I wish I could say that this was a typical homeschooling day, but I wanted to write it down because I gotta say it was a good day.

First thing: Violet demands a cuddle. She was trying to prolong our time together last night, so I told her, more snuggles tomorrow. So we climb in my bed, both still in PJs. She curls up into a little ball and burrows into me, and says “I love you soooooooo much.” For Violet, this is affection beyond belief. We don’t typically get this from her, but lately she is more given to spontaneous shows of affection. To be the first to say “I love you,” though—that’s really new.

Piano practice: Learned a new section of a piece. We had a good talk about getting frustrated with mistakes—that when we make mistakes, even though we know the world isn’t going to explode or our heads aren’t going to fall off, it sure feels that way. I am very excited about moving to private lessons—she is so ready.

Math: I’m pleased with using 4th and 5th grade materials together thus far. We have been doing a lot with approximation, which I think is good for her very literal mind. Using the 4th to introduce and then the 5th to take it the next step—a surprisingly small step!—is a great way to practice and reinforce without feeling super-repetitive. So much of the “increased difficulty” from grade to grade in primary-level math seems to be about the number of place values (10s, 100s, 1000s, etc.), so I am glad that we will not be waiting til next year to do some of the same stuff, just with an extra zero! Violet whipped through her workbook pages without stalling or doodling for an extra 15 minutes (except for one problem that initially seemed to require long division, which freezes her up a bit). She was enthusiastic about the ease of the work, especially since we were doing the 5th grade book today.

Art Adventure: On our drive to the art museum, we listened to an interesting story on NPR about brain development, evolution, and the “Lucy” fossil, among other things. Led to a cool conversation about how in some sense we all have African heritage. Violet asked a question I couldn’t answer right off: What are qualities that make Cro-Magnons different from humans? Didn’t figure that out til bed time, when I scared her out of her interest by suggesting that we make a little science unit out of the subject—it’s just as easy for my curiosity and enthusiasm to overwhelm her as it is for her curiosity and enthusiasm to overwhelm most everyone else. But we do have a cool new exhibit at the Science Museum on the idea of race that will bring us back to it.

We had a great tour of the art museum. We only got to see a few things, things that the kids had seen before. The theme was “people and their environments,” so the kids were really supposed to think about how people are influenced by the things they see around them in creating art. Violet really engaged with the art and seemed genuinely excited by “visiting” the different countries in the museum, especially China and Africa. (More on the art museum in a later post.) She was so disappointed that we had to leave early, but leave we did because we had to race to ice skating.

Violet loves ice skating, and Victoria likes it OK. Victoria is usually ready to go after about 30-45 minutes, but Violet would skate forever. It is a homeschool skate session, with lessons at all levels, plus practice time, so there is a group of teenage girls there practicing spins and jumps and what not. Violet managed to get one of the girls to work with her on spinning in a circle, so she practiced and practiced and practiced until I thought she might get plowed over by the zamboni. She’s decided she’d like to be a professional figure skater or speed skater, but probably figure skater. Well, never say never.

Both girls were very well behaved, in marked contrast to last week (!), so we hit the local Caribou Coffee afterwards. We discovered that in the spring there will be an -- Oh My Gosh -- Ice Show! With Costumes! And Headpieces! And two performances! For All Levels! Oh the ecstasy!

As we started to leave the coffeeshop, Violet said to me for the 2nd or 3rd time, “This is a really good day.”

By the time we came home it was time for all to retreat to separate corners—Puzzle Pirates, PBS Kids, and blog—until dad got home. My legs hurt from skating, and I have hours of freelance work to do (still no nanny!), but I agree with Violet. This was a day that I was so happy to be a homeschooling mom.

[Edited to add: I know the images aren't loading -- you aren't missing anything, but hopefully it's a site fluke and it will fix itself.]

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After leaving a (too!) lengthy comment on the blog of a friend, I decided I’d better continue my one-sided musings on my own blog.

Basically, she was worrying—and her readers, like me, were commiserating—about the challenges of homeschooling a highly gifted kid. For example, this year we’ll probably go through 3 grades of math in about 9 months. After seeing the Physics Circus she told me she might like to be a physics professor someday (presumably after being an actress and artist for a while.) How long until this child eclipses my ability to teach? I didn’t even take physics in high school!

