Mothering Forum banner

October Unschooling Thread

6K views 44 replies 9 participants last post by  transpecos 
#1 ·
Anything goes!

Reflections, news, inspiration, commiseration, stream-of-consciousness....

Miranda
 
#2 ·
I am elated for October, Fall, Pumpkins, 'nicer' weather. Hopefully my own attitude will change a bit. I am ready to kiss summer good bye for several months around here.

Today we have 'fluffy' clouds to the north, still air, and temps in the 90's.

Plan for the day is a quarterly trip to walmart (generally happens around the holidays and no other time), trip to grocery store as teenager is convinced we are going to STARVE if I miss a week of shopping. Tonight I want to sit on the couch and work on a crochet blanket project.

I need to call the Dr on monday as my back is not improving, I had xrays last week out of desperation.
 
#3 ·
Oct :hide where has this year gone??

We are plugging along here. We are in a new place. We will go back to the afterschool program once a week. We love the kids. N wants to do science with them. So, we asked the director whom was more then willing to have us back. :love

N loves science and wants to share his knowledge of animals and all other stuff. To him this is not "school" stuff it is just fun stuff. It should be great. He is planning a bird lesson as we speak. :nerd:

We are going apple picking Monday. Hoping for good weather...OK, October here we go.
 
#5 · (Edited)
This week my webhosting service had a hardware failure. They host my website, my blog with 19 years of journaling about parenting and family and me and my family. As well as a couple of other community volunteer sites I host (the fundraising site for our refugee family and a housing exchange site) and all my important email accounts. It took them three days to restore things, and at the end, once everything was finally back, I realized that I need to print off more of it. I had used a blog-to-book service a couple of times in the past to archive the first few years, but the most recent year I'd had printed up was 2008.

It feels really expensive, but then I think to myself:
  • I'm not buying scrapbooks with archival paper
  • I'm not buying paper journals and special pens
  • I'm not buying stamps and washi tape and embellishments
  • I'm not paying for photo printing
And alternatively:
  • I'm not paying $84 a year for pro cloud storage that would allow me to backup my blog continuously so that it would be safe in case of abject webhost failure

So really, if it costs me $250 to archive four precious years of my kids' lives, and there's the bonus that we get these amazing hold-in-our-hands books that we can leaf through and giggle over, it's money well spent.

Today I got out the volumes that cover 2003 to 2008. Fiona and I leafed through and giggled and read aloud to each other. Unschooling Memory Lane. And I'm getting 2009 through 2012 ready to publish.

Miranda
 

Attachments

#7 · (Edited)
Last week I used my mad internet skillz to find the father of the refugee family we're sponsoring online. We've been waiting patiently to be notified by the Canadian government of their flight details, at which point we'll have a few days to organize picking them up and getting them settled. But we know so little about them besides names, genders and ages, that it's been hard to prepare properly, especially for whatever language barrier might be present.

So I found a guy I thought was him, sent a message, and waited. It is him! Africa is backwards in many ways, but in terms of cellphone technology they are very much there... they just kind of vaulted past land lines and everyone has mobile phones, which means that in the cities at least it is possible for even poor refugees to have Facebook accounts and access.

I just got off a Skype call to them. Dad's English is very functional. His wife understands and speaks some. The kids know a bit and are picking up a lot by watching cartoons in English ("X-Men!" one of them shouts in the background).

It was an amazing experience to connect! They had been so demoralized to have heard nothing since July when they were told to wait to receive a travel itinerary notification, especially since their medical clearance is set to expire at the beginning of December. Their hope has been restored ... I sure hope rightfully!

Fiona and I have had great fun this afternoon composing an email describing our community, ourselves and the school to people who know next to nothing. Drawing ourselves up short after writing "during the school week" and realizing that might need more explanation... substituting "shops" for "stores," keeping grammatical constructions simple, easy to understand and/or translate.

