The Berry Patch

In the Flow

2012-01-08T16:07:00.003-06:00

I've been wanting to write an update for a while, if for no other reason than I've been havin' so darn much fun, but also not wanting to write lest I get overly analytical about our lives. That's a constant trap for me because I'm a psychology nut and kids are the best. experiment. ever! So sometimes I have to work very hard to get out of my head and just enjoy them. Today I'm giving myself a break. :-)

The kids are growing by leaps and bounds, some of them literally. I suspect that within the next year Tex and I will be sharing both shoe size and height. He'll turn ten in June. And I'm short. But still! He's growing in lots of other ways, too. Some of you know Tex personally and know that I sometimes find his personality to be challenging (and yes, I know, he's always sweet at your house, don't rub it in), and there's no question that he struggles with a certain awkwardness when it comes to dealing with other human lifeforms (let's just say I have a particular sympathy with Leonard from The Big Bang Theory), but he is a good-hearted kid who really does want to get along with his friends and have good relationships with his family. That it is shining through so bright these days is such a relief. :-) I see him trying to take a deep breath more often when his temper gets hold of him. I see him choosing, when his sister is annoying him for kicks as siblings sometimes do, to turn it into a game for as long as he can stand before asking her to knock it off. I see him trying to talk his way through arguments instead of headbutt through them. I hear him acknowledging his imperfections and laughing about them instead of getting angry and hurt. He's maturing, and he's doing it in part because he's surrounded by people willing to (mostly) talk him through it instead of only punishing him for it. I've known for a while now that school would have been inappropriate for Tex for this reason in particular. He has needed these years to overcome his difficulties in negotiating the social landscape of this world, and I can see that he's finding his voice and his place, figuring out what he's good at and what feels useful to him. I think he's starting on a big journey of finally having overcome the effect that preschool and our overly strict parenting style had on him (to clarify, we weren't the Pearls, we just were much more strict with the conventions than we are now and that wasn't a good fit for our unconventional child), and being able to really explore himself.
Both Tex and Noodle are into the online multiplayer games Minecraft and Roblox, just to name the top two. These are games where they get to create a character (a LEGO-ish fellow) and then go out into the various worlds to play games, fulfill quests, solve puzzles, or even blow things up. The boys watch videos on YouTube about their videogame passions and play together side-by-side at their computer stations. Noodle in particular is a computer whiz and gets such joy out of manipulating the computer to make it do what he wants. He wants to set up servers and install mods and add memory and learn how to build stuff and beat the game. There are days when he is at his computer almost non-stop! And honestly, yeah, it used to bug me, but he's getting so much out of it that I don't worry anymore. He's found a passion to pursue at the age of seven and I think that's awesome!
Monkeygirl is having a great time of it lately as well. She's four now, so she's finally old enough to sign up for our local TaeKwonDo classes, and after just a couple of classes she is having a ball and so excited about her class. Watching her confidence in class, her willingness to try over and over again when she doesn't get it right, her silliness and complete self-assurance in the face of language barriers, stricter discipline than she's ever seen, and high expectations is so thrilling!
My little Monkey is also having great fun learning math skills on the new Team UmiZoomi math app for the iPad, even practicing addition and subtraction skills. I have to give special thanks to my parents for buying us the iPad this summer for homeschool, and to our family and friends for keeping us in iTunes cards so that we can find new fun games to play. I can see the learning the kids are doing with this new tool and it's really fun for them. In fact Noodle now knows more about US geography than I do, thanks to a wonderful game called Stack the States. I've still got 'em on the nicknames, though. Yes, I take my victories where I can get 'em, why do you ask? We also all really enjoy the logic games like Where's My Water, World of Goo, Cut the Rope, and SpongeMarble. Since I think the most important goal for homeschooling is to help my children learn to think logically and independently, these games provide invaluable problem-solving skills. Fair warning: they also cause insomnia in adults as you try to get through just. one. more. level!
And if there are still any lingering concerns about their academic smarts and whether or not they are on par with the national standards, you can quiet your worries. Daddy-O watched an episode of "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader" with the boys and they did great! :-) They did that while on a trip to Nashville where they saw the scale reproduction of the Parthenon at Centennial Park, visited the children's science museum, and even attended a Predators hockey game. It was a great boys' weekend for them while Monkeygirl and I hung out at home.
Okay, I gotta go now. The boys are playing Just Dance 3 in the other room and I really want to go get my groove on! Hope you're all enjoying your journey!

Wrapping It Up

2011-05-25T18:35:00.003-05:00

So the "school year" is wrapping up, so it's time for another little update, but I'm finding it very hard to want to focus on listing academic achievements just now. I've been doing some pretty heavy reading the last couple of days, and it's really changing my focus. Or more accurately, sharpening it.

See, I'd like to lead off with the reassuring statement about how Tex has become a darn proficient reader now, in his own time, and is even starting to think of himself that way. We were going through our rarely-read children's books to find some to give away for victims of the recent tornadoes, and something happened that has never happened before: Tex wanted to keep books so that HE could read them. He's never talked about wanting to read independently before. Ever. He has clung to the idea of me reading to him for years, in fact I think he was planning to have me in the dorm room next to his if he goes to college, so that I could read text books to him at bedtime. :-) "Insecure about reading" doesn't even begin to describe him. "Hostile" maybe comes closer. So it's with no small amount of joy that I realized two days ago we had had a banner day: Tex told me all the jokes off his Popsicle sticks after HE read them himself. He didn't ask for help before trying, he gave it a shot and it made sense for him, he comprehended the words and was able to express them accurately to me later.

But that doesn't really change the basic fact that Tex is not naturally proficient at language-related tasks, and I really want to start actively playing to his strengths as a spatial learner. I love that he's brought himself this far and that he's starting to feel confident about something that's been a big challenge for him the last couple of years, but I'm also worried that I'm not doing enough to support that learning and help him feel powerful and intelligent. I feel like if he could take it to the next level, having some concrete tools to employ when trying to decode language, then he would feel even more self-reliant and independent, and wouldn't look to me to be his savior in these situations. But he's so resistant to any kind of pressure that I've been hands-off in order to let him know that I don't expect his brain to operate on my timeline. And that's kind of what the whole point of homeschooling was with him, was to get him to a point where he felt well-equipped to handle what would be expected of him in public school, and not feel abandoned or neglected. And that's not to say he would be forced to go to school once he reached that point, just that it wasn't an option until then. And now I'm seeing that with a little more focused work on my part, there's a light at the distant end of the tunnel. That's pretty cool. But more on that "urge to push" in a minute.

Speaking of reading, it turns out Noodle is just one of those kids who "get it". I was like that; I don't know what age I started reading, I just remember that words on a page made sense to me. It appears Noodle is much the same, as his reading has gone from basic C-V-C words last summer to full on reading of whole paragraphs at present. Of course he struggles with the odd word, but most of them just flow right in his eyes and out his mouth without a break. I realize now what a gift that is in this world, to have words just open themselves up to you. I think it will allow Noodle a lot more choice for a while, and I hope I don't forget that he still needs my interest in what he's learning even if he doesn't need my help.

Okay, now that the reading is covered, what else have we been doing? Well, the big thing that was coming up after my last entry was Disney World! I can't believe what a burst of imagination has come on the tails of that trip. The kids still watch the Disney behind-the-scenes videos on Netflix at least once a week, they talk about their favorite rides and what they're going to do next time when they're bigger (we're hoping to take another trip in 3 years or so), and the other day Tex and I even had a conversation comparing the strengths and weaknesses of Disney and Universal as we saw them. He argued that while WDW definitely has the best rides for kids his age, Universal had the more impressive architecture, citing Hogsmeade/Hogwarts in particular. I maintain that Universal should only get credit for having hired the staff from the movies to design the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and that overall Disney does a much better job of selling their themes. Then he pulled out the Dr. Suess area at Universal and I rebutted with Epcot's World Showcase. In the end we agreed to disagree.

Anyway, it's been a fun surprise to me to see what caught each child's fancy at WDW. While we were at the Monster's Inc. Laugh Floor on our last night at Disney, and Tex got asked by a monster comedian what he wanted to be when he grew up, he answered without hesitation "a costume designer". Now, dressing up is something that Tex has always loved to do, and we maintain well-stocked dress-up boxes for all the kids, but it's like our trip to the theme parks really brought it to life for him. He focuses on the little details of the costumes he sees in movies and tv shows, and on figuring out how we can recreate them at home. This is one of those times I wish I was good at sewing.

But now, let's go back to the sharpening of focus I told you about. I suppose it's natural as one begins to live out the Unschooling lifestyle, but I've been thinking more and more lately about what is really important to us. I was in the bookstore yesterday and I picked up The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. I had heard about the book and it's author, and even read a couple of excerpts on the internet, heaping scorn on the head of the woman who would do such things to her child for the sake of being thought to be a good mother because her children were successful. For shame! But in reading the jacket of the *actual* book instead of just relying on the internet (funny how that works), I saw that this wasn't just a clueless, disconnected mother feeding her own ego. Amy Chua parented her daughters the way she did, forcing them to practice lessons and achieve greatness at the cost of their own relationship, because she thought that being successful was more important, would be better for her children, than having a strong relationship with her built on unconditional affection. Part of me feels overwhelmingly sad that she thought so little of herself, that being a whole person to her children seemed worthless, but that's not really the point. She wanted the best for her babies. And by her definition they have been successful, so I guess that's a comfort to... someone.

But here's the thing. I'm going the other way. I've made just as conscious a choice and I'm choosing the relationship. This is not to say I'm going to give my children everything they want in the hopes they'll like me, it just means that I'm choosing explanation and honest discussion over manipulation and extortion. I've recently discovered that the phrase "you're not your child's friend" really rubs me the wrong way. No, I'm not going to ignore the fact that I have more life experience and (hopefully, sometimes) wisdom than they do, but I'm not going to pretend that my voice is the only one worth listening to. I wouldn't do that to a friend. Not one I wanted to keep, anyway. So I'm not going to choose paths for my children and push them so hard down them that in my ignorance about my children's desires I push them away from me. I won't sugarcoat the realities of life, but I also won't pretend they don't have a choice about which lessons to learn on their own. I choose being a safe haven over being a driving force.

Catching up and looking forward

2011-02-23T19:15:00.003-06:00

It's been months, I know. Sometimes I don't post because I'm busy, sometimes because there's just not much new to report. Lately it's been the former, for sure! Seems like ever since the holidays started we've just been going-going-going around here and I don't have 30 minutes together to sit down and post. But it's getting ridiculous even by my loosey-goosey standards, so here we go! As usual, forgive the bouncing around, I guess when I go this long without posting I forget what all I want to report. :-)

Tex is just amazing. No, the kid isn't the most socially able, and I admit I have a hard time with that, but his brain is freakin' awesome!! He has an innate understanding of mathematics and physics that I could never even dream of having. He can recite (and more importantly, understand) Newton's Laws of Motion, he's still doing multiplication and division in his head for fun, and he's started exploring geometry and angles now as well. A lot of this new geometry information comes from doing woodworking with his grandfathers and uncle, and the physics knowledge gets a workout as both Tex and Noodle recently designed their Pinewood Derby cars for Cub Scouts.

Also for Cub Scouts, we recently went on a Fire Station Field Trip with a homeschool group, and let me tell you how much my boys impressed me. The tour leader, Tory, was asking kids about what to do if there's a fire. Tex is an old hand at fire safety, so he piped right up with the "stop, drop, and roll" technique if one's clothes are one fire. But then Tory asked, "what do you do if there's a fire in your house?" And oh, my Noodle. I wish you could hear his squeaky little voice explain: "well, you could... well, this wouldn't really be possible, but if you could get a big jar and put it over the house, then the fire wouldn't have oxygen and it would go out!" Tory's response: "Get this kid an application." ;-) They then had a great time exploring the whole fire house and three different fire trucks.

In other news, both boys are now reading very capably. It obviously comes very naturally to Noodle, while Tex has to work a little harder, but they're both doing really well. I'd say that Noodle is a little above grade level and climbing fast, while Tex is right at his grade level. The great news is that Tex still loves a good story, and we're about halfway through the newest Rick Riordan book, The Lost Hero, which picks up where the Percy Jackson books left off, but now with a Roman bent instead of Greek. This has really captured Tex's imagination and just today he asked me to pick out some books on ancient Rome and Greece at the library. He also wants to add some ancient Greek and Roman dates to our timeline, like the building of the Colosseum and the eruption of Vesuvius, so we need to get some thumbnail pictures printed out to go with those dates.

Tex's love of dinosaurs and World War I and II aircraft has recently been rekindled as well. We recorded a couple of shows off the Military Channel, one on Pacific theater WWII aircraft and one on the European theater, and he's been watching the show Dogfights with his grandfather again. It's been a couple of years since I've seen him staging dogfights with his toy planes, so that's been a treat. And he's really looking more into the paleontological side of dinosaur study, and says that he'd like to be a paleontologist when he grows up. There's no doubt in my mind that he'd be great at it with his attention to detail and ritual, seems like those traits would be useful in a profession that requires meticulous cataloging of findings.

