November 2012

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A Diamond in the “Ruff”

November 21, 2012 in Three Good Things, Uncategorized | 1 comment

Three Good Things for the day:

  1. Leo is totally into animal sounds. The only one he can really make is a dog’s “woof,” which is adorable because of the way he purses his lips. (His little mouth is one of my favorite parts of him.) But today I discovered that he wants to know all the animal sounds. We have one of those speak-and-say things and he just couldn’t get enough of it tonight.
  2. I got to play on a Wii at physical therapy today.
  3. This didn’t happen today, but I’m still rejoicing about finding two incredibly important things for Sam this weekend. First, I found a homeschool Brownie troop for her. Then, I signed her up for an extracurricular course at an “enrichment center” which offers a la carte classes to homeschooled kids. I didn’t care much what class it was – I just wanted to get her in so that we could start building a network of homeschool friends. Then I found out that both the troop and the school were founded by the same woman. We spoke on the phone for 45 minutes because we couldn’t stop discovering all the things we had in common. I think these two things have the potential to fill the social gap that we have as homeschoolers. Sam really needs a group of kids she sees regularly, in a relatively unstractured setting. Most kids get this from school or church. They see the same group of kids day after day, week after week, year after year. We do have our neighborhood, but now that all the kids Sam’s age are going to the same school, she is an outsider. She is also on a very different schedule than most of them. And extracurriculars are too structured to allow for making real friends (and enemies). The woman who started the Brownie troop and the school had the same things in mind for both, and miraculously (irony intended), they are both secular! The Brownie troop meets weekly instead of twice a month, and there is a lot of unstructured time (as well as very cool field trips). The enrichment center only offers classes on Wednesdays, but it goes on all day in a huge facility, so there are tons of kids there at the same time, and there is a lounge where the parents and kids can hang out, plus a huge play area outside. Sam will be taking a class called “Engineering Extreme Structures” for 1-3rd graders, which seems like a joke to me (she’s never even built anything out of Legos), but we plan to spend part of each Wednesday hanging out there. I will be so happy if this works for us because otherwise, I’ll have to try to build a group of kids on my own. There really is nothing else here in NOVA if you are not religious. And Sam really, really misses her friends from school.

Looking Ahead

November 15, 2012 in Montessori | 1 comment

Looking for a school for your child is like house-hunting: when you find the right one, you know it immediately–even from a description and some photos. If you’re like me, you still do your due-diligence and research every option to death, but you know it’s just an exercise. I knew it with Sam’s Montessori school, I knew it for Sam’s current school (home!), and now I know it for a Montessori toddler program for my babies.

We’re not even sure we’ll send Leo and Zoe to school next year – we might do another year of an au pair or a nanny – but if we wanted options, I had to start doing research now. Sam’s school does not currently have a toddler program. They keep saying that they might have one by this fall, but at this point I can’t count on it. I still plan to send them there for Primary, unless this place impresses me more than I can even imagine right now.

I suppose I should wait until I at least visit this place in person, but damn, I just know. It’s the closest, cheapest, and the most beautiful (at least, based on the photos). It has an  outdoor prepared environment in addition to the classroom, which is extremely appealing to me. I mean, this outdoor space is gorgeous and huge. It even has an AMI-trained guide for the toddlers, even though it is an AMS school. When I called, the director emphasized an uninterrupted work cycle, even for the toddlers! (2 hours instead of 3.) That doesn’t really matter to me as much as it would in Primary, but the fact that the director emphasized this is a good sign. (Sam’s school was the only one that insisted on the 3-hour uninterrupted work cycle – it is one of the first elements to be trashed in many Montessori schools, probably because parents demand “enrichment” activities.) There are still a million questions to answer (like, how the hell could we possibly afford this!), but I’m so excited.

 

Fashionista, Diva, and Muse

November 14, 2012 in Three Good Things | No comments

Three Good Things for the day:

  1. I recently bought Sammy a few new articles of clothing – really awesome stuff that I got for cheap at the consignment store. A black hoodie with a rhinestone butterfly on it, another with mod purple and blue cats all over it, and one faded old thing which I bought only because it had blue and green hearts on it which reminded me of her eyes (some days blue some days green). She described it all to a stranger today, and was asked which was her favorite. She answered, “the one that matches my eyes.” I find that charming.
  2. Sam’s version of “Call Me Maybe”: “Hey, I just make you. And it’s crazy. So here’s my llama. Call me maybe?” Delivered in a six-year-old voice this is about the cutest thing ever.
  3. I told a great Little Bear story tonight at Sammy’s bedtime. I’m a little sad that I never wrote down my greatest hits. I could have changed the characters around and had my own series of children’s books written by now.

Election, Dentist, Walkers

November 13, 2012 in Three Good Things | No comments

Three Good Things for the day:

1. I’m back at my Three Good Things exercise after a brief pause due to the election. No talk here about how I’m feeling on that issue. The point is, I’m back at it.

2. I love taking my Samantha to the dentist. She is such a pleasure. She asks all sorts of questions and makes conversation with people (kids and adults), and charms the socks off of everyone she meets. She also has no cavities, and she was able to do the xrays of her back teeth for the first time. She has a real sensitivity to things that might make her gag (she won’t even wear a turtleneck because it touches her throat) and she swore to me she was not even going to TRY to put those things in her mouth for the xrays. But she did it. And she only was able to do it through sheer determination. Effort, people! She put up with a discomfort in order to attain a goal. I’m not sure what motivated her, but the point is – she made the effort. She was very pleased with herself, too. Awesome.

