Insomnia Hazards

Wednesday afternoon I think I accidentally used regular instead of decaf.  Someone maybe should consider “reading the label” as a useful habit, hmmn.  So about midnight I got out of bed, roamed around a little, and landed on what I was sure would be the perfect cure:

Diagramming Sentences. Don't Let It Keep You Up at Night.

 

It didn’t work.  I read the WHOLE THING.  And learned how to diagram, I might add.  Nicely done book, highly recommended.

Then I skimmed the New Missal Latin book, also pulled from our box of Kolbe-ware, and then I was able to go to sleep.  Sneaky coffee, causing me to be educated.

But here’s the worst part.  So the next afternoon, I was writing up my little entry for the campground blog, and you’ll never believe what happened me: I felt compelled to put both a subject and a verb into every sentence.

You can see it has worn off now.  But wow, for a while it was close.  Careful what you read.  It could mess with your grammar.

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Funny grammar story: Once I refused to sign a petition, because it did not contain complete sentences.  I couldn’t figure out what it was we were demanding.  I inquired, but my fellow activist was strangely silent.  I think he decided he didn’t need a rabble-rouser on his team after all.

my life.

Prelude: How to get the people to eat lunch.

It’s one o’clock.  The little people have lost momentum and scattered to various activities that are neither school nor chores.  They seem unaware of the checklist.

“Okay, everyone, it’s one o’clock.  Let’s do a clean up.”

“But I haven’t had lunch yet!”

Three more people surface, suddenly starving.

“Okay.  Eat lunch and then we’re cleaning.”

***

Part 2: Purgatory.

I’m making my own lunch. (Well, I had breakfast at 11.  Did I say I was organized?  No I did not.)  Female child squeals “Ow!” in the eating area.  I look over to see what Mr. Usually Guilty is doing this time.

He’s just standing there.  And there is no female child in sight.

I look under the table.  Sure enough, eldest daughter is hidden among the chairs.  Other two girls are down the hall.  “What are you doing under there?” I ask.  Still trying to find out what her brother has done this time.

“We’re hiding from the bomb!”

Ah.  The bomb.  That would be the microwave.  Every time it beeps, it’s a bomb going off.  You have to run down the hall to be safe.  Don’t ask me how this one started.  I have no idea.

Microwave beeps.

“Ahh!  The bomb!  You’re dead mom!  You and Mr. Boy are dead!”

Death looks eerily like my kitchen.  Well, the boy is right here with me. “I’m afraid we’ve died and gone to Purgatory.”

***

Things homeschoolers do. So the Kolbe lady calls me today, because she’s packing up the books I ordered, and everything is single copies except for two copies of the student workbook for Famous Men of Rome.

“Well, both kids are going to do Roman history next year, so I got them both a workbook.”

“Okay.  Well I saw you also got the Greek history . . .”

“Umm.  That was just because my history-nut child wanted to look at it for fun.”

A little more back-and-forth, confirming order is correct.  Friendly lady tells me books will be shipping out this afternoon, should arrive late next week.

I have to tell you: It felt very weird yesterday, buying textbooks.  For one, they’re expensive!  I’m not used to having to by that exact book.  I usually just get the one that someone’s selling real cheap and it looks pretty good.  And then: A whole year (or more) of school in just one book? You mean I won’t have to go to the library? That’s the point, of course.

New experience for me.  I guess it’s the way people feel about sending their child to kindergarten.You know it’s the right thing for right now, and you hope it will work out, and it’s exciting, but it’s . . .  so much.

***

Children are dispersing again.  They seem to have forgotten that whole “clean-up” thing we talked about forty-five minutes ago.  Better strap on my dictator powers and see what we can do.

Kolbe – episode 2

So we decided to go ahead and register with Kolbe for next year, for the two big kids.  Here’s the beta, for those who are considering a similar plunge:

Glad we registered silly early. Kolbe lets you send in your registration (and tuition, of course) as early as you like, and then you school year still runs for the 12 months you indicate.  So we mailed forms in March, but that is to cover the year running August 2011-July 2012.  Why bother registering so early?

• Avoid overwhelming the staff during crunch season.  We had a big box of course plans and parent information on our doorstep within a week.   One item was missing, and it was no problem to whip out an e-mail and the registration guy could just pop it in the mail.  You don’t want to be sweating waiting for materials a week before you need to start.
• Time to look through the course plans, and get an idea of how the recommended books will be used.  So you know whether ________ supplemental text is something your student will really need, maybe want, or can do without.  Handy.
• Time to bring the kids up to speed on their weak subjects.  Which is why . . .

