.....Aaaaand We're Back

Hello, my lovely fellow homeschoolers! Did you miss me while I was gone, launching my new blog?


I had toyed with the idea of deleting this one permanently, but now that I've found my groove over at THL, I think I can handle both. Plus, this blog is an important record of the things we do as homeschoolers. I found myself wanting to write about our adventures today, on this, our official Not Back-to-School Day.


When September rolls around, I realize that I'm not completely deschooled, and may never be. I'm not even sure I want to be. I loved school when I was a kid, and especially loved all the preparations leading up to the first day. I was excited to buy all my supplies--the new Trapper Keeper, folders, crisp white paper and pens, and of course new clothes, too. But more than anything, I loved the feeling of a fresh start, a feeling that still comes over me like clockwork every September.


Just like last September, I'm starting this new school year (see? I'm still thinking in terms like "school year") feeling like we need more structure in our days. I'm also having math panic. Last year, I bought Logan a 2nd grade math curriculum that came highly recommended called Math Mammoth. I was thrilled when, in the beginning of the year, I didn't even have to ask him to work in it. He had always loved math, and was enthusiastic about his new workbooks. See? I said to my skeptical husband. Unschooling works. I just leave it out and he does it. (To my hardcore unschooling compatriots: yes, I'm aware that leaving out a workbook in the fervent hope that your kid will just spontaneously decide to do it is not unschooling. And, as it turns out, not realistic.)


Of course, just a few weeks in, he tired of them, and like the good unschooler I was trying to be, I put them away and never mentioned them again. Now, as any homeschooling parent knows, math and numbers are a part of everyday life. A kid doesn't need workbooks to pick up a basic understanding of math, and Logan knows how to add and subtract, keep track of his scores on video games, and do simple money transactions (thanks to Monopoly). He does not, however, know how to carry or borrow, he doesn't know his multiplication tables, and he doesn't know how to read an analog clock--all things he would have learned last year, in second grade.


So, it seems that I have now joined the camp of people who unschool everything but math. My older kids asked to go back to public school after several years of homeschooling, and because I had insisted they keep up with grade-level math, they were actually ahead of their peers when they returned to school. I really believe I'll be doing Logan a disservice if I don't ensure that he has the same option. Life learning should be about expanding choices, not limiting them. If that makes me more of an eclectic homeschooler than an unschooler, then so be it. As I began to realize last year, we're kind of a hybrid. More relaxed and radical than the other families in our local homeschooling group, but more structured and conservative than some of the families we've met at unschooling conferences. This year, I'm going to embrace our unique brand of homeschooling and let my intuition guide me to do what's best for our family.


I've also added a little focus to our days by highlighting whatever wacky (or sometimes serious) National Day it is, and using that as a jumping off point. I bought a whiteboard for the kitchen, and each day I'll write "Today is National Whatever Day". I also plan to write a quote-of-the-day. So, without further ado, here's what we did today: 

Yep, we did a page of math. After I dug out last year's workbook and had a talk with him about why I was suddenly insisting that he do at least a page of math a day, we sat down together and I showed him how to tell time. On an actual non-digital clock.

We went for a morning walk around our neighborhood. Well, technically, I walked, and Logan rode his bike. We plan to make the morning walk a daily event.


We celebrated National Grandma Moses Day! I found a website with a short kid-friendly bio, which I read aloud to Logan, and then we looked at some of her paintings together online. We talked about how maybe having discovered a new passion so late in life helped her live to be 101.

We played Oceanolopy. It's Monopoly with sea life. We played it for a really, really long time. :) As I mentioned earlier, Monopoly is great for learning about money management.


We went to the BMX track. Logan is new to BMX racing, and wanted to go to the track to practice. He rode his bike, and I sat in the shade and read.


We went to the library. We saw not one, but two, monarch butterflies today, and so we stopped at the library to find some books about monarchs and learn about their migration route. We walked out with a huge pile of books!

We baked cookies. When we came home we made really easy gluten-free almond butter chocolate chunk cookies  (from Clean Eating magazine). I burnt them a little, but they were still yummy.


Interspersed throughout all this activity was some MarioKart with friends, and a visit from the birthday boy, my oldest son Zachary. A very busy Not Back-to-School Day indeed!

