A book! A book! We'll do a book!

Madison and I have started home schooling for the fall just a little bit early -- although she doesn't know it. She's going to help me write a book that I've been thinking about writing.

The premise of the book, temporarily called The Frontier Team, concerns ten homeschooling kids who all live on the same very long block that backs up to a creek. One day during a flood, one of them notices something stuck in the middle of a beaver dam. After some figuring out the best way to get at the object, they discover that it is a small treasure chest. Inside the treasure chest, carefully preserved, are two pieces of paper. One is entitled "Rules of Detecting" and the other is entitled "Mistakes to Avoid."

The "Mistakes to Avoid" are written in Latin (and will turn out to be the list of logical fallacies).

The "Rules of Detecting" are not rules per se, but 15 REFERENCES to rules throughout children's mystery literature. A rule might look like this:

Paragraph 3, Page 59, Boxcar Children #3

See, it will be both an exciting story and a culturally-literate romp through the best children's mystery literature, meant to get kids excited about reading these other books. I'm thinking Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Boxcars, Bobbsey Twins, Trixie Belden...plus also some of the books that describe how-to-do-stuff-on-your-own such as My Side of the Mountain, Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Family Robinson. Any suggestions?

The action of the book will partly be the children's divvying up the clues so they can go hunt down what they are and compile the list, and discussing what they mean (especially the Mistakes -- fortunately one of the families studies Latin). The rest of the book will be the children using the rules to figure out the actual mystery: where the treasure chest came from, who composed the rules and when, how it got to them, etc.

I told Madison my plot outline last night as she was going to bed, which may have been a mistake because her brain instantly vroomed up into overdrive. We're working on character sketches today. And then, later, once we come up with the abstract formulation of the rules, I'll have her re-read a bunch of books to see if she can come up with instances of the implementation of the rules so that we have stuff to refer to. Of course, it looks like I'll have to do some speed-reading through children's literature myself.

The other cool thing about the book, which Madison pointed out independently, is that it could be the start of a series, if it's successful. Here, they learn how to "detect." In the following books, they'd use their detecting skills on other mysteries.

Madison has already come up with four of the characters. She LOVES this. And so do I. Her interest may mean that I actually get this written (how many novels have I started? 4? 5?), and that we get it published. I have a probably-absurd confidence that if it gets written, it will be published. (And, fantasizing here: Wouldn't it be great to go on literary promotion tour with the kids? They would absolutely have to come along, of course, given the book's premise. No one would want to hear me without them.)

CAT update

From Deb:

The CAT -- that is, Californial Achievement Test -- score sheet arrived while we were in Rochester.

Remember I blogged about how I couldn't believe some of the questions on the test -- such as the need to distinguish between the spellings of "wonder" and "wander" were intended to be answered by first graders? Well, that's because they WEREN'T intended to be answered correctly.

Madison's score in the eight sections put her mostly in the 99th percentile of first graders, and one or two of them in the 97th percentile.

The scorers of the test claim that this puts her equivalent grade level at...

6.3

Yes, they claim that my 6-year-old performed as well as the average American 6th grader on this test.

I don't actually believe it; this conclusion seems ridiculous to me. They didn't even have multiplication or fraction questions in the math section. (Actually I think that in the math sections, where she got all the answers right, the maximum you could get scored to was 4th or 5th grade level.)

But if it's even close to true, it's a sad commentary on the state of American education.

In any case, it was quite a lift for me, to know that at least by some "objective" measurement I was doing this right. I love home schooling.

Laura, if you want to give yourself a lift about the great job you and Raymond are doing, give him the 2nd CAT grade test.

Deb's blogging will be light

Blogging will be light for the next 10 days as we visit Rochester. I'll have sporadic internet access, though, so I'll check in to see if Laura has any updates.

We're in the Hampton Inn in Selinsgrove, PA right now, on our way up to the Great Temporarily-Not-White North. Amazing how much kids love a hotel.

You know how on the day you're traveling somewhere the kids wake up obscenely early and bounce on you to get going, going, going? Well, that happened in reverse today. *I* was the one up at 6:15. Ella got up at 7:30, and Madison is still snoozing at 8:15. I think I'll go bounce on her.

The Blues Sisters

Not educational, but hilarious.

Ella's Unicorn Stories

Ever since my cousin Arlene gave Ella a little Beanie Baby unicorn the other week, Ella has been obsessed with unicorns. She dictated two stories this morning, and even made herself a horn, mane, and tail out of paper which she proceeded to figure out how to attach to her clothing (a nice lesson on adhesion, and why tape sticks better to hair than to skin, and to fabric better than to hair). The photo is of Ella in full homemade unicorn regalia, illustrating the first of these two stories.

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Once upon a time, there was a little unicorn that was a really little unicorn that was just born a couple of weeks ago. She had a little girl owner that was very nice to her.

When they were taking a walk one day, the little unicorn saw something that she liked: a little unicorn toy. So the unicorn raced off to catch the unicorn toy with her owner, but they really just walked to the toy.

And when they got home, the little girl owner asked if they could keep the toy. Her mom said yes, because she once lost a toy when she was a little girl, in that place, and it was a unicorn toy. She said,

“That one looks just like the one I had. So you can keep it, because that one was mine.”

The unicorn liked that they could keep it. So they played with the little unicorn toy all day.

And they lived happily ever after.
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The little unicorn grew up. And she had three little baby unicorns. They were all as pets, and they fed them and named them all. Rose, and Night, and Sunshine.

One day, they were taking a walk and they found an apple tree. The babies were really hungry from walking. They got apples for the baby unicorns. They walked home.

The little owner read them a story.

The end

Real (backyard) fireworks

Last night, we spent the Fourth of July evening with our across-the-street neighbors having a barbecue and setting off fireworks. The kids enjoyed it all immensely, after a little apprehension.

It was my first experience with personal fireworks. They are illegal in New York and New Jersey, but for the past week I've seen a fireworks stand every mile or two along Route 29 here in Virginia. When I was a kid in New Jersey, we'd hear them going off and wonder who the bad people were who were setting them off. (Though sparklers were legal, go figure.) So last night's festivities felt vaguely illicit to me.

I bet fireworks are not only legal, but practically mandatory, in Texas.

The kids will like these fireworks.

Just click here while making sure the sound is on on the computer.

July 4 Birthday of the Day: The United States of America

A great way to celebrate the 4th of July is to listen to American music. My favorite album is actually a kids' album produced in the 1980s (but still commercially available) called Wee Sing America. My detailed review of this album can be seen by clicking here. It's great. The production is terrific, the music is great, and my kids know not only some great songs from and about America, but they also know the Preamble to the Constitution as a result.

Homeschooling with just the kindergartner

From Deb:

Madison is at a "field camp" this week -- a hiking/nature camp, right up her alley -- so I have Ella home with me, and when there is no camp, there is Mommy School.

I took a cue from one of Laura's earlier posts about play-time-school-time with Riley, and basically played with Ella all day. Well, first we did our phonics reading, what she regarded as "work." And the rest of it was play. Puzzles, "Stargo" (a terrific constellation-math-oriented Bingo), we went to the library and read about monkeys.

It was great. We had a blast.

Maybe I can have my work with Madison be a little less structured, too...although I'm not inclined toward unschooling. I don't know how one could work on times tables casually...instead, I think I'll try Laura's strategy on that when we pick it back up in August, but maybe incorporate a bit more of me into the playtime aspect of home schooling.