Home Spun comic strip #464

Carnival at The HomeSpun Life

The latest Carnival of Homeschooling is up at The HomeSpun Life! Please stop by and take a look at this week's selection of articles from our homeschooling blog community!

Home Spun comic strip #463

I can recall at least a couple of hikes where my little fashion plate, then 2 or 3, dressed to the nines. Once it was a lovely pink velvet and chiffon party dress. Another time it was a more down-to-earth white cotton slip dress. And of course, no hiking outfit is complete without the shiny white Mary Janes with no tread on the soles. Perfect when you accidentally walk off the trail into brambles and have to climb down a leaf-strewn incline (Marina says it was a cliff) just to find your way back to a path. True story.

Home Spun comic strip #462

We are in for rain and possibly a wintry mix this weekend. You can bet what I'll be doing next time the weather warms up and the sun shows itself!

Error is not Forever

There is a great intimacy from putting pen to paper that I cannot experience from typing and tapping away on a keyboard. It's nice to complete a thought without the instant corrections of spell and grammar check popping up like a surly English teacher wielding a red pen. I wish I could explain this to my children, especially Chase. He has been extremely pen-phobic, afraid of making a mark he can't undo. More than undo--obliterate. I suppose we are all afraid of making mistakes these days. When your mistakes can be instantly broadcast and mocked to the four corners of the Earth, it is much easier to fall into the familiarity of what you know. It is a safe and well-worn path through life.

Perhaps the problem is in equating mistakes with failure. After reading through all of the various definitions in my low-tech Merriam-Webster dictionary, I can honestly say I did not find one mention of "failure" among the various meanings of "mistake", and vice-versa. In fact, the term "failure" seems complete and irrevocable in its definitions (a lack of success; deficiency; deterioration; decay) while "mistake" seems to offer some hope of change (misinterpret; misunderstanding; error).

Mistakes are a form of learning. We often forget that in our modern, fast-paced, success-at-any-cost world. As Ms. Frizzle of The Magic School Bus would say, it's time we "Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy!" We cannot learn or do anything new without taking some risks!

For myself, I think I will take more time to turn away from the computer, put down the pencil, and do some writing in pen. It's amazing to see the thoughts that freely flow from ink.

Author's note: This post was transcribed from my journal, a simple spiral-bound notebook with book quotes along the top of the pages. It was originally written using a Pilot clicky pen with jet black gel ink, which doesn't smudge when I'm writing. This is important when you are left handed. Spell check has put a red line under the words "versa" and "clicky". I am letting myself be content with my choice of words and leaving them as is.

Carnival at Home Grown Mommy

This week's Carnival of Homeschooling is at HomeGrownMommy.com. Please take a moment to look at some of the interesting articles submitted to this week's carnival!

Home Spun comic strip #461

Well, I must apologize! I went to bed last night completely clueless that I needed to put my comic strip up. I thought Tuesday was Monday. I blame spring fever and an evening meeting. And Molly, because she just hatched her second owlet. That might go under the heading of spring fever.

Ever wonder why schools have snow days and we don't? Because if it's snowing badly, the road conditions make it impossible to reach the school safely. On the other hand, snow does not make it hazardous to walk from the bedroom to the kitchen and living room. Since we don't have snow days, I think it is perfectly logical that we should take off when a beautiful day beckons, especially after a hard winter. Makes sense, doesn't it?

Molly-fied

I have not been getting enough sleep lately. It's entirely my fault. I've become addicted to watching Molly the Barn Owl thanks to a post at Malia Li'i Kula. Last night we were waiting up for Molly's mate, McGee, until way past our bedtime. McGee tends to come in between 10:30 and 11 PM EST, but last night he didn't show until well past midnight. They are wild owls, and because I've read the book Wesley the Owl, I know there are so many dangers that face owls. My mind starts imagining the worst. It's my mom in me. (Sorry Mom, but you know it's true.)

Watching Molly has been a fascinating experience. We were lucky enough to witness the hatching of her first owlet, named Max. Right after his hatching there was a problem at UStream that took the webcam down for hours, so we were happy we had the opportunity to see the event. We are now on egg watch for the next owlet.

