Smrt Lernins

I’m having one of those days where I want to reach through my screen and throttle people on the homeschooling forums. The hypocrisy from the religious homeschoolers towards the secular homeschoolers invokes The Slappening.

We secular homeschoolers are to keep our mouths shut and sit on our fingers. We are never to offer any thoughts on the efficacy or rigor of a curriculum. We are never to voice our concerns about the injection of religious content into materials, especially those that appear to be touted as secular. We are never to comment on a thread labeled “CC” (Christian content) or any thread that might in any way though on any topics pertaining to religion in any way under any circumstances…including evolution, which we just made up because we hate God, anyway. We must steer away from these places, where our opinions are not wanted. We can’t put “secular” in a post title as a warning that the post contains nothing for religious homeschoolers — the very notion is offensive and invites plenty of unwanted, unneeded criticism. Any mockery from secular homeschoolers of content we find ludicrous (literal 6 day, 24-hour creation of a 5000 year old Earth, anyone?) is “mean.” We must be accepting, even praising, of their “opinions” about things. You know, I think some of those “opinions” are pretty damn ridiculous, but I don’t leap all over their “CC” posts and say that — I keep it where it belongs, in secular posts or “what do you think” posts.

Religious homeschoolers, on the other hand, can say anything they want to us. They have no qualms in invading a secular thread to criticize its content. They have no problems dropping a snarky little remarkinto a thread of secular content…but we’d be reamed if we did the same. A secular homeschooler can’t call a creationist ignorant, but a religious homeschooler is perfectly fine with calling someone who believes in actual evidence-based science ignorant, arrogant, or ungodly. Sorry, unGodly. Any mockery (though of course, “Christians” like them would never mock…they’re just “being helpful”) of our educational content is because they are studying the One True Curricula that God Adores Best and it Just So Rigorous (despite having absolutely no basis in evidence) and ur doin it wrong. We have “opinions” and they have “truth” or, God save us, capital T “Truth.”

I could post until the end of days about how to make my child’s curricula more Godly or how to encourage more modesty, chastity, or religious devotion — that’s perfectly acceptable, no matter how many people disagree with that. If I post about how to make my child’s curricula more secular or how to encourage my child to question matters of faith instead of following them blindly, to avoid bigotry and hatred towards people who are LGBT, how to be strong and independent (especially if they’re girls)…well, that post should be completely torn to shreds by the “Godly” set.

I know not all religious homeschoolers are like this — most probably aren’t. I know not all Christians are like this — most probably aren’t. The vocal minority, however, makes it difficult to avoid painting them all with the same brush. After all, if they didn’t agree with it, why wouldn’t they speak up? Why wouldn’t they say, “Let’s respect this person’s right to believe differently or even to disbelieve” or “This post was labeled ’secular content’ so I don’t think our pro-religion input is needed here” when their more aggressive, extreme brethren (sistren?) start ruffling the secs? Speak up so we know we’re not alone and that it’s not about religious vs. secular, but a small handful of hypocrites vs. the rest of us.

Hypocrisy isn’t an attractive color on anyone and no amount of “Godliness” is going to make it any more flattering.

Captain Science’s cast is off as of Wednesday and we are moving and grooving again! Hooray for a return to something like a normal schedule.

Ancient Greek history continues smoothly. Captain Science used Eyewitness: Ancient Greece as his main text this week, and covered Troy, Athens, Sparta, and Greek Warfare. He wrote summaries about Athenian history and warfare, and was quite stoked to learn that flamethrowers were used in Ancient Greece. He now knows what agora, frieze, strategoi, hoplite, perioikoi, helots are. He finished Tales of Troy and a retelling of The Odyssey. We’ll start back with maps and time line next week, since he didn’t get his cast off until Wednesday and still has limited arm mobility.

The Captain started his first memorization project, the poem Prometheus Amid Hurricane and Earthquake by Aeschylus, though I admit we weren’t nearly as good about practicing that this week as I’d wanted us to be. He enjoys it, has learned the first four lines, and was inspired to write his own Greek poetry. He covered chapters 5.7-5.12 in Growing with Grammar. He also began Vocabulary from Classical Roots, Grade 4, completing lessons one and two. He also read the second book in the Percy Jackson series.

Math was rough this week. He struggled with the first bridge for Life of Fred: Fractions chapters 16-19, so we made him complete all five tries this week. By the fourth and fifth try, however, he got everything right, so today he completed chapter 20 with no trouble. We’re glad to have him rolling on that again. His biggest issue is just not wanting to write everything out. He can do most of it in his head, but if he makes a tiny mistake mentally, his answer will not only be wrong, but we have no way of knowing how he went wrong. It’s hard to make him show work for problems when the answer he gives is correct, but I’ve told him that until he shows mastery of the concepts, he has to always show his work. I know that’s the best course of action, but it’s a little hypocritical, as I always hated having to show my work when my answers were correct.

