A Year in the Life

Incredibly, I am thirty-eight years old today. Part of me cannot even hear the number without cringing ("ewww, that's so old"!), but another, fortunately bigger part of me wouldn't trade this age for any other. My outlook, my perspective, my lifestyle feels just about perfect right now. And, as my Dad says: getting old sure beats the alternative!

Probably the main reason I'm so contented is homeschooling; because we do this, our kids are happy, healthy, and thriving - and I get to watch their growth and development happen.

Also, homeschooling led me to blogging (isn't that funny? I would never have had time to blog with two kids in school, I'd be too busy being the Enforcer :-), and blogging has been SUCH a great outlet and place of connection.

For my birthday, I decided to post some pictures from the last year. It's been such a good one, there's lots worth remembering!

From The Stone Age Techie

The curve of Owen's cheek - that is why I love this picture. That and his determination to feed the birds at his Grandma's Colorado home!

From Oregon for blog

Luke, the proud Oregon fisherman.

From Oregon for blog

My husband's whole family, on that same visit to Oregon.

From Summer 2008

One of Luke's first jumps off the side of the pool - doesn't this picture just say "ahhhhh"?

From Fall Blog

My favorite stuffed animal from childhood is now Owen's.

From The Stone Age Techie

I took this picture on a field trip last May, and it represents Spring in a way that not much else does.

Thanks for sharing in my birthday! Here's hoping the coming year will be a good one - for all of us, and for you, too.

Why Do You Homeschool?

About a year ago, I started wondering why other people homeschool. We began because the academic pressure at Luke's primary school made him sick - but I thought it unlikely that everyone, or even most homeschoolers, had the same awful impetus that we did.

In the non-homeschooling world, the conventional wisdom is that people teach their children at home because A) they belong to a freaky religious sect, or B) because they desire total isolation from their fellow humans. Certainly around where we live, homeschoolers are seen as radically separate from their communities. In that world, before we made the switch to homeschooling, it was hard to imagine that the conventional wisdom could be wrong.

Once we started, and I learned how truly awesome homeschooling is, and how very un-radical homeschoolers are, I began to wonder: where are all these weird, unsocialized people I'd heard so much about? The homeschooling families we meet seemed so well-adjusted, involved in their communities, and generally very together that it's hard to imagine their children having the same kinds of problems Luke did when we started. With this in mind, I wondered, what made them decide to homeschool?

To find out, I conducted a survey of homeschoolers in our local email newsgroup, asking why parents removed their children from public schools to homeschool and how they feel their children fare now, socially and academically. I found out that Luke's experience was far more common than the conventional wisdom holds: all 24 parents who answered my survey, from dozens of school districts in 3 states, withdrew their kids from public schools because of problems with academics, such as the curriculum or teaching methods. Their children were bored to tears - either that or driven to aggressiveness, impassivity, or illness by school teaching methods, rules, and regulations. Many were also labeled, punished, and/or bullied, as often as not by the adults in schools to help develop a 'thick skin.'

A few parents cited religion, a few cited social/peer issues, but all placed blame squarely at the foot of the institution itself, both for what was being taught and how it was being taught.

And now, a year has gone by and I'm wondering, not just about the northeast, but about why we homeschool nationwide.

So, I have a question for you: why do you homeschool? Whether you have always homeschooled, or pulled your kids out of school to start, I'd love your input. The survey itself is seven questions long and I am happy to get responses of any length, from the brief answer to pages about each question. My plan is to spend several months getting as many families, from as many states as possible, to respond. Then I will review the responses and write a paper about the results.

To take the survey, please email me at whywehs@yahoo.com; you will remain anonymous, in case you worry about that kind of thing, and your responses are very valuable, whether you have one child or a dozen, whether some are in school, or some were in school, or none have ever been in school... you get the idea.

I hope you respond to my survey. I believe that schooled children will benefit from our stories, because we homeschoolers show every day that education must be shaped to fit the child, and not the other way around. If we can be open about why and how we educate our children, then we give hope and strength to non-homeschooling families everywhere. We are saying, loud and clear, that there's more to life than school, and many ways to become educated.

Thanks!

P.S. - If you have a blog or website, and would like to link to my "Why Do You Homeschool" button, just copy the text in this box below and paste it into your website. Thanks soooo much to Jena at Yarns of the Heart for teaching me about buttons, and for making the box o' text itself... they don't call me the Stone Age Techie for nothing, and I would not have even known where to start without her!

<a href="http://stoneagetechie.blogspot.com/2009/04/why-do-you-homeschool.html" target="blank"><img width="200" alt="Survey at StoneAgeTechie.blogspot.com" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfeO0NMSn-QoSSW_YN5AiciS2c0ZzvfmZNuAV_dvJS85-FW6Ru-yUh0tDVnfDNMVRObUhhm5dMx2rJFch2cf1q2JPIWpOQzo1u5qpcZrnchVgowORaciSs7cr_QeEyVs5s15s-pXry2fY/s240/study+button+v+5.jpg" height="148"/></a>

Saint-Emilion 1976

When Ben and I were first married - no. I must go back further.

The weekend Ben and I met, when I was twenty-five and as-yet-unbetrothed, a huge concern of my eldest relatives, I completely pissed off my Mom and extended family by opting to go to a friend's weekend-long graduation party instead of my Grandpa's 80th birthday celebration taking place in Montreal, Canada, a very long way off from where the friend's party was held.

Now if I hadn't gone to the party - Ben's best friend from life was the graduate in question - than I would not have met him. I would not have felt the earth move when we shook hands, or called my Mom after the weekend ended to say "I just met the man I'm gonna marry; how was your weekend?"

Fortunately, we held our wedding two years later to the day, and so we got to celebrate my Grandpa's 82nd birthday with all of my family together.

