Ken Robinson on Homeschooling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5qv9Qx4jGw

Love this guy!  Check this out!

Monday Math - 1/31/11

 Math comes up naturally in daily living.  There are so many teachable moments if the parent keeps an eye out for them.  Like when Daddy and Becky decided to build a little bedside table together and Josh joined in to do the geometry necessary in figuring out exactly where to attach the legs.  Sean was interested too.

Rick's carpentry hobby often brings up math moments.

Oh my!  Josh needs to shave!  LOL

Unfortunately, I can't show you the finished project because when they went to put on the legs, they discovered they didn't have long enough screws.  They then determined to go to Home Depot for the proper ones, however, Daddy got distracted by something (can't remember now) and they wound up never going.  So I guess the finished product will have to wait until next weekend.  Stay tuned!

Parched by Heather King - Book 4

Parched by Heather King is an immediately engrossing memoir of her life; her childhood, how she began drinking at age 13, her two decades of drinking and how she finally stopped.  King is a great writer.  Every word rings true.  She is a little older than I am but as a child of the Seventies, I could relate to everything she wrote.

This book was the perfect one to have with me on a night when I was trapped by a snowstorm and had to sleep in a hospital waiting room.  I couldn't really sleep so I read this book instead.  It made the experience actually enjoyable!  I didn't have my Kindle with me, but God in his mercy arranged things so my husband showed up at the hospital too and had his ipad with him!  So while he slept (he can sleep anywhere!) I read.  I watched King plummet deeper and deeper into the insanity of drinking and the sordid life that went with it.  And the thing is I really felt 'there but for the grace of God, go I.'  The book is funny too and so insightful and descriptive and full of love and longing.  

I plan to read King's other book too and I love her blog.

Two thumbs up for Parched. 

(To see other weekly book reviews from the Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks go here)

A Bouquet of Unschooling Blogs

Someone on the Catholic Unschoolers list posted this site.  Looks great. I'm only familiar with three or four of these blogs.

Mapping the World by Art

Uh oh, I feel myself being pulled toward the precipice!  This program looks really good!  I wanted to focus on Geography with Josh next year.  This program is recommended for grades 5 through 10.  Well, Josh will be 11th but I bet we can beef it up a bit for him.  But all the kids like to draw and this just looks like such a cool way to integrate history, geography, art history and drawing skills.  I am very, very tempted!

Unschooling Moments of the Week 1/28/11

Sunday - Hannah left for Rome!  She's keeping a blog on her semester there, which is fun to read.

Monday - Well, let's see, where are my kids?  Oh yes, I've got one in Rome and the other four went to the March for Life.  Will and Josh with the parish youth group, Sean with his friend and family and Becky with her friend and family.  I had planned to go but instead went into DC to visit my aunt along with two of my sisters.  We still don't know when  my aunt will be coming to live with us, or even if she will be coming to live with us.  The situation was very bad but is beginning to improve, maybe!  Everything's up in the air.  The kids had a great time at the March and managed to survive the bitter cold.  But everyone, including moi had the grumpies at the end of the day.  I wound up going to bed at about 9:30.  I think all this stuff with my aunt is making me tired!

Tuesday - Latin class was fun.  We are studying for the National Latin Exam and it's just plain fun!  Josh is also enjoying his Biology class.  This class and the last they've been talking about evolution from both an evolutionary point of view and from a creationist point of view.  He's finding the whole thing fascinating.  Will sat down and taught Sean about fractions while we were gone in the a.m.  Becky went to art and then wound up playing at her friend's house.  In the evening Josh went to his 4H project on alternative energy.  They were trying to make biofuel from yeast, water, corn syrup, sugar and leaves.

Wednesday - I left early in the morning to accompany my aunt to her follow up surgery appoint at her doctor's.  The doctor took a look at her other leg (the one she's still got!), saw how swollen it was and immediately called the vascular surgeon.  He made us go over there to get a Doppler test of her leg.  We wound up being there for 5 hours.  We got in and they did the Doppler and immediately announced she had to go to the hospital.  Meanwhile a huge snowstorm had hit the city causing the worst traffic jam in ages.  People took hours and hours to get home.  Many people abandoned cars.  It took us two hours to go from the doctors office to the hospital.  It should have only taken about 15 minutes!  It was horrible.  Rick met me at the hospital and we had to sleep there overnight in the waiting room.  My aunt is doing okay, though.  Will held down the fort at home.  No school but they did watch movies, play videogames, read books, eat and sleep!  Thank God the power didn't go out.

