….to be confronting and challenging homeschooling stereotypes lately. Another spunky lady did a bang up job on the topic herself. Enjoy!

I adore art and art history.  I might have even majored in it in college, except that I let that whole “getting a good job” propaganda steer me in a different direction.  I loved my AP Art History class in high school and one of my favorite classes from college was the Russian Art and Architecture class I took as part of my Religious Studies minor (since most of the art and architecture we studied in that class was faith-based.)  So I really like sharing art history with children.  This year, I taught an ancient art history class for four to nine year olds that was a great experience for everyone involved.  Athena took an art appreciation class from another homeschool mom and our new co-op just did a painting class that the whole Triad participated in fairly enthusiastically.  We’ve made several trips to the art museum for their monthly family events and today we just got back from a story time field trip there as well.  We’ve covered a great deal of art and art history this year. 

Talking about art with children is really a fascinating experience.  They see things we adults don’t because their eyes are far less trained by cultural images.  They connect easily with the moods and feelings a work of art evokes within them.  We have to think about it.  How does looking at this make me feel?  Hmmm.  Let me see.  Let me quiet the chatter within and take a minute to really……  Meanwhile, my kids say “That freaks me out.”  Or “This painting is making me hungry.”  Or “I want to be that girl in that sculpture because she looks so happy.”  Or a myriad other remarks that come tumbling out unhindered by what is appropriate or what we think we are suppose to be seeing or saying about this piece. 

Interestingly, Athena has taken all of our art and art history related experiences in and created a very clear picture for herself of what is or is not art and how she feels about it.  She adores land art.  She likes the fact that many people had to work together to make it and it also appeals to her that the creators of ancient land art never got to see the finished project for themselves.  The artists had to take it on faith that it turned out right.  We’ve looked at pictures of land art created by ancient North and South American cultures and by the Celts.  But we’ve also looked at modern land art which she and Patris Maximus had a very lively conversation about since he felt pretty strongly about that not being art.  She stood her ground though.  It is art.  According to her.  And good art at that.  She also know what she believes is not art.  Show her a Jackson Pollack and she grimaces.  “That’s not art,” she’ll tell you.  “Anybody can do that just for fun.  That’s not hard.  That’s not beautiful.”  She will also tell you that if you think it’s art, that’s fine but she just does not. 

Today, on our field trip, we stopped at a couple of de Kooning pieces.  I couldn’t resist asking Athena if she thought these were art.  “Yes.” she said matter-of-factly.  She explained that even though his work is abstract, she thinks you can see that he thought carefully about where to put what brush strokes and what colors.  I pointed out the Pollack across the same room and she wrinkled up her nose.  “What’s that doing here?”  I told her that some people thought that was just as much famous and valuable art as the de Kooning we were standing in front of.  “I just don’t think he thought much about that” she said with a sigh.  We moved from the Abstract galleries to the Impressionist galleries and she really perked up.  Turns out that she seems to really like them.  She liked how they used “neat colors” and “strange lines” but she could still tell that the artist meant to paint a tree or a horse or a lady.

We’re making plans to hunt up a few books on the Impressionists this weekend at the library and we’ll be back at the art museum on the next family day.  We are lucky to have such a child-friendly art museum here because it’s one thing to read about art and quite another to stand in front of it.  As Artemis and Apollo get older, I am looking forward to having them join the discussion.  They are already interested in talking about color, lines and shapes so the dialog is just beginning. 

A few great resources for beginning to explore art with kids are the Come Look With Me books and the Can You Find It? series.  Museum websites often have images of their collections.  If you know the title of a piece you’d like to show your kids, just use Google Image search and you’ll most likely find it.  We also regularly check the adult stacks at the library since they often have large art history books with beautiful color photos.   But don’t forget to get out to your nearest art museum, as well. 

I often dream of a world where the word “homeschooler” does not conjure up this terribly sterotypical image a la Mean Girls in folks’ minds the minute I utter it.  I actually don’t have too many of these experiences these days, mostly because of the fact that I’m surrounded by a large, brilliant, and supportive eclectic homeschooling community.  I’m lucky that way.  I guess that’s why when I do have a run-in with someone who assumes that we and everyone we know must be a Tim Hawkins knock off it can get me a tad fired up.