We haven’t actually done science yet, because it was Dance Mat typing program. The Captain loved it and did all the parts of Lesson 1. He’s going to do the lesson a second time to show mastery and print his certificate, but he’s having a good time learning to type correctly.

We were unable to start our Spencerian handwriting lessons when I realized that we didn’t have the theory book and I had no idea what to do with the copy books. Hopefully can remedy that soon, even if it means a return trip to Scary Jesus Book Store. His handwriting has suffered from three weeks of his arm being casted at a 90 degree angle.

The Tank also had some table lernins this week. He’s working on a Sesame Street numbers workbook. He counted, circled, wrote 1 and 2, and traced 1-6. He loves doing homeschool with us, so I’m considering not sending him back to preschool out of the home next year. I’m just happier having them here with me!

In the world of homeschooling, being secular is too often synonymous with being alone. I’ve talked about this before, I know.

Isolation is everywhere for the rigorous secular homeschooler. Because we aren’t using religious-based curricula, we’re isolated from the large local communities of Christian homeschoolers. We’re oddities on the Well Trained Minds forums. If we aren’t unschooling, we’re even isolated from a good portion of the secular community, who think we’re anal retentive and don’t let our kids have any fun. We’re oddities at the secular co-ops and on the Mothering.com forums.

I envy Christian homeschoolers. Yes, I poke fun at some Christian curricula, but I really do envy them. They have community, not just for their educational choices, but for their whole lives. They have a place to belong. Being part of a community and staying close to your family is praiseworthy. As long as you ascribe to the same viewpoints as your religion, isolation isn’t really a problem. Some religions definitely err way too far in the other direction and become wholly intrusive into people’s lives in an oppressive way, but feeling alone, having no one like you, those aren’t problems for a Christian homeschooler teaching Christian curricula within a large Christian community. They have curriculum support from large Christian curricula publishers. They have support from their churches for protecting their children from exposure to wordly, immoral, or questionably secular things. They have support from peers, who are also homeschooling. They may even have been homeschooled themselves, depending on their church. They have support from homeschooling forums, where they comprise a significant majority. They aren’t an aberration. They aren’t alone.

The secular world, however, seems to place great value on the ability to be alone. Grow up fast. Move away. Be independent. Fish don’t need bicycles! Multigenerational living is scoffable — the quintessential “thirty year old man living in his mom’s basement” stereotype. We’re encouraged to segregate our child by age early on, as the emphasis on same-age peers is huge. Children themselves are pushed to be independent so quickly — give up the family bed, go off to preschool, spend the night away from home, and of course, mom must return to work as soon as all this happens. Culturally, we seem to value isolation…and then medicate the side effects of it.

I admit that I’m lonely. I have a few homeschooling friends, whose support I value immensely, but I sometimes wrestle with this feeling of being a pariah, both in the greater world of homeschooling and in the rest of my life. I’m way, way too liberal, “hippie,” and secular for Christians (or any religion, really) and Christian homeschooling. I’m probably significantly more moderate and mainstream than some of my secular friends, though — not alternative lifestyle enough, not “crunchy” enough, too minivan-driving suburban cop’s wife. I’m stuck in the middle with Patchfire, and we cry so many dramatic tears together.

Where’s the middle ground? Where are my people? I’m too much of a heathen for most of the homeschoolers and not enough of a free spirit for the rest of them. Where is my tribe?

Secular Thursday posted late this week due to computer crash last night.

So impressed was he by the poem he is memorizing that Captain Science was compelled to write his own Greek poetry:

Ares
Oh the war and pain!
Oh Oh it’s Ares
He is ruining the hall
In the sunshine terrace
It is so scary
He causes so much terror
I like this god
But Zeus is fairer

The rhyme scheme would be perfect if he had known “Ares” was pronounce “Aireez” not like “heiress.” Otherwise, not a bad poem to whip out on the fly like that!

Captain Science just started his first memorization exercise. I read it aloud twice and then he read it aloud twice. I could tell when he read that he’d already learned part of just from hearing it twice. This is one of the blessings of having a gifted learner (I can also tell you about all the curses) — gotta love that photographic memory! He seems to have a good feel for the meter of the poem. I think he’ll have this learned and ready to recite to others in short order, then onward to something more difficult.