Thursday - made it home around 10:30 a.m.  The boys were out shoveling snow.  Becky was making a snowman.  Sean had spent the night at his friend's and gotten as little sleep as I had.  His friend's house had lost power, so he came home to our house.  They played pretty well most of the day, but towards the end, due to fatigue Seano got pretty grumpy.  Finally the friend's dad came to pick him up.  I took a nap and finished reading my book that had kept me company during my night at the hospital.  Cleaned up the house some.  Read The Story of the Romans David Copperfield and Hitty, Her First Hundred Years aloud.  Rick read from The Begger Queen.

Friday - For some crazy reason school is still cancelled.  The bio teacher follows the schools closing policies, so even though we could easily get to her house, Josh had no bio today.  However, he did have to study for a take home biology test.  He also did Geometry at Kahn Academy and on line Driver's ed.  I read Bible History out loud -a cleaned up story of Susannah and Mathematicians are People, Too about Blaise Pascal.  Sean wanted to read the I Hate Mathematics book instead of doing Saxon.  So he did, about probability.  Becky just wanted to do more math on the white board, so we did that too.  Sean wrote a summary for WWE and did a little bit of cursive.  Sean made up a very funny way to remember the present tense of the verb 'to go' in Latin:  Uh oh! (eo) Ees eet ee-moose? (is, it, imus)  Eet ees! (itis), Grunt sound (eunt - spoken so it sounds like you've just been kicked by a moose!).  Josh, Sean and Becky went to gym class where they had fun.  I thought Becky had a sewing project meeting but no one was home when we arrived.  Instead Becky and I went home and did the rock candy experiment in the book Science Experiments You Can Eat.  After starting off our rock candy we wanted to see the difference between sugar and salt crystals.   This led me to get our microscope out.  Josh, Becky and I had fun looking at some old prepared slides of bamboo, feathers and hair as well as salt and sugar crystals.  Sean, Will and I all watched Unit 15 of Discovering Music about Russian music.  Incredibly fascinating, though Will already knew a lot about it.  Rick read more of the Beggar Queen out loud.

So looking back it was a very busy week: Hannah departure for Rome, the March for Life, my aunt's health crises, getting stuck at the hospital by a big snowstorm and then a very full, rich learning day today.  Very long, tiring week!

Eager Readers

Check out this family run website that lists all the great books they've encountered.  This is from a large, long-time homeschooling family of readers, and every book is one they, the parents, have approved!  If you don't have time to preread everything for your kids, here is a reliable resource.  I am acquainted with some of the members of this lovely family.

N.B. I don't agree with them on their assessment of Harry Potter, but even though they might be a little more conservative than I am in choosing books, I still find this resource to be excellent.

Wordless Wednesday- A Day Late!

I couldn't do Wordless Wednesday yesterday because I wasn't here.  I was attending a doctor's appointment with my elderly aunt who is having many health difficulties and it wound up being a whole day affair with her admitted to the hospital at the end of the day.  Meanwhile there was a heavy snowfall that shut down DC so I wound up getting stuck at the hospital for the night.  Luckily my dear husband was with me.  And luckily my 18 and 15 year old sons took care of my 9 yo daughter.  The 12 year old was spending the night at his friend's house so he was taken care of in that way.  I finally got home late this morning.  It was a very long day!  And underneath all the stress and fatigue, I kept thinking, darn it!  I missed Wordless Wednesday.  So here it is!  I'm showing off our nifty new timeline that is posted in the hallway upstairs by Becky's bedroom.

The Cristo Rey Story - Book 3

Finally I've read a book for 52 Books in 52 Weeks that falls definitely in the suggested guidelines.  It is not a child's book, it is longer than 100 pages!  It is not a reread!  The book is The Cristo Rey Story, More Than a Dream; How One School's Vision Is Changing the World by G. R. Kearney.  That's quite a title!