But we couldn't think of a simple way to explain our homeschooling so we omitted it for now. I mean this is a family for whom consistent affordable schooling for six children has been nothing but a pipe dream. Dad is a teacher and has endeavoured to help them learn some academic skills at night, but school is the ideal in their world view and the prospect full-time schooling is a massive perk of immigrating to Canada.

I mean, really unschooling is a first-world luxury these days. Sure it was the natural way for kids to learn in tribal times, or even in pre-industrial communities ... but to a large extent the children were limited to the skills, knowledge and expectations of those often dire living situations. It is only by being part of a safe, relatively affluent and literate society that provides so many resources for to learn and interact with, that unschooled children are capable of learning all those 21st century tools for success. If you're part of a culture that is trying to pull itself out of a pit of poverty, lack of opportunity and illiteracy, that's when you need schools. Not because all parents are lacking education themselves, but because from a practical standpoint neither they nor the environment around them have the resources necessary to support and facilitate home-based learning sufficient to springboard their kids into a better life.

So yeah. We'll explain homeschooling and unschooling some other time, some other way. Best to say "Fiona learns violin, singing and dancing outside of school. In school her favourite subject to study is mathematics." And leave it at that.

Miranda
 
#8 ·
Nazmum -- thanks for the song. I think my son wanted more depth out of the info in it, though. It's kind of the place we're at -- most of the stuff designed to be cute and fun is introducing stuff he already knows, and some of the rest is kind of hard to decipher.

Miranda -- Those books look cool. My sister-in-law does something similar with her travels. I wish I was a better documenter of the day-to-day stuff in my own household. But I write as a career, and that sometimes makes it harder to make time for that other sort of writing.

zebra -- I cannot imagine temperatures in the 90s! It's been so many years since I've been in them.

The two-day mountain backpack with friends turned into 3 days, because it was too beautiful. The last part of the ridge is kind of knife-edge steep, and my son was afraid of heights, super slow going up and down. Then got distracted by a math puzzle he'd invented for himself (take a number between 1 and 99, divide 10s digit by 2, multiply 1s digit by two, and add those together to get a new number 46 -> 20+12 ->32, for example). Which ended up being a much more interesting problem than any of us had anticipated, leading to several different possible infinite loops and interesting patterns. Probably the only math he's done in weeks, but those little explorations seem to add up to plenty.

Now it's raining and I'm thinking it's time to organize the freezer, make jam, that kind of thing...
 
#9 ·
Went to airport with husband this morning; he called from Newark before crossing the ocean to visit sister in Edinburgh and mom in France and then do some stuff with mom & maybe sister in London, before heading back to E. to fly home. 17ish days, plenty of time for family stuff. Last time his sister melted down because the chocolate sent specially to all of them wasn't vegan, and on the very last day Mom tried to stiff the cab driver who was going to take them to the airport an hour away; she thought the price was 49 pounds and it was 56...the driver almost drove off, stranding them far from husband's waiting plane, before mom could be made to see reason. (Being cranky is a apparently a perk of aged parenthood...I speak from experience!

So I've written a small list of things that should be done, and add to it as I think up stuff...so far I have switched the books in two bookcases and earmarked 8 for total removal and another stack for putting in the den until another place is found for them. I hand weeded part of the east and south gravel spaces around the house (against fire); maybe can finish off the smaller plants with a rake. The dogs have dispersed the gravel anyway, patches of landscaping fabric show through.

Yana has been leaving her dogs here again during the day; guessing the landlord found he liked having them gone, when she was visiting her sister!

I love taking car trips, but I hate driving more than a half hour or so by myself, so today I was happy that when the public radio station I found diminished about 40 milies from the Big City, I could tune into our local public radio; the transmitter is on top of a mountain, so I could hear (with a couple of faint spots) the morning classical program and the news all the way home. Abiout the news, I will say nothing! Except, grrr.

Tonight I'm thinking about hanging a big map on the wall. I'll have to put some hangers of some kind (maybe cannot even find, have lost a bunch of hangers for paintings) into the beam on top of the adobe wall that supports the roof.

