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The Judy Effect

At least once in any lifetime we'll meet someone who instantaneously irritates every nerve in our bodies. For me it was the guy who sat behind me in college. I think it was a history class, but I don't really remember. I only recall the way he'd wiggle his glasses back into place without use of his hands, and his habit of wearing crewneck sweaters with no shirt (collared or otherwise) underneath, and the anal precision he'd use when asking me out again, and again, and again. The mere sight of him made my skin crawl with a thousand tiny spiders. The sound of his voice made me ... ok, I'll stop there. I'm feeling ill.

It was my husband who invented the term for this phenomenon: The Judy Effect. Thus named because the person who made his skin crawl was (is still, I'm assuming) named Judy. Sadly, unlike my "Judy", Dr. D's Judy was someone we had to deal with frequently. I saw mine only a few times after college, while Dr. D had to endure his at frequent intervals. I didn't know Judy had the Judy Effect on my husband at first. When Judy stopped by I'd grow irritated with him. "Why are you hiding out in the kitchen? Aren't the dishes in the dishwasher yet - wait, why are you washing them all by hand?" or "Can't you find a better time to reorganize the cupboards?" and "Wait a second bub, you're taking dishes out of the cupboards to wash?"

Then he told me. And we discovered the Judy Effect. I bring it up only because someone had the Judy Effect on me today. A comment on a post on Facebook. A know-it-all crewneck-sweater-without-a-shirt sort of comment that instantly made my skin go prickly with those pesky spiders. One might say, "That's what you get for using Facebook," and they'd be right. And the person who posted, "Actually, fortune cookies are Japanese American not Chinese" was also right. But after hours of compiling funny sayings, printing them, cutting them out, wrestling with homemade fortune cookie dough to make a plate of crispy golden fortune cookies as a very special treat to celebrate finishing a unit study on China ... well, let's just say the information, while accurate, was not appreciated.

I later gathered my children and told them, "Hey, did you guys know that fortune cookies aren't actually Chinese?"

They stared at me a moment, then, "Yeah, Mom. They were invented by some Japanese immigrants in, like, California." Apparently that factoid was in one of the books I forgot I'd had them read. The next question was theirs. "So we get fortune cookies again when we're studying Japan, right?"

Homeschool Indecisions: or Tapestry of Angst

For several years we sort-of-happily used Tapestry of Grace as our main humanities curriculum. Until the sort-of became not-very and slid into not-at-all. What is Tapestry (TOG) and why did we use it/discontinue using it? So glad you asked.

TOG is, in a nutshell, all the humanities at once (hist, soc studies, geog, writing, reading, lit, art, music) - or it CAN be, if you put the time in. And for a time, we loved it. Because ... it's great for schooling a bunch of kids at once. Much/most teaching is done all together, but on different levels. The oldest might be reading different books than the youngest, but they'll both be learning about the same time period. Plus the depth of content quite simply cannot be matched. It's truly astounding. Which leads to the problems that drove us all batty (and the reasons we're not using it now).

There is just too much. Not options or activities. Too much prep for me - I was spending easily 5-hrs/week just on prep. Like finding books, printing maps and sheets, finding youtube videos (not part of TOG but my kids love them and I love the break!), determining which resources to use. Because I discovered that once we moved beyond the fabulous picture books in the grammar levels, the uppper level books were hit or miss. Some were awesome. Some mind-numbingly boring. TOG uses a lot of very very old books that are virtually impossible to find at the library and are not really ones you'd want in your permanent home library because "Old" does not equate with "Better." Many were free or nearly free for the Kindle, but I don't enjoy using a device for reading and found it impossible to keep track of which child was at what point in the book. You can't stick sticky notes in a Kindle. 

