Gradually getting the learning thing together here, in the doldrums of midsummer. My aim is to have some plans nailed down before we take Epiphany to college in late August, so that come September, when we resume what passes as our regular routine, I can commence ignoring them. What else are plans for? I ask you.
Nevertheless, I make them, and occasionally I actually follow what I've written. The other day I shared our projected second-grade reading; now for third grade.
Goals for third grade:
* For a fluent, fast reader, to increase "depth" and comprehension in reading
* To improve proficiency in handwriting, which right now remains a struggle, despite huge improvements last year
* To make strides in and feed enjoyment of mathematics
*To nurture a well-furnished historical, scientific, literary, cultural, etc. imagination
*To maintain good habits of prayer and expand understanding of our faith
*To cultivate a greater sense of personal responsibility via life skills and chores
Much of our reading will happen in a "combined-school" setting with the second grader; that booklist to follow shortly. Meanwhile, here's the third grader's individual reading list, which will be scheduled, like the second grader's, in small doses so that books are spread out over at least a semester, if not the entire year:
For the Children's Hour
School of the Woods
Story Book of Science
Robinson Crusoe Written Anew for Children
The Secret of Everyday Things
The Boy's Book of Sea Fights
The Book of Saints and Heroes
Poems Every Child Should Know (copywork)
Our Island Saints
This Way to Christmas
Great Inventors and Their Inventions
When the King Came
The Bears of Blue River
Boys and Girls of Colonial Days
Math: MEP Year 3
Head of the Class: I'm using this, in all honesty, as a way to keep people gainfully occupied while I'm working one-on-one with someone else. If an MEP math lesson is going to take the full 45 minutes -- and my experience so far is that really, though in general I believe in short lessons a la Charlotte Mason, the full benefit of this program lies in doing it as it's written, and not skipping or breaking lessons in half -- then I need the person who is not doing math to be doing something quiet and learning-ish and independent for that amount of time, which is just becoming possible with these younger two.
So the third grader, once he's finished his independent reading for the day and finds himself at loose ends, will work his way through a complement of online applications in spelling, science, geography, and music, via a customized curriculum I've set up (nifty feature, that). The curriculum for each grade level also includes a "fun" component; the third grade "fun" is a series of little multimedia presentations, a.k.a. narrated slide shows, on various career options. This is one of those Gee, I wouldn't have thought of that offerings, and it does look like fun, so he'll be doing that as well. Plus we'll be printing out Spanish vocabulary words and geography goodies like the flags of Europe to put in lapbook/folders in our notebook.
He'll also do liturgical-year lapbook projects with the second-grader, but I think I'm trespassing into "Combined School" territory now.
That booklist, plus Grade 8, up shortly.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Deals Deals Deals
Over at the Homeschool Buyers' Co-op (free membership required to participate):
The One Year Adventure Novel is currently available at a 20% discount. The more families opt in for this group buy, the greater the savings.
Amicus will be using this very cool-looking, rave-reviewed program for the writing component of his coursework this year: it looks to me like the perfect way to learn about structure in writing, about pushing your writing beyond the limits of the terse informative paragraph, about how your written voice sounds to other people, about creating and sustaining a long-term project. A kid who navigated this curriculum would, in my view, have prepared himself beyond adequately to adapt his writing to the structures and constraints and conventions of more formal writing later on.
Anyway (and no, this isn't a paid endorsement or formal review -- having requested and been impressed by the free demo, I just want to buy this product for the best price possible), I'm joining this buy-in and thought someone else out there might be interested as well.
Offer expires July 31, so don't dawdle!
Also . . .
Big savings on Rosetta Stone languages
A year's subscription to Defined STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math) at 60% off
Discounts at Bethlehem Books . . .
and more.
Check 'er out.
The One Year Adventure Novel is currently available at a 20% discount. The more families opt in for this group buy, the greater the savings.
Amicus will be using this very cool-looking, rave-reviewed program for the writing component of his coursework this year: it looks to me like the perfect way to learn about structure in writing, about pushing your writing beyond the limits of the terse informative paragraph, about how your written voice sounds to other people, about creating and sustaining a long-term project. A kid who navigated this curriculum would, in my view, have prepared himself beyond adequately to adapt his writing to the structures and constraints and conventions of more formal writing later on.
Anyway (and no, this isn't a paid endorsement or formal review -- having requested and been impressed by the free demo, I just want to buy this product for the best price possible), I'm joining this buy-in and thought someone else out there might be interested as well.
Offer expires July 31, so don't dawdle!
Also . . .
Big savings on Rosetta Stone languages
A year's subscription to Defined STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math) at 60% off
Discounts at Bethlehem Books . . .
and more.
Check 'er out.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Homeschool Reading List #1: Second Grade
Goals for second grade:
*increased fluency in reading
*increased proficiency in penmanship, spelling, and mathematics
*a well-furnished literary, historical, natural/scientific, and cultural imagination
*good habits of prayer and an expanded understanding of the faith, with reception of sacraments of reconciliation and communion.
*cultivation of personal responsibility via life skills and chores
Reading List:
(NB: These will be presented as individual daily readings of, generally, no more than a page apiece. I've scheduled four selections a week, which allows us to linger over something if we have to. Most of these books are long enough to last us a semester, if not the entire 36-week school year. Until reading becomes really fluent and confident, we'll buddy-read our daily selection, alternating paragraphs. My plan is to print out a week's worth of reading to put in the second-grader's binder, collecting finished readings in a larger binder to be enjoyed again as an anthology)
Kindergarten Gems
The Burgess Animal Book for Children
Birds of the Air
A Child's Own Book of Verse, vol. 1 (copywork)
Good Stories for Great Holidays (selections)
Christmas in Legend and Story (selections)
Understood Betsy
Boys and Girls of Colonial Days
History, science, geography, religion, and more literature will be covered in "combined school," with second and third grades together (that reading list to follow).
