Petticoat Government

Selective ability to memorize

2012-01-27T07:57:00.000-08:00

Dd7 has watched the movie Barney: Jungle Friends twice in the last few days. As far as I know, she never saw the movie before this week. Now she is singing songs from it that she memorized after just two viewings. WHY, oh, WHY, are we still struggling through addition drills together every morning? There needs to be a Barney (or Blue's Clues or Disney) movie with songs on all the basic addition facts! She'd have them learned in a jiffy with little effort and struggle.

I want to "liveblog", too!

2012-01-22T18:52:00.000-08:00

One of the blogs I follow is Instapundit, a libertarian law professor in Tennessee who updates very often and links to many interesting things. (Some of them are so "interesting" that I no longer visit his site on Sundays. He is less restrained with his language and topics dealing with human intimacy than I like to see on a day I have been taught to dedicate to the Lord.) He frequently links to other bloggers who will be "liveblogging"--or even "drunkblogging"--debates, big political speeches, and so forth.

Now that I'm 37+ weeks pregnant, I'm really looking forward to the birth of this baby. To help me not be bored between contractions once labor gets underway, I think I will follow the trend and "liveblog" the labor and delivery process this go-around. Will anyone care? Probably not. But it gives me something to do when I'm not focusing on my breathing and relaxation.

I just realized that some might find my detailed description of birth to be offensive (ironic in light of what I said above about Instapundit). I'll try not to be TMI about it. ;) Seriously, though, I've had three natural childbirths in hospitals in three different countries now, so my birth story told as it happens might be helpful to other women who wish to see what non-medicalized birth looks like in a medical setting. Here's hoping I get my chance to liveblog soon!

Dorothy Sayers and TLTOL (part eleven)

2012-01-15T20:24:00.001-08:00

Wow! This is a really long essay. But I'll keep plowing through since I've already done so much of it.

Let us amuse ourselves by imagining that such progressive retrogression is possible. Let us make a clean sweep of all educational authorities, and furnish ourselves with a nice little school of boys and girls whom we may experimentally equip for the intellectual conflict along lines chosen by ourselves. We will endow them with exceptionally docile parents; we will staff our school with teachers who are themselves perfectly familiar with the aims and methods of the Trivium; we will have our building and staff large enough to allow our classes to be small enough for adequate handling; and we will postulate a Board of Examiners willing and qualified to test the products we turn out. Thus prepared, we will attempt to sketch out a syllabus--a modern Trivium "with modifications" and we will see where we get to.
But first: what age shall the children be? Well, if one is to educate them on novel lines, it will be better that they should have nothing to unlearn; besides, one cannot begin a good thing too early, and the Trivium is by its nature not learning, but a preparation for learning. We will, therefore, "catch 'em young," requiring of our pupils only that they shall be able to read, write, and cipher.
My views about child psychology are, I admit, neither orthodox nor enlightened. Looking back upon myself (since I am the child I know best and the only child I can pretend to know from inside) I recognize three states of development. These, in a rough-and- ready fashion, I will call the Poll-Parrot, the Pert, and the Poetic--the latter coinciding, approximately, with the onset of puberty. The Poll-Parrot stage is the one in which learning by heart is easy and, on the whole, pleasurable; whereas reasoning is difficult and, on the whole, little relished. At this age, one readily memorizes the shapes and appearances of things; one likes to recite the number-plates of cars; one rejoices in the chanting of rhymes and the rumble and thunder of unintelligible polysyllables; one enjoys the mere accumulation of things. The Pert age, which follows upon this (and, naturally, overlaps it to some extent), is characterized by contradicting, answering back, liking to "catch people out" (especially one's elders); and by the propounding of conundrums. Its nuisance-value is extremely high. It usually sets in about the Fourth Form. The Poetic age is popularly known as the "difficult" age. It is self-centered; it yearns to express itself; it rather specializes in being misunderstood; it is restless and tries to achieve independence; and, with good luck and good guidance, it should show the beginnings of creativeness; a reaching out towards a synthesis of what it already knows, and a deliberate eagerness to know and do some one thing in preference to all others. Now it seems to me that the layout of the Trivium adapts itself with a singular appropriateness to these three ages: Grammar to the Poll-Parrot, Dialectic to the Pert, and Rhetoric to the Poetic age.

To apply this to my children, they are all three (ages 2, 4, and 7) in the Poll Parrot stage, although I can already see seeds of the Pert age in dd7. I haven't caught any of them memorizing license plates or poetry, but they absolutely repeat and mimic movies they like. Dd7, while taking longer than I would have liked to memorize addition facts, is actually learning them and for the last two or three years has exhibited a very good ability to memorize facts about random animals. Dd4 has picked up many addition facts just from observing me work with dd7 and hearing addition fact songs in the car occasionally. Dd2 is frequently a copycat, as one might expect of someone trying to navigate a world that's still quite new to her.

Dorothy Sayers may not have been a recognized child psychology expert, but based on what I have seen with my children so far, I think she seems to adequately describe children as learners. I would only say that she underestimates the ability of children in the Poll Parrot stage to reason things out on their own. As an academic undertaking, I think expecting critical thinking from dd7 would be a lost cause because she still lacks the ability to quickly process complex causes and abstract concepts. However, she does like to think things over and come to her own, sometimes unexpected conclusions. At this point in her life, I choose not to formally exercise this developing reasoning ability for fear I'd unintentionally quash her independent use of it. Reasoning should be a lifelong practice that a child engages in for his/her own goals and not just for school assignments.

SOTW update

2012-01-10T12:55:00.001-08:00

We finally finished Volume 1 of the Story of the World yesterday. While it was fun to study the ancient world, it's going to be GREAT to study the middle ages. What little girls don't want to learn about Grendel, dress up like princesses, and draw dragons as part of a study of heraldry? There's a renaissance festival each summer in a city near us, and I think we're finally going to go this year.

Manly, Positive Music

2011-12-27T19:43:00.000-08:00

Dh and I bought bunk beds at IKEA tonight and have been busy all evening moving furniture in the girls' room so that it will sleep 3 (4 with the trundle bed pulled out). He asked me to play some good working music for him to listen to while assembling the furniture. Searches on the internet for "manly music" turned up a lot of heavy metal and songs with very objectionable lyrics. The playlist I finally put together on Grooveshark consists of the following songs. The furniture job is taking hours, so it's a good thing he likes the mix! If you're interested, it includes the following songs:

1) "Eye of the Tiger" by Journey

2) "A Man's Gotta Do" from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (warning - this is the only song on the list with a crude word)

3) "You're the Best Around" from The Karate Kid (the Ralph Macchio version, of course)

4) "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Mulan

5) "We Do (The Stonecutter's Song)" from The Simpsons

6) "Trogdor" by Strong Bad

7) "The Final Countdown" by Europe

8) The Mission Impossible Theme

9) "Kung Fu Fighting"

10) "Macho Man" by Village People

11) "Big in Japan" by Alphaville

12) "Anton aus Tirol" by DJ Otzi

13) "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley

14) The A-Team theme

15) Knight Rider theme

16) Airwolf theme

17) Bonanza theme

18) Hawaii 5-0 theme

19) "I, Don Quixote" from Man of La Mancha

20) "Holding Out for a Hero"

Boxing day

2011-12-26T10:03:00.000-08:00

What a relaxing day! Yesterday was a bit hectic, what with choir practice at church and then church. However, I really appreciated that with Christmas on Sunday this year, the focus was taken off opening presents and placed on more transcendent things.