So, a lot of projects. And here's hoping that Son has completed his car project by the time that husband gets back home! (Gutted car, car parts everyhwere, including some he doesn't know where are, because apparently a cat knocked on the floor and they rolled away. The needed parts are supposed to arrive tomorrow, so maybe the work can proceed steadily from there!

Yana here, must find her electric bill. There should be a credit on it...

Deborah
 
#10 · (Edited)
I've seen more of Son & Yana than expected: Yana is again dropping her dogs off during the day (and Harpo Slim, the psycho dog, who acts like a regular dog when she is around, but won't come inside when she isn't) seems to be going after the smaller fig clump, will have to protect but will be a little harder to fence in than the first, but fortunately as the smaller and less productive clump, not as distressing to dh, who is the REAL special needs one around here...

In dh's absence I a) have been avoiding my GIS job, b) split my lessons into two days (today I will be driving to town for just two lessons, but next week three, and after that, who knows, and tomorrow five, plus some unaccounted for, my "distance learners")...

And I've been trying to accomplish the first successful "move in" in my life, where the house ends up being what I/we want it to be. (We've been here over a year: three rooms and two closets are still horrible. The pantry isn't bad, but could be better. And if one's tools are stored in the base of the kitchen island, there are probably attractive ways to do it. I felt vindicated when visiting a fellow book club member's house the other day: they have tools in their kitchen island too, and their house is probably three times the size of ours. If not more.) Because I've worked more than usual, some of the usual Basic House Maintenance had fallen behind (why the espresso basket was lost in the laundry basket for days; usually I keep up on laundry). Husband has been gone since Monday and the kitchen still has not reached a pristine state, partly because Yana showed up last night, stir fried some veggies for the two of us, and somehow managed to use two pans. Unless one was left over from husband's last cooking event, on the weekend!

I'm still avoiding repairing the hem of one of Zela's skirts. (I had planned to copy a dress pattern and send her some clothes when husband visits her over Thanksgiving. Now, I don't know...).

Instead, I dismantled part of my violin case. Backstory: when I bought my violin, I wanted a light, violin shaped case that would be easy to travel with (by plane or train), easy to carry...so I bought a Bobelock case from the violin shop. So did husband. (We got our violins at about the same time.) He went cheap, with the plastic handle. I got the more durable looking handle. And the case smelled really really nasty...apparently it was made in the Philippines, and the plush was attached with a glue made from rabbits. (Husband's case doesn't smell bad.) So my friend offered to let me have any case from his distributor, at his cost plus shipping. He suggested one I might like: he'd seen a "small" Bam case, just the length of the violin, with a separate tube that would hold two bows. So I got it, in a nice maroon. I liked the case, especially because it has a thick padding that has proven to protect against both hot and cold, but various parts started to fail. I wasn't so entranced with the big pouch on the back, for music and a tent and a change of clothes, apparently...hard to slip this thing on an airplane without it being diverted to "baggage that you can pick up at the side of the plane as you get off". The zipper that closes the case failed (and it doesn't have a latch); the zipper that closes the pouch failed. So today I went at the pouch with seam ripper and scissors and cut it off! Then I took the shoulder strap (I always use either the handle or the backpack straps; I tell you this thing is loaded with unnecessary features!) and cinched it up to the right size to hold the case shut, in the absence of functional zippers. I toyed with the idea of cutting out the "raincoat" (a cover that zips into its own pouch and can be unfurled and used to envelop the whole case if you have to go on the Ark or something) but realized that it still might be useful in a delulge, given the state of the zippers. THEN I had to find a kid backpack to put in the stuff that I usually carry in the pouch: for today's lesson I am experimenting on two students with a supplemental method (to Suzuki) to see how they like it. (It takes some kids a long time to really start going through Book 1; I want to keep their attention!) So, you have it.

I have more than two weeks to make messes, before dh comes home!

