Smrt Lernins

This week in Lernins History, we hit the 60 day mark! Captain Science declared that to be 1/3 of our 180 days school year, or 33.3%, or .33. I can’t believe we’ve already gotten that far! We’ll easily hit 90 days by Christmas, at this rate. So exciting!

Captain Science completed tries 3-5 for the bridge to chapter 25 in Life of Fred: Fractions and did some additional practice with adding and multiplying mixed numbers using worksheets from Math Drills. On Monday, we’ll move on w/ Fred, now that he’s cemented these concepts.

In Vocabulary from Classical Roots, he completed lesson 4, which is a review of lessons 1-3. I’ll quiz him on his roots and words next week. We continued with our once-a-week grammar schedule, due to additional subjects we’ve added. The Captain continued adverbs in Growing With Grammar, covering chapters 6.4 (adverbs that compare), 6.5 (building sentences with adverbs), and 6.6 (double negatives). In Writing Strands, he continued working on “sentence and paragraph control,” completing days 5 and 6 of that lesson. He still enjoys the writing program and I’m so glad I decided to ditch IEW! Still no forward movement on getting that theory book to start handwriting, much to my shame, but his handwriting has been consistently better lately. Captain Science also passed Dance Mat Typing level 1 with flying colors and will start level 2 today.

Captain Science and Eclectic Girl completed their Science in a Nutshell sound vibrations unit. Because they finished all three sections on Thursday, while Patchfire only expected them to finish two, there’s no science lesson planned for today (Friday), which works out really well, as Eclectic Girl has come down with a bad cold and probably isn’t up for company tonight.

We’re now past our halfway point with Ancient Greece. Next week it will be math, science, and culture; the week after, we’ll do mythology for our ongoing pantheon project we began with Ancient Egypt. This week, however, it was the Greek expansion through Asia, the birth of democracy, and how myth became history, all from History: The Definitive Visual Guide. Captain Science wrote about the destruction of Alexander’s empire and about Greek histories. We did transition back to hand-written essays, because he was spacing out at the computer and not doing quality work. He has almost finished The Golden Fleece and I have decided to let him read one of the adult translations of The Iliad, just to see if he can do it (he was asking).

The biggest news this week is that we’ve finally gotten Logic Countdown and are integrating logic into our week. He started with logical comparisons, describing why items are grouped and adding additional items to a grouping. My favorite example was “wheat, rice, barley___.” He correctly labeled them as grains, and then added flax of all things as his additional example. Can’t add oats like a normal kid, right? Logic is currently his “reward” for making it through his other assignments in a timely manner.

The Tank had his harvest festival at preschool, the notes about which I apparently ignored, as I showed up at school with him a half hour too early AND not dressed for me to stay. We had to come home so I could replace my pajamas with real person clothes. Have I mentioned how much I dislike having to take him someplace three days a week? Yeah, not a fan. Tank, however, loves it and loves his pre-K teachers, Miss Amy and Miss Carin, who seem to equally adore him. They like to ask him what’s bothering him, because he always answers, “Nut’in,” and they think that’s cute. We did a mini pumpkin hunt and The Tank rode on a small train around the building. He brought home all manner of strange items — paintings done with gauze and a bag of scooped-out pumpkin guts. His newsletter for November says, much to my chagrin, that they will be doing lots of “Indian projects” for the letter I and to celebrate Thanksgiving. *shudder* They mean well, but oh my stars. Time to break out a mini-unit on Whitey Oppressor the Pilgrim, right? Maybe we’ll talk about King Phillip’s War.

Babypie impressed us all this week by standing unassisted…at 7 months. Yes, I’m less than thrilled by this sudden leap forward from babyhood. Luckily, it surprised her as much as it did me, and she plunked onto her bottom. I think Patchfire’s Purple Child is a bad influence. That age-mixing just won’t do! She’s still crawling up a storm, cruising around furniture, and being cute as can be. Officer Daddyman and I swear we heard her say “Dadaman” this week after hearing me say it (she’s been addressing him as “dada” for a couple of weeks now). She waves to her reflection frantically and chants “Hi! Hi! Hi!” every time we pass a mirror.

