In the three days I've been rather incapacited and provided very little instruction, the girls have quite happily been left to their own devices. One aspect of this is that our cable was out on our tv when I got back home, but I had no energy to try to call Adelphia about it.
I have to say, they've been remarkable, in that a lot of what they've devised for themselves has been very educational. Not that they hit the workbooks or anything, but their play has included Madison typing out sentences and printing them out for Ella to read, which both helps Madison with spelling and Ella with reading. They have been doing a lot of crafts (as the craft area, which they haven't been inclined to clean up, attests!), reading, and play-acting. They have devised some new imaginary friends and have spent hours each day playing with them all together. Madison has read to Ella, and read on her own a lot. They have both played educational computer games. And, even though they both now have colds, there has been very little fighting.
And all of this in the context of no TV! (Not that they have ever relied on TV in any significant way.) Even their use of videos was minimal and limited to when I suggested it.
Maybe I should become an unschooler.
No, don't worry.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Neglecting my post
From Deb:
We've had hardly any school for three days now because of this weird stomach bug I have that won't quit.
Good thing that they're ahead and at least I don't have to worry about missing a few days here and there.
We've had hardly any school for three days now because of this weird stomach bug I have that won't quit.
Good thing that they're ahead and at least I don't have to worry about missing a few days here and there.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Dare I say it, but the multiplication is working
After six months of struggle with the multiplication tables, Madison's sudden decision to take control of her own multiplication learning (admittedly at my mild suggestion) is bearing fruit.
Today, she took her 10 x 10 grid to her room, looked where she hadn't colored in with highlighter, and she learned, really learned (I tested her at the end of the day):
Six problems in one day...when you have only 38 to learn, that will happen in no time. Even SHE can see that.
Then, when we were talking in the car about 4 x 6, I asked her:
Today was a pretty good and fast day, work-wise. Ella is working on odd and even numbers, and we have a little block set where she can fit together chains of numbers, so the last few days she's been doing that. She gets the concept of an even number, but I'm not sure she's at the point at which she could describe it.
Ella and I also worked on time, today. I realized that before I teach her about telling time, I have to teach her more about the concept of time. So for the last couple of times we did it, I've simply been taking this nice little educational plastic clock with the big and little hands that you can manipulate -- an important component of this clock is that the big hand will only move if you correctly move the little hand around the dial, so it acts as if real. For the last couple of times we have worked on this, we start at midnight and go around the clock twice for the 24 hours, saying whether it's light or dark outside, and say what we're doing at that hour. One more session of that and it will be time to talk more about the big hand and the small hand.
Madison did spelling fairly willingly today. We are using the Spellwell series a bit unconventionally, which is just taking their list suggestions and testing her until she gets six that she doesn't know. Then she has taken those six and typed them out on her computer. (I love seeing her do this, because she is starting to hesitate and focus before typing a word -- I can see that she's working out the typing pattern with her eyes on the keyboard so she can do it as a unit rather than hunt-and-peck. I didn't teach her to do this, she's just doing it naturally.)
Amazing that even though she's such a good reader (she's into the third Harry Potter these days), she can't spell better than the typical first- or second-grader. When she was very young, I used to think that she was an aural learner, because sometimes she could figure out what word we were spelling by listening to the sound of the letters. But as soon as she could read, she snapped right into being a visual learner. It is amazing that in the course of about the two months before she turned six, when reading became a pleasure rather than a chore, she also became completely a word recognizer and relied much less on phonics, so little that sometimes she's lackadaisical about sounding out a word that she doesn't know; she'd vastly prefer to figure it out from context or just skip it. Regular "educators" might try to point to the idea that she is now a whole-language learner rather than a phonics learner, but that is nonsense. Already-successful readers recognize words as units, it is true, but to try to use that as a pedagogical method rather than phonics is, I really believe, a recipe for disaster.
To round things out today, Madison worked in her logic workbook (Mind Benders -- she LOVES this, I have to limit her time on it or she'd do the whole workbook in a day). She also read out loud a fair amount of Robert Frost, as occasioned by the onset of a fall-like day here in Virginia. She loves reading The Road Not Taken, and I think her favorite poem by Frost is The Last Word of A Bluebird. We have a wonderful edition of Frost in the Poetry for Young People series; this book is divided up into poems for the various seasons, and it's illustrated by Henri Sorensen. Henri, wherever you are, you're wonderful.
Oh, and we went apple picking this afternoon, in preparation for our marathon applesauce cooking extravaganza tomorrow. Madison loves eating fresh applesauce right off the stove. The one orchard in Charlottesville is Carter Mountain Orchard; the orchard is right on the top of Carter Mountain and you have a beautiful 360-degree view all around Virginia.
Today, she took her 10 x 10 grid to her room, looked where she hadn't colored in with highlighter, and she learned, really learned (I tested her at the end of the day):
2 x 8
4 x 6 (and 6 x 4)
5 x 6 (and 6 x 5)
6 x 6
Six problems in one day...when you have only 38 to learn, that will happen in no time. Even SHE can see that.
Then, when we were talking in the car about 4 x 6, I asked her:
What happens when you double 4?
You get eight.
What happens when you divide 6 by 2?
You get three.
What is 4 x 6 again?
24.
Guess what happens when you multiply 8 x 3?
(Gasps.) No! Really? Does it work for EVERY SINGLE number, if you multiply one by 2 and divide the other one by 2, do you get the same answer as for the first problem?
Yep.
(A big grin from the back seat.) Ok, let's prove it... give me another!
Today was a pretty good and fast day, work-wise. Ella is working on odd and even numbers, and we have a little block set where she can fit together chains of numbers, so the last few days she's been doing that. She gets the concept of an even number, but I'm not sure she's at the point at which she could describe it.
Ella and I also worked on time, today. I realized that before I teach her about telling time, I have to teach her more about the concept of time. So for the last couple of times we did it, I've simply been taking this nice little educational plastic clock with the big and little hands that you can manipulate -- an important component of this clock is that the big hand will only move if you correctly move the little hand around the dial, so it acts as if real. For the last couple of times we have worked on this, we start at midnight and go around the clock twice for the 24 hours, saying whether it's light or dark outside, and say what we're doing at that hour. One more session of that and it will be time to talk more about the big hand and the small hand.
Madison did spelling fairly willingly today. We are using the Spellwell series a bit unconventionally, which is just taking their list suggestions and testing her until she gets six that she doesn't know. Then she has taken those six and typed them out on her computer. (I love seeing her do this, because she is starting to hesitate and focus before typing a word -- I can see that she's working out the typing pattern with her eyes on the keyboard so she can do it as a unit rather than hunt-and-peck. I didn't teach her to do this, she's just doing it naturally.)