I just read the book Shiny Objects: Why We Spend Money We Don't Have in Search of Happiness We Can't Buy, which says that although studies and statistics show holding materialistic values doesn't lead to being happy, materialism has increasingly become a much greater characteristic of our society, particularly in the recent crop of young adults. Materialism is a bit of a treadmill, one on which you never can feel like you have "enough", no matter how much money and/or stuff you accrue.

Both dh and I are fairly modest in our wants (living in developing countries can do that to you), and we have been united in focusing our family life on religious, relational, and educational goals. As recommended in Shiny Objects (written by a professor of marketing, ironically), we have avoided TV much of our marriage. We have been without a TV altogether for the past four years. This permits us to escape most of the advertising industry's incessant inculcation of materialism, a freedom that we gladly embrace over keeping up with the Kardashians's doings or idolizing wannabe pop stars. When we do occasionally see ads on Hulu or at a relative's home, we point out to our children that the ads are "just trying to get us to buy something" and are often stupid or dishonest. A positive result of avoiding TV marketing is the peace that we have experienced this Christmas. Yes, we gave our children gifts, but we probably didn't spend more than an average of $50 per child, counting stocking stuffers and candy. I did utilize a local thrift store heavily to save money on books and clothes and their grandparents sent gifts, but it was still a low-end haul by US standards. Yet they had a very happy Christmas. They were grateful for each gift and, most gratifying to us parents, they hardly fought with each other Christmas afternoon, indicating a minimal level of possessiveness about their gifts.

Now if I could just live up to today's name and box up some older playthings to give away in order to prevent toybox overflow, but low levels of materialism do not prevent little girls from developing emotional attachments to copious numbers of stuffed animals and homemade crafts. Grrr. At least they have loving hearts....

Dd7's newest project

2011-12-15T07:24:00.000-08:00

She wants to have a website, so I just set up another blog for her on this account. If you want to learn weird but true facts about random animals, feel free to visit weirdbuttrueanimalfacts.blogspot.com.

A sweet moment

2011-12-12T18:30:00.000-08:00

I walked into the living room this evening to find dd7 playing with this place value learning tool. She showed me the large number she'd made and said, "Mommy, this is how many times God thinks of us." I love that girl.

Dorothy Sayers and TLTOL (part ten)

2011-11-21T18:02:00.001-08:00

In this post, I ponder on these two paragraphs from "The Lost Tools of Learning":

For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects. We who were scandalized in 1940 when men were sent to fight armored tanks with rifles, are not scandalized when young men and women are sent into the world to fight massed propaganda with a smattering of "subjects"; and when whole classes and whole nations become hypnotized by the arts of the spell binder, we have the impudence to be astonished. We dole out lip-service to the importance of education--lip- service and, just occasionally, a little grant of money; we postpone the school-leaving age, and plan to build bigger and better schools; the teachers slave conscientiously in and out of school hours; and yet, as I believe, all this devoted effort is largely frustrated, because we have lost the tools of learning, and in their absence can only make a botched and piecemeal job of it.
What, then, are we to do? We cannot go back to the Middle Ages. That is a cry to which we have become accustomed. We cannot go back--or can we? Distinguo. I should like every term in that proposition defined. Does "go back" mean a retrogression in time, or the revision of an error? The first is clearly impossible per se; the second is a thing which wise men do every day. "Cannot"-- does this mean that our behavior is determined irreversibly, or merely that such an action would be very difficult in view of the opposition it would provoke? Obviously the twentieth century is not and cannot be the fourteenth; but if "the Middle Ages" is, in this context, simply a picturesque phrase denoting a particular educational theory, there seems to be no a priori reason why we should not "go back" to it--with modifications--as we have already "gone back" with modifications, to, let us say, the idea of playing Shakespeare's plays as he wrote them, and not in the "modernized" versions of Cibber and Garrick, which once seemed to be the latest thing in theatrical progress.

Is being progressive always good? I don't see how that can be the case. Its most common definition is merely "to move forward". But in what are we moving forward? Are the outcomes positive...or at least better than they were before we took a given step forward? If not, there's nothing wrong with moving backward to something that gave us better results while we think of other things to try. In moving backward, we can still take with us the insights we gained from experimenting with the new thing, so in a way progress and regression can happen simultaneously.

For example, most reject the harsh schoolteacher who drills the class in arithmetic facts and "switches" the "dunces" in the class. In the name of progress in the USA, we seem to have given up not only the harsh, humiliating treatment of students but also demonized group recitation of arithmetic facts. What if we "threw the baby out with the bath water" on that one? What if group recitation of arithmetic facts serves an important and useful purpose in helping young children memorize math facts to automaticity? (I have no idea if this is the case. I'm making up a hypothetical.)

I would wish for the educational establishment in the USA to be better at utilizing the pedagogical methods and curricula that give good outcomes and rejecting any seemingly "progressive" things that end up giving bad results. Unfortunately, they glaringly fail at this, if I can judge by the "fuzzy math" curricula that so many school districts (including mine) refuse to give up in the face of quite pathetic math outcomes for the students. I'm so grateful to be able to teach my children using my own choice of curricula and methods.

Homeschool Update

2011-11-14T13:07:00.000-08:00

66 days, over a third into the official "school year". (Colorado requires 172 days, with an average of 4 hours of instruction per day.)

How's second grade going for dd7?

Math - Oh, the pain! She STILL doesn't have her addition facts down. We've done flashcards, online games, board games, memorization strategies, and addition fact recitation. The only thing I can think of next to try is timed minute drills targeted towards the exact facts she needs to master. Conceptually, math is fairly easy for her. She picked up borrowing (called "renaming" in her math worktext) just last week with very little trouble. She could do her math work in 1/5 of the time (or less) if she just had her addition facts known to automaticity.

Reading - She's a great little reader. :) I like our current reading textbook, Our Country from Open Court. Not only is it a good reader for her level, but we are also covering the history of the USA at a level that is appropriate for her. Because it is a 1973 edition, I do find that I occasionally have to explain a few things. For instance, although negro means black in Spanish, we no longer call a black person a "Negro" (this came up in the context of the Lewis and Clark expedition). We've also had to discuss why the book uses the word "Indians" for Native Americans. That's the price I pay for using free books from my mother's old school library.

History/Social Studies - I really appreciate having The Story of the World to use as a spine for history studies. We're up to Julius Caesar now, which is fortuitous as the Christmas season approaches. Tax issues around Jerusalem and King Herod's actions make more sense in the context of the Roman Empire. We also are learning American history as part of dd7's reading schoolwork. And, of course, we do fun things like attending a Martinstag lantern parade and a Diwali celebration last week.

Foreign Languages - She picks up a smattering of Spanish vocabulary from her part-time attendance at a charter school; I think it's just enough to reinforce what she has learned from Dora and Diego. German continues to go well because her father only speaks German to her and we assign her 3-4 German vocabulary worksheets each week.

Writing - We do a small amount of dictation some days, and on other days she does a Draw-and-Write from the Enchanted Learning website. She wrote our family newsletter yesterday. It was short but fairly well-done, given her age.

Music - We do a little each day, either singing a song, playing the recorder, or practicing the piano. I could ask more of her, but it doesn't seem worth fighting over. She's learning to read and enjoy music and play a little on two instruments, and that seems like enough for now. I guess I'm no "tiger mother".

Art - No formal curriculum is needed or used at home. She draws almost daily on her own as part of her playtime projects. She does receive some instruction from an art teacher at the charter school.

Physical Education - I drive her to school in time for recess, and she has PE instruction there some days. I find it amusing that recess is her favorite part of school.

Science - We read a science article daily and watch a lot of science videos. She loves science and absorbs information from science videos and library books like a sponge.