Officer Daddyman had some good arrests this week and is thinking about where he’d like his career to go from here. It’s time for a bit of a change, so maybe he can move to another unit. DUI looks promising — though it would be brutal hours, I’d be very proud of the work he’d be doing. He’s also trying to start back to college in either spring or summer, so we’ll be extra busy with our lernins!

As for me, I’ve almost finished reading A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome. Have I mentioned that history SURE IS INTERESTING? I’ll elaborate later. Other than that, I’ve been knitting, sewing, and planning a BOLD Red Tent with Patchfire and some other friends (who don’t have blog nicknames yet).

I’m a supporter of the Southern Poverty Law Center and their magazine for educators, Teaching Tolerance. A recent post on ability grouping in the Teaching Tolerance blog, however, has me scratching my head over educational philosophies that damn separating students by ability (or, to be PC, “performance”) in order to best teach to those children’s needs. The post’s author begins crying upon receipt of the notice of her child’s level placement, not (she says) due to where her daughter placed, but because “[her daughter] and her little homeroom peers worked really hard to get to know each other and create a new and shared community during those first weeks of school, and now they’d be divvied up for sizable parts of their day.”

Now, I will be honest in that lack of adequate ability grouping was a major cause of our flight from public school. Differentiated instruction, which some comments to the post suggest as an alternative to ability grouping, often fails a child like Captain Science, mainly because too many teachers fail to understand what really constitutes differentiated instruction. In theory, it means providing ability/achievement-appropriate ways of accessing the curriculum, which is actually a great idea. Unfortunately, most teachers seem to interpret differentiated instruction significantly differently, viewing the goal as being to “level the playing field,” doing the very thing that differentiated instruction-proponent Dr. Carol Ann Tomlinson specifically stipulates is not true differentiated instruction: “assignments are the same for all learners and the adjustments consist of varying the level of difficulty of questions for certain students, grading some students harder than others, or letting students who finish early play games for enrichment.”

That’s not to say that differentiated instruction, done correctly, doesn’t work — it’s to say that I have little faith in the ability of most public school teachers to appropriately implement differentiated instruction in their classrooms, especially when dealing with a wide ability/achievement disparity like one has with a mix of below-level, at-level, and highly gifted students. Captain Science’s wretched teacher from last year was a stunning example of someone who believed herself to be using differentiated instruction, when in reality, she was punishing the gifted and/or high achieving students and those students who were working below grade level by assigning the same work for all of them and applying different standards in grading. My mother worked in public schools for over a decade and reports a similar experience with differentiated instruction in classrooms at those schools — a great idea in theory, but nearly impossible to enact adequately in a class of 20-30 students of vastly different abilities. Differentiated instruction in the wrong hands turns into institutional mediocrity.

What, then, is the solution? We would have been very happy if we had been offered a truly ability-grouped classroom, where Captain Science could have been taught with other gifted students and allowed to work as far ahead of grade level as he could go. Of course, our school system didn’t offer gifted-only classrooms, both for budgetary reasons and because, as we see above, many parents react strongly (and tearfully) to the idea of ability grouping. I think that those parents are also probably NOT the ones whose children are at the far ends of the ability spectrum and are, therefor, the ones whose children are the least likely to need an ability-grouped classroom.

So…if ability grouping is as bad as the parent in this Teaching Tolerance blog believes, how shall we group students? It seems to me that most school systems and parents can only understand one particular means of grouping children, which stands out in the author’s original statement: “[Her daughter] and her little homeroom peers.” “Peers” is an ugly little word in education, because it places the highest value on parity of age, rather than ability, interest, or learning method. Unfortunately, calendar age is often a poor indicator of where a child is physically (early or late bloomers?), emotionally (ready for independence or still needing lots of support?), and academically (a strong early reader or a late reader? Takes to mathematical concepts readily or struggles?).

Homeschoolers, on the other hand, place a lot of emphasis on the importance of age-mixed interaction, an idea to which I (someone who was schooled k-12 in public school and whose child attended public school for two years) was initially resistant. Having seen my son interacting with a wide age range at co-op, however, and through teaching my mixed-age writing class (ages 7-12), I’m now fully on board with the idea of ability/interest-based peerage, rather than age-based peerage. It works! Captain Science has friends of many ages through the co-op, but when dealing with children his own age, he tends to gravitate towards other gifted students, who share his quirky way of looking at the world. In his public school classroom, he had little choice as to his social circle, because he was always in an age-segregated class, even at lunch, recess, and “specials” like PE and music.