I can't remember where I picked up this book, but it is sort of part of my continuing fascination with Jesuits.  My dad attended a Jesuit seminary and growing up we always thought of Jesuits as the pinnacle of everything that is good in Catholicism in my family.  After losing my religion for a long time in my teens and my twenties, I started back on my long reversion to the faith.  I was shocked to discover how many orthodox Catholics belittled or disdained the Jesuits.  It seems that the Jesuit order had fallen away from orthodoxy and seemingly had embraced modern culture, openly disregarding Church teachings on things like abortion, etc.  Wow, what a bummer, I thought.  But slowly I began to discover 'good' Jesuits, like Father Fessio of Ignatius Press, Father Mitch Pacwa of EWTN, Father Joseph Koterski of Fordham University, Father John McCloskey, who catechized and baptized Dr. Bernard Nathansen, the founder of NARAL, and finally Father James Martin, who is a prolific and bestselling author.

This book is about other Jesuits doing good things, in spite of the fact that at the same time, they were seemingly missing a lot in terms of being faithful Catholics in other aspects of their order.  They began and expanded a remarkably successful model for college prep high schools in impoverished areas of the United States.  When the Jesuits were first opening schools, way, way back when, these schools were aimed at the poor.  Jesuits are supposed to serve the poor, that's part of their charism.  If you think about it though, now we associate their schools with middle/upper class college prep schools.   I know in DC Gonzaga High School is a very popular high school and many people in Northern VA send their boys there.  You can see the tell-tale big G emblazoned on the back of many a Lexus and other high end cars around the area.  You have to have money to send your son there!  This change from serving the poor to serving the rich happened because of the shrinking of the order over the past decades coupled with the rising cost of education.  It took more and more money to run a private school with less and less Jesuits to run them.

So the beauty of Cristo Rey High Schools is that the Jesuit order came up with a plan to fund a great high school for very impoverished, endangered kids from the ghetto without having to charge high tuition.  They did it through a really visionary combination of things.  First they have something called CIP, or Corporate Internship Partnership.  Each student in the school spends one day each week working for a corporate sponsor. In essense, 5 kids job share at a particular site, each taking a day a week to work there.  The kids do things like work in mailrooms, copy centers, act as messengers, etc.  That sponsor 'pays' the student by contributing a contracted amount of money to the school.  This is a win-win situation.  It helps the student immensely.  Most of these students have grown up in violent, drug-infested, dysfunctional families and neighborhoods.  They have never really seen what life is like outside their own 'hoods.'  Putting them into the working world in a professional capacity, opens up their eyes to the possibilities out there.  It gives them responsibilities they wouldn't normally have and it hones their work ethic and social skills.

The school is also dedicated to treating Latinos with respect and they work carefully to balance the students needs between learning English and maintaining their Spanish.  The CIP also helps them become truly bilingual.  Most of these kids are Latinos who live in Spanish-speaking communities and have never made it out of their ESL programs in the public schools.  Learning to be fluent in English is a huge boost for a Latino teenager.

Another thing the school does is it focuses on what an impoverished Latino student needs to get into and stay in college.  The school developed something called an Active Learners class where the students were taught critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, and writing skills.  This class uses all sorts of topics as a jumping off point for developing projects that would teaching them valuable skills.  Sometimes the students rebelled and wanted more traditional classes.  At one point the students said they just wanted to learn history and not do all these fancy projects, so the teacher turned this request to learn history into a project!  The students had to research three topics in history they wanted to know more about (of course learning about the topics as they researched!).  They then had to present arguments for why the class should learn their particular projects.  Then the students had to vote on what projects they'd be able to focus on in class.  The teacher was really a genius at this sort of thing, though his highly unorthodox methods often got him into trouble.  However, the Active Learners class was always controversial and in the end it got axed to give time to more traditional subjects.  The students who had graduated from Cristo Rey and gone on to college came back to say that they did not feel prepared for college level history and literature classes.  They felt Cristo Rey needed to focus more on those subjects.  Another teacher, who in the beginning years of the school, was very traditionalist in his approach eventually was asked to not return one year.  So there was a constant tension between being innovative with the curriculum and providing traditional curriculum.

The book is largely about financing.  I don't know much at all about how to finance businesses and do fundraising for non-profits but it is extremely vital in order to begin a new private educational system.  This book gives the reader a little peek into that side of the business world, though I can't say I understood most of it, I came to appreciate how heroic it actually is to find, court and beg these big corporations and rich folks to fund a worthy cause.  Cristo Rey got its big break first from a man who'd made it rich in Silicon Valley and wanted to give back to the Jesuits who had educated him out of poverty.  Then, several years later, Bill and Melinda Gates got into the picture.  As the first Cristo Rey high school became financially solvent and proved to be fulfilling its goal of college prep for poor inner city Latinos, other educators around the country began to request help in setting up their own Cristo Rey high schools.  Another teaching religious order got involved as well; the De La Salle Christian Brothers got involved in setting up the high schools too.  Now something called the Cristo Rey Network exists, with many of the original entrepreneurs working for it, who help set up and run these high schools.

