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the dictation project

September 1, 2010 in homeschooling, learning, the dictation project, writing | 8 comments

Welcome to a new, month-long project here on the Wonder Farm! Come on in, and find a seat! For the month of September, I’m planning to focus my posts on a single topic: taking dictation from kids. I’ll be posting much more often than my typical once-a-week dispatches. I’m hoping that some of you will join me, try some of these ideas out with your own kids, and share what you discover. Please, let’s chat!

What is dictation?

Dictation, to me, is simply writing down something that your child wants to have written down. It could be a story, but it could just as easily be a theory about life on Mars, or a description of a fairy house just built, or the words of a ditty that you catch him singing as he eats his toast. It’s an easy practice, but there are ways to make it work smoothly, and I hope to discuss those here.

What’s the big deal about dictation?

This is what I hope to crack open and explore this month. I believe that taking dictation from kids is a powerful, but largely underused tool for helping kids develop their voices as writers. It isn’t widely used in schools, simply because that isn’t feasible, but I think it has great potential for homeschooling families. And it’s really for kids of all ages: from those just beginning to talk to older teenagers who might be struggling to express something in writing. It’s also a technique that kids who go to school can do with their parents at home.

Why are you doing this?

Mostly because I think these ideas might be helpful to parents, and I want to share them.
I’d love to have other families test these ideas out, so we can all get a better sense of what works and what doesn’t. I’d like to build a community of writing families here on the Wonder Farm.
You may remember the William Zinnser quote I posted about a few weeks back, from Writing to Learn: ”I thought of how often as a writer I had made clear to myself some subject I had previously known nothing about by just putting once sentence after another–by reasoning my way in sequential steps to its meaning. I thought of how often the act of writing even the simplest document–a letter for instance–had clarified my half-formed ideas.” I’m hoping that lingering with this topic for a month, and responding to those of you who contribute will clarify my own ideas about dictation. Which will help me write that book on homeschooling and writing that I’m plugging away at.
I’ve just left my oldest child at college for the first time, 3,000 miles away, and my middle child has stopped homeschooling for the first time in her life, and started high school. As you might imagine, I could use a big project right now.

How do we start?

I recommend that at first you simply read along here, and ponder the ideas a bit. I don’t want to get you all fired up about dictation, and have you pounce on your child with your New Big Idea! Anyone who has homeschooled for any length of time has probably discovered this: the more excited you are about a notion, the more leery your child is likely to become. (Perhaps my kids have ultra-developed sensors to keep me at bay because I’m always buzzing with some crazy idea, but I think this is a fairly universal theorem.) One of the most important things to remember about taking dictation is that you want to do it because your child wants to–not because you think it’s a good idea.

But how will my child decide to dictate, when I’m the one reading here?

That, my friends, will be the topic of an upcoming post. I do hope you’ll come back!

How do I join in the project?

There are several ways you can participate. You can simply read along, and try out ideas that might work for your child. You can leave a comment–and I’d love it if you would–to tell how something worked, or didn’t work. You can ask questions of me, or of other readers, in the comment section as well. There will be opportunities to share writing which your child has dictated, if your child is agreeable. And if you write about dictation on your own blog, you can leave a link to your post in the comments, so readers can find you.

Please spread the word about The Dictation Project: on your own blog, with your friends, with your homeschooling communities. The more families we can get to join in, the richer the exploration of this topic will be.

Coming up tomorrow: thoughts on why taking dictation from kids can be such a powerful tool.

So what do you think? Any of you interested in joining along, if your child is willing?

school, part 2

August 24, 2010 in homeschooling, learning | 20 comments

Seems like just yesterday I was writing part 1, when H decided to go to high school as a junior, after homeschooling all his life.

This time it’s Lulu. She’s starting at the same school, as a freshman. (While her brother, meanwhile, has graduated, and is off to college.)

It wasn’t a sudden decision. Lulu decided to do this a year ago, and has been planning and readying since.

It’s hard to have your kid leave a life of homeschooling, and choose school. Mr T and I will miss having Lulu around: I’ll miss her conversation throughout the day, and her cooking; Mr T will surely miss the playmate that sneaks out of the teenage girl from time to time. And it’s hard to see her leave the homeschooling support group that we’ve been part of since she was two, and her dearest friends.

I know that some homeschoolers disapprove of school, and I get a flicker of that from a few friends in our support group. But here’s the thing: Remember my last post, about following the kid? That’s what I’ve been doing with all three of my kids from the beginning. (Although, in all honesty, I’ve gotten better at it over time, as the older two taught me how well it works.) And if you follow your kids, two things happen. First, you raise kids who know themselves and have a clear sense of how they learn best.

Second, you learn to trust their wisdom.

Both H and Lulu had clear and eloquent reasons for wanting to go to school. They’d spent a lifetime choosing how they wanted to learn, and choosing school was simply the choice that seemed right at a certain point. Both had to leave behind a very safe, tight circle of wonderful friends, to do something that none of their friends had chosen for themselves. Both times, their bravery and self-determination have amazed me.

Following them hasn’t taken a leap of faith on my part. They’ve been showing me for years how wise they are about knowing how they want to learn. They’ve been assured and confident and stubborn and sometimes loud and belligerent. And as challenging as that’s been at times, they have a pretty good record of demanding the options that have ultimately been right for them. They’ve convinced me.

Yesterday, on Lulu’s second day of school, she marched into the auditions for the school musical without knowing a soul and sang. I am so proud of her. And I have full faith that she’s made the right decision.

following the kid

August 16, 2010 in homeschooling, learning, writing | 17 comments

This happens often. I’ll be chatting with a new homeschooler, and this person will ask what we do each day. I’ll explain that we aren’t unschoolers, that we have a habit of doing something together most days, but that I try to follow my kids and their interests.

At this point the fellow chatter usually nods, but often I can see little question marks scroll over his or her eyes. You follow your kids? What does that mean, exactly?

This is the point in the conversation when I try to give examples. Just the other day, in fact, Mr. T had me chasing him down one of his never-ending trails. I thought I’d share it here, so the next time I talk to a new homeschooler and the question marks scroll, I’ll know just the specific story to tell.

Anyway, T was doing a logic puzzle in National Geographic Kids. (My kids have all loved the magazine when they were young, although I hate the ads and the movie and video game tie-ins. If you must know.) He asked for my help. It was a full-page, detailed drawing of a couple dozen kids eating ice cream in a parlor. There were several clues for finding a specific kid, such as the person is not wearing plaid. By process of elimination, you find the sought-after kid and solve the puzzle. I told Mr. T that this sort of puzzle is called a logic puzzle.

“I love logic puzzles! What’s someone who does logic for a job called?”

Here we go, folks. Did you catch that? He’s waiting there at the metaphorical trailhead, excited. Luckily I was listening, and not distracted by the tink of a new email or some enticing just-arrived sale catalogue, as I’m sure I am plenty often when T is ready to take off. But if you want to follow your kids, you have to be there for the start of the hike.

“I think they’re called logicians.” I said, and then–this is key–I tried to say the next line as casually as possible, “You know, you can make up logic puzzles. We could make them for each other.”

If I’d said that last line too enthusiastically, Mr. T might have shut down the whole trek right then and there. A bit of wisdom, learned from my kids: There’s nothing more dampening to a new idea than to have your mother jump in and run off with it.

Now, as we had this conversation, I was putting dinner on the table, so we didn’t have time to pursue the idea further right then. But since he’d seemed so interested, the next morning I brought it up again. I told him that I remembered some logic activities in a book–Family Math–in which kids write “bean recipes”, using real beans to work out problems that are solvable.

“Beans! Why would I want to do logic problems with beans?”

I was about to tell him that we could just use the book for ideas, when he busted out with this: ”We could use my guys!”

His guys. Some of you may remember Mr. T’s guys from a post long back called When Your Kid Wants Almost Nothing For Christmas. His guys are a motley collection of small plastic creatures. Many are Digimon figures, although T knows little about Digimon. Some are Gormiti figures, which we discovered in Europe, and seem to be an Italian version of Pokemon. T doesn’t care much for the backstory of these creatures; he invents his own names and his own stories. And he adores his guys: they’re one of the few toys he plays with, almost every day.

If a project revolves around his guys, I know Mr. T will be interested. So when he says something like, “We could use my guys!”, I pay attention.

We decided to each take a bunch of guys, and to secretly select a target guy to write clues about. We would each read each other’s clues, and try to find the secret creature.

Mr. T’s first set of rules was a bit vague.

His first clue was If it’s holding something. I asked whether a guy was holding something meant that it was the mystery creature, or wasn’t. T had meant that if it were holding something, it could be the creature. I asked how he could write the clues so they’d be easier to understand. He remembered how they were written in National Geographic Kids. “I’ll write them like that next time.” (Who knew that these logic puzzles would be a little lesson in writing clearly? Most excellent.)

Then he tried out my clues.

We had fun solving each other’s puzzles, so we each wrote another set of clues. “Let’s use more guys this time!” T enthused. Okay!

Note that his clues are more straightforward this time. He was especially excited about this clue: It does not have wings on it. He stumped me with that one. One of his guys–a wingless one–had a tiny bird emblem on his chest. With wings.

I was also charmed by this clue: It does not have any fire, or lightning, on it. Don’t you love the commas? You could argue that they aren’t necessary, but he’s playing with comma usage, and that excites me–language geek that I am.

We had a fine time writing clues for each other, and solving them. Much more fun than if I’d been suckered into playing Monopoly, and a thousand times more fun than him doing a math workbook page. Mr. T got some logic practice, some writing practice, some playing-with-guys time, and some playing-with-Mama time. And he was entirely engaged. All because I followed his lead.

That’s the kind of learning I love.

Have your kids led you down any trails lately?

audiobooks, anyone?

July 16, 2010 in books, homeschooling, learning, writing | 29 comments

A few months back when I asked for your help, you showed up in the comments like kind neighbors with casseroles at the house of a sick person. Would you do it again?

Can you tell me about your family and audiobook listening?

I’m starting a chapter on audiobooks for my book. (My book! Remember that old notion? Remember the chapter-a-month challenge? Golly gee whiz, I have some catching up to do.)

Listening to audiobooks together has probably been one of the most consistent activities we’ve done in our family’s thirteen years of homeschooling–a close second only to my reading aloud. From the time H was about five, we’ve almost always had an audiobook running in the car. We’ve listened to everything from Ramona the Pest to Odysseus. Nowadays H isn’t in the car with us very often, and the book is usually one that T and I have chosen together–but Lulu often surreptitiously switches off her iPod and listens along.

Both older kids also spent years listening to audiobooks in their rooms. Lulu especially. She’s an auditory learner and didn’t love reading until she was about eight. But she loved her audiobooks. And she listened to them again. And again. And again. And–it must be said–again. Mr. T has been doing the same for the last three years or so. I can’t believe that our Harry Potter discs haven’t worn down to wafers by now.

In my notebook, I’m jotting down notes about why I think we love audiobooks so much. Here are a few random thoughts.

Audiobooks make me feel less guilty about all the driving we do. All the activity-schlepping and errand-running is instantly transformed into a literature appreciation session.
Professional readers even make the classics captivating. Have you ever heard Tim Curry read A Christmas Carol? And Patrick Fraley’s rendition of Huckleberry Finn is a revelation. (I’ve decided that no kid should be expected to read Huckleberry Finn and all its confounding dialect, when the spoken version is such a joy.)
On days when I’m feeling sick or lazy, or one of the kids is feeling sick or lazy, we can curl up on the couch and have someone read to us. Someone who reads really well. (And if Mama isn’t feeling too sick or lazy, she might even be able to knit.)
Audiobooks allow kids who might not be reading yet–or may not enjoy reading–to lap up literature.
Likewise, audiobooks allow kids to enjoy books that might be more advanced than their reading abilities.
Listening to books–and re-listening to them!–helps kids internalize the flow and rhythm of good writing.
Some books I just don’t want to read aloud. All those thick-as-a-dictionary Harry Potters? You may call it sacrilege, but I just couldn’t do it. And why would I want to, when Jim Dale and his universe of wondrous voices does it so much better?
If you’re into silly phrases like vocabulary-builder, audiobooks are it. I’ll never forget the morning when seven-year-old Lulu accused her older brother of having “a severe lack of moral stamina.” (Thanks, Lemony Snicket!) I’m also pretty sure that audiobooks had something to do with H’s high SAT reading scores. Not that we listened because I cared a dang about SAT scores back then, but it’s a useful fringe benefit.
And perhaps most dear to my heart: when we listen in the car together, our drives often become impromptu literature analysis sessions. Casual book clubs, if you will. This isn’t something I instigate, mind you, but something that just happens. Someone will say something like I think J.K. Rowling makes the beginning drag on for too long or Why is it so funny when a bad guy like Count Olaf says a word like yep? And suddenly we’re all throwing in our opinions and dissecting just what makes writing good. It’s a beautiful thing. And do I see the results of these conversations come into play in my kids’ own writing? Um, yep.

I am still a great fan of reading aloud, and would never let audiobooks replace reading to my kids. But there’s something discretely captivating about a good audiobook. Maybe it’s the professional reader. Maybe it’s the fact that we manage to get through audiobooks faster than our read-alouds–and momentum can be an important factor in enjoying a book. Maybe it’s because it takes no extra energy from me to stay in the car a little longer when we get to a really good part. I don’t know. But I do know that listening to audiobooks has played a large role in my kids’ development as writers. And I want to include a chapter about that.

So tell me: Does your family listen to audiobooks? How? When? Where? Could you share some favorites?

Please feel welcome to respond to any or all of the above, or whatever else crosses your mind. Thank you. Your feedback means even more to me than a pan of homemade vegetarian lasagna.

chapter-a-month challenge: april

May 11, 2010 in chapter-a-month challenge, learning, writing | 10 comments

I almost forgot that I owe you my monthly update. I can just see you bouncing in your seat right now.

Thanks for indulging me. These posts keep me sticking to my goals.

They learn from us. We learn from them.

You may remember that my plan is to use the first three chapters to write about what each of my three kids have taught me about writing. I’ve shifted my ideas with each kid, and these reflections form a sort of nutshell history of how I went from a classroom model of teaching writing to something completely different.

The big lesson I learned from Lulu was the importance of helping a child develop a voice as a writer.

When I first began taking writing classes as an adult, I was always baffled when instructors used the term voice. How could an auditory term have anything to do with the written word? Clearly it was an important term: not only did all of my instructors use it; every one of my writing books had a chapter on voice (or sometimes one on style, which seemed essentially the same thing.)

Definitions of voice differ, depending on which writer you’re reading, but I came to understand voice as having personality and style on the page (or screen). In What A Writer Needs, a book for writing teachers, Ralph Fletcher offers this helpful definition: “When I talk about voice, I mean written words that carry with them the sense that someone has actually written them. Not a committee, not a computer: a single human being. Writing with voice has the same quirky cadence that makes human speech so impossible to resist listening to.”

I rarely took dictation from H, except when he was very young–before age six or so. With Lulu I began to do it more regularly, but I always felt a little guilty about it. I felt like she probably ought to be writing herself. But when she was eight, she dictated a story that started to set me straight on all that.

This time L. took a character from literature, Beverly Cleary’s Ramona Quimby, and dictated her own, original chapter in Cleary’s style. At the time L. had been reading the Ramona series–the first series of longer chapter books which she’d slurped down on her own–and listening to audiobook versions of the stories in her room. L. gave Ramona her own grandmother’s real-life experience of putting hand dishwashing liquid into the dishwasher, only to have it foam out in billows all over the kitchen floor.

Here’s how L.’s story, titled Oh Ramona, begins:

Ramona Quimby walked in through the back door.

“How was kindergarten?” her mother asked, in a tired voice.

“It was fine, except I gave Davy one of my worm rings and he said, ‘Yuck!’ and threw it back at me.”

“Oh Ramona,” Mrs. Quimby said.

“Will you read me a story, Mama?”

“Oh Ramona, I’ve got a headache and look at all those dishes I’ve got to put in the dishwasher.” She groaned as she pointed towards the sink full of dishes. “I’m going to lie down in the bedroom. You go play and stay out of mischief!”

Mrs. Quimby walked into the bedroom. Ramona looked from the kitchen to the bedroom and back to the kitchen.

“I can help Mama by putting all the dishes in the dishwasher and running it!” Ramona tiptoed into the kitchen, and as quietly as she could, began to load the dishwasher with the dishes. Ramona knew that her mother used soap in the dishwasher, so she climbed up and got the bottle of soap down from the counter. Ramona filled the dishwasher tray with soap. “Maybe I should put some more in, ’cause these dishes are really dirty.”

Of course, soon bubbles are oozing across the kitchen floor, and instantly Ramona is putting on rain gear to scoop up “bubble snow”, placing foam “whipped cream” on plates for a bubble feast, and having a “foam war” with her buddy, Howie. I was astounded as L. dictated this passage to me over the course of a few days, and I said so, something along the lines of, “You sound just like Beverly Cleary!” Which she did. Cleary’s style is all there: the weariness in Mrs. Quimby’s “Oh Ramona”; the worm ring detail; the way Ramona talks to herself; and, of course, her boundless, imaginative mischief.

I knew from my writing books that professional writers often start out by mimicking their heroes. Annie Dillard’s words bear Thoreau’s whispers; Michael Cunningham let Virginia Woolf’s ghost guide his pen. Michael Chabon writes about how, as a boy, he modeled his comic book club newsletter on the editorial pages of Marvel Comics’ Stan Lee. “I wrote it in breathless homage, rich in exclamation points, to Lee’s prose style, that intoxicating smartass amalgam of Oscar Levant, Walter Winchell, Mad magazine and thirty-year-old U.S. Army slang.” This, often, is how writers learn their craft. L. was learning by imitating her own master–and she was able to do so because I took the time to take dictation from her. I’m certain that she couldn’t have adopted the nuances of Cleary’s style if she’d had to do the writing herself. She was still struggling with basic spelling at that that point; content took a backseat to form when she wrote on her own.

