Odds and Ends of Homeschooling

The big medieval festival was here over the weekend. The boys collected all their old Schleich knight figurines, set up a blanket in a prime sidewalk location to sell them, and made a fortune. Afterward, Little Guy set out to scour the neighborhood sidewalk sales, and came home triumphant: he bought a microscope for $20. He had to go out to purchase batteries for it, and then spent hours (and hours) looking at various items. Then on Monday he was at it again.

One of the things I love about homeschooling is the irony of saying, "Stop looking at the microscope and come do your school work!"

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Years ago we borrowed a CD from the library of presidential campaign songs. The kids loved it, particularly the songs like, "Get on a Raft with Taft" and "Let's Put Barry in the White House". 

Last year for Snuggler's birthday she received the Library of Congress book of presidential campaign posters. This is prime material for what might be called Coffee Table Homeschooling: you leave it out, and they pore over it.

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Officially, we're learning British history this year. Nonetheless, things like the Keith and Rusty McNeil CDs reappear out of nowhere, and are listened-to in free time. Little Guy recently rediscovered the Civil War set, and he lies on the floor with the songbook, singing along. What I love about this series is that it's easy to listen to, and a fascinating look at the music from both sides of the Civil War. 

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I picked up the scripts for the musical Honk, Jr tonight. Snuggler will be the voracious cat, who tries to eat Ugly, the duckling. Little Guy is Ugly. It's his first lead. 

The kids are in the other room, already running lines. I don't know what curriculum category that falls in (I will probably tuck it into music), because New York regulations don't include requirements for education in the performing arts. 

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Snuggler has a regular job as a mother's helper two afternoons a week. With her first fistful of cash she bought a subscription to Creativity Express, an online art appreciation program. I think this is the third time we've bought this; the kids enjoy it, and it's surprisingly content-rich without being heavy. (If you are a homeschooler, you can purchase it at a substantial discount through the Homeschool Buyers Co-op.) 

The advantage of having this program is that it gives me another thing about which I can say, "Yes, you can do that... after your schoolwork is done." 

On Being a Good Person

The benefit for the park was Tuesday night, and I was duly honored. It was lovely. The weather was gorgeous, the Hudson River glittered in the sunset, the food was excellent. The event was sold out, a fact that made me very happy. I am always ridiculously pleased when people contribute to making the world more beautiful, and our park is indeed, a beautiful place.

The Heather Garden in Fort Tryon Park
Photo from the Fort Tryon Park Trust

To my surprise, both our state senator and soon-to-be city councilman came and stayed for an extended period of time. The senator declared me "an individual worthy of our highest esteem and admiration". The current city councilman's representative said I am "an outstanding individual, one worthy of the esteem of this great city." It's printed up on faux-parchment, so I can gaze upon the words whenever the urge hits. The city proclamation is even framed, with a ribbon and gold-foil seal.

It's moving, but frankly also pretty funny. I mean, how long have you vaguely wanted others to think you are a Good Person? Now I am like the scarecrow from Oz, who thought the problem was that he needed a brain, but found that all he needed was a diploma. I have the documents! It's official! I'm Good! (Heh, heh.)

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On Saturday I'm teaching a class called "What the Dinosaurs Ate in Fort Tryon Park". I taught this class last year on the day Hurricane Sandy arrived. The rain started to fall just as we finished. The trees started to fall 10 hours later.

If you walk through the park today, the only remnants of the hurricane are 100+ tree stumps. The city was a huge mess at the time, but most of Manhattan has long since recovered. Out in Queens they are still rebuilding. I have to remind myself that there are people who will be rebuilding their lives for years. It's easy to forget that, once your own life has moved on.

The impact of disasters varies from person to person. Big Guy has a friend at his therapeutic school whose father was killed on 9/11. When the towers fell, so did her life. She was five at the time. I think sometimes about this girl's mother, who lost her husband and, in some senses, lost part of her daughter. She probably lost some of her own grounding, too. Putting a life back together is far harder than putting up a Freedom Tower.

To my way of thinking, this is part of why we need to build community, build resourcefulness, build each other up every day. We need to be so deeply in the habit of doing and seeing, of caring and contributing, that it's our default setting. We need to give, not because that makes us Good People or because we get thanks or a proclamation, but because we can.

When we get around to consistently doing what we can because we can, I suspect we'll stop wanting others to think we're Good People... because our hearts will be focused on good itself. Which is, really, far more interesting than the adulation of people around us.

Homeschool 2013-14

Eldest began her senior year of college last week, and Dancer started her sophomore year of high school.

Tomorrow is the first day of Big Guy's senior year of high school. We finally decided -- late last week -- that we'll homeschool Snuggler for 7th grade. We'd already planned on having Little Guy at home, so tomorrow will be the first day of school for them as well. I may be up late tonight figuring out exactly what that means.

Snuggler will be doing Medieval British Lit, starting with Beowulf. It will be a stretch, but for her it's better to go deep, slowing down to whatever pace works, than to trot along reading books without layers. In theory it's a semester-long course; if it takes a year, that's okay.

