Two things I’ve learned since we’ve started homeschooling

Three and a half years ago I wasn’t sure exactly how homeschooling would work for my family.  My oldest had completed Kindergarten, and while we thought everything was fine, we saw changes that we didn’t like.  Gone was the strict phonics based reading that she had learned at home the year before Kindergarten, instead she was confused by little pictures and bored with sight word stories that made little sense.  She was stressed with interpersonal issues that a 5 year old shouldn’t have to deal with.  She cried every Thursday as she faced timed Math tests.   She was coming unraveled.  She wanted to excel, but when she did she was placed in a peer group of children she could “mentor.”  Her bright and joyful disposition became shadowed and stressed.  

Our first year of homeschooling was a challenge to say the least.  We had Naomi starting first grade,  4-year-old Rebekah, and 1-year-old Nathaniel.  The transition home was harder than I thought it would be.  But I learned some important lessons since we’ve started not so long ago.

My first big lesson was taught to me by Rebekah.  She loved homeschooling.  I had no intention of starting her until her age fell in line with that of her peers would be attending school.  I figured this would give me time to get a handle on what I was doing.  Rebekah asked me when she was 4 to teach her how to read.  She accused me of wanting her to be dumb when I put her off, and finally I had a moment when it clicked--I realized here was a child who wanted to learn, I should teach her regardless of her age.  There is no age limit to curiosity.  Of course, this natural desire to learn can backfire.  Now four years old himself, spouting off facts that he’s learned by listening in on his sisters’ physics lessons, Nathaniel joyfully experimented with gravity.  No one was injured, nothing important was broken.

My second big lesson came this year.  Naomi is not fond of language arts.  Somehow last year our program did not work for her.  I bemoaned her atrocious spelling and worried about her writing skills. By the middle of spring, I realized that I was failing to teach Naomi in a manner that she could understand.  By the end of the year, I decided to “fail” Naomi in language arts.  In reality, it wasn’t so much a decision; it was an all out failure on my part to teach her adequately.  Up to this point, I never thought about a child who has failed at something, or how the method of learning and the method of teaching can vary so greatly.  The onus falls on me to teach my children in the manner that best serves them.  We don’t despair about failing though, we try something else.  Fortunately, we’ve found an English curriculum that makes sense to Naomi.

If I had known even these two things, which it’s ok to try again, that it’s ok to follow your child’s natural inclinations maybe our homeschooling would have been a little less fraught with anxiety.  

How we work it all out

I am sometimes asked how I schedule our days.  I always want to laugh, because really, I don't schedule our days.  Scheduling implies that we have a time line to follow, that we might know what we are doing.  We don't.  This is my third year of homeschooling and we still don't know what we are doing.  But for the curious, here is the basic breakdown:

We are all usually up before 8 o'clockish and have breakfast around 8:30.  We mostly eat breakfast together as a family.  Then the short people are supposed to go get dressed and get ready to face the day.  Usually this works out to mean that around 9:00 I realize they are all hiding somewhere reading, so I have to get after them to get dressed, make beds and face the day.  Fifteen minutes later, I have to get after them again.  Hopefully, by 9:30 we are ready to start school, but that might actually not happen until 10:00.  I suppose that I could be stricter with the chores and getting ready in a timely manner, but I enjoy my coffee, straighten up the kitchen and such, and face the day slowly.

We have what we call "couch time", which is when we tackle Bible, History, Memorization, Geography, Readers, Literature and Poetry.  I follow the schedule that we get from Sonlight for those subjects, and I aim for 4 days of work a week (although I use the 5-day schedule in the curriculum).  This year we added in Christian Studies from Memoria Press to see if we like it, so that is also included in couch time, as well as the readings for Latin and Physics.

Usually, we break from the couch, put things away and have lunch and play time.  We reconvene close to 1:00 for "table time".  This is usually when The Boy is sent to bed for a nap.  Coincidentally, he plays during couch time, unless I have a hint of foresight and print him off a coloring sheet to go with what the girls are learning.  Table time isn't scheduled other than the stack of written work comes out and is tackled. We hit the subjects that require more direct supervision first.

Over the course of a week we watch the Latin DVD, work on drill sheets and derivative sheets, read and review history, work through exercises in the books and a quick quiz at the end of a lesson.  English is completed together with direct instruction, as well as Spelling.  Math and Cursive are worked on individually with facilitation.  Physics is done 3 times a week.  We read the chapter during couch time on one day, the next day we complete the experiment, and the third day we finish the follow-up.

Normally, we are done around 2:30-3:30 for school work.  But its not unusual for someone to finish something up a little later, or for someone to go back to a subject and work on another part or section.  If a day spirals out of control and things don't get done, I will require them to work on something after dinner, or before breakfast the next morning.  Sometimes Physics is taught by the Man, in the evenings.  We aren't tied to any sort of schedule, and there are days where we don't get half of this done, but call it a good day because we were together.

One thing is that while I have 5-day schedules, and I buy 5-day curricula, we very rarely work 5 days a week.  Some days we are tired, some days we are lazy, and some days we just want to have fun, or do chores, or any number of things that distract us.

So that in a nutshell (emphasis on NUT), is how our week works.  Far from a schedule, but we have a general routine we keep up.

