everyday best

Margin for magic

2011-11-12T13:57:00.004-05:00

I am currently in the midst of NaNoWriMo, an attempt to write 50,000 words of fiction in 30 days. For me it is all consuming, so why am I writing about margins? There is a magic that can come from placing myself in front of my novel, with my fingers on the keyboard. Sometimes it takes awhile, but in the course of this month my imagination will send more to my typing fingers than I ever thought possible -- but I have to give my imagination a margin -- I have to sit at the keyboard and do the work, even when it takes a long time.

Similar in my family life in the concept of quality family time. We do not always have quality time every time we are together, but the value in being together is that it can be wonderful. But if we never give it the time, it won't be. We are tempted to fill up our evenings with commitments and skip family dinners. It's true that sometimes our dinners are far from transcendent. Some one is mad at someone else, or the food isn't very good, or the conversation is boring. But sometimes we have a fabulous time together, we talk about interesting things, or learn something that we didn't know. Those are the dinners that I want to happen, but to experience them, we have to live through the other kind too. We have to provide a margin for the magic to happen.

"I am not responsible for your feelings"

2011-11-12T13:22:00.004-05:00

I have recently been thinking a lot about this idea "I am not responsible for your feelings."

While it is true that no one can enter my mind and fiddle with my feelings, we certainly learn to push the buttons of our loved ones. I have noticed, particularity with my children, that upsetting siblings (or other loved ones) is in some way rewarding, and people learn quickly how to do it. It seems to me to then teach them that they are not responsible for the feelings that arise from their words or actions is somewhat immoral. It allows them to commit egregious deeds and then respond without compassion to the feelings that arose in the other person as a result.

But let me take a step back and look at two extremes. The first is the case where someone, in fact, truly did nothing and their friend or relative is having strong feelings about them. I will risk my reputation when I say this has happened to me, that I have become angry or unhappy about a person when, in fact, nothing has actually happened. I expect that I am not alone.

At the other extreme, a person has willfully been hurtful, has spread rumors or spoken cruelly, been physically or emotionally abusive, or stolen from or cheated someone in someway that most of us would see as justifiable reasons for negative feelings.

Having laid out what I think are self-explanatory examples from which you will draw your own conclusions I want to return to the idea of being responsible for feelings. I am going to venture the opinion that no one is responsible for anyone's feelings, even our own. There are a few enlightened beings among us who can control their thoughts and feelings. There are others among us who are at the complete mercy of our thoughts and feelings. The rest of us ride a middle course: attempting to turn our thoughts and feelings to the positive, but certainly not always succeeding. My understanding of Buddhist belief is that thoughts and feelings happen, but it is up to us whether we chose to believe them. This comes close to my own opinion.

My experience is that I can only be somewhat successful in controlling my thoughts and feelings, and that some responsibility for triggering negative thoughts and feelings may sometimes be reasonably applied to an outside source.

As a parent this is an interesting question to me. Take the case where one of my children gets upset and tell me "He made me mad." Sometimes I agree -- one brother may have set up another brother in a way that made him mad in the past and is likely to do the same today. The mad brother, though, has a history of over-reacting -- again this is our subjective opinion. I personally do not see this as a case of not being responsible for the angry brother's feelings. I see it as more like the case where one car rear-ends the car in front of it without much force, but the driver, who was predisposed to injury through pre-existing conditions, suffers traumatic neck injury. In this case the driver of the car causing the accident is legally liable for the injury.

With my kids I want them to look at the upset person, acknowledge that they have acted in a way that contributed to the out of control feelings, and make appropriate amends and, hopefully, refrain from acting the same way again. The angry child has a job too -- to try to tone it down, to recognize that they are very sensitive to getting angry and to begin to get a handle on that. We live in a family, a community, and we cannot live alone. These are the steps I think the involved persons need to take to live in harmony with each other.

I recently had the experience of two people making a decision that negatively impacted my life. One was able to listen to my upset, and validate that she could see why I might feel that way. The other told me that she was not responsible for my feelings. Guess which one I'm now happy to be in community with? The first didn't change what she had done, but she did help me to deal with my own feelings about the event. She didn't "Gaslight" me by telling me in any way that my feelings were invalid, and because of that I was able, on my own, to recognize the ways in which my feelings were out of proportion to the event and it's actual effects on me and my family.

If empathy is foremost then we can in fact say (but only in our heads and never aloud to the upset person) "I am not responsible for your feelings." It may be true, but it is a way of saying "I don't have to care what I did, and I don't have to care about you and your feelings." If we can be with the person, hear them, empathize with their feelings and make reasonable accommodation not to repeat the result will a better community/family.

These are some other interesting discussions of this same topic:

I am not responsible for your feelings

Responsibility

NaNoWriMo 2011

2011-11-09T18:03:00.003-05:00

"Self Learning" in our Homeschool

2011-08-29T17:07:00.003-04:00

I'm working on a self-learning model for my oldest, who is turning twelve in November (although I'm not a fan of the term). I'm motivated by the fact that I'm feeling a bit burnt out and we haven't even started the year yet! But just as importantly, the self-learning option has a lot to recommend it. My current plan is to give him a loose list of topics and books to work from, but not so much he can't add his own, or find more resources on a topic that interest him, or go lightly on something that doesn't spark his interest. I'm also making him a planner to keep track of it all. He has a composition book sectioned into topics for notes and narrations. I'm not willing to give him completely free rein, but I do think that giving him choices over books and when to study each subject can have positive effects. I'm not willing to put aside books and methods that I have researched, but I will be flexible.

My hope is that I will have far less to do -- I have never yet been very successful at giving him a list of things to do. I tend to watch the clock and decide if there is time for one more thing. My hope is that with this plan, he takes over much of that work, to his benefit and mine. I need time to work with my other two. Last year my youngest mostly tagged along and didn't get much work targeted to his own level. I don't think much harm was done, but I want to be able to work with him individually. And my nine-year old needs some help to learn to set thoughts on paper. He has a way to go.

These are some of the best resources I've seen on self-learning for homeschoolers:

http://www.wildiris4you.com/2011/03/self-directed-learning-and.html
http://www.urthemom.com/Self-Learning.html

Thoughts about the day

2011-06-02T12:25:00.003-04:00

I am grateful today for the lovely weather, and for not having been in the path of a tornado yesterday. My gratitude makes me much more patient than I have been for the last few days, and motivated to make my house look a little less as if it has been hit by a tornado (which, just to reiterate, it hasn't). I would like to be in the position, should the occasion occur, to offer hospitality to anyone who might need it following yesterdays storms. Yesterday I could easily envision all of my clutter rising into the air and adding far more to the mess of destruction than any one house has the right to do. The thought that I do not keep up well with the house makes me feel inadequate and grumpy. But also the universe has been sending me the message, "You are enough," and as I go about my day, doing a lot of work of various kinds, but not managing to keep up with the clutter, I try to keep that message in mind, to do my best and to acknowledge that I am, in fact, doing a lot in this multifaceted life of household manager, cook, and homeschooler, and that perhaps no one, and certainly not I, can do it all.

I took my patience into a nice morning. We cancelled plans for a fieldtrip today due to evening sports commitments, and as a result I would have a full fledged mutiny on my hands if I tried to assign tablework. Instead we sat outside and read The First Book of Birds and had a great Nature Sit (that's like a nature walk, but without the perambulation). I have mixed success with nature walks, and today's version worked well. By sitting fairly still, we managed not to scare all the wildlife away! We saw a bluebird in the backyard (and I have never seen one here before, and it makes me happy), and a woodpecker that was probably a Northern Flicker. We noticed other birds and watched a robin take a bath in the sandbox cover. We saw chipmunks and squirrels and had a good conversation about birds, using the Cornell site to look at bird shapes. There were no time limits, and no pressure to be done and move on to something else so we could continue as long as it seemed there was interest.

When people ask if we do science and history and whatever other subjects, this is the type of day that I can't quite use in my answer, but that best describes why we homeschool. Learning unfolds in these hours, but not in a way that falls into the traditional paradigm. This type of learning is vastly underrated, but in my opinion, it is some of the best.

WiNoWriMo: Teaching Noveling, Pt 2

2011-04-21T15:57:00.004-04:00

Well, I'm not getting these posts done, so I'm posting my outlines in the hope that they will help inspire someone else:

Noveling 2nd meeting:
Warm up: adjectives

The _______ dog gave a ________ bark.

The _______ dream left a ________ memory.

The _______ book gave me a _______ idea.

Check in: How is it going?

Word count -- graph it and discuss
discuss setting: a great way to add lots of words.

Hand out adjective sheet -- adjectives are a great way to add to your word count and bring detail to your story -- note that every noun could have as many as ten adjectives to describe it
List 20 adjectives that can be used to describe a setting
exercise: write 50 words describing a new setting you can use in your novel

What makes characters interesting? observe the people around you for tidbits to add to your novel.

Exercise (either written or orally): list 20 adjectives that can be used when describing a character

exercise: write 50 words describing a new character you can use in your novel
Who would like to read theirs?

Do you have a part of your story where you introduce a character that you would like to read to us?

What ideas do you take from these readings?

villain/conflict
what use is a villain?
Who is the villain in Little House on the Prairie, Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel, Anne of Green Gables, The Odyssey?

Has your Main Character been pushed out of their comfort zone yet? What is the problem they are confronting?

tips for figuring out names?

Workbook: Make up your story p. 42

plot
write the climactic scene

11:50 read week 2 pep talk from NPNP

Email to writers:
I hope your writing is going well this week. I hope you've had the chance to put the descriptions you wrote on Thursday in class into your stories. If not, that might be a good thing to do.

One thing I've done during NaNoWriMo that I've found helpful is something called a Word War. That's where you agree with someone to write for a certain amount of time. At the end you compare word counts. You can do this using the telephone or email. If you'd like to do it as a group, we could set up a time tomorrow to have one. You can also arrange your own with just one or more other writers.

Good luck! I'm thinking of you all this week!

3rd meeting

Warm up: Nouns -- use specific ones (5 mins)

Check in: go around the table (20 mins)
What's hard, what's easy, has it been the same the whole time?
Is there anything you'd like input on?

word count (15 mins)
work on milestones page of workbook
create wordcount plan to finish (work individually, using a worksheet I built before class)
Each writer should copy down their customized word plan somewhere in workbook or notebook

Character voice -- read 3 examples on pp. 52-53 of Magnificent Stories

Are your characters growing and developing?
Examples from books you have read:
Will your character do something surprising? (Examples from books you have read)

creative process (15 mins)
Liz Gilbert TED video starting at 6:30
What's your creative process like? What are you finding writing like? Where do your ideas come from? Do you have all your ideas before you sit down to write, or do they come to you as you write?
Did you hear anything from anyone else here that you'll use in the next two weeks?

Halfway video peptalk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7te8m-YlL8 box castles
Suck dragon video from YWP

discuss different types of scenes: action, description, backstory, etc.

Where is your story? Has it reached the climax yet. It probably will this week, although it might be late this week or even early in the last week. (Exercise to go with this?)

Pep talk (text) http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/node/849990

NanoWrimo 4th meeting

Warmup: Using all senses to describe a place or person

1. Update word count. Note who wrote the most in each week so far. Make plans with those who need a plan to finish.

Has real life helped you figure out what to put in your novel this week? Did anything unexpected happen that you ended up writing about?

2. Discuss some other aspect of noveling? Climax? Conflict? Summarize the conflict in your story.

3. Check in. Let everyone talk for a few minutes about their novel. Try to keep the kids from changing the subject to their own novel when it isn't their turn ;) Give them time to talk about process as well as ask for help/ideas about ending their novel if they want to. (I recommend more focus for a conversation like this one. We found that kids had a hard time describing their novels. Maybe ask them to read an excert that will help us figure out what their novel is about. YMMV)

4. 15 minute word war. Award winner prize. (We made a white duck tape sash that said Word War Winner.)

5.Talk about endings. How do novels end? What kind of ending do you like best? What kind do you think your novel will have?

5. Another word war?

6. pep talk for 4th week

NanoWriMo 5th session

DONE!!!!

Collect and graph word counts
Congratulations and applause, callouts for exceptional work
Maybe make a poster to share wordcounts? (as percentage of goal)

read your novel (We gave the kids some quiet time to read what they had written. Not everybody could read their whole story in the time we had.)

Talk about revising
(we did one week of revising before reading excerpts and having a party the last week)
1st, make a backup copy of your novel. You can use the words "rough draft" in the file name"
Most people recommend taking a break from your novel before revising it. http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/nowwhat
for revision categories, see the last section of your workbook
grammar
complete sentences
story
paragraphs
punctuation
tense
spelling -- how to approach spelling this week, and my philosophy of spelling in general
this week -- use your spell check and be aware of homonyms
in general -- very similar, but also notice words as you read so that you can recognize a word that is wrong.

My philosopy of spelling: it matters, it can affect how seriously your writing is taken, but it's not the most important aspect of writing. Do your best, and use the tools that are available to you (including proofreaders)
list of homonyms http://www.cooper.com/alan/homonym_list.html
phrases that are often misspelled: "Say your piece" Bare your soul,

Talk about NaNoWriMo November. Could we do it as a coop? What would you say to the rest of the coop to convince them.
(Make a poster?)

talk about choosing a passage to share with the coop next week

Write a blurb:
story is defined by: character, setting, genre
complete this sentence in writing: My story is about: (less than 2 minutes each) (make it interesting)
write a cover blurb to suck in readers who might buy your book
write a bio for yourself for your book cover

read excerpts?

Email sent:
The writers all did extremely well, all meeting, and some massively exceeding their word goals. We talked in class about editing spelling, paragraphs, and grammar. It is often recommended to let a piece of writing "rest" for a while before returning to it to make changes, but we don't really have the time to do that. I forgot to recommend that they make a backup of their files, but that is still valid -- they should keep a copy of their novel as it stands now and before they make additional changes to it.

In class we also wrote "blurbs" to describe our stories.

In addition to editing this week, they should also pick an excerpt of a page or less to read to Echo on Thursday. They can briefly introduce their excerpt, preferably with their blurb rather than a detailed description of their story. It would be useful if they worked with you to pick an excerpt to read, but if that doesn't work at your house, we will help them on Thursday morning.

We are looking forward to celebrating the hard work they've done in the last four and a half weeks!

6th meeting
This meeting was devoted to practicing reading an excerpt they chose. We sat with each writer and helped them pick an excerpt if they wanted us to, or just made sure it was a good length. One typed page is plenty, we found, YMMV.
In retrospect, it is very important to have them practice out loud and get any gentle coaching on talking louder and/or slower. Also, it turns out to be very difficult to stand up and launch into an excerpt without explaining it first (even though I encouraged them to do that). So talk about that and figure out how you want to handle it.
We had each writer write a bio that we used to introduce them. Most of them were pretty silly, but fun. It's a good idea to read these in advance to make sure they aren't offensive (like mentioning stinky little brothers who may be in the audience). We also had them write a cover blurb for their books, in part to keep them busy while we worked with writers individually.
We made a congratulatory word count poster, and each writer signed it with their word goal and actual words written.
Once all this was done, we presented our excerpts to our audience and then had party food!

WiNoWriMo: Teaching Noveling, Pt 1

2011-03-27T22:07:00.004-04:00

Here’s what I did for our 6 week NaNoWriMo-inspired noveling class (with gracious bows to Lydia, whose curriculum inspired many of my own activities). We had eight kids, ages 10-14, and two adults, who also wrote. We met around a table for about two hours, once a week.

The materials I used are what I had lying around the house. If you have different books on writing, by all means, use those!

Materials I used:

No Plot, No Problem: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days, by Chris Baty (creator of NaNoWriMo)
Guaranteed Non-Lame Young Novelists Workbook, from The Young Writers Program (they also have curriculum). I had access to a spiral binding machine and asked families to print out a copy and then I bound them (or I charged a nominal fee to print them out). Some kids kept them in 3-ring binders. I personally thought the Staples/Kinko price for printing and binding a bit high since in my class, at least, use of the workbook was optional. Some kids really got into them and enjoyed them, and found them useful, and others hardly used them.
Memorable Characters. . . Magnificent Stores: 10 Mini-Lessons on Crafting Lively Characters – the key to Great Student Story Writing, by Susie Garber
A big piece of paper to track group progress
I asked each child to have a notebook and pencil for class, but I was also realistic and had a stash to share. The notebook could be to write their novel in, but it was definitely for wordwars and other class writing. They could also use it to write down ideas they had about their novel when they were not actually writing, but I’m not sure any of them actually used them like that!

We wrote for one calendar month, but since we started in the middle of February, we only wrote for 28 days – 29 if anyone was sneaking in a few last words before our 10am meeting! Doing this project in November has the huge advantage of being able to take advantage of all of The Young Writers Programs perks, but if you can’t do in November, it’s still worth doing.

Overview
Session 1: Discuss the whys of writing a novel quickly. Brainstorm plot and pick word goals.
Session 2: Think about adjectives & conflict.
Session 3: Think about nouns and character voice. Do a wordwar.
Session 4: Share stories and do a wordwar.
Session 5: Wrap up, many congratulations, and discuss editing.
Session 6: Prepare readings and read a page or less to an appreciative audience. Follow with a party!

If you have the time, it would make sense to introduce the concept in the first class and then have the kids spend the first week working on the workbook. However, our schedule changed a couple of times due to snow, so this is what we ended up doing.

And now in slightly more detail. My apologies if many of the details have been lost, but my hope is that this is still useful to someone!

Session 1

We started by stressing very strongly that to make our group a safe place to share our writing we all had to be very respectful of each other and work hard to censor intended and unintended criticism. We had to reiterate this often, throughout the session, as kids often just say whatever pops into their heads!

Community builder: We didn’t end up doing this, but some sort of exercise to get kids working together and trusting each other would certainly be useful.

The Whys: Why try to write a novel or a story in a short amount of time? Read from No Plot No Problem. Chapter 1 deals with this. It is clearly written for adults, so preread and decide if you need to make any substitutions to the examples.

Genre: What is it, what are some examples, What are your favorites, what genre will your novel be?

What makes a book good? (Hero, villain, conflict)
Write a recipe for your novel (i.e. 2 cups adventure, 5 explosions, ¼ teaspoon romance, etc.)

Quick thoughts about paragraphs, quotations, chapters. (Use a favorite novel as a model)

Store your inner editor (workbook)

Brainstorm novel ideas in small groups

Where to write your novel? a notebook, Word, Google Docs

What to do when you get stuck:

ask for help: share email addresses (or set up a group) to get help from each other (I emphasized that no one has to use anyone else’s ideas, but that they may help to get the creative juices flowing, also, again emphasize being gentle and avoiding anything that can be construed as criticism of someone else’s idea)
Describe things in detail
Skip to another part of the story (write an exciting scene that you have to work up to)

What to do if you don't like your story? Make a change. It doesn't have to be logical, it's a first draft. If you end up liking it, you can go back and fix inconsistencies later.

Writing exercise to help determine reasonable word count (I’m sure this was a good idea, but we didn’t do it due to time constraints)

write an exciting scene (we didn’t do this either, but I’ve used this successfully myself for NaNoWriMo)

We did, however, pick word goals. The lowest the goal any of the kids had was 2400 words which is high for 5th graders (who made up a large portion of our class) according to the Young Writers Program guidelines. However, all the kids with that goal exceeded it, one by nearly 400%. The word goals varied between 2400 and 7000. The two adults writing had word goals of 15,000, which had the potential to mess up the group progress chart when we both got behind. On the one hand, the kids got to see us struggle, but I wouldn’t have been happy if my own failure to write had caused the group to fail to meet its goal. That didn’t happen, but I offer it as food for thought.

