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Ebenezer
Nov. 12, 2008
In which I have an epiphany
| I just realized that even though every personality test I've taken categorizes me as an introvert, I think I'm actually an extrovert or at least a fence-sitter. It's just that the conversation topics I'm interested in are not at all the same as most of the population, and I like to dispense with the small talk it takes to get to know new people. |
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Nov. 12, 2008
In which I remain a lazy blogger
Oct. 7, 2008
More on Charles Murray's thoughts
Karen Chenoweth critiques Charles Murray's ideas, ones I referenced in a previous post. I agree with her concerns. But why can't we take the kernel of truth -- that intellectual differences are just as real as differences in skills in physical, musical, artistic, leadership and empathetic areas -- and say: All courses of study are AVAILABLE to all who want to try. NOT all courses are required. We encourage everyone to try with the knowledge that they can change course if it doesn't work out. But it still is ridiculous to REQUIRE four years of high school math for EVERYONE. Core requirements should be what is necessary to function independently in society. Consumer math. Budgeting. Understanding credit. Interest. Basic investing. Also civics and community service. Home ec, maybe, though it saddens me that many children aren't learning cooking, cleaning, and simple repairs at home any more. But: College prep should not be core requirement. Requiring those who aren't able or don't care dilutes the difficulty and value of the class. Those students are welcome, but should not be forced into it.
In fact, why don't we make things like auto shop required courses and precalculus/12th grade math an elective? I wish now that I had taken shop in HS. Let each child, with family guidance, chart their own educational course in high school, exploring interests and pursuing passions. That's why I'd like to keep homeschooling through high school.
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Aug. 22, 2008
In which I profess my career aspirations
In her book At Large and At Small, Anne Fadiman writes in praise of the familiar essay, the literary form I would most love to spend my time researching and writing. Such essays are simultaneously jocular and erudite, winsome yet full of the highest, best and most precise vocabulary-stretching language. Their authors examine everyday subjects, topics we think we may already know all about, yet, through slightly self-deprecating personal anecdotes and research of trivia, make them seem entirely new.
Really what Fadiman describes are the best blog entries you've ever read. They can be about life's minutiae, but they are not dull laundry lists. Rather, they straddle the line between the academic paper and the diary entry, putting the personal in the context of the universal.
Though she doesn't reference blogs, she does contrast the familiar essay with other types of "essays, " including the type of writing that appears on too many blogs:
If I were to turn [essayist Charles] Lamb's 1821 "Chapter on Ears" into a twenty-first century critical essay, I might write about postmodern audiological imagery in the early works of Barbara Cartland. If I were to write a twenty-first-century personal essay, I might tell you about the pimple on my left earlobe that I failed to cover with makeup at my senior prom....(snip) ... But I don't want to write -- or read -- either one of those essays. I prefer Lamb's original, which is mostly about his musical ineptitude but also about the sounds of harpsichords, pianos, operatic voices, crowded streets, and carpenter's hammer: in other words, about the author but also about the world. (p. xi)
As such a woman of letters, then, Fadiman presents a dozen of her own familiar essays, a genre she previously featured in her collection Ex Libris (a book I own perhaps only for the piece on what happens when you marry and must merge your personal libraries). Her topics include coffee, ice cream, American flags, lepidoptery and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Imagine the best dinner conversation you've ever had: that's what it's like to read these essays.
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Aug. 20, 2008
He's right about some things
The More Child discusses Charles Murray
Charles Murray has come under fire for tying achievement disparities among races to fundamental intelligence instead of (or at least more than) differences in opportunity, but I do agree with him that abilities -- academic and otherwise -- fall on a bell curve (not tied to race), and that not everyone can or should go to college, and that our push to allow everyone to do so has diluted the meaning of a college degree. |
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Aug. 12, 2008
Curriculum, 2008-2009
COMET, Fifth Grade, Age 10:
- Tapestry of Grace, Year One: Creation to Fall of Rome, dialectic level: includes history, literature, geography, arts/activities, Bible, philosophy
- Catechism: Continue Training Hearts, Teaching Minds by Starr Meade
- Writing: Classical Writing- Homer, part 2; TOG Writing Aids
- Latina Christiana II
- Finish Key to Algebra, Singapore Challenging Word Problems 6, to be followed by a mix of Singapore New Elementary Math and Art of Problem Solving curricula
- Rod and Staff English 5
- Spelling
- Current Events (curriculum designed by me)
- Typing
- Life Science -- Oak Meadow spine, monthly dissection labs at the Homeschool Building, labs from Janice Van Cleave books and The Science of Life by Frank Bottone, miscellaneous projects, web activities and library books
- Piano lessons
- Co-op art class
- Co-op PE class
- Possible regular service days at Kids Food Basket
- Evening read-alouds from fiction and discussion of Philosophy for Children
DANCER, First Grade, age 6
- Tapestry of Grace YI, upper grammar level
- First Language Lessons, part 2
- Singapore Math 2B and 3A
- Writing Aids
- Spelling
- Life Science using a free online curriculum I found plus as much involvement in Comet's activities as she wishes, and lots of library books
- Violin lessons
- Co-op art class
- Co-op ballet class
- Co-op Spanish class
- Co-op PE class
- Catechism
- Possible service days
- Evening read-alouds and selected philosophy using children's books.
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Aug. 12, 2008
When gifted children grow up
I Stumbled across this video the other day which talks about child prodigies and brain differences. It's worth a watch, especially to see young Marc Yu play the piano.
What has stuck with me, though, is the observation someone made about what happens to gifted children when they become adults -- more accurately, how people respond to them. What the child was able to learn when he was very young, to the amazement of others, is no longer so different from what his age peers can now do, so people now shrug and say "so what?" For the child that has grown up in the spotlight, addicted to attention, this is a huge psychological hurdle that can in fact paralyze her if she does not have inner confidence and self-worth.
But, as the video explains, this does not mean that the other adults have "caught up" in innate ability; the person is still able to learn faster. It does mean, though, that the gifted individual needs to be thinking about creative and distinctive output, not just learning quickly.
I don't write this to imply that gifted people should focus on staying in the spotlight to keep their egos stoked. Rather, I'm thinking about avoiding the shutdown in meaningful work, the self-critical "I guess I'm not so special." We need gifted adults to continue creating beauty, meaning and understanding, and we somehow need to provide outlets for significant creativity (see Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning) for our gifted children instead of just filling the cup. |
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Jul. 31, 2008
"Overachieving" homeschoolers
Please go read this lovely post at Red Sea School. I, too, tire of people who think I'm pushing my children too hard or who think that I'm being elitist. If you've read my previous post(s), I hope you see I'm just filling a need. Even though my son is going into 5th grade, high school is barely registering in our thoughts. We aren't in a race. We aren't comparing. We just do our own thing. We go --at most -- a year at a time in planning, based on current needs and interests. It's only overachieving when compared to the average student. For my kid, it's just achieving.