More level-appropriate chapter books will be added to school box for independent reading: The Courage of Sarah Noble, And Then What Happened, Paul Revere, etc.
Lapbook projects for the Rosary, Advent, Lent, and the life of Jesus courtesy of ThatResourceSite.com.
Introductory Spanish, plus fun online interactives in spelling, geography, nature, music, and art, via a customized curriculum from Head of the Class. Lapbook and folder projects to unfold from these topics as desired; I will use file folders, hole-punched to fit into a notebook, for gluing on Spanish vocabulary cards, to keep them straight and available for us to use. I'll also be printing out cursive-writing worksheets: this child really wants to write in cursive, and it won't happen if I don't have some kind of template.
Math via MEP. We began, experimentally, in Year 2 this last spring, but per advice from the knowledgeable folks at the MEP-Homeschoolers Yahoo group, I think we'll drop back to Year 1 to build confidence and solidify skills and concepts. It's a rigorous-enough program that I don't see this as a setback, and I think we'll be glad in the long run that we took the time to get things right.
Coming soon: Grades 3 and 8, plus "Combined School." Stay tuned!
PS: If you wonder how to schedule readings, check out this excellent and helpful conversation.
*increased fluency in reading
*increased proficiency in penmanship, spelling, and mathematics
*a well-furnished literary, historical, natural/scientific, and cultural imagination
*good habits of prayer and an expanded understanding of the faith, with reception of sacraments of reconciliation and communion.
*cultivation of personal responsibility via life skills and chores
Reading List:
(NB: These will be presented as individual daily readings of, generally, no more than a page apiece. I've scheduled four selections a week, which allows us to linger over something if we have to. Most of these books are long enough to last us a semester, if not the entire 36-week school year. Until reading becomes really fluent and confident, we'll buddy-read our daily selection, alternating paragraphs. My plan is to print out a week's worth of reading to put in the second-grader's binder, collecting finished readings in a larger binder to be enjoyed again as an anthology)
Kindergarten Gems
The Burgess Animal Book for Children
Birds of the Air
A Child's Own Book of Verse, vol. 1 (copywork)
Good Stories for Great Holidays (selections)
Christmas in Legend and Story (selections)
Understood Betsy
Boys and Girls of Colonial Days
History, science, geography, religion, and more literature will be covered in "combined school," with second and third grades together (that reading list to follow).
More level-appropriate chapter books will be added to school box for independent reading: The Courage of Sarah Noble, And Then What Happened, Paul Revere, etc.
Lapbook projects for the Rosary, Advent, Lent, and the life of Jesus courtesy of ThatResourceSite.com.
Introductory Spanish, plus fun online interactives in spelling, geography, nature, music, and art, via a customized curriculum from Head of the Class. Lapbook and folder projects to unfold from these topics as desired; I will use file folders, hole-punched to fit into a notebook, for gluing on Spanish vocabulary cards, to keep them straight and available for us to use. I'll also be printing out cursive-writing worksheets: this child really wants to write in cursive, and it won't happen if I don't have some kind of template.
Math via MEP. We began, experimentally, in Year 2 this last spring, but per advice from the knowledgeable folks at the MEP-Homeschoolers Yahoo group, I think we'll drop back to Year 1 to build confidence and solidify skills and concepts. It's a rigorous-enough program that I don't see this as a setback, and I think we'll be glad in the long run that we took the time to get things right.
Coming soon: Grades 3 and 8, plus "Combined School." Stay tuned!
PS: If you wonder how to schedule readings, check out this excellent and helpful conversation.
Free-Range Crash and Burn
A child in this house turns nine on Saturday, or so I am told. So I was told twenty times today, and yesterday, and the day before that; so, if my luck holds, I will be told tomorrow.
This child is a creature of habit, not to say repetition, and having found a birthday-party paradigm to suit his needs, he aims neither to alter nor to wander from its course; lo, he deviateth not. So on Saturday we will be driving, for the third consecutive year, with a vanload of boys and others, to the mountains, so that everyone can run around half-naked and surprise some copperheads and poke each other with sticks for an afternoon. With cake.
Today I suggested that he might make up some invitations to take around to neighborhood friends, and this he did. When he was finished, he then wanted to deliver them -- alone.
We live in a quiet neighborhood: no seriously busy streets, no especially creepy houses, nothing much going on besides the odd late-night drug deal in the community-college parking lot across the street. In broad daylight: nada. This child's older brother has been roaming the town since he was ten, the year we moved here, taking himself to the library, the secondhand bookstore, the junk shop, and City Lunch, where he can get a late-afternoon cheeseburger pick-me-up for a dollar, if he happens to have one. Statistically, of course, he courts real danger by getting into the car with -- well, me, for instance; when he walks the streets of Fiat, the perils which lurk lurk largely in my own imagination, where I can keep them penned up and refuse to feed them. Besides, he's a sensible kid. I trust him not to make his own peril any more than he absolutely has to.
Somehow, though, it escapes me completely most of the time that the younger children aren't still toddlers. Occasionally I'll look at one of them -- Crispina, for example, who is seven -- and I'll think, When your older sister was seven, she was riding a bicycle to school down a narrow street full of double-decker buses in a foreign country. When we came back to this country, we were flabbergasted to discover that seven-year-olds still ride in booster seats, at least till they hit 78 pounds, at which point we throw up our hands and round to the nearest ten.
So I have to make myself, deliberately, not treat them like babies. Things which came naturally for the older two, like having pocket money and budgeting it, walking to the corner store and spending it, I have to remember to enact with the younger two. Half the time I forget, which is no good for any of us. And so it is that although we live in a relatively quiet neighborhood, in a relatively safe town, and our children's friends live within relatively easy walking distance, I'd never let either of the younger kids walk to those friends' houses alone.