Had Captain Science been in a gifted classroom all day, every day at public school, we would have been much more likely to keep him there. Ability grouping would have spared him the boredom, frustration, and extra work that poorly implemented faux differentiated instruction forced up on him every day. Now that he and I are homeschooling, Patchfire and I have intentionally “ability grouped” Captain Science and Eclectic girl for science lab, because they both need a partner who can keep up with them. Imagine what could be accomplished with a group of children like those two, with a teacher or mentor who understands that type of child and can urge them to develop their full potential.

Ultimately, I wonder why the hell we would ever want to level the playing field. What is it we’re so concerned about? Sparing the feelings of the students who aren’t in the “top” ability level? Fabricating a sense of age-based community at the expense of individual needs and abilities? I, for one, think it’s time to take our kids out of the “esteem”-protecting bubble wrap and listen to the words of Joan Crawford (only in this instance, please — spare the wire hangers; it won’t spoil your child): “Age is just a number. It’s totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine.”

Did you know you can now follow Smrt Lernins on Twitter? No, I can’t think of a single reason why you would want to, but you could.

Happy Halloween Week!

I’m a fan of theme-blogging, because it makes it much easier to think up a posting topic if I know the day has a them. With Wordless Wednesday, Secular Thursday, and now “Ask a [Smrt] Homeschooler ” Tuesday, I’m becoming the laziest blogger ever. Stay tuned as I wow you with more boring nonsense!

My non-homeschooling friends and family have a lot of questions about how such and such works. I can’t answer for all homeschoolers or, ok, any other homeschoolers, but I can certainly answer for this particular Smrtly Lerned homeschooler.

Today’s questions come from my friend H. the Harried Homemaker:

“How do you keep your shit together [without having 9 hours of time during the week to not answer questions or tend to someone else's needs]?”

I mainline coffee from 9am-5pm and then drink heavily after the children go to bed. I’ve also convinced myself that I’m two separate people. I switch on Homeschool Smrt Mama during school hours and pretend that Actual Smrt Mama is spending four hours at a day spa getting highlights put in and her unmentionables polished. I also spend a lot of time hiding in the bathroom with a book. Captain Science asked, “Why do you have so many books in the bathroom.” I told him it was for reading while in the bath and neglected to mention that sometimes I sit in there and read while pretending to poop.

How [do you] keep the house straight when you’re never really out – there’s no separation between house and school?

We have a lot of stuff and very little time to sort that stuff. Luckily for me, Officer Daddyman collects plastic bins. We fill a bin and put it somewhere, and if we don’t need to sort through the bin to find anything for about three months, we just bury it in the backyard. Amazingly, this words well for disposing of dead pets, too, though I’d recommend an opaque box for that.

It seems like homeschooling is the ultimate act of submitting to your family. Not in some patriarchal bullshit [way], but being there.”

Ok, this one wasn’t phrased as a question, but it still sounds ask-y to me, so I’ll run with it.

Submitting, no, but subsuming, yes, a bit. It isn’t much of a shock or a paradigm shift, because I’ve also spent the last 4+ years pregnant and/or breastfeeding. I’m used to being there 100% for them. I never got a chance to get out of the habit of just always being RIGHT THERE if someone needed me or of rescheduling what I want to do around what the babies might need. If I’d started this several years down the line, after I’d had the opportunity to adjust back to the non-lactating, non-cosleeping way of life, it might have been harder to adjust to it and felt more oppressive, but I’m already a shambling zombie wearing a living babycoat all day, and you can’t really oppress a zombie. Zombies don’t pine for the fjords.

Do you have a question you’d like to Ask a [Smrt] Homeschooler? If so, email me at smrtmama@smrtlernins.com!

Here’s something that we* have noticed cropping up on the Well Trained Mind forums: mothers of toddlers, especially babies or very young toddlers, with no older children, who refer to themselves as “homeschoolers” and to the interaction they have with these small children as “homeschooling.”

