practical bits

I’m having one of those weeks where Anne Taintor is my idol.

Yeah, it has. Well, the update: two of my children have flown the coop and gone to public school. One remains. And in answer to what is probably your first question: NO, it’s not any easier with only one. Schooling the one is easier. But the schedule is actually slightly more complicated, and I still have as many projects to deal with than before. More, actually, because there are now more cooks stirring the pot. See? The DEA is right: stay away from pot. I’m just sayin’.

I get tired of people looking at me funny when I say the word “homeschooler”. You’d think I grew another head. However, I think the best course to combat funny looks is … Read the rest of this entry »

Now testing embed code. And what better subject than a mildly amusing take-off of “I Will Survive”, a la homeschool?

What’s molecular gastronomy? Well, I like to think of it as what happens when Mister Science takes some LSD and is let loose at the Whole Foods catering kitchen.

Cuban cigar? Pork sandwich!

February sucks. (Which is why it’s particularly nice that it’s now March.)

Why? Because as far as the school year goes, it’s Hump Month. (Stop Thinking That Right Now, You.) Seriously: you’ve survived the onslaught of the holidays, with that 3-day weekend blip for MLK. Once you’re past Valentine’s and Presidents, what’s left?

A whole lot of Are We There Yet? until spring break kicks in, that’s what.

No wonder more people want to quit homeschooling in February than any other month. (Okay, I don’t know that for a fact. But if the homeschool message boards are any indicator, the number of posted topics that read “I WANT TO QUIT” sure seem to spike around 2/18.)

What do you do?

Take a break. Flexibility is one of the main reasons we started homeschooling in the first place. We did school lite over the summer precisely so we could drop everything and say to hell with school for three days in the middle of the “regular” school year and not feel guilty about it.

Revisit your plan. Maybe the reason your kids say school is boring is because, well, school is boring. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut – drop the curriculum blinders and look around. Maybe it’s time to shake things up a little.

Get them out of the house for a while. Yes, I know going out while the weather’s crappy is a pain. But it’s a change of scenery, leaving the house if half the fun, and your kids get a nice dose of vitamin D from the UV rays. See? Now it’s a health lesson.

Chin up. Spring break is coming!

I was reading an older blog post from The More Child where the blogger asks, as an aside, whatever happened to actual history? Like Mesopotamia and explorers and all that?

I’ll tell you where it’s gone. It’s been dissolved in a combination of That’s Not Politically Correct To Talk About Anymore (the Spaniards were horrible to the people they met in the Americas! We’ll avoid the subject by not talking about it!) and Let’s Be Touchy Feely Instead (If we change the subject to “Social Studies” then we can talk about feelings instead of history).

Don’t even get me started on subject creep. As in, “Mommy, how come they’re talking about feelings in math?”

Pookus recently finished a month-long book project wherein each student developed a short story, illustrated it, and then pasted it all together into a blank book. They had an author’s tea where each student read their book aloud to assembled parents and classmates. I know I’m bragging when I say Pookus’ book drew a healthy amount of appreciative laughter, both for story and illustrations.

Her book was entitled The Carnivorous Bear-Eating Frog, a humorous little tome about a mysterious creature that attempts to lure a cute little bear into a lake to be eaten. Fortunately, the bear overpowers the frog, promptly dispatches the amphibian and hauls him home for dinner. Bear invites everyone he knows to share the feast, laughter abounds, the end.

Pookus brought her creation home today and with it came a grading rubric. She received an A-, and the written comments indicated that points were removed for – are you ready for this? – “Random violence”. Because… self-defense is random violence? Are you KIDDING me?

What’s funny about homeschooling around here is that people can’t figure out why I’d  bother. The simple reason is that I want my kids’ education to be what mine wasn’t. To wit:

I want my kids to have a history education imbued with a sense of order and causality.

I don’t want a disjointed multi-year social studies program. I want a HISTORY program.

I don’t want a science curriculum that is cobbled together off of random web sites and then treated like the inconvenient “extra” (ranking even lower than art, music and – heaven forbid – P.E.) I want them to read a little science and then get their hands dirty with experiments. All the time.

I want a language arts curriculum that includes writing and grammar, not just spelling and vocabulary. I don’t want a language arts curriculum that assumes writing is covered “somewhere” just because other subjects assign writing projects.

I want a curriculum that includes logic and critical thinking, not an education where facts are spoon-fed to the student and their pass rate depends entirely on their ability to regurgitate on command.

And the last reason why: I’ve got three students on different levels, moving at different speeds with different learning styles. But there’s only me and them – not me and 18 or 23 or 26 of them. I have great respect for teachers: given their restraints, it’s amazing they turn out what they do with the 18 or 23 or 26 at a time. But it’s still not enough. When we made the decision to cut loose from schools, we’re not just freeing them from the bonds of an institution – we’re letting them go as far and as fast as they want.

I just hope we’re not too late.

In the second grade, my child came home with a book report assignment. “Oh, a book report,” I thought, “that’ll be easy. My kid is reading on a fifth grade level, piece of cake.”

No.

It was torture. She could read the book, she could comprehend the book, but she couldn’t write about it. Getting her to write five sentences about what she read was like pulling teeth. Only, pulling the teeth would have been easier. (Weirdly, this is actually the case. My kid loves going to the dentist. She’s had four teeth extracted and each time was happy as a clam. It probably helps that we have a very Zen pediatric dentist. ) But I was baffled. Was there something wrong with my kid?

Again, no. Digging my brain out from the depths of Mommy Madness, I dusted it off to examine what was actually being taught in school. It finally dawned on me that what I needed to consider is what’s *not* being taught at school. Namely, writing skills. The kids do vocabulary and spelling. They get free time every day to read books. As part of their reading groups, they are given worksheets about the assigned reading with questions to answer. But nowhere do they teach the tools to organize thought and construct a logical paragraph.

“Here, kid. Read this book, then boil it down into six salient points. Organize them, defend them, and hand it in next week.”

Easy for you to say. You’re not a seven-year-old kid who, two years ago, was still learning how to write words, much less organize them.

At university I took an advanced Shakespeare class. We were split into groups of four and were supposed to critique each other’s papers. The other three people in the group handed me papers with spelling errors, grammatical inaccuracies, and sentence fragments. This wouldn’t be so bad if only their papers had any kind of coherently organized thought to them. Did I mention that you had to be a junior to get into this class?

I strongly suggest you read The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and compare it to what your kids are – and are not – learning in school.