But today Helier wanted to, and I said yes, provided that he took Crispina with him. I don't know why I thought it was so important for him to take Crispina with him: she doesn't know jujitsu, and I'm not sure I'd rely on her map skills in a pinch, either. As it turned out, I was glad that I had made him take her with him, though he rolled his eyes and asked why he couldn't ever do anything alone.
"Just take your sister," I said. "Just do it. And here," I added as an afterthought, "take my cell phone, too."
"Cool," he said. This, obviously, was the consolation prize for having to wag his little sister all the way to Chandler's house. I showed him how to find our home number on speed dial, just in case they took a wrong turn, and I sent them on their way.
Now, I wasn't really worried about them. As I say, the neighborhood is quiet. And in general, I don't worry so much about them, per se, as about the appearance of the thing. When, for example, I let them ride their scooters in the parking lot -- on Sunday afternoon when the drug dealers aren't there, obviously -- and I'm not visibly watching them, are they unsupervised? Am I negligent, to let them experience a limited facsimile of the autonomy I took for granted at their ages? I mean, they're not babies. Not anymore. Even I know that. And yet. Last year a friend of mine, whose children ride bikes on their dead-end street, had a social worker appear at her front door. Someone on the same street, some anonymous tipster, had called CPS to complain about unsupervised kids. The interview was over quickly, and the social worker rolled her eyes a bit even as she asked the necessary questions -- some things are just obvious -- but still. Do I want to court that? Do I need that reason to lie awake at night?
So I wasn't worried, exactly, but I was on alert. And I wasn't that surprised when the phone rang.
"Mom? If we're at the corner of Elm and Hackberry, which way do we turn?"
I told him, and he hung up.
Three minutes later the phone rang again. "Mom? We turned left like you said, and we've gone all the way up to Legislature Street, and I don't see their house."
"Ah. Are you sure you're on Hackberry?"
"Uh, yes?"
"Do you see a street sign?"
"Oh. We're on Gingko. What do we do?"
"Go down one more block. That will be Hackberry. Turn right, and you'll see their house."
He hung up again.
Five minutes later: "Mom? We did it. They weren't home, and I think the lady next door was suspicious, because she opened her door and watched us put the invitation on the porch."
"That's all right. Come straight on home now," I said. And thinking that this thing was a wrap, I told Amicus to listen for the phone, and I went to take a bath.
This I might not have done, at least not with such naive confidence, had I not assumed that they were walking. What I didn't know was that they'd taken their razor scooters. Not that I necessarily worry about them that much more on the razor scooters, because they're both pretty competent, especially for toddlers. Still, there's always the chance that something will go slightly more spectacularly wrong than it might have if the scooter-rider were merely lumping along on his own boring pins.
From the bathroom, I didn't hear the phone; fortunately Amicus did. Between the time he set out from our house and the time he caught up with them, in the middle of the block of Hackberry between Legislature and Crape Myrtle, where Helier's scooter had executed a double axel of its own free will and deposited him ungently on the sidewalk, they called home several more times; Crispina did, that is, our cool-headed heroine who in an emergency knows how to seize and operate a phone. There seems, mysteriously, to have been a dog on the scene, too, because the phone messages, which I listened to later, are full of barking and Crispina saying with authority, "Shut up, you stupid animal."
Amicus found them readily enough, and there wasn't really much wrong with Helier, beyond an epic skinned knee. He limped home, clinging to Amicus, while Crispina followed with the scooters. They came banging into the kitchen about the time I emerged from the bathroom. "Mission accomplished," I was about to say in triumph, when I saw Helier's bloody knee and surmised that all had not been quite the summit-gaining that had been hoped for.
Between us we dressed the busted knee, and Crispina, solicitous and important, made a bed on the sofa for the invalid, brought him his plastic army men, and offered to carry him to the bathroom, should he have need of that service. By this evening he had risen and walked and gone to Cub Scouts -- you know how these miracle healings go.
I did ask him: "Were you riding your scooter really fast?"
"Uh, yeah."
So I guess maybe he learned something firsthand today, about freedom and danger and limits. What the heck did I learn, though? Beyond remembering, next time, to make them leave the scooters at home, I'm really not sure. Did I learn that there shouldn't be a next time, not till -- well, when? Did I learn that it's naive to assume that simply because God is in His Heaven, and we pray their guardian angels to guide them safely, my children will not fall down and bleed on the sidewalk three blocks from home? Did I learn gratitude? They did come home, after all. Other women's children do not, sometimes. Nothing terrible happened to mine this time, just enough to remind me that something in the universe likes to twitch the throw rugs, drop banana peels, stick its ugly foot out as people are running.
And of course, it's not just out there. It's in my house. It's in me, in my uncertain judgment and faulty calls. On the other hand, there's grace, too, in the brother who dashes from the house to save somebody from he doesn't even know what, in the little sister who tags everlastingly along. And you know, really, that those two things, fallenness and grace, don't even hang in the balance. The grace weighs infinitely more than all the things broken and stupid and wrong, in all their boring mostly-low-grade variety. You know at the end of the day who wins. Still, it comes as a surprise.
This child is a creature of habit, not to say repetition, and having found a birthday-party paradigm to suit his needs, he aims neither to alter nor to wander from its course; lo, he deviateth not. So on Saturday we will be driving, for the third consecutive year, with a vanload of boys and others, to the mountains, so that everyone can run around half-naked and surprise some copperheads and poke each other with sticks for an afternoon. With cake.
Today I suggested that he might make up some invitations to take around to neighborhood friends, and this he did. When he was finished, he then wanted to deliver them -- alone.