The most heartening thing about this book is the sheer number of priests (and some sisters), who so obviously devote their lives to helping the poor.  You definitely admire these selfless and hardworking people who live to serve the youths in need.

The author's writing style is a bit choppy, I found.  He writes very much like a reporter so I felt like I was reading one very long newspaper article.  But overall I enjoyed this book very much.  It taught me a lot about things I had never thought about before and it is a very optimistic book that makes one feel hopeful about mankind's future.

Math Monday- Going simple!

Sometimes, we just do math.  Nothing fancy.  No games, no gimmick.  Just plain old arithmetic.  Try it some time!  When folded in with other ways of exploring math, it's actually kind of satisfying!

Lapbooks for Catholics

This is an interesting resource.  I'm starting to think about helping Sean prepare for Confirmation.  At our parish you have to register in 7th grade (next year for him, officially).  The prep is a two year process with the Sacrament of Confirmation usually happening in the spring of the 8th grade year.  Each confirmandi has to join a team of other confimandi to perform certain activities or acts of community service as part of the preparation.  Our parish lets us homeschool, so we don't have to sign up for the classes.  We do have to send in a list of our resources used in the preparation.  And each child has to be interviewed by either our Pastor, one of the Religious Ed teachers or the Youth Ministers at our church.  And they each have to write a letter to Father Pat explaining why they want to be Confirmed.  And they go on an overnight retreat as well, usually in the fall of 8th grade, if I'm remembering correctly.

Anyway, I thought Sean might be interested in making a lapbook while he prepare for the sacrament.  So I'm keeping this resource in mind!


http://www.gocek.org/christiansymbols/images/dove.gif

Natural Learning Goes On

Lately, between the health crisis with my aunt and the fact that my daughter is going overseas for a semester (leaving tomorrow!) I have been preoccupied and rather an emotional wreck.  But even under such circumstances, kids, being kids, are still learning.

I went to bed early last night but my 12 yo son had his dad helping him solve some of the problems from Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School.  They were doing this for fun before my son retired to bed.  I came down to the kitchen this morning to find this:

And apparently Becky is back to running her own restaurant.  As you can see she's devised a survey to make sure her customers are satisfied!

I find this kind of thing so heartening.  If kids are given freedom, where they are safe, nurtured and encouraged, they do a fine job of learning.  I know so many moms who are frightened of the idea of letting go and letting their kids take control over their own education.  They say that their kids will only play mindless video games or some such thing.  But I have found in the years that I've been at this, that when kids' lives are tightly regulated they will tend to mindless stuff when they have down time.  But given more freedom they tend to do really cool, creative things just as a matter of course in daily life, like these two rather minor examples. Really, these are just a couple of little incidents among dozens that go on every day.  We, the parents, have to open our eyes, though, to see them and to value them as they should be valued.  I could have taken control and said, okay, today children we are going to do problems from this Wayside school book.  They might have enjoyed it.  But I think it is soooo much better that my son instigated this little activity.  I could have made a lesson plan that involved creating your own survey for your own restaurant, but I think my daughter probably learned more from coming up with the idea herself.

Unschooling Moments of the Week 1/21/11

Monday:  MLK day.  Josh and I did Latin in the a.m.  Josh started doing Geometry at the Khan Academy site, which he really enjoyed.  It was a take it easy kind of day.  Becky, Will and Rick chopped an old tree in our backyard into firewood.  Sean did ????  Probably played a lot of computer games.  He's going through a phase like that.  We listened to MLK's I Have a Dream speech on youtube.

Tuesday:  ice storm closed the schools so homeschool classes got cancelled too; no Latin class, Art class or Biology.  Rick drove me in to get my aunt transferred from the hospital to another facility.  Very depressing.  But amazingly the kids did some schoolwork at home.  Sean and Becky both did cursive practice and math.  Josh was busy catching up on his Church History reading and also reading Hillaire Belloc's William the Conqueror.  Will was supervising.  We watched Discovering Music Unit 15 (I thought we'd stopped before Christmas at Unit 11.  I was wrong!).  It was on Wagner.  Now I know that Wagner was incredibly innovative and a creative genius but I fell asleep during the lecture.  This is exactly what I did during the only Wagner opera I've ever seen.  Intellectually I know Wagner was one of the greats but I thought his opera was the most pretension, long-winded thing I've ever been subjected to for money.

