Mini from Trinidad

Ah, it's a good day. M is serenading us from the tub with a rousing rendition of  "I am Mini from Trinidad" (along with a lot of verses in a made-up language that sounds kind of French-ish), and A just got back in from trying out the hail-covered trampoline. Apparently hail makes a trampoline very slippery. We just put away the Christmas decorations, everyone is healthy for the first time in about 2 weeks, and life is good. Oh, and now Mini's bathtub audience is applauding wildly and calling out for an encore.

Three goals

There are so many wise and wonderful people out there, and I've been trying to pay attention to what I can learn from the people around me. One thing I've been dissatisfied lately is the quality of the conversations I have with the kids. Lots of logistics, not so many ideas. I've been sitting with this for a couple of days, looking for ways to change, and I'm beginning to see some ways I can change for the better.

I have one friend who makes comments sometimes indicating that she doesn't view herself as especially "smart", meaning, for her, that she had to work very hard in school to get good grades and still sometimes has to work hard to understand things she wants to understand. However, she is remarkably curious and is always asking questions that I wouldn't think to ask. It seems like curiosity will get you a lot farther than being able to pick things up quickly. 

I always considered it a strength of mine that I have a high tolerance for ambiguity. That is, I don't stress out if I don't know everything I want to know about a situation or person--I can go with the situation as it is and let it unfold without feeling unduly stressed that I don't know where it is going to go. However, the flip side of this, I am realizing lately after hanging around with this friend, is an embarrassing lack of curiosity. It is good to have the wisdom to realize when more information will not be helpful, and when to stop gathering information and just make a decision based on what you do know. However, it is also so important to be wondering about things and thinking about things. I don't do this enough. So this is resolution number one, gleaned from my wise and curious friend: be curious!

The second resolution is related, but different. Last night I was reading the blog of a homeschooling mom that linked to a post by her 12-year-old daughter. I started to read the daughter's post and was completely blown away. This girl read Beowulf in its original Old English and wrote a very intelligent essay on it (with perfect writing mechanics, by the way!), including historical background, parallels she saw with The Hobbit, a description of her personal reaction to her favorite part of Beowulf, which she memorized and typed into her post (all 100 or so lines of it!!). We're a long ways from this at my house, I'm afraid. I went back to the mom's blog and read some older posts, looking for clues about what this mother is doing to elicit this level of academic endeavor. One post described her family as "loud", as in, always arguing, debating, and laughing loudly. This struck me, because it doesn't really describe my family, but I wish it did. But how do I encourage this? I don't think that diving in and arguing a lot with my kids would be especially productive. 

Here's what I'm thinking. We do actually laugh a lot, and this is the foundation I should build on. I should try to be sure we laugh together every day. Laughing is really about being in the kind of mood where you can be playful and silly, rather than annoyed and impatient. A playful mood is also the kind of place a lively discussion can spring from--one where everyone clamors to have their say. 

Here's the part I don't do so well: listening. I need to listen hard to the things my kids are interested in talking about and draw them out, rather than cutting conversations short because I don't really want to hear the detailed Harry Potter analysis, for example. Too often I only half listen. So this is my second resolution: Listen hard and keep them talking about things they are interested in for as long as they have something to say. Use my curiosity to help me think up questions and keep the conversation going. 

OK, so I guess I actually have three goals: be curious, really listen, and make sure we have a good laugh together everyday day. These are so embarrassingly basic! I don't think this will lead to an instant transformation to a loud, debating family with lots of lively conversation, but I think these things will get us started on the journey. Wish me luck.

Extremely Disturbing Book

I just finished an extremely disturbing book (All God's Children by Rene Denfeld) about street "families" that focused primarily on a series of murders that occurred here in my hometown. In fact, one of the murders took place within a few blocks of a house we used to rent. In the midst of the prolonged and brutal beating that preceded the murder, a couple of the participants went to the 7-11 that we used to go to regularly  because is was just a couple doors down from our house. 