This has been a wonderful experience in animal behavior for the kids and me. I knew many things about barn owls from my reading, but to be given the opportunity to observe the life of these owls in one of their most private settings has really been educational. I never knew that owls kept a pantry for food their mate brings in. Or that the owl "bonds" with her mate every night. Or that the first small hole that appears on an egg is call a pipping. And it has been a thrill watching Molly care for her new baby. It has really made me long to attract some of our own local owls with a box. They could probably use a home this year after all the trees that fell in our area from the windstorm. I wonder if I could set up a webcam....

Home Spun comic strip #460

It's interesting when you suddenly realize that your child is teaching you. This happened early for me. What can I say? Marina is a voracious reader and lover of history. She tells me so many stories and facts that the slightest comment from me sets off a chain of memories. I'm suddenly treated to the intimate details of the life of Elizabeth I, Akhenaten's push for monotheism, or the properties of the element Polonium. I live an interesting life.

Home Spun comic strip #459

You would think this had changed now that I have two teenagers, so I tested it a few days ago. I bought a package of 100 pipe cleaners and left them out near my computer. Sierra snatched them up first. The following day, Chase asked me where the pipe cleaners had gone. Little pipe cleaner creatures are popping up everywhere...

Home Spun comic strip #458

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!

That was the Night When the Lights Went Out...

Last weekend was harrowing, to say the least. With winds up to 62 mph and trees going down all around our neighborhood, it wasn't surprising that we would end up losing power Saturday night. In the past we've been lucky. At most we have had to deal with a power outage for less than 12 hours. During the snowstorm two weeks ago, we lost power for ten hours. This time, our power was out for almost two days. We also had trees blocking roads in virtually every direction from our house, so until the storm abated on Sunday evening, I wasn't even interested in trying to go out anywhere. People have actually started calling this an unnamed hurricane. This amuses our family. We started calling it The Hurricane that Must Not be Named.

And what do you do when you have no power for an extended period of time? If you're me, you finish as much of your comic strips as possible and start composing a blog entry in your head. We'll call it:

What We Did While The Lights Were Out:

~Start digging into the thawing food. These things always seem to happen after I make a big grocery trip. I had just told my husband to buy two gallons of milk while he was out Saturday afternoon because the kids had been draining a gallon a day lately. I also realized on Sunday evening that we had a container of barely touched ice cream that was now less than soft serve. That meant milkshakes all around. And what do you have with milkshakes?

~Bake cookies. Thankfully, we have a gas stove. It wasn't to cold outside, but it was cold enough to be uncomfortable. I'm not a fan of keeping on an empty oven to heat the house, but if we can have chocolate chip cookies and warm the house at the same time, I consider that as good a reason as any to start baking.

~Tell stories. My children have the uncanny ability of being able to act out their favorite YouTube videos, so Sunday evening we were treated with several of their favorite RandomGuy and How it Should Have Ended episodes.

~Retell stories. They also improvise stories. They've been working on their own version of Paradise Lost for a while and my husband and I were given a performance. Some of the highlights include God letting there be light by "clapping on"; the Holy Soap of Justice, which Michael the Archangel uses on Lucifer every time the fallen angel "bleeps"; and Lucifer tricking Eve into thinking that God was using reverse psychology when He told them not to eat the forbidden fruit.

~Sing songs. I am pleased(?) to say I still know all the lyrics to Gilligan's Island. I also remember all the lyrics to David Bowie's Major Tom and my family doesn't do badly with Bohemian Rhapsody. We also sang a few Beatles songs. This may explain why everyone had sore throats on Monday morning.

~Knit. OK, only Marina was able to do this. But at least she could do it. She is working on another sweater for herself.

~Read. Well, this is obvious. We did a lot of reading by flashlight. I had had the forethought to buy plenty of batteries for the lanterns and we also have two crank flashlights which have nice strong light and also give the user exercise when it's time to recharge. Chase was especially creative here. He used his tri-corner pirate captain's hat to fashion his own headlamp. I was lucky enough to get a picture. We have a powerful flash on the camera, it makes the room look well-lit, even though it was incredibly dark in the living room:



The stick is being used as a counterbalance for the flashlight. Anyway, I was just happy that he was enjoying a book I recommended to him, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate.

