Three Plus Two

The Homeschooling Meme

Pam at Everyday Snapshots tagged me for the homeschooling meme that's been going around, so here goes...

1) ONE HOMESCHOOLING BOOK YOU HAVE ENJOYED

Well, I was going to put a photo of my homeschool book bookcase here to point out the difficulty I might have with "one" book, but... I couldn't get the bookcase to fit in the frame! Actually, that's probably not as bad as it sounds, because it's a tall skinny bookcase, and there's not a lot of room to maneuver in the little piece of hallway where it resides, but still... I've collected a lot of books over the past 10 years.  For instance, I have all 3 editions of The Well-Trained Mind.  Does that sound nutty? I use it mainly for the resources.

Since I have a hard time following directions, here is a list of some of my favorite homeschooling books:

A Little Way of Homeschooling

(I love this book.  It is like having a good friend at your elbow telling you to relax, that it's going to be okay, really.)

Better Than School: One Family's Declaration of Independence  by Nancy Wallace

The Latin-Centered Curriculum by Andrew Campbell

Hard Times in Paradise  by the Colfaxes

How Children Fail   by John Holt

Homeschooling Our Children Unschooling Ourselves by Alison McKee

Pretty dang unschooly. With a little classical thrown in for good measure.

2) ONE RESOURCE YOU WOULDN'T BE WITHOUT

Er... one? Well... if I was stranded without all my stuff, what I would absolutely want most would be a library card.  So I guess the one resource I wouldn't be without is ACCESS TO BOOKS, and lots of them. 

3) ONE RESOURCE YOU WISH YOU HAD NEVER BOUGHT

Hmmm... Off the top of my head, I would say the IEW writing curriculum.  I don't know how I thought I could get past my deep aversion to teaching "dress-ups.

4) ONE RESOURCE YOU ENJOYED LAST YEAR

Gee, that's tough.  There were some good books last year, but I think one of the "resources" we most enjoyed last year was the Lego unit I blogged about here.

5) ONE RESOURCE YOU WILL BE USING NEXT YEAR

Would that be this year maybe?  Because I can't plan to the end of the week, much less know what we'll be using next year!

A few resources from this year...

Discovering Moths: Nighttime Jewels in Your Own Backyard  

Rosetta Stone French and Japanese

Other Worlds: Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy

Fieldwork Marine Biology plans

Holling C. Holling books

Among the Night People

Seeing Is Achieving: Improve Your Child's Chances For Success  

A really good voice teacher

6) ONE RESOURCE YOU WOULD LIKE TO BUY

Does anybody have a schoolroom/art studio/home library space for sale, cheap?

7) ONE RESOURCE YOU WISH EXISTED

A schoolroom/art studio/home library space you could unfold and attach to your house.  Like the TARDIS -- bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

(This sounds like a good excuse to stick in a Doctor Who Youtube montage.)

 

Actually, Doctor Who has led to some good discussions in our house, so I guess it counts as one of my favorite resources, right? (Just smile and nod; it's easier that way.)

8) ONE HOMESCHOOLING CATALOG YOU ENJOY READING

Sonlight (although I don't like their new catalog as much as I liked the old format) ... Emmanuel Books... Montessori Services... (I guess that's technically not a homeschool catalog, but that's what I use it for, so I think it counts.)

Ok, so -- tag, you're it!  If you haven't already done the meme and you'd like to, consider yourself tagged!

 

 

 

This Week

A cicada emerges from its exoskeleton.  Photo by Katydid.

This week we had a few "cool" days (in the 80's) so we spent more time outside.  The twins and Chipmunk fought ants and caught caterpillars.  One of the caterpillars they caught may have been a cabbage white caterpillar, and they spent an entire morning counting and pooling their money so they could buy cabbage to feed it.  Alas, the poor creature was "wounded" (or so I was told) and did not survive the day.  Katydid surreptitiously dumped it outside.  The boys were again focused on their ongoing battle with the billions of ants that populate our yard anyway.

 

Farmerboy tamed chickens.  I think the one he's holding may be named Domino.  She's a Dominque, a breed we remain partial to because they're like cats, only more useful. The chicken heading into the hole in the stall door is a Salmon Falverole affectionately known as "Runt".  As a chick she developed a lot later than the other birds, so much so that we thought there was something wrong with her and that we might have to cull her.  Instead we fed her vitamins.  She survived a dog attack and is now one of the chickens with the most interesting personality. 

(If you don't have chickens, you might not realize that they can have interesting personalities.  But some of them do.

Also, did you remember that our barn used to be a weird sort of mauve and tan color? Probably not, considering how little I've posted in the past year.  If you don't remember the weird mauve color it used to be, you won't know how much improved the green is.  Just trust me.)