PROMETHEUS AMID HURRICANE AND EARTHQUAKE (from “Prometheus Bound”)

by: Aeschylus

EARTH is rocking in space!
And the thunders crash up with a roar upon roar,
And the eddying lightnings flash fire in my face,
And the whirlwinds are whirling the dust round and round–
And the blasts of the winds universal leap free
And blow each other upon each, with a passion of sound,
And æther goes mingling in storm with the sea!
Such a curse on my head, in a manifest dread,
From the hand of your Zeus has been hurtled along!
O my mother’s fair glory! O Æther, enringing
All eyes with the sweet common light of thy bringing,
Dost see how I suffer this wrong?

This English translation, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, of ‘Prometheus Amid Hurricane and Earthquake’ is reprinted from Greek Poets in English Verse. Ed. William Hyde Appleton. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1893.

All this weather is not conducive to high quality homeschooling. Days and days of rain and gloom have left Captain Science fidgety and unfocused. It’s bad enough that the broken arm limits his ability to partake in the physical activities that help keep him on track, but not even being able to go outside or see so much as a ray of sunshine leaves me with twitchy, bouncy, scatterbrained children. Eyes are rolling around in the head like marbles. It’s not pretty.

Captain Science keeps snapping his glasses. They’re semi-glued until the new pairs arrive. The kid (and his brother, who has broken half of the Captain’s broken pairs) is rough on glasses. He’s twitchy, fidgety, glasses-falling-apart unhinged. The sound of his cast scraping against the desk is making my skin crawl and he keeps whispering to himself. Send help before I invoke The Slappening*.

Seriously, though, it’s hard to give too much of a damn about Ancient Greece or the parts of speech when you’re expecting an ark to go sailing by any moment now.

Ark-related question (from me, not Captain Science, who doesn’t give a hoot): Did Noah supposedly save two cockroaches on the ark? Or did the cockroaches just hold their breath and walk along the bottom? What about two mosquitoes? If so, why? This is one reason why it’s so good that we’re secular homeschoolers, because I have no answers to questions like these! See, even my mind is wandering.

*My friend Heather’s term for that moment when you’re just going to lose it and start grabbing anyone within arms’ reach and start slappin’ ‘em.

We’ve officially completed week nine of our school year, so we’re 1/4 down, 3/4 left to go!

Captain Science had a pretty great math week. He did chapters 16-19 of Life of Fred: Fractions, though he did rather bomb the first bridge to chapter 20 today. I’m not sure what was going on with that, other than he just never puts in a good day of work for his dad. I think he’s a lot more self-conscious doing school work for Officer Daddyman than for me. We’re doing a half-day tomorrow, partially to make up for his broken arm days and partially to make sure he’s really cemented this math thing. He’ll correct his first try on the bridge and do at least the second try.

Science has been a little piddlin for Captain Science. He plays upon Eclectic Girl’s sympthies, gets her to come up with the answers, and then writes down what she wrote. We put a stop to that tonight (he does science Thursday morning and Friday evening) and had him redo the experiments on his own. His cast should be off by next Thursday, so he will hopefully go in with a good attitude. He loves science, but he also loves sympathy and having someone else do the hard stuff. He’s one of those gifted kids. *eyeroll* Nice try, pal, but I was one of them, to, and half-ass isn’t going to fly.

We kicked back into gear with history this week, starting “pre-Greece” (aka Crete). On Monday, Captain Science read the Crete, Mycenae, and Minoa sections of Eyewitness: Greece and on Wednesday, he read the “Europe’s First Civilization” chapter (pg. 76-77) in History: The Definitive Visual Guide (H:TDVG from now on, ’cause that’s long!). He typed two summaries this week, one on Mycenaen culture and one on Minoan trade/crafts. He’s finishing up The Tale of Troy and read the first Percy Jackson book for free reading (it’s a nice mesh).

In grammar, we started adjectives. He did a good job diagramming them, even if it was awkward w/ his left hand. He covered chapters 5.1-5.6 in Growing with Grammar and took an adjective quiz on comparative adjectives, which he passed with 100%!

I’m really missing having a writing curriculum, so I hope he’s able to get his cast off this week. Typing papers has at least given him a way to demonstrate composition skills for history, but it’s not the same as really getting into a creative writing assignment.

Because we’re treating tomorrow as a half-day, we’ll do more math and our music appreciation lesson. We’ll either do Benjamin Britten or we’ll do Chopin. Not totally decided yet.

The best thing of all this week is that our school room is just about finished! All of this week’s work was done at our new school desk, which makes it much more pleasant for everyone.

My friend Patchfire expounds upon why she recommends The Well Trained Mind first to new homeschoolers.

This is my favorite bit:

I recommend The Well-Trained Mind first, though, because I want these neophyte homeschoolers to see what’s possible. I want the mom who is considering homeschooling because she wants something better to see just how much better is possible. I want to encourage my fellow secular homeschoolers to reach high. There’s no shame in reaching for the stars and falling short. There is, I feel, shame in only reaching for the light switch.

