Math Monday - Our Family's Classic Math Lit.

Since we are on vacation at the beach, we haven't gotten very mathy.  In fact playing Rummikub is about as mathy as we've gotten, so far.



So I thought I'd just share the top three books my kids all enjoyed when it came to learning about numbers and math.




How Much is a Million?




G is for Google





The I Hate Mathematics Book



These are books my kids all have picked up on their own, time and again and enjoyed thoroughly.  They are old (in that they were around when I was teaching my oldest kids, so 12 or so years ago) but they are classics!

We never got into as many 'math literature' books as others.  I know some folks really specialize in discovering all sorts of books on math topics.  Not us!  But these three did a wonderful job at making reading and exploring math great fun for my kids.

Edit:  Oops!  I forgot to include the link for the Math Monday Blog Hop!  I was posting in a hurry!  Here's the link!

Interview with Suzie Andres

No Read 52 Books in In 52 Weeks review today.  We are at the Outer Banks this week.  I hope to get a lot of reading done here, but haven't had time to focus on it this previous week.

However, there is a wonderful interview with Suzie Andres, author and editor of the book A Little Way of Homeschooling.  I contributed a chapter to this book, so it is kind of thrilling whenever there's any attention paid to it.

So here's the link to the interview.  Isn't Suzie wonderful?

Great Article from Psychology Today

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rewire-your-brain-love/201005/your-baby-shouldnt-read

What We've Been Up To - 8/12/11

• Well, what was supposed to be a weekend type project was stretched out to two weeks, but we finally got the boys room all painted and put back together.  I even spent a day cleaning their carpet!
• I dejunked my side of our master bedroom.  This took me a day and a half because:  I am really slow at that sort of thing and well, we just had so much junk.  But notice I said my side of the bedroom.  Still have towering piles of junk belonging to my husband.
• Said husband has hardly been seen this week because he was desperately trying to finish up stuff at work so he could take a real vacation.  Alas, he'll still have to do work some on vacation but hopefully will still be able to relax somewhat.
• I think I nagged my children all week.  Mow the lawn, go run this errand, move this stuff, clean up that stuff, etc, etc.  For the most part they were pretty helpful.  Mostly everybody was in wait mode because they knew vacation was coming.
• Did a mammoth recycling run.  Woo-hoo!
• I had to orient my sister on the house and how to take care of my aunt Jackie (and also our cat) while we are away.  Sisters are wonderful!  But I keep remembering little things I should have mentioned....
• We found out that we might have two more classes of kids at our Aquinas Learning Center.  It is really expanding!  Had to run over to the church and survey it to see if we really could accommodate more kids.  I think we can!  But there is soooo much to do before we are up and running September 15th.  It boggles my mind and makes me hyperventilate (but in a good way LOL!).
• Cleaned out my fridge so my sister wouldn't gag every time she opened the fridge door.  9 jars of salsa! 
• Took my aunt into the Rehabilitation hospital to try out her new prosthetic leg.  Pretty darn cool, but she is really uncomfortable with it.  It tired her out just trying to take three steps.  They have to do some modifications and then it should be ready at the end of August.  Then she gets PT to learn to really walk with it.  She said:  well, this isn't really something I"m looking forward to, but what else is there to do?  I feel bad for her, for I think she's really bored.  She reads the paper every day and she's reading several books.  She watches movies and Teaching Co. lectures, but all that stuff gets old.  Yet she doesn't really have the energy to do anything.  So she's kind of trapped.  Before this, her whole focus was on getting to Maine, but now that she's back she really doesn't have anything fun to look forward to.
• Tried to read David Copperfield to the family but it was pretty much an exercise in frustration.  I'm too tired at night to read for long and most evenings I couldn't because Rick was working late.
• Hannah had her last day at the National Right to Life Committee.  She got a ton of bumperstickers which has stuck all over our cars (but she put them on magnets first, because Rick hates trying to get bumperstickers off cars!).  That internship was an incredible experience for her.  I think she learned tons and tons of stuff.
• STILL CAN'T FIND MY CAMERA!  I WANT MY CAMERA!

Thankful Thursday - 8/11/12

I am so thankful for so many things:

• Most immediate - my 19 yo son is finally mowing the lawn.  I can see him outside my window and hear the mowing roaring.
• I'm grateful for the beautiful summer day we are having - mid 80's, dry and breezy with puffy white clouds and blue, blue skies.
• I'm grateful to Suzie Andres and all my other internet angels, who probably don't realize how much I appreciate them.
• I'm thankful for my supportive homeschool group who doesn't really care whether folks are traditional homeschoolers or unschoolers.  I've heard a lot about people feeling shut out of their groups because they don't see eye to eye with them on educational philosophy, but my little group here has never been like that.
• I'm grateful for the beautiful gifts God has for some unfathomable reason decided to shower up me.  A wonderful, loving husband, 5 beautiful children, the gift of homeschooling.
• I'm glad that we are able to take my aunt in to live with us.  How much better things are instead of having to deal with nursing homes!
• And finally (for this Thankful Thursday at least) I am very grateful that we are all going off to the Outer Banks for a week.  I can't wait to relax by the ocean and have some time with my sister Lisa.  I was always closest to her growing up but we've hardly seen each other lately.  I miss her!