Son TOLD me to not be alarmed if I saw the carport light on last night; he thought he might work on his car after work. I have no idea if he did, but the cardboard boxes in the carport that were arranged next to his car have been moved over a bit, so maybe?

Deborah
 
#11 · (Edited)
Ooh, my sister has a Bam Trekker. She loves it for urban commuting and walking to and from her studio in all kinds of weather. Hers has stood up really well. The only thing she dislikes is having to use the bow tube.

My violin case is 33 years old. About 15 years ago I sewed a new Cordura zippered cover for it. That's now all that's holding it together.

Sophie is now one month into her college experience. Her dorm was the location of an attempted murder yesterday -- a very serious assault that was fortunately derailed before the injuries were critical. A friend of hers disarmed and restrained the perpetrator until police arrived. Yikes! This was on the same floor as Sophie's room, though on the other wing. She was arriving back from class as the police screeched up. When my eldest two went off to college they were living in apartments on their own and travelling through dodgy neighbourhoods to get to and from school. I worried about them a bit but I never thought to worry about something like this with Sophie living in a lovely first-year dorm with key card entry points.

I am spending so much time lately on my correspondence with the Somali family. I feel the responsibility of being the spokesperson for our sponsorship group, our community and our country weighing pretty heavily. Today I am trying to be honest about the cultural and religious isolation they will experience here, while making it clear they will be welcomed and supported. While not overwhelming them with too many ideas to process.

mckittre, I loved the description of your son's math puzzle. Was he doing it iteratively? i.e. take the new answer and plug it back into the processing function? If so did he get interested in the sequence of answers? Don Cohen has some pretty neat work/play with iterative sequences with young children that introduce calculus. You can buy his worksheets; I think for a while the pdf was available for free but the website seems to be defunct. Here's a snippet of one of his early exercises that will give you a taste:

http://www.mav.vic.edu.au/members-area/item/171-share-2-cookies-between-3-people.html

Miranda
 
#12 ·
Ooh, my sister has a Bam Trekker. She loves it for urban commuting and walking to and from her studio in all kinds of weather. Hers has stood up really well. The only thing she dislikes is having to use the bow tube.

My violin case is 33 years old. About 15 years ago I sewed a new Cordura zippered cover for it. That's now all that's holding it together.
I've had the case more than ten years (can't remember exactly) and the only problem I had with it before recently was that the elastic that holds the bow tube on stretched. But...then all the ************ failed within a few months (this hasn't been going on long) and I realized that we were looking at Condition Super Critical. I wish I'd cut off the pouch a long time ago now; it actually looks like it was meant to look that way! But because the zippers don't look easy to replace, will probably end up making its own snug jacket! (I have thermoplastic cases that are Older Than God and still functional...why is it that the cheapest sometimes last the longest?)

And the dorm stuff...that is really horrible. I always think of college campuses as somehow immune from crime (halls from higher learning and all) but I can think of horrific things that happened at almost all of the ones I know...usually the perp was not a student though, more often a person with mental illness who had been a beneficiary of catch & release programs for sexual predators (and by the time they found their campus prey, murderers). I hope that is the LAST of that sort of thing that your daughter is near!

Deborah
 
#13 ·
Baby bunnies growing up fast. The girls are fast becoming experts, and they have from the beginning been the authorities on them. With some exceptions, they have taken on most of the responsibility for the care of their animals. I still do a lot, but I don't grumble because they are my animals, too. I do scold a little if I find they've run out of water (especially Mama Bunny), but in general they are stepping up nicely, if unevenly, and without prodding.

DD2 has decided she likes picking up and organizing. If the house no longer looks like a bomb went off, it's because of her. My little Hurricane has finally tamed herself. She loves it; she loves the clean spaces. I looked around and for the first time yesterday, I felt like my house isn't any worse than anyone else's (okay, not *quite* there, but in the ballpark). It takes a load off my mind.

