Yeah, yeah, I know it’s July, but I’m still trying to catch up with my blogging. In any case, back in April, after spending too much time at home during the winter months, I went a little field-trip crazy and signed the us up for a grand total of 12 field trips or activities — out of 20 weekdays in the month. By the end of the month, as you might imagine, I was hearing things like, “Where are we going this time?” and “Do we have to go?”

We’re going here and yes, we have to go, because I already paid for it.

Hey, I was a homeschooling rookie this past year. Now I’ve learned my lesson: take it easy on the spring activities, no matter how eager you are to get out of the house.

Luckily, Walden Pond was one of our first trips early in the month, so we had yet to succumb to field-trip malaise. The weather was mild (for April) and sunny. Our tour guide did a nice job of summarizing Henry David Thoreau’s life in his Walden Woods cabin.

Of course, you can read all about Thoreau’s two years there, sometimes in excruciating detail, in his book, Walden. One detail he left out — I know, because my 7-year-old asked the tour guide — is where he read the Sunday paper, if you catch my drift. Apparently, Thorough avoided writing about such unseemly bodily functions in Walden. But if you’re into famous-people quotes, Walden is the book in which Thoreau penned the “live the life you’ve imagined” and “march to the beat of a different drummer” lines, except that’s not exactly what he wrote in either case, but most people don’t exactly care as long as the gist is right, and it is.

I understand why Thoreau wanted to live near Walden Pond: as you can see from the photos below, 160 years later, the pond is still beautiful, even before the leaves on the trees around it are in full bloom. Unfortunately, my photos don’t show just how sparkling blue the water is. The pond was formed by receding glaciers from the last ice age, and the water is still absolutely brilliant and blue.

Makes me want to jump in, now that summer is here.

In the summer, this is where you find the swimmers.

During the two years Thoreau lived in Walden Woods,
he measured the pond’s dimensions and depth,
and amazingly,
more recent measurement with modern tools have shown
Thoreau’s to be accurate.

Tags: Henry David Thoreau,, Walden,, Walden, Pond

I‘ve been so bloggedy-blog-blog busy that I haven’t had time to, um, blog in the past several weeks. How sad that it’s almost summer and I haven’t finished writing about spring. I’ll never get all the details down now, but trust me when I say we had a lot of fun this spring, what with the 5,000 field trips I registered us for and the general whoopin’ it up we do on a daily basis.

Okay, we don’t whoop all that much, but when we do, we really whoop like nobody’s business. In a nerdy sort of way.

Take, for instance, March 14, otherwise known as the day before the Ides of March or Pi Day (3.14 - get it?). Plus, it’s someone’s birthday. Of all people, Albert Einstein had the good sense to be born on Pi Day. How fortuitous for Albert and for me! I have kids, so I now have an excuse to celebrate Einstein’s birthday, which is something that never occurred to me to do when I was young. Can’t imagine why. Now, of course, I’m all for adding more birthday celebrations to our calendar, especially if they s-t-r-e-t-c-h out the time until my next birthday.

The Einstein birthday party was actually my daughter’s idea. She was mad that I didn’t tell her it was Einstein’s birthday until 9 o’clock that evening. “Now I missed it!” she complained. But I assured her that she could have an impromptu party the next day, and none of the kids on the block were likely to know or care that we were a day late. After all, she had no idea about Einstein’s birthday until I told her, right? So in the morning she created the invitations and helped me with the party activities. When one of her friends arrived for the party, we explained what the party was and what we’d be doing, to which he replied, “I thought this was going to be a normal party.”

Normal, schmormal. Some party highlights:

The Einstein Quiz
In which we asked truly trivial questions about Albert Einstein’s life that none of the kids could answer correctly. Can you believe none of them even knew he was German? Sheesh, take an educated guess, people! (NB: The oldest kid at the party was 10.)

If I Only Had a Brain
In which art imitated life. Look at the photo of Albert. Something’s missing — his brain! No wonder his hair is always a mess.

I bet he has a splitting headache.
(Note the awesomeness of my Photoshop skillz.)

Luckily, the kids stepped in and played Pin the Brain on Einstein, with one child actually sticking a brain in the hole in the astrophysicist’s head. Nice job!

I wish it were this easy for me to get another brain or two.

Let Them Eat Pi
In which a 9-year-old used a pie (and whipped cream) to explain pi. Pie humbly and doubly serves humanity by being both a math manipulative and a dessert, while pi serves as the shortest mathematical term with the longest value (more than a trillion digits and counting!).

Mathematically good!

Tags: Albert Einstein's birthday, Pi Day

And who am I to argue with the eloquent, hard-working Pioneer Woman?

I think part of being a homeschooler is being somewhat of a nonconformist, somewhat of an anarchist, with a healthy amount of “freak” thrown in there somewhere, as well as an overall absence of good sense.

The rest of the post is, as usual, funny. With photos.

Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day! If you loves you some comic books, stop by your local comic book store and see if they’re participating. Or better yet, search for participating stores in your area before venturing out.

Just by showing up at a participating store, you’ll get at least one free comic book. Some stores give out two or three. It’s up to each store to decide. We learned about this event last year and found out that yes, stores really do give away comic books on this one day per year. You’ll probably have to choose from a limited selection and you won’t be able leave with arms full of free stuff, but that’s how it should be. If one free comic book isn’t enough for you, then you’re really kind of greedy, aren’t you?

Comic books are having something of a renaissance in America right now. In fact, they — along with their more lengthy and haughtily named cousin, the graphic novel — are downright acceptable in schools these days, to the point that some are being written and published for the school and library markets. Unfortunately, once they’re deemed “educational,” they get saddled with vocabulary lists and glossaries and comprehension questions in the back of the book. Talk about a buzz kill.