FB also spent a considerable amount of time working on a Lego coral reef.  We finished reading Pagoo last week and this week we moved on to One Small Square: Coral Reef, mostly because it came in the mail finally and because when I looked inside, the word LEGO jumped out at me.  I'd ordered it from Winterpromise a long time ago, along with some other books, including Atlas of World History.  The other books came, but the Atlas and the One Small Square book did not.  For over a month.  (I was reading a blog post the other day in which the writer and various commenters led me to believe that this situation was not uncommon with Winterpromise.)  Anyway, at least it was a nice surprise to open a box with interesting books in it that I wasn't really expecting.  Coral Reef suggests using Legos to build corals, and of course that was all the encouragement FB needed.  Here you see staghorn coral being feasted upon by a Crown of Thorns Starfish, while a giant clam resides nearby, hiding a pearl.  Katydid told him clams didn't make pearls, but that didn't really seem to deter him.  I think he's claiming artistic license on this one.

Another interesting coral reef book from this week:  

It's all about the Great Barrier Reef.  And he watched this National Geographic Great Barrier Reef video.  And a bunch of the other videos on the same page, too.  And now I have heard that he wants to be a diver.  Which means he'll be wanting more swimming lessons, I guess.

It was a marine biology week for Katydid (age 12/7th-ish grade now) as well.  She seems to naturally concentrate on one subject for a while, then move on to the next one.  Over the course of a year, if left largely to her own devices, she usually acquires a pretty well-rounded education.  But if you looked at it on the level of the week, you might not see that.  This week was one of those weeks.  It seemed like every time I saw her working, she was working on marine biology.  She and FB played some of these BBC Sea Life games in addition to the work she did using Seaside Naturalist: A Guide to Study at the Seashore.  She told me she "accidentally" wrote a report while she was trying to take notes. 

Gareth works in a similar fashion, except intensified by several degrees.  This week was all about geography for him, considering that we got that new atlas and he's reading Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies , and writing and science fiction.  He and Katydid are working on the Other Worlds curriculum together.  He's also moving at a good pace through Jacobs Geometry with the aid of the Ask. Dr. Callahan DVDs and syllabus.  I must say that this is a relief to both of us after all the wrestling with algebra. This week was a further focus on deductive proof.

The younger boys had a "math morning" this week... I think it was Thursday, when it stormed all morning.  It wasn't planned; math was just what they wanted to work on. I do try to work on math daily with the K-3 set, but a) that's not usually a problem with Pop, who will tell you that he has a "math brain" and b) Thursday morning they just wanted to keep going with various mathematical activities.

I put out some pattern squares on the table.  I made a flower.  Nobody could guess what it was.  (Pop: "A satellite? Radar?") FB sat down and immediately put all the squares in a battle array and then informed his brothers of the rules to the game, if they should wish to play.  Of course they did, and of course they immediately protested that it wasn't fair because FB had all the soldiers. So... we spent some time figuring out how many soldiers FB actually had (beginning multiplication, multi-digit addition, regrouping, then division when he split them up).  I only had to break up a few fist fights before we were finished.

Boys.

We are doing lots of schooly stuff every day, but it is still summer time.  My garden this summer has become an abysmal failure -- well, "abysmal" may be a little strong, but it's a tempting word to use when squash bugs destroy half of everything you planted and even your green beans don't really bear.  Anyway, there are several Bartlett pear trees in our neighborhood, and they're getting ripe this time of year, and today one of our neighbors was cutting grass for another neighbor, who has a tree loaded with pears but doesn't use them, and he said we could have the pears if the kids would come get them.  So I sent the three oldest over with the cooler on wheels, and even though one cooler full was probably enough, our neighbor said the kids should dump their load and come back for more.  I'm not sure how much this is -- a bushel and a half? Two bushels? Or what I'm going to do with them either, considering that Bartlett pears tend to be hard as rocks.  But I figure they might be good for preserves or pear butter.

 

Linking up!

Weekly Wrap Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learning with Lego

I've been having a hard time getting enthused about homeschooling lately, so I decided it was time to not worry so much about "making progress" and to do something fun instead.

It's the flag of Denmark!

Cue: this Lego unit/lapbook, which I first learned about on the Aussie Pumpkin Patch blog last fall.  I'd tucked the idea away in the back of my mind, and these dreary, sick January days seemed like a good time to present it to my Lego-obsessed 7 year old.  Farmerboy is not an independent reader so he really couldn't do this unit independently, and he didn't have much interest in making a lapbook, but we had fun watching all the videos and doing the "building challenges".  Gareth and Katydid joined in on occasion, too.

We've only gone through the first 3 days because Pip had to make an unscheduled visit to minor medical on Thursday with an infected finger.  Farmerboy is looking forward to doing more learning with Lego this week... so much so that I'm afraid I'm going to have to come up with my own building challenges for many more days!

Farmerboy's taxi-truck from Day One... we couldn't find the taxi instructions, so Farmerboy made up his own.

The ship from Day 2... It's a speedboat.  His finger is hiding the prop he added to the back.

 
Katydid's mosaic from Day 3... a treasure chest.

We also used the nice spread on Lego manufacture in the book See How It's Made and found a good article about the science of how Lego works (among other things), which I read aloud to everyone.

