Archive for the ‘Family Notes’ Category

Email: What other curricula did I use?

Hi Julie,

Thanks to The Writer’s Jungle, I can now relax and teach writing in a more natural and fun way. Your blog has helped inspire our homeschooling and remind us of what really matters. I like your homeschool style and wonder if I could get your recommendations on any particular materials that you used over the years that you found to be valuable.

murderousmaths

I get the idea that you are probably not the type to use a curriculum – but thought I would ask anyway. I’m sort of a curriculum junkie. I have two daughters, 12 and 10.

For the moment we are using the follow…..

  • Math-U-See
  • Singapore Math
  • Apologia Science
  • History Odyssey
  • Writer’s Jungle and The Arrow
  • Worldly Wise

I’ve wasted a lot of money on plenty of other resources.

Thanks so much,

Susie

——

Hi Susie!

I certainly did use a variety of curricula over the years. Some of it I regret (and cringe to think about now). Some of it I loved and would use again. And then for a period of some years, we unschooled (though the definition of that word varies group to group, but from my perspective, that is who we were).

Some of my favorite resources follow, as well as how I “solved” some of the needs we had where I didn’t purchase curricula. I have omitted choices I regretted.

Math:

  • Miquon Math (For elementary school; combined with Cuisinaire rods—I literally didn’t understand multiplication until these books)
  • Family Math (I loved this book – we did everything in it)
  • Math-It (A game to learn multiplication tables quickly)
  • Keys to… (Fractions, Decimals, Percents)
  • Murderous Maths (Hands-down the most fun we’ve ever had with math; lots of volumes)
  • The I Hate Mathematics Book and Math for Smarty Pants by the Brown Paper School company
  • Saxon Math for Algebra and Geometry
  • Tutoring for math in exchange for writing help between homeschool families
  • Paid tutoring for high school math
  • Parttime enrollment at the local high school

History:

  • Sonlight (back when the Instructor’s Guides weren’t so enormous)
  • Well Trained Mind for a reading list, and Story of the World books
  • Personal rabbit trails and my own interests
  • (My regrets are in this category more than any other so the list appears to be short.)

Science:

  • Charter member of HENSE (Home Educators Neglecting Science Education)
  • Kitchen chemistry experiments from books
  • Ring of Fire Rock Study Kits (These are fabulous!!)
  • DK books
  • A telescope
  • Nature journaling 
  • Bird study through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, including their BIG book and course.
  • Biology through our co-op
  • Chemistry through the local high school

Language arts:

Logic:

Art:

  • Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting (Oh My Goddess!! I just googled and all of her “videos” are now online for free. Just the music alone sent me wheeling with memories and happiness. Don’t miss these.)
  • Linnea and Monet’s Garden (Then look at the recommended books and you will see all the others we read and enjoyed!)
  • Any museum in driving distance, regularly visited. Bought the books in the museum shop to review at home.

We also had fun with Ancient Greek, Rosetta Stone Chinese (didn’t get far in it, but it was fun to wet our feet), and Power Glide for French. Still, in the end, it was much easier for my kids to learn foreign languages in school (they attended the local high school for language learning, all except Noah who studied Klingon on his own <g>).

Hope that helps! Would love to hear about other favorite resources in the comments below.

Posted in Appreciating Art, Family Notes, Grammar, Homeschool Advice, Language Arts, Unschooling | 2 Comments »

Happy Valentine’s Day: Strawberry Shortcake Edition

Strawberry Shortcake Recipe

Our favorite Valentine’s Day treat is Strawberry Shortcake.

I like to make the shortcake from scratch. It has great crumbly, buttery texture and is warm from the oven. For those of you who feel ambitious and inspired, here’s the recipe I use from my old stalwart battle-ax: The Fannie Farmer Cookbook:

Shortcake

2 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 Tbsp sugar
5 Tbsp butter
2/3 cup milk
Berries, slightly sweetened
Heavy cream (whipped)

Preheat the oven to 425ºF (220ºC). Butter and lightly flour an 8 inch cake pan or a cookie sheet. Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a bowl. Cut the butter in bits and work it into the flour mixture with a pastry blender or your fingers until it resembles coarse meal. Slowly stir in the milk, using just enough to hold the dough together. Turn onto a floured board and knead for a minute or two. Pat the dough into the cake pan, or roll and pat it 3/4 inch thick and cut it into eight 2-inch rounds, using a biscuit cutter. Arrange the rounds on a cookie sheet and bake them for 10-12 minutes, or the larger cake for 12-15 minutes. Split with two forks while still warm, butter, fill with sugared fruit or berries, and serve warm with whipped cream.

