Smrt Lernins

It seems to have become quite trendy among religious homeschool co-ops and resources to require parents to sign a “statement of faith” before enrolling their children in the program. These “statements of faith” may be as simple as swearing you are Christian and as complex as to make sure you match, theologically and philosophically, with the ideals of the co-op’s founding individual or organization on every single level. If you do not sign, you do not join. Insisting on a signed “statement of faith” may be within these groups’ right, but I don’t think it is right, morally. I also don’t think it’s particularly Christian.

What’s in a “statement of faith?” Ead’s Home Ministry would be happy to walk you through creating one for your religious co-op, because nothing says “love thy neighbor” like something specifically designed to “[e]xclude families that do not share the faith [you] have,” right? Among the many families you can exclude through your carefully worded “statements of faith” are those who practice “Non-Christian faiths and the cults” ( “cults” usually meaning “Mormons and/or any sect/denomination we don’t like”), believe in any form of “liberal theology” (like the notion that the Bible isn’t absolutely literal, accurate, and perfectly translated — not matter what version you’re using), or who don’t believe in the “truth about hell” (“truth” being a word I’ve noticed gets thrown around a lot in groups of this nature).

The words that springs to mind when I see such required “statements of faith” aren’t “devout” or “Godly.” They’re “defensive” and “insecure.” Surely, one who is secure in the rightness of one’s faith wouldn’t feel threatened by the inclusion of someone who didn’t think exactly alike. Surely, allowing a secularly homeschooled child to participate in a math or art class with your children won’t shake your children’s religious foundation or be an affront to your God. What’s the real intent of a “statement of faith” anyway? Is it really to help protect those of different faiths from being “uncomfortable” or feeling out of place, as the above website claims?

Do religious homeschool co-ops really believe they are in danger of being inundated by secular homeschoolers, with the intent of converting (or unconverting) their children and bringing down their organizations? The teachings of some fundamentalist churches are awfully paranoid, so perhaps they are ascribing an agenda to secular homeschoolers and our children. Concepts like “tolerance” and “inclusivity” are presented as subtle ploys to undermine belief. Personally, I’ve never met a secular homeschooler who wanted to waste their money and their child’s educational time on a creationist science class or Titus 2-style daddy/husband worship Bible study program, period, let alone one who desired to waste that time and money simply to undermine the program. We might like to enroll in classes on art, music, math, or a variety of other subjects. If we find the subject matter or the co-op itself to be so offensive, counter to our beliefs, or beyond our comfort level, we just don’t sign our kids up for it.

I know a few secular homeschoolering families who participate in religious co-ops in order to have access to classes and opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise get. Their goal isn’t to disrupt class or try to dispute any religious messages. They don’t teach their children to argue with the teachers or try to convince the other children in the class that their beliefs are wrong. The expect their children to be respectful of the co-op’s teachers, rules, and beliefs, just like you would respect the rules and beliefs of someone in whose home you were a guest. Most of them use the differences in beliefs as an after-class teaching tool, to show that people who believe different things can still come together in certain areas. Isn’t that a message we want to teach children, rather than the message of excluding and reviling anyone not exactly like us?

In many areas, especially smaller towns and rural regions, religious co-ops are the only game in town. Thankfully, not all religious homeschool co-ops and resources require these exclusive “statements of faith.” Some have them listed on their website or in their paperwork, which is helpful in making the theological and philosophical foundation of the organization obvious, but don’t require that parents or children sign them. Some require only that their administrators and/or teachers sign. Plenty seem to still actually believe that their goal should be educating children and providing services to the community. That seems to mesh a whole lot more with what I’ve read about Jesus than “keep your kids away from mine, you sinner” — then again, secular homeschooler here, so I supposed my understanding of the Bible is automatically suspect.

Incidentally, I’ve yet to come across a secular homeschool co-op that required anyone sign a “statement of non-faith.” In fact, our co-op is “an all-inclusive group” that “welcomes diversity” and doesn’t “discriminate on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political views, or teaching style.” Is that really so very threatening?

