Smrt Lernins

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.

*knock on wood* So far today, everything has gone right! I shall illustrate for you in bullet point.

The Ways In Which All Is Well Today:

The Ways In Which All Has Not Gone Well:

Not a bad day when the good list is that much bigger than the bad list (and the bads are mostly just not-goods as opposed to plain-old-rottens).

Some days don’t start out as smoothly as I’d like them to be. Captain Science can’t (or won’t) do or remember something that I think he should. We go back and forth. You should remember this! I can’t remember this! You know how to do this! I don’t know how to do this! If you can’t learn at home, you’ll have to go back to public school! If I knew how to do voodoo, I’d poke a pin in your doll’s FACE! (Ok, made that last part up). Next thing you know, I’m on the verge of yelling and he’s on the verge of tears. This can easily derail our homeschooling day and make us both miserable. I feel frustrated with Captain Science for not doing his work and guilty for blowing up him. He feels frustrated with himself for not being able to do the work and angry with me for not listening to him. Yuck.

Lately, though, I’ve been working on techniques to help us regain our equilibrium on days like this. Taking a moment to step back and find our center can quickly repair the rift between us before it grows into a gulf and can get us back on track with our work for the day, two happy people.

Today is a good example of how we’re making this new system work. Captain Science had completely forgotten how to do direct objects, despite coming back to this topic multiple times in the last few months. He just couldn’t do it. Couldn’t pick it out of a sentence. His attempts at diagramming it were becoming more and more ludicrous, with words and lines all over the place. I was fussing at him for not being able to do it, why can’t he remember, is he not making an effort, ARGH! We were both starting to raise our voices and making emphatic, angry hand gestures (have I mentioned he’s sort of, just a little bit, exactly like me?). I was very close to just screaming at him and he was very close to weeping.

I took some advice my mother’s friend once gave her about dealing with errant husbands, “Make him a sandwich.” In this case, I took a deep breath and fed him a cookie, then tried to figure out the source of both our frustration.

My issue(s): I know he has a photographic memory, so I interpret his inability to remember something as an intentional failure to remember, which results in a feeling that he’s not trying and that he doesn’t pay attention to my teaching. In other words, it’s mostly not about him, but about me.
His issue: He doesn’t understand that value of knowing about direct objects, so he makes a subconscious decision not to bank the memory. In other words, it’s not at all about me, but about the relevance of it.
The solution(s) for me: Stop taking it personally. He’s NOT not remembering to spite me or because he disrespects me. He just doesn’t see why the subject is important, which is my failure, not his. The things that aggravate me about him are surely the traits in myself that I don’t like. Don’t get pissy w/ him about that.
The solution(s) for him: Explain to him why grammar in general has value. I know he responds well to the idea of coming across, in speech and in writing, as intelligent and well-spoken, partially because he likes people to know he is smart, but mainly because being able to express himself well is important to him. He is a child who needs to be heard and understood. When I told him that proper grammar makes him sound intelligent and educated, and that throughout his life, using language correctly will help him be understood and respected, I could a visible shift as he re-engaged with the subject. Go back through the topic in two different media (a quick online and then diagramming on paper) and also allow him to explain verbally which part of speech is which, using playful examples (“‘They ran home.’ Are they running the home? NO! Home is where they’re going, not what they’re running. So the home isn’t the direct object. If I say ‘I run the home,” is home a direct object? YES! And it’s also true, because I RUN THE HOME.”) to get him laughing.

Within a matter of minutes, we were being silly, giggling, and he could diagram all three example sentences perfectly, as well as identify with 100% accuracy whether a word was the direct object or predicate noun. Once informed of the relevance, he could turn that memory back on in his brain and use it. Cookies were eaten, work was finished, and now we’re having a grand fine time while he reads his Ancient Greek history lesson for the day and flails in his chair. “I feel suddenly wild!” he just said to me. I’m glad. Better wild (and happy) than miserable and tearful.

I’m glad we found our center. I’m proud of both of us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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:

Still need to add:

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