Farmerboy has now added "Professional Lego Builder" to "Paleontologist" when asked what he wants to be when he grows up.  Next I think he will probably answer, "Nathan Sawaya".

 

 

Beginning to keep records for high school when you're on your own

We're taking a break for Thanksgiving, and I thought that I would take the time to share some specifics about the older kids' learning this year, including some issues I've been fiddling with for high school.  High school posts tend to be sparse in the blogosphere, maybe for a few reasons.

1) To respect a teenager's privacy.

2) Because many homeschooling families turn to traditional texts, courses, or independent study schools to help them through the high school years.

3)Because teenagers do fewer cute crafts.

4) Some homeschool families choose to send their teens to brick and mortar high schools.

There are probably more reasons, but those are the ones I can come up with on the spur of the moment.  While I certainly respect all of them, it does leave those of us who are just starting high school in a bit of a state of uncertainty.  I do intend to respect my teen's privacy, but hopefully I'll be able to share a bit about our high school experiences as well.

Gareth turned 14 in October and is "officially" in "8th grade", although we don't have to report him as such to the state and I tend not to think in those terms very often myself.  To complicate matters, much of his work is on a high school level... whatever that is, as what is considered "high school level" seems to vary widely, even among packaged programs -- compare Kolbe's high school history to one of Winterpromise's senior high programs, for instance, and you'll see the dilemma facing the parent and teen who attempt to chart their own course.  In any case, having reviewed various high school textbooks to get an idea of what "high school earth science" or "high school history" (particularly on a 9th grade level) might be like, I'm pretty sure that he's doing it.

There is some debate over whether or not colleges want to see (or care about) any courses done in 8th grade.  (There is an excellent discussion of the matter on Kind Conversation.)  From what I have read the answer is: maybe not.  On the other hand, I think it is better to have too many records on hand to choose from rather than too few, and so I am keeping track of all books, projects, field trips, papers, videos... etc.   If we were the types of homeschoolers who lay out year-long courses of study and complete them every year, I would perhaps be less worried about keeping track of Gareth's history, science, and literature selections this year, but since we are not, I am going more with age than grade. From Alison McKee's book From Homeschool to College and Work: Turning Your Homeschooled Experiences into College and Job Portfolios:   :  "Since we don't believe that homeschooled children are in traditional 'grades' we prefaced many of the portfolio's dated entries with Christian's age at the time the activity took place."   Elsewhere in the book she tells how they began the documentation process with an "academic journal" when her children turned 14.  Thinking of "high school" and the documentation process in these terms fits very well with our experience.  Since we began homeschooling (when Gareth was 4), I have noticed that I tend to think of him as a grade "higher" every January, even though he may still "officially" have several months to go in the grade in which he began in July or September.  This is because his birthday is in October and every fall and winter he experiences a period of both physical and mental growth.  By the time January rolls around, he's a different kid.

In any case, since we tend to pursue interests more than timetables, I fully expect most of our home-designed courses (in history and science, say, or literature -- not math or Latin) to spill over into the "official" years of high school.  It's my plan to -- as Alison McKee says often in her book -- "sort and resort" those learning experiences into official packages after the fact, and not before.

But "after the fact" reporting has its own pecularities.  When activities, books, etc. are written down, they need to be recorded in such a way that they will be easier to "sort and resort" when the time comes.  Alison McKee recommends doing this sorting on at least a 6 month or yearly basis.  Since her book was written before all the nifty homeschool tracking software was developed, she was simply doing her sorting from a notebook that her kids kept.  Also, she did not give grades or credit or write her "narrative transcript" to bear much resemblance to the kinds of transcripts produced by traditional high schools.  When her children applied to college, colleges had not seen many homeschoolers.  Today many colleges have policies in place to deal with homeschooled applicants, and I want to cover my bases.  I am tracking hours in subjects that are not textbook based (like math or Latin).  I plan to use the Carnegie Unit of 120 hours to grant credit, after the hours have been collected, sorted, and grouped.

(I want to be clear here that my oldest is just 14.  I have absolutely no experience with applying to colleges beyond the train wreck that my own college application process was.  I am not an authority on the matter -- just sharing the results of my own research process.)

This is how I have set things up for now. 

I'm using Homeschool Tracker Plus.  I don't enter assignments ahead of time.  Instead, I record as "assignments" activities already done.  I try to enter "topics" and "time spent".  Entering topics will give me a scope and sequence later on and will help me sort out the resources.  The software tabulates hours for me (and grades if anything is graded), and I can tabulate hours over more time than just a school year.  It will also generate lists of resources used.  When I assign courses I try to either be very broad or else -- in the case of science -- fairly specific. For instance, I have a course titled "High School History" right now to kind of separate what I tend to think as "junior high" stuff from the books I think probably ought to appear on a high school reading list; I'll sort this work into courses like "European History" or "Medieval History" later, when I see what we've got.  But I have broken down "science" into courses by discipline -- geology, paleontology, astronomy, evolutionary biology, etc.  This is because, depending on the number of hours accumulated, Gareth could end up with a course called "Earth Science" incorporating the fields of geology/paleontology, astronomy, oceanography, and meteorology... or he might end up with courses called simply "Geology" or "Astronomy".  At the time of application (assuming he does decide to apply to college, which I think likely), I would sort out and discard any dead ends or topics that just didn't add up or combine with anything else.  But until that time I'll keep recording anything I think might be useful.