She's already started her Thinkwell for math, and she and Little Guy will both do the One Year Adventure Novel. (Yeah, I know: neither of them is in high school. But if I can get Little Guy to write anything, it will be progress. And one of the oddities of teaching kids is that sometimes -- not always, but sometimes -- setting the bar high gets them over smaller hurdles they think they can't jump. More on that another time.)

I've signed her up for Caveman Chemistry at the homeschool co-op, which we'll supplement with Conceptual Chemistry at home (because we already own the book). We'll also be working through Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking with the help of the MIT Open Courseware syllabus.

She'll also do a class at the historical society that teaches American history through musicals. First up: 1776, along with artifacts and actual documents of the time. Add soccer, a big role in the children's theater musical, being a mother's helper twice a week, and a regular service project, and that's about it for now.

Little Guy will be doing Singapore Math 5, although I realized today that I don't have the workbook. He's going to be on a FIRST Lego League team (robotics), play soccer, and he scored the lead in the children's theater musical (he's Ugly -- the duckling -- in Honk, Jr.) Science will be cells, writing will be endless, though I'm hoping the OT will help with graphomotor skills. We'll split apart the conceptual side (via dictation and, if needed, Dragon Naturally Speaking) from the physical process of composition.

We're doing British history, thanks to Little Guy's obsession with Horrible Histories (you can see samples on YouTube; it's kind of Monty Python meets history). He thinks we should take a field trip to England this spring. I told him I'm up for it, as long as he pays.

It's a plan. Or, as I explained to someone the other day, it's the plan we're starting with. It will be revised as we go along. A lot. Frequently. Because, you know, we're learning. And that requires change, and flexibility, and searching out opportunities for growth.




 

Thoughts on feeling that you can't make ends meet

There is nothing quite like cleaning a kid's room to re-realized how not-poor you are. I was thinking about it this way:

On the left side of the scale let's put all the things you want for your kids, as well as the desires (for them and for you) that you think of as needs.

On the right pile let's put all the waste: the carelessly broken, unused, good-for-a-week, and no-longer-of-interest toys and games; the leftovers that went bad in the fridge and the food thrown out partly eaten; the collection of single earrings mourning their mates; the clothing that is perfectly good but languishes unliked and unworn in dresser drawers.

It puts some perspective on all those desires, doesn't it? Because all that stuff you're throwing out was once, in some way, desired.

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I tell my kids they have the right to feel poor on the first day they don't get to eat.

I don't expect them to buy it completely, of course. We all feel poor when others have things we can't afford. We feel poor when we have to work hard at making ends meet. We feel poor when we have to make hard sacrifices and trade-offs. We feel poor when we can't replace things we're used to having, and when we can no longer afford to do things we used to be able to do.

Whether feeling poor is the same as being poor is a different issue. The yardstick doesn't begin with where we are and end with where we want to be. The yardstick begins with poverty we can't imagine, and ends with wealth we wouldn't enjoy. How much of it we see is up to us.

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A dozen years ago I met someone who managed to scratch three meals out of one chicken for her family of four. I knew how to get two meals for my then-family of five, but was baffled by the third. "Soup," she told me, "I never buy chicken without making soup."

It had never occurred to me to make soup from the scraps. At first it seemed like a ridiculous amount of extra work. But like most things, it doesn't take that much work once you make it part of your routine. It's like baking muffins: less expensive than cereal, better for you, and five minutes to mix up and toss in the oven. Simple. Sometimes we're poorer because we lack the insight to see how much more we can do with what we have.

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One reason we sometimes feel we don't have enough for our needs is because as soon as we have resources our minds revert to thinking about what we want, instead.

It also think that, aside from being incredibly bad at distinguishing our own needs from wants, we confuse others' needs with what we want for them. This is true when it comes to our kids, and particularly true when it comes to things that we think will make them happy, smart, engaged, interesting or better able to capitalize on their innate abilities.

I hit this wall every year, when I try to reconcile our homeschooling activities with our budget. It is hard to see what would be beneficial but isn't possible. Eventually, every year, I shrug. I can't do everything I think would be beneficial, because that's not one of my options. Instead I do what I can with what I have, and trust that somehow that will grow into what it needs to be.

Updates and such

We're still trying to find a school for Snuggler for the fall. Yes, this fall. That means two weeks from now. It's not an easy process; New York is notorious for being difficult about school placements, and we're looking at a complicated array of needs. I went to visit one school a couple of weeks back, about which I had many questions and for which I only began to find out answers yesterday.

After talking with the school social worker I spoke with the "educational consultant" who is helping us, to de-brief. "I think that woman doesn't like me," I told her, "But she'll get over it!"

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My mother gave Snuggler a Nook for her birthday. I have mixed feelings about it; I'm beginning to hate what screens do to the family dynamic. But there are benefits, too.

The other night Snuggler downloaded an app called Songify, which turns whatever you say into a pop song. My kids are big Jane Austen fans, so they recorded oddities like "Mr. Darcy eating cheesecake in a bathtub outside", and had them altered into some sort of rap song. It was quite clever. And then all five of them (Eldest is home for an end-of-summer visit) sat around doing preschool karaoke and laughing endlessly.