September

I love this time of year, when the sun cools and its not as hot.  It reminds me of the fall I spent with my grandparents and how beautiful things were every morning from the steam rising off the river as I walked to the bus stop to the bright red sumac before the leaves dropped.  Everything was golden with pollen motes floating in the afternoon air, and the grasses spun gold, no longer green with summer.  I wonder how I can offer my children such beauty everyday, and sadly I'm not sure I can find a way.

More curriculum talk--because I'm boring like that

I'm finally stepping out of my shell.  I've loved most of Sonlight's boxed curriculum for 3 years now, but I noticed something was working for my oldest.  So this year I've talked and talked and talked, and read, and read, and read about curriculum until I finally think I've got a solid Language Arts program planned for my kids.  Yes, I realize I've mentioned this to the point where I'm driving everyone around me nuts.  But really!  I've got it.  At least... I hope I have.

Here's the plan:  

*Rod and Staff English 2-accelerated for the oldest, on course for the Princess.  When the Angel gets through Rod and Staff English 2, I'll move her into Rod and Staff English 3.

*All About Spelling for both, probably at the same pace.       

*Latina Christiana I, I'm going to slow this down for both of them (which means go the pace that is recommended.  We've flown through Prima Latina).  If I need to, I'll supplement it with Ludere Latin for the older one.

*New American Cursive II, we are wrapping up NAC1 soon, and I'm finding this to be a very usable cursive curriculum.  

Its kind of liberating to have a handle on my plans and to have my program put together.  The girls are finishing up cursive 1, Prima Latina, and have just started the Rod and Staff, and so far I think my biggest concern is directing how they do their table work as they are sharing some of the materials.

Also in the shake-up we are ditching Sonlight's Bible program for Memoria Press' Bible curriculum.  I wanted something a little more in depth for the kids as they are getting older.  I hope that I'm not disappointed.  We'll keep the Core from Sonlight though.  That is our favorite part of the school day.  We'll keep our Horizon's Math too.  Every now and then I get worried as we move into new territory, but I still think overall its working well for the kids.  We're also trying a new Science this year, Real-Science-4-Kids Physics which is exciting.

SO deep breath as I hit the place order buttons for more curriculum!

Humility

A thought has been niggling at my mind lately and I keep seeing the triggers for this thought popping up around me.  There is a certain pride that some people take in educating their children. I know I take pride in it.  I love the chance to choose the right program for each of my children.  I relish thumbing through curriculum catalogs as I consider each child, and each child's interests, strengths and occasionally even weaknesses. I feel joy in knowing that I am doing the best thing for my daughter who is advanced in her studies, but very much emotionally her age.  I am happy to report that I have followed my children's leads in their desires to learn.  All of this feels great to contemplate.  Yet, then there is that little thought at the back of my mind.  Its been there for a while, but its finally become loud enough to listen to.  And it makes me feel ashamed, and worried.

You see, we started that fantastic Latin program, which includes learning prayers.  I made the remark a couple of times about how I wanted the kids to learn the table blessing so that we could say it each night.  I made jokes about people who sing a table blessing, as they all hold hands and how it used to make me uncomfortable as a kid.  I like the table blessing the kids learned, and I like how it sounds when their sweet voices repeat it.  I like the translation of it.  But recently, I realized that my child has been praying this prayer to show off her Latin.  Pride has rushed in like a wave and taken over a spot that shouldn't be full of pride.  Prayer should never be about pride, and I'm teaching my children pride instead of humility.

What drives this home is an encounter I had with another child.  I took 2 years of Spanish in high school and 2 courses in college.  I can ask you where the bathroom is, and I can repeat the "hi, how are you?"  "I am fine (or so-so, or bad), and you?"  bit.  In my education, I picked up a different accent (I'd wager because all of my instructors experienced Spanish in Spain and not Latin America).  It surprised me then when in a playful greeting exchange, the child I was speaking with corrected me rudely and told me that I was wrong in how I pronounced something.  I smiled and let it drop since it wasn't a big deal.  

I thought about her assurance in her correctness, and about how she took the opportunity to show off her own education in this matter.  I was reminded that my own daughter did this just a couple of days ago when she begged to pray at her cousin's birthday celebration, and did so, in Latin.  I realized I have taught my children to do the exact thing that I found uncomfortable to be a part of as a child.  I also realized that in my desire to teach my children to value their education, I haven't taught them to value kindness and humility--not showing off what they know, not making people uncomfortable with their actions and words--above that education.  It's humbling to see this failure and to know that it is directly because of my own pride and my own actions.

Curriculum from Memoria Press

New American Cursive

Memoria Press

We just started a new handwriting curriculum here.  I have used Handwriting Without Tears (HWT) for printing and its worked for my girls.  I knew that we would be starting cursive soon, and I just didn't like the look of the HWT style.  Here's my problem, the oldest, my 8-year-old angel is right-handed and the second, my 6-year-old princess is left-handed.  I had to find something that I could teach both of them easily.  Angel and I looked at a few samples together as I was only going to start her on cursive writing to begin with.  But then, I came across a couple of independent articles about the benefits of starting cursive handwriting in first grade instead of the now common 3rd grade.  Which hit me that I could teach two children one skill at the same time.  Who doesn't love that?  So I picked a program that had simple, pretty formed letters and would work for the two.  I am thrilled.  Both girls look forward to penmanship and willingly complete extra practice.  I can't wait to see where this goes with them.  

Best features of the New American Cursive include the top bound book, straight forward lessons, reinforcing activities and practice throughout the book.  There is a computer program that can be bought to make worksheets for copywork if desired, but I did not invest in that.  Less attractive feature is the cost.  It cost more for 2 students to work through this than our previous curriculum.  