First off, I am the Queen of Outsourcing. For my freelance work, I hire subcontractors, and I have no problem doing the same in the rest of my life. If I can trade time for money by letting someone clean or organize my house, do some coaching in Chinese or ice skating, deliver my groceries, or shovel my snow, I’ll do it. (For that last one, we bartered some old drums to another neighborhood homeschooling kid—was lovely to see the shoveled walks after last night’s snow storm!) I do keep tabs on how much of my life I give away, especially when it comes to my kids, but otherwise I put the emphasis on the Manager part of Household Management. If I’m the conductor, I don’t have to play oboe, viola, and timpani drum all at once to make beautiful music.

More important, I think, is trusting that my ability to teach is extremely unimportant compared to my child’s ability to learn. Thus far, Violet seems highly able to learn, quickly and with surprising retention, despite my frequent missteps, bad moods, and benign neglect while attending to the Internet. My job, as I see it, is primarily to put interesting things, books, people, and places in her path, and let her go with them.

Timing is crucial, it’s true. I keep books away from her that I’d like her to be just a bit older to read. She has the reading ability of a high school senior, but I still keep A Wrinkle in Time back, just because I think she’ll love it that much more in another year or two.

But sadly, I can’t know the right time. I guess, I estimate, then I close my eyes and hope for the best. My consoling analogy is that of feeding a toddler. Picky toddlers: one day they love the carrots, the next they toss them on the floor in disgust. One week they eat with gusto, so that you can never quite get them full, then for three straight days they don’t touch a morsel of dinner. Then there’s that stretch of eating only yellow food.

My limited experience of the world has taught me that most parenting advice is pretty sound for dealing with people ages 2-102. When you feed a toddler, you put an array of healthy choices in front of her and trust that she will take what she needs when she needs it. She may need to get hungry sometimes to figure out what she needs, but that’s part of learning to feed herself.

True, everyone feels more relaxed on those happy occasions when mom thinks it might be a broccoli day, and three trees would be just right, and sure enough Miss Toddler gobbles it up and smiles. Days when the milk gets poured over the mashed potatoes before the whole mess gets flung onto the china cabinet, on the other hand, can make you feel that you are doing everything wrong.

But no. You are both—mom and child—doing it right. And I really think it works the same with education. You provide the quality control for the content, and trust the student to take it in and digest it on her own schedule. Even if she sometimes flings the fabulous biography across the room and seems to subsist on a diet of SpongeBob and Fairy Realm books. (In that case, try adapting Dr. Sears’ advice on carefully observing your kid’s educational diet—you’ll likely be surprised at how much substance is actually getting in there.)

Aha, you say! But what happens when the child has an incredible hankering for blueberries, and you can’t possibly provide enough unless you started a blueberry farm? Can’t it happen that you just won’t have enough of something that your child really needs, so that it won’t make its way onto her buffet?

Yes, yes it can. And by that time, hopefully you’ve taught your child to go pick blueberries. Granted, from my perspective, it is a challenge to teach a very young, profoundly gifted child to be educationally self-sufficient at the age when they’d still be learning addition and phonics in school. Just because a seven-year-old can do basic geometry or algebra doesn’t mean she has the skills or discipline be totally self-directed in her education.

We’ve tried to accept the reality that the ages 5-9 would be the toughest time, when our daughter’s mental skills and her chronological age would be at their most out of whack. (Sorry, I can’t find the link for the articles; if I do I’ll add them later.) Which means it’s going to get easier. The fussy toddler won’t starve to death, and the demanding learner won’t atrophy, as long as someone is consistently providing nourishment of some kind, all the while pushing self-care skills and increasing independence. The avid nurser eventually weans, the potty-resistant kid doesn’t go to college in diapers, and the gifted-but-dependent student starts to learn online with the computer she built over the weekend. (Have I mentioned that Violet is a proud and avowed “Linux Nerd”? How many 7yos have a favorite operating system?) The day-to-day reactions of the child are not the best indicator of whether this is happening, nor is hitting a temporary plateau in development.