So skip the library this time and support your local businesses. Go get yourself a non-school-market, free comic book, buy one or two more at the regular price, and corrupt your children’s minds and morals the old fashioned way.

Tags: Free Comic Book Day, comic books, free stuff

Today isYesterday was National SpankOut Day. I don’t usually care for these kinds of days of observance — mostly because there’s a day for everything, including the unbelievably trivial, but also because I don’t see much of a purpose to making the days official in some way — but if SpankOut Day helps just one parent stop spanking his/her kids, then it’s worth it.

Chris O’Donnell has collected some posts on his Evolved Homeschooler Wiki.

Tags: SpankOut Day, Evolved Homeschooler

Sure, they look all comfy and innocent….

Spring, the season of rebirth and renewal, has finally arrived in New England. Our forsythia blooms, the tulips push through the cold earth, and the magnolia buds ready for opening. Outdoors, signs of life abound. But spring has also brought new life indoors … to me.

Each winter, I tease my husband that he and the kids are trying to collect on my life insurance policy by leaving their shoes and boots all over the staircase landing — and particularly close to the steps themselves — thereby increasing my chances of tripping and falling head first into the full-length window directly across from the stairs. This would be the same landing that’s always dark because the overhead light burns through bulbs like Mexican water runs through American tourists. With my klutziness, the perfect storm brews all winter.

Note the forced casual look of these strewn-about
shoes and boots. Even the dog is getting in on the
act! (See red arrow). Also, note that not a single
pair of my shoes can be found on
the landing.

A few days ago, as I was noting that I could finally put the menacing snow boots away for the season and breathe a sigh of relief at having survived yet another dangerous winter on my own staircase, my husband reminded me of the Twilight Zone episode “Living Doll.” In it, Telly Savalas plays a grumpy newlywed who’s peeved that his bride somehow neglected to mention that she had a daughter… until after the wedding. Savalas’ character is bitter and just plain disdainful of his new step-daughter. But he meets his match in her talking doll, Talky Tina. The supposedly inanimate Tina seems like a regular toy around most people. She recites the appropriate prepackaged lines in front of them. But Tina secretly torments Savalas, who doesn’t like the doll because he didn’t want his wife to buy it for his unwanted step-daughter in the first place. (To make matters worse, Savalas’ character is also bitter because he’s infertile, which, given his anger management issues, is not necessarily a bad thing.)

Anyway, Talky Tina doesn’t like Angry Daddy, and she tells him that. He’s a little freaked out, starts to get paranoid (and, not surprisingly, angrier), and throws her in the trash. Of course, he later finds the doll back in the house. You just can’t throw Tina away! She has feelings. Eventually, when Talky Tina has finished playing with Savalas’ sanity, she places herself juuuuuust right on the stairs, where Savalas trips over her and falls to his death. Tina ends the episode by telling the little girl, “My name is Talky Tina…and you better be nice to me!”

This Is Not the Relationship Most Women Have with Shoes

After my husband recounted the Twilight Zone plot, I thought, “Am I now supposed to believe all those shoes on the landing are not there for some nefarious reason?” I mean, if you were trying to convince me that you hadn’t put the shoes at the foot of the steps to trip me, would you tell me a story about someone tripping and falling down steps?**

But then I realized what Mr. Enigma was trying to say. He wasn’t reaffirming his role in my future demise. But he wasn’t saying I was safe, either. He was saying, “I’m not out to get you, honey, the shoes are.”

Keep reading… »

Tags: boots, shoes, Twilight Zone, Talky Tina, Telly Savalas

Check this out: a study by Vanderbilt University indirectly supports the value of homeschooling. It concludes that kids learn best when they explain what they’re learning to their mom. Previous studies (if not oodles of personal experience) have shown that people learn more when they generate explanations of what they’ve learned. The Vanderbilt study examined whether it’s important if the explanation is for oneself or for a listener, and also if the specific listener mattered.

In other words, do children learn better when they explain something to someone else?

Don’t we all?

And does it matter if that someone else is one of the most important people in a child’s life?

Shouldn’t it?

From “Learning from explaining: Does it matter if mom is listening?”
The goal of the current study was to examine whether explaining to another person improves learning and transfer. In the study, 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 54) solved multiple classification problems, received accuracy feedback, and were prompted to explain the correct solutions to their moms, to explain the correct solutions to themselves, or to repeat the solutions. Generating explanations (to selves or moms) improved problem-solving accuracy at posttest, and explaining to mom led to the greatest problem-solving transfer. The study indicates that explanation prompts can facilitate transfer in children as young as 5 years and reveals that it matters if mom is listening. [emphasis mine]

Well, DUH. It always matters if mom is listening. And she usually is, as is dad. Most parents naturally help their babies and young children learn new things by talking to them (even when they’re too young to “talk back”), answering their questions (even the thousandth “why?” for the day), and listening and otherwise showing genuine interest when their kids say, “Hey, Mom, look at this!” or “Hey, Dad, guess what?” This is the natural state of early exploration and learning for all humans raised by other loving humans.

Should this relationship be any different as kids get older? Would a parent’s genuine, natural interest in what’s going on in his/her child’s mind (and life) not continue to exist and nurture the child’s learning? It seems obvious to me that if a parent doesn’t drastically change the way s/he interacts with and listens to his/her kids, the benefits of having that parent as a “listener” would never dissipate. It also seems obvious that the more time a child spends with his/her parents actually learning and talking to them, the better.

Homeschooling, then, naturally provides a superb learning environment for children.
Keep reading… »

Tags: moms help kids learn, homeschooling, listening, learning