AWESOMEness

I found this great blog earlier, 1000 Awesome Things, and Logan and I spent a very pleasant hour reading some of the entries together. Then we were talking about writing, and blogging, and he decided he wanted to start his own blog, so with no further ado, here is Logan's very first blog entry--about his latest passion, Pokemon--at Logan 101. (A title he came up with, by the way!)

More awesomeness: Yesterday we visited Wheaton Village with our wonderful homeschool group, and got to see a glass pitcher being handblown right in front of our eyes, as well as over 7000 pieces of glass in the museum! The museum lady almost had a heart attack when she saw how many kids there were, but they were all very respectful and interested. (Of course, they're homeschooled!)

Logan's favorite part of the day was watching a man make a clay pitcher and a bowl on a pottery wheel. It was very cool. He made it look so easy! They teach classes there. I think we'll definitely be looking into that.

National Pi Day!

We did some fun stuff for National Pi Day. Logan would like to tell you in his own words:

It was a very fun day. We made a pi pie. We also made a pi paper chain. Each color represented a digit. Even though this has nothing to do with pi, I made a splatter paint picture. So here are some pics:

Swarms of Books and Flying Ants

I see that somehow almost three weeks have gone by since my last post! When I disappear from my blog for weeks at a time, you can safely assume I've been on a book jag. Let's see....what have I read in the last few weeks? Radical Unschooling by Dayna Martin (AMAZING, and I will write a review here and on Amazon when I have more time), The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan (devoured it in two days), Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn (I need to get the DVD and make my husband watch because he's not really getting what I'm doing), Amazing Grays by Maggie Rose Crane (about embracing aging), and now I'm halfway through Julie and Julia by Julie Powell (I'm on a major foodie kick). Still on my to-be-read stack are three new Tarot books, two Wicca books, Queen of Broken Hearts by Cassandra King, two books by Byron Katie (I want to see what all the fuss is about "the Work"), and Heat by Bill Buford (another foodie memoir). And that's not even counting the paperback I started to read in Borders the other day called This Little Mommy Stayed Home by Samantha Wilde (daughter of one of my favorite writers Nancy Thayer) which had me drawing stares from strangers because I was laughing so hard. I put it back on the shelf because it wasn't in the budget that day, but I keep thinking about it. Hilarious!

So, what with my heavy reading schedule and all, you can see why it's difficult to find time to post here. Also, every computer in the house is not working at the moment, except the one I'm currently writing this post on, Chelsea's itty bitty laptop. Four people sharing one computer is not pretty.

In other news, we've been invaded by swarms of flying ants. We've lived in this house for 18 years, and have had our share of critter problems (on my old blog, I wrote about The Great Squirrel Infestation of 2004), but flying ants are a first. Yesterday Logan and I went online to determine that they were, in fact, flying ants and not termites. They're definitely ants, which I suppose is slightly better than termites, but still not great. They could be carpenter ants, and they're definitely coming from under the house. We learned that this swarming behavior will only last a few days--they're basically emerging to mate and then die--but that doesn't change the fact that we have a colony of ants living in our crawlspace that is eventually going to have to be exterminated.

I guess we'll add "exterminator" to the list of stuff we need to save for, after computer repairs, a new central air system (or at least some freon before it gets really hot), and spending money for our trip to the NE Unschooling Conference next month. Actually, I have our money situation well in hand these days, but it would be nice to have a month or two go by without some kind of unexpected expense. You would think that after 18 years as a homeowner I would learn to expect the unexpected!

What Goes Up....

What a week! On Wednesday we went on a terrific homeschool outing to a historic village with our local homeschooling group. There were 169 of us there! That's pretty amazing for a group that didn't even exist the first time I homeschooled. I took lots of pictures, but have yet to upload them so that'll have to wait until my next post. The weather was gorgeous, and Logan was really into it. At the living history exhibits, he asked lots of good questions. We met some new people and had a really good time.

But later that evening, he and his friend Damien were playing out front--supposedly kicking a soccer ball around--when I heard a loud thunk, and then Damien say, "Ohmygosh, are you all right?" I looked out the window, to see Logan holding the top of his head and say uncertainly, "I think so..."

But then he took his hand away and saw the blood. I bolted to the front door to let him in, and by that time his face and his shirt were already covered in blood. I pressed my hand onto what I thought was the general location of the wound and began banging on the bathroom door where my husband Ely was getting ready to take a shower. He heard Logan's shrieking, and opened the door. By this time my hand was covered in blood and it was dripping onto the floor. There was SO. MUCH. BLOOD. I grabbed the nearest towel, wet it, and pressed it onto his head. Believe it or not, Ely and I were completely calm. We've already lived through this scenario several times with the older kids, and we are both emergency room veterans.

