Addam's Family Homeschool

Can we come?

The first Addam's Family Episode. From 6 minutes in are all the reasons I homeschool, down to the box of spiders, unfortunately ours aren't thoroughbred.

I know it sounds crazy, but my gorgeous happy little sprite of a daughter would just adore the Addam's family house-- the ravens, the two-headed tortoise, Pugsly's octopus, the snake candles....

And if Jake had an uncle Fester who could power a lightbulb by sticking it in his mouth, my son would never leave his side.

He Should Fit Right In.

This here is Ragweed. He's a golden tan, so he matches my decor like my other pets. As well as being a pet, he is a scientific experiment involving nutrition, behavior, and cognitive function. He also likes spinning things and banging into walls.

Mighty Mice

Monday morning, my daughter and her friend are going out to buy two mice in order to run an experiment studying the effects of nutrition on concentration and behavior. I'll blog it as interesting things will surely develop. They will be entering their experiment in the local homeschooler's science fair.

They have already picked out their names: Poppy, and Lucky Sue. She's lucky because she's a feeder mouse who has been saved from being a snake's lunch.

Here's an interesting little article I read today about super mice. Oh no, they're not interested in using this technology in humans;) I imagine the military will get their hands on this one. Perhaps even the NFL.

Big Numbers and A Seal.

The kids were arguing about the population of the United States, New York, Tennessee, and the world this morning, so we consulted to oracle for the numbers.

The population of New York City alone outstrips the population of all of Tennessee by approx 2.2 million people.

I said to them, "Take all of Tennessee, cram it into one city and add another 2 million people to that." Josie, in all of her linguistic glory, exclaimed "Wow! New York is so overpopulated! It's like the locusts infesting the savanna!"

I really had no idea how large New York City really was. I did have a clue that the state of Tennessee still has many wide open spaces when I flew over it last week. Which reminds me, I'm supposed to blog my Florida trip.

Here's a cute photo of a seal I got.

"Yes, I know, everybody tells me how cute I am."

(He needs a better caption if anyone has any ideas.)

What We Did This Year

I figure I need to post something about what we did this year since much of the point of this blog is to keep a journal of what we've done school-wise.

I advanced the kids up a grade last week, so now Josie is in the fourth grade and Jake is in the third. They are still doing the same schoolwork. Jake is young for his grade, but he has moved up to fourth grade math. He is an "A" student in math as well and that makes me very proud. We haven't used a math curriculum this year, we have just bought a few math workbooks and when they finish one for their grade, they move up to the next.

They both started gymnastics last month, which was a big milestone for Josie, since I haven't had her in any type of class situation since taking her out of school last year. She has a very patient coach, and is learning little by little some of the social rules that go along with taking a gymnastics class. Jake is practicing his handstands every day trying to see how many seconds he can stay upside down. I like that he's set himself these goals. That's a real little-boy thing after all.

They have two notebooks each that are full of schoolwork that we started in on around January. We signed up with Oak Meadow School and that got us jump started. Every day we read a story or a fable or something from history and they draw a picture and practice their cursive writing with a brief summary of what they have drawn.

We also have learned about the Babylonians, the Phoenecians, the Romans and Greeks, the Assyrians, the Spartans, ancient Egyptians, and the Jews and their nomadic travels. We have a large timeline made of foam core board that we label with major events and people after reading a chapter from our favorite little history book.

We've read so many books this year. Together we read Alice in Wonderland, Despreaux, The Higher Power of Lucky, and we're currently reading The Wind in the Willows. We have also read about 25 fables since January, and the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. Josie has read everything I could get her by Roald Dahl, and Jake has read most of those too. Once I'm unbanned from the library (darn those hidden pockets in backpacks!), I'll begin to get some audio books for the car.

This year we went to the Human Body Exhibit in Atlanta, missed the shuttle launch in December, but it still counts, visited the nursing home at Christmas time to pass out cards and sing songs, went to Safari Adventure in Pigeon Forge, recently we visited Liles Acres, a really neat little farm in Maryville with llamas and chickens and organic gardens. We've done countless other little trips too.