Time is what will tell, which is really hard to take when it comes to supporting the happiness and well-being of your child. In the meantime, I have to trust my child. If she learns nothing else, maybe she’ll learn that her ideas and interests are worth pursuing, and that she can trust herself too.

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I decided to use the J-Term concept for homeschool -- January is going to be a month of short-term study of things we don't normally study.

Primary J-Term subjects:

Can you guess what we're doing in February?

That's right, we're going to Mexico! I am so very excited. A friend called us on Christmas Eve to say that because of illness (sad) some family members would not be using their 1/2 of a double bungalow, so we are going for an entire week. Plus our friends have 3 little girls, so built in playmates and childcare swapping! We never go anywhere for a week anymore. Wahoo!

Violet also "graduates" from Yamaha right after our return, and for their final in-class recital she wants to write her own song. I'd said that's fine as long as we actually write it. I will probably do most of the recording, but I thought at least she could help me fill in the black dots and such. I think she needs some reinforcement on notation anyway -- especially the various rest symbols -- so it should be good. We also have our teacher search narrowed down to 2, both supposed to be very good. One I know is supposed to very good with precocious kids and kids who like to improvise and compose -- though I hear she is a bit "picky" with her students.

Violet has also been begging Husband to teach her more HTML. They did a little bit one night before bed and I had to drag her away from the computer. Of course, her dad is her hero, so she loves computers. And she would love to be able to do games and such.

Not sure how much physics we'll actually cover, but I want to make good use of the Physics Circus that Violet and Husband will be attending soon.

Monday we're headed to the homeschool store for new Singapore books. I think our plan is to buy two years at once and bounce back and forth among them, plus use some supplementary materials. She averages about middle of 5th grade for math, but she still needs work memorizing those multiplication facts! So we will get the 4th grade books as kind of an "intro" to stuff and then go into the 5th grade for more depth, and continue to use outside geometry and algebra materials for challenge as well.

I don't know why I even put so much effort into math. It's not her passion, it's not her best subject, she does fine with it, but somehow math is the subject that I spend the most time trying to get just right.

I think that's another musing for another day: What is the place of math in our school? Do I really want to give it so much of our energy?

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We are still on total break from school. What do we do all day? Lots of Legos and board games. I think Lupin's clasroom is done -- I'll post a photo.

DH had surgery the Thursday before Christmas, so we planned for a very low key holiday. I tried to keep the girls busy with a bit of crafting and making, overcoming my great dislike of scattered glitter and frosting stuck to the dining room chairs.

Good gifts (among so many): We love Victoria's Fridge Phonics

which really surprises me because we avoided all such toys with Violet like the plague. But Victoria is learning reading so differently. She is a very aural kid -- identifying letters visually is still a work in progress, but if you ask what letter starts "Mom" she will sound it out and say "M" and she can spell her name aloud.

For Violet, this cool writing tablet to use with the computer

She can draw like crazy with it -- and no paper! It's also fun to trace with.

I think we are on our way to owning every Cranium-type board game in existence, and the library grew tremendously too. (I love that Violet opens the books and acts like *yawn -- books again* but then she stops opening presents and starts reading right away!)

Here's a bit of our holiday prep work, in pictures:

Cookies

cookie monster number one

cookie monster number two

ornament making

ornament maker -- with green juice mustache

ornaments

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And Merry Christmas everyone, from the Red Sea School!

“A-YA-SCHOO!” yelled Leka.

She sat straight up in bed, sneezing and coughing helplessly. “A-YA-SCHOO! A-a-a—whew.” She thought, What is wrong with me—ayaschoo! Ahac-ahac!

“Oh-oh. Now what? I’m in the—the FUTURE!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Little boys and girls—playing? Opening boxes filled with wonders of the universe? Laughing with delight? No Pixys or Elves? No Doksys or Farys? Not even one Creature? H-help!”

“Whaddaya need help with? What are Doksys? What’s a Creature?”

Leka fainted.

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A little late now, but M. at Trinty Prep School got me curious. For the record, it was English. Close enough.

