bearing blog

The quote not taken.

At the last meeting of the homeschool co-op, someone suggested using audiobooks on CD in the car to expose the kids to poetry.   I thought that was a great idea of the "why didn't I think of that?!" variety -- they have had little patience for poetry as read-alouds, but they have loved classical music CDs in the car.  I  had an order almost ready to go at Rainbow Resources anyway; I immediately added A Child's Introduction to Poetry and sent in my order, and when the box arrived we put the disc in the car right away.

Success!  The kids love it and have been reciting snippets of sonnets and haikus.  I will be getting more poetry CDs for sure.  It has been nice for me, too, to listen to recitations of famous poems, many of which I remember from high school English, while driving.  When they come in through the auditory channel, it's really quite a different experience from reading them off the page, even reading them aloud.  You're more of a passive receiver, rather than using your own voice to modulate and interpret the poem, and you have to receive the poem linearly instead of visually taking it all in at once, knowing which lines are long and which short, and when to expect the end.  Dylan Thomas, Carl Sandburg, Robert Browning -- it's a nice collection, mostly of well-known favorites.

Listening to the recitation of Frost's "The Road Not Taken," I was reminded of my favorite rant about quotations out of context.  By the time I got to tenth- or eleventh-grade English literature, I had read the famous quotation from this poem about eleventy-thousand times:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

This quote is always, always, always used to support the thesis that the wiser, better man will take the "road less traveled."  Have you ever seen a place where it is not used as an implication that the road less traveled is the one that leads to happiness?  Something about being unconventional, I suppose.  You will see people writing, for example, that the poem offers "good advice."  That sort of thing.

I remember being really annoyed and angry at the quoters when I encountered the whole poem, finally.  Because of course the poem as a whole implies nothing of the sort, offers no advice at all, contains no judgment about the relative merits of the two paths.   The last stanza contains a whiff of mystery and not a little regret alluding to the consequences of the choice, but to me most of the regret is contained in the line "I could not travel both/And be one traveler."  

It strikes me as a simple meditation on the tragedy of reality:  that you can't experience everything.  Listening to it again, maybe for the first time, in a purely audio format, I was even more strongly struck by it.

But I have always been irritated at the quoters who take the last three lines, not even the whole last stanza with its "sigh," and use it to imply the inherent superiority of the road less traveled.  Hey, sometimes it's the right choice.  Other times it's not.  Logic, people.

The information age.

It's "break time," that magical 45 minutes after lunch when the rule is that the kids can do almost anything as long as they leave me alone, more or less, to mess with the computer in peace.

Tromp tromp tromp BANG tromp tromp tromp.  Two boys are at my ear.  One has his hand tightly clamped over the mouth of a (recently washed) jelly jar.  Little sister is bouncing up and down excitedly behind them.

"Mom! Mom!  What do crickets eat?"

"Uh.  I don't know.  Grass maybe."

Furious whispering.  "Mom, are you sure?  We don't want to poison him."

"Hey guys, I said I don't know, I'm kind of busy here -- " and it's not till then that I realize that I'm sitting in front of a live internet connection with my fingers on the keyboard.  Or rather, I knew that, it's just that it's not until then that I catch a clue. 

 Not only can I use this awesome power to waste time surfing the web, checking my email and vegging out for a quick respite from my day's work... I can also use it to send the children on an errand that will keep them busy for maybe five whole extra minutes! 

Click click click.  "Ahem.  'Rearing crickets is very easy since they tend to eat anything.'  Um.... 'Rolled oats with fresh fruit and vegetables is an ideal food for crickets.'"

"Thanks Mom!"  Tromp tromp tromp rustle rustle rustle.  "Do you know what we're going to name him?  'Oats!'"

"No, 'Chester C. Cricket!'" muffled arguing

Mental note:  Write down an extra line under "Science" on today's page in the record book...

Why have I been spending so much money on packaged cookies?

Per Oscar's Civil War history activity, the children are joyfully gobbling up homemade hardtack for their afternoon snack.

It didn't even cost me any labor, since Oscar made the stuff.

I am pretty sure that a cup and a half of flour, a teaspoon of salt, and a half cup of water costs less than fifteen Oreos.  I think it maybe even makes less mess.  Even if you consider the tablespoon of molasses I gave each child to dip their hardtack in.