Laura asks, “How do you know how to pace homeschooling? I know homeschoolers who finished high school at 16 – how do you feel about that?”

It’s a little hard to think about long-term pacing right now, when all I want is for Captain Science to finish his daily assignments on time! I wish I were currently in the midst of worrying about pacing from the “whoa, don’t go too fast!” point of view, instead of our current “why is it taking you three hours to finish one math problem?” point of view. This boundary testing nonsene is a bitch that I’d like to send back to the pound.

Still, you’ve touched on a big issue for homeschoolers. Obviously, there are different schools of thought about how (or whether) to pace work in order to keep a homeschooled student on track for a roughly “normal” age of graduation. Some people let their children work at an entirely self-directed pace, even if that means graduating at 14. Others believe strongly (and I mean strongly) that certain subjects are taboo before certain ages or stages of development, and that you’re damaging your child horribly and permanently for allowing them to work too far ahead of what they feel is “age appropriate.” Think I’m exaggerating? Ask Patchfire how much flack a homeschooler takes for daring to algebra to a nine-year-old (even a gifted one). One mustn’t learn too fast!

Of course, you’re not asking what They (the collective “Them”) do, but what the [Smrt] Homeschooler does. Thus far, pacing (at least for the sake of making sure he doesn’t finish too early) has not been something I’ve worried about excessively. Captain Science is already officially one grade ahead, due to skipping a grade, so he’d be graduating early anyway. He’s working ahead of his grade level (the one to which he was skipped) in several areas, when he isn’t wrapped up in his hissy fit of “I don’t wanna!” that we’ve been experiencing the last few weeks. I couldn’t imagine deliberately holding him back or slowing his progress, just to keep him on “grade level” — whether out of fear of potential damage from introducing concepts or out of fear of him going off to college too young.

Some of our curricula is self-pacing. Life of Fred is a good example of this. He does a section a day, moving through it at a pretty fast clip, unless he’s having trouble with one of the concepts. If something is tripping him up, it will come out in the bridges between chapters. Since he has to correctly answer 9 out of the 10 questions to move on the next chapter, he could theoretically complete the bridge in one day. If he answers fewer than 9 correctly, however, he must complete the next try the following day. While only five tries are provided, there’s the option of repeating them until the concepts are cemented. Typically, he makes it through by the fourth try, though second or third is more common.

This does mean that he’s moving through the Life of Fred books pretty quickly, covering more than one full book per semester. It also means that, in another six to eight weeks (provided he gets back on track) we will be faced with the choice of starting either pre-algebra or beginning algebra, which puts us into the “oh no, you can’t start algebra too early!” zone. Personally, if the kid has the prerequisite skills, I don’t see why s/he couldn’t start algebra. Whether or not Captain Science will be ready, however, is going to depend entirely on his skill set at that point. I won’t hold him back if he’s ready. I won’t push him forward if he’s not.

The subjects where I control the pacing, such as history, I’m careful to not throw too much information into one day. This isn’t because he couldn’t make it through the work, but because I want him to have time to savor the minutia of the subject matter. Yes, he could read the entirety of Eyewitness: Ancient Rome in about 20 minutes, if it even took that long. He wouldn’t, however, take the time to think about the similarities and differences between Roman culture and ours, or what it would really mean to live in a stratified society (especially as someone on the lowest stratas), or about how different childhood might have been for him had he lived over 2000 years ago. Pacing, for history, means offering just enough information in a go to let him look at each fact and draw conclusions between those facts and his prior knowledge and experiences.