Socialization - Thanks to the part-time attendance at the charter school, she is getting some socialization, which has been mostly positive; the one time she was called a mean name, I was standing by her and able to smooth it over for her immediately. Family and church friends also help satisfy her need for interpersonal interaction. She's an introvert and thus relatively easy to satisfy in this respect.

The year is going well. She is happy and learning a lot. Last week, she spontaneously said she was very glad I was her mother. I think she actually has an inkling of how lucky she is....

My updated theory on autism

2011-11-09T21:15:00.000-08:00

If you read a couple of my older posts, you'll see that I think there is a link between autism and folic acid supplementation. I started paying attention to this issue because I have a family member who rather demonizes vaccinations. I, on the other hand, believe that the alleged vaccine-autism connection has been quite thoroughly debunked. In fact, a recent study of brains of normal and autistic people found that there were too many neurons (67% more) in the cerebral cortex of the brains of those with autism, neurons which are generated only prenatally and which typically are pruned prenatally and in early infancy through programmed cell death (see this study). Instead of still suspecting vaccines in autism, we should instead pay attention to the prenatal environment.

I'm open to being proved wrong on there being a connection between folic acid supplementation and autism, particularly in light of the 2011 finding by UC Davis that women who took prenatal vitamins were less likely to have autistic children. The researchers postulated that it was because of a protective effect of folic acid. I think they're guessing on that point. Folic acid affects methylation and seems implicated in epigenetic changes, which are connected to autism (see this recent study). Some other vitamin or combination of vitamins appears to me to be more likely as the cause of the protective effect of the prenatal vitamins. Vitamin D seems a very likely candidate, especially since "developmental vitamin D deﬁciency increase[s] cellular proliferation in the brain and reduce[s] the amount of apoptotic cell death that is normally associated with neuronal diﬀerentiation", per this paper.

I imagine this as a possible scenario--folic acid, given with the laudable goal of preventing neural tube defects, also contributes to autism by increasing the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex, then vitamin D deficiency prevents the brain from adequately pruning the neurons to the proper number, resulting in an excess of these neurons, which prevents the brain from functioning in a neurotypical way. Please, any ideas on this? In the meantime, I'm 27 weeks pregnant, and it's nearly winter; I'm going out to buy vitamin D supplements this week.

Dorothy Sayers and TLTOL (part nine)

2011-11-08T21:04:00.000-08:00

Critical thinking skills are lacking in students and graduates throughout the USA, according to many an article on education in the past few years. An article yesterday in the Sacramento Bee stated that the top skill gap employers are finding in job applicants is the area of critical thinking and problem solving.

"American businesses are facing a paradox — high unemployment and the inability to fill key jobs in their organizations," said Mark Schmit, vice president for research at SHRM. "Our research shows that gaps between unemployed American workers' skills and those required for open jobs in the United States are a major reason for this seemingly unlikely contradiction. It follows logically that if key jobs cannot be filled in organizations, then other less critical jobs requiring less skill cannot be created either because the organizations' growth potential is stunted. Thus, the cycle of low or no job growth continues."
....
HR professionals at organizations having difficulty recruiting also reported gaps in basic knowledge and skills in job applicants. The top four skills gaps were: critical thinking/problem-solving (with 54 percent of those respondents saying that job applicants typically lack that skill); professionalism/work ethic (44 percent); written communication (41 percent); and leadership (39 percent).
The most common gaps in basic knowledge skills were:
Writing in English
Mathematics
Reading comprehension
Speaking in English

Despite 13-17+ years of formal education, too many American job-seekers are not learning the material addressed in the dialectic stage of the trivium. Dorothy Sayers would be not be surprised, per this excerpt from her essay where she discusses how modern education largely dispenses with teaching dialectics:

It is, of course, quite true that bits and pieces of the mediaeval tradition still linger, or have been revived, in the ordinary school syllabus of today. Some knowledge of grammar is still required when learning a foreign language--perhaps I should say, "is again required," for during my own lifetime, we passed through a phase when the teaching of declensions and conjugations was considered rather reprehensible, and it was considered better to pick these things up as we went along. School debating societies flourish; essays are written; the necessity for "self- expression" is stressed, and perhaps even over-stressed. But these activities are cultivated more or less in detachment, as belonging to the special subjects in which they are pigeon-holed rather than as forming one coherent scheme of mental training to which all "subjects"stand in a subordinate relation. "Grammar" belongs especially to the "subject" of foreign languages, and essay-writing to the "subject" called "English"; while Dialectic has become almost entirely divorced from the rest of the curriculum, and is frequently practiced unsystematically and out of school hours as a separate exercise, only very loosely related to the main business of learning. Taken by and large, the great difference of emphasis between the two conceptions holds good: modern education concentrates on "teaching subjects," leaving the method of thinking, arguing, and expressing one's conclusions to be picked up by the scholar as he goes along' mediaeval education concentrated on first forging and learning to handle the tools of learning, using whatever subject came handy as a piece of material on which to doodle until the use of the tool became second nature.
"Subjects" of some kind there must be, of course. One cannot learn the theory of grammar without learning an actual language, or learn to argue and orate without speaking about something in particular. The debating subjects of the Middle Ages were drawn largely from theology, or from the ethics and history of antiquity. Often, indeed, they became stereotyped, especially towards the end of the period, and the far-fetched and wire-drawn absurdities of Scholastic argument fretted Milton and provide food for merriment even to this day. Whether they were in themselves any more hackneyed and trivial then the usual subjects set nowadays for "essay writing" I should not like to say: we may ourselves grow a little weary of "A Day in My Holidays" and all the rest of it. But most of the merriment is misplaced, because the aim and object of the debating thesis has by now been lost sight of.
A glib speaker in the Brains Trust once entertained his audience (and reduced the late Charles Williams to helpless rageb by asserting that in the Middle Ages it was a matter of faith to know how many archangels could dance on the point of a needle. I need not say, I hope, that it never was a "matter of faith"; it was simply a debating exercise, whose set subject was the nature of angelic substance: were angels material, and if so, did they occupy space? The answer usually adjudged correct is, I believe, that angels are pure intelligences; not material, but limited, so that they may have location in space but not extension. An analogy might be drawn from human thought, which is similarly non-material and similarly limited. Thus, if your thought is concentrated upon one thing--say, the point of a needle--it is located there in the sense that it is not elsewhere; but although it is "there," it occupies no space there, and there is nothing to prevent an infinite number of different people's thoughts being concentrated upon the same needle-point at the same time. The proper subject of the argument is thus seen to be the distinction between location and extension in space; the matter on which the argument is exercised happens to be the nature of angels (although, as we have seen, it might equally well have been something else; the practical lesson to be drawn from the argument is not to use words like "there" in a loose and unscientific way, without specifying whether you mean "located there" or "occupying space there."
Scorn in plenty has been poured out upon the mediaeval passion for hair-splitting; but when we look at the shameless abuse made, in print and on the platform, of controversial expressions with shifting and ambiguous connotations, we may feel it in our hearts to wish that every reader and hearer had been so defensively armored by his education as to be able to cry: "Distinguo."

Oh, how I echo that wish that our young citizens could distinguish the logical fallacies that currently lead some of them to think that disorderly camping in public parks is the way to brighten their future. What they really need, and our public school institution has failed to give them, is solid education in critical thinking and communication skills so they can be hired for the "key jobs" requiring such skills.

I really like Sayers' phrase, "defensively armored by [one's] education". Education should teach us how to discern falsehood from truth and error from correctness. Otherwise, we're destined to be fooled like P. T. Barnum's proverbial "suckers".