We live in a quiet neighborhood: no seriously busy streets, no especially creepy houses, nothing much going on besides the odd late-night drug deal in the community-college parking lot across the street. In broad daylight: nada. This child's older brother has been roaming the town since he was ten, the year we moved here, taking himself to the library, the secondhand bookstore, the junk shop, and City Lunch, where he can get a late-afternoon cheeseburger pick-me-up for a dollar, if he happens to have one. Statistically, of course, he courts real danger by getting into the car with -- well, me, for instance; when he walks the streets of Fiat, the perils which lurk lurk largely in my own imagination, where I can keep them penned up and refuse to feed them. Besides, he's a sensible kid. I trust him not to make his own peril any more than he absolutely has to.
Somehow, though, it escapes me completely most of the time that the younger children aren't still toddlers. Occasionally I'll look at one of them -- Crispina, for example, who is seven -- and I'll think, When your older sister was seven, she was riding a bicycle to school down a narrow street full of double-decker buses in a foreign country. When we came back to this country, we were flabbergasted to discover that seven-year-olds still ride in booster seats, at least till they hit 78 pounds, at which point we throw up our hands and round to the nearest ten.
So I have to make myself, deliberately, not treat them like babies. Things which came naturally for the older two, like having pocket money and budgeting it, walking to the corner store and spending it, I have to remember to enact with the younger two. Half the time I forget, which is no good for any of us. And so it is that although we live in a relatively quiet neighborhood, in a relatively safe town, and our children's friends live within relatively easy walking distance, I'd never let either of the younger kids walk to those friends' houses alone.
But today Helier wanted to, and I said yes, provided that he took Crispina with him. I don't know why I thought it was so important for him to take Crispina with him: she doesn't know jujitsu, and I'm not sure I'd rely on her map skills in a pinch, either. As it turned out, I was glad that I had made him take her with him, though he rolled his eyes and asked why he couldn't ever do anything alone.
"Just take your sister," I said. "Just do it. And here," I added as an afterthought, "take my cell phone, too."
"Cool," he said. This, obviously, was the consolation prize for having to wag his little sister all the way to Chandler's house. I showed him how to find our home number on speed dial, just in case they took a wrong turn, and I sent them on their way.
Now, I wasn't really worried about them. As I say, the neighborhood is quiet. And in general, I don't worry so much about them, per se, as about the appearance of the thing. When, for example, I let them ride their scooters in the parking lot -- on Sunday afternoon when the drug dealers aren't there, obviously -- and I'm not visibly watching them, are they unsupervised? Am I negligent, to let them experience a limited facsimile of the autonomy I took for granted at their ages? I mean, they're not babies. Not anymore. Even I know that. And yet. Last year a friend of mine, whose children ride bikes on their dead-end street, had a social worker appear at her front door. Someone on the same street, some anonymous tipster, had called CPS to complain about unsupervised kids. The interview was over quickly, and the social worker rolled her eyes a bit even as she asked the necessary questions -- some things are just obvious -- but still. Do I want to court that? Do I need that reason to lie awake at night?
So I wasn't worried, exactly, but I was on alert. And I wasn't that surprised when the phone rang.
"Mom? If we're at the corner of Elm and Hackberry, which way do we turn?"
I told him, and he hung up.
Three minutes later the phone rang again. "Mom? We turned left like you said, and we've gone all the way up to Legislature Street, and I don't see their house."
"Ah. Are you sure you're on Hackberry?"
"Uh, yes?"
"Do you see a street sign?"
"Oh. We're on Gingko. What do we do?"
"Go down one more block. That will be Hackberry. Turn right, and you'll see their house."
He hung up again.
Five minutes later: "Mom? We did it. They weren't home, and I think the lady next door was suspicious, because she opened her door and watched us put the invitation on the porch."
"That's all right. Come straight on home now," I said. And thinking that this thing was a wrap, I told Amicus to listen for the phone, and I went to take a bath.
This I might not have done, at least not with such naive confidence, had I not assumed that they were walking. What I didn't know was that they'd taken their razor scooters. Not that I necessarily worry about them that much more on the razor scooters, because they're both pretty competent, especially for toddlers. Still, there's always the chance that something will go slightly more spectacularly wrong than it might have if the scooter-rider were merely lumping along on his own boring pins.
From the bathroom, I didn't hear the phone; fortunately Amicus did. Between the time he set out from our house and the time he caught up with them, in the middle of the block of Hackberry between Legislature and Crape Myrtle, where Helier's scooter had executed a double axel of its own free will and deposited him ungently on the sidewalk, they called home several more times; Crispina did, that is, our cool-headed heroine who in an emergency knows how to seize and operate a phone. There seems, mysteriously, to have been a dog on the scene, too, because the phone messages, which I listened to later, are full of barking and Crispina saying with authority, "Shut up, you stupid animal."
Amicus found them readily enough, and there wasn't really much wrong with Helier, beyond an epic skinned knee. He limped home, clinging to Amicus, while Crispina followed with the scooters. They came banging into the kitchen about the time I emerged from the bathroom. "Mission accomplished," I was about to say in triumph, when I saw Helier's bloody knee and surmised that all had not been quite the summit-gaining that had been hoped for.
Between us we dressed the busted knee, and Crispina, solicitous and important, made a bed on the sofa for the invalid, brought him his plastic army men, and offered to carry him to the bathroom, should he have need of that service. By this evening he had risen and walked and gone to Cub Scouts -- you know how these miracle healings go.
I did ask him: "Were you riding your scooter really fast?"
"Uh, yeah."
So I guess maybe he learned something firsthand today, about freedom and danger and limits. What the heck did I learn, though? Beyond remembering, next time, to make them leave the scooters at home, I'm really not sure. Did I learn that there shouldn't be a next time, not till -- well, when? Did I learn that it's naive to assume that simply because God is in His Heaven, and we pray their guardian angels to guide them safely, my children will not fall down and bleed on the sidewalk three blocks from home? Did I learn gratitude? They did come home, after all. Other women's children do not, sometimes. Nothing terrible happened to mine this time, just enough to remind me that something in the universe likes to twitch the throw rugs, drop banana peels, stick its ugly foot out as people are running.