This is the email I sent to parents after the first session:
Welcome to the crazy life as a family member of a novelist!

Today in class we looked at the workbooks put out by the Young Writers Program (http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/). I encourage the kids to make use of these workbooks, but I'm not assigning specific pages -- I want them to concentrate on writing their stories. However, if they seem stuck, the workbook is a good place to turn to.

As of tomorrow, they need a way to start working on their novel. If you need technical assistance, please ask. We talked about writing in Word (or another word processor) or in Google Docs, which is accessible anywhere you can get internet access. If they are going to write longhand, they should have a notebook devoted to that. I discouraged them from deleting or tearing out pages -- everything they write counts towards their word goals. If they really need to they can put gentle x's or grey out the words they wouldn't want to use in a final product. But we are not writing a final product! Our goal is exuberant imperfection -- there is no bad writing at this point, as long as they are writing!

My ideal is that they spend about 3 hours a week writing -- either three 1 hour sessions, or 6 half hour sessions, or whatever works for them. However, their progress is not measured in time spent, but in words written. Below is their word goal for the four weeks (writing from February 10 to March 10), with another column for the weekly goal. We're shooting for 100% success here, and they are encouraged to write more than their goal -- the goal is a minimum. If they are writing longhand they do need to count their words and make a note of it on each page (a cumulative count would be useful too). If they are using a computer, there is always a way to get the program to tell you how many words you have written. I encourage them to track their progress as it can be encouraging to see what they've accomplished. The Ready, Set, Write section of the workbook has place to note progress and goals (i.e. pages 83 and 85). Note that our "month" starts today and is 29 days long.

Word goal Weekly words
[Table of individual word goals and group total word goal]

If your novelist has an email address, please send it to me. I'd like them to be able to ask each other for advice. I'd also like to be able to nudge them personally during the week (I'll CC parents on that too, in case they don't check their email often).

Next week I would like them to bring their workbooks, a writing implement, and a copy of what they have written (with word count noted). (A small notebook would be useful also, and I've suggested they have one to write down ideas when they are not actually writing.) They will retain control of their own writing, and will be asked to share a bit if they would like to. I think that a hard copy is a useful, tangible mark of their progress, but even that is not required. I can print out their stories if you would like to send them to me on Wednesday.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

That's it for Session 1. More to come in a future post!

Nanowrimo 2010

2010-11-20T12:55:00.003-05:00

After skipping last year, I am back in the game again this year. Week 1 was was barely adequate, and week 2 was even worse. I have considered giving up or reducing my personal word goal, but that didn't sit right, so I have a plan to make it to 50,000 words by midnight on November 30.

Homeschool Planning

2010-09-21T17:19:00.002-04:00

I thought hard about our homeschool plan for this year, and explored many options. I ended up not far from where I had begun though.

I felt in some ways that I was starting over this year, although it's my sixth year homeschooling. I think I felt that way because with the third entering first grade it feels like my first year juggling three students, and with my oldest in fifth grade I feel like I need to be sure that I'm giving him the education I want him to have. Also, as I outlined in my last post, I our family's values to be well represented in our homeschool.

My middle son, who is eight, is perhaps the one I think about most, and the one I looked at the most options for. He enjoys language and books, but his own language arts skills (reading and writing) are at nearly the same level as his six-year old brother's. He is also the one who hates school work the most, and who most drives me to consider quitting homeschooling. However, he would likely hate school even more, and that's not what I want for him. For him I looked at mainly two curricula: Moving Beyond the Page and Global Village. My goal was to find meaningful books that he would enjoy. I did purchase the Global Village curriculum guide for 3rd grade, and I'll review that in a separate post.

I spent a lot of time wondering how I could combine kids so that I don't go crazy trying to direct the three of them in their different work. As of last year the oldest still liked me to read to him, and I thought I would still be doing that this year. As it turns out, he is happy enough reading selections like George Washington's World, Treasure Island, and a biography of Isaac Newton by himself this year. In the end they will all have their own work, and we will try to do many subjects together.

I did come up with a long term plan for history so that in two years all three boys will be studying the ancients and proceeding through a six year history cycle together.

Some of what I had to do was (clearly) relax a bit. In order to do that I've changed my record keeping a bit. In previous years I've used spreadsheet versions of the Ambleside Online schedules. However, when I'm always behind, I'm always stressed! This year I'm trying to be a little looser without doing less. I'm open to two or three kids listening to what I'm reading, and I'll record it that way so I have plenty to report at the end of the year. I have a monthly grid for each kid (a row is a week) with all the main subjects across the top so that I make sure we cover a variety of subjects each week. I'll use it for both planning and recording. In short, I'm trying to keep track of what we accomplish, not what we fail to get to. I think that's very CM, since CM tests ask you to explain what you know rather than trying to trip you up and discover what you don't know.

Each boy does have his own rough plan, but we'll do more together than we have before. I'll use the Global Village book choices, and ones like them to expand our world view and try to get a glimpse of cultures and lives around the world. Otherwise, I continue to use AO book choices as our spines, and as a guide to topics and numbers of books when I decide to substitute. I want to be more open to following rabbit trails and doing rough units. For instance, right now we have an ocean theme going, middle ages (for the youngest), and monarch butterflies (from one of the Global Village selections).

So a little run down of our plan:

5th grade:
History: Constitution through the 19th Century, using Foster "World" books and historical fiction
Language Arts: Typing Tutor, Dictation Day by Day, written narration, Easy Grammar 5. We're saving Write with the Best for next year -- getting him ready to take advantage of that is a priority this year.
Math: MEP 5 (actually, first we're finishing up the data and probability sections in 4B)
Science: Biographies of scientists, library books and videos on various topics
Literature: some AO5 selections, and others we both agree on. He reads a lot and I want to use this year to work on writing and let literature take a back seat. (Currently reading Treasure Island)
Ideally he will also learn recorder

3rd grade:
Social Studies:Global Village around the world book choices
History: Age of Explorers -- Marco Polo and ocean explorers
Science: library books and DVDs, at least one nature story
Literature: good books we select together (currently A Door in the Wall, planning on Wind in the Willows)
Reading: easy readers on level, Phonics Pathways
Writing: Getty-Dubay workbook and some simple dictation
MEP 3

1st Grade:
Ambleside 1 secular selections, fable-like books (such as those by Janell Cannon) and whatever he listens to when I read to his brothers. He is a great unschooler and has a great attitude, and I don't want to mess to much with that.

All:
Art appreciation (currently Monet)
Music appreciation (currently Beethoven)
Virtues
Nature Study (with help from Katie's Homeschool Cottage)
Bible (using Penny Gardner's suggested readings)
Shakespeare (using Leon Garfield)
Family Read Alouds (we recently finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)
Geography (I purchased Map Trek and hope to make good use of it)

I looked at a great many science curricula, because I'm afraid I may be weak on science. But in the end I didn't find anything I liked enough to spend money on (other than the Nature Study ebook). I rely heavily on David Atenborough videos, and I'll try to be better about finding science books at the library. I think the ToC of Nebel's Elementary Education (which I own) may be useful. In fact, I should add a list of science topics to my homeschool notebook right now!

Defining Family Values

2010-06-28T16:13:00.004-04:00

I am realizing more and more that time is limited, and that to get done the things that are important to me, I need to first focus on my values, and on our family values, and then choose my tasks accordingly. I am happier when my actions reflect my values. For instance, I can stand the dents and dull spots in my living room floor because my choices about the floor reflected my values of using local, affordable,recyclable, and nontoxic materials. When through circumstances I feel forced to choose actions that do not align with my values, I feel a lot of stress.

I've found that, without thought, finding what aligns with my values is a kind of "I'll know it when I see it" experience. But with thought, I can do a better job of articulating what I want to find, and perhaps get help from others in finding it. That is a journey I am taking now with my homeschooling, but more on that later.

The values that we think are important for our family include the following:

Gratitude: although we can certainly complain with the best of them, we try not to, and we try to find things to be grateful for. We are blessed, and this is not difficult. We try to express gratitude out loud, too, so our children can hear it. "Yes, it is very sad that Uncle sold his house, but we were so lucky to have the chance to visit it."
Responsibility to make the world a better place: I see this one from micro to macro, and all our actions are small. At home, I try to use this with sibling issues. If a comment isn't likely to make the situation better, it doesn't need to be said. In speech I like the suggestion to first consider "is it necessary? is it kind? is it true?"
Kindness: in a similar vein, being kind is important. We point out that being funny at someone's expense is unkind and that with kindness we can make a difference in the world, as we make someone feel a little better through kindness that may multiply as all the people we interact with may interact just a little better with other people, and so on.
Take care of the earth: We struggle with this one, but it is nonetheless a family value. We drive a gas minivan and heat with oil, but recycle, talk about how there is no "away" to throw trash to, try to limit our consumption, and think about ways that we can preserve nature.
Appreciate beauty: I try to point out natural beauty as I see it (and even man-made beauty). I think noticing it helps with the previous value, and it also sharpens observation and takes one out of oneself for a moment at least.

These are all ideals, of course that we strive toward and don't necessarily achieve, but I think failing to recognize them overtly will most certainly lead to failure to strive toward them at all!

My youngest son recently finished his first year of Spirit Play at our church, and I very much like their Rainbow Promises, and find that they are a good model for our family values also:

Respect each person.
Offer fair & kind treatment to ourselves & others.
Yearn to learn about ourselves , each other, and the mystery.
Grow by searching for what is right and true.
Believe in your ideas, share them, and listen as others share their ideas.
Insist on a fair and peaceful world.
Value the earth, our home.

Written as part of Steady Mom's 30 Minute Blog Challenge.

Growing

2010-03-29T17:24:00.004-04:00

Today my youngest turns six. He was born at home, in the bed and bedroom I still sleep in. He was born fond of snuggling - I carried him in a sling a lot as a baby, and loved him to sleep. As a toddler he would good naturedly find his snuggling, sneaking into a lap when it was convenient to him.

He is very deliberate and independent now. He goes to bed on his own schedule, and doesn't need any help doing it- he may stay up later than we'd like sometimes, but then suddenly he's gone-taken himself off to bed. He's very deliberate in his answers to questions, which in this house often means his answers are provided for him. But if they are provided incorrectly you can be sure we'll hear about it! He is hard to interrupt because he will steadfastly continue on his course. I have found it quicker and easier to work with that and let him finish what he is doing before having him do the task I need from him. I've also found that more than one or two directions or questions at a time is a waste of my breath! He is endlessly energetic and always has something goiing on in his head (and is often engaged in visible, imaginative play). His good nature and happiness are nearly always apparent, and he continues to be an excellent smuggler.

He is quite picky about food, and has been known to leave the table in a huff if green vegetables are put on his plate. His good nature and position as third child have somehow helped him get away with this. Exhibit 1 is the fact that he somehow got three bought meals for his birthday, which has never before happened here! And he's a terrible sugar addict. The other two boys will eat their Halloween candy slowly, over days and week. Not Evan -- he eats his right away and then steals his brothers' if he thinks he can get away with it! When he was one or two we found him ensconced on the couch with a pile of foil wrapped eggs, deliberately unwrapping and eating each one with no end in sight.

He is very verbal, and describes and explains in detail. He knows how to take advantage of finding an available adult ear! He spends a lot of time on weekends at our neighbors house, either talking to her or playing on her computer. Sometimes he comes home with treats they've baked. He plays with ideas and absorbs at his own speed, sometimes surprising me with what he knows. He's an excellent unschooler.

All in all, he is nearly always a joy and causes us very little worry. We're glad he lives here!

Journey North Mystery Class

2010-02-09T15:26:00.007-05:00

We started the Mystery Class this week, and I thought I'd give a summary of our first get together. I found it difficult to figure out what to do, so maybe this will help someone else, or simply be a reminder to myself next year. I'm feeling my way through it, but I think the class offers a great opportunity to use data as clues, draw conclusions from graphs, discuss how seasons happen in an astronomical sense, and look at the geography of the world. I homeschool in part to be able to take advantage of integrated learning opportunities like this one!

We printed out data sheets and graphs -- a data sheet for each location (10 in all, and an additional one for each student to record their home data), and one graph for each student. I cut off the bottom inch of the top page of the graph and then taped the two pages together from the back. All the action happens around the 12-hour mark, so make sure the graph can be written on where the two pages join!

We introduced the class as simply taking time clues such as sunrise and sunset to find locations in the world, and that we will be doing this over time.

For the first week we had each student record the sunrise and sunset times for their home location, and calculate the photoperiod -- that is, how long it was light. By our first meeting we had two weeks of data for the home location. We split up the rest of the locations between the students and recorded sunrise and sunset times and calculated photoperiods. Each student then graphed the photoperiod for all eleven locations on their graph, using a separate color for each location (color a box of that color on the top of the data sheet), and noting the number of the site next to the first data point. Data can be graphed as a dot or an X, and as time goes on the data for each location can be connected in a line. So on our first week we had two points for Home and one point each for the other 10 locations.

We used a globe to discuss some of the simpler concepts, such as where it's light all day and when, and vice versa (the poles). (This would probably work better at night with a flashlight -- we did it in the daytime with sunlight -- or by using these pictures which I just found.) We looked at the line dividing day from night and talked about how it slants and what that means for the length of the days and nights in north and south hemispheres. With a flashlight I could have taken the globe around to the other side (retaining the same slant) and discussed the opposite season.

We talked about latitude and longitude in very general terms (latitude being measured by the lines parallel to the equator, and longitude being measured by the lines that go through the poles.) We read the Latitude Rap, which might be more interesting later -- right now it had too many new ideas. We mentioned the Prime Meridian as the base (or Universal) time used in the world (which lead to a brief discussion of the extent of the British Empire).

We looked at the completed chart included in the teachers pack on Latitude and used what we know to make some guesses about the locations on that graph.

We also viewed the video included in the clues for Location #6 and made some guesses on where it might be based on our data for the first week, their data for the first week, and a guess on the nationality (or native language) of the students.

Our students picked a pet location and filled out one sentence about it on the weekly worksheet. There will be more to write later, I think.

I think that's it! Next week I may have new students, so we may review. I may get a better grasp of the materials available on the Journey North site, also, and make use of more of them.

Check out my friend Kris's preparations too, at At Home Science.

Temper, temper

2010-01-13T12:11:00.003-05:00

I have a bit of a temper. My mother will tell you all about it. Lately, my kids have been mentioning it too. So, with my wonderful new ipod Touch, I'm on a mission to improve it. I'm using (free) Daily Tracker -- I added a "Temper?" question, and every day I can answer yes or no. If I don't answer, it puts in a grayed out No for me, but doesn't count it in the statistics it compiles. Day one, before I decided to start, I lost it when our oldest broke a pretty wedding gift, but that, with the yelling a couple days before were what propelled me to this new effort, so they had a purpose.

It's day 2 that's worth talking about. It was a Sunday, which means I didn't have to direct the kids too much, and I didn't do any yelling. We just needed to get to church and home again, and keep the boys out of too much trouble. M (7) and I went to Family Yoga together. He went reluctantly, but he loved it. I wish it was more than once a month. The day is already fading into memory, but it was joyful, a really lovely day, and I have to think that my new resolution was part of that.

The days since have not been as good. One of them I yelled -- it bubbled out of me (with some cause that I don't know remember) so quickly that I didn't have a chance to quell it. The next day I didn't yell, but I was trying to get the boys to do some schoolwork, and they didn't appreciate it. In fact, the oldest ran away from home for about 45 minutes over math homework.

But I will hold the glow of that one day and hope that if I continue to work, it will be repeated.

Getting ready for a new puppy

2009-10-20T10:09:00.002-04:00

Even before we went to England we knew we would get a new dog soon. My sensitive middle son was very attached to our dog who died in March, and is also attached to our neighbor's 15-year old dog. We feel like getting a new puppy is almost a necessity.

Before we went to England we visited a local breeder who I know a little bit who has two litters of black Portuguese Water Dog (PWD) puppies. (Because of my allergies we're looking at purebreds with non-shedding coats.) We were pretty sure we would be bringing one home at the end of October. But when we came home from our trip and the weight of my household and family responsibilities hit my shoulders like a ton of bricks, I began to rethink that decision. For one thing, these puppies are very expensive. And for another, I could see that even though the rest of the family would love the dog, the work would fall to me. A big dog can really only be walked by an adult, and PWDs need intellectual stimulation and exercise and training. I had time to do agility with Jake when he was young; I think I'd just feel guilty I couldn't do the same with this new dog.

I'd thought of a smaller dog earlier in the process, but when I asked my family, particularly dh, they preferred a larger dog. Really, I think, we just wanted a new Jake. And the PWDs we looked at looked just like Jake. But I remembered something an older friend said to me recently "In the end, you're only responsible for your own happiness," and I wasn't sure that getting a bigger dog was taking care of myself.

I asked my family to write me a letter telling me how they would help me out both with the dog and with other work I do when we got a puppy. They didn't write anything. So I started to think about a compromise that both gets my middle boy a puppy and doesn't make me much crazier than I already am. I came up with a smaller dog that costs less, makes smaller poops, and doesn't need it's own seat to travel in a car (we bought a mini-van to in part to travel with Jake). We're getting a Bichon Frise that the boys will be able to walk, even when it's full grown. The boys are fully converted after seeing some pictures. They sound fabulous although some say they're hard to house train -- I hope they're wrong!

I felt sad today when I told the PWD breeder we had decided on another breed, but maybe that's just the end of saying goodbye to Jake. We're working on names for our new puffball (who I plan to keep in a puppy cut)! My hope is that a smaller dog will need less training (maybe I'm wrong there!) and will be easier to exercise. I know the crate will fit into our house better!

Trip abroad: Planning and Money

2009-10-13T21:00:00.004-04:00

We are back from 11 fully filled days to the UK. That said, we didn't see everything, not even everything on my much shortened list. However, we did have a good time.

So here are my first thoughts on planning a trip such as ours.

The first suggestion is to plan lots. Have a flexible schedule with options. In a few places on our trip, notably London, which we did at the end, I was woefully underprepared. I didn't have a reasonable top 5 list, and perhaps more importantly, I didn't know how we were going to get around. So we struggled a bit with Tube tickets before buying an Oyster card (still not sure if that was the right decision), and we struggled with finding a double-decker bus going where we wanted to go, although that was successful in the end.

Money: If you can, you and your travel partner (even if it's a spouse) should carry different credit cards so that if one disappears or get stolen, you have the second to fall back on. We ran the last day and a half of our trip on the cash left in my wallet. We didn't see the Tower of London for this reason, although there weren't resounding cheers at the idea of going either, so we might have skipped it anyway.

The less money you have, the more you should plan. If you're trying to keep to a budget, it's going to be less stressful if you know where you can eat and sleep each day. Don't forget to budget for sights – we were told this is an affordable option in the UK). We only visited a service station once, and we did quite a lot of driving. We were lucky to be able to travel without counting too many pence, although we did have to budget at the end when we didn't have plastic anymore.

Speaking of driving, it's pretty challenging. First there's the driving on the left side thing. Then there's the fact that the roads are narrow (really narrow, and they sometimes get narrower for no other reason than to slow you down) and the Brits drive really fast. Then there are the hedges blocking your view around any bends – and everywhere there's a bend, so don't plan on seeing the road ahead (except for motorways, of course). And because of that you'll whiz right by your turns. If you're lucky there will be a roundabout where you can turn around, but if not, plan on going miles before the driver gets up the nerve to turn around. And speaking of roundabouts, feel free to go around more than once if you need to to find the correct road. It's way easier than turning around later.