Noodle's big obsessions lately have been animals and Club Penguin. A new series of shows have become popular in our house: Dogs 101, Cats 101, and Pets 101. They detail the characteristics and needs of a variety of species and breeds of animals, and since the thing Noodle wants most in the world is a pet of his very own upon which to lavish large amounts of love and time, this is good preparation for him. We've made multiple trips to PetSmart for him to look around and design the correct habitat for a variety of animals including hamsters, fish, lizards, hermit crabs, dogs, and cats. He also plays "puppies" with his friends a lot, and they'll make themselves a doghouse and get bowls of food and water and have a grand old time. Of course the "teacher" in me makes note of the fact that this meets the national standards of learning about animal habitats. ;-)

And who have I forgotten? Oh, yes, the Monkeygirl. The silly, smart, loud, joyful, kind Monkeygirl. She is such a blessing on our house!! Of course at 3 years old she's learning through play all day long, so it's hard to make up a laundry list of all she knows. But she's got numbers, letters, colors all down pat, and lately she's been pointing to words and asking me, "Mommy, what dis say?" She's also an excellent singer, and we are treated to choruses of "Old McDonald Had a Farm" all. day. long. Sometimes we just get "eieio, eieio, eieio" for a minute straight, but sometimes she regales us with the sounds of llamas, roosters, and even babies on the farm. Monkeygirl's sense of humor is amazing, and her compassion and concern for others is truly beautiful. I love to see her and her brothers interact because the love shining off them when they're together makes my heart feel full to bursting! Oh, and the Sunday School coordinator at our church tells me repeatedly that she is the most articulate 3 yr old she knows, which is always nice to hear.

So, we have a big adventure coming up in a month and a half. We are going to Walt Disney World!!!! I cannot wait to get my kids in those parks and watch them have a blast. Tex is charged up about Epcot with all its futuristic rides, Noodle is charged up about the Kim Possible Secret Agent mission in Epcot's World Showcase, and Monkeygirl is just barely aware that we're going to be going on a special trip one day. I'm excited to see all the live animals at Animal Kingdom and go on the safari with the kids, and yeah, okay, I'm also excited to be a Kim Possible secret agent. I know that whether it's planned or not this trip is going to provide some huge learning opportunities for my kids. It already started tonight when I explained Tom Sawyer island in Magic Kingdom, and the fence-painting scene that inspires the WDW cast members to hide paint brushes all over the island for visitors to find and exchange for prizes. So there ya go, a little bit of classic literature with your vacation planning. ;-)

The Eagle has landed!

2010-10-01T10:08:00.003-05:00

Psssst! Don't tell Tex, but I think he may have crossed over into being a confident reader! I noticed yesterday that when his brother was playing a video game and couldn't read something, Tex didn't hesitate to lean right over his shoulder and read it aloud for Noodle. And when I complimented Tex on being such a great reader and helpful brother, I actually got a smile instead of a sullen look or loud, contrary "I am NOT a good reader, I HATE reading!" And then today I was spelling out a word I didn't want Monkeygirl to hear (for the record, "princess", because that's just the kind of mama I am) and Tex immediately piped up with the word! Something about the wiring from Tex's ears to his brain works SO much better than the path from eyes to brain. He's always been able to repeat almost word for word any information that he hears and is interested in, and can remember it long after it has lost its tenuous grip on my synapses. In any case, I was stunned to hear him put it all together so fast, and thrilled for what this confidence could mean to him in the coming months of learning. I don't know that any of my kids will ever be the bookworm that I am, but I'm hoping they'll at least consider reading to be a useful and painless tool for growth.

In other reading news, we've begun the Harry Potter series. I'm rereading the entire series and I'm pretty sure we won't be going beyond the second book for a while. Which is fine, as there are a lot of other wonderful books out there to explore and read. But even after just a week of reading, Tex is really enjoying Harry Potter. I overheard him yesterday trying to teach Noodle how to ride a broomstick and play Quidditch. :-)

I think I'm getting the hang of this now!

2010-09-16T20:26:00.002-05:00

Unschooling, that is. It's been quite an adventure, I must say, and it's certainly still a work in progress. Carrying the freedom over into our parenting has been a particular challenge, but one that I think is going to have to happen because I can't see how it would work to Unschool during the day and then revert to "what I say goes" behavior once we hit the dinner table. How confusing that would be for our children! It IS an effort, especially with Tex's argumentative nature to make all our work seem pointless some days, but I'm seeing enough overall progress in our relationships and the happiness of our home to remind me to keep the faith.

Academics are going well, such as they are. Tex's reading continues to improve, and his love of stories is growing and growing. We're three quarters through The Tale of Despereaux and Tex is thoroughly engaged. (Can I pause for a minute and tell you how much I LOVE reading to my children??? Granted, there's not much I like more than reading anyway, but being able to read aloud and have someone giggle with me is just priceless. I don't think I'll ever want to stop!) He's always been so adept at focusing on the story and building his own pictures while I read, it amazes me. Plus he likes my French accent. :-)

Tex continues to advance in math, as well. He's adding three-digit numbers, continuing to memorize the multiplication tables, he's understanding more about decimals and integers, and his fractions are really coming along. Oh, and our timeline! I admit I've been lax about adding items to it, but not a week goes by that Tex doesn't have a suggestion for something that should be up there. Last week he suggested I add the start dates for the Korean, Vietnam, and World Wars; this week he wants the first space flight and the moon landing to be written down.

Noodle is picking up reading, as well, at his own pace. He told me the other day that "I'm not reading, I just see the words and they make sense". Well. Okay, then. Noodle is also getting interested in addition, and most days will do me the favor of letting me know what x + y equals. Yesterday he told me that his Papa told him 8+8=16, then he asked what 8+9 equals. "Well, if you had 8 and 8, and that's 16, and then one of those numbers grew one more, then what would that be?" "Seventeen!" he exclaimed, with a huge smile on his face.

Both boys are enrolled in Taekwondo now, as well. Noodle is surprising me with his enthusiasm! This is my little guy who usually isn't a "joiner", doesn't really have much use for someone telling him what to do, and gets along quite well doing his own thing, thankyouverymuch. But he works hard in Taekwondo! Tex finds it more of a struggle, frankly, especially since his class is more fitness-focused and disciplined, and Tex would prefer a lower-pressure environment. But he's starting to make progress after a few weeks of classes, now, and I think he's feeling the reward of his persistence. In any case they both promised they would stick it out until Noodle's birthday in November, and I'm hoping that by then they'll be over the awkwardness and sure about whether it's something they want to stick with or not.

Monkeygirl is having a blast, I must say. She's almost three and has such a spirit of confidence about her! I love that I can see that for what it is: not willfullness or cheek, but a positive sense of self that empowers her to say "this is the way *I* like things, and my voice matters, too!" I can't help but think of the benefits she will have, growing up as my most free child. The only one never to have been schooled (both her brothers were in preschool by this age), the one who has experienced the least amount of yelling and strife in the house, the one with the fewest limits on her joy. Like our Noodle, Monkeygirl has an amazing sense of humor that she loves to share with her family. She's also beginning to explore letters such that she can now identify a handful reliably (O, T, M, B, A, X, Z, F, H, and Q, at the very least) and even some of their sounds.

Both my boys are also official Plants vs. Zombies lovers. Once again the persistence comes out in ways I would have never imagined. And before anyone scoffs at the limits of learning that a video game can spur, go play that game yourself, mister/ma'am! LOL It requires fast, strategic thinking and even makes MY heart beat faster! I'm proud of how they've stuck with it and learned to make decisions based on what kind of obstacles they're facing. So there. I've said it. My children have learned a lot from zombies. :-)

Whose principles are these, anyway?

2010-08-14T14:40:00.003-05:00

There are many challenges to Unschooling, and I think this one might just be the biggest for me so far. It's the idea that one kind of learning is as valuable as any other kind of learning, because different people need different information, and learn different things from the exact same presentation of information. That parents should not dictate the majority of their children's educations.

Now, I realize some of you are going to find this to be topsy-turvy, but bear with me for a moment. Let's take Tex as an example, and his process of learning to read. Now, y'all should know in advance that I love reading. Reading is the thing I do when I don't have to do anything else. If I sit down in front of the tv, or to eat, or on the toilet, I feel I am lacking if I don't have a book or at least a magazine for my companion. Tex, on the other hand, has always valued the story, but not so much the process of reading. He knew his letters when he was 2 (because he asked, and we answered) and he knew the sounds they made when he was 4 (because they taught that in preschool, and sometimes he wanted to know). He's had a good reading basis and as his parents we did everything we could to help him along in the reading process. He's played reading games on the computer and the kitchen table, we've read Easy Reader books and story books and chapter books, because reading is very important to us. The challenge is this: until he was naturally ready to read, all the games and encouragement and quizzing and pressure, all they really did was make him feel that he was less than a child who could read. Oh, he loves the stories and would have someone read to him all day long, probably, if any of us had that kind of time and vocal stamina, but reading has been a by-the-by sort of thing for him. It just wasn't something he needed to do, and it wasn't something he wanted to do, and I don't think our pressure and desire for him to read made him learn any faster. What they did do was make him feel slower. Noodle is reading now, at 5 1/2, words that Tex didn't figure out until last year, and he's done it with none of the pressure, none of the coaching, and none of the feelings of inadequacy.

I hate sports. I'm not really good at any of them, I don't like learning the rules and regulations, I don't even like watching a great many of them. The Olympics are just my sports-speed: lots of variety and they only happen once every couple of years. I understand the importance of exercise and its value to the body, but beyond that I just don't. like. sports. But... just because I don't see the fun in them doesn't mean I shouldn't smile when my child tells me that his favorite team won the game, or celebrate when he climbs a rock wall all the way to the top, or bowls a better score than he ever has before, or finds the baseball card he's been after for months. I don't value sports, but I shouldn't discourage my kids from enjoying them.

So I have begun to see how it is that parents can damage their child's healthy sense of wonder and inquisitiveness by how we value different things and expect or demand our children to do the same. Do I think it's important to finish a really tricky level of a video game? Heck, no, I don't. But have I watched my husband stay up until 2 a.m. trying to get all gold stars on Mario Kart? Oh yes, I have. And I don't shame him for it. It's his life, it's his sleep deficit, they're his priorities. Why would I not allow my children to have the same freedom in as large a portion as they feel secure in handling? That's key, by the way, that you don't give children more freedom than they are capable of feeling secure with. And that's not a coded way of saying "as much freedom as they can have and still make the right choices according to MY values", it means that I have to watch my child to see if they are loving the freedom or feel they are being left to twist in the wind.

So it started this summer that we removed restrictions for "screen time": tv, video games, and computer time. We had originally only allowed them to have, maximum, about 45 minutes of video game play at a time, but when the restrictions were lifted I noticed that my kids have quite a spirit of persistence, WHEN it's something they are motivated to complete. They spent hours in focused work, figuring out the little tricks for each level, getting faster. We had discussions of teamwork, and the difference between encouraging and discouraging your playmates, and how to handle the frustration of losing. Why should I tell my son that it is more important to finish a chapter in a book than it is to finish a level on a video game, simply because I do not value video games as much as he does, and when he is learning so much from playing them? Is it fair to interrupt my child in an activity which he considers urgent, and engaging, and worth his time, in order to have him participate in an activity that I find more worthwhile? Assuming that health and safety are not at issue, WHY do parents have such a hard time letting children develop their own values?? WHERE did we get the idea that our children are supposed to grow up to like and value the same things that we do??

It's not easy, this shift. I have had to realize that joy is the most important thing. The joy my son gets from completing a level on LEGO Batman is the same joy I get when I finish reading a really good book, so why would I want to deny him that joy simply because it wouldn't be joyful for me? I wouldn't be very happy if someone insisted that I had to play video games all day long, if they found them to be more valuable and had that sort of authority over me. So it become a matter of giving my children the freedom to find their own joy, and not to judge if what brings them joy is not something I would have chosen for them. It is choosing to be a joy enabler, instead of a joy crusher.

Will I have limits on this? Clearly. I hope my children will not find joy in damaging the body or mind of another living creature, or themselves for that matter, and in those kinds of extremes of course I would take action. But I shouldn't care too much if they want to spend their time watching Wallace & Gromit and Fantastic Mr. Fox for a year, especially since I don't know if it could potentially lead to them designing and filming their own stop-motion animation and eventually a career in the film industry. I hope my children will come to know the power of Christ in their lives and work hard to be who He has called them to be. But I shouldn't worry too much if they do as I did and spend years exploring the possibilities, even if those years extend beyond mine and I never see them come to Christ. In fact it will be much better if I simply choose to live my life according to the principles I have chosen, to follow Jesus and love all my fellow men with the abundance and faith which He has shown to me, rather than shaming others (my children included) for not finding the same answer I have found. I would hope that as my children grow and become more mature, that they will take more responsibility for the care of the space we share, and be more conscientious of the work they create for others. But I shouldn't take 60 seconds from both our days and interrupt what they're doing to clean up a mess which I could have cleaned up in 10 seconds because doing so was valuable to me.

