Home Spun comic strip #398

Latest Carnival and a Must Read

My sister sent me another article this morning that I consider an important read. This one is from Psychology Today. Seven Sins of our System of Forced Education. I'm always happy to find an article that reinforces my reasons for homeschooling!

Also on this week's reading list, the latest Carnival of Homeschooling is happening at Heart of the Matter. I can always find something inspiring from the contributor's posts!

Home Spun comic strip #397

Giving Birth to an Educational Philosophy

My sister has been having some issues with her younger son's preK class. I wish she didn't live on the opposite coast, since I could help her out more if she were nearer. She's considering homeschooling again. She always finds interesting articles about it. A few days ago she sent me one called If You Want Real Reform, Homeschool from Just Enough and Nothing More.

This had me thinking about homeschooling and why I made the choice I did. No one can tell me that it is easy to challenge a system that you grew up with. I'm a product of the NYC public school system. I would never say it's all bad. I've had some wonderful teachers and friends thanks to public school. I've had some great opportunities. My junior high school art teacher let me hang a bulletin board with my artwork. I can thank a substitute teacher in sixth grade for my love of writing (I only had him as a sub once, by the way, which probably says more about the teacher than school.) I was also senior illustrator in my last year of high school. I spent a lot of time designing flyers for various senior class activities like the prom. Memories like these touch my nostalgic heart and make me yearn to reconnect with old friends and teachers.

But not all my memories are gold stars and lollipops. I also remember the ridicule at the hands of students and school personnel. I remember the anxiety over tests and grades. I remember many hours of wanting to do anything other than homework, especially math. I remember doodling all over my notes in some classes and then learning to keep my doodles on a scrap of paper because some teachers collected notes. I remember being embarrassed to ask permission to go to the bathroom. And then there was the panic over the possibility of being late to school or a class, because I would have to figure out how to get a late pass and everyone would focus on me. These are strong fears for the sensitive and shy schoolkid that I was.

My decision to homeschool actually mirrors my methods of giving birth. Even with my first pregnancy, I really didn't want to have a traditional hospital birth, but my obstetrician nixed the idea of a birth center because I have asthma. Marina was born in a hospital. After it was over, I reasoned that it was the best possible hospital birth. It wasn't until I became pregnant with my second that all of my disappointment over that experience swelled to the surface. I was determined not to have a hospital birth again. That was how I found the Birth Cottage, which was a free-standing birth center on hospital grounds. That was my favorite birth, but the Cottage closed when I became pregnant again, five years later. It was my midwife who suggested I try a homebirth, and put me in touch with a homebirth midwife.

When Marina was approaching school age, the same feelings happened. I was OK with my own school experience, but all of the bad memories started coming back. I didn't want this choice for my daughter. Why should she go to school just because I had? I didn't feel comfortable putting my kid through experiences that I hated and was powerless to change. Her school experience would never be the same as mine, but that was OK. I didn't feel the need to relive school through her. I also liked having her around and having the freedom to do things without being reined into a school calendar.

I hope I can help my sister as she figures out a path for her children's education. I'm only familiar with NY regulations, so if anyone knows of homeschooling organizations in CA that can guide her through the process and answer her questions, I would be happy to pass the information to her.

Home Spun comic strip #396

Carnival of Homeschooling at Apollos Academy

Autumn is here and so is the latest Carnival of Homeschooling: Learning About the Autumnal Equinox. Head over to Apollos Academy and check it out!

Home Spun comic strip #395

This is a constant problem in our house. Where there are sniffles, there is a large pile of tissues. But it's better than the alternative, don't you agree?

I spend a lot of time talking about germ prevention. With allergies, colds and viruses floating around, you need to take precautions. I did this long before I even knew what H1N1 meant. It's a common sense thing. Sneeze into your elbow. Throw out your used tissues. Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands. Sometimes I feel like a broken record, but I would rather lecture them than have a house full of sick children.

Home Spun comic strip #394

Animals, Animals

I thought you might enjoy some pictures from our recent trip to the Bronx Zoo.

A lion cub was born this year. She's gotten so big already! On this particular day she was playing "predator and prey" with her mom while dad lounged. (And no, they can't reach those animals in the background. There is a large moat around the lion's rock.)


The zoo has a number of giraffes. This one was kind enough to pose for me.


I love the patterns on the African Wild Dogs!

Peacocks hanging out with a zebra.

The Wild Asia monorail was a good choice on this day. Lots of animals were out and about, like this tiger. The zoo's Tiger Mountain exhibit has been closed since an August storm damaged it.

More Wild Asia residents. An elephant and a red panda.

In the Jungle World exhibit, there are two black leopards that remind me so much of our cat Merlin, if he were super-sized. I think this one was anticipating dinner time. It kept looking up at the catwalks above the exhibit.

Home Spun comic strip #393

Home Spun comic strip #392

It's one of our favorite Norse myths. Thor and Loki visit the giants and Thor is given different challenges to test his strength. One of the challenges is to pick up a cat. He stretches the cat's back to the ceiling, but still the cat's feet remained on the floor. In the end, he could only lift one of the cat's paws from the floor. Thor later found out it was a trick, but we believe this was still a very accurate description of cat behavior.