The Assessment Tests are Gold.  Get them. These are the tests that measure how much of the current year’s work your student has mastered.   And here’s the secret that nervous, overwhelmed parents need to know: You don’t have to administer the test. If you’ve been teaching your student one-on-one, you can probably just look at them and get a good idea of how your student stacks up to plan.

For example, you might look at the end-of-third-grade grammar test, and say to yourself, “Egads! my 9-year-old has never even heard the word ‘Predicate’!  Somebody, quick, find me a grammar book!”  And so you google “free grammar practice worksheets”, and find this great site, and you spend the rest of the spring introducing your child to the wonders of formal grammar study.

No need to traumatize anyone by actually administering the test.  You can traumatize yourself just by looking at it.  (And, also, be reassured that the idea of a ‘predicate’ is pretty easily explained, once your child learns what nouns and verbs are, which is also pretty easy.  Which is why you weren’t sweating grammar up till now anyway.)

***

So that’s what we’re doing this spring.  Intensive grammar, math, and penmanship; structured unschooling for the rest.

 

***

PS: Funny conversation with the boy:

Mom: I think you’ll find the history next year pretty light.

Mr. Boy: Kolbe must not really care about history.

Mom:  No, actually they care quite a lot about history.  It’s that most kids your age don’t read adult history books for fun.

Mr. Boy: Oh.

(FYI rest assured, not all my children are like this.)

other people’s words

Hey, look I’m being like Dorian and outsourcing.  Because I’m teaching tonight, plus I was being responsible today (reduced goofing off), plus Christian LeBlanc e-mailed this link to an article of his on the origins of the French language.

So go read that.  It’s interesting.  And then if you’re still bored, you can come back here and click on the link to the Verb Conjugator (many, many languages offered) and entertain yourself with that for a while.  That’s what he was doing when he had the presence of mind to entertain me.

–> Try not to blush when your boss asks you what you’re doing, and you insist you were just, er, conjugating.  Oh yes, one of THOSE sites.  Sure.

Wake up! Hey, Wake up!

That’s what my then two-year-old used to shout at his baby sister in the next seat when we arrived at our destination.  The parents were not amused.

These two articles might not amuse you, either.  But if you need to be really grumpy, these’ll do it.

–> I’m continuing with the regular-life-requires-my-attention-theme, so outsourcing my invective to ‘things that showed up in my inbox’.

From Christian LeBlanc, interesting link to an essay on contraception and the fall of the west.

The West lasted from AD 732, when Charles Martel defeated the Muslims at Tours, until 1960, where it fell without a battle. In 1960, the birth control pill became widely available. Many think of it as heaven, sexual nirvana, the route to self-expression, wish fulfillment, and liberation for millions of women. I think of it as Auschwitz in a bottle. It was and is genocide, as, using it, the women of my generation happily traded off 1,200 years of unparalleled growth, wealth, security, stability, scientific and ethical progress for a second BMW in the garage.

I’m not persuaded of author’s provocative conclusion (“Islam is the only way”), but the irony is there.  In the 19th century the French quit reproducing — yes, before effective contraception became widely available — and by the late 20th were wringing their hands over the cultural impact of all the muslims they’d imported to do the labor of the children they’d never had.  Germany has followed suit, and the US isn’t far behind.

(Though, luckily for our culture, we are importing truckloads of macho catholics with their awesome mariachi masses.  Maybe God does love us more?  Kidding.  Really.  The French have Brie — if that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.  But yes, I do like a rousing Spanish mass now and again.  Perks up the excessively-somber soul.   And as much as I am moved by the beauty and devotion of faithful muslims at worship, no, I can’t slip down to the corner mosque for a mini-revival.)

Anyhow, key point of link for me is this:  You can’t refuse to bear children, then get all shocked and horrified at the presence of the people you imported to do the work of the offspring you never had.  You want someone t0 mow your lawn and do your dishes?  Either rear yourself a pair of middle-schoolers, or hire someone else’s.

[Teenagers everywhere are now saying aha!  You really did raise me to be a slave! The mother points out that she does a thing or two for her own children that she doesn’t do for the random low-wage stranger.  Indeed, here may lie a bit of the problem: rather than a steady flow of youngsters who do the grunt work for a decade and then move on to greater work, we attempt to create a society divided between perpetual overlords and perpetual economic-teenagers.  And then are shocked, just shocked, when the daring, hard-working, self-sacrificing immigrants turn out to be just like our own children — ready to move up in the world after a spell.]