The Ramona story in particular was enough to convince me to continue taking dictation from L. as long as she wanted it. I was an aspiring writer myself, still striving to find my own voice as an essayist. I knew how hard it could be to write in a consistent style–to balance humor and insight, story and analysis. I knew how hard it was to be captivating on a page. Even back then, I sensed that helping L. develop her own voice mattered far more than worrying over whether she knew how to start sentences with capitals, or punctuate contractions, or spell sufficiently for her age.

Kids. They wear me out sometimes, ’til I’m ready to collapse on my bed like Mrs. Quimby. But I learn from them every day. Every day.

Next month: what I learned about writing from Mr. T, the kid who never does anything the way you’re supposed to.

the wall beside the bed

April 29, 2010 in learning | 14 comments

Do not underestimate the power of the wall beside your child’s bed.

I didn’t really think much about it last summer, when I thumb-tacked that map of the world above Mr. T’s bed. He’d been interested in maps lately, and this one was colorful, with cute pictures of animals. I thought he’d like it.

I had no idea that such a small act would eventually prove my fathomless ignorance.

At first he was simply fascinated by certain places on the map. Mongolia. Sri Lanka. Greenland.

But soon he began to talk about places I’d never heard of.

Him: “Did you know that Norway is one of the highest countries in the world? Because of Spitsbergen.”

Spitsbergen?

Turns out it’s a Norwegian island in the Arctic Circle.

And, “Can you find Myanmar on the globe?”

Myanmar? I’ve never heard of Myanmar.

“It’s Burma, Mama.”

Oh.

We didn’t realize how much he’d been studying the map until one afternoon when Mr. T was spinning our globe at the kitchen table. Chris started naming countries for him to find.

“Argentina.”

“D-a-d-d-y! That’s too easy!”

“Laos.” He found it.

“Tajikistan.” Got it.

“Oman.” No problem.

I think Chris finally stumped him with Eritrea.

I’m just glad he hadn’t asked me to play. Although I could have found Argentina.

Another day my parents were over for dinner, and my dad started telling about a radio story he’d heard about Bangladesh. The story, he said, claimed that Bangladesh’s population was almost 160 million–in an area the size of Iowa.

Chris, a numbers guy, thought that sounded funny. “That can’t be right. That’s half the population of the United States.”

“It is right,” piped up Mr. T, and he ran out of the kitchen. Soon he was back, with a notebook and a pencil in his hand. He’d written out the number 133376684. “This how many people are in Bangladesh. It says so on my map.”

Which proves, you realize, that the kid has lain in bed looking at his map and contemplating the population of Bangladesh. (His map, with data from 2002, is already a bit outdated.)

I showed him some online geography games here. He played the alien game, in which the names of countries flash on the screen, and you click on the appropriate country on a very small map, so the alien knows where to go. T knew the locations of Greece, Saudi Arabia, Chad. Click, click, click. Lulu and I watched behind him, and when he clicked on Chad, we looked at each other sheepishly, knowing that if we played, our aliens would be lost and teleporting back home in no time.

He never asked to go back to that geography site again. Too easy.

He loves to play Scrambled States of America–but I’ve learned that my typical game-playing tact of “going easy on him” is not in my best interest here. He knows where all the states are, and he knows the capitals (sheesh!) My chances are better with Passport to Culture because the game includes questions about culture, instead of just geography. And I beat him at Take Off! the other day–only because we were playing the basic version, in which luck factors more than geographical knowledge. If we played “The Challenge Game”, I’d be a goner.

The corner of Mr. T’s map are bedraggled because he lies on his bed looking at it, while walking his feet up the wall. The map is constantly loosening from its tacks, and left dangling from one corner. I told T I’d like to find another copy of it, and have it mounted so it would be sturdier.

“No! I like this one!”

Clearly he does. But some day, if he tires of it, I’ll put some thought into what goes in its place, knowing what may follow. A Table of the Elements might be a good choice for the spot. Or a diagram of the complete animal kingdom. Or how about an elaborate timeline of the world, from pre-history to modern times?

Yeah, that would be good.

“but if I write for them, how will they ever learn to write themselves?”

April 2, 2010 in homeschooling, learning, my waldorf guilt, writing | 11 comments

This is a question that often comes up, when I talk to parents about taking dictation from their kids.

I understand the concern. I’ve had the same worry myself.

But remember this: if you’re taking dictation from kids, you’re helping them see the value of expressing themselves in writing. The usefulness of having a written record of their thoughts.

And eventually, they’ll start writing on their own.

It will probably start small.

A title to a drawing, maybe. Or a caption.

(This one cracks me up. It’s the last page of a battle comic. Note that everyone is head-stabbingly, eye-crossingly dead. I was wondering why he wanted to know how to spell Mondays…)

They may give names to characters drawn.

Or keep a list of favorite Pokemon cards.

Next thing you know, they’re jotting down statistics as they play video games. (Cue up my waldorf guilt.)

I didn’t ask Mr. T to do any of this writing. Usually, I didn’t even know he was doing it. I just found it lying around.

It took me a long time to believe this, but now I do: if you don’t bug kids about writing, if you don’t force them to do it, if you value writing in your home, if you’re willing to write for them occasionally…they will come to writing on their own. At their own time, in their own way. H. liked to make elaborate Calvin-esque Keep Out signs for his bedroom door. Lulu liked to keep lists of her Beanie Babies, and to write out fancy daily schedules for her school days at Hogwarts. And that eventually led to other, more advanced writing.

So don’t discount those Pokemon lists, or the Beanie Baby cataloguing. And don’t feel like you have to assign writing topics or penmanship practice pages. Barring underlying issues like dyslexia (which I promised my friend Susan I would acknowledge), kids can learn to write as organically as they learned to talk. They really can.

one hundred years of food

March 26, 2010 in creativity, from the kitchen, homeschooling, learning | 16 comments

Remember back in January, when Lulu and I watched all those old commercials, and I told you about her food project? She wanted to learn about food in the U.S. in the last century. Well, she worked at the project for two months, and finally finished it last week for our homeschool group’s history fair. (I wrote about the fair here last year.)

She decided to research each decade since 1910 to learn how food had changed in that decade. The book The Century In Food by Beverly Bundy was a big help, as was the internet.

For each decade she wrote an overview; then she came up with a menu, a few typical school lunches, a recipe and an interesting tidbit from the decade.

A big part of the fun was deciding how to display her information. There are always lots of tri-fold display boards at these fairs, and Lulu wanted to come up with something more engaging. She decided to put each decade’s information on some sort of food container that seemed emblematic of the decade.

She put the 1960s on an old Julia Child cookbook.

And don’t you love the 80s presented on a Big Gulp container, and the 90s on a package of Lunchables? (Or maybe I should say: doesn’t it make you cringe?)

She also made samples for visitors to try: a butterless, eggless, milkless cake from the wartime 1940s (surprisingly good!) and a pineapple upside-down cake from the 1950s. And she ran a loop of those wacky old commercials.

It surprised me how hard Lulu worked at this project. She had a vision for it and wouldn’t stop until it was finished. I think the history fair might have been a little disappointing for her–after all the work she did, it seemed that most visitors weren’t able to spend time to really explore her display. Then again, the main reward seemed to be the accomplishment she felt. If you go back to my last post and reconsider those Dan Pink abilities for the future, I’d say Lulu spent a few months romping in design (how she displayed the information), story (deciding how to tell each decade’s story in a compelling way), symphony (pulling together information from many places and creating something unique) and meaning (this topic mattered to Lulu, which was evident in the amount of time she put into it. Something about it really drove her.)

My favorite part of her display was her write-up of the decade of 2000-2010. Most of the resources she’d used didn’t include this decade, but that didn’t really matter–this was the one decade Lulu remembered herself. We talked about the decade a bit before she wrote, but most of her information came from discussions we’ve had over the last ten years. Lulu gets what’s happening with food in our country these days, and I’m proud of that. I’m not sure that goal would show up on a list of education standards, but it’s pretty important to us.

Here’s what she wrote.

“In the 2000s, the organic and Slow Food movements started to become popular. These movements brought America back towards where it had started at the beginning of the 1900s, buying fresh vegetables at local markets, cooking meals from scratch and using seasonal ingredients. Over the last century Americans had strayed farther and farther from this sort of cooking, until home-cooking meant heating something up or adding water. With the Slow Food movement, Americans began to cook natural, real health food, not the low-fat, calorie-free food that had been thought of as “healthy” in the past. Farmer’s markets, farm boxes of fruits and veggies and health food stores like Whole Foods are spreading across the country, bringing with them the idea that not only is Slow Food healthy, but it’s also delicious and enjoyable to make. Foods like organic eggs and milk, free-range chickens, grass-fed beef and local vegetables are beginning to appear on ordinary supermarket shelves and become staples in American diets. Restaurants are also following the movement, creating organic and seasonal menus that appeal to the next generation as well as the last one. Even First Lady Michelle Obama has chosen as her cause, while in the White House, to improve the eating habits of American children and bring healthy foods back to schools.

Even with these movements, America is still very much a country built on convenience foods, but that is beginning to change. And maybe one day in the near future, America will have come full circle, back to the wholesome, homemade foods of the 1910s.”

Hopeful, don’t you think?

I think she learned a lot.

why you need a whole new mind

March 18, 2010 in books, creativity, homeschooling, learning | 12 comments

I know I’ve been hinting at my admiration for A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink, for the last month or so, but I’ve finally managed to write a proper post about it.

Because I think you should read this book.

mr. t tries on a whole new mind

It’s a book about how we’re leaving an era widely known as the Information Age, and entering a new one. Pink writes, “We are moving from an economy and a society built on the logical, linear, computerlike capabilities of the Information Age to an economy and society built on the inventive, empathetic, big-picture capabilities of what’s rising in its place, the Conceptual Age.” And this book is all about the skills we’ll need in this new age.

The premise here is that many of the jobs held in the Information Age are now carried out by computers, or outsourced to foreign labor. So the jobs of the future will require skills that are more right-brained than left-brained, skills that Pink calls “high concept” and “high touch”.

And while the book’s primary audience is the business world, I think New Mind has big implications for parents, and for homeschooling parents in particular. (An aside: I know that many of my readers aren’t homeschoolers. Still, the fact that you follow this blog, and based on the comments many of you have left, I assume that we have some intersecting philosophies about parenting. I imagine that you value learning that’s meaningful to your child. So while I refer to homeschoolers in the rest of this post for the sake of sentence fluidity, know that I’m speaking to any parent who takes a particular, deep interest in his or her child’s learning.)

Anyway, what’s interesting about the skills–or “abilities”–that Pink writes about is that they’re nothing like the logical, linear skills that schools have convinced us that we’ll need. Let’s see if I can summarize.

Design. Pink says that these days, products, services, and experiences can’t be just functional. “Today it’s economically crucial and personally rewarding to create something that is also beautiful, whimsical, or emotionally engaging.” Design matters! Which validates the time your son spends designing a better skateboard ramp, or your daughter spends making a model Indian kitchen. And it’s another reason why project-based learning can be so valuable: when kids choose their own projects and create them, they’re designers. And the act of designing is almost always fulfilling.
Story. Hee-haw, you know I love this one! Pink’s point here is that information these days is so accessible that it’s overwhelming. We need people who can present information and data in a compelling way–with story. Story is why you remember the history you’ve learned via historical novels, films, and personal accounts, but not what you learned from a textbook. It’s not so important that our kids memorize a bunch of information; it’s more important that they can shape information into something that’s meaningful and captivating to others. So all those silly Pokemon stories that your kid endlessly rattles off? It’s teaching him to be a storyteller, and it’s good stuff. Keep it going.
Symphony. This is the skill of being able to gather disparate bits into something new. This particular ability fascinates me for egocentric reasons–it’s a skill I never conceived of before, but it’s one I think I’m pretty good at. For instance, I’ve always belittled myself for not being a very creative cook. I tend to follow recipes, rather than make up my own. But when I think more about it, I realize that when I cook, I actually pull together lots of information. If I want to make a vegetable lasagna, say, my mind will go back to dozens of recipes I’ve looked at or tried over the last twenty years–and frighteningly, I usually remember where I saw them–and I’ll combine ideas from several and create something new, which is creative in its own way. It’s the same skill that had me cutting up and reassembling my writing in my last post; it’s the one that compels me to compile a bunch of ideas into a book. Symphony is the skill of an applied researcher, I suppose, and it’s something that no one ever told me I had talent for. But I see my kids cultivating it constantly in their self-designed projects–like when one combines wii games with Norse myths. Symphony also includes metaphorical thinking, which is an ability that I always admire, as a writer.
Empathy. The ability to walk in another’s shoes. This isn’t a skill that schools truly value–you don’t see standardized tests measuring empathy. But it is an ability that many parents hope to nurture in their kids. And it’s worth nurturing, not only because it’s noble and decent but, according to Pink, it’s also practical. Many jobs of the future will require people to do what computers can’t–interpret the emotional needs of others.
Play. Homeschoolers don’t need to be convinced of the importance of play in daily life. We see how much our kids learn from play; we understand that having enough time for play is vital. I found Pink’s chapter on play a bit disappointing; his examples highlighting the importance of play are laughing clubs in India, and the effects of playing video games. Somehow I would have liked more–but I didn’t need to be persuaded. My kids taught me the importance of play years ago.
Meaning. This is the ability to understand deeper underlying reasons for doing what we do: “purpose, transcendence, and spiritual fulfillment”. This is another ability in which homeschoolers have an intrinsic advantage. If our kids have control over what they learn, it gives their learning value and meaning. They aren’t learning for someone else’s purposes, but because their learning matters to them. Pink quotes American journalist Gregg Easterbrook: “A transition from material want to meaning want is in progress on an historically unprecedented scale–involving hundreds of millions of people–and may eventually be recognized as the principal cultural development of our age.” I think homeschoolers are on the forefront of this transition.

Pink devotes a chapter to each ability, followed by a portfolio of ideas for developing those abilities. The story portfolio, for example, encourages the reader to consider writing a 50-word mini saga, to interview and record friends, to visit a storytelling festival (Carrie, I want to do that this year!), to experiment with digital storytelling. So many exciting ideas. It’s a fun book, an enjoyable read–not what I expected from a book in the Business section.

But here’s what thrills me most about this book: My kids use these abilities constantly. There’s a whole lot of right-brained thinking going on around here. But the kids don’t learn this way because their dad and I want them to “rule the future”, as New Mind‘s subtitle says right-brained thinkers will. We don’t homeschool because we want our kids to get into good colleges, or get better jobs. We’ve homeschooled because we want them to be curious, creative people who love to learn, who know their passions and value the notion that those passions might guide their lives. Their learning is kid-driven and mostly project-based because that’s the sort of learning that motivates them.

Pink’s book won’t change our homeschooling. But it does validate what we’re already doing. A Whole New Mind makes me realize that learning driven by kids and based on their interests isn’t just fun, it’s practical. It’s giving them skills that are not only rewarding and fulfilling but–dare I use this word–marketable. And yes, I’ve always known this, always believed it, but it’s awfully nice to read a carefully researched book written for the big, bad Business World that seconds what homeschoolers have always known.

So I think you should read this book. Not because it will change your life, but because it might give you courage to keep at the life you’ve chosen.

chapter-a-month challenge: february

March 10, 2010 in chapter-a-month challenge, learning, writing | 10 comments

I’m a little late, but here’s how I’m doing with my project.

It always feels a little funny sharing a work-in-progress. I read a post from ysolda on her fabulous knitting blog, about her qualms with sharing her designs-in-progress. She does share, saying, “Personally I think it’s pretty interesting to see a project build and gain some insight into the development process.” (And doesn’t the sweater she’s working on look gorgeous? Check out the post with the wrist detail. I want to knit that!)

I’m always fascinated with the creative processes of others. I’m hoping that some of you out there feel the same. If nothing else, if you don’t write yourself, what I share here might help you see what a messy process writing can be. It might help you understand your kids’ frustrations when they write.

Anyway, I don’t have a chapter this month. But I have an awful lot of stuff.

I kept starting new parts, but nothing came together. It was like trying to gather up a ball of bread dough that didn’t have enough moisture. I finally realized what was holding me back.

I had this idea–which I still like–that I wanted to write very short chapters for this book. Break down my ideas into small bits, followed with practical suggestions, so parents could pick up the book and consider one small idea at a time–or they could read several.

But here’s what I realized: I don’t write short. Gee, I’ll bet you’re thinking, no duh. Have you ever seen a short post on this blog? What I’ve always loved about the essay form is that it imitates the thought process. It takes off in unexpected directions, incorporating story, analysis, argument and wonder. It’s a little unwieldy. That’s my style, and I think I need to go with it.

That realization opened up the possibilities for me. Instead of not knowing what to do with those chunks in which I’d written about each of my kids, it occurred to me that each of those sections was part of a bigger idea. With each kid I learned something new about writing with homeschoolers:

With H, I learned that the traditional school model of having kids take on their own writing at age six doesn’t work very well.
With Lulu, I learned that what’s most important is to find ways to help kids want to write, and to develop their voices as writers.
With Mr. T, I learned that homeschoolers can put the previous notions into practice differently. We can use an entirely different model.

Suddenly, I realized that I could write a chapter on each of those ideas, incorporating the sections I’d written about my kids with the newer sections I’d been working on. I could try to carry my readers along my own evolution of thoughts about kids and writing–assuming that many readers might follow a similar evolution–leading them right into the practical ideas that will form most of the book.

And I knew what I needed to do next. It was time for a cut-and-paste session.

Cutting up and rearranging my work in the back of the car, while Mr. T was at his wilderness program.

This is one of my favorite techniques for when writing isn’t working. Take what you have, cut it up and play with the order. It’s fun, and it almost always leads to new ideas. If nothing else, it gets you up from your writing chair and moving, which is always helpful.

I helped a homeschooled friend on her college essays this fall. She’d written a nice essay on her love of cycling, but it wasn’t quite capturing her passion. It wasn’t lively enough. I remembered a beautiful poem she’d written in our writer’s workshop, a very sensory, tangible poem about one particular ride. I suggested that she might want to cut up her essay and her poem, and see if she could work them into one.