Anyway, the whole thing is incredibly frightening and describes the highly organized and violent nature of the society created by a subset of street youth and homeless young adults. The people in this book (who hang out downtown to this day, the ones who aren't in jail, anyway) appear to have absolutely no sense of restraint in the use of violence and have the moral development of very young children. The really frightening thing is that quite a few of these kids appeared to have decent homes and parents who are functional and care about their children. I also found it shocking how many places provide good food, and how really well-served these youth are in terms of health care, social services, and a place to stay. To the point, the author contends, that it helps kids who have perfectly good homes stay on the streets. I do realize some kids don't have a home they can go back to, and I do think it is really important to get these kids services, but it seems like it wouldn't be a bad thing if street life could be less attractive.

The author points out that many of the street youth did come from awful circumstances, and that even some with loving homes arrived at those homes after being in the foster care system and suffered who knows what kind of abuse. Not surprisingly, these youth are vulnerable to being pulled into the street families, with the fake "mom" and "dad", the strict (albeit constantly changing) rules, the feeling of belonging and acceptance (until someone gets mad at you for whatever random reason and everyone turns on you). The people who were the focus of this book were also sexist white supremacists. The author also points out that few homeless youth of color wind up in the streets of downtown in the street families, but are more likely to be taken in by someone in their own neighborhood, where extended family and church networks play a bigger (and functional) role.

This society of street youth seems to reflect so many things that are wrong with the way main stream white America is going--the isolation, the lack of a sense of place and history, the mixing of reality and fantasy in TV and computers, the desensitization to violence, the consumerism and income disparities, and I'm sure many more factors I'm not thinking of at the moment. It is hard not to feel hopeless when you hear a story like this one. Sometimes I worry that I haven't done enough to push my kids out into the larger world, and wonder if it is OK that they don't really enjoy doing things without me coming along, but when I read a story like this I see that connection as only for the good. 

It isn't about where you are, but the direction you're headed

At the end of 3rd grade, two years ago, A took a standardized test and did really well on 5 of the 6 sections but really poorly on the mechanics of writing--i.e., spelling and punctuation. So, I resolved to tackle these areas with some consistency with the goal of at least getting up to grade level. We've been fairly consistent for the past couple of years, which means some weeks we'll do spelling 3-4 times per week and others just once. 

We've been using Sequential Spelling and doing copywork for spelling. Sequential Spelling works really well for A because it puts words together in word families. A spells completely phonetically and has a hard time with words like "raid", where she has no idea if it should be rade, raid, or even raed. With Sequential Spelling she's beginning to see that "raid" is in the same family is "paid" and "laid", while "fade" and "made" are spelled alike and differently from the "aid" family. Plus they also throw in high frequency words regularly so kids get plenty of practice with, for example, the "ould" words. Anyway, we've slacked off in the past month or so, and a few days ago we picked it up again. The spelling word (sentence, in this case) was "They weren't there.", which I'm now spelling out for her so she can correct her mistakes:

Me: T-h-e-y...

A: Oh, that's right, it's an "e", not an "a".

Me: w-e-r-e-n-'t...

A: Whoops, I forgot about that other "e"!

Me: t-h-e-r-e-....

A: Oh, darn, the "e"s are just killing me today! Well, at least I got the punctuation right.

Me: Did you start with a capital T?

A: Well, no...

Me: Oh, then you ended with a period?

A: Well, no, but I got the apostrophe!!

Oy! Needless to say I was feeling a bit discouraged on the spelling front after that. But, tonight A was looking at a sign she had posted about a year ago and laughingly said "Oh my gosh, I spelled rules "ruels", and then here I spelled it "reals", and I spelled break "brec". Geez, I was not a very good speller when I wrote that". Hey, at least now she knows how to spell "rules" and "break"!! This is progress! 

It is so easy to freak out and see all the mistakes and things your kids don't do so well, but I keep having to learn the lesson that the important thing is progress--not that we put everything else on hold to make her a kick-ass speller, but that by chipping away in the right direction she'll get there in good time. She is a much better speller now than she was two years ago, though she won't be winning any spelling bees any time soon, but that is perfectly OK.  

I read an article somewhere that looked at brain development in kids with ADHD and concluded that those kids wind up doing just as well, cognitively, as their non-ADHD peers, but it takes them longer to get there. This has got to be true across many domains for most kids who don't have organic brain disorders. They are all on their own timetable, and the more we respect and support this timetable, the better off the kids will be in the long run.