For Secular Thursday, Patchfire and I packed up our babies and headed out to the Scary Jesus Book Store*, our local homeschool book store. It caters to a…well, let’s just call them the Really Really Not Secular crowd. We both independently came up with the idea of photoblogging our trip, so check out her Secular Thursday post on the same topic!

This is Scary Jesus Book Store. It’s on the corner of a local strip shopping mall. It will help you build character. GET IT?

As you can see, it makes no bones about what it is. Christian. No Sundays. No Wednesdays. Not so many hours.

This is us. Patchfire and Purple Child on the left, Smrt Mama and a teensy bit of Babypie’s hand and shoulder on the right. Scary Jesus Book Store also featured.

Math. Fairly Jesus-free. Nice. Feeling pretty hopeful.

Hopes immediately dashed by shelf full of Creationism DVDs…

The neighboring shelf of $.50 Christian tracts (offering answers on many important issues)

And Literal 6-day Young Earth Creationist “Science” books on the next shelf over from that.

So much ignorance of actual scientific evidence, so little time.

Then we hit Bible versions. How many Bible versions does one need? The answer…

Home Economics for Homeschoolers? Only girl ones. Lucky for Captain Science, only girls need to learn about things like cooking, ironing, cleaning, and sewing.

“Better get right on that domestic stuff, Rosie. Daddyman’s shirts won’t iron themselves.”

Patchfire says Eclectic Girl really liked these books, which are parallel histories. Hi, Patchfire! Hi, Purple Child!

Bob Jones University. All of it.

At this point, the store owner (who might be German? Very blond, Aryan, with a Germanic-sounding accent) came over to ask why we were taking pictures. We both said, very honestly, that we were photoblogging for our homeschool blogs. “Some people might think it’s weird,” said Patchfire. Aryan Scary Jesus Book Store Owner replied, “I think it is you are** weird, too, and I think I do not like it.” No more in-store pictures. We made our purchases (I got Vocabulary From Classical Roots and Spencerian Handwriting — $20, not a bad deal!) and left.

Happy Patchfire!

Naughty rebel Smrt Mama! Please note my minivan, the Battlestar Galactogogue, with her lovely pro-gay marriage, pro-Obamacare, cloth-diapering, shop local bumper stickers — used to have a great breastfeeding magnet, too, but someone stole it at the homeschool co-op.

Smrt Mama is HARDKORE!

A nice field trip into the belly of the Christian Homeschooling beast. Another fun Secular Thursday!

*That’s Scary Jesusbook Store, not Scaryjesus Book Store. The store is the scary part, not Jesus.
**Patchfire reminded me that the book store owner did not say “it” was weird, but that “we” were weird.

This is just a quick update about our current program(s) of study, mainly to give me an at-a-glance look at our curricula:

Grammar: Growing with Grammar Grade 4, 3-4 chapter lessons twice weekly, with sentence diagramming as applicable and Houghton Mifflin Grammar Blast quizzes to demonstrate mastery of new concepts.

Vocabulary: Vocabulary from history chapters 2x weekly, vocabulary words from Rare Words 2x weekly, starting Vocabulary from Classical Roots, Grade 4 2x weekly [on hold for one more week due to broken arm].

Writing: Writing Strands Level 3, 1-3 sections 2x weekly, depending on chapter content. [on hold due to broken arm]

History: Using History: The Definitive Visual Guide as our spine text, 1-2 sections 2x weekly. Daily activities include vocabulary, important people/places/events, summary or narrative, timeline, maps, supplemental reading. Currently covering Greece, so supplemental reading includes Greek mythology from various sources, Greek literature, and Eyewitness: Ancient Greece as an alternating text w/ our main history text. One project per culture/time period.

Mathematics: Life of Fred: Fractions, four one-chapter lessons or three one-chapter lessons and the bridge per week.

Science: TOPScience physics lessons (currently on magnetism), twice weekly with Patchfire and Eclectic Girl.

Music Appreciation: Once weekly segments from Classics for Kids, one composer a week.

PE: Martial arts once weekly (at co-op), running and calisthenics 2-3 times weekly [on hold due to broken arm].

Extracurricular: Chess, math club (cyphers), and film making, once weekly through the co-op.

Still need to add:

Arts appreciation (looking for program)

Foreign language (possibly Japanese, possibly using Rosetta Stone, possibly starting in the spring semester)

Handwriting (picking one up this week to start once his arm is healed)

Typing (starting with the free BBC Dance Mat Typing but if that doesn’t do the trick, trying Typing Instructor

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Entertaining any suggestions, questions, criticisms, or comments on our curricula!