And if I may digress a moment: the problem with education is not underachieving, or overachieving. It's the fact that we set the same bar for every student, putting requirements such as three years of high school math on kids for whom trade school would be more valuable and exciting and meaningful, causing them to lose their spark, and not at all challenging students who need it and who therefore lose their spark. There's something to be said for ability-based tracking, especially when children are allowed to have input into what track they're assigned to. If they want to try the academic track, let them go for it, but give them the freedom to move to a technical track or an arts track if it doesn't work out. And vice versa. But we're so concerned with comparisons, or rather lack of comparisons -- that everyone should be equal in all abilities (except sports) -- that we're afraid to let kids follow their passions.
Anyway: Please read this. |
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Jun. 26, 2008
Educational elitism
Here is a link to an article in The American Scholar that I will be thinking more about in the next few days:
The Disadvantages of an Elite Eduation
It's difficult to disentangle all the threads that have in some sense dumbed down higher education, but a sense of entitlement is certainly one of them, as is the mindset of pleasing others, or working for a grade instead of the knowledge -- i.e., the lack of a growth mindset. (All traps that made my higher education less than it should have been. Successful by people-pleasing GPA standards? Extremely. Do I feel good about it now? Not so much. I missed out on living because I was afraid to really live.)
So what does this mean for me as a teacher/parent? How do I cultivate a growth mindset in us all whilst still striving for excellence? How do we define success? What spiritual components need to be developed?
From the article:
But if you’re afraid to fail, you’re afraid to take risks, which begins to explain the final and most ****ing disadvantage of an elite education: that it is profoundly anti-intellectual. This will seem counterintuitive. Aren’t kids at elite schools the smartest ones around, at least in the narrow academic sense? Don’t they work harder than anyone else—indeed, harder than any previous generation? They are. They do. But being an intellectual is not the same as being smart. Being an intellectual means more than doing your homework.
If so few kids come to college understanding this, it is no wonder. They are products of a system that rarely asked them to think about something bigger than the next assignment. The system forgot to teach them, along the way to the prestige admissions and the lucrative jobs, that the most important achievements can’t be measured by a letter or a number or a name. It forgot that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.
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May. 24, 2008
Yeah -- what she said.
This about sums it up for me. Except I like to think that I'm a wee bit more gracious about others' achievements. I'm delighted when other people (or, more to the point, other people's kids) aspire to excellence and succeed. But definitions of excellence vary. When I know the child has risen to a challenge -- an honest-to-goodness challenge defined by the abilities of that particular child -- that's praiseworthy. When the benchmark for excellence is something defined by whether a whole classroom of children can succeed but could only be defined as mediocrity for a particular child, then ... not so much. That's when I have to bite my tongue. I don't disparage the level of ability. I disparage the educator who assumes excellence for one child -- typically the average child -- can be construed as excellence for every child, and I disparage the parents who accept that as the upper limit.
I have an internal conflict: I want others to understand why we're different here -- not stereotypical homeschoolers, not stereotypical any-kind-of-schoolers -- but I don't want them to think that I am one of those moms who feels superior because of our difference, or that I'm trying to engineer genius. The difference is just that -- a difference. Not better. Not worse. Just different.
So that's why I'm burying my son's achievement here. (And really, it's not an achievement in the sense that he worked hard at something. It's more of an indicator.) I have told very few people and only when asked why we were in Chicago last weekend. But here it is. My son, a 9-year-old 4th-grader, took the EXPLORE test (i.e. 8th-grade level test) as part of the Midwest Academic Talent Search. The top 5 percent of scorers on grade-level tests are invited to take it. My son's scores were in of the top 1 percent of that top 5 percent. We were pleasantly astonished.
Just one out of every 2,000 4th-graders has a similar baseline for excellence. That's why we do things differently around here. And why we homeschool in the first place.
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Mar. 29, 2008
New addiction
Mar. 1, 2008
Books of late (ish)
I've read a lot of tweener stuff in the last six months, partly to preview for my kids, partly to preread homeschooling books, and partly because I saw a lot of interesting titles at Pooh's Corner when I was Christmas shopping. Among them are:
* Dune Boy, by Edwin Teale : I don't know if this falls into the YA category or not. It's a memoir, written some 50 or 60 years ago already, of someone who spent summers with his grandparents near the Indiana Dunes on Lake Michigan a little after the turn of the 20th century. While it has some of the expected emotional coming-of-age content you expect from a memoir, the book mostly describes his tooling around the farmstead and shore.
* A Long Way From Chicago, Richard Peck. Also by Peck, A Year Down Yonder. I decided I wouldn't yet let my kids read these, not because they have objectionable content but because they're more sophisticated than Peck's Soup books. Just as funny, though.
*Tarshis, Emma Jean Lazarus Fell Out Of a Tree. My husband thinks the main character in this book is just really smart and kind of socially inept as a result of her intellectual difference. I thought maybe the implication was that she was on the autistic spectrum. Anyone else have an opinion? I liked this book better than the one everyone else seems to like this year, which is Urban's A Crooked Kind of Perfect, though that one had its moments. The entire premise of taking lessons for the electric organ in 2007 and having to turn contemporary songs into Muzak is funny. Have I mentioned before that about a year ago I heard a cabaret version of Van Halen's Jump in a restaurant? It was as bad as you're imagining.
Other 'grownup' books I've read include:
* Haven Kimmel's A Girl Named Zippy and She Got Up Off the Couch. I loved these memoirs of Kimmel's childhood in small-town Indiana because I found it amazing that she could accurately get inside her own head of 30 years ago without filtering it through her retrospective knowledge. She'll be at Calvin College's Festival of Faith and Writing this year. One of these times when I don't have to worry about childcare or a job I'm going to go to that. Seriously, check it out at www.calvin.edu/festival -- Yann Martel? Katherine Paterson? Kathleen Norris? Luci Shaw? What more can a reader want?
* Duncan, Brothers K. A reread for book club. As I did the first time, I found it really funny until about halfway through, when it got a little preachy and difficult, but then the resolution was fantastic. Favorite character: the very sincere Sunday school girl with the harelip.
*Tom Bodett, Norman Tuttle on the Last Frontier: I don't remember why I got this book out, except that maybe I thought I'd check out Bodett after hearing him on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me a few times. I'm glad I did, though -- this is one of the funniest books I've read in a long time, and I'll have to reread it when my son gets to be 14 or 15 and can't decide whether to be a man or a bonehead.
* I've read many of the Anne of Green Gables books in the last few months. I've never read past the first book before. As with any series, I find it's better to space them out or the mannerisms and such become exhausting instead of charming, but I do enjoy them.