Prima Latina

Memoria Press

The Angel hated the Language Arts from Sonlight.  I'll be honest,  I did too.  It was hard to teach to her--and that's ok to admit.  I just wish I hadn't invested in 3 years of Sonlight Language Arts before I'd realized that.  Part of it, is Princess did ok with it so I was determined to power through it.  This year, though we stopped and took a break.  I didn't want the girls to hate table time, since the time we are at the table is so important overall--its when we do Language Arts, Math, Handwriting and so many other activities.  I felt the guilt of not addressing any sort of Phonics or Spelling, or writing and started to stress out about it.  I knew that I was going to run the kids through a Latin course at some point, and Prima Latina is marked as appropriate for grades K through 3.  So I ordered the teaching manual, pronunciation cd, flashcards, 2 student books, plus the 3 DVD course.  I have never learned Latin and didn't have the confidence to teach this to the kids on my own.   

First, I am so glad that I bought the DVDs.  I couldn't have instructed the children in Latin as well as the lessons are presented on the DVD.  I also wouldn't have reviewed the materials as thoroughly.  The girls are learning so much about the basics of English language from this course.  I am very pleased.  While I intended to work through a lesson a week with them, that pace is too slow.  The longer lessons take about 2 days to finish and the shorter ones only a day.  The princess complains about the amount of writing required, and it is a lot for a 6-year-old.  

The Prima Latina CD comes with 4 songs from the Lingua Angelica course.  All three kids love to listen to these songs and I will be ordering the CD for them when I place my next order.  All three kids have also learned 3 of the 4 prayers that are in the course and enjoy saying them.  I think that's pretty awesome especially for a 3-year-old who is just sitting in for fun. 

Memoria Press also just came out with the Prima Latina cursive copybook using the New American Cursive. I wish that I had known about this to begin with and maybe I would have rearranged the order that we started these two courses to take advantage of that.

Learning in Napland

I don't know where this rambling is going to go.  I do know one of the coolest things I've witnessed in my short time homeschooling my kids is this:  where one child learns, the others do too.  Now that isn't a statement that encompasses all subjects to mastery.  It simply can't be.  I started homeschooling the Angel when the Boy was not yet 2 years old.  What I've found is that where I sat with the Angel and the Princess and read storybook after storybook to them when they were small ones, with no direction or purpose to our reading, they retained a (un)healthy amount of information about those stories.  With the Boy, he hears all sorts of information that the girls did not hear at the same age.  His curiosity is piqued over a much more varied range of subjects.

Isn't this the story in all households with a number of kids?  The younger children learn from the older children.  I did not understand how vital this is.  Sure, the annoying attachment to Dora the Explorer was passed down from oldest to middle to youngest.  But how about the sing-song exercises of geography?  Even more interesting is the acquisition of Latin by the 3 year old.

Wait, what?  My 3 year old is learning Latin?  When did this happen?  This is a direct response to the repetition of Latin vocabulary words, phrases and prayers from the older girls' Prima Latina lessons.  The inquisitive nature of a toddler/preschooler has taken me by surprise.  Sometimes I wonder if I wasted so much of that with the older two by reading *Dora Saves the Stupids, or **The Perfect Wedding.  Of course, things were different with the older two.  We were different when they were this age.

So, as the Boy (who still at this point, refuses to sing the alphabet song, but can identify the sounds the letters make), grows and sits in on lessons while he waits for my and his sisters' attentions, I can't help but wonder how much he is learning passively, and what this means for him later in life.  I do know that he is exposed to much more information, than if his sisters attended school outside the home.  I didn't spend the time reading about the Renaissance or introducing the girls to Michelangelo when they were three, and I doubt that I would do it for the Boy if it weren't for the girls' curriculum.

Its such a simple concept, but its so interesting to watch it actually happen (in a positive manner).

*not a real book (I hope)
**unfortunately, a real Cinderella book that the girls were obsessed with for a while.  ACK!

Isolation and self-pity

I don't know if its the fact that its summer, or that its because I'm a stay at home parent, or if its because we home school, or if its just because I'm a sucky person, but I am really feeling the isolation of my life right now.  The kids sense it too, although we really try to take advantage of summer opportunities which allow them more outings than fall through spring.  Its these opportunities that draw my attention to the realization that I do not belong and I do not fit in--anywhere.

I occasionally take advantage of the free lunch program that is found in the parks and school yards around the nation.  So we find our shoes and walk across the street to the elementary school where the kids are fed brown tuna on gluey white bread and they are ecstatic because they are eating around other kids.  Oh and they get chocolate milk.  I have a love/hate relationship with this program.  The food is generally atrocious, but its there and its a social opportunity.  Children are forbidden to take food and will be chased down by summer lunch ladies if they mosey away with an apple half-eaten in their hand.  The distributors of the food can't take the untouched items back, according to the federal regulations.  So where my kids can only eat one apple between the three of them and would be satisfied with 1/3 of the food offered, but because they all want their own milk and entree, the rest of the food has to be thrown away.  Even untouched it can't go home for later.

Enough about the food though--that's a problem to itself.  Its the crowds of parents sitting together, the kids who all know one another and the ones who know my kids through various activities.  Its parents that we've carpooled with.  Its people who might be friendly enough to say hi, but scurry back to their own groups.  I am grossly reminded that I am different.  I am not welcome.  Their children, who are great friends of mine in other settings, behave as though my kids harbor the plague.  Its hurtful.  I hate being the outcast, outsider.