 

Create your own continent

If you have followed this blog for any length of time, you've probably noticed that my kids like earth science.  This year Gareth has decided to make high school level earth science his focus, and as is often the case when one child becomes interested in a thing, the interest spills over into the rest of the family.  A couple of weeks ago, his reading about plate tectonics (the theory of continental drift) sort of collided with the boys' love of shovels and their collective invented universe (I'm sure I have pictures on the blog of the "cities" they built in New York, but I can't find it now) and Minn of the Mississippi, and this is what happened:

 

The kids found a good place to dig in the backyard and dug a river system.  Then they added mountains, mesas, and plateaus.  They discussed and defined all the terms.  Gareth explained continental uplift to the 7 and 5 year olds.  The 3 year old was identified as the primary cause of erosion; one of the twins earned the nickname "Earthquake".   Of course, forts were constructed, too, for empires that rose and fell.

In the midst of all the digging, Katydid decided to also dig a model Mississippi, using the maps in Minn of the Mississippi  as a guide.  It's still under construction.

My role in all of this?

I let Gareth read a book he wanted to read instead of one I planned for him to read.

I chose Minn of the Mississippi as a school book for the little boys and I read it to anyone who would listen.

I provided access to shovels and dirt.

But most importantly, I let them dig.

 

 

K-2 and Early Learning: November 1-7

This week was a "hither and thither" sort of week... heavy on the "thithering".  Andy took off on All Saints Day so we could run moving-related errands; Katydid had her once a month choir practice for her once a month choir (which, unfortunately, she will not be able to attend because so many of us are sick); we spent Thursday visiting gyms to find a good preschool gymnastics program; and the little boys, pumped up on Halloween candy and irritated by a virus most of the week, did their share of "thithering", too.  In other words -- it was a light week academically.  

While we were driving around we listened to Hotel for Dogs, by Lois Duncan.  We haven't seen the movie, but the book is good.  I did my fair share of indentifying with Andi Walker, the 10 year old main character. 

Because I apparently have SO MUCH to talk about for a "light week" (ahem), I'm going to break my usual weekly review post into two.  This one will focus on Farmerboy and the twins, who are roughly 2nd grade and kindergartenish, respectively.

Art and Nature Study:

I forgot to mention last week that we started a family nature journal.  It's not an original idea, but I can't remember where I first heard about it.  Anyway, I thought it would be a good way to encourage the little boys in some nature drawing and possibly to encourage my 14 year old as well.  (Katydid has her own nature journal in which she draws frequently.)  Our first project was leaf rubbings:

(Sorry about the glare from the page protector.) 

We're just using a 3-ring binder.  Katydid and Farmerboy made a cover for it and then led all the little boys on a nature walk around the yard.  They drew what they found and filed the pictures in the binder. 

This week's "excursion" (hands-on science in the yard, basically) was a dig initiated by Farmerboy, who wanted to see if any rocks could be found at all.  When it was so dry, the dirt was as hard as rock, but with our rain this week, it softened enough to take a shovel.  Unfortunately, no rocks were discovered, but a long, rotting board was, and also signs that a raccoon has taken up residence in the barn.  The raccoon will have to be evicted somehow; one of our jobs this winter is to convert one of the big stalls on the outside of the barn into a chicken coop.  Raccoons are bad for chickens.

By Sunday afternoon, the trench had become an entire river system, complete with tributaries, mountains, volcanoes, bluffs, forts, and civilizations.  Chipmunk and Pop had apparently been assigned the titles of "Erosion." 

 

Pip worked hard coloring some bird notebooking pages.  He has become very meticulous about his nature coloring pages, prefering to work from actual photos in order to get the colors right.  In order to color his blue hen chicken (the state bird of Delaware), we had to round up Storey's Illustrated Guide to Poultry Breeds, which has excellent color photos of all the breeds it references.  (And, really, if you are at all interested in raising poultry, you need this book.  Read it alongside the poultry catalogs, which is what we're doing right now.)

Math

Farmerboy and the twins have also been learning to tell time for a while now.  Farmerboy started out last spring with a few pages in Seton's Math 1 for Young Catholics, but math workbooks usually give telling time and the concepts behind it short shrift.  Time (like most mathematical concepts) is a concept best dealt with in a practical, hands-on manner anyway, but the kids do like practicing their time-telling skills on paper.  This is where typical math workbooks can become frustrating, because once you've done a page or two of clockfaces, you've exhausted the workbook's fund of time-telling practice.  So this is what we do:

Montessori clock cards :  These are not the same cards I have, I don't think, because I printed mine from somewhere I can't remember back when Katydid was learning to tell time.  But Lori's materials are top-notch, and I'm fairly certain this set is more comprehensive than the one I have been using.  The twins are working on telling time to the hour; Farmerboy is struggling a little bit remembering :15 and :45, but he's getting there.