* Speaking of which, I just finished Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon. I like the Mitford series. I didn't like this book nearly as much. I think it's due to a couple of different things: First, we're being introduced to a ton of new characters that likely won't be developed any further in future books, so we're not as invested in them. Second, and conversely, we see only Father Tim from Mitford, plus Cynthia and Dooley only briefly, so we aren't let out of Mitford slowly. Reflective of Father Tim's disoriented feelings during the book? Yes. Make for a good read? Not so much. Third, the book deals with much darker things than the Mitford series.
*Brooks, March. I really liked Year of Wonders and I found this book, about what Mr. March of Little Women did while he was away in the Civil War, to be interesting too, especially the parts about John Brown and the anti-slavery movement. Definitely not to be read by younger Alcott fans, though.
* Proulx, The Shipping News. Tried to read many years ago. Annoyed by writing like this. This time I got past it. Had to for book club. But I found it a good read anyway after the first few chapters, which .. are not so nice. Don't read this book if you are prone to bouts of despair, though I appreciate the redemptive arc and the fact that maybe things don't always get redeemed the way you imagine them to.
* A.J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It-All. I loved the first one. I was worried that it would be disrespectful -- Jacobs' career has been at pop culture bastions like Esquire and Entertainment Weekly, in which sarcasm is de rigeur -- but Jacobs manages to poke fun at appropriate things and still get value from the exercise. He was an agnostic Jew when he started; at the end he at least thinks he might give some parts of religion a chance. Read it for the stoning passages alone.
The second of the books I just finished for book club. This time I was annoyed with Jacobs. Maybe that's what he intended, considering the title and all. But it wasn't his habit of imparting useless information at inappropriate times that annoyed me. It was the overall tone of self-centeredness that existed before his project of reading the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z. His Biblically book came after this one and I think that process helped him look beyond the end of his nose some.
* Kullberg, Finding God Beyond Harvard. In grad school I was involved with Intervarsity's Graduate Christian Fellowship. I've been thinking for a few years now that campus ministry might be in my future. This book made me want to do it even more. I have no idea how or when that will work, though.
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Oct. 9, 2007
A Girl From Yamhill
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that more than the street names in the Ramona Quimby books came directly from Beverly Cleary's childhood. She, too, stomped around on coffee-can stilts calling people "Pieface" and played brick factory, I learned the first volume of her memoirs, A Girl from Yamhill. But I can't help being a little disappointed that now I'll be thinking of Depression-era Cleary instead of timeless Ramona when I reread the books with my children.
Yamhill is written in the same clear prose Cleary uses in her other books, in which she's not afraid to throw in some challenging vocabulary for children. But this surely is not a book for children. It goes beyond Ramona-age and even Beezus-age into the teen years, where we discover that people were not really more innocent then; things just weren't identified or talked about much. There's a relative who preys on children. There's a frighteningly overbearing boyfriend. And while Cleary doesn't come out and say it, her mother clearly suffered from depression.
I'm curious about why I liked the book. I'm not one who enjoys lurid celebrity stories. And the way Cleary addresses the difficulties of her upbringing wasn't really gripping or exciting. But it felt as if I was having a conversation with someone I knew, or was getting to know. At the same time, I felt a little as if she was trying to explain some shortcomings she sees in herself by pointing the finger at others. Most of the time, I sided with Cleary, having felt some of the same dynamic in relationship with my own mother. But once in a while I felt as if she was trying too hard to deflect attention from her own immaturity at the time.
I'm looking forward to reading the second volume, My Own Two Feet, to see whether that tendency shifts as the Cleary she's writing about grows into adulthood.
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Oct. 9, 2007
Writing to Learn
Preach it, William Zinsser.
Gems from the first few chapters of Writing to Learn:
"Writing and thinking and learning (are) the same process." -- p. ix
"What students ... write for the English teacher is more florid than what they would write for anybody else ... but this style is no part of who they are. Nor is it necessarily good English ... students should be learning a strong and unpretentious prose that will carry their thoughts about the world they live in." -- p. 13 ff.
"The essence of writing is rewriting. Very few writers say on their first try exactly what they want to say ... I don't want anyone to have to read a sentence of mine twice to find out what it means." -- p. 15
Shifting the focus from product to process "puts the emphasis where it should have been all along: on the successive rewritings and rethinkings that mold an act of writing into the best possible form. If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself." -- p. 16
"Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow." -- p. 19
"I don't like to write, but I take great pleasure in having written ... Perhaps in no other line of work is gratification so delayed." -- p. 36
And a paraphrase from somewhere in the book that I can't find right now:
Fuzzy writing is the product of fuzzy thinking. Clear writing only comes from clear thinking.
I'm reminded of a quote from Tom Littlewood, one of my journalism professors at Illinois:
"You can be a good reporter and still be a bad writer, but you'll never be a good writer if you're a bad reporter."
I'm trying to get to the marrow of teaching writing. I struggled with teaching college students 15 years ago; I'm struggling with my 4th grader now. None of my students was or is a terrible writer; that's part of the problem. They don't see the difference between proofreading and rewriting. They don't see the need to rewrite. Of course, my son doesn't want to put pencil to paper in the first place -- he thinks it's too much work even to get a first draft down. I've been trying all kinds of angles into writing. Even when we get topic he's enthusiastic about, his attention span is just too, too short. It's our biggest struggle, and perhaps my expectations are too high.
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Oct. 8, 2007
When the children's sermon is more memorable than the 'real' sermon
My pastors preach great sermons, but once in a while, they're upstaged in relating the gospel. Yesterday was one of those times.
When the man giving the children's message asked for a volunteer, a 4-year-old girl quickly raised her hand. Wanting to illustrate the burden of the law, particularly the additional Jewish laws and customs for Gentiles (see Acts 15), he started to put on her a man's shirt, a necktie, and suitcoat. With each piece the other children and the congregation started to chuckle, and the little girl's brow started to furrow. Soon tears were welling up, and when the suitcoat was on, practically swallowing her up, she cried out, "I don't want to do this anymore!" and burst out crying. The adult quickly removed the clothes and let her cry on his shoulder for a while. The girl then went to her sister, who completely enveloped her in a reassuring hug. They stayed like that for many minutes. Astutely, the man pointed out that the Gentiles didn't want to do it any more either.
Do we run to Jesus and ask for mercy, for freedom to live instead of shame? Do we come beside those who struggle with sin and shame and offer them unconditional love and reassurance that Jesus is willing to take on their burdens? |
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Oct. 3, 2007
Family Liturgy
Growing up, family devotions were very regular but not especially meaningful for me. The Bible was read aloud, straight through, one chapter a night, after supper, while we still sat at table with dirty dishes in front of us. There was no real discussion of the passage unless one of us had a vocabulary question. I usually leaned over my uncomfortable chair sideways, resting my cheek on the mustard-yellow naugahyde or whatever unnatural 1970s upholstery it was -- I can still conjure that smell. And I didn't really listen. My short-term memory allowed me always to meet the "what were the last 5 words" challenges from a frustrated parent. But for a while after I started reading the Bible on my own I was frequently surprised about what was actually in there.