Let's not assume that its only this one facet of social interaction, where the isolation is present.  We've attended a church for well over 2 years now, becoming members a year ago.  Its a big church and we appreciate the messages delivered every Sunday by pastors who appear to love God and His people.  We appreciate the children's opportunities and try to take part in them as much as possible.  But we don't really belong.  I notice it when a conversation stops as we walk by (I know they aren't talking about me, I'm not known or note-worthy myself).  Its in the unacknowledged "hi, how's it going?"  Its the invisibility at child pickups and drop offs.  Part of me wants to strike up a desperately uncomfortable conversation with a parent, any parent, just to make them feel as uncomfortable as I do, and another part of me wants to keep that pathetic, half-smile pasted on my face long enough to sign my initials and get the hell out of there.  I usually go with the second option.

Here is the truth though.  We wouldn't fit in anyway if we followed a conventional lifestyle.  If we both worked, and the kids went to school and preschool, if we lived the American dream, if we looked the part of either happy consumer or happy hippy, we might fit in.  But our normal isn't normal enough.  Its just enough to keep us in a very, very narrow niche where we don't have enough in common with anyone else.

Did I forget church?

So I posted the benign facebook status about how Sunday was perfect with its gardening, yard work, kids playing, too much sun, etc.  Then I second guessed myself.  You see, I have a lot of friends who share my Christian beliefs, and here I was posting that Sunday was perfect and omitted that we had gone to church.  I worried that those facebook friends would notice my omission, because you see, these are the friends who post whole biblical passages as their statuses.  They find something that excites them and they post it.  They post about their fantastic Bible studies.  I don't do any of that.  Every one of my friends knows that I am a follower of Christ.  I'm not ashamed of it, but just like my glasses--an absolutely necessary part of my life, I don't advertise that I use them.  You can see the glasses on my face, and I hope that you can see that I believe in the salvation and redemption found in Christ.

But let's go a little further.  You can find blog posts all over the net about how Sunday mornings are stressful.  I feel better after having read a number of them, finally knowing that my family isn't the only family that oversleeps, crams cereal in their kids, yells at the excruciatingly slow, small people who can't find their dressy, white flip-flops and are looking for them in their underwear drawer (WHAT?  Who puts flip-flops in their underwear drawer?  Why would you even look there??).  But until the anonymity of the internet and the ease of blogging, no one ever admitted that Sunday was difficult.

Admitting that Sunday mornings suck and that you end up yelling, possibly screeching, like an unholy, angry banshee mother with PMS because you know its rude to not just the Sunday School teachers, and the pastor, and the worship leaders and the little old ladies whose view you end up blocking because the only seats left are in the second row, but its RUDE TO GOD TO BE LATE TO CHURCH, ACK! was just not heard of.  Obviously, you have a discipline problem when you are yelling at your kids to find their dress shoes on Sunday morning.  And possibly that it true, but thanks to the internet I now know that my miserable, stress-filled time of herding old molasses into a minivan is not a unique problem.  I am not the only mother on earth who wakes up on Sunday morning with a sense of dread because the next hour and a half is going to plainly suck and you'll be happy to get through it.
 

Confessions of a sport parent

Its confession time, as the kids dance season has ended and the softball season is gearing up, the public school across the street is out for the summer and the weather is supposedly turning.  And here are my confessions:

I dread softball.  The Princess was put on a team where the other mothers and coach made a big deal out of her being homeschooled.  So I contacted Parks and Rec and asked that she be moved to a different team.  I just didn't have the energy to deal with people being asshats about my child not being in the same school as every other girl on the team.  The new team works great for her, and the girls all get along well, but holy cow, the other parents are... how do I say this kindly?  not very friendly.  Why can't we get a team where the parents are all cool and the kids get along well?  I don't want to discourage her, as right now she loves the game, but I dread sitting twice a week with the parents.

The Angel is on a fun team again this year.  We lovingly call it the reject team as they lump all of the charter school/private school girls on this team.  It works for us, as she gets to play with some really fun coaches, kids and parents.  I'm jealous that the Man is getting to take the Angel's practices and I'm stuck with the Princess' practices PLUS herding the boy.  Lucky Man.  I admit that I'm jealous.

All of the kids finished out their dance season in a recital.  I would have loved to have sat and watched them like the other parents.  Unlike some of the other parents I have a real problem with turning my 3 year old loose in an unsecured building without supervision.  I also don't expect my 6, or even my 8, year old to change costumes quickly unassisted.  So again I paid money for a ticket that bought me access to the back room where I missed most of my kids' recital.  I didn't even think about how this would go and didn't order the video of the whole thing either.  I'm bummed and cranky.  I feel like I've put a lot of time, money and energy into my little dancers and I missed getting to see them dance.  I feel like other parents/guardians kind of suck for not taking care of their own kids, especially the one who took our brand new cheer shorts when I offered to loan them to her (as she had forgotten she needed them), and she disappeared after the recital with them.

School's Out!

...across the street and all over the country.  Kids are celebrating their freedom from classrooms, and we hear their joyous shouts and excitement even over here, across the street.  Teachers are smiling broadly and looking forward to finishing their contract time very soon so that they can get on with their much earned break.  Parents everywhere are posting comments on facebook, twitter and message boards, speaking around softball fields, dance studios and other places about the dread of being with all of their children every single day of the week.  Sympathy and commiseration abound everywhere... except in my world.  Every now and then people who don't know that we homeschool, look at me, smile the tired smile and groaningly share about how awful it is to have to deal with the kids for 3 whole months.  They just don't know what they are going to do alllllll summer long.  Oh the misery!!