I scheduled our flight on Iceland Air through Iceland. It was cheaper than anything else I could find. The flight over is a bit brutal, leaving Boston at 9:30 pm and getting off the plane for an hour at 2am our time, and on another plane for another 3 hours. I don't regret that choice at all.

I was very happy with our lodgings. The first place we stayed was a wonderful little cottage at Merkins Farm near Bradford-on-Avon (which is near Bath). It has three bedrooms and a wonderful view, and was just perfect for us. There was a delicious cake awaiting us after our hard drive from Heathrow (see section above on driving in Britain!). It was worth the difficult drive, and we stayed there three nights.

Tweet log

2009-09-16T11:56:00.002-04:00

2 friends visiting today, but 5 boys is not enough-we just added a 6th for the evening. So far conflicts have been small and self-resolved.3:56 PM Sep 11th from TwitterGadget
Spent all day typing about handwriting: http://trunc.it/1ni9k andhttp://trunc.it/1nip4.9:24 PM Aug 31st from TwitterGadget
After creating a plan that has us seeing everything in the UK south of York, I've settled on three destinations. We'll take day trips.5:25 PM Aug 29th from TwitterGadget
The boys have built a castle, following the directions in Macaulay's book. http://trunc.it/1k2mq2:52 PM Aug 26th from TwitterGadget
Just booked a trip for five to Great Britain. Woo hoo!4:23 PM Aug 25th from TwitterGadget
Where should I look for ideas for traveling with 3 boys in England and Wales?10:30 PM Aug 23rd from TwitterGadget
I'm late to the Not Back-To-School party: http://bit.ly/vIDTjBack from a fab Mom's weekend away in Boothbay. Yesterday we watched moonrise over the Atlantic (sublime) and played Spoons (ridiculous).11:01 PM Aug 9th from TwitterGadget
10:36 PM Aug 9th from TwitterGadget
Ds2&3 noted the resemblance of Dvorak's New World Symphony to the SW score. http://trunc.it/151cg Music unit study?http://trunc.it/14krjFound it: http://bit.ly/24ryQG :58 and http://bit.ly/2KbmUZ 7:308:15 PM Jul 29th from TwitterGadget
I'm painting outside trim (White Dove). Dh got ahead of me yesterday with the stain (Spruce Blue), and now I have to catch up.My oldest did paid chores all weekend 2 earn enough 4 the new HP game (4 PC), & they R now all 3 entranced by it. Patient w/ #3's playin, 2.3:27 PM Jul 22nd from TwitterGadget
I've seen a fox and a hummingbird in our suburban back yard today.Kids were inspired to make their own version of Mythmatical. Greek gods for oldest, and Norse for middle, and no silly math.3:11 PM Jun 26th from web
Interesting article about year round school with enrichment intersessions in the WashPo: http://tinyurl.com/n48988Back from our first camping trip. Beautiful site (Tully Lake). Canoed, ate, hiked, and listened to the rain all night.11:58 AM Jun 13th from TwitterGadget
Planted a variegated dogwood with my dogs ashes.New blog post on students' response to failure. http://bit.ly/cfY26:56 PM Jun 6th from TwitterGadget
My 9 yo wants to create a website and use miniclip games on it. Anyone have a recommendation of how to get started?Planted: tomatoes in containers, squash (no zucchini available), nasturtium, peas, cukes, parsley, cilantro.4:39 PM Jun 6th from TwitterGadget
I have a new blog post on getting sucked in to homeworkhttp://tinyurl.com/p2y75g.My mother is having a hip replaced in 2 hours, and I'm flying to VA tomorrow. ??Go to the homeschool fair today to see what local hsers do?9:13 AM May 22nd from web
Planning more work for the boys during their week with Grandma than normal. Might keep them away from the screens.Had a tough trip to Staples yesterday - forgot my wallet. Leaving, my 5yo said, they should have a button that says "That wasn't easy!"10:19 AM May 18th from TwitterGadget
2:58 PM Jan 13th from web
Oldest now obsessed with building a cardboard and duct tape boat. Currently, it's 30 F and due to get colder.I have a post in the Carnival of Homeschoolinghttp://jacquedixon.com/?p=3... Here's the post:http://tinyurl.com/pb4nqn9:18 AM May 12th from TwitterGadget
Just did a serendipitous bridge unit based onhttp://tinyurl.com/9evwd5. Read Javier Builds a Bridge.2:58 PM Jan 13th from web
How the heck do I get my Verizon FIOS messages that people leave when I don't answer call waiting?10:27 AM Jan 12th from web
I'm about to try the crazy honey/onion cough remedy.8:10 PM Dec 29th, 2008 from web
I have blog posts on the ice storm and on our homeschool fair uphttp://www.everydaybest.blo....10:40 AM Dec 29th, 2008 from web
I won #nanowrimo!2:03 PM Nov 30th, 2008 from web
I think Write or Die is amazing. It's trained me to write without updating my words every 100 or so (which I'm not proud of!)4:29 PM Nov 25th, 2008 from web
I'm going to try Write or Die to get my #nanowrimo word count done for the day.
7:53 PM Nov 15th, 2008 from web

Creating a handwriting curriculum

2009-08-31T21:01:00.006-04:00

I have decided on teaching my kids to italic and cursive italic for handwriting. It is not what I learned, but it makes sense to me that it is an easier style and it's adherents can write both more fluidly and legibly. See here and here and here and here for explanations.

I have a number of resources I can use to teach them how to write, and there are a number of free or affordable (under $15) resources that you can use if you want to follow this path:

Get the Briem Handwriting font (Look for these links: The Italic Project>Teaching Aids>Software). It includes lines if you italicize it (type spaces to get blank lines). If you don't like that style of lines, get Learning Curve. It's a cursive handwriting font but it includes a symbol for the more traditional lines. Change the font sizes to change the size of the lines or the text. You can use the font to make huge letters for younger children and copywork samples for older children.
Download another Briem resource, Cursive Italic News. It contains lots of ideas for starting out with hand-eye training and includes many warm-up exercises that can be copied.
For more exercises and a step-by-step guide to each letter, see yet another Briem resource: Quick results, easy work (click that link and read everything, or click on the Model link to see the letter instruction).
Consider buying Penny Gardner's Italics: Beautiful Handwriting for Children. This book gives all the (unadorned) workbook pages that you need to teach the lowercase italic alphabet, and then works through the different types of joins. She also has YouTube videos to help teach handwriting (see the links at the bottom of the page).
In addition, blank lined paper is available from other places on the web including the Donna Young website (in the Handwriting section). Or you can just use a notebook from the local office store.

These are the steps I envision will work for anyone. This is not rocket science (as FlyLady would say):

Choose the type of handwriting that you think will serve your children best.
If you can, find a font that matches #1. If you have nice handwriting yourself, I see no reason not to make the exemplars yourself. There are free handwriting fonts available, so check those out before you spend money on a font.
Consider making sheets (maybe even laminated) of warm-up exercises such as vertical lines, horizontal lines, zigzags with the first stroke straight down and the second stroke up at an angle, n-type humps, u-type curves. Finding a rhythm and writing consistently is the object here. These warm-ups could be used for years, and could be offered in smaller sizes as the child get used to writing smaller letters. (See the resources in the bullet section above for specifics on warm-up exercises.)
Experts differ on whether to teach uppercase first or not, but it makes sense to me, and it's what my children have asked for. So I teach uppercase, and then lowercase.
Start providing words to copy, and of course, assisting in spelling when the child asks.
Continue with copywork, moving to longer passages, poems, etc. These can be printed out in your exemplar font if desired. Ambleside Online volunteers have created Word files of quotes from each years books for just this purpose. They are available in the Files section of the AOCopywork Yahoo group.
Teach how to join letters.
Continue with copywork, providing support and correction as necessary.

Using the resources I already have, I can make pages of copywork of various sizes, and of single letters or words using Microsoft Word and one of the italic handwriting fonts I already have: Lucida Sans italic or the Briem Handwriting font (which are free), or one of the Barchowsky fonts. (See my below for instructions on finding the Briem font, and see my first post on italics for a list of fonts.)

Penny Gardner's book Beautiful Handwriting for Children is a very useable resource and a good value. I wish it had warm-ups, and it needs to be accompanied by plenty of copywork.

New free resources:

I've found an additional font for italics. It's here on Briem.net. (Choose The Italic Project link and then Teaching Aids and then Software.) When you download the Briem Handwriting font, you also download a program to join the letters into cursive italics. Frankly, I don't see using the conversion program regularly once my students have the hang of joining letters, but it's a great resource.
Monica Dengo's mini curriculum. Lovely!
Nan Barchowsky's videos
Penny Gardner's videos: links here

Barchowsky BFH Handwriting Review

2009-08-31T12:14:00.006-04:00

This is an update to my earlier post on Fonts and other resources for handwriting.

I finally gave in and purchased BFH Fluent Handwriting. However, I bought it used, and all my comments are about the older version. (My book is blue with white writing and copyrighted 1997 and 1998.)

I've spent a bit of time with it, and it's definitely a love-hate relationship already. I love the style of writing and the approach to teaching it. I really like the warm ups that are included to encourage consistency and rhythm. However, as a program it is difficult to use. There is no clear index to what is on my CD. (I think the book should have included a printed version of the pages on the CD. Some pages, like worksheets with large print, could even have been shown in 1/2 size.) I have to use their program to look at the contents and pages appear in about 1/4 size on my screen. I can only read a page if I do a print preview, and I can only preview one page at a time. I'm also frustrated that I haven't found a single page to print to use as a reference to the alphabet. With the font that is included on the CD I can make one in Word, but it seems like an obvious thing to include in a handwriting program. (I looked into ordering them from the website, and the shipping for three 25 cent strips was $9!)

The book I have contains the same sections as the updated book. Note that the first section is, indeed brief, and goes from posture and how to hold the writing implement (which is indeed useful information) right to some of the patterns for warmups and the joins that go with each pattern. Introducing younger children to writing is not covered in the book. The CD, however, does include pages for teaching capitals (one page per letter) in alphabetical order, and pages for teaching lowercase (also one page per letter) grouped by letter family. I do really like the quick narrative for each letter. Some of them are especially fun like: g: "Gus the gopher runs around, jumps up, and goes down in his hole to curl up." The narratives for lowercase letters are grouped by letter shape, and those for uppercase letters are in alphabetical order.

The CD for the older book contains five folders: Basics 1, Basics 2, Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. I notice that the new version has a level 4, which my older CD does not have, but perhaps it doesn't have two Basics levels and the material is the same. In each folder are worksheets to print out, including patterns and letters and, at the higher level, words and words with joins. The first page or so of each file is nearly always text for the teacher to read, and it is this text that can't be read without using print preview or just printing the lesson. Some of the words used on some of the worksheets can be replaced by the user by typing new text.

I find the material poorly organized. For instance, after a little review, my fourth-grader is ready to start joining letters. However, the material for introducing that topic is split between the book and the CD. The book is perhaps more complete, but doesn't offer matching worksheets. To be clear – my copy is old and the program has been revised. I don't know how many of my comments apply to the revised program and unfortunately, the website doesn't provide a lot of information.

The search for the perfect handwriting curriculum continues – or rather, I need to forget it and build one from what I already own! (Getty-Dubay is calling to me - I've never seen it in person, and it adds up in price with three kids . . . .)

Homeschooling for the Trip

2009-08-26T15:17:00.004-04:00

I think much of our Ambleside Online plans will be put on hold for the month and instead we'll focus on stories and such about Britain in preparation for our trip. This morning we started reading David Macaulay's Castle. After about 20 minutes of that, I tried to switch to one of the Shakepseare History plays in Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories, but was pre-empted. P said "I really want to use this book to play We Are The People." He took the book and they disappeared inside for a few minutes. When they came back out they all had parts: P was, I think, the master engineer, M the mason, and E the blacksmith and the miner. They busily made the tools they needed and built a castle, while I read David McCullough's 1776 in preparation for a unit on the American Revolution that I hope to lead for our co-op after the holidays. It was fun to listen to them "narrate" what I had just read to them.

We just went to the library and I got out a pile of books on Britain, but didn't find a good history. So I think I'll revisit stories from An Island Story: specifically the Romans (because we will visit some Roman ruins) and The Princes in the Tower (because they had a connection to Ludlow, where we will visit). I'm sure I pick a few others. I'm going to encourage P to read Dawn Wind by Rosemary Sutcliffe, and maybe some other books set in Britain. The sights all bounce around in chronology -- I'm sure the two younger won't be able to make sense of that. Oh well. And M (7) is very interested in Vikings right now, so we'll probably continue with those books (Viking Tales and Viking Raiders). We're flying through Iceland, but decided not to do a layover -- the Viking sights could have been fun.

I'm also looking for appropriate movies with British settings so that they can perhaps recognize some places from the. Other recommendations are most welcome!

We're going to Europe!

2009-08-25T17:24:00.003-04:00

Just booked the trip for the five of us! I found that Iceland air is considerably cheaper than other options, and the layovers in Reykjavik are reasonable -- 1 to 2 hours. Of course the trip over will be brutal -- leave at 9:30 pm, 5 hours in the air, then land, layover for an hour and get on another plane. But the trip over is brutal when you land at 6am London time too, so it is what it is. At least we'll be able to check into a hotel as soon as we get to London, and not have to wander around with our bags! And take a cost increase of $100-200 for a better (i.e. nonstop) flight and multiply it by five, and you'll see why I'm willing to do it this way. I considered a longer layover in Iceland, but decided against it. We'll have enough to do in the UK to fill up our 10 days.

We'll do a little London, maybe Oxford, the old walled city of Ludlow in Shropshire, with a side visit to the Roman ruins at Wroxeter, and hopefully some coasal Welsh castles. Recommendations appreciated, and more to follow!

Massachusetts cannot require 900/990 hours from homeschoolers

2009-08-20T21:57:00.006-04:00

I've seen Massachusetts listed as one of the more difficult states to homeschool in. I don't know enough about regulations in other states, but it seems to me we're somewhere in the middle between states like Texas that don't require registering homeschooled children at all, and states like New York and Pennsylvania that have specific academic requirements. One of the difficulties in Massachusetts is that each homeschooling family is required to report to their school district superintendent, thus guaranteeing different treatment in different towns, and that there are not laws, only case rulings to govern the regulation of homeschooling.

At any rate, I'm not going to reiterate Massachusetts homeschool law here -- see the experts for opinions. I recommend MHLA and AHEM.

And I do highly recommend that you brush up on the case rulings, particularly what they don't include. My district, and I think others, provides me with paperwork, which from my reading of the case law, includes many inaccuracies, starting with the first paragraph: "The Massachusetts General law requires the School Committee to determine that a home schooling program meet with the minimum standards established for public schools in the Commonwealth prior to approving such a program."

In fact, there is no reason to believe that homeschooling must meet the minimum standards established for public schools. The case law actually asks that the homeschool program "equals in thoroughness and efficiency, and in the progress made therein, that in the public schools in the same town."

The form that my school district asks me to sign provides the following text immediately above the signiature line: "The following signature confirms the intent to provide a minimum of 900-990 hours of instruction." I balk at this, mostly because I don't want to track hours the way I would have to to ever provide documentation of those hours. I can see it now: "Approximately 15 minutes spent in car discussing personal finance, 5 minutes spent on fractions while making dinner . . . ." I don't think so. This requirement makes me uncomfortable, so I did some research. I'm not the only one who doesn't like it. There was a vociferous discussion on this point on the MassHomeLearningAssoc Yahoo group a couple of years ago. From that list, and the two web sites linked above, I've come up with the following potential responses to the 900/990 hour requirement (that's 900 hours for elementary school and 990 for secondary level).

The Brunelle decision states: "While following a schedule may be an important consideration in a public school where preexisting schedules need to be maintained and coordinated, the perception and use of time in a home school are different. The plaintiffs can observe and accommodate variations (from child to child, subject to subject, day to day) in the learning process and teach through a process that paces each student."

As we will teach our child on a year round basis, we will meet or exceed the state mandated 180 days/900 hours per year of structured learning time required by the Massachusetts Compulsory Attendance Laws for public school students. However please note that according to the Brunelle case:"Parents who teach at home stand in a very
different relationship to their children than do teachers to a class full of other peoples' children. Teaching methods may be less formalized, but in the home setting may be more effective than those used in the classroom because the teacher-to-student ratio is
maximized, a factor permitting close communication and monitoring on an individualized basis."

We endeavor to live up to the Charlotte Mason ideal that "Education Is an Atmosphere, a Discipline, a Life" and therefore does not end at set times. Thus we consider that we homeschool all the time, and thus easily meet the 180 days requirement.

[child's name]'s education is holistic as well--learning occurs in the context of and as part of normal life experiences. His "school year" extends 365 days a year.

Due to the flexibility of homeschooling it is impossible for us to state the number of hours of instruction. [Child's name]'s education will be equal in thoroughness and efficiency to that which is received by public school students. Please note that the 900/990 hours per year of structured learning time required by the Massachusetts Compulsory Attendance Laws pertains specifically to public school students.

The coming homeschool year

2009-08-09T21:19:00.005-04:00

I've been working hard on my plans so I'm going to jump on the Not Back-to-School bandwagon and share my idea(l)s. My apologies if I’ve ever sounded smug about my homeschooling. I think homeschooling a single child under a certain age (I think under 4^th grade), can be easy. I certainly don’t feel that way now with my oldest turning 10 this year, and my second child being well into school years. I want to offer them some content as well as helping them to develop their skills , but not overwhelm them (or, just as important, me) with work. I want to pick a few excellent resources for us to use, and I worry over finding the right ones. I prefer living books, and consider myself a secular Charlotte Mason educator.

My boys are 9 (P), 7 (M), and 5 (E) ; fourth grade, second grade, and kindergarten. We will continue to use Ambleside Online as our guide.

I've thought a lot about whether to combine the studies of any of my boys -- doing three different years is definitely a bit daunting. However, I don't want to hold the oldest back, or force one of the younger children to jump in at a higher level, so for now my plan is that they will all work on their own level, with separate materials for history, geography, literature, and some math and science. I'll have to push my oldest to do more of his own reading to make this work; it's hard for me to let go of knowing everything he reads, and it will be hard for him, too, because he likes me to read to him. I'll read the literature selections to him, but my hope is that he can take over the rest. We'll also do some topics together such as artist and composer study, Shakespear studies, and nature study

For my fourth grader I am planning to use the following: For history, This Country of Ours, by H.E. Marshall, George Washington's World by Genevieve Foster, Poor Richard by James Daugherty, and Abigail Adams: Witness to a Revolution by Natalie S. Bober. For geography, Minn of the Mississippi by Holling C. Holling. For math I'm leaning toward Math Mammoth as being a little more useable than MEP, which I used last year. I want to de-empasize the workbook (use them as a guide) and use more Living Math. I'm hoping this list of math readers from the Massachusetts DOE will prove useful.

We'll use the AO 4 Lit selections: The Age of Fable by Thomas Bulfinch, The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford, as well as some shorter works.

We will do some poetry, but I'm not sure if we'll use the AO 4 selections for the family, use difference selections as a family, or do different poems with different boys. I have a long free reading list for P to choose from -- I think I'm going to ask for two books he selects from my list per term, but we'll see how that goes.

I've done a lot of thinking about our science selections. We'll read Physics Lab in the Home by Robert Friedhoffer. I would like to cover some earth science also and have requsted the following from the library to evaluate: How the Earth works / John Farndon, and Shaping the earth / Dorothy Hinshaw Patent. We own The Earth by Barbara Taylor, but it's what I consider a factoid book and not the type of material I prefer to use. We may also read material about evolution and/or read a biography of Charles Darwin. I'll use DVDs here also (see Nature Study, below).

