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

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

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.

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

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.”

And it suddenly made perfect sense. The shoes are out to get me! They are, and I have proof.

Last spring, when my son was in kindergarten, either my husband or I would take him to the bus stop in the morning. This was a huge inconvenience, as the bus stop was full 40 feet from our front door.

Isn’t it true that most accidents happen within a mile or two of one’s home?

When it was my turn at the bus stop, I’d just slip on one of my husband’s pairs of shoes near the door. With so many to choose from already so conveniently and neatly stored by the door, why would I bother to retrieve my own shoes?

One morning, I chose my husband’s old hiking-style boots. I slid my feet into them without bothering to tie them. And as I walked toward the bus stop, I was suddenly thrust forward as my right foot got stuck on something midway through my step. Both legs were straight — I couldn’t bend my knees — and I basically did a belly flop on the street, with barely enough time to get one hand down in front of me. I landed mostly on my left knee and shoulder, with a little help from my right hand.

Ouch.

They hate me. They really hate me!

It turns out that a hook for the laces on the right boot got caught on a hook on the left boot. The hooks locked, and my foot stopped moving while my body was propelled forward and then downward.

Bruised, but for some curious reason undaunted (or perhaps simply unable to learn from past experiences), the very next morning, I slid the same pair of boots on. This time, I made it all the way to the bus stop without tripping and falling. As the kids boarded the bus, I crossed in front of it to head home.

Then the boot hooks locked again. I fell just as fast and hard and landed on the same knee and shoulder as the day before. I swear, I fell exactly the same way as the day before. But this time, I landed two feet in front of the bus, whose driver was busy watching the kids board rather than watch the stupid mother fall on her face in front of his 10-ton vehicle. By the time I was on the pavement, even if the driver had looked ahead, he wouldn’t have seen me.

The news headline flashed in front of my eyes:

Mother Trips Over Own Feet, Crushed by School Bus

Son waves goodbye to her flattened corpse as bus drives away

Even though my shoulder screamed and the rest of my body was stunned, I hopped up and got myself out of the bus’ path. I thought for sure that if I didn’t get out of the way quickly, I’d have to do one of those stunt-man-roll-between-the-tires- and-hold-my-breath-as-the-bus-passes-over-me kind of moves. And I didn’t know if I could pull it off.

At the time, I didn’t realize the boots were out to get me. I just figured I should have tied the laces or perhaps not worn shoes four sizes too big. In other words, I figured my falling was my fault.

But now I realize it wasn’t me, it was the boots! Why they wanted me out of the way, I don’t know. Perhaps they overheard me telling my husband it might be time for a new pair. Or maybe they heard me cursing when they came in with dog poo stuck in their treads. I don’t know, but clearly those spills were no accident, especially that one right in front of the school bus. If the bus had hit me, the police would have never suspected the boots. It was almost the perfect crime.

Just as Telly Savalas got Talky Tina out of his house, I removed the deadly boots from my home. I didn’t throw them in the trash, but I did put them on the back porch, far, far away from the front door so I would never again be tempted to slip them on to retrieve the mail, take out the trash, or perform some other supposedly safe outdoor activity.

They haven’t walked themselves back into the house. But this morning, as I opened the sliding door to let the fresh spring air in the house, I could swear I heard a voice on the porch say, “You better be nice to me.”

**Really, people, I hope you know I’m joking.

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

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.

The study also focused on a particular age group: 4-5-year olds. I find it somewhat funny that the study “prompted” these young children to explain their new knowledge to their mothers. As if kids that young can be stopped from showing and telling their parents all about darn near everything! Again, it’s natural for kids to show/tell their parents about new, exciting things. This show-tell-listen relationship is part of our evolutionary programming, and it happens in families without anyone even thinking about it. We just do it naturally.

The study concludes:

Prompts to explain improve learning, even for young children, and having an audience for the explanations facilitates transfer of this knowledge to novel problems. Presence of a listener may provide a natural context for helping children to stay motivated and integrate knowledge across multiple dimensions of a problem. The general lesson might be that if you are having difficulty in understanding something, you should try explaining it to your mom.

Well, it’s not like we need research to tell us that parents are important to their children. To me, the key sentence in the paragraph above is: Presence of a listener may provide a natural context for helping children to stay motivated and integrate knowledge across multiple dimensions of a problem.

Kids learn better when they tell another person what they learned. They learn best when that person is their mother — or presumably another adult they’re emotionally close to. To generalize, children need at least one caring adult who is available to listen to them explain what they’re learning. If they don’t have access to that special listener, they don’t learn as well. What will happen to their innate passion and motivation if, over time, they see that no one is available to listen to them when they’re excited about something or want to explain it to an adult to see if they really understand it?

And riddle me this: can a teacher in a conventional classroom of ~25 kids possibly be engaged with and actively listen to each child to help reinforce his/her learning? No, it’s just not possible. One human being, no matter how loving, dedicated, and skilled, cannot give all those children the attention each and every one of them deserves and needs.