 Yes, in fact, I do occasionally wear an ankle length denim skirt.  Did I mention that I wear it with a short sleeve fitted Ramones graphic tee?  And sometimes pig tails?  Go ahead, stereotype me.  I dare you.  Tell my five and a half year old (who can talk your ear off about Darwin’s voyage to the Galapagos, explain the basics of natural selection using pinto beans and lentils and says she’s going to be a chemist when she grows up) that homeschoolers don’t learn any math or science.  Tell my husband (who is currently desperately pleading with me to reduce the guest list for the twins’ upcoming birthday party based on the square footage of our home) that his kids don’t and wont have any friends and never get the chance to socialize.  The only thing these sorts of comments expose is the fact that the person making these stereotypical assumptions is totally ignorant in the ways of modern homeschooling.  And probably blissfully ignorant of the pervasive defects of American public education system as well, if I had to guess.

I am often dumbfounded by these assumptions.  But then I have to remind myself that not everyone knows a homeschooled teenager who is taking community college classes and helping one of her professors write new curriculum in her area of expertise.  Or another teenager who has found a mentor who is helping her work in a high tech lab on projects of her own design and passion.  Or a dedicated mother who has managed to help her autistic daughter exceed all ”professional” expectations through the fabulousness that is home education.  Or a father who carves time out of his schedule to facilitate the study of Latin for a group of kids ranging from age seven to eighteen all in the same class.  Not everyone is blessed enough to be in a community with these amazing people who are all living, breathing, walking, talking examples of what sucessful home education looks like today. 

One fabulous thing came of my recent run in with the blissfully ignorant.  It created an opportunity to have a talk with an old friend who spent the first half of her education at home in the 1980’s.  I got the opportunity to share with her what a fabulous influence and example she (and her mother) have turned out to be for me.  She, in turn, shared with me her thoughts on how her time spent home educating affected her life.  Her words are something I will cherrish for a long time and add to my collection of odds and ends that keep me focused on why we have chosen this particular path for our family.  She spoke about how her mother fostered a life long love of learning in her and her siblings.  She also shared how she came to see learning as a natural everyday part of life that could happen anywhere and at any time, not just in a cinder block walled room, seated in a desk, staring at a chalkboard, between the hours of eight and three on only Monday through Friday.  This is what I lost somewhere around 1985 and didn’t get back until around 2002.  This is what I want my children to never lose.   

So I will continue to move forward with her words in my heart.  But as a home educator in the world today, I will also continue to strive to educate the non-homeschooling public about what homeschooling really looks like and the amazing potential of home educated children whenever the opportunity presents itself. 

Once again, my homeschooling BFF (read: Google) has got my back.  Last night I asked Athena what she wanted for our bedtime read aloud.  She brought me Archimedes and the Door of Science by Jeanne Bendick.  This is actually a great living math/science sort of book, but not what I was expecting as before bed reading.  We’re waiting on the fifth Rick Riordan book though, so I think we have Greeks on the brain.  We agreed– one chapter.  Otherwise this bedtime reading thing can go on for hours and hours.  I flipped through a few pages and figured this would actually work out well.  It looked fairly short and I might even be able to spend a decent chunk of quality time with Patris Maximus after the Triad was finally snoozing.  Best laid plans.

 After a short section on Archimedes’ childhood, the author began listing a quick cursory overview of his most notable contributions to science and mathematics.   We reach the part about specific gravity and I am interrupted.  So hydrogen and oxygen are elements, right?  And they make water, right?   Yes, I say, getting ready to move on.  Can we make water?  I put the book down.  I asked her what she meant and she asked if we could get some air in two bottles from our recycle bin, sort out everything in one except the oxygen and in the other except the hydrogen.  Then we could mix them in the kitchen and make our own water.  I tried to explain that our kitchen isn’t that cool.  And that pure oxygen is flammable.  So why isn’t the air on fire then?  I was honest and told her I wasn’t totally sure, but that I think it has something to do with the fact that oxygen atoms don’t float around by themselves alone, that they bond with themselves to make more stable compounds.  (I still have to double check this so if anyone know for sure, feel free to give me a heads up.)  Can I see oxygen atoms, like with a microscope?  Not with our microscope.  Our microscope is cool, but not that cool.  So I told her about scanning electron and transmission electron microscopes.  Can I at least see a picture of those microscopes?  Sure kid.  Tomorrow.  We’ll check Google.  I asked if I should keep reading.    Yes, please.