Anyhow, back to hit-or-miss, the Dialectic books made me want to cry at the thought of having to read them (snoreville!), and made St. Nick do more than want to cry. So I ended up sticking with the grammar level books, even for middle school, because it just wasn't worth the battle. I also spent a lot of time finding more contemporary books that might be more engaging or AVAILABLE than the older ones. The curriculum would call for Pride and Prejudice, for example, so after laughing at the thought of my young teen reading Pride and Prejudice, I would find a graphic novel version. (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is NOT an adaptation. Just FYI.)

Likewise the weeks themselves were hit-or-miss. Egypt was fabulous, fascinating, fun. Abraham/some of the stuff between Egypt and Rome was tedious. The war of 1812 and Napoleon were interesting and there were ample movies and books to supplement our studies. Simon Bolivar, on the other hand, made me want to stage a rebellion. And YouTube videos on him, what few I found, were largely in Spanish.

The final and most important irritation that drove me away from TOG is that I found the digital edition and layout/organization to both royally suck. First, why the digital edition? If I want a physical copy, then why not buy the print version? I learned from experience: It's huge. Four gigantic, unwieldy binders. Four phone-books, most of which I'd never get a chance to look at. It seemed like a tragic waste of resources and an unnecessary expense. Plus the digital edition would be continually updated as the already-hard-to-find books went out of print and were replaced.

So, on to the the DE (digital edition). TOG uses a program called Lock Lizard for the digital edition. It's quirky, works only half the time, and doesn't work at all on an ipad (they released some sort of fix for that, for a fee, but I never got it to work. I did not, however, ever get the $$ back). I had hoped to have a PDF, something I could take onto my iPad and import into one of my note-taking programs where I could mark the margins, check things off, record books I wanted to add or subtract, etc. Nope. TOG staff takes copyright very, very, insanely over-the-top-our-documents-are-worthy-of-CIA-level-clearance seriously. In short, they're paranoid. Yes, if your digital product is not on severe lock-down, people WILL pirate it. Yes, homeschoolers are sometimes prone to bending the "rules" to save a buck, to share with friends, to pass down resources from generation to generation, to burn "Archival backups" of DVD's borrowed from the library. Wait, that last was my brother and lawd knows he'd never homeschool. Anyway, the creators are rightfully trying to protect their content. But the means by which they protected it made it virtually unusable. Pages didn't print correctly, whole week-plans would mysteriously disappear, I had no way of taking notes, or pulling out the pages I wanted to use, or anything else that would make it not a severe headache that left me comatose on the floor after planning-day. 

And now, not related exclusively to the digital edition: for a curriculum that prides itself on being ultra-complete and richly deep (which it is), the organization was truly and appallingly awful. Like a PC when you're used to a Mac - no grace, no elegance, nothing was intuitive, every week's planning forced me to re-learn their moronic organizational method anew. The way the week plans were laid out required me to flip to ten or twelve different pages to get the info that I needed. All without the help of sticky notes or bookmarks or the ability to copy-and-paste the parts I needed to a word document (I tried. Lock Lizard was not happy). Each week-plan was at least 20-30 pages long with background info, discussion questions, activity sheets, answers to activities and whatnot. But half the items were burried in the page-after-page of single-spaced small print "teacher notes." I killed a small forest printing a few week plans because the answers to the Upper Grammar Literature sheet might be on Teacher's Note page 10, while the answers to the Geography sheet wouldn't show up until page 22. The Upper Grammar craft instructions might be on page 543, for all I knew, if I hadn't given up on finding them by then. Why, oh why is it necessary to have a reading list (two pages), alternate reading list (another page), activity list (another couple pages), group activity list (another page) etc. all on separate pages. Some items would repeat from one list to another, others wouldn't, and I could NEVER remember which items were on which list. Some might fault my memory in this case. I spent a year faulting my memory. And then I gave up.

It's like the baby monitor we owned for a week, the one designed by some childless man with a pocket-protector in a cubicle. The designer who never considered how annoying it would be to navigate through eight menus to switch cameras or adjust the damn volume at 1am. In the end, it didn't matter how clear the picture was or how perfect the reception. The monitor went back to the store. And likewise, TOG is no longer a part of our homeschool life. It still saddens me, but not enough to mess with eight levels of menus at 1am.