Her resulting essay was unique and vivid and wonderful. I hope it helps get her where she wants to go.

At any rate, my own cutting and pasting session was just what I needed. Suddenly all my ideas are coming together, and I have a big, shaggy ball of dough to knead. It needs work, but it’s working.

This month I hope to write a good draft of the chapter on H and the traditional school model of writing (and why it often doesn’t work). I’ll let you know how how it goes.

Most likely at painstaking length.

thank you

February 25, 2010 in homeschooling, learning, writing | 4 comments

Thank you to all who left a comment on my last post. Thank you so much.

Here’s the cherry on top that I promised. I just wish I could give you each one of the actual profiteroles that Lulu made for her grandparents’ birthdays, with handmade bittersweet chocolate sauce, of course!

I was touched that so many of you took the time to leave thoughts that seemed deeply pondered, and were so wonderfully honest. You have no idea how much you’ve helped me. (And if you didn’t leave a comment yet, it’s not too late. I’d love more feedback!)

I feel a little sheepish about how most of you weren’t asking for advice, but I stepped right up and elected myself the Dear Abby of Homeschooled Writing. Somehow I can’t help myself. When people start talking kids and writing, I get giddy. I could put duct tape on my mouth and sit on my hands, yet if you started talking about your kids and their writing experiences I would bounce up and down and try to mumble through the tape, “I have an idea for you!”

One reason for my feedback is that I can’t lose the teacher part of me that loves to help people. But I write back for selfish reasons too. As I respond to your hopes and concerns, I’m figuring out my own thoughts on the subject. Like anyone, I crystallize what I think about a topic as I write about it–which is just one more wonderful reason for writing, and one that Susan and both Carries alluded to in their hopes for their kids. And crystallizing your ideas is pretty important, when you’re endeavoring to write a book.

What your feedback did more than anything was give me an audience for this book. Any writer will tell you that if you want your work to be effective, you need to know who you’re writing for. Now, when I sit down and write, I’m writing to you, you who leave me comments here, sharing your worries and your desires about your kids and their writing. You’ve become my audience, like it or not, and having you in mind has given me a focus that I didn’t have before. Finally, I know where the book should begin and I’ve begun it, because I know what I want to tell you.

I wish we could all sit around a table, talking kids and writing and eating profiteroles. But until that day comes, I’m ever grateful to gather with you here. Thanks for hanging out and telling me what’s on your mind. It’s just what I needed to hear.

pretty please?

February 19, 2010 in homeschooling, learning, writing | 44 comments

I need your help.

I’m writing myself in circles with the chapter I’m working on, and it occurred to me that some feedback from actual rather than virtual people would be incredibly useful.

I have two questions that I’d love to have answered.

What are your concerns regarding your kids and writing?

What goals hopes do you have for your kids as writers?

(Edited to add: after reading your comments, it seems that many parents once had concerns about their kids’ writing, but have let them go. Hooray! If you want to mention what your former concerns were, that would be helpful to me too. I think that parents of younger kids often have more concerns, as they haven’t yet been able to watch their kids evolve as writers.

Also, I changed the word goals to hopes in the second question, after reading Diane’s comment below. She’s right: goals connotes a sense of the parent steering the kayak and mapping the voyage. I’m really more interested in the hopes you have for your kids, regardless of your role in how they might get there.)

If you don’t have children (or even if you do), feel free to answer the same questions about yourself.

Quick responses of a few words are fine, as are wordy rambles. Any feedback will help.

Thank you. With a cherry on top.

norse myths, wii games and a whole lot of thinking

February 14, 2010 in books, creativity, homeschooling, learning, my waldorf guilt, writing | 19 comments

The latest episode of my waldorf guilt.

If you haven’t been reading along, these are the posts in which I wring my hands over how un-waldorfy things can get around here, and how I tend to feel guilty about it. Or try to justify why I don’t feel guilty.

I’ve been feeling less and less guilty lately. Brought on by a confluence of different ideas from different people.

First was Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs. I’ve already raved on and on about this book, so I’ll spare you. (Although if you can get your hands on the audiobook version, which Chabon reads, you must.) In my reflection on the book, I wrote this:

“There’s something about the way Chabon combines his Pulitzer Prize-winning style with the most base cultural references that captivates me. In his essay on Legos—one that had particular resonance for me as the mother of two Lego-loving sons—Chabon writes, “Time after time, playing Legos with my kids, I would fall under the spell of the old familiar crunching. It’s the sound of creativity itself, of the inventive mind at work, making something new out of what you have been given by your culture, what you know you will need to do the job, and what you happen to stumble upon along the way.” That making something new of what you have been given by your culture is a big part of Chabon’s genius. It’s precisely what he does in these essays, again and again.”

And one could certainly argue that Chabon made something new of what he was given by his culture when he took his lowly childhood love of comic books and fashioned it into a Pulitzer prize-winning novel.

Second was my reading of Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. I’m planning to write a post on the book soon, so I won’t say much yet. But holy sheep dip, this book has so many implications for educators–for homeschoolers especially–about the skills kids will really need in the future. So many of Pink’s ideas are what I and a world of other homeschoolers have intuited over the years, but what a joy to get such heavily-researched validation!

Third was yet another insightful post by Lori at camp creek about not limiting what our kids learn from. (You may have already clicked on my link to this post in the sidebar–if not, go read!)

Which all led to the morning when Mr. T was trying to come up with a project for our homeschool history fair, based on his interest in Norse myths. I can’t remember who came up with the idea first–it may have been my suggestion after I saw how he was “enacting” a video game by jumping across the family room furniture. But somehow the idea formed: he plans to design his own Lego Wii-style game, based on Norse mythology.

map of the nine Norse worlds

Now he won’t be actually making a playable game, of course. But he’s imagining levels and drawing pictures and narrating to me what happens in each. And we’re thinking of begging his big brother to help him make some stop-animation films for each level.

Here’s what he has so far. My waldorf guilt must warn you that there is a lot of virtual punching involved. But if you can hang in there, I’ll explain what I think the kid is getting from this.

map of level 1

LEVEL 1: THE BATTLE OF YMIR

Object: Defeat Ymir

First of all, go to Ymir and punch him three times. He will jump to a ledge. Beware, he’ll throw icicles down! Also, jotuns will fall from the sky. They’ll only take one punch to defeat.

Remember, don’t go into Ginnungagap or the sides of the board or you’ll die.

Go under Ymir’s ledge and pull down a lever. More ledges will come out of the wall. Jump on them to get to Ymir’s ledge and punch him three times. He’ll jump to a new ledge and the one you’re on will explode. You’ll fall to the ground.

Then, go under Ymir’s new ledge and step on one of the three red squares. Your teammates will step on the other red squares. Then Ymir’s new ledge will come down. Jump on to it and punch him three times. He’ll jump to the ground. Punch him three more times and the level will end.

Tips:

How to get the magic box: in Free Play, be Loki or a different character that can jump really high and jump on to the island in the middle of Ginnungagap. Collect the floating box.

If you win:

You unlock Odin and his brothers and you can be them in Free Play.

How this level is based on Norse myths:

Well, there really wasn’t any levers, red squares, floating boxes, jotuns falling from the sky, or an island in the middle of Ginnungagap. Really, there wasn’t any Lego things whatsoever.

What there really was were the characters of Odin, Loeder and Hoenir, who were brothers and the first of the Aesir gods. There also was Ymir, who was the first of the jotun race, or a frost giant. Odin and his brothers really fought Ymir and they did throw him into Ginnungagap. I didn’t put blood in because I didn’t want it to be too violent, but there was blood in the story. Ginnungagap was a giant pit in the middle of Niflheim and Muspelheim, the first of the nine Norse worlds.

Nifty fact:

The Star Wars planet Mustafar was based on Muspelheim.

First, I have to tell you how incredibly excited Mr. T is about this project. He thinks about future levels endlessly, and begs me to take more dictation. So there’s deep immersion.

Second, there are lots of writing skills at work here. After I wrote Level 1, he said, “Now do the dot-dot thing.”

I knew what he was getting at. “You mean put a colon in?”

“Yes, a colon.” And he came to check that I did it right. On the next line, after I typed object, he said, “Now put a colon.”

How can I not be charmed by an eight-year-old who requests colons in all the right places?

I asked him if he’d consider adding the How this level is based on Norse myths section (hoping to make sure the project looks somewhat educational for the homeschool fair.) Mr. T was happy to. He said, “Can the narrator be funny in that part?”

“What?” I didn’t see that question coming.

“You know, funny. Like this.” And he proceeded to narrate the section above, influenced, I’m pretty sure, by the disclaimer page that follows each Magic Schoolbus book. My favorite part is Really, there wasn’t any Lego things whatsoever. (I’m not fixing his grammar at this point–he’ll learn to use the right verb tenses in time, but for now I want to keep intact his eight-year-old voice.) I love how he’s picking up the notion that one can write with personality and humor, even in nonfiction.

“Oh, and I want to add a nifty fact.” A nifty fact? I have no idea where he got that phrase. From National Geographic Kids? From one of the many behind-the-scenes books on comics that he’s read? When I asked where he got this particular nifty fact, he ran upstairs and brought down his Star Wars encyclopedia. Surely wii games and Star Wars books are just the sort of “crap” that Michael Chabon writes about; my kid is using crap to learn how to make his informational writing captivating.

He’s using just the sort of right-brained thinking that Pink writes about to put this project together. He’s researching Norse myths and considering the wii games that he likes to play. Then he’s applying his research to design a game that takes into account those myths while also being entertaining. Silly as his project may sound, I’m convinced that these are the types of skills the kids of today will need in the future. It’s not the content that he’s working with that matters so much, it’s the thinking skills involved.

If content like wii games is what captivates my kid, I’m willing to go with it. And, surprisingly, I don’t feel even a smidge guilty.

thoughts on a year-long project (or, boring my readers for one last time)

January 25, 2010 in books, chapter-a-month challenge, learning, my year of essayists, writing | 16 comments

On New Year’s morning, I woke to find a message in my inbox telling me that Scott Russell Sanders had left a comment on my blog. Sanders was my essayist for October, and reading his message was such a thrill, and a closing more satisfying than I ever could have imagined for my year-long project.

This wasn’t the first time a writer had left a comment on my blog, but it was the first of my beloved essayists to stop and say hello. I’m not sure I would have ever had the gall to put these thoughts out in public if I’d ever dreamed that the writers themselves might show up to read what I’d written. And I’m not sure I would have ever started this project if I’d realized what a time-consuming creature it would become.

Oh, it was time-consuming. There was at least one book to read each month. (And not a lick of fiction all year–not a lick!) After reading, I had to go back over my highlights and select favorites. Type them in and explain what I admired about them. And then write a little nutshell overview of what I thought about the writer. Those posts took me hours to write–usually over several days. Somehow they got longer and longer as the months went on, yet they consistently received far fewer comments than any of my regular posts. What was I thinking? What kept me doing it, month after month, like that dutiful teachers’ pet in the front row that makes everyone cross their eyes?

I’m not entirely sure. There was something about declaring the project in public that fueled me. Who wants to fail on the stage of the World Wide Web? But more than that, I think, it became clear in the early months that I was learning an awful lot from the project. Here’s what I wrote when I first started out:

“The idea of studying essayists came to me in late December, when I was reading some writer’s list of favorite writers. And I realized, with plenty of despair and loathing, that although I’ve been reading and writing essays for thirteen years now, I would have a hard time coming up with a list of favorite essayists. I could give you a couple names, but a couple is a set, mere salt and pepper shakers. Not a list.”

And now? After twelve months of being a good student, sitting as I am in the front row, I can rattle off a long list of favorites. I can even tell what I’ve learned from each one. (Not that I can apply what I’ve learned. But I’m trying.)

Annie Dillard showed me how to observe, how to make every word in every sentence count; Michel de Montaigne showed that in an essay, it’s more important to raise questions than to answer them. From Sue Hubbell I learned how to approach instructive writing using the essayist’s toolbox, and from Joan Didion how to work the telling detail, and the rhythm of a paragraph. I will always love Anne Lamott for her humor, her heart, and her wacky, spot-on metaphors. I’ll always appreciate Molly Wizenberg for showing me how to leap from the blogging world to the literary one. E.B. White showed me how an essayist can be witty and intelligent yet still downright charming, while Pico Iyer taught me how to pay attention to the details in the world around me, whether I’m in Iceland or my own kitchen. M.F.K. Fisher showed how insight into people is as important as details about things–and how to be sassy. Scott Russell Sanders taught me how to craft beautiful lines about pain as well as joy, and Michael Chabon showed me how to craft beautiful lines, somehow, from the most mundane bits from our culture and our days. And Adam Gopnik, well, Adam Gopnik will always be the Scarecrow to my Dorothy, my first favorite essayist.

This project has been so satisfying. I’m thinking of slurping all the posts into a Blurb book, so I can revisit all those fabulous lines until they burn themselves into my brain and fingers and make me a better writer.

Recognizing the power that a public year-long project seems to have on me, as the year wound down I began considering a new project for the new year. As good as it would be for me to read another dozen essayists, to finally get around to studying Virginia Woolf, I’m not doing it. It just took too much time. I thought about doing something completely different, something with photography, because I want to take better pictures.

But eventually I realized that the natural follow-up to this project would be to take what I’ve learned this year and to try to apply it to my own writing. And to make some progress on my book idea, since it’s the project that matters most to me right now. So I’ve come up with something I’m calling my Chapter-A-Month Challenge. I’m going to try to get a draft of a new book chapter completed each month.

I have no idea if I can pull this off. I write s-l-o-w-l-y. I write about as fast as Mr. T brushes his teeth, because he spends most of his brushing time making faces in the mirror. But at least I can try to write slowly more often, right? Once a month I’ll report here on how it’s going. Maybe I’ll share a few lines; maybe I’ll just whine about how hard it is to wake up at 5:00 am on Tuesdays to write. I’m not sure.

I’m putting the challenge on my blog for the kick-in-the-pants effect I hope it will have on my writing, not because I think you, dear readers, will find it interesting. I hope you don’t mind indulging me once a month.

The week I finished off my essayist project, I read one more essay. This one was by Alexander Chee, from Mentors, Muses and Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives. It’s an essay about the time Chee spent in the classroom of Annie Dillard, my January essayist from last year. By the time you get to the part where Dillard tells her students that whenever they’re in a bookstore, they should put their finger in the place on the shelf where their own book would be, you are guaranteed to have goosebumps if you’re an aspiring writer yourself.

“If I’ve done my job, she said in the last class, you won’t be happy with anything you write for the next ten years. It’s not because you won’t be writing well, but because I’ve raised your standards for yourself. Don’t compare yourselves with each other. Compare yourselves to Colette, or Henry James, or Edith Wharton. Compare yourselves to the classics. Shoot there.”

After nearly twenty years of trying to teach myself to write, I’m sure I won’t be satisfied after another ten. But after twelve months of reading some pretty excellent essayists, twelve months of sampling them and savoring them, now, when it comes to my own writing, at least I know what I’m shooting for.

on rice-a-roni and inspiration

January 15, 2010 in homeschooling, learning | 28 comments

I decided against posting my thoughts on my essayist project just yet. I thought that maybe two essayist posts in a row might be about as thrilling as back-to-back episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger.

I’ve been thinking about how homeschooling ebbs and flows. There are days and weeks when the kids come up with projects that enthrall them, that keep them busy and buzzing. There are weeks when it seems that we’re doing nothing more than running around, to performances or classes or appointments, or we’re preparing for a holiday or a few days out of town, and all we manage is a little reading together. Then there are days that just don’t feel inspired, when we’re home and the kids are dabbling at a little math here, a little reading there and no one seems thrilled about anything.

This, however, has been a particularly good week, one of those busy and buzzing weeks. Lulu and Mr. T have both found projects that have them all worked up.

Lulu decided that she wants to study the history of American food in the last century. She’s been looking at popular recipes for different decades, at particular products and when they were introduced, at typical lunches and dinners through the years, at how food trends are often tied to what’s going on in the world. It’s fascinating.

She’s just done a quick overview so far. By the time she got to the 70′s, she started asking what products I remembered and before long, that Great Talent of mine, which you may remember from the beginning of my last post, began to rear its ugly head. Lulu would name a food product, and I would sing its jingle. I spent the morning singing:

“Every single Pringle’s potato chip is a perfect (doo doo doo) potato chip…”

and

“Hamburger Helper helps her hamburger help her…make a great meal.”

and

“Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat.”

(But why is it the San Francisco treat? I have lived in San Francisco, and never once saw a person eating Rice-A-Roni. Look, even Rice-A-Roni’s own website “explains” the connection without explaining anything. Oh, but Wikipedia has the story! A deep sigh, after decades.)

And of course, once I started jingling, Lulu had to search out the old commercials on YouTube. Here’s one of my favorites. My best friend and I performed this endlessly, as a duet, for our parents, who acted as if they found it entertaining.

Fast Tube by Casper

In between the commercial karaoke, Mr. T wanted to learn about spiders. As I read to him, he began to notice how spiders come in different types. How they have particular strengths and weaknesses. And methods of attack.

Is this beginning to sound familiar?

He began to notice that spiders are a lot like Pokemon.

It was just a small suggestion: “You could make spider cards, like Pokemon cards.”

Suddenly, he was bouncing on to the arm of the couch on his knees. On and off and and on and off. “I don’t want to just make cards! I want to design a game! There will be a game board and enemies and…”

He was off.

So they’ve been blissfully busy all week. As a homeschooling parent, I wish all of our days were like this. But hard as I try to make that happen, I can’t. You can’t manufacture inspiration. I try, I do, but sometimes a little suggestion like You could make spider cards, like Pokemon cards is met with nothing more than a grunt. I remind myself that we need the slow, stewing, simmering days for ideas to form and collect into something grand. You need to make lots of pots of rice, lots of pots of vermicelli before the notion strikes to throw them into a pot together and cause an entire generation to sing a jingle that no one really understands.

Some days are ablaze with singing in the kitchen, with the invention of epic games. And some days are about as thrilling as back-to-back episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger. That’s just how it is.

woman with a mission

January 4, 2010 in homeschooling, learning, writing | 27 comments

I hesitated about posting this photo. But I checked with its author, Mr. T, and he okayed it.