Its times like these that I really do feel odd and outcast.  I feel a little sadness that I really can't relate to these feelings of dread and unhappiness.  This is a foreign thing to me.  I spend all day, every day with my kids.


And on that note, when the sounds of exuberance and joyous celebration filter through our open windows, my dear princess child looked at me and said, "I'm so glad that I'm not in school.  I'd hate to stop learning for the whole summer."  I savored the words.

As an adult I know that schoolchildren won't stop learning this summer break, but its such a joy to me to hear my child express that she likes learning.  She wants to learn and progress no matter the season. Maybe something is right about our choices.

Conversation of the day

Fist, let me apologize, dear Reader (Hi honey!).  It seems when I tried to load IE 9, my computer decided I was an idiot and refused to allow me to continue on my lifelong path of least resistance, and thus has refused to cooperate with my desire to use the program I feel most comfortable with.  So I switched to Google Chrome, which I had a vague familiarity with.  I had imported my bookmarks earlier, but couldn't be bothered to figure out how to put newer ones like blogger on there.  So this is my simple-minded reason for not updating my blog this month.  I rock.  I know I do.

Today's conversation:
"Mom, what are we doing today?"
I resist the temptation to say "The same thing we do everyday, Pinky.  Try to take over the world."  I want to say it everyday, but my kids don't understand the reference and this confuses them.  Then they shake their heads at me and get out Math books and figure out multiplication and subtraction and pretend to have a normal mama instead of a mama that is slightly crazy.  Instead, I reply, "Well, I think we'll work on Latin and Math for now, since I don't want to start a new week's worth of Core."  By the way, I catch myself saying "well" a lot.  That and "but, anyway..." at the end of a sentence it drives me absolutely nuts, but I can't seem to break the habit.
Groans from the children.
"Oh, and then we need to get the laundry done, and pack today."
Nate interrupts, "To go to Auntie Header's?"
"Yep, I want the house cleaned and the van packed before bedtime tonight."
"And, Uncle Derry haves Otter Pops?"
"Yes, Uncle Jerry has Otter Pops, but you need to get your laundry out of the dryer and set it by the coffee table so I can fold it for you."
"I like Uncle Derry's Otter Pops."
"Did you hear me?  Can you get your laundry out here please?"
"Uncle Derry have gween Otter Pops?"
At this point I realize that like my pets, the kids are hearing, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, Otter Pops. Wah, wah, wah, Blah."

Once, my kids went to stay at their aunt's house. and their uncle gave them the much coveted Otter Pops.  Since then, every time we go, they want to know if Uncle Jerry has Otter Pops.  I could tell them that Auntie Heather is the person behind the Otter Pops, that she buys them.  Auntie Heather could have offered them Otter Pops forever since, and Uncle Jerry have offered none.  Nope.  They are Uncle Jerry's Otter Pops--delicious tubes of artificial colors and high fructose corn syrup.  The kids are in heaven.  Or they will be, once they've finished their Math and Latin, packed their clothes and entertainments for the trip, slept, awakened at the crack of dawn and  ridden in the happy fun bus for 10 hours to arrive tired and cranky at our destination.

Books

The problem with raising your kids this way is that there are books everywhere.  On the sofa, in the sofa, on the floor, on top of the bed, in the bed, under the bed.  I wanted to instill a love of books, I just didn't know that we'd be sleeping with them.

Great ideas

I wish that I had known and picked the brain of a veteran homeschooler before I embarked on this journey.  It seems like we've been flying by the seat of our pants for a while now and while I'm happy that we are, I wish I had other's experiences to draw on before we'd even started this road.  And that, my friends, is the problem with choosing the road less traveled. 

But I'm rectifying this situation now, I am surrounded by people who are at the same point as we are, just starting out, and those who are closer to done than us.  Sure, we talk about the big issues:  What curriculum is best for Language Arts?  How do you deal with the younger sibling who isn't of age to be actively involved?  Who has a homeschooled teenager who will watch the kids while I go to the dentist?  When is the best time to go to Disneyland?  But its the little things that are catching my attention. 

A friend mentioned in passing that someone had suggested that they fill their shelves with field guides.  I have never thought about this as I'm not a bird enthusiast (that is the nice way of saying I'm terrified of birds).  Sure, the man has field guides to rock and mineral identification, but that is work related.  I filed the idea away in my head and decided to at least take a look at it.  You know, we can always use more reference books...  For Easter this year, we bought the kids each a small field guide.  The Angel thumbs through hers in her spare time.  The Boy sleeps with his.  We had a chance to use The Princess' guide the other day when we came upon a bird that was nesting in the gravel. 

I really wish I had known of this great idea, which seemed so insignificant when it passed in conversation a few months ago.    Maybe when new babies are born to those around me, I'll give out field guides instead of Pat the Bunny.

Our square foot gardening adventures

Adventures?  Sure, why not.  I'm going to attempt to explain this in an easy way. 

We like to go to a hardware store and buy 2 2x8's, cut them into 4 foot lengths there and bring them home.  If we are having a bit of foresight we buy a bag of vermiculite (the 2 cu. ft.) a bale of peat moss (the 4 cu. ft.) and 3 cu. ft. of composted manure.  Technically, experts call for 3 cu ft of each, but its not sold in those quantities around here, so we fake it.  Last year we did just fine with this mix.

