Creating a handwriting curriculum

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):

1. Choose the type of handwriting that you think will serve your children best.
2. 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.
3. 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.)
   
4. 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.
5. Start providing words to copy, and of course, assisting in spelling when the child asks.
6. 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.
   
7. Teach how to join letters.
8. 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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.