Wednesday:  We did Bible History.  We read about the exile in Babylon.  that reminded me of these two songs so we listened to them.  Becky and Sean both did cursive.  Sean did Latin and read from his Muse magazine.  Becky did some math, read from a McGuffey reader and then built a bridge out of toothpicks and marshmallows.  Josh was finishing up his Church History study questions.  At 12:30 the other teen who joins us came.   We spent two hours just focusing on history.  We went through all the study questions and then watched a video about William the Conqueror.  Not sure what Will did except that he took Becky to VT for me and also went to his music lesson.  Hannah had to deal with getting her laptop fixed and buying stuff for Rome!  She's been busy with lots of sundry errands in preparation for that.

Thursday:  I realized I am married to an angel.  He said we can bring my aunt home here to take care of her instead of in that awful nursing home.  I feel totally overwhelmed and overjoyed at the same time!  I spent most of the day visiting my aunt, but we did read aloud some, do some penmanship, Latin and math.  Will went to his piano lesson.

Friday:  Hannah and Becky went to an ice skating party in the a.m.  Becky  had been asking Hannah to take her ice skating anyway.  Can't believe Hannah is leaving for her semester in Rome this Sunday.  She'll be gone for 4 months.  Sob!  Josh started back with his Biology study group and class.  Sean and Will sat around discussing stuff.  This p.m. we have a new gym class to attend.  This evening Josh has his first 4H Teen Cooking Project meeting.  They are doing Swiss Fondue.  Will and Sean are going to see the new Narnia movie with the parish youth group.

Read alouds:  We've been reading David Copperfield out loud to everybody (except Hannah), and Rick has been reading the next book in the Westmark series entitled The Begger Queen to Becky and Sean.  I've been reading more of The Story of the Romans to Becky, Sean and Josh and reading Hitty, Her First Hundred Years to Becky at night when she's tucked into bed.

I'm too stressed to bother with pictures for this review.  We are suddenly trying to turn our study into a bedroom for my aunt.

William the Conqueror by Hilaire Belloc - Book 2?

I keep reading books that I don't know if I should officially include in my 52 Books in 52 weeks challenge.  So far I've read a short children's Christmas novella out loud to my nine year old.  And then I reread a young adult novel about St. Augustine of Canterbury.  The two adult books I started, I haven't been able to finish!  I read this book, William the Conqueror, in conjunction with my 15 year old's history studies.  It is only 76 pages long!  It is more like a very long essay.  But I guess I'll review it and then I can revise my book numbers at the end of the year.

The issue of bias in history keeps cropping up in my life lately.  And it reared its perplexing head while reading this book too.  Mr. Belloc is very biased for William the Conqueror.  The back cover states that as a result of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 "England was thence-forward to be knit over more closely into the unity of European Christian civilization - not a political unity, but a unity of culture and civilization, of which the soul was the Catholic Faith."  This book is published by TAN which is a popular Catholic company.

I do understand how the Norman Conquest changed England's history, but I don't see quite as clearly what it had to do with the Catholic faith.  There were already mostly Catholics living in England at the time.  Belloc tries really hard to paint England as half-heathen, but the truth is Catholicism was thriving there and had been for a long time.  England had suffered many invasions over the course of her history.  She'd first been settle by Celts who got invaded by the Romans.  Then the Angles and Saxons as well as other tribes came down from what is now Germany and invaded and settle there.  Belloc treats them as the 'natives.'  And by 1066 they were, since they'd been established there for so long.  Then the Danes invaded.  The Danes however started intermarrying with the ruling classes of Anglo-Saxons.  Then came William the last invasion of all.  The problem was that the different tribes and ruling families of either Anglo-Saxon or Danish or whatever descent kept fighting and jockeying for power.  There was great disunity in that way.  William the Conqueror managed to crush almost everybody (but not quite completely) into submission.