And that's how we spent our nights without electricity. I hope I've given you some ideas for the next time you find yourself in the dark!

Home Spun comic strip #457

I'm so sorry to keep everyone waiting, especially since I had finished drawing this week's strips early on Sunday. This comic is actually very appropriate after the weekend we had! A terrible windstorm pulled trees out of the ground all over our neighborhood and knocked out our power for 46 hours. I'll write more on that tomorrow. For now, please excuse the roughness of a comic as it was drawn with very low light.

Meeting Scott Mebus

Last weekend, my husband took Marina and Chase to our favorite independent bookstore, The Voracious Reader. Author Scott Mebus was appearing at the bookstore to read and sign autographs. We've read and enjoyed Scott's books immensely, perhaps because they are so full of New York City history. Gods of Manhattan and the second book, Spirits in the Park are the first two in a trilogy about a brother and sister who learn how to see into the world of Mannahatta, a spirit world within Manhattan where former leaders and other famous personalities become gods of the city after they pass away. Here is a photo of Scott Mebus reading from his second book.



Marina was very excited to have asked Scott a question about the series that he couldn't answer, since it is pertinent to the third book (which will be out soon). He was very impressed with Marina and Chase, since they had not only read the book, but had researched many of the more obscure characters mentioned in it. Originally, Scott Mebus was going to have the story set across the US, but it would have been such a huge project he became overwhelmed and decided to focus on NYC. This would make it possible to include lesser known historical figures along with major names like Alexander Hamilton and Peter Stuyvesant. Scott is hoping to write similar books based in other cities, like Boston.

All in all, Marina and Chase had a great time meeting this author. Unfortunately, I couldn't go because I was still dealing with a nasty cough. Chase was nice enough to make some videos of Scott Mebus for me to make up for it. I'll post one or two as soon as Tech Support uploads (downloads?) them from the camera.

Home Spun comic strip #456

Home Spun comic strip #455

I can be stubborn when money is involved. If I'm shelling out a significant amount of money for a book, I want to make sure I get my money's worth. I didn't even let Marina or Chase write in their cheap math workbook, because I figured I would be using it for Sierra eventually. After months of tears with a math text that simply was not working for Marina, I finally laid it aside and decided that my daughter's well-being was more important than the money invested in a book we didn't like. I remembered that I didn't need to push on with something that was creating math anxiety. And luckily, we had an extensive library system literally at our fingertips. I do a lot of my library book searches online and place holds so that the book is delivered to my local library branch. I discovered many different math texts and books that explained concepts in clearer ways. We became educational product testers, setting aside the books that were confusing and noting the ones we liked for future purchase. It's this flexibility that endears me to homeschooling. If a book or text is not working for us, we are not stuck with it. I wish I had had this option back in sixth grade when I was starting to get overwhelmed by math.

Carnival at Homeschool Bytes

The latest Carnival of Homeschooling: The Party edition is up and running at Homeschool Bytes. Please take a moment to enjoy the party and support your fellow homeschoolers by reading some of the articles in this week's carnival.

Home Spun comic strip #454

From grades 4 to 7, we used Singapore math for Marina. I did like Singapore math, it was very logical. Sometimes they would throw in a problem that required a call to my math support (my mother or my sister), but for the most part, I found it challenging for her and easy to follow.

Then Marina outgrew Singapore.

For the higher grades, Singapore has a set of books called New Elementary Math. I suppose if I had had a degree in mathematics, I may have had some hope of understanding the higher books. Instead, I found myself thrust back into my junior high school years of fearing failure. It didn't help that the series was approaching math in a completely different way. A little algebra here, a little geometry there...I felt like I just crossed the border into a foreign country without my passport or a map and no knowledge of the local language. Except this time I had my child there with me and watching her struggle and lose confidence was causing me to lose confidence in my ability to homeschool.

(to be continued....)

Sierra's Birds

Sierra has taken an interest in nature photography. I probably had a hand in that. After our snowstorm last week she took some photos of the birds under the feeder. Here are some of my favorites.



I cropped the picture below to get a close up of the white-throated sparrow's profile and was amazed to discover the sparkle of the snow. It gives an interesting and almost unreal backdrop to the bird.



