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| I guess this means I really AM a nerdI took a week off from the internet. I did this because I was becoming more compulsive about the computer, not being able to walk past it without interacting with it in some way. I don't like that. So, a little holiday to recalibrate my habits.
The funny thing is that I didn't miss the things I thought I would. I really didn't miss my email much at all, except a couple of times when not having it was inconvenient. I didn't miss Facebook at all. This surprised me, because Facebook has become my timewaster of choice lately.
I was also surprised to find that no internet did not translate into more productivity around the house. Well, maybe a bit more, but mostly I still found ways to not do the laundry. I am good at not doing the laundry.
The biggest surprise of all was what I did miss from the internet. I really, really, really missed weather.com. We don't have TV or get newspapers. I was reduced to calling the weather line. This was an unsatisfactory substitute for the forecasts that are constantly updated, broken down by hour, and fraught with misplaced accuracy that you get from weather.com.
The other website I found I could not live without is our local library's. I wasn't so much concerned with not being able to check which books were coming due, because I made sure nothing was due during my internet vacation. What I really missed was being able to browse the catalog and put random things on hold to pick up later, and, of course, to check back to see which of the random things were ready for us to pick up. It's like a little, mini-Christmas whenever I see that we have books to pick up from the library. It makes me happy, and I missed that.
But now I am back online, and I will not take my weather forecasts and library accessibility for granted.
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| More Bathtub SillinessHeard from Tom in the tub (sung at top volume):
I'm farting in the bathtub and I'm glad I'm not in France!
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| Katie is taking a bubble bath right now. She just called me into the bathroom. She wanted to show me A Reenactment of Odysseus and the Clapping Rocks. First she made a long channel down the center of the mountain of bubbles. Then she wound up the Altoids-tin paddle boat, and set it off between the towering bubble cliffs. Sadly, in this version, Odysseus and his men were all crushed when their paddle boat stalled halfway through the perilous passage.
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| Am I Talking to My Daughter, or My Grandmother?During supper this evening the name Meatloaf came up. The kids had never heard of the Dark Sex God Who Must Not Be Named, so Matt and I started to explain who Meatloaf is. Once the kids got past howling with laughter at his name, we decided that hearing is believing. I pulled up Bat Out of Hell on YouTube for their listening pleasure.
Tom kind of liked it, especially the revving motorcycle noises.
Katie did not like it. She said, "You notice how he is yelling most of the words? That's why I don't like . . ." (and here her voice drips with scorn) " . . .Pop Music."
And she really does not like any "pop" music. If it isn't classical, traditional Celtic, or Broadway, she turns her nose up at it. Oy! Kids today!
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| What A Difference Some Focus Can MakeAwhile back I wrote about needing to make some changes to our daily lessons. I needed to loosen things up some. Lessons had lost their spark. Well, I made changes, but there was no immediate change in the basic state of affairs. Our homeschool had lost its focus. I was drifting along from day to day, not sure what exactly I was trying to do. I was feeling a general confusion about whether we should be more unschoolish or less. And if less unschoolish, then more what?
Earlier this week something happened that brought the purpose of our lessons into focus for me, and that focus has made a world of difference. We were sitting on the couch and I was reading a rather boring bit from a usually interesting book about weather. Tom was restless, occasionally getting up and bouncing around the room and making noise. Katie was sighing and rolling her eyes. I was stubbornly trying to plug on through the material and get it over with. No one was having a good time, or learning anything, and it was getting on my nerves, so I stopped.
My first impulse was to get angry. To yell at the kids for not paying attention. But I managed to stop and take a deep breath. Still, I couldn't resist the impulse to talk about the frustration I was feeling. I started telling the kids how hard schooling was feeling to me. To give them some context, I stated talking about why we do lessons and what we are trying to accomplish. Because I was explaining myself to children, who do not carry the same assumptions as, say, homeschooling parents, I had to strip what I wanted to say to the bare bones. Take everything back to first principles, so to speak. As I was explaining why we do lessons, the confusion I had been feeling settled down. I was on solid ground again.
So, here is what I am trying to accomplish in our family homeschool:
1. I want to give the children practice at following my direction, and me practice at directing them. As I have mentioned before, I tend to shun the authority of parenting, but then get upset when the kids won't listen to me. Daily lessons are a good chance for us all to get more comfortable with me being in charge. I could do this outside of the educational arena, but lessons are a logical place for it.
2. The kids need to get lots of practice in math, reading and writing. It needs to be as fun as possible, but it still needs to happen. Being able to write, read and do basic math without having to stop and think about it opens the doors wider to learning from the written word, expressing oneself clearly, and thinking mathematically.
3. I want to show my children that life is full of interesting . . . stuff. A big part of lessons is simply to offer up a sampler platter of interesting things to pursue. It doesn't matter if Katie knows all about the Civil War, or if Tom can play the piano. It doesn't matter if either child ever understands the Krebs cycle. But they do need to see that history, music and science can be worth learning about. As well as art, literature, languages, crafts, physical exercise, cooking, and on and on and on.
So that's it. Three things. Three simple things.
I don't know if it will last, but once I got that straight in my head, what to do each day for lessons, and how to do it suddenly seemed simple. We need to do some math most every day (nice, because that's Tom's favorite part of lessons). The kids need to write most every day (nice, because that's Katie's favorite part of lessons). They need to read most every day (which they do anyway, but out loud is good practice once in awhile). And it needs to be as fun as possible (which, surprisingly, isn't all that hard). I need to be the one telling them that it is time to do it, at least part of the day (not easy for me, but sometimes I get it right). And we need to explore fun and interesting stuff, like history and science and art and music and so on (And if something we started to explore turns out to be not so fun, we can, and should, stop!).
Easy peasy, right?
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