Amazing that even though she's such a good reader (she's into the third Harry Potter these days), she can't spell better than the typical first- or second-grader. When she was very young, I used to think that she was an aural learner, because sometimes she could figure out what word we were spelling by listening to the sound of the letters. But as soon as she could read, she snapped right into being a visual learner. It is amazing that in the course of about the two months before she turned six, when reading became a pleasure rather than a chore, she also became completely a word recognizer and relied much less on phonics, so little that sometimes she's lackadaisical about sounding out a word that she doesn't know; she'd vastly prefer to figure it out from context or just skip it. Regular "educators" might try to point to the idea that she is now a whole-language learner rather than a phonics learner, but that is nonsense. Already-successful readers recognize words as units, it is true, but to try to use that as a pedagogical method rather than phonics is, I really believe, a recipe for disaster.
To round things out today, Madison worked in her logic workbook (Mind Benders -- she LOVES this, I have to limit her time on it or she'd do the whole workbook in a day). She also read out loud a fair amount of Robert Frost, as occasioned by the onset of a fall-like day here in Virginia. She loves reading The Road Not Taken, and I think her favorite poem by Frost is The Last Word of A Bluebird. We have a wonderful edition of Frost in the Poetry for Young People series; this book is divided up into poems for the various seasons, and it's illustrated by Henri Sorensen. Henri, wherever you are, you're wonderful.
Oh, and we went apple picking this afternoon, in preparation for our marathon applesauce cooking extravaganza tomorrow. Madison loves eating fresh applesauce right off the stove. The one orchard in Charlottesville is Carter Mountain Orchard; the orchard is right on the top of Carter Mountain and you have a beautiful 360-degree view all around Virginia.
The struggle of handwriting
From Deb:
It's hard when your brain so far outstrips your hand. Madison is getting a little better at handwriting, but struggles both with its look and its pace. She knows it's pretty bad, and it takes her so long to form the letters that she in no way can use handwriting to record her thoughts. She's learning to type partly to take away this frustration, but that is still very slow, of course. (It's a good thing we're doing the book together, us talking while I type, just so that she has some outlet for getting down her thoughts.) Yesterday was the day for thank-you cards for her birthday, and my god, it took her two hours to write "Thank you, love Madison" on ten cards and print out a sentence or two on the computer in the vein of "Thank you for coming to my birthday party. I really loved the art supplies." And I even typed the original sentence, made her letterhead, and provided her with the list of who gave her what. She had a lot of fun with fonts and colors, though.
It even frustrates me, so I can imagine how she feels.
I know that the key is the same as the way to Broadway. But I think I hate that she has to practice even more than she hates it. So, admission of guilt here: We don't do it every day. Kind of far from it.
It's hard when your brain so far outstrips your hand. Madison is getting a little better at handwriting, but struggles both with its look and its pace. She knows it's pretty bad, and it takes her so long to form the letters that she in no way can use handwriting to record her thoughts. She's learning to type partly to take away this frustration, but that is still very slow, of course. (It's a good thing we're doing the book together, us talking while I type, just so that she has some outlet for getting down her thoughts.) Yesterday was the day for thank-you cards for her birthday, and my god, it took her two hours to write "Thank you, love Madison" on ten cards and print out a sentence or two on the computer in the vein of "Thank you for coming to my birthday party. I really loved the art supplies." And I even typed the original sentence, made her letterhead, and provided her with the list of who gave her what. She had a lot of fun with fonts and colors, though.
It even frustrates me, so I can imagine how she feels.
I know that the key is the same as the way to Broadway. But I think I hate that she has to practice even more than she hates it. So, admission of guilt here: We don't do it every day. Kind of far from it.
Ella and reading
From Deb:
Because I had not pressed Ella on reading all summer, she naturally fell behind in skills, which I of course didn't worry about because she's only 5, after all, and she came so far so fast in the spring. So what I did this week was borrow back my EPS Phonics Books from Tatiana, and start Ella back on the second series of 10 books (she had finished the third in the spring). We'll read them through again. We've done one every day (where usually she has read just half a book in a day as they got harder). This has been very successful the last two days; she is impressed with herself that she is able to zoom through a whole book in about 10 minutes. We'll rapidly be back to where we left off.
Regarding the silent E question, I have noticed an interesting thing about Ella: She is not holding the entire sound of the word in her mind until she actually makes the word-meaning connection, it's still a collection of strung-together sounds that she has to reconstruct by looking again at the first letter. I noticed this because when she is reading a word that has a silent E, she doesn't notice at the outset that there is a silent E at the end, and adjust her vowel sounds accordingly (she had done this well as of about May, so I'm sure it will come back quickly); instead, she sounds through the entire word, comes to a silent E at the end, and stops, confused. She has heard the sounded-out version in her mind, and it doesn't make any sense.
For example, take the word "cake". She'll sound out C-A-K and then stop and see the silent E. She repeats "CAK" in her mind. "CAK" doesn't make any sense to her. But instead of automatically substituting the short A vowel sound for the long one she's using, and realizing that it must be "C-AY-K," she has to reconstruct the whole thing. First, she fixes in her mind that the sound is now "Ay" not "Ah" because of the silent E, and then she goes back to reconstruct the word. "C-AY-K" and now she hears herself saying it, and knows it's Cake.
That probably made no sense to anyone but me, but I find it fascinating. I need to get this stuff down, because there is no recreating the little bits and pieces of exactly how they learn; you have to record it immediately.
One other note: I am seeing glimpses in Ella that she is interested in listening to more complicated stories from chapter books rather than just being willing to sit with me for picture books. I had noted -- not in a worried way, but interested -- that whereas at the age of 3 Madison had wanted to hear books like The Trumpet of the Swan, Ella is still not interested in focusing on those kinds of stories. And by her age, Madison was having me read her the Boxcar Children and Cam Jansen. I don't know exactly what it means that Ella hasn't been ready for these things, maybe it's just that Madison has always had this exceptional imagination that she is willing to substitute for the pictures in the storybooks. I don't know.
Because I had not pressed Ella on reading all summer, she naturally fell behind in skills, which I of course didn't worry about because she's only 5, after all, and she came so far so fast in the spring. So what I did this week was borrow back my EPS Phonics Books from Tatiana, and start Ella back on the second series of 10 books (she had finished the third in the spring). We'll read them through again. We've done one every day (where usually she has read just half a book in a day as they got harder). This has been very successful the last two days; she is impressed with herself that she is able to zoom through a whole book in about 10 minutes. We'll rapidly be back to where we left off.