It probably sounds foreign to many of you. A few of you probably don't understand how this could NOT lead to children who are entitled brats. My only response is that if I ever feel I'm being taken advantage of, then I will discuss it with my housemates and trust in our love for each other to help us find a solution that works for everyone. I'm not out to coddle my children or remove all the strife from their life. I just think it makes a difference when you believe in what you're working for, and that my children should have the opportunity to feel that sense of purpose rather than having to work almost exclusively towards goals that I have chosen as the most worthy. I'd rather they get to be themselves all their lives instead of spending years trying to find joy in my expectations. And if I can just get that tattooed on my hands I might have a prayer of remembering it next time I find a swath of LEGO, ripe with value and sharp edges, all over our playroom floor. And when I DO remember, I will feel the joy of being successful at something I value: peace.

First Day of "School"

2010-08-09T22:39:00.003-05:00

So the public schools went back in session today, which always puts me in the frame of mind to get our learning kicked back into gear as well. This doesn't really mean anything other than me being less on the computer and cleaning up the house and more available to say "yes" to board games and setting up projects and going places. I may also strew more learning toys about in strategic locations and invite more involvement into my own projects, although in truth I'm making it a personal goal to be more open to assistance in my "grown up responsibilities" at all times.

I was astounded today to see how much Noodle's reading has progressed! It all started when we were returning from MonkeyGirl's parent/child gymnastics class (she's SO excited to be back!!) and the boys asked if we could play Silly Sentences when we got home. Sure, we can do that! So we get home, set out the puzzle-style words designed to fit together in a limited number of ways (articles only attach to adjectives and nouns, and nouns to verbs on the other side, then prepositions, which feed back into articles), and off they go putting sentences together. We don't take turns, we just all do our best to make the silliest sentences we can. Stuff like "The furry, blue banana climbed on the sad, scary duck." Except the game doesn't include commas, which bothers me. They have periods, why don't they have commas for multiple adjectives?? Yes, I am a grammar nerd. Learn to love it.

Anyway, back to the Noodle, he was doing a great job reading almost all of the words in the game, and even with the pieces that had pictures on them (nouns and colors) I could see him moving his lips to sound out the accompanying words. Then after lunch we played another game, it's some pirate octopus treasure game with beginning and ending sound blends that you can mix up to form multiple words (sw- goes with -ing, -ap) and again Noodle worked to sound out his own words and mine. We played that game three times!

Tex played with us once and in contrast to last year when he was still working hard to read each blend, most of them come to him quite instantly now. He's still not ready to give up the security and speed of someone else reading to him, but I'm confident that he is making steady progress. He is certainly interested enough in storytelling! We're almost finished with the last of Nick Riordan's Percy Jackson books, and I'm curious to see where we'll be going after this. Tex definitely likes to have adventure in his stories, so I'll probably continue in my hunt to see what sort of series are out there that would appeal. My particular challenge is to find something that might be interesting to both the boys, as our books usually end up being bedtime material and it's easier if they're both engaged. The big hits over the last year were the Star Wars junior novelizations, the Narnia series (though we stalled out at Voyage of the Dawn Treader), and How to Train Your Dragon. I may try to talk them into The Tale of Desperaux next, since it's funny and adventurous (AND has illustrations, a big draw for Noodle). Or we may finish The Odyssey if they want to continue the Greek theme, or D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths. So many options.

Tex and I also had a fraction discussion today. This kid loves fractions. He was telling me how much of his banana he had eaten, and he started with an estimate of 3/4, then said "no, it was a little more than 3/4, I think. Like two and a half thirds." I came back with "oh, ok, so that would be 5/6". He thought about that for a minute and said "thank you for making that a simpler fraction, but do you know what? Even though what you said makes more sense, it's actually much easier to say 'two and a half thirds' than it is to say five sixths." I couldn't even argue with that. The word "sixths" is a pain in the tokhes and should be avoided at all costs.

I Ain't Scared of Third Grade!

2010-07-21T10:24:00.002-05:00

I have to admit, at first I was a bit apprehensive. We've just gone whole-hog on Unschooling, and here I am whipping out What Your Third Grader Needs to Know, worried beyond reason that there is going to be something life-changing in there, one thing that Tex NEEDS to know and cannot get without me sitting him down and telling him about it, and probably doing worksheets. Frankly, I wouldn't mind a bit, I love doing worksheets and seeing how many answers I can get right, 'cause I'm a smartypants like that. :-) But if there's one thing Tex can't stand it's being led down a path he's not independently interested in traveling, so it was with much trepidation that I opened up this "helpful" book.

Turns out I had nothing to worry about! Without further ado I present to you our third grade goals:

Language Arts
- continued reading of folk/morality tales, mythology, and fantasy (specifically mentioned are Tales of the Arabian Nights and Norse mythology)
- explore other genres of literature, particularly biographies
- grammar focus is on parts of speech, sentence structure, punctuation

History
- World focus is from the Roman Empire through the European exploration of North & South America
- National focus is on the original colonies through the American Revolution

Art & Music
- continued experience with and discussion of art and music, particularly how they can convey emotion, a story, etc. I would also like to tie music and art to any historical periods in which he is interested.

Mathematics
- using correct mathematical notation. Lately I've begun writing down equations as Tex and I have solved real-life "word problems", since it's what I do if I'm solving one on my own, too, and I imagine continuing that will spark him to do the same eventually.
- practice, practice, practice all the math he can, including the maths of time, money, geometry, and graphs

Science
- Life Sciences - keeping ecosystems in balance (may include applied experiments such as a terrarium, or discussions of food chain interruptions, or following of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill); also the nervous system of the human body
- Physical Sciences - beginning to gather an understanding of: electricity, forms of matter and how to measure them, molecular vocabulary, astronomy
- biographies of scientists in any field of interest

So, that's it. Granted, I winnowed it down to the key focuses without worrying too much about the details, because I don't think it matters whether we read Pollyanna or The Tale of Desperaux if either way we get the same message of working hard and sticking to your principles in the face of adversity. But by and large these topics seem to be ones either A) lend themselves to being learned at any point in life, such that we could cover the Renaissance this year if that is where Tex's interests lie, and save the Middle Ages for another year when he is more engaged, or B) are so vital to being a functioning member of society that he can't help but learn them as a part of his daily life, such as grammar and the mathematics of time, area, or money. So I'm not really worried. If Tex wants to delve into WWII this year instead of the Roman Empire, I'm going to be okay with that. If Egyptian mythology catches his fancy instead of Norse, I think that's workable, too. Most of all I have faith that there's nothing Tex can't learn if he is motivated to do so, and that therefor anything he doesn't learn must be something he doesn't need badly enough at this time. That doesn't mean I'm going to take down our poster about punctuation until he asks for it, or that I'm going to avoid putting the electronics kit on the kitchen table too see if it catches his eye, it just means that I'm going to help him explore his interests to whatever depth he chooses without judging their worth according to the needs of my own life.

In other news, we've seen a recent surge in Tex's reading confidence lately. Just a few weeks ago he was still insisting on us reading everything, but lately he's started to take the initiative and read things for himself, only needing to spell out to us the occasional word. It's actually astounded both myself and Daddy-O some of the words he does NOT need help on. Tex would probably still tell anyone who asks how much he dislikes reading, but hopefully those days will be numbered as his confidence continues to grow.

I'll be back soon to post a little about some processes and projects I'm thinking of trying this year, to help make our learning time rich and memorable!

Radical Unschooling

2010-07-12T13:40:00.002-05:00

Ha! Scared you, didn't I? I know, I know, Unschooling has gotten quite the poor treatment from the media lately, and any of you who have seen said treatments are probably thinking "Oh Lord, what is Brownie trying to do to those kids NOW?" But I'm convinced, y'all. I'm all in.

First, what IS Radical Unschooling? Well, basically, it's letting my children spend their days however (within the boundaries of safety and reality) they want to, trusting that they will learn what they need to learn in order to get by and even succeed in the world. It's me backing off on controlling the details and instead worrying only about controlling the environment so that it can be safe and stimulating. It's living our home life by the principles we find most important rather than a list of rules that can be challenged and broken by kids as well as adults. Speaking of which, I could use some help on the basic principles. Try as I might, the only one I ever come up with is "Be considerate of others"; it seems to cover a multitude of conflicts we usually have (not cleaning up dishes/wrappers, sibling arguments, yelling at a child to come do it NOW without any regard for the activity in which they were engaged, etc.) without being too wordy or sounding too hard.

Now, I must admit to a little bit of subterfuge. I was reading Sandra Dodd's Big Book of Unschooling right as the last "school year" was ending, so I decided to test the ideas by implementing them as temporary, Summertime rules. We told Tex and Noodle that they no longer had to clean up a room to play videogames, there were no restrictions on their tv time, and over the course of a few weeks we loosened up on meal times and food suggestions. We did all this with the idea that, if it didn't work, we could always go back to living by the rules when the "school year" started up again in August. But I don't think we're going to. The kids have responded so well, and our house is so much happier, I think that, as Alice Cooper said, "School's out forever". :-)

But relax, that doesn't mean we don't have responsibilities. In fact on the parents' part this is going to mean a lot of very conscious choices. If we're not going to dictate our children's food choices then we'd better only have food in the house we're okay with them choosing, possibly over and over again. If we're going to let them make their own learning choices then we can't guilt or shame them for not being interested in reading, writing, or science, any more than we'd do if they weren't interested in art, sports, or musical theory. Basically, if we're going to create an environment where they get to make their own choices, then we need to do what we can to make sure the limited choices they have are safe, largely healthy, and supported. Soon enough they'll be out in The World where there are millions of choices, a great many of them unsafe, unhealthy, and insupportable. I want them to have some practice before they get there.

Second Grade Goals Analyzed

2010-05-18T08:13:00.002-05:00

At the beginning of the year I wrote a post that included the basic national goals for second grade year. I would like to go back now and make note of what Tex covered in relation to those.

Language Arts

continuing to read fables and folktales to illustrate good character and principles

This year we read a number of Bible stories, 4 of the Chronicles of Narnia books, stories from The Children's Book of Virtues, and a number of Greek/Roman myths (esp. in relation to the Percy Jackson books)

label basic parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, etc.) and learn about abbreviations/contractions as well as antonyms/synonyms

Tex has a basic understanding of what contractions are and can usually figure them out in a sentence (tense-related ones like "it has" vs. "it is" can still be confusing). We played a lot of the board game Silly Sentences to learn parts of speech.

Geography/History

be able to identify continents, some large countries and major cities, a few oceans, rivers, or other bodies of water, and some major mountain ranges

Can identify: North Am, South Am, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, doesn't know where Europe ends and Asia begins; the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Madagascar, prob. Brazil, New Zealand, maybe Japan; knows Pacific/Atlantic coasts.

have some understanding of ancient world history and the discoveries of important civilizations (Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, India, China, Africa...)

Mostly got into Greek/Roman mythology and the society surrounding

early American history - basically any and everything -- from the natives to the first explorers, colonists, Western pioneers, and up to the Revolutionary War -- in which they are interested

Casual discussions of pioneer life and Westward expansion; some understanding of Revolutionary War as fight for freedom from England

Fine Arts

as much hands-on experience as possible -- take kids to see performances or put on some ourselves, listen to poetry read aloud, see and discuss artwork and architecture

We enjoyed some Shel Silverstein poetry this year and discussed artwork when we saw it. Tex also has a love of drawing and concentrated this year on dinosaurs, robots, and spaceships.

introduction to different instruments and how they are classified into groups
anything about the parts of a song, how plays are written, mediums of visual arts, etc.

Tex did a LOT of independent listening to music this year and can identify verses/chorus; pays close attention to how different instruments are used in songs; starting to learn about rhythm, syncopation. Also understands how songs can tell a story, even those without words, a la Disney's Fantasia. Has discussed jazz, opera, rap, rock, and other forms of music. This year he also received a sound mixing toy with which he can create his own electronic music, and he spent lots of time designing sets, costumes, and scenes which he then filmed with our digital camera.

Mathematics

practice, practice, practice, in fun and useful ways

Tex does math problems in his mind for fun, not to mention our practice with cooking, money, couponing, music, time, etc.

memorization of basic addition and subtraction tables, skip counting, evens/odds, Roman numeral introduction, adding and subtracting time on an analog clock, learn HOW to +/- 3-digit numbers, and begin memorizing multiplication tables
always practicing geometry, money, measurements, fractions, and word problems

Skilled in addition/subtraction, skip counting, understands evens/odds, analog clocks, is working on adding multi-digit numbers (ones, then tens, then hundreds), knows lots of small-number multiplication (2x2, 2x10, 5x3, etc.), can work small number division (9/3, 10/2, etc.), knows basic fractions

Life Sciences

human body - cells into tissue into organs into systems

Can name several bones of the body: tibia/fibula, femur, mandible, humerus, radius/ulna, vertebrae, ribs, pelvis

life cycles of animals/plants and how they relate to the seasons

We hatched butterflies this year and also cared for our garden. Tex knows some plants come back every year in our garden while others must be planted anew. Understands insect pollination.

lots of hands-on experience with animals, plants, and nature
biographies of important zoologists, animal activists, doctors, etc.