Curiosity

2011-10-31T14:49:00.000-07:00

Teachers want to inspire curiosity their students. Homeschooling parents want to allow their children's curiosity to remain untrammeled by brick-and-mortar school practices. Is curiosity really all that important?

According to this study, curiosity is just as important as conscientiousness in predicting good academic performance. I don't doubt it, having been pestered by dd4 for weeks until I finally helped her build a crane out of spools, wood, and tape today; she got the idea from a book of science projects she likes to browse. She and dd7 have since discussed what simple machines are incorporated into the crane.

Carnival of Homeschooling is up!

2011-10-19T07:25:00.000-07:00

And this time, I put something in it (the post below on music). You can find the Carnival of Homeschooling #303 at this link at Small World.

Music Education

2011-10-17T15:09:00.000-07:00

My mother had a goal for each of her ten children to learn to play the piano and one other instrument--preferably a string instrument, for she was rather snobby about instruments and viewed band instruments as what one plays when the school doesn't have an orchestra. She was a bit like a Chinese tiger mother when it came to music, but at least she never threatened to burn our toys if we didn't play a piano piece correctly. As part of a sibling package deal, she got free violin lessons for me from a Suzuki teacher when I was in kindergarten, so music has been a part of my life for over thirty years now.

Because my life has been greatly enriched by music, I want my children to have the same chance to learn to love making music and develop appreciation for the effort involved in creating an excellent music performance. (I'd also like them to reserve standing ovations for truly excellent performances instead of every bloomin' performance they ever attend, but I'd be fighting a losing battle on that....)

Recently I have been worrying that my efforts to bring music into my children's lives have been insufficient. (Shocker! A homeschooling mother wondering if she's doing enough!) My shortcoming: I have yet to sign my children up (ages 1, 4, and 7) for any formal music lessons. I don't want to force dd7 to practice just yet; I have too many negative memories of my mom yelling at us to get us to practice. However, I will not pay for music lessons until dd7 is capable of practicing regularly and diligently mostly on her own. But time is passing, and her brain needs to get wired for music before she is too much older.

Dd7 has had some music instruction through her part-time institutional schooling. I started teaching her to play the piano last year, but progress was slow and she had little enthusiasm. Later I labeled notes on the piano and gave her cards with "mystery songs" to figure out; that was intriguing for a couple of days. I think I am having greater success now with a different instrument. Recently I rediscovered a recorder instruction book in the bookcase, and now dd7 is learning to play the recorder. I'm pleased to see how she is finally putting together what she's learned about melodies, note length, and music notation from various sources--I hope her interest in the recorder continues beyond mastering "Hot Cross Buns"!

I am hesitantly optimistic that we will make it through the entire recorder book. When we have done that, I will tackle piano lessons for her again. It should be much more fun for us both now that she is becoming better at reading music. Who knows? Maybe it will finally be worth signing her up with a professional teacher....And then what string instrument to start her on? (Actually, she can choose any instrument except the drums.)

Dorothy Sayers and TLTOL (part eight)

2011-10-12T20:24:00.000-07:00

More Sayers ideas from her essay. This is a long excerpt, but it sums up the trivium.

Let us now look at the mediaeval scheme of education--the syllabus of the Schools. It does not matter, for the moment, whether it was devised for small children or for older students, or how long people were supposed to take over it. What matters is the light it throws upon what the men of the Middle Ages supposed to be the object and the right order of the educative process.
The syllabus was divided into two parts: the Trivium and Quadrivium. The second part--the Quadrivium--consisted of "subjects," and need not for the moment concern us. The interesting thing for us is the composition of the Trivium, which preceded the Quadrivium and was the preliminary discipline for it. It consisted of three parts: Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric, in that order.
Now the first thing we notice is that two at any rate of these "subjects" are not what we should call "subjects" at all: they are only methods of dealing with subjects. Grammar, indeed, is a "subject" in the sense that it does mean definitely learning a language--at that period it meant learning Latin. But language itself is simply the medium in which thought is expressed. The whole of the Trivium was, in fact, intended to teach the pupil the proper use of the tools of learning, before he began to apply them to "subjects" at all. First, he learned a language; not just how to order a meal in a foreign language, but the structure of a language, and hence of language itself--what it was, how it was put together, and how it worked. Secondly, he learned how to use language; how to define his terms and make accurate statements; how to construct an argument and how to detect fallacies in argument. Dialectic, that is to say, embraced Logic and Disputation. Thirdly, he learned to express himself in language-- how to say what he had to say elegantly and persuasively.
At the end of his course, he was required to compose a thesis upon some theme set by his masters or chosen by himself, and afterwards to defend his thesis against the criticism of the faculty. By this time, he would have learned--or woe betide him-- not merely to write an essay on paper, but to speak audibly and intelligibly from a platform, and to use his wits quickly when heckled. There would also be questions, cogent and shrewd, from those who had already run the gauntlet of debate.

I love the idea of actually learning the basics of communication before being asked to communicate. It seems like we have a plethora of talk these days and a corresponding dearth of coherent usage of the English language. Of course, texting and tweeting are obvious examples of poor grammar and spelling. Yet even on news sites, one sees too many comments posted on newspaper articles by people who think profanity-laced, misspelled attacks are worth anyone's time. I don't think much of someone's opinion if they can't spell correctly, for that is an indication that he or she either received a poor education or is too arrogant or lazy to use a spell-checker before posting. I plan to teach my children to spell well and teach them as much information as practicable. Although Sayers doesn't seem concerned with pride, I also hope I succeed in teaching my children that they never know enough to be conceited about and satisfied with what they have learned; humility is such an important, though under-appreciated, virtue.

Mornings

2011-10-06T07:36:00.000-07:00

"Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." - Benjamin Franklin

Some mornings it is very difficult to get going on schoolwork, getting dressed, etc. Because my husband doesn't have to be to work until around 8 a.m. and we live a few minutes from his workplace, the girls and my pregnant self don't get up until he heads off to work. We adults have been going to bed by 10:30 p.m. recently, so I think we are doing the "early to bed" part of Franklin's maxim, but somehow "early to rise" just isn't happening.

Generally, it's easy to feed myself and the children breakfast, but moving on to schoolwork is a struggle most days. The girls want to play with toys or read books, I want to check the news in the world, and the schoolwork doesn't usually get started until after 9 a.m. There is a bright side to our late starts - the girls seem to recover from colds fairly quickly, and we adults are less susceptible to getting them at all. I'm appreciative of the health, but I need to bestir myself earlier if I want to increase our family's wisdom and wealth. Perhaps 10:30 p.m. isn't early enough? (When did I get so old??)

Dorothy Sayers and TLTOL (part seven)

2011-10-02T15:49:00.000-07:00

Here's another short meditation on a segment of this influential essay by Dorothy Sayers.

Is not the great defect of our education today--a defect traceable through all the disquieting symptoms of trouble that I have mentioned--that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils "subjects," we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they learn everything, except the art of learning. It is as though we had taught a child, mechanically and by rule of thumb, to play "The Harmonious Blacksmith" upon the piano, but had never taught him the scale or how to read music; so that, having memorized "The Harmonious Blacksmith," he still had not the faintest notion how to proceed from that to tackle "The Last Rose of Summer." Why do I say, "as though"? In certain of the arts and crafts, we sometimes do precisely this--requiring a child to "express himself" in paint before we teach him how to handle the colors and the brush. There is a school of thought which believes this to be the right way to set about the job. But observe: it is not the way in which a trained craftsman will go about to teach himself a new medium. He, having learned by experience the best way to economize labor and take the thing by the right end, will start off by doodling about on an odd piece of material, in order to "give himself the feel of the tool."