Judy Clock:  Again, the teaching clock(s) I actually own are not the same.  I bought them (I bought two of them, one for Gareth and one for Katydid, back when there were only two kids to buy for) at an amazing teacher supply/educational bookstore we used to frequent when we lived in the St. Louis area.  (The best thing about the store was that it had a large play area in the back.)  Our clocks are not as fancy, but I actually like them better because they have the corresponding minutes printed beside the big numbers to help kids learn to tell time in 5 minute intervals.  The boys use these a lot, for fun.  They sit on the couch turning the hands and say, "It's 7 o'clock!  It's 3 o'clock in the morning! It's 12 o'clock now!"

Clock Stamps: The boys are not as keen on these as Katydid was, but they do use them occasionally.

Books:  Well, you knew there had to be books, right?  Two of our favorites: Telling Time with Big Mama Cat and Little Rabbits' First Time Book (Little Rabbit Books).   Mama Cat has been read with so much enthusiasm over the years that the hands on the clock were torn off, so it is in need of being replaced.  Little Rabbits is one of Chipmunk's favorite books at the moment.  A book I found at the library this week that shows some promise is All in One Hour.  It's illustrated with colorful cut-paper collages and digital clocks timing a chain of events set off by a cat chasing a mouse in the early morning.  (Another book of which I have fond memories is Gail Gibbons' Clocks and how they go, which I read over and over and over and OVER to Gareth when he was about 4 years old.)

Another opportunity for time-telling practice is letting me know when it's 4:00 and time for computer/Wii time. ;-)

Farmerboy is also working on adding and subtracting two digit numbers in Seton's Math 2 for Catholics.  This is work he enjoys doing, but he gets horribly frustrated if anyone talks while he's doing it.  Finding him quiet corners in which to work has been a challenge.  Also, this is another instance where kids really need some concrete, hands-on work, but our base 10 blocks were all packed up.  I finally managed to unpack them this weekend and am hoping to introduce Farmerboy to "trading up" (and hopefully the snake game, too).

And the twins spent a few hours on Sunday morning before Mass inventing their own games using Rummy Roots card decks and other board games.

Reading

Because Farmerboy was sick much of the week (including a three day headache), he didn't do too much reading, which is more difficult for him than math.  But he did read most of a picture book to me, Drat That Fat Cat!, which I found at the library.  This is a really excellent book for young readers -- SO much more intelligent and funny than most phonetic readers, and with a vocabulary mostly based on short vowel words.  I had to interject some help here and there (eg.  as with "This is an outrage!"), but Farmerboy could read a lot of it on his own.  I think that struggling readers often think they are doomed to read short, meaningless books about "nags", "cats", and "hams" for a long time, so I was happy to be able to provide Farmerboy with something different.  Glasses certainly improved his reading, but we are still going slowly.  This week has been the first I have heard him try to read words in the books HE likes to look at, or on the closed captioning on the TV.

Pip and Pop are anxious to try out their fledgeling reading skills, too, and are just at the "starting to blend" stage.  Pip in particular demands long lessons using Phonics Pathways, and this week I helped him along through his first book: a short K-4 phonetic text from Abeka I have had sitting in our container of readers (I keep sets of early phonics readers each to their own ziploc bag in a tall Rubbermaid container) for... a really long time.  Gareth and Katydid never picked them up, but they seem to be just right for the twins at this stage. 

 

 

 

 

 

Where Do I Start? Daybook

Outside my window: Sunrise.  I'm facing west and looking at the trees in my pasture, the small sycamore in the "back yard" area, the floodlight pole.  The windows on the back of the house are of the 1980 variety of just not quite big enough.  I miss my big dining room picture window.  In fact, I miss quite a few things about my old house, but at least this house does not make me wheeze.  Being able to breathe trumps picture windows.

Weather for today:  Ridiculously warm and sunny.  Back into the upper 80's and low 90's again. Temperatures dropped down into the upper 60's this past weekend.  We saw people wearing toboggans and laughed.  The weather has been a little beautiful, though... the land is parched and so in need of rain.  Leaves and grass crunch underfoot.  It looks like they are trying to predict a "few showers" for Gareth's birthday next week, so we can hope!

In my yard: The beginnings of a potager ... some unidentified red flowers (from bulbs) that have pushed up through the soil in  Azaela Garden ... pecans and persimmons falling... a mockingbird that sits in the magnolia tree in the paddock and sings to us in the morning.