How to Rehab an old School Desk: Decoupage

Or: things to do when you're procrastinating.

So in typical Me fashion, my first order of business after deciding to homeschool was to obsessively organize, plan, and pretty much avoid thinking about what I would actually be doing every day. I started by setting up work boxes, moved on to curricula comparisons, and then bought two cute little desks off Craigslist.

My initial plan: paint the metal, strip the wood. Snag: the chemical stripper only took off the top layer of paint. So I sanded but the next layer (old primer?)  seemed very lead-based. And with Rowdy crawling all over...

I moved on to painting, after soaking the rusty areas in a baking soda paste and scraping and sanding, after a crap load of painters tape. Voila. 

And

Now, what to do with those seats! Any sane person would have painted them or never %#€!! them up in the first place. No sane person would plaster them with pictures from iconic children's books. So of course, I did decoupage with pictures (google images + color printer). Of course I did!

Step 1: collect images. For extra fun, let the kids pick their favorites!

Step 2: Glue! Ok more specifically make a solution of half glue and half water. Cut or tear out your pictures. Working in small areas, brush the glue mix onto your surface. Then submerge the pictures one at a time in the paste mix for five or so seconds. Apply to your surface. You'll have a few minutes of flex time to reposition things and adjust layers. Be sure some overlap. And try to make it look random. Smooth out bubbles with damp hands. Oh, and use straight glue (white school glue in case I didn't mention that) and a little paintbrush to affix tricky corners. You can always trim with an exacto when dry. 

Step 3: after an overnight dry, apply coat after coat after coat of this stuff:

At least three coats or until you've entirely lost your mind or are so high on fumes the pink elephants are dancing. But do let each coat dry before sloshing on the next. 

Finally:

That is Mud Pie's desk. Note the happy colors and cute chickies and bunnies. Contrast with Fish's:

Hmmmm. 

All Books are Not Created Equal

I've been eyeball deep in selecting books for this coming school year and since I'm (part) Dutch, I'm (part) cheap frugal, so I'm going through our curricula's book lists to see what I can get at the library and what we ought to purchase.

One item on the list: The Everything American Presidents Book by Kelly and Kelly. I've read some from the Everything series before, and while they're interesting and all, they're graphically pretty spare. A quick perusal on Amazon proved there are gajillions of books about US presidents. Surely one could be more visually appealing. Right?

I found what looked like the perfect alternative. Our Country's Presidents by Ann Bausum. Put out by National Geographic, this one was sure to be better. Right? I decided to check out both from the library to see.

Sure enough, the National Geographic book was beautiful. Stunning illustrations, sharp layout. I added the book to my Amazon shopping cart and moved on to the next item.

Then this morning I wondered ... why would the authors of my curriculum recommend the Everything book when the National Geographic book is so obviously superior? Unless it's not. Hmmm.

I did an experiment (pretty smart of me). I read (even smarter!) the section on George Washington in the Natl. Geographic book. And THEN (wait for it - it's really smart) I read the section on George Washington in the Everything book.

Here's what the Natl. Geographic book said:
Ooh, pretty pictures, let's see, bla bla bla, George Washington, bla bla bla. Something about his wife. Bla bla bla, and he died of strep throat.

The Everything book:
Wow, Washington's mother was rot; so he didn't actually cut down a cherry tree! And he didn't have wooden dentures. So that's how he inherited Mount Vernon! Plus he came to believe slavery was immoral and was the only founding father to free all his slaves.

So Natl. Geographic with the dry tone of textbook is going out of the shopping cart, the Everything Book is, well, why don't I just get it from the library? One thing is certain: the curriculum writers really did choose the better book.