Then, as newlyweds, we drove up to Montreal, along with my brother Rob and his new wife, Suzanne, to visit our grandparents. It was a fun trip at the time, and now looking back more than twelve years later, it is even sweeter because it turned out to be our last visit with my grandparents that was not tainted by illness or loss. Also the visit was before babies, so we were still footloose and fancy free.

I don't know if you have a special relationship with any of your extended family, but I have special relationships with nearly all my Mom's family - and my Grandpa was the special-est of all. Going to visit with him and my Grandma, taking time out of our busy twenty-something lives, was a real treat, not the chore that you might imagine; the number of years between our ages meant only that my grandparents had lots more good stories to share than we young people did, and more gardening and cooking experience that we could learn from as well.

When we awoke on the Saturday morning of our visit, Grandpa was mortified to tell us that during the night, something had gone wrong with the pipes, and a plumber was on his way over to fix it. My grandparents were so upset, their weekend with the grandchildren interrupted by bad plumbing!

To get to the pipes, many closets were emptied; clothing and canned goods that had gone years without seeing the light of day were pulled out and dusted off. And that's when we found out that the pipe problem had a silver lining: a bottle of red wine from 1976. An absolutely superb bottle of red wine, as it turned out, from the year that I was five and my brother was three.

We said, "Wow - you guys should save this for a special occasion!" My grandparents smiled, wondering, what could be more special than this? So we shared the wine that night along with my Grandma's fantastic spaghetti and meatballs.

In the intervening decade-plus, both grandparents grew ill, and passed away, and we have had our children and watched them grow; in truth, the boys remind me very much of my Grandpa. Ben and I, and Rob and Suzanne, reminisce about them often, occasionally remembering sharing that great bottle of wine - still, I had almost forgotten about it when we helped Rob and Sue move into their new house last weekend, and found the empty bottle sitting on top of their dining room table.

From Spring 09

I asked, "is this the bottle?" My brother answered enthusiastically that yes, in fact, it was - and suddenly I was sitting at my grandparents' dining table, newly married, the taste of the wine and good food in my mouth, the feeling of being together with our grandparents fresh in my mind. I am so glad that my brother kept that bottle; it brought back not just the good memory of that weekend but also a tangible feeling of joy, that I have had such people in my life, and that they live on in successive generations.

If this is a holiday weekend for you, then I hope you celebrate it with those that you love... and if it isn't a holiday weekend for you, well then I still hope you celebrate it with those you love.

Another Subject Better Played Than Taught

We are unschoolers, or as Jena says, interest-led learners. This means that our kids learn about what they want to know, and they learn with all of their senses and through lots and lots of play.

Luke bounces back and forth among a few favorite subjects, right now primarily dinosaurs and dragons. He reads almost unceasingly, non-fiction for the dinos, and stories (such as Eragon or Dragon Slayer's Academy books) for the dragons, and he visits web sites to play dinosaur trivia games, watch Walking With Dinosaurs, and find out where dragon sightings have happened all over the globe. He sketches elaborate dragons while out in the woods, 'playing' at observing dragon behavior behind our house, and even uses his math skills to figure out how many weeks he'll need to save up for new favorite books about dragons and dinosaurs.

My point is, all the work that 8 year-olds need to do - reading, writing, thinking, mathematics - happens naturally in their play. And from everything I've read about interest-led learning, this continues as kids get older; the play may change a bit, becoming more abstract and about more sophisticated topics, but it's still play at heart. After all, if you really love your job, is it work or play?

Today, I read this article from yesterday's Boston Sunday Globe, about 'teaching' emotional intelligence. A growing number of educators and psychologists, worried that schoolchildren lack this type of intelligence, are calling for schools to adopt a curriculum that will overtly teach it, as the article's author writes, "just like trigonometry or French grammar."

Well, I just spluttered. And then ranted, when I read about the types of lessons planned: identifying different emotions on the faces of children in pictures, for example. Why, I wondered, don't they let the kids play a little more? Then the kids would see 'expressions' on the faces of their friends, and perhaps figure out ways to resolve conflicts - a stated goal of emotional intelligence proponents - based on their interactions during play, too.

Luke got involved in the discussion over breakfast this morning. I expressed my disdain for the idea that emotional intelligence should be taught this way - how do you grade somebody's knowledge of emotional intelligence? what would this standardized test look like? why, why do educators so like to break everything into little lessons, why do they think that's the best way to learn everything (or, for that matter, anything?) Would they use the Saturday Night Live skit about the sarcastic clapping family to teach sarcasm?...

While I ranted away, Luke wondered, why was I smiling? That question stopped me cold. I answered that it was because I was angry about the absurdity of this idea, and that combined with my anger was a feeling of (I don't know if this is a word even, but it made sense at the time) bemusedness.

I told him that my smile was a cynical one, too, because the idea of teaching all children emotional intelligence through a curriculum instead of firsthand, through interactions with others in which emotion is bound to play a part, is one that could only have been invented here - in the country that doesn't believe in down-time or recess for schoolchildren.

I thought it was so interesting that during our talk about emotional intelligence Luke wondered why the expression on my face didn't match the tone of voice coming from my mouth. And because he is attuned to emotions and a verbal kid, he's capable of forming this question and then understanding the answer. (Yes, he'd get an 'A' in Emotional Intelligence :-)

Luke's questioning, and then understanding, represented a teachable moment which any canned curriculum about emotional intelligence is bound to miss. They'll be too busy grading the children on how well they remembered the sequence of facial expressions to address questions that stray from the curriculum.

And that's a shame, because children really do need to hone their emotional intelligence; they need to cajole, question, tease, debate, laugh, and sometimes even fight.