In my kitchen: Oh my, the kitchen.  Where do I start?  The kitchen has been my focus in one way or another since we've been here.  First it was just trying to set things up so we could eat decent food instead of the fast food and convenience food we'd been eating since June.  It felt good to cook fresh hulled black-eyed peas bought at a local farm stand on rice, even if most of my kids turned up their noses and only ate the bacon and rice.  It felt good to find a farmer's market and eggplant and tomatoes and make ratatouille.  It felt good to discover that Hot Chow Chow is one of the more addictive foods on the planet, and a little mournful to realize that the lady you bought it from had just sold out her stock.  Cooking, though, has also become a little bit of something else for me in the time that we've been here.  It's the one thing I can almost sometimes control.

Here is where I have to begin again, and it won't be anything about the kitchen, except that it all links up in the end.  This is where I have to write down what has been ordering our lives -- or disordering them -- for the past two months, and it's not boxes.  On the day before we arrived in town, my father-in-law had a heart attack.  He did not go to the emergency room.  He drove to meet us at our new home the next day to give us the keys.  It was 103 degrees and about as humid as a steam room.  Andy's mom said that he was having chest pain and his shoulders hurt so he would not be wandering around our new house with us but sitting somewhere in the air conditioning.  That Monday, he went to the doctor and discovered he'd had a heart attack. 

Then began a month of tests, culminating in bypass surgery, 9 days in the hospital, a few days at home, then 4 more days in the hospital, and -- thank God -- now he seems to be recovering.  Andy has spent a lot of time with his dad.  I have spent a lot of time taking care of kids late at night.  And feeding them.  And trying to feed Andy, when he's here.  And sometimes making food for my inlaws.  And talking to Andy about diet.  And reading about food.  And thinking about food.

It's situations like this that make it clear how important the cook's role is in a family.  My husband (to some extent) and kids don't choose what they eat too much.  They depend on what I cook, what I buy.  Am I feeding them the right things?  Or is what I'm cooking going to contribute to heart disease down the road, to 13 days in the hospital and many weeks of recovery at home?

All my reading has convinced me that real food, real meat, real fat is best.  I feel better when I eat it.  My husband feels better.  My kids calm down.  (Give them a slice of commercial birthday cake and watch them zoom into the upper stratosphere.) 

But it's hard to ignore all the conventional, "expert" advice about saturated fat.  Hard to believe that all the experts are wrong in their touting of a low-fat diet, high carbohydrate diet, but then again, I do a lot of head scratching when I look at the data and wonder why all the "experts" seem to be ignoring it, too.  Gosh, it feels like deciding to homeschool all over again.

It leads to a lot of frustration at the grocery store.  We're trying to make two house payments right now (and don't even get me started on the situation with the other house).  We have some padding in the form of a savings account, but we want to keep the padding, so we're trying to be very frugal.  But how frugal do you get when it comes to food?  (I've been reading all the saving-money-on-groceries blogs, which usually just make me feel inadequate in completely new ways.)  Do you buy the cheap milk that says it contains skim milk even though it's sold as "whole milk"?  That has to mean it contains powdered milk.  So -- no -- I go out of my way to find better milk. (Note I'm not talking raw milk here or even organic milk, just milk that doesn't have "skim milk" or hormones added to it and isn't ultra-pasteurized.)  Do you buy the $.49/lb chicken leg quarters in the 10 lb bag?  I tried.  I couldn't.  They looked horrible.  Maybe I'll buy the $1.78/lb chicken breasts, although I stand there at the meat cases and think about conditions on industrial farms and food-borne diseases.  When we first moved in, we bought some "all natural" hamburger -- not grass-fed, but we had to eat.  The fat that came off that meat turned into an orange sludge.  Now I am never tempted to buy cheap hamburger. I often wonder if we shouldn't just be vegetarian for a while, but then I'm nursing a 3 1/2 month old linebacker and there are times when I really crave meat.

Fortunately we have found a nearby farm that sells grass-fed beef and lamb and pastured pork by the quarter, side, and whole.  If we can make it to January, we'll have some decent meat in the freezer for less than the price per pound of Whole Foods' grass-fed hamburger (including cuts like Porterhouse steak and all sorts of roasts.)  The moral of this story is: support your local farmers!

Coaxing order from chaos: Moving on... down from the soapbox... after a bit of a down point this week as I sniffled through a cold and we had to run Gareth to urgent care and I contemplated all the business trips Andy has planned... I've concluded that the best way for me to cope with the house at this point is to close the remaining book boxes and move them back into the garage.  We had to leave our two biggest bookcases in New York because nobody could figure out how to get them out of the hallway.  (They were moved into that hallway, but neither I nor Andy could remember exactly how.)  We were already pressed for shelf space, although I donated boxes and boxes of books before we left (including a few books I now wish I'd kept!)  So now I'm being even more ruthless and donating more boxes.  Hopefully at some point we will become proud owners of some new Ikea bookcases.

Are they learning anything?: Well, gee, I hope so.  I've been a little frustrated at my inability to keep the little boys to a decent schedule, but then I remind myself that I have a 3 month old baby.  He sleeps at night pretty well and with all the other stuff that's been going on, sometimes I forget how little he is.  But even happy, peaceful, good-sleeping babies need to be held and nursed and walked and played with and enjoyed.  So at those moments when I am frustrated that I am not accomplishing enough, I stop and take a deep breath and remind myself to be patient.  We've been saying our prayers every day, and the big kids are reasonably independent with their baskets and shelves of books.  For the twins and Farmerboy, I am focusing on reading lessons out of Phonics Pathways.  If I pray with them and work on reading, I know I've done the most important things.