Your Scholastic Strength Is Deep Thinking

You aren't afraid to delve head first into a difficult subject, with mastery as your goal. You are talented at adapting, motivating others, managing resources, and analyzing risk. You should major in: Philosophy Music Theology Art History Foreign language

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She saw a warrior, and leaping at him, she showed courage and plunged her dagger into his heart. He fell down dead. She grimaced at the blood, but wiped her sword on her clothes to prove she was brave.

She gulped at the sight at a huge, tall soldier, but yelled: “Yah, idiot! You come tackle me, The Brave Leka!” The soldier gulped at the sight of such a brave warrior and froze, in the thinking of death, he was weak. So Leka plunged her sword into him.

She did this twenty times until she was standing at a huge, green pine tree. She saw berries next to it. And heard angel choirs sing: “Yah, Leka, come now, the bravest warrior, unafraid of anything.”

Leka gazed up in amazement, and said:

“Thank you for your praises, Yah! But thus I must return.

My home is waiting patiently, while broths and soups doth churn.

My heart must be at home, I know it must, Yah.”

Leka returned home, only to find nothing but a pile of ash by where the front door used to be. She stared at it, then sobbed hopelessly and ran off into the night, crying: “I’m not brave! I’m not!” Her echo sounded: Not brave, not brave...and she threw herself onto the ground and died.

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The Pixy disappeared, leaving Leka shivering. Leka heard more footsteps and gulped.

“Leka? Is…is that you shivering? It’s me, Paneno. And—and I brought Little Robin back from the Navajo camp.” Seeing Leka’s puzzled face, he said: “They renamed her. Pity, so?”

“They renamed her?” she repeated. Then: “What a pity. Yah.” The elf giggled nervously. She was shy, very shy

“What’s wrong, Leka? You been attacked? You are always so proud of your outgoing personality. You ill?”

“No—no, Paneno. I—well, I’m sort of shy, actually.” She paused, embarrassed.

Paneno understood her and said softly: “Boo.” Leka screamed and ran from the house, crying.

Paneno said: “Oops!”

“Oooooooosssshhhh!” said a voice. Leka bit her lip. “Oooooooooooooo!” Then Leka found a Doksy behind her, laughing.

“Erggggghhhhh….” Grunted Leka.

“Whowhowhowhowho…..” screeched an Owl.

Ba-bun, ba-bun…..whispered drums. War drums!

Leka jumped and put her head on one side. They’re headed in this direction! Thought Leka, thinking of a plan. She crept back home, grabbed her sword, and tiptoed into the night.

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For Your Consideration . . . The first installment of a story written by Violet this weekend. Can you tell she's been alternating in her reading between Harry Potter 5 and The Fellowship of the Ring (with a bit of Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg -- again! -- and the Murderous Maths Algebra book thrown in)?

It was a lovely starry night in the year -64732873463784736478347.

The softly glowing 5 foot high wicks were the only lights in the darkness of Leka’s chilly room. She shivered and jumped out of bed to get a drink of chawlotre, which was a decaffeinated drink that glowed brightly with magical Sparkle. She had a sip, but then heard footsteps.

“Hello, good Pixy. What is your coming about from?”

“I am here to tell you in the night, a stranger comes to kill from the stars.

“They do say he is fright. Nighttime is good to he who is Black. The Stars shine to show their importance.”

Leka shuddered. She knew about this so Creature, the flying Cloak.

The Pixy gave a weak smile. “They say his only weakness is a candle.”

Of course! Leka knew another creature like the flying Cloak, the biting Pixy. “Thus, what is your trouble? I sleep peacefully without that Creature awakening me in the dark of the night.”

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Christmas crazyness is threatening to bring school to a halt before our planned break starting next week. I won't let it!

We did some math and history today, but both took forever, plus Violet had a dentist appt., so Chinese and piano went undone. We'll try to do piano tonight -- Violet is trying to get a 30-days-in-a-row photo up on the wall of the studio, but it is hard for all of us. Math today = percents. History = The Vikings, Hurray! We are, after all, in Minnesota.

Here's a tidbit that might not be found in your average history book:

Some of that you might recognize from the SOTW book, but the frightened grass (!) and the fist-shaking anger at the hubris of Charlemagne (a bit of poetic license about Charlemagne there) are pure Violet-y goodness.