Symbaloo: My New BFF

Thanks to Mud Pie's 2nd grade teacher, I discovered Symbaloo. Which is really nothing more than a cross-user, cross-platform version of Safari's "Top Sites" start page. Well, ok, it is more than Top Sites, because with Symbaloo I can make a webmix (or mix of bookmarked sites - that's visual rather than a pulldown list), and I can put it as the homepage for each of the kiddos. What's more, they can each have their own customized homepage!

I can put Dance Mat Typing and Starfall on Mud Pie's, Spelling City and TimeMaps on Fish's, and National Geographic and Kitchen Chemistry on St. Nick's. Along with about three dozen more - each. Each kiddo can have a customized background, too. Even Rowdy has a home page, though there's not much on it since she'd rather eat the mouse than click it.

Solved is the problem of Fish starting up the computer, clicking Firefox, and surfing away to Gamezone or some other time-waste site. Solved is the problem of finding a great educational link, emailing it to myself, losing the email beneath a zillion others, and forgetting about it entirely. I can add and delete links at will from my computer - no more logging on to the Family Dinosaur to change up the kids' home pages or nagging St. Nick to visit such-and-such site. Any changes made from the master webmix will be reflected on any computer where that webmix is displayed! How cool is that? What a fabulous educational resource!

MIT Courses for FREE?!? Kitchen Chemistry

So, ok, I've been neglecting my dear little blog for Pinterest and the Benjamin Moore color picker app because I'm eyeball deep in remodeling projects. But as an aside, the other day I did a random search for "Kitchen Chemistry" - since we'll be doing chemistry next year for school. What should I find but this?

MIT, yes, that MIT, offers a free, online course in Kitchen Chemistry. The course syllabus is a list of culinary delights. Guacamole, Death by Chocolate Cookies, Scones and Coffee. Sound like fun? Do you think St. Nick is going to be taking this class on his own? Not a chance.

St. Nick is truly looking forward to this (Pancakes!) and was blown away by all the other fabulous offerings in his areas of interest. So was I, not to mention courses in MY areas of interest.

What to Do? Homeschooling / Schooling Angst

Ever since our decision to switch the kids from the charter school to an elementary in our district, I've felt uneasy. Beyond uneasy. Conflicted. No. Queasy. And it's not just watching St. Nick, Pie and Fish climb off the bus every afternoon, although that alone makes me queasy - how I hated the long bus rides home when I was too tired to stay awake but too afraid of missing my stop to fall asleep. Ugh.

Books About Halibut, or not

Halistones and Halibut Bones by Mary O'Neill. Doubleday, 1961 (republished w/ new illustrations in 1989) affiliate link.

I absolutely love this book. Here is another homeschool resource, one I used time and again when I “assisted” with a homeschool coop class on writing. It made the notion of metaphor come alive, along with personification, vivid detail—really everything I wanted to teach in that class could have come from this book.

I, of course, was not the lead teacher, so the children got lessons on what they “ought” and “ought not” write about (children being naughty, unless they are punished, was one “ought not”) which left me steaming, but alas at least I got to read, again, these beautiful poems!

What’s not to love? The first poem, “What is purple?” starts,

Time is purple
just before night
when most people
turn on the light, 

and describing purple as a “great grandmother to pink” is just lovely. Gorgeous, educational book.

Our Egypt Diorama (speaking of education!)

It's Been a While: Why We're Glad We Quit Homeschooling

I leave in a few minutes to pick Fish up from school. Yes, school! We put St. Nick and Fish in 3rd grade and kindergarten respectively, and haven't had a moment's doubt. Well, ok, maybe a moment's doubt. But the results have been 100% fabulous. I'd like to take a minute to challenge some misconceptions the homeschool world has about traditional schooling ...

