Rience Reasoning

Ella suddenly came up to me this afternoon and said,

"I think it's true that if I were able to run at the speed of light, I could run across a lake and not sink."

What instigated this chain of reasoning? I'm glad I asked.

Scooby-Doo.

Picture Shaggy being so scared and running so fast that he could run across water. That's what got her thinking.

I'll take it where I can get it.



(Of course Tony pointed out to me later that if she really were to run across the lake at the speed of light, if she touched the water at all it would probably kill her.)

(And then later, David pointed out that the air friction alone would kill her.)

Great.

I think -- I hope -- I have the schedule set

Extracurricular schedule:

Mondays: Homeschool Gym and Swim at the Y 1-3, Madison cooking 4:30-5:30, horseback riding 6:30-8. Monday is busy!

Tuesdays: Drama for Madison 4-5, karate 6-6:45.

Wednesdays: Piano lessons at our house 11-12.

Thursdays: Drama for Madison 4-5, karate 6:30-7:15.

Fridays: Irish Dancing (hs class) 10-11.

Saturdays: Bach Children's Chorus for Madison, Mozart Children's Chorus for Ella

Brownies are every other Tuesday evening at 6:30 (those weeks they'll do the 3:45 Wed karate class). Cooking, drama, and horseback riding are 5-week programs ending the last week of October. When that ends, we'll switch to Monday & Wednesday karate instead of Tuesday-Thursday, which will leave Tuesdays and Thursdays completely free.

Am I ever glad they have similar interests, and that everything is on the East side of Rochester. Otherwise I'd be running all over creation.

I've been using Airset.com to manage my schedule, since spring. That has worked out extremely well. I truly recommend it.

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Daily Schedule:

We're going to try not to linger over breakfast (the earlier David gets out, the more we get done...the school day never seems to begin while he's still there). We'll end breakfast with the Birthday of the Day and getting the Birthday's photo up on the timeline downstairs.

Each morning after breakfast, we'll start with a 15-minute karate practice. That was an effective invention of mine this spring; it gets their blood running and also focuses them, plus gives them what they need to get their red stripes (every 3 practices, a red stripe) on their karate belt.

Then, one will practice piano while the other does work that needs to be done focused, with me. For Ella, this will be reading.

Three subjects will be done every day: Handwriting, spelling, and math. For Ella, also reading.

Man, Madison needs help on handwriting. I've decided to have her use graph paper for her math this year to help her keep things neater and in columns -- it was so hard for her to do multiple-digit multiplication and long division because she couldn't keep numbers the same size and in columns. We'll be using Handwriting Without Tears and also a handwriting book Laura gave us. For spelling, Madison will use AVKO and Ella will use...some other first-grade spelling book I have, I forget the name.

I'm seriously considering (and I think Laura will really cheer me on here) using Writing Road to Reading with both of them, even though Madison just already reads. She's bad at spelling and writing, though, and I think that this will really help, and I'm going to want something for Ella if reading doesn't just click in naturally soon. The unschoolers would tell me just to leave it be and read, read, read to her. I'll read, read, read...but leaving things be just isn't in my nature, when if she works at it, it's something she could get. The child can read, she just needs practice so that she reads automatically, and damn it, the more practice she gets, the sooner she'll be able to experience the joy that is reading.

For math, Ella will use Math-U-See Beta level and Madison will use the Deb Ross curriculum. Among the goals for Madison are to have her absolutely rock-solid in the mechanics of multiplication, long division, fractions by year's end. We'll do as much "really interesting" math as she can handle this year (applications in geometry, among them), and sail on with that next year. Among the goals for Ella will be to have her rock-solid in multiple-digit addition and subtraction, and much of the multiplication tables memorized, by next spring.

We're using History Odyssey as a general history curriculum this year, which includes a book that the girls have come to love this summer, the Usborne Internet-linked Book of World History. I got some great supplemental project books on ancient history: Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Chinese, and Romans.