Belloc writes very well.  He reminded me a bit of Chesterton and for some reason William F. Buckley, in his writing style.  I know he's a very popular author among Chestertonians and I am very late getting familiar with him.  I am planning to read his book The Path to Rome a little later this month (when my daughter goes to Rome for a semester with her University class.)  This book was published first in 1934, so the writing style feels a bit older.  Belloc is very eloquent and erudite.  However, certain things bugged me about the book.  1)  The blatant bias  2) Lack of footnotes.  Belloc would assert all kinds of things but there were absolutely no references to check.  I guess we just have to take his word for it!

After reading the book, Josh, the other teen who meets with us, and myself all sat down and watched the BBC video by Simon Schama entitled Conquest.  This is part of Schama's A History of Britain.  While Schama couldn't go into as much detail in a TV show as Belloc could in a book, it was interesting to see how differently each man portrayed William the Conqueror.  Belloc asserts that William wasn't really a 'conqueror' because he was simply claiming his rightful place as king of England.  Schama simply relates the confusing facts.  Edward the Confessor sent conflicting messages as to who should succeed him, William or Harold.  Belloc portrays Edward as weak but holy.  Schama portrays him as more politically astute and becoming more and more religious as he dealt with unsavory political situations that boxed in his power.  Both men portray Godwin (or Godwinson) as manipulative and brutal.

As to the character of William the Conqueror himself, Belloc excuses any brutality or excessive violence on William's part, even to the point of just being confused about why William did some things.  They just didn't fit with Belloc's view of him as the noble knight of Catholicism.  Schama explains why he became so brutal; he was an illegitimate son whose father died, leaving him vulnerable in a court of dangerous intrigue (William saw his own steward murdered before his eyes at the age of 10.)  But Schama doesn't hesitate to call him brutal.  He admires the great things he did, but he doesn't mince facts about the bad stuff he did either.  Schama tells us briefly about what different historians think, but then he relies on a Norman monk's history written very shortly after the Conquest.  He also relies heavily on the retelling of the Battle in the Bayeaux Tapestry.

One thing I did like about Belloc's book is how he explained how the political and economic system developed in England from the time of the Romans, and much of its development was influenced by the Roman organization of property and trade.  However, I thought it interesting to note that Belloc places the brilliant administrative stroke of compiling the Domesday book squarely in William's corner, whereas Schama notes that William couldn't have collected the information so quickly (within six months of the invasion) if the Anglo-Saxons hadn't kept such meticulous records.  To Schama the Domesday book is a tribute to the Saxons' organizational skills as much as to William's.

Belloc is much softer about the circumstances surrounding the Conqueror's death.  The king was weakening because of poor health.  He was beginning to be defeated in little skirmishes for power which kept cropping up around England and Normandy.  His horse stumbled during a battle and the saddle pommel got pushed into his gut.  He suffered internal injuries which caused his death a couple weeks later.  Belloc takes the reputed confession of William's sins at his deathbed as fact.  Schama says we don't know if they were real or if someone put those words into his mouth.  He died without leaving an appointed heir.  Schama points out that when he died, no one even bothered to bury him.  His corpse was abandoned while everyone rushed off to secure their own property and get ready for the inevitable fighting for power that lay ahead.  Finally, some servants buried him.

12 Ways I've Found to Strew Around My Home

On an unschooling yahoo list I'm on, we've been talking about the various ways to strew.  That got me thinking of all the way's I've found to do this.  I thought I'd summarize them here.  There are more ways than these, but this is what has proved to be effective in our family life:

1.  coffee tables

2.  Fridge doors

3.  Actually, any kind of wall surface:  cabinet doors, sliding glass doors, walls, doors.

4.  On whiteboards or chalkboards.

5.  In gift giving for Christmas or birthdays

6.  Via e-mail to my kids.  I can suggest websites.  Or I just do something on the computer in a conspicuous way.  On Monday I just went to youtube and played Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech when a lot of other people were in the room.  This got everybody's attention.  We watched the whole thing.  We were especially taken with King's references to Lincoln and the Bible in his speech.

7.  We strew by listening to the radio or watching something on TV that catches their interest.  Or suggesting that we listen or watch something together (though in our family this doesn't get the reception that just turning something on and listening/watching does).

8.  I can strew via read alouds.

9.  We strew through fieldtrips, classes or activities that come up in the homeschool or regular world community.

10.  We strew via conversation.

11.  We strew through celebrating the liturgical year.

12.  We strew through daily living.

Romans Go Home (In Lieu of Wordless Wednesday!)