 We managed to get through the rest of his major scientific contributions and began in on the mathematics.  Archimedes published on every subject in mathematics with the exception of algebra.  The book said that to do algebra, you have to know the concept of zero which the Greeks had not understood.  Okay.  So far, so good.  Then the book said that zero wasn’t understood and used for hundreds of years after Archimedes.  Athena had heartburn with this.  Nu-uh!  The Hindus used zero then, they just didn’t tell the Greeks about it.  I put the book back down.  I told her I am pretty terrible with dates and we’d have to check it out in the morning.  I agreed that zero first came into use in Ancient India and was a long time coming to the Western world, (see the fabulous Story of One by PBS and available on Netflix) but I wasn’t sure about the exact timing.  We can google it tomorrow?  Yes.  We can google it tomorrow.  (For those of you who are now waiting on the edge of your seat- there is actually a bit of controversy about this and zero may be a contemporary concept to Archimedes’ time or it may not.  Go forth and do a bit of googling yourself for the rest of the story!)

The situational humor of the end of the chapter was not lost on me:

But probably the most important thing Archimedes gave to the word was a logical way of thinking about [science and] mathematics.  Like his predecessor, Euclid, he had a way of taking things in order, step by step, so that he could prove or disprove his ideas as he went along.

This morning over breakfast we googled!  Enjoy!

Can You See an Atom?
Pictures of Scanning Electron Microscopes
MicroAngela’s Pictures Taken by a SEM
An Article on a Transmission Electron Microscope
Pictures of the TEAM 0.5 Transmission Electron Microscope

Believe it or not, this post is not about science in the academic sense.  I actually post a great deal about science, which my parents probably find both hysterical and unbelievable given my childhood track record with the field of study.  But this is about a different type of chemistry; the type that can make amazing things happen when the right variety of elements combine to create a powerful reaction. 

Just as the elements of the Periodic Table can be grouped into rough families with common characteristics, I find that homeschoolers can do that to themselves too.  We all make up the homeschooling community, but we often bond better with certain folks than with others.  And that’s to be expected.  In addition, like many elements, some of us are easily excitable, some of us almost never react to anything, some of us are very self-sufficient and some of us thrive on community.  We actually belong to a whole host (read: four) of homeschooling groups.  In case it isn’t painfully obvious yet– we thrive on community.  Each one actually fulfills a different need for us and has a different function in our lives.  One is a giant pool of resources that allows us to feel completely emersed in a homeschooling community that totally normalizes homeschooling for our children and exposes them to the diversity of the home educating world.  One is a structured weekly co-op that allows my children to internalize the idea that they can learn from anyone, not just Mommy and helps feed Athena’s need for a steady flow of new information.  One is a loose circle of friends who gather together when inspiration strikes and schedules allow that is basically for pure fun.  And one is the new force, a powerful reaction, in my life.  That is the one I want to talk a little about today.

I came to the idea of homeschooling very early in my motherhood journey.  Someone at a La Leche League meeting dropped Gatto and Holt in my lap when Athena was barely six months old.  Talk about a chemical reaction!  So I’ve spent easily the last five years of my life studying home education and educational philosophy, approaches, materials, and the list goes on and on.  This is often why people who “run into me” online think I’ve been doing this a whole lot longer than I have or that my children are older than they are.  It turns out that I was indeed guided to the right path, considering my children and their accelerated learning.  My half decade of study has led me to feel like I can keep up with the Traid of Chaos.  Otherwise, I think I would feel constantly and woefully behind all the time.  In my limited experience, most folks do not come to home education in a similar way.  Many do not start seriously considering it until school looms much closer on the horizon.  And yet others try institutional school first, only to pull their children out later when they are dissatisfied with the experience.  I am grateful that my children have not ever set foot in a formal classroom for many reasons I’ve probably already discussed elsewhere. 