For science, I got the R.E.A.L. science curriculum in May, and this still looks pretty good. But for September (the weeks we'll be there, anyway), we'll be focusing on the human body because the RMSC is starting a whole exhibit on it, plus the planetarium will be showing a big-screen movie on it. And this summer I got one of those models where you can take out the organs and put them back in again. Madison had gotten a chemistry set at her birthday party that she used with David all last week, and she wants to keep on with chemistry. So right after the human body, I'll do atomic and molecular structure with them, and then a chemistry unit, before going into REAL science. They both really love science.

I got a really interesting grammar book from Jessie Wise, one of the ladies who brought us The Well-Trained Mind, First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind. It will do for both of them, as it's level 1 and 2. We'll start Madison on level 1, though, and let her move ahead if she goes fast.

We'll keep on with logic, of course. Probably not every day.

I will also review Spanish words with them a few times per week, which I didn't do last year (I just let their little Spanish group with Monica take care of that), and on the days we don't do Spanish words, we'll do sign language. This will be only a little 10-minute exercise each day.

I plan to have Poetry Friday on Friday mornings before Irish dancing, which is at 10am so there's not much time for something beforehand. I figure that reading a poem, talking about it, and then either making artwork to go along with it or creating a short poem of one's own would be a good, time-limited, thing to do before dancing.

For writing, we are definitely going to pick up where we left off with the Frontier Team book with Madison. And Ella and I are going to start writing, as well...we have a book plot scoped out. We'll start off low-key with this; I think we'll do it while the other child has piano lessons, and we'll see where it takes us.

I've abandoned my desire to start Latin this year. We have too much going, and I think maybe I'll start next year, after Ella has mastered reading.

I am going to organize as much of this into lessons ahead of time as I can, so that the subjects can have the lists of lessons spelled out, each on their own sheet. Then we'll put a sticker and date of when each was completed, and every so often we'll celebrate the completion of a set or milestone in spelling, history, science, reading, etc. My girls are definitely motivated by stickers. I plan to do the same for each day their rooms are organized.

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Obviously, we'll weave in nature hikes, maps (I realized last week that the girls are NOT good at knowing where they live in the country, in the world, etc), general cultural literacy in with all of this. We'll be filling in the timeline in our basement (Western culture, 1450-present) with the Birthday of the Day and also with some invention history and art history.

Stepping back and looking at this, I'm pretty satisfied. We're heavy on music (piano, choir, dance) and phys ed (gym & swim, karate, dance, horseback riding). It seems we have a gap in arts-and-crafts, but History Odyssey includes a number of projects, so it's not so bad.

My own work: There will be some mornings I'll need to work while they're working, but I'm going to do my best to reserve this for afternoons.

Timeline link

I have been using the time while Tatiana is teaching and I have Madison, Ella, and Dario with me to coordinate our curriculum for the fall. Of course, I keep getting led down lovely pathways of investigation, and here is one: A user-created timeline called Timeline Index.

Off to Doylestown PA

The girls and I are driving to Doylestown, PA (near Philadelphia) to stay with los Americanos for five days. Dario's school doesn't start until next week while Tatiana starts this week (she's teaching at Villanova and two community colleges while also taking classes toward her Masters degree at Villanova), so we're going to fill in some child care gaps. Also, I'll be able to do some business in DC Monday evening and Tuesday while Tatiana has the girls. We'll speak a lot of Spanish. I'll get a bunch of homeschool planning done while the kids play. We'll miss David.

Philosophy for kids

I checked out John Enright's philosophy suggestions (actually, the White book, Philosophy for Kids, wasn't a suggestion, just a pointer) and have been talking the matter over with David.

There really isn't much out there. I guess I was looking for a history of philosophy for kids. White's book approaches it by organizing the subject around these kinds of open-ended questions that contemporary philosophers seem to love, with the goal of helping kids think about these "big questions" so that they get interested in philosophy. David took a more detailed look at the book and really hated it.