Remembering this, I wanted to make sure, with some inspiration from the Holy Spirit, that my children's experience was different. I'm not sure yet that I'm succeeding in doing so, especially with my younger child, but I think that we are still creating comfortable and sacred rituals for them surrounding prayer and Scripture reading. (And as you'll see, when we're faithful with it, it has the added bonus of keeping our dining room table fairly clean!)
About four times a week, we gather around the (clear) table and proceed with a liturgy:
First, we light a candle and sing a song of invitiation (I made family liturgy sheets with the words). We've been using "Be Still, For the Presence of the Lord." Sometimes we then will read a psalm or have a short prayer for the reading of Scripture.
Next, my husband will read the Bible passage. Our church has been doing a challenge to read through the Bible in a year chronologically. The challenge is done; we're still in the Gospels. But that's neither here nor there... We close the reading with "This is the Word of the LORD / Thanks be to God." Then, being the homeschooler that I am, I then try to make sure there's some "so what does that mean?" type of discussion afterward. I often have my own questions. I often, too, am frustrated that my husband seems to have specific answers for all my questions when I think the question invites more meditation and mystery, but that's also neither here nor there right now...
Then we talk about things to pray about and proceed to pray. We've taken to using a rosary not for its intended purpose but for the person whose turn it is to pray to hold. This eliminates the accidental interruption of someone's prayer and provides a tactile reminder for children (and people like me whose minds might wander some) that they're talking to God. We close the prayer time with the Lord's prayer.
Finally, we hold hands sing a closing song of praise or benediction (we've been using "My Friends, May You Grow In Grace") and recite the Gloria Patri (in English, though we probably could do it in Latin!). Then my children argue about who gets to blow out the candle. No, not always, but the overall peace is usually broken fairly quickly.
I think what I like best about this is that it emphasizes the holiness of time with God -- not in the self-righteous way that sounds, but in the sense that, even though we always live in God's presence, our dining room table has become one of those "thin places" where the veil is drawn back a little bit and we are intentional and mindful of our relationships with God and with each other.
(This entry is linked to Works for Me Wednesday at Rocks In My Dryer ) |
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Jun. 3, 2007
The Wednesday Wars
Little did I know 15 years ago that the slightly-built man in the barn coat leading me and my fellow Calvin College English majors around Boston in subzero weather, describing all the literary heroes who hailed from there as "astonishing," would become a Newbery Honor winner. In the early 1990s, Gary Schmidt had (to my knowledge) just started putting out quality children's books such as his retelling of Pilgrim's Progress and his teen novel The Sin Eater, but I don't think he'd gotten popular acclaim yet. I knew him as the energetic co-leader of the month-long New England Saints off-campus class, my History of the English Language prof, and the chair of the department who had to write me a few recommendation letters for grad school applications.
His book Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy won a Newbery Honor in 2005, though, and now he's in the pantheon of authors whose books for young adults are considered timeless classics. Perhaps I'm wearing rose-colored glasses (or maroon, since we're talking about the Calvin connection), but I've been completely engrossed by every book of his that I've read.
Today I read The Wednesday Wars in one sitting. While not as complex or serious as Lizzie, there still was depth to this comedy -- and I probably could appreciate it even more had I learned more Shakespeare.
Loosely based on a time in his own childhood, and set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the book details the 7th-grade year of Holling Hoodhood, the only boy left in his class on Wednesday afternoons when the rest go to catechism or mitzvah classes. His teacher originally resents having to find activities for him, but soon sees an opportunity to push Holling into exploring his own life circumstances by having him read some of Shakespeare's plays. She becomes a mentor, and he discovers (this being a young adult novel, after all) who he is beyond his father's expectations and the middle-school environment.
Schmidt's books are innocent enough for all ages, but (as I've said in a previous entry) there's more to be gotten from this book if the reader is Holling's age. Adolescent romance is not only handled appropriately, but in a way that even models what those relationships should be like. Adults in the community step up where Holling's parents fail him, but it's not heavyhanded -- you still feel as if Holling loves his parents even though they are clueless about their children. Schmidt's sense of the feelings and ideas of young people rings true, and shows that he has a great deal of respect for youth. On the one hand, it's a secular book ;on the other, it's certainly informed by Schmidt's faith as shalom is wrought in Hollings' relationships. And it's funny. It's also getting Newbery buzz.
Here is a link to an article about Schmidt in Calvin's alumni magazine. He's a fascinating person who cares for his students. Factoid: He bangs out his novels on a manual typewriter.
Gary Schmidt at Calvin
And here's an interview from Publisher's Weekly:
Schmidt interview
And just for fun, here's a link describing that New England Saints class -- a great trip:
New England Saints
OH! and I forgot to add that he dedicated the book to the ladies who own my very favoritest bookstore here in town: Pooh's Corner !
Also, I read another interesting young adult novel in the last few weeks which I'm mentioning here both to recommend it and to remind myself to write about it later:
Ordinary Miracles by Stephanie Tolan, about a son-of-a-fundamentalist-preacher who befriends a dying Nobel-winning scientist and struggles to reconcile his faith with his scientific observation and innate ideas about ethics. |
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May. 14, 2007
Haiku
As we approach the end of the school year, we've completed our Rod and Staff LA material and my son's written narrations have been for science, but I felt as if we still needed to do more practice in other areas. Prompted by Rod and Staff's extremely narrow definition of poetry -- rhyme and strict meter -- I thought I would introduce the traditional 5-7-5 haiku. Here's my son's guess-the-animal haiku:
Climbing in the trees,
soaring, flying in the breeze,
gliding on the air.
Answer: a flying squirrel.
Then I thought haiku would be a fantastic way to handle some of our history narration for the rest of the year. After reading the Erie Canal book from Sonlight 3, for example, my son wrote:
Donkeys pull cargo
along the Erie Canal
dug by the Irish.
He thinks it's fun, and I like how it forces the writer to use strong verbs and get to the main points. It only takes a few minutes, too, and we discuss word choice in a way that will carry over into better prose writing. I'm finding it a good mental exercise, too.
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Mar. 8, 2007
Re-reading Childhood Favorites
I recently re-read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Konigsburg, for old times' sake and because Comet was reading it. It was better than I remember it, probably having read it too soon as a child to appreciate the themes, and I might even now say in retrospect that it's better than my all-time favorite book as a kid, The Westing Game.
