Somehow, the week got away from me and I missed Tuesday entirely. Well, missed it on the blog anyway, as I did at least show up for the co-op that takes place in my house.
Instead, I give you a semi-Wordless Wednesday.
Babypie turned one on Saturday.
Babypie would prefer you not attempt to touch her cupcake.
Babypie would probably be a mean drunk.
Four poetic meters, that is: iambic pentameter, trochaic tetrameter, dactylic tetrameter, and anapestic pentameter.
Captain Science’s assignment for Michael Clay Thompson’s Building Poems today was to choose a topic, choose four words, and write four four-line poems using the above four meters, each containing those four words and addressing the topic. Because it’s a rather challenging task, I agreed to do it as well. We had about an hour to work on our poems.
Captain Science’s topic: Roman wars
Captain Science’s words: The (I told him that’s a cheater word and next time it won’t count), Roman, loud, and war
Iambic Pentameter
The Roman drums of war sounded out loud
You could hear many men crying out loud
And then there was something that made them scream
A laser was attacking with a beam
Trochaic Tetrameter
Roman solders war my men and
Arrows shriek loud through the air, then
catapults chuck boulders ’round — whoa
One arrow ’bout grazed my hair!
Dactylic Trimeter (he forgot he was doing tetrameter)
Bash! Oh no — bloom! There goes my tower
’cause of the catapult’s boulder, it
flew so loud, yet it did,
I had some horrible curses, so
I cursed the Romans then the war
stopped strangely, ’cause of the dead army.
(This was supposed to be anapestic tetrameter, but he totally lost the meter on this one — I like it, though)
I’m a sorceror, so I cursed
all the Romans. The two armies
had warred day and night for
10 YEARS! Finally we have
won, and against Rome’s
army, now we are going
home so we can celebrate so loud.
My topic: Seasons
My words: apple, flowers, faces, feel
Iambic Pentameter
The sun beats down, the flowers brown and wilt
Our faces, also brown, are turning pink
My mother’s apple pie served a la mode
I feel a warmth that isn’t from the heat
Trochaic Tetrameter
Apple picking in the orchard
Falling leaves brush by our faces
Flowers of the summer fading
Autumn colors in their places
Dactylic Tetrameter
Oh, can you feel it? The winter is fading and
flowers are peeking their faces up out of the
snow and the apple trees soon will be blooming, so
fare the well, winter, for springtime is entering
Anapestic Pentameter
Faces cold, feel the snow soft and fine on the pines, evening time.
Frozen cheeks, apple red, snowflakes light on your head. Softly said
Whispered word, barely heard in the night’s dimming light.
Close your eyes, safe and warm. Winter storm singing nigh, lullaby.
This summer, we will be hosting a Pennies for Peace program from our home. We already run a small co-op on Tuesdays, so making the leap to a one week (with at least one follow-up at the end of summer) “summer camp” seems like a totally manageable idea.
Pennies for Peace is was founded by Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools, as well as being the co-founded and executive director of the Central Asia Institute, which builds schools for schools for children in regions that have no schools and few resources. Most significantly, the Central Asia Institute builds schools for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan, including areas where women have been deprived of education for decades. Says Mortenson, “If you educate a boy, you educate an individual; if you educate a girl, you educate a community.”
The Central Asia Institute has provided educational alternatives to the violence-fueling extremist madrassas that currently pepper that region of the world. By educating girls and young women, the CAI is contributing to improving overall quality of living and health in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Most importantly, the CAI’s projects help empower communities to empower themselves and seek additional educational opportunities. I can’t say enough wonderful things about CAI or Greg Mortenson.
Pennies for Peace is a program developed for school-aged children with the goal if helping them “broaden their cultural horizons and learn about their capacities as philanthropists.” Students in the Pennies for Peace program learn about Pakistan and Afghanistan and reach out to their community through the philanthropic task of raising pennies to purchase pencils and other school supplies for impoverished school children. One penny, which buys nothing in the United States, buys a pencil in Afghanistan. This most insignificant of coins can be a pathway to something incredibly significant, a powerful metaphor for even the smallest among us can make a powerful impact and be a part of remarkable change.
If you’re an Atlanta-area homeschooler, please start spreading the news of our Pennies for Peace program. We’re calling our group “Peace Begins at Home — Georgia Homeschoolers Raising Pennies for Peace.” We’ll host both a K-4th group and a 4th-8th group. The K-4th group will read Listen to the Wind: The Story of Dr. Greg & Three Cups of Tea, learn about their community, cultural diversity, about Afghanistan and Pakistan. The 4th-8th group will read Three Cups of Tea, compare our culture with those in Central Asia, and learn how to be effective global citizens. All students will learn ways to raise pennies for donation to Pennies for Peace. They’ll spend the summer raising pennies and we will reconvene in August to pool our pennies and make our donation.