Regarding the silent E question, I have noticed an interesting thing about Ella: She is not holding the entire sound of the word in her mind until she actually makes the word-meaning connection, it's still a collection of strung-together sounds that she has to reconstruct by looking again at the first letter. I noticed this because when she is reading a word that has a silent E, she doesn't notice at the outset that there is a silent E at the end, and adjust her vowel sounds accordingly (she had done this well as of about May, so I'm sure it will come back quickly); instead, she sounds through the entire word, comes to a silent E at the end, and stops, confused. She has heard the sounded-out version in her mind, and it doesn't make any sense.
For example, take the word "cake". She'll sound out C-A-K and then stop and see the silent E. She repeats "CAK" in her mind. "CAK" doesn't make any sense to her. But instead of automatically substituting the short A vowel sound for the long one she's using, and realizing that it must be "C-AY-K," she has to reconstruct the whole thing. First, she fixes in her mind that the sound is now "Ay" not "Ah" because of the silent E, and then she goes back to reconstruct the word. "C-AY-K" and now she hears herself saying it, and knows it's Cake.
That probably made no sense to anyone but me, but I find it fascinating. I need to get this stuff down, because there is no recreating the little bits and pieces of exactly how they learn; you have to record it immediately.
One other note: I am seeing glimpses in Ella that she is interested in listening to more complicated stories from chapter books rather than just being willing to sit with me for picture books. I had noted -- not in a worried way, but interested -- that whereas at the age of 3 Madison had wanted to hear books like The Trumpet of the Swan, Ella is still not interested in focusing on those kinds of stories. And by her age, Madison was having me read her the Boxcar Children and Cam Jansen. I don't know exactly what it means that Ella hasn't been ready for these things, maybe it's just that Madison has always had this exceptional imagination that she is willing to substitute for the pictures in the storybooks. I don't know.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Order of Operations
From Deb:
We had a good first day back after vacation today. I mean yesterday, it's past midnight.
Madison, who has finally decided to take control of her own multiplication table learning, asked to create a 10 x 10 grid so she could see which ones she knew by heart and which she didn't. I printed out a grid from Excel so she didn't have to waste hours trying to make a nice one with rulers, etc. She completed all of the blank spaces, sometimes knowing the answers by heart, sometimes having to figure them out. I used it as our handwriting lesson, too, and believe it or not she was kind of enthusiastic about making it look nice, so things looked better than normal. She still kept reversing the 6's, though.
After she completed the grid, she had me test her on the tables. I put a small dot in the squares of the ones she knew by heart. Then, she took a highlighter marker and colored in all of the squares of the ones she knew, leaving the rest white. She figured out that she didn't know 38 of them, which translates to roughly 20 that she has to memorize since many of them are the same backwards-forwards.
20 seemed so manageable to her. She's going to devise strategies for doing the memorization. I'll leave her be on that for a while.
So that was the scheduled part of the day. But I love how sometimes learning happens just spontaneously rather than having been planned.
We were eating out for lunch (I want to mess up the kitchen as little as possible because of potential buyers seeing the house), and she asked me the difference between answers to equations that people knew, versus ones they had to figure out. So, she asked me, "Do you know the answer to 10 times 10 minus 10 plus 10 times 10?"
We then talked about how knowing the answer to parts of it makes the other parts easy to figure out, and that no one has memorized the answers to problems that have more than 2 steps; pretty much you just have to know the multiplication tables and your addition facts, to be able to do things that are much more complicated.
And THEN I gave her a shocker, which is that the answer to her question depends on how you group the parts of it. Really? The answer can be 1000, or 190, or 200, and probably others, depending on whether you don't use any parentheses at all to group them, or put parentheses in certain configurations. We talked about My Dear Aunt Sally as being the way to memorize the Order of Operations, and we did a couple of problems on napkins, both her above problem and things like
3 x 4 + 4 = 18
if there are no parentheses, and that this means
(3 x 4) + 4
But if you use a different set of parentheses like this:
3 x (4 + 4) then the answer is 24.
She loved this. She's glimpsing the fact that there is cool math beyond the multiplication tables.
We had a good first day back after vacation today. I mean yesterday, it's past midnight.
Madison, who has finally decided to take control of her own multiplication table learning, asked to create a 10 x 10 grid so she could see which ones she knew by heart and which she didn't. I printed out a grid from Excel so she didn't have to waste hours trying to make a nice one with rulers, etc. She completed all of the blank spaces, sometimes knowing the answers by heart, sometimes having to figure them out. I used it as our handwriting lesson, too, and believe it or not she was kind of enthusiastic about making it look nice, so things looked better than normal. She still kept reversing the 6's, though.
After she completed the grid, she had me test her on the tables. I put a small dot in the squares of the ones she knew by heart. Then, she took a highlighter marker and colored in all of the squares of the ones she knew, leaving the rest white. She figured out that she didn't know 38 of them, which translates to roughly 20 that she has to memorize since many of them are the same backwards-forwards.
20 seemed so manageable to her. She's going to devise strategies for doing the memorization. I'll leave her be on that for a while.
So that was the scheduled part of the day. But I love how sometimes learning happens just spontaneously rather than having been planned.
We were eating out for lunch (I want to mess up the kitchen as little as possible because of potential buyers seeing the house), and she asked me the difference between answers to equations that people knew, versus ones they had to figure out. So, she asked me, "Do you know the answer to 10 times 10 minus 10 plus 10 times 10?"
We then talked about how knowing the answer to parts of it makes the other parts easy to figure out, and that no one has memorized the answers to problems that have more than 2 steps; pretty much you just have to know the multiplication tables and your addition facts, to be able to do things that are much more complicated.
And THEN I gave her a shocker, which is that the answer to her question depends on how you group the parts of it. Really? The answer can be 1000, or 190, or 200, and probably others, depending on whether you don't use any parentheses at all to group them, or put parentheses in certain configurations. We talked about My Dear Aunt Sally as being the way to memorize the Order of Operations, and we did a couple of problems on napkins, both her above problem and things like
3 x 4 + 4 = 18
if there are no parentheses, and that this means
(3 x 4) + 4
But if you use a different set of parentheses like this:
3 x (4 + 4) then the answer is 24.
She loved this. She's glimpsing the fact that there is cool math beyond the multiplication tables.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Working and home schooling
From Deb:
Sometimes this is really hard.
I mean, the girls are very independent, especially for being 5 and 7, but sometimes clients just need me in the morning and there's no two ways about it--especially for people whose projects I've been working on a lot and getting it to them late, if you know what I mean. There's only so far that they'll be perfectly understanding about my setup.
