trying a routine where every day all of one week we do science, then every day the next week we do social studies, and so on. It's the same amount of total time I would have scheduled for those subjects anyway, but it's been nice to keep up momentum on one topic all week rather than alternate days as I've done in the past. And it's nice for my planning purposes to not have to switch gears all the time to be ready for one then the other. 
• Project time! I will post more about this separately, because we are all loving it. Three days a week, the last hour of the school day is devoted to pursuing the kids' own choice of projects and topics. We've been doing some exciting stuff during this time that I can't wait to share about. I also love that project time is the last chunk of the day, because if they are really into it they can keep doing what they are doing as long as they want to, which has happened several times. 

Space 

Last year we had a devoted homeschool space. It was a small spare room upstairs that we didn't use for much other than storage. It worked for us pretty well last year. But, my husband now works from that room several days a week. Also, I couldn't see staying in one room most of the day with two kids, or having them on different floors doing different things while I ran back and forth. 

So we moved out of that space and into the part of our home where we live the most. We have the materials all stored in a central cabinet. Each kid has a cubby that is specifically all of their stuff-- their own best pencils, their own workbooks and writing folder. I have supplies for general use in another  couple of cubbies, and my teaching materials in the top cubbies. Things we use less often or that I want to have more control over (like glitter and the glue gun) and in drawers below out of sight. 

The dining room table is our home base where most of the actual lessons happen. (Our big table comes in handy because a few school things that are in progress can be left out and we still have the other end to eat at.) But the work happens wherever it makes sense-- the table, the floor, the couch, or even outside a few times so far in good weather. We're finding that certain work in certain locations works best, but I like including the kids in those choices and working that out naturally. 

Recently my son described how he loves to do math pages sitting on the couch next to our dog: "...When there's a problem that frustrates me, I just pet him and that calms me down and then I can figure it out." He summarized by saying, "I just love how homeschool is like, so loose, but I feel like I'm learning so much." 

That's become my homeschool motto that I want to live by all year: keep it loose while making sure they are learning a lot.  

In the next post, I'll share about the curricula we are using this year and why we chose what we chose...