If you’re interested in being a part of Peace Begins at Home, please email me at smrtmama@smrtlernins.com. We’ll have limited space, so it’s first come, first serve. While Pennies for Peace is a secular program, Peace Begins at Home welcomes students from all walks of life (though please be willing and able to respect the religious beliefs of others and those held by the cultures we will be studying).
Our anticipated dates at this point are May 24-28, with a follow-up date some time in August, though this is subject to change. Please feel free to email with any questions!
We’re talking about dictionaries today. Dictionaries: Handy tools, not sources of controversy, right? We can discuss dictionary options without someone being horribly offended, right? Right?
Now, behave y’all’s selves, ok? Dictionaries.
I assume most of you own a dictionary. We own several actual* dictionaries, but I usually use Dictionary.com and long for the days when I was enrolled in college and could access the Oxford English Dictionary online for free ($295 a year is too expensive for a subscription to a “book” I can’t fondle, no matter how sexy etymology might be…and etymology is exceptionally sexy, if you were wondering). One of my fondest literary fantasies is to have an actual copy of the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary. I thought I was something of a freak for wanting this, until the day Captain Science said to me, with longing in his voice, “I wish we had that giant dictionary with all the words in it.” Oh, my son! You really are my son, aren’t you?
Our actual dictionaries are all of the youth variety, and can I just be the first to say that the people who edit youth dictionaries must think that children are either a) really stupid or b) only reading Captain Underpants, because half the words Captain Science needs aren’t in there and the other half have such simplified or limited definitions that it’s rarely the specific meaning of the word that he needs. I end up looking the word up on Dictionary.com and having him choose the definition that seems to fit the context. Yes, I know we should just buy a grown-up dictionary, but refer to the above “I want the unabridged OED” and you’ll understand why nothing else will do.
On the Well-Trained Mind forums, a discussion arose over whether or not there is a method** to finding a word in the dictionary when you don’t know how to spell it. In that same thread, one homeschooling parent says she solved this problem by purchasing an Allographs dictionary, which, according to the product description is:
is a unique sound-based dictionary in which words containing a particular sound are listed under each of the spelling alternatives for that sound. It contains over 3,000 words. Words are set out in alphabetical order down and across the page. Students can see at a glance which sound is easy or difficult to spell. [...] With practice, students can easily “look up sounds to spell.” This is in contrast to a conventional dictionary where you have to know the spelling before you can look up a word. This means the Dictionary not only links to a useful set of exercises, but allows students to be able to check their own spelling during creative writing.
Captain Science is a fairly natural speller. With the notable exception of continuing to spell “because” as “beacuse” in his writing (if you ask him to spell it aloud, he spells it correctly), he can spell just about any word that he’s heard used in context and most that he hasn’t. He doesn’t have a difficult time figuring out the spelling of a word (using the method I describe below) to find the definition. I can’t imagine buying the Allographs Dictionary as an alternative to a standard dictionary, but I imagine it could be an exceptionally helpful tool for a child for whom spelling doesn’t come as easily and I also think it could help a child without spelling difficulties find different ways to look at language and how others perceive it. As someone who absolutely loves language, I’m inclined to say that whatever it takes to guide a child towards the correct and passionate usage of language is a positive thing, so I think that the Allographs Dictionary might find a home on my shelf at some point.
What are your thoughts on this? Does it make the dictionary more accessible for children who have spelling difficulty? Is it a shortcut (and if so, a helpful or hurtful one?) or just an alternative way of looking at language?
*I’m using this word to mean “as opposed to virtual.”
**My answer was that I think there is a method and that “both phonics and an understanding of vocabulary roots play a role in that method. When my son doesn’t know how to spell a word he’s looking up, he identifies possibly spellings and then likely spellings. For instance, “f” sound could be spelled “f” or “ph,” but if he knows the word he’s looking up was in a conversation about sound/music, the likely spelling is “ph” (root “phon”) so he’ll start there. He knows a word starting with an “s” sound is most likely to start with an actual s, but if he doesn’t find it there, he nows c is the next likely place.”
You know how some wealthy people have those special rooms in their houses in the event of a home invasion or assault, that go into a full lock-down mode with a line out to contact the police? I need something like that to protect me from reading other people’s plans for next year, because I have a rising sense of panic that is possibly on par* with what I would experience in the event of a break-in.