David's point is: When we teach science or math, we don't teach kids the bad, wrong ideas that people have come up with over the ages, except occasionally (e.g., Lamarck) as a means to show what the right answers are. But philosophy, which should be approached this way as well, never is; it's always questions like "When a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound?" "Can computers think?" These questions make kids think that somehow everyone's answer is valid...it's just philosophy. He thinks we need to actually teach the right ideas, and then when they're older start exposing them to the wrong formulations, as a means of solidifying the right ideas.

I think I disagree, slightly. I mean, we're already actively teaching logic. Whenever we're presented with an idea, we analyze it from a rational perspective, and discuss it in a way that Madison can understand and participate in. She has already really enjoyed some of the history of philosophy that I've presented her with (i.e., Aristotle and Plato...we did a little overview of The School of Athens). I'm thinking that it would be possible to present her with a kids' version of a history of philosophy that would be appropriate and interesting.

Except one doesn't seem to exist.

What I think I really need is an Objectivist approach to a history of philosophy, for kids.

Maybe one could be created. Takers?

Girl Scouts baseball campout

We've had a lot of fun this summer, but one event Madison and Ella had been looking forward to since May or so was last night's Girl Scout Baseball Campout at Frontier Field. The idea is to watch the Red Wings (our local AAA team, minor league team for the Minnesota Twins) play a night game, then watch the weekly Friday night fireworks display, then vacate the field while they clean, then come back onto the field and pitch tents in the outfield, watch a movie on the big screen, eat snacks, and go to sleep (and get kicked out at 7am). I mentioned in my weekly email to my Rochester KOA list (now about 6000 parents) that we were going to do this and whoever else was going to be there should stop by and say hi. I got responses to the effect that I should "take a nap, because it's going to be a late night!"

We already owned a 2-man tent; Ella and I went to Gander Mountain on Thursday to gear up with another 2-man tent (looks like a bright yellow sarcophagus), sleeping bags for David and me, and some foam pads. Yesterday, we baked brownies (of course, we couldn't actually bake Brownies) and cookies, and packed up grapes and cheese balls.

We got to the game with the back of the car all packed. Unfortunately, the game didn't start until 7:40 because of some AAA Hall of Fame ceremony, then got over at 11pm. And at the moment it got over (Red Wings beat the Scranton-Wilkes Barre PA team 6-2), the sky opened up. It was a brief shower and didn't impede the fireworks, but the announcer said that there was an air mass that was at that point over Buffalo, heading our way, with lightning and hail...so the campout would have to be postponed.

I thought I was the only one relieved, because all of the parents put on appropriate disappointed faces, but David murmured to me that he was just as happy to be going home. A nice cool house, a soft bed, a good night's sleep in advance of a 9:30am belt-testing ceremony at the girls' karate dojo...vs. a 2am humid, hot night with a bunch of giggling preteens, cranky 6-year-olds, and sugary snacks...I'd say we lucked out. Plus Ella was already wilting in my arms and it was going to be another hour before we could even set up.

Of course, I'm feeling like an old fogey for even thinking this. What kind of wet blanket am I going to be in 10 years?

Golden Age

Ella is 6 and Madison is almost 8. And I feel, this summer, as though we've entered a Golden Age.


Madison seems to have left behind the edgy, hair-trigger, hyper-sensitive, perfectionistic, prickly phase that started at 4 and had its peak from 5-6. (One wonders if it had not a little to do with being in school.) She is still somewhat more sensitive than the average child, but overall she is relaxed, warm, and go-with-the-flow. She's so incredibly willing to be intimate without reservations, now. She has confidence in herself and her abilities, and accepts her limitations (and things she needs to work on, like spelling and handwriting) with good humor.