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Your other link is this article from the HSLDA, from Swedish parents who moved to Finland in order to homeschool.  I will use this as my cue to get off the internet educate a few fresh faces of my own.

****

PS, castle news: We got a new roof.  Looks a lot like the old one, only much, much younger.

 

 

 

 

 

Under the microscope

(Um, just a homeschooling post.  No deeper meaning.)

I’ve been planning school a month at  a time lately.  February went a little haywire, between guests, the flu, and the 6-week mark on the library cycle (all books to be returned).  So yesterday morning with life resuming a semblance of normalcy, had to figure out what to do about science.  Kids had really enjoyed the lab science feel to our Drop of Water study, and they’d been complaining about the endless animal research reports last fall, so I thought maybe it wasn’t the auspicious week to return to Zoo Pass Science Class.

Instead I announced that as soon as the kitchen table was clean after lunch, I’d pull out the microscopes.  We have one very nice low-power microscope that the SuperHusband acquired from work.  He had spied one sitting unused and unwanted in the lab, and in lieu of a bonus, asked his boss if he could have that instead.  The other is a hand-me-down from Ann Miko at Phos Hilarion, a good sturdy cast metal unit retired from a school science lab.

So science this week is this: You can look at anything you want under the microscopes.  Having them out for free use is turning out to be much more peaceful than having everyone gathered for one short class and having to fight for turns.

Kitchen table can be devoted to this because the weather is so nice this week.  We’re having meals and most homework outside at the picnic table.  I’ll be frank here: This is one of the primary reasons we homeschool.  Seriously.  Living in the south, our glorious summer days all come during the school year.  (In what gets called “summer” it’s one giant three-month-long sauna.)

So I was sitting outside yesterday, feeling like the luckiest person in the world (fairly accurate), and there was that little voice saying “Your children should be sitting inside under flourescent lights all day, because that’s how they’ll become prepared for the adult world”.   Because I guess people who do math in broad daylight are rank hedonists.

But people say this.  There’s this notion floating around that Children Must Suffer.  It is not enough to master the material, It Must Be Boring.  It is not enough to devote hours a day to schoolwork, it Must Be Done Someplace Unpleasant.  It is not enough to have a varied social life, There Must Be Bullies.

Now if there were something natural about spending large quantities of time sitting indoors under artificial lighting, I could be persuaded that the resistant child must be conformed to the human condition.  But given that long stretches sitting still, and long hours of daylight spent inside, are actually linked to health disorders?  It becomes a bit like insisting that because the child will likely one day work in the mines, he must be sent underground from the age of five so that he might become accustomed to the dark and damp and coal dust.

So that’s us.  Rank hedonists.  Happy Spring, southerners.

c.a.i.t.u. & other castle news

CAITU: Coolest Author In The Universe.

[Be French.  Speak in Acronyms. It’s good for your brain.]

I’ve lately determined that the CAITU is John McNichols.  Who totally took care of my beleaguered boy after my complaining post the other week.  And that’s not the first time he’s proven his credentials, though I will not embarrass him with too many tales of his kindness to internet strangers.

(And FYI, no I’m not an old friend of his brother-in-law’s cousin’s law school roommate’s favorite veterinarian.  I have no stock in Sophia Press. I get no commission on the sales of Tripods Attack, which you should read, because it is fun and because it is what we need more of — enjoyable catholic fiction.)

So that’s how you become the CAITU.  AND you write a steampunk alternative history alien-attack G.K. Chesterton catholic thriller, AND you take care of the fans with Strom Thurmondesqe responsiveness.

Nominations for SCAITU are still open.  I think maybe the alien thing isn’t strictly required.  But it helps.

*****

Other Castle News:

Thinking of going with Kolbe next year. For the two big kids.  Am open to opinions if anyone wants to share.  (Have already mined the brains of a couple trusted internet friends who are long time happy Kolbe families.)  The reason is this:  My kids really like checklists.  Love ’em.  Mr. Boy just wants to get his assignments, get them done, and be free.  Aria likes forms so much she begged the SuperHusband to buy her a blank receipt book she saw at the hardware store.  (I consoled her by printing off a handful of 1040-EZ’s to play with.  She’s thrilled.)

We were planning to switch to a more formal curriculum with one of the major catholic curriculum providers come high school.  Mr. Boy will be hitting middle school, so time to make the transition and learn the expectations, so he isn’t blown out of the water in 9th grade.  Kolbe has a decent no-nonsense high school curriculum* of the kind that has gotten students into college for the past three generations or so.  AND, they issue checklists.  Which would free me up from writing my own.