Both of them have been taking on baking projects, almost completely without my help. I'm trying not to show impatience when they need more help than anticipated. I have a lot of homework, and it gets disrupted constantly. I know I battle with the feeling that I am intruding on everyone's lives, and suddenly I see myself possibly passing on that feeling to my daughters by expressing irritation at being interrupted. I wonder if I picked up on that idea similarly. I know my mom was very reclusive in some ways, and I know she didn't relish the realities of being a mom, so I look and I wonder.

The girls, though they grumble, are getting used to the routine of coming to school with me. It's usually 4, sometimes 3 days this quarter and never for very long. As usual, our most intense "curriculum" is learning to get along. DD1 needs to learn some self control, which would be typical for all kids, but I think with everything I know of her personality, that she is rather "spectrum-y". Our counselor wouldn't agree that she could be classified officially, but many of those traits are present in her to the degree that they can be obstacles. Not that it makes a difference in the end, but it does make a difference in the patience I am able to muster. Yesterday, especially, I felt more compassionate than annoyed. That's a good sign for me, as the depression/anxiety/burnout stuff I've been dealing with for the last two years has very often precluded *feeling* love and compassion for my kids. Empathy is there, I know, because I act on it. But I don't *feel* it. I don't *feel* the love I have for my kids. It's far too buried under the stress and anger and irritation. But yesterday, it was there, even in the midst of the intensity. That is progress.
 
#15 ·
But yesterday, it was there, even in the midst of the intensity. That is progress.
It is indeed. And I really appreciate the way you have teased apart the empathy, and the actions, and the emotions of love. They're all a little different, yet they're all interconnected.

I'd venture to say that most parents run the hamster wheel of daily life without experiencing the emotional part of love for their children more than occasionally. And it can become depressing and the source of existential angst to live that way, only reminding yourself intellectually that you love your children. Accepting that the feelings are there, and that there are simply obstacles that can -- at least theoretically -- be cleared away, is a lovely way of looking at it. I'm sure it would be really helpful for most of us to adopt that attitude.

Actually if I had to describe my entire life philosophy, it would be very much in line with this. eg. There is goodness at the heart of all. If it's not in evidence, it's because of some sort of obstacle. Let's try to sweep the obstacle away, why don't we?

Miranda
 
#14 ·
Yesterday I asked my students what was different about my violin case. They could not say, even though they've seen me take books and stuff out of the now-absent pouch zillions of times! And now the left side *********** is working again, weird.

I've been trying to get up earlier in the morning (now that I have to be at the vet at 8 on weekends and holidays, and sometimes sub teach at school), so today I was out before sunrise, grubbing weeds out of the perimeter gravel by hand and with a tool. The "dog yard" and the turn circle in the middle of the driveway are now the worst.

I cleaned the plexiglass window that Yana's cat whizzed on that goes in the bathroom ceiling and reinstalled it, and noticed that it is now quite a bit lighter than the other one, which still has a build up of dust. So one of my jobs today is climbing on top of the bathroom ceiling (some of our rooms are boxed in under a much taller ceiling; I have no idea why the bathroom is right next to the open kitchen; that's the one design flaw in the house in my opinion) and washing it. The ladder I usually use to get up there is a hand built affair, a couple of poles that look like they were shaped by adze with rungs lashed on...I prop somewhere on the floor (made of bricks that were dry laid on sand at one time, so it's not level) and, holding firmly to the wall or whatever is in reach, clamber up. I was thinking of checking to see if the figs are pretty much harvested...bring in the 10 foot folding ladder that has been permanently set up there for a couple of months! (I found one the other day, but Fig Season is done I think...)

So, going to town to the PO and maybe something at the store to cook for Son, who wants to be able to drive his car by time to pick up Lela this afternoon! Maybe a run by the thrift store on the way, to drop off some plastic bags and check out the blue jeans stock, and the books of course...

Today's high was last night at midnight; this cool (mid fifties) and dark and damp day means that a couple of cats have tucked themselves in inside nooks, like next to the water heater.

Deborah
 
#19 ·
I must be getting old.