What I expect from him, work-wise, is increasing gradually over the year. He’s moving pretty rapidly from simple ideas to broad and important concepts — the speed at which he goes through the material hasn’t changed, but how he relates to it has.We’ve gone from listing dates and finding vocabulary to writing (hopefully) thoughtful essays based on essential question (both the “recurring questions in life” and the “key inquiries within a discipline” varieties). How do the differences in cultures affect childhood? What is the meaning of the forms of entertainment we choose, the foods we eat, the rulers we elect (or who conquer us)? If he’s ready to seek out the answers to questions like that and to think deeply and meaningfully (moving from the grammar stage and into the logic stage), why would I continue to insist he work on the lower level, simply because he’s in fourth grade and the logic stage “officially” begins in fifth grade?

As for what we’ll do about college when (since we’ve already gone past “if” by virtue of grade skipping) he graduates early, most of that will depend on Captain Science. If he doesn’t get any further ahead than he is now, and graduates at 17, I have no problem with him going to college wherever his heart may lead. At fifteen or sixteen, if he’s ready to handle the work (which he should, if he’s graduated high school), we’ll probably send him to a local college/university for a year or two, as we have wide variety from which to choose within a 30 miles radius.

Of course, if Harvard or MIT comes knocking at fifteen, I guess we’ll just have to change our plans a bit, right?

Do you have a question for the [Smrt] Homeschooler? Email them to
smrtmama@smrtlernins.com

Let’s talk about the weather or international disasters or politics. You know, something less painful.

Captain Science is…well, I’ll just call it “boundary testing.” I believe I mentioned that a little earlier this week. Of course, I made the huge mistake of commenting that he’d improved greatly by Wednesday, which of course means that by Wednesday afternoon, it had all gone to hell in a tightly-woven, decorative, but highly functional Longaberger hand basket*.

Sometimes, Captain Science is not the most forthright of children. He occasionally sneaks, cheats, and/or lies, especially if he’s trying to do something fun that requires polishing off a few chores or some work first. Along with being slow, slow, slow this week, he opted to do a little copying down the answers in Life of Fred and turning it in as his own work. Of course, because the answers to each section of Life of Fred are just right there, I can understand the temptation, but really, if you’re going to lie about having done the work, pick a problem where it’s not so obvious. Pal, I know you didn’t convert .875 to a fraction in your head that quickly.

Captain Science had been warned that lying would result in writing lines, so he got to start a page of lines that said, “I will not lie and I will not cheat.” That took him about fifteen times longer than it ought to have, pushing back even more work. Every task this week, with the exception of the first have of Wednesday and science on Thursday, has been like a long, slow tooth extraction. I’m pretty sure he’s accomplished a few chapters of Life of Fred, perhaps 11-14? He also managed to do a lesson of Editor in Chief and two Writing Strands sections. Before he goes to bed tonight, he’ll do a chapter of Vocabulary from Classical Roots. It’s not that the week has been educationally fruitless, it’s just been rather devoid of joy.

We’re trying some new things to get us back onto track, but it will take a couple of weeks to see how they pan out. Wish us luck and that week 21’s review is more positive than this week’s.

*The Nana collects these. She’s not really the collecting type, but she does love a basket, because “you can put things in baskets” and they are useful in the event of a disaster. The children all have Longaberger Easter baskets. I am not a Longaberger consultant or anything, but if you want to buy an expensive, but very nice, basket, Longaberger is the way to go.

Sometimes I feel like the kid in “The Rocking Horse Winner,” rocking away because there must be more money. Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy curricula, and through curricula comes happiness. So say we all.

I know there are a billion “homeschooling for free or next to free” websites out there, who will tell me I’m doing it wrong if I’m dishing out more than $5 for history, but between the gas and energy that would be required to go back and forth to the public library, which doesn’t have the vast majority of what Captain Science needs anyway, thus requiring heavy supplementing, I assure you, buying the exact curricula comes out cheaper in the wash.

I will confess to you that I’m about to make a major curriculum purchase, the Michael Clay Thompson Grammar Town set. We’re looking at the Level 2 Basic Homeschool package, because it has all the teacher manuals, which include the student books, for the level, which is for gifted 4th or on-level 5th graders. If only I had the money, I’d buy the complete package, which has separate student books, but I can’t dish out an extra $65 on top of the $105 I’ll be spending tonight. From what I’ve heard about the curriculum, it will be worth the money, especially for a language-mastering, Life of Fred-loving boy like Captain Science*.