We also got a bit off schedule for a happy reason, which was a visit from grandparents, during which we enjoyed:

These guys

And the fabulously rocking

Which really made me want to get both Violet and myself one of these

Also saw the World's Largest Gingerbread house, as below. The structure is wood, but covered in giant gingerbread bricks piped together with icing, in addition to the darker Hershey bar bricks, and window lead made of red licorice. Sixty feet high, it was. Mighty strange and impressive. 90% edible, as Violet keeps telling me. The armless gingerbread men on the facade suggest that someone has been testing out that claim.

[Edited to add: since I rarely post pictures of the adults in the family, I feel I should point out that Mimi and Papa are posting with the girls, not Mom and Dad.]

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Violet just had her last recital with the Junior Music Course in Yamaha. This semester will be the end of her group lessons.

We really liked Yamaha. It was too slow and too easy, but Violet enjoyed the group lessons. She was always with older kids, and the school was flexible about moving her ahead a class or giving her different solo pieces. They have a strong ear training component, and the kids work on rhythm and intervals, and singing solfege.

We would have pulled Violet from the group lessons last year, when she was clearly going faster than her class, but she felt strongly after leaving public school that she wanted to keep her piano class, and it was easy enough to oblige.

I do look forward to her private lessons, though we are not yet settled on a teacher. I think it will be interesting to see what she does when she is not motivated by besting the other students or sitting in a lesson waiting for the others to catch up.

First photo: The new barrette purchased to minimize hair-fussing during the recital.

Second photo: Playing 'Arabesque.' Violet's was the last solo of the recital -- she was pretty pleased to be the last pianist featured.

Third photo: The group playing "Endless Journey," a rhythm piece.

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While brushing teeth tonight, Victoria revealed herself as a Catholic and a mystic.

We were discussing Christmas, which is when, I told her, we celebrate that "Jesus was born."

Wrong Mom, says little V. "Jesus is born."

Of course she's right, silly me. I knew my many mentors in the faith would approve.

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Little Victoria is off preschool for the month, so our schedule is really in chaos. She demands to be *on* me when I am trying to do something with Violet -- something she would not be doing otherwise.

I've tried to adjust our homeschool expectations accordingly, without totally giving up. (Vacation starts officially on the 18th for Red Sea School.) I've totally abandoned Singapore until next year, when we'll start a new grade (but which grade?), and we are focused on fractions/decimals/percents for the rest of the year in math. I'm embarrassed to say that I am using a cheap book on fractions from Walgreens (allegedly grades 5-6) to supplement the intro to fractions we got in Singapore.

History is fading -- Violet seems to be losing interest. Her written summaries are really getting weak again. Some guys had a battle, and this one guy won -- that seems to be the basic formula. We need to get back into how people lived and away from the tribes and battles -- and yet the Western and Arab worlds are getting formed, and some of these events are so decisive in the development of world history.

I think my strategy must be to slow down and get a little more into details of culture, language, etc.

Speaking of language, Violet has announced her intention to learn Japanese and Korean next -- she says she wants to learn all the languages of Asia. Why Asia? Who knows. I am thinking of doing some minor comparative language studies. We recently read in SOTW about the mixing of cultures among China, Japan, and Korea, so we could probably pursue that further.

Otherwise we will be doing lots of holiday crafts up until the 24th. We're doing a paper tree on the wall with homemade paper ornaments -- somehow I have to make this look attractive!

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Despite our overlapping "readership," I'm going to echo Sarah's referral to a bit of homeschool humor.

If you homeschool, you'll appreciate it. If not, at least you may understand why your homeschooling neighbor seems to be concealing a little wince at certain moments in your conversations.

See Fourteen Days of Homeschooling to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas. A sample:

On the fifth day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, "YOU ARE SO STRANGE! What about P.E., do you give them tests, are they socialized, can you homeschool legally?"

And the classic How Does a Homeschooler Change a Lightbulb.

That's the kind of homeschooler that makes me want to get in bed with my Sudoku book and hibernate until summer.

Don't we all know at least one?