The major thing we did this year was join a homeschool co-op. The kids have made some great friends and so have I. If I hadn't met all of these great folks, I might not be the confident homeschooler I am right now. I have gotten so much support and so many ideas from them. Most of all, I've gotten the comfort of knowing I'm doing the right thing, by hearing about their trials and triumphs, by seeing how well their children are doing, and laughing together about the things our kids do, when at one time many of us were consumed by worry.

Keeping this blog has helped me as well. Whenever I feel like we've slumped out, I can look back and see how busy we have been, and how much has been accomplished this year. I can safely say I'm proud of myself and truly proud of my kids, and blessed to be able to take this responsibility to help them grow and learn.

My New Most Favorite Thing

I bought this little gem at a used curriculum sale for one dollar. "So what?" you say, but if you look it up on Amazon, you'll find that it is not easy to get, and if you can find it, it's usually sold for an exhorbitant price. Why is this book my New Most Favorite Thing? Because it is so delightfully un-P.C.

It was written in the early 20th century, soon after World War I, by the headmaster of Calvert School, who from their founding have provided missionary homeschoolers with curriculum. That's not the reason I like the book though. I'm not a Bob Jones type Christian Homeschooler. I'm more of a Regular Joe homeschooler, which I fear is pretty rare. I tire easily of radical points of view. I'm just as put off by the "never sit your child down and make them read a book" radical unschooling philosophy, as I am by the "never let your child even entertain the thought that the world is older than 6000 years" radical Christian philosophy. I find them unreasonable. I don't like unreasonable things.

I think this book knows for whom it was written, and is painfully unaware of how unfairly it's innocent little viewpoints would be viewed almost 100 years later by an audience nearly suffocating on Orwellian new speak. It was quite a reasonable book for its time, and if our present society wasn't so brainwashed into stupifying moderation by it's fear of offending the too easily offended, and if our present society hadn't lost it's sense of humor because of these fears, it would be a reasonable little book for children today.

My little book would be on trial today for it's patriotic nationalism:

"but the Jews wanted a real king as their enemies had and other nations who were their neighbors. Strange they wanted a king which so many countries have tried to get rid of--we should think they would have preferred a President as we have."

My little book would be on trial today for its apparent bigotry:

"We don't know how nor when nor where colored people first lived, though it is interesting to guess."

and

"If your name is Henry of Charles or William, you are probably an Aryan. If it is Moses or Solomon, you are probably a Semite. If it is Shufu or Rameses, you are probably a Hamite."

(I do discuss these ideas with my children. Interesting about the "colored people" remark- this is not a Young Earth book. It talks about the Big Bang theory, and Neolithic man. It's strange to me that the author wouldn't entertain the thought that primitive man emerged in Africa as well as the Middle Eastern regions. So I did discuss this apparent ignorance with my kids.)

My little book would be on trial today for viewing history from a Christian perspective:

"The Greeks believed in many gods, not in one God as we do and the Jews did, and their gods were more like people in fairy-tales than like divine beings. Many beautiful statues have been made of their different gods, and poems and stories have been written about them."

I do appreciate how the author addresses the children with the assumption that they are Christian and yet allows them to truly delight in learning about other religious beliefs in a light-hearted way. Chuckling was allowed, without fear of being branded a bigot. It was okay to have a point of view, and find other's points of view strange, new, and intriguing, make a judgement on it, and perhaps get a laugh. Today if an educator said some of these things he would be sent off to reprogramming. If certain points of view are repressed and censored, how do we have dialogue and debate?

My little book might have gotten called archaic and gotten relegated to some out-of-print section on Amazon, and that is sad because so many children wouldn't get to read gems like this:

Chapter 41

Nightfall

It was 500 o' Clock by History Time.
Night was coming on.
The Dark Ages had begun.
At least, that is what people call it now. But people didn't call it so then.
Crazy people don't think they are crazy.
Ignorant people don't think they are ignorant.
So the Dark Ages didn't think they were dark.