She told me yesterday (out of the blue) that at 12 she envisions herself confident, well-spoken, and able to cook a full-course meal easily. Yesterday when I was making blueberry scones from my Cook's Illustrated magazine, Madison started reading the article and analysis that always accompanies the recipe. She loved reading all about the various ways the author had varied the recipe to see what the effect would be, and the author's impression of what caused the various effects. I mentioned that this is why Cook's Illustrated is the only cooking magazine I'd ever want to read. "I love the theory," I said.

And she replied, "Yes! The THEORY! That's why I like about it, too. Can I just sit down and read your Cook's Illustrated any time? I want to find some good meat recipes. You know, just plain meat. But fancy."

"Plain, but fancy? At the same time? Can something be plain and fancy at the same time?" I asked.

After a short pause, she replied, "Well, sure. Like, take the furniture that you like. You like plain lines, not fancy with curlicues or gargoyles carved into it or wild colors. You like beautiful wood, nice leather, something comfortable and plain and clean. But that's fancy furniture, see?"

Who knew she was paying such close attention to our arts-and-crafts style?

Last night after Ella went to bed a little early, Madison wanted to talk with me and David about philosophy. So we talked about the different schools of thought regarding the concept "soul" -- how the various religions regard it, and how nonreligious folks can define it validly. She said that she wanted to use it to mean the "unconsious ideas and habits that a person has." David talked about how he sees it as the aspect of the person that values, and I offered that it's the aspect of the person that encompasses his likes and dislikes. I ended up privately agreeing with David, but didn't talk about it because I wanted her to see that each person must define her own concepts herself, and I didn't want to muddy that up with switching my definition to be closer to David's, right then.

If anyone knows of a good intro to philosophy, or intro to the history of philosophy book, either specifically for children or one that Madison could read, PLEASE let me know.

And Ella, well, Ella is even more of the eager, active, good-natured person that she has always been. She's a bit more eager to have a good time than to work at getting better at things she needs to work at, and she's still apt to put up a little bit of a fuss when she's made so much of a mess that cleaning it up seems overwhelming. But that's not different from any other 6-year-old. She's so happy to see the good in everything, the fun in everything. She's definitely a glass-half-full kind of person. She has always liked the Magic School Bus series and other science kind of nonfiction, but she's really getting into that with zeal lately. She loved the nature camp, and noticing lots of small details about things and filing them away. She loves beautiful things, she'd fill the house with flowers if she could. She'd cook all day. She learned really well to ride a bike this summer, and there's just no stopping her. She'll keep her hair in curlers for hours just to look like Shirley Temple for her dad when he gets home. She's enthustiastic and precise in karate class. There is no problem getting her to practice piano. She'll put on the iPod and listen and listen to the Bach Children's Chorus recording that Madison has been practicing to in preparation for participating this fall -- good thing they also have a Mozart Children's Chorus preparatory program for ages 5-8 so Ella can be in it as well.

I never, ever want this to end. Relaxed, peaceful, enthusiastic, healthy, happy. I try not to think about some future teenaged angst where I'm mourning this time. We're mostly just snuggling in and enjoying it.

Ella reading update

I'd had intentions of having this summer be reading-intensive for Ella -- not necessarily reading herself, but being read to -- in the hopes that there would be a sudden "click" and she'd just be reading on her own.

Well, life was quite busy this summer, what with camps so I could work, and trip to Tamra and William's, and having Dario over for a week and the Maughlins over for a week. So we didn't get to spend hours and hours sitting around reading.

I had Ella read some for me yesterday. I wanted to see whether The Click had happened.

No, in fact she's regressed. Sigh. And her enthusiasm hasn't increased.

But it's not that far of a regression, and I'm sure she'll catch up quickly once we get going again.

I'd really believed in The Click. Damn.

E.T.

We watched E.T. as a family last night. Funny, it didn't hold up quite as well as I thought it would, despite all of the "remastering" or whatever techie stuff Spielberg was able to do to the DVD that wasn't available in the early 80s.

