Books and Bairns - Homeschool Blogger

This blog

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:58:00 -0500

I haven't posted here in quite a while; frankly, I only refer back to this blog when there's something I know I've written about but I can't seem to find. But a friendly reminder hit my inbox this a.m., letting me know that my account would be deleted if I didn't log in. So I came here ... ostensibly to begin the process I should have completed ages ago: moving these entries over to the new home of Books and Bairns. I started moving them, only to be sucked in. I ended up reading so many old posts, and delighting in the path my life has taken since I began this blog two years ago. There have been losses, there have been gains, there have been good days and oh, yes--there have been bad. But it has been a blessed path. How wonderful to be reminded.

For the newest with me, visit Books and Bairns.

Giving it a try

Mon, 1 Oct 2007 14:37:00 -0500

I've heard in various circles that HSB has "gotten better"; the issues that forced me to open another blog have been resolved. I thought I'd check in and see if that's the case. Anyone want to chime in with their thoughts?

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Tue, 8 May 2007 20:32:00 -0500

Due to the fact that I can never seem to log in to homeschoolblogger, I am moving my blog. I am very sorry to be abandoning this community, because I have really enjoyed all the people here. But ... honestly, I don't have so much screen time on my hands that I can keep messing around with this burdensome and cumbersome system. So, Books and Bairns is now located here. Please come by and see me from time to time!

Back burner

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 21:31:00 -0500

School is most certainly not on the front of my mind right now. Actually, I think it's ranking somewhere around ... ten? Maybe nine--but only on days when I don't have a headache.

I've had a terrible, awful headache for two days now. It's not completely unexpected (I'm taking a medication that can cause headaches), but it's unwelcome nonethless. This has made being me a lot more bothersome than usual. Last night, for instance, as I played storyteller for my beloved Cubbies for the last time ever as Director, I was fighting off a headache. My joy was not, shall we say, complete. Actually, dear friend J. used the term "shadow" to describe the crippling migraines she used to experience. All of a sudden, I know exactly what she means. This constant pain in my head is hovering on the bottom of the priority list, but it's there.

What else is ranking above school right now? Adoption.

We are awaiting placement. Our homestudy is in circulation among social workers and our placement director is actively looking for our kids. Wow. I am anxious and excited and scared all at the same time. This one is ranking very high right now.

We are a part of the leadership team for a church plant

Emotional dumping day

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 22:00:00 -0500

I am extremely hormonal right now. There. I've said it. I am extremely hormonal right now.

I am so hormonal that I sat sobbing at my computer reading a myspace page for a full twenty minutes this afternoon.

I am so hormonal that I wrote my baby brother an epic email cataloging with excruciating detail exactly how much I love him, how much I miss him and how much I want a better, happier life for him.

I am so hormonal that I sobbed yet again while recounting to best friend J. exactly why I had spent twenty minutes sobbing at the myspace page.

I am so hormonal that tonight I cried while reading "Poppy" to my boys. The reason? My great-grandfather was called "Poppy." And I loved him desperately. The sheer act of standing in his shadow was enough to make me feel safe and loved as a child.

Which makes the crying seem a little less bizarre ... until you learn ....

that my great-grandfather was not a mouse.

Next week will be better, right?!?!

History finally hits home

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 21:20:00 -0500

I'm an east coast girl living on the west coast, so a lot of things are a little strange to me. The size of the trees, for one. The number of days of consecutive rainfall. The architectural styles. The pronunciation of the word "onion" (which I have trained my Washingtonian kiddos to call "ung-yuns" just like I do).

There are lots of things that I miss about the east coast. Most of the things I miss are more specifically Southern in nature; the sweet smell of magnolias, the sight of fireflies dancing in the backyard, tea so sweet it makes your teeth hurt and live oaks dripping with Spanish moss are among the tops things on my list.

But I also miss the history.

As we've been studying American history this year, I've been painfully aware of all the things my children know about only through books. Only Jo has been to D.C.--we took her along for the ride when we went to see the Van Gogh exhibit at the National Gallery in 1998. The wealth of historical treasures stored there are mysteries to my children. They've never been able to wait in line to see the Declaration of Independence through a plate of glass, or seen samples of Revere's silver or any of the myriad other historical knick-knacks that the galleries there offer. My children do not live within driving distance of any colonial re-enactment camps, or near any Revolution battlegrounds. These things are a five hour plane ride away. On our budget, they may as well be on the moon.