Or this:

"Well we have now reached the seventh century--the six hundreds, and we are to hear of a man who to make a change in the whole world. he was neither a Roman nor a Greek nor a Frank nor a Goth nor a Briton. He was neither a king nor a general, but only a ---
What do you suppose?
A CAMEL-DRIVER!
And he lived in a little town called Mecca in far-off Arabia. His name was Mohammed. Mohammed went on an errand for a wealthy Arabian lady, and the lady fell in love with him. although he was a poor camel-driver and only a servant and she was rich, they were married."

The author goes on the write about Mohammed's vision of the angel Gabriel and how muslims pray, how Islam grew. He paints a pretty picture, but he is also honest about how eventually people were being converted by the sword.

"But very soon they began to force others to become Moslems whether they wanted to or not. Like the highway robber that says 'Money or your life,' they gave every one a choice. 'Money or your life, or be a Moslem!' This may seem a strange way for people to make others believe their religion, but the Moslems said that Allah wanted all people to be Mohammedans, and didn't want anyone who was not."

Hillyer tells about their defeat in France, but shows that in 110 years they had gone from a vision to a religion that "had conquered and converted the whole of the country bordering from the Mediterranean from Constantinople all the way round the southern edge and as far up into France as Tours."

This headmaster really does seem to tell the Whole History of the World as we know it, from Ramesis to Catherine the Great, from the Babylonians to the American Revolution. He includes great scientists, discoverers, musicians, revolutionaries, villians and heroes. And he ends his book with a warning about war:

Someday man...will invent something a million times more powerful than gunpowder or dynamite--something so explosive that when discovered by some Mr. Swartz it will blow him, his house, his town, his country, and the whole world to kingdom come--and that will be the end of this little spark off the sun."

and an image that gets me choked up:

"Perhaps you looked through a microscope at what seem to be wars between germs. As germs might look up at the eye of the microscope through which we watch their life and death struggles, and wonder what is up above on the other side looking down at them, so we may look up at the the blue eye of heaven above us and wonder what all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful being up there is watching our own life-and-death struggles here below.
Our little world, which seems so immense to us, is really only a tiny speck, only one of countless other specks floating in space; it is like one of the tiny motes which you may see any time in a sunbeam that shines in at the window. Who has an eye so keen that he can count the moving motes in such a beam of light? Who would miss one such grain of dust if it should disappear? So this grain of dust we call the World and all of us who live upon it could vanish without ever being noticed!
This story ends here, but only for the present, for history is a continued story and will never end."


This is a book for kids, and I have learned so much more from it, than I ever learned in my college world history class, and in such an entertaining and enlightening way, that I can't put it down. I'm jealous that I didn't get this opportunity in elementary school.

I forgive my little book for it's lack of sensitivity and it's cultural bias. It's sparked in me a love of history that I wouldn't have otherwise known, given my children something to talk about and investigate with wonder.

Bullfrog Tadpole Grows Up

I don't pay attention to them much, but my daughter takes care of her animals pretty well. She gets on the internet and finds out what they eat and what kind of water they need and just does it. She's had a crayfish named Larry for about six months who's molted twice and seems to be trucking along just fine. She's got a couple of mail order leopard frog tadpoles in her frog tank. In another tank she's been keeping some bullfrog tadpoles that she collected at Grandma's house in Indiana. Yesterday she found the male (Billy) dead underneath some rocks in the tank. But Cindy up there sprouted front legs this morning and was floating on a lego ship that Josie made for her. I hope that Josie will let her live out the remainder of her life in our new koi pond, and I'll appeal to whatever little bit of compassion the kid has, but if not, and her frog dies, she may learn a valuable lesson. If the frog lives a good long time under Josie's care like little Larry, then I'll learn a valuable lesson.

Mmmm. Zoloft.

I know I'll catch crap for this. Anything for a funny I always say. Believe me, when you see your kids sitting around with their friends and discussing their diagnosis and medications, there's nothing left to do but laugh. Gotta keep that sense of humor.