I am giving a talk next week. This is the third time I am running it, and have spent a lot of time collecting the slides for the new version.

But I am a procrastinator!

Usually I just open my mouth and talk, draw and field Qs in real time. But I have been asked to bullet point the talk because the translators need a few days to get the technical terms sorted, and, they want the talk to be under 3 hours long.

Any one got any suggestions on getting things done?

a
 
#20 ·
Any one got any suggestions on getting things done?
Hehe, I'm a lifelong procrastinator too. But as my life has got more chaotic and less compartmentalized, and as I've got older and less willing to deal with unnecessary stress, I've discovered that there's a great feeling that comes from waking up in the morning and knowing that there is nothing hanging over my head that I have been putting off.

I've started bullet-journaling recently, which is kind of fun and is helping me get things done. Like so many Pinterest-worthy trends of the last decade or two, it is possible to get sucked into an expensive and time-consuming hole of tools, techniques and aesthetics. But at its root, a bullet journal involves nothing more than an empty booklet of some sort, a pen, and an organizational system that you design and modify organically according to your needs. There are really no rules.

I am a smartphone person, but I've discovered that no matter what apps I use, it takes longer to create entries on a phone than on a notepad, and the format is either simple to use but much too constraining or so dense with nested menu options that it is challenging to get to the features that you know are there. Sometimes I'll take a photo of the current week's bullet journal page with my phone to refer to it, but despite being very much a tech person, I have to admit the paper notebook has major advantages for me.

Miranda
 
#26 ·
Waiting for the storm systems to arrive tomorrow. We'll start with some heavy rain, then rain and wind, then a typhoon remnant (!!!) I should put out containers to measure the rainfall. Our little road through the valley floods easily, so I might need to park the car over the hill tonight, and definitely tomorrow night so I can drive to school the next day. It never hurts to have a woodsy walk in the morning (I'm hoping the woodsy walk doesn't become menacing with the wind, though.

Anyone want a baby bunny? :wink:
 
#27 · (Edited)
Zela and I have a small? thing for me to spell tonight; haven't seen her yet.

Yana picked up her dogs, who seem to be living here now while she works again (I put wire fencing loosely around the other figs that Slim was eating; will have to remember to trim out some of the damage before husband gets home. Fortunately it is the less productive clump, on the thinnest bit of soil.)

Son called to say that he starts Monday as a mechanic & makes 12 bucks an hour if they keep him. Of course he is hoping to get this other job, which I think pays not a lot more, but cheap housing & benefits, but comes with the problem of not being in the town where his daughter lives, and he'd still have a lot of picking her up after school, etc. Anyway, it turns out that when he wants a job (contrary to what he thinks, based on his experience with the one he REALLY wants), he can get it. In spite of his history degree...

Two interesting things happened during my trip to teach today. I have two 8 year olds (one I taught for a couple of years, a couple of years ago and the other has played piano since five but not violin), and they want their lessons together, and they've combined their practice book, and we were all working together, and the teacher who owned that room was watching with great interest, and asked how young I'll teach, and I said four, and after asking if I have room, she turned to her little daughter and said "Would you like to do that?" Sigh...if I lived in the Bigger Town, I'd have a full studio... but the more interesting thing was that I'm beginning to think there is something about the age of ten. I've started lessons again with a lovely kid of twelve who at ten was scatterbrained and headstrong and we PLODDED through lessons, and she didn't even NOTICE that her lessons were withdrawn by her mom last year (she mentioned it seemed like a long time since last spring, and I said it's actually been almost a year and a half!, and she said why?)...so anyway, she hasn't lost the skills that I wasn't sure she ever got, and she's all focused and eager and I JUST DO NOT KNOW WHAT HAPPENED, but it gives me some hope for my current ten year old student (seriously dyslexic & organizationally challenged too) who is SO HARD TO WORK WITH. (Emphasis mine... ;) )

I'm really understanding the grandparental role now, through my granddaughter, but more through my students. Their parents are so concerned that their kids focus and work hard as its own reward and I'm like, yeah, everybody's different... ;) I might have mentioned that I saw a woman in the grocery the other day with her little son (3?) and I thought, how nice to have a little son...