The point of beginning with basic skills is one that I think people need to consider when looking at second (or third) language acquisition curricula. Because young children learn so well from immersion in a foreign language, many think that immersion will be sufficient and/or superior in teaching languages to older students and adults. But young children have shorter working memories, and when immersed in a foreign language, they actually break down what they hear into smaller chunks for themselves and learn those chunks. Older children and adults, with their increased working memories, are able to learn whole sentences and conversations, but that doesn't mean that is the best way for them to learn a language. I've learned a few languages as an adolescent and adult, and my experience was that it was more effective for me to memorize vocabulary and grammar rules and then practice using them to become competent in communicating in and reading/writing a new language, while language tapes of conversations were useful mostly just for learning pronunciation and idiomatic expressions.

Not as pertinent to the Sayers paragraph above, but something that I dislike in general is the heavy emphasis on giving students assignments where they are supposed to "express themselves". First, do we really want teachers grading a child on his/her expression of his/herself? I'd rather teachers evaluate academic and physical skills. Second, students are typically young, with limited knowledge of the world. I was quite frustrated in elementary school and beyond by creative writing assignments. I remember thinking sometime in 2nd-4th grade, "I don't know how to come up with something new. I'm just a kid! I don't know all the stuff that's been done before!" I had little to "express" when given a picture and a list of vocabulary words and told to produce a "creative" story based on the picture. Why didn't they instead say, "Write a story using these words and base it on the picture. We don't care if you're creative or as logical as Spock as long as you focus on writing as clearly and correctly as you can."? Creative expression, for those capable of it, should be its own reward, not an element of the assignment.

Welcome, Autumn

2011-09-27T16:37:00.000-07:00

September draws to an end, and I welcome fall with open arms. What's not to love about colorful trees, pumpkins, and apple season? Oh, the colds we've already dealt with are less than lovely, but they are likely due to the start of school, not the weather.

Our science field trip today was to the OB/GYN office where my daughters were treated to an ultrasound examination of a 18.5 week (gestational age) fetus - mine! The technician seemed to enjoy their interest and was very nice about pointing things out to us and answering our questions. We also found out that we are going to have a fourth daughter in 2012!

In other homeschool news, dd7 still loves science, and dd4 has finished Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. Part-time school at a nearby charter school continues to be a good social outlet for dd7.

"Extra"

2011-09-12T17:36:00.001-07:00

Somehow dd6 has already decided that when "schoolwork" is over (according to her own reckoning), it is horribly unfair to expect her to do a German worksheet with her dad when he gets home from work. She's the one who didn't want to do German Saturday School this year. She needs formal instruction in reading and writing German from someone, and Vati is the most qualified for the job. Here's hoping she acted so resentful today because it was the first day and that she quickly gets used to the "extra" learning time.

Her life's work at this point in life is primarily learning. Her work doesn't stop just because it's not included in some arbitrary outside schedule imposed by the school district and/or mom. She has oodles of free time, so it's not as though we are imposing onerous burdens on her by asking her to learn a little more right before dinner. What is really ironic is that she reads science books to herself all the time without realizing that I enter it as "school time" for homeschooling records.

Expectations

2011-09-02T08:31:00.000-07:00

I'm at 17 weeks of pregnancy, and the nausea is finally, truly going away. That means I had about 9 weeks of life-altering illness this time. A week ago this time, I was starting to sink into depression because the nausea hadn't gone away yet like it was "supposed to". Having expectations not met is more demoralizing than just suffering by itself.

When I first started dating my husband, he told me that he prefers to keep his expectations low in order to avoid disappointment later. Naturally, I applied his words to myself--like any self-centered young adult--and was rather offended by the implication that he was having low expectations of me. I've since come to understand the wisdom of his philosophy, although I still make efforts sometimes to help him feel greater feelings of anticipation about an upcoming event (e.g., vacation, family outing, reception for work, etc.) than he would on his own.

His "low expectations" are usually very realistic expectations based on his experience and knowledge. He still hopes for the best, but he doesn't have a mental picture of everything turning up roses all the time...and that's a good thing, for although I'm a good wife, I'm not a "10" in the figure category (thank you, four pregnancies and sedentary work), and I spent much of the past summer in a semi-invalid state complaining about nausea. Yet, he still loves me and thinks I'm great. I consider myself very blessed that my husband doesn't have expectations of me being a superwoman, for I could not measure up.

I used to think one of the things my parents did "right" was have "high" expectations for us academically. I've since come to realize that what I thought were high expectations then were actually very realistic expectations given the academic abilities of my parents (father is now a PhD/MD, mother is a PhD/JD) and the early education they gave us (they ran a private school based on traditional academics when I was in pre-school). When it came to genetics and environment, they bestowed a good hand on me, and they were just expecting me to play it properly.

Now my job is to learn all I can about the abilities and interests of the little ones I'm raising so that I can have appropriate expectations of them. Expectations that are too low are an insult and can lead to delays in their development; expectations that are too high set them up for failure and depression.

Things I Have a Hard Time Stomaching...

2011-08-08T11:19:00.001-07:00

Ha, ha. You probably thought this was going to be another post about morning sickness. Well, while I could go on ad nauseum on that subject, I'm actually talking about the stock market. A little over a year ago, my husband and I were debating whether to close our Roth IRA accounts (taking some losses, but not as much as if we had done it a year or two earlier) and use the funds towards paying off our home mortgage. The more I read about the market and the economy, the more hesitant I was to keep the Roth IRA's. I saw things like inflation of the money supply with no rise (until recently) in the price of anything except for stocks, articles talking about how stocks were valued at amounts that didn't reflect actual company earnings (making it seem like the market was more casino than an investment marketplace), and multiple warnings to buy gold. Like most people, I have a greater aversion to loss than desire to make a potential profit. So, I talked my husband into closing the Roth IRA accounts a year ago. As I watch the stock market drop today (which does still affect our non-Roth retirement accounts), I'm pleased with our decision. As imperfect as our house is--and it seriously has its flaws--it's shelter and it's insured...which is more than I can say for the stock market. I honestly don't know how stock traders handle the stress of their jobs; I would never take it.

Checking in

2011-07-29T12:11:00.001-07:00

Ah, morning sickness. So unpleasant, but it helped hearing the baby's heartbeat yesterday at the doctor's office. Just think, this little creature in me has only been forming for around 10 weeks (I'm 12 weeks along), and he or she already has a beating heart. That's enough to bring a smile to the face of this weary mom.

I had ambitions for this summer. We were going to spend so much time in parks, and I was going to get through the last half of Volume 1 of The Story of the World. Instead, we have only made it to parks about twice per week, and I've hardly touched history for the past six weeks. The only academics I've been consistent on throughout this stage of pregnancy is using a book of addition worksheets for dd6 (she does about 4 per week) and doing about 4 lessons per week out of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons with dd4. On the bright side, my fatigue and nausea have helped my girls become more independent: now dd6 can get her own breakfast and make her own PBJ sandwiches, and dd4 is trying to read library books to herself.

Still here

2011-07-06T14:40:00.001-07:00

Morning sickness has hit. Tomorrow marks 9 completed weeks of pregnancy. I am frequently nauseated and throw up nearly every day. I don't have excess energy for non-essential things like blogging right now. However, I do have a tip that I can't believe is working for me right now: Banquet frozen entrees. I generally abhor "TV dinners", but my dad--a retired physician--recommended I try the Banquet frozen entrees. They're just the right size and mercifully soft and bland. Each entree provides me enough protein and carbohydrates to fuel me through a few hours but doesn't make me queasy or overfill my stomach. I told my husband that I'm eating "old people food"; seriously, the meat is so soft that I could chew it with just gums. Oh, well. I can swallow my pride and eat the mushy, starchy TV entree...the important thing is that I can swallow the food and keep it down!