You know, I think I read a lot of books too soon because I was an early reader and my mom gave me books of the upper-elementary and middle-school level in kindergarten and first, and I think as a result I missed out on a lot of emotional formation through books. I did read Trixie Belden books voraciously, eschewing Nancy Drew (not a lot of profundity either way), but Beverly Cleary offered slightly more challenging fare with Ramona being a character I could relate to at the time I was reading about her. I don't think my mother realized -- or maybe the selection was not so great at the time -- that many picture books are quite sophisticated, both in terms of theme and reading level, but more appropriate for younger readers. I'm not saying that the books I read had anything objectionable in them; it's just that Harriet the Spy, The Phantom Tollbooth, A Wrinkle in Time and others would have been more meaningful to me even a few years later. I feel like I missed out on the power of the books, the identification with them, if not the enjoyment.
In fact, another book I read this quarter -- not so much read as used as a resource -- is Some of My Best Friends Are Books, which offers reading lists for gifted readers and thinkers. But it is careful to categorize fiction according to how relatable it is to a particular age group, gifted or not. I found myself remembering some of the listed titles but not remembering at all the themes as the book describes them. I remember the story, lowercase, but not the story. I'm glad for a second chance to read them. Unfortunately, my son blazes through books faster than I can, so I need to learn to read books before letting him even see they're in the house so I can discuss things with him.
The books I listed above are ones I have re-read in the last year or so. I expect I'll do a lot more, especially with the recommendations from SOMBFAB and by going through Sonlight catalogs, but I wonder if any of you have suggestions for juvenile literature that read better knowing what you do now? I'm thinking Cynthia Voigt and Lois Lowry would be good re-reads.
Here's what else I've been reading in the last few months:
Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller. Some have called this book overly simplistic, but that's actually the beauty of it, I think. It strips away all the baggage we religious types carry and confronts us with the reality of being a follower of Christ -- or really, how to relate as Jesus did to people put off by all the church stuff. It's funny, too. I especially was struck by his description of an economy of grace and love that some of us (gesturing wildly at myself here) have that blocks us from true relationship with Christ. To wit: "(A friend) was too proud to recieve free grace from God. He didn't know how to live within a system where nobody owes anybody else anything. And the harder it was for him to pay God back, the more he wanted to hide. God was his loan shark, so to speak. Though he understood that God wanted nothing in return, his mind could not communicate this fact to his heart, so his life was something like torture." I also loved the 'confession booth' during a secular college's drunken revelry: read it, it's not what you might think.
The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield. This book has been blogged to death. In short, I liked it, but it was disturbing. Redemptive story arc appreciated.
The Book of Names, Jill Gregory and Karen Tintori. Essentially, the Jewish (more precisely, Kabbalistic) DaVinci Code. Though DaVinci was not high literature, I found it to be a page-turner. This book was not that way for me, perhaps because I'm less familiar with the ins and outs of Jewish mysticism. And there weren't the anagrams or other puzzles that involved readers in Brown's plot.
Year of Wonders, Brooks. Nothing profound, but an excellent, vivid story about grace in a small English village during the plague.
Leaving Church, Barbara Brown Taylor. She gets a little too Unitarian for me, but as with Miller's book, I felt as if she, too, is hoping for people to stop being just "church people" and start being Jesus people. Neither Miller nor Taylor is ready to scrap theology altogether, but I think Taylor, a former Episcopal rector, is more inclined to do that.
Parenting with Love and Logic, Jim Fay. My all-time favorite parenting resource. The principles are not original to the authors, but the scripts for a parental response to every possible situation your children can dream up work like magic. And it's funny. And Christian, but not in the spare-the-rod sense.
For the Great Books Reading Partnership, I've read Gilgamesh, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Next up: Histories by Herodotus.
For the book club I'm in, I've read:
Everyman, Philip Roth. Depressing, but it led to a great, honest, personal conversation with an older man in our club about faith and what's valuable in life. I think he's seeking something more.
Digging to America, Anne Tyler. As is typical of Tyler, the character development is precise and detailed, and the ending doesn't tie up all the loose ends, just like real life.
Freakonomics, Levitt. This was fun to read, but I don't think all of his conclusions can be drawn from the evidence he presents, particularly in the chapter where he explains the drop in crime rates in the 1990s as a result of abortion being legalized two decades earlier. I'm not saying that's not a factor; I'm just saying that, based on what he presents, I don't think it's the ONLY reason. I don't think he picked apart the demographics of women getting abortions in the 1970s enough to tie it to possible future perpetrators.
I've also read the Sonlight 3 read-alouds, The Hobbit as a family read-aloud, and now half of The Fellowship of the Ring as a read-aloud. |
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Jan. 12, 2007
What we did this week
Borrowing from Jessica, and for my own benefit someday, I'll recount what we did in school this week:
DD4:
* Finished through Lesson 44 of Saxon Math 1 (worked M-Th)
* Finished through Lesson 143 of Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading (worked M-Th)
* Attended preschool three mornings
* Read Chocolate Fever and Ramona the Brave on her own (which seems redundant with OPG, but that's explained in earlier posts)
* Started art project of a space landscape, tying in with preschool discussion of space/rockets and also with Discovering Great Artists / Thomas Gainsborough project DS was doing.
* Ballet class
DS8
* Daily piano practice and a lesson, about halfway done with Music Tree 2A. Also the activity book
(triads, transposing)
* Reading for school: George Washington, Our First Leader
* Read himself: The Westing Game, Five Boys in a Cave, Redwall (for the umpteenth time, but this time he has his own copy he got for 49 cents at the thrift store); other shorter books I can't keep track of but have selected myself from the library
* Had read to him: Toliver's Secret, Freddy the Detective (has anyone read this Freddy the Pig series? My husband loved these growing up but I'd never heard of it until now. They've got a fantastic lexicon.)
* Boys' club at church: Made a leather Jacob's-ladder wallet, played dodgeball
* Math: Singapore 4B, Multiplying decimals; also Challenging Word Problems re: perimeter and area
* History: Sonlight 3 Week 20 -- a little disjointed, but mostly about the Articles of Confederation and the push for a federal government and a constitution. DS either answered worksheets or wrote paragraphs in summary.
* Calculadders Book 3: stuck on the first one for a while now (supposed to finish 80 random multiplication facts through x12 in 4 minutes. I'm bumping up the time by 15 sec. next week)
* Science: Week 30 of Noeo Chemistry 1
* Classics for Kids radio show and questions (online)
* Rod and Staff 3, Lessons 75 and reviews, unit test
* Memorization: Continue with Sonlight's schedule for Bible, reviewing old verses, also memorizing square roots to help with area/perimeter questions, also Latin prayers, reviewing books of Bible, states/capitals, etc. using our fantastic memory box mentioned in previous posts
* Bible: Continuing with family reading plan
* Spelling: Spelling Power through level D31
* Latin: Prima Latina finished Lesson 12 (about one lesson per week)
* Typing: one 15-minute session with Typing Instructor, currently learning q, w, o, p
* Art (which we rarely fit in, but I'm working on it): Gainsborough project (landscape with watercolor; people to be drawn separately and inserted into landscape)
* Penmanship: Cursive Success (HWT blue book), lowercase w
* For the record: We'll start swimming lessons again next month
* Writing: I've decided to roll this into history for now -- we hit a bit of a wall with CW Aesop
It seems like a lot when I type it out, but the comparison bug always makes me feel as if we're not doing enough or, on the flip side, doing too much too superficially.