Ok, mothers (or fathers) of the wee younglings. Let’s lay this out on the table. What you are doing isn’t homeschooling; it’s parenting. Whether you plan to educate your kids at home, send them to private school, or put them on a bus to public school, regardless of the method you might be planning to use in the future, what you are doing right now with your 6 month old, 1 year old, or 2 year old is not homeschooling. Staying home with little Mackynzie and Skyler, teaching them their ABCs, coloring, playing with play dough, teaching them shapes and colors — that isn’t homeschooling. That’s mothering (or fathering) and I would hope you do that regardless of your future educational choices.

You don’t have to justify being an involved parent by calling it homeschooling. You don’t have to validate being a stay-at-home parent by calling it homeschooling. Parenting your children is inherently justified, inherently valid. It is a good thing, a virtuous and noble calling that is practiced around the world without any need to introduce the degree of formality that you get when you try to label it “homeschooling” just to make it sound like you’re “doing something.” Parenting is doing something, an irreplaceable something, and helping your child learn in those early years is a facet of parenting.

How will you know when parenting begins to cross the line into homeschooling? Think of it this way: If you had never heard of homeschooling, would you not read to Mackynzie? Would you never help Skyler differentiate between blue and green? Of course you would, because that’s part of parenting your child. You don’t have to have even the vaguest concept of what homeschooling is to know those are things you should probably be doing with your child. As your child gets older, however, and his/her contemporaries are starting to be loaded up into minivans to sit in carpool lines for their twice weekly preschool, but you’re sitting down with Mackynzie to work on phonics or playing math games with Skyler, you’re starting to get into the homeschooling arena. You’re beginning the process of formalizing, or simply crystallizing, that parental guiding and modeling into educating. That parenting in the early years was laying the foundation for a child who will love to learn, but now you can begin to lay down some bricks and beams (and yes, the house metaphor will end here).

In short, your one year old isn’t homeschooled because she doesn’t need to be homeschooled. She needs to be mothered (or fathered). She needs parental attention, interaction, and guidance. She needs to be shown which things are important and set on the path to education. She does not, God help us all, need a curriculum. She doesn’t need an educational methodology applied to the time you spend together. There is no Classical Parenting, no Waldorf Parenting, no Montessori Parenting, no Unschooling Parenting (or if there is, there shouldn’t be) — there’s just a child and the adults who love and guide her. Let her be a baby and a toddler before you try to make her a student of anything but the world. Revel in motherhood or fatherhood, and if you look to a time when you will also be a teacher, do it without envy or haste.

Just because you aren’t homeschooling yet, it doesn’t mean you won’t. Just because you aren’t homeschooling yet, it doesn’t mean that what you’re doing doesn’t have a most remarkable purpose. A mother or father really is exactly what your child needs you to be. It’s not sub-par, less-than, or requiring additional titles to make it a worthwhile profession. Parent now; homeschooling will come later.

*Not meaning the royal “we,” but Patchfire, Snowbird, and me. It would be disingenuous for me to say that I noticed it, because I’m not the one who pointed it out in conversation today. That was Snowbird.

Another good week at the McLernins house.

Captain Science did chapters 21-24 in Life of Fred: Fractions (a curriculum I discussed pretty thoroughly in this week’s Secular Thursday) and bridges one and two. He’s still having some trouble with multiplying mixed numbers, so we’re slowing it down next week, letting him work on the remaining three bridges for the chapter, and maybe doing some additional mixed fraction and improper fraction work. He’s really more of a decimals and percents kind of kid, so I hope we can get to the next book soon so he can fly!

The Captain has memorized Prometheus Amid Hurricane and Earthquake! He learned in it a week and can recite it to others. We’re working now on enunciating and standing still while reciting. What to learn next? I’ve looking through some likely candidates, but will welcome suggestions. Greek poetry, please!

In that same vein, history progresses well. The captain read the sections on Greek city-states in History: The Definitive Visual Guide and the Alexander the Great sections in History: The Definitive Visual Guide and Eyewitness: Ancient Greece. His essays were on the conflicts and cooperation between city-states and on Alexander’s life. We’ve scaled back a little on the dates and vocab this week, focusing more in important people. He’s reading The Golden Fleece right no and is likely to finish that tomorrow or Sunday. He wants to read The Iliad, but the only translation I have is definitely written on an adult level, and I worry he’ll be bored. Maybe I’ll challenge him with it and see how he does? It’s not long, just dense. I need to start including some reading from Uppity Women of Ancient Times. Cleopatra wasn’t the only important woman who lived prior to Queen Elizabeth, no matter some people might think.