I did not crop the pictures of the mourning dove and the sparrow below. I don't know if she intended it, or simply has her brother's eye for composition. Or maybe I'm just a doting mom. But I do love her photos. All photos were taken from our window seat and I am surprised at their clarity in spite of the smudgy window. (I should really clean that.)

Home Spun comic strip #453

Home Spun comic strip #452

The Department Store World

When I was a child, I was very particular about my food. Nothing was allowed to mingle on my plate for fear of the flavors mixing. My mother used to say I had a department store stomach, because even though my parents loved to point out that the food all mixed together once it got there, I refused to eat any other way. Really, what kid wants their green vegetable to touch any other item on their plate? It just ruins the flavor.

It is human nature to sort things. We've been doing it since God told Adam to name the creatures of the earth. I'm sure Noah had separate decks for carnivores and herbivores, considering he had to keep them on board for forty days and forty nights. And then a man named Aristotle thought it would be neat if we classified everything. This would eventually lead to our present day system of taxonomy. Scientists categorize everything.

Which makes me think about school. I grew up in the public school system. I remember well being sorted by age into grades, sorted by height into lines in the halls and gym, sorted by cold or hot lunch preference in the cafeteria. In our school, the brown bag students were actually sent to the auditorium for lunch. We probably threw off the well oiled machine of seating kids at their class table, quieting them under threat of getting their lunch last, lining them up, and sending them back with trays of food. You are also sorted by academic skill, although I don't recall being aware of this until I reached junior high school (grades 7-9). And of course, each subject is separated. Math is not allowed to touch English. English can't play with Social Studies. Art was more of a reward than a subject after second grade until high school, but only because I went to a specialized art-focused high school. When you think about it, school is highly scientific. It makes me wonder what the old one room schoolhouse was like, in contrast to our present system.

I was watching a news show on Sunday morning when it suddenly occurred to me how far we've taken our scientific ideals. Look how we've separated our major debates. We have the health care system debate, the economy debate, the environment debate, the clean energy debate. We argue a lot, don't we? Again, we separate everything like good scientists, like me with my plate of food, cautious against cross-contamination, measuring and studying each item individually. Could it be that by introducing children to society by this system of classification, we have unwittingly created adults who feel it is normal to compartmentalize their lives?

I'm more holistic now in my approach to life. (OK, I admit I still separate some of my food.) When I started homeschooling, I began with the school model, like a good little traditional school graduate. It was what I knew, and so, when I started homeschooling Marina in kindergarten, I separated her subjects, an hour of math, an hour of reading. Yes, I was that crazy when I started homeschooling. Luckily, I have keen observational skills. I started noticing how much overlap there is among subjects. I started using that to my advantage. If she wrote a paragraph about some historical subject, that counted as both writing and history. She learned to count and do multiplication tables while taking walks. Physical education and math! With the reassurance of a friend, I realized I did not have to spend an hour on each topic, that that time period was set by a school where they had to allow for getting thirty students into the class, settling down, taking attendance, homework collection, etc. After considering all that, I'm amazed anything gets accomplished in school.

I've come to realize that there are many types of scientists. Just because some of them enjoy spending their day arguing over how to classify a jellyfish, doesn't mean that is the only way to think about a jellyfish. As I've slowly but surely arrived at the idea of unschooling, I've learned I'm more of a behaviorist. I like to watch, to discover what interests my children and help them go for it. It's taken me a long time to reach this point. Fear of answering to my school system kept me along the traditional route for a long time. Even though I half unschooled them for many years, Sierra is the first of the three of them to be completely unschooled.

It would be nice if we could use a more holistic perspective in all areas of life. Maybe our schools could at least start understanding the merits of mixed-age classes. Maybe our government would come to realize that things like health care, clean energy and the economy do not exist in a vacuum, but are interdependent. If they take the time to focus on only one of these issues, it will impact the others. Maybe it's time we stopped classifying life into sterile compartments and started looking at the world as something whole and interconnected and beautiful.

Except for peas. I really don't want my peas touching my other food.

Home Spun comic strip #451

As you can imagine, we do a lot of animal behavior in our house. The children have done several projects of observing an animal and recording their activity at regular intervals. Not so easy if you catch the cat at naptime...