This was a slip for our Advent box. A box in which, during Advent, we place slips of paper sharing how we’ve brought light, somehow, to someone else.

Mr. T wrote this one. He didn’t fold it in half, so when I opened the box to add a slip of my own one day, this was sitting on top, waiting to charm me. In his own quirky spelling, Mr. T had written I did not interrupt when Mama was doing the Writer’s Workshop.

The workshop is something I facilitate for a group of kids who are Lulu’s age. And whenever we meet, Mr. T has to keep himself busy and stay out of the way for two hours. Not always an easy task for an eight-year-old boy, but clearly he recognizes that it helps me when he does.

I post the slip here for a few reasons. First, I’m making just two resolutions for the new year. One is to make substantial progress on my book project. The other, a sort of extension of the first, is to post more often about writing with kids.

Because, as you can imagine, I’m fairly immersed in the topic these days. But even more, I want to put other parents at ease when it comes to kids’ writing. Whenever I give workshops on writing, whenever I post here on the topic, whenever I simply find myself in a conversation with other parents about writing, I realize that many parents have a lot of anxiety about kids and writing.

And I have a personal mission to help them stop worrying so much.

Look at that little slip of paper. Isn’t the spelling a mess? My kid is eight years old; if he went to school he’d be in second grade. I think his teacher might be concerned that he spells doing as doni and shop as soepo. Soepo?

Am I worried? Nope. (Noepo?) See, this kid only writes on his own in little bits here and there, when he wants to. On his comics, on lists, for games he’s imagining. Mostly, I write for him, taking dictation. He’s quite a storyteller.

With my oldest, I did a fair amount of forcing when it came to writing. And he was the only one of my kids to say he hated writing. (Luckily, he grew out of that frustration before long.) With my younger two, I decided that nothing was worth making them hate something that I loved so dearly. So I took dictation from them and let writing happen more slowly and organically.

It’s still happening slowly and organically with Mr. T.

I love that slip of paper. It may not look like much from an eight-year-old, but it was writing that Mr. T did without prompting, because he wanted to. I don’t think he worried much about the spelling. And I think spelling will always challenge him somewhat–he’s more of an auditory learner than a visual one. But then again, look at how he uses an apostrophe in the word writer’s. He can’t spell the word correctly, but he can punctuate it. Interesting, huh? (He picks up a lot of grammar naturally when I take dictation from him.)

If posting that little slip helps even one parent breathe easier about his or her own kids’ writing, then I’m glad I did it. And I plan to continue writing about writing. If you have questions or comments about your kids and their writing, let’s start talking here. Because it’s a new year, and I’m a woman with a mission.

the college application monster

December 1, 2009 in learning, wondering | 22 comments

Well, hello.

You may be thinking that I haven’t written here because I got busy with Thanksgiving, but you would be wrong. I haven’t written because I was attacked by the college application monster.

This is the first time this has happened to me. Back in the day, twenty-seven or so years ago, I applied to precisely one college. It was a simple check-the-boxes sort of affair, devoid of essays or any such matter, to a public university that lay within driving distance of my home. Two years later I filled out one more application, a transfer one this time, which may or may not have required an essay–I don’t remember–to a different public university at the other end of the state. I waited for a response and then packed my bags. That was it.

It’s a new millennium and my, oh my, how things have changed. The college application process has morphed into a monster. If you aren’t already acquainted with this particular beast, allow me to introduce you.

H is applying to four colleges. These days, that’s an unreasonably low number, according to H’s high school counselor and most other kids at his school. But this kid knows what he wants, and it’s a very particular sort of film production program. There are two schools which offer programs that thrill him, one that comes in a distant third, and another that fills the role, in application parlance, of “safety school”.

Four applications. Sounds manageable, doesn’t it?

Don’t be silly. Shall we begin with the essays?

You may have heard of something called the Common Application, which allows students to fill out a single application which can then be forwarded to several schools. This year’s essay options for the Common Application are as follows (Choose one, 250 words minimum):

Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.
Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.
Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music, science, etc.) that has had an influence on you, and explain that influence.
A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.
Topic of your choice.

If one essay sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. Only two of the four schools H is applying to even use the Common Application. The other two schools have their own essay requirements. Which, of course, differ from each other. One school requires a response to one of these prompts (500-700 words):

Write an essay about an event or experience that helped you learn what is important to you and why it is important.
Tell us about a creative project, performance or other work of yours and how it reflects your vision or voice.
Reflect on a challenge you overcame through persistence.

The other school requires a response to each of the following essays (1,000 words for both essays combined):

Describe the world you come from — for example, your family, community or school — and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.
Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?

And, lest you think that a single essay for those Common Application schools is all that’s required, let me tell you about the insufficiently named “school supplements”. These are extra applications for Common Application schools, unique to each school. Some of the “supplemental” questions H must answer are:

If you had the opportunity to spend one day in New York City with a famous New Yorker, who would it be and what would you do?
Write a haiku, limerick or short (eight lines or fewer) poem that best represents you.
In the year 2050, a movie is being made of your life. Please tell us the name of your movie and briefly summarize the story line.
Please tell us what led you to select your anticipated academic program and what interests you most about your intended discipline.
Please tell us three specific features of our university that interest you.

Oh, and let’s not forget the short responses for the non-Common Application schools:

Tell us about an activity that is important to you and why.
Describe your academic interests and how you plan to pursue them at our university.
Optional: Please provide any information that you believe is relevant to our consideration of you as an applicant, but not already discussed or explained in your application.

Then there are “quick-takes” which are one-line responses to silly questions like “favorite food”, “last book read” or “role model”. My kid loved these because he could fill in goofy answers just because the requests are so ridiculous and it’s fun to fill in those spaces with something temporary and completely inappropriate so your mother sitting beside you can freak out, panicking that the form will somehow submit itself with your “role model” response saying “Jack Black” or “Bob” or “You”.

Okay. That’s a lot of writing, but it seems manageable, no? Not so fast, my friend, we haven’t even begun with the film program requirements. One school requires this:

The personal statement will be read by the Film & Television Production Admission Committee as a measure of creativity, self-awareness and vision. There is no standard format or correct answer. We are looking for a sense of you as a unique individual and how your distinctive experiences, characteristics, background, values and/or views of the world have shaped who you are and what you want to say as a creative filmmaker. Be specific, vivid and focused. (1,000 words or less)
The Production Program is committed to providing students with a broad understanding of both fiction and nonfiction filmmaking, in cinema, television and new media, and in the major creative roles of writing, producing, directing, cinematography, editing and sound. Given what you know now (and without committing yourself in any way) tell us which of the above aspects of filmmaking seems of particular interest to you and why. (200 words or less)
Writing Samples (choose one)

An outline for a four-minute film that contains no dialogue. It can be fiction or non-fiction. The story has to be communicated visually. (no more than two pages)
A dialogue scene between two people. Provide a one-paragraph introduction describing the two characters in screenplay format. (no more than three pages)
Describe a concept for a feature-length movie, fiction or documentary, which you would like to develop. (No more than two pages)

Create a brief narrative video in which you had a major creative role. The video can be either live-action or animation, fiction or documentary, but it should reflect your aesthetic tastes and intellectual and emotional interests. (no more than five minutes)
Portfolio List: The portfolio list is a written record of the applicant’s creative materials. It should include a concise description of each project, the month and year the project was completed, the applicant’s creative role and the purpose of the project.

Another film program requires this:

A one-page resume that highlights creative work accomplished, activities and relevant employment.
A film or video/ live action, animation or documentary. Your submission should reflect storytelling skills that convey conflict, character as well as a beginning, middle and end.
Dramatic Essay – Introduce yourself. Describe an unforgettable event in your life and how it changed your perception of yourself or the view of someone close to you. This event can be dramatic and/or comedic. The assignment may be written as a short story in the first person or as an essay. (Up to four typed, double-spaced 8.5” x 11″ pages.)

And a third this:

Essay one: Describe your dream job. (One page maximum.)
Essay two: Create a self-introductory video no more than two minutes in length. Your video should visually highlight something about yourself, your personality, your interests, etc. that is not related to film. The only rule is you may NOT appear in the video in any way (including any photographs of yourself) so be creative.
Creative resume: Provide a one-page resume highlighting 5-7 pieces of what you consider to be your best creative work.

Did you see that little video requirement? That meant H couldn’t use a film which he’s already made. He had to film a new one entirely.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, one of the schools H is applying to doesn’t accept film school applications until students are college juniors. So H didn’t have extra application work there. Phew.

Don’t breathe too easy yet though–there are also letters of recommendation needed. H required, I think, twelve different letters from five different people, and each request needed to be accompanied by a properly-addressed envelope, with postage applied. He also needed to arrange for transcripts and test scores to be sent to each school.

Oh, and about those transcripts? If your child has homeschooled for all or part of high school, you, as a homeschooling parent, get the glorified job of writing that transcript. I do not recommend waiting until your child is applying to college to write a transcript because you just might be busy helping that child with other things. Like his or her college applications.

Luckily for me, I’d already written a transcript for H’s homeschooled 9^th and 10^th grade years, when he applied to high school as a junior. I spent fathomless hours crafting that baby, and it’s a document of beauty, I tell you. That single part of the application process was easy: I just hit “print” and mailed copies.

And did I help H with the other parts of the applications? Do vegetarians like cheese? I’m a homeschooling mother–helping is my default mode. Yes, I helped. Kids who can corner this monster without the help of parents or school counselors deserve to get into every school they apply to. H is a smart kid, he’s a competent kid, but he couldn’t have done it on his own. I nagged and badgered about those essays, beginning last summer. (Did he listen then? No.) I helped him sort the deadlines and requirements for each school. I helped him brainstorm his essay drafts and I gave him feedback. I sat beside him and sighed and groaned and swore when online applications submitted with blank pages, or did not display necessary forms, or logged themselves out repeatedly because everyone under the sun was filling out the same application, two nights before the deadline.

(Note: Do not try to submit an online application the night before it’s due. The website’s servers will be busy. I just tried to pull up an application to copy questions for this post, and the application, which is due tonight, is inaccessible. And it’s too late for a snail mail postmark. Boy, do I feel sorry for all the kids trying to complete that application.)

Doesn’t this all sound insane? What if H had applied to as many schools as his counselor recommended?

The craziest part is that H is doing all this on top of seven classes-worth of coursework. You’d think his high school could make an elective class of the college application process, give credit for it. I mean, these kids are researching potential schools, they’re writing essays, they’re managing deadlines, they’re learning how to fill out forms, how to ask for letters of recommendation. A pretty educational process, don’t you think?

As of yesterday, H’s monster is three-quarters slain. The beast is hunkered down in his cave, gasping and dribbling green drool. In the last two weeks, three applications have been submitted, and H has one more to complete, due January 1^st. Meanwhile, he has three weeks of messing around (with seven classes-worth of final papers and exams). Then, come Winter Break, he’ll finish that last application and kill the monster off for good.

Then we’ll have to wait and see what the monster hath wrought.

science and silliness

November 20, 2009 in creativity, homeschooling, learning | 14 comments

Last week, our homeschool group had a math and science fair. Kids shared displays on a math or science topic. At our history fair in the spring, Mr. T had been disappointed that few kids seemed interested in his “history of the planets” display. He wanted more visitors this time.

No problem. He decided that he wanted to do “fizzy” experiments. To guarantee an audience, he would display as alter ego Dr. Curlybrain, mad scientist.

For a few weeks we tried out simple experiments at home to find a few good ones. Our inspiration was the fun book Cool Chemistry Concoctions: 50 Formulas that Fizz, Foam, Splatter & Ooze. The winners: cleaning pennies with salt and vinegar; a lava-lamp-like jar to shake, filled with oil and food-colored water; a jar with layers of liquids of different densities in which small items could be dropped and their landing layers predicted. But the real crowd magnets were the one in which a hard-boiled egg got sucked into a small-necked bottle by the force of a lighted match, and the one that had him inflating a balloon by filling it with baking soda and attaching it to a vinegar-filled bottle.

As his audience started growing, Mr. T seemed to forget he was a mad scientist, and morphed into a stand-up comic instead. He tossed off stream-of-consciousness jokes that often made no sense–anything to keep that audience from moving on. What, you don’t think vinegar is funny? How about if I pour it on my mom?

In the weeks of trying out the experiments, Mr. T kept a logbook. He made that fun too. (And yes, he drew a log on the cover.) He gave each experiment a silly name–the baking soda-inflated balloon experiment was christened The Power Pump–and eventually started drawing comics for each experiment.

In the penny-cleaning experiment, the chloride from salt combines with the hydrogen from vinegar and forms hydrochloric acid, a solution strong enough to clean pennies. He came up with this (I wrote the characters’ names for him):

After the fair, the science fun continued, as my friend Susan from In the Kitchen wrote a post recommending They Might Be Giants’ new science album, Here Comes Science. (Go read her post. There’s singing! There are many reallys!) We bought the CD the next day–it’s just Mr.T’s cup of hot chocolate. There’s science! There’s silliness! He was especially taken with the song “Meet the Elements”.

“Hey! I want to draw a bunch of comics about elements that react against each other!”

This announcement came as I was trying to get us to some appointment or meeting, and I was madly dashing to assemble snacks, coats, assure the rabbits had been fed…

Him: Can you Google some chemical reactions for me?

Me: Buddy, I’m trying to get us out the door.

Him: Just Google it real fast and I’ll read it.

Me: You can’t just Google chemical reactions. Why don’t you draw a comic for water–two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen? (This was the best I could manage in my mad dash to fill water bottles. I do not possess multi-tasking skills.)

Him: (wailing) I can’t have two of the same element in my comic!

I promised we would research the next day. (But can you Google some chemical reactions for me makes me smile, now that I’m not rushing out the door. Ah, the fathomless faith of an eight-year-old in his mother’s ability to work out what he dreams up.)

So today we researched. And he did make that comic about water. With just one hydrogen atom.

He also made one about gold. (Apparently he got over his distaste for drawing two atoms of the same element.) I’m not sure there’s any solid science in this one, but it cracks me up. Do you see what the two gold atoms are saying to each other upon meeting? (I probably should have added an extra e to make Spar-kle-us three syllables.)

“I’m Sparkleus!” “I’m Sparkleus!” That’s Mr. T’s little homage to Spartacus. You know, the scene when all the slaves claim to be Spartacus, to protect the real Spartacus? I’m Spartacus! No, I’m Spartacus!

I have no idea what that has to do with gold. I’m telling you, this kid is twisted. But hey, I’m up for anything, if it makes science fun.

if your kid loves wolverine

November 2, 2009 in books, celebrations and traditions, learning, makin' stuff, my waldorf guilt | 24 comments

If your kid loves Wolverine, go with it.

Find the comics at the library; buy some for his birthday.

When trying to choose a gift to make for that birthday, decide on a freezer paper applique of “young” Wolverine. Trace the outline from a comic when he isn’t looking. Do not swear when you cut the wrong microscopic lines in the stencil with your X-acto knife on the day before his birthday. (You meant to do it the day before that, but you’d caught the stomach flu from your kids, which might have had something to do with scraping throw-up from carpets with a bench-knife in the middle of the night, two nights in a row. But that’s another story.)

Be pleasantly surprised to find Wolverine books at the library with interesting content. Reading to him about Stan Lee’s history at Marvel Comics, find yourself intrigued.

When your kid wants to be Wolverine for Halloween, brainstorm how to make adamantium claws. Decide on pencils and paper mache. Buy fingerless gloves and black hair spray.

Ignore your waldorf guilt when it whispers that newly-minted eight-year-olds should wear less violent costumes.

When he takes off the claws at your homeschool Halloween party, and is left with just a black ducktail and sideburns, and he shouts to you across the park, “Mama, make me a sandwich,” note his resemblance to Elvis.

Go hear Michael Chabon give a reading at your favorite local bookstore. (Try not to feel smug when Chabon notes that it’s his favorite local bookstore.) When he reads his heart-kneading essay, “The Loser’s Club” and uses Stan Lee’s rise at Marvel Comics as a metaphor for the role of audacity in art, try not to nod your head too vigorously. You know what he’s talking about! Thanks to your Wolverine-loving kid.

you spin me right round, baby, right round

September 21, 2009 in books, homeschooling, learning | 20 comments

Mr. T and I have been playing with probability lately. The other day he made a spinner.

We got the idea from Math By All Means: Probability, Grades 1-2. I really like these books by Math Solutions, particularly the Math By All Means series and the Teaching Arithmetic series. I used them back when I was teaching (and was even one of the test teachers for the first Math By All Means book, on multiplication.) Each book is a series of activities on a single math topic, geared for a certain age group. The emphasis is on presenting interesting activities, and letting kids figure out their own ways of making sense of the problems. The books aren’t for everyone: each activity has many pages of explanation, with word-for-word dialogues of how a teacher introduced the idea to her classroom, what the kids said, and examples of their work. For some that’s overkill, but if you’d like to get a better sense of how to let your kids use their own smarts and learning style in math, the books are fantastic. The math philosophy behind all Math Solutions books is sound: it’s always about comprehension, rather than rote learning.

It’s also nice to have the work of other kids to share with your own child–hard to do in a homeschool setting. And when activities require looking at larger pools of results than you’d have with one or two kids, you can always look at the classroom results reproduced in the book.

And no, I am not a rep for this company–I just think these might be books that homeschoolers might not come across on their own. We’ve never used math texts until my kids were close to their teen years; we use a variety of activities, games and books. These Math Solutions books are a backbone we return to often. But even with them, we don’t do all the activities. We just pick and choose, depending on the kids’ interests and what they already know. And we adapt them, as you’ll see.

Anyway, Mr. T made a spinner. The book instructed kids to make a spinner that was one-quarter red and three-quarters blue. Well, I know Mr. T, so I told him he could make any categories he wanted on the spinner. When I said, “Even characters, if you want to,” little fireworks practically shot out from his eyes.