So that’s what we’re thinking about.

Despite being a little out of rhythm this week, due to relatives visiting over the weekend, school is going pretty well this month. Which is noteworthy any time you combine “homeschooling” with “january”.  What we’ve been doing is after breakfast and a morning clean-up, kids work independently on checklist items.  (For the two littles, that’s just a box of activities they can choose from at will.)  Then I call each kid in for an individual class, youngest to oldest.  Then group class for penmanship, french and science.  Then big kids get work assignments for the afternoon, and littles are free.  When we stick to this, it runs pretty smoothly, and everyone is happy.

January is Science Fair Month. We took a break from Zoo Pass Science Class to work through A Drop of Water, and this week kids are now pausing that to conduct science experiments.  Mr. Boy wants to know if acorns pop like popcorn.  Aria asks whether hard boiled eggs truly are easier to peel if you plunge them into ice water after cooking.  And the Bun is attempting to freeze bubbles.  Results to be revealed to the admiring real-life public on the 29th.

Deskavation Sucessful. Found it.  Wood!  Then lost it again.  And I’ll have you know my miraculously-given organizational system is still working, even with intermittent clutter-flooding.  But here’s what, and sit down before you read this: The girls room is clean.  Consistently clean. Three girls ages 4, 6 & 8, in a 12×12 room that is also used for storage. As the SuperHusband said before we tackled the place, we have 1950’s living space, 1990’s lifestyle.  (And I would add: 1930’s personality.)

We cleared out the excess junk, designated and labled places for everything, including certain spots labeled “empty” so no one tries to pile stuff there. Then we developed  a successful inspection method.  We go through the room, and check each drawer and shelf, and toss anything that doesn’t belong there into the middle of the floor.  I look on the label to remember.  It is so much easier to ask “Are all the things in this space the ones on the label?” than it is to try to negotiate a generic sort of fuzzy standard of cleanliness.

The foot is great. Not exactly normal, but highly highly functional.  In the category of attending pro-life marches, visiting museums, grocery shopping, cleaning out the house, all that stuff.  It’ll do.

That’s the highlights of castle news.  Upcoming on the blog:

• Usury part 3, of course.

• I still owe you the official Catholic Company review for Why Enough is Never Enough. No change in the verdict — unqualified ‘buy’ recommend.  Excellent book.
• Recently read The Gargoyle Code, and wow that was good.  Fr. Longenecker needs to write more true-fiction.  He’s got a gift there.  So I need to give you a long explanation of why that probably belongs on your Lent-a-claus wish list.

And should I start a deskavation series? Because here’s the thing: Most organizational tips are written by people who are already organized.  So they say ridiculous things like “throw out your catalogs as soon as they arrive”, or “write all event dates in your calendar the moment you learn of them, then throw the original away”.  Ha!  You make it sound so easy.

But I’m thinking that just like there people who can’t magically keep their bank accounts balanced just by “spending less”, but need little tricks like cash envelopes to make it work, there are people like me who need painfully obvious baby-step methods to keep the house running smoothly.  And we’re discovering some of these things. So I thought maybe that might be helpful.  Or else entertaining, in a voyeuristic reality-show kind of way.

 

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*Yes, I know that this whole “classical” education label thing is about as accurate a historical replica as a Red Ryder wagon is to a horse and carriage.  That’s fine.  I’m not running a seminary here.  We are the trade-and-merchant class, our children are signed up for a nice practical education that will get them into engineering school.  And ask my pastor about roofs, sound boards, and programmable thermostats — you could do worse than a business or engineering degree if you have a calling to become a parish priest. But for those who really do want the same type of education as Thomas Aquinas (whose grandfather was not a plumber), this guy is doing his best to re-create just that.

more self-bookmarking: grading student papers

http://educationnorthwest.org/resource/464

Internet friend pointed me here – guidelines for how to evaluate a student paper.  (Thank you Sue.)  Apparently “re-write until it is publishable or I get sick of it, whichever comes first” is not the best way to run a homeschool.  Haven’t looked through the whole site, so don’t have an opinion.  But figured if I stuck it here, I wouldn’t lose it.  And could be of interest to others.

More about our ADVENTure Day

This is for Dorian, who asked very nicely in the combox.

Here’s the story on ADVENTure day:  Two years ago, our then-new DRE went with a new VBS program. (Pre-packaged.)  Instead of dividing the kids into grade-level classrooms, the kids were grouped into mixed-age crews that traveled from station to station through the morning. Crafts, snacks, games, music, Bible story room (that was me), all that.   It worked very well.   We volunteers didn’t have to be jacks of all trades (an actual music teacher teaching music!), and there was more intensity and liveliness to each room.