Hmph.

(mix flour, salt, and water in bowl, knead in bowl, roll out to 1/2 inch thickness on ungreased cookie sheet, cut into squares, poke holes with skewer, bake 25 minutes at 375 degrees.)

Okay, they're asking for gummy bears now.  Seems a little bit more normal.

I have never had a knack for getting labs to go right.

I could have predicted some of the problems we'd have with Oscar's science lab this morning, the one where you mix baking powder with various liquids in bottles sealed by balloons, and see how much gas evolves.

For instance, that the balloons I'd bought would be too small to put the required amount of baking powder in, or that they would be quite tight and hard to stretch over the bottles.  

Or that the baking powder would not disperse well with the liquid, leaving a dry cake of baking powder stuck to the bottom of the bottle, unable to be dislodged even with vigorous shaking.

Yeah, I could have foreseen that, and if I hadn't been in such a hurry, might have been able to set the experiment up to run a little bit more smoothly.  I had Oscar write a list of problems and difficulties with the experiment, and things we learned from them.

What I couldn't predict:  that three-year-old little sister would run shrieking and weeping with terror out of the room at the sight of the expanding balloons, nearly tearing my pants off in her attempt to climb straight up my legs into my arms, out of fear that they would pop suddenly and loudly.

And that this performance would be repeated for every one of the six balloon-bottle-baking powder experiments of the day.

And that Oscar would need an extra pair of hands for most of the experiments (because the balloon necks were too tight for him to stretch over the bottles) so I would spend the morning alternately comforting a crying, frightened little girl, and peeling her off my body for long enough to act as laboratory assistant (while she screamed "Come BACK mommy!  Come BACK!"

I wish I could say that this was the sort of thing that drove me into theoretical rather than experimental work...

Co-schooling and planning.

Today Hannah and I sat down and made a supply list for our (between us) four youngest children's school days together.

To recap, our family co-schools with Hannah's family on Tuesdays, and with Hannah's and usually Melissa's family on Thursdays.   Partway through last year Hannah and I completely revamped our school schedules to sync them together, so that on T-Th we were working together on the same subjects, more or less, and the stuff we couldn't do well together we segregated to the other days of the week.

(Meanwhile Hannah and Melissa set up other days to work together for their two families.  It's a weird sort of three-family co-schooling thing we've got going.  But it's working pretty well now, fantastically well compared to before when we weren't sync'ed together.)

Hannah's and my oldest boys, who are both fourth graders, are pretty much scheduled out for the rest of the "school year."  We have a few vague plans -- When we get to the end of the second level of the writing curriculum, how about we have them do a subject report with library research, and take however long that takes, before we go on to begin the next book?  -- but mostly we know what they're up to.  I run world history, American history, and Latin.  Hannah runs English grammar and composition.  We are chugging forward through curricula and book lists, and it's all pretty much worked out at least till mid-June.  

The younger children are harder to fit together, maybe because of a slight age mismatch.  Our middle boys are an "old" kindergartener and an "old" first grader.  They're not too far apart in reading skill, i.e., "can read many sentences with help, not much independently yet;"  but there's a big gap in attention to detail and ability to sit and work for a while.    Our youngests, both girls, are still wider apart; Hannah's girl will be 5 soon and so is nearly ready for kindergarten-level stuff, but mine has only just turned 3.  They play together beautifully, but will they be able to work together?  Or will Hannah's youngest, the 5yo girl, wind up being the natural schoolmate of my middle child, the 6yo boy?   How will that work?  Maybe we will be doing some cross-pairing from time to time.  We are experimenting right now with teaching an early-childhood music theory curriculum to the younger four as a group, and seeing what happens.

Despite not being exactly sure how to put it all together, a year or so of working together like this has made it easier for us to identify "stuff" that will probably work for us.  So we really enjoyed sitting down with the Rainbow Resource catalog and picking out some things we can do with each group of children.   