He drew an alien in each of the two spinner sections, and named them 2-MO and Z-31. Actually, he didn’t use dashes; he drew sort of a flattened T symbol for one alien, and an upside-down version of the same for the other. When I asked what the symbols meant, he just rolled his eyes and said, “They’re aliens.”

Oh.

The book’s design for these spinners is pretty brilliant. You basically use some 4-by-5 index cards (I used cut-up manila folders ’cause that’s what we had). You draw a line from one corner of the bottom card to the center of it, which indicates which part of the spinner “wins”. Then you poke the bent spoke of a paperclip through the bottom card and the round spinner, and tape the rest of the clip flat to the bottom of the card; a little flag of tape will keep the spinner from flying off the card. But the secret mechanism is a one-quarter inch cylinder, cut from a drinking straw, which goes between the bottom card and the circular piece. That makes the spinner really spin, in an obsessively fun way. Like a record, baby, round, round, right round.

The fact that the spinner featured aliens made testing it all the more fun. Filling out the results graph became a race between aliens. Of course, Mr. T didn’t want to just color in or put an X in the graph paper squares–he wanted to draw each alien’s personal planet in his square whenever the spinner landed on his spot. Which was fine by me; graphic graphs are more fun to look at anyway.

Poor Z-31 was pretty much doomed from the start, getting only one-quarter of the space on the spinner and all. Plus, luck wasn’t on his side: out of 22 spins, the spinner landed on 2-MO eighteen times, and Z-31 four times. Which led to a conversation about how chance factors into probability.

We’ve been talking about probability in terms of game design. Mr. T is still making his own Pokemon-style card game called Dinkers; until now he’s planned for players to use dice on their turns. But he’s starting to see how spinners give the game designer more control. If he wants a rare outcome, he can allot it a very slender slice of the spinner’s pie. Plus, you can make a spinner have words and pictures and personality.

But mostly, spinning a spinner is just dang fun.

a little reading alchemy

June 29, 2009 in books, learning | 18 comments

A spectacular transformation took place in these parts last week. Mr. T became a reader.

Oh, for months he’s been reading words and phrases that he spots around him. Gas station signs. Comic book titles. Billboards. But he didn’t want to read books. I’d check out new easy-to-read books at the library each time we visited. And sometimes he’d want me to read one to him, and then he’d try to read a few pages on his own. But that was it.

Like his older sister was, he’s a great fan of audiobooks. He likes to take in his literature through his ears–either from his CD player or from my reading aloud to him. And listening to books has helped him develop an acute sense of story, and a vocabulary loaded with words like schism and associates and phrases like speak of the devil.

If there’s one thing you learn by the time you get to your third kid, it’s don’t push. After ruining your first child, and coming close on your second, you finally develop the faith that your kids really will learn to use a toilet, and put their faces under water at swimming lessons, and spell words in a standardized fashion. They’ll figure it out eventually, and your interference only makes it take longer–and likely obliterates all the joy and pride they’d get from doing it in their own time.

So I didn’t say much. Just kept those easy-to-read books lying around, and kept reading to him.

But last week he wandered around the kitchen chatting to me about robots or martians or something as I made dinner, and the library books we’d just checked out sat on the kitchen table. I glanced through one called, Good Night, Good Knight. Easy words. Cartoony pictures. A knight. Hmmm.

“You know, buddy,” I said. “I’ll bet you could read this book. I think you know most of these words, and if there are some you don’t know, you can just skip them.”

So he picked up the book. Read every word on the first page. Went on to the second. I stir-fried broccoli and he read aloud quietly, occasionally spelling a word aloud for me to translate. He read the whole book.

It was hard not to jump up and down and scream, “You read that whole book! I knew you could do it, I knew you could do it!” But I’ve also learned a thing or two about stealing the kids’ glow so I just looked at the glitter in his eyes, swallowed my thrill and said calmly, “Wow buddy, you read that book all by yourself!”

He was already moving on to the second book. And the next day he picked up another. And another. I find him curled up on the couch like this:

I find him reading in his room, reading in the car. I find him reading Wii manuals in the office. (Another notch in my Waldorf Guilt belt.) We need to get back to the library, quick, to load up on new books.

(As exciting as it is to watch your child begin reading, it’s a little sad, too. Mr. T has found a way into the wondrous world of books that doesn’t require me as his tour guide. Here I go again–getting all melancholic as I watch my youngest grow up.)

I’m not sure what magic made this happen so suddenly. I suppose that Good Night, Good Knight had just the right mix of intriguing subject matter and a not-too-frustrating reading level. I suppose that before that book, Mr. T didn’t believe he could read, and suddenly he proved to himself otherwise. He’s actually gone on to read several books that are much more challenging–propelled, I suppose, by his confidence in himself.

It would be easy to claim credit as the alchemist in all this, to assume that his reading happened because I suggested the right book at the right time. But the truth is, it would have happened eventually. Still, it does feel good after so much biting my tongue and waiting, to see my abracadabra inspire a transformation.

* * *

If you’re here via the link from Homeschool.Style.Bytes., welcome! Thanks so much for visiting! Please consider leaving a comment and introducing yourself. I love to meet new folks.

And if you missed the reference Helen gave me last week, here it is. I’ve recommended this blog before–it’s a glorious combination of words and photos from homeschoolers far and wide. And, happily, in this case the words are more than mere accessories to the images.

frog egg afternoon

June 10, 2009 in homeschooling, learning, out and about | 8 comments

I got the idea in my head that Mr. T and I needed to raise tadpoles this summer. It’s something we’ve never done before. I was already thinking about it when Lori of In Heywood’s Meadow wrote about her son finding frogs’ eggs and raising tadpoles. She recommended the book Pets In a Jar: Collecting and Caring for Small Wild Animals by Seymour Simon, which we handily found at our library. Armed with the proper know-how, we set out to a local small pond where I’d years ago seen frog eggs.

We didn’t find any eggs in the first pond, so we moved on to a second, and lo and behold I saw a jelly-like cluster right off. We scooped it into a jar and studied it.

I’m not entirely sure these are frogs’ eggs. It’s definitely a cluster of some sort of egg. The dark bits you see are actually algae; I don’t see the dark spot in the egg that frogs’ eggs are supposed to have, but perhaps these were freshly laid and the dark area is still quite small.

Mr. T enjoyed the egg cluster, but he was much more interested in the small creature we’d inadvertently captured along with it.

We identified it as a backswimmer in our little pond guide.

Mr. T wanted to keep it, until we read that backswimmers like to eat tadpoles.

We brought the cluster home, where we’ll keep our eyes on it and see what happens next.

Being at the pond with Mr. T was a little bittersweet for me. Call me slow, but I’m finally starting to realize that once kids like my older two reach teenage-hood, they prefer to learn on their own. I’m sure that’s not true of all teens, all the time–but for the most part, my older kids aren’t so interested in exploring parks with me. Can you imagine: thirteen and seventeen-year-olds would rather hang out with friends than go to a park with their mother? Shocking! But Mr. T is still happy to explore ponds with me for an afternoon, to stalk frogs’ eggs, to read field guides. I know these times together are fleeting, so I’m relishing them like the last bites of a pint of ice cream. I’m scraping the bottom of the carton with my spoon, and I’m not going to miss a drop.

I’ll keep you posted on our mystery egg cluster.

atwitter: april

April 30, 2009 in atwitter, books, learning, makin' stuff, out and about, the bees | 3 comments

A few more things that have me all atwitter these days.

the girls have arrived! We picked up our package of bees on Saturday, and introduced them to their hive that afternoon.

There are so many of them–approximately 10,000 at this point! I love to sit near the hive, on the terrace wall that Chris built, watching them come and go. I’m dying to get in there to see if they’re making comb, to see if the queen is laying, but we’re giving them their privacy for a week or so.

Surely bees don’t care if their hive is cute, but since this one sits in our front yard, I care. So it’s painted to match the house, with a totally unnecessary-but-adorable-anyway pitched copper roof. (Please disregard that temporarily unpainted stripe of a shim. You know I’m detail-crazed enough to be bothered by such a thing.)

bee art. Lulu, Mr. T and I sketched bees last week.

Then the kids became inspired to make a collage of bee art, which they later abandoned, but we did carve some rubber stamps.

Now Lulu’s thinking about making bee-themed greeting cards to sell at our Homeschool Fair in a few weeks. She spent all morning searching out bee poetry online–for lines for the cards–and I showed her some of Sylvia Plath’s bee poems. Plath wrote those poems upon keeping bees of her own for the first time, and when I read them a few years ago, I knew I’d have bees of my own someday.

learning about japan. We went to the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco’s Japantown on Monday, to see a San Francisco International Film Festival showing of Battle for Terra. (A perfect film for Mr. T as it tells the story of life on another planet which is invaded by earthlings. The planet, Terra, and its creatures are beautifully animated. The film’s director spoke afterwards, and it was fascinating to hear about his original ideas for the film, and how they developed over time.) Anyway, in addition to the film being wonderful, the location was ideal, as we’re just beginning a study of Japan.

We had a Japanese bento lunch.

We visited the Peace Pagoda.

We went to the Kinokuniya bookstore. I’d never been to one of these Japanese bookstores before–so big, so fab! There are books in Japanese, of course, but also many in English. They also have lots of those great little items that only the Japanese design, like Piperoid robot kits made up of paper rolls which are cut apart and assembled.

Mr. T put together both Goriborg and Dr. Penk with a fair amount of help from me.

The trouble is, of course, that he wants to play with them, which only makes their feet fall off.

I always hear knitters rave about Japanese knitting books. (I just listened to the Knitting Japanese episode on Stash and Burn.) Looking through that section in the store, I came across a few books by a young Japanese woman named Ayano Uchida. Despite the English titles and a few giggle-inducing, roughly translated English headings here and there, the books are otherwise written in Japanese, so I have no idea what they say. But they’re filled with photos of the author’s quirky, layered style, and I couldn’t resist buying one called Favorite Style for Four Seasons.

“Why would you buy that?” Lulu asked, offended at my foolishness. “You can’t even read it!” I’m not quite sure why I bought it, except that I find the photographs charming. I think I find them even more charming for the fact that I don’t know what the writing says, which means I get to use my imagination. (I’m linking to Amazon’s Japanese page, in case you want to “Look Inside” the book. I haven’t been linking to Amazon these days, which you may have noticed–the reason for which is a blog post for another day. Go indie bookstores!)

Oh goodie–now it’s time for you to tell me what has you all atwitter…

atwitter: february/march

March 27, 2009 in atwitter, books, homeschooling, learning | 7 comments

I never got around to writing an atwitter post last month, so there’s more to share this month. A few of the things that have me all worked up these days:

beekeeping. About ten years ago, we planted our front hillside with more than sixty lavender plants. Every July the hillside is smothered in bees, and I’ve always thought we ought to have a beehive. Of course, I envisioned some other beekeeper maintaining the hive, and leaving us with a share of the honey. But several of my friends have been keeping bees themselves–Stefaneener, Susan and Kristin–so I’m encouraged to try it too. (My beekeeping friends are also bloggers–what’s the personality trait that draws people to both blogging and bees? What, did you say geekiness?) My honey is building me a terraced bee yard out amongst the lavender, and I’m reading The Backyard Beekeeper and Beekeeping for Dummies, planning to get my bees in April. And of course I’ve found some fantastic bee bloggers who are already convincing me to do things differently and be a beekeeping rebel: Backwards Beekeepers and Linda’s Bees.

spain, on the road again. I bought this book for my Spanish-blooded husband for Christmas, and we’ve been enjoying the accompanying PBS series on disc. It’s basically a show about Mario Batali, Gwyneth Paltrow and friends driving around Spain, taking in its gorgeousness, and eating delicious food at every opportunity. My kind of trip. They visit many of the same places we visited when we went to Spain in ’05, along with the kids and Chris’ parents. (Where I had the distinct pleasure of pronouncing my name Pa-tree-thee-a Tha-ba-yosh. And picked up that cute little olive dish pictured above.) We love Mario Batali around here–he’s such a happy hedonist. It’s hard to watch all the food talk without getting hungry, but watching with a glass of Spanish wine in hand helps.

learning how to make perfectly hard-boiled eggs. Just in time for Easter! Why is it that Americans don’t seem able to boil an egg without rendering the yolk grey and chalky? In Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (favorite cookbook ever), Deborah Madison writes, “When cut in half, the yolk should have a dime-sized moist dot in the center.” Yes! The yolk is so gorgeously gold and succulent when boiled this way. A while back, Clotilde from Chocolate & Zucchini gave directions for perfect hard-boiled eggs, and the instructions are spot on. Follow the ones for a 9-minute egg and you will not be disappointed.

studying india. We’re wrapping up our India studies. Mr. T is anxious to move on to Mongolia, and Lulu to Japan. But I sure loved learning about India and would be happy to linger there a little longer. I’m planning to listen to A Passage to India on disc (which might also be the motivation I need to work up some steam in my knitting and finish that dang sweater coat!) But it’s been fun reading Indian tales, visiting local Indian shops and restaurants and learning how Indians live. Check out this fascinating video on the complex Mumbai system of home-cooked lunch delivery, carried in tiffins, those stainless steel stackable food containers that are now all the rage amongst the green crowd. We finally bought our own, after insuring that the one we bought was authentically Indian.

a new blog. I really like Homeschool. Style. Bytes. It’s sort of a homeschooling blog co-op. Helen gathers beautiful photos and text about homeschooling from Blogland and makes a lovely bouquet of them. I keep meaning to write down our own homeschooling recipe and send it her way.

So, what are you all worked up about this month?

the scribe and the storyteller

March 10, 2009 in creativity, homeschooling, learning, writing | 16 comments

One of Mr. T’s favorite things to do is to tell me a story, and have me write it down. Actually, he’s been adding on to the same story for months now–Scritch and Scratch, about a boy and a girl turned into wolves who have many adventures in space.

Yesterday he was jumping out of his skin when he realized that he had a new story to begin, about a boy named Todding Toddington and his adventures in an alternate world, which other people can’t see. It’s part of what he’s calling The Series of Wonders. (And you know his Wonder Farm mama is lapping that up.)

Mr. T would be happy if I’d take his story dictation every day–even several times a day. But I don’t. It’s time-consuming. And it’s tedious. But I try to get to it a couple of times a week because it brings him such joy. And, I realize, he learns an awful lot about writing in the process.

As prone as I am to making teachable moments of every gosh-darned thing, I try not to lapse into teaching mode when I take down his stories. I don’t say in my Dana-Carvey-as-The-Church-Lady voice, See how I start each sentence with a capital? or Did you notice how I spelled this word? Nope, I just write down what he tells me, and ask for clarification when I’m honestly curious about something.

Still, he’s learning so very much every time we do this. Yesterday I tried to take note of what he was picking up:

He knows that sentences end with punctuation, because whenever he continues a sentence that I thought he’d finished, he sees me erase the punctuation and add it later.
He knows that exciting sentences end with exclamation marks.
He knows how to use quotation marks because he sees me do this whenever one of his characters talks. He’s also learned how to add he said or she exclaimed in the most dramatic places in the dialogue. I assume he’s picked this up from being read to, and from listening to audio books.
He knows that titles are centered on the page and capitalized. He’s even noticed that minor words like of and the don’t get capitalized.
He knows about starting new paragraphs when the story shifts gears. Often he’ll tell me to “start down here now” when he’s ready to move on in the piece. Paragraphing is something that’s often hard for much older kids to grasp; Mr. T has intuited it by watching where I add paragraphs in his stories. Often I’ll simply ask him, “Do you think we should start a new paragraph now? Is the scene changing?”
In his story yesterday, Todding Toddington found a piece of paper with a poem on it. As I wrote down his poem, Mr. T said, “Shouldn’t it be slantways ’cause it’s a poem?” I realized he meant that part should be written in italics; I’m not even sure where he picked that up. So I erased it and wrote it in cursive.
In his story one character said to another, “Are you a windquist?” I asked Mr. T what a windquist was, and I pointed out that his reader might wonder. So he said, “This is the narrator talking now,” and he defined a windquist. I said, “I’ll make a new paragraph, since we’re switching to the narrator.”
He narrated the sentence, “At that second a giant thing of wind blew into the room.” I’m all for writing down lines as he says them, but if he uses vague words like thing, I’ll often check to see if he can come up with a better one. He struggled with finding the right word, so I became his thesaurus and suggested a few: blast, gust. Yes! Gust was just what he wanted.

My hand and my attention usually peter out after two pages or so. It would be easier to type his dictation into the computer, but I don’t think it would allow him to notice what I’m writing quite as well. Watching me erase and rewrite as we go seems to be a tangible learning experience for him. And allowing him to watch me write seems like a natural bridge to his writing himself eventually.

I love the thought that my kids have never needed grammar instruction; they’ve picked up the tools of writing by loving to write. Even if it meant that, for a long time, I was the one doing the physical writing.

As I was writing this post early this morning, Mr. T woke up. His first words to me: “What are we doing today? Will you write my story?”

making space, literally and figuratively

March 4, 2009 in homeschooling, learning | 8 comments

The ever-wonderful Lori has a truly inspiring post up over at Camp Creek. It’s called Making Space For Their Ideas, and it’s all about how to help kids facilitate their own projects. How to let go of your own ideas, to make space for them to have their own ideas.

If you haven’t read it yet, do.

It goes right along with my last two posts. Makes me realize how far I’ve come with child-led learning, since my days as a teacher–and how far I still have to go.

Take Mr. T’s planet project. We’d talked many times of the papier-mache planet models that H made when he was Mr. T’s age. So when I asked if he might want to make his own models for our homeschool group’s upcoming history fair, I knew he might be interested. He was happy to go along with my idea for a project.

Just yesterday he started it. But I didn’t let him guide things at first. I just assumed I’d show him how to do it; then he’d take over once it came time to do the papier-mache and the painting. I hadn’t yet read Lori’s post, you understand (she says sheepishly).

But here’s something I love about my kids: when I start taking over their projects, they stop me. I must have done something right, because they know what they want.