I've mooned my way through the early period of history this year, keeping a running tab on all the great field trips we could have been taking, as well as all the neat little side trails that we could have been off on if we still lived in either of the states my children were born in. Stuck out here on the west coast, away from all the action, I whined. What a waste!

And then, at long last, we came to the Corps of Discovery. God bless 'em. No really, I mean it! I feel like finally hitting this particular era of American history was a godsend to our homeschooling this spring because ... it happened out here! That natty little band of explorers hauled themselves plumb out here to the edge of the world--and back again--way back before the Civil War.

This place--the land of the funky cookie cutter homes, the place with a precious handful of buildings left standing from any time prior to WWII, the place with no musical genre to call its own--has history. Turns out it's just that I didn't know the history very well. Who knew? I guess my public education failed me again, huh? The only mention of Lewis and Clark I remember from my own school days was that they mapped out the area of the Louisiana Purchase. All these years, I never really realized what a huge job that was, or what the implications are to this day. Whoa. Someone really should come and snag my college credentials before I hurt someone, I tell you.

As you can imagine, I am frantically pulling up potential field trips and vacation spots. There are forts and reenactments and camps and museums all over the place tracing the Corps voyage. And the Oregon Trail. And the trains. And the gold rush. And ... well, it's a lot. It's history. And it's here.

I am thrilled.

Online games

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:04:00 -0500

Thought I'd post a link to gamehouse for anyone looking for some educational games online. While I am not fully endorsing this site (there seems to be some allusion to mock casinos on the site), I did find a Pyramid Solitaire game that Jo enjoyed, as well as one called Bookworm that kept Atticus stringing together words for thirty minutes.

Non-test assessment

Mon, 9 Apr 2007 14:54:00 -0500

Jo has never had a full battery, comprehensive-type assessment. Each winter, I have her complete a STAR assessment, available through our co-op. It's one of those computer tests that generates questions of increasing difficulty, halting the test when the child gets X number incorrect. At the end of the quiz, it spits out your typical school system-type results: percentile, grade level, etc.

Personally, I find that whole genre of tests very misleading, so I place very limited faith in them. Why? Because I myself was exceptionally good at standardized testing. I flew through reading and writing tests--rightly so, as that kind of thing comes easy to me. But I also flew through--and generally scored quite well on--the math portions of our annual tests. If our school system had cared enough to test logic as an area of learning, they would have discovered why--when confronted with four possible answers to a given math problem, I quickly learned that two would be completely ludicrous. The two remaining would be very, very similar. All I had to do was plug the two numbers back into the problem to get the right answer. In effect, I just solved for X from the time I was in second grade. Bingo! The odds of my doing well were vastly improved.

This usually served me well. My SAT score was much higher than it should have rightfully been, which was a pleasant bonus when college shopping. But in the fifth grade, it caused a near-disaster. Our Iowa Basic scores were used to place us in math classes that year. When I was assigned to my group, I knew I was in trouble. Three of the math "smartiest" kids in the class came over to our cluster. Uh-oh. Sure enough, I was out-mathed at every turn. My teacher got wise by about the fourth week and reassigned me, but not before I it had been deeply imprinted on me that I was not the sharpest tack in the box when it came to numbers.

I tell you this to explain where dh and I were in our thought process concerning testing for our always-been-homeschooled kids. While our state requires that public school students take an entire week out of their schedules to take standardized test, we are exempt from such as homeschoolers. That leaves the old stand-bys, of course. CAT, Iowa, etc. None of them generate the kind of feedback that we thought would actually be useful to our homeschool: what does she understand? What is she missing? What are her greatest strengths? What areas does she need reinforcement in? Are we hitting her learning style in general? What curriculum would best fit her needs for this subject or that one? Those answers don't fall into the range of "She's doing better than 98% of the fourth graders in WA." While that would be a nice pat on the back for me, I guess, it wouldn't help her one bit. After all, if she's does better than 98% of kids, but she's only using 58% of her talent in that area, I'm not really serving her very well, am I?

Enter the non-test assessment.

(If you're not sure about what a non-test assessment, click here to see what our state homeschool organization has to say about it.)