1. A lot of time is wasted in school.

While this may be true for some schools, we have found the opposite at our Heritage Academy. Every second of every day St. Nick is doing something. Doing. Something! And let me tell you, it's not whining, not begging to use the computer, not complaining over how much he doesn't want to do his work or sit by his brother or how bored he is ... all that @#$% he did at home. He learns things! He does *gasp* crafts! He writes and draws and learns and is HAPPY about it!!!! Hear my enthusiasm. My reluctant writer will now show me whole pages of (nearly illegible - some things don't change) script. He'll take pencil and paper to bed and write poetry. Poetry! Dude, I don't know what magic wand Ms. 3rd Grade Teacher has, but I sure didn't have it.

2. The social environment will destroy his fragile sense of self and he'll become a sociopathic drug addict with no will power and an overwhelming need to fit in even if that means, yes mother, that he'll jump off the cliff just because everyone else is doing it.

Not true! Partly because of my own antisocial tendencies we never got hooked into a homeschool group, so St. Nick never had any concentrated time with other kids, so St. Nick never had any real friends. You know, those people we remember from childhood who call on weekends and giggle during sleepovers? (Ok, boys may not giggle.) Well, he now has lots of contact with other kids, and my once surly, bad-attitude (look back at our homeschool coop experiences), socially awkward child has friends! He gets phone calls! He has secret clubs! He has a CRUSH!!! He also gets to make tough choices every day. Does he tell the teacher when a classmate has something she's not supposed to have in her backpack (her Nintendo DS, not cocaine)? Does he tease the kid who can't have birthday treats because of his religion, just because his friends do? St. Nick proves again and again that even children are capable of critical thinking. And even my kid (raised by wolves) can make the right decisions much of the time. And he comes home with lots to talk about over dinner.

3. Family cohesion will fall apart and we'll all eat pop tarts at the counter before rushing from one practice/event/lesson to the next.

So totally false. Perhaps because of my aforementioned antisocial tendencies, our evenings running to school activities are rare treats. And they really are treats! We went to Chuck E. Cheese for the first time EVER with his school, which turned into a fabulous time to connect with other parents, meet classmates, and blow off steam. Sorry to say, it rocked far and away over the homeschool softball-nite or square dancing hoe-down. Ok, sorry for the unfair jab. The truth is, we ran around like headless chickens far more when we were homeschooling. Now we enjoy evenings at home together. And major bonus, Dr. D totally digs helping St. Nick with homework! The same Dr. D who was almost entirely uninvolved in homeschooling now works with his son every single night. I've seen those two grow in crazy leaps this year in mutual respect. St. Nick blossoming from the attention of his dad, and Dad realizing his little smart-ass is really pretty dang smart.

4. Siblings won't get along because they'll be, like, separated by artificial age categories and hierarchies and whatnot.

Wrongers. Here's our day: St. Nick and Fish leave at 7:30 am. I get to have Mud Pie all to myself all morning (ok, this is mostly Pie playing in my office with an occasional preschool lesson thrown in). 11:30 Pie and I go pick up Fish. We have a great lunch together and Pie, geeked beyond measure to have her big brother home, plays with Fish who, geeked beyond measure to be with this adoring little sister, relishes every moment. They play without stopping until 3pm when we go to pick up St. Nick. Pie is craving rest time by then, so Fish and St. Nick (who were once arch enemies) pair up on computer games or legos or just hanging out. They actually like one another! From the bickering and constant drive to divert my attention from whoever was getting it at any given moment, to friends. It's a miracle.

5. Schools don't really teach anything.

Don't get me started on the actual content of the education. While I'm still an advocate of teaching reading at home (the one-on-one is invaluable), St. Nick does activities and learns stuff I never would have thought to teach him. Stuff I don't care two whits about but he LOVES (uh, like math? Kidding, kidding). His spongy little mind just soaks it all in, tons of stuff, and the teacher has time and energy to do things I could never get myself to do. Spelling for example. Who knew my son would be a great speller? Certainly not me since I could never keep on track with weekly spelling words, pre-tests, tests, etc. I tried, but little things (like two younger siblings) always pushed it to the to-do-later pile.