So I'm afraid I've been giving a bit more of a reduced workload for Madison and Ella this week. I haven't been pushing Ella too hard on the reading, nor Madison on handwriting, and the multiplication strategy that Laura suggested I try with Madison involves just a bit too much of my focus for me to accomplish it this week. Add to this is the stress that I'm going to be on vacation next week, and there are things that simply.must.be.accomplished for clients before I go. I've been working until 12:30 at night (another benefit of David's being gone...he's not here to distract me, and not to give me The Disapproving Look) and getting a lot done in that quiet time, but clients actually need to converse during the day.
And I'm supposed to be the epitome of home schooling working mom, or so I may be portrayed in Sue Shellenbarger's column next week. Ah well, some days are easier than others.
On the other hand, they are getting learning time in, no doubt about it. And having fun. Gotta go and do our new "Teaching American History with Folk Songs" book and CD, which I've been promising all morning as long as their other work got done. It turned out to be a good incentive!
Looks like I'm leaning toward a Robinson approach in the next few years!
Sometimes this is really hard.
I mean, the girls are very independent, especially for being 5 and 7, but sometimes clients just need me in the morning and there's no two ways about it--especially for people whose projects I've been working on a lot and getting it to them late, if you know what I mean. There's only so far that they'll be perfectly understanding about my setup.
So I'm afraid I've been giving a bit more of a reduced workload for Madison and Ella this week. I haven't been pushing Ella too hard on the reading, nor Madison on handwriting, and the multiplication strategy that Laura suggested I try with Madison involves just a bit too much of my focus for me to accomplish it this week. Add to this is the stress that I'm going to be on vacation next week, and there are things that simply.must.be.accomplished for clients before I go. I've been working until 12:30 at night (another benefit of David's being gone...he's not here to distract me, and not to give me The Disapproving Look) and getting a lot done in that quiet time, but clients actually need to converse during the day.
And I'm supposed to be the epitome of home schooling working mom, or so I may be portrayed in Sue Shellenbarger's column next week. Ah well, some days are easier than others.
On the other hand, they are getting learning time in, no doubt about it. And having fun. Gotta go and do our new "Teaching American History with Folk Songs" book and CD, which I've been promising all morning as long as their other work got done. It turned out to be a good incentive!
Looks like I'm leaning toward a Robinson approach in the next few years!
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
First Day of School
From Deb:
We had a good First Day of School. Not a to-die-for day, with wild enthusiasm for every new idea presented to them, not a my-god-I'm-the-best-mother-educator-in-the-whole-freaking-world kind of day, not a can't-wait-to-get-to-this-new-work kind of day, but a solid day of education and (mostly) snuggles. Ella has a new attitude that she is trying on, a cranky one, but it won't work, trust me. She just needs a few days for that fact to sink in.
In between reading, handwriting, math, and logic, we pulled all of the remaining carrots we planted in the spring (a motley crop of mostly small, hairy, bitter carrots) and put them into a stew that cooked all day in the crock pot. The cooking didn't improve their taste too much, so even Ella, who is wild for carrots when I slow-cook them with my Brazilian beef stew (apple cider vinegar and cumin flavoring), didn't like them come dinnertime. We worked on the Frontier Team (Raymond will be happy to know we're about done with Chapter 3) and I had my interview with Sue Shellenbarger in peace for 40 minutes. Plus I got some work done for, well, my own work. "Real" work. And I have a loose outline for the rest of the week.
Some day, maybe my own real work will be the Frontier Team. God, that would be great. Given focus, Madison and I could probably churn out two or three per year. She LOVES writing with me.
We're going to take off all of next week and travel to various northeast friends and relatives for about 10 days. We'll make it all the way up to northern Connecticut where we'll stay with a colleague of mine and visit...yes, really!...the Gertrude Chandler Warner Boxcar Children Museum. I found out about it today, and Madison is REALLY excited about going.
And just to top it all off, heck, maybe I'll take the girls to the beach on Friday. It's not like we're going to be anywhere near a beach when we live in Rochester. Why not, we'll just go to the darned beach. TWPFFFTT to the school officials.
We had a good First Day of School. Not a to-die-for day, with wild enthusiasm for every new idea presented to them, not a my-god-I'm-the-best-mother-educator-in-the-whole-freaking-world kind of day, not a can't-wait-to-get-to-this-new-work kind of day, but a solid day of education and (mostly) snuggles. Ella has a new attitude that she is trying on, a cranky one, but it won't work, trust me. She just needs a few days for that fact to sink in.
In between reading, handwriting, math, and logic, we pulled all of the remaining carrots we planted in the spring (a motley crop of mostly small, hairy, bitter carrots) and put them into a stew that cooked all day in the crock pot. The cooking didn't improve their taste too much, so even Ella, who is wild for carrots when I slow-cook them with my Brazilian beef stew (apple cider vinegar and cumin flavoring), didn't like them come dinnertime. We worked on the Frontier Team (Raymond will be happy to know we're about done with Chapter 3) and I had my interview with Sue Shellenbarger in peace for 40 minutes. Plus I got some work done for, well, my own work. "Real" work. And I have a loose outline for the rest of the week.
Some day, maybe my own real work will be the Frontier Team. God, that would be great. Given focus, Madison and I could probably churn out two or three per year. She LOVES writing with me.
We're going to take off all of next week and travel to various northeast friends and relatives for about 10 days. We'll make it all the way up to northern Connecticut where we'll stay with a colleague of mine and visit...yes, really!...the Gertrude Chandler Warner Boxcar Children Museum. I found out about it today, and Madison is REALLY excited about going.
And just to top it all off, heck, maybe I'll take the girls to the beach on Friday. It's not like we're going to be anywhere near a beach when we live in Rochester. Why not, we'll just go to the darned beach. TWPFFFTT to the school officials.
Right-mouse-click for spelling
From Deb:
The last few days, both Madison and Ella independently have been obsessed with writing on the computer. I got Madison a new computer and printer at the beginning of the summer, and in the last couple of days, despite the fact that we haven't officially started school yet (that's today), she has preferred writing in the word processor to playing games. Ella, too, has wanted to do this on her own computer, and, really, it's independent of Madison, it's not as though she is imitating her deliberately. Ella may even have had the idea first.
One shortcoming of this is that I have had to be fairly close by, otherwise there is Spelling Shouting going on all over the house. "Mom, how do you spell SCHOOL?" one of them might shout while I'm down in the kitchen. I yell back over the sound of the sink, "School. S-C-H-O-O-L. School. There is a silent H in there, so think of it as pronounced "SK- -HOOL."