Patchfire and I long to order the entire MCT series, so that we can see exactly where it goes. Unlike some curricula, which are available at the Scary Jesus Book Store (which I’m not sure I’ll be patronizing any longer, due to the owner’s attitude towards his customers), MCT can’t be bought locally, so we don’t have the luxury of flipping through it at our leisure. Between us, we’ll own Grammar Island and Grammar Town, but that doesn’t help us project forward to Grammar Voyage and the levels beyond. Will we continue to love it? Only time will tell, but I sure wish I already knew. I could develop a language arts plan from no until the end of time.

If I had an unfettered curricula budget, I would buy:

• Michael Clay Thompson language arts series
• Life of Fred College Prep Set
• The Medieval and Early Modern World seven volume set.
• The Definitive Visual Guides to Art, the Universe, and War
• Bevington’s Complete Works of Shakespeare, 6th ed. (mine is several editions out of date)
• Surely quite a few other things, but let’s focus on the brain candy above, shall we?

Unfortunately, I don’t have a limitless budget for curricula, so I have to buy only what I need, thus limiting my ability to plan ahead. As a secular homeschooler, my options for comprehensive, secular materials that challenge my gifted child, yet are engaging enough to make him want to learn are few are far between. Life of Fred is one of the few that meet nearly all of those goals (falling short only by not being entirely secular, though close enough for our purposes). MCT looks like it might fit into that narrow set of parameters. The DK books are glorious, though they require I develop all my own lesson plans for history (not a horrible torture, luckily). I also don’t have the money to keep replacing curricula that don’t work. It’s a hard knock life sometimes, being a secular classical educator.

What’s on your dream list of curricula?

*Captain Science declared tonight, “I don’t want to be called ‘Captain Science’ on the computer. I want to be known as ‘Shadow King.’” My answer: “Uh…yeah. You know, not so much.”

Surely not!

The last two days, we’ve charged Captain Science with the task of setting goals for himself and meeting them. If he can continue to do that through tomorrow’s work, then on Friday we will mail in the check for the Starbase program at Dobbins Air Reserve Base, a 5-week, one day a week course in aeronautics. If he can’t demonstrate the ability to set goals and complete his required work, he won’t be going. If he can, then he will.

Yesterday, he set rather long time periods for himself to complete the work (an hour to complete two math problems), but finished most of the work well before his own goal. Today, he’s set much more realistic goals and come within a few minutes of meeting all of them. For instance, he gave himself 45 minutes to complete math (6 problems), which would have put his finish time at 10:15. At 10:10, I check in with him, and he had only done a problem and a half. I reminded him of his goal, reminded him that he had to meet his goals at least reasonably well in order to attend Starbase, but didn’t express any emotion about the situation at all.

At 10:19, he came upstairs with completed math work. Funny how that works.

He completed his language arts, for which he’d allowed himself another 45 minutes, within just over 30 minutes, then took a snack break, and is rewarding himself now with his history. He’s been looking forward to the topic of the Roman army since we started Rome, and now he finally gets to read and write about he. He’s given himself an hour and fifteen minutes to read the chapter and write his essay, so as long as he completes it within an hour and a half or so, I’d say he’s stayed on task for all his major assignments today, and we’ll call this day a major win!

The goals he is setting are very close to the time blocks on the schedule, so we’ll try to get back to that next week. He’s been a little disappointed we aren’t sticking to it, and keeps saying, “But the schedule says it’s time for…” I’ve explained that, this week, he’s setting his schedule and motivating himself, because obviously I can’t motivate him. If he finishes the week strong, then we’ll slowly start reintegrating the extra subjects he loves.

Feeling pretty good about our progress. Hopefully this is onward and upward.

