…he might not have needed that forge. This is Mr. T’s costume for our homeschool history fair. (More on the fair coming soon.)  Like any good fan of The Iliad, T wanted his own hoplite armor. Like any good bricoleurs, we figured we could make it. We started talking duct tape, and suddenly I remembered [...]

“Jeff’s friend and colleague Linda Fisher likes to joke that we spend the first few years of a child’s life teaching him how to walk and talk, and the rest of his life telling him to shut up and sit down. This strikes us as the way schools also work. We spend tremendous energy helping [...]

Back in those video games posts (part 1 and part 2), I wrote about how games, and popular culture in general, can engage kids with literacy. Boys, especially, who often don’t find writing compelling. In classrooms, boys are often discouraged from writing about popular culture, especially if their work contains violence. (If you want to [...]

In which Lulu and I go visit H in New York City, and get worked up about all sorts of things. the washington square arch. Washington Square is such a haven in the middle of the city. Now I’ve seen the arch in every season but fall. H’s new dorm is right on the square, [...]

So much interesting discussion on my last post! Do check out the comments. Such doubts we have about video games! Which makes sense: it’s something that we parents didn’t grow up with, which many of us don’t understand, yet it’s becoming a basic part of childhood for many of our kids. People always fear the [...]

Recently Mr. T took a circuitry class for homeschoolers. Although the class sounded interesting, T didn’t love it. For part of the class there were experiments that the teachers had set up, each with a diagram and a supply of parts. Kids were supposed to build the circuit on the card and to test it. [...]