Tex has a few favorite animal scientists: Nigel Marvin, Steve and Bindi Irwin, Jungle Jack Hanna

Physical Sciences

the products of chemistry such as plastics, hands-on simple chem experiments

We worked on acids/bases as well as a number of other basic kid-friendly experiments.

how meteorologists gather data, how weather systems form

Tex understands how weather fronts move, how tornadoes form, what you can learn from looking at a weather radar

the history of astronomy and how stars can be used to find direction, and how/why the sky changes with the seasons
the behavior of light and sound, other physics basics

Experiments with grandfather on friction, resistance, etc.

simple machines, introduction to basic engineering and technology

Built hydraulics machines, watched several of The Way Things Work series on simple machines (inclined planes, levers, wheels/axles, pulleys)

more awareness of the Scientific Method in everyday play

One of Tex's favorite things! During play he loves to make predictions from the available information and then adjust his behavior to see how it changes the result

biographies of important scientists

Clearly there are areas in which Tex excels and areas in which he could use more focus. I feel very blessed that homeschooling allows him to develop at his own speed and in the areas towards which he feels most drawn. My own basic goals for this year were for him to be reading well (he is on grade level even though his confidence is still lacking) and for him to continue his learning and comprehension of math and science topics (in these his understanding far exceeds my expectations). I look forward to seeing what kind of learning continues this summer since our Unschooling "schedule" will not change appreciably, and I'll spend several hours this summer collecting information on the basics of Third Grade.

Spring fever!

2010-04-01T20:24:00.002-05:00

I love winter, and this year's was a spectacular specimen. Thanks to El Nino we had multiple snows that stuck, when in the last four years we've had none that did so for more than a few hours, so the kids really got some wonderful snow playtime. Unfortunately the main thing we discovered is that if you're going to go play in the snow, it really does pay to have all that "snow gear" that we never see in stores down here in Alabama. After a few good days of playing in the snow, freezing feet (no snow boots) and wet legs (no ski pants) were enough to get my kids over this snow business and ready for Spring. (Secretly, it's left me with a desire to plan a skiing trip in the next few years, complete with enough gear to keep us warm for hours of playing, but I'll tuck that away for now and get on with the point)

We have SO enjoyed the nice weather we've had the last couple of weeks. We've been out playing at parks, playgrounds, our own backyard, the Botanical Gardens with their new "tree house" exhibit, anywhere we can think of. The tree houses in particular have been a great source of learning, from their structure to the features of each, and even the physical skills needed to make use of them. One house even led to a discussion of pioneer living. We're also talking about the life cycles of different plants, why some we have to plant anew each year while others (like our beloved tulips!) come back on their own. And thank goodness, I remembered the butterfly hatching house I snagged on clearance at Target last fall and will soon have Painted Lady caterpillars for the kids to study and raise, AND I remembered the butterfly life cycle poster I bought online on clearance (do you hear an echo?) which I can display while the butterflies are shacking up at our place to help the kids keep up with the process. We also have a friend whose family is trying to hatch praying mantises (manti?), so with any luck our garden will be bursting with beneficial insects this summer!

Further academic news? Today while waiting for me to be free to read to him, Tex decided to just give it a whirl himself. I found this great Star Wars Clone Wars graphic novel at the library the other day when Monkeygirl and I dropped by while the boys were in P.E. at the Y, and it's really the perfect thing for Tex. Lots of picture cues, the words aren't too hard (he stumbled over "circuit" today, but who wouldn't? That word is crazy!), and lots of frames with stuff like guns going "zzzack!" and beasts saying "grrrr" and R2D2 saying "bwooooop". He can have read enough words to increase his confidence, but also get enough of the storyline from the pictures to enjoy it even when he can't read the words perfectly. I always thought comic books would be a good fit for him, I just hadn't found the right ones yet. We'll see where this leads. I can tell Tex's reading confidence is growing, which to my mind is the final hurdle to him being a mostly independent reader. Oh please, please, tell me that light at the end of the tunnel is NOT a train about to spoil my party! LOL

Also, good results with the book I mentioned in my last post. Every issue isn't solved yet, but there is MUCH less violence and much MORE willingness to talk to find solutions that are acceptable to all. It is hard as a parent to make that switch in my brain to acknowledging that having a five-minute discussion at an inconvenient time is still a better choice than having a full-fledged meltdown at a normal time, but more than anything it cements in my mind that Tex is a child who can not be parented in the "old school" fashion. This is a child who sees how Daddy-O and I treat each other, with good humor and flexibility, and his rigid mind sees no reason whatsoever than the rules should be different for his interactions with us. On one hand it's nice to know that this sort of experience will benefit him no end as he grows and forms relationships with many different people in different roles, so that he'll expect and give respect in equal measure, but it does make it necessary for us to give up that image of our family working like a well-oiled machine with Daddy-O and I at the head and our three wee ones following lovingly and dutifully behind as they trust us to know best. On second thought, though, that sounds kind of creepy... I think I like our way better. ;-)

How to Keep Your Child from Exploding

2010-02-28T19:57:00.002-06:00

This entry is going to revolve around some struggles that Tex has had for most of his life, which are a large part of the reason why we chose homeschooling for him in the first place. Along with a diagnosis of mild Sensory Perception Disorder which makes certain activities and concepts more challenging for Tex, he also has a certain, shall we say, lack of social graces which can make interacting with others a little awkward and confusing. Tex is not at his ease when dealing with new social situations, he struggles with wanting to be funny and "cool" and it just not coming naturally to him, and he is often unsure of what people expect from him and how to convey his own very rigid expectations to others. We have a lot of fits and arguments at home due to these issues, and it is exhausting for the whole family. Not that Tex isn't a fabulous and wonderful child, he IS, he just also happens to be very emotionally challenging. I've gone back and forth lately over whether he actually needs to see some kind of therapist to help him with his anxiety and frustration, but eventually (with the help of the less-inclined-to-tinker Daddy-O) decided that what he needs is time and closer guidance. Which is all well and good considering that intra-and interpersonal relationships are kind of my bag (degree in Social Work), but still, it's different when it's my own child I'm trying to walk through these delicate situations, which usually involve (you guessed it) ME! And I challenge any therapist out there to be calm and constructive when their client is whacking them with a lightsaber.

After a particularly hurtful battle last week I went to the bookstore seeking comfort and assistance. I browsed the Parenting section thinking "they haven't written the book yet for the kind of hell I'm in, knowing I have the skills to help my child and having no idea how to put them into practice", when voila! I came across The Explosive Child by Ross W. Greene. "Explosive, yes, that fits," I thought, flipping through the book. I saw enough that first night to warrant bringing the book home, and it is just exactly what I needed. I've long felt that having children should be much more like learning to live with a roommate than it should be like training a pet, so Greene's Collaborative Problem Solving routine is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for to help us find a mutually satisfying solution to the big issues we face in our home. No "I'm the parent and I pay the bills so we do it my way" because A) frankly, making that stick is more trouble than it's worth and B) it doesn't really teach my kids the kind of life lessons I'd want them to retain, anyway. I want my kids to believe that they CAN change their situation in life, in ways that are effective and considerate of others, and I realize that in order for them to have that belief they need to see it in motion and even practice it themselves. So I'm excited to have a new resource helping us help Tex as he navigates the social minefields coming his way.

I had a fun moment watching Tex play and show off his understanding of math concepts. The kids were playing restaurant and Tex asked me for my order, I gave it, and he was ringing up my total when I said "wait, wait, I have a coupon!" Without even batting an eye (because he knows his Mommy and her love of coupons) he said "okay, ma'am, your coupon is for 50% off, your total was 4 dollars, and 50% is half, so half of four is two. You owe me two dollars, ma'am." I mean, come ON!! I know it's basic, but the kid goes from percentages, to fractions, to division with perfect understanding of what those concepts are! And he's not even 8 years old!

Oh, one other thing we've been enjoying lately is that I'm reading Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief to the boys and Tex is now all interested in Greek mythology. He even told me the other day that he'd like to learn Greek so that he could read the myths, but was pretty stoked when I told him the libraries will have books of Greek/Roman mythology written just for kids his age, instead. He really enjoyed looking at the Greek section of a giant encyclopedia of mythology he found on our shelves, but it was more an index of characters and creatures than a collection of the stories. It will be nice to have my memory refreshed, since I keep confusing Ariadne with Arachne, and Perseus with Theseus, and can never remember which names are Greek and which are Roman! Plus I have a comic book of The Odyssey I'd love to whip out. ;-P

Design Central

2010-02-03T19:54:00.003-06:00

Oh, Tex and his grandiose plans. He's had them since he was born, I think, and reality never does quite live up to his expectations, but he keeps plugging away. I've been fascinated to watch the evolution of several projects this week.

There was the allosaurus we made last year, with the crushed-aluminum foil skeleton and heavy, baked-on polymer clay. The foil would crush closer together every time we squeezed more clay on, leaving air pockets and saggy clay that eventually drooped off the form. Tex tried again using a foil skeleton and a lighter plastic clay, this time making a velociraptor, but the air-dry clay shrunk where it wasn't well-smoothed and revealed gaps. Finally, two days ago we constructed a skeleton out of wire coat hangers. I did the grunt work, of course, bending and snipping the wires according to Tex's specifications and holding the frame steady while he worked clay onto it and shaped it into a velociraptor. He gave the velociraptor teeth, a pattern to his skin, a bumpy ridge on his tail, a curved second toe-claw, and three feathery plumes on his head. Even the positioning had to be precise, with the tail acting as a cantilever to the beast's head so that his whole spine was almost parallel to the ground. This kid knows what he is doing! And I am happy to report that after two days' drying time Tex's velociraptor is standing upright on his own power as well as having a flawless complexion with no gaps! Can't wait to see how this guy is going to be painted in the next couple of days.

Tex also has an abiding interest in costuming. No surprise given his backstage-crew parents, but it has taken forms I never would have suspected before having children. In the last few years we have made together: a dilophosaurus costume, complete with painted long-johns, sculpted foam head, and Jurassic Park-style neck frill; an oviraptor costume, using a balaclava as the basis for the head and adding a feathered back ridge and tail to the dilophosaurus long johns; and an unfinished R2D2 that sits in the corner of my room awaiting inspiration. We have now begun the long process of designing and creating next Halloween's costume!!! I suppose I should be happy that we've moved off dinosaurs but finding out my next challenge is going to be a robot by the name of General Grievous, from Star Wars Episode III, sort of made me long for a functioning pterodactyl costume order. But we must press on...

So Tex spent much of last week or so Googling "General Grievous" images to find the form he'd prefer and angles that allowed us to get a good look at how things really go together. Then he and I took a trip to the home improvement store yesterday. We investigated plumbing fixtures, tubes, wires, pipes, dowels, tried things on, speculated on form vs. function, and finally walked out with the makings of two matching lightsabers: two 9" turned table legs for the handles, to be painted in a pattern of silver and black, and a 1 1/2" dowel to be cut in half, painted green, and used for the blades. The costume itself is going to take a lot more work and trial-and-error. There were some great plumbing parts that we think we can use as the basis for the feet, then use copper tubing wrapped in black duct tape to form the metal toes. The arms and legs will be the biggest challenge, while the face we're confident can be made from pieces of PVC pipe cut into semi-circles and glued together before painting. A cloak will most certainly be used to great effect. At this point I'm just happy Tex decided to settle for two-armed mode instead of four-armed, but even there I don't want to hold my breath! One thing is for sure, we will probably use all 9 of the months he's allotted us.

In the meantime we have a smaller costuming goal: wings. Tex wanted to dress up as some Transformer from Beast Wars today, and this guy apparently has eagle wings. The closest thing we have in this house is Monkeygirl's pink fairy wings. Definitely not beast-ish. So again we bust out the wire coat hangers, the wire cutters, the last of our stash of brown pleather, and a boatload of craft glue. Tex designed the wings himself, explained it to his poor, old Mother's tired brain over and over until I got it (he finally had to get out the string, cut it, and have us both pretend to be wings connected by the string in the way he wanted before I understood), and consoled me when I completely mucked it up by forgetting to make the wings in mirror images so that the right side of the fabric would face out. He even found the solution: making the wings smaller so that I could cut the correct mirror from one and then trim the other to match.

And lest you think that we're all makeup and show tunes around here, I have more reading progress to report. Tonight at bedtime (historically Tex's worst time for trying to read, and who can blame him after a long day?) I was reading aloud from Watch Out for Jabba the Hutt when out of the blue Tex took over and read a few sentences, without hesitation and with perfect comprehension: "Anakin and R2-D2 fly together in a spaceship," "Yoda is one of the most powerful Jedi. He is small but very strong and wise," and "He is big, bad, and cruel, but his son, Rotta, loves him!" Whew, it's just nice for me as a mom to know that all those crazy letters on the page are starting to make easy sense to him now, and that he's gaining in confidence every time he reads successfully.