Science was fantastic this week! He’s really putting in a lot of effort into the new physics unit, which covers sound vibration, from Science in a Nutshell. We have to leave the building when balloons are involved, because Patchfire doesn’t like balloons, but otherwise, the unit is nice. The Captain is giving thoughtful, thorough answers, and loves the hands-on experiments with the tuning fork and other sound-making implements. He’s also reading the third Percy Jackson novel.

Captain Science started back with Writing Strands doing a short section on expanding sentences as we build back up to a more rigorous writing schedule. Handwriting is still on hold until I can order the theory manual for Spencerian Penmanship. In Growing With Grammar, we started chapter 7, adverbs, though we did only one lesson this week in the interest of other activities. He’s got a good grasp of grammar, so if something needs to be trimmed for time, that’s the one that normally goes. He’s absolutely devouring Vocabulary from Classical Roots, doing lesson 3 this week in about 10 minutes, and hasn’t missed a question yet. I need to get the quiz book from Patchfire so we can do a quiz.

I have discovered that we need a much better dictionary. I no longer define words for Captain Science when he asks me, “What does [word] mean?” I make him look them up, but our little Webster’s Concise English Dictionary just isn’t cutting it. I love his ability to read definitions and rephrase them in context of the conversation or reading. He seems to have such a natural gift for language. I hope it will apply to foreign languages, too, as I’d like to start one in the spring. As much as I wish we could be classical enough for Latin, it’s likely going to be Japanese.

Co-op was kind of a crazy mess this week, due to a visit from the Carlos Museum mummy wrap program, which Captain Science had already seen last year at public school. The kids ran amok and I have no idea who much learning the Captain actually did. We need to start finding some other outside activities.

The Tank had a busy week at preschool, but more and more I am wishing he wasn’t enrolled anywhere. It’s been good for him, there’s no denying it, but I really think that I’ll start homeschooling him next year. He’s done all manner of paintings with body parts and objects (elbows? gauze?), but it’s really just about getting him out around other kids, which I could do in other places.

Babypie has been busy. She’s now crawling up a storm and has started *gasp* pulling up on things! This means she’s in to everything and I keep having to fish random objects out of her mouth — magazine pages, pennies, toys, food she doesn’t need. She keeps us all on our toes. Her silliness is probably Captain Science’s biggest distraction during the day, as the two are just nuts about each other.

I have to say, I’m pretty pleased with this week. Next up, Halloween tomorrow, where Babypie will be Rosie the Riveter, Captain Science will be a ninja, and The Tank will be a police officer like his daddy.

Because I only ever assume I’ll have one Halloween per child to dress them in any way I please (as Captain Science was very vocal about his costume choice by his second Halloween), I chose to dress Babypie as Rosie the Riveter this year, specifically trying to recreate the iconic poster. She’s going to be dressed in a polka dot bandana, denim overalls, something resembling a workshirt, and a little dirty smudge on her face, while I’m going as the background of her poster, wearing a yellow t-shirt with a blue speech bubble with white letters that say “We Can Do It!”

I had a dilly of a time getting the shirt ready. I bought the only yellow tee in my size at Target and two cans of spray fabric paint, which proved to be a bad choice, as the blue spray I used on the speech bubble wicked underneath the stencil, making a huge green blob, as the blue also proved to be far from opaque enough. There were tears and angry exclamations, but when the shirt dried, I appliqued a piece of blue fabric on over the green blob and made a passable speech bubble. I made a stencil for the words, tested the white spray, and managed to get it all over the table, thankfully sparing the shirt. Finally, I just painted the letters on by hand, which was a bit tedious, but doable.

While I was painting on these letters, I entered into a strange mental state, where I was suddenly really struck by the meaning behind them and what this represented. Rosie the Riveter is often used as an icon of feminism, because she represents the women who took on male-dominated trades during the war. Because of that, I think a lot of women (the conservative and/or religious homeschooling moms I see on the WTM forums, for example) might not give her a lot of credence, or perhaps they place more significance on the fact that after the war, Rosie returned to being a homemaker or other “acceptable” female trade. They may not think they can identify with Rosie. They may not think of themselves as being much like Rosie.