One thing that Madison can't abide when we're writing The Frontier Team together is the wiggly red line under the misspelled words or the wiggly green line under the sentence fragments that Word deems ungrammatical. Even when I tell her that it's just a proper name that Word doesn't know, or we're doing something for effect so it's okay, she wants me to get rid of that line. So of course she notices instantly when she has misspelled something in her own writing when she's on the conmputer.
I debated about 4 seconds after I thought to teach her the right-mouse-click to fix the spelling. Should I or shouldn't I? Would it just make her too reliant on the right-mouse-click and she wouldn't bother learning to spell? On the other hand, I'm not in the least concerned over her being able to spell well someday, and this way she's noticing what she did wrong (which she doesnt, particularly, when she hand writes something; it either seems okay to her, or she sees it's wrong but it's too late to do anything about it except an ugly cross-out so she lives with it), checking out the possibilities the computer provides, noticing the difference between what she did and the correct spelling (she invariably picks the correct spelling because she recognizes it instantly -- which speaks to the stupidity of the multiple-choice spelling test Laura's tutoring client will be using in her 6th-grade classroom). So, right-mouse-click it is, and she loves the independence. I'm only being consulted at times when the spelling is so far off the mark that the options don't give her the right word (such as when she tried to spell "they" T-H-A).
She didn't want to stop writing even after 9pm last night. She wanted to write in lieu of reading her new (old) Bobbsey Twins book or of having me read to her. Who was I to deny her, I figured. So I let her write until 9:30 and then snuggled with her in bed, but she was so excited by what she was doing (more on that later) that she couldn't fall asleep until almost 10:30.
The other thing that I have noticed about both girls after only a few days of this writing obsession is that they're both getting much better at knowing where the letters are on the keyboard. Madison keeps wanting to use more than one finger, so she's thinking ahead two or three letters and placing her fingers on the keyboard so she can use two or three fingers.
Ella is deinitely much faster than before in knowing where the letters are, too, although she's using just the one finger. When Ella types, though, I really do have to stick close or else she gets stuck on the spelling. Ella doesn't care a whit about the red underlinings, though, and she's content to misspell and doesn't really realize that she has done so. Interestingly, she is more willing than Madison to make an effort to memorize the short words I give her when she wants to spell them, and then type them out from her memorization. (Got. G-O-T. Got. And then she'll go over to the computer and type G-O-T.) Madison is much more interested in me giving her the sounds chunk by chunk, rather than the whole word at once.
The last few days, both Madison and Ella independently have been obsessed with writing on the computer. I got Madison a new computer and printer at the beginning of the summer, and in the last couple of days, despite the fact that we haven't officially started school yet (that's today), she has preferred writing in the word processor to playing games. Ella, too, has wanted to do this on her own computer, and, really, it's independent of Madison, it's not as though she is imitating her deliberately. Ella may even have had the idea first.
One shortcoming of this is that I have had to be fairly close by, otherwise there is Spelling Shouting going on all over the house. "Mom, how do you spell SCHOOL?" one of them might shout while I'm down in the kitchen. I yell back over the sound of the sink, "School. S-C-H-O-O-L. School. There is a silent H in there, so think of it as pronounced "SK- -HOOL."
One thing that Madison can't abide when we're writing The Frontier Team together is the wiggly red line under the misspelled words or the wiggly green line under the sentence fragments that Word deems ungrammatical. Even when I tell her that it's just a proper name that Word doesn't know, or we're doing something for effect so it's okay, she wants me to get rid of that line. So of course she notices instantly when she has misspelled something in her own writing when she's on the conmputer.
I debated about 4 seconds after I thought to teach her the right-mouse-click to fix the spelling. Should I or shouldn't I? Would it just make her too reliant on the right-mouse-click and she wouldn't bother learning to spell? On the other hand, I'm not in the least concerned over her being able to spell well someday, and this way she's noticing what she did wrong (which she doesnt, particularly, when she hand writes something; it either seems okay to her, or she sees it's wrong but it's too late to do anything about it except an ugly cross-out so she lives with it), checking out the possibilities the computer provides, noticing the difference between what she did and the correct spelling (she invariably picks the correct spelling because she recognizes it instantly -- which speaks to the stupidity of the multiple-choice spelling test Laura's tutoring client will be using in her 6th-grade classroom). So, right-mouse-click it is, and she loves the independence. I'm only being consulted at times when the spelling is so far off the mark that the options don't give her the right word (such as when she tried to spell "they" T-H-A).
She didn't want to stop writing even after 9pm last night. She wanted to write in lieu of reading her new (old) Bobbsey Twins book or of having me read to her. Who was I to deny her, I figured. So I let her write until 9:30 and then snuggled with her in bed, but she was so excited by what she was doing (more on that later) that she couldn't fall asleep until almost 10:30.
The other thing that I have noticed about both girls after only a few days of this writing obsession is that they're both getting much better at knowing where the letters are on the keyboard. Madison keeps wanting to use more than one finger, so she's thinking ahead two or three letters and placing her fingers on the keyboard so she can use two or three fingers.
Ella is deinitely much faster than before in knowing where the letters are, too, although she's using just the one finger. When Ella types, though, I really do have to stick close or else she gets stuck on the spelling. Ella doesn't care a whit about the red underlinings, though, and she's content to misspell and doesn't really realize that she has done so. Interestingly, she is more willing than Madison to make an effort to memorize the short words I give her when she wants to spell them, and then type them out from her memorization. (Got. G-O-T. Got. And then she'll go over to the computer and type G-O-T.) Madison is much more interested in me giving her the sounds chunk by chunk, rather than the whole word at once.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Woodworking birthday party
We had a fun, energetic, and non-frantic birthday party yesterday for Madison on our screened-in porch. I had always vowed (there's that vowing again!) to have the girls' birthday parties outside the house, to let other people manage it for me. But Madison really wanted to have a woodworking party with Miss Judy, from whom she's been taking lessons during the spring and summer. Miss Judy actually does it pretty cheaply, and I figured that since it would be the main activity, I wouldn't have to plan other "party games." I have always had these nightmare visions of having to corral a screaming bunch of kids and lead them from one activity to another. This was pretty tame; we had eight kids accept the invitation, although only six showed (!). I made great little gift favor bags with real tools: A small screwdriver, pliers, a level, glue (Wal-mart for only 9 cents each!), and a ruler. Miss Judy managed everything well, everyone had a good time, and as you can see from the photo, the local bakery was able to take this printout that I made by downloading some "tool alphabet" letters from the web and put it in edible form on the cake. Interestingly, every single present Madison got was art supplies, although one family also gave her a Mad Libs books.(Too bad I'm banning art projects until we sell the house. They'll have art Thursdays with Mrs. Geffken anyway.)