During this school year, I’ve felt a ferociously strong call to mentorship.  It seemed odd to me at first, considering that I sometime don’t feel I’ve been at this long enough to mentor anyone.  But that call continued to build over the last several months and I was still meditating on how to answer it when, as is often the case, I was clearly pointed in the correct direction and spiritually kicked in the behind. 

In December, I was at a gathering of a lovely playgroup we belong to, filled with mindful mothers and truly delightful (most of the time) children when the conversation turned to homeschooling.  I heard many things I had heard before, but they somehow struck a different chord with me this time.  The idea of bringing the older kids in this playgroup together to explore different topics, the frustration that a spouse was not yet on board with homeschooling, the concern about facilitating a child’s math and science study, the bewilderment of where and how to start, the desire for a close knit community.  All these things and more were shared.  I came home and thought about it for all of a few hours before contacting the group and floating the idea of putting a spin-off homeschooling group together out of the playgroup.  The response was overwhelming and positive. 

We’ve taken our time getting started and I think that has worked out really well.  First, we met to brainstorm about what kind of group the families involved were looking for and what common vision was important to all of us.  This really helped us determine the direction to take the group in, as well as, what logistical ground rules to set and what basic foundational structure to build.  Next, we took some time to think on our own about what sorts of contributions we could each make to the group.  We gathered together and hashed out a preliminary plan of activities for the summer as our first stab at this.  Then we got down to business. 

I am proud to say that we have an amazing summer planned.  Thanks to the eighteen mothers of these great young kids, we are up and running.  Everyone found a way to contribute and actively participate in some form that fits in simultaneously with the group’s needs and with their familes’ needs.  It has been amazingly rewarding to facilitate this process.  Watching these (mostly) new homeschooling mothers take flight has been impressive.  They’ve put together something that many veteran homeschoolers couldn’t make happen and they should be very proud of themselves!  After our summer of toothbrush painting, award winning children’s literature, dancing with butterflies, getting lost in outer space, exploding angel food cake, going behind the scenes at one of the finest restaurants in town, and apples, apples and more apples, I am hoping this amazing group will continue to build itself into the autumn and faciliate many more crazy wonderful experiences for our children.

 So to my fellow happy mommas, thanks for such a wonderful spring and here’s to an utterly fantastic summer and beyond!    

…is just not a phrase you’ll ever hear coming out of my mouth.  Athena is one of those kiddos who does math better at night.  Who knows what the logical, scientific explanation is for this tendency, but she often gets the math bug after dinner and just does not want to walk away from it until she’s had her fill.  Tonight, I was finishing up some dishes and getting ready to herd them all towards bed when I see her setting up.  She had plopped down on the living room floor with her back against the couch and placed her pink and white lap desk across her short little outstretched legs.  I watched her select her Primary Math workbook out of a stack of materials she spread around her and gleefully get to work.  Patris Maximus came out of the office after checking a few baseball scores on the computer and asked me what happened to getting them headed to bed.  I pointed to Athena and told him he could go tell her she had to stop doing math and go to bed, but there was no way I was going to do that to her.  He laughed and went to offer the twins an encore of his stirring Click, Clack Moo read aloud performance without saying a word to Athena. 

 I utterly adore how learning has not been forced into a tiny box for our children.  They just assume and better still, expect that it can happen at any time, on any day of the week or any month of the year.  They even believe that it happens anywhere they just might happen to be at the moment the urge hits them to dive deeply into some facinating topic or project.  This is why we sometimes listen to Arabic language CDs in the car or bring a writing journal stuffed into our produce co-op pick up bags or do math way after sundown on a Saturday night.  This is not to say that these inclinations the Triad has aren’t sometimes challenging or even downright exhausting.  There are evenings when I really do want to tell all three of them That’s it!  I’m totally beat.  No more learning for you.  Please just go to sleep!  But then I watch Athena doing this crazy little ritual she does when working out math problems that involves kissing her own fingertips as she calculates and I just cannot bring myself to put her in a box.