Then we bring the lumber home, drag out the deck screws and drill and put the frame together.  Buy deck screws when you are at Lowe's if you don't have a ridiculous quantity of them hanging around your house. 

We measured out where we wanted this frame and placed it in the yard.  We'll let it sit here long enough to yellow the grass under the frame so that we know exactly where we want to install the garden.  This saves on painting lines in the yard, and give a natural outline when we pick it up to dig.  You don't have to dig out the grass, and instead you can place a layer of weed block under the frame, but we liked the idea of having the natural (though poor) soil available under the garden, in case anything we grow gets super ambitious.

That's hard work, which is why I'm taking a picture instead of picking up the shovel laying next to the wheelbarrow. 

This is what it looks like with the aforementioned soil mixture.

We used clothes line to mark out our 4x4 grid.  We had some laying around in the cabinet.  We have friends who have used the metal slats from old miniblinds to make a grid, and you can always use something like wood slats from the store to make your grid too.  Just be sure to mark out a grid before you plant, it makes it easier, and you waste less of your space.

This is last year's garden right after we planted the starts.  We got a late start so we didn't bother to try to start any seeds.  Can I say "start" any more in this paragraph?  Start the starts and start now.  Or whatever works for your area. Start, start, start...

We ended up discovering that we shouldn't grow corn.  It's a huge space hog, and ours rotted on the ear anyway.  It costs more for us to grow corn than it does to buy it at the store.  Other people may have better luck with it than we did.  Last year we grew squash, pumpkin, zucchini, corn, peppers, rosemary, basil, thyme, strawberries, head lettuce (another failure), leaf lettuce (grew great), watermelon and marigolds in the bed.  We learned that 2 zucchini will take over 1/4 of the bed, so if you plant them, plant one and make certain you have a vining kind that can be trained.  This year our second bed will be the home to the vining squashes, where we will train the vines to grow in a less trafficked areas.

Now, we have cats, and if you do too, I suggest covering the bed soon after your final harvest and cleanup, anything wintering over (we wintered over strawberries), can be left out from the cover, but really, these are just too tempting to cats to be left open.  Our cats do ok, and generally stay out of the garden once we plant and water it, but as long as they see bare, dry soil, they think we have installed the world's best catbox.  We covered ours with some leftover lumber last year.  In a fit of spring fever, I pulled the covering off and then realized that we needed to recover it until planting.  We put black plastic over it, which will help to warm the ground too, making seeds germinate better when we plant our carrots and the other things we'll plant from seed this year (we'll cover those areas to keep the cats out when we do plant).

As you can see, our strawberry square is uncovered (and our grass is sparse, until it recovers from winter.  It will look great again by May, when the snow stops falling at random intervals).

My love of Henry

Henry, oh Henry (wait, isn't that a candy bar?).  I met him yesterday.  He stood there tall, proud, strong, and ready to come home with me.  The man wasn't sure about him, since we'd have to bring home more than one if I bought Henry, and the price was kind of steep.  Not to mention that Henry will make a bigger mess every year we have him, plus he will require a lot more care than what we'd originally intended to invest.  But in the end, I asked some questions and found that I could get Henry for half the price, and I could get his mate, Ethel for that price too.  I'm so excited!

Now we just need to finalize Henry's and Ethel's forever homes, where they will probably live longer than we will.  Hopefully, since Summer Crisp Pear trees are self-pollinating, we will have beautiful pears for a very long time.  These are our first trees that we've picked out and bought for ourselves. Let's hope we don't kill them!

Wheel spinning Mondays

Yep, its one of those days.  Actually these days don't come along too often, but today has been one.  Dadman had to go to work early today, so the kids are a bit off-kilter.  Sweet Princess Girl tearfully asked if Daddy had kissed them goodbye when he left.  Of course and he'll still kiss you tonight in any case.  The Boy stumbled out of bed, hair on end and every which way, demanding Daddy to make his pancakes and sausage.  Sorry kiddo, no pancakes and sausage today, how about waffles.  "No pan-takes and sausage?" he asked soulfully with giant, sad blue eyes.  Angel Girl had a bit of a sob and then threw a shortlived fit that stemmed from me refusing to make pancakes this morning.  Maybe I should have caved... but waffles are so much easier and so much less mess.  We managed in any case, and the strawberries and whipped cream helped to soothe some unhappy feelings.

I love a couple of things about this situation.  One is that my kids wake up and their biggest worries on a Monday morning is that they may have slept through Daddy saying goodbye and wishing them a good day, and that Daddy didn't make them breakfast.  Two is that they were all thrown off by him not being here.  Sure it happens, its part of his job.  But we've made the choice to keep the kids home for school, which ensures that we'll always have as much time as possible with them.  I can't help but to sit in the midst of quiet time and reflect on just how sweet it is that the kids aren't too busy, too hurried or too ready to get out of the house to want to be with their parents.That time may come, so I'll enjoy the sweetness of this for now.

Time and One Christian Homeschooling Family

What do you teach your children about time? 