The large disc shortcake makes a dramatic appearance on a table (you split the entire cake, butter its insides, heap on the berries, and add whipped cream on top). Cutting and serving it is less artful of an impression for the individual dish, but as long as everyone beheld the original masterpiece, a bit of a mess is forgiven.

I’ve enjoyed creating the smaller, individual biscuit-size shortcakes when serving my family. The kids love seeing their own miniature cake look exotic and particularly whipped cream-special just for them. So we usually use the biscuit cutter version of the shortcake for our family strawberry shortcake parties. The photo is from 2007, and is of one of our small biscuit shortcakes.

This is my Valentine’s Day gift to you! Hope you have a wonderful day.

Visit our Poetry Teatime website!

Posted in Brave Writer Lifestyle, Family Notes, Poetry Teatime | Comments Off on Happy Valentine’s Day: Strawberry Shortcake Edition

Natural Vocabulary Development

Spelling words

The quickest way to grow as an educated person is to master the vocabulary of a particular field. That really is what we mean when we say people are “educated.” They know the verbiage that goes with that field, they know the people who comment and write about it, they know the critical players in the field (whatever field of expertise they are in—inventors or football stars!), and they know especially the language of the specific domain.

For instance, your kids are often expert in a particular video or computer game. When they talk about it, don’t you feel a little out of your depth? That’s because your kids are experts and you are a mere novice! On the other hand, your knowledge of a particular area (birth? tennis? art history? literature? gardening?) trumps your kids’ I’m sure!

The point is this—growth as an educated person is all about mastery of language and how it relates to a specific field. The more you read, the more nuances you’ll master. It’s one thing to say: “What a pretty night sky” (a novice’s appraisal) and another to say, “There’s Cassiopeia! It’s a constellation in the northern sky, named after the queen Cassiopeia from Greek mythology. You can recognize it by its unique ‘W’ shape and how it’s formed by five bright stars. See it?”

The tendency in homeschool is to overvalue “academic” vocabulary and to under-appreciate the vocabulary your children naturally acquire in their areas of “common” interest. For instance, you want to claim “genius status” for the kid who loves astronomy, but you overlook the child whose enthusiasm for fashion makes her an expert in fabrics, necklines, and designers. Yet the exact same set of skills goes into “expertise” for both. Both of these fields offer your child the opportunity to deepen a vocabulary around a particular field of interest. Knowing the language, the insider-jargon, the methods for evaluation for whatever research is being done, the successes and failures in the field, the “celebrated persons,” the career opportunities that go with that field—all of these lead to a level of competence in that subject domain that empowers your child to be “smart.”

The mastery of a particular area of interest leads to the ability to replicate that style of inquiry for other areas later in life (both personal interest and academic). Not only that, you can use your child’s natural interests now, for spelling, grammar, writing style, and exploration in a way you can’t conjure with bored children being dragged through history or science that doesn’t engage them.

When my daughter, Caitrin, spent several years deeply invested in fashion, we made spelling lists of words that were particular to that field. Words like couture, stilettos, boutique, sleeveless.

Caitrin kept a daily blog for a year writing about fashion and modeling her individual outfits each day. We took a trip to Chicago to see the stores of designers she had studied in her magazine subscriptions (Vogue, Elle, etc.). We watched Project Runway with religious regularity.

Caitrin acquired a vocabulary far superior to mine in that arena and we used her passion for that field to learn about how you take a subject area deeper. She is less interested in fashion today, but as she focuses on what she loves, she finds the names, ideas, and language that go with those subject areas because she knows (instinctively) that that’s how you demonstrate intelligence and credibility when you talk about any subject.

Try it! You’ll like it.

Funschooling

Posted in Brave Writer Lifestyle, Family Notes, Words! | Comments Off on Natural Vocabulary Development

Happy Winter Solstice!