First, Mr. T explained that the book I showed him giving scale explanations for the planets–if Jupiter is a large cabbage, then Earth is a walnut–was wrong. He led me to a video on Flixxy about the scale of planets, which was forwarded to us by my friend, Carrie. It’s a fascinating video, and Mr. T has watched it dozens of times, and studied the scale pictures below the video.

“That book shows Uranus and Neptune too big. And Uranus and Neptune should be almost the same size.”

He was right. The book I’d so carefully tracked down from another library system, the one I used back when I was teacher, was published in 1977. It’s outdated–and Mr. T didn’t need it anyway. He could have figured out how to make the models himself, based on the video that’s enchanted him so many times.

Earlier, he’d tried making a foil ball the size of a walnut for Earth. He tried to trace the shape of the walnut on to the foil, so he could make a walnut-sized foil shell, which he would then fill with foil.

When forming the shell became difficult, did I ask if he wanted help? Nope. I just blurted out that it might be easier to make a small foil ball and keep adding to it until it was the size of the walnut.

I knew when I said it that I shouldn’t have. I knew I was hurrying him along, wanting him to make progress on the project–because our history fair is in two weeks.

About an hour later I read Lori’s post. Just when I needed it. As much as I’ve learned to follow my kids, I need to step back even more. I want to step back even more. I want to see what Mr. T’s wondrous imagination comes up with, when I don’t climb in there and muck things up. Even if it means his history fair exhibit might look like it was made by a seven-year-old with a wondrous imagination.

I think I’ll print out Lori’s post and hang it beside my desk.

I’m glad I read it before Mr. T got deep into his project. I haven’t taken it from him yet–there’s still time to let him grab it from my hands and run with it.

And the other good news? He didn’t take my advice on how to make a foil walnut. He did it his own way.

the duomo

February 26, 2009 in homeschooling, learning, makin' stuff | 5 comments

Ooh, the comments on my last post have been interesting–have you seen?

So much talk about child-led learning, and parental support, and the many possible ratios of the two.

That last post was about me trying to let go and let Mr. T lead; this time I’m switching angles and writing about a time when I didn’t let go.

A couple of years ago, before our family took an amazing trip to Italy, H made this model of Florence’s Duomo.

The model was his idea. He was reading Brunelleschi’s Dome, by Ross King and was fascinated with the dome, couldn’t believe how big it looked in Florence, when viewed from above on Google Earth. H’s dome might not look that impressive on first glance–it’s just a foamcore model. More impressive was the fact that he made it on his own–with no instructions, no blueprints, no measurements to work from. He looked online for architectural plans, and found some drawings of the dome, but nothing with measurements. So he made his own scale plans by measuring photos on the internet.

This might be a workable concept if making a traditional building, with traditional right angles. But look at the terracotta sections of the dome and try to envision how they’re shaped. Then envision how you would cut the pieces from foamcore to make them come together into a dome.

Now, spacial-visual skills are one of H’s strengths–you may have heard me talk of the dizzying Lego diagrams he could follow at five. He was sure he could work this out, and he tried. He cut piece after piece out of foam core for the dome section and tried again and again to fit them together. Eventually he got so tired of cutting them that he was hacking them from the foamcore, with an X-acto knife. Then finally, one day when he was so close to getting the thing to work, he had enough. He picked up his duomo-in-progress, hurled it across the living room where it smashed against a cabinet, and said he never wanted to see it again.

Well. Any parent who ostensibly follows their child’s lead with his learning would take this as a not-so-subtle signal to move on. But no-o-o. Not me. I just couldn’t let go of the project. H had put so many hours of research and effort into his model, and he’d come so close to making it work–I couldn’t let him throw it all away.

So Chris* and I appraised the smashed model. We could see that H’s last version of the domed roof had actually come close to fitting–it was just that the hacked edges weren’t lining up. So Chris used H’s pieces as a template, and recut the pieces as only an un-frustrated person can.

Then I begged and cajoled H to try one more time. He said no! I begged more. Eventually he caved. He made the dome pieces fit, and finished the model, up to the brass cross at the tip.

I’m so glad I pestered him. Look:

That was the view from our hotel room in Florence. It was directly across the street from the Santa Maria dei Fiori Cathedral and Il Duomo. The old, eight-feet high wooden windows were worth the price of the room. We never tired of the dome’s ringing bells, or looking out the windows at that ancient terracotta roof, at the crowds in front of the cathedral. Each morning I drank my cappuccino at the window, watching people ride their bikes across the square to work–my favorites were the nuns, and the women riding upright in their stylish skirts and scarves, looking like extras from Roman Holiday.

But I think no one loved that view more than H. He owned that dome. He had conquered it. It was his.

Which brings me back to the little dance in which sometimes my kids lead, and sometimes I lead. I try to let them take control, but sometimes, I think, they can use a little push. A little insistence even. They need someone to say, I think you should try to do this and here’s why. H needed me to hear me say, I know you don’t want to work on that Duomo any more, but I’d really like you to make another attempt at it.

I try not to do it too often, or my words lose their power. I do a lot of biting my tongue.

But here’s what I’ve discovered: if you make an effort to listen to your kids and follow their leads most of the time, they may, on occasion, listen to you.

——————————

* Chris has decided the he doesn’t want to be referred to as My Charming Husband. Too much pressure, I guess. He suggested Cristiano, his commenting pseudonym, which was actually the name of our concierge at this particular hotel in Florence. But I don’t know–referring to him as Cristiano makes me feel like I’m married to an Italian concierge. So I’m going back to using his regular ol’ name; hopefully if some business acquaintance googles his name, Chris won’t be embarrassed by his shenanigans on the Wonder Farm.

in his hands

February 22, 2009 in homeschooling, learning | 10 comments

boy holding pomelo

Because I like to have a photo with each post. Because I thought I could make one more contribution to yellow week. Because the pomelo looks like a planet. And because the image itself could be a metaphor for the words below.

Our homeschool group sponsors a history fair each spring. Kids display exhibits on an any interest related to history. We encourage them to include an interactive element–something to do, or taste, or try. Kids take turns visiting exhibits, and staying at their own exhibits to answer questions. They also create stamps or stickers related to their topic, which they use to mark visitors’ passports. It’s always a fun, inspiring morning.

I try to help my kids come up with a display idea a couple months before the fair. Since we’re studying India these days, I figured I’d help them come up with projects related to that country. Lulu quickly came up with her idea of making an Indian dollhouse–although her interest is flagging a bit, not helped by the fact that she made a set of Fimo pots and utensils for her kitchen, which I inadvertently burned while preheating the oven to make pizza on Friday night. Doh!

Mr. T has been playing with options for a few weeks. First he said he wanted to make some sort of forest sculpture, so we researched Indian trees–mangroves and banyans. I was especially excited about the idea of him making a banyan tree out of Model Magic, because he loves that material, and because we read In the Heart of the Village: The World of the Indian Banyan Tree. It’s a beautiful book about a small Indian village and how life revolves around the old banyan tree in the village center. Mr. T could make animals to go in the tree! He could make shrines to Hindu deities at its trunk! He could talk about how banyan trees factor into so many traditional Indian tales!

But no. Mr. T decided he didn’t want to do that. So we shifted gears–me feeling a little disappointed. We talked about doing a project about Hindu deities. Mr. T has always loved deity legends, which began when he first listened to the wonderful D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths on disc when he was four. He’s gone on to listen to them again and again and again. Last year he learned about Norse gods for the history fair, this time using D’Aulaires’Book of Norse Myths, and The Adventures of Thor the Thunder God, among others.

We’ve been reading the fun Little Book of Hindu Deities, written and charmingly illustrated by Sanjay Patel, an Indian-American animator at Pixar. We played with the idea of making a comic book about Hindu deities. This seemed like an intriguing idea, given Mr. T’s love of drawing fanciful characters.

But again, no. Mr. T just wasn’t excited about these ideas, nor any of the many others we discussed.

I knew what the problem was.

As interested as he is in India, in the tales we’re reading, and the food, and the photos and the videos we’ve seen, what’s he’s really excited about right now is–space.

It started when he watched Wall-E once again, and started asking questions about galaxies. Then he started inventing his own galaxies, and journaling about the moon. When I was too busy to constantly read him books about the planets, he pulled out the books himself and started studying charts and using his budding reading skills to learn about moons and rings and orbits. I’m amazed what he’s picked up on his own.

I knew what I needed to do: I needed to let go of my idea of an India project. So I asked, Hey, Buddy. What would you think about doing your history project about the history of the planets?

His eyes grew wide.

If you want to, you could make papier-mache models like your brother did when he was your age. Now his eyes were as wide as his brother’s old scale model of Mars. Yes! he said. Yes!

So we’ll do it. We’ll whip up some flour paste and rip up some newspaper. He’ll make a mess with paste and paint and I’m sure he’ll love it. Since he’s doing this for a history fair, not a science fair, I’ll help him focus on how people have interacted with the planets: how they discovered them, how they named them. Which will bring us back to those gods–we’ll work Hindu deities into his project yet.

But in the end, it’s his project. One of my biggest challenges as a parent is knowing how much to support; how much to let go. It’s an art, really, offering just the right amount of enthusiasm and help to make their ideas come to life. It’s an art that I make a mess of constantly; luckily I have three fabulous teachers, trying to help me get it right. Trying to help me leave things in their hands.

for the love of bon jovi

February 11, 2009 in learning, my waldorf guilt, wondering | 7 comments

listoftheday-700174783-1209502986_thumb

No, the Bon Jovi lover is not me. I wasn’t even a fan during their late 80′s heyday. (Although I did manage to make my ultra-fine hair pretty big back then, with help from Sebastian Shaper Plus.)

The Bon Jovi fan is my seven-year-old son.

How did this happen, you ask? Well, in another incitement of my waldorf guilt, in November my two older kids pooled their money to buy Guitar Hero World Tour. And as much as I despise having a gaming system in the house, this game has less to despise. The kids play virtual music. Together. My favorite band incarnation is H on drums, Lulu on guitar and Mr. T on vocals. It wasn’t long before Mr. T was perfecting his own favorite song: Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer.”

It’s pretty funny hearing your seven-year-old traipsing around the house singing, “Oh, oh we’re halfway there, oh oh, livin’ on a prayer…” But not funny enough for my jokester of a husband. He had to intensify the situation. One day in December he took Mr. T out to do a little Christmas shopping. Mid-morning he called from his car.

“I bought him Slippery When Wet.”

“You bought what for who?” I asked.

“You know, Slippery When Wet, Bon Jovi’s big album. For Mr. T. We’re playing it now. He loves it!”

And so he does. He’s loved it over and over and over again. At high volume in his bedroom, jumping on and off his bed. Shouldn’t he be listening to They Might Be Giants or Ralph’s World? Or The Beatles, at the very least?

Of course, if you’ve learned anything about my youngest after reading this blog, you know how much he likes to talk. So for over a month our talk has had Bon Jovi references. Many references. And as I take part in these titillating discussions, I realize that Mr. T is actually learning a few things. Consider:

Music history: We spent the Christmas Eve drive to My Charming Husband’s parents’ house in a full-family discussion of whether Bon Jovi was considered hair metal. Were they better than typical hair metal bands? Weren’t they more in a class with Van Halen? Were they hair metal? (My guitar-playing husband–who never has been a metal fan, I’ll have you know–nevertheless insisted that Bon Jovi was not on a musical par with Van Halen.) So then we had a hair metal shout-out: Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot, Night Ranger, Ratt, Motley Crue (sorry, I’m not searching down an umlaut character on Motley Crue’s account). Stryper led to mention of Christian metal; then we had to acknowledge hair metal predecessors glam rock and heavy metal. Next thing we knew, My Charming Husband was talking about German metal, a category I didn’t imagine actually existed and the whole conversation pretty much disintegrated from there. Bring on the Christmas carols!

Current events: Mr. T came home from an evening at my parents’ house and told me that when he asked his Grammy if she liked Bon Jovi, she said yes because Bon Jovi did lots of good work for others. Really, I wondered? Bon Jovi? We quizzed Grammy over Christmas dinner. Turns out she’d mixed up Bon Jovi with Bon-o. (Silly Grammy.) Which led to further discussions of Rockers Who Do Good Work.

Music appreciation: Mr. T loves to nettle the rest of the family by insisting that Bon Jovi is better than The Beatles. At first we tried to give him concrete reasons for why this isn’t so. (Music. Lyrics.) But then we tired of his adamancy and just started nodding our heads sarcastically. Then one evening, during a nightly wrestling match between him and My Charming Husband, Mr. T decided it was a battle between Jon Bon Jovi and John Lennon. When it became clear that neither was winning, Mr. T stood on the couch and insisted that he’d morphed into a new mega-wrestler named Jon Bon Lennon. And then he pummeled his father.

Singing to his Mama that she gives love a bad name.

Etymology: At one point we explained to Mr. T that Jon Bon Jovi’s real name was John Bongiovi, which is Italian. And I told him that bon means “good” in French, and assumedly is a variation of the Italian word for good, buono. “What does giovi mean?” Mr. T wanted to know. “Can you google it?” So we did, and discovered that it’s a conjugated form of the verb giovare, which means “to be useful” or “to be good”. “That’s a lot of goodness,” Mr . T said. “What’s with all the Bon bands?” He was referring to one of my new faves, Bon Iver. So we googled Bon Iver and discovered that the name is a variant of bon hiver, French for “good winter”. (We also discovered some other interesting backstory which included mononucleosis and a Northern Exposure episode.) Fascinating stuff.

Yep, that’s why we homeschool: even mediocre hair metal bands can be learning opportunities. (Although Mr. T has moved on somewhat. Yesterday he was singing a different Guitar Hero song, Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker”. Luckily, I suppose, he wasn’t singing the original lyrics: I’m a joker, I’m a smoker, I’m a midnight toker. No, he was substituting names of the Hindu deities he’s been learning about: I’m a Brahma, I’m a Rama, I’m a Parashurama. I tell you, there’s never a dull moment around here.)

invented spelling

January 27, 2009 in homeschooling, learning | 11 comments

Yesterday Mr. T was illustrating some of his “galaxies”. These are the newest creatures to pop forth from his imagination, based somewhat on facts he knows about real planets and galaxies, and somewhat on the fascinating flotsam that collects in his brain. I asked if he wanted me to write down the galaxies’ names for him.

“Nah, I think I’ll write it myself.”

“That’s a great idea,” I said, and tried to bite my lips shut so I wouldn’t say more and undermine the whole endeavor.

It’s so fantastic when kids are willing to write words their own way, based on the sounds they hear and the letter combinations they remember. Back in my teacher days we called it invented spelling. It’s exciting because it frees kids up to write without the help of an adult–and helps them focus on words and learn conventional spelling more organically.

I love this photo--you can see him saying aloud the sound he's trying to write.

Kids typically focus on consonant sounds first, and then start working with those baffling vowels. In the picture above you can see his Sombrero Galaxy, which he spelled The Sambro. (And it’s an actual galaxy name–did you know?) I was sitting beside him, and sometimes I helped him say the words slowly, so he could focus on the sounds. But mostly I tried to stay out of it.

Some kids don’t like using invented spelling. H hated it for a long time. He wanted his words to be right. And actually, thinking back, it makes sense. He’s always been a very visual learner. It probably bothered him to look at a word, and recognize that it was wrong.

I’ve also learned, through many years of eating my words, that it’s best not to push invented spelling. You know the theorem: the more you push, the less they want to do something. So I’ll keep biting my lips and only occasionally suggest that Mr. T write on his own. Maybe he’ll do it without any encouragement. But I’ll still take plenty of dictation. I made the mistake with my poor firstborn to assume that once he was proficient with writing, I was off the hook and he could do it on his own. The trouble with that notion is the writing becomes shorter and more limited because the mechanics of writing can be such a chore. Instead, if you’re occasionally willing to take dictation– years after they’re able to write on their own–kids will have the experience of writing the more developed, sophisticated work that their brains and imaginations are capable of.

But for now I’m just enjoying what Mr. T is doing. See that dark, scary creature at the bottom of the page? He’s Karpt, pronounced Corrupt.

I’m not sure which tickles me more–the name, or the spelling.

10,000 hours

January 23, 2009 in creativity, homeschooling, learning | 2 comments

A few weeks ago on Camp Creek –my new favorite blog about project-based homeschooling and authentic art!–Lori wrote an interesting post after reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success. In the book, apparently, Gladwell states that to become excellent at something, you need to spend about 10,000 hours at it.

In her post, Lori considered how homeschooling might play into that theory. If you haven’t already, go read what she wrote instead of a poor summary from me.

Now, here’s something exciting which might seem completely unrelated: right now my 16-year-old is at the Sundance Film Festival for six days. I couldn’t be more thrilled for him.

And I think that fact has an awful lot to do with Gladwell’s 10,000 hours, and Lori’s thoughts on homeschooling.

But to tie that all together, I’ll have to tell you a little story. Or a long story. (I have to be careful: my oldest doesn’t like me writing about him here. But, I figure, I took his name off the blog. And I just want to share a little about his path; I’ll try not to get too personal. Plus, the kid’s at Sundance–my blog is surely the last thing on his mind.)

Anyway, a couple of years ago, in November 2006, H and I had one of those explosive homeschooling days that made it clear things weren’t working. At that point, he was what a high school would consider a freshman. And since he’d started “high school”, things had changed with our homeschooling. I’d changed things with our homeschooling.

Suddenly, I’d realized that if H planned to go to college, he would need a transcript, and for the first time in our homeschooling lives we needed to account for how he was spending his time. I wanted him to continue as we always had: “covering” less, but letting his learning be more in-depth. Having him choose projects to explore interesting topics, rather than skimming through endless textbooks.

But that transcript kept hovering over my shoulder, and I was suddenly pushing him to cover more. Do it in an interesting way, of course, but cover more…

Well, there isn’t enough time in the day to learn both ways, and H was justified when he told me in no uncertain terms, “I can’t do all this!”

We spent a lot of time talking about what we should do. I could see that learning had become less exciting for him, and it saddened me. But neither of us wanted to completely ignore the fact that eventually colleges would be interested in what he’d done for four years.

We didn’t figure everything out that day, but we decided that he would change his focus. He would “cover” some topics that interested him less more quickly–science, math–and leave time to explore the areas that he liked in more depth–English, history.