I get asked this question a lot and the reason I get asked this question is because the Man is a geologist.  As a geologist, he deals with dirt, rocks and resources that are labeled as billions of years old, and his science focuses on the "old earth" teaching.  This is what we teach our children too, and here is why:

There has to be a scale.  Someone could classify the epochs and eras in "do, re, mi, so, fa, la, ti, do" and it would serve the same purpose as classifying in billions or millions of years.  We could have alphabetize the findings, but really using numbers serves this purpose just fine.  The kids learn that something is a little older than something else.  It doesn't mean we are teaching our children to not trust in God by teaching them a number system for classifying the ages.

Man is fallible.  God is infallible.  While the Bible is God's word, it is translated by man.  I can go to the old King James Version, the Standard American Version, and the New International Version for Kids and find verses that are ever so slightly altered in each translation.  The meaning is still there, I do not doubt that for one second.  My understanding of the general idea is not altered.  With that, I don't really know how long a generation was in the times of Genesis.  There are people who say with great conviction that they can figure this out, but I can't, and honestly, I'm not too worried about that.  Why?  Because it doesn't affect my faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior.  It doesn't matter to me if this world is 100,000,000,000 years old or 10,000 years old.  Jesus still came to earth to die for my sins and he still rose the third day.  My belief is God's plan for mankind is not altered by an argument about the age of the earth, fossils, or the existence of dinosaurs versus dragons.  It is all an argument on semantics to me, and while fun to pursue with adults for the sheer joy of the study of words, I won't introduce it to my children at a time when they are growing in both faith and knowledge.  This argument is not one that we depend on in order to lead our children down the spiritual paths we wish to see them follow later in life--and if it is, we need to question what exactly are the basic tenets of our religion.

I could spend the rest of this entry typing biblical references such as Ecclesiastes 9:12 "For man also knoweth not his time...." in order to convince the reader that I am not wrong in my assessment that teaching a millions of year time scale to my children will not destroy their faith in God, but I won't.  There are so many references to time in the Bible, and if you have the time on your hands to search it out, you can go to www.biblestudytools.com and type in "time" and then spend a couple of days following every reference to ferret out whatever meaning supports your personal hypothesis.  I would do this myself, but at this time I have a child begging me to tie his blue-footed booby feet onto his shoes. 

Welcome Back

The drawback to a nice warm day of over 50 degrees is that your children insist on dressing down to play outside.  "Put on some clothes!"

In case you were wondering where I was, I went on spring break.  Ahh... Spring break for the homeschooler.  I'll have to load pictures of my adventure, and translate my adventures from the chicken scratch of handwriting where I kept an old fashioned blog, also known as a journal.  You know, a book where I write down all my random experiences and thoughts?  Kind of like a weblog, but on paper, written in ink, with a pen?  Its wild, really wild.  You should try it sometime.  We all should.

So welcome back to my blog of randomness.

Gravy, pickles and flying

I posted these comments elsewhere on the internets, but I think that they are important sentiments that need to be examined. 

So my friend is pregnant, and she can't find dill pickles in Scotland.  She says you can find just about any vegetable pickled in the grocery store, but you cannot find dill pickles.  This brought me to trying to figure out if I can take some of those large individually wrapped deli pickles with me.  Can I take them in a carry-on? After reading some of the airlines' sites, I went back to the idea of using my backpack as my personal item, and then taking just the small carry-on suitcase, which I could check on the return trip if need be; this was before considering the pickles though.

Anyway, back to the pickles and searching the internet for flying with pickles protocol...  I found a list of foods that have to be in checked baggage instead of carry-on:
Creamy dips and spreads
(cheeses, peanut butter, etc.)
Gift baskets with food items
(salsa, jams and salad dressings)
Gravy
Jams
Jellies
Maple syrup
Oils and vinegars
Salad dressing
Salsa
Sauces
Soups
Wine, liquor and beer


Gravy?  Seriously?  Who packs gravy?  Why on earth would you take gravy on a plane?  Seriously, are you sitting around divvying up the family food assignments for a holiday and someone assigns the sister who is flying in with the gravy?  And she says, "I'll save time and I'll make the gravy ahead of time and bring it with me on my 4 hour time suck of flying." (Getting to the airport, checked-in, security, wait for your flight, fly for the 30 minutes or whatever to a semi-close town, off the plan and through a small crowd of people, to a car and to grandma's house... if you are flying from one small airport to another, we aren't considering large airports where the hike alone adds another 20-40 minutes.)  My point:  Who packs GRAVY?

And I still think I'm going to have to check a suitcase to take the pickles. 

Germs and blessings

We have germs.  Lots of them.  Too many of them.  The kind of germs that are keeping people up at night coughing, moaning, suffering.  Little people are wailing through the house at midnight as they bring their suffering from their beds to mine.  Feverish people act as flailing heaters in the night.  First to cuddle close to their daddy and then to cuddle close to their mama.  We are cuddled in such to marinate in the germs.  And yet, while a part of me sighs with resignation that we'll all succumb to this virus and its mutations, I can't help but count the blessing in knowing that our kids know they are welcome to cuddle, to turn to us for comfort. 

Morning comes and I have fallen to the virus.  I wonder if the kids felt this poorly, and I assume they did.  Although they were up for that 3 mile hike last week, which came during the onset of this round of sick.  Maybe they didn't feel like death served up on a moldy trencher.  The Man stays home and teaches the kids.  He reads Prince Caspian.  I fall asleep to his voice carrying softly down the hall to me in my sick bed.  He cooks, he cleans, he takes care of us all.  He is a blessing.