(A small, but important post script…..  If you also use Primary Math in your house, be aware that the publisher just posted a notice on their own discussion forums that the Challenging Word Problems books will be out of print next year and no longer available.  Specifically, they estimate they may run out before the summer is through.  We think these are probably one of the two best parts of this math program, next to the Intensive Practice books. We have gone ahead and purchased all six levels through Rainbow Resource to ensure our kiddos can continue enjoying them for years to come.  I figure their resale value is about to skyrocket and will use them as masters for our three learners, then sell them when we’re done.)

Today, we’re focusing intently on the three Rs.  Reducing, reusing and recycling.  Athena has suddenly become a raving environmentalist, pointing out every scrap of litter, hollering about wanting the whole earth to be clean and chastizing complete strangers for not recycling or composting.  As a result of her sudden need to take an active part in saving the planet, I took home an empty bushel crate from our produce co-op and helped her start a tiny compost pile in the backyard.  Then at the zoo last weekend, she just could not wrap her head around the idea that the zoo serves food on compostable plates, yet has no compost bins to deposit them into when one is done eating.  It took a lengthy debate between Athena and Patris Maximus about the practicality of trying to bring home the pizza sauce and honey mustard coated plates for our new compost bin versus biting the bullet and dropping them in the zoo trash cans before we could move on to the actual animals.

Two days after the zoo plate incident, while wandering around one of those soul-sucking megastores I normally avoid like moping my kitchen floor and waiting for an oil change and a flat repair on our minivan, the Triad of Chaos spotted a Bill Nye Paper Recycling Factory science kit.  On sale.  For two dollars.  Marked down from twenty.  Now, no self-respecting homeschooler would pass up a deal or opportunity like that, so of course it came home with us. 

The entire Triad is now gathered around a large plastic bin this very moment as I type, gleefully ripping any and all scrap paper they can scrounge into teeny tiny pieces in the name of Mother Earth and the pursuit of science.  Later, we’ll soak the scraps and proceed with the paper recycling a la the illustrious Mr. Nye.  I figure this will be most, if not all, of our day today.  Athena already has plans for the finished products.  She wants to write letters to family and friends, possibly use some of it to work out math problems and at least put one sheet of it in her History notebook for safe keeping, since after all, the Ancient Chinese invented paper, don’t you know Mama.  Best $2 I’ve spent in a long time.     

In a previous post, as an aside, I happened to mention that Goodnight Moon freaks me out. I tried to explain this at a playgroup once to a group of friends and they all either stared at me like the raging blasphemer of children’s lit I guess my opinion made me or started trying in vain to expound on the numerous quaint charms of the book, all of which are pretty much lost on me.

Today, I am struggling to sift through the gazillion emails that have stacked up over the last few days while we’ve been out and about. In one of those emails was a link to a great blog, GottaBook by Gregory K, related to children’s literature that is doing this nifty (not-so) little thing for National Poetry Month by listed previously unpublished poems by the likes of Jon Scieszka, Jane Yolen, Jack Prelutsky and Nikki Giovanni at the rate of one a day. It’s fabulous. You should check it out. But while you’re there (or before you get to that section, because I’m going to make you go to a different part of the blog first with my linky to prove my point) be sure to check out Gregory K’s hillarious Oddaptations. Especially the very first one about Goodnight Moon…..

A recent comment on one listserv I subscribe to in response to an ongoing discussion about a variety of issues facing American public education that have been highlighted in the media in the last few weeks was that No amount of money can make up for bad educational philosophy.  That one remark has been knocking around in my head since I read it and the truth of it rings so true to me, the more I contemplate it.  Especially in light of the components of the latest stimulus package that are aimed at public education.  I find it facintating and encouraging that an in-depth conversation about the flaws of our public education system is taking place within a community of committed homeschoolers in the first place.  Oftentimes I think non-homeschoolers don’t realize that just because we homeschool, doesn’t mean I don’t care about the state of the American educational system.  In fact, many of us care very deeply.  We still have family and friends whose children are in the system and we wish the best possible experience for them.  Personally, I keep tabs regularly on what’s going on with public education at various levels.  I also read a great deal of material related to educational philosophy and methodology.  I find it helpful to me to mull these things over through the lense of homeschooling and my children’s particular needs, as well as considering how these issue affect our nation’s future.  And I’m hardly the only one.