Deborah
 
#28 ·
I do end up using Google calendar -- primarily because I can see my husband's meetings and such there as well as my own stuff, so I don't cross-schedule (important when you have two self-employed people working from home and orbiting around work and family in a very unpredictable fashion). And I can see it on my phone.

Gardening: I like gardening. I get overwhelmed by it sometimes, but find it a fun challenge to try and figure out how to most efficiently produce the most food from my space (carrots are not quite as easy as kale, but pretty easy). We have a lot of people on our property, and have guests often in the summer, which means dinner is usually for 7-10 people, and growing produce is really the only possible way that hospitality is affordable.

Math: My son was extending his problem into alternate bases (base 4 and base 6) yesterday while I was making dinner, and I was a little chagrined to notice that my 7 year old was faster at the arithmetic than I was, once we stepped away from the base system where I'm old enough to have memorized most of the answers. He found some patterns that mirrored the ones he found the first time, some new, some he had missed the first time, and some differences, which was cool. This has been a more extended exploration than most, but playing with numbers and patterns seems to be a lot of how math learning happens here.
It always bugs me a little when people talk about unschooling math only through the lens of practicality (measurements, prices, etc...). People don't say that it's okay to unschool english because there are game directions and road signs and recipes that will need to be read -- they talk about how awesome stories and books are. Why the disparity?
 
#29 ·
It always bugs me a little when people talk about unschooling math only through the lens of practicality (measurements, prices, etc...). People don't say that it's okay to unschool english because there are game directions and road signs and recipes that will need to be read -- they talk about how awesome stories and books are. Why the disparity?
Well said. Part of the paradigm that "math is boring and only nerds have fun with it".

My girls always loved the Vi Hart videos on recreational math-- math for the sake of math. Anno's Math Games books (I'm sure far beyond your 7yo, but your daughter might love them) has the same attitude, but for the "younger set" (scare quotes because we were grooving on the Fibonacci sequence at the same time, so whatever).
 
#30 ·
Why the disparity?

Math as recreation, and math as a language spoken eloquently, is far behind our understanding of verbal language being the same thing. Math has precision, logic, reason. Language needs to be none of that. Language can mean nothing and yet still be appreciated for the sound of it in our minds and on our tongues. Words can be spoken, and the beauty becomes the way our mouth flows and shapes the words. Language is emotive. People are emotive and illogical.

That doesn't mean that math can't move people, or be elegant, or be fun. It can boggle the mind, and it can make us laugh. But it is different. Math is not our "native language". Our fluency, therefore, is not as easily achieved, and when we combine the relative lack of mathematical discourse in our homes and in our lives compared to language-- and I could say this about very mathematical households-- then we will not reach the cultural fluency that enables the kinds of expressions that verbal language enjoys.

Then, we leave off with a kind of poetry that might not ever have a mathematical equivalent, by a well-known recreational mathematician:


’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
 
#33 ·
Math is not our "native language". Our fluency, therefore, is not as easily achieved, and when we combine the relative lack of mathematical discourse in our homes and in our lives compared to language-- and I could say this about very mathematical households-- then we will not reach the cultural fluency that enables the kinds of expressions that verbal language enjoys. .
For sure. But we could do a lot better! There are so many missed opportunities to play with numbers. Even just silly things, like a kid saying they're falling down "a million times" and me replying with quick mental calculation to figure out how long they'd have to fall down at a once per second rate to reach that million. And playing with words is great too. Now I'm reminded of the expedition when we all memorized poetry, including the Jabberwocky. I should see if my kids want to do that again. Now, I'm not nearly so successful inspiring them to actually want to read anything, but playing with language -- that we can do.

