Smrt Lernins

I wanted to set a reading challenge for myself this year. I had fallen into something of a reading rut, doing a lot of rereading favorite books, and wanted to make myself read some new things. While I’m a fast reader, I wasn’t sure I was up to the challenge of 52 books in 52 weeks, because I do have other hobbies and interests outside of reading. Instead, I decided I’d shoot for four books a month, so that I’d have an extra couple of days of leeway if life got too busy for me to sit and read for any length of time.

ETA: I am soliciting recommendations for future FBAM reads!

In January, I read the following books:

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver was exactly what I needed to start the year. Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite contemporary writers, and she did not disappoint me this time. Politics, history, an (incredibly appropriate) undertone of magical realism, with a partial setting in Asheville, NC? Color me sold. I learned a lot about pre-WWII-era communism, Trotsky, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and about the McCarthyist senate hearings and blacklist. The format, journals and letters of the protagonist assembled posthumously by his secretary, creates interesting gaps in the timeline and provides limited insight into certain areas of his life, but detailed looks into others. I noted some uncomfortable similarities between political events in the book and some current goings-on. Definitely worth reading!

My Name is Memory by Ann Brashares wasn’t nearly as fluffy as I’d anticipated. I enjoyed Brashares’s other work, the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, but it wasn’t the most substantive read. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Brashares devoted as much energy to crafting the setting and backstory in My Name is Memory (an area that I found significantly lacking in the Pants books) as she did to character development. Brashares’s take on reincarnation was interesting from both a literary and philosophical perspective, and I enjoyed the short glimpses into all the different cultures throughout history. Not the best book I’ve ever read, but a solid and enjoyable book nonetheless. We’ll call this one Deep Lite.

Julie and Julia by Julie Powell was also not the fluff I had anticipated. I was anticipating a self-congratulatory Pioneer Woman-esque story of lookit-me-I’m-so-awesome! I didn’t know anything about Julie Powell’s life or history, but learning where she was working at the time gave me a different understanding of why she started the Julie/Julia project. I enjoyed the blogging aspect, especially since blogging wasn’t anywhere near as popular when Julie started her project. The cooking managed to sound alternately (sometimes either simultaneously) delicious and disgusting, the people were all funny and (since they’re actual people, at least in theory) sometimes behaved unpredictably, and the project itself was inspiring. I loved that final stick of butter. Thoroughly enjoyable book.

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss was good as far as fantasy goes. It’s hard to impress me in that area, because I’ve read so much fantasy. I’m underwhelmed by the protagonist, Kvothe, because I find little to relate to with a character who is good (usually the best) at everything, all the time. The “I’m so gifted, everything comes to me naturally” trope is one of the most common in sci-fi/fantasy that it’s easy to predict the character’s personal arc: S/he’s the youngest ever to [do suchandsuch], s/he will lose or be separated from his/her parenst through a traumatic event, s/he is doubted until s/he makes a display of his/her talent that is both impressive and tricksy, his/her fatal flaw is pride in his/her amazing abilities and that leads to a loss of something s/he really wanted and will spend the rest of the book trying to craftily win back, all the while interacting with an unattainable love interest (which of course, we know is ultimately doomed — the question is only whether the love interest will die, turn out to be a bad guy, or be stolen/seduced by the bad guy). That’s almost every fantasy book, ever. It’s hard to sympathize with the ill treatment Kvothe receives from others as a response to his success, because it’s just so predictable. That antagonist (the jealous fellow student) isn’t well developed; he’s every jealous student/fellow mage/whatever in every fantasy book, with no good points. On the plus side, the larger story arc (the one that is obviously intended to go across the whole series) is much stronger; the world is richly developed, the magical system is quite good (based on thermodynamics, in part), and the writer’s use of language is enjoyable. I thought I would be more impressed by this than I was, because I’ve had it so highly recommended, but I think my standards for fantasy are higher than average. Perhaps that’s a result of being raised on Tolkien? I fully intend to read the other book(s) in the series, because now I’m invested in the story and want to see what happens, so I guess that’s a mark that this book was good enough.