If you want to read the Norse Myths, I recommend The Children of Odin: The Book of Northern Myths by Padraic Colum. It's written for children and is very readable. (Dover sells it as Nordic Gods and Heroes, but it's the same book.)

Carnival of Homeschooling at Dewey's Treehouse

The Carnival of Homeschooling: Creatures and Critters edition is up in Dewey's Treehouse. Please squirrel away a few moments to visit the latest carnival and read posts from this week's contributors.

Shining

I've been feeling a bit down lately. It's nothing serious, mainly hormonal coupled with a hectic life that doesn't seem to want to slow down. It is interesting to me that when I'm feeling down, life seems to throw more lemons at me, as if testing whether I will let them knock me off balance or take those lemons and juggle them.

I'm juggling them right now. And I have decided to use my writing as a way to throw them back.

Maybe writing is not exactly the right word. I spent a lot of time pondering at first. Then I separated my ponderings, pulled out some promising seeds of ideas, and now I'm taking those seeds and planting them to see if something legible will sprout. How am I doing?

I did learn something from my ponderings. Let me explain. I recently joined Facebook. Yes, I did. It caught me at a weak moment. I was feeling nostalgic. Nostalgia once meant I spend a day or two wondering where this person went and how that person is doing.`In the age of Facebook, you can actually type in a name and unless your old buddy was John Smith or Mary Jones, you can usually find them. This can be a blessing and a curse.

The blessing is that you can reconnect with the friend. Find out how they are doing. Maybe share a few jokes and some quiz results. And give your friend a sheep.

The curse is that you start getting flashbacks to your former self. I know this isn't a curse for some, but if you weren't part of the popular crowd in your old school, or you were more of a follower, or shy, it is best to know who you are now. Especially since reconnecting with friends on a screen is quite different from reconnecting in person. I am a writer. I know this. I like to be able to collect my thoughts, write them down, edit sections, rewrite them again, and take my time to figure out how best to say what I want to say. I don't fool myself that I am like this in person. I once blanked out when a doctor asked me who my kids' pediatrician was. Never mind that I had been taking my children to her for seven years. I could not remember her name. I've tried to give my opinions in public and ended up flustered and misunderstood because I had to speak off the top of my head. My words are disorderly when they are floating in the air.

But when I write, I can let the thoughts flow out of me because I know I will edit them and make them coherent before they are set before the world. No one speaks over me and interrupts my train of thought. I don't have to worry about the topic fading behind three subject changes in the course of a conversation before I've figured out how to say what I want to say. Conversation is a babbling, bubbling brook for me. Writing is a quiet pond with gentle ripples that expand across a reflecting surface.

Which brings me back to my point. "Meeting" friends on Facebook unfairly freezes them in time. You don't look at them as they are now, but how they were when you were with them. This means I'm suddenly cast back into the role I played. I remember that role well, since it was the time in my life when I was most depressed, and at times suicidal. I don't wish to return there. Luckily, I know who I am and who I am not.

I am a writer.
I am not an intellectual. Homeschooling has taught me that I know very little, but I am open to learning and I am not afraid to hear different opinions on subjects.
I am a cartoonist and facepainter.
I am not as great an artist as some. I know I could spend my life on one drawing and never feel it is truly finished. The outlets I have chosen for my creativity allow me to let go of my perfectionism and actually produce something.
I am a juggler.
I am not a performer. As much as I love this artistic form, I would rather teach it than stand before a crowd seeking approval for my skills. I never tire of seeing that smile spread across my students' faces when they realize they are juggling three objects for the first time.
I am an environmentalist and care about human rights.
I am not an activist. I prefer to change the world quietly, not angrily. Homeschooling my children has taught me there are very few issues that are black and white. I find the lack of respect people show when they press their opinions on others distasteful. You cannot stop a war, even a war of ideas, with anger.


This is who I am now. I love my life. I love to laugh. Finding joy in the everyday saved my life. If that makes me shallow, call me a bowl. Something shiny like a copper or stainless steel bowl. I like to shine.

Home Spun strip #391

Home Spun comic strip #390

Marina and Chase both took some time to master the scissors. It is a tricky skill, after all. You need to hold them correctly, you need to hold the object you are cutting correctly, and then you have to work your fingers to open and close the blades. I was pretty impressed when Sierra could operate them at the tender age of two. Then again, she also knew how to climb up into the bathroom sink to open the medicine cabinet. And she knew how to open child-safety caps.

...Then there was that tree climbing incident...and various broken dishes when she tried to reach the kitchen cabinets on her own...the times her tongue turned green from sucking on markers...

When you think about it, it's a miracle I've managed to get her to age seven.

Frankly, her life has been been a miracle since the very beginning. I was planning to announce my pregnancy at a birthday dinner for my mother. Two days before this event, I sat there wondering if I were crazy to be having a third child and wondering if my extended family would be happy for us. I even called my sister about it. She is wonderful at calming me down, but I was still depressed the next morning (which happened to be my sister's birthday. She is the day before my mother's. And yes, I'm going somewhere with this...). That morning happened to change my view. Having good news was very important. The date was September 11, 2001.