Jo had her first major assessment last Thursday. Can I just say "WOW"? The lady who performed Jo's assessment was far more thorough than I ever expected. Her skill at fettering out the big picture was almost flawless. And her commitment to the real education of children is inspiring.

By her account, Jo's reading level is 8th grade + ... she says she only tests four grades up because anything more than that becomes very difficult to pinpoint accurately. Remember my diatribe on Language Arts materials? Well, apparently it worked, because she recommended ending formal grammar instruction at this point and moving on to composition and writing style. She also recommended a formal etymology program, said that spelling was purely a fun pastime that should be optional for Jo and said that my daughter was extremely well-read for a nine year old. Cloud nine for a homechoolin' momma!

On the math end of things, Jo didn't shine quite so brightly. The consultant felt that her skills were "at chronological level" but were in danger of falling well behind due to my textbook based (and boring, I admit) math instruction. Jo is strongly auditory and visual. She recommended lots and lots of math games that go well beyond our current library. She also coaxed me to give Math-U-See another try. I'll let you know how that goes!

At the end of it all, I felt amazingly blessed to have been given such insight and clear direction in to the fruits of our homeschooling. Jo is clearly learning, growing and blossoming in ways that she never could in an institutionalized school environment. This non-test assessment was something like a weight check on your healthy, happy six-month old. You know that they're doing well, but you want to see what the doctor thinks. Thursday, I got to see what the doctor thought. And it was very, very good!

It's Time

Wed, 4 Apr 2007 16:11:00 -0500

Almost-seven yo Atticus and almost-five yo Logan have a Thomas the Tank Engine bedroom. This is more than mildly laughable for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that neither boy has ever been truly infatuated with Thomas. I expected them to be when we moved in here, though; Atticus (age 2.5) was showing all the signs of being really into trains and Thomas. He watched the videos. He lugged his cheerful blue engine with him to the doctor's office. His favorite book had buttons to push that said things like "You're a really useful engine!" Logan, who was only 10 months old at the time, was just along for the caboose ride. So Thomas it was!

I worked hard on that room. The bottom half of the walls in their room are green, rolling hills topped with wallie stickers of the various Thomas engines and vehicles. The top half of the walls are blue sky dotted with puffy clouds. Their bedspreads are coordinating red and blue solids. And, of course, a huge train table takes up a big part of the floor area. When I unveiled the room to my boys, their eyes were wide in wonder. The work had paid off--they were more than wowed.

Over the years, the luster on this once too-cute-for-words set up has most certainly faded. The trains that used to have prime real estate on the table top have been boxed up for quite some time. A Playmobile castle now claims the honor, along with an assortment of plastic cowboys and indians. The back of the bedroom door has an Ichiro poster on it. You're more likely to find Atticus reading "Clabbernappers" than anything to do with trains. And, of course, the cheeky little train stickers look a little tired.

It's time (gulp) to move on.

I've known this was coming for the past year and a half. For a while, I toyed with doing another mural on the walls. Maybe a castle? Maybe space? In time, though, I realized that the amount of effort I'd expend was too great for the relatively small amount of time that the theme would hold their interest. Something relatively neutral, I decided. Something both boys are into. Something easily adapted.

With dh's expert consultation, we settled on a camping theme. We're a camping family, and the woods hold vast interest to my boys. They love wildlife, daddy's canoe and the idea of reeling in big fish. A little bit of contrasting paint in shades of tan and beige, and we're in business, right?

Thanks to my cousin, we're more than in business. Her no-longer-little boy recently outgrew his bear motifed room, and they passed on a huge collection of items. Blankets. Rugs. Lamps. The works. My boys, tired of Thomas and thrilled at having something that belonged to their beloved J., almost did backflips when they saw the booty.

So we're in the redecorating business here. This weekend I guess I'll go and look for that paint. My husband has a few signs he wants to order.

I've found a few other accessories, too. A fly rod. Lures. Maybe I can garage sale a paddle or two.

So it's time for a "big boy room" at the Books and Bairns household. Pray for me, o.k.?

Awful

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 12:50:00 -0500

The pulling of Jo's teeth was awful. Awful. As a matter of fact, it was so awful that I am not going to blog about it. Because it I blog about it, I will cry. Again. And really, why would I do that to myself?