Officer Daddyman likes to containerize. We tease him about his collection of bins, particularly clear plastic bins of various sizes. While he really does buy bins with some degree of regularity, he usually does buy them with specific goal in mind, and the purchase typically is precipitated by lots of measuring and sorting. January is a good month for Officer Daddyman, because it’s when all the bins go on sale. I want you to hold all of this in your mind as I continue with this Tuesday’s “Ask a [Smrt] Homeschooler” post.

I wanted us to start our second semester with reorganized binders. Officer Daddyman wanted us to start with a neat desk. These are both noble goals.

Reorganizing binders meant a lot of sorting into categories, repairing torn notebook paper holes with those little white circle thingies, and generally reshuffling. Officer Daddyman walked into the school room to find me surrounded by piles of papers. His eyes grew wide, and he asked, “Are you keeping all of that?” (Of course, I immediately told him I’d be blogging that).

Today’s question, from Officer Daddyman is, “Are you keeping all of that?”

The short answer: No.

The long answer: While I’m not required to produce records for what we’ve covered, I want to keep them anyway. Keeping records does not, however, mean keeping every scrap upon which Captain Science ever scribbled a math problem. My keep file boils down to this:

The “dispose of” pile included all the “your turn to play” sections from Life of Fred, rough drafts of essays, old history vocabulary and timeline stuff (since we pretty much ditched that), and any scribbles, doodles, or scratch paper. Trust me, the “dispose of” pile was much larger than the “keep” pile.

Now the [Smrt] Homeschooler has a question for you? What do you keep? What papers are you required to hang on to for continued homeschooling on the up-and-up? What do you keep for personal records?

If you have ever, ever taken even the slightest bit of advice from me in the past, I urge you to reconsider ever doing so in the future (Other than this piece of advice: don’t listen to me! Except for that thing I just wrote. Listen to that). I am a miserable failure at homeschooling and should never be asked for advice on any subject. Unsolicited advice from me should be summarily ignored. Move along. There’s nothing to see here.

Captain Science has decided to just not do his work. Not only is he not doing his work within the time limits proscribed by my color-coded schedule, he’s not doing his work within the time limits of the actual day. We have not yet integrated any of our new subjects into the schedule, because we can’t make it through the basic four subjects (math, language arts, history, and science). We have the first chapter of our Latin materials ready to go, and have not even begun to begin them. I have another poem ready for Captain Science to memorize, but I can’t imagine even trying to integrate that into our day right now. My big plans to start art have gone out the window.

Three and a half hours: That’s how long he spent completing one chapter of Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents. You may be asking (if you wouldn’t ask this, play along, because darlins, I am at the breaking point), was it too difficult? Am I pushing him too hard or thinking too highly of his abilities, thus presenting him with overly-challenging materials? Am I asking for too much work in too short a time? No to all of this! He just can’t be arsed to sit down and finish his work. He can’t be bothered to make a freaking effort, even the minimal amount it would take to answer a hand full of questions in Life of Fred.

Instead of the beautiful color-coded schedule, we’re implementing a simple black and white schedule with only four subjects, plus piano. No Latin. No typing. No memory work. No logic. Until the basic subjects are being completed within something resembling their allotted time, nothing extra will be on the agenda. Until all school work is being completed within school hours, no electronics will be enjoyed, including the new iPod Touch Captain Science received for Christmas.

He has the choice to do his work or not, but doesn’t have the option of doing anything else as an alternative. He can decide whether he wants to do his work in a timely manner, but he can’t decide to fill his time with anything other than the work. In other words, do it or don’t do it, kid, but until you do, that’s all you do — I am just plain tired of standing over your shoulder. Own it.

I don’t know if this is going to work or how long it will take if it does work. He’s probably going to be scarred for life. He is certainly not going to be making any forward movement in his subjects for a little while. At this point, however, I no longer care. It’s bread and water education until he starts showing a little bit of freaking effort.