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You may be amused/disturbed by some of the "expert" musing on the increasing popularity of unschooling, in this article from today's NY Times.

Money quote: “As school choice expands and home-schooling in general grows, this is one of those models that I think the larger public sphere needs to be aware of because the folks who are engaging in these radical forms of school are doing so legally,” said Professor Huerta of Columbia. “If the public and policy makers don’t feel that this is a form of schooling that is producing productive citizens, then people should vote to make changes accordingly.”

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I may lose some of my liberal credentials with this post, but so be it. A recent editorial in the NY Times (link below), prompted by a report from the nonpartisan foundation Education Trust, has pushed some buttons for me.

The Times summarizes the report’s findings as demonstrating that public universities have begun to use their financial aid coffers to attract high-income students rather than low-income students:

“Public universities have been choking off college access and upward mobility for the poor by shifting away from the traditional need-based aid formula to a so-called merit formula that heavily favors affluent students.”

First hackle raised: “So-called merit?” While I am fully cognizant of the very real factors favoring affluent students in acquiring those quantifiable credentials beloved by selection committees, I am not prepared to throw out the idea of “merit” all together.

Friends and family can guess why. Education professionals have told us several times that we had better start saving the big bucks for our daughter’s education, because profound intelligence and high scholastic achievement are going to earn her a big pat on the back but no financial aid for college. Too bad that the housing bubble and the cost of meeting the educational needs of our profoundly gifted child for today (free and appropriate education my a**) have made it difficult for us to get those 529 funds for the future going just yet.

The Times editorial continues:

“The public universities were founded on the premise that they would provide broad access in exchange for taxpayer subsidies. That compact has been pretty much discarded in the state flagship campuses, which have increasingly come to view themselves as semiprivate colleges that define themselves not by inclusion, but by how many applicants they turn away, and how many of their students perform at the highest levels on the SAT, an index that clearly favors affluent teenagers who attend the best schools and have access to tutors.”

No argument with the first point. And I won’t dispute, too much, the idea that certain application criteria do indeed favor those “affluent teenagers.” I just have to object to the implied suggestion that high achievement is primarily the result of parental favors bestowed on the fortunate, if spoiled, child, and probably not the result of the student’s own abilities. (Especially not any innate abilities.)

Of course I object because even when my child was six I was hearing that her abilities, her test scores, her musical talent were likely the result of excessive parent coaching and culturally biased instruments of measure. Yes, there are helicopter parents, yes, IQ tests are imperfect. Just how many times will my daughter and her parents have to grovel at the feet of politically correct amateur social commentators before we can assert that, despite all of those problems, merit and intelligence are real things, and it makes some sense for institutions of higher learning — particularly public universities whose research is pointed toward public benefit — to seek out and encourage students who appear to possess those qualities?

One last note: What is high income, according to the report?

“In recent years, aid to students whose families earn over $100,000 has more than quadrupled at the public flagship and research universities.”

Now our family income is not as high as $100K. Neither is it less than $20K, the low-income group considered by the report. But I’m going to make the radical suggestion that while $100K is a nice round number, it’s a low floor for high income as discussed in the report. A family making $100K in my town, given the high cost of living, is going to be doing just fine, thank you, but they are not in the privileged group with access to the best schools and private tutors. How could they? Sending two kids to the best schools in our metro area would require almost 40% of their pre-tax income.

A family making $100K likely will not qualify for need-based assistance, either at the secondary or the post-secondary level. That seems more than reasonable. But it seems extremely unfair to me that such a family should be passed over for merit-based assistance, especially if that decision is based on the misguided assumption that the student’s merit is derived mainly from extreme wealth and privilege.

The Times editorial concludes:

“The college degree has become the basic price of admission to both the middle class and the new global economy. Unless the country reverses this trend [of failing to assist poor students], upward mobility through public higher education will pretty much come to a halt.”

Well, Amen, I say.

But the mistrust of merit and intelligence continues to prevent the full flowering of students who could contribute much to that middle class and that global economy. For too many highly gifted students, access to appropriate education—at any cost—has already come to a halt. And we are all poorer as a result.