The middle boys have been learning about common Eastern mammals via the Burgess Animal Book for Children, and coloring pages and doing narrations about what they've learned.  When they finish that book, we've decided to spend some time working on birds -- not an exhaustive study, but focusing on the dozen to twenty species they might actually see in the backyard.  We'll use the Burgess Bird Book for text, and the Peterson Field Guide Color-in Book for coloring pages (with attention to correct coloring -- it matters more with birds than with bobcats), and the Cornell Ornithology Lab site for birdsong.  And spend several sessions on each bird.  And use it as a starting point to jump into the Usborne First Book of Nature, bird section, for generic bird anatomy and lifecycle and stuff, and see where that takes us, through the winter I hope.  We also hope to dabble in the activity suggestions in One Small Square:  Backyard, which has a couple of winter activities, but mostly we would gear up for that in the spring.

As for the younger girls, Hannah will probably take the lead in their adventure together, since she's got a child who's approaching Real School Age, and mine is only a preschooler tagging along.  Still, my 3yo's "first exposures" to things like letter formation and number theory can happen alongside a kindergartener's "firm grounding in the basics."   They love to do worksheets together (to my MJ, "schoolwork" = "Mommy sits and does a worksheet with me, or better, ten worksheets in a row"), and so we identified some books that they can do together (because the nice thing about worksheet books is that they are easy to tote and easy to pull out the instant the girls come clamoring to us, "We want to do our schoolwork!")  We think we'll teach them how to use the telephone in the coming months, and to remember a parent's phone number and their addresses.  We found a great prewriting worksheet book that incorporates nursery rhymes -- memory work! -- along with practice with the basic handwriting strokes and shapes.  And we've got some old Charlotte-Mason-y tricks in our bag from when our older kids were younger... a listen-and-parrot Spanish phrase curriculum that they might like, Aesop's Fables to hear and narrate back, a stash of art prints to show and talk about.  When we were done with our list, we were satisfied that the stuff we had would make part of a proper kindergarten curriculum for Hannah's 5yo, while still allowing my 3yo to join in fully as much as she wants.

Hannah and I enjoyed the work session so much, we didn't even notice that we had forgotten to have our "schoolwork's done, pour a cup of tea and sit down" ritual.  That's something we don't miss much -- it was one of the things we resolved to make time for, way back when we revamped our awful schedule so we would enjoy life more, and enjoy the kids more, including each other's kids.   

Which just goes to show what inveterate curriculum geeks we both are.   Which is one of the reasons why it works so well, I think.

"Imperial history of the Middle East."

I may have pointed to this before, but I wanted to recommend again this animated map of the imperial history of the Middle East.  A very cool survey of 3000 years in 90 seconds. 

We used it today with the 4th-grade boys to accompany Chapter Eight of Story of the World: Early Modern, which contains a too-exhausting-to-remember survey of the history leading up to the Ottoman Empire.  The animation worked a lot better.

Tuesday, 2:50 p.m.

Hannah teaches prepositional phrases to the two 4th-grade boys.

The girls, having had Bible stories and narrated them back, are producing illustrations.  Hazel is about to ask me to write on this one, "Noah built this boat and his sons helped him.  And THE END."

They also finished pictures and narrations of the burning bush.

Milo, not currently being taught, asked for paper and glue and went off to another room, where he produced this snowman.

Meira finished the Latin translation exercise I gave her and Ben and Oscar, and went off to do her own thing.

 
 
 
  

Composition on the fly.

One teaching activity that I find mildly entertaining is coming up with sentences, on the spot, for my nearly-six-year-old to practice reading.  

By now I've taught him almost all the sounds in English, and he recognizes one or two spellings for each sound.  (For example, he knows that "ai" can spell the so-called "long a" sound.  He knows that either "s" or "z" can spell the sound /z/.)  A few years ago, I was teaching the same concepts to my first son, and waaaay back then I compiled word lists for each sound.  ("Y spells /y/:  yam, yap, yell, yen, yep, yes, yet, yin, yip, yon, yum.  OR spells /or/:  Borax, border, borer, boring, Boris, born, boron, bullhorn...")  That makes the job easier.

Anyway, at this stage my reading teaching tools are very portable and fit in a pouch or a slim binder.  They consist of a dry erase board, a couple of markers, a rag to wipe the board, and my word lists.  I sit down with Milo, scan the lists for good words, and construct sentences in my head, which I write on the board for him to read.  It's kind of fun trying to come up with interesting sentences.