In short, they need to play.

Media

For the first time in a long time, family-type, 'offline' stuff has gotten in the way of blogging - which stinks, because there has been so much to blog about!

For today, then, I'm going to send you around to some of the super news-worthy links I've seen but have been unable to address that I found out in the blogosphere. And I'm afraid that these next several days look to be at least as real-world busy as the last, giving me lots of time to wish I could get on the computer and rant, but precious little time to actually do so. Ebb and flow, ebb and flow...

First, by way of Alicia at Magic and Mayhem comes this great list of April Fool's jokes. April Fool's day has always been a favorite of mine, and reading about so many hoaxes cracked me up yesterday.

From The Expanding Life comes this article in Parade magazine, about a multi-age model being adopted in a school in Colorado and how much everyone loves it. Of course, we homeschoolers know about the wonders of multi-age education, for so many reasons - I'm hopeful that schools will catch on and be that much less damaging for the children in them. Hopeful... but not exactly optimistic, I guess, because in my more cynical moments I think that schools will probably find a way to mess this up, too. (Gosh, did I just say that? Out loud? How terribly brash...)

This next one should really be the focus of one whole post: Lenore Skenazy over at Free-Range Kids wrote recently about a school in Milford, Connecticut that has banned physical contact of any kind - hugging, patting on the back, slapping five - because somebody got kicked in the groin and sent to the hospital as a result. As Lenore points out, why not just ban kicks to the groin? Why go so far as to outlaw the pinky-shake? I mean, come on, people!

And finally, and for no other reason than because this cartoon made me laugh the hardest this morning:

March Inspiration

These past few weeks, I have been a little shorter with the kids than usual, and find that I need a bit more down-time than normal, too.

Ben helps when he can, and there is always that almighty baby-sitter, screen time; in fact, as the boys get older, this is more often educational rather than true couch-potato vegging.

Even with Mommy-time and TV, though, this in-between season of too cold for fleeces, too warm for winter coats (resulting in excessive whining and less time outside)can be wearing. So, I decided to post some inspiration this week!

In no particular order, here are some quotes, websites, and silliness I've been trying to keep in mind while fighting the early-spring doldrums:

"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Albert Einstein. What cracks me up about this quote is where I read it - in Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of the Purple Potty People! Author Dav Pilkey is someone that I suspect would have made a great homeschooler, judging from the way he skewers the educational system in these awesome, funny books.

"Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire" - W.B. Yeats. When Luke is happily reading Calvin and Hobbes, or whistling a little tune over and over again, when he is just in 'idle' mode or wants to horse around with Owen rather than do anything (that I think of as) productive, I try to remember this one. Because those non-productive times are offset by lots of very creative, productive hours, and it's important to remember that there is an ebb and flow to interest-led learning; he goes by his own schedule. Sometime soon, I'm sure he will have more creative drive and interest, and then we'll be off on the next wild ride - the one after dragons, which was the one after Star Wars, which was the one after Pokemon...

Home Education Magazine; I've enjoyed the free online version for a year or so, and then I was lucky enough to receive a gift subscription this past Christmas. It's a great magazine, lots of interesting, timely things to do with the kids and also content intended to make us adults think about why and/or how we homeschool.

Barbara Kingsolver's great book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and the book's website both get me happily thinking about the coming growing season. They are informative and a cure for cabin fever.

Because you just can't see them too many times, here are OK-Go on treadmills:

And finally, The Twiddlebugs:

Dragons

Luke is obsessed. He's passionately reading any book he can get his hands on right now about dragons.

In addition to Dragonology and How to Raise and Keep a Dragon, Luke read Christopher Paolini's Eragon, the fantasy tale of the boy Eragon and his dragon, Saphira, over the course of five days last week. Five days! He is eight years old. This is a 700+ page book. I am in awe, not so much because of the speed with which he reads, but more because Luke's comprehension is astounding. Eight years old!

The book that captivates him most right now - until he dives into the Eragon sequel, Eldest, is The Dragonology Handbook: A Practical Course in Dragons. The book is set up as a course, with homework assignments and lessons, and I think that is part of Luke's fascination: it's like he has a private tutor about his current favorite subject!

Luke has taken to sketching dragons, and after some serious begging we now allow him to go out in the woods behind our house - alone! we are truly raising a Free-Range kid - and search for dragons to observe and draw. In case you missed that, let me just reiterate the point - Luke. In the woods. Drawing!

Each time he heads off into the woods, my heart is in my throat; when he returns, flushed with fresh air and the excitement of dragon-seeking, I realize that letting him go is the right thing to do.

Capitol I

Here is a little song that has been making our spring cleaning kinda fun:

If you're pushing forty, like me, you may remember that song from the Sesame Street of your youth. I loved it then, and as it turns out, I still do.

I don't know how they did it, but Luke and Owen have learned all the words to both Capitol I and the bonus Lowercase N track, after listening for about 3 minutes to each. So, we now have rousing choruses of these songs as we clean windows, sort laundry, dust and sweep.

It's nice - makes the cleaning feel like it's done faster, too!

My New Favorite Book

I have been a fan of Lenore Skenazy's writing for a long time, since reading her columns in one of our favorite monthly papers, The Funny Times (please keep in mind, if you follow that link, that those who know me best often refer to me as a "bleeding-heart liberal"... this paper leans, perhaps more than slightly, to the left - and, it's really, really funny).

Last summer, I read that Lenore had started a blog, Free-Range Kids, after she became known as "America's Worst Mom" for allowing her 9 year-old to ride the subway on his own. I enthusiastically checked it out and ended up placing Free-Range Kids into my Blogroll (over there, to the right). I love it because it's the antithesis to helicopter parenting; every new post helps me to remember that, while we live in an era of heightened media coverage, we do not necessarily live in an era of heightened crime, child abduction, or Death By Raw Cookie Dough.