3. This didn’t happen today – it happened last week when I wasn’t blogging. But …

Both Leo and Zoe are toddlers now!

They don’t walk much yet, but they both can do it. A new era has begun.

Grammar

November 8, 2012 in Homeschooling | 10 comments

I think I mentioned here before that we are now using First Language Lessons as a kind of pre-grammar curriculum. I still think it is a worthwhile book, and very easy to use. However, I noticed something interesting.

This book contains a lot more rote practice than I would do if designing a curriculum from scratch. It has the instructor say phrases like, “a noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea,” and have the student repeat it three times until he has memorized it. It also has the instructor ask questions and then the student is supposed to answer in complete sentences. For example, the book would have me ask Sam, “Is ‘city’ a common noun or  a proper noun?” and then later, “Is ‘Oakton’ a  common noun or a proper noun?” Well today, as review, I asked Sam about the difference between common and proper nouns and her answer was, “A common noun is the first one and a proper noun is the second one.”

I had to really think about why on earth she would say that before the light bulb went off.

I’m not 100% positive the book always asked about common nouns first and proper nouns second, but it certainly was a trend. And Sam never had any idea what I was talking about. She just caught on that I would always ask common before proper.

And now I think back on a lot of the other Q&A we did using this book and Sam could have fooled me into thinking she understood most of it, just by her pattern-recognition abilities. She does have an excellent memory. (I don’t mean she fooled me intentionally – she just found the shortest distance between two points – the easiest way for her to get the “right” answer.)

Part of the problem is the whole approach of classical education – way too much rote memorization of “facts.” But the other part of the problem is indicated by my scare-quotes around the word “facts.” This book basically starts out by defining a noun, and then adding on the narrower concepts of common and proper nouns. It gives the definitions, yes, but not one time, ever, in this book, is there a sentence with words in it and an attempt to show the child that each word in a sentence has a purpose. It doesn’t touch on why we should figure out the purpose of different types of words – in other words, what is the motivation for learning all this?

Sam didn’t balk at the lessons and I thought that was because she was getting something from them. But now I think all she liked about it was that she could parrot something back to mommy and get my seal of approval on it. It fits in with her love of memorization.

So now I’m stuck again on grammar. I looked at the Montessori curriculum guide again and it’s really not all that different. It has concrete manipulatives, yes, but it still kind of just jumps in by telling you what a noun is outside the context of a sentence. And of course it requires a ton of specialized materials and takes a lot of prep work. I’m willing to do that if I think it’s worth the effort, but I’m not convinced the Montessori approach is quite right either. I never diagrammed sentences when I was a child, so I don’t know if there is a prerequisite for it. But it seems like the sentence is the first-level concept here. (I don’t mean first-level overall, just the beginning concept in the subject of grammar.) Maybe that’s where we should begin. And maybe it is too early, which is fine with me as well.

So, my plan now is to listen to Leonard Peikofff’s course on grammar (which you can now get for a super-low price from the Ayn Rand eStore in digital format) , and then to take a look at Rex Barks, (sentence diagramming) which I’ve had on my bookshself since long before Sam was born. Then I’ll decide whether we are ready for grammar at all, and try to find a better place to start.

We’ll still use First Language Lessons for the poem memorization work and some other exercises. And the Q&A might work as a supplement to whatever we end up doing with grammar. But on its own, I don’t recommend it as a way to start grammar.

Forgot a Title

November 2, 2012 in Three Good Things | No comments

Three Good Things for the day, on this very tough day:

  1. Sammy has turned one of her iPad geography games into a musical instrument. She’s learning where Jamaica is on the map and making a sound that is pretty darn close to Jamaican steel drums.
  2. I got through all my physical in-box and paid all my bills. I’m actually shocked and proud that I was able to do it under the conditions in my house today.
  3. Adam brought me a cup of coffee this morning before I got out of bed. Lifesaver.

Good Thing for the Week:

We finished off the week of school. Sam did all her work for four days in a row, although she was late today. But it was a good school week. Next week we’ll try to do all five days, and I’m optimistic.

Baby Email, Geography, Switch Witch

November 1, 2012 in Three Good Things | No comments

Three Good Things for the day:

  1. I set up gmail accounts for Leo and Zoe. Faked their ages just to secure the account names I wanted for them. Apparently, it’s an FCC requirement to not allow e-mail accounts be assigned to children under some age. It wasn’t a problem when I set up Sam’s gmail account in 2006. Anyway, I spent a few minutes sending phony email from the babies to their parents–to myself, you see.  I wrote phony letters in my childrens’ names and sent them to …myself. And then I was surprised and enamored of the cuteness when I received them. Awwww.
  2. Sam memorized the names of all 50 states and is working on her third poem. She loves memorization, and she loves geography. We also just play around with Google Maps. Zooming in and out, reading the city names, watching how the maps change, bringing the little guy over so we can see photos and move around like we’re virtually there. Sam is wild for this stuff. I’ll count it as geography.
  3. The Switch Witch is coming tonight. Sam sorted out about half her Halloween take, and offered it to the Switch Witch. If the Switch Witch thinks she has offered a good trade, she will exchange the candy for a good gift. But a lesser offer will garner a lesser toy. Luckily, Sam picked out just the right amount of candy to switch to justify giving her the one toy we had prepared: a pink cowboy working cap gun. Super cool. Of course, Sam knows that the Switch Witch is mommy or daddy, but it doesn’t seem to curb her enthusiasm for the game. You should try it – the Switch Witch is awesome. I think we got that idea from the Kalts, but we probably modified it some.