Narration

2011-06-22T07:13:00.001-07:00

Dd6 has begun narrating to her stuffed animals. She has two favorite lizard-like stuffed animals, and she is telling them all about SCUBA diving right now. She watched a video on SCUBA diving last night. She seems to be a little blocked when narrating to me, but when she's just having fun with her stuffed animals, she's a wonder at regurgitating details. I'm not going to interfere with this new development at all! Also, I'm glad she found patient objects of her lengthy, fact-filled discourses; human beings don't enjoy her retelling after a few minutes. She's very thorough.

Summer!

2011-06-09T11:59:00.000-07:00

Evening outings to the park, morning outings to the library, midday reading time in the shade of the living room, and a little formal instruction thrown in each day. I love summer!

This summer, I'm putting a focus on learning songs. The morning routine now includes learning a new song. We've learned "Haensel und Gretel", "Yes, We Have No Bananas", "Here Comes the Oxcart", and "Hoppe, Hoppe, Reiter" so far, and the girls are starting to get into it.
Well, to be more precise, dd4 energetically wants to keep doing "Yes, We Have No Bananas" each day.

Miscellaneous

2011-06-01T18:09:00.000-07:00

1) Dd6 just finished her 1st grade math book. She enjoyed learning math with Digit the Clown and Cecilia the Seal. She is quite solid on procedural math at the first grade level. She still doesn't know all her addition facts to automaticity, though. I think that at least she knows enough of them now that she'll want to play some of the fun online math fact games out there. We'll start the 2nd grade math book--this BJU Press worktext--next Monday. For now, she can bask in a milestone reached (and get a reward...I told her we'd celebrate by doing something special, and she decided that she wants to go pick something out at the thrift store...good thing I just bought that 30 gallon toy bin...).

2) Dd4 is ready to learn to read in earnest. We do one or two lessons from Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons each day, and it's been perfect for her. Since she's only four years old, we skip the letter writing exercises. Her motor skills are behind her verbal skills, and I see no reason to push her on writing while reading instruction is going so beautifully. After all, she's quite young, and I wasn't doing formal schoolwork with our oldest at this age.

3) Dh is learning all sorts of new things: he helped put up a wall on our porch last week, he's installing our water heater now with help from a more-experienced friend, and today is the first official day of his first term as a student of Western Governor's University. He is working towards a Masters in Instructional Technology.

4) Dd1 has a little over 8 months left of being the "baby of the family". Those digital E.P.T. early tests are impressive. Of course, there could easily be a miscarriage at this point, but I'm glad that there was a happy reason I threw up Saturday night...at first, I thought it was food poisoning.... :/

They're back...

2011-05-26T13:53:00.001-07:00

I despise termites. We have to treat for them again after doing a treatment just three years ago. At the library today, my daughters wanted to check out a book today called Termite Tales, and I refused. I can't stomach the thought of reading to them a book that makes a termite look "cute".

Aesop's Fables

2011-05-13T22:16:00.000-07:00

We just finished our first narration book. I read simplified versions of Aesop's fables to dd6 (and dd4 listened attentively, too) out of this book, passed on to me by my mother, a former schoolteacher and private school operator. It was a fun book to work through, especially because so many of the fables have been put on YouTube by various animators.

Dd6 tends to be quiet and hesitant in doing narration because she wants to tell the story perfectly, complete with quotes from the characters. I think we'll do narration exercises using Bible stories next; those don't have as much conversation, but I'll still be able to find related YouTube videos that the girls can watch after hearing a story.

I will likely come back to Aesop's fables in a month for other reasons. We are oh-so-slowly making our way through Story of the World, Volume 1, and we're finally approaching the segments on ancient Greece! I'm so glad. Mesopotamian studies just seem to drag on and on without being very interesting (new warlord conquers and kills, big mud buildings are built, rivers shift course, formerly-dominant cities erode away, etc. ), especially for dd6, who is sensitive and averse to bloodshed (despite having watched Mulan so many times).

Petticoat Rule is online now!

2011-05-05T21:30:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite books and the inspiration for the title of my blog is now available online at Project Gutenberg - find it here if you'd like to read it.

Homeschool Carnival

2011-05-03T21:41:00.000-07:00

It's up! Find it at Homeschool Dad's.

Rapunzel, Unschooler

2011-04-23T21:15:00.000-07:00

We just checked out Tangled from the library recently and watched it five or six times in the week that we had it. I was quite amused to realize that Rapunzel is an unschooler.

She spends approximately seventeen years living in a tower with only her unkind "mother" for company. Of her own volition, she reads the same three books repeatedly and fills her free time with science, art, music, physical exertion, and homemaking activities. She never says she is "bored"; her discontent with being in the tower is that there is so much more she wants to learn and experience beyond the tower walls.

When she finally leaves the tower, she remains focused on seeking out new knowledge and experiences. Of course, she also does so while exhibiting amazingly good people skills (seriously, EVERYBODY loves her right away) and fighting abilities. One worry people often voice about home-schooled children is that they will not be properly socialized and won't be able to handle unpleasant people in the "real world"--apparently the Disney writers don't share that worry. :)

Transmission Requirements for Citizenship

2011-04-19T21:12:00.000-07:00

Recently on Facebook, I've had to educate relatives, friends, and random commenters about the transmission requirements for U.S. citizenship that apply to children born abroad to U.S. citizens. To show how crazy those "birthers" are, some argue (even in a Forbes blog recently) that Obama is a natural born U.S. citizen, no matter where he was born, because his mother was a U.S. citizen. This is a glaringly wrong misunderstanding of U.S. citizenship law.

When a child is born abroad to two U.S. citizen parents, the child is automatically a U.S. citizen at birth.

When a child (a legitimate or "legitimated" one) is born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent, that U.S. citizen parent must have spent sufficient time (as set forth by Congress) in the U.S.A. in order to transmit U.S. citizenship to his/her child at birth. For instance, if a U.S. citizen and his Greek wife have a child outside of the U.S., the U.S. citizen must have spent five years in the U.S. (two years after age 14) in order to be able to transmit U.S. citizenship to his child upon its birth. If the U.S. citizen does not meet the transmission requirements, his child is not a U.S. citizen at all; he can remedy that situation by filing an immigrant petition for the child, and the child will become a U.S. citizen upon being admitted to the U.S.A. with an immigrant visa. The child will still never be a "natural born" U.S. citizen.

Barack Obama was born to just one U.S. citizen, his mother, Ann Dunham; his father was a citizen of Kenya. In 1961, U.S. citizenship law said that a U.S. citizen must have spent ten years in the U.S.A., five years after age 14, in order to transmit U.S. citizenship to a child born abroad. See 7 FAM 1133.2-2 (in the State Department's Foreign Affairs Manual volume on citizenship). Ann Dunham gave birth to Obama when she was only 18 years old, so she did not meet the requirement that she live in the U.S.A. for five years after age 14. Under the law, she could not transmit U.S. citizenship to Barack at birth; the only way for him to be a U.S. citizen at birth was for him to be born in Hawaii.

Was President Obama born in Hawaii? I think so. There's a Hawaii birth certificate that says so. There are also two contemporaneous newspaper announcements of his birth in Hawaii. Those are sufficient evidence to me, and I accept that Obama was born in Hawaii.