The Scientific Method

2010-01-23T13:32:00.002-06:00

So it came up this week that Tex has the Scientific Method as a part of his Scouting requirements, and although they get a healthy dose of it from The Mythbusters I'm always happy to take opportunities to use it in real life. So. Noodle is a nut for "experiments". This mostly just means mixing stuff together, and it doesn't even have to be sciencey (yes, it's a word, so hush) stuff, it can just be bubble bath and water. But on this particular day he wanted to repeat the experiment of the day before by mixing baking soda with various liquids to see which ones could make it bubble the most. He though chocolate and strawberry syrups mixed together had a good chance at the title. So we chose five liquids: the syrup mixture, fresh lemon juice, pasteurized OJ, honey, and filtered water. Noodle helped set up five separate samples of baking soda, and Tex joined in at this point to help me use litmus papers to test each liquid. The fresh lemon juice got the biggest reaction, turning the litmus paper a dark red almost immediately. Next on the list was the OJ, while the syrups, honey, and water all appeared to be rather neutral. We devised a system to rate the reactions, listing a "1" as no reaction, a "2" as a mild bubbling, and a "3" as a very fizzy reaction. After adding water to one sample of baking soda and recording a "1" reaction, we dipped litmus paper in the solution and it immediately turned a deep bluish-green.
Then the real fun started! The honey and syrups had to be thinned with water after our initial attempts resulted in little baking soda-covered balls of viscous liquid, but still rated as "1" reactions. The pasteurized OJ was rated a "2" for its light fizzing. The lemon juice was the clear winner with a big, bubbling foam that threatened to overtake its container! Then Tex and I wondered if fresh orange juice would have a different reactions than store-bought, so I grabbed what I thought was an orange and sliced it open only to find that it was really a grapefruit. Oops. Well, no matter, the Mythbusters make mistakes all the time, so we decided to include fresh grapefruit juice in our sample, too. We then squeezed some fresh OJ and tested both with litmus paper. The color of the litmus paper dipped in grapefruit juice was quite as dramatic as the lemon. The orange juice was less so, but more acidic than the pasteurized variety. Tex and I compared the blue base paper with the red lemon paper and noted that the biggest reactions came when combining the substances that had the most dramatic color changes, and from that he predicted that the grapefruit juice was going to have the biggest reaction of the two new liquids, but that the fresh OJ would have more of a reaction than the store-bought. And boy was he right! Noodle couldn't get over the fizz of the grapefruit juice and had a blast mixing it with baking soda, then mixing the lemon and grapefruit juices and adding them together. Two happy guys. :-)

Just keep learning, learning, learning

2010-01-21T16:39:00.003-06:00

I love this life. There is nothing better than being able to have my children around me and watch them learning. Sure, there are days when I would happily duct tape them all to the couch just to get a half-hour of uninterrupted Quiet Time, but I can wait a couple years until they're more capable of giving me that gift. ;-)

Only problem is: if I don't blog more often, I totally forget all the stuff I was going to mention! We've done SO much the last few weeks since getting back into our homeschool schedule after the holidays, and I'm going to try to remember as much as I can.

We got a microscope for Christmas, and it has already yielded hours of entertainment and learning. It is a compound microscope, so it can view both slides and 3-D objects with its different light sources. We've examined the difference in crystals between table salt, kosher salt, and sugar. We've looked at dead bugs up close. Today Tex and I made our own slide with mold from an old croissant (it's not bad housekeeping, it's science!), and another with water from the toilet (nothing in the water moved, which I found wonderfully reassuring), and plan to get some pond water next time we're out and about, and examine it for beasties.

Noodle was busy experimenting with some acids and bases to see what happens. Tex bought some Pucker Powder at the science museum last week and I noticed that a main ingredient was citric acid, aka the stuff that Noodle likes to mix with baking soda and water and watch it bubble. Noodle begged and pleaded and got Tex to part with one teaspoon of his Pucker Powder to see what sort of reaction it would yield. Unfortunately it didn't do much other than make colored water, but it was worth a shot! We then moved on to squeezing lemon wedges onto the baking soda, and that got a much more exciting reaction! So much fizzing! Noodle was very happy until he discovered that lemon juice and cuts on one's finger do not mix well. Sometimes science hurts. :-(

What else? Well, a couple weeks ago we had an Alabama snowstorm, which means we had actual snow that stuck on the ground and could be made into snowballs and tiny snowmen. Of course the kids had a blast, and we got out our magnifying glass to observe the crystal formation in the snowflakes. We were also completely tickled to discover that one of our nearby ponds was completely frozen over, a phenomenon I've never seen in this town. We went to explore and see how thick the ice was. I thought it couldn't be more than an inch, but after banging and digging with sticks and rocks for a good while we had to stop because we couldn't get farther than about 3 inches deep. Knowing it was that thick, I decided we could risk a little "skate" around the rim where I could actually see the dirt and grass underneath the ice. We talked about ice safety and listened to the faint creaks from the ice as we walked around the edge. The boys would have stayed all day but MonkeyGirl thought landing on her bottom on the cold, hard ice lost its luster after about a dozen times.

We've also been making a concerted effort to be sure the kids get their "P.E." every day. Of course some days that's as easy as going to a park and letting them run and climb until they're sweaty and worn out, but Tex also attends a homeschool P.E. class at the YMCA every week and attends Little Gym's homeschool class once a week as well. He's really improved his body strength and can now do a pullover on the bar and a straddle roll, and in P.E. he's started making home runs in kickball and doing better on the Presidential Fitness events. We have also begun, as a family, to use our new Wii Fit Plus that we got for Christmas every morning. Tex especially loves it and gets some good aerobic exercise doing the hula hoop, short jogs, and obstacle courses. It's a nice way to get him moving first thing in the morning.

And finally, our reading progress. I mentioned that Tex had finally had his lightbulb and realized that he could read, but I think he's been a little disappointed that every word isn't easy to read. So I mention to him that he's going to have to practice to get better at it, which is usually met with a rant about how "I don't like reading, I'm never going to read, you're going to have to read to me forever!" LOL But the other night when he lamented that he couldn't read Star Wars on his own and had to wait on pokey ol' Mommy, I mentioned it again, "honey, the more you practice reading, the more confident you'll be, and the more you'll be able to read, and before you know it you'll be flying through whatever books you want to." He seemed to think about it for a moment and then said, "ok". And since then he's been doing more spontaneous reading on his own and not taking it so badly when he's not immediately correct. We even, Tex, Noodle, and I, played gummi words for about 45 minutes yesterday and they both did amazing. I bought these cards designed to help you recognize "word families", so they have things like "___ight", or "___ump" on them. So then we just took our gummi letters and made "bright", "light", and "plump rump" (Tex's favorite). Even Noodle was doing great with the families like "_at" and "_ig". I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were both reading independently over the summer!

Better late than never

2010-01-21T15:49:00.002-06:00

Here's an entry from Daddy-O about a pre-Christmas trip to Atlanta:

Brownie and I decided to break up the trip to Atlanta (technically, Gwinnett County/Lawrenceville/Duluth) by stopping at the Tellus NW Georgia Science Museum. For being next to the middle of nowhere, that place ROCKED! There was a gorgeous collection of prehistoric creature skeletons (including a T-Rex, Edmontosaurus, and mosasaur), huge minerals/crystals, many planes, trains, and automobiles...and the little kid section was pretty big. Thanks to our having a membership to the science museum here in town (which is very mediocre and basically a scienced-based, educational, indoor playground), we got in to the museum for free. It was an absolute hit for the whole family and will likely become a regular stop whenever we travel to ATL.

Brownie here: Tex and I spent some quality time with the skeletons of prehistoric creatures. I asked him to explain to me the difference between bird-hipped and lizard-hipped dinosaurs and we went around the room classifying each. We found that the pterosaur had a completely different-looking pelvis than any of the other skeletons. And we learned that dunkleosteus is pretty intimidating even when he's a fossil. After that the kids had a blast excavating dinosaur skeletons and especially enjoyed the water feature where you get to "pan for gems". Tellus has little bits of lapis, tiger eye, quartz, jade, malachite, jasper, and other shiny bits buried in sand, covered by running water, and you have to scoop some up and find the gems buried inside. We left with a small bagful that they are planning to use to decorate a small trinket box or something similar.

Friday's big adventure was to drive to I-285, hop onto the MARTA rail, take it to Midtown, visit the Federal Reserve Bank, and back. In case you didn't know, it was raining like crazy on Friday. Thankfully, the MARTA station was only half a block from the Federal Reserve so it wasn't far; but even after hanging out at the visitor's center for about an hour, our clothes were still quite damp. Then we had the pleasure of running back through that rain to the station. But since the Fed was free, two of the three kids rode the rail for free, and parking was free, it was a fun, educational activity to fill the day with the boys. While the Federal Reserve was our "destination," Noodle's primary interest was in riding his first subway car. He was been very interested in the driving capabilities in the Sim City 4: Rush Hour set. He loves to build a city of infrastructure and then drive/pilot cars, trains, planes, and boats on the screen. The anticipation of finally riding in a subway train had Noodle absolutely giddy.

Friday and much of Saturday was spent at the relatives' home. Well, more specifically, in their basement. They had the Wii set up there and it was the boys' first exposure to RockBand/Beatles RockBand. After all the playing, Tex has been singing numerous lines from the songs. Although he had mild interest in "Ticket to Ride" and "Drive My Car" a couple of years ago, the only songs he actually sings to himself are ones from Depeche Mode and Duran Duran along with "Smoke on the Water." Now he's going around singing verses of "Eight Days a Week" and "Yellow Submarine," and thankfully only a few lines of "I Am the Walrus."

Me again: the kids, especially Tex, have really been enjoying singing lately. Tex is getting more confident with singing aloud in the car and even when he's listening to music in his headphones. He does pretty well! I'm toying with asking him whether he'd be interested in singing with the children's choir at church.

Will wonders never cease

2009-12-14T21:19:00.003-06:00

It seemed too early to say something when, not two days after my last post, Tex discovered that he does NOT, in fact, suck at reading. However, since we've now had several days of increased confidence and improved reading, I'm going to go ahead and call it: Tex is A Reader! The lightbulb went off one evening as he had just completed an email to his Papa regarding their plans for the upcoming Sunday playdate. He had written, almost entirely by himself, the subject line of "What to do Sunday", and then the sentence "What's your plan, Papa?". He even had it correctly punctuated! About an hour later Papa replied, and Tex sat down to read it. There were several sentences there, but Tex just started breezing right through the words, reading most of them automatically and stopping to sound out a few, only needing close assistance with two or three. He was halfway through the email when he literally stopped short, shouted "I'm reading!", and then kept going, completely tickled with himself. The following day he said "Mommy, I think I'm a proficient reader now." I told him I was so glad that he was feeling confident in himself. In reality I was relieved all the way down to my toenails, but I can't let him catch me caring about stuff like that or he feels pressured. ;-)

We have some big plans coming up. We have family in Atlanta, GA, and a Christmas party there soon. We plan to take the leisurely way down, stopping at the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, which includes exhibits where you can dig for fossils or pan for gold! We're planning to have tons of fun. Then during our time in ATL we will visit the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Visitor's Center to get an idea of the history of our nation's money and see cool stuff like where they shred the old bills. At the end of the tour the kids will even get a bag of shredded money to KEEP! Why do I see a raid on Scotch tape in their future?

We will also be taking a trip on the MARTA subway system at Noodle's request. Thanks to all his city planning decisions in SimCity he's developed an interest in all public transportation. Today we were out at a park feeding cracked corn to the geese, and I heard Noodle's squeaky voice yelling "Mommy, I saw a city bus! It's different from a school bus!!" But his big interest is light rail and his big Atlanta wish is to ride the subway. He was just disappointed to hear that Atlanta doesn't also have an elevated train or monorail we could ride for purposes of comparison. Guess we'll just have to plan a trip to DisneyWorld and ride the monorail there. Whoops, I think I just heard DaddyO's heart grind to a stop at the thought of shepherding 3 young children through the Magic Kingdom, better go check on that. ;-)

All on their own

2009-11-30T21:04:00.003-06:00

I've been such a bad home schooling Mom lately. We've had sicknesses, birthday parties, a root canal for me (and a couple days of Codeine Mommy afterwards; she was fun), and of course the Thanksgiving holidays, and I feel like we haven't had our act together for weeks! "Having our act together" being relative, of course. For us that means we: get moving relatively quickly in the morning and get out of the house to do something (even if it's just playing in the yard), watch little television, and I make myself extra-available as a resource for the kids' learning play. Life has gotten a little bit in the way of those humble goals lately. And yet, I find that I still have many things to report.

Tex's reading gets better and better. Don't tell him I told you, because he hates reading and is determined that he's horrible at it, but he's really not half bad. The other night he and DaddyO read Pepito the Brave together as part of Tex's Wolf Scout requirements, and Tex needed very little help in sounding out the words he didn't recognize on sight. He still seems to think that reading should be effortless and is discouraged when he has to work at it, but I hope that as he practices more and more in his head he'll gain confidence and realize that reading is manageable.