Naturally Nice

I read an interesting article today about a study that was done to see if nature makes us nicer. I love reading about studies like this, since they tend to confirm ideas I already had. I grew up on the edge of NYC in the Bronx, across the street from a park and we had a large picture window in the living room that faced the park. This gave us beautiful views of sunsets over the trees. My father had (still has) this window filled with tropical and other houseplants. I don't think I could live in a house without plants, although I limit myself to plants that are low care. We also had a backyard where I spent a lot of my childhood daydreaming.

Contrast this to the city. I spent a lot of time in the city in my teens and twenties. Just getting into Manhattan meant taking the car onto the highway and through nature-desolate areas of cement and steel with the occasional scrubby tree. Taking the subway limited your nature experience even further, unless you enjoyed seeing that rat walking along the tracks and into the tunnels. More recent experiences with the NY Subway system has shown me that little has changed in twenty years, although I admit they are trying. There is much less graffiti and stations are cleaner, even though I think the smell is there for good. Elevated stations near my parent's house now have decorative stained glass, while some downtown underground stations sport murals or mosaics. But it's still the subway, still packed trains at rush hour and angry people that just want to get from here to there. The same can be said for the roads.

If you want to see New Yorkers at their best, you go to the parks. Parks slow people down and offer respite to an otherwise hectic city life. I've had the opportunity to take some out of town friends to Central Park this summer. My family spends a lot of time at the Bronx Zoo and the New York Botanical Garden. I'm hoping for a chance to see the new High Line park that was built along the old elevated train line on the lower West Side. It always feels good to walk among the trees after the subway, as opposed to coming out in midtown where you are greeted with buildings stretching up around you. The only way I can deal with buildings is to look for the more beautiful stone facades amid the glass and steel skyscrapers. I can't think of where I saw it, but I remember reading about how flowers were used in the facades to help people through the winter. Seeing the stone flowers was a reminder of the warmer days of spring and summer. Which only proves to me that city dwellers have always looked for that connection to nature. We need it as much as we need sunlight and laughter!

A friend of my mother's called an appreciation of nature a gift. I believe it is a gift that can be learned. I'm sure my own appreciation of nature came from my parents' love of the natural world. My mother's father used to point out cloud formations while they drove along and have her take pictures of them. My children are definitely nature-oriented because of me and my husband. They have all grown up with the homeschooling nature class, going to parks and the Botanical Garden, biking on trails and spying on the animals that visit our yard. Marina often sketches the plants outside and has her own garden. Sierra has started doing this as well. We have a tree that doubles as a reading perch. We feed the birds and relocate toads when the lawn is being mowed.

I challenge my busy friends to take a moment from your hectic schedule to notice something natural. Perhaps you can find some flowers growing where you didn't expect them. Maybe you will notice a flock of birds flying overhead. Listen for the cicadas and crickets. Start a journal for your daily observations. You may soon find it difficult to avoid seeing the nature around you!

And I would love to hear some of your nature observations!

Home Spun comic strip #389

We are very fortunate to have nice librarians. Each of my children has left their mark on a library book around the age of two or three. When you take out books as much as we do, you come to realize your chances of having to reimburse the library are very high. I don't mind, considering how much I save from borrowing books rather than buying them. Each time I've replaced the ruined book, except for the one that was out of print. I never could find a copy of it.

Home Spun comic strip #388

People who enjoy quiet do not have children in the next room.

Happy Labor Day, everyone!

Home Spun comic strip #387

Yes, this still happens.

Settling into a New Homeschooling Year

I read an interesting post from Ode magazine's blog today entitled Who gets to decide what is right for you to learn? I suppose it is preaching to the choir to link it here, but this time of year I like the extra boost to kick off my new year of homeschooling.

On that note, I also finished reading the book, The Homeschool Liberation League by Lucy Frank. I was pointed to this book by Laughing Stars, who has a review here. I also reviewed it on my LibraryThing account.

I find it useful to give myself some inspiration this time of year. When you've been homeschooling for 10+ years, it is very easy to feel burnt out and bored with the same old routines. Just as it is important to vary your exercise routine to keep you motivated, it is important (for me) to exercise my mind with homeschooling stories and learn about new ideas so that I am motivated to do this for one more year. There is an interesting quote in the book I mentioned above. "...the average homeschooling family changes their style of homeschooling seven times in the first two years." That stuck in my head. I imagine I've changed my style at least seven times in the first two years for each child. The number is probably higher with Sierra because we are still trying on different styles. Homeschooling is a learning process with each child. Finding the best educational fit to make it work is what keeps this interesting for me. Maybe when all this is over I could start a career as an education detective...

Home Spun comic strip #386

Interesting side note for this one: When the sentence starts "Wasn't it funny in that movie when..." the movie is usually one we haven't seen in months, possibly even years. My family (myself included) has an amazing ability to take one word and have neurons firing randomly all over our brains. Subjects typically get caught in the crossfire.

Carnival of Homeschooling at Home Grown Mommy

The latest Carnival of Homeschooling is happening at Home Grown Mommy! Please click over there for the most recent articles from other homeschooling bloggers!