One final look at what traditional school has given us:



This from the kid who cried buckets when we put him in an angel costume for his PreK Sunday School Christmas play. All on his own, he auditioned, memorized his lines, and performed in front of a packed house (1,100+ people).

Things St. Nick does *instead* of schoolwork

He'll do almost anything. So far this morning:

1. Watch Sesame Street with his younger brother.
2. Put messy pigtails in his sister's hair.
3. Pet the dog.
4. Pet the cat.
5. Make his own breakfast, involving the toaster, the refrigerator, etc.
6. Blow a granola bar wrapper from one end of the table to the other and back again.
7. Write a list of his favorite websites.
8. Run in circles making monster noises.
9. Ask me five million questions (unrelated to school), until I snap "Quit it! I'm not going to bug you about doing your work, but you're not allowed to keep me from doing mine!"
10. Inform me that we need milk and proceed to take inventory of the cupboards and refrigerator in case we're going to the store today, which we aren't.
11. Hide.

And all this before 10am. Ah, the joys of homeschooling.

Since I'm Quitting and all...

Since I've put away Sonlight and am therefore not keeping tack of what we do, here's a little record of the past week (new "method" is to give St. Nick his to-do list on Monday and he can decide when/what he does each day, but if it's not done by Friday evening he doesn't eat).

Last week: MCP Phonics pages 105-110. Printing Power pages 21-25. Math - Singapore 2B exercises 22 and 23 plus Review 2. Poetry: Knock at a Star pages 42-56. Scholastic Success workbook pages 213, 241-246 and Reading Skills Test 4.

Well, that was short and sweet. Now to shower and head to the library to confess that the Tweety's Amazing Adventure DVD went to Goodwill. Ooops.

It's 2009 Now

Long time, no post! Nothing much to update. Basement flooded in February (beginning) and we spent the next two months scheduling our lives around contractors and repair people. The boys got in the habit of spending the day avoiding whatever part of the house was being fixed, I got in the habit of letting them. After months of slacking, school has become the Evil Thing that Mean Mom forces on her unwilling subjects. So guess what? I quit homeschooling!!! That's right. I'm selling Sonlight Core 2, all the books, everything and the boys are going to "real" school in the fall. Until then we'll push through the essentials (math, handwriting, language arts).

Of course, I feel like a failure, a fraud. Can't I handle homeschooling one child? Fish isn't really schooling yet and Mud Pie is far from it. Aren't I deficient somehow, that homeschooling is making me hate my home and loathe my children? Shouldn't I *want* to do this so-called best of things for my kids?

Homeschool Co-op Strikes Again

Another day of our new coop down and this time I sent St. Nick armed with a notebook and box of pencils, to take notes. He didn't think this would help. "It's sooooo boring, Mom! What am I gonna do, WRITE?"

"No, no, you can take notes in pictures, sweetie."

"What kinda pictures? Pictures of dumb birds?" (Cue five minute rant about how birds have feathers and he already knows birds have feathers, etc.)

"Not if you don't want, you can draw whatever kind of pictures you want, that have a little to do with what the teacher is saying, maybe." Maybe was added because I really do know better.

"Anything I want?" (Cue that look of cogs and wheels turning up there in his head behind his eyes, a scary look that usually precedes something ingenious and often destructive.)

"Sure!" (But the look gets stronger so I backtrack.) "Well, nothing inappropriate or scary."

"Ok."

Ok.

After class his teacher came up to me saying, "St. Nick could hardly contain himself, he wanted me to see his picture so badly. Quite a kid, that St. Nick." Something in here eyes warned me.

At this point I'm a little annoyed (again) about the environment, the culture that's waaaay too close to what's shown in the previous post. So when I asked, "St. Nick, so what's this picture you drew during class?" I was pretty sure I didn't want to see a drawing of dollies in a field of daisies. Of course, I know St. Nick too well to think I'd ever get a drawing of dollies in daisies from him (though he did draw an adorable Apple Dumpling doll for his sister once). Still, I didn't know quite what to expect. This is what I got:

I laughed the whole way home.

