Smrt Lernins

When asked to correct some minor grammar and punctuation errors, Captain Science instead chose to completely rewrite his story. Unfortunately, this resulted in it no longer fulfilling the requirements of the assignment, so he is now working on draft #3. As you can see, version two is as bizarre as version one, of not more so.

Once upon a time, there was a nice town, and nice people lived in this town, but they had been cursed by a wizard, so they couldn’t speak any adjectives. As a result, their sentences were dull. One day, a spy who worked for the wizard noticed two men talking…about his master! The first man said, “The king will surely like when I deliver the culprit.” The second man said, “He certainly will.” Then a third voice said, “Listen up, both of you! Your wretched town will never survive with my spied lurking in every corner!” The spy’s eyes widened. The third voice belonged to his master. He then hurried off to prepare for a siege.

Captain Science’s grammar work today was to choose one word from a list of choices for each part of speech, use those words to write one sentence, and then use that sentence to start a story. I had some trouble getting him to actually use all the parts of speech, and as you can see, he played a little fast and loose with the interjections, but I found his story to be…well, ok, I found it to be absolutely absurd.

Once, there was a nice town, and nice people lived in this town, but one day, they were suddenly cursed so they couldn’t say interjections like “yes” and “no.” One day, a spy was spying when he saw two men talking. The first man was saying, “…the lord will not be pleased–.” The second man interrupted with, “not you!” since he couldn’t say “no!” “Besides–” he added, but he couldn’t say any more since he couldn’t say “Why you?” “FINE!” shouted the first man, “forget it.” “Whew!” said the second man. “Let’s race to the park,” he added, and they took off. “I like the second man,” said the spy. “He saved my master’s life.”

If you haven’t already guessed it, I might as well put it out there: I’m liberal (particularly definitions 1-5). I’m not just liberal, either. I’m a Liberal — a great big fat pro-choice, equal-marriage-rights-touting, social-services-loving, Universal-Healthcare-wanting, happily-tax-paying, tree-hugging, Obama-swooning, Olbermann-watching, if-real-life-were-like-West Wing-I’d-be-in-hog-heaven Liberal, complete with bumper stickers*. I’m That Liberal.

As you might imagine, liberal homeschoolers aren’t exactly in the majority in the Deep South. In fact, I’m pretty certain liberal homeschoolers aren’t in the majority anywhere, and certainly not liberal secular homeschoolers of the non-unschooling variety (which seems to be where many of my liberal homeschooling sisters gravitate). If you’re looking for the group that is probably the least represented among homeschoolers, the secular, rigorous, classical, liberal homeschoolers might very well be it. We’re certainly in the serious minority on the Well Trained Mind forums, the Mothering.com forums, and even in our local secular co-ops — I was surprised by the number of conservatives and/or “Libertarians.” Really turned my expectations of “hippie liberal homeschoolers” on their head. Turns out that the liberal hippie is being fast replaced by the Libertarian “nonconformist.” Hear that rattling? That’s my eyeroll.

When you’re the minority among a minority, you spend a lot of time dispelling assumptions about your motivations. No, I’m not homeschooling my child to protect him from evolution, sex ed that isn’t abstinence-only, or contact with “unsavory elements” like uppity women and Ho-Mo-sekshulls. If anything, I’m homeschooling in order to teach more evolution, better and more expansive sex ed, and provide plenty of contact with the unsavory elements that the conservatives seem to fear so much. I am thrilled that my children are getting plenty of exposure to women who don’t subsume their power to men. No, I’m not an opponent of “government” schools (the Libertarian term for public schools, intended to create a scary mental picture of overbearing politicos lurking in the corners of the classroom to brainwash your children). I think public education has done fantastic things for this country by providing a baseline of education for every child. I don’t think it’s a flawless system, but I don’t believe it’s evil, brainwashing, dangerous, or anything like that. I just don’t think it’s set up to meet individual needs that well.

Of course, I’m to the political and social left of the majority of religious homeschoolers. That’s a left I’m comfortable inhabiting. But being so far to the left of many other secular homeschoolers can make for a lot of awkwardness, like the time one boy in my writing class (an otherwise delightful child) starting making comments about how Obama was “messing up” this or that, resulting in a snappish response from me of, “That’s ‘President Obama,’ and let’s leave politics for the adults who know what they’re talking about, rather than in my class.”