Lenore now has a book, Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts With Worry, coming out next month, and I cannot wait! She's turned the title "America's Worst Mom" around on itself, proudly using it as a rallying cry for those who dare to disagree with parenting experts about how young is too young to ride a bike to a friend's house alone, or use the stove, or... (place your worst fear for your children here). I must say that, as a homeschooling mom with some experience disagreeing with parenting experts on what's right for my children, I am enjoying the free-range/helicopter debate very much!

Anyway, the introduction to the book has now been placed online, and you can read it here. I hope you enjoy it, and I'd love to hear your thoughts about free-range kids; if yours are still young, do you hover more than you'd like to? If they are older, how did you handle their need for independence combined with your need to assure their safety?

I'm still working on the right combination - mostly, I try to stop and think before immediately saying "no." I also try to include the boys in decisions about their independence/my need for their safety, and I'm learning that making mistakes can be good for them. Not set-the-house-on-fire, lose-an-arm kind of mistakes, but still... as the saying goes, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. Thanks to Lenore Skenazy, my 8 year-old makes a great omelet!

Maple Sugaring

I guess we have field trips on the brain, and a good thing, too - recently, we got to go maple sugaring!

One great thing about living in the northeast are the maple trees, and the lovely, delicious syrup they produce after many, many hours of boiling down the sap, which is 97% water when collected from the trees. Come with us as we learn all about maple syrup!

From winter 08 09

From winter 08 09

The key to maple syrup is, not surprisingly, a maple tree. What did surprise us was learning that any maple tree will do, contrary to the conventional wisdom that only sugar maples produce sugary sap (other maples have less sugar in their sap, but not by much). And, the tree has to be at least 10 inches in diameter, making it about 40 years old. Clearly, maple farmers aren't in it for their own generation!

In these next pics, the kids are first drilling into the tree, and then gently hammering the tap into place. Even before the tap went in, sap started coming out!

From winter 08 09

From winter 08 09

From winter 08 09

From winter 08 09

Now, here we all are, listening intently to the lovely 'plink, plink, plink' sound that the sap makes as it hits the bottom of the bucket. Our ranger, a maple sugarer himself, gave us these few moments of just listening because it's his favorite part of the whole sugaring process... I think it's my favorite, too.

From winter 08 09

Then, we checked the buckets put up yesterday to see how much sap they've collected - quite a lot, as it turned out, enough to share among all the kids' buckets, which they then carried off to the area where the sap gets boiled down into syrup.

From winter 08 09

Nowadays, this is done in a huge, outdoor, wood-fired boiler:

From winter 08 09

Watching this brought back memories for me of living in a great old farmhouse as a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Happily, when it was time to find housing I lucked out and got into this awesome house, shared by myself and 4 housemates. One of them, Tom, tapped the maple trees in our yard, and then boiled the sap down on the woodstove in the kitchen, turning a huge pot of sap into a pint or two of syrup each spring. Maple sugaring always reminds me of those years, for which I am so thankful - I loved my time out there!

Maple sugaring was honed into a fine art by the Native Americans, long before Europeans came on the scene. They tapped the trees like this:

From winter 08 09

And then boiled the sap into syrup using hot rocks:

From winter 08 09

That smoke smelled so good, Luke and Owen had the kids all chanting, "I love rabbits," a takeoff of our family's habit of saying "I hate rabbits" to make campfire smoke move away from us (don't know where it came from, does anyone else do this?)

Before we went out into the woods, we watched a movie about maple sugaring in Massachusetts, and it was such a treat because it featured kids, out sugaring alongside their parents, and talking about this tradition that had often been in their families for generations.

One dad spoke of his desire that his children have a 'sense of place,' and how maple sugaring accomplishes this. While out sugaring, in the beautiful, quiet woods, I think I understood what he meant - and now we are looking for maple trees to tap for syrup, too!

On the Virtual Field Trip

Finally, the big day arrives!

Good morning, and welcome to the Virtual Field Trip! Please make sure that you are sitting comfortably:

From winter 08 09

Also, have your passport ready for better service.

From winter 08 09

Previously, the bus was driven by expert driver Owen:

From winter 08 09

...but today he has graciously ceded this post to two very competent professionals, Dog and Panda.

From winter 08 09

Now, sit back, grab some cushions, blankets and a snack, and let's hit the road!

From winter 08 09

What a wonderful, wonderful trip! From the moment we heard the Magic School Bus theme song, we were hooked - and then, when Luke found out about the passport links he was jumping for joy. Anything 'official' like that really brings him in, and as Luke is a duel citizen of Canada and the US, he had a choice of official passports, so he was just over the moon.

Owen, still only 4 and not really inclined to sit in any one place for too long, enjoyed the whole passport-creation event, and some of the postings, but Luke and I sat, captivated, in the bus for more than an hour, and still only got into Utah - giving us the rest of the posts to visit later this week!

Some of Luke's favorites were Goblin Valley, the Pirate Adventure, and the Lincoln Log Cabin, especially for the 'build-a-log-cabin' game. I enjoyed the Lincoln Log Cabin too, and also Mt. Vernon in Virginia, and so many other places...

Best of all, now that the kiddos are asleep I can go back in and check out the whole trip again!

Jena, thank you so much for this. It is a true gift, from a talented blogger.

Unintended Consequences of a Poorly Written Law

We interrupt this idyllic, springlike weekend to call attention to a hypothetical issue that has turned into a very real, BIG problem.