Math with Money

Math. We're on Singapore 2A, exercise 10 and I'm finding that St. Nick has no trouble at all doing math when we do the money-related problems, like Sam has $30 and wants to buy the book, how much more does he need? (The book costs $32 - must be a textbook - so he needs $2, obviously.) St. Nick hardly has to think about this, even when it's more complicated (like Sam has $86 and buys the pencil for $15 ...) and we break out the base ten blocks. Easy.

But working on the exact same types of problems using imaginary apples and pears or cupcakes and cookies? No good. Then it's tears and "I don't get it!" Which makes math about as fun as, say, handwriting.

Hmmm.

Our First "Vacation" Day

Or Mental Health Day or sick day (more mental illness than anything, though the kids do have colds). Whatever you want to call it, school just isn't happening today.

And here's why:

The morning started typically. We had breakfast, I nuked my coffee about fifteen times because it kept getting cold, St. Nick wanted to try tea, didn't like it, so it got dumped and he got coffee instead, I took a shower and the little ones decided a bath would be nice.

And then ...

Well, let me backtrack. As I was getting St. Nick's tea, I noticed the door under the sink open. Huh? Had I left it dangling? Maybe. I shrugged, closed it, went on with tea making. A few minutes later I had to run into another room, and when I came back the door was hanging open again. Fish or Pie throwing something in the trash, I assumed. Why else would it be open?

Now fast forward. Bath is drawn, Mud Pie is in the water, I'm in the midst of getting my own tea and I'm chatting with St. Nick about his friend's birthday the following day. Fish heads up to jump in the bath and asks if he can bring his Noah's Ark. Sure, sure, whatever. Just get in there so I can start school with your brother!

Splish, splash, the little two are taking a bath and I realize, Oh! The water! It's still on, and this tub fills up faster than our old house's tub, so I go up and wonder what the nice smell is. Did they already get into the soap?

Well, no. And yes.

The water is blue and flecked with dark navy things. And there's something icky, sort of slimy in the water. I pick one slimy blue glob up, stare at it a moment. Then it hits me.

The dishwasher soap! We'd had a coupon for Electrasol gel packs and there was a brand new, month's-worth box ... under the kitchen sink.

The open door, Fish and Pie's squirrelly eagerness to get in that water. It's all coming together as I scoop partially-dissolved gel packs out of the bath. I scoop the kids out too, drain, wash the tub, rinse the toys, draw a new bath and scrub the thick film of dishwasher soap off their little hides (which were in danger of being tanned at that point, I was so upset with them). I took their drippy little selves, wrapped in towels, down to the scene of the crime and told them to never, ever, EVER!!!!!! get into the cupboard again.

We started the day with 31 gel packs, and since not all would fit in the ark and some I found on the family room floor, we now have 12.

And school didn't happen. We made Autumn placemats out of last year's dried leaves and clear contact paper instead.

Why I love Homeschooling

I have two frogs on my kitchen counter.

In a jar, thank heavens.

The Miracle of Dawn

This is something I'd ordinarily save for my little homeschooling journal, but since it's book related, and really just fabulous, I'll share it here.

Today St. Nick, who is seven and technically in first grade, cajoled me into taking him and his siblings to the library. This was our conversation on the drive there:

Him: Mom, do you know why I like going to the library so much?

Me: (Slightly irritable - I didn't really want to drag out in the rain and Mud Pie had a fashion meltdown on the way out the door) To get movies?

Him: Nope.

Me: Really? (Truly surprised) Then why?

Him: Well, I do like the DVDs but I love the books too. Want to know why?

Me: Sure.

Him: The books are sort of like movies, only better. When I read them I make pictures in my head and it's just like watching a movie but without having to watch it.

Me: (Momentarily speechless)

Him: Yup. I use my imagination. It's really powerful and I can see the stories just like movies. So that's why I like the library so much.