It’s not that I expected a perfect meeting of the minds. I’ve spent my entire life in the South; I’m used to being the most liberal person in the room. I just thought there would be more homeschoolers out there like me. I didn’t think I’d continue to be the most liberal person in a room full of secular homeschoolers…but unless Patchfire is there, I still am. I’ve found my “tribe” for birth, breastfeeding, and parenting philosophies, but the handful of politically/socially like-minded homeschoolers are barely enough to make an extended family, let alone a tribe.

*I had more, but someone at the secular homeschool co-op also stole my “Breastfeeding for the survival of the human race” car magnet. Not pointing fingers, but almost all of the other liberal hippie moms in that co-op already had the exact same magnet.

If I have any other Michael Clay Thompson curriculetes* out there reading my blog, your input on this would be most welcome.

Tomorrow, I’m planning to get Captain Science rolling on his new MCT language arts curriculum. We have the whole Town level at our disposal, so any topic staging I do won’t have to revolve around the ordering of and waiting for books to arrive.

The recommended order of events seems to be:

1. Start the four-part grammar text (Grammar Town).
2. Halfway through grammar text, start the Latin-based vocabulary (Caesar’s English I).
3. Upon completion of the grammar text, begin writing (Paragraph Town), poetry (Building Poems), and practice workbook (Practice Town).
4. Upon completion of writing/poetry texts, start next level of grammar text (Grammar Voyage).

Is my understanding of the recommended order of text introduction (per this elemetary curriculum guide) correct?

Because Captain Science has such a good foundation of grammar already, I am considering starting him with the Latin-based vocabulary at the same time as the grammar, then alternating writing and poetry once the grammar is completing. I don’t forsee completion of Grammar Town taking any great length of time. Any strong recommendations for or against these plans?

I suppose I could just scatter the books around on the floor and let Captain Science chicken-peck at them at his own pace, but I guess I’m just the conventional type.

*There is something practically athletic about developing rigorous curricula for our classically educated children, isn’t there? I suppose we could also be curriculists or curriculeers, but that’s not nearly so awe-inspiring.

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

Homeschooling is traditionally thought of as being something primarily done by the religious in nature. People tend to make a lot of assumptions about your beliefs when they hear you homeschool. The number of secular homeschoolers is growing, however, and we’re slowly integrating ourselves into the culture of homeschooling.

I’ve talked before about how I often feel, as a secular classical homeschooler, like the odd mama out. While I have ways in which to cross the divide between the secular classical homeshooler and the secular unschooler (we have a lot of social things in common, generally), crossing the divide between the secular homeschooler and the religious homeschooler (especially the more fundamentalist homeschooler) is often more difficult. The philosophical differences between us are often so vast.

Despite the claims by some religious homeschoolers that they’re terribly persecuted, it’s the secular homeschoolers I see being attacked with regularity on homeschool forums. If a secular homeschooler comments on a “CC” thread, we get the royal pile-on and “how dare you!” and “didn’t you know this thread wasn’t for people like YOU?”  Conversely, religious homeschoolers don’t seem to have a problem making comments from a religious perspective on a thread with a clearly secular bent, but heaven help you if you point that out. I admit, it’s made me a bit bitter towards religious homeschoolers as a whole (the “as a whole” part is what’s important here).  I’m sometimes hesitant to comment on religious homeschool blogs, because I feel my perspective is likely to be unwelcome, purely because I’m a secular homeschooler.

Still, some people are able to bridge the gap. I have a few regular commenters on this blog who are of significantly more devout faith than I. Some of them even use Bible-based (or even *gasp* young earth creationist!) curricula. Two of my favorite fellow bloggers, Daisy from The Quiet Life and The Mama from Concordia Classical Academy are what I would consider to be the model religious homeschoolers — and their religious beliefs and curricula choices are often quite different from mine. I decided that my Secular Thursday post should be about the things that Daisy and The Mama do differently from many other religious homeschoolers I encounter online that make them such a fun e-people to e-know*.