What can Rosie represent to all women? “We Can Do It!” Rosie says, baring a strong arm, dressed in her practical work clothes. We Can Do It! “It” for Rosie was stepping into a traditionally male job, working long, hard hours doing physical labor that she likely never expected to have to do. She likely didn’t grow up longing for assembly line work, a job as a welder, a chance to put a war ship together, but when she was called to do it, she went. She stepped outside her cultural constraints because it was necessary to do it. She put her own physical and possibly mental comfort on hold. She sacrificed, however temporarily, the things she wanted to do, preferred to do, or was simply used to doing, so that she could serve a tremendous social and economic needs, often doing so under brutal conditions with pay far below that of a man in the same job.

We Can Do It! “It” for each of us may be something different, a different sort of necessary, but difficult labor, a different kind of sacrifice, a different kind of service. “It” is anything we could choose to shirk, but don’t, any tremendous task that could overwhelm us, but doesn’t, every hardship that begs us to just surrender, but will not break us. We Can Do It! We can do it because we have to, because we know it is right, and when we do, we become a Rosie, too. We don’t have to bare our muscular arms to show the world that we’re Rosies. We do it through our actions every day.

Every woman can be a Rosie.
Every woman who has ever put the needs of her children before her own is a Rosie.
Every woman who has overcome a cultural norm for the sake of doing what’s right is a Rosie.
Every woman who has served a greater good, when not serving would be easier, is a Rosie.
Every woman who puts out a hand to help other women find strength is a Rosie.
Every woman who holds her head up high under duress and hardship is a Rosie.
Every woman whose work goes unappreciated, but who keeps on working anyway is a Rosie.
Every woman who reaches out to her sisters in her community is a Rosie.
Every woman who refuses to give up is a Rosie.
YOU are a Rosie.

You can be a Rosie in jeans, in a suit, in a uniform, in modest dress. You can be a Rosie with no children, with one child, with many children. You can be a Rosie working out of the home or in the home. You can be a Rosie if you are an atheist, a Christian, a Jew, a Buddhist. You can embody the strength of Rosie without ever picking up a hammer. You can embody the strength of Rosie while you change a diaper, scrub a floor or fix a meal. You can be Rosie when you educate your children at home.

Rosie is a strong woman, who owns her choices, who sees an obstacle and works to over come it, who does what is necessary regardless of whether or not it’s easy. A Rosie commands respect, not through force or a loud shout for attention, but through tireless effort, pride in her work, and the strength to do the tasks that must be done. That’s not just a feminist ideal, but one that any woman, any person can reach for.

Be a Rosie. Be a woman who knows that She Can Do It!

For today’s Secular Thursday, I thought I’d try something different: a review of one of my favorite secular* curricula, the Life of Fred math series.

Captain Science has always been pretty good at math, but his one true love is reading. The kid will read anything you put in front of him, from books and magazines to product packaging and insurance forms. If it has words, he can’t help but read them (we’ve learned to be very careful about the materials we leave lying around!). While looking for a math curriculum, I’m sure you can imagine my pleasure when the Life of Fred series, which teach post-long division level mathematics within a novel format — and by “novel,” I mean both “fiction book” and “unique and new.” Life of Fred, by Stanley Schmidt, follows the story of a boy named Fred, a mathematical genius who, at age 5, is teaching college-level math at the fictional Kittens University.

The Life of Fred series covers fractions, decimals and percents, algebra, and other higher-level math concepts. To begin this series, your student needs to show mastery of addition, subtraction, multi-digit multiplication, and long division. Each short chapter contains a section of ongoing plot, some discourse between author and reader, footnotes with all manner of not-necessarily-math-related information, and a set of mathematical concepts. Because the math is contextual (something is happening to, around, or because of Fred), a strong reader can easily understand the relevance and mechanics of the subject matter, making this a fairly self-guided curricula. At the end of each chapter is a section entitled “Your Turn to Play,” where the student works through a set of problems, which cover the new material learned in the chapter and hearken back to earlier chapters. The students are encouraged to check their own work after the parent has looked it over, because the answer key** contains even more instruction and shows the different ways in which one could get an answer. Every five chapters or so, students do a 10 problem “bridge,” which covers all materials learned to date. If they get at least 9/10 correct, they can move on. If not, there are four more bridges to try.