Three days into my own suffering.  The kids are in various stages of sick still, making it past 5 days for them.  The angel and the princess are both feeling better, only really suffering at night, and yesterday's low-grade fever recurrence (after being fever free for 24 hours).  Voices are still weak.  The Boy ignores me as I whisper-yell in a wheezing-frog voice.  He's either mutated his germs for fun, or he's got something different from what the rest of us have gone through.  He's cuddly even though he communicates via eardrum breaking whining.  He asks for quiet music instead of TV. 

Dante Alighieri, how you vex me

I feel stupid.  So, so stupid. 

I'm know I read The Divine Comedy in college.  I think I read it... I'm sure it was assigned at any point, and I passed the class it was assigned in.  So imagine my vexation when I downloaded a copy of Inferno and felt like I was reading a completely foreign language.  It was then that I realized that I was indeed reading a foreign language as I had downloaded a copy in Italian.  This realization only made me feel marginally better, after I downloaded a new copy translated by the much esteemed Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  He wrote in English, correct?  I recall him as being a much-loved poet in my childhood, reading whatever poems deemed worth of "The Treasury of the Familiar."  I'm sure he wrote in English, I'm not exactly sure I speak and write in English though.  I think my brain has been damaged by so many readings of The Disney Princess Collection's "My Perfect Wedding". 

Alas, my kind Longfellow, who was so gracious as to translate Inferno from the original to English has lost me.  I am determined to not be thwarted by my lack of comprehensive ability.  I decide then to download the audio book and see if I can make sense out of it if someone reads it to me--not that I'm a terribly adept auditory learner, but I am determined to understand.  I started the recording, listen to the first 3 cantos and wake up when my husband kisses me goodnight.  Sigh.

I briefly consider trying to find a copy of Inferno that is translated into modern English, but this feels too much like defeat.  Did I mention I am determined to read this?  I am.  While my determination is strong, I can't help but be filled with regrets.  Regrets of letting myself lose my interests long enough that I can no longer just pick up and understand.  Its a lot like the piano that has come into my life recently.  The amount of practicing just to play something vaguely pleasant has taken me by surprise.  Can you practice comprehension like you can  music?  Do I have to start at Ode to Joy before I descend into the Inferno?

We'll see.  I'll let you know when I finish my first volume of the Divine Comedy.

Weird stuff my kids have said and done today.

On discussing where her ancestors hail from, I mentioned that her grandma's family came from Denmark as recently as the early 1900's.  This means Grandma is a Viking.

"Why doesn't more music have bagpipes?  All music would be better with bagpipes."

All coats of arms should have a flower, or a unicorn.

The Boy claims that fruit makes him mean, so he can't eat it.

"Mom, why do you keep playing that song over and over again?"
"Because I'm practicing."
"Shouldn't you get better when you practice?"

What we are reading

I'm not reading Pride and Prejudice to the children, in case you were wondering.  I am reading it for myself.  Did I tell you this wonderful discovery I've made which makes me wish I had all this technology available to me when the girls were little?  I can download classics for free on my iPhone to the iBooks application.  Plus, I can download classic audio readings to the audiobooks application.  So, when I have a chance to snatch a few minutes to myself to read I do, but in those events where I don't have time to snatch a few minutes to read because my hands are full or too busy, I can listen to the book.  Or if I'm simply too lazy at the end of the day to force my eyes to read and my brain to process, I can lay in my bed, and listen.  Ahh...bliss!  Where was this when I had babies with reflux who needed to be held in the middle of the night?

After some consideration we started The Magician's Nephew instead of the more popular The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  I thought about this, but when faced with the decision, I started "Nephew" because I hope to read all of the books in order to the kids at a reasonably brisk pace.  If I had to choose only one, with the hopes that the kids would pick up the series themselves at a later time (which I considered), I would have picked The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  So far we are all enjoying it.  And I guess the benefit of 2 girls losing their electronics privileges is that they can now spend their evening tv time listening to me read. 

The Strawberry Girl is a lovely book that we are almost done with.  I haven't told Becks that there is a sequel as she often becomes quiet heartbroken when we finish a book.  You should have witnessed the distress at the end of The Boxcar Children (which we later found out there are bunches and bunches of those).  Of course the high joy of finding out there is nearly a whole shelf of BC at the library was completely adorable. 

And the Night Sky... Its our Science text.  Written before the reclassification of Pluto, we'll learn the 9 planets and then throw a quick asterix in the mix.  Otherwise a great book that makes our Science lessons something to look forward to.

So that in a nutshell is what we are reading. 

Three things and I can't count

First,  I love xkcd.  It make me laugh or at least titter nervously.  Sometimes, it makes me think, or further research an idea.  So I was directed to Wikipedia's List of Common Misconceptions today which I wasted plenty of time, post haste, in reading.  Some information I righteously felt smug about not disseminating and some things, I felt my embarrassment grow for passing the misconception to my children.  Which brings me to the idea that, oh my gosh, I'm my kids' only teacher--if I get one thing wrong will they grow up and understand that it was a minor mistake and that I got a lot of things, right?  I really had very little respect for my 4th grade teacher who apparently went to Idiots University (I learned as a 4th grader not to dis the terminally ill even if everything they teach you is completely false, it doesn't matter if they are wrong, and its easily disproven, they have [whisper]cancer[/whisper] therefore you must believe every single word).

Third (second was the bit about me destroying my kids faith in what I teach them), I'm tired of the cold.  No one said the three things had to be related.

Beyond third, well, crud, I can't remember what my other comment on my life was.  My gosh, I'm boring.