Poor Damien was hanging back by the door not sure what to do. "What hit him, Damien?" I asked.

"A rock," he answered miserably. God. So that was the sound I heard--a rock connecting with my son's skull. "We were throwing rocks up into the tree. Is he okay?"

"Well, he's bleeding a lot, but he'll be fine," I said, over Logan's hysterical screaming. "You should probably go home."

In the middle of all this, Logan had to pee, I was still trying to staunch the bleeding with the towel, and Ely went out to the yard to try and find the offending rock. It was huge--a big hunk of granite. What were they thinking?? "We--we were trying to hit the branches and it bounced off and hit me," Logan managed to get out.

Well, four hours in the ER and four stitches later, Logan's inch-long head gash was finally closed up and we came home at midnight to learn that Adam Lambert had lost American Idol. So, a crappy evening all around!

7 Blocks

This morning, I wanted a newspaper. Normally I just hop in the van and drive the 7 blocks to Wawa (a ubiquitous South Jersey convenience store, for those not from around here), but today finally the sun was out and the day was scrubbed clean and gorgeous. "Hey, why don't we walk?" I said to Logan.

The first interesting thing we came upon was a squashed frog in the road. Of course Logan wanted to take an up-close and personal look so we did. Then we noticed we were walking through a drift of pink flower petals and I pointed out to Logan that the tree above us was losing its flowers and growing new spring leaves. We took a good look at the nearest branch and then I caught the unmistakeable aroma of lilac. Sure enough, behind the tree was a flowering lilac bush. We both buried our faces in the blooms and inhaled deeply. "It smells kind of like vanilla," Logan said.

We went to take our usual detour down a dirt road that leads to a lake, but saw that there was a newly strung chain across the way, and a very definitive sign warning us to Keep Out! All righty then. So we kept going down the street and--omigod--I almost stepped on a snake! It was right at the edge of somebody's lawn, about a foot into the road. I recognized it as a cousin of the garter snake that almost gave me a heart attack in my backyard last year. It was perfectly still, except for its little tongue darting in and out. We squatted down to take a closer look (Logan closer than I). We noticed that the lawn's owners had just mowed, and surmised that the snake was probably trying to escape the mower. "Yeah, but what if it gets hit by a car?" Logan asked. I wished that I was brave enough to pick it up and throw it back into the grass, but alas, I was not. I asked Logan if he wanted to pick it up and throw it back, and he also declined. So we kept going, crossing our fingers that the snake would make it to safety.

Less than a block away, what should we find in the road, but damn! A smushed snake! We gave this one a wide berth since it had flies all over it, and then suddenly noticed that we were walking through a swirling storm of floating white fuzzies. "What the heck...?" There were hundreds of them! They looked like dandelion fluff, but they seemed to be coming from way high up in the trees. We shielded our eyes and peered into the sky but we couldn't figure out where they were coming from. Laughing, we snatched at the air, trying to catch some, but they were elusive little buggers. As we walked, the cloud thinned out and disappeared and then reappeared about a block later. This time, it was obvious where they were coming from--the ground. Logan said, "It was dandelion fluff."

"Mystery solved," I said. "The wind must have carried it up above the trees, and then they floated back down. Now you know why there are dandelions all over the place."

"Why?"

"Those are seeds. The wind carries them away and wherever they land--presto! More dandelions."

"I didn't see any seeds," said Logan. So we picked a dandelion puffball, and pulled out a few fuzzies so he could see the seeds attached to the ends.

By now we had almost gotten to Wawa, and Logan noticed muddy tire tracks on the newly paved road. He spent a few minutes speculating as to what type of vehicle might have made the tracks, and decided that that it must have been some kind of truck. We spent our last few minutes before going into the store reading the names some kids had written in the concrete. We bought our newspapers and some munchies and headed back home.

As we passed the spot where our friendly neighborhood garter snake had been, we were very relieved to see he was nowhere in sight, and so had clearly made it across the street unscathed. We resolved to be braver in the future and pick up and move any imperiled snakes to safety.

As we turned back onto our street, I said, "I'm sure glad we didn't take the van."

Logan smiled up at me, clutching his dandelions. "Me too."