Mad TV "Public School House Rock"

Carnival of Homeschooling

The Carnival's up.

I don't know how many of my homeschooling homies read this, but it's weekly. It's not just homeschoolers talking about why they're homeschoolers, which I like.

How Do Kids Like This Go to School?

Ate breakfast. Did a math page. Then read them the fable "Fox's Snack".

Jake wanted to act it out. Josie didn't. I sent Jake upstairs to get a bag for a prop. Then Josie decided she wanted to play. We used an afghan for the bag.

First Jake was the fox, I was the lady of the house, and Josie was all the other characters. The dog acted the part of the dog in the story. You should have seen her all wrapped up in the afghan, struggling to get out and "eat" the "fox". Next we played it so that Jake got to be all of the other characters in the story.

After that, Josie wanted to write Part Two of the story. So she paced all around the room while I wrote what she dictated. She added a cat to the story. Four pages later, I asked if she wanted to draw a picture for part 2. She said she didn't. So I did. At that point she thought drawing a picture was a grand idea, and drew two, embellishing the story a bit while she doodled. She went upstairs to take a shower, and Jake asked if he could write Part Three. He dictated three pages to me and then he illustrated his story.

Whew. This was about 3 hours of narrating, writing, reading, drawing, acting, reciting, and dictation, with a little math thrown in.

A school teacher would have to get past the fact that my daughter says "no" to something. Just begin doing it anyway, and she'll join in. A teacher would have to accept that my kids dislike writing at this time. No way I would ever expect her to sit down and take dictation. A teacher would have to let my kid put another kid in a bag and attack them in order to act out a story! Heaven forbid! Running in the classroom? No way. Would I want them to do any of these things in a real classroom situation? Never.

So, did they far exceed their former public school's and my own expectations of them today? Yep. Am I proud of them and hopeful? Yes indeedy.

So Far, Today Rocks.

It's 12:23.

The kids are dressed.

Their rooms are cleaned.

The rat cage is clean.

The banana orange smoothie recipe has been made.

Breakfast was eaten.

The "Tower of Babel" was told.

Story questions were answered.

Drawings were made (did you know the tower had window boxes with flowers? Me neither.)

Summaries were written in cursive by both children. Jake wrote an especially long paragraph.

Josie ran upstairs. "What are you doing, Josie?".... "I had to finish cleaning my room!"

No whining, fighting, or complaining.

KNOCK. ON. WOOD.

Let it Be

That phrase has a few meanings. Let it happen... Leave it alone... Amen.

This morning I just let us be. I try to do this often, but I get afraid that things will go undone and my kids will deteriorate intellectually, if I don't monkey with them. In the winter I monkey a lot with worksheets, assignments, and activities. Now that it's getting springy I'm letting it be a bit.

It's funny what happens. This morning Jake came downstairs to tell me that I really am good at drawing, and that all the portraits I have on the walls are nice. I told him that when I was his age I took an interest in drawing. It was something I practiced all the time because I enjoyed it. At this point he picked up his recorder that he's been playing all week and asked me if I could find a place to put it that the dog wouldn't chew on it.

I asked him if he wanted to find some recorder music online to listen to. We went online and found "That Bach song. DOO-DOO-DOOO........." It's Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring I told him. I discovered a few really simple and sublime pieces by Bach like Minuet in G, and officially changed my mind about him being the Eddie Van Halen of classical music. You know the guitar show off with too many notes.

Later this morning we went outside and burned some yard junk. While he was blowing on a stick to get the fire started up, he asked me what a pun was. That's a fine question for a 7 year old to ask, huh? I told him I'd let him know when we heard one, but they're used a lot in knock knock jokes.

Finding your joy, Bach, building a proper fire, and puns. All before lunch. Because I let it be. Amen.

