Smrt Lernins

We had an unintentional, but fortuitous, confluence of subject matter today between our writing and history lessons. The topic for the day in history was flood stories. I read a section of the Genesis flood story (Noah) and a simple retelling of the Sumerian flood story from Gilgamesh (Utnapishtam) aloud, and we talked about the flood stories from other cultures. Our writing lesson for today just happened to be about Noah and the flood, with the goal of producing a poem full of action verbs, -ly words, and strong adjectives. I thought Captain Science might appreciate the project more if we broke from the assignment somewhat, so instead, we brainstormed about him being involved in a Great Flood of some kind. How would he feel if God, a dream, a magic fish, or something/someone else came to him and warned him that a flood was coming? What would it be like? What would it look like? What would he hope for? With very little prompting from me, other than asking him to add adjectives or use stronger words (“What kind of trees?”), he produced this magnificent poem:

[Captain Science] and the Flood

The rain
Breaks through walls
Forcefully falls
Icy and heavy
Snapping every towering tree
Like a toothpick.

The water
Violently rips off roofs
And sneaks in through
cracks.

My boat
Surrounded by endless
Oceans of dark flood water.
I am anxious for
The flood to end.

Hopeful for other people
That survived to help
Rebuild after the
Rapid waters leave and
The world is full of

Green plants and

Great friends.

Captain Science and the Flood

Captain Science started Life of Fred: Fractions this morning. He read the chapter twice with no complaint and finished the work at the end in record time. He would have gladly continued on with the book if I’d let him!

Math can be fun without sacrificing the educational value. I’m sure the same holds true for most subjects. How sad that it’s taken us this long to discover that particular truth?

Last week, Officer Daddyman got Captain Science up for a run nearly every morning. This week, however, Officer Daddyman has annual police training and is leaving at 7 every morning. While I can send the Captain on a run up and down the hill, I can’t accompany him on a run around the neighborhood, because I’ve got The Tank and Babypie. Less running = less concentration!

After spending an hour staring at history work this morning, Captain Science managed to write one whole line…and it had to be rewritten later for accuracy. He’s currently muddling through his chapter summary, which had to be rewritten as well, due to gems like “ainchent Sumeria” and “they fell to Babylon though.” This draft is focusing on spelling the vocabulary words correctly and on expanding ideas for more complex sentences. He’s doing well so far, just going sloooooowly.

The Tank had his Tea With Teacher event at the local preschool. While the teachers are nice and I’m sure Tank will do well there, I’m already regretting the decision to send him away for preschool. I know it’s the right choice for this year, but it just creates a hustle and bustle that isn’t conducive to an easy morning. I think we’ll be fine on every day but Wednesday, when Officer Daddyman is working his part time and it’ll be just me with the kids. Getting Tank to school while keeping the Captain on task is easier said than done.

I need two of me. Sure, I essentially cloned myself three times through my children, but I need a full-sized, capable clone to take over at least one of the tasks I have to do. She can nurse Babypie, drive The Tank to preschool, or help Captain Science with grammar, while I manage the other two.

I guess complaint at this point isn’t fair, though. We’re still trying to get into a routine, and we’ll find a new one that works for everyone. On the whole, I’m much more relaxed than I thought I would be. Even if it takes Captain Science two or three hours to get through history, his day is still shorter, more efficient, and more educational than the alternative.

Maybe some pushups or jumping jacks will get his head out of the clouds and back to Sumer and Akkad.

This afternoon, when asked why a certain section of his science work wasn’t finished, Captain Science replied that Eclectic Girl kept taking all the batteries. “We had more than enough,” he said, “but she just kept saying she needed more of them.”

Now we know from whence cometh Eclectic Girl’s powers. She’s battery operated!

Our first week of homeschool turned out to be much busier than I ever expected.

Captain Science started off his first week of 4th-ish grade with an 8am run with Officer Daddyman and the leaped right into his history. He made it through the first four sections of Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, his main text, covering “What is History?” and “The World in Review” on Monday and “First Humans” and “First Farmers” on Wednesday. He has subject-relevant history vocabulary words for each day, some of which are clearly defined in the book, and others where he has to glean a definition from the text. I realized we’re actually overdoing history vocab a bit, because it’s taking far too long to get through it, so I’m splitting the words into two categories: look up and define on paper, and look up and discuss/use in summary/narrative. He writes a one-paragraph summary or narrative  each day and does one oral summary or narrative each day. So far, he’s summarized “What is History?” and written a short narrative on the domestication of dogs. After vocab and writing, he puts any relevant dates onto his timeline, then he identifies any important cities, landmasses, etc. on the fill-in-the-blank map. He also does an hour of history reading each week. He started Eyewitness: Mesopotamia and will start Gilgamesh the Hero next week.

After history on Mondays and Wednesdays, Captain Science does his grammar lesson. We’re using the Growing With Grammar: Grade 4 student manual, but not the workbook. Instead, I write demo sentences for him to identify the correct parts of speech and to diagram. Thus far, he’s really taking to sentence diagramming, which pleases me to no end, as that’s something I also love. He’s really motoring through the book and has already covered parts 1.1-1.10. Once he’s demonstrated mastery of the concept in three example sentences, we move on. When passes the review, we’ll go on to chapter 2.