However, I don't think that the evidence of his birth in Hawaii is so overwhelming as to make those who doubt his birth in Hawaii "crazy". Based on my experiences as a consular officer, I know that birth certificates are sometimes based on fraudulent information provided to a government office. Ann Dunham was in a very odd position when Obama was born; she was, unknowingly by her own report, in a bigamist marriage with a man whom she resided apart from within 2 months of her son's birth. If she, for some weird reason, had gone abroad while heavily pregnant and ended up giving birth outside the U.S.A., she would have had several reasons to pretend that her son was actually born in the U.S.A. (e.g., avoiding immigration paperwork, automatic U.S. citizenship for her son, and needing to get back to the U.S. soon in order to go to college in Washington state). Ann Dunham and her second husband don't appear to have been strictly honest in all of her son's paperwork; Obama's Indonesia school records claim that he had his stepfather's surname and was an Indonesian citizen. Since Ann Dunham appears to be a less than completely reliable source of information and the issue of Obama's birthplace is so central to his eligibility to be the U.S. president, it would really help if there were some baby pictures of Obama somewhere to show that he was a newborn in Hawaii. Did people not take baby pictures in 1961? Can't Obama show one of himself as a cute little wrinkly baby with his grandparents (who lived in Hawaii)? I would love this controversy to be put completely to rest, and such a photo would go a long way towards doing that.

UPDATE: Soon after I posted this entry, the "long form" birth certificate was released. It showed that Obama's birth was registered promptly and that he was born in a hospital. In light of this, I would revise the paragraph above in that now I would wonder whether a person might indeed have a brain dysfunction if still questioning whether Obama was born in Hawaii. But I'm not a psychiatrist, so I won't play one...even on the internet.

Dorothy Sayers and TLTOL (part six)

2011-03-26T12:27:00.000-07:00

Back to my slow digestion of this essay....

Another quotation from the same issue of the TLS comes in fittingly here to wind up this random collection of disquieting thoughts--this time from a review of Sir Richard Livingstone's "Some Tasks for Education": "More than once the reader is reminded of the value of an intensive study of at least one subject, so as to learn 'the meaning of knowledge' and what precision and persistence is needed to attain it. Yet there is elsewhere full recognition of the distressing fact that a man may be master in one field and show no better judgement than his neighbor anywhere else; he remembers what he has learnt, but forgets altogether how he learned it."

I would draw your attention particularly to that last sentence, which offers an explanation of what the writer rightly calls the "distressing fact" that the intellectual skills bestowed upon us by our education are not readily transferable to subjects other than those in which we acquired them: "he remembers what he has learnt, but forgets altogether how he learned it."

I've discussed before how I feel about constructivist math curricula--I don't like them, and I refuse to allow a school to use such a curriculum on my children.

There exist many people, including some math professors, who DO love such curricula, though. They say things like, "I was taught what to do and not why to do it. Isn't it wonderful that [Everyday Math, etc.] challenges a child to understand why a math principle is true instead of settles for 'rote learning'?" Maybe my traditional math education was different from theirs, but I was typically taught how and why to do an algorithm and then given so much practice that it became automatic. Since I had no need to remember afterward why something worked, I often didn't bother to remember the "why". Getting the right answer was my goal. That changed temporarily in my university math theory and proof classes, where the math professors were trying to make a mathematician out of me. They didn't succeed; I got my B.S. in Mathematics and then went into computer programming and finally law school. I'm still content to be an excellent calculator.

Taking humanity as a whole, very few people are going to be actual mathematicians. Yes, everyone should be able to calculate and have enough experience with math through pre-calculus that they can understand general statistics terms and do their own taxes and home improvement project purchases (e.g., vinyl flooring, paint, etc.) without relying on a calculator. However, this low-level math isn't intriguing like fractals and vigesimal Mayan math, and it certainly isn't what university math professors spend their time on.

Why do we listen to these professor-mathematicians when they speak in glowing terms of elementary math programs, especially constructivist curricula that cover lots of "cool" topics in "creative" ways? Basic math is a limited, rather boring thing--although one which the non-mathematician will use throughout life--and the university professors rarely teach that subject matter. In fact, the professors often were the kind of child that learned most basic math seemingly by osmosis and never had to do timed drills to remember the multiplication table. They are experts at posing problems in and teaching certain areas of mathematics that the average person has no need or interest in: set theory, number theory, topography, cryptology, game theory, etc. They are rarely experts in teaching calculation and very basic geometry. I don't think they are in a position to opine on the fitness of elementary math curricula. I would rather read curriculum evaluations from high school math teachers who have to teach students after they have been subjected to a given curricula for several years. They seem to me better positioned to be experts on the effectiveness of elementary math curricula.

Ow

2011-03-18T21:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I slipped and banged my right thumb. It's been quite sore, but since I'm not positive that it was fractured, I've just worn a homemade splint on and off.

This afternoon, dd4 was playing with a heavy plastic garbage can and dropped it on my foot, and the rim (of the opening, not the bottom) hit my right toe, smashing it and tearing the skin. Again, I don't know whether it's fractured, but it's quite sore.

I occasionally read about people with sons having to make lots of trips to the urgent care and emergency room. We, with three daughters and six years of parenthood, have thankfully found so far that our children are fairly cautious when it comes to their own safety. Instead, they injure us. Oh, well, better us than them.

Spring Is Icumen In

2011-03-10T12:26:00.000-08:00

We are having lovely weather in Colorado today! Of course, we'll probably get hit with freezing rain in June for it, but that's the price we pay for living at the foot of these glorious mountains.

Dd6 and dd4 are contentedly listening to Magic Tree House audio books while they read along in the paper books. When they're done with that, we'll head outside to do yardwork. Actually, I'll do yardwork, and they'll dig holes and plant flags in piles of dirt.

Here is an update on homeschooling:

1) We have reached 132 official days of an average of 4 hours of instruction; 40 more such days, and I don't have to keep records again until the 2011-2012 school year! I will keep some records just for my own purposes, of course.

2) Reading is going very well for both dd6 and dd4, who has benefited significantly from overhearing dd6's lessons. Both love to sit down with a book on their own and read (using a flexible definition of that word for the younger child).

3) Dd6 is over halfway through 1st grade math and understands all the math principles well. She still hasn't memorized her addition facts adequately, and it's slowing her down. Maybe I should make some silly poems for her to serve as memorization helps.

4) Dd6 initiates many crafts, art projects, and science experiments. Library videos and books have been invaluable resources for her.

5) We just started doing formal narration today. Inspired by a book on Charlotte Mason's education philosophy, I found an early reader volume of Aesop's fables and read the first fable, "The Wolf and the Goat", to dd6. She struggled a bit to retell the story in her own words, but seemed to enjoy doing it. I look forward to doing the entire book with her.

6) We just reached the Anansi the Spider stories in Volume 1 of The Story of the World. There are some very cute versions of Anansi stories on YouTube.