I plan to teach my oldest italic cursive this year, continue doing copywork, do some written narrations, and start doing dictation. I may have him learn to type this year. I also plan to do some Plutarch, using Our Young Folks' Plutarch by Rosalie Kaufman. We need to do a little grammar, perhaps using Primary Language Lessons, by Emma Serl, or perhaps just expanding on Mad Libs.

A focus with my second grader will be his reading skills, and my hope is to be low key but do consistent and regular work with him. His little brother is breathing down his neck with reading skills and I think my middle boy will be happier if he can stay a step ahead of his little brother, even if he has to work hard to do it.

M enjoys language, and is interested right now in Norse mythology and medieval times. We'll read Viking Tales, an AO 1 selection that we didn't get to yet. We'll use early chapters of This Country of Ours and Child's History of the World, by Hillyer for history, and I may look for ways to supplement that, although our literature selections may be sufficient to fill it in some history. We'll use Holling's Tree in the Trail and probably Seabird for geography and more history. This child is very sensitive, and I'm not sure how he'll feel about whale hunting. History tales will also include The Little Duke, by Charlotte Younge. We'll try Understood Betsy, The Wind in the Willows, and Robin Hood for literature, as well as other selections, including Shakespeare stories (we'll try Leon Garfield's book, and Jim Weiss's audio).

Science selections will include The Kids' Book of Awesome Stuff by Charlene Brotman which I enjoyed with P two years ago, and Pagoo, by Holling.

I'll be a little more flexible with the reading selections for M, as working on basic reading and writing skills is where I'll need to pick my battles. I plan to use children's readers and other children's books to work on his reading, and we may add a phonics resource. His computation is good, I'lll try to keep in fresh with living math, but will probably use Math Mammoth with M also.

If we do individual poetry selections, I'll use this compilation from Ambleside for the two younger boys.

I like to unschool for kindergarten, and my youngest has lots of interests (unschools well;). I own MFW K program, so I may use that for guidance as well as making sure we have a good selection of books to read. I use the lists from AO0, Mater Amabilis, and Five in a Row for guidance in selecting books.

I plan to do some things with all three boys, perhaps even starting that way in the morning after doing family chores (this would be new for us, but worked well one day recently). However, we have a tea-time ritual, and composer and artist study will be saved for tea time on occasional afternoons. I'm hoping to do the following together: hymns (from our UU hymnal), virtues, a bible story a week from Penny Gardner's list, foreign language (Spanish, probably), art, song/folksong, and perhaps recorder for the older two.

As I've noted before, we struggle with nature studies, but we continue to work on it. Last year we watched the complete DVD series Life of Mammals (David Attenborough). This year I plan to use Handbook of Nature Study bird challenges, and follow that study of common backyard birds with the Life of Birds DVD series (also David Attenborough). I may also look for DVDs for learning about the earth, space, and evolution.

That's it, and it's subject to change to meet our needs.

Challenged by Math

2009-07-01T21:51:00.005-04:00

I'm feeling challenged (and a bit obsessed) by math in my homeschool lately. I'm very attracted to Living Math, but concerned about my ability to implement it in a thorough way. With my oldest I used Singapore for 1st and 2nd grade. In 3rd grade I used MEP.

Singapore is fine,but I didn't find there was much explanation (maybe I needed to buy another book). I like MEP, but I found it difficult to implement. First, we had to print it. Last year we printed all the files for years 1 and 3 -- that's 18 files per year. Then to teach it, it requires my time using the Lesson Plan booklet (which I had to print myself) which occasionally refers to unnumbered Copymasters, and then I have to figure out where the corresponding practice is in the student's Lesson book. The whole system is poorly referenced, in my opinion. Perhaps if we did math five days a week it would work for us, but we don't. Also, the in-depth study of the metric system, the fact that my student's measurements of items in the Lesson book would be off because we use a different size of paper in the US (it's a British program) is a problem. The use of British money is a small issue also if your child is very concrete. I love the price (free), and the I think the math is good, but I found the whole thing hard to use, and at my house that means that it doesn't always get used.

I'm also challenged by math by the boys. My oldest especially shuts down at the sight of math, which makes me sad. On the other hand, in fourth grade his mother also shut down at the sight of math, and went on to work far ahead of her class in 7-9th grades (yeah, that's me). At that point the system reined me in. So I try not to think I've wrecked him permanently. I'm not currently challenged by math. Generally I like finding patterns and such, and I do a fair amount of math for my sewing and knitting. I took calculus in college and had to use it in grad school, but always needed the help of the engineers on my team to make it through the problem sets.

I find he needs more practice than I think he does. I may think he's learned a concept (say, borrowing) but if he doesn't use it for awhile, he forgets. When that happens I think one of two things -- I either think we need to buckle down and be more rigorous, or I wonder if we should just leave it for awhile, and when he's ready it will stick. I'm not sure dh would really be okay with leaving it. He often teaches more difficult topics on the fly as they come up. I'm afraid my job may be to make sure they don't get forgotten.

So I'm eying other options. I'd really like to do more Living Math. I have to make time for it. (This is a good article on using more living math.)I'm hoping that I can do living math with multiple kids -- doing one at a time for three different kids gets difficult, and that's also part of the problem with MEP. I worry about Living Math being enough, especially if for some reason the boys ended up going to public school. I know that I'm not very good at working without a plan -- too often I end up not working at all, and I'm not always eager to make my own Living Math plan. However, I found this article very interesting, although it doesn't provide a curriculum by any means, even as revolutionary a curriculum as it outlines. Part of me hopes we're already doing it with our literature-rich approach to learning. I'm also familiar with the claim that K-8 math can be learned in less than six weeks by a motivated student. But so far I can't completely let go of a formal approach, at least with my oldest (who is 9). My youngest has a great time figuring his own stuff out.

So what else am I looking at? Math on the Level (MOTL) is very appealing. It provides books on major concepts, and the books cover all levels (K-8). Theoretically, I could cover the same concept for all three boys and provide questions for them at their own level. I could find teaching ideas for whatever topic seemed to be appropriate for us at the time. However, the down side seems to be that I have to come up with the questions. I think some may be provided, but the 5-a-day concept requires me to pull together five problems on a variety of topics for three boys. That's probably 60 problems a week. Plus record-keeping. MOTL is starting to sound pretty mom-intensive. It's also quite expensive.

I'm also looking at Math Mammoth. MM has a variety of options, of which I've been looking at the Blue Series and the Light Blue Series. The Blue books are by topic, which I think sounds quite similar to MOTL -- however they provide problems. They also provide enough text for a child to potentially teach themselves. It's also very affordable. It is available as downloads which can be printed, but that doesn't bother me, especially as I can print off different copies for all three boys as they are ready. The Light Blue books are full curriculum books, also potentially good for self-teaching. They are slightly more expensive than the Blue books (approximately equivalent to Singapore, I think) but I would only have to buy it once, not once for each child. From what I've seen, I think MM is a thoughtful program, and far from being simply drill. It may not be quite as innovative as MEP, but I think it may be far easier to use because explanations and problems are together in the same place.

So having put my thinking into writing, I'm going to leave it alone. We're going on vacation and the boys are doing a daycamp this month, so we won't be doing much until at least August. At that point I may buy the MM multiplication book to get a sense of how they work and to see if we like them. I'll also think about buying MOTL and looking at it for the 60 day free trial.

P. S. One inspiration for an imaginative approach to math instruction is this article: Lockhart's Lament.

Oldest Makes a Funny

2009-06-21T21:03:00.002-04:00

"Hey Mom, speaking of educational there's a Nova movie on tonight that I think you'd like."

"What is it called?"

"Watching grass grow in real time!"

After recovering from laughing so hard I cried I wondered out loud if there might be some parts in slow motion so that we can see all the details.

Let's blame the student

2009-06-03T14:26:00.009-04:00

I spent last week taking care of my mother after a hip replacement operation, and had the opportunity to chat with some of her bright and interesting friends. One friend was a teacher and told the following story: A boy who has always done well turns in a paper that is below his usual standard and she grades it accordingly and gives it a B. It turns out that the B resulted in the boy and his family going into therapy.

The response in our conversation was a bit of disdain that the boy couldn't take a lower grade, and the comment that it was good for the boy to get a B or even to fail at something, and the conversation went on to say the children (perhaps especially gifted children) shouldn't expect to always excel.

At this point I broke in, because I felt they were blaming the victim. Children in school are certainly not told that it is okay to be less good at one subject, or to only be good at one subject (unless, perhaps, its a varsity level sport). Quite the contrary. Similarly, they are not encouraged to allowed to continue to formally study a topic after the class has finished it, regardless of how good they may be at it, or how much they like it. To excel academically, a student must be good at every subject and must be willing to give up a subject of interest to move on to the next topic on which they will be graded.

How about not blaming the student, but acknowledging that when he or she reacts with shock and dismay to a low grade, they are responding to the system that teaches them that they must excel at everything? School is just one big game, and only a few can win. You're supposed to win, and to win you have to be good at everything. If you can't be good, don't even try, is what they learn as the corollary.

So then kids move on to real life. Real life is much less clearly a game to win, although some adults will make it so. As an adult, you don't have to be good at everything -- not that it wouldn't be nice, of course. What matters as an adult? The ability to be happy, to figure out what needs to be done and then do it or delegate it, the ability to get on with others. And certainly an ability that allows you to make a living is extremely useful. But being good at math, science, literary analysis, essay writing, a foreign language or two, and history isn't going to serve you particularly well unless you enjoy them, and they they will provide hours of entertainment in your leisure time.

What would a school that actually prepared kids to be adults look like? It would certainly let children continue to study a topic that interests them. It would not set up such a win/lose situation. Many more people can succeed at real life than can be in the top echelon at school. It would nurture those characteristics that contribute to success as a self-supporting and somewhat content adult. Content would be broad and real, not watered-down, and children could, after an initial introduction, choose how far to pursue a topic. I'm feeling my way here -- what do you think?

Even homeschoolers get sucked in

2009-05-20T14:29:00.002-04:00

To the homework game, that is.

Middle(7) has been signed up for a zoo school this year targeted to homeschoolers. They meet ten times, once a month, for two hours at a time. We were “assured” that one of the leaders had been a teacher and was up-to-date on curriculum standards and all that. Some of the moms laughed and whispered among ourselves that that wasn’t what was important to us. I should have known then . . . .

Zoo school has provided him with some opportunities, but it has also provided him with homework. For reasons that I haven’t completely figured out, he never wants to go, but he also has never regretted going or seemed at all upset when I picked him up. So I really didn’t want to push the homework thing. It was hard enough to get him there (Oldest, 9, informed me that I was using too much bribery) without also getting the homework done. Also, at his age and reading and writing level (three letter words and barely) guess who is actually doing the homework?

Yesterday was the second-to-last class, and there were assignments due – a game that he was supposed to create, a paper or poster on an animal he picked, and animal cards with facts on different animals for when he shows us around the zoo at the last class. We had some animal cards, but it’s not clear to me how he is going to use them since he can’t read them. He could hand them to us to read, but then he’s not showing us around the zoo, but just giving us information to read that I have probably gathered and added to the cards.

The game assignment didn’t call to him, but this was the assignment that sucked me in. I got myself in a dither about it. Last month (when I thought it was due) I cut out a safari game that we had in PDF form, but of course it wasn't a game that Middle had created. He was worried too, and between us, we worked ourselves into a bit of a dither, with him saying he didn’t want to do it (with a mulish expression on his face), and me resentfully busting my ass to create a simple game for him.

Fortunately, I had to go out in the middle of the afternoon, and I had a chance to recognize what was happening. He wasn’t interested in completing the assignment. I didn’t think it was a good assignment (although it could be, for the right child), and I wasn’t particularly interested in completing it either. One of the reasons my kids don’t go to school is so that I don’t have to make them do stuff (or do it myself!) that none of us thinks is worth doing. I had been sucked into a situation that I always intended to avoid, and now I needed to extricate myself.

When I got back home I asked him what he wanted to do, and he said, “I don’t want to make a game.” I was okay with that and told him so. As it turned out, when I checked him in we were asked if he had the game and the report, and I could answer “no” and hopefully made it clear that I was fine with that. At any rate, he was happy when I picked him up, and I look forward to seeing the zoo through his eyes next month.

A day

2009-05-12T16:50:00.005-04:00

I woke up a bit late and wasn't out of the shower until after nine. I fed the unfed children and set up the Bosch to grind wheat. The two older kids played outside, but Youngest noticed scissors in a holster on a website I was looking at, and wanted some. So we cut out felt the right size and he sewed it (by hand) with my help to make a little blue scissor holster.

I mixed up two loaves of mostly whole wheat No Knead Bread (which I actually knead in my Bosche). It will be ready to cook tomorrow. Then I mixed up three loaves of Whole Wheat Oatmeal Bread, somewhat making up the recipe.

I found the potholder loom that I'd hidden -- it needed only two more loops to be ready to finish, so Middle (7) and I worked on that so that Youngest (5) could use the loom. In the meantime, I'd given Oldest (9) some math to do, which freaked him out. For the record this was the problem: use all nine digits only once each to create an addition problem (i.e. four hundred something plus six hundred something equals one thousand something). That took pretty much forever, and I probably helped him too much. This morning he was reading something -- Pokemon I think. Later I asked him to finish reading A Lion To Guard Us which he did, despite the fact that only feet away his brothers were playing annoying tunes on a toy electric guitar.

After at least some of us had had lunch I sat outside on the swing and finished reading Yonie Wondernose to Middle (7) and Youngest (5). Then we read a story from D'Aulaire's Norse Myths. I went inside to put the bread in the oven, do a few dishes, and make a cup of coffee and collected all the boys (Oldest was finishing up drawing a cartoon) to squeeze onto the outdoor swinging loveseat for the first act of Virginia Lee Burton's Life Story (which is a history of the earth and life on it).

Then I released them just in time for computer time (which is available starting at 3) and took the bread out of the oven. Youngest reminded me he hadn't had lunch so I made him a peanut butter sandwich. I took my knitting back out to the swing to do a couple of rows on my almost finished socks. Then I remembered to call the plumber about the leak in the mudroom which dh just doesn't have time to get to, so I went to do that (took awhile to track down his number). He'll come by tomorrow.

Then I watched a YouTube video about homebirth: Part 1 and Part 2.

Still on the list is making pizza dough with the rest of the freshly ground flour, and sewing the straps on the slowest sewing project ever, my Spring Ruffle Top. Two more sessions and it might be done. So far it's taken probably six separate sessions in the sewing room to get to this point.

Tonight is supposed to be the first ultimate frisbee practice if the weather holds, so I need to make and pack up dinner for the kids to eat at the field and see if I can find my cleats. My mother called to check in. She had her pre-op appointment yesterday for her hip replacement operation in ten days. I'm going down for a week to help her out. And tomorrow I just noticed I have a Jericho Road meeting (a board that I am on) at 9am, but I haven't arranged childcare yet . . . .

Carnival of Homeschooling

2009-05-12T11:11:00.002-04:00

Be sure to check out the Carnival of Homeschooling this week -- one of my posts is included! This week's host is Jacque Dixon of Walking Therein. You will find it here: COH #176: Some Things Moms Love.

New Go To Cookbook

2009-05-10T11:06:00.000-04:00

My sister-in-law has written a terrific cookbook that I am enjoying. About 15 months ago a I did a raw vegan detox. A few months later I was going to do it again, but the friend who was going to do it with me bagged out. I wasn't brave enough to go it alone, but I did want to do something different with my diet, so I stopped eating meat. I have found that the effects of the detox, in that I look for more fresh food in my diet, have lasted, and they didn't seem to be when I returned to an omnivorish diet in the months after the detox.

At any rate, there is the detail of what, exactly, to eat and I've found that Tess's cookbook, Radiant Health, Inner Wealth, is very helpful when I'm trying to figure out what to eat. I enjoy her spring roll recipes, and now use the ingredients from the Mango Cucumber spring roll as a salad -- no fat and delicious! I've also made and truly enjoyed the Mulligatawny Soup, the Aloo Gobi Chole, and The Fresh Greek Delight. You can find some recipes at her blog. If you like them, consider buying the cookbook! Tess is a homeschooling, self-publishing WAHM, and you can be sure that your money will go to good use, and you'll get a cookbook you'll love in the bargain!

A fun nature walk

2009-03-25T13:19:00.014-04:00

Finally, a successful nature walk! True, it didn't start out smoothly. First I lost Middle, then I lost Oldest while I went back to get Middle, but we finally all convened. Then I had to bribe grumpy Middle to come along with us, but in the end he had the most fun.

We went to a reservoir near our home and saw lots of stuff.

Like ice on the reservoir -- but not all of it.

A shot of the way the ice pushes up onto the shore.
Bubbles under thin ice. The ice has melted and reformed in the last couple of weeks. Today it was about 50 degrees. There was a funny squeaking or whistling sound that I think was the ice. I tried to record it on a video, but it didn't work -- I can only hear the airplane that was going overhead.

We found pussy willow. And old milkweed -- a place to look for Monarchs soon (check out this site that maps sightings of growing milkweed and migrating Monarch butterflies).

This was the prize of the trip:

A skeleton, probably bird, since we found it surrounded by feathers.

The skeleton in situ.
Some scat. We aren't very successful in finding living animals, but we do see evidence of them, and hear the birds.

A little fur on the ground. My guess is a perished mouse, but I'm no expert.

A debris hut/leanto that we found.
Some brand new lacy white fungus.

I think we could use some of Melissa's Tiny Happy Foraging Bags -- at least for Middle, who brought home the skeleton. Here he is, happy!

Our "puppy" Jake

2009-03-12T09:47:00.004-04:00

Jake our Portuguese Water Dog died on Sunday. He brought a lot of love into our house, and it is hard to let him go. He was ten years old.

He was diagnosed with a large tumor about two weeks ago, and an ultrasound on Friday showed that it had spread and was inoperable. Although he had a few low days, in general his spirits were good. Just last weekend he had a good run off leash, and even Friday he was happy to see me when I picked him up from the vet. However he ate his last meal Friday afternoon and then failed fast. We told the boys on Saturday about his prognosis, and they were, and are, all very sad. Sunday it was clear to us that he was done, and Matt took him to the vet. We were lucky to have wonderful family and friends to provide one-on-one care for each of the boys during this time.

I want to thank all of you who helped us or provided a shoulder to cry on during the last two weeks. We are blessed with good friends and we were blessed with a good dog.

P.S. If you have a minute for a sad and humorous will and testament by a dog, you might enjoy this one written by Eugene O'Neill: http://www.longwharf.org/off_hughPlay2.html.

Feeling Unschooly

2009-02-11T14:48:00.005-05:00

I haven't really entertained the idea of unschooling for quite awhile now, although I do agree with unschoolers that free time is crucial in learning. For many unschoolers what I do is not remotely close to unschooling, which requires little to no direction from the parents. I'm not currently interested in giving up parental authority. But this week I'm feeling unschooly, although I'm not particularly acting on it.

It may have stemmed out of a conversation on Monday night where I explained how my education had let me down, that perhaps I am less happy as an adult than I could have been because of education. I've used this spiel in conversation before, so I'm not sure why it seems to have affected me more this week.