Josh and I were chatting about Latin (I originally wrote Roman!) grammar and how hard it is.  Rick was listening in.  He was reminded of this scene from Life of Brian. It is hysterically funny!  Especially if you have studied Latin grammar!

Kid music I actually enjoyed

My 9 year old has been carpooling with this blogger's daughter a lot lately.  They go to the same art class.  And apparently they've been listening to Beethoven's Wig in the car.  This caused my daughter to beg me to find our own CD of it so we could listen.  It had gotten lost in depths of our CD drawer.  I pulled it out and we listened to it.  Haydn's Big Surprise has been playing in my brain ever since.  I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the silly and witty lyrics written to famous classical music tunes.  Beethoven's Wig is one of those kids Music CD's I actually enjoyed listening, unlike, say, Raffi who made me gag slightly whenever I had to listen to him, even though I knew he was politically correct.

Another children's CD I enjoyed along with my kids was G' me Elbow by Bonnie Rideout.  She is a Scottish fiddler.  This CD is really charming.  I think my favorite piece on it is a great sung version of a Robert Louis Stevenson's poem about a train.  There's other Stevenson poetry on it recited with a nice thick Scottish brogue.  Becky's favorite song is Oh Dear What Can the Matter Be?  (that might not be the actual title).  She'd walk around the house singing it to herself.




This next mention takes me back to when my now 20 year old was 4 or 5. Sob. We listened to Howjadoo a lot.  John McCutcheon has long been a favorite of mine.  I've seen him in concert!  He was incredible moving from dulcimer to guitar to whatever; a great multi-instrumentalist.  Here's to Cheshire was my favorite song.  And I used to sing Tender Shepherd as a lullaby to the kids.  It's a beautiful round.

Fairly recently, I discovered the Putumayo Kids series.  The first one I got was A Jewish Odyssey.  At the time Sean's very favorite piece of music was Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.  He'd listen to it every night as he fell asleep.  A Jewish Odyssey is a collection of Klezmer music from around the world.  You can hear bits and pieces of a Klezmer influence in Gershwin's work.  Sean loved that connection and he loved Klezmer.  We listened to that CD over and over again for months.  Last spring I got European Playground from Putumayo which is also very enjoyable.  They even have lesson plans to go with these CDs.

Just as a note:  I have found the Putumayo stuff uneven though in how much I like them.  I got a couple of other CDs and wasn't nearly as impressed with them.  I got the one on South African Music and was really disappointed.  I think I was hoping for something more akin to Ladysmith Black Mambazo.  But this is club music more than genuine folk music and it just sounded too canned and commercialized to me.  Ditto with the Arabic CD.

Math Monday: Spring Balance

While decluttering one of the baskets under our coffee table yesterday, I found a little spring balance pilfered from some science kits from years ago.  Becky was delighted with it.  She immediately hung it on a cabinet door knob in the kitchen.  It was hard to find things to hang on it, so she made her own little basket from an old apple cider gallon jug, a hole puncher and some string.

She had fun learning about grams.  Her dad helped her look up how many grams are in a pound (450!) and they figured out via a calculator how many grams are in an ounce (I think it was 28. something but I can't quite remember right now!).

How much does your sock monkey weigh?

This was completely spontaneous.  I didn't have to do a thing to plan it.  This is the beauty of strewing!  (Also, it makes me feel not so bad for being such a clutterer!)

Children do love to weigh things.  See my earlier post on this.

Anatomy of a Coffee Table

 Our family room coffee table is a prime strewing spot in our house.  I should have taken a before picture which would have shown it with books and magazines all jumbled into messy piles, cups and glasses, used tissues and other trash and lots of odds and endsy sorts of things dumped on it.  I didn't take that picture, but I did take picture of what it looks like after I'd spent close to an hour dejunking it.

A thing of beauty!  A clean coffee table!

Two atlases and the books that are currently being read, either out loud or independently.

Starting in the upper left corner this is religious and philosophical reading.

Mad libs, Sudoku and crosswords as well as Consumer Reports

Nature and gardening stuff

Cooking mags on one side and some nice art and history picture books next to it.

Becky and Sean got these subscriptions to magazines for Christmas

Still have the math books out I was strewing during our Advent school.

Basket underneath the table for library books.

Sundries basket with things like Klutz books, art supplies, little games, etc.

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Then there's that little pile of stuff I don't know what to do with!