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
A shell story by Ella
From Deb:
Here is the kind of story Ella tells now; I guess she based it on the great time she had on Monday at the Lake Anna beach. She dictates, I type verbatim.
Finding Shells at the Beach
By Ella
Once upon a time, Ella was collecting shells at the beach. And she was going to play with them with her friend Lara. They were playing with them until they found one little shell that was little. It was a connect-shell. There was a little conch shell, but there were lots of those little connect-together shells too. Then they connected the little shells together, and then the conch shell, and they put the two little shells under the conch shell. They showed them to their mom and dad, and they were going to keep them. And they found two places that had those same things, and they did the same thing for one of them, and the other.
And then, they swam out to the deep part of the lake with their fathers. Ella found a huge conch shell at the bottom of the lake, even bigger than a child’s head. Since they couldn’t reach it, but their fathers could reach it, Ella’s father got the big conch shell and put the conch shell in a big sack. Then they swam back with Lara carrying the sack, and showed their mothers.
They kept the big conch shell until they found another one that was the big size, but it was in the shallow end of the lake. And then, they were trying to find treasure at the down part of the shallow end of the lake. They were trying to find a big shell that had these little double baby shells on it, and they found them. They also found little conch shells.
When they were going back home…the street behind Ella’s house was Lara’s house…they played at Ella’s house. They played and played, the rest of the day.
The End
Here is the kind of story Ella tells now; I guess she based it on the great time she had on Monday at the Lake Anna beach. She dictates, I type verbatim.
Finding Shells at the Beach
By Ella
Once upon a time, Ella was collecting shells at the beach. And she was going to play with them with her friend Lara. They were playing with them until they found one little shell that was little. It was a connect-shell. There was a little conch shell, but there were lots of those little connect-together shells too. Then they connected the little shells together, and then the conch shell, and they put the two little shells under the conch shell. They showed them to their mom and dad, and they were going to keep them. And they found two places that had those same things, and they did the same thing for one of them, and the other.
And then, they swam out to the deep part of the lake with their fathers. Ella found a huge conch shell at the bottom of the lake, even bigger than a child’s head. Since they couldn’t reach it, but their fathers could reach it, Ella’s father got the big conch shell and put the conch shell in a big sack. Then they swam back with Lara carrying the sack, and showed their mothers.
They kept the big conch shell until they found another one that was the big size, but it was in the shallow end of the lake. And then, they were trying to find treasure at the down part of the shallow end of the lake. They were trying to find a big shell that had these little double baby shells on it, and they found them. They also found little conch shells.
When they were going back home…the street behind Ella’s house was Lara’s house…they played at Ella’s house. They played and played, the rest of the day.
The End
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Not-Back-To-School Day
From Deb:
Yesterday, the local kids started back to school. To celebrate our not-back-to-school, we spent the afternoon at Lake Anna, a large man-made lake a little over an hour to the east. They had a lovely, clean beach, with nice sand that extended far out into the lake -- no icky, living lake bottom like they usually are, and fairly clear water that you didn't mind getting in the babies' mouths and noses.
I was feeling fiercely defiant the whole day. David was amused, and made a cryptic, not-quite-critical comment about the fact that I kept mentioning that the girls were NOT in school. I was able to spend a lot of nice, quiet time on the beach, and I realized during it that I am still burningly angry about the amount of desperately trapped feelings I had to repress at the start of school for probably 11 of the 12 years I was in public school. I wasn't psychologically able to experience those feelings then, because I wouldn't have been able to manage them. So that's what's coming out now. I resent having been forced to go, and I still experience that resentment to a degree that I find surprising now, almost 20 years later. And I was good at school, heck, I was valedictorian. I know that circumstances would be a lot different for my girls, that they would never feel trapped in the way I did...but I tell you, you'd have to pry them from my cold, dead fingers before they'd set foot in a public school as a student.
On the other hand, 15 years ago I vowed to leave the Philadelphia area forever, and just look at what are we contemplating now. So much for vows.
Yesterday, the local kids started back to school. To celebrate our not-back-to-school, we spent the afternoon at Lake Anna, a large man-made lake a little over an hour to the east. They had a lovely, clean beach, with nice sand that extended far out into the lake -- no icky, living lake bottom like they usually are, and fairly clear water that you didn't mind getting in the babies' mouths and noses.
I was feeling fiercely defiant the whole day. David was amused, and made a cryptic, not-quite-critical comment about the fact that I kept mentioning that the girls were NOT in school. I was able to spend a lot of nice, quiet time on the beach, and I realized during it that I am still burningly angry about the amount of desperately trapped feelings I had to repress at the start of school for probably 11 of the 12 years I was in public school. I wasn't psychologically able to experience those feelings then, because I wouldn't have been able to manage them. So that's what's coming out now. I resent having been forced to go, and I still experience that resentment to a degree that I find surprising now, almost 20 years later. And I was good at school, heck, I was valedictorian. I know that circumstances would be a lot different for my girls, that they would never feel trapped in the way I did...but I tell you, you'd have to pry them from my cold, dead fingers before they'd set foot in a public school as a student.
On the other hand, 15 years ago I vowed to leave the Philadelphia area forever, and just look at what are we contemplating now. So much for vows.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Back-to-school spending
From CNN.com today:
If I spend $527 on curriculum stuff for this entire upcoming YEAR I'd be amazed. And they say that public school is free?!
A survey by the National Retail Federation found the average family expects to spend $527 on back-to-school items this year, up 18 percent from $444 last year.
If I spend $527 on curriculum stuff for this entire upcoming YEAR I'd be amazed. And they say that public school is free?!
Synonym Silliness
Madison discovered the right-mouse-click thesaurus today in Word as we were working on the book. She got the biggest kick out of finding random words that we had written, and right-mouse-clicking on it to select a recommended synonym that was just "off" enough to make it funny. For example:
“No swimming, silly!” said Elizabeth.We definitely had fun!
became
“No swimming, harebrained!” said Elizabeth.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Insurance?!?
Overheard from Madison:
"Mom, why don't I have insurance?"
"INSURANCE?!?"
"Yeah, you know, where parents give kids money for doing little chores around the house."
"Mom, why don't I have insurance?"
"INSURANCE?!?"
"Yeah, you know, where parents give kids money for doing little chores around the house."
The Frontier Team book
From Deb:
Madison and I have been working on the book very hard for the last two days, and she shows no signs of wanting to stop. We've been working perhaps three hours per day!
We have a plot summary, a plot outline, the setting, annotated list of characters, the first chapter, and we're now working on the second chapter! (The chapters are pretty short.)