A better homeschooler would motivate her child to learn. She’d probably throw out all this boring stuff and let him do FUN!!! things all day long to inspire a love of learning, and surely he can learn about decimals from helping me shop for groceries! A better homeschooler’s child probably wants to learn and doesn’t ever balk at it. He wouldn’t go through stages of boundary-testing to see if she’ll find a way to make him do the work. She would let him play Pet Society all day long and call it veterinary science, and he’d definitely like her a whole lot better than my kid likes me right now.

Don’t take any advice from me. Go take some from her. I’m doin’ it wrong.

This week, we started back to school after a two-week holiday break and we had our first (and possibly only) snow fall of the winter. We also implemented our new schedule, which of course required some boundary-testing. You can imagine how unproductive this week turned out to be.

Math was exactly what I thought it would be, review by way of doing all the tries for the bridge to chapter 11 in Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents. Captain Science kept getting hung up on the problems requiring multiplying numbers with decimals. With each try, however, he was able to do the problem easily on a second attempt, so I think part of the issue was the dawdling and distractability. We went through it one more time, together, and I think it all snapped back into place, because his only mistakes thereafter were “couldn’t pay attention” errors in arithmetic.

History was…well, he enjoyed his chapters on Roman technology and social status, at least. His essay on Roman technology was good, and I enjoyed his conclusion that, “despite not having electricity, the Romans were in some ways more advanced than we are.” His essay on the importance of Roman social status turned out to just be a list of the different social statuses with a brief description, however.

Because we haven’t gotten our new MCT grammar curriculum yet, Captain Science worked on Editor in Chief A1 a lot this week, doing three lessons of it. He didn’t make any mistakes in the lessons, but it took him forever and ever to finish them. Vocabulary from Classical Roots went much more easily and quickly. He really enjoys vocabulary and the parts of speech. He isn’t very keen on rewriting paragraphs. Fair enough.

This week’s science unit apparently had something to do with boiling water while Captain Science and Eclectic Girl took turns staring at it and muttering excitedly. It also involved a dish of isopropyl (which my browser’s spell check keeps insisting is spelled incorrectly, even though it’s not) alcohol and sticking one’s hands into bowls of water of various temperatures. I guess that means they were learning about heat?

Officer Daddyman subscribed us to the Classics for Kids podcast on iTunes and he and the boys listened to one this morning while I slept in a bit with a bad headache. That was the sum total of our electives this week, I’m sorry to say. Next week will be better, surely.

On a positive note, Patchfire and I did decide on a good use of our newly-emptied Tuesdays. I’m using the mornings to do art and she’ll come over in the afternoons to teach a second science class (on the brain) and for me to teach creative writing. It’s a micro co-op!

I guess the first week back to school after the break could have been worse, but I feel like every single accomplishment was extracted with the relative ease of pulling teeth from a reluctant tiger.

Captain Science’s chapter from Vocabulary from Classical Roots included the root “serv-,” so we were talking about various words with that root: service, servant, deserve. I mentioned “disservice.”

Captain Science asked me to give an example, so I said, “When you leave your dirty dishes all over the table, you do me a disservice.”

Captain Science then gave his own example: “A boy’s family is cleaning the house, when his friend comes over to play. The friend goes home and leaves a mess of toys everywhere, while the family is cleaning.”

The Tank exclaimed, “Oh! I have one, too!” He then gave his example, which I can only partially transcribe, because it was very Boomhauer-esque: “A boy go to his friend’s house and then goes home and they say, ‘Oh no! The toys turned into a robot master!’ and [mumble mumble] fightin’ TWO robots and [mumble mumble] it turn into this thing and [mumble mumble] and that’s what I doin’.”

Um…ok, then.

Addendum: Apparently, radioactive ants were involved in the Tank’s story.

Babypie has a new game. She picks up a pair of shoes, walks around with them, “drops” them, sits down to pick them up, stands up, and then demands applause – which also cues me to say “You got them!” That quickly because the game of just sitting there and shaking the shoes for applause and “You got them!”

After playing this for a while, she started saying it herself. I love it when they get so good at playing something that I’m totally cut out of the process.