But I'm coming back to what it is that I really want our children to do and be, and none of it is related to learning the history of Britain in the seventeenth century. (Although the lesson of trying to plant a colony in America is perhaps more relevant – P has learned than in order for a colony to succeed, they had to farm. Obvious to us, but not to them, and thought provoking for anyone setting out on a brand new endeavor to take the time to figure out what is essential to have a chance of success.)

I want them to find their own place in the world, figure out what they are good at and how to pursue it. I need to remind myself of this when I want to read to one of them and they are running in the opposite direction – even when I have carefully picked a time when they didn't seem engaged in any other project.

It could be I'm seeing the success of my less visible work – the house is a little more organized, and therefore more conducive to constructive play (currently we have tape marking the "mining cart tracks" running through the upstairs hall, down the stairs, and around the living room). We have some routines in place – for instance, the computer is out of bounds between 10am and 3pm, with limits on how much it can be used at other times, so they can put computer games out of their minds for a little while and play at other things.

Their play sometimes makes me crazy – it's nearly all about fighting. I know I give them stories that are not about fighting! I guess I want to keep doing that.

I'm not sure I'll change my approach, but I certainly don't regret paring Ambleside Online down recently (except for the niggling worry that I might not make my year-end summary acceptable to the school system). I've reduced it to the point that we can catch up if we get behind. And both of my school-age children do really enjoy a good story, even if the language is a little difficult. I don't remember that much of my schooling – but I really enjoy learning about what interests me. I guess I want to expose them to many subjects in the hope that one lights a fire for them. And I need to constantly remind myself of that goal when it becomes clear that no fire is being lit, and that there is more chance for an ember to develop if I back off and leave them alone.

Back to the status quo

2009-02-08T12:31:00.005-05:00

The acute danger of a layoff seems past. My husband has been getting reassurance through the grapevine for him and his whole group. He now reports directly to the president who orchestrated the layoffs, which has good and bad points, but allows the president to get to know him and the work he does, creating a personal relationship.

And it has brought me back to my third point which is where I get uncomfortable. The crisis gave me two opportunities: to count my many blessings (in the hope that I would be able to keep them), and to recommit to the life I have chosen of homeschooling and homemaking. And it did that. When faced with the possibility of needing to work and send the boys to school it seems very clear that this is the better life.

But when the crisis has passed, I return to my itch that although what I do is best for my kids, I'm not convinced that it's best for me. Those five days of sureness look very attractive, in an odd way. My problem is, I lack motivation to make and meet my own ephemeral goals. NaNoWriMo gets me to write in November -- I need something to get me to write the rest of the year. Or I need to stay so busy that I'm not wondering what it is I'm supposed to be doing with my life.

Facing a layoff

2009-01-30T15:48:00.003-05:00

Yesterday at noon, my husband was sure he'd be laid off today. By two he had heard through the grapevine that he had received a reprieve in a behind-closed-doors shouting match. We are not feeling very secure in our income right now.

I'm using the following precepts, very loosely borrowed from yoga, to deal with the situation.

1. Open to grace. I believe we need to continue to notice and enjoy our blessings, and also open to any gifts that may come to us. This may involve sharing our worries to some extent with our circle, who cannot help if they don't know about any problem. In church we pray for those who are in grief or distress, facing medical treatment, etc., and I realize that we are none of those.

2. Ground yourself to the earth. For me this is currently taking the form of determining what our values and priorities are. I have become aware today that my job may be to maintain normalcy as my husband is stressed out. I am too, but I think I need to bury it for the kids. We need to decide what is important, and it is emerging to me that what is important is to live as happily as possible, especially for the kids.

It also means to me being very concrete in our defining options and making decisions. For instance, our initial response to this uncertainty is to stockpile money, which makes me feel rather hopeless because it is so amorphous. I'm hoping to come up with something more concrete -- decide how much money we want to save this month and create a budget, which gives us a more positive goal to work toward, rather than looking at any spending at all as a failure, and allows some fun or necessary expenditures.

3. Open, reach, stretch. So I'm not so sure what this means to me today. Perhaps I'm still working on 1 and 2.

Altering/Refining AO or AO3 Lite

2009-01-14T13:27:00.009-05:00

We have made some changes in the new year to our curriculum. I was beginning to find doing everything too stressful, but on consideration, Ambleside Online is still a good choice for us, we just need a little less of it. We are busy with a coop on Thursdays, and if I'm lucky, Grandma takes the boys on Fridays. That leaves us a three day school week. My boys are busy with their projects and their Lego, and I see that as a good thing. So I've cut down our already reduced AO3 in the following ways:

We don't do Bible -- they go to Sunday School.
We just dropped An Island Story. I will read it myself and narrate parts back as they are relevant to other readings we are doing. We are keeping American history and CHOW.
We dropped our Marco Polo book. We were using Rugoff's Marco Polos Adventures in China and found it very dry. I plan to use some online resources, perhaps a movie, and the shorter and prettier The Adventures of Marco Polo by Freedman to create a familiarity with MP.
We don't use Trial and Triumph. However we are using the other History Tales/Biography, and may look for extras to help replace AIS. P reads these himself.
I'm not very good at nature study, but we have been watching Attenboroughs The Life of Mammals on DVD. They are excellent. We do dribs and drabs of nature study, but I'm not organized about it.
We have dropped The Story of Inventions and substituted The Mystery of the Periodic Table. We are still using Science Lab in a Supermarket by Robert Friedhoffer, which P can read himself.
P is reading Tall Tales himself, and we are reading The Heroes together. We are not doing Parables of Nature, or Pilgrims Progress. We enjoyed The Princess and the Goblin, and have started Children of the New Forest, which so far has very good Librivox readers.
We don't do as many of the free readings as I'd like to, but we're shooting for sanity with our education, and lots of time for projects, so it is what it is. There are only so many hours in the day/week/year. We are reading Little House on Plum Creek, which I'd like to follow with Swallows and Amazons. I figure if I do different free readings with each child each year, we'll hit quite a few of them. We read books that are not on the AO list also.
We do composer and artist study and poetry at tea time, which happens about once a week.
We work on math and handwriting and P enjoys independent reading, sometimes including books strewn by his mother/teacher.

That's it, more or less. Currently they are making a fleet of paper airplanes and giggling together. P has been working on his idea journal, which he just started in a Christmas notebook. We did this challenge yesterday, and he is extremely inspired by ongoing challenge 1 on the same page (and the picture at the top of the page).

Reviewing Online Personal Finance Tools

2008-12-30T15:07:00.006-05:00

For a few months now I've been messing around with some of the online finance apps, mainly Yodlee, Mint, and, as of today Quicken Online, which is now free. I've also looked at Wesabe and Geezeo.

I've gotten fed up with the Quicken desktop application. They've forced me to upgrade to an inferior version which then corrupted my data, forcing me to do far more work than I'm willing to do to fix the data file. I'm a long-time user of Quicken, but it provides more features than I use, and I didn't always trust the results it gave me.

My main financial goal is to live within our means. I want to be able to enter recurring and other upcoming bills and find out what's left to spend. I want to be able to use this information as a decision-making tool when I have the gimmes for a new outfit, a GPS, or a trip to Aruba -- can we afford it this month? This is the tool that I've had tremendous difficulty finding, but today I discovered that Quicken Online does an adequate job. It doesn't seem to use the current credit card balance(s) to calculate it's Real Balance (R), but at least it's on the right track, showing me, on the first page What's Left. True, it's completely wrong, but if I look at the Checking account, it shows me upcoming bills and income and the balance at each date so if I input the amount of the upcoming credit card bill(s) I do see the checking account balance that includes all the bills that have to be paid.

Rudder seems to have an app that does what I'm looking for, that is, calculate What's Left based on balances and recurring bills input by the user. But I haven't tried it. It doesn't do much else (not even show you transactions, much less categorize them), and I've scattered our financial information over the web widely enough already. Still it does look like it has the one feature I think every other application is missing. Hopefully one of the other services will snap it up and include its features in their application.

No other online tool that I've found even attempts to show me if we're living within our means this month. Some of them (Yodlee, for instance) are happy to show me how my income and spending compare in past months, but to my knowledge I cannot enter recurring bills and paychecks to calculate something similar to Quicken's What's Left number. Mint doesn't even do a good job at comparing income and spending, showing me a chart where spending appears below the axis, and income appears above, making it visually difficult to compare the two numbers. Geezeo and Wesabe don't seem to have even a chart of spending vs. income over the past few months.

Quicken Online has a long way to go. For instance, it does a terrible job of importing transactions from my bank (same as the desktop version). There is absolutely no identifying information -- I have to open my bank's site and manually enter information for each transaction into Quicken Online. Yodlee manages much better, so clearly the information is available and Quicken is just not using it. Also, Quicken seems terribly slow.

Yodlee has some strengths compared to Quicken Online, which is the current but beatable frontrunner for me. It has a lot of good tools, charts, etc. and categorizes my data well. It also stores our investment information and gives some stats about it. Quicken Online does not appear to handle investments. At least that's what I've read, and so far I haven't been able to link to our modest Sharebuilder account.

I've played a little with the budgeting tools in Yodlee and Mint, and find them inadequate. For instance, Yodlee doesn't add up the various budget categories to give you a total. So if I want to know if I'm budgeting more than our actual income, I have to use a calculator! And I find Mint barely worth discussing. It's pretty, and it tells me what's in each account and gives me a list of transactions, but as for doing any analysis, fergetabowit. I don't understand the buzz about Mint at all -- it's not useful to me.

I looked at Mvelopes a while back, but hated the cost, and found it too labor intensive. I don't feel the need to allocate each dollar of income to a category of spending, although I can see how that would be useful. My needs are of a lower level.

So in the end I'm still looking for the right tool. And I'm willing to pay -- say what I'd pay for a new Quicken over three years. I think that works out to about a dollar a month.

Parenting though the storm

2008-12-19T16:45:00.002-05:00

Last Friday, along with much of the rest of Central Massachusetts, we had no power. In retrospect, our emergency was minor compared to others, but our electricity was out for 10 hours and the house was cooling off. The radio news I was able to listen to warned that it might be days before the power was back on. For us that was not true, thank goodness, but some people are still without power a week later.

The hardest part of our own little disaster was parenting well through it. I was single parenting, by the way. My husband is on the fire department, and he left at midnight and worked for twenty-seven hours. However, he wasn’t far away, and I bothered him with phone calls a few times.

Mid-morning the house was getting cooler, and especially as we didn’t know when the power would come back on, I wanted to get some wood to burn in the fireplace. Despite all the ice on the trees, in our neighborhood at least, the ice and damage were minimal, and the roads were clear. Other parts of town were a drastically different story. It was a storm where a degree or so difference in temperature made a huge difference to the result of the weather.

Two of my three kids didn’t want to get in the car when I was ready to try to find firewood. During the day I found there was a lot to do – I wanted to use the light to get ready to be in the dark, so I was getting candles ready, hauling wood, taking food out of the fridge and trying to plan no-cook meals, all in the midst of trivial interruptions. Part of me thought there should be no fighting because of the emergency. But kids don’t work that way.

Anyway, it left me with some insights about emergencies and parenting. An emergency is a lot of work, and parents don’t have a lot of slack in their days. So if you know a parent in an emergency and you want to help, you might offer to take care of their kids. Alternatively, you might offer to take care of some other part of their work, even a routine part, like laundry, meals, or dishes. If you can help call needed professionals or do other work, that is likely to be helpful also. Realize that they probably have a To Do list in their head and are running from one task to the next, and probably don’t have much time to chat. Hopefully they will have time to thank you, but sometimes embarrassment at even needing help make expressing gratitude more difficult. Give what you can; don’t expect much in return. Hopefully they will pay your help back or forward at a later date.

Get a better deal with Charter

2008-12-08T18:33:00.003-05:00

We recently got a letter notifying us that our Charter TV rates were going up. The amount we pay for TV strikes me as ridiculous and I decided to see what we could do about it. I started with the online chat, and spent 40 minutes (time I don't have to spare, btw) trying to discover what channels I get for each plan at what cost. Really, pretty simple, right? I'm shopping -- what does this cost, what does that cost, is that a better deal, does this give me what I want.

Well good luck, 'cause Charter doesn't deal in information. And they won't tell you anything without knowing your account number. Well, I wouldn't give it to them. I said I was happy to tell them what market I was in, and eventually gave them an address where there is not actually a house. They quoted me a rate $25 less than what our new rate will be. Finally, I coughed up our account number and asked why we were being charged so much more. Oh, you are getting different channels, was the answer. Well, which different channels, I wanted to know. They wouldn't tell me, but instead transferred me to a different rep who also wouldn't give me the information I wanted. And I had to leave, but honestly, there wasn't a straight answer in sight. I could even show you the transcript, because I saved it.

When I got home, I looked into Dish TV. It's confusing too, but far more upfront about the channels provided at each level. I'd like to be able to put in the channels I want and be quoted a price. Even if they tease me with channels that I could get at the next higher lever, that would be okay.

Later, I called customer service to try to get the skinny. She says they have three tiers, the lower two separated by about $40. I tried to get info from her without coughing up my account number, but finally succumbed. She gave me a price, and I said it was too much, that I was looking into satellite. She said there was a promotion she could give me, adding HBO and Cinemax, adding more HD channels and lowering our monthly price by about $8 (from our current price, not the higher one). Really? More product for less price? Sure, for twelve months. Sounds good, I said. Sign me up. So we're still with Charter. But really, what's with that? Isn't it illegal to price discriminate?

The moral -- push them, ask for more for less $. I wish I'd done it earlier. I wonder if i could have done even better. I have to remember it to do it again this time next year.

Crafts and such for the Homeschool Fair

2008-12-05T13:08:00.013-05:00

Our homeschool group had a holiday fair at the beginning of the month, and we all made things to sell. Mason made some earrings. He has a good eye for design, I think. Parker made some little bundt cakes which sold very well, and I made a variety of things.

These are some of Mason's earrings:

And I used the opportunity to use up small pieces of fabric. So here's a girl's poncho made with this tute. I hemmed the bottom edge because figuring out a fringe with the corners was beyond me.

My big seller was flannel hankies in a reversible drawstring bag. I made the bags reversible using this tute from Yarn Monster. I've struggled with drawstring bags, embarrassingly, and I love this approach, which I find easy and clear. It is lined, so it uses more fabric, but the little ones stand up even without interfacing, which is kind of cool. The hankies are 10x10 (or four across the width of the flannel), and serged with a three-thread rolled hem, which came out faboulously, if I do say so myself. The corners are curved to make the serging easier.

I also made some bags without the hankies.

I also used this tute from Dragon[knit]fly which makes a very cool zippered box bag. I recommend starting by sewing around the two pieces of fabric, right sides together, leaving a hole and turning them right side out. Then I eyeballed sewing on the zipper on an already finished edge, and didn't have any raw edges on the inside.

The purple batik tote is made with pre-quilted fabric. I used some awhile ago to make my niece a zippered lunch bag -- this bag used up all the leftovers.

Two no-sew projects: I made a fleece shawl by cutting a rectangular piece and fringing the short edges with a rotary cutter. I cut a ruana from lightweight fleece (used the directions here -- search the page for Dragonmama). I have one like this that I wear often.

I have some wheat berries and since that is a bit unusual, I used them for some other products. I mixed up the grains for the Blender Pancake Mix from Urban Homemaker, and sold that with directions. I made some no-knead bread with some freshly ground whole wheat flour (and some All Purpose white flour also), and some 100% whole wheat bread with another Urban Homemaker recipe. I love this bread but have found it too crumbly for sandwiches. But with soup or as a snack, it's super, and I've had lots of compliments on it.

Some other good tutes that I thought about using but didn't are these:
Cute patchwork basket:

http://ayumills.blogspot.com/2008/05/tutorial-fabric-basket.html

Tote Bag: http://www.sewmamasew.com/blog2/?p=514

Coasters: http://allsorts.typepad.com/allsorts/2006/11/crisscross_coas.html
http://foofanagle.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/simple-coasters/

(Please excuse the bizarre formatting. I have much to learn.)

Dr. Wicked's Write or Die

2008-11-15T21:31:00.002-05:00

	885

31

lab.drwicked.com

Cool, huh? That means I could write my daily words in an hour, and yet I sit for many hours with my laptop in my lap. Well, we'll just call it research.

Blue Man Group, Homeschool update

2008-11-14T23:10:00.003-05:00

We took the oldest two to Blue Man Group last Saturday as a birthday present for the oldest (who turned nine). The oldest adored it, and the six year-old wasn't so sure. There is some reading in the show, so I think it's better to take a child who can read.

Parker got books for his birthday, and managed to polish off 345 pages (The Lightning Thief) in three days. We were impressed. I found it hard to justify interrupting that with, say, a review of the seven times tables.

I've backed off academics a little. Life is much more fun this way, for everyone. That's no surprise to the unschoolers. Rethinking my materials is a lot of work, and its Novel Writing Month. And next month is the holidays. So our current priorities are having fun, novel writing, and preparing items to sell at our homeschool fair in December. After that, Christmas becomes a priority, starting with presents that need to be shipped. Then we'll see where we are. I think I'll stick with AO3 for the oldest (my loose version of it). I can see digressing lots for my first grader. Life is so much more pleasant when I'm not forcing the learning on him. Really -- a lot. You can't imagine.

Video Schooling

2008-10-28T11:52:00.010-04:00

I found a flattering comment from Natalie on another blog, and it reminded me to post again. Thanks Natalie!

I've been feeling a bit burnt out this week, and trying to figure out how to work with it. We're doing a fair amount of video-schooling lately. I currently get one video at a time from both Blockbuster and Netflix (for a total of four a month). Blockbuster because my list is there, and Netflix because they have way more educational videos available than Blockbuster. For instance, I've had The Story of One on my Blockbuster list for years, right up near the top, and I got it immediatly from Netflix.

Our recent videos have included the Olivia Hussey/Zeffirelli version of Romeo and Juliet (brief nudity), and then the movie version of West Side Story for comparison (and for the music). We introduced Romeo and Juliet with the Bruce Coville audio version which was a hit (which not all Shakespeare has been -- not by a long shot). We listened to the audio on the laptop while sitting outside on the swinging bench -- that might have helped!

We also watched a video on Columbus. Conveniently, it synced up with Columbus Day, but in fact Parker is reading about explorers for AO3, so it wasn't simply a Columbus Day thing. We watched Great Adventurers: Christopher Columbus which wasn't a complete success. There's a lot of talking by British professors, which, unsurprisingly, doesn't result in much information getting into my boys heads! There is also some reinactment, which is slightly more interesting. This video gives a pretty balanced view on Columbus importance in history in opening the Atlantic to travel and discovery, versus his rather coldblooded view of the people he discovered as slaves and the land as a font of resources to be robbed. Perhaps middle-school and up is a better audience. Let me know if you have any early explorer videos that you like.

Yesterday we watched The Story of 1 which I recommend. My eight-year old got the most out of it, I'd say. I'm getting some spontaneous narration right now, and it sounds like they really enjoyed it.

Mason (6) is going to Zoo School once a month, and September and October focused on primates, so I'm trying to supplement that a bit at home. We watched David Attenborough's The Life of Mammals: Vol. 4, which is wonderful. However, the monkey episode does have some disturbing scenes. We fast forwarded through the scene in the second episode on this disk where the chimps(?) turn on one of their own and kill him. This is followed by a long sequence where the monkeys hunt down a baby of another monkey species and eat it, sharing it with their tribe. This is a long sequence and we lived through it. There is interesting narration, but I could have done without the raw meat. We're getting Vol 1 next, to get ready for giraffe's, the next Zoo School topic.