You may remember, back in January, when I posted about a news item that had me - along with a large number of others - worried (read my posts here and here). It was the lead-ban law, passed last August, and the concern was that thrift and Goodwill stores, flea-marketers and anybody holding a yard sale would be subject to punishment if they sold anything intended for children under 13 that was later found to contain lead. Since no one in their right mind would test every incoming item for lead content, we worried, the law would mean a nation of very full landfills - and a lot of empty thrift and Goodwill stores, flea markets, and yard sales.

So, we fast-forward to yesterday. I had almost totally forgotten that this law was an issue, since the original date listed, sometime in mid-February, for trouble to begin had come and gone; I nearly fell over when I walked into our favorite local thrift shop and found that all the toys, baby things, and nearly all the kids' clothing was GONE.

They had to throw it all away - completely filling their Dumpster, so the lady in charge told me - by February 26 or else risk being put out of business in case they sold a product that was later found to contain lead.

I was speechless and utterly heart-sick. All the way home, I kept thinking of clothing and toys that we had purchased from the shop that is now contraband; any clothing with snaps, zippers, fasteners of any kind, and so many toys that I couldn't possibly remember them all. By the time we got home, I had gotten over 'shocked' and moved on to 'outraged.'

Here is what the boys and I did about it:

From winter 08 09

We piled every toy we own, and every piece of clean clothing that is now against the law to sell (but okay to own, I guess) into a stack so big, we could hardly walk into the living room. Here's the whole thing from another angle:

From winter 08 09

As Ben pointed out while looking at this pile, which took us nearly an hour to put together, "this is just one moment in time," meaning that this is where the kids are right now, our assemblage will change as they grow out of these and need stuff for bigger kids.

I'm angry about this on so many levels: first, none of the items in that pile can be resold. When I picture us throwing all these perfectly good toys and clothes away, actual bile comes up into my throat. Because of the law, that is what will happen to all this stuff; if we get into trouble for selling it and cannot donate it, what the hell else are we supposed to do with it?

Secondly, there are people who need these things! Especially the clothes, but I think you can argue that kids need fun, interesting, and durable toys, too, at least a few. And, has anyone considered the frostbite risk if the truly poor cannot purchase used winter jackets for their children because of the supposed lead risk?

Third is the natural resources used up when everyone buys everything new. I'm still speechless about this one, so I will refer you to Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff.

Fourth, why age thirteen? Kids stop putting things in their mouths around 3 or 4, so what is up with this?!?

Last but not least - until I think of more reasons which I can discuss without spluttering - is how Kafka-esque this law feels! Like everyone, I worry about the risk of lead in products intended for children. I don't want anyone to end up with lead poisoning, but I am shocked at the approach taken by Congress to prevent this possibility. Everyone is punished under this law, most especially the people who depend on second-hand goods to clothe their children and give them joy.

During our last visit to the thrift shop before the poorly written law took effect, Owen stood looking at our toy haul as it sat on the counter while we added up what it would cost. He said of the 50-cent Bob the Builder interactive workbench and one or two other cute little 25-cent toys: "Mom, I feel so rich!"

Thanks to this crappy piece of legislation, he may never say that again.

Big Yellow Bus

This is a very exciting week for us here at the Stone Age Techie: we're getting ready for a field trip!

It's a virtual field trip, and if you look up in the top right-hand corner of my blog, you will see how you can go, too.

Totally awesome interest-led homeschooling mom Jena at Yarns of the Heart came up with this superb idea, in which we send along posts of our favorite (not necessarily recent) field trips to her by tomorrow - March 6th - and then on the following Monday, the 9th, we depart through her blog to points exciting and unknown.

Because Owen has never been on a 'real' school bus, and most likely never will, he is very much jonesin' for this experience. So, in honor of the Virtual Field Trip, we're constructing a school bus!

From winter 08 09

From winter 08 09

From winter 08 09

From winter 08 09

On Monday, the three of us will sit in the bus and with the power of modern technology (our laptop), we'll visit all the great places that our fellow homeschoolers have been via Yarns of the Heart. If you have been somewhere interesting, and blogged about it, please share by sending the link along to Jena.

We can't wait to check out the virtual field trip!

Why We Homeschool

Last spring, I surveyed parents in my area who had removed their kids from public school in order to homeschool them. And, even though I took Luke out because the academic pressure in the early grades made him sick, I still felt in my heart of hearts that he was unique in this respect, and that most other families homeschool for religious or family values reasons. These reasons are perfectly valid, but as it turns out, not the main reasons given by the parents who responded to my survey.

Anybody have a guess as to what the #1 reason, cited by every single parent, might be?

Yep: academics.

A few parents cited academics and religion, a few cited academics and social issues - but they all expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the curriculum and teaching methods their children received in the local public schools. They ran the gamut from gifted children who spent the bulk of their school days giving quizzes and correcting their peers' papers - I'm sure you can imagine how popular those lucky children were - to very bored, smart kids who became behavior issues in class, and on to children with special needs whose education plans were not honored and who were harmed emotionally because they were part of the 'dumb' class, and who didn't learn anything to boot.

With all this in mind, I'm excited to share an article of mine, published this month in both the online and print versions of Parents and Kids. You can find it here.

Update, 4/12/09: Unfortunately, Parents and Kids has no archive, so my article is not currently on the web. If you are interested in reading it, please email me at whywehs@yahoo.com and I will send you a copy.

In it, I tell our story about why we homeschool, discuss last spring's survey, and answer commonly asked questions that we homeschoolers get. If you enjoy it, I hope you'll pass it on; the more dissatisfied parents learn that homeschooling is a great alternative, the more kids can get out of school and start learning.

Practical Knowledge

Even though Luke is so healthy, vibrant, and knowledgeable about almost any subject you'd care to mention, I still worry about the traditional sorts of things that he doesn't know yet. Math facts, long division, the diagram of a sentence; these are subjects Luke does not know much about because they don't particularly interest him.