Charlie Pie

Sometime when people find out that we homeschool they assume that we are a really smart family. Then then get that deer-in-the-headlights look from all three of us over some stupid question like "How many years ago was 2002?". M is stumped by the math, A thinks it is some kind of trick question, and I can't figure out what year it is now. I try to console myself in these moments with all the wonderful, stimulating, enriching activities we do at home. Then a person may ask, a little doubtfully, "What DO you do all day?". I ask the kids this question myself over dinner on my work days and am just as likely to get the deer-in-the-headlights look as the stranger quizzing us on higher math. It turns out they spend a lot of time, like probably a couple of hours a day, playing "Charlie Pie and Smoochie Poo". M plays Charlie Pie and A orchestrates all the other characters, as far as I can tell. Here's a taste of Charlie Pie:

OK, now I'll just sit back and wait for the college offers to come rolling in...

DVD Schooling and Academic Trade-Offs

I don't believe it, I actually got this blog set up, and it actually looks like a real blog! Some day I'll get really fancy and add cool stuff down the right-hand column besides just archives. Now if I can only come up with something interesting to say.

My homeschool pendulum is swinging away from feeling determined to stick to a homeschooling schedule that has some vague resemblance to an academic endeavor. This week, I'm embracing DVD-schooling. Or more specifically, Mythbusters schooling.

I recently bought Season 4 of the Mythbusters because I wanted to get the episode where they looked at the Mentos + Diet Coke Myth (it was confirmed, needless to say!) to show to our science club, which has recently tried this out. I hadn't ever seen the show before, but heard that it was a lot of fun and included some real science. We are now in the midst of a major Mythbusters film festival that has caused us to throw the rest of our schoolwork out the window. Is this good? Or bad? 

Yes, and yes, naturally. It is great when the kids get excited about science and see people thinking logically and critically about how to test something like one of these myths. My kids have been wracking their brains about what myths we could test ourselves or send in to their website, and have been thinking more critically about explanations for physical phenomena in these past couple of weeks. Tonight they spent about 45 minutes throwing a bin of plastic knights/princesses/dragons/etc. down the stairs to see which figures traveled the  farthest. They made a diagram of the stairs and recorded the number of figures on each stair over several trials. They noticed that there is usually one clump of figures on the top couple of stairs and another bunch all the way at the bottom. Then the began trying to figure out which shaped figure were more likely to make it to the bottom (the princesses--they are very round and don't have a lot of stuff like swords poking out). Then they figured out that they should be consistent in the way they throw them down the stairs so they started setting the bin at the top of the stairs and gently pushing on it until it tipped over. This is science!! This is good.

But here's what I'm worried about. Mythbusters has loud catchy music; funny nice-looking, hip,  young hosts; short scenes with lots of crashes and explosions; sarcasm and humor; fast pacing; and constant reiteration what they are doing and why. All this makes it really engaging and easy to watch, but will they still be willing to watch slower paced stuff that takes more thought after all this? Is their attention span dwindling? Especially 6-year-old M: his brain probably doesn't need a lot of loud electronic stimuli at this stage in his life, and in fact, might it be damaging? Interfering with neural pathways that promote focus and sustained attention?

Here's my solution. Mythbusters is great and I'm glad we're watching it. Balance is good. Tonight we took the night off from Mythbusters (for the first time in about a week) and actually did some spelling and math. What do you know--no complaints, no tears of frustration, no annoyed mom, but lots of laughter and goofing around, and we did actually get in spelling, math, and history for both kids, reading for M, and a nice long read-aloud. I have precious little time for actual homeschooling with the kids these days, so I need to make the most out of what we do. I don't have any doubt that laughter prepares the brain for learning, and lessons covered when we are happy and getting along stick better. Too much of anything makes us want a break from it, a chance to use a different part of our brain. I don't have time to do everything I think we should be doing academically, so I really can't waste time try to cram something into an unreceptive brain. Better to spend my efforts in making the brain happy to learn, and trust that life (and occasionally mom) will present many opportunities for learning the specific things that are important to learn.