Still, if he doesn't have room for reading in his brain, it's because it's so full of science! I was just now looking at a little science/transportation book we got from Sonic with our lunches the other day, and the first page was about airplanes. I started to read one of the little blurbs, regarding the forces that must be equalized, when Tex piped in with "I know this! The engines create thrust, which pushes against the drag, and then the wind creates lift, which pushes against gravity. That's from Newton." Well. Alrighty then, let's just keep reading, shall we? Here's a nice page explaining an experiment you can do yourself with a straw and a small paper ball, where you keep the ball floating in the air stream and observe what happens when you tilt the straw as you blow. Once again, Tex is ahead of the game: "that's just like at the Space & Rocket Center, where they have a beach ball and a vent, and did you know that the air isn't pushing on the bottom of the ball, it's actually splitting and going around it! And when it goes around [the ball] perfectly evenly, with gravity pushing down, there's nowhere for the ball to go. You have to tilt it SO far before gravity pushes the ball a lot, and makes the wind on the bottom thinner, and then the ball can break through the wind." And there you have Bernoulli's Principle as explained by a 7 1/2 year old. And I had to look it up in the Sonic science book to make sure I had the name right. (sigh)

What else has been doing around here, lately? Well, Noodle has moved on from creating zoos in Zoo Tycoon to creating whole cities in DaddyO's Sim City computer program. It's mostly an excuse to "drive" trains and plot the destruction of whole towns with robots and metal dinosaurs, but in the process he has to do little things like set up power plants or alternative energy sources (he likes the windmills), lay roads and train tracks, build businesses and homes, and other matters of city planning.

And oh, goodness, Noodle is starting to read, too!! He was looking at our coupons box the other day, and he all of the sudden stuck out his finger and started to read: "c-ah-up-onz. Mommy, does this say 'cop-ons'?" You could have knocked me down with a feather!! Of course I played it cool and let him know that in this case the "ou" makes the "ooooo" sound, so he wouldn't sense my excitement and immediately decide to stop reading altogether, but inside I was jumping up and down! And tonight when I made the boys a sign of what they needed to do before bed, he read "teeth" right away. The Noodle is on his way to reading, big time!

Both boys are also still interested in film-making (that sounds so much better than "they both still love abusing the camera"). Tex had asked me how filmmakers get things to move in movies without touching them, which led to a discussion of wires and fishing line, and Tex wondered if we could tie some fishing line to something an move it around. For instance, hmmm, oh hey, Mom, how about this thing I've been carrying around and pretending is a laser blaster gun, will that work? Sure! So we tied some fishing line to his blaster and I showed him how he could pull it without anyone seeing how. Well, Tex found that he could not waste such a wonderful opportunity, so he turned into Director Tex and got us all to play our parts: Tex as a Star Wars baddie, Noodle as Obi Wan Kenobi (the Ewan McGregor version, not Alec Guinness) injured and unable to reach his weapon, myself as the special effects coordinator (I pulled the string), and DaddyO as the cameraman. Tex put us all on our marks and we did at least three takes; it was a grueling 10-minute shoot. But I think that what they came away with was pretty darn cute.

Finally I should mention all the work Tex has been doing for his Wolf badge in Cub Scouts. He's so excited about all of this scouting stuff, and thank goodness he has DaddyO, Grandaddy, Papa, and even a Great Uncle who are all so generous with their time and experience to help him accomplish his tasks. This weekend he did some woodworking and used some basic tools to create a doorstop and cut a notch out of a plank of wood. He even got to use the circular saw under close supervision. There is no doubt about it, that boy is growing up. I hope he's more ready for it than I am. ;-)

That was a good day.

2009-11-03T07:42:00.002-06:00

Yesterday should not have been such a good day. It started off with the decision to stay home since Tex and I were both sporting runny, drippy noses, because I knew that if we went anywhere not only would we be leaving behind copious germs, but we'd also get so worn out so fast that it wouldn't be any fun. The drawback is that most days we are "stuck" at home turn out to be tortuously long and full of arguments between playmates.
Not this time! We started off with an episode of The Amazing Race. We've been Netflix-ing the DVDs of Season 1 and watching them with Tex as a fun way to talk geography and dialogue on concepts like sportsmanship, honor, fairness, etc. In this episode we found France and Tunisia, and talked about how two teams working together, even though they're in competition, can actually help both teams do better; and also about how one team that can't communicate will have trouble getting anywhere.
We finished our third hydraulics machine, the scissor lift. Only one machine left to go. Tex and Noodle did weight-testing to see what objects the scissor lift could hold up, and which were heavy enough to actually push the fluid around themselves and lower the lift.
The most fun I think we had all day was graphing the Halloween candy. We made plates for "chocolate", "fruity candy", "gum", "snacks", and "lollipops", and the boys each separated their candy into those groups, counted each group, and then made a bar graph showing how they compared to each other. Then they selected their favorites to keep, and the rest went to "DaddyO Tax". They had so much fun, I imagine we might be doing this again with any candy in their Christmas stockings, or maybe at Easter! :-)
Oh, and Noodles has discovered Zoo Tycoon!! This is a PC game that allows one to build their own zoo (with regular, endangered, marine, and even prehistoric animals), design the exhibits, hire staff, provide for the guests' needs, and maintain the animals' happiness. I credit this game with getting Tex started reading last year, because he had to learn to identify words in order to play it without a grown-up around to help. Noodle isn't quite there yet, being as he's just about to turn 5 and Tex was a new 6-year-old when he got started, but he's fascinated about each animal and how their environments differ from others, why you have to have boy and girl animals in order to have babies, and especially why some animals have a LOT of babies very fast while others take a long time to grow their population. Last year Tex learned about the food chain by putting penguins into the sea lion exhibit and watching the resultant scuffle, then putting the sea lion in the polar bear exhibit and seeing how the predator became the prey. I find it amusing that the game designers created this function, and the "scuffles" complete with swirling lines and stars. LOL
In any case it was a good day. Now send me prayers that today should be as fun, because we've added a sick Monkey to the bunch, so we're staying home again. Noodle may just go crazy.

The blog is slacking, but the school isn't!

2009-10-05T21:07:00.002-05:00

Now that it's Fall Break for city schools and we have a week off of our organized activities, maybe I can get some blogging in. And can I just stop for a moment and tell you how much I love Unschooling??? It never ceases to amaze me, although it darn well probably should by now, how much these kids learn whether we're "teaching" at them or not. There's big stuff going on in those little noggins.

Tex and Noodle have discovered a new online game at PBSkidsGO.org, part of the show Design Squad, whereby they have to use various shaped widgits to get a certain number of Tribble-like Fidgits to fall out of their tube and into a little box. So they have to use geometry to figure how to bounce the Fidgits in such a way that they head towards the box, they have to consider the physics of the materials used and how much energy each absorbs (each widgit can be made of rubber, wood, or concrete), and there is definitely a certain amount of creativity and trial & error involved in getting it to work. I especially appreciate this aspect as Tex is a perfectionist, my typical first child who only looks up to adults and thinks he should be as skilled as us with much less practice. It's nice to have a game where, first thing, you HAVE to fail. You HAVE to let those Fidgits drop out of the tube and just let them land wherever they may, and not get into the box at all. Then you have to try out a solution, but it's probably going to fail, too, and that's good because it gives you more information. And so on and so on until finally you tweak your design just right, and those little squeaky, beepy Fidgits finally get in the dang box and shut the heck up. I love this game.

And Noodle, oh Noodle, my little electro-nut. Last week Noodle and I put together Tex's Electronics Lab because he just could NOT wait any more! It had wires! It had springs! It has transformers (NOT actually robots in disguise, though you would have thought so by how excited he was) and capacitors and did I mention WIRES?!?!?! Oh, the joy on his face when he completed a circuit and that little red LED lit up, it was priceless. I must admit I was pretty tickled, too, having never really known before how any of this stuff went together; it was a flashback to the old HeathKit television my dad built when I was about 7 years old. And two days later Noodle and I went right to the library to try to find some books on robots again (they said they'd order more for us) and left with a grade-school book titled Artificial Intelligence and three books about Star Wars (because Star Wars has... you guessed it... robots!). Strike what I said a few posts back about Tex building the spaceship and Noodle being the unwitting test pilot; I'm now quite convinced that they will be full partners in their plot to launch themselves out of the garage. For my part, I just don't know what I'm going to do when they get to more complex physics issues; that is not a class I took and I was quite happy about it. Perhaps they have a kindly grandfather or uncle who will help them experiment safely... or just enable their craziness, you never can tell in this family.

We've started reading the Chronicles of Narnia aloud, and so far Tex is thoroughly enjoying it. Only the second night, but when I finished Chapter Two tonight he very sweetly said "please don't stop", and who am I to deny this kid a good story?? Frankly, at this point anything that isn't a dinosaur book is a-okay with me! Truly, though, he still insists that he dislikes reading as an activity AND a school subject (even though he's getting better at it all the time), so anything that gets him excited about reading is something I want to encourage. He even wanted me to follow along with my finger so that he could tell where I was on the page, which is something he usually finds distracting. I do so hope that at some point he's going to find the book or topic that makes him want to read things on his own, so that he can get in some more frequent practice and start to reap the rewards. Of course, I should also remind myself that just because being "a reader" is important to ME does not mean that it will or should be so for him. DaddyO is not ravenous about books the way I am by any means. In fact I can only think of a few in which he was so engrossed that he didn't want to put them down to eat, work, or sleep, while I could probably say that about a few dozen books at least. There's almost nothing I like more. On the down side, we're running out of shelf space.

So there you have it, in a week filled with paper-making, computer and board games, The Magician's Nephew, and lots of outdoor and gym play, we have all grown leaps and bounds. I can't wait to see what happens next!

Harvest Day!

2009-09-21T21:36:00.002-05:00

I've been staring out the boys' window at our raised tomato garden bed, and looking at the dozen or so ripe Roma tomatoes waiting to be picked, so when Tex and Noodle were willing to help me pick them today we headed right out to do it! We got a bunch of tomatoes, a load of basil, one tiny pepper that Noodle spotted, a bunch of lavender (the boys want to make "dream pillows" like the one I made Daddy-O years ago), parsley, and a peck of bugs to go with it all! As we speak there is an inchworm on a basil leaf, and another leaf with some sort of larva or chrysalis webbed onto the back (haven't figured that one out, yet), resting in our "bug keeper" cage. We even got to check out blooming flowers on the basil, then some spent flowers with the seeds visible, and we discussed how the positioning of the seeds (on the underside of the seed pod) allows them to simply fall down to the soil and grow new basil plants whether we like it or not (we do!). The boys then helped me to "process" the basil, picking off the good leaves and rinsing them for me to make pesto later.

Tex and I (ok, mostly me) have slacked off terribly lately on his building projects. I keep leaving it up to him for us to make a trip out to buy materials, but I've come to the conclusion that like most kids he just wants to do it when he wants to do it, and I'm going to need to gather some materials to have on hand for him to explore building. I need some strong wire to be the skeleton for his dinosaur sculptures, several decks of cards for building houses of cards, and maybe even some bamboo for outdoor structures. We agreed to spend some time tomorrow making a big list of projects to go on the wall where we'll be reminded of them often, and so that I can be picking up materials as we have the money.

Tex and Daddy-O are scoping out Cub Scout troops in the next couple of weeks. Given Tex's intense interest in wilderness survival skills we're hoping that Scouting will be a good fit. Tex has been watching Daddy-O go to his old Boy Scout troop's meetings as an adult leader for the last few years, and he's thoroughly enjoyed the times he's joined Daddy-O for activities with the troop. The challenge will be finding a good fit. They went to their first meeting tonight with the goal of "being good scientists and observing", which they will do at a couple more meetings with other troops over the next few weeks before making their choice.

And I have a book recommendation!! Tex and I actually read it last week but I forgot to mention... Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland. The story concerns a young squire named Radius, son of Sir Cumference and his wife, Lady Di of Ameter, and his quest to become a knight. In this "math adventure" you find an exciting story that introduces the concepts of angles and degrees and incorporates them into the narrative with lovely little memory tricks that I can tell will help them stick better than the rote memorization I always depended on in school. I originally saw these in a learning catalog, but then ended up finding them on the shelf at Barnes & Noble. I may just have to buy one every time I get a B&N coupon. :-)

Happy learning!

Active week

2009-09-18T19:56:00.002-05:00

The boys have really been into physical play this week. There's a new indoor playspace in town with a big wooden "pirate ship", moon bounce, and a bunch of other ways for the kids to stay active and have some imaginary play time. There's even a special area for Monkey to stay if she wants to be away from the big kids, although most of the time she just does her best to keep up. We spent at least 4 hours there this week. We also got Tex signed up for Homeschool P.E. class at the local YMCA and he had his first class this week; came out red-faced and sweating after playing soccer and loved it! :-) He was actually interested in moving his conflicting gymnastics class so that he could attend the Y's class twice weekly instead of once. Noodle is simply excited that we're going to start going swimming during Tex's class time, and I'm betting Monkey will be thrilled, too.