I wish I were capable of preparing my ‘10-’11 curricula that far in advance. It’s not that I’m not capable of making the plans, but I just can’t afford to buy that much curricula that far ahead of time. I can’t buy dozens of supplemental history books, get my language arts stuff two or three levels out, or an extra few books ahead in math six months before they’ll be needed. I’m envious of people who can afford to do that, but I’m not one of them. I see people’s lists for next year and I panic, because they have the books and I don’t. I can’t make too detailed of a plan for next year w/o the books, and I don’t have the books yet.
I know what I want Captain Science to be working on next year. It looks like this:
It looks like a great plan and all, but I don’t have most of that stuff yet. It’s not like we’re taking the summer off from homeschooling, either — we’re doing several subjects over the summer, plus a co-op’d unit study through Pennies for Peace – so while I will be buying books and working on lesson plans over the summer, it won’t ever be something to which I can devote my full attention (like it was the summer before our first year of homeschooling). This wasn’t something I had counted on, the feeling of always being a step behind where I should be. The lazy pre-homeschooling summer and hand-me-down curricula gave me a false sense of the ease and affordability of preparing for a school year. Of course, we’ve bought many, many books since then, so I’m not a total newb, but having to get it all together at once? Having to prepare for the next year while still working on the current year? Never getting a summer totally “off”? Can you blame me for panicking.
It’s a true blue Earnest Mom moment here, folks. I feel like I’m not doing it right and none of Patchfire’s protestations that she’s only getting ready for next year this early because they’re probably moving will convince me that I’m not behind. When you think of me, just picture Jodie Foster.
*I have an anxiety disorder, so I spike a comparably high level of panic over a wide range of things, regardless of whether or not the situation actually warrants it.
**I already have these books, thank goodness!
Should have blogged this yesterday, but it was a full day and I just didn’t get around to it.
Yesterday, I went to spring conference at Tank’s preschool. I met with his teacher and looked over her assessments of his abilities and development. I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw!
First, Mrs. SweetTeacher (he also has Mrs. HappyTeacher, the assistant teacher) showed me the assessment from the music class instructor. The Tank showed concept mastery in all areas, including the area of “how to behave yourself in a music class.” It wasn’t worded exactly like that, but that was certainly the implication of that particular bullet point. Tank apparently knows the names of all of the instruments used in class and can categorize them (drums are percussion, for example). He always participates in class and enjoys singing. This, I knew, as I can’t put on my Glee cd without the child belting out “Don’t Stop Believing.”
In Mrs. SweetTeacher’s class, the Tank has also been making great strides. His gross motor skills are just as good as I knew they were and his fine motor skills are also excellent. He can jump, skip, draw a straight line and a circle, and draw a picture of himself with all the parts that a child should be consistently putting in drawings at this age (head, facial features, arms, and legs). He is social and gets along well with other kids, always has a playmate as is right in the middle of the action, though he shows a mature ability (“We usually see that in much older children!”) to identify the kid that won’t put up a fuss if he swipes their toy — yes, the Tank is the kind of child who could easily become a bully if that sort of behavior weren’t parented out of him, which is one reason why I think homeschooling will be much better for him than public school, where his innate bullying instinct might be fed. I’m glad he has such a high level of social intelligence, but I want him to use it for good, not evil!
He knows all of his colors and shapes. He can count to 15, though he often skips 16 and/or 17, then can continue to count up through the 20s and 30s, and often beyond, especially with a little prompting. He has sight recognition for the names of all of the boys in his class (the preschool ended up with way more boys than girls this year, resulting in an all-boy classroom for the M/W/Th group). He can write his own name, from left to write in all upper case, though he writes each letter from right to left, which is sort of interesting. They don’t expect them to have name recognition or the ability to write their name, but they assess them for that anyway, just to see if they can, and the Tank can!
The area where I wasn’t at all aware how the Tank was developing was in letter recognition. He won’t even sing the ABC song for me (“I don’t know them all.”) and I didn’t know that he could now recognize all of the letters, at least the upper case ones! He sometimes misreads G for C, but otherwise, he can correctly identify all of them. Wow, this really blew my mind. On the one hand, I was really excited that he could do so much more than I realized. With Captain Science as my barometer, it’s often hard for me to know if the Tank is behind, normal, or even ahead, because Captain Science was so far above average that the usual “above average” seems like “average” to me, if that makes any sense. It was comforting to know that the Tank is not only NOT behind, but is ahead in most areas.