On Wednesdays, the Captain does his writing lessons from the Institute for Excellence in Writing’s Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons. I’m not incredibly impressed by this program so far, because it seems a little on the tedious side and is very heavy on the -ly adjectives and “never use a simple word when a 50-cent word will suffice,” a philosophy to which I do not ascribe. I think that the writing curriculum will be just fine with a little trimming here, a little expanding there, and the removal of the “banned words” list from the back of the workbook. As a professional writer and editor, the idea of using someone else’s How To Write curriculum is a bit galling, but Captain Science doesn’t enjoy writing and needed something simple, mechanical, and relevant to other studies to get him through it. This particular writing program only requires about a paragraph a week, which is sufficient writing when combined w/ the daily history paragraphs.

The liberal arts portion of homeschooling is rounded out by at least 30 minutes a day of reading (he just finished Redwall) and several nightly chapters of someone reading books aloud to him (currently The Chronicles of Prydain).

For mathematics (Thursday and Fridays), we started out with long division review. He gets a little lost with the traditional division methods, so Officer Daddyman tried introducing him to the double-division method [ETA: Officer Daddyman has informed me that they are not doing double division, but another method, found here, that doesn't seem to have a name, but which Cpt. Science thinks should be called the Steps Method], which he figured out pretty quickly. Cpt. Science will continue to do a problem or two before his math lesson every day, just to be sure he’s still getting it. He’ll start Life of Fred: Fractions next Thursday.

Patchfire is oh-so-kindly handling the science portion of our curriculum. Captain Science will head to her house on Thursday afternoons for TOPS science lab. This week they did the electricity module. It’s a nice break for me and fun for Cpt. Science to do some lernins with his good buddy, Eclectic Girl.

On Tuesdays, we will head over to the Secular Education Experience for Homeschoolers (SEE), where Officer Daddyman will teach martial arts, I’ll teach creative writing, and Captain Science will take martial arts, chess club, math club, and filmmaking.

Where is The Tank through all this? On Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, he’ll be attending a 4-hour preschool program this year. Next year, he may join in the homeschooling fun, but right now, 15 minutes of “table lernin” is about all he can handle, and after that, he becomes disruptive. A class full of little boys his age will give him a fun way to spend the mornings.

I think we had a very productive first week and I look forward to the rest of our curriculum!

Yesterday, we went over to my friend Patchfire’s house house so that Captain Science could have his first physics lab lesson with Patchfire’s daughter, Eclectic Girl. The goal of the day was the figure out how Eclectic Girl and Cpt. Science work together — does one give the other the answers? is one taking the lead in all the experiments? do they squabble when the pressures of labwork are applied? — and to give EG and Cpt. S a feel for what physical labs will be like. And yes, our 4th graders are doing physics.

They wrapped aluminum foil around batteries and lit up lightbulbs. Had this activity happened in a public school classroom, they might have been lucky to have one battery and lightbulb to share between them, and they certainly would have had a stringent set of rules about what was and was not acceptable for the experiment. Patchfire gave them the directions and the supplies (including a large stack of batteries) and set them free with minimal interference — guidance, but no hand-holding. The result was that our somewhat gawky little scientists figured it out in short order, in their own way, in their own time. So refreshing!

Captain Science is currently doing the “homework” Patchfire assigned him, which was to finish the lesson sheets. He’s currently trying to describe in detail how one would go about making a lightbulb light with nothing but aluminum foil, Scotch tape, and a battery.

SCIENCE! ENGERGY! SCIENCE! ENGERY! Snaaaaaaake Eeeeeeeyes…

Science is, by its very nature, secular. The moment you throw “belief” into the picture, it’s no longer science. Creationism isn’t a scientific theory. It’s not science at all. It’s a religious belief. It has no scientific evidence to support it. It is based in faith, not fact. Can you believe God set the universe in motion and still believe in scientific fact, sure, but faith is, by definition, not something provable.

For the record, before anyone wants to start with “evolution is just a theory,” please familiarize yourself with what that word actually means in science — it’s not a hunch or a guess. It’s based on empirical observations.

I find that homeschooling gets me up and moving. It could simply be that I’m waking up a couple hours earlier than I have been lately. It could also be that I’m engaging with my kids in a more positive, constructive manner. I feel happier and more productive than I have in a while. I’m getting things done — not just homeschooling, but other things around the house, like cooking, cleaning, and crafting.

The laundry is getting done a little faster. I’m cooking better dinners. I’m picking up the discarded flotsam of our day-to-day activities a little more consistently. I’m working on my craft projects, if only for short periods of time (motivated mama or not, my kids are still 8, 3, and 4 1/2 months).

I had no idea that doing more would make me want to do more!

Today I learned that:

Our first day of homeschooling went exceptionally well. Not only did Captain Science learn more in a day than he probably would in the entire first week of public school, but he actually had fun doing it. At one point, he made a mistake while writing (didn’t shape the letter perfectly), and began verbally deriding himself, saying, “I messed up! Oh, man, I messed it up and I have to fix it!” I put my hand on his shoulder and looked right into his eyes.

“Are we turning this in?” He shook his head no.
“Are we being tested on this?” He shook his head no.
“Can I read it?” He nodded.
“Is the answer right?” He nodded.
“Then it’s right,” I told him. “I’m not going to make you redo it or erase it. As long as I can read it and it’s the right answer, it doesn’t have to be perfect!”

I could see the Captain’s body visibly relax. “I bet Mrs. [Bad Teacher] expects it to be perfect!”
“You’re right,” I said. “I bet she does, but SHE isn’t perfect, either.”

What really struck me most about today is how much I enjoyed homeschooling. I didn’t see any of the tension we had doing homework. He didn’t argue, backtalk, or fuss about doing his work. He was engaged and excited, and so was I!

I can’t wait until tomorrow. How weird is that?

Captain Science's First Day of School