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Dec. 28, 2006
Comet's reading log, 2006
Here are most of the books my son read or had read to him (indicated by RA) in the last year, ages 7 and 8. This does not count multiple re-reads of Redwall books and other books, comic books, or books with more pictures as words. I think we're also missing several books from Sonlight 1+2. And there are many books he's read over Christmas break that aren't included yet.
Following each entry is a number indicating the rating he gave them. We started with a 5-star scale, but when he read Harry Potter he had to exceed that and somehow it morphed into something else -- not a 10-star scale, really, but one in which many books are better than great. I think the lower scores early on would be higher on the current scale.
Overarching themes: author binges, mysteries and stories about mice.
* Henry and Ribsy, Beverly Cleary, 3
* The Story of Castles, Lesley Simes, 4
* Gooseberry Park, Cynthia Rylant, 5
* The Coolest Cross-Sections Ever, Stephen Biesty, 4
* Favorite Medieval Tales, Mary Pope Osborne (no rating)
* Danny Dunn and the Universal Glue, Jay Williams, 3.5
* The Lighthouse Mystery, Gertrude Chandler Warner, 4.5
* Benny Uncovers a Mystery, Warner, 4
* The Niagara Falls Mystery, Warner, 4.5
* The Mystery Behind the Wall, Warner, 4.5
* The Mystery of the Queen's Jewels, Warner, 4.5
* (RA) Detectives in Togas, Winterfield, 5
* The Mystery Cruise, Warner, 4
* The Mystery in the Old Attic, Warner, 4.5
* Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy, Williams, 5
* Poppy, Avi, 5
* Ramona Quimby, Age 8, Cleary, 4
* Asterix and Friends, 5
* Little House on Rocky Ridge, 4
* (RA) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis, 4
* (RA) Prince Caspian, Lewis, 5
* (RA) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lewis, 5
* (RA) The Mystery of the Roman Ransom, Winterfield, 4.5
* The Three Investigators and the Moaning Cave, Arden, 4.5
* 'B' is for Betsy, Haywood, 1.5
* (RA) White Stallions of Lippizza, 4.5
* Mystery of the Spiral Bridge (Hardy Boys), 5
* Einstein Anderson, 3
* Trouble at Timpetill, Winterfield, 4.5
* The Door in the Wall, 5
* Plague, 2.5
* Danger on Vampire Trail, Dixon, 4
* Mike's Mystery, Warner, 3.5
* Funny Frank, Dick King-Smith, 5
* The Phantom Freighter (Hardy Boys), 4.5
* The Melted Coins (Hardy Boys), 4
* The Ghost at Skeleton Rock, 4.5
* The Wailing Siren Mystery, 5
* (RA) The Silver Chair, Lewis, 5
* Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, Rowling, 8
* The Bicycle Mystery, Warner, 5
* (CD) Hank the Cowdog and the Case of the Shipwrecked Tree, Erickson, 3
* Three Terrible Trins, King-Smith, 5
* School Mouse, King-Smith, 5
* The Golden Goos, King-Smith, 5
* Ace, the Very Important Pig, King-Smith, 5
* 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Verne, adapted by Conaway, 3.5
* Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 7.5
* Redwall, Brian Jacques, 8
* The Tough Winter, Lawson, 5
* Mossflower, Jacques, 8
* Martin the Warrior, Jacques, 8
* Salamandastron, Jacques, 8
* Soup, Robert Peck, 5
* (RA) The Great Turkey Walk, Karr, 4.5
* Rakkety Tam, Jacques, 8
* Because of Winn-Dixie, DiCamillo, 5
* A Bear Called Paddington, Bond, 6
* Taggerung, Jacques, 8
* Ramona and Her Father, Cleary, 6
* Triss, Jacques, 8
* The Legend of Luke, Jacques, 8
* (RA) An Occasional Cow, Peggy Horvath, 5
* Ramona and Her Mother, Cleary, 6
* Lord Brocktree, Jacques, 8
* The Long Patrol, Jacques, 8
* (RA) Archimedes and the Door of Science, Jeanne Bendick, 7
* The Bellmaker, Jacques, 8
* (RA) The Penderwicks, Birdsall, 7
* Basil of Baker Street, Eve Titus, 7.5
* Marlfox, Jacques, 7.5
* High Rhulain, Jacques, 8
* Loamhedge, Jacques, 8
* (RA) The Wheel on the School, Meindert deJong, 7
* The Corn Grows Ripe, Rhoads, 4
* The Marvelous Inventions of Alvin Fernald, Clifford Hicks, 8
* Spy in the Sky, Karr, 4.5
* Basil and the Pygmy Cats, Titus, 7
* Danny Dunn, Scientific Detective, Williams, 5
* (RA) Mr. Popper's Penguins, Atwater, 7.5
* (RA) Walk the World's Rim, Baker, 5
* Pedro's Journal, Conrad, 4.5
* Vostaas, Buffalo, 4.5
* Bill Peet, An Autobiography, Peet, 7
* (RA) Peter Pott, Hicks, 7.5
* A Lion to Guard Us, Clyde Bulla, 4.5
* (RA) The Great Brain, Fitzgerald, 6
* The Tale of Despereaux, DiCamillo, 7
* The Wacky World of Alvin Fernald, Hicks, 6.5
* (RA) Secret of the Andes, Clark, 6.5
* Basil and the Lost Colony, Titus, 6
* Anatole, Titus, 6
* The Boy Who Sailed Around the World Alone, Graham/Gill, 5.5
* (RA) Incans, Aztecs and Mayans, Holzmann, 4.5
* Pocahontas and the Strangers, Bulla, 5
* Pearls of Lutra, Jacques, 8
* The Outcast of Redwall, Jacques, 8.5
* Maps: Getting from Here to There, Weiss, 5.5
* (RA) Pagoo, Holling C. Holling, 7
* Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims, Bulla, 6.5
* Soup for President, Peck, 6
* Thanksgiving Story, Dalgliesh, 5.5
* (RA) Sign of the Beaver, Speare, 7
* There's an Owl in the Shower, George, 6.5
* The Courage of Sarah Noble, Dalgliesh, 5.5
* The Bears on Hemlock Mountain, Dalgliesh, 6
* Skippack School, DeAngeli, 6.5
* Socks, Cleary, 7
* The Family Under the Bridge, Carlson, 7
* (RA) The Witch of Blackbird Pond, 7
* The Matchlock Gun, Edmonds, 6
* (RA) Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Fleming, 7.5
* (RA) What's the Big Idea, Ben Franklin?, Fritz, 5
* Ben Franklin of Old Philadelphia, Cousins, 6
* (RA) Can't You Make Them Behave, King George?, Fritz, 5
* Mr. Revere and I, Lawson, 7
* Ben and Me, Lawson, 7.5
* (RA) And Then What Happened, Paul Revere?, Fritz, 6.5
* (RA) Johnny Tremain, 7
* Meet George Washington, Heilbroner, 6
* Danny Dunn and the Weather Machine, Williams, 6.5
* " " " " Anti-Gravity Paint, Williams, 6.5
* " " " " Swamp Monster, Williams, 7
* (RA) Paddington Helps Out, Bond, 7.5
* (RA) More About Paddington, Bond, ?