Today's were:

  Look at that fast-running river!

Help!  Rescue that boy!

I stuck a card in the book for a bookmark.

The ash borer is a bug that can kill a stout tree.

A planet must orbit its sun.  (He really tried hard to turn "must" into "Mars.")

I got a new outfit for Lori's wedding.   (He couldn't really read his aunt's name without some help, and it's not his fault.  That "i spells /ee/" is a ways off.)

Beef at a nickel a pound is a good value.

This long stick is a pool cue.

It should be pretty obvious that we're working on "oo," "ou," "or," and "ue."  I meant to practice "ch" too but I forgot to include any words.  Oops.

We have to take some time off next week, so I'm going to wait before introducing anything new, but as soon as we start up again I'm going to add the "long vowel" pronunciations of A, E, I, O, U (that  would be "oo" not "yoo").  Once he's got those, he will be able to read -- or make good guesses at -- quite a lot of common written words.   

So far, so good --- or, some so good, some not so good.

Self-check, two and a half weeks of the school year down.

Things I appear to still have a handle on.

(1) Planning a reasonable amount of schoolwork to accomplish in a given day.  It's all getting done, or close enough.    

SURPRISE FACTOR:  High -- I expected I'd plan too much and have to scale back, as in all previous years.  

(2)  Planning and preparing meals.   We're all eating pretty well.  No unplanned restaurant trips or pizza deliveries yet.  

SURPRISE FACTOR:  Low -- I have a high standard for myself in this area.

(3)  Minimum housework standards.  Granted, I'm not trying to do very much.  I am in true "minimum" mode.  But the minimum is being met.

SURPRISE FACTOR:  Medium.  I usually have a hard time with this one.  On the other hand, my minimum is really rock bottom, and doesn't entail much more than stopping the house from spiraling out of control.   On the other other hand, hey, that's worth something.

(4)  Tuesdays and Thursdays co-schooling with my friends' kids -- a total of six children on Tuesdays and ten children on Thursdays -- has not descended into chaos.  We are accomplishing what we set out to do, mostly, and having fun doing it.

SURPRISE FACTOR:  Low for well-established Tuesdays, medium for still-figuring-it-out Thursdays.  

Things I clearly am not quite on top of:

(1)  Keeping "screen time" low for my three-year-old and my kindergartener.  I am relying on videos or computer games at least once each day so I can have a chance to work one-on-one with my oldest.   I need more ideas for keeping the three-year-old, who does not nap, busy and happy and not interrupting my close work with the oldest.   Better-quality videos are part of the answer, but I still want to get the total screen time under an hour a day if I can.  

(2)  Getting enough rest for my pregnant self.  I think I would function better if I could get a catnap somewhere in the middle of the day.  Fortunately, Mark is doing most of the evening clean-up, which has reduced my on-my-feet time.

(3)  Getting everybody outside in what's left of the nice weather.  

First science experiment of the year.

Oscar's working on this question:  What is the difference between a cake baked without oil and a cake baked with oil?

The young investigator in the "lab."

Not to be confused with what's behind him, i.e., the "kitchen."  Note French toast in progress.

Nor with the opposite side of the counter, i.e., the "Pokémon bench."

Weighing an egg in grams on my kitchen scale.

The worksheet we developed for making sure that each small cake contains the same amount of egg.  (This was really, really fun for me to lead him through on Monday when we prepared for the lab).  Complete with hands-on lesson in Why We Must Align Digits Neatly In Our Lab Notebook Lest We Make Simple Addition Mistakes.  Woo-hoo!  

Control cake batter on the right.  Test cake batter (sans cooking oil) on the left.

One does not "make mistakes" in the lab so much as one Deviates From The Experimental Procedure.  This is not necessarily Ruining The Experiment, as long as you document what you did.

Visual observations of the freshly baked cake.  Note to anyone who might be concerned about following standard laboratory kitchen procedure:  They were done at about the same time, so we managed both to bake them for the same amount of time AND to bake them to the same doneness.   All controversy related to which of these is more appropriate is thus, for the moment, moot.

Finally:  the focus group test.  (It's not double-blind.  It's not even single-blind.  I wasn't looking when it started).