And filmmaking.

H had started using the family camcorder to film movies with his friends and siblings that summer. He’d taught himself how to edit with iMovie. It amazed me to see how immersed he became when he was editing a film, how he could spend hours at it, completely focused.

I wanted him to bring that excitement about learning back to his homeschooling. Together, H and I designed a “class” that we could add to his transcript: Introduction to Filmmaking.

He started with Hitchcock, because back when I was in college, I decided that one ought not to graduate from UCLA without taking a film class, and Hitchcock was the spring quarter offering. So H watched one Hitchcock film after another and read my text from the class: a fantastic set of film-by-film interviews between Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut.

Hitchcock turned out to be a fortuitous introduction, I think. His careful attention to camera angles and shots had an effect on H’s own very visual style.

He read Rebel Without a Crew by Robert Rodriguez and watched his early films with the director’s commentary. He learned a lot about making films as a beginner, with little money.

While studying WWII, he filmed and edited an extended interview with a family member who’d served there.

I helped H load up the Netflix queue. Classic films, newer films, he watched them all. He wrote a few papers. And he spent a lot of time behind our camera and with our computer editing program.

A year or so before, a friend in my homeschooling group had forwarded a link to a free (!) filmmaking program in our city, for kids 15 and up. I’d saved that link–because squirreling away possibilities for our kids is what homeschooling moms do best. When he turned 15, H started attending the program, and it’s been an amazing opportunity for him. He’s been using professional-quality cameras and editing programs for over a year now. He’s made three short films of his own, and done collaborative work on others. He attended a program on an Indian reservation outside Seattle, in which teams of kids had 36 hours to film and edit an adapted scene from one of Native American writer Sherman Alexie’s books. The films were screened at the Seattle International Film Festival, and Sherman Alexie was there.

And now they’re at Sundance.

But back to Lori’s post. What’s interesting is that H decided to go to high school this year as a junior, for his own reasons which I won’t go into here. It’s been a lot of work–I’m not sure he understood entirely what he was getting himself into. But what’s wonderful is that he took on school with the understanding that filmmaking wouldn’t lose its priority in his life. As a homeschooler, H had two years to explore film at his own pace, to let it seep into him and become part of him. And there’s no way he’s going to let a set of required classes stop him from continuing that.

I don’t think he’s come close to his 10,000 hours yet, but they’re clicking by pretty quickly. And I’m so grateful that homeschooling helped him get that clock going.

word for the year

January 12, 2009 in learning, wordlover | 3 comments

I first heard about the idea of adopting a word for the year on the Creative Mom Podcast last year, but I never got around to choosing my own. But then I was reminded by this post on Handmade Homeschool. Prairie Poppins has some intriguing musings, photos and links.

I was surprised how quickly a word came to me. It walked right off my blog tagline.

Cultivate.

It fits into so many of my goals for the year.

I want to continue trying to cultivate my kids’ interests. I just stumbled upon camp creek, which is a blog all about project-based learning. How is it that none of you mentioned this one to me before? It’s already providing inspiration, since we’re big on project-based learning around here.

I want to cultivate my garden this year. My garden is one of my favorite places in the world, yet last year it went all but neglected as we had work done on our house. But we had some gorgeous weather here on Saturday, and were able to get out there and make a better start for this year.

I want to cultivate my writing. I’ve already started on My Year of Excellent Essayists. I’ll share that with you soon.

Any of you have a word for the year? Care to share?

abundance

November 27, 2008 in celebrations and traditions, learning | 4 comments

I’ve been collecting leaves, cones and seed pods. Every fall I’m struck once again by their abundance. Not only on hiking trails, but on city streets. Outside the library. At the playground. In parking lots. I pick them up and put them in my pockets. The squirrels and I are giddy. Like everyone else, I’m watching my pennies these days; how rewarding to find so many treasures scattered on the ground, free for the taking.

In Carmel a few weeks back I picked up eucalyptus leaves and pods. I was so glad I had them when I happened, for the first time, to Prickly Pear Bloom and read her post on missing the California of her childhood. I couldn’t bring her back, but I could send some fragrant bits of California to Wisconsin. Check out her beautiful photo of the bits in their new home. Even the squirrels can’t transport them that far.

Mr. T and I did a little classifying of our collection. It took some research because there are all sorts of mislabeled photos on the internet.

It occurred to me that our collection might look lovely strewn across our Thanksgiving table. Lulu helped me with the artful arrangement. She’s quite adept at artful arrangement.

After reading about Three Girl Pileup’s Thankful Tree, I got the notion to cut little fortune-cookie fortune slips of paper for us and our guests to write down what we’re grateful for. To tuck among the leaves, pods and cones.

I’ve grown so fond of my collection–the pods and cones especially–that now I’m thinking I’ll save them after Thanksgiving, and give them a glossing of fine glitter and glue. For the Christmas tree.

But stop me from getting ahead of myself–for today it’s still fall and Thanksgiving. I hope you have a day abundant with food, family, and friends. And gratitude.

pokemon revisited

November 25, 2008 in creativity, learning, my waldorf guilt | 5 comments

When H was six or seven (could it really have been nearly ten years ago?) he was obsessed with Pokemon. Obsessed. He studied the cards constantly, memorized them and then followed me around, asking questions like, “Did you know that Metapod has more hit points than Bulbasaur?” or “Did you know that Tentacruel’s ability is liquid ooze?” (These days when H complains about Mr. T nattering on, telling his imaginary stories, I remind him of his Pokemon days. I don’t think he quite believes that he actually talked like that.)

Of course, as a homeschooling mama I am nothing if not resourceful, so I capitalized on H’s obsession. I wrote down his Pokemon stories, helped him make Pokemon books, invented Pokemon word problems with him. By the time H finally moved on from that obsession to baseball cards over a year later, I was so tired of Pikachu and all his friends that I was happy to dismiss them from my brain forever.

So imagine my horror at our last homeschooling park day, when I saw Mr. T sitting with another seven-year-old and his collection of Pokemon cards, studying them for over an hour. Heaven help me, I thought, here we go again…

I was sure Mr. T would want to rush home and dig out his brother’s thick-as-the-Oxford-English-Dictionary binder of Pokemon cards. But no. Mr. T is not his brother. He doesn’t have a fascination with statistics, nor a mindset that borders on obsessive. He doesn’t even like to follow game rules. What intrigued him wasn’t the Pokemon game itself but the idea of a multitude of imaginary characters. Characters that can evolve into other characters. When I mentioned that H once made up his own Pokemon-style characters and cards, which he called Zamblasto cards, Mr. T’s eyes lit up like they’d been sparked by Pikachu’s thunderbolt tail.

He quickly spread himself and his supplies across the kitchen table and began drawing his own characters and their evolutions.

He made up abilities for them, and asked me to write them down. Check them out.

I especially like Surprising Scare in Dark Cave and Crack Open Balls of Power. Sort of like manga meets haiku.

One of my favorite parts of watching Mr. T draw is witnessing how it’s a process of animating his own imagination. Bringing it to life. He narrates the characters’ words as he draws, then has them interact, with lots of action and sound effects. Sometimes the scene gets so exciting that his very pencil comes to life, and starts zooming through the air, with plenty of “pshoo, pshoo” mouth noises.

Which all brings me back to the idea that sometimes my kids’ most banal interests can spark their best creativity. Which reminds me not to cave so quickly to my Waldorf guilt, and dismiss Bulbasaur, Mario and Luigi and all their compatriots. If that’s what fascinates my kids, so be it. Rather than pretending those characters don’t exist, I can realize their power in my kids’ minds–and I can put my arm around them and try to introduce them to my kids’ creative brains.

Even if it means I’m going to be regaled with hours and hours of stories about characters with abilities like Cannon Do-Dow, Honk-n-Zap and Haunted House Evil Liquid.

these things take time

November 21, 2008 in learning, wondering | 11 comments

I have a problem.

Whenever I take on something new, I want to be good at it right from the start.

Can you relate?

When I started writing, I wanted to be published right away. (Instead it took 17 years.)

When I started knitting, I wanted to knit long, lacy sweater coats like this, from the get-go . (Two and a half years later, I finally have the skill and the gall to take on that project.)

And now blogging. One blog whose name seems to get dropped into my posts on a regular basis is SouleMama. For months I’ve admired her gorgeous photographs, her poignant posts. Then there are all those subscribers, hundreds of them, and what seems like an average of 100 comments per day–over 2,000 for a recent giveaway.

I’d like me a little blog like that.

Instead, I have my blog–a toddler blog on unsteady legs. Long-winded posts, photos that don’t have the depth I desire. And I’d rather not admit how often I check my Blog Stats, hoping to see my readership grow.

But wait, patient Reader! Lest you think I’m throwing a pity party for myself, let me share why I’m writing this. You see, was taught a lovely little lesson the other day, one which gave my perspective a nudge.

In trying to choose a new camera, I started looking at blogs with photographs I admire to see which cameras those bloggers use. Many mention their camera model in About Me sections or in FAQs. Some I could ascertain from Flickr posts. Then I started wondering: were these bloggers always such good photographers?

Which is what took me to SouleMama’s archives, and her very first post on TypePad, back in February 2005. And what did I find there? Sweet photos, but a few that were, dare I say, blurred. Others that were surely taken with a flash. Writing that was charming and chatty, but not evolved to the edited eloquence of Amanda’s current posts. And comments? Well, on one lucky day in February she got four, but on most others she got one or two, or even more often, zero.

Wow. I just sat there looking at my screen and took a deep breath. I’m grateful that Amanda has the grace to keep up those old posts because for a new blogger like me, they offer a whole wicker basketful of hope. They call to mind some old adages, ones that I expect my kids to understand, but forget to apply to myself:

Being good at something takes time. And effort.

It’s important to focus on the process, rather than the product.

I think I need to spend less time clicking on my Blog Stats and spend more time remembering instead the buzz of excitement I get on a run, as I trudge up hills while tinkering with lines for a new post. The fun of playing with my new camera. The thrill I get whenever I hit that Publish button. The joy of reading a comment from a reader who’s taken something I’ve written and added new thoughts to it–making my blog a living thing, a bowl of yeasted dough waiting to be transformed.

That’s a lot. And for now, it should be enough. Blog Stats be damned.

presidential

November 7, 2008 in celebrations and traditions, learning, wordlover | 6 comments

Stole this button from my friend Emily. Cause that’s what friends are for. Check out what she did with it. I’m proud to have friends who do such noble work.

My focus for this blog is learning and creativity. I’ve never planned to discuss politics here. But listening to our next president’s acceptance speech the other night brought to mind some past conversations with my kids.

A few years ago, when we studied the Civil War era, we read speeches and quotes by Lincoln. Oh, I thought then, to have a president who could speak with such wisdom and eloquence! It seemed like something from a bygone time. The kids and I talked about this.

Listening to Obama speak, I remembered our conversations. We’ve elected a president who can move people with his words. He may not be another Abraham Lincoln, but can you listen to him without being stirred? After his speech, as the newscasters yammered on, some talked about his gifts as an orator. They said that in a time of soundbites, he is “bringing back the spoken word”.

Can I tell you how much that excites me?

The history-making reasons for Obama’s election move my heart. But the fact that we’ll have a president who can speak with eloquence thrills my mind. I’m delighted that we’ve elected a president who seems so, well, presidential.

For fellow word-lovers, check out this short yet inspiring post on the power of words in this election.

on homeschooling and teaching credentials

October 23, 2008 in homeschooling, learning | 4 comments

I’ve had a lovely correspondence with a new blog-friend, Melissa of WhatKnot. (Do stop by her blog and take in her beautiful photos of her kids and her crafts, and her charming way with words.) In an exchange of emails about homeschooling, Melissa pointed out that many people who homeschool (including me) seem to have a background in teaching. She wondered about homeschooling without such a background.

I’ve often said that my background as a teacher has been as much a hindrance as a help to me as a homeschooler. And I mean that.

As a former teacher, I came into homeschooling confident that I could do it. But I also had a whole slew of preconceptions.

Consider just a sampling of what teaching taught me:

Students do whatever you ask them to do. (And if they don’t, they’re a discipline problem that you’ll need to attend to.)
Teachers do the lesson planning.
You should plan lessons carefully ahead of time, and stick to the plan on the page, or you’ll get behind.
Students should cover most subjects most days.
Students should have written records of what they’re learning, otherwise you can’t be sure they’re learning.
Kids learn how to read in first grade, they work on spelling in second grade, learn cursive and multiplication in third grade…

I could go on. Now reread that list and consider how it might work in a homeschool environment. It might work fine if you have a very obedient child who follows your every instruction. I, however, did not. My first child has always had a very strong sense of self and a very strong voice to proclaim it. He would never do anything simply because I told him to; instead he’s questioned everything. Why do we have to read this book if I don’t like it? Why do I have to stop drawing to do science? Why should I write down my thinking on that math problem if I can just tell you how I did it?

Chris and I like to say that H’s motto should be “What’s the point of that?”

Why indeed? I had to give him answers, which made me think through his whys. Often I realized I was asking him to do things simply because it was how I’d done it in the classroom. I wanted him to be able to do what I knew school kids did. That seemed reason enough for me, but it wasn’t good enough for H. Why, why, why he argued. Oh, we had battles, I can tell you that. He argued; I was stubborn. I was a professional after all! But slowly (very slowly!) I saw that when I forced H to do something, he didn’t learn much. Except to despise whatever I was trying to teach.

Slowly I learned to listen, to consider, to shake off many of my teacher-ish beliefs. I learned to focus on helping H learn in ways that were meaningful to him.

Disobedient kids can be a blessing. (And I got three of them!) Sometimes I wonder which of us has learned more.

Of course, any parent who has spent time in a classroom may share many of my preconceptions about learning and education. But I’d argue that it’s probably harder for those of us with a background in education to shake those notions. After all, we’ve been trained to believe them.

If you don’t have that training you’ll probably have an easier time easing into homeschooling, just continuing what you’ve done with your kids since birth: pay attention to their needs and do your best to meet them.

Being a teacher did have some positive effects on my role as a homeschooling parent. More on that in my next post…

(Yes, I do still keep a teacher’s plan book. But rather than using it to plan lessons ahead of time, I record instead what the kids have done after the fact. Including all the wonderful learning they do on their own. Being able to look through the book is always encouraging when I start to worry that we’re not doing enough. Plus, record-keeping is one teacher-y part of me that I just can’t shake.)

button box

October 21, 2008 in learning | 5 comments

Somewhere along the way, I inherited my grandmother’s button box. I don’t think I originally appreciated it as much as I do now. My grandmother (I assume) made it from an old cigar box. She covered it with lots of beautiful buttons, and painted it in matte black paint.

There are buttons missing in spots now, and the cover doesn’t stay on. And there are a couple of buttons on the top with metal trim that have tarnished green through the black paint. (Could they be made with copper?)

It’s not in the best shape, but I love it.

When each of the kids has been about five, six or seven, we’ve done math with the buttons in the box. Last week the box came to mind, and I realized it was Mr. T’s turn.

We had fun just admiring and playing with the buttons inside. And then he naturally began sorting them, without any prompting from me: buttons with words, buttons that are tiny, buttons in yellow, buttons in shapes other than round.

Today we made Venn diagrams with the buttons. I made two intersecting circles with yarn, and put buttons sharing a particular attribute in one, buttons with another attribute in the other. In the intersection I placed buttons that shared both attributes. Then I asked Mr. T to guess the rule that sorted them. After he figured it out, he made labels for each section.

Check out that pencil grip. Yes, yes, yes I've tried to get him to change it and no, no, no he doesn't want to.

Then it was his turn.

Don’t you love how kids personify everything? They’re not matching buttons, they’re twins.

When we’re finished playing with the buttons, I’m displaying the box beside my desk, rather than sticking it back in Lulu’s closet. Because not only is it full of my grandmother’s history, now it also overflows with memories of playing with buttons with each of my kids.

And because, despite its dilapidated appearance, it’s a beautiful box.

(edited to add: Oops! Mr. T labeled that first diagram wrong. It should say two holes, not four. We were having so much fun that neither of us noticed.)

six weeks

October 1, 2008 in learning, wondering | 5 comments

At the homeschool conference, I went to several sessions with Catherine Levinson, a Charlotte Mason speaker. She had a lot to say about cultivating habits in kids. Apparently Charlotte was a big believer in cultivating habit.

The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days.—Charlotte Mason

Levinson thinks we should work on one habit at a time with our kids, gently reminding them to do something just once–no nagging. If we do so, she says, the habit will take within about six weeks.

I have no idea where she gets the six weeks figure. Something Charlotte Mason wrote a century ago? Some scientific study? Personal experience? A random time frame that sounds good?

No matter, I decided to try it. After all, I could use a smooth and easy day every now and again. I decided to see if I could eventually get Mr. T to put his plate next to the sink after a meal, without being reminded. This seemed like a reasonable habit to attempt–it isn’t something that really drives me nuts, so I figured I could restrain my usual nagging.

So I reminded. Gently and only once per meal. (Don’t chalk this up to patience; I was just trying to carry out the experiment scientifically.) Mr. T usually put the plate on the counter after one reminder, but never on his own.

Yesterday morning, when I came downstairs after showering, look what I found:

I calculated. It had been six weeks and one day since I started trying to fix this habit. (Mr. T is not a kid known for obedience–I guess he needed that extra day.) Of course, it might have been nice to have the yogurt container and lid placed in the garbage, just a few feet away…

But I guess that will take another six weeks.

queremos a frida

September 12, 2008 in creativity, learning, out and about | 2 comments

When I told Lulu to smile, she said, “No, I’m Frida” (who never smiled in her self-portraits.)

The other day, Lulu, Mr. T and I went to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the MOMA in San Francisco. If you’re local and you haven’t seen it, it closes on September 28, so vaya! It’s a big show, with room after room of Kahlo’s work. It’s stunning stuff, and I think all those self-portraits make it compelling for young viewers. (Although there are a handful of disturbing pieces of suicide, murder and miscarriage, with plenty of bloody veins. Mr. T. didn’t seem too bothered by those, although after glancing at one he said, “I don’t want to look at that anymore” and wisely moved on to the next.)