* Hitchcock, Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries, 6 |
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Dec. 2, 2006
Report Cards
Here in Michigan we are not required to keep formal records of grades or anything, so I haven't been doing that. We just work on things until I think they are mastered.
This has posed a little bit of a problem with a work ethic in my son. In fact, one of the reasons I started homeschooling was because he was getting the impression that school was a lark -- things came easily to him, and when something looked challenging he'd just not even try.
On the homefront, he's been starting to slack because, while I have him do something over if it's messy or incorrect, there's no incentive to do things right the first time or in a timely manner. And when I have told him to do something over I got an incredible amount of backtalk and yelling and saying it was somehow my fault and so on. I was tired of repeated discipline -- it just wasn't working. This is a drawback of a bright and stubborn personality, which he comes by honestly -- DH and I were EXACTLY the same way.
So last week I hit upon the idea of a daily report card. Each subject would get a grade based on correctness, neatness and promptness/attitude, and he would get an overall grade for the day for comportment, broken down into grades for attitude, obedience and diligence. Report cards would be talked over with Principal DH each evening.
I never dreamed it would work as well as it has.
Not only did he try hard THE FIRST TIME in each subject to get a good grade, but when he slipped up, he would say things like "I think I'll go back and practice those piano pieces once more," and "What can I do to improve my grade?" I was flabbergasted! This worked, mostly, all week. I guess it appeals to his need for objective and tangible results. The one problem I see is that he may (like I used to) start to work just for a grade and not for the joy of things. But so far it seems to be having the opposite effect -- he's doing things more completely instead of skimming the surface of acceptable. Things are no longer just pass/fail in his mind.
Has anyone else tried something similar?
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Oct. 28, 2006
Catching up
Staying on course with homeschooling means getting off course with the extras -- or, my new favorite word, "frippery," direct from Witch at Blackbird Pond. That means blogging is about 212th on my list.
So, with apologies, here's what's been 1, 2, 3 and possibly more:
1) My mother. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's about six years ago at the appallingly young age of 58 (recently the diagnosis is being refined to Lewy Body dementia, which you can Google if you're interested, but of course it doesn't really matter at this point, and no one can know for sure except via autopsy). Of late she has been declining rapidly. My dad, now 68 and in pretty good health, has been caring for her by himself until recently -- a couple of months ago he got some small bit of respite care for himself, but as of this week that is up to 12 hours a day, 7 days a week with some nursing care for my mother. Thursday we visited the hospice nurse, as my mother had been in the hospital twice in ten days for tremors and hypotension, and she was mostly refusing food, drink and medicine. She was slurring speech (such as it is) and was spending most of the time slumped forward in her wheelchair semi-conscious. We are thinking six months to live is not pessimistic.
(Side note: this dementia thus far has affected physical abilities even far more than mental abilities. She can still follow conversation and respond with a couple of words, but memories of the past come more in flashes. On the other hand, she can't walk and has little vision on one side, and can't coordinate her body well enough to feed herself, really, and has swallowing problems that means a soft diet and crushed pills.)
Well, yesterday, one day after the 12/7 care started, I went to visit with my kids. You could have blown me over with a feather when I saw her -- the help has apparently been able to get her to drink appropriate amounts of fluid and get medicine down along a little more food. She'd just finished a sponge bath and was quite alert, saying "hello" to us and responding to questions, and sitting up. And even -- get this, after what I described earlier -- she bopped a balloon around with the kids and even engaged in her old trickery of looking at one kid and tossing the balloon to the other. (Clearly on purpose.) She remembered a visit she'd had earlier in the week and put together a few sentences of five or six words. This is the woman we thought could die at any time.
Of course, I don't know if this is just a sparkling anomaly or something that's happening because of improved hydration and diet. But it seems as if she's regained a will to live, even some joy! Praise God.
So that has been occupying much of my actual time -- sitting with her while my dad went to the doctor himself, going to the ER, meeting with care people, etc. -- as well as my mental time.
Now, thing 2: school. We just finished Week 10 of Sonlight 3 (Year 1 of American History). My son,8, seems to be enjoying it. We have been remarking on the similarities and differences between our church background and beliefs and Puritanism. There's quite a lot of overlap, especially historically. In fact, my little denomination has often been labeled as Puritanical. On the other hand, it's also been labeled heretical by those who are apparently even more Puritanical.
Math: Methinks this is Comet's cup of tea. He is a young third-grader (turned 8 at end of August) and finished Singapore 4A in nine weeks. We're doing Challenging Word Problems for a bit before we move on, not to hold him back but to cement the ideas and give us some flexibility to skip math while he....
Takes the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Cognitive Abilities Test. He has never been tested for either ability or achievement, and, at the recommendation of a homeschooling friend, thought it would be useful to refine my teaching -- to see areas I've missed and to compare academic potential via the CogAT to progress via the ITBS. I administered the verbal battery portion of the CogAT yesterday and will do the math battery today. We'll put in an hour of testing each time Dancer is at preschool and hope to be done in another week or so. I'm eliminating some things from the school schedule during this time, but keeping up with the SL schedule for history, reading, and so on. We're in the experiment-intensive portion of NOEO Chemistry 1, so we do a week's worth of experiments on Saturday with dad.
Four-year-old Dancer, meanwhile, is plugging away at Saxon Math 1. She is not necessarily mathematically inclined like Comet but doesn't have big problems, either. She had been doing Singapore Earlybird and almost finished all of those, and I saw that we needed to make sure there were no gaps in things like calendar, clock, right/left, and other stuff I wasn't even thinking of since I never did K/1 math at home with Comet, and she has a habit of skipping 15 when counting and isn't entirely clear on other math basics, so we went ahead and got Saxon, thinking I'd move back to Singapore afterwards.