While I do worry, I have confidence in Luke. It springs from the knowledge that, should he suddenly become interested, he will learn those subjects faster than you can say 'standardized test.'

At the Life Without School blog over the weekend, I read a great post about what kids should know, when. Laureen, the author, wonders where practical knowledge fits into a child's education. For her family, living on a seafaring Catamaran, 'practical knowledge' takes on a different meaning than for us landlubbers. Still, Laureen's point is made every day, right here in our home.

Each time Luke cooks himself an egg, asks a question and then says 'hey, I know where I can find this out!', begs to get on the library website to search for books on his favorite subjects, makes connections between seemingly unrelated subjects, says 'I don't get why this is funny' when reading the comics and then really listens while I explain it to him - he learns so much about metaphors, sarcasm, facetiousness, mottos, and other conventions of English as well as our culture, just from the comics! - each time he pokes his head up from the blankets in the morning, he learns infinitely practical stuff.

It doesn't stop at practical, though. Luke is capable of seriously high-level critical thinking, and participates actively in family discussions about any topic from chicken-keeping to the American Revolution. He may not remember each and every fact he's ever learned - although, he does a better job with this than his mother, for sure - but I think he is expert at a more important skill: how to research, really learn , about a subject.

And, I ask you, what is more practical than that?

From The Stone Age Techie

The Long View

For unschoolers, or interest-led learners, like us, planning for college takes an unusual path. Our oldest is still only 8, but each time somebody tries to frighten me with that zinger, "What are you going to do about college?", I get a little pang of fear in my stomach.

Evidently I'm not the only one worrying. To address the fears of unschoolers everywhere, my blogging friend Jena recently posted about how her interest-led, homeschooling son got into the University of Chicago on a full scholarship. The post, which includes the transcript sheets that she developed along with several helpful links, can be found right here.

If you shake in your boots each time somebody asks about college for your little dears, you should check out Jena's post. In this, as everything else interest-led, she is right on the money.

How to Teach Thoreau to Little Guys

From winter 08 09

We needed an outside-type field trip, so today we went to Walden Pond, ostensibly for a walk, but really to check out the tiny house where Henry David Thoreau lived and wrote, by himself, for two years between 1845 and 1847.

I wanted to give Luke and Owen a sense of Thoreau, even though I knew it would be hard to explain to them what he wrote about and why. How do you translate across time and a serious difference in language to help young children understand the motives of people who lived so long ago?

I started talking in the car on the way there, about imagining no cars, no airplanes overhead, just the sound of the wind in the trees... I told them we were going to see the place where 'Thoreau lived, all by himself, so that he could see if he could do it.'

Luke piped up with 'oh - like Johnny Appleseed!'

'Kind of the opposite of Johnny Appleseed,' I replied, 'because Thoreau wanted to see if he could go to the woods and pretty much avoid people, do most everything on his own, and write about his experience whereas Johnny Appleseed wanted to bring apple trees to as many people as he could. One wanted alone time, the other wanted to be with people.'

Both boys thought about that for a while, and then Luke said, 'hey, maybe we'll find his little shack while we're walking!'

I thought, 'small steps, Karen, small steps!'

Today, a pretty windy, chilly day for walking, both kids enjoyed themselves. The first thing we did was check out Thoreau's house, rebuilt closer to the road than the house site. Luke was so excited to find the 'shack' and truly captivated when he heard that Thoreau built two trapdoors into the floor. I swear, he went to bed tonight puzzling out why anyone would build trapdoors into their floor - if you know the answer, send it along our way, please! - and so we set off into the woods to find the house site.

We walked along the water of Walden Pond, and every couple hundred yards we came upon a stone staircase leading right into the frozen water. The boys were fascinated, and kept wondering aloud why Thoreau built these; they finally concluded that he really liked to swim, so he needed these stone staircases to get to the water.

We ate lunch at the house site, largely because the wind wasn't quite as howly there as near the water.

From winter 08 09

Thoreau had a lovely view from his front door:

From winter 08 09

I cannot be sure if 8 and 4 year-old boys truly appreciate living as Thoreau did at Walden Pond. They may not have a clear understanding of who Thoreau was, or why he went to the woods, but their interest has been piqued.

I will say this - going there on a windy, overcast day in February brings the true experience a lot closer than visiting in summer, with the rest of the tourist world.

Plus, we got a nice walk out of it; driving there, Ben and I listened to a talk-radio show about television, and were shocked to discover that the average American watches more than five hours of tube a day! As we listened, with one kid reading in the back and the other one looking out the window at the scenery going by, I felt thankful that tv plays such a small part in our lives.

I would much rather be out enjoying the natural world than in front of the tube, and today my family seemed to feel that way, too.

Winter Must-Reads

Lately, we've had lots of time to read because winter has lost, shall we say, a touch of its thrill. Of course, we do enjoy our outside time around here, but now in these waning days of February, with the snowpants mostly covered in mud (but unable to be abandoned on account of the remaining snow), we spend less time out, and more time in, 'recovering' in front of the fire with good books, hot cocoa and popcorn.

Kids' favorites include a variety of chapter books, especially Jack and Annie in The Magic Tree House series, Wishbone the Dog in an adventure about Beowulf, and The Artemis Fowl series, adventurous and funny books about an Irish boy and his obsession with faeries.

Luke and Owen devour graphic novels by the bagful since our library gave this genre its own shelf a few months ago; graphic versions of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Shrek, the Incredibles, and the Star Wars Clone Wars series top their lists right now.