The January Itch. Patchfire promises me (somewhat menacingly) that I will get it. Apparently it has something to do with an impatient longing to change all your curricula, rearrange your schedule, and plan for next school year. We’ve made so many changes already in our short time homeschooling, however, that I’m not sure to what extent the January Itch will overtake me. I hope that by continually reevaluating and changing curricula as needed during the year, I can get the positive aspects of it and not the frantic, stir-crazy negative ones.

In that spirit, as we approach the halfway point (we’ll hit 90 days on Wednesday), it’s time to take another look at what’s working and what isn’t. We’ve made some curricular changes (which my brain keeps seeing as “circular changes,” which is also true), some pleasing, some less so. We’ve let some things fall by the wayside, some for well and some for ill. Here are my feelings on some of our current curricula:

Dance Mat Typing — This free typing program offered by the BBC is much adored by my children, and somewhat loathed by me. While it does seem to be helping Captain Science with his typing, I can’t stand the songs and noises this game/program makes, though I admit that I enjoy the goat’s Scottish accent. We had a bad few hours a couple weeks ago, when Captain Science reached some level with a snoring hippopotamus on Officer Daddyman’s computer (to which I didn’t have the login) and the Tank inadvertently logged him out — leaving us with a loudly snoring typing program that we couldn’t turn off! I give Dance Mat Typing a C for the annoyance factor.

Editor in Chief A1 — I purchased this level because it was recommended for Captain Science’s age level and because I was concerned that the new format of the curriculum would cause him to get lost if we started at a higher level. Bad call on my part. This book is far too easy for Captain Science. The writing in the exercise paragraphs is simplistic and awkward, leading Captain Science to sometimes improve the writing style and count it as one of the expected number of corrections for the exercise. He has no problem identifying the grammatical mistakes and correcting them. The size and spacing of the lines provided usually results in him writing overly small or having to write on a second piece of paper. Because he finds the work so tedious, he’s often lazy in the rewrite. I have higher hopes for higher levels of this program, however, so Editor in Chief gets a C+.

Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents — This curricula works perfectly for us. My only continuing complaint is the answers being on the same page as the questions. Captain Science is good about covering them, doing the work, and then checking and correcting them himself. He’s flying through this book thus far. The format suits him well. The story is interesting enough to keep him engaged and doesn’t sacrifice the quality of the mathematics instruction to deliver the story. I give Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents an A+.

Logic Countdown — This is the curriculum Captain Science begs to do. I find him working on pages outside of school hours! I like the variety of logic puzzles, the mental tools being taught, and the fact that it’s broken into small, manageable bits for easy assignment. I view the answers in the back of the book as a guideline, though, not the definitive answer, because Captain Science often finds unusual ways of grouping objects that make perfect sense to me, but aren’t the obvious (or “normal”) answer. I’d like to spend more time working on this, though it’s hard to make it the priority subject, since it feels more like fun than work. Silly me! I feel this curriculum really gets gifted students, so I give Logic Countdown a nice, solid A.

Spencerian Penmanship — I confess, we have yet to start this. It looks so daunting. It looks like it will require a lot of initial micromanagement of Captain Science’s efforts. I admit that I just don’t have the energy for that. The font itself is gorgeous, but the books are just so fussy! I’d like to be the mom who goes through all the steps in the theory book, but I doubt I ever will be. We’ll give this another go in January, but right now, Spencerian Penmanship gets a big fat F for failure on my part.

Vocabulary from Classical Roots 4 — I like the idea of this program, but the truth is, Captain Science’s vocabulary is too advanced for this level. There’s also the issue mentioned in my last weekly review, where ambiguity in the questions leads to “incorrect” answers, and there’s no taking into account the possibility for students thinking outside the box. The word choices are good and the method of instruction is sound. I just think we could find something better suited to someone as linguistically gifted as Captain Science. Vocabulary from Classical Roots gets a B.