If you, as a religious homeschooler, are wondering how you could become a goodwill ambassador between the religious homeschoolers and the secular homeschoolers, here are a few tips for you, based on the wonderful model of the gentle, generous, and humorous The Mama and Daisy :

• Stop recommending religious curricula, especially with the suggestion that I could “tweak it to be more secular,” because no, I usually can’t. All the tweaking in the world isn’t removing Biblical references from Abeka math or making a Biblically-centered history text suitable for secular curricula. A little religious reference in Life of Fred doesn’t bother me, but surely you can how going through a text with a Sharpie or telling the kids “just ignore that part” isn’t appealing. I’ve read enough posts on the Well Trained Mind forums to know that many religious homeschoolers would object to being given a science book and told  “but you could probably tweak it to make it less secular” or having it suggested that they “just ignore the evolution parts.”
• Stop recommending certain materials “for girls” or “for boys.” I’d actually prefer you stop asking for recommendations of materials, but if you insist on gender-segregating everything in your own children’s lives, at least do me the courtesy of not suggesting I do the same. “I’d recommend that book for a boy” or “Do you really think that’s a good program for a girl?” aren’t going to go over very well with most secular homeschoolers. The sex of the protagonist in a book doesn’t have to match the sex of my children for them to appreciate the story. Do you, as an adult, only read books with protagonists of your same sex? Also, stop making curricula/text suggestions based on the inaccurate assumption that all boys are “hands on” or “math/science dominant” and all girls are “good desk workers” or “language dominant.” That may be the reality that you have nurtured into your children, but it’s not one I have nurtured into mine.
• Stop trying to “save” me. No, seriously. You’re assuming that secular homeschoolers don’t believe in God (and that they definitely can’t be Christians), and need you to intervene on their behalf. Personally, I’m happy with the state of my soul and feel pretty right with God as I understand him. I don’t want to be preached at, prayed at, proselytized to, or have it suggested that I’m paving a short road to hell for myself and my children.
• Stop suggesting my children are a bad influence on yours. I’m growing tired of seeing comments about how you don’t like your child playing with the [Not My Religion] children [next door, at the co-op, etc.] or how you have major concerns about your child spending the night at [Child Not of My Religion]’s house because they could be lead morally astray. They’re children. Children. And frankly, my experience has been that children brought up in a very religious home (and their very religious parents) are a lot more likely to share their beliefs without solicitation than less/non-religious children and their parents. For all that I jokingly call my brother-in-law a “devout atheist,” I’ve never heard his daughter strike up a random conversation with another child about atheism. Conversely, I’ve had children start conversations with me (as an adult!) about whether or not I believe in Jesus. Secular homeschoolers aren’t trying to recruit your children (or you) into our secular army of secularists. Can you say the same of your fellow religious homeschoolers?
• Stop being taking everything so personally. If I got my panties in a twist every time someone made a nasty comment about us “evolutionists” or “immodest women” on the WTM forums, I’d have awfully twisty panties and spend most of my day in tears (from hurt feelings and an awfully uncomfortable bottom). You have to have a sense of humor about this stuff. Sure, I laugh at the comical (to me) notion of peaceful fruit-eating Tyrannosaurus Rexes hanging out with Noah on the ark, but  you surely laugh at the equally comical (to you) notion of people and apes having evolved from a common ancestor (or “people coming from monkeys,” as I keep seeing it inaccurately described). We can both poke fun at perceived absurdities in broader systems of belief.  Unless you mean an individual insult to me, as a person, every time you make a snarky comment about evolution, don’t take any snarky comment I make about creationism as an individual insult to you. I can crack about a movement or philosophy while still finding you to be a lovely, reasonable, and intelligent individual.

You don’t have to hide who you are or what you believe (read back through the comments and you’ll see that these ladies don’t blow smoke up my patootie or pretend to be anything other than who they are), but if you try applying these simple ideas, you’ll find that we secular homeschoolers react much more warmly when you participate into our threads or comment on our blogs. We might even find areas upon which we can have a meeting of the minds, or at least share a laugh over the absurd width of the gulf between our beliefs in those areas where we’ll likely never agree.

*You can add “e-” to any word to simultaneously indicate “something on the internet” and make it funnier.

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.