A picture:

We have managed to set up some rudimentary art shelves.  The kids were happy to find the watercolors.

 

 

 

 

Summer School

I'm trying to keep everyone somewhat busy and yet still do a lot of sitting (and nursing).  "School" is therefore in session... sort of.  I'm reading aloud in the mornings and requiring math of the big kids and some phonics of Farmerboy (starting next week, after I get our Explode the Code online account set up.)  That's it.  But here's what our days have actually been like...

What we did yesterday:

• Read aloud 1 chapter of Minn of the Mississippi, 1 chapter of Robin Hood (the Howard Pyle version - forsooth!) in the morning, You Can Name 100 Dinosaurs to Chipmunk and Pip at naptime, and at bedtime Andy read 1 chapter of The Buffalo Knife, by William O.Steele (to everyone) and a chapter of Mattimeo, Redwall #3, (just to the little boys).  
• Gareth read The Tombs of Atuan (Ursula K. LeGuin) to himself.
• Katydid wrote... something.
• Boys all built Lego castles.
• Katydid made sandwiches for lunch and brought them outside for a picnic while I nursed the baby.
• A discussion about the physics of trebuchets at lunchtime.
• Everyone played in the hose... for hours and hours.
• Gareth looked over his new Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra.
• Katydid did a couple of pages in her Key to Decimals workbook.
• Katydid and Farmerboy made an "ocean" in a big Rubbermaid container.  Then Farmerboy made his own ocean in a 2 liter bottle (i.e., water + dirt, rocks, shells, sticks, etc) and noted later that everything had settled to the bottom.  Had a discussion about sediment.
• Gareth and Katydid played Wii Secret Agents.
• Everyone except Gareth (who had a doctor's appointment) spent a good long while watching the Giant Ocean Tank webcam at the New England Aquarium... and also grousing about how their mother had already packed all the ocean books.
• Kids decided to watch Finding Nemo.  Gareth and Andy went to Scouts.

What we did today: (I'll try and update tomorrow, since we still have an evening to get through!)

• More webcam watching to start the day.  The nurse shark with the ripped fin was somehow christened "Fred". 
• Scrounging for unpacked books resulted in a little information on tidepools, coral reefs, and sharks.
• The latest "cliffhanger" chapter of Mattimeo narrated to me by Farmerboy (don't worry; I don't assign narrations of bedtime reading!!)
• Taught Katydid to make fried eggs.
• Read aloud Little Farm by the Sea to Chipmunk and another chapter of Minn of the Mississippi, roughly half a chapter of Robin Hood.  It's not bedtime yet, but I expect that Andy will continue to read from The Buffalo Knife and Mattimeo (especially since Farmerboy is adamant about NOT MISSING any of these books.)
• Katydid drew in her nature journal.
• Gareth worked on a map for the novel he's writing.
• Lots more play in the hose.
• More model "oceans".
• Discussion about how the oil spill might affect migrating birds.
• I boiled a batch of eggs.  (Hey, that was a big deal.  I have a 3 week old baby.)
• Katydid worked on decimals some more and Gareth started on chapter 1 of LoF: Beginning Algebra.  He got frustrated when he saw how much there was to chapter 1, but felt much better when we looked at the table of contents and realized that if he did an entire chapter a day he'd finish algebra I in 12 days.  We're shooting for 45 minutes/day.
• I read more of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything and discovered that lichens are so slow-growing that big ones are probably hundreds or thousands of years old.  Had to stifle the impulse to run out to the woods and see some really OLD lichens.  I was sitting on the couch, nursing.

Thinking about Unschooling

I mentioned recently that the last week in May was "officially" our last week of school, and that what "school" means for us is that there is some required work to do and work that "counts".  For instance, during one of our "work" periods (from 2-4 PM, say), you can't read a Warriors book but you can read The Secret Garden or Beowulf or The Fellowship of the Ring or Critter Chronicles.  You can decide that you want to write a book telling people how to watch and feed backyard birds or a poem that you illustrate with oil pastels, or you can sew a few pillows or work on crocheting a scarf, or you could build a stone wall, or you could use One Year Adventure Novel to work on the fantasy novel you're writing, or you could listen to a Redwall book on audio, or you could try to draw a Celtic-style whale, or maybe learn the Greek alphabet.  But you can't watch TV or play video games or go outside and swing a stick at dandelions for forty-five minutes.  And you'll have to do math and Latin.  And grammar (not every day).  And maybe spelling.  And possibly you'll have to write something on a topic of your mother's choosing, if she thinks you haven't been writing enough.  And if you spend a lot of time not finishing books or projects, she will probably also have a talk with you.  Because she has a book list.  It's sort of informal and it changes over the year, but it's a goal in her mind, see.  It's often based on the interests you listed for her at the beginning of the year, and sometimes it's even enshrined in writing.  And if it's enshrined in writing -- meaning that she spent time actually writing something down for you to follow -- she expects you to follow it... I mean, well, maybe not to the letter, but couldn't you use it as a guide like other homeschoolers seem to do?  What about all these lesson plans?  Wouldn't it be easier if we were all more organized?