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When you have several children, there is an enhancement to the one-thing-always-leads-to-another rule, so one thing leads to two or three things. I dunno what's with that; somebody must think that moms of many have an inner need to stay busy. On Tuesday I took Big Guy for a routine checkup and now I need to set up appointments for allergy shots, an ENT visit, and possibly a sleep study. Yesterday I went for a routine checkup and now I have to schedule a bone density test (thanks to my broken jaw), a dermatology visit, a mammogram, colonoscopy, GYN appointment and, er... something I can't remember. I go back to the dentist in ten days.

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Nonetheless, things are looking a bit better around here. I know that sounds ridiculous, because the odds that they could get worse (or even continue in the same vein) are pretty small. Snuggler is feeling more like herself. Andrew's depression is lifting. The boys are less anxious. My jaw is healing. I've had work coming in steadily, and even -- gasp! -- had time to do it.

I've been getting plenty of walking in, usually between two and four miles a day. This is easy in the city, because a) we have lots of sidewalks, and b) the alternative is paying for public transportation. At $2.50 per person per trip, it makes sense to walk if at all feasible. I also get in an extra quarter mile walking to the grocery store after discovering someone ate the last butter/milk/bread. And you know how often that happens!

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Tomorrow I'm off to Big Guy's school for his "senior meeting". Yes, it's his last year in high school. It will also be Eldest's last year in college. Andrew will officially become a senior, too, in October. Me, all I get are senior moments. I think that's okay, don't you?

Healing and growing and something nice

My jaw is doing a lot better. I'm still wired up, but the bulk of the pain is gone. On Monday the dentist told me I was healing nicely... and that I shouldn't chew on the left side for another two weeks. Fortunately I can now chew gently on the right. That's okay; the memory of last week's pain is strong enough that I am still a  long way from yearning for a toasted bagel with cream cheese!

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This week I've been bogged down in a backlog of work. This is good, inasmuch as it means I have work, but I'm feeling a bit like Katy and the Big Snow, with a whole town to plow through.

When I think of how I've grown up in recent years, learning to plow through hard stuff is definitely near the top of the list. There are skills which help: breaking problems into smaller pieces so they're not so overwhelming, re-framing problems, acknowledging how I feel and then moving on, consciously paying attention to the positives. Getting out and doing things for others, whether it's talking about how to homeschool or how to handle a tricky parenting issue or teaching a class, keeps me from getting too self-absorbed, too.

That said, at this point I'd just as soon have a nice long streak of good luck. The broken jaw was kind of over the top.

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As if to signal a change of direction, the other day I ran into the woman who's in charge of the park for our part of Manhattan. “I’ve been meaning to call you,” she said, “Would you be willing to be our honoree for the Fort Tryon Park Trust benefit next month?”

“What would you be honoring?” I asked, jokingly. I’m not a big financial donor. I volunteer at events and teach classes because I can, not for thanks or recognition. I don’t care for awards or shout-outs or thank-you's. 

“We want to honor you for being an asset to our community,” she replied, "For all the things you do." 

I thought about that, and decided I could own it: to be honored for being a light, rather than to bask in the limelight. Besides, this is one of my favorite events of the year, and one that I helped establish. It's pretty awesome to sip wine overlooking the Hudson at sunset. If you can come and support the park on September 17, please do. 

Effective Complaining

I've been reading The Squeaky Wheel, which is about effective complaining. There's an epidemic of whining and venting in the world today, and most of it isn't even intended to correct problems.

I'm always interested in solving problems, in making things a wee bit better. But I do neglect to write letters of complaint when I'm sold a bum good, and I don't always call 311 to report (yet another) streetlight out. The author cites a survey which says that the #1 reason people say they don't complain to someone who can fix the problem is that "they don't have time". However, the same people report they vent to between 7 and 10 people about the problem. So the time's there... it's just not spent effectively.

I'm not a big fan of venting. It gets my heart over-focused on the negative. If I "need" to vent to seven people, chances are I'm ruminating, re-experiencing a negative event seven times, instead of processing it.

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According to the book, another reason people vent instead of complain is that they don't know the right person to contact to fix things. Not in the book: there is a class of problems in life for which there is no correct contact person.

There is no decision-maker whose responsibility is to make a mentally ill person well.

There is no one who can approve a change in a bad relationship to make it better.

And to whom do you complain to fix a chronically ill child?

Those of us who are let's-fix-it types have to be careful to remember that not everything is fixable in the same way. (And yes, even though God can fix things, it's not his job to do our bidding.)

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My upper left jawbone is fractured. It happened at the dentist, a freak accident. I am not going to sue anyone, though undoubtedly I could (and I'd win). Sometimes complaining -- effectively or not -- is not what one needs to do.

Instead, I spoke to the distraught woman who broke my jaw, and told her I forgave her. My jaw will heal, but perhaps her life would not, without gentle words.