She's also working steadily through Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, which is more for me than for her because, well, she can already read, but I need to know she can also read words phonetically out of context. I'm seeing that it's a good idea we're doing so, even though she is frustrated with having to do stuff she already knows just to tease out the stuff she doesn't. But the other night she wondered if we had any "Laura and Mary books" -- we had gotten some of those easy-reader versions of single Little House stories from the library that she enjoyed. They'd been returned, and all I had was the real deal, full-scale Little House on the Prairie. "Okay," she said, and started reading to herself. The only thing I heard in the next half-hour/thirty pages was "Mom, what's a powderhorn?"
I hear my children are awake now, so I will finish here. I appreciate the patience of anyone who's still reading -- either this post or this blog at all!
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Sep. 28, 2006
You know you're a homeschool family when...
your family entertains itself around the dinner table by thinking up math story problems involving probability, combinatorials and factorials to stump each other, and when even the 4-year-old says "I want to do some!" and chimes in with: "Molly has ten pairs of shoes. Two pairs are green, and the rest are red. How many red shoes does she have?"
We are such nerds.
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Sep. 27, 2006
Geography / Maps curriculum
Does anyone have advice about a practical-application maps curriculum? As in, first, is it necessary, and second, which one?
We are not strangers to maps; I my son -- and even my daughter, 4 -- have a basic understanding that maps are (generally) a small-scale representation of a larger place. We sometimes have made floor plans of our house for treasure hunts. I made a U.S. road map quest for my son to follow my written instructions from Michigan to Washington, D.C. (and made it trickier by not telling him what states he was driving through or where his destination was -- he had to follow highway numbers for x number of miles, and switch to local maps as necessary).
But I know there is more to it than this -- I'm thinking about other geography concepts, such as census data, latitude/longitude, other types of maps, etc. Will we pick this up naturally as we continue life and homeschool, or is there something specific I should be doing?
I spent a little while last night looking at samples of the map-type curricula available through Rainbow Resources. They all seem very similar, from what I could see. I wonder why Evan-Moor charges $24.95 for each book instead of the $5.95 that others charge, though, since I couldn't discern a big difference. But I'd rather spend more money for something superior than cheap out and get what I pay for.
Any words of wisdom?
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Sep. 13, 2006
Additional funnies
In the last post I reference something interesting my daughter said a while back. I keep a notebook of funny or startling utterances from my kids, and I reread some of them after that last post. Here is another funny one:
A power outage struck right at supper-making time. We have an electric stove and oven, so I see this as an excuse to go out for supper.
Dancer, age 3 1/2: "Mom, I will make a suggestion but you will probably automatically say no. McDonald's?"
Mom: "No, I think we should go someplace a little nicer."
Dancer: "Oh. (pause.) Burger King?"
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Sep. 13, 2006
Good kind of problem
Alright, I need some advice. I'm not detailing things here to boast; I'm really not sure what to do.
My 4 1/4-year-old daughter is progressing very, very quickly academically.
She's been reading for almost a year. She reads herself the books in the Sonlight PK curriculum -- even the missionary stories; she has read parts of Beverly Cleary books aloud for us during evening family chapter book time. Last month I thought I should go through Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading with her to make sure there were no gaps in her phonics so she could sound out her own words and have a good grounding for spelling. This is apparently utterly redundant to her. I'm still insisting we do a lesson a day, which she does grudgingly, but I have noticed some minor issues with some letter combinations out of context.
With penmanship, her motor skills are such that she has very, very legible and often perfectly formed capital letters and numbers. We're halfway through Handwriting W/O Tears' Letters and Numbers For Me. She'll be doing lowercase letters next.
With math, the Singapore Earlybird 2 books are ... not challenging, but she likes to do them, so I let her.
Last year and this year, she listens to all the read-aloud stuff for DS8 from Sonlight 1+2 and now 3. She is able to answer comprehension questions. She participates in science experiments we do. Her vocabulary is enormous. She's absorbing some Latin. She knows her Bible. She asks amazing questions.
(Here's my favorite, which is from just before she turned 3: We hear religious chant music on the radio. Her: "This sounds like music from TV." Me: "Really? What did you see that had this kind of music?" Her: "That show with the king." Me: "You mean Mr. Rogers? King Friday?" Her: "No, that show with the king and all the people were coming to see him." Me, after a long pause to think of what she could possibly be referring to: "You mean when the pope died?" Her: "Yeah, that one." This was six weeks after the funeral.)
On the other hand, she's 4. A young 4. I don't want to go all pushy-mother on her. But I don't think she needs kindergarten. Of course, with homeschool it's a moot point, but I mean, I can't really use kindergarten curriculum. So how do I balance age-appropriate with ability-appropriate?
Here's what I'm thinking, for starting slowly once she's done with OPG and Earlybird:
* First Language Lessons
* Saxon 1 (I only want to deviate from Singapore here for the same reasons I'm going through OPG -- to close any gaps before moving on in Singapore. For example, I don't think Singapore covers things like calendars and clocks and "practical math" quite so much as Saxon does in this early stage. Advice?
* Copywork
* Readers of her choosing, mostly, guided by booklists in Veritas, SL, etc.
* Five In A Row, though she claims not to like this
* Spelling Power, maybe? Or wait?
* Continued Bible studies (we use Nancy Ganz commentaries in evening and son reads the assigned SL passage aloud in the morning, along with misc. other things and overall educational philosophy)
* Continued art and music appreciation, dance and swim class
I think this is enough quantity-wise; but I wonder if anyone has advice in the math and FLL areas, as well as whether I could go ahead and do Prima Latina with her.
Anyone?
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Sep. 6, 2006
Camping checklist works for me!
This entry is a blatant attempt to get blog traffic from Rocks In My Dryer's Works for Me Wednesday posting, as I'm sure this is a totally unoriginal idea, but as I'm doing this RIGHT NOW I thought I'd pass along the trick that has made annual camping trips so much easier: a checklist that stays on the computer all year long.
For some reason we persisted for many years in rewriting our list before each trip, invariably forgetting something or remembering it once the VW was already carefully packed to popping. So now we have one list that only needs minor modifications and updates each year (for instance, I just took off "Pack&Play" and "Bibs"). We even have the standard food items listed, such as ketchup and dog buns. Works for me!
Bonus works-for-me: You know those campfire sandwich makers for doing grilled cheese and stuff? We use ours for pizza pockets and, best of all, for fruit pies. Butter your bread on the outside, put pie filling and a little extra sugar on the inside, smash, cook over coals, and voila! Don't burn your tongues!
By the way, we're headed to a homeschool camping gathering on Lake Michigan. Interesting tidbit: upscale lakshore property owners and neighbors of the conference grounds -- which has been offering camping forever and I think predates the neighbors -- are miffed about campfire smoke sullying their air. Do you think I should feel sorry for them?
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