On the other hand, that I didn’t know all the things he can do leaves me with a slight feeling of loss, just like missing any milestone in your child’s life. Where was I when he learned the alphabet? How could I miss that he knew all the things he knows? I don’t think it would have occurred to me to feel regret about this if I hadn’t been homeschooling Captain Science this year. I like being a part of my children’s education. I like knowing what they know, because I’m the one who helped them learn it. I’m sad that I wasn’t the one who taught the Tank the rest of his letters and it only reconfirms my plans to homeschool him starting next year.
Mrs. SweetTeacher asked if we were reenrolling him for next year and I told her we would be homeschooling. She seemed disappointed that he wouldn’t be returning to the school. I’m glad his teachers seem to genuinely like and enjoy him, because he’s an enjoyable, entertaining child. Both Mrs. SweetTeacher and Mrs. HappyTeacher have remarked on his good sense of humor, his advanced verbal skills, what a great personality he has. It’s always nice to hear that from an outside source.
I’m thrilled this conference was full of so much good information, but now I can’t wait to start preschooling at home next year!
Christi writes, “I’ve considered home schooling my eldest for middle school, since our local middle school is really bad, and we can’t afford private school. The trouble is, even with my degree in education, I have a hard time just helping her with her homework. She gets frustrated, rolls her eyes, throw tantrums, and then I get irritated with her and give up. Have you dealt with any of this and how did you get past it?”
That’s a reasonable concern and on that many parents contemplating homeschooling seem to have. You’re touching on the very thing I feared when the possibility of homeschooling Captain Science was first brought up for consideration. We battled over homework nearly every night. I’m not being hyperbolic here, either. Almost every single school night devolved into fussing, yelling, tears, arguing, nagging, and/or fits over the completion of homework. If I couldn’t get him to finish an hour of homework without that sort of drama, how on earth could I manage to get him through a full day of school work? Were my days going to be nothing but a constant struggle to accomplish even the smallest tasks? Was I setting us both up for a complete breakdown of our parent-child relationship?
Well, take a deep breath in, Christi. Now let it out. Relax and be assured that none of the above worries have come true.
Your daughter spends most of her day at school. She’s probably up and out the door pretty early, spends a full day at school, and then comes homes only to do more school work. Of course she’s not happy about it. Who among us enjoys putting in a full day at the office, then coming home to spend an additional hour or more of what should be your time with family on work-related conference calls, paperwork, or, for a more accurate comparison to the majority of homework, a busywork review of your day’s tasks? Sure, some people like bringing their work home with them, but most people want to leave work at the office.
Newsflash! So do your kids. They also seem to understand instinctively what Harris Cooper, a professor of education and psychology at Duke University who is an expert on homework, has discovered through research: that there is very little evidence that most homework (reading and short assignments to prepare for tests excluded) in elementary school helps kids learn. In other words, all that work really is a waste of your child’s time and yours.
During her school day, your daughter may be interested and engaged in the materials. Her interactions with her teacher might be very positive. This positivity could carry over to the home education environment, with you in the role of the educator sharing new knowledge with your child. Or, it might be that she’s very unhappy with the teaching style, classroom dynamics, speed at which materials are covered, etc. and you could help reengage her with her education by finding the right curriculum and by providing a safe and secure environment in which to learn. As the homeschooling parent, you aren’t being put in the position of having to be a prison guard jangling the keys while your kids serve an unpleasant sentence issued by a teacher, a sentence over which you’ve had no input.
This may sound a little melodramatic to those of you whose children have always been homeschooled or whose homeschooling experiences weren’t preceded by negative public schooling experiences, but those of us who started homeschooling in response to bullying teachers who seem to punitively assign busy work can tell you that is exactly what it felt like many nights. It actually reached a point with Captain Science and his third grade teacher where I did finally declare some of the work to be pointless busy work that I didn’t care if he finished or not, because I got so tired of having to enforce rules I didn’t set and harass him through worksheet after pointless worksheet.
In the homeschooling environment, my reluctant homeworker has become a (usually) willing homescholar. Our daily materials aren’t busy work. It’s not worksheets to send home in order to have something to grade or give the appearance of actually teaching when I’m not. I have the power to make it interesting the first time through…and the first time through is the only time through, if he demonstrates mastery of the concepts!
Just a warning: you may have to do some deprogramming to get these positive results. Take a relaxing summer off and start the school year with positivity. Find out what parts of her day she most enjoyed, what aspects of education worked best for her, and let her know you’ve taken that into account when planning the curricula. If she balks, take it slow, and reassure her that she doesn’t have to worry about grades and tests, just about learning the materials and enjoying them. Don’t let it turn into a power struggle. You can always quit and come back to it the next day, which is better at the beginning that leaping right into the head-butting.
Ultimately, I think you’ll find how little homework and homeschooling have in common.