The more I have pondered the idea of good vs. bad educational philosophy, the more I see this as the crux of the advantage home education has over institutional education.  Home educators get the luxury of a constantly evolving educational philosophy.  It does not take hoards of legislation and gads of meeting, working groups, lobbying efforts, committee discussions, etc., etc. for us to come upon new information and say- “Hey!  That makes a great deal of sense to me.  I’m going to try that with my kids and see what happens.”  As much as good quality, committed teachers may yearn to do the same with their classes and students, they have massively less freedom to do so.  In fact, trying something new might land them in a whole heap of trouble.  The root of this lies in the size of the system.  Public school systems are managing the progression of thousands of children.  Standardization is a method of survival for the institution itself.  Home educators are free from that for the most part, depending on the severity of state oversight. 

I try my best to maintain hope for positive change in the national institutional school system, primarily because I know that although the homeschooling population is growing more and more each year, the future of our world still lies in the hands of children mostly educated in institutional schools.  But more and more, I feel that reform of the current system is not possible and we are actually headed in the complete opposite direction on the whole.  Just enter “No Child Left Behind” in the search box at Amazon.com and you’ll quickly see what I mean.  As much as I would like to believe it could happen, I don’t see us even beginning to approach the tipping point yet that would give wide enough grassroots support to throwing out the current system completely and truly re-forming public education from scratch.  That idea is still considered extreme and that’s putting it mildly.  Of course, it also begs the question if we were to chuck the current system, who would re-form a new one and what would keep them from making the same mistakes all over again?  So what’s a nation to do?  I honestly have no idea, although I will continue to ponder it.  The best I can come up with for the moment is what I can do for my children; exercise my right to school choice and continue to home educate them and myself in the hopes of preparing us all to make the future at least a tad bit brighter in our tiny corner of the big wide world. 

Artemis and Apollo (both 2.5yo) have recently begun requesting activities of their own during any period of time that Athena and I are doing any sort of focused work these days.  So I’ve had this in the back of my mind for a few weeks.  The other night I was dinking around on the computer, reading listserv email and googling random stuff, when I read something that directed me back to the Moving Beyond the Page website.  In general, I’m not terribly excited about their materials.  It seems like an awful lot of worksheets to me which I find ironic since I can’t sense much “moving beyond” those worksheet pages from the content on their website for early elementary children.  But when I clicked on their preschool page, its content did catch my eye.  They recommend using a program that I realized I already had stuffed in a box somewhere called Peak With Books.  I remember trying this book out with Athena and it not holding her interest.  I can’t recall exactly why now and I will admit it could have been my presentation and not the material itself.  I read through the suggestions at Moving Beyond the Page and got motivated to go hunt up the wayward book.  In due time, I managed to relocate it and began flipping through it with an eye to what Apollo and Artemis might enjoy out of it.  My kids love books.  I mean, they carry them around all day.  They often set a book next to themselves on the floor as they play with a different toy.  When I change their bed sheets, I often find books stuffed inside pillow cases, between matresses and walls and underneath blankets.  They play, eat and sleep with books.  Literally.  So I figured that a collection of children’s literature activities entitled Peak With Books might actually interest them a great deal. 

 Last week, I tried out our first week long literature study with the entire Triad of Chaos.  All in all, it was a rip-roaring success.  I even gained a new appreciation for my least favorite classic children’s book, Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon.  (I know, I know.  How could anyone not love that book, right?  But it bothers me to no end that a bunny has two pet kittens and mittens with thumb spaces and keeps his personal grooming articles next to old food.  Okay, end of rant, back to the real story here and my apologies to Ms. Brown for my obviously deep-seated issues.)  Whatever Athena found lacking in the material the first go-around didn’t stop her from being just as enthusiastically engaged as her younger siblings.  I had a captive audience all week.  We memorized moon related poetry, sang bedtime themed songs, wrote and illustrated a family good night book, created green room pictures of rhyming words and even did a little star-gazing.  

This week we had just as engaging a time with Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings.  We wrote thank you cards to Michael, sang some new duck songs, created pictures of ideal duck habitats and learned about how Mr. McCloskey learned to draw mallards so accurately.  We have had so much fun that I am really looking forward to giving a mouse a cookie next week and seeing what happens. That is, if I can convince Apollo to let the ducklings out of his pillow case.