The big discussion in town lately has been the school funding. The state's out of money, everything's being cut, and our tiny school is currently receiving much more money per student than other similar schools, and might not be able to do so much longer. Of course, some people think that homeschoolers like me are the problem, which I resent (and know not to be true, after attending the budget meeting myself). Mostly, people are just upset (understandably) and hyperbolic, and going crazy worrying about school closure (not on the table), and I wonder what would happen if they backed up and tried to figure out what a good school with 30 or so kids K-12 should actually look like.
 
#32 ·
Okay...a few days until (Thursday evening) until husband gets home. I tackled another room today, moved a bunch of sewing stuff into the "office" (formerly Yana's room) at the back of the house. About three boxes are clothes that need to be either mended or discarded. (A friend of mine told me how to "turn" men's shirt collars, knowledge I could have done without, because then I started doing it.

This is because not only am I supposedly showing up with my mom on November 3rd, after driving with her from Montana, but my SIL, the one who made a practice of ruining my life for a couple of years a few years back with interminable phone calls. (You can't hang up on a depressed and anxious person, right? Only when it became extremely stressful for me, I told her that certain topics were off limits and she never called back, except for me to help her find things, which for some reason I am good at, long distance.) So, she has a conference in Austin and is coming in on the train that morning. So...we do not have enough bed (our big one and a twin, so one short for the night my mom will be here) so I am in the process of recalling the futon that Yana does not want, so husband can spend an uncomfortable night on it with a dog, while I guess I'll get the floor and another dog. (The futon is a twin, no room for even two people and a dog!)

So now there's a bit more room to hang some paintings, both professional (by MIL) and kid generated. The boxes with the rest will go on top of the closet (maybe an airy reading nook at some point in the unreachable future) until I can figure out a better place! (the dumpster? ;) )

My Reduction of Paperwork project has not been very successful. But, I still have several days!

Son did take the huge pile of car parts out of the back yard. I'm afraid to look in the carport shed. And because he ordered the frost plugs (or whatever they are) and they didn't get shipped until yesterday, I'm guessing that his car will still be resident in the carport by the time husband gets back. Well, some things can't be helped, and better Late than Never, and all that.

And I apparently have another student. She's ten...remember my rant about ten year olds? ;)

Deborah
 
#34 ·
So many really good things going on here and many challenges as well. We are in the midst of an elimination diet trying to get to the root of some ongoing health issues for my 8 year old. I thought I spent a lot of time in the kitchen before but unless we are physically out of the house I see little else but the kitchen. Hope we make it through this one intact!

Our Nature Connection program is going strong. Lots of little challenges but it has been so fun to work through those with the two wonderful women I am working with. I don't believe I've ever had the opportunity to work with others where we truly all share the responsibility and are all invested at the same level. Really lovely. This next week we open up our group to our broader homeschooling community to let them get a little taste of what we do. It should be a lot of fun.

Other than that, my 8 year old actually figured out a word that I flippantly spelled out loud. (Too long a story to share but it wasn't to try to test him or anything.) He has dabbled with Teach Your Monster to Read over the last couple of months and has had a slight increase in wanting to write something down and having me spell it for him. But it was a nice surprise for both of us. :)

Fall has gone quickly and the cold weather routines are beginning to settle in.
 
#36 ·
Just something funny: D (7) has been wanting to find a Phone Booth for the longest time. I told him we might never find one. Let alone a pay phone :2cents. So, today we got a little bit lost, and lo and behold there in front of us was a phone booth. :joy:joy He was so happy. He could not stop smiling all day. We most of hung out at the phone booth for an hour. It was so cool!!!!

In other NEWS we were lost for a little while. We took that time to explore a new place. We discover an "old" video game arcade. Boy! did that make me feel old. LOL
 
#38 ·
Ha, our area only got cell service about 5 years ago, and we only have one tower here (meaning only a couple of miles of coverage) so we still have payphones. A couple have been decommissioned, but there's still about 4 for every 1000 residents.

Rotary phones... have you got those? We have one community space that has a rotary phone in the lower level... boy do the kids ever puzzle over that!

miranda
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top