But I suppose the kids can talk to their parents when they get home, right? Riiiiight. Have you ever met your kids at the door after school and asked them what they did that day and had them answer, “Nothing.”? I have — on my daughter’s first day of kindergarten. I shit you not. Where was her motivation to tell me what she learned? Where was I, her best listener, when she was excited or had a question about what was happening in the classroom? Where was the opportunity to explain to me what she accomplished that day so that it naturally reinforced what she learned? It was gone. That moment of excitement just could not be maintained until later in the day when she was able to see me again.

It would be very easy to read this study and walk away just thinking, Omigod, I’m soooooo important that when my kids tell me about something, they learn it best! I totally rule! But I’m not so great. I’m just an everyday mother who wants what’s best for her children. Even without the research, and even only part-way through our first year of homeschooling, I can see that homeschooling provides more benefits to my kids than attending school does. Maybe that won’t always be the case, but it is right now. That said, it’s nice to have more research to cite at all those cocktail parties I attend these days.

Hat tip: Kitchen Table Math

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

So we took a ride over there yesterday afternoon to walk the labyrinths and, perhaps, meditate while on our path. (Okay, with my kids, meditation — in the silent, pensive, inward-looking sense of the word — was but a pipe dream.)

It occurred to me only after I parked the car that it’s winter in New England. We still have snow on the ground. A labyrinth is, in fact, a path. On the ground. And therefore under the snow. Suddenly I was reminded of last winter when we (and when I say “we,” I mean “I”) decided it would be fun to finally try letterboxing with the kids. In the snow and 20-degree weather. It was not fun, nor, as you might expect, did we find the boxes. We did learn something that day, however: walking around in the woods, looking for something someone else has left there, on an Arctic-cold, overcast day does little to bring about family peace or unity.

See the curved path outlined by the rocks?

Given that I’ve made the same mistake two years in a row, I must be in some sort of deep, soul-level denial about winter. Either that, or I’m just incapable of learning from past experiences. The jury is still out.

Anyway, luckily, we don’t have all that much snow left, and the labyrinths were somewhat visible because they’re marked with logs and large stones. If you looked closely, you could see the curved patterns in the snow, but you couldn’t see for certain the specific path laid out. So we did the best we could to follow the intended labyrinth paths, but I’m sure we’ll have better luck once the snow melts.

Sometime in June.

Tags: labyrinth, Rolling Ridge,

Mr. Enigma sat down to draw in his sketch book. The Duke walked by on his way to do something else, noticed that Dad was drawing, peeked over his shoulder and asked, “What are you drawing?”

Monkey see, monkey do

They talked about the drawing for a moment while my husband kept working. Suddenly, The Duke grabbed a chair and pulled it up alongside Mr. Enigma’s recliner. Then he went into his room, grabbed his sketch book and pencil, and sat down next to his Dad and began drawing.

They worked that way for at least half an hour, and what a special, bonding time it was. Completely unplanned and uncoerced, creativity begot creativity.

While this side-by-side drawing was going on, my daughter was hogging my laptop, programming her first 3D animation in Alice. She took the tutorial and spent about an hour noodling around. Her finished piece was, as she put it, “A Shakespeare kind of thingy,” by which she meant a whole bunch of characters fought, declared their love for each other, and died, all in a 20-second animated movie.

What was I doing? Well, my daughter was using my computer, so I read, started getting dinner ready, and took pictures of my family just hanging out and doing stuff. It was a good day.

To see scenes from my daughter’s first movie, click the link below.

Scenes from “Oh Crap”

It’s a Shakespearean tragedy, so we all know how it ends, don’t we?

Meet Ooch (a.k.a. Brett Outchcunis), a professional yo-yoer (sp?). He does the most amazing tricks with a yo-yo, AND he gets paid by Yomega to promote their products and teach people how to yo-yo. He’s especially good with a crowd of kids, which we learned this past Saturday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Family Day in Boston.

How’s “professional yo-yo guy” for an unconventional job? Can’t you just hear the adults (but probably not his parents) in Ooch’s youth needling him with comments like, “Those yo-yo tricks are great, but you can’t get a job as a yo-yoer. Why don’t you apply yourself to school/work/something-serious-but-uninteresting like you do to that yo-yo.”

Heh. And here he is now, still playing with a toy and actually getting paid to do it, a living testament to do what you love and the money will follow.

You hear that kids? Do what you love, follow your dreams, and don’t let anyone tell you you can’t. [/steps off soapbox]

During Saturday’s show, which focused on the physics of yo-yos, Ooch invited my daughter on stage to demonstrate a key physical property of the ever-popular “around the world” yo-yo trick: centripetal force. Ooch is clearly blown away by my girl’s mad cup-swinging skillz. Who wouldn’t be?

Tags: yo-yos, Ooch, Brett Outchcunis, AAAS, yo-yo physics, do what you love