For fun, we're watching Young Indiana Jones. I didn't like episode 1 at all. It featured two stories that didn't hang together that well (even individually), and child slavery was a featured topic, which I'm not crazy about exposing my kids to. I wished I had previewed it. I previewed episode 2, and it was much better. The first story has Indy in Africa with President Roosevelt. There are hunted animals shown, (it does reflect the time period) but the message is fine, with some discussion of conservation. The second story has Indy in Paris, meeting the artists of the early 19th century (Degas, Picasso, and Rockwell, mainly). Parker has read all the Young Indy books that we've been able to find -- maybe two from the library maybe six that I bought from Ebay. They are scarce. The movies seem to have different stories from the books, in which Indy finds actual artifacts. So far he hasn't found artifacts in the videos.

We're using audio selections also. I'm only using Librivox when I'm very busy or my voice isn't strong because of a cold or allergies. The quality is so mixed. However, if I can find quality recordings from the library, I have better luck with them. A biography of Galileo is on our AO3 schedule, and I used a Jim Weiss recording: Galileo and the Stargazers. Parker enjoyed it, and also the other story about Archimedes (who appears in the Story of One also).

Our homeschool group of about twelve families and 25 kids meets every Thursday. Currently the kids are in three groups. The oldest (7-12) are doing five weeks on the election with me and an assistant (thanks Christy!) We have used a lot of material from Little Blue School (page down to see all the lessons Lydia's written). I'm very grateful to Lydia for this material, because I was having trouble finding anything else I wanted to use. The six year olds are doing a junior lego league, using the challenge on weather for this year. The youngest group (four and under) is doing a unit All About Me. I have a kid in each group! In the afternoon we have art and music, and the most popular subject, free play. This fills in some important subjects for me!

NaNoWriMo 2008

2008-10-13T22:24:00.004-04:00

Are you ready? I've been researching since July, and the idea of November makes my stomach hurt! But it's all good. Try it -- if you can write 50,000 words in a month, imagine what else you can do!

My new Canon SX110

2008-09-19T16:31:00.013-04:00

Here are some pictures I took on the first day with my new Canon SX110.

My hard to photograph black dog:

Here are some thoughts about my new Canon SX110.

I'm noticing some tendency toward yellowness, even when using the Tungsten setting inside. I'm quite disturbed by it's inability to focus at close distances. I called support, and was told that I cannot zoom and use the macro setting, however, even with that information I'm having trouble with close-up shots. I had to figure out that the macro button doesn't necessarily turn on the macro setting -- it offers choices, and I have to make sure to choose the Macro icon.

The speed between shots without the flash is fine for my uses, I think -- I'll give it more of a workout tomorrow at soccer.

First, with the flash:

The rest are without the flash.

A macro shot:

Update: The soccer pictures came out well. Out of about thirty, only one was out of focus, and I only missed a couple of shots that I wanted because off the speed (or lack thereof) of the camera. The movie quality is a bit noisy (visually), but fine, I think for us. I do realize that if I want good movies I should buy a movie camera. A viewfinder would be nice, but in general, I'm happy with this camera.

Choosing my new camera

2008-09-18T21:41:00.008-04:00

I'm feeling a little crabby about digital cameras. First of all, I just bought my fourth one, and it's the only one that works. The first fell off a table, the second stopped working, and the third stopped extending its lens. The third is currently in pieces on my dining room table, because I was hoping that I could clean any sand out of the lens and perhaps fix the problem. I had nothing to lose -- it is two months past its warranty, and it costs a minimum of $160 to repair.

I did not jump on the digital camera bandwagon early. My first digital camera was a Christmas present in 2002. Four in six years seems like too many, especially when compared to the longevity of film cameras.

So when I went looking for a camera this time (and I knew I'd get an extended warranty, although we usually self-insure) here's what I wanted:

Good pictures. Although I mostly take pictures of my family, I used to dabble in photography, and can be a bit of snob about picture quality.
Quick pictures. I want to be able to take a number of pictures quickly, as my kids aren't known for staying still. I don't want to wait for the camera to actually shoot after I depress the shutter button.
At least 5x zoom.
Under $300

I also prefer AA batteries, wanted image stabilization, and a decent movie mode.
Totally unreasonable? Not really. However when I read reviews at
http://www.imaging-resource.com/
http://www.dpreview.com/
and other sources, one thing I notice is that none of the reviews for cameras I looked at said anything to the effect of "the quality of the pictures will knock your socks off." Last year when my Canon S1 IS died, I compromised because I couldn't afford what I thought I really wanted. This year I'm not even convinced that what I want is out there, because manufacturers seem to be "improving" cameras in ways that don't match my wish list.

I looked at a variety of cameras, but ended up focusing on the Canon SX110 and the Lumix TZ5. I saw multiple mentions of the TZ5 having trouble focusing in movie mode, and the sound quality of movies being poor. There is a work-around to the focus problem, but since my kids like to make movies, I'd like a camera that they can make movies with without my turning off the autofocus first. I'm still eyeing the Canon S5 IS, but am put off by the fact that the reviews mention that photo quality was better in earlier versions! And the price is really beyond my budget. Also, my kids will use it, and the S5 IS is a little bulky. I enjoyed my S1 IS, but I didn't always take it places because of its size.

The other factor this time around for me was extended warranties. I want one that's bulletproof. I hope to have and use this camera for more than a single year! I discovered that Ritz Camera has a good warranty, but it's really expensive -- over a hundred dollars. Best Buy's warranty also seems good, and it's much cheaper, although their prices on the cameras are more expensive. I didn't get into a search for a good warranty from a mail order company, but at this point the convenience of being able to drop off the broken camera is a big selling point. As is the option to say "my kid dropped it, and it doesn't work." Best Buy told me that if I can bring them the camera, they will fix or replace it. Many warranties cover only defects, not accidents, so read carefully, and decide what you want.

I now own a Canon SX 110, however, it's still sealed in the box. I'll be thinking about it for a few more days, and seeing if the next Depression starts before I open it. I'll let you know what I think.

Homeschool scheduling

2008-09-15T21:39:00.004-04:00

I was worried about folding my second son into our homeschool this year, but so far, the workload at least has not been a problem. We are doing secularized Ambleside Online, Year 3 for Parker, who is turning nine, and Year 1 for Mason, who is six. I thought about trying to combine years by finding other things to do with Mason for a year or more until my youngest, two years younger than Mason, might be ready for AO1. But I decided against it. I like Ambleside too much to not have each child do as much of it as they can. At least that is my view from this point!

Today was better than most in the past two weeks. We started with a brief meditation (at least I meditated, and maybe Parker). Perhaps that helped the day, along with my intent to have a different kind of day. Starting with a quiet time followed by a group activity of some sort (poetry or another read-aloud, for instance) rather than jumping right into the least popular tablework (handwriting and math) seems like it might be a more successful approach.

We are on the third week of Ambleside (both years), and the schedule has already been tweaked. To be honest, my biggest problem is six-year old moodiness. Even before we start any work, the squeaking has begun, so already I'm retooling. His math today, for instance, was mental, and in the car, and his handwriting was tracing a word that he wants to be able to write rather than a page in HWT. I supervised closely – I learned that lesson with my oldest, whose handwriting currently leaves a lot to be desired. I want him to have the skills of writing and computing, but I don’t believe that at the first grade level curricula in those subjects are necessary, although it can be useful as a guide. Later in the morning, when he came to find me when I reading my e-mail, I read half a fairy tale to him – just him on my lap in the office, neither other boy in sight. When he started squirming, we ended for the day, and we'll finish it up another day this week.

Parker is a little more compliant than Mason, although he definitely went through a similar moodiness that he seems to have currently outgrown. He's learned that he often (although not always) finds the readings interesting. He'll sometimes slip away without doing what I've asked him to do, but he will generally do it without much complaint in the end. That's a habit to work on, though.

We ate lunch outside, and I moved to a hammock swing before they were done. Mason came to join me, and we looked at the trees in sight, talking about leaf shapes (he's named oak "antlers" and maple "king's crown") and the difference in the bark, and whether there were matching trees around.

Later this afternoon the four of us listened to a Bruce Coville recording of Romeo and Juliet, because there is some sort of Romeo and Juliet quest that Parker had been working on in Runescape, which the two oldest are heavily into right now. They all listened, even the four-year old (at least, he was quiet).

I set up the wheat mill, and we each took a turn grinding (totally voluntarily). I mixed up some scones with a little help from Evan. I asked Parker to make a dated drawing for his history notebook (we tried a timeline, but he wanted to draw pictures of the stories and we store them in chronological order in the loose leaf notebook). His picture is of Columbus' Nina, with the red cross on the sail as it's shown in one of our books.

We listened to the second half of Romeo and Juliet, with chocolate chip scones and tea, and the middle son managed to miss the ending. Narration consisted of telling me how the story differed from the version in Runescape. This was our first tea time this term, although it's on the schedule several times a week. We may try a movie version of Romeo and Juliet, also.

While my written schedule has homeschool done before lunch, today's more relaxed all day version may work better, at least until October, when some of our other activities start. I've tried to schedule some time for myself in the afternoon – both quiet time and project time. It's harder to make it happen that I expected, but I'm really not good at schedules. this afternoon, for instance, I used some of my time when I agreed to my youngest's request to play Go Fish. Still, it's better to have a plan and deviate from it than to not have a plan at all, I suppose. (As long as there's not too much guilt involved.)

[As far as schedules on paper go, I use the AO schedules that fit a twelve-week term on one page, front and back. I have both a paper version of this that I refer to, and an electronic version which has the readings I use online hyperlinked. I also have a rough "at home" daily schedule, that lists when the computer and TV are off and on, homeschool time in the morning and project and free time in the afternoon. This schedule is currently a little less reflective of what actually happens. The third paper lists days of the week across the top with three time slots – morning, afternoon, and evening. This is where I list weekly activities like our coop, gymnastics class, soccer practice, and regular evening meetings. I've also used this sheet to try to slot in weekly activities like tea time composer or artist study, and some other things that I haven't actually gotten to.]

Floor finishes

2008-07-21T14:26:00.012-04:00

Our new pine floor is in, and I'm in the process of finishing it. I went with a penetrating oil finish rather than a polyurethane. Initially I looked at Osmo Hardwax and Bioshield as more ecological options, but in the end I wanted to use a finish without any petroleum distillates or metal dryers.
It turns out that oil finishes are widely used in Europe, and most of the options come from there. There is more information here:

http://woodcareusa.com/index.html

http://woodyoulike.blogspot.com/2005/11/wooden-flooring-finished-with-lacquer.html

There are actually many options of penetrating oil wood finishes. This is a list of the ones I've found:

Osmo Polyx Oil
Bioshield oil and wax products
Land Ark
Velvit (nice collection of stain colors)
Sutherland Welles
Tried and True Wood Finish
Waterlox
Tung oil
Livos
Weather Bos
AFM Naturals Oils
WOCA (previously Trip Trap)

None of these were easily available locally. Some were available 45 minutes or more away. I thought I would be ordering whatever I chose. The exception is Waterlox, which does tend to be more available, and it was my fallback.

My choice was driven by my desire to go domestic, and to avoid petroleum distillates. Although I worried about the length of time some finishes took to dry, as I researched I discovered that many of the other finishes also take a while (a week or more) to dry, and I imagine that quicker drying is due to drying chemicals. I also had a strong preference not to sand between coats. In the end I went with Land Ark. I make no claim to have tested or thought of everything – I haven't. But time was running short and I liked Land Ark.

I put on four coats over five days, and have just finished buffing the floor. In fact, I feel a little like this laptop is moving back and forth in an uncontrollable way just like the buffer! I think I'm done. If I paint the walls, the room will be unused for another week at least, allowing the oil to dry and floor to cure further. It is not perfect now, and as time passes, it will be less so. But my hope is that it develops a patina, rather than becoming shabby looking!

Here's a picture of my floor (before the final coat and buffing):

[Some safer poly-type products I came across: AFM Safecoat, Vermont Natural Coatings.]

It's now very clear that the walls need to be painted, which wasn't on the short-term to-do list. However, I think I'll go for it anyway. I'm going to try to pick up some Mythic paint on Friday on the way to Fenway Park. There are no dealers near me, but there are dealers in the Boston area. Mythic is non-toxic, which is a big step up from simply low- or even no-VOC, and it gets good reviews from people who have used it. I'll be looking to match the BM Honeywheat color that I used in our family room.

Heating Options for the Winter

2008-07-19T17:25:00.005-04:00

For a few years now I've had in the back of my mind the thought that we needed to know how we would heat our house when oil became problematic. The time is here, and we're not ready. Our neighbor is converting from oil to natural gas. I'm not convinced that is right for us. For one thing, if we're spending a lot of money, I'd rather spend it on a system that taps into renewable energy sources, not simply a different non-renewable fossil fuel. For another, my understanding is that in the long run, gas and oil prices track each other.

The alternative heating market is not ready for all us New Englanders who heat with oil and are looking to switch now. I have friends using wood either in wood or pellet stoves. Although wood is renewable to some extent, it's not clean. We have a neighbor who uses wood, and although I enjoy the smell of the wood smoke, I think if my other six close neighbors were using wood, the neighborhood would be unpleasantly full of smoke. And what are those pellets really made of, anyway? And I suspect wood prices will rise as more people switch to it. We have a fireplace with heating rods and a blower, and we may use that more this winter, but wood is a lot of work – it has to be cut, split, stacked, carried, and swept up after. And the fire has to be tended. However, we have some uncut logs out back, and it might be time to put in that work and burn some wood this winter. I'm not sure I can use a chain saw and a splitter with my kids asking me questions and trying to help, though!

We are thinking about building one or more of these solar window heaters (there are other versions around the web). Our south facing windows are on the back side of the house, and we have six double-hung windows back there. There are some trees, but in the winter there are no leaves, and I think the sunlight is still significant. We may build one and see if we think it works. We like this option because it's cheap and we can try it out without cutting holes in our house. They may require some babysitting when the sun is not shining (closing the vents), but it seems that it would be minimal, and nearly free heat would be worth it. The fireplace is in a different room, allowing us to heat two rooms without oil (and very possibly more if we can move the heat around) and paying more attention to heating only where we need it would allow us to save some oil. I'm also looking for more blankets for the beds. For now, we'll stick with our one year old oil hot water heater.

Solar heating seems to be the exception. Solar systems generally seem to be for electricity or hot water. Right now my primary interest is in heat. Our electricity bill is not overwhelming, and neither is our summer oil bill for hot water – our heating oil bills could be. We buy about six tanks of oil a year, and last year I had one bill of about $800.

I'm still looking for a long term solution. Perhaps a heat pump or geothermal system? I have a pipe dream of a few neighbors sharing a geothermal system, but the septic systems might get in the way. I don't generally look to the government for advice, but I wish someone would suggest the right way to jump.

Be happy, and get out of the way

2008-05-16T15:43:00.006-04:00

I finished Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert on Mother's Day. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't feel any need to travel the world alone (which is just as well, considering my three children), but I am inspired to work a little on a meditation practice.

My favorite quote from the book is this:

As I focus on Diligent Joy I also keep remembering a simple idea my friend Darcey told me once – that all the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in the big global Hitler-'n'-Stalin picture, but also on the smallest personal level. Even in my own life, I can see exactly where my episodes of unhappiness have brought suffering or distress or (at the very least) inconvenience to those around me. The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people. (p. 261)

I find this quote makes perfect sense, and it sends me out to find my own happiness in the realization that my happiness is what is best for my family. It also helps me answer the question of whether I as a parent am responsible for my children's happiness – I think the answer is that I need to do my best to teach them how to figure out how to make themselves happy so that they, too, can get out of the way.

Rushmore, a book review

2008-04-30T14:15:00.004-04:00

We just read Rushmore by Lynn Curlee, and it's exactly the kind of book I look for to read with my children. Some interest in Mt. Rushmore had been generated by the second National Treasure movie, so I decided to follow up on that when I saw this book at a local library. The book is 48 pages with some of those pages being full page illustrations, and the text is medium sized with spacing between each line. The result is completely appropriate for the mid-elementary years – providing enough detail without getting bogged down. The story provides opportunities to talk about the time between the World Wars, the boom of the 20s, geography, immigration, art and sculpture, the Great Depression, politics and funding for federal projects, public works, the type of personalities needed to complete such a project, and engineering. And of course, adding biographies of the four presidents depicted, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and the first Roosevelt, would make sense. It would make a fabulous spine for a unit study, and I'm not even into unit studies!

We followed up by looking at some photograps of the real Mt. Rushmore, since the illustrations in the book do not include photographs. I particularly liked these, which include some closups (look at the eyes!) and this one of the sculptures under construction.

A Nature Walk

2008-04-30T10:07:00.003-04:00

I struggle with the nature walk aspect of the Charlotte Mason education. I agree with it completely philosophically. One of the reasons I want to homeschool is so that my children can see their connections to the world around them, and that definitely includes the natural world. It is when the rubber hits the road that I have problems. My kids whine. They would never choose to take a nature walk. And here in New England, it is extremely hard to motivate ourselves to get out in the winter. I did finally put up a bird feeder this year, though, and that has been a good addition to our days.

Last Friday I saw an opportunity to get them out -- we took a walk before I dropped them with Grandma. That way I didn't have to pack food, which made things easier. We went to a new place, too. I had one unhappy boy, but the other two were okay, and found things to see on our forty-five minute walk. We saw curled fiddleheads, a stream running next to a stone wall, a man made stone bridge, leaves and blossoms just emerging, birds (we heard a woodpecker making two distinct sounds, presumably on two different trees). We walked uphill to a pond and saw a little life in that, as well as a huge pile of logs on the other side of it. My four year old told me that beavers have their doors underwater and have long sharp teeth. He would also walk a few steps and then say with amazement, "Look, Mom, another part of the lake." And I would have to look before he would move on. On one stop we saw a pile of large branches under the water and he decided that it was the beavers' playground. My oldest was fairly observant also, and particularly drawn to the stream. About halfway through I did have to make a rule that there are no bad guys in the woods -- they are constantly building stories around bad guys! My middle guy was happier once we turned around. Strangely, he's the one who seems to like nature best, but not, apparently, on this day.

I hope to have more of a nature walk routine through the summer. We do have plenty of outdoor time, but not a whole lot of observation. I also have Wild Days, and would like to get them started with nature journals. My six-year old hasn't been much of a artist, but that is changing, and I think he could do a nature journal now.

I'm tempted to add the moral of the story, but in Charlotte Mason fashion, I'll hope that the writing itself makes it clear!

New Living Room Floor

2008-04-23T14:52:00.008-04:00

I've tossed around the choices for a new living room floor for about a year – carpet, tile, laminate, or wood. I'm looking for an option that is affordable and environmentally friendly. I'm fed up with carpet, and with the dog turning ten, older dog or future puppy accidents are all too likely. We love the tile in our family room – we never fuss at the boys about what they are doing on it -- but we can't quite picture it in our more traditional living room. Also, the floor isn't quite flat. Laminate just doesn't suit my style – I really prefer less processing. I'm not completely comfortable with the engineering of bamboo, and the fact that it doesn't have the ability to be refinished (or at least not multiple times). We don't really like the look of cork for our living room. So we're left with wood, and the concern that wood and boys may not go together.

We do not have a formal living room. In fact, the boys may spend more time playing in the living room than in the family room. The stairs , the office, the front door, and the downstairs bathroom all abut the living room. Our TV is in the living room. Keeping the boys out is not an option.

I'm not crazy about the look of oak (just a personal preference). I've been looking at pine and hickory. I love the look of pine, and my hope is that we could manage to distress it in an attractive way. Hickory is much harder, but also more expensive. It's attractive, but I prefer the look of pine. I worry that hickory would get damaged, but not in an all-over way as is more likely with the pine.