On Line Courses

I've started a page of on line courses that I've either used myself or have heard other people recommend (mostly at the WTM board).

See above!

Unschooling Moments of the Week 1/14/11

Well the best news of the week is that Josh, my 15 year old, has completed Saxon's Algebra II textbook!  Hurrah!  He started out September of his 9th grade year with it but he was in such a slump motivation-wise.  He was busy growing, changing, eating, sleeping, daydreaming, etc.  He just didn't have the energy to learn Algebra II!  This was such a switch because in 8th grade he had asked for a more formal year and he had done a lot of stuff from Kolbe Academy.  And he seemed to enjoy it!  But not so in 9th grade.  He just wasn't up for doing much for school.  So we slogged along through the year but it was painful.  Added to this was the fact that he developed severe scoliosis and had to have major back surgery in February last year.  Then there was the long recuperation from that.  So he wound up plodding through math all summer with lots of stops and starts.  So it is with great relief, that I, his mama, see the end of Algebra II.  I thought he was going to be doing it until he was 18!

So just as he finished it up, he announced he really likes math and wants to study more!  Our plan, (I think) is to use Khan Academy to tighten up on getting all the geometry necessary for the SAT in.  Saxon weaves geometry in and out of its Algebra I and II texts.  But you really don't have a full credit's worth of Geometry without doing about the first 1/3 of Saxon's Advanced Math.   I think, though, we are going to go with some other math text for PreCalc and Trig.

It was a good but informal math week.  We enjoyed our new math game (Sean even played it twice with me on Wednesday!).  And we enjoyed reading about mathematicians and exploring math that way.


We have started back up on The Story of the Romans.  Josh is listening in now when I read it aloud.  He and I are preparing to take the National Latin Exam in March.  We need to bone up on our Roman history and culture!

The boys seems to be getting more into cartooning.  I keep finding things like this around the house:

I find these slightly disturbing!  From what deep depths of despair do these spring from, I'd like to know???

Becky continues to decorate the glass sliding door with her creations.  She is very into paper craft.

She's gotten into doing activities from this book (a hand me down from her older sister).  She wrote in invisible ink made from lemon juice (which doesn't photograph so well!) and also had fun writing secret messages like this one:

Do you see a theme to these messages?

Napier's Bones

In Mathematicians are People, Too, we read about John Napier.  We read how the rods or bones he invented worked here:  http://www.mathsisgoodforyou.com/artefacts/napiersbones.htm

We went to this site to get a pdf of the 'bones.'  Then we did some multiplication.  Sean, the 12 yo, worked out the multiplication problems the regular way, while Becky and I did the same problem using our paper Napier's Bones.  It was very cool!

The Great Wall of Learning

 Or maybe it should be called The Great Cabinet Doors of Learning!

These are all the Latin words from the Advent Calendar.

This is our new book list for January.   Looks a bit anemic right now.

These two Spelling Help pages have been up for a while, but Becky won't let me take them down.

Our new spelling rule for the week directly from Phonics Pathways.

Our old handmade grammar poster.   It's about 10 years old!

The whole catastrophe!

Wordless Wednesday - 1/12/11

Becky built a 'clock tower' for the cats.

She put a bowl of water and sprinkled some catnip inside.

Oops.  Missing 4 o'clock!  And the darn 5 always turns itself backward!

Eats, Shoots and Leaves

We loved this book when it came out a few years ago.  This Christmas my younger ones received the children's version.  It's another strewing hit!  They keep picking it up and reading it.  Last night I noticed Becky had brought it up to her room to read it in bed.  The funny thing is the kids read it over and over again for pleasure. And it is a pretty simple picture book. Yet every time, that little change in punctuation that alters the whole meaning of the sentence gets them giggling.  I think they think it is fascinating that one little change in a seemingly minor detail can have so much impact.  The way they keep rereading it reminds me of younger children when they are learning something new who joyfully repeat their activity in play, whatever it might be, over and over again.



I highly recommend this book for learning language mechanics painlessly!

Real World Math Game

We just got this game.  It's fun!  My 9 yo enjoyed playing it and learning how to keep a check book (can you imagine????).

We aren't as into playing games as I'd like to be.  Frankly, I think we are all a little too ADD when it comes to playing board (bored?) games.  And we are really picky about them.  But I was happily surprised by this game.  Becky really enjoyed it.

Becky intent on her game!

You may want to check our balance. I had a headache and kept making dumb errors!