And then... school's out.  180 days have been logged as "school" days for the state, some of them more structured than others.  Your mother is in a tizzy to accomplish 4000 things in 15 days before she gives birth to another little brother for the family, but since she is also quite hugely pregnant at this point, she also must sit around in a lawn chair quite a bit.  All this busyness and sitting on her part (not to mention a persistent stomach virus making its way through the ranks) means that you really are left to your own devices much of the time, when you don't have chores. 

So what do you do?  Do you swing a stick at dandelions for hours or whine about not being able to play video games all afternoon because you're bored?

No.  This is what you do.

You set up a paleontological dig in your garden.  You even make grids for it.  Then you cart your finds back to the house and break them open with a rock hammer. 

Your brother finds a geode in this way, a real honest to goodness geode that wasn't even part of a kit.  And you find a perfect snail shell... which happens to be solid rock, hundreds of millions of years old.  You want to identify it so you come in and look through the Ward's Geology catalog to see if they have any samples that match.  (The Ward's catalog is becoming tattered from use, because almost everyone is using it to see if there are any interesting fossils cheap enough to buy with kid money.)  When they don't, you go to your mom, and she finds a very useful key online, and you discover that it really is a fossil snail.

And in the afternoon, maybe you and a sibling make dinosaur models out of newspaper and masking tape, then paint them with tempera.    

 

You practice your violin for a recital...

... where you are introduced by your music teacher in terms of your expertise as a birdwatcher, when everyone else is introduced by way of how many lessons they are taking and how they are doing in school.  Playing in public gets you excited about music again, so you actually practice more after your recital than before, and you even write a song, which your music teacher plays and compliments.

And your mother, who keeps an eye on what you're doing no matter how busy she is, thinks, hmmmm.  

Week in Review: May 24-31... More Nature Study

Officially, this week was our last week of school.  What this really means is, this is the last week I'm going to make anyone do math or Latin until sometime in July. 

I imagine that the nature study, building, etc. will only continue.

Katydid giving the boys an impromptu class on caterpillars.

We seem to have more butterflies and moths than usual this year, and a really large variety of caterpillars.  Of course, there are the ever present Eastern tent caterpillars:

 

(Katydid took both photos.  She especially liked this close-up.)

We also found two moths we can't identify.

 

This moth is large -- maybe 3 inches long? 

 

A much smaller moth, which we think probably belongs in the tiger moth family given its coloring... but we haven't been able to figure out the actual species. 

(Katydid took both these pictures, too.)

 

Another Katydid picture of a caterpillar... a Black Swallowtail.  We found this one on a parsley plant at the farm where we buy our vegetable plants and flowers every spring.  Since we're moving this year, I resisted the urge to buy any tomato plants, but I did rationalize the parsley by saying I could put it in a pot and take it with me.  The caterpillar was just a bonus science project.

 

Katydid planted all the flowers for me when we got home.

We had a brief incident with the chickadee nest, so no pictures this week... Katydid opened the nest box and two of the fledglings fell out.  She had to pick them up and put them back in the nest box.  "They're the lightest things in the world!" she said.  We do hope they're all right. 

The tree swallow nest also has eggs in it, but the tree swallows are a little more anxious about intruders than the chickadees are.

However, Katydid made an exciting sighting of a pileated woodpecker right outside her window.  Maybe that will make up for the lack of nest pictures.

 

In addition to all the hands-on nature study, we did manage to wrap up our history for the year by reading the John Lackland chapters in Our Island Story, watching Becket (the 1964 movie about Henry II and Thomas Becket starring Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton), and using some of the Story of the World vol. 2 activity sheets I found when I was packing boxes.

 

Farmerboy started working on a coat of arms, which he drew on a shield template included in the activity sheets.

Gareth and Farmerboy both colored a panel from the Bayeux Tapestry, also included in the activity sheets.  This panel is Farmerboy's, which he worked very hard on.

Gareth marched with the Boy Scouts in the Memorial Day parade, Chipmunk came down with a stomach virus, and Farmerboy worked more on his stone wall, especially after we discovered a pamphlet at Agway describing how to build stone walls.  We stood in the store and examined all the diagrams for building a dry stack wall (which is what Farmerboy is building.)  Since we're trying to save money right now (more on that shortly), I didn't buy the pamphlet, which meant that the next day Farmerboy was rather disgusted with me because he wanted to refer to those diagrams, especially after he knocked his wall down so he could dig the foundation V-shaped trench.

The reason we're saving money?

We just bought a house.  In northern Mississippi.  

Now we're taking deep breaths and packing A LOT of boxes.