In Life of Fred: Fractions, Captain Science is not only learning about various things to do with fractions (reduce, convert, add, multiply, etc.), but also about things like Roman numerals. He’s also learned additional vocabulary, some rhetorical concepts, and other facts not precisely related to math, but still handy to know. He wants so badly to know what happens next that he sometimes begs me to let him do an extra math chapter!

The questions I hear most often are “Is it rigorous enough?” and “Does it need to be supplemented with additional work?” My answer to question #1 is yes, it is, a) if your student is a strong reader and learns well through reading and b) especially taken as a whole series, as it builds each new concept upon the previous concepts so well that your children seem to be learning very complex concepts with minimal effort (hence the “is it rigorous enough?” question). As for whether a student needs supplemental materials, I’m of the mind that extra practice doesn’t hurt and that some kids will need additional help on certain concepts, while others won’t. Captain Science will probably benefit from some additional mixed fractions additional and multiplication work as he’s working on those concepts in Life of Fred, but he hasn’t needed any additional practice with the other topics he’s covered. Keeping a concept-matching Key To… book around for additional practice would very easily provide a gap-filler if there’s something in a chapter that your child just cannot get. This is where the bridge between chapters is so beneficial, because it provides a method of making sure concepts are being learned and retains. If your child can’t pass the bridges or struggles with the same types of problems in multiple bridges, you’ll know it’s time for some supplemental work — a situation, by the way, that can happen with any curriculum, no matter how rigorous and thorough.

Captain Science and I give each this secular mathematics program two thumbs up (or more accurately, two thumbs up from me and a nose buried in the book for him).

*The author of this series is Christian and there are a few minor Christian references in Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra, such as a mention of Fred saying his prayers before bed (the actual prayer isn’t in the book), a discussion with an Army chaplain who says he learned Greek to read the New Testament, and a reference to a quote from Deuteronomy about taking care of widows and children. This does not, to me, negate the value of the series to a secular homeschooler and my experience with the earlier books has been that they are entirely secular.
**The answer key is immediately after “Your Turn to Play,” often with no page in between the questions and the answers. The major flaw of this book is that I have to cover it the answers before the Captain can start working to avoid him just copying down Fred’s way of solving the problem. Having the answers on the other side of the page would have been appreciated! Maybe in later editions?

Unsocialized homeschoolers? If anything, the kids in the homeschool co-op are a little too socialized for my comfort level.

Some of the older children have discovered the notion of “crushes.” Little romantic dramas unfold and play out to their end, all within the half-hour the kids spend on the playground during lunch. There’s hand holding, pushing each other on the swing, and even some surreptitious attempts to slip into the bushes and kiss. While this is relatively age appropriate for the 9+ crowd, the mixed-age makeup of the homeschooling groups (where age “segregation” is never, ever, ever ok!) seems to be resulting in the much younger kids mimicking this kissy-face behavior without any understanding of the context or why it’s not ok to wallow all over each other during class time.

It’s getting disruptive, with the playground volunteers and the teachers having to pry the children off of each other. Because some of the children come from low or no boundary households, they aren’t taking “no” for an answer and it’s turning into something of a tussle, with the recipient of the child’s affection (whether willing or unwilling) in the middle as we try to scrape the affectionate child off him/her. These kids, some of whom have very little by way of experience in a structured environment, don’t understand why they can’t smooch, hug, or lay all over each other in the middle of class.

I actually sat the whole lot of them down during the 2pm session and we had a little talk about personal space and how co-op isn’t the place for kissing and draping yourself across each other. I have no idea if they got it. The little girl who’d spent the day clinging to an alternately willing and unwilling Captain Science said to me, quite forcefully, that she would NOT stay off of him, until I informed her that I don’t let children talk to me in that manner and she most certainly would keep her hands to herself. Captain Science and Officer Daddyman are going to have a nice little chat about age-appropriate behavior, too, because he does not need to be kissing girls just because some 11- and 12-year-olds might be doing it.

Whatever else they may be, these homeschoolers are not awkward around other kids. They’re a tetch too comfortable with each other. And here I thought I had at least another year or two before I had to worry about this stuff!