DSCN9634.JPGFor years, I thought about celebrating Solstice with my kids.

It seemed like it would be a great way to take some of the commercialism out of the season and it would give us a chance, as the kids got older, to recapture some of the magic of our homeschooling journey.

In 2009, we decided to create our own holiday traditions for Solstice. Each year, they vary a bit (for instance, the first year we used hammers and nails to puncture tin cans in pretty patterns to create lanterns to line the driveway—much harder to hammer nails into tin cans than you might imagine! So we recycle them each year and haven’t had to make them again).

solstice tin cans

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Traditions

There are a few traditions we do every year.

For instance, we always light a fire (sometimes outside, sometimes inside). Then we take strips of paper (old Trader Joe’s grocery bags cut into long strips) and we write two things on them:

1) Regrets from the past year
I regret not working harder to help my team…

2) Wishes for the coming year
I wish that my sister and I would get along better this year.

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These get read silently by the writer, then tossed into the flames. We usually play a little instrumental Celtic music in the background while we use magic markers to write. It’s proved to be one of our favorite traditions of the year. The kids now like to keep a record of their wishes so they can remember year to year what they wrote the previous year.

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Another tradition we love is to make handmade gifts for each person. This means we can’t go to the store and buy someone a CD or scarf. Rather, whatever we give, it must be crafted in some way by the giver.

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Some of the items of the last several years:

  • Origami cranes colored to look like famous people (based on the celebrity obsessions we each have—from Lady Gaga to Dumbledore to Dietrich Bonhoeffer!)
  • Book marks and popsicle stick picture frames
  • CD mixes (tailored for each person)
  • A lengthy rap, where each stanza addressed a specific family member and the whole thing was performed with accompaniment
  • Photos framed with selected passages from novels (remember the value of copywork?) that went with each person
  • Apple calendars with photos of the kids for each month of the year drawn from my lifetime supply
  • Harry Potter brooms (matching the houses each of my kids believe they would be in)
  • Haiku!
  • Personalized tree ornaments
  • Crowns
  • Art trading cards
  • Embroidered initials in small hoop frames

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We also eat special foods (in our home, we eat a cashew pasta dish, homemade applesauce, and sliced oranges with sugar and cinnamon on them) and we drink a special wassail (though this year we are trying mulled wine).

The event ends when we make candles from a beeswax kit purchased from Hearthsong (a favorite toy and craft company we’ve loved for 20 years).

Solstice 2011
 

The most wonderful thing about celebrating Solstice is that I get to see the fruits of all those years of crafting, reading aloud, the celebration of family, and the care for each individual member all expressed in one evening celebration—at the darkest time of the year. For us, it’s been a most satisfying addition to our winter holiday celebrations.

I want to publicly thank Kimmy Certa (Brave Writer mom and online friend) who first put the thought into my head as I witnessed her version of Solstice celebrating.

Happy Winter Solstice to all of you!

Posted in Activities, Brave Writer Lifestyle, Family Notes, On Being a Mother, Solstice | 3 Comments »

Know Your Kids as They Are

Know your kids as they are

I read a plea from a desperate mother of a nine-year-old girl who hates school. The mother felt helpless, hurt, and angry. She appealed to her email loop for support and advice. The first email reply went through the “nurturing model”—

  • rock her in a rocking chair,
  • don’t worry about school,
  • she’s young still,
  • enjoy precious moments,
  • help her to feel comfortable and happy in your home with less school pressure

…etc.

The very next reply was a 180 degree turn. This mother offered a list of quotes out of a popular child rearing book. The first one said roughly, “Don’t make rules you won’t enforce.” And of course, if you make a rule, require obedience. Suggestions of penalties followed:

  • time outs,
  • wooden spoon spankings,
  • withdrawal of TV or computer privileges.

These two positions were so opposite to one another, I found myself laughing out loud. What kind of parents are we? It seems to me that the real issues are often missed in these discussions. We parents are so quick to evaluate the behavior of our kids and then to look to each other for “tricks” or “tips” on how to “deal with them.” The desperate mother is asking the wrong questions to the wrong people.