Me: (Still speechless)

This has been one of the greatest privileges of motherhood. I labored with St. Nick over letters and sounds, over sound bingo and Bob Books and the laborious sounding out of word after word. There were times I doubted my ability to teach this most fundamental skill, and doubted his ability to learn. Times when I suspected the dozen or more books he keeps squirreled beneath his pillow were there just for the pictures.

And now I know they were - but not the pictures drawn with graphite or a brush, but those created within. Within his mind, and ultimately, within his soul.

To see this dawn in him is to witness a miracle. I understand a little better what might feel like to look down from the heavens and see that the world is good.

Let's Hope "They" don't read this

Whoever "they" are. Those anti-homeschoolers who are on the prowl for evidence that we're all secretly squirreling our kids away at home to fill their minds with anti-semitic mantras and instructions on bomb production. Or at least that we're neglecting their education and turning them into dull witted, socially inept, intellectually anemic adults. Because the past two weeks have really sucked on the school front.

Here's what we did:
Leading Little Ones to God: 60-62. And Psalm 100.
Math intensive practice (Singapore 1B, the second to last unit, whichever that is. Adding and subtracting to 100): a bunch of pages.
Scholastic Success for second grade: some stuff on maps and worksheets on proper nouns and verbs.
Some poems in Modern Rhymes on Ancient Times: Rome.
Several home showings.
A whole lot of time outside digging for bugs.
A handful of experiments involving vinegar and baking soda, all having the same basic outcome.
And a Lego robot built to resemble (quite accurately) the robot in a movie called Iron something. I can't even remember the title of the film.
Oh, and three trips to the library for movies and reading material. St. Nick has started picking up chapter books (vs. comic books/graphic novels) and, basing solely on the amount of time he spends looking at each page, I'm guessing he's actually READING them.

Another house showing tomorrow and an open house on Sunday, so rather than do school, I am doing laundry. St. Nick is playing with pipe cleaners. I'd like to say next week we'll get back to it, but I'm not making any promises.

(Ok, ok, we will. We WILL!)

End of the Week Summary

What? But it's only Thursday! True enough, but we're going to Indianapolis tomorrow and Saturday to hang with Dr. D's mom. She and his dad are there for six weeks (or more) while Dad undergoes stem cell replacement. (Something to keep in prayer for the one person who actually follows this blog.)

So, here's what we did.

Monday: Nothing. I don't remember Monday. At all. Funny, that.

Tuesday: Leading Little Ones to God lesson 59; exercises 64 & 65 in Math; started reading Famous Men of Rome (see earlier post for St. Nick's poem written in response).

Wednesday: Busy day. Fish had a Dr's visit where, as I was updating his new Dr. on his medical history, I totally forgot that he'd broken his collarbone when he was two. That was such a traumatic event - I can't believe I didn't mention it. I said, "Oh, I think the only time he's seen a doctor was when..." Dum-me. Then I had an appointment after lunch, and after that I wanted to finish edits to a manuscript so I could get it out already, so school didn't happen.

Thursday: Read and repeated Psalm 100 (we're going to memorize it); Math exercise 66; McGuffey's Second Reader lesson 42; Scholastic Success for 2nd Grade lesson on common nouns (done extremely well, even if barely legible); found quartzite and obsidian in the backyard (looked them up on a rock identification website) and discussed volcanic vs. metamorphic rocks. Not sure how much stuck, but it was fun for me. I love this stuff. I'm such a geek.

Oh! I just remembered Monday! We had a house showing, so I spent the morning cleaning and trying to occupy the kids with things that wouldn't make a mess, then spent the afternoon at the ice cream parlor and the library where St. Nick discovered the non-fiction section. Then we went out to the deck, and while St. Nick paged through his dozen or so books, I tried to keep Fish and Pie from throwing all the library's mulch into the lake. Fun!

More after Indianapolis. Can't say I'm looking forward to this one.