When they want more than a book, but not quite a full-blown unit study, we pull out the Lithgow Paloozas Boredom Blasters, kits with great ideas that children ages 5(-ish) and up can do mostly themselves, and that younger kids enjoy at their own level, too. I first blogged about the Boredom Blasters back last February, when we visited my folks in the Rocky Mountains, and they continue to thrill us all now. Thank you, John Lithgow!

I'm learning about randomness and probability in a great, readable book by Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard's Walk. I say readable because, while I'm not a big math person and therefore not a likely candidate to comprehend probability-speak, Mlodinow makes the concepts of probability understandable and - more importantly, I think - pertinent to my life. I have laughed out loud while reading this book, reason enough to endorse it, but I learn as well while I read.

The books that have obsessed me most this winter, though, at least until I finished the fourth in the series and must now wait until the author publishes the next, are those in the 'Percy Jackson and the Olympians' series; the first is called The Lightning Thief. These books, about modern day teenage demi-gods, have taught me almost as much about Greek mythology as Luke knows from reading the myths themselves. Author Rick Riordan brings the gods to light, for anyone interested in Greek mythology, but even if you're not they are just great, light reading.

So, these are the books that we've been obsessed with this winter; any books you can't put down? Tell me about them, and happy reading!

Stone Age Techie in the Boston Globe

We've gone old-school around here this week.

Last Saturday, I read this Op-Ed piece about the importance of high scores in educational testing. While I disagreed with the whole piece, one part in particular left me speechless.

Author Kathleen Madigan wrote: "Just a decade ago, Massachusetts had lower reading scores than Connecticut. But while the Commonwealth's reading scores improved more than any state's between 1998 and 2005, Connecticut experienced some of the nation's most significant declines. Leaders in Hartford chose to focus on "how to" skills like critical thinking and problem-solving over academic content ... Connecticut has recently seen the error of its ways. It has discarded the focus on how-to skills and joined the growing number of cities and states adopting Massachusetts' academic standards as their model."

I wondered how anyone could dismiss critical thinking and problem-solving skills, arguably two of humanity's most important talents, in favor of high scores. And, in part because I've been watching the John Adams series on DVD, I decided to voice my opinion in a decidedly old-fashioned way - I wrote a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe's editorial page.

I didn't think it would get in to the paper, I understand that the Globe gets hundreds of letters a day, but it felt good to write it anyway. I was taking part in an age-old tradition, the debate of ideas.

But I guess they decided it was okay, because here it is on today's Editorial Page!

Mine was not the only letter that the Globe received about this topic. The editor printed 3, all in stark disagreement with the original author's belief in test scores as the be-all and end-all. In this one, a 40-year teaching veteran rails against assessment. Also, Linda Darling-Hammond, professor of education at Stamford University, takes offense with both Madigan's argument and with the part Madigan accuses Darling-Hammond herself of playing in it.

Reading these other letters, I felt so validated. That my letter was published along with those of a teacher and a Stamford University professor, both of whom expressed themselves so well, gave me goosebumps. How exciting to be counted among such people!

The whole episode has left me thinking, thank heaven for newspapers, Op-Ed pages, and good old-fashioned debate.

This Weekend, Go to the Carnival!

... The Carnival of Homeschooling, I mean, now up and running at Topsy-Techie.

I only found Topsy-Techie's blog a few weeks ago, and I just love it - I bet you will, too. Look out for my post, in the Parenting Patches section, if you head over for the carnival!

The Ocean In Winter

I know it's weird, but I love the ocean in the off-season. In fact, I prefer it to the summer, when beaches and roads are crowded and everyone is frying in the sun.

So the other night, when the weatherman said something about the recent full moon combined with high tides making for great beach-combing, I knew where The Stone Age Techie's next field trip would be!

From winter 08 09

From winter 08 09

From winter 08 09

We went, and wandered, and got sand in our boots. It was a really good day.

For our next field trip, I want the ocean and some good tidal pools! I'm already figuring out where we'll end up, and feeling grateful that we live so close to the coast.

Not Hooked on Phonics

Recently, I was thinking about Luke's last school teacher, just before he left 2nd grade, telling me about new research that showed kids retain spelling better when they memorize it properly the first time, kind of the direct opposite of inventive spelling.

At the time, I thought only of making Luke's school life a little easier, by stopping the memorization of 'sight' words. He was supposed to have memorized about 100 of these by the end of 1st grade, and the pressure on him to 'practice these every night' and have them committed to memory was making him sick - really, really sick. We're talking night terrors at least 5 nights out of each week, migraine headaches, and weight loss - Luke lost 20% of his body weight in 1st grade. By the time his problems started up again in fall of 2nd grade, after taking the summer off, I didn't care so much about how many sight words he had memorized, I just wanted him to stop feeling bad.

But, because his teacher had this new research, I put aside my education, all I was taught about how kids learn in many different ways, everything I had experienced in learning to write myself - I used inventive spelling until at least 3rd grade, and I'm one of the best spellers I know - and allowed her to persuade me that this decision about my son's learning was for the best.

Needless to say, it was the wrong decision. And now, happily, we've rectified it.

What matters more than children's ability to spell each word properly is fostering their creative spark, the one that will get them interested in lifelong writing and reading. As a homeschooler, Luke reads voraciously, and spelling doesn't hinder him from reading books, graphs, selected Newsweek and newspaper articles, even books written for adults. (A fact that I'm sure confounds teachers everywhere - how can an 8 year-old kid read at a high school level, but be unable to spell!)

Recently I decided to look up this research and see it for myself. Here is what I found: an article which 'critiques' inventive spelling. My reading of it gives only one valid (from the author's point of view, anyway) criticism, that teachers do not have enough time in the day to decode children's inventive spelling. And, my thought on that is: some things you just can't rush, and one of them is written communication.