See links below for full details:

Education Trust Report: Engines of Inequality

Times Editorial: Public College as ‘Engines of Inequality’

Davidson Institute: Genius Denied

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It was a lovely day in spring falls. And S----, N------, M-------, and R----- were enjoying a picnic at a lovely place, fall 1891. Now S----- was good-tempered and sweet, while the boys were medium-tempered. Of course they were not as sweet as S-----, but—it was a good start. Now R---, the eldest, did go shoot turkey every thanksgiving. But once every ten years, S----- was asked to watch.

Now then. This year, S------ had been asked to watch. She usually wept, for she did love animals so. But then, they came upon a turkey. S---- struggled to hold back tears—of fear! The turkey was pointing R----’s gun at them. S----- screamed, and wept with fear that she and R----- were to die. N----- heard the screams of terror and ran to their aid. S----- was weeping and sobbing so much she knelt before the turkey and cried, "Oh ever grateful turkey! You must spare us! We solemnly swear we shall not kill a turkey for any reason this and the following year! Oh, oh dear turkey, we will build a temple to worship you, master of the universe!!!"

Well the turkey agreed but said he must have the temple set up in a week with a golden statue. Then it said it must have a magnificent palace. M---- heard this and said, Er- yes, um—dear turkey,--uh—the universe is—ah—all yours!" Then N---- said, “ Oh good and loving turkey, we—um—worship you!” “Oh, N----..." said S---- firmly, “we should indeed worship the turkey, and the lord." N------ declared “We will have a chicken thanksgiving!"

“S---? “ It was I---, S----’s little sister! “ What in the world?" S---- cried. “Now we do not have enough food! I----, couldn’t you have stayed home with Mamma and Poppa?" “ I was really hungry, S----!" said I---.

S----- said, "Oh, I so wish we had enough, and I do think there are some wild chickens around here—Aha! R-----, run get your rifle! Hunt that chicken down, now! Come on now! I---- is hungry! Go on! Now is no time to play games. R-----.... Right now! Go on! Go on, now! Get that chicken! Come on, now! I--- is very hungry. Well done. “ “Grrrrrrrr....“ said R-----. Well they roasted that chicken, ate it all together, and hunted another, roasted and ate it all up. Well by then they were full, and made the temple and palace, and then they all burped.

The end.

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We keep marching along into the darker days of the fall, which means that mom gets more and more tired, and less and less patient. I don't plan to talk much about it, but I suffer from seasonal depression, and this year it is pretty bad. (Which is why my posts are becoming more sparse -- I'm pretty sure that reading about life as a depressed person is only slightly less unpleasant than actually living that life, so I spare you.)

Anyway, the bright spot is that today I just needed to buck the routine and do something different, so we played a very fun game instead.

Great States was great fun -- Violet actually liked it better than the Carmen Sandiego computer game she had tried earlier! We have been pretty lax with American geography (social studies right now is the medieval Franks of Gaul), which is pretty useful to know when you live in America, so I'm glad she likes it. Now I need a fun math facts game!

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. . . we get a graphic novel about a "practical" girl who accidentally writes herself into a book and comes to discover that the fairyland things she didn't believe in (like unicorns) are real.

And we get a ballet based on the story of Cinderella, to be performed next week. Here is an invitation for my husband to perform as the prince:

Can you see why teaching writing to this child is so perplexing?

Happy Weekend!

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I found a couple of links that I want to check out later, so I'm posting them here, in order to remember them.

Bright Kids at Home, which is specifially about homeschooling gfited kids.

The Homeschool Diner is a general interest site (i.e.. not only gifted homeschool), but its creator is a member of our regional gifted/talented association and its homeschool chapter. She is always adding resources.

Someone recently referred me to this report, which was very interesting in the time I had to skim it. It's the American Academy of Pediatrics clinical report on the importance of play, in particular unstructured play. It's somewhat lengthy, but not exceedingly scholarly despite the intended audience (pediatricians, not laypeople).

I must confess that my children are right now not building block castles or pretending to be dragonflies, but watching this movie:

In general, however, I delight in knowing that homeschooling allows my 7yo to enjoy much more unstructured play time. As we spend more and more time together I not only see just how bright she really is, but I also realize that 7 is still so dang young!

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