The Inner Lives of Our Children

The inner lives of our children ought to be the object of our quest. When they throw routine tantrums and say outrageous hurtful things, why aren’t we asking where that’s coming from? So often we just want to squelch the behavior—extinguish it like a sputtering candle.

Can we know our kids from the inside out? Will they talk to us? Some kids have no trouble telling us their needs or hardships. Others are completely tongue-tied—stuck perhaps in the non-verbal mode of relating to themselves—aware of problems and feelings but unable to articulate them or to even identify them.

Instead of rules enforcement versus nurturing to the point of “catering to,” how about investigation and support/compassion? How about encouragement and understanding? Are we willing to know our kids as they actually are rather than to simply apply labels for behavior, or symbols for their season of life, or rules for their “own good”? What if we become fascinated by the complexity of our kids, rather than worried about it?

Sweet Noah

I remember when Noah (my oldest) was 10-years-old and he struggled with writing. His attitude showed that he was demoralized (even after “all I’ve done for him” to make it easier). My ego got flustered and irritated.

He was violating my system.

He was invalidating my work.

But my spirit knew differently. I suddenly saw that Noah must have had real reasons that made sense to him about why writing was continuing to feel hard… It was a moment. I flipped my point of view away from wondering where I went wrong or why he couldn’t validate my efforts, to what was going on inside of him. So I asked him with gentleness and true interest:

“Noah, what’s wrong? What is bothering you?”

Do you know that for the first time, tears of shame and earnest self-displeasure surfaced? He felt badly that he couldn’t please me by “getting it” more quickly. This reminded me of feelings I had as a girl when my father tried to help me with math homework and I just “didn’t get it.” My dad got so frustrated with me, thinking he’d been clear (I’m sure he was!). But I felt desperate inside. I couldn’t validate him. I could only fail in his presence and make him miserable. What an awful feeling—to know your parent is trying to help and you can’t translate that help into success! The only way forward is to shut down, if there is no entry point for discussion or honest communication of scary internal feelings. I feared I wasn’t smart. I didn’t want my dad to know that about me. So I clammed up.

Noah’s weren’t tears of frustration or anger or anxiety about writing specifically. I could tell. He said to me,

“You’re a writer. You and Dad talk about it all the time. You teach it. No matter how much you tell me that you aren’t worried about how well I write, I still know that you’d be happier if I wrote well. And I want to do it but know I can’t.”

More tears.

Wow. So honest. So risky!

The only respectful reply at that point was silence. I saw. I didn’t have an explanation, or more information to throw at him, or even good ideas, or defenses for how wrong his perceptions were. I saw. And in seeing, I knew that all I really had to offer was compassionate support. A hug. A kind, understanding smile of sympathy.

So I told Noah that I loved him, appreciated his openness in risking those words out loud, and I offered to do whatever it took to support him in finding his own way out of those oppressive feelings. It was a moment.

My real job at home

I suddenly realized that my true job as a mother was to care more than anyone else about the interior lives of my kids. I wanted to be there to watch, encourage, and do what it took to support them in triumphing over the hurdles they faced. Noah gave me a gift. He articulated his feelings in a way that I could understand them. Lucky me! Here was an instance where Noah’s self-awareness and verbal capacity helped him—and even realizing that—that he could find his words when he felt safe and cared for—helped me know he’d write well one day.

Not all of our kids can express themselves as easily in words. We want to remember to listen beneath the words, or to help find the words for our other kids when they get that stuck. Or at minimum, we can offer a comforting response like,

“It must be so frustrating to not be able to express what’s bothering you right now.”

Noah and I talked for 45 minutes the next day about his writing project on roller coasters that he’d begun, and the change was dramatic. He felt freer to ask for help, to try my ideas, and he knew I was relaxed and happy with him. We did the work together, and I watched him go to the computer to write with relief and success. I was humbled by that. It struck me that he found a way to relieve the pressure of those “illegal” feelings, and then with my kindness and companionship, writing followed.

That may not be the exact sequence in your family. However:

  • relief
  • light
  • hope
  • intimacy
  • optimism

…may follow.

Those are good too.

Partnership Writing

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Family Notes, Homeschool Advice, Young Writers | 7 Comments »