I'm looking at penetrating oil finishes rather than poly. I like that I could refinish any parts of the floor that needed it. My top picks are Osmo, Bioshield, Velvit, Waterlox, or Tung oil.

I'm leaning toward the pine. I prefer the look, and I can get very affordable pine from a mill about an hour away – it's local, the logging has to meet any environmental standards here. Also, our boiler recently needed a new motor, using some of the money earmarked for the floor. I will finish it myself, probably with Osmo or Bioshield. I'd like to lightly stain it, so that it coordinates with our trim. We'll see if we have the nerve to purposely distress it when put it in – we probably should! Our tax rebate is going to be funding this project!

Homeschool Coop Update

2008-04-21T20:35:00.006-04:00

Our homeschool coop has had a good year. In the fall we did a six week Lego League, then a winter program of ancient Egypt, and currently we're in the middle of six weeks of this and that -- whatever people were willing to offer. We have 18-24 kids, from eleven families. We're finding that if we have two groups, each with a leader and a helper, it takes about 40% of the moms to run each homeschool day. The activities I've mentioned have been for the older kids, seven and up. For the younger kids (3-6) we've had a coop kindergarten going. In the afternoons we've had a music teacher come in and teach two music classes -- one for the older kids and one for the younger. In the current session, we also have an art teacher teaching art to the older kids when the youngers are in music, and vice versa. We meet in people's homes. This year we've had two hosts.

I led one group during Lego League, and during the current session I've led two sessions for the older kids. Despite the fact that I have two children in the younger group, I haven't led that group yet! A few weeks ago I co-led a session on Leonardo Da Vinci. We did a little history and geography, read Leonardo's Horse, did anatomy measurements to corroborate the ratios he found, did a perspective art project, and did a picture study of the Last Supper, including having the thirteen kids line up as if they were in the painting!

Then last week, in two hours flat, I ran a restaurant with the older kids. There are so many things we could have focused on with this -- it's so complex! I tried to keep it simple -- this was my approach:

I asked that every student be sent with at least a dollar. This included the younger group, who were slated to be our customers. I brought in a bag of groceries: bread, butter, peanut butter, and jam, and asked the if they wanted to buy these groceries for the restaurant for $5. Five kids put their dollar in, and we wrote down that we owed them for the loan. I told the kids that they would each earn a dollar working at the restaurant today. Then we worked on the menu, and set up the table and kitchen space we would be using. The kids writing the menu had to come up with prices, and I recommended that $1 be the highest price, so that our customers would be able to buy something. They decided that a peanut butter and jelly sandwich would be a dollar, and various versions of toast would be less. (We could have talked much more about setting prices, but our first customers were due about 45 minutes after they bought their first groceries.) Once the menu was established, I acted as their first customer. Our original idea (that is, my husband's, since he came up with the restaurant plan), was to distribute that first dollar to the whole staff to make the point that we had to sell a lot more to pay each of them their dollar, and also pay our other costs. But I was vetoed by the kids, who thought it would be easier to divvy everything up at the end.

We assigned each customer a server, who was responsible for taking their order, getting their food, and giving them their bill. The customer either paid at the register, or the server brought the money. We didn't focus on making change, although that would definitely make sense.

At the end we counted up our money and talked about profit, and what other expenses a real restaurant would have.

I hope the kids got a sense of how complex it all is! We certainly could have done more with it, but I didn't want to get bogged down. I can see doing this a few times a year and letting the kids take a bigger part in the design each time.

Literature-based curriculum

2008-03-10T13:11:00.006-04:00

(This is a work in progress. Expect eventual updates!)

So, like me, you like the Charlotte Mason approach, but figuring out how to put it together yourself seems almost impossible. There are many curricula that are options, or that can be used for their book lists when you build your own curriculum. I recommend finding the one that resonates best with you and your family (or even just the one child who will use it) and use that as a starting point.

These are the sites that I have found useful:

Simply Charlotte Mason

Sonlight

An Old Fashioned Education

Bringing Up Learners

My Father's World

Beautiful Feet for history

Noeo for science

Five in a Row (and here) especially for younger children

And for some good reading:
Penny Gardner's site
http://liltinghouse.clubmom.com/the_lilting_house/2006/07/all_righty_when.html

Raw Detox

2008-03-04T21:11:00.005-05:00

A few weeks ago I did the seven day RawDivas detox with a friend. I highly recommend it – there are no gimmicks, nothing that you have to buy, no supplements – just eat only raw food for a week. But there is support, and there are some recommendations, and emails that you can receive on each day of the detox. (They are a for profit business, but the seven day detox can be completely free, which is how I did it – sign up and they'll send you the link to the detox page. I haven't received any questionable emails as a result.)

I didn't feel great while I was doing it, but I have no regrets at all. I think I eat a little differently now, trying to incorporate more fruits and veggies into my daily meals. I'm also very aware that on any given day I only eat so much, and that if I want to eat well, I have to choose well. This seem obvious, but for me it's a bit of a shift. I expect I will try this detox again, especially if I can find a friend to do it at the same time. I'd prefer to do it during warm weather – both my friend and I found that we were cold eating only cold and room temperature food in the middle of New England February.

Today Oprah was discussing The Truth About Food. One study they (she and Dr. Oz) discussed was a raw food experiment. After only ten days, cholesterol was down by 25% and blood pressure was down also. They also discussed a detox experiment which showed no benefit to the detox as far as expelling toxins. However, Dr. Oz sees a detox regime as useful as a reboot or quick start to a better eating plan. They didn't put the two together, and I think that would have been a useful suggestion – detox by going all raw for three, five, seven or more days (I recommend at least four).

Pay off mortgage early?

2008-03-03T11:54:00.002-05:00

I get the emails from Debt Into Wealth, and I must admit, it sounds awfully tempting not to have a mortgage. However, we've decided instead to have a savings plan and continue paying our mortgage at the regular rate, and here are some of the reasons:

We want to build up savings to the recommended three to six months worth of expenses. If my husband lost his job , savings and investments will help a lot more than a lower mortgage balance.
We want to save money to make a down payment on a new car when one is needed.
Although I'm not sure about this, I think having a mortgage may result in more financial aid when the boys go to college. Even if we paid an extra 1K a month (ouch!), we wouldn't pay off the mortgage for another eleven years, which is about the time our first will be heading off to college. My guess is his college would be happy to help us out with that sudden extra cash flow.

We've set up a plan with ShareBuilder where we invest regularly each month, some in the stock market, and some in a money market account. I really like having the money taken out automatically -- much less temptation to spend it instead of saving it each month. Yet if we need it, it's there and available to us.

We don't have credit card debt to pay off, and rollup into the next debt. But we will use future raises to increase our ShareBuilder allotment, and when we pay off our HELOC, we'll increase our savings amount by that figure (as we did recently with our car payment).

If we didn't have an automatic savings plan, or our weren't disciplined enough to use it, paying off the mortgage might work -- but I think it's a big risk to put extra money into a mortgage without an emergency savings stash.

There are a lot of articles on both sides of this argument -- I like this one: http://www.fool.com/foolu/askfoolu/2001/askfoolu010307.htm.

Recurring Chores

2008-01-22T17:23:00.001-05:00

I'm not generally a New Year's Resolution type, but this year I seem to have some, and they're all the stereotypical ones, one being to keep my house better. I've been trying FlyLady again, without complete success. If I get on track with zones, I seem to fall down on weekly tasks. One step I took that I think was helpful was to split my own house into zones that work for my house: 1: Family room and Mudroom (which are connected), 2: Kitchen (which must take 80% of my cleaning time), 3: Bathrooms, Laundry room & sewing room, 4: Bedroom and Office, and 5: Living Room. I also printed out one of these calendars and marked out six day periods and labeled the weeks with zones. That way the family and living rooms don't get shortchanged.

Then I rediscovered Motivated Moms. I must have looked at it before, because I have the free 2002 calendar on my hard drive. Like any system, it doesn't fit me perfectly, but isn't that weekly checklist awful cute? So then I spent obsessive hours trying to figure out how I can make my own Motivated Moms calendar, with my own tasks and intervals that are right for me and my house. I want to be able to easily move a task if too many tasks end up on the same day, and I want to print it out. I looked at Outlook and Microsoft Project and a bunch of pages Google turned up, and didn't find anything that does what I want it to.

But it turns out that Palm Desktop will. I have a monochrome Sony Clie with DateBk5 and it handles recurring tasks pretty well. But I don't always look at it, and the tasks start to build up after a while and become daunting! But Palm Desktop will print out a weeks worth of my calendar. The only fault as far as I'm concerned is that it displays each task with a diamond rather than a check box. I'm surprised it's so difficult to figure this out. I wonder how Motivated Moms makes theirs?

And how does my house look? Well, I just moved the office into the living room so that the new carpet can get put in on Thursday, and it's a wreck!

Choosing Floor Covering

2008-01-14T11:28:00.002-05:00

All of a sudden, my whole house seems to be falling apart! I took apart the room we use as a home office last spring and moved the computer into the livingroom. It fits there so well that we lost the impetus to redo the office. Also, in the middle of painting the ceiling I gashed my arm open -- that slowed me down too. But, the office is finally painted (Benjamin Moore Moroccan Red with a white ceiling and medium brown stained woodwork), and for the last few months I've been waffling about what to put on the floor. I'm concerned about allergies, the environment in general, and the environment inside our house. There's another floor that I want to replace, too, money permitting. The living room floor is eight years old and between the kids and the dogs is totally trashed. Our livingroom is at the center of our house -- it leads to a bathroom, the stairs, the kitchen, the office, and the front door opens into it. The TV is in the living room. Shutting it off to kids is not a good option, so the floor needs to survive the boys.

In the end I choose an affordable Berber for the office and then spent at least a month second-guessing myself. I looked heavily at Flor carpet squares. I wanted to like them, but I didn't love any of the options I looked at. So the Berber is being installed tomorrow. I don't feel great about it, but I do think I'll like it, as long as it isn't stinky.

And stinky brings me to the livingroom. The carpet is about eight years old and has been misused by the dog. It isn't bad in the cold weather, but once it starts to get warm and humid, the odor is noticable. I'm really struggling with this one. Affordable, environmentally sound choices don't seem to be prevalent. I'm looking at wood, currently.

A good homeschooling day

2008-01-04T12:39:00.001-05:00

Currently my three children are productively employed. The oldest has taken pictures of Lego and has figured out how to print them, three to a page, directly from our new printer. He is planning to write a story and make a "book" with them. Earlier he listened to a Burgess Animal story, which I'll check off of Week 14 of Ambleside Online Year 2 curriculum. The five-year old is listening to a tape of the King's Singers Reluctant Dragon, and the youngest found Yahtzee and was messing around with it -- he's since packed it up and put it away (I was impressed!). About half an hour ago they all needed me at once, but they've since gotten the help that they needed, and have gotten on with their projects. I'm working on some chicken broth, knitting a sock, sewing a Tiny Happy bag, and blogging. I need to clean the kitchen.

Not all days are like this! In fact, even the rest of today won't be like this!

Kids giving gifts

2008-01-01T12:00:00.000-05:00

This year it seemed like it was finally time for the boys to start giving gifts as well as receiving them. In past years it has felt like too much work – in fact, this year it felt like too much work, too, but it also seemed like the right thing to do. A fairly trite case of doing what was right rather than doing what was easy. So we buckled down and figured out doable projects. I thought of beaded gifts, since we have some beads around, but bracelets and necklaces were too big for me and my kids. For one thing, I have a thing about gifts – I don't want them to be clutter. So if we made jewelry, I'd want it to be wearable. But if the kids make gifts, I want them to feel ownership. I could see myself hovering and fixing, and it wasn't going to be a good thing. So only a week or so before Christmas I thought of earrings. Now earrings don't work for everyone on our gift list. They don't even work for all the women, because not all the women have pierced ears. But for the women who do, my five-year old made earrings.

You can buy pieces of wire like pins, with a head on the end to hold the beads, load it with a few beads, leaving enough wire at the end to twist around the earring finding that you can get at a craft or bead store – I got ours at AC Moore. M did the beading – he chose the beads and put them on the wire, often more than once if they fell on the floor. He made two to match. Then I wrapped the wire onto the earring finding and voila, a beautiful gift. (Although, don’t underestimate the wrapping procedure if you’re a beading newbie like me. However, since it was a gift from a five-year old, I didn’t feel perfection was necessary.)

For people who don't have pierced ears, we made bookmarks on a ribbon. These were less successful in my opinion, because I had to be involved the whole time, to help him thread the beads onto the ribbon (we used a waxed piece of thread, folded in half as the "needle"). With the earrings I could walk away while he prepared the wires, and attach them to the earring piece later – he could watch or not.

P, who is eight, had trouble with the earrings. He wanted to use big beads, which slip of the end of the wire. He didn't want to hear me tell him that if he started with small bead, it would hold the big bead on. He stuck an ugly button on the wire which looked terrible, and my perfectionist tendencies kicked in. So to cut to the chase, he drew pictures on bookmarks that we cut out of cardstock, and felt very proud of them, and I'm sure the recipients will like them too. They meet my criteria because a little piece of paper, used as a bookmark (I use old envelopes all the time) just cannot be clutter. At least not as long as people read books, which isn't a sure thing, I guess!

E, who is three, made a single gift – he climbed on my lap and said he wanted to make a present, so we did. I didn't feel that he was up to making more than that. Maybe next year.

Need more money?

2008-01-01T11:55:00.000-05:00

Here are my options for finding more cash to pay the holiday bills, the astronomical oil heating bill, or to fund replacing the stinky living room carpet (the nine-year old dog has issues):

Pinch the grocery budget
Stop all (or most) discretionary spending
Earn some/more -- get a contract job, or try to sell some sewing (kids pants and baby carriers are the top of the list). Anyone know the best way to sell things like this?

That's it. Nothing that isn't obvious, but sometimes I have to remind myself.

NaNoWriMo, Week 3

2007-11-15T14:56:00.001-05:00

Today is the first day of the third week of NaNoWriMo. it's also the fifteenth of a thirty day month. So event the mathematically challenged among us can easily figure out that NaNos should be near the 25,000 word mark.

That is actually in shooting range for me, although I've had a busy week. I'm within 1667 words of 25,000.

I cracked the chapter of No Plot, No Problem that talks about week 3 this morning. Week 2 is notoriously hard, and my experience was, indeed, that it was difficult. Last nightI used a scene that I had saved in a different file to bolster my word count -- now that buffer is gone. The urge to quit is strong. Why am I doing this again?

Well, Week 3 is supposed to get easier as the story takes off on it's own. So I'm hoping that's what happens to mine. On the other hand, the support network tends to get pretty tired of this endeavor.

I'll keep pressing forward. I have no idea how I'm going to tie up my novel, but my experience has been that I can write another 1700 words (or so) each day, and move the plot forward somewhat.

Please continue to wish me luck!

NaNoWriMo update

2007-11-06T23:06:00.001-05:00

I'm still writing. I'm on track for 50,000 words, although it's only the one-fifth benchmark at midnight.

What's easy: I don't find writing 1667 words in a day that difficult. Even when I think I'm too tired I've managed it. On the other hand. I stop when I reach that goal, which could easily come back to bite me if anything happens this month -- like, say, hosting Thanksgiving (oh yeah, we're doing that). I have a rough story. The details that are part of my own life are easy.

What's hard: actually coming up with made up stuff is hard. Creating characters is hard. Creating a reasonable story arc is hard. Filling in the mystery's details is murderous.

Please wish me luck!

NaNoWriMo

2007-11-03T17:08:00.001-04:00

I'm looking for more outlets for my energy than houswork, cooking, and Sudoku puzzles. Every now and then the universe bops me on the head, and that's how I felt when I heard about National Novel Writing Month. Can I do it? I have no idea. But I really like the idea that you don't have to have a plot to start a novel. And since I think I would like to write fiction, and I'm not working right now (for money), this seems like the right thing to do.

So far (day 3) I'm on course for 1667 words per day (for a total of 50,000 words in 30 days). That gives me ten extra words, but who's counting (well, I am, about every thirty seconds)! I find that the power of a goal is amazing. It's only day three, so we'll see how it goes, but I think I'm out of ideas, but the word goal pushed me on. What I have is not great, but I'm pretty happy with the whole process, and I'm interested to see how the process goes.

The NaNoWriMo community is faboulous, so I have hope that when I get stuck, I'll be able to get help from them -- at least some questions to get the juices flowing again. On the down side, the boards are really slow.

Students need different tools for success

2007-11-03T16:58:00.000-04:00

A teacher writes about school from much the same perspective that I wrote my letter. In Waging a Battle on Standardized Tests by Dan Brown in the Boston Globe today a teacher writes about his students unique needs and how the current system, with its emphsis on testing, fails to nurture students individual strengths. He writes "American public schools have more money than ever, but students are still widely denied the most crucial tools for their success: individual attention and specialized support."

No answer here, but an agreement on the problem.

NaNoWriMo Warmup

2007-11-01T15:23:00.000-04:00

Preface

Imagine that you’re trying to write a novel – 1500-2000 words a day for a whole month. What would that be like? In the beginning, there’s the lack of a plot – or maybe just too many fractional plots. Fantasy pops into my head – like Crystal Singer or Wrinkle in Time. Or maybe an upscale romance like the Luanne Rice book I’m reading right now, or the Eileen Baker I just finished. I love historical fiction, but that seems like it would need too much research. I don’t have time for research in addition to one thousand words a day – I have a household to run and children to homeschool! I’ve been saying that there should be more romance novels (good for sex life) for married ladies. If it’s true that minivan drivers have sex only three times a month, and that romance novels improve sex life (according to Christiane Northrup), then that seems like a niche waiting to be filled. But what does that look like? If you don’t get the thrill of a new love, that makes the story much harder to write – it might even need actual skill! Yikes! Plots are what I don’t have. I can put one word after the other, I can write non-fiction, but fiction is elusive to me – I feel like it’s just out of sight of my peripheral vision, I can’t quite reach it. I have a scene written of a minivan with a mom and three kids crashing into water – my own fear. If I can include that, it’s a whole three hundred words. Woo hoo.

Alright, so it turns out I’ve already written about a thousand words – I opened my other file and found them. Of course, some of them are in the form of a list – not exactly fiction. But here’s the idea – a woman living my life (because I know that) and her daydreams of living an exciting life. She can live in a Jennifer Crusie novel, a Janet Evanovich novel, a Judith Tarr novel, a Diana Gabaldon novel. I can combine them all – how’s that for cheating! I’m not sure where the tension will be in the “real life” side, but, hey, this is all about word count, right? About people not actually throwing up when they read it? And about finding my inner fiction, because, god dammit, I’m sure it’s there. Hidden under layers of junk, but there somewhere. And, oh – I challenge myself to put in a sex scene.

Can you imagine? Delusions of grandeur already. A published novel! Ooh, that part is pretty good. Alright you – yes you, author lady! You have to actually have a plot to publish a novel! Some pretty words strung together is not enough! What a surprise. It takes actual work! So let’s say seven hundred words in the morning and seven hundred every evening. Now that the Red Sox have won the World Series, baseball season is over and there are three extra hours in every day. Of course, Christmas is also coming, but hey – two hours to write and one to plan for Christmas. If the words will flow, one hour to write might do it. Is that true? I’ll have to measure my speed some day – that will be good for a few more words.

I need to name my protagonist. Christine is a nice uptight name. But Aria is prettier. Gives her something to live up to . More Luanne Rice-like. Hmm.