But what really galls me is the author's position that there is only one method by which children will learn to spell, and write, correctly, and this is phonics. He puts the fear of God into parents that should their children be exposed to "Whole Language" (in quotes, of course, like any radically ludicrous idea) they will suffer from an inability to write or spell, pretty much ever.

Next, I wandered down to the bottom of the page and clicked the 'home' link; it brought me here, to the home of The National Right to Read Foundation. And, hey ho, guess what they're selling? Yep, phonics stuff. Their mission statement reads, in part, "Explicit and systematic instruction in phonics is a non-negotiable component of comprehensive reading instruction." The italics are theirs, showing how very much they want to drive home this point.

Now, I can see the value of some phonics instruction, for some kids. But to state that phonics is non-negotiable, even for kids (like mine) who learn, as it were, by osmosis, that statement is a death sentence: learn these rules, or you'll never learn to read. It's simply not true, as many thousands of kids are learning the hard way.

Why not expose kids to both phonics and whole language? That way, if they learn better one way than the other, at least they'll still learn. Kids don't need to memorize sight words to read, and Luke is a living example of this.

As a wise yoga instructor I know says, "Take what you need, and leave the rest."

Walking

Lately, I haven't had enough pictures up, so today I decided to remedy that by sharing a few from a recent walk.

We've had crazy balmy weather, and with Ben around too, it seemed like the perfect day to get out, the 4 of us together.

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

We were fascinated with the creek, and the boys kept tossing in snowballs and running downstream to watch them drift. Such a simple, old-fashioned kind of pastime!

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

It was the kind of slow-paced, listening-and-looking walk that makes life worth living, and one I hope to do again soon.

Authorship

It looks like my computer time from here on out will be limited: we have an 8 year-old author in the house.

After years of avoiding even the slightest whiff of writing, Luke has started a book. On the computer. Because I suggested it!

I think that what this means is, he has mostly gotten "school" out of his system - he had to take a long break from any writing except of the briefest kind, like holiday and birthday wish lists or notes to his favorite Harry Potter characters.

The book itself, "The Defeat of Chairman Drek," all one page of it so far, is a corker, which I think can be expected from a child who has spent years absorbing the conventions of writing through reading. Luke's dialogue exchanges, settings, plot and characters - taken from a video game (of course) - are pretty good, kind of stoic and adventuresome and read like, well, a real book. He has figured out a way to be as eloquent on paper as he is verbally, and seeing how he structures his writing is like looking at how his mind works from another angle.

We do have some confusing exchanges, though, with questions such as, 'Mom, where's the little two dots thing that you use?' or 'I can't find the thing that separates the ideas but keeps the same sentence.' Or, 'where's the two lines that mean somebody is talking?'

The one frustration I've felt is over Luke's inability to let something be misspelled, even for a few minutes. He hates inventive spelling, and just can't abide those little red lines underneath the words - and I can't figure out how to shut off the spell-checker so that he can write in peace! He loses thoughts and phrases while trying to figure out how to spell, rather than letting this be a 'draft' and sorting out the spelling later. My heart goes out to him, my young perfectionist.

For the most part, though, it's kind of cool having a young writer in the house, and his ideas and enthusiasm amaze me.

Even though I don't have the computer to myself anymore.

The Eeyore-Tigger Energy Level Spectrum

My two boys couldn't be more different in terms of their energy levels; Owen operates at Tigger speed most of the time, whereas Luke is more of an Eeyore kind of kid.

Since I tend towards Eeyore myself, especially before noon, it can be quite a challenge to satisfy Owen's need for activity, balanced with Luke's need for peace and quiet - and my need for this, too.

We've figured out a way that, most days, keeps everyone happy. We have the luxury of coming up with our own schedule almost every weekday, so most mornings, while Luke wants to read and I'm still bleary, we break out manipulatives for Owen. His favorites are:

- Play dough, with cookie cutters, scissors, rolling pins, popsicle sticks, Mr. Potato Head pieces...

- Goop - one part water to two parts cornstarch, hand-mixed; we add more of one or the other to change the consistency. This stuff is addicting!

- Scissors and glue, along with construction paper for cutting and gluing

- A shallow pan full of mixed beans, scoops, and little action figures. While I hemmed and hawed about using beans for play instead of food, we've kept these same beans for more than 5 years, with good hand-washing afterwards - they are good fun and, like goop, addicting because they feel so good in your hands.

Long about 11 or so, we eat because Owen has exhausted whatever morning activity we came up with. Then, after lunch when Luke and I are more or less 'ready for the day,' we do something more active. This can range from a couple solid hours of outside play, to a library or indoor park day trip or play date, to chores or active games like Hullabaloo, or just dancing to fun, favorite tunes.

Usually, several hours' active fun will get Owen to a quieter place, allowing Luke and I to read, write, and play word or math-type games while Owen looks at books or plays with toys.

My favorite part of this little routine is, Luke enjoys the more active stuff and the manipulatives as much as Owen enjoys the books, games, and quieter parts of our day - the trick is to catch them both at their best moments.

I think they are the better for learning to accommodate each others' needs - and from being exposed to activities to which they might not naturally be drawn. They are really each others' perfect complement.

Winter Respite

From winter 08 09

Rare is the February day when it's nice enough to be out without hats on - we took advantage of the 50-degree weather today!

From winter 08 09

The guys built a fort, by hollowing out the snow mountain we've been building up since December. And I indulged in a childhood passion:

From winter 08 09

I wandered the woods behind our house, listening to the trickle of the brook there, checking out deer tracks, feeling the sun on my face.

From winter 08 09

From winter 08 09

That all this is within sight of our back yard makes me feel so grateful; that I can visit quietly, alone, now and then is a special treat.