And of course, it's not just out there. It's in my house. It's in me, in my uncertain judgment and faulty calls. On the other hand, there's grace, too, in the brother who dashes from the house to save somebody from he doesn't even know what, in the little sister who tags everlastingly along. And you know, really, that those two things, fallenness and grace, don't even hang in the balance. The grace weighs infinitely more than all the things broken and stupid and wrong, in all their boring mostly-low-grade variety. You know at the end of the day who wins. Still, it comes as a surprise.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
July Garden
 |
| Vegetable garden by driveway: a bit out of control at this stage. |
 |
| A Very Fetching Garden Friend, Surprised Among Bean Leaves |
 |
| Marigolds |
 |
| My favorite summer constellation |
 |
| The sun the summer day revolves around. |
 |
| Hm, moussaka . . . ratatouille . . . I will *force* people to like eggplant . . . |
 |
| Blue sage |
 |
| More blue sage |
 |
| Bee balm going to seed |
 |
| A second round of daylilies |
 |
| I love this little dog vase, but I dunno about the flower-gargling effect here . . . |
Friday, July 8, 2011
Memento Mori in Massachusetts
Not, I mean, that you will necessarily die in Massachusetts. But you will die somewhere, sometime, and these stones don't mean to let you forget it.
Many of these I found in a Lexington graveyard several centuries older than the Catholic church beside it. Aelred had left his breviary in the pew at Mass on Sunday, and while he was fetching it from the church office and the children, who after all still have all the time in the world, waited dutifully in the car, I went stalking with the camera.
Et tu, Transcendentalist?
Et tu.
(Bonus: Wilfred McClay on Mr. Emerson's Tombstone)
Pussycat, Pussycat, Where Have You Been?
What? Me? I've been to Boston to be on EWTN.
When we left off with each other a few weeks back, I was spazzing, as you may recall, over what to wear on television. Now, I will readily admit to personal vanity, which I have in spades, deeply and complexly; I will also admit that one of my worst recurring anxiety dreams involves standing before a closet full of clothes, with a clock ticking and someplace I have to be in fifteen minutes, and every outfit I put on is wrong. Tick-tick-tick goes the time, life's rich cavalcade passes outside, and there I stand, putting on and tearing off clothes with a feeling of desperation and futility which mounts until finally I wake up. To compound matters, despite my personal vanity, which I do have in spades, deeply and complexly, I'm perfectly aware that most of the time I look like a line out of Eudora Welty's novel Delta Wedding: "Clothes, I'm going to town. Anything that wants to go with me can jump on my back."
So, yeah. Invite me to be on your tv show. I'm intensely interesting.
Fortunately for us all, the topic of this particular segment of Colleen Carroll Campbell's Faith and Culture show did not deal with personal neuroses, but with homeschooling. That I can talk about, though mostly, as I was preparing my off-the-cuff remarks, as Mr. Collins prepared his little spontaneous compliments for Lady Catherine de Bourgh, I was aware that off the top of my head I could think of twenty people far more experienced, thoughtful, and articulate than I, a reality which I hoped to offset by the acquisition of a royal-blue sweater set and some under-eye-circle concealer. Behold! She homeschools her children, and see how refreshed she is! God is good to her indeed!
Well, He is, but I have a feeling that I might be digressing the tiniest bit. The story, in linear fashion, is this: Colleen asked me very kindly and utterly out of the blue, back in the winter, to be on the show, and I said yes. A date was set, and, oh, I don't know, about four days before the taping at St. John's Seminary in Boston, I made an actual plan for getting there. I had had vague thoughts of flying and coming home the same day, and had gone so far as to look up airline prices; then I thought, How can I go to a place like Boston and not take at least one child? What kind of homeschooler wouldn't turn this into a field trip? Once I had had that thought, however, there was the problem of which child to choose. Finally I said to Aelred, "Do you think we might possibly all go, and make a vacation of it?"
There are educational experiences and educational experiences, and Epiphany opted to stay at home, alone, mistress of her own fortunes, while we drove away north. Immediately we left, she rang her grandmother for the macaroni-and-cheese recipe and then went to the grocery store. Except for a couple of nights when she went out and another couple of nights when she babysat, I believe she subsisted for six straight days on a diet of macaroni-and-cheese, than which a person can do far worse. Anyway, beyond that, she does not enter this tale, a state of affairs to which I realize I must accustom myself in days to come.
The rest of us drove north through Virginia, Maryland, a sliver of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. If Helier and Crispina were telling the story, it would go like this:
1. We stopped at a motel. It had a pool.
2. We stopped at another motel. It had a pool.
3. We stopped at a motel with a pool, which was closed. From outside the fence it looked perfectly fine. This was an outrage.
4. We did some stuff not involving a pool, and looked at some old stuff.
5. The best part was the gift shop.
6. We got rear-ended on an off-ramp, on our way to a motel with a pool.
7. We stopped at a motel. It had a pool.
8. Now we're home. Mom, why don't we have a pool?
The day of the Faith and Culture taping, we were eating breakfast in the second motel-with-pool when we happened to notice that the television news was all about the Boston Bruins, and the Stanley Cup, and some parade happening in the center of Boston that day.
"Oh, yeah," said the morning guy at the front desk. "The game was Wednesday, and the parade's today. You guys aren't gonna be driving in Boston, right?"