So she finished VBS #1 resolved to do more of the same during the year.

There was a living rosary in October (on the playground, visited by a pack of stray dogs, oops), but the real big invention was ADVENTure.  Instead of running K-5 classes on Wednesday evenings in December, we would host one school-day-long VBS-type Advent program on the first Saturday of Advent.  Parents could have free babysitting from 9-3, and catechists would have off the rest of the month. [6th grade and up have regular classes all month.]

Here’s what we do, and I’ll describe this year’s program, since she made a few tweaks that helped it run more smoothly.

Students are sorted into mixed-age crews of 15-20 kids.  Not random: 5th graders with K5, 4th with 1st, and 2nd & 3rd.  I noticed this year the 2nd/3rd groups were boys in one crew, girls in the other.  (Oh my. Those boys.  Had to take the markers away.  Fast.)  Youth from grades 6 & up volunteered to lead the crews from class to class.  2-4 youth per team.  They helped with the kids, and also managed potty breaks and other crises.

Catechists paired up and we manned several lesson rooms.  This year it was St. Francis & the Nativity, Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Nicholas, and Church Year Calendar.  In each room we were issued a story book or similar educational prop, and then a craft to go with.  Our DRE gives us a fairly free hand to adapt the lessons to our teaching strengths.  I ended up subbing out the story book with a different St. Nicholas book from the library, and running more a discussion-style lesson with tidbits from the book, rather than just reading the story.  It worked well.

(Last year in the St. Nick room my co-teacher and I alternated teaching at each class period.  This year, different co-teacher, I taught the first class, and she never let me quit.  She did all the support work with getting supplies queued up and helping manage kids.)

Our DRE conscripted her grown daughter as slave labor to get all the craft supplies organized and do necessary prep-work so that everything was ready to go and in the classrooms Saturday morning.  I brought along my own sets of coloring sheets, wordsearch and crossword puzzles just in case I needed to fill time, and I ended up using them a bunch.  (For those 2nd/3rd grade boys, I fully subbed out the worksheets and sent home the craft, because the craft was.not.happening.  Just not.)  Some of the classes that finished early just sent the kids out to the playground with their crew leaders.  That was good.

Kids were each issued a bag with name-tag and grade affixed in which to collect all their papers and artwork.  [But, this year’s crisis: a bunch of the bags split open.  Note for next year: sturdier bags.]

Class periods lasted aproximately 30 minutes.  Additionally there were two movie rooms running double-period movie viewings.  The Knights of Columbus served lunch (hot dogs or bring your own) in two or three lunch periods, plus our resident snack lady (the one whose kids have the very worst food allergies — she is a master at making sure no one dies of peanut exposure) oversaw a snack period in the afternoon.  Students brought juice boxes (boys) or cookies (girls) to provide for the snack.  There was a nicer snack cart in the catechist supply room for grown-ups.

Having the movie, lunch and snack periods meant that each teaching pair got three break periods through the day.  This is essential.

At 2:45 we brought the kids out to the car line per our usual dismissal process, and parents picked up kids between 2:45 and 3:00.

***

So there you go, Dorian.  Ask away if you have any questions.

And FYI last year our DRE also put together an Eggstravaganza on the morning of Holy Saturday — so fleshing out the long-established egg hunt with on-topic crafts and lessons.  Unfortunately I was out sick (it was either rest up or skip the Easter Vigil — pretty obvious choice), so I can’t report.   This year I firmly resolve not to catch any ailments.  Ha.

PS to Dorian: See how I am making a category name that is a tribute to your Catechist Chat series?  So that everyone will know I am truly your disciple?

holy catechesis, batman

So the truth is, the number 1 thing I’m going to steal from Christian LeBlanc’s religious-ed snapshots is the line “Stop guessing like monkeys and think!” But there’s good info, too, about you know, the bible and saints and religion and stuff.  Plus how to use the gross-out factor to keep your 6th graders captivated.  Did I say that out loud?  What I meant was, how to use Q&A within a lecture format, to help the kids pay attention and think through the material, and cover lots of details without everyone getting lost.

(I would never, ever, pick a saint to cover in class just because she was depicted with her eyeballs on a platter.  That would only be a coincidence.  Since her feast day came round.  Then, you know, it would be practically an obligation.  If I were teaching a room full of 12-year-old boys.)