Writing Strands Level 3 — Captain Science likes this curriculum a great deal, considerably more than I do, in fact. I like that it establishes a foundation and builds upon it, but it doesn’t ask for enough in a single lesson, it’s too simplistic, and it’s taking too long to get to the actual meat of the writing. It engages Captain Science much better than IEW did, he doesn’t balk at writing lessons, I appreciate the tone of the materials, and the example writing is solid, but I feel like I’m still on the look out for the writing program for us. Perhaps, as a writer and writing instructor, I will never be satisfied until I develop my own curriculum. Until then, Writing Strands gets a B-.

I’m alternating between dread and excitement over the complete revamp of our schedule I’ll be doing for next semester, in order to accommodate new subjects like Latin and piano. It’s beginning to look a lot like Aieeeeee!!!!mas.

As a secular homeschooler, I have a deep fondness for DK Publishing. I wasn’t interested in purchasing a boxed history curriculum, even if one I felt was both adequately rigorous and completely secular were available to me. Instead, I chose to pick a main text for developing a timeline and use supporting texts and other resources (websites, field trips, fiction stories, mythology trivia cards, etc.) to supplement. The books from DK Publishing have largely filled that need.

Here are a few DK texts we’ve used so far this year:

History: The Definitive Visual Guide provides the spine for our history curriculum. This book uses secular dating (BCE/CE) and doesn’t couch history in terms of religious events. As the title suggests, this text is visually stunning, with full color pictures of settings, people, and artifacts. Each section starts with a timeline of important events. The chapters are fairly information-dense, which makes this book appropriate for strong readers of the logic stage and up. The book does leave some gaps in knowledge. Overall cultural accomplishments are well covered, but many important events and people receive too small a mention. For example, Ancient Greece, I couldn’t find a single reference to the Battle of Thermopylae. Make sure you read through each section and choose appropriate supplemental materials for the thin areas. On the whole, however, it’s a much deeper look into each time period than any other history book I considered for our spine — it beats the singularly nonsecular Kingfisher history hands-down and is better than the Usborne for an older student.

The Eyewitness series is one of our best sources of supplemental reading. Thus far, we’ve used Eyewitness: Mesopotamia, Eyewitness: Ancient Greece, and are beginning Eyewitness: Ancient Rome. These books provide detailed information about the arts, technologies, daily life, clothing, and other cultural aspects of each time period. They, too, have many wonderful illustrations with detailed captions and each has a pull out full-color poster with important terms, events, people, and other details. We like to put our posters up right by Captain Science’s workspace. They also come with clip-art CDs, which we haven’t used, but might in the future. I have to say, both Eyewitness: Mesopotamia and Eyewitness: Ancient Greece contained more information than I remember learning about either culture until at least high school, and possible college, in the case of Mesopotamia. The books are written for children around age 8+, so it’s easy for children to engage with the material, but it’s by no means dumbed-down or overly simplistic. The biggest down side of using these as a school text was that Captain Science would sneak off with them and read them straight through instead of waiting on each lesson.

Many of the sections in the Eyewitness books match up well topically with History: The Definitive Visual Guide. When we covered Alexander the Great, Captain Science read the sections in both books, which presented the information in two slightly different ways and presented a nicely rounded picture of this famous ruler. The sections on science and medicine in both books matched up nicely, too. I’m looking forward to seeing if Eyewitness: Ancient Rome and the chapters in History have the same degree of parity.

All in all, you can consider this post my love letter to DK Publishing, because I’ve been very pleased with everything I’ve purchased so far. Even better, because these aren’t books aren’t published specifically for homeschoolers, I’ve been able to find them in my local book stores and use coupons and my educator discounts on them! Nothing like inexpensive, secular, quality texts to make a history-loving homeschooler a happy mama!

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?