The show was crowded, even on a Tuesday morning. Mr. T couldn’t see the first painting through the crowd when we entered; when he finally got a glimpse and recognized it as the Luther Burbank portrait we’d seen in this book, he pulled on my hand and called, “Look, Mama, look, there it is!” which drew smiles from several nearby onlookers.

Then he floored me by looking at every single painting in the exhibit. Of course, he bounced and bobbed precariously over the wire that guarded each painting as he talked about what he saw. He recognized Diego Rivera in several paintings, and he talked about what different images might mean and also Kahlo’s use of color. (I can’t believe what he’s learned from that Creativity Express program.) Lulu floated around on her own, looking and sketching.

Mr. T spent a good three minutes studying Moses. This is a mural-like painting, supposedly based on Kahlo’s reading of Sigmund Freud. Mr. T spotted the guy with the thunderbolts in the upper right corner and said, “Hey, that’s Zeus.” Then he noticed Ra and said, “I think this painting is about gods.” We talked about the painting for another few minutes. Then he said, “I think I’m done here,” and proceeded to act as you would expect a six-year-old in a museum to act, whining about being bored and hungry and wanting to leave right now.

I’ve always been fascinated to watch my kids’ interests unfold. H was always captivated by sculpture and three-dimensional models; Lulu could sit through a ballet at two. Mr. T seems to have a thing for art, and I’m paying attention. He easily spends an hour each day drawing, a little here, a little there. He doesn’t care much about the product, or having people appreciate what he’s done. For him, it’s all about the process–when he draws he’s in his own world, quietly narrating what he puts to the page.

When he was five, he announced to us over pizza and a big glass of root beer, “Drawing is my life.” Maybe that’s a line to go in the bio at his first gallery show someday. Or maybe it will be something we’ll laugh about, when he turns out to be a car salesman or a stand-up comic.

Another good reason to visit modern art museums: the fantastic photo ops.

A couple of other good Frida books: Frida and Artists in their Time: Frida Kahlo (the second goes into nice depth for older kids.) I never did see the film Frida, but now I’m looking forward to it.

digging (to) china

September 9, 2008 in homeschooling, learning | 7 comments

So Lulu and Mr. T want to learn about China. Here’s their brainstorming list:

learn to write in Chinese with ink
read about Chinese goddesses and myths
write a Chinese version of an American Fairy tale (Lon Po Po comes to my mind)
learn the history of chopsticks
research and prepare Chinese food (“Potstickers!” says Mr. T)
learn how to speak some Chinese
go to China

That last suggestion was from Mr. T. I explained that such a trip was probably not in the budget this year.

A few more ideas popped into my head:

learn about items invented in China (so many!)
raise silkworms (if I can find a mulberry tree closer to home than the one in the botanical garden from which I guiltily stole leaves when we did this years ago)
make Chinese kites
learn how rice is grown (oooh! I found a great website on growing rice as a houseplant! And my neighbor owns one of the seed supply companies mentioned!)
learn how tea is grown
learn about religion and spirituality in China

Then Lulu came up with the Best Idea Ever. She wants to write a fake blog about traveling in China.

This would be her second fake blog. Not long after starting a real blog, she and her friend thought it would be fun to write a fake one together, based on characters they play in a movie they’ve been filming for two years now. No wait, the blog is supposedly written by the fake actresses who play the characters in the movie they’ve been filming. (Are you following this?) Since the actresses are well-paid movie stars, money is no object. They have purebred dogs, which Lulu and her friend researched online, of course. I believe one of them has an emu. And a few weeks ago, the two actresses decided to take a trip around the world.

Lulu and her friend spent a lovely summer afternoon at the computer, mapping out their trip. They researched how long flights would take, and searched for “quaint little beach villages” on the western coast of Ireland. (How do two young girls use the internet to find quaint beach villages in western Ireland? I have no idea.) They looked for the ritziest hotel possible in Madrid. Lulu insisted I come to the computer to check out her suite at the beach resort where they’ll be staying in the French Riviera. She was so pleased with finding the place, you’d think she’d actually be staying there.

Then they started blogging about their trip.

Anyway, when we started talking about Asia, Lulu lit up over the idea of writing an Asia travel blog. Or a fake Asia travel blog. This blog won’t be written by a movie actress, mind you; it will be written in the voice of a more lowly, Average Jane. It’s a brilliant idea, if you think of it. In addition to lots of writing, Lulu will incorporate photos–both hers and ones found on the internet. She’ll link to interesting websites. She’ll do all sorts of research on cities and sites in Asia. She’ll be able to take advantage of all the cool features on Google maps and Google Earth.

And it will be much cheaper than Mr. T’s suggestion of actually going to China.

Got any good recommendations for a study of China? Do leave a comment!

school

August 26, 2008 in homeschooling, learning | 5 comments

For the first time, one of my kids has started school. Granted, he’s sixteen and more than ready for this. Still, it feels like a big step.

Growing up, H was always happy with his status as a homeschooler. He’s a very stubborn willful independent-minded kid, and he liked how homeschooling gave him the freedom to make his own choices. He abhorred the idea of a teacher telling him what to do all day. So when he came to me one morning last November and said he wanted to go to high school, I felt I’d had the wind knocked out of me. I just didn’t see it coming.

But H had a lot of reasons that made sense. He didn’t want to go straight to college from homeschooling. He didn’t want to take community college courses, as many of his homeschooling friends have; he wanted to take classes with kids his own age. He wanted to be part of a community of kids, a big community of kids. Our homeschooling support group and his filmmaking workshop weren’t enough for him anymore.

Just weeks before, I’d read these two posts about what teenagers need on Brave Writer’s blog. When I read them, I had no idea how much they’d help me later. I went through a short time of mourning, in a way, for the time I thought we had left together. Then I turned my focus to H’s needs and we got busy.

We set about considering schools, visiting schools, making a transcript, applying. A huge process. In the end, there was only one school that H wanted to attend, a Catholic high school. It’s a bit less rough than the local public schools; less hardcore-academic than other local private schools. In April he was accepted as a junior transfer.

The school seems like a good fit for H. He was able to get into some advanced courses in the areas he’s especially interested in: English and history. And last week, when I met the Vice Principal of Academics at a parent transfer dinner, she asked about H’s interests. When I described what he’s been doing with filmmaking, she immediately started considering how to adapt his schedule. She made an arrangement with the Computer Arts teacher for H to be instructed independently, so he can work at a more advanced level. I’m impressed to see an administrator take that level of interest in a student, right from the start. (I guess all that tuition we’re paying is good for something…)

Most of my homeschooling friends have been supportive of H’s decision. But a few have (unintentionally, I’m sure) conveyed a slight whiff of disapproval, a subtle sense that we have somehow failed, that if we did things differently, H would still want to homeschool.

I don’t think so. One of my main reasons for homeschooling was that I wanted my kids’ learning to be meaningful to them; I wanted them to decide how they wanted to learn. And H has always had strong opinions on these matters, that’s for sure. His decision to go to school is just one more refinement of his understanding of how he learns best. He’s chosen a path different from those of his friends. That’s taken courage and confidence. I’m glad homeschooling gave those qualities to him.

If you’d asked me last November, after H made his announcement to me, I would have been sure this first week of school would be a sad one for me. But you know what? I’m not sad. Instead, I’m excited. Excited to see H excited. Excited to see him when he comes home from school, eager to share what he’s learning. (I always hear that school kids don’t want to talk to their parents about school, but so far H does.) And I’m excited to see that he’s happy, which he wasn’t so much last year.

Plus, I know the truth: H will always be a homeschooler at heart.

(I took a photo of him walking to the bus with a backpack that made him look like he was off for a five-day trip in the mountains. He didn’t want me to share it here though. It’s a special one, just for me.)

what I love about my local homeschool conference*

August 22, 2008 in homeschooling, learning | 2 comments

1. Watching all the colorful teens gleefully bounding about the hotel like oversized 4-year-olds, not a sullen face among them.

2. Inspiration! Inspiration from new ideas** and new twists on old ideas***.

3. Seeing people of all ages crafting everywhere, with workshops on mosaics, amigurami (small Japanese crocheted animals), artist trading cards and matchbox shrines, to name just a few. Then there was the amazing Swap-o-rama-rama where kids got to take donated clothes, cut them apart, and stitch them into something new. Pure bliss for Lulu. She made H a trench coat out of old jeans and duct tape.

4. Eating pizza, drinking sangria and laughing with my homeschool homies–otherwise known as my fellow homeschooling parent friends–on a balmy Sacramento night, beneath a full moon.

5. Lots of knitting time during larger keynote sessions.

6. Watching Lulu and her equally absurdly-competent friend somehow manage at least 20 kids at a time during their popular Rag Doll-Making workshop.

7. The vendor hall and Recycled Resource Room. I’m not so tempted by curriculum stuff, but I have to restrain myself with all the great books and games. Found a cool computer program on art technique and history that Mr. T adores already, and a brilliant hands-on set for exploring the Pythagorean Mr. Trem.

8. Offering my own workshop for the first time.

I gave a workshop on facilitating writer’s workshops, and it was such a thrill. I’ve been facilitating writer’s workshops for homeschoolers for years now, basically gathering kids together and giving them a chance to to share their writing with one another. I’ve also participated in workshops myself, through adult ed courses and with my beloved writing group. Let me tell you: there’s nothing like a workshop to inspire writing! I could talk all day on the topic! What a joy it was to share this with a roomful of eager folks who seemed truly interested.

(Incidentally, If any of those workshop attendees find your way to this blog, please let me know if you start up a workshop–my email address is on the handout, or leave a comment here! And to anyone who may have bought a CD recording of the workshop, leave a comment here as well, and I will gladly email the handout which I referred to half a zillion times as I spoke. (You must include your email address when you leave a comment, but I’m the only one who will see it. You can even leave a pseudonym like, say, Homeskool Harriet or John Holt, Jr.)

I know people who don’t like this conference, or feel that they’ve attended so long that there’s nothing new to learn. I also know a woman who homeschooled three kids, and has sent two off to college. This year her youngest will attend high school, so her homeschooling life is theoretically ending. Nevertheless, I found her beside me in more than one of the Charlotte Mason workshops. I asked why she was there, since she would no longer be homeschooling. She’ll be tutoring a young boy this year, she explained, and she thought the workshop might be helpful. But mostly, she said that she loves history, and was enjoying hearing about this woman, Charlotte Mason, who had so many innovative ideas, so long ago. My friend attended the workshop, I think, because she’s a curious person who likes to learn. Interestingly, her youngest daughter–who attended my writer’s workshop–is one of the most enthusiastic, eager-to-learn teenagers I know. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

* My local conference is put on by HSC, the HomeSchool Association of California. It takes place in Sacramento the third weekend in August every year. Hard to believe, but last weekend I went for my twelfth year.

** Scott Noelle had some interesting ideas about enjoying parenting, as opposed to being motivated by guilt and a puritanical work ethic. Sheesh, I hadn’t realized what a puritan I am.

*** I’ve read about Charlotte Mason in the past, but it was fun to revisit her ideas via Catherine Levinson. I’m newly intrigued with Charlotte’s ideas about narration as a precursor to developing a writer’s voice; the use of nature journals; and the idea of very short lessons in subjects such as math. (Not that I offer lessons to my kids on anything. But they seem to be teaching me lessons constantly…)

here we go!

August 16, 2008 in 100-species-challenge, learning | 2 comments

After whining about how one of my children did not share my boundless enthusiasm for the 100-Species Challenge in my last post, I decided it best to proceed on my own. Once I did that, of course, interested family members began to sprout up as quickly as the unnamed plants themselves. Mr. T gladly ate one of our Pink Pearl apples so I could photograph its stunning salmon-colored flesh for my first entry.

And my charming husband, after catching up with my blog at the office, took pity on me and my lack of enthusiastic family members and promised to search out a few species himself.

Hoo ha!

I’ve decided to post our (presumably) growing list as a page in the A Little Background sidebar at right. I won’t share every new species as a blog post-I’m trying real hard not to bore you silly here-but I’ll post occasional, (again, presumably) intriguing entries as posts from time to time. Those posts will be linked under the category 100-species-challenge at right.

I’m following scsours’ Official Rules. With a little tweaking, of course, cause that’s what homeschoolers do best.

A little drumroll please, Mr. Shaffer…

1. Pink Pearl Apple

Latin name: Pyrus Malus

Interesting facts: I chose this tree, even though it’s growing right in our backyard*, because I’m always mixing up it up with the Pink Lady apple. I wanted Mr. T and me to get it right once and for all. We googled to be certain and discovered that the Pink Lady is the one that is pink on the outside; ours with the pink interior is the Pink Pearl.

According to California Eating, Pink Pearls are unique to the West Coast, which makes it all the more interesting to have this tree growing in our yard. They’re also rare in supermarkets because they don’t keep or travel well. I love how California Eating’s author, Amy, calls their color “positively vampy”. She also says the apples “taste of raspberries and lemon custard.” Tempting! Ours are still a bit under-ripe but I’m looking forward to tasting for that lemon custard. Mr. T is impatient; he likes them sour, says they taste like Sour Patch Kids.

And check out the Pink Pearl blossoms pictured in Amy’s post. Our blossoms really are that pink and gorgeous in spring. Positively vampy.

* Not the best photo ever. Our two apple trees are espaliered against a fence, and they have the clean lines and elegance of dancers most of the year. But right now they look as if they’re sprouting limbs from their stomachs because it’s summer and because the sunflower house has stepped right in front of them on the stage and we can’t get to them to give haircuts.

the 100 Species Challenge meets the challenge of raising kids with minds of their own

August 12, 2008 in 100-species-challenge, learning | 3 comments

Okay, so I came across this challenge on Melissa Wiley’s blog. It originated here, when scsours contemplated a quote that most people can’t recognize 100 plant species within a mile of their home. The challenge is to go out and learn the names, and a bit more, of 100 plants in your neighborhood.

Ooh, I loved this idea immediately. I’m pretty good with plant names, especially garden plants, and herbs and other edibles. Many of the Latin names even manage to velcro their way into my brain. I’m sure there are plenty I don’t know, though, especially trees. And wouldn’t it be fun to do with the kids?

Apparently not. When I mentioned it to one of my children, who shall remain nameless, she (ahem) rejected the notion as quickly as I had fallen in love with it. “I don’t want to do that,” she said. “I just want to do life science.”

Oh, life science. Silly me, suggesting plants.

When will I learn that my kids’ desire to do anything is inversely proportional to my suggestions that they do it? In plain English: If Mama thinks it’s a good idea, it must be a bad idea. Sometimes I think they say no simply because I’m suggesting it, without considering the suggestion at all. I guess they’ve spent years having to fight off my Boundless Excitement over Learning Opportunities. Mr. T. is still young enough, at six, that he’s often willing to get caught up in my enthusiasm, but he has such a creative way of looking at the world that he usually veers off my path pretty quickly.

I probably should have quietly started this myself. I could have asked the unnamed child to figure out how to put her camera in macro mode and take a picture for me. I could have looked up a Latin name and researched its meaning in this this cool book. Then I could have casually mentioned it to a nearby child. Latin names are very Harry Potterish, you know, and I think Mr. T would dig that.

There’s a part of me that hates the notion of having to be sneaky about what I want to share with my kids. But I guess that’s better than being told flat-out that they’d rather do life science.

I see that Sandra Dodd, unschooler extraordinaire, is taking on this challenge. Check out her subtitle: “In Which Sandra Dodd Follows the Lead of Others in Trying to Identify by Name 100 Local Plants”. Notice that no kids are mentioned. This is her quest. I’m sure I could learn something from that.

But I keep thinking how fun it could be to make plant trading cards, you know, Pokemon-style, with Latin names and cool facts…no, no, stop me! Remind me to keep it to myself for now! Remind me to play with the idea of this challenge, think about how I might do it myself–and maybe strew a few enticing crumbs along the way.

If you want to take on this challenge yourself–alone or with kids who are more cooperative than mine–you can read the Official Rules and sign up here.

week of “writing”

July 21, 2008 in learning, writing | 2 comments

Last week I had a five days with all three kids enrolled in various day camps, and me at home alone, able to write for uninterrupted hours on end. Such time alone is rare for a homeschooling parent, as I’m sure you can imagine. It has happened precisely three times in my life as a mother–once last summer and twice (gasp!) this summer.

As you can see from the post title, this was a week to be used, ostensibly, for writing. And I did some of that. I revised an essay about traveling with our kids in Spain, for the zillionth time, and sent it out for a third ride on the rejection merry-go-round. I started a new essay on the self-imposed sanity that I’m calling “homeschooling my MFA”. But what I did, mostly, was get this blog up and running.

Which should have been a simple task, if I had simply gone to wordpress.com and chosen one of their hosted, pre-designed blogs. But no-o-o. I had to decide to design and host my own blog, with my own website and my own server. Why? Because I fixate on superficial things like page layout and font colors.

I’m not sure I would have done it if I’d realized that my learning curve would be as steep as a black diamond ski run. I started this project in April, for heaven’s sake. But this book helped. As did my belief that you can learn anything if you’re tenacious enough to dig through help files and support forums.

I learned a bunch of terms that a few months ago would have made as much sense to me as Swedish. I learned how to edit a CSS style sheet with the proper HTML code on my MySQL database so I could upload it via FTP and then drag it to the theme files of my content folder. I’m astounded that that sentence makes sense to me; even more astounded that I was actually able to do it. And that was simply what it took to make my links appear this particular shade of green.

I’m just glad that you and my kids weren’t here last Wednesday to see me swearing and crying when I tried to upgrade to the newest version of Wordpress, and found myself in the deep end of the pool with the water far over my head. I lost everything and had to start from scratch. But I’ll know how to upgrade next time!

So I didn’t get a lot of writing done last week, but I got this thing up and running. And I think I learned enough to impress my 16-year-old. Maybe.

It feels so good to teach yourself something. It’s one of the best parts of homeschooling. And it isn’t just for the kids.

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