Creative Endeavors

Wow, a big burst of creative energy today! I came home to find them deeply immersed in some dramatic scenario involving the usual suspects, Charlie Pie and Smoochy-poo.

Then I came upon a couple of drawings of A's. First one of Mr. B, her beta:

Then one using her favorite canvas...

A wrote another installment in her retelling of the story of how the main Greek gods (Zeus and his siblings) started out, this time from Rhea's point of view. (After discovering that Cronus had been swallowing her children, she wrote: "Whell, you can emagon how mad I was. I stormed away to find my husband. He was lounging in his boodwa! I rushed at him to confrunt him and knoked his boodwa over. I was fuming in my room and trying to think of a way to protect my coming baby when an idea hit me so hard it almost knoked me over." OK, maybe we still need a little work on the spelling) Now A is playing her clarinet and M is drawing dinosaurs. Funny what a little taste of sun will do to a kid.

Idle Parenting

Today I embraced idle parenting, to good effect, I believe. The cold and rain was supposed to return this afternoon, but we had a reprieve and so spent the day outdoors. I lied around on the on the porch reading, and the kids did exactly what I'd like them to do every day: built forts, made flower fairies, and searched for bugs. Then the cousins came out to play and they all worked on a play together. A truly good day. Maybe spring really will come to stay some day.

Trip to Seattle

Here are a few pictures from our recent trip to Seattle. The night before, as I was trying to figure out what we were going to eat and do for 8 hours on the train, I was wondering why I thought this was such a great idea. But, it turned out to be so much fun, I'd do it again in a minute. A big part of the fun was having two traincarloads of homeschooling friends along with us, of course! We didn't actually know everyone, but we knew about 1/4 to 1/3 to start out and quite a few more by the time we were home. 

Here is a picture of my husband when he was 6 years old. Oops, I mean, here is a picture of 6-year-old M!

We went to the EMP with Auntie S and cousin M, and ran into some friends on the way to the catch the bus back to the train station. This is the back of the EMP building, if it can be considered to have a back. It was a really amazing building, and it was so much fun to play the instruments they had set up on the third floor. It would have been cool to have other instruments to try besides the ones in rock bands, like strings and brass and wind instruments, though I can see that these would be a lot harder to do, logistically and hygienically. 

Having fun with friends on the way up. It was a long ride, but it was amazing how little whining and fighting I heard. A little between siblings, but that was it. It was funny to walk from the other train cars, where it was almost silent, into the noise and chaos of our cars. But it was a happy and manageable chaos.

Homeschooling in Portland

Someone who is thinking of moving here asked about homeschooling in Portland, so I thought I'd share my perspective, limited as it is to the part of town we live in, for the most part, and focused on activities that interest my particular kids.

From what I can tell the homeschooling community is thriving in Portland. There are so many resources and classes and park days that it is really hard to limit your schedule to something that is manageable. I think it can take some time, though, to build a good social network, which has truly been the most important resource of all to us.

For out-of-towners, Portland is divided by a river, and people often tend to look for activities on their side of the river, and there are some (very non-universal) differences between people who wind up on the west side versus those who tend to wind up on the east side. Although this is a gross generalization and many people don't fit this mold, alternative and non-main-stream and sometimes less affluent people often seem to wind up on the east side of town, especially in the urban neighborhoods closer in. The west side has more traditional suburban family-oriented neighborhoods that have less of an "edge," for lack of a better word. East side families are probably more likely to be politically liberal and less structured in their approach to schooling, while west-siders may have a higher proportion of conservative and religiously-based homeschoolers. The homeschooling moms I've met have been pretty universally really wonderful people, whether conservative Christian or unschooling Pagans, so no judgement are meant by these generalizations! My impression is also that the west-side moms may be a bit better organized than the east-side moms, as evidenced by some very long-standing and well-attended events (like Cook Park park day) and a wonderful homeschooling resource center, Village Home. However, more and more organized activities are occuring in and around east Portland, and Village Home is looking for an east-side location and hopes to open up classes in inner-east Portland next fall.

Beyond Village Home, the offerings are rather amazing: classes of all kinds at many community centers around town, fencing, swim team, archery, aikido, OMSI science classes, ice skating, roller skating, rock-climbing, girl scouts, campfire, and much more all have day-time classes/times especially for homeschoolers. Also, one-time or periodic field trips are often arranged, like train trips to Seattle and a tour of the Tall Ships. People frequently post information on smaller classes or events they are offering, such as cooking classes, scrapbooking, dragonology, hikes, and game days. Last summer there were at least four different homeschool park days in different parts of town. One of these routinely had 40-60 people show up, as I understand it, and the one I attend probably had 25-40 people every week last summer.

All that said, I think it can take some time to find your way to the families that will be your main social support system. It is tricky to find a family where the moms hit it off, the kids hit it off, you live in reasonable proximity to each other, and your schedules mesh well. It also appears to me that there isn't an overabundance of teenaged homeschoolers, at least on the east side. Our local homeschooling organization has begun sponsoring several dances each year, and by all acounts these are really fun, so hopefully that will help teenagers find like-minded friends.

Anyway, others feel free to correct or add to my impressions. I think it would be entirely possible to find like-minded homeschoolers in whatever area you wound up living in Portland, and it would be extremely easy to fill up your week with activities. And most of all, I've just found so many really, really nice people among Portland homeschoolers. I just wish I had more time to invest in more of these friendships!

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.