More Than I Thought They Could Handle

Yesterday my mother called at about 1:00 to tell me to turn on Sundance Channel and see these little boys in Africa doing some kind of routine involving dumbbells. Well, I missed it, but I left the TV on that channel, and left to clean my room. I popped in and saw that Josie was watching a sub titled program about illegal immigrants called "Wetback". It showed young people from Central America who were trying to cross into Mexico. Touching on police brutality, the dangers of jumping trains, rampant urban crime and gangs.

Of course it was Sundance, so the sympathy was for the illegal immigrants, some that crossed the Rio Grande at the end, and we talked about that sympathy, and how important it is to be compassionate to people who suffer. We also talked about how these people were breaking the law, and that sometimes laws seem harsh, but they are there to protect us. I told her some of the bad people who were hurting the good people in Mexico and Central America can come over our border too, so that's why our border patrol sends people back. The program was favorable to our border patrol, showed them to be respectful to the people they detain, as opposed to the Mexican police who beat and robbed two of the immigrants in the documentary.

Anyway, I was shocked she sat through the whole thing and really took it in.

Later some friends came over and we watched the show about Oprah's school for girls in South Africa. I'm not sure any of the kids understood the significance of the school to the little girls, or how those girls suffered in their own lives. We were trying to make the point to our children that they should appreciate their blessings. When you have a daughter who breaks into tears because you tell her it's time to go to the grocery store, you need a bit of ammuniton too. Maybe the show will marinate in their subconcious for a while and come out in a couple of years when they're developmentally able to understand it.

I went to Blockbuster and picked up "The Prestige" and we all watched it. Yes, Grandparents, the children sat through the whole thing. I'm certain they didn't get all the plot twists (I sure didn't), but afterwards Jake was talking his head off about electricity. He was a little outraged at one point during the movie asserting that "Magic is not real!" When it was apparent some real magic had occured.

I never expect my kids to have any attention span. That's unfortunate for them, because if I whittle down their education to suit what I believe they can handle, then it's like I'm spoonfeeding them. That's starving my children.

P.S. Dharma's coming over today to help me Feng Shui my house. I've been reading a book, and apparently I'm cutting the Chi's all over the place.

What?

Hey all my homeschooling homies! Apparently our parental authority to educate as we please is being undermined again! Isn't this infringing on our freedom to assemble?

ATTACK ON HOME SCHOOL GROUPS In the last week we have had a rush of complaints from home school organizations from across the state. Home schools traditionally produce some of the best and brightest kids who achieve high results in the real world. As you may or may not know home school students are starting to team up and are becoming a more powerful group. They are starting to come together and do things like start sports teams and clubs that meet and interact with other more traditional students. Some home school groups and students have also been meeting in churches and Sunday school classrooms to get specialized teaching by a specialist in a common field of interest. An example might be a group of ten or fifteen home school students gathering together to hear a presentation or be taught about nuclear science from a nuclear scientist from Oak Ridge. I did a discussion one day about how our state government works for a similar group. Lately though these groups have come under attack. Codes inspectors have begun to shut these groups down in mass. The reason given is that when they meet they become "a school" and the churches and Sunday school class rooms that they meet in don't meet code for schools. Forget that these same rooms are much more packed every Sunday for church or Sunday school classes. Expect to hear more about this as time progresses. posted by TheRep @ 8:56 AM

This is from Rep. Stacey Campfield's blog.

Dissection Kit

This set only costs about $40! I thought this kind of thing would be way more expensive. You get a fetal pig, frog, perch, crayfish, grasshopper, clam, starfish, and whatever a Grantia is, you get one of those too. The kit includes the book and all of the tools for dissecting. There is a set of nine animal specimens for about $14. I know some kids who would love to come over for a creepy little science party at my house.

Rudyard Kipling's "Just So" Stories

I very truly must make a high recomendation to all my families to read some Just So Stories aloud to their most 'satiable curtious children. Specially the one about the Elephant and how he got his trunk by the great- green- greasy Limpopo river. Have a little spot of hot tea next to you when you do this, because it is most very 'ceedingly difficult to say some of the long-windy words. When you read how the Leopard got his spots, you can also learn how the Etiopian decided to turn brown. Truly, best Beloved, it is most 'ceedingly fun.