But this line was certainly worth it:

"Did you tell him [E.T.] about school?"

"How would you explain school to higher intelligence?"

The party went great!

The Harry Potter Party for Madison yesterday went great. (Unfortunately, although I had the video camera in my hand, I forgot to record the "surprise" moment.) She was stunned, and happy. She liked "Hagrid's Dinosaur Egg Hunt" the best. She particularly liked an idea that popped into my head literally 5 minutes before the guests arrived: I took a big piece of cardboard and painted "Forbidden Forest" on it in big red letters, and nailed it to a tree at the edge of the forest part of our backyard.

The Pumpkin Potion Punch was a big hit...It was V8 Splash, orange soda, pineapple juice, and ginger ale. I went and got a square chunk of dry ice from a dry ice company (don't you love capitalism?) and put it in a roasting pan in some hot water so that it bubbled and spilled cold steam all over the place, and then set the punch bowl on top of it. Really neat!

One thing I love about my little HP fan is that, unlike me as a kid, she doesn't get all hyped up about presents (and neither does Ella). We don't open presents at our parties, because we want them to be about having fun and not everyone comparing what they gave with what other people gave. But Madison was actually perfectly happy to sit around and talk about the party for a while, and have a bath, before going over to open her presents. When I was her age, it would have been unbearable to wait, and then it would have been a gift-wrap-tearing frenzy.

Actually, I'm not positive why opening presents and getting stuff isn't that important or exciting to Madison and Ella. And the stuff they have is important to them; they never want me to get rid of anything. They pretty much have what they need. They rarely pester me for anything new, not really, and they know if they really want something they can save up for it. But I guess we mostly do rather than buy (thank you, Cindy's Porch!). So they tend to have a good time without excess baggage. I don't know, really, it's hard to say. But I was happy that it was the case.

I think the most creative present she was given was a kids' cookbook, plus measuring spoons and a big stirring spoon and a spatula, with a bunch (like 7!) of boxes of mixes: cookies, brownies, muffins, etc. I'm definitely going to copy that for someone else. I emailed the mom to thank her specially and she told me that you can find all except the cookbook at the Dollar Store.

Photos of the party are coming soon. Today is house cleaning day, after a week of house guests and a party with 11 kids. (David has taken the girls for a bike ride on the Erie Canal for a couple of hours.) And laundry! Lots and lots of laundry in my new laundry room that Alan built this week to my specs and with me hanging by as the Lovely Assistant. I learned a lot, too. I feel great about the new vent system we put in for the dryer, and the insulation around it. Photos of my New Favorite Room coming soon, too.

I'd say this is pretty blatant racism

Apropos of nothing in particular except that I was posting it to the KidsOutAndAbout.com online calendar, the New York State Fair, which runs from Aug 23 - Sept 3, has, on August 31, free admission for Native Americans.

Don't believe me? It's here.

I wonder if that's actually legal. Imagine replacing "Native Americans" with "Whites."

I am feeling so smart

This has nothing to do with the girls' education per se, but I am feeling so smart for signing up for the Windy Meadow Farms weekly produce delivery. Not only is it fun to pick up my produce on Friday afternoons at Mona's house in Brighton, but the deal is unbelievable. And it's like my birthday, to open up these three full grocery bags and see what I got. Today, $10 bought me a LARGE head of romaine lettuce, EIGHT beefsteak tomatoes (six ripe and two green, to ripen), eleven Roma tomatoes for sauce, a bag of 30 cherry tomatoes, six ears of corn, about 2.5 pounds of potatoes, a big eggplant, a summer squash, three cucumbers, four green peppers, a red pepper, and three sweet peppers. Better than a partridge in a pear tree!

I have to figure out how to cook eggplant.

She has no idea

The Harry Potter surprise birthday party is tomorrow, and Madison has no clue!