It's so much fun! At lunch yesterday we had a really great, long discussion about first person, second person, and third person writing, omniscient narrators, non-omniscient narrators, and why books written in the first person can't have omnicient narrators. Our book is written in the first person, although I think third-person omnicient is appealing to Madison because it makes the author into god.
Madison and I have been working on the book very hard for the last two days, and she shows no signs of wanting to stop. We've been working perhaps three hours per day!
We have a plot summary, a plot outline, the setting, annotated list of characters, the first chapter, and we're now working on the second chapter! (The chapters are pretty short.)
It's so much fun! At lunch yesterday we had a really great, long discussion about first person, second person, and third person writing, omniscient narrators, non-omniscient narrators, and why books written in the first person can't have omnicient narrators. Our book is written in the first person, although I think third-person omnicient is appealing to Madison because it makes the author into god.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Vocabulary used, PURELY from reading
From Deb:
This evening, Madison and I were talking about the Rules for Detecting that we're going to write about in our book (starting Monday!), and she proposed one to me:
"Never element a clue unless you're absolutely sure it's not part of the mystery."
Element? Of course, she meant eliminate. And she knows the word "eliminate" to speak it, in regular conversation. But she had come across the word "eliminate" written out very often in her own reading, and for some reason had always in her mind apparently pronounced it "element."
"That's funny," she said. "I kind of thought 'element' (spelled eliminate) was a synonym for 'get rid of something,' just like 'eliminate' -- I didn't realize it was the same word."
And then, a tiny bit later, she used the word "element" again, showing how firmly the written word "eliminate" is fastened in her mind with that wrong pronunciation. She was even interested, herself, in the fact that I had to correct her again (mildly and interestedly, of course. Then, the next time she used it, she said the word correctly, "eliminate."
This was fascinating from the perspective of how children learn (and how she is learning to learn independently), and also very good for her in one very important way: She got it wrong, I corrected her, she was interested introspectively in why she got it wrong, but most important, she didn't mind at all getting it wrong, and worked to get it precise...without any problem at all, without the profound embarrassment or self-consciousness that my little perfectionist sometimes exhibits. This was marvelous.
I told Madison that I remembered doing the exact same thing when I was in the second grade, and I even remembered the two words that I mispronounced because of reading them rather than speaking them: "Rapid" (which I pronounced as it's spelled: "rape-id" -- the darned word should be spelled rappid), and "crouch" (which I pronounced "crutch"). She was very interested in these words, and in fact told me that she often makes the same inner-ear mispronunciation of "crowch" into "crutch." I think it's because it is spelled like "touch."
Really, in so many ways, that girl IS me. And in so many ways, that girl IS David. Actually, she's an almost perfect blend of the two of us.
This evening, Madison and I were talking about the Rules for Detecting that we're going to write about in our book (starting Monday!), and she proposed one to me:
"Never element a clue unless you're absolutely sure it's not part of the mystery."
Element? Of course, she meant eliminate. And she knows the word "eliminate" to speak it, in regular conversation. But she had come across the word "eliminate" written out very often in her own reading, and for some reason had always in her mind apparently pronounced it "element."
"That's funny," she said. "I kind of thought 'element' (spelled eliminate) was a synonym for 'get rid of something,' just like 'eliminate' -- I didn't realize it was the same word."
And then, a tiny bit later, she used the word "element" again, showing how firmly the written word "eliminate" is fastened in her mind with that wrong pronunciation. She was even interested, herself, in the fact that I had to correct her again (mildly and interestedly, of course. Then, the next time she used it, she said the word correctly, "eliminate."
This was fascinating from the perspective of how children learn (and how she is learning to learn independently), and also very good for her in one very important way: She got it wrong, I corrected her, she was interested introspectively in why she got it wrong, but most important, she didn't mind at all getting it wrong, and worked to get it precise...without any problem at all, without the profound embarrassment or self-consciousness that my little perfectionist sometimes exhibits. This was marvelous.
I told Madison that I remembered doing the exact same thing when I was in the second grade, and I even remembered the two words that I mispronounced because of reading them rather than speaking them: "Rapid" (which I pronounced as it's spelled: "rape-id" -- the darned word should be spelled rappid), and "crouch" (which I pronounced "crutch"). She was very interested in these words, and in fact told me that she often makes the same inner-ear mispronunciation of "crowch" into "crutch." I think it's because it is spelled like "touch."
Really, in so many ways, that girl IS me. And in so many ways, that girl IS David. Actually, she's an almost perfect blend of the two of us.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Morse Code
Ella and Madison are discovering a neat new way to represent the alphabet: Morse Code! It's particularly useful for Ella. My friends from college visited last night and today, and they brought little gifts for the girls. For Madison, they brought a little electronics kit, one of whose products is a telegraph. She and David built it this afternoon, and now they're having a great time building words in Morse Code. I don't even care about the shrieky quality of the beeps the thing makes.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Editor-in-Chief
From Deb:
Went to a curriculum meeting of a bunch of HS moms and dads last night at the local Barnes & Noble. Got a couple of decent leads on some stuff that has worked for others.
One is a program called Editor-in-Chief, produced by the same Critical Press people that do the Mind Benders. Editor-in-Chief teachers grammar, spelling, and punctuation by teaching kids the editing marks and having them make the corrections on things that are wrong. I think that Madison will enjoy this kind of thing.
I also saw the workbooks for Susan Wise Bauer's History of the World series. We have the first book in the series on Ancient History, but I skimped on buying the workbook. Several moms there swear by the workbook, and when I saw it I thought it might work for us too.
Went to a curriculum meeting of a bunch of HS moms and dads last night at the local Barnes & Noble. Got a couple of decent leads on some stuff that has worked for others.
One is a program called Editor-in-Chief, produced by the same Critical Press people that do the Mind Benders. Editor-in-Chief teachers grammar, spelling, and punctuation by teaching kids the editing marks and having them make the corrections on things that are wrong. I think that Madison will enjoy this kind of thing.
I also saw the workbooks for Susan Wise Bauer's History of the World series. We have the first book in the series on Ancient History, but I skimped on buying the workbook. Several moms there swear by the workbook, and when I saw it I thought it might work for us too.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Toward a method of classifying children's literature
Theorizing from Deb:
As a means of furthering my goal of helping my KidsOutAndAbout.com readership grow ever smarter and more thoughtful about their parenting, I have started to write more book reviews and do more interviews with children's authors on the KOA site. As you know from the post that is two posts below this one, I intend to pursue writing children's books in earnest. So I've started to read Madison's books more actively. Actually, what I'm doing is steering her toward books that I enjoyed when I was a girl, and I'm either reading them with her out loud, or snagging her books and reading them on my own, as a means of formulating what I like and don't like about such books.