Fortunately, as it turned out, we weren't gonna be driving in the part of Boston upon which a million people were expected to converge by 9 a.m. We also weren't gonna be driving that early; I didn't have to turn up at the seminary until 2-ish that afternoon. All we saw of the festivities was what played on television during breakfast plus hundreds of people in Bruins jerseys disgorged from the public transport by Boston College while we were eating lunch. We did, however, scrap our plan for seeing the historical sites that afternoon, once I emerged and was a normal, non-makeup-wearing member of the populace again.
OK, so, the interview itself. First of all, I have to say that the EWTN people were beyond nice. The camera guy who doubled as makeup artist didn't make me feel like a yokel for not owning face powder. Colleen was lovely and down-to-earth, so that I wasn't really all that nervous; when the lights were bearing down on me and the camera was rolling, I just made meaningful eye contact with her -- otherwise I'd have stared at the camera like that Andrea Martin character on SCTV's Night School Hi Q (sorry, there used to be a YouTube video, but it's gone now) -- and talked.
Talk talk talk talk talk. Apparently I can bang on effortlessly for -- minutes, anyway. On end. What did I say? I don't know. I remember that when we got around to the subject of homeschooling and faith, all I had the presence of mind to bang on about was that, you know, we get to go to Mass a lot, but not all of us every day, necessarily, but you know, we have kind of a crazy Mass schedule, so it's really nice that we get to go to some if not all daily Masses, but not all of us, always . . . And then we were out of time.
So ever since then, lovely, concise phrases like the integration of faith and learning; the integration of faith and life have been floating about the deserted stairwell of my head, awaiting some opportunity for wit to meet the world. So if you happen to see me, which you won't for almost a year, anyway, please feel free to fill in the blanks.
As for the rest of the travelogue, I think I'll let the pitchers do the talk-talk-talking.
When we left off with each other a few weeks back, I was spazzing, as you may recall, over what to wear on television. Now, I will readily admit to personal vanity, which I have in spades, deeply and complexly; I will also admit that one of my worst recurring anxiety dreams involves standing before a closet full of clothes, with a clock ticking and someplace I have to be in fifteen minutes, and every outfit I put on is wrong. Tick-tick-tick goes the time, life's rich cavalcade passes outside, and there I stand, putting on and tearing off clothes with a feeling of desperation and futility which mounts until finally I wake up. To compound matters, despite my personal vanity, which I do have in spades, deeply and complexly, I'm perfectly aware that most of the time I look like a line out of Eudora Welty's novel Delta Wedding: "Clothes, I'm going to town. Anything that wants to go with me can jump on my back."
So, yeah. Invite me to be on your tv show. I'm intensely interesting.
Fortunately for us all, the topic of this particular segment of Colleen Carroll Campbell's Faith and Culture show did not deal with personal neuroses, but with homeschooling. That I can talk about, though mostly, as I was preparing my off-the-cuff remarks, as Mr. Collins prepared his little spontaneous compliments for Lady Catherine de Bourgh, I was aware that off the top of my head I could think of twenty people far more experienced, thoughtful, and articulate than I, a reality which I hoped to offset by the acquisition of a royal-blue sweater set and some under-eye-circle concealer. Behold! She homeschools her children, and see how refreshed she is! God is good to her indeed!
Well, He is, but I have a feeling that I might be digressing the tiniest bit. The story, in linear fashion, is this: Colleen asked me very kindly and utterly out of the blue, back in the winter, to be on the show, and I said yes. A date was set, and, oh, I don't know, about four days before the taping at St. John's Seminary in Boston, I made an actual plan for getting there. I had had vague thoughts of flying and coming home the same day, and had gone so far as to look up airline prices; then I thought, How can I go to a place like Boston and not take at least one child? What kind of homeschooler wouldn't turn this into a field trip? Once I had had that thought, however, there was the problem of which child to choose. Finally I said to Aelred, "Do you think we might possibly all go, and make a vacation of it?"
There are educational experiences and educational experiences, and Epiphany opted to stay at home, alone, mistress of her own fortunes, while we drove away north. Immediately we left, she rang her grandmother for the macaroni-and-cheese recipe and then went to the grocery store. Except for a couple of nights when she went out and another couple of nights when she babysat, I believe she subsisted for six straight days on a diet of macaroni-and-cheese, than which a person can do far worse. Anyway, beyond that, she does not enter this tale, a state of affairs to which I realize I must accustom myself in days to come.
The rest of us drove north through Virginia, Maryland, a sliver of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. If Helier and Crispina were telling the story, it would go like this:
1. We stopped at a motel. It had a pool.
2. We stopped at another motel. It had a pool.
3. We stopped at a motel with a pool, which was closed. From outside the fence it looked perfectly fine. This was an outrage.
4. We did some stuff not involving a pool, and looked at some old stuff.
5. The best part was the gift shop.
6. We got rear-ended on an off-ramp, on our way to a motel with a pool.
7. We stopped at a motel. It had a pool.
8. Now we're home. Mom, why don't we have a pool?
The day of the Faith and Culture taping, we were eating breakfast in the second motel-with-pool when we happened to notice that the television news was all about the Boston Bruins, and the Stanley Cup, and some parade happening in the center of Boston that day.
"Oh, yeah," said the morning guy at the front desk. "The game was Wednesday, and the parade's today. You guys aren't gonna be driving in Boston, right?"
Fortunately, as it turned out, we weren't gonna be driving in the part of Boston upon which a million people were expected to converge by 9 a.m. We also weren't gonna be driving that early; I didn't have to turn up at the seminary until 2-ish that afternoon. All we saw of the festivities was what played on television during breakfast plus hundreds of people in Bruins jerseys disgorged from the public transport by Boston College while we were eating lunch. We did, however, scrap our plan for seeing the historical sites that afternoon, once I emerged and was a normal, non-makeup-wearing member of the populace again.