She'll be going with Mateo, Maria, Ella, and Alan and David to a picnic for their karate dojo from 10-1:30, then she'll arrive back here at 1:45 and if all goes well, the kids will jump up on the deck (not off the deck) and yell Surprise! I will put a Harry Potter Gryffindor robe on Madison, hand her a wand and the glasses, and get the party started.

Then they will all:

Make HP wizard hats out of construction paper and put sticky stars on them

Make HP wands

Hunt for Hagrid's dinosaur eggs (Easter eggs, some with baby dinosaurs in them -- couldn't get dragons but I figured that Hagrid would like dinosaurs equally well) in the backyard

Play pin the tail on the unicorn if I get my act together and draw a big unicorn

Whack at a wizard hat pinata

Drink potion punch (orange soda, V8 splash, pineapple juice, and gingerale with a big ol' chunk of dry ice bubbling in the middle)

Eat an HP cake

And then, if weather permits, put on swim suits to play on the slip-n-slide which is on sale for $85 at Toys-backwards-R-Us, or at least WAS last week when I saw it there. If weather does not permit, they'll just play.

Think that can use up 2 hours?

Giving the girls these experiences

Yesterday, with our friends from Virginia who are up for the week, we went to the Strong Museum. Of course, we'd bring them to Strong -- there are so few experiences for a 4-year-old and an 8-year-old that are like going to Strong, it's one of those things you show off about Rochester, along with Wegmans and the lack of traffic.

But yesterday, we went for a special reason: SteveSongs was there for two concerts. Steve is out of the Boston area, and he is TERRIFIC. One of these nice side benefits of publishing KidsOutAndAbout.com is that I get sent stuff for review in the hopes that I'll publish something about it. About two weeks ago, the SteveSongs publicist sent me his latest album as a means of getting the concert publicized. I was happy to oblige with an enthusiastic review in our newsletter, and in the middle of last week, the publicist offered a special experience for Madison and Ella: If the girls wanted to, Steve would have them up on stage to sing the last song, On A Flying Guitar. That was on an album we didn't have, so she emailed me the iTunes file, and we got it just fine. Madison and Ella learned it in a couple of days, and indeed, they were invited up on stage:



They sang on a Flying Guitar with Steve and the Sillies, Linnea and Mariel Ross (no relation!) who are 9 and 12 years old. Mariel Ross is incredible; I spent some time talking with their mom, Diane, and found out that Mariel is a very minor singing celebrity in Boston, singing the National Anthem for the Celtics once, in a lot of productions, that kind of thing:


Madison and Ella's respective personalities totally were evident when they were on stage. Madison took the whole thing seriously, had that Focused Ross look on her face and made sure she sang the right words at the right time. Ella knew the words, and just had a great time up on stage, smiling and singing and dancing and glancing up at the Sillies to see if they were doing hand motions she could copy.

I would not be surprised if SteveSongs makes it fairly big some day soon. Right now they're mostly doing East Coast places because that's where they can drive to.

So the thing I've been thinking is: I feel as though my job as a parent is to engineer the girls to have a childhood that they look back on like this: I want them to remember working hard and learning in a relaxed and interesting environment, to have this as a routine, interspersed with moments on their own where they're devising their own entertainment (you know, plenty of time for playing outside or getting lost in a book), and punctuated by these special experiences that I can arrange. I want them to think, "Hey, wow, Mom arranged for us to get up on stage for SteveSongs"...or "We went on a homeschool learning cruise to Bermuda"...or "We visited our forest land in Mississippi"...or "The whole family danced up on stage in this community theater production in Charlottesville."

David and I realized the other day that even just one of the girls has done more cool stuff, been to more cultural events, been "out and about" more than either of us was for our entire childhood.

Summer dreams

We've been away for a while, visiting friends. The girls had their first fishing-with-Uncle-William experience last week, and I got the greatest photo of all:



They each caught fish. They loved it. (No worm-touching for them, though, not even for Madison.)