The boys have also enjoyed a lot of game playing this week. Computer games, Battleship, board games. And I've noticed that Tex has particularly delighted lately in being the teacher. He doesn't know it, but I love this b/c it helps me to know what lessons he's really absorbed. This week Tex taught Monkey about why clouds rain, he taught Noodle about the different environments that animals live in as they were building a Zoo Tycoon zoo together, and I remember hearing quite a few things I didn't know before, but apparently I need to work on MY listening skills because now I cannot recall a one! Perhaps he'll be good enough to repeat himself this week if I promise to wear my listening ears?

Today we had a field trip to a local hydroponic farm with a group of homeschool friends. The kids got to see the benefits of their vertical planting system which needs one acre for every 18 a traditional farm would use, and uses 2,600 gallons of water daily compared to the 50,000 gallons a traditional farm growing the same number of plants would need. (See, today I had my listening ears on!) We also saw a wicked huge grasshopper, ladybugs and their larvae, stink bugs, squash bugs, learned the difference between beneficial and harmful insects, between male and female squash flowers, and supported a local farm all in one fell swoop!

Back in the saddle

2009-09-08T19:56:00.002-05:00

Last week was just crazy and we barely got any homeschooling done each day. Of course the kids are always learning no matter what I do to/with them, but it's nice that this week we're able to get back into focusing on learning.

Big plans are afoot in the Berry Patch. The boys are planning some backyard camping trips and, if all goes well, possibly one at an actual campground. Noodle is absolutely over the moon about being able to camp outside; I've decided not to mention the ratio of bugs-to-Noodle in the great outdoors and just dip him in DEET before they go out. ;-) Tex was really hoping for a "Man vs. Wild" style drop-off and survival marathon, but as Mommy doesn't have access to a helicopter or parachute, we had to put the kibosh on that one.

For Table Time today Tex decided he wanted to play Battleship for math practice. Can't wait to get that kid into doing graphs and such, he already loves grids and code-breaking and all that sort of stuff. And he cheated, but he didn't win even then, so I'm hoping he'll get the idea that cheating sours the game without any guarantee that it will pay off. Teaching ethics is tricky to a kid who cares more about winning than about being fair! But I'll keep at it with the attitude that I still love him even though he's a big fat cheater ;-P, and that it's only going to hurt him in the long run anyway.

Oh, and Tex is also designing a "blaster" to go with his Megatron costume. He drew up a couple of designs, drew each design from 3 different angles (!) so I could see which I thought might be easier, and now he's planning to start small-scale mock-ups with toilet paper or paper towel rolls before we move on to the full-size model using a mailing tube. Y'all watch out, if this is where we're at at age 7, I don't even want to think about what he'll be building at 16! I might go out in the garage one day and it will be like a scene from The Explorers (y'all remember that one, with River Phoenix and the singing alien?). Twenty bucks says Noodle's the test pilot...

Even in the midst of chaos...

2009-09-02T20:34:00.000-05:00

We've had a death in the family this week (DaddyO's grandma, God rest her soul) and a memorial for my grandfather who died back in June, but the learning just keeps on happening! We enjoyed a trip to SciQuest this morning where the boys spent most of their time concocting a "recipe for disaster" in the kitchen portion of the model home. Then Tex went to the gift shop and spent his allowance on a Life-Size dinosaur book (very cool!) and a stick of rock candy, which was a nice way to practice his money skills.

Oh, and that darn celery experiment is giving us SO many opportunities to learn!! Grrr! The blue food coloring hardly showed up at all even though the celery

Life lessons

2009-08-31T21:58:00.002-05:00

Today we discussed the structure of a tooth, and what happens when decay gets to the middle of the tooth and infects the root. Know why?? Do ya, do ya, do ya??? Because Mommy has to go to the dentist tomorrow for a root canal!! LOL Yes, the boys and I spent some time looking at my poor half-dissolved tooth, drawing a diagram of a tooth and discussing the root canal procedure as explained to me by my dentist, and then looking at DaddyO's tooth that had a root canal and crown applied about 10 years ago.

Tex and I read some of a dinosaur library book today. He gets really annoyed if I just try to read to him what the book says, so he looks at the pictures and says things like "What do you notice about this guy? What do you think is cool about him?" and I ask it back to him and then find little bits of the text to throw out as additional information to go with our observations. Today we noticed the depressions in the skin of 3 drawings of carnosaurs, and then spotted them a couple of pages later as openings in the actual skull of an Allosaurus. Tex is very interested in paleoartistry, where artists have to gather information from the fossils of a dinosaur such as where its ligaments were attached and any remaining skin evidence to create what they think is the most accurate picture of that creature.

Noodle and I worked up a new science experiment at Table Time today. It's the old standby of the celery in the food coloring. I've never done it before but DaddyO has and said it's pretty cool. We should have blueish celery in the morning. Hope it works!!!

At bedtime last night I introduced the concept of myths, not in the Mythbusters sense, but as legends. We were reading a book about insects that Noodle got from the library last week and I mentioned how spiders got their name (the story of Arachne and Athena) and told the myth as I remembered it from grade school. I explained that legends are stories that are so amazing and exciting that they pass down through the years simply because people enjoy them, true or not, while myths are something people use to explain why or how things happen. The boys were already familiar with the legend of the sun-god riding his chariot across the sky after watching Fantasia, so I was able to relate back to that.

The drawbacks of Unschooling

2009-08-26T15:56:00.003-05:00

Ok, not really, because it all evens out in the end, but some days I do find myself watching my children do (from my point of view) pointless playing all day and I just want to yell "learn something!!!" Sometimes I need a reminder that they spend their day learning whether I appreciate what they're learning or not.

Transformers reign supreme in The Berry Patch, and dontcha know that every toy company and kids' television channel out there has some kind of website to go with their products so that kids can get even more marketing shoved into their little brains. I was, however, pleasantly surprised to see that the Hasbro Transformers websites do have a couple of interesting games: one teaches keyboard familiarity by challenging kids to type a "secret code" in a time-sensitive situation, and the other uses a very kid-friendly program to help them put together a "video" of transforming bots and transition shots, corresponding sound effects and dialogue, and background music. It looks a LOT like the software DaddyO used to use when he would edit audio as the producer of a morning radio talk show. In fact DaddyO showed me Windows MovieMaker, which is a legit next step for Tex and Noodle after they outgrow the Transformers video or actually want to go further with their current filming jag. (Note: the kids are also getting an underwater video camera for Christmas this year, which I'm betting will lead to plenty of opportunities to learn editing.)

Table Time has continued. Tex worked some more on his dinosaur code book and is doing really well. He wanted me there to help but the only thing I did was point out when he was trying to read that he'd filled a letter in incorrectly. Oh, and I helped him sound out the word "sturdy". His reading has come along very well and I can see he's becoming more confident. Need to get his glasses fixed after Monkeygirl decided they'd make a good pretzel, though. We continued our table time with an experiment from Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman; identifying the marker used in a crime by the way the ink bleeds when wet. Tex took one piece of paper towel as his control and wrote a message on it without me being able to see which marker he used. Then he took that marker and two others of the same color, but different brands, and made three experimental swatches. He then got each one wet, allowed the water to bleed fully, and it was my job to match the correct marker to the control. I was surprised how really obvious the different inks were!

Our other fun, yesterday, was to identify the giant flying bug that I killed in the kitchen. As I scooped it up into a napkin Tex noted that it looked like a really big fly and must be a horsefly. We looked in our insect/spider book and sure enough it was an American horsefly, identifiable by its green eyes.

Go with DaddyO to Work Day

2009-08-21T14:15:00.003-05:00

Notes from DaddyO about his and Tex's day at the office:

Tex has not been very studious today, so when we sat down for lunch,
I decided to crack open the books. ;)

We discussed nouns, verbs, prepositions, articles, adjectives, and
adverbs. He seems to have a pretty good grasp of nouns and verbs. He's
nearly got prepositions, adjectives, and adverbs. I made an attempt at
explaining articles (definite vs indefinite) but don't think it quite
sank in.

I wrote several sentences and had him identify the nouns, verbs, and
adjectives. I used sentences to illustrate all the parts of speech. I
also was able to get Tex to retain the following definitions:

noun - people, place, and thing word (some discussion of proper and
common nouns)
verb - doing word
preposition - where nouns are
adjective - describes a noun
adverb - describes a verb

I was a bit surprised with how enthusiastic he was to discuss these
terms and pointing out the parts in example sentences I wrote.

Just the facts, mom

2009-08-21T08:26:00.002-05:00

Results: the Gummi Bear grew, dude! Almost doubled in size! Tex and Noodle were so impressed, but me, I knew that was gonna happen the whole time. Totally.

Our next experiment was to rest a couple of pennies on a vinegar-soaked paper towel and record our results, which this morning consists of: "green splotches".

Great trip to the library yesterday. Found a biography of Charles Atlas for kids that was handy seeing as Tex is fascinated with body building and being able to SEE muscles under the skin. Oh, and speaking of under one's skin, we received our 18" plastic human skeleton and put it together yesterday. His jaw is hinged. Much puppetry ensued. I wonder how hard it's going to be to make costumes for our plastic skeleton guy...

And speaking of costumes (funny how I can just chase my thoughts around like that), Tex is currently working on props for their live-action Transformers film. Optimus Prime is going to be carrying a wicked foam-board axe.

Table Time a Rousing Success

2009-08-19T15:57:00.003-05:00

Well, I'd say the kids are enjoying Table Time! Our first day was Monday, and we took it easy by doing some artsy stuff. Tex worked on drawing a Dilophosaurus (using his How to Draw Dinosaurs book, which starts with the basic ovals, etc. and adds detail from there) and instructed me to draw a "swampy, forest-y" background of "ferns, cycads, and gingkos". My ferns rocked, if I do say so myself. When the dino was drawn and colored we cut it out and Tex glued it to the background.

Since then we've been into science experiments. I picked up those chemistry sets for ages 5+ at Target's toy clearance since Noodle's been wanting to do some of this kind of stuff, and the grade school sets are really too advanced. Yesterday we did an experiment called "Dancing Powders" where you take some baking soda and some crystalline citric acid, measure out equal amounts of each, and the pour water on them to activate the chemical reactions. Noodle wanted to do it so many times (and using test tubes, cups, pipettes, and any other equipment he can round up) that I finally had to set him up with his own little bowls of each substance for mixing.

Tex and I, meanwhile, are working on a hypothesis. Another science experiment book (this one from the Target Dollar Spot) has instructions for seeing if a gummy bear will soak up water and grow larger. We didn't have any "real" Gummi Bears, so we used a gummy bear vitamin. We had to measure its length and width (he wrote the fractions out himself), trace its outline, and then put it in a cup, just covered with water. This morning we woke up to an almost completely dissolved gummy vitamin! As Tex observed, "I guess it got smaller, since it dissolved." We decided that perhaps the vitamins were of a different formula and did not behave the way a real Gummi Bear would, so we picked up a new bag of the real thing, measured and traced, and should have some results tomorrow.

And today's experiment was really fun! Take a wide cereal bowl, fill it almost full with skim milk, and wait for the milk to stop moving. Then at three equidistant points around the edge of the bowl you put drops of the primary colors of liquid food color (so for instance, red at 12 o'clock, blue at 4, and yellow at 8), being careful not to jostle or jiggle the bowl. Then you add 1 Tbsp of dish detergent right at the center of the bowl and get ready for a show! If I can figure out how to put up the video we shot of it, I will do that later.

Oh, and Tex's other big thing lately is substitution codes. We have this little dinosaur-themed workbook and on almost every page is the meaning of the dinosaur's name in picture code, and he's enjoying substituting the letters in working out what the words are. We also worked in one of the Puzzlemania books on a story where you have to fill in the word that fits each blank, then take the letters from the numbered blanks to complete the riddle at the end of the story. He tries a lot harder when he's reading words that he constructed on his own!! :-) We did these substitution codes for the entire hour that Noodle was in gymnastics class today.

Tex the engineer

2009-08-17T13:16:00.002-05:00

Optometrist: So what school are you going to this year?
Tex: I'm homeschooled.
O: Oh yeah? What grade are you doing?
T: I'm second grade.
O: And what's your favorite subject?
T: Engineering, of course!! :-)

At the advice of one of the books I'm reading, I asked Tex the other day what sorts of things he wanted to explore and learn this year. His immediate answer was "engineering and architect", and he further explained that he wanted to learn how to build a big, strong house of cards, a bamboo fishing pole, bamboo tent, and a paper spear (Mythbusters strike again?). The tent and fishing pole also led us to his desire to learn "survival skills", so Daddy-O (an Eagle Scout himself) suggested we get a Cub Scout manual and start learning some age-appropriate outdoor skills. I also received a fortuitous email from a homeschool list I'm on announcing the presence of an Outdoor Adventure Club that takes monthly nature hikes and camping trips! Sign us up!

Also, I have laid down the law regarding television on homeschool days. Now, since the TV my kids watch is almost exclusively "educational" in nature (yes, lately the occasional Transformers episode has slipped in) I don't stress too much if we go over the recommended daily allowance. So they are allowed to watch a little in the morning before we "start our day" (meaning: before Mommy is conscious enough to deal), a little bit during Monkeygirl's naptime when I need those crazies to be settled anyway, and a little bit when I'm making dinner and again need them entertained.