OK, so, the interview itself. First of all, I have to say that the EWTN people were beyond nice. The camera guy who doubled as makeup artist didn't make me feel like a yokel for not owning face powder. Colleen was lovely and down-to-earth, so that I wasn't really all that nervous; when the lights were bearing down on me and the camera was rolling, I just made meaningful eye contact with her -- otherwise I'd have stared at the camera like that Andrea Martin character on SCTV's Night School Hi Q (sorry, there used to be a YouTube video, but it's gone now) -- and talked.
Talk talk talk talk talk. Apparently I can bang on effortlessly for -- minutes, anyway. On end. What did I say? I don't know. I remember that when we got around to the subject of homeschooling and faith, all I had the presence of mind to bang on about was that, you know, we get to go to Mass a lot, but not all of us every day, necessarily, but you know, we have kind of a crazy Mass schedule, so it's really nice that we get to go to some if not all daily Masses, but not all of us, always . . . And then we were out of time.
So ever since then, lovely, concise phrases like the integration of faith and learning; the integration of faith and life have been floating about the deserted stairwell of my head, awaiting some opportunity for wit to meet the world. So if you happen to see me, which you won't for almost a year, anyway, please feel free to fill in the blanks.
As for the rest of the travelogue, I think I'll let the pitchers do the talk-talk-talking.
"Integration of faith and learning. Integration of faith and life. Why couldn't I think of the word integration?"
"Lexington, Massachusetts, and not a motel pool in sight."
"I went to the woods because I wanted to shake hands with this metal dude."
But look:
He has a pool.
We really did get rear-ended, by the way, on an off-ramp to Fishkill, New York, around midnight as we were coming home. The woman who hit us smacked us hard, but did no damage -- this is when I don't feel guilty for driving a tank -- and was manifestly too afraid that Aelred was going to beat her up to volunteer any insurance information. We all drove away from the scene, and I presume she's okay. I hope it wasn't any actual, real-life experience which made her so afraid of Aelred, who had only wanted to be sure she wasn't in worse shape than, say, Crispina, who slept through the whole thing in the very back seat.
We were so late looking for a hotel (with pool), chiefly because we'd loitered in Boston having gelato, but also because we'd wound up loitering in a Macdonald's in Waterbury, Connecticut, watching a uniformly gangsta-dressed populace queue up for McChickens, while two Russian guys hunkered over a game of chess. I can't explain why this scene fascinated me, but it did.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Where Have You Been?
Because I haven't seen you in -- oh. Wait. You've been right here all this time, tapping your foot, wondering if we'd died out here or what.
Well, we haven't died. We haven't even had heatstroke yet, which for the Fourth of July week in Fiat is saying something, let me tell you. No, no, nothing's wrong. We've just been . . . busy.
Doing what, you ask.
Oh, you know. Washing our hair. Stuff like that.
Traveling. Pictures to follow, sometime.
Picking cucumbers and more cucumbers.
Making sourdough starter, crackers, and bread. Also yogurt.
Going to Mass a lot.
Updating the Abandon Hopefully curriculum site -- Grade 10 is almost finished, lacking only some more Shakespearean and historical resources, some art and music and theological writing, to round out a medieval/Renaissance humanities course. Grade 9 is put-near done, too.
Lesson planning. Why I obsess so fervently over plans I so quickly forsake for better things, I do not know, but this has come to be my summer mode. What's in my plans, you ask? Well . . .
1. The Baldwin Project. It occurred to me not long ago, as I was scrolling through their beyond-excellent list of vintage children's titles, that one could do worse than simply to read through everything -- or as near everything as might be reasonably expected -- on that website. In the lower grades, at any rate, do a broad spectrum of Baldwin reading, some copywork and other writing, and a good math program, and you got yourself a edumacation. As they say.
Anyway, every year I look at The Baldwin Project and think, This is incredible! Every year, promptly I exit the site, I forget what I saw that looked so good. This year I sat down with booklist forms from Donna Young, and I went down the list of titles at the site, and I made a reading plan for each of the three children who will still be at home this year. For Amicus, who'll be an eighth grader, I went heavy on the world history and geography. For Helier I went heavy on titles beginning with the words The Boy's Book of. Crispina's going to be reading her way through anthologies with names like Kindergarten Gems, which I hope she doesn't notice, since no self-respecting second grader really wants to be seen in public with a book that says kindergarten.
2. Math. Did I mention that I'd found a good math program? I had seen the Mathemathics Enhancement Programme mentioned glowingly on various homeschooling forums and websites, but when I'd looked over the student materials, all I'd thought was, "Eh . . . this looks random." Finally, though, after reading yet more glowing reviews of the MEP curriculum, I went back for a more thorough look, and this time I bothered to read the prepared lesson plans. My goodness, what had I been missing? A lot, as it turns out. Each page of each random-looking practice book comes with a 45-minute scripted lesson plan which takes the student through mental math challenges, work on the whiteboard, and independent practice. This is a teacher-intensive program, but in our limited experience with it so far, well worth the investment of maternal time and energy. There's also a very helpful Yahoo support group for homeschooling families using MEP.
3. More free online curriculum. I've played around a good bit lately with a program called Head of the Class. We're not especially worksheet- or kids-on-computers-based in our homeschool, but via their handy "customize curricula" function, I've been able to draw up a sequence of online applications in math, spelling, art, music, science, and geography for Helier and Crispina to work on independently, as I need them to work independently, plus arranging to have cursive-writing worksheets (ok, we're using worksheets some) queued up regularly for us to print out. From a Charlotte-Mason-ish, literature-based perspective, a program like this looks too thin to stand on its own as a full curriculum, but were I to be ill or otherwise need the kids to work completely autonomously, the math and language-arts curricula are thorough enough to reassure me that if we had to cut back to the bone, core knowledge would be covered.