What's wrong with kids these days?

2007-10-30T20:52:00.001-04:00

A recent letter I wrote to our local paper was chosen as Letter of the Week! My pen (gift from the paper) arrived today!

Columnist David Brooks writes about the odyssey years, the years of wandering during young adulthood. He claims this wandering is a sensible reaction to the uncertainties of the modern world.
I think he comes closer to the truth when he quotes, “Young people grow up in tightly structured childhoods, but then graduate into a world characterized by uncertainty, diversity, searching and tinkering.”
How do we prepare our children for life in a world of uncertainty? By putting them in a highly structured environment for 13 or more years; by teaching them many facts, facts that are at their fingertips in this wired world, which they know how to navigate better than their elders.
We separate them from the fluid world so they don’t get the chance to figure out how they are uniquely qualified to serve the world and live a fulfilling adulthood until they are on their own. The system doesn’t encourage the creativity and innovation we need in the world today. Do children have the opportunity and encouragement to enable them to find their gifts?
If we can figure out how to structure childhood to give children a basic smattering of facts, to learn how to find out what they need to know, and, most of all, to nurture their individuality and give them the freedom to figure out where they will fit in the world, we might find that young adults had a tremendous amount to give to this troubled world.

A friend wrote me that on reading my letter her husband was convinced that they should homeschool, even though he had never considered it before.

This is, in fact, my philosophy of why we homeschool. In it's current incarnation, I do offer my kids a fair number of facts, but not for more than an hour a day or so, and they have most of the rest of the time to explore their own interests. This is what works for us now, but as time goes on my kids may need/demand something different.

I believe that every child should have the opportunity for a childhood like this, not just those whose parents have the time to nurture their individuality. I don't know what this model looks like in an institutional/mass setting. It is not a simple change by any means, but an important one. If I figure out how to work toward it for society, you'll hear more about it here.

More thoughts on Kindergarten

2007-10-30T17:16:00.001-04:00

On a whim (or maybe it was a parental panic attack (PPA) day), I bought a used copy of My Father's World kindergarten package. Here is my review.

I'm very happy with it, but first the issues I have with it. I think it's a bit too academic in general and for my kindergartener if you do everything, and some of the crafts are a little too "canned" for my taste, but it has a fabulous list of topics and activities. Another caveat is its religious name and themes, but those can easily be omitted (or included only when they are in line with your values) without losing the value of the curriculum as a whole.

It starts with the Biblical creation story which I decided to include. I hope we will discuss many creation stories, and this one is quite beautiful. It suggests many pre-reading activities, some of which I will do, and some that I will skip. After the creation unit a week is spent on each letter of the alphabet and a science topic that begins with that letter. The list is available here. It suggests books and activities for each topic, and there is plenty of content to choose from, and plenty of content for your kindergartener to soak up. The letter flash cards are really nice, and I like the inclusion of simple games. Of the programs I've looked at (Oak Meadow and AmblesideOnline Yr 0) at this level I like this best. That said, please read the articles referenced in my other Kindergarten post about not pushing your Kindergartener too much academcally!

The recommendation in the curriculum is 90 minutes six days a week. I'm thinking I'll do more like 30 minutes at a time!

Why Homeschool

2007-09-28T21:28:00.000-04:00

An On Point show this week on innovators and entrepreneurs, which prompted me to think again of why I choose to homeschool. The show featured some innovators, mostly scientific, I believe (I missed the beginning). As I listened I was thinking of what I want for my kids. At the same time I am trying to define my own goals, and I'm reading I Could Do Anything If Only I Knew What It Was. This book encourages the reader to discover why they are not following their gifts, and one step is to consider what those who know/knew you want/ed you to be.

To take this back to homeschooling, I have multiple thoughts. One is not to have expectations of what my children will do as adults. On the other hand, listening to the show on innovators, I want them to have the education to do whatever they wish -- I would hate for them to be held back by choices that I make about their education -- although, if I set the level of preparation at the same level as our public school, perhaps the bar is lower than it could be. And a point that seems difficult for non-homeschoolers to grasp is that I don't want to damage our family relationships in my effort to provide the education that I think is required. Although I do expose them to topics, and I do strongly encourage handwriting and math and I do not push to hard. Some exposure may be important, but force isn't required for them to find and follow their gifts.

We have a small high school at a local technology institute. I would like for them to be equipped to go to that high school, if that is what they wish. But I don't wish that for them if that is not their interest. It may be that my eldest will want to pursue some aspect of film, or some as yet unfound interest. I want to remember that for all of them to pursue a livelihood that uses their unique gifts is the most important gift I can give them. It is most likely to lead them to the happy life that I wish for them.

Eating Right: Local and Organic

2007-09-12T15:11:00.001-04:00

I've recently read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, and I'm thinking more about the way we buy and eat. It's not easy to do the right thing! Here are some of the things I'm thinking about.

I would like to stop buying factory farmed meat. Although I've toyed with vegetarianism, Kingsolver makes a good argument for omnivorism, and then, as always with this issue, there are the practical concerns -- such as my husband really likes meat! So I need to find local meat, and I can. There is a farm about 20 minutes away that sells their own pork, chicken, lamb, and beef. These animals are locally and humanely raised, but I don't know if they're fed pesticide-treated grain. There is a turkey farm another 10 minutes away that has pretty good practices, but could probably not be considered organic. So if I can do the trip just once a month or so, I can probably meet that goal. I am concerned about the cost, but so far the prices are somewhat reasonable, and if I save extra trips to the supermarket, I will probably save some money.

Produce is more difficult for me. I shop irregularly, and try to shop without the kids, so working Farmer's markets into my schedule is more difficult than it should be. There is a farm (not far from the meat farm) that sells in season produce, and they use IPM, so I feel comfortable buying from them. I am not an expert at planning my menus around what I found. I like to choose a recipe then get the ingredients. Also, my husband calls our crisper drawer in the fridge the "rotter drawer" which is sadly too accurate! Frozen organic produce may be my best choice. I'm just not seeing myself buying up all the in-season organic local produce I can find and canning it or otherwise processing it for use the rest of the year. I've considered joining a CSA, but have so far resisted, because I'm afraid that only I would eat what we got, and I'd feel guilty about any waste. As I've said before, I may have gone wrong way back in terms of what my kids will eat!

After reading Kingsolver's book, and with my newly raised conscienceness about pesticides, I find trips to the supermarket excruciatingly frustrating. What's safe? Everything has pesticides or high fructose corn syrup! Of course you know this, but there are whole aisles of junk -- an aisle of cookies and crackers, an aisle of sugar cereal, an aisle of corn syrup salad dressing, and aisle of crunchy pesticide chips. There is no organic bread in my supermarket. I realized that of the healthiest foods I buy, I eat most of them, and my kids get the SAD (Standard American Diet) stuff. (Medium SAD only -- I have some standards!)

I'm getting ready to make our bread. I have a Bosch Universal on my Christmas list, and I think I'll get the Family Grain Mill package from Survival Unlimited with the Bosch adaptor and the hand base. They have the best price I've found. I don't have much of a plan for food stores in case of an emergency, so I figure some wheat berries (which last for years) and a hand mill would be part of that plan. The trade off between time and healthiness is very clear to me. I think I'm willing to take on bread, especially if I'm making 6 loaves at a time. There is the worry that my family won't like what I make, but I've been making bread off and on for a while, and it generally gets eaten. I might not be able to go to 100% whole wheat, but I think it will be healthy bread, and I can buy organic wheat berries. There is a store about 50 minutes away that carries organic whole grains -- worth it if I go only once or twice a year.

Kindergarten thoughts and links

2007-09-04T16:28:00.000-04:00

While I mostly unschooled P for Kindergarten, I enjoyed having some structure for first grade last year, and I’m afraid that M (who is five) may not demand my time if I don’t schedule anything for him.

I appreciate the attitude that less is more, especially for this age group. Here are some articles along those lines:
http://www.besthomeschooling.org/articles/lillian_jones_ps_kdgtn.html
http://www.besthomeschooling.org/articles/david_elkind.html (linked in the first article)
http://www.besthomeschooling.org/gateway/inted16.html

I’m already seeing that self-direction will take him where I want him to go – he’s asking to write words every few days, and I help him with that, and today he expressed a wish to read (perhaps the first time I’ve heard that from him). So I’m looking for a gentle structure. I’ve found some great booklists – too many maybe! Some activities that fit with the way our family works would be a good addition (that is, non-twaddly, and of interest to my kids). At some point during the year, when he seems interested, I’ll help him make a calendar with holidays and birthdays on it. I continue to hope to get outside more. We watch Between the Lions mainly for him, although I’m not sure if he gets any literacy education from it – enjoys the stories, though! I may buy Teach a Child to Read With Children's Books.

These are some of the curriculum/book lists that appeal to me, and that I'll draw from this year:

Oak Meadow http://www.oakmeadow.com/curriculum/samples.htm curriculums for preschool through 1st grade (open the sample and read the table of contents for ideas even if you're not interested in buying the curriculum)
Letter of the week ideas http://www.letteroftheweek.com/index.html. At the same site are Science of the week, Story of the week, Country of the week, etc.
My Father’s World has a lovely book list for Kindergarten. http://www.mfwbooks.com/1_k_read.htm , with each week associated with a letter http://www.mfwbooks.com/1_k_theme.htm, but not in alphabetical order, which is fine with me!
Sonlight http://www.sonlight.com/cp-b.html
Winter promise themed programs http://www.winterpromise.com/themed.html
I’m ready to learn
Journeys of Imagination
Animals and their worlds

And some more links on kindergarten from the excellent site, A to Z Home's Cool: http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/weblinks/kindergarten.htm

Fonts and other resources for handwriting (mostly italic)

2007-08-20T21:12:00.010-04:00

August 2009: See my updates a review of BFH and plans to create my own curriculum.

I've been thinking about buying either StartWrite or Educational Fontware, but I'm on the fence. I really only need one set of fonts, so I balk a bit at spending $25 - 35 for it. I have some educational fonts that I've found for free, so I thought I'd share what they are. I haven't seen these listed in one place. I prefer a slanted font, and currently I plan to teach cursive italics rather than traditional cursive. This is not intended to be a complete list, just a list of what interested me.

I would like to be able to make lines in the same proportion as the fonts, and so far that's been an issue with the free fonts I've found, although I could use the lines from the Learning Curve font even though I'm not planning to teach cursive.

When you evaluate a font, look at all the letters, upper- and lowercase. Is the lowercase a the form you like? How about the uppercase G? I'm partial to a nice upward slant on the bottom of a lowercase a, so I look for that. Check each letter, perhaps comparing them to the handwriting workbook of your choice.

These are the fonts that I've found that look useful:

Possibly the most useful font is free on all Windows computers -- Lucida Sans, when italicized, looks an awful lot like a nice italic hand. With this or any other font that doesn't come in a dotted or dashed version, you can use the Font dialog box to choose Outline format (or another format you like, such as engraved or raised). You could also make the font color gray, so that you can see what your child has written over the top. Windows Vista has some additional Lucida fonts such as Lucida Handwriting and Lucida Calligraphy that you may like.
Neal Font: a dotted slanted font. Possibly useful italic-like font, but difficult to read.
Jarman and Jardotty (select your computer type from the menu at the left): Nice dotted italic font. Make a worksheet based on Jardotty here. The creator of these fonts writes about handwriting here, including some animated suggestions for better handwriting.
Precursive New: a slanted font available with arrows, dashed, or as a regular unadorned font from BJU.
Foundation Handwriting: I don't like the C or c and the uppercase G, and I'd rather have a lowercase k without the loop. However, in italics, it's an italic cursive font (lowercase only), which may be it's most useful feature. I got the basic font for free, but I haven't found it again except as a set for sale. (Possibly here. Use a virus checker please!)
Print Clearly: An upright printed font available in a dashed version. From Blue Vinyl Fonts.
Skyland: an upright printed font with arrows.
Learning Curve: a cursive learning font, also available in a dashed font. Quite pretty. The font also includes dingbats for learning characters to create lined paper. From Blue Vinyl Fonts.
Kid Letter Font: D'Nealian style, includes lines, arrows, dots, and other options. $15

Some other resources:

About.com has a page on free teaching fonts here: http://desktoppub.about.com/od/fonts/p/schoolfree.htm
dafont.com had a category of school fonts (I think I've included the best above, but the one with only a bottom and a middle guideline may be useful to some)
Fontgarden.com has some cool handwriting fonts that could be useful helping an older student to develop a personal style.
This site has some great ideas about teaching italics -- could easily replace a book (click the Quick results, easy work link).
Another great site on learning and teaching italics, this one by Ted Power.
Donna Young has some handwriting pages, although she doesn't favor italics.
An overview of handwriting styles from Zaner Bloser. (Not actually from Zaner Bloser, according to Kate Gladstone. See comment section.)(Looks like Zaner Bloser actually bought this link since I made the post and Kate commented on it.)
Kate herself has a list of handwriting resources here (click the Resource People link at the bottom of the page).

For money:

Check out StartWrite and Educational Fontware if you want to spend money. They are likely to be your best bet. The Fontware give you fonts on your computer that you can use in any application. StartWrite allows you to make pretty worksheets in any of a variety of fonts (personally, I like the Australian fonts). They both get glowing reviews
D'Nealian fonts for sale ($20)
I'm intrigued by the Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting program, which comes with fonts. The fonts alone are about $17, and are included with the curriculum.
http://www.schoolfonts.com.au/: Pretty Australian fonts, but not free.
About.com's list of Commercial Fonts for Teachers.
Penny Gardner's book, Italics: Beautiful Handwriting for Children. I own this and like it, but would still like to be able to make customized copywork for my kids.
Some beautiful copywork books from Downunder Literature.
The popular workbooks, such as Handwriting Without Tears, Getty Dubay, and many others (try Rainbow Resources for starters).
A list of handwriting resources at Cynscribe Calligraphy Resources. http://www.cynscribe.com/handwriting.html
A plug for Modern Italic Handwriting with a free lesson. Useful for adults wanting to learn or practice italics. http://www.studioarts.net/calligraphy/italic/handwriting.html

That's it! Let me know if you find anything here useful!

Charlotte Mason outside time

2007-08-09T15:12:00.000-04:00

The weather has broken here after a long hot humid spell, so I decided today would be a good day to try to get our 4-6 hours outside, as Charlotte Mason recommends. This has been a typically up and down day.

I went out around 10am with the clippers. First I had to chase the kids off the non-Charlotte Mason approved computer. I took out my tree book to identify a tree near our driveway, and tried to get my five-year old interested in that, not particularly successfully (I think it's a Hickory tree). I spent awhile clipping, and after a little moping, the boys got busy drawing in chalk on the driveway. That is, until the five-year old freaks out about his brothers messing up his drawing. I have a little talk with the oldest about how important it is for the five year old to feel that he can draw (since he’s intimidated by how good his brother is at it), then I go around to clip in the back, after suggesting we separate the driveway so that middle boy can have his own part. Of course, the three-year old isn’t very good about following rules like this, but I’m not sure that came into play. Pretty soon the seven-year old comes running out with the five-year old in pursuit. Turns out the middle child has been throwing ice cubes at his big brother because he’s still mad about the drawing. thing. So I sent him to his room, and on the way he yells at me that I’m stupid, which earns him a little extra talking to.

Later, they swang for a bit, and then we had lunch outside, which was a little hard to coordinate, but we managed, and had a good 10 or 15 minutes, including noticing an interesting bug. I commented on our trees—which ones matched and which ones were different.

Later, my oldest wanted me to read with him, and at my suggestion he set up a spot for us with cushions while I did a little cleaning up in the kitchen. That worked for about fifteen minutes, and then the other two got a little too rowdy and we stopped to look at clouds for a few minutes.

After another break inside, I came out again to practice throwing a Frisbee. The middle boy turned on the hose, but the three-year old ended up in control! They had a good time, that is, until the five-year old freaked out about getting squirted when he didn’t want to be.

Tonight we have a Frisbee game, so that will be more time outside, so we’ve definitely exceeded the recommended time, but it ain’t easy! I find that most outside time is like this – some good, but a lot of issues, too.

I Surrender! I Take It Back!

2007-08-08T17:30:00.000-04:00

When I was a new mother of a single baby, I did not immediately surrender to motherhood. I especially did not surrender to homemaking. But as time went by and I had two additional babies (eventually, three children under five), I did. I was a mother and a homemaker, and I came close to embracing that role in my life as well as in at least one holiday letter sent out to friends and relatives. My relationship with housework has always been rough, but I do accept it as my responsibility, currently, although I do expect some help (and I don't do laundry).

But now I'm wanting to take a little back, to find a little ambition and figure out what to do with it. The first step is to permanently give up any thoughts of having any more babies. I know we're done, I really do, and there are plenty of good reasons not to have any more babies, but I still find it hard to state definitively that this is it. Nobody I tell believes me.

The second step may be to figure out which ambition to follow. Should I try to save the world? Should I try to write that bestselling historical novel? I have enviable leisure to figure that out; well maybe not leisure, exactly, but I don't have to work for a living, currently; I just have to take care of a house and three kids.

My biggest problem? I feel like my creativity is stuck, and I don't know how to crack it open. I think that my calling is to write. I am a published technical writer, but that, I'm almost sure is not my calling. I love to read. Lately my reading list has been a bit bland -- books about homeschooling, homemaking, and chick lit, mostly. But I'm a historical fiction nut. I love A Midwife's Tale, by Laurel Ulrich. I read fantasy: Judith Tarr, Ursula Le Guin, Shari Tepper, Anne McCaffrey. I like mysteries, but of all the genre's I read, I'd be surprised if I ever wrote mysteries. But where do I find the stories? I don't seem to have them. Maybe a scene here or there, but no complete story arcs. Maybe non-fiction is a better bet for me?

And then there's this baggage from my last worthwhile endeavor -- that is, being a mother to young kids. I still have those kids, and I'm still committed to giving them the best childhood that I can. It's just that I want to find a little something meaningful for myself, too. I'm petrified, that I'll look up in fifteen years and wonder what I thought I was doing with all that time. I recently listened to an interview with a homeschooling mother of one, whose life still seems to center around homeschooling -- her only daughter is 28! I don't want to send my boys to school, but I recognize that I'm afraid of the work of finding and following through with an alternative. There is an alternative school within commuting distance, but I'd have to work to pay the tuition. We have a relaxed lifestyle at home now, and that would change if we went that route.

And somewhere in there is finding some time for this new ambition. Although it's true that my kids are less work than when they were 0, 2, and 4 (they must be, right?), I find it hard to actually find that time in my day. Apart from creating and cleaning up three meals a day, plus snacks, plus keeping the house in acceptable shape, not to mention answering a hundred questions an hour with a smile on my face, there are plenty of family-type projects to work on, from photo albums to family movies to family room shades. And I've always struggled with routines -- I think I want one, I may even spend time creating one on paper, yet they never last for long. Yet I think that is what I need to carve out time for me.

Part of me is ready to jump right in, but another part of me thinks I need to educate myself first. I don't know enough to be able to write like Diana Gabaldon. And even though J. K. Rowling gets plenty of criticism, she seems to know plenty of history, mythology, and literature. Natalie Goldberg says to be specific: not just tree, but sycamore. I don't know anything about trees! But how to get there? What the heck did I do for nineteen years of school?! I think it has to be independent study, but I wish I had a way to make myself accountable for it.

But that is the beginning of my plan: 1) Read. Read more widely. Read things that are difficult. Think about and form opionions about what I read. 2) Write. Attempt to write fiction. If scenes are all I have, then just write scenes.