I'm looking forward to starting the practice of having Table Time for everyone during the day, so that I can help with the word puzzles that are too difficult to do at bedtime, or watch one child build a contraption while another paints. I love watching my children work in their own ways to get things done! And since I stocked up on science kits and the like during Target's Summer toy clearance time we have a lot of stuff ready to go, which is nice when you're dealing with little kids who want it to be ready the minute you even mention it's a possibility. ;-) Today is our first day, so wish us luck!

Second grade goals

2009-08-12T16:09:00.002-05:00

Finally got through What Your Second Grader Needs to Know and have come up with an overview of what Tex should accomplish by the end of the school year. Some of these things require mastery, while others are suggestions of things with which he should have a passing familiarity. I try to meet the spirit of the basic requirements without restricting my kids from exploring things in their own way and time.

Language Arts

continuing to read fables and folktales to illustrate good character and principles
label basic parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, etc.) and learn about abbreviations/contractions as well as antonyms/synonyms

Geography/History

be able to identify continents, some large countries and major cities, a few oceans, rivers, or other bodies of water, and some major mountain ranges
have some understanding of ancient world history and the discoveries of important civilizations (Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, India, China, Africa...)
early American history - basically any and everything -- from the natives to the first explorers, colonists, Western pioneers, and up to the Revolutionary War -- in which they are interested

Fine Arts

as much hands-on experience as possible -- take kids to see performances or put on some ourselves, listen to poetry read aloud, see and discuss artwork and architecture
introduction to different instruments and how they are classified into groups
anything about the parts of a song, how plays are written, mediums of visual arts, etc.

Mathematics

practice, practice, practice, in fun and useful ways
memorization of basic addition and subtraction tables, skip counting, evens/odds, Roman numeral introduction, adding and subtracting time on an analog clock, learn HOW to +/- 3-digit numbers, and begin memorizing multiplication tables
always practicing geometry, money, measurements, fractions, and word problems

Life Sciences

human body - cells into tissue into organs into systems
life cycles of animals/plants and how they relate to the seasons
lots of hands-on experience with animals, plants, and nature
biographies of important zoologists, animal activists, doctors, etc.

Physical Sciences

the products of chemistry such as plastics, hands-on simple chem experiments
how meteorologists gather data, how weather systems form
the history of astronomy and how stars can be used to find direction, and how/why the sky changes with the seasons
the behavior of light and sound, other physics basics
simple machines, introduction to basic engineering and technology
more awareness of the Scientific Method in everyday play
biographies of important scientists

First Days

2009-08-11T18:53:00.004-05:00

Well, I haven't even finished figuring out our goals for the year, but these kids knew school was starting for everyone else and they would NOT be denied! Actually, truth be told, they've been wanting to start homeschooling for weeks and I've been holding them off in an effort to get myself more organized. I suppose one of my favorite things about homeschooling, and Unschooling in particular, is that there really isn't any difference between a normal day at our house, except there's less TV and more Mommy. Oh yeah, that reminds me, here we go into the couple of months when I can't keep my house straight AND homeschool at the same time. Sorry there, honey!

So Monday was our first day, and we decided a trip to the park was in order. We found a few leaves and identified them in DaddyO's Boy Scout manual, speculated as to how a tree grows with its lower trunk split open wide, and of course got in lots of running, climbing, dangling, and bouncing. The boys also enjoyed taking pictures with a one-use camera I had picked up a while back, although they were endlessly confused as to why they could not SEE the pictures immediately after they took them! Kids these days, I tell ya. I remember a family friend saying something about how weird it was when her daughter didn't know what a vinyl record album was ("That's a big cd, Daddy" was the quote, I think) and now my kids are flummoxed by the idea of actual film. We're taking one of those cameras apart, doggone it.

Today, Tuesday, I was a little better prepared. We got in some wonderful math practice while playing The Ladybug Game (I lost), then Tex and I found and explored a new dinosaur website (www.kidsdinos.com) where he played two wonderful games: one showed you the dinosaur and its statistics for height/weight, when it lived, and what it ate, and you had to classify it as a "large meat eater, small meat eater, armored dino, large plant eater, duckbill, bird-footed,", etc.; the other was a version of Hangman that showed you a drawing of the dino, its stats, and then you had to guess its name in 8 turns or less. Tex and I had to actually go get some of his dinosaur books, look in the time period for dinosaurs with some of the same characteristics as the pictured dinosaur, count the number of letters in the name, and even deduce possibilities from some of the Latin root words he's learned (-saurus, cera, cepha, raptor, etc.) to help him narrow the letter choices. It was very difficult, but he enjoyed it so much! We also started a list today of topics he wants to explore, and tops on the list is various forms of "engineering and architect". He wants to build a tent, a fishing pole, and maybe a spear out of bamboo. And we're going to use that Boy Scout manual a lot more because he wants to learn survival skills! Methinks I smell camping with DaddyO this Fall...

Oh, and my favorite. At four o'clock I told Tex he had to wait until five to turn the TV on. He was not pleased. But we spent the next hour making the aforementioned topic list, and he also played fractions in his head by dividing the loathsome hour into quarters, thirds, and sixths. I tried to coach him through fifths but that was a little too hard. "Mommy, you just got carried away with the math." Yes, yes I did.

Still working on that goals list. Can't have them learning without me being able to sort it into my little boxes, now, can we????

2009-08-07T17:22:00.000-05:00

The following exercise is borrowed from Guerrilla Learning: How to Give Your Kids a Real Education With or Without School by Grace Llewellyn.

List everything about which you know enough to contribute significantly to a conversation on the subject or to write a pithy booklet called "The Beginner's Guide to_____."

Now write down everything you're good at - all your skills, anything from designing Web pages, to changing a diaper, to writing a newspaper story, to building a fence.

Now take a moment to consider whether your lists are longer or shorter than you would have expected. (Or ask several people who have very different school backgrounds from you to make their own lists, and compare the length and quality of your lists to theirs.)

Next, put an asterisk by each of the items that you learned mainly in school and college.

Finally, consider what percentage of your skills and expertise you've picked up in school and what outside of school.

My "reply" to follow will be my list, and I will head it with my educational background. I invite all my readers to do the same so that we can compare not only the wide variety of skills and knowledge we all must use during our days, but what proportion of those skills and knowledge were acquired through formal schooling.

2009-08-06T19:40:00.000-05:00

My motivation for homeschooling is many-layered. When I first heard about homeschooling back when dh's boss's wife was doing it with their kids after a bad teacher experience (like, really bad, traumatized her son kind of bad) and my immediate response was the ol' socialization argument. Thought homeschooling was a really bad idea. Then as we had a front-row seat to them homeschooling for several years, I saw more of what it was really about. I realized that as worried as I was about kids learning to "socialize" correctly, I wasn't actually much of a fan of the results of that socialization, so what was the big deal if they missed it?

Fast forward to having Tex for a kid, and you'll see my main motivation! lol This kid is just barely comfortable in his own skin, much less in situations where he has to be one of 20 kids all expected to live up to some relatively arbitrary expectations. I think that if *this kid* went to our (admittedly pretty dang good) public elementary school that in the long run he would either fall through the cracks as he didn't learn some things he was expected to, or come up with unhealthy coping skills in order to function emotionally and be unhappy with himself for much of the time. So the overriding factor, the one that keeps me in the homeschool mindset even when I WANT, desperately, to have 7 hours away from this squeaky wheel of a kid, is that I really think it is what is best for HIM.

The next thing, though, and the stickier wicket when it comes to discussing this with others sometimes, is that I think he has a good chance of getting a better education as a homeschooler. "Better" being subjective, of course. Heck, I was public schooled and I had some fabulous teachers, I mean so good that I still remember lectures they gave 15 years after I graduated! And I am not opposed to my kids entering the public school system at a later date if I think THAT is what is best for them. Since Noodle's turning 5 soon, this is actually my trial year with him to see if he thrives with homeschooling, because I'm not comfortable making the assumption that he will. He may turn out to be a kid who needs to be at school surrounded by 20 classmates and learning with them in order to feel fulfilled, and if we continue to live in areas with good schools then I'll certainly consider public school an option.

But really, these days I think it makes even more sense to homeschool than it did when I was growing up. With all the cuts taking away elective programs like music, drama, art, sports, etc. (depending on the school and its priorities), and so many community resources where you CAN get quality exposure to those subjects, it's just no longer necessary to have your child attend school in order to gain that exposure. A perfectly normal and viable option, yes, but not necessary the way it was 150 years ago when rural children were going to institutional schools in order to better themselves.

Also, with all the emphasis on standardized testing, I don't think kids are really getting what they need in school, which is a THIRST for learning! I feel really horrible for teachers because I imagine that to some extent they have to make the choice whether to teach to the test or to teach in a way that is interesting and engaging but may not be absorbed in the exact same way by each child, therefor resulting in them each spouting different ideas rather than a series of testable facts. I read Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto, a Teacher of the Year or something in NYC, and he said that he spent most of his time trying to get his students to think the SAME, instead of trying to nurture each of their special God-given talents in a way that would bring out the best individuals. He also pointed out the uselessness of having classes of a predetermined length. If a child is absorbed in an art project, so in his groove that he's gaining wonderful experience and feeling joy in his accomplishment, then what on earth is served by him having to stop because in 5 minutes he's going to have to leave to go pay attention in science class while his brain will still be half in art class thinking of what he would have done next? Let him continue the project to an end determined by him according to his own priorities, just as we adults do.

And speaking about adult learning pretty much leads me into Unschooling. In its purest form, Unschooling is basically about having the attitude that "people learn what they need to learn, when they need to learn it". Period. If your child needs to learn to draw, she will; if she needs to learn to read, she will; if she wants to learn to build a robot, she will do that, too. Just like adults choose what skills we want to acquire, children should have some say in what subjects they learn about, and they should not be forced to sit still and learn something for which they have neither interest nor use. Now me, personally, I cannot let loose well enough to get with the Pure Unschooling. I am conscious of the idea that my children may want to go to school one day, and I do not want them to be so far off the pace of their peers so as to be unprepared. I want to make sure that, even if they don't know any of Aesop's Fables (a big part of the 1st Grade curriculum, apparently), that they understand how some stories illustrate life lessons, and that we read folk stories from other cultures like Anansi the Spider that have the same structure. Or we may not sit and study the different cloud formations by rote memorization, but my kids understand how clouds are formed and how weather "works" to some degree, and we look at the radar and listen to the weather radio and sit on the porch and watch the stormclouds roll in. I don't want them to be SO very off the "normal" track, at least at this point in my journey, that they can't get back into a classroom of their peers and have the same building blocks in common. But I very much appreciate that homeschooling gives me the opportunity to influence the information they receive so that it is most suited to THEM, and to sparking their interest in learning more.

Ok, obviously this is a topic I love to talk about, and will do so at length. I realize homeschooling is not appropriate for every family but I have no doubt in my mind that it's right for ours right now, so I'm not threatened by honest questions and will do my best to answer them. Hope you're all still awake!

Gearing up for homeschool '09/'10

2009-08-05T15:04:00.001-05:00

This is our first year officially homeschooling our oldest, Tex. He turned 7 a couple months back and now must be registered with the state as being in someone's care during the school day, and I am happy to claim him! Of course the other two kids will tag along for the ride and who know, they might just learn something. Noodle is heading towards 5 as fast as he can, and is very interested these days in spelling and reading. He can type in his own username and password on Hotwheels.com from memory, the little genius! And of course the Monkeygirl, almost 2, will watch every move we make while I have my back turned and try to use them against me later.

In short I'm going to use this blog as my personal teaching planner, because it will be a lot faster to type out the long stories about what my adorable children do than it will be to write them in a notebook, and I'm all about saving some time. I'm doing it publicly because, well, other people like my kids, too, and there's no doubt that there are lots of other families out there who might have some words of wisdom to share as they read (I know you exist, I read YOUR blogs!).

Now to the matter at hand: our homeschooling plans for the year. We're going to continue Unschooling for the most part, which just (to me) means that I let the kids lead the way, and I use their interests to try and expose them to a wide variety of topics for the sake of "well-roundedness". The one structured thing I think we'll be adding this year is to have some Table Time each day. What they do there is up to them, be it crafts, math play, maze workbooks, playdough, or some reading practice. Tex's reading lightbulb has started to shine in the last few weeks, and I'm hopeful that that will make this year a little easier on me than last year was. Having been an early reader myself (I can remember reading some words at 5) it's been hard to watch Tex struggle with this skill, but I can see how proud he is now when he successfully reads something, and I'm glad I allowed him to get there in his own time.

One of my next stops will be the library for a copy of What Your Second Grader Needs to Know. It's purely for my own sake, so that I can see what kids are learning during this time in public schools and do my best to be sure that my kids are exposed to many of the same concepts. This may be as simple as the hours Tex spent last year playing Zoo Tycoon on his PC, during which he clearly demonstrated an understanding of different animals' habitats, a key concept on the First Grade science curriculum. So I like to have an understanding of what we're working towards so that I know what areas need a little boost and which ones are taking care of themselves and then some.

Check back soon for this year's list of goals. Thanks for reading!

Browniegirl