4. Evernote. Yet another resource I read about on a homeschool forum: an online plus a downloadable desktop application, for organizing information. You make "notebooks," ie folders, for collecting .pdf files and .jpeg image files, typed notes to yourself, web pages which the free "web clipper" function allows you to paste into your notebooks, and more. The free version allows you 60 MB of space, which I'm fast using up, but I'm trying to be disciplined and not surrender to the allure of the paid, premium level, which allows you everything everything everything in your wildest dreams not necessarily excluding a yacht. Nah, I'll live with my 60 MB, thanks . . .
I am thinking of setting up an Evernote for Amicus, however, particularly if we -- and this is a gargantuan if -- acquire another family computer. Our old iMac desktop has done put up its legs in the air and died, and life in this house currently is one long wrestling match over my (personal, private, bought-for-work) laptop. Though it is true that in general we are not a terribly kids-on-computers homeschool, still a lot of what he does for school happens online. He uses KhanAcademy.org, for example, extensively for math and science instruction; I'd also like to collect sites like this one into folders for him to access with ease. Eighth grade for him is looking a lot like throwing meat into the tiger cage and running away, and I can foresee Evernote's usefulness in keeping the meat organized, fresh, and readily available for devouring.
So, there you go. This and that. We are here, and we have a pulse. More will be revealed.
Well, we haven't died. We haven't even had heatstroke yet, which for the Fourth of July week in Fiat is saying something, let me tell you. No, no, nothing's wrong. We've just been . . . busy.
Doing what, you ask.
Oh, you know. Washing our hair. Stuff like that.
Traveling. Pictures to follow, sometime.
Picking cucumbers and more cucumbers.
Making sourdough starter, crackers, and bread. Also yogurt.
Going to Mass a lot.
Updating the Abandon Hopefully curriculum site -- Grade 10 is almost finished, lacking only some more Shakespearean and historical resources, some art and music and theological writing, to round out a medieval/Renaissance humanities course. Grade 9 is put-near done, too.
Lesson planning. Why I obsess so fervently over plans I so quickly forsake for better things, I do not know, but this has come to be my summer mode. What's in my plans, you ask? Well . . .
1. The Baldwin Project. It occurred to me not long ago, as I was scrolling through their beyond-excellent list of vintage children's titles, that one could do worse than simply to read through everything -- or as near everything as might be reasonably expected -- on that website. In the lower grades, at any rate, do a broad spectrum of Baldwin reading, some copywork and other writing, and a good math program, and you got yourself a edumacation. As they say.
Anyway, every year I look at The Baldwin Project and think, This is incredible! Every year, promptly I exit the site, I forget what I saw that looked so good. This year I sat down with booklist forms from Donna Young, and I went down the list of titles at the site, and I made a reading plan for each of the three children who will still be at home this year. For Amicus, who'll be an eighth grader, I went heavy on the world history and geography. For Helier I went heavy on titles beginning with the words The Boy's Book of. Crispina's going to be reading her way through anthologies with names like Kindergarten Gems, which I hope she doesn't notice, since no self-respecting second grader really wants to be seen in public with a book that says kindergarten.
2. Math. Did I mention that I'd found a good math program? I had seen the Mathemathics Enhancement Programme mentioned glowingly on various homeschooling forums and websites, but when I'd looked over the student materials, all I'd thought was, "Eh . . . this looks random." Finally, though, after reading yet more glowing reviews of the MEP curriculum, I went back for a more thorough look, and this time I bothered to read the prepared lesson plans. My goodness, what had I been missing? A lot, as it turns out. Each page of each random-looking practice book comes with a 45-minute scripted lesson plan which takes the student through mental math challenges, work on the whiteboard, and independent practice. This is a teacher-intensive program, but in our limited experience with it so far, well worth the investment of maternal time and energy. There's also a very helpful Yahoo support group for homeschooling families using MEP.
3. More free online curriculum. I've played around a good bit lately with a program called Head of the Class. We're not especially worksheet- or kids-on-computers-based in our homeschool, but via their handy "customize curricula" function, I've been able to draw up a sequence of online applications in math, spelling, art, music, science, and geography for Helier and Crispina to work on independently, as I need them to work independently, plus arranging to have cursive-writing worksheets (ok, we're using worksheets some) queued up regularly for us to print out. From a Charlotte-Mason-ish, literature-based perspective, a program like this looks too thin to stand on its own as a full curriculum, but were I to be ill or otherwise need the kids to work completely autonomously, the math and language-arts curricula are thorough enough to reassure me that if we had to cut back to the bone, core knowledge would be covered.
4. Evernote. Yet another resource I read about on a homeschool forum: an online plus a downloadable desktop application, for organizing information. You make "notebooks," ie folders, for collecting .pdf files and .jpeg image files, typed notes to yourself, web pages which the free "web clipper" function allows you to paste into your notebooks, and more. The free version allows you 60 MB of space, which I'm fast using up, but I'm trying to be disciplined and not surrender to the allure of the paid, premium level, which allows you everything everything everything in your wildest dreams not necessarily excluding a yacht. Nah, I'll live with my 60 MB, thanks . . .
I am thinking of setting up an Evernote for Amicus, however, particularly if we -- and this is a gargantuan if -- acquire another family computer. Our old iMac desktop has done put up its legs in the air and died, and life in this house currently is one long wrestling match over my (personal, private, bought-for-work) laptop. Though it is true that in general we are not a terribly kids-on-computers homeschool, still a lot of what he does for school happens online. He uses KhanAcademy.org, for example, extensively for math and science instruction; I'd also like to collect sites like this one into folders for him to access with ease. Eighth grade for him is looking a lot like throwing meat into the tiger cage and running away, and I can foresee Evernote's usefulness in keeping the meat organized, fresh, and readily available for devouring.
So, there you go. This and that. We are here, and we have a pulse. More will be revealed.
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