(and I would be really thankful if I could find my camera!)

Wordless Wednesday - Not!

Well, I would have done this as I am trying to get into my new blogging groove, however, my camera has gone missing.  I've spent all day cleaning, hoping I'd uncover it, but to no avail!  Wah!

So maybe next week.

That is all.

Introducing Strewsday Tuesday! - 8/9/11

The name of this blog is Strewing:  Unschooling Resources.  The reason I named it such is that initially I really wanted to focus on the serendipitous art of strewing!  It has become more of a general homeschooling blog for me because I can't ever keep to the topic at hand!  But I do want it to be a resource for others; a way to share what works so well for us in this educational approach called Unschooling.  Really, strewing happens anytime human beings are around interacting with their world!  It isn't something just confined to unschoolers.  It just tends to get its proper recognition in unschooling circles.

But in the name of trying to stick to my primary focus, I decided to start my own blog meme.  Eventually, I want to get one of those meme buttons and have the capability for others to link together, like Read 52 Books or 7 Quick Takes does.  That's me dreaming big!  I am woefully ignorant, intimidated and slooowww when it comes to anything computer related.  So for now I'll just make Tuesdays the day I focus on strewing.

Strewing is often something you don't recognize until after the fact!  You look back at something your children got some exposure too and you can trace how that first spark blossomed into something deeper.  This is a subtle, meandering kind of strewing.

For instance, a couple years ago I was very worried about my middle son.  He was 14 and he didn't talk.  He had always been my quietest child but as adolescence hit he became very, very quiet.  Being his mother I worried about his lack of 'socialization.'  His avoidance of anything that required socialization made me anxious.  I guess at one point my worry reached a peak and inspired by some on line conversations I was having with other homeschooling moms, I went to the library and got some books out on introverts.  When I brought the books home, the son I was so worried about surprised me by emerging from his cave, long enough to actually notice the stack of books I'd brought home.

What's this, he asked?  Holding up what I think was this book (my memory is hazy):



I equivocated a bit because I didn't really want to show my excessive worry about him.

Oh it is a book about introverts.  I think I might be introverted so I got interested in the subject.

But then I had to come clean.

And I think you might be an introvert too, so I got it to find out more about that type of person.

What's an introvert? he wants to know.

So I explain the way I learned it from the Myers-Briggs test.

"An introvert is a person who gets energy from being alone.  An extrovert draws energy from other people."

He was really intrigued by the whole idea.

Can I read it?  He asked.

Sure, I said, rather surprised.

So he read it.

And some months later, I think he also read this book on Myers-Briggs.  We have an old copy from the 1980s floating around the house.

Fast forward about a year and a half.  Nary another word has been spoken between us about this.  I'm standing at his bedroom door, talking through the door, because he's doing his usual thing of hiding in his bedroom, asking him what he wants to do for high school studies for credit.  He's opted to be kind of traditional about high school.  In my head I've concocted this wonderful geography program that I want to do (yep, it's all about me!).  He is usually very laid back and goes along with about 90% of my suggestions.  He really doesn't want to have to think too hard about this kind of thing.

But again he surprises me by suddenly opening up the door and saying:  I don't want to study geography, I want to study psychology.

This completely flummoxes me.  Do high schoolers even study psychology?  I'm not sure.  They didn't when I was in high school!

So I look into it and find a couple of resources.  Months go by and not another mention of it.  Then I sit down and formally sketch out just what will be going on for his 11th grade studies.  I ask him again, do you really want to study psychology?  Yes, he answers firmly.  So I wind up going onto Amazon and ordering a textbook, a study guide and couple of other books that look interesting.


The order arrives.  One of the books I've bought is called 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology.  He spies it sitting on the kitchen table.  He grabs it up.

What's this? he asks.

Oh I got that for you and your psychology studies.

Cool!  he says.

He opens it up and reads the title of the first myth.

And then without reading any further, proceeds to tell me all about why it is a myth and how things really work.  I am really surprised.

How do you know all this? I ask.

Oh, I read about it.

He goes onto the next myth and does the same thing.  And the one after that.  And the one after that. . . .

I try hard to keep my jaw off the the ground.

Later I asked his big brother:  Did you know that Josh really knows a lot about psychology?

Oh yeah, he said.  That's what he does all the time.  He's always reading articles on the computer about it.  Didn't you know that?

Nope.  I sure didn't!  I thought he was reading web comics and playing games.  I guess I am pretty clueless mom!

I think my son is going to breeze through our little psychology course.  I know I'm looking forward to learning from him!