We're about 2/3 of the way through The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgeson Burnett, a book I loved as a kid and read until the pages fell out. Madison loves it too. Yesterday when the kids were at the pool with David, I read through to the end. I sobbed most of the way, as I would have throughout much of the first part had I not been under control while reading to Madison. It's not a sad book or anything, in fact it's quite a joyous book, but I think I was just astonished at how different it is to read the same book as an adult. One sees so much more in it. For example, I would never have understood as a child why The Secret Garden is, among other things, about redemption. The significance of redemption to human life was absolutely beyond me as a child (despite being Catholic then). I could understand it, theoretically, as a teenager, but there is no substitute for living life, making terrible mistakes and doing one's best to make up for them, to "get" what redemption is about and its significance to human relationships...and why books that address this topic can be so powerful. (Incidentally, I’m glad I have a good memory, because I can zoom back to childhood and remember what I got from reading a certain passage, and compare it with how I respond as an adult. I did this recently when I saw The Karate Kid Part II, as well. I loved that movie when I was 17. I saw it recently, and I still really like it, but now I’m seeing it from the adult point of view rather than the kid point of view. To say that it’s dramatically different is putting it mildly.)
Reading Madison’s books got me thinking a lot about the differences between the adult and child experiences of a book that is meant for children to read. After all, the book is written by an adult. Are some books experienced the same by both adults and children, and some experienced differently? What are the dimensions that comprise the differences?
I'm going to address chapter books only, because picture books are not intended to be read in the same way as are chapter books. It's true that picture books sometimes teach values, but I don't think they fall into my two neat categories, so they're out. I'm really interested in the higher-level conceptual thinking that is possible by readers of chapter books.
Here is my main conclusion: There are two kinds of children's books (aren't there always "two kinds" of everything?):
1) Books that place the child protagonists in a safe and stable world setting, in which the problem to be solved is situational, and achievements made and lessons learned are those typical in and useful to childhood.
2) Books that address personal development and integration into the rest of the world – an adult world – in which the personal development of the protagonist(s) is central to the plot.
Books of Type #2 win Newberry Medals, and books of Type #1 don’t. But I think both are important to have available for children.
Type #1 teaches concrete achievements that children ought to learn, and teaches them how to navigate their own world, an environment that has been carefully circumscribed by adults (difficult enough when you are a kid). It’s easier (and psychologically safer) for a young reader to identify with the protagonist in Type #1 books.
Type #2 books teach children to spread their mental wings beyond the concerns of childhood, to see themselves as the same person they will be when they are adults, to move in an adult world that is usually unstable and fraught with uncertainty. Type #2 gives young readers glimpses into the idea that things will change, that they will change, and that the direction in which change happens is important.
To put it briefly, Type #1 shows how to do, Type #2 shows how to become.
My next post will try to elucidate the characteristics of “Doing” books and “Becoming” books.
Question: What do you think of the words “Doing” and “Becoming” as designators of the two categories? I suspect there are better buzzwords to describe the two categories, and I’d love to have suggestions. Maybe "stable world" and "unstable world"? No, that's not that satisfying either.
As a means of furthering my goal of helping my KidsOutAndAbout.com readership grow ever smarter and more thoughtful about their parenting, I have started to write more book reviews and do more interviews with children's authors on the KOA site. As you know from the post that is two posts below this one, I intend to pursue writing children's books in earnest. So I've started to read Madison's books more actively. Actually, what I'm doing is steering her toward books that I enjoyed when I was a girl, and I'm either reading them with her out loud, or snagging her books and reading them on my own, as a means of formulating what I like and don't like about such books.
We're about 2/3 of the way through The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgeson Burnett, a book I loved as a kid and read until the pages fell out. Madison loves it too. Yesterday when the kids were at the pool with David, I read through to the end. I sobbed most of the way, as I would have throughout much of the first part had I not been under control while reading to Madison. It's not a sad book or anything, in fact it's quite a joyous book, but I think I was just astonished at how different it is to read the same book as an adult. One sees so much more in it. For example, I would never have understood as a child why The Secret Garden is, among other things, about redemption. The significance of redemption to human life was absolutely beyond me as a child (despite being Catholic then). I could understand it, theoretically, as a teenager, but there is no substitute for living life, making terrible mistakes and doing one's best to make up for them, to "get" what redemption is about and its significance to human relationships...and why books that address this topic can be so powerful. (Incidentally, I’m glad I have a good memory, because I can zoom back to childhood and remember what I got from reading a certain passage, and compare it with how I respond as an adult. I did this recently when I saw The Karate Kid Part II, as well. I loved that movie when I was 17. I saw it recently, and I still really like it, but now I’m seeing it from the adult point of view rather than the kid point of view. To say that it’s dramatically different is putting it mildly.)
Reading Madison’s books got me thinking a lot about the differences between the adult and child experiences of a book that is meant for children to read. After all, the book is written by an adult. Are some books experienced the same by both adults and children, and some experienced differently? What are the dimensions that comprise the differences?
I'm going to address chapter books only, because picture books are not intended to be read in the same way as are chapter books. It's true that picture books sometimes teach values, but I don't think they fall into my two neat categories, so they're out. I'm really interested in the higher-level conceptual thinking that is possible by readers of chapter books.
Here is my main conclusion: There are two kinds of children's books (aren't there always "two kinds" of everything?):
1) Books that place the child protagonists in a safe and stable world setting, in which the problem to be solved is situational, and achievements made and lessons learned are those typical in and useful to childhood.
2) Books that address personal development and integration into the rest of the world – an adult world – in which the personal development of the protagonist(s) is central to the plot.
Books of Type #2 win Newberry Medals, and books of Type #1 don’t. But I think both are important to have available for children.
Type #1 teaches concrete achievements that children ought to learn, and teaches them how to navigate their own world, an environment that has been carefully circumscribed by adults (difficult enough when you are a kid). It’s easier (and psychologically safer) for a young reader to identify with the protagonist in Type #1 books.
Type #2 books teach children to spread their mental wings beyond the concerns of childhood, to see themselves as the same person they will be when they are adults, to move in an adult world that is usually unstable and fraught with uncertainty. Type #2 gives young readers glimpses into the idea that things will change, that they will change, and that the direction in which change happens is important.
To put it briefly, Type #1 shows how to do, Type #2 shows how to become.
My next post will try to elucidate the characteristics of “Doing” books and “Becoming” books.
Question: What do you think of the words “Doing” and “Becoming” as designators of the two categories? I suspect there are better buzzwords to describe the two categories, and I’d love to have suggestions. Maybe "stable world" and "unstable world"? No, that's not that satisfying either.
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