Our Trip to the Nursing Home

Today our little co-op went to the nursing home to visit and pass out Christmas cards. The look on the patients' faces will stay with me for a long time. Many of them took a while to recognize that there was a little person in front of them. But then a kid would put a card in their hand (or drop it in their lap) and say Merry Christmas. That empty look would leave some of their faces, and Grandpa or Grandma would emerge for a short while and they would smile and say "Well, bless your heart" or "Merry Christmas" or "You come back any time and see Nanny, okay?". A few of the patients would just smile.

One lady I won't forget for a long time. She was walking slowly down the hall with an aid beside her and two of the kids went running up to her and handed her their cards. We were all standing outside a room where an old woman who seemed to be pretty lucid was giving away free hugs to our littlest member (two). When the children came back to us, the walking lady followed. Tears were streaming down her nose, and she just stood among us crying like that. She asked for more cards, and the kids just kept giving them to her.

While we were waiting for the world's slowest elevator to carry us down a floor, the kids were singing "Jingle Bells". A very hunched-over woman with a walker sang the whole thing with us, rocking a little, and grinning.

Our trip ended with some boisterous tree-climbing in the front yard. A man in the lobby watched them the whole time.

I so truly wish them all a Merry Christmas, and pray that they have families that will visit them often. If not, I hope our loud, irreverent little kids helped just a little.

As an aside: Old people need little kids around, and little kids need to be there for them too, and all of us in the middle need to make sure that happens, whether our hearts can take it or not. (I mean, the kids were happy, the elderly patients seemed happy to have them, and here I am crying about it.)

Homeschooling for the Bloody Capitalist

The real world is a place where people get paid for their labor. I've decided my kids will get paid for theirs too. For the kids should enjoy learning and doing for its own sake crowd, please start formulating your arguments now, and I heartily promise to ignore them.

From now on if my kids read 10 books, come and tell me about all of them, choose one and write a good one page book report about it they get $5. If it is an especially neat page of writing, they get an extra $1.

If they learn their times tables and take a test and pass, they get $3 for each test passed. They can only take one test a week. There will be no test on 1x. Duh.

They will have to pay me for TV time and computer and playstation time. 50 cents for each 30 minute increment. Educational TV and computer is free. If they write a page about what they learned on TV or on the PC, then they receive $2.

For Jake a day without whining or screaming nets him $2. If he does either of these things he pays me $2. I will keep a sheet on this so if he goes in the hole, he'll have a little lesson on credit and collections.

Same for Josie about using a nice tone of voice.

From now on they buy all of their toys and candy themselves. Christmas doesn't count. Gifts from Grandmas and Grandpas etc. don't count either.

Later, I may get into them taking a loan out from us in order to buy a big item if they don't have enough, but I think that's a concept more for the 11 and above crowd.

Fire away.

Trip to AMSE Grossology

It wasn't a program. It was a room full of interactive games. There was also a climbing wall that was supposed to look like skin. Kids were supposed to climb from the scab to the mole to the wart etc. There was a video game cabinet that had "Urine, the Game" written on it. Josie played it. The object of the game is to make sure the right things pass out with the urine. She made sure the sugar and the red blood cells stayed in the system. There was a giant animatronic talking faucet in a bathrobe with a perpetually dripping nose. We learned a lot of interesting things about mucus from him. I couldn't bring myself to play the Guess the Smell game. I saw the buttons to push though. One of them said "anus". Also we learned a bit about the process that causes one to vomit. If you push the buttons for brain, stomach, esophagus, and mouth in order, the cartoon character will blow chunks and the lucky kid recieves a standing ovation. The burp-maker was neat. Pump enough soda-pop into the inbred hick and he will burp for you. Pump some more and he will let out a long screaming fart. Very educational.

Also met some cool, down-to earth, homeschooling moms and their very pleasant children.