MJ has a few questions for the [Smrt] Homeschooler this week. She asks, “How long to do you plan to homeschool? What/how do you base you decision on whether or not to homeschool the other kiddos? And/or will you start Babypie out on the ‘public’ path or just skip it altogether and do homeschool from the beginning?”

Right now, my plans for homeschooling have no upper limit (other than college, obviously). That is going to be entirely up to Captain Science’s needs as he ages. I’m sure there will be many subjects where his needs outweigh my abilities. Luckily, that doesn’t necessarily mean a return to public school, unless he wants to attend one of the magnet high schools in our area, of which we have several. He could attended our local university (or one of the downtown universities) as a joint-enrollment student. He could take classes at Pierian Springs, which offers classes for upper grades with a collegiate style schedule, format, and campus (complete with collegiate pricing, though. Ouch!). We can get packaged curricula or find online classes for Advanced Placement classes, if it’s outside my subject area, and he can take the AP tests to exempt out of college courses. There’s tutoring, co-ops…we have lots of options. Returning to a mainstream public school really isn’t one of them at this juncture, though.

I might do with Babypie what I’m doing with the Tank, and put her in a year or so of preschool at someplace like the little Methodist school where the Tank goes. It will depend on her needs. I have no plans to enroll either of the kids in a mainstream school past pre-K, though. I’ve become too disenchanted with public education’s methods and goals. I think homeschooling is better for my kids and for our family as a whole. If one of them shows a need for a different environment, we’ll address that as it comes.

As a bonus, MJ also would like to know, “What’s the wackiest religious based material you’ve seen out there?”

Oh, MJ. How could I pick just one?

Around here, questions come often and in many forms:

“What does _____ mean?”
“What’s ____?”
“How does _____ work?”
“Why does _____ ?”
“How/why do we ____ with ____?”

Because I’m a mean mom I enjoy aggravating my children my own ignorance knows no bounds I believe in the whole notion of “teachable moments” (that sounds so impressive, doesn’t it?), I try to avoid just giving the answer unless it’s absolutely necessary (For instance, I’m inclined to answer “What does a brown recluse look like?” immediately, in case the questioner has just come into contact with one, but am less inclined to answer “What does ‘external confirmation’ mean?” if the questioner can look it up).

For many questions, the first answer is, “Did you look it up in your dictionary?” It’s amazing how that book actually contains information about the meanings of words! Even more amazing, someone can actually look in the dictionary himself and find the meaning!

If Captain Science found the meaning in the dictionary, we discuss it a bit. If he has questions about the words used in the definition, he looks those up, too. He tells me in his own words what the word means and how it was relevant to the discussion/reading where it cropped up.

If Captain Science did not find the meaning in the dictionary, as he sometimes does not (our dictionary isn’t great), we turn to Dictionary.com for a definition. Once we’re there, we often use the thesaurus function to look up synonyms of the word, and then we use those in the sentence in place of the word we looked up.

If the dictionary or Dictionary.com don’t contain the kind of information we need, and if we don’t have a book on the topic in our personal library, we Google and/or look it up on Wikipedia (which, though not an acceptable source for formal research, has an acceptably high accuracy rate for the purposes of answering our questions). HowStuffWorks also provides well-written articles explaining the mechanics of everything from hot air balloons to zombies.

If what we’re looking up a matter of science or history, we turn to reputable, accessible sources. I vet online science and history sources prior to letting Captain Science wander through them — when in doubt, I do my own search about the site to see if it’s been the subject of controversy or if it isn’t secular and/or evidence-based. PBS is a great resource for both science and history (for example, it has a great online library of evolution resources, including lessons for educators). We also turn to a lot of primary sources online. Online copies of original texts and films of speeches provide a lot more information than a site about a text or speech.

Through all of this, I encourage Captain Science to rephrase his question or expand on it, so he not only answers his exact query, but gains some context and nuance for the answer. If you ask “how,” also ask “why?” What’s the root of that word you’re looking up? What’s the cause of that event? What’s the meaning of that saying or the evidence behind that science?

The question and the method used to answer that question are just as important, if nor more so, as the answer. We like questions here in the McLernins household and we like finding answers together. I want my children to grow up questioning, to be lifelong questioners (and thus, lifelong researchers).

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?