Captain Science wrote this little ditty today as an exercise in iambs and spondees.
I go into the kitchen
To get some pretzel sticks
And how much pretzels do I get
Well, nine’s how much I pick.
He didn’t quite integrate his understanding of the spondee into his poetic meter, but he’s getting there. He can explain it just fine, but since he’s only nine and still occasionally emphasizes words oddly in conversation, I don’t expect his usage to be perfect yet. We discussed that “many,” not “much,” would be grammatically correct here. He rewrote it to conserve the iambic rhythm and to try to use the spondee correctly. “Many” in the last line is intended to be the spondee, and when he reads the poem aloud, he stresses both syllables of “many.”
I go into the kitchen
To get some pretzel sticks
How many pretzels do I get?
Well, nine’s how many I pick.
I’m exhausted and, despite yesterday’s 70 degree weather, we have snow flurries. In celebration, I give you a collection of links (some homeschool-related, some not) to entertain you:
If you didn’t stay up to watch the debate and vote last night, you may be wondering if they passed healthcare reform. Did they pass healthcare reform? answers your questions with care and nuance.
Envy those stylish 20 and 30-somethings with their disposable income and tragically hip living spaces? Unhappy Hipsters has the cure for that.
Apparently, cultural bias is still keeping women out of science, math, and technology. Is this supposed to be surprising?
Captain Science apparently told Eclectic Girl that “knitting is for girls,” (though he told me, “I don’t recall ever saying that” when I had a little come the Jesus meeting with him on the topic of what men/women can/can’t do) Men Who Knit would beg to differ.
How have you people lived thus far without ThinkGeek? They have the best, geekiest products ever. I so desperately need a personal soundtrack shirt that I’d actually be willing to convert to Christian homeschooling or unschooling (your choice) if you mail me one.
Need a laugh this morning? Awkward Family Photos and Regretsy. ‘Nuff said.
There. Go, entertain yourselves and leave me alone.
I didn’t die from pneumonia, so I was able to return to schooling this week! With the completion of this week, we’ve done 140 days of school, so only 40 days left to go to meet our required number of days for our first year of homeschooling.
While we wait for our next set of math books, we’re taking a brief math break and doing a language arts-intensive week or two. Captain Science completed chapters 5 & 6 in Caesar’s English 1. We went back and reviewed the sections on appositive and gerunds/ gerund phrases in Paragraph Town (lessons 4 and 5), then lesson 6 (on clear paragraph topics). He also continued working in Building Poems, learning about meter and feet. He read through his Shel Silverstein poetry books and identified exampls of iamb, trochee, dactyl, and anapest. We also discussed different meters and clapped out the rhythm. I’m pretty sure he did some work in Practice Town, but I’m not the one who went over that work, as I wasn’t feeling great, so I’m not sure exactly which sentences he did! Finally, he read Wrinkle in Time for his literature and discussed it with my mother (since we were still over at her house for part of the week). He’s become interested in tesseracts, so we’re going to do some research on that.
We had co-op for the first time after a 2-weeks break. The game class is going to start playtesting a simple version of their food fight game next week. The Brain class students performed an “MRI” on an orange (with raisin and cranberry “tumors”) and made neurons from marshmallows and rope licorice, along w/ their written work. My writing students starting working on dialog vs. exposition, when to “show” and when to “tell,” and are supposed to spend this week writing 10-20 minutes a day and keeping a log of it, in order to develop the habit of regular writing.
Captain Science and Eclectic Girl worked on labs on friction at Patchfire’s house this week for physics. Captain Science had some trouble making sense of one part of the lab setup, but luckily, EG was able to make sense of it. They seem to alternate taking the lead on the physics labs now (or at least, on being the first one to figure out the lab setup), which is an improvement over the previous units, where Captain Science mostly let EG do the thinking. I’m glad he appreciates this smart young woman’s leadership qualities, but I don’t want him slacking off because of it.
The Tank had his “Green Patrick’s Day” party at school and Babypie is gearing up to turn one on the 27th! I’m beginning to prepare our work for next year, including projecting WAY ahead to the end of the year, when EG and Captain Science both start the middle ages and I guide them through an awesome unit study (hopefully EG will be able to be involved in this, *stern look at Patchfire*), where they’ll choose a favorite time period and do extensive research into it, developing a persona (yes, sorta of like in the SCA) and learning what their persona’s life would have been like — what sort of education would they have had? What mathematical and scientific beliefs were in that time period? What foods were eaten? What clothing was worn? What was the political status of their nation and the world? We’ll make clothing, taste the foods, and try our best to attend a local historical recreation event! Only have, you know, 9+ months until we can work on that.
