syhndi's Xanga

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:06:11 GMT

Why is it that each week, on the day after Girl Scouts, my daughter is a slightly different kid? Is it the late night? Maybe. It's funny, though, because this slightly different Katie is an awful lot like some of the girls at the meeting. These are not girls that Katie is friends with. She doesn't seem to admire them, or even really like them. In fact, during the meetings it seems like Katie does not even notice them. But then the next day, there is an echo of these girls in my daughter's face, in her movements, and in her voice.

I suppose I ought to say that these girls are not behaving terribly. I am not shocked by their behavior. They aren't doing anything quite bad enough to get into any trouble. In fact, I can't describe how they act without sounding like a cranky old lady. Honestly, I think they are basically well brought up little girls who are playing at being cool. They put on a shallow, breezy, don't-give-a-shit attitude the way they might put on costumes from a dress-up trunk. There is a lot of hair flipping. It's not horrible, but I don't like it.

I especially don't like to see it in my odd, quirky, artistic, nerdy, imaginative, earnest, honest, just-who-she-ought-to-be baby girl!

Perhaps interacting with age-peers is overrated.

WooHoo! Yippee! Huzzah!

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:09:59 GMT

Like last year, we've been doing lessons most every weekday this summer. It isn't a lot of the day, about 2 hours every morning, sometimes a little less. And the lessons have been very relaxed and simple. My basic outline for each day is to have one child on the computer, allowed to select from a variety of officially educational websites, while I work with the other on some kind of math exercise and some kind of writing exercise. Then we switch. Then we go sit on the couch together and I read to them from one or more of the many books I've run across that I thought might be interesting for "school". We've been slowly making our way through Jack London's White Fang. We've also read some Tolkien (Tom couldn't remember The Scouring of The Shire), some Shakespeare adaptations, and about world religions, roly-polys, human anatomy, how telephones work, and I can't remember what all else

Note: You see, this is the portion of the blog entry where I soothe any lurking bad-Homeschool-Mama fears by enumerating all the wonderful things we've done. It is a common practice, and should not be mistaken for trying to make other Homeschool Mamas feel bad because they haven't done one or more of the things on the list. These lists always read more impressive than the real experience.

Yesterday we skipped lessons so that we could meet up with some friends and play in the park. Today I was considering skipping lessons so that I could do some cleaning before we go swimming in the afternoon. As I was telling the kids roughly what the schedule for the day is, I decided to compromise and do an hour of lessons, and then get on to cleaning.

Upon that announcement, my daughter sighed with relief and said, "I was hoping for lessons today." My jaw dropped in anstonishment, quickly followed by a desire to do a Snoopy dance.

I guess this means I really AM a nerd

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 01:05:45 GMT

I 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.

More Bathtub Silliness

Sun, 17 May 2009 15:22:07 GMT

Heard from Tom in the tub (sung at top volume):

I'm farting in the bathtub and I'm glad I'm not in France!

Friday, May 15, 2009

Fri, 15 May 2009 18:12:08 GMT

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.

Am I Talking to My Daughter, or My Grandmother?

Fri, 01 May 2009 22:51:21 GMT

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!

What A Difference Some Focus Can Make

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:56:50 GMT

Awhile 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?

Homeschool Day Book

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 02:15:44 GMT

A couple of years ago (has it really been that long?!) I blogged about wanting to write a software program that people like me could use easily. I had the idea to make it like a blog, where you just typed in what you had done that day in text format. Then you could apply labels to the entries. The labels would designate which children were mentioned in the entry, and which subjects were covered. Great idea, yeah? The only problem is that my programming skills were definitely in the beginner's category, and what I was envisioning was some more advanced stuff. Still, I messed around with the idea now and then, trying to use it as a learning project. Somehow, though, I just lost the fire for programming that I had when I was programming for our homeschool co-op. Another good idea that would never get anywhere.

Or so it seemed. Luckily, the idea caught my husband's interest. He asked if he could "steal" my idea, and I happily granted my permission. I wanted to see the idea made reality, because I wanted that program for my own homeschooling use! Well, he ran with it. He changed a few things. At first I wasn't very happy about changes to my original idea, but I could see the logic, and after starting to use the prototype software myself, I could see that the changes were real improvements.

Well, after months of putting in a few hours here and a few hours there, while working pretty much steadily for two other clients, Matt announced that Homeschool Day Book was ready for the world to see! I don't know if many people will find out about it and end up using it. We certainly aren't going to become millionaires from it. But I do know that the program is great! Of course, I've known that since I started using the "alpha" version back in July.

So, kudos to you Matt! I knew you could do it.

And by the way, here it is: http://www.homeschooldaybook.com/

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:46:17 GMT

Things are getting better around here homeschool-wise. We took a week and some change off, and just hung out, watched nature videos, played games, that sort of thing. And I thought about things. And read a few things. I think I have a pretty good idea where to go from here. But first, a look back at what hasn't been working:

1. Too rigid. I love a schedule, and even if I jot one down with the idea to only use it as a guide, I find myself wanting to stick to it to the minute! I feel like the day is getting out of control if we don't do the things I planned to do, by the time I planned to do them. This isn't working.

2. Inappropriate expectations. I think it is fine to expect your children to excel. I think it is fine to present them with challenges well above their "age level." We don't worry about grade level or age level around here much at all. But it is a problem when my expectations are above their abilities and I am not realizing it. Usually this is when I compare them to other children their age and notice a way they are behind. Then I start to expect that they should be able to do better. When they can't meet my expectations, they feel like they've failed. This doesn't work.

3. Perfectionism. I've had the idea in my mind that if I ask the kids to do something, they should do it correctly. That makes sense to me. The problem is that I am missing the forest for the trees. I want them to enjoy writing. They can't enjoy writing if I am focusing on spelling the words correctly. I want them to enjoy cooking, but they can't if I have chosen a recipe in which it matters if they measure everything exactly. Not working.

4. The last big thing I can see that hasn't been working is that I've been focusing on the kids during lessons, and then detaching for the rest of the day. They have the idea that lessons is about being under my thumb, and the rest of the day is about being free to do their own thing. That stark difference does not make them eager for lessons.

With this in mind, I've made some changes to my lesson plans. I may blog about those changes when I get more time. For now, suffice to say that I plan for a softer, gentler approach to learning. And right now, I need a nap.

She's really a reader now

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:08:57 GMT

Katie usually wakes up sometime between 7:00 and 7:30 in the morning. This morning, 7:30 came and went, and Katie was still in bed. Viruses have been floating around lately, so I decided not to disturb her. Matt woke up and asked where Katie was. I told him she was still sleeping and that she must need some extra to be in bed so long. At 8:30 I went in to check on her. She was awake, reading a book.

When did you wake up, Katie?

6:55. I've been reading.

But at 6:55, it was still dark, honey.

I know. I used my flashlight.