Dorothy Sayers and TLTOL (part five)

2011-02-02T09:04:00.000-08:00

I don't have a lot to say about these next two paragraphs except that they demonstrate a level of education about logic that one rarely sees on display in modern writings (especially not in FB and blog comments):

Are you occasionally perturbed by the things written by adult men and women for adult men and women to read? We find a well-known biologist writing in a weekly paper to the effect that: "It is an argument against the existence of a Creator" (I think he put it more strongly; but since I have, most unfortunately, mislaid the reference, I will put his claim at its lowest)--"an argument against the existence of a Creator that the same kind of variations which are produced by natural selection can be produced at will by stock breeders." One might feel tempted to say that it is rather an argument for the existence of a Creator. Actually, of course, it is neither; all it proves is that the same material causes (recombination of the chromosomes, by crossbreeding, and so forth) are sufficient to account for all observed variations--just as the various combinations of the same dozen tones are materially sufficient to account for Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and the noise the cat makes by walking on the keys. But the cat's performance neither proves nor disproves the existence of Beethoven; and all that is proved by the biologist's argument is that he was unable to distinguish between a material and a final cause.
Here is a sentence from no less academic a source than a front- page article in the Times Literary Supplement: "The Frenchman, Alfred Epinas, pointed out that certain species (e.g., ants and wasps) can only face the horrors of life and death in association." I do not know what the Frenchman actually did say; what the Englishman says he said is patently meaningless. We cannot know whether life holds any horror for the ant, nor in what sense the isolated wasp which you kill upon the window-pane can be said to "face" or not to "face" the horrors of death. The subject of the article is mass behavior in man; and the human motives have been unobtrusively transferred from the main proposition to the supporting instance. Thus the argument, in effect, assumes what it set out to prove--a fact which would become immediately apparent if it were presented in a formal syllogism. This is only a small and haphazard example of a vice which pervades whole books--particularly books written by men of science on metaphysical subjects.

Words I never learned in school that Sayers uses with ease: final and material causes, syllogism, and supporting instance. (To give my university its due, I did learn about final causes in my colloquium on Western civilization.) I can't wait to study formal logic in a few years with my children!

Chess Club

2011-01-31T15:50:00.001-08:00

While I consider myself a homeschooler, I do send my daughter for a few hours each week to a local charter school. To do my part as a parent in the school's community, I volunteered myself and my dh to run a chess club after school. Today was the first day of the club. The children were great, plenty of adults showed up to help out, and there were nearly enough chessboards. I can see that flexibility and diplomacy will be key to this endeavor--flexibility to deal with shifting numbers and abilities as some beginners outstrip others, and diplomacy to gently correct children who are certain that pawns can move backwards.

Dorothy Sayers and TLTOL (part four)

2011-01-25T06:42:00.001-08:00

These next paragraphs from Sayers' essay call to mind (they are full of questions, after all) far too many examples from my own life and family:

Do you ever find that young people, when they have left school, not only forget most of what they have learnt (that is only to be expected), but forget also, or betray that they have never really known, how to tackle a new subject for themselves? Are you often bothered by coming across grown-up men and women who seem unable to distinguish between a book that is sound, scholarly, and properly documented, and one that is, to any trained eye, very conspicuously none of these things? Or who cannot handle a library catalogue? Or who, when faced with a book of reference, betray a curious inability to extract from it the passages relevant to the particular question which interests them?
Do you often come across people for whom, all their lives, a "subject" remains a "subject," divided by watertight bulkheads from all other "subjects," so that they experience very great difficulty in making an immediate mental connection between let us say, algebra and detective fiction, sewage disposal and the price of salmon--or, more generally, between such spheres of knowledge as philosophy and economics, or chemistry and art?

In connection with the first paragraph, I immediately thought of relatives and friends who think some questionable websites on alternative medicine and sovereign citizenship are correctly informing them.

The second paragraph was illustrated recently. Two days ago, the Washington Post published an opinion piece entitled, "Our Superficial Scholars", discussing Rhodes Scholarship applicants and saying, "high-achieving students seem less able to grapple with issues that require them to think across disciplines or reflect on difficult questions about what matters and why." Isn't it interesting that the high-achieving students, the ones who learned to play and win at the "school game", are now being criticized for not making mental connections between different spheres of study?

I think such compartmentalization is a nearly unavoidable result of our grade 7-12 school structure. When we tell youth that they can only learn math in Algebra (for 53 minutes until the bell rings and they head out the classroom door to traverse the school hallways in a path that cleverly takes them by their latest crush's locker), then world history in World History Class, then music in Music, etc., it is nearly impossible for them in such an environment to see connections between these subjects, especially because they are rarely taught a correlated curriculum that makes apparent the connections between the disciplines.

A great strength of homeschooling is the time and study flexibility to permit children to make inquiries on subjects different from the one at hand. Whatever questions dd6 has about insects or watermelon seedcounts while we read a book about China can be answered quickly (thanks, Google!). Another strength is the ability to teach in a way that promotes making connections; for example, if we have just read a story (language arts) set in a bayou, I can assign a worksheet about Louisiana (geography), read to my daughter about swamp vegetation (biology), and watch The Princess and the Frog (art, jazz, and zydeco).

Sayers' TLTOL (part 3)

2010-12-17T11:39:00.000-08:00

Sayers calls into question the discernment and debating abilities of those educated in modern times:

Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy throughout Western Europe is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard of and unimagined? Do you put this down to the mere mechanical fact that the press and the radio and so on have made propaganda much easier to distribute over a wide area? Or do you sometimes have an uneasy suspicion that the product of modern educational methods is less good than he or she might be at disentangling fact from opinion and the proven from the plausible?
Have you ever, in listening to a debate among adult and presumably responsible people, been fretted by the extraordinary inability of the average debater to speak to the question, or to meet and refute the arguments of speakers on the other side? Or have you ever pondered upon the extremely high incidence of irrelevant matter which crops up at committee meetings, and upon the very great rarity of persons capable of acting as chairmen of committees? And when you think of this, and think that most of our public affairs are settled by debates and committees, have you ever felt a certain sinking of the heart?
Have you ever followed a discussion in the newspapers or elsewhere and noticed how frequently writers fail to define the terms they use? Or how often, if one man does define his terms, another will assume in his reply that he was using the terms in precisely the opposite sense to that in which he has already defined them? Have you ever been faintly troubled by the amount of slipshod syntax going about? And, if so, are you troubled because it is inelegant or because it may lead to dangerous misunderstanding?

I shy away from conflict. Just a small Facebook quarrel via comments can ruin my day because it's all words with no conciliatory faces to show that no hard feelings are accompanying the disagreement. I don't waste time watching Presidential debates because they're mostly performing for cameras and trying to make the other person look stupid to the projected demographic makeup of the audience. Don't misunderstand me: debate is incredibly important to our republic. But I don't see it well done, so I try not to waste my time or emotions watching useless debate. Ad hominem attacks, incomplete facts, and utter failure to understand the other side's point of view characterize much of "public debate" these days (go ahead and throw in some corruption, too, of course, for Americans aren't magically immune to it). I wish we had an Abraham Lincoln who could write his own eloquent and thought-out speeches, but we don't. Inspiring demeanor or folksy down-to-earthness don't make an argument valid or convincing. Is the solution teaching Latin to kids? Of course not, but there's a lot more to the education that Sayers is proposing in this essay.

Sayers' TLTOL (part 2)

2010-12-13T20:16:00.000-08:00

Today I wearily consider these paragraphs:

Before you dismiss me with the appropriate phrase--reactionary, romantic, mediaevalist, laudator temporis acti (praiser of times past), or whatever tag comes first to hand--I will ask you to consider one or two miscellaneous questions that hang about at the back, perhaps, of all our minds, and occasionally pop out to worry us.
When we think about the remarkably early age at which the young men went up to university in, let us say, Tudor times, and thereafter were held fit to assume responsibility for the conduct of their own affairs, are we altogether comfortable about that artificial prolongation of intellectual childhood and adolescence into the years of physical maturity which is so marked in our own day? To postpone the acceptance of responsibility to a late date brings with it a number of psychological complications which, while they may interest the psychiatrist, are scarcely beneficial either to the individual or to society. The stock argument in favor of postponing the school-leaving age and prolonging the period of education generally is there there is now so much more to learn than there was in the Middle Ages. This is partly true, but not wholly. The modern boy and girl are certainly taught more subjects--but does that always mean that they actually know more?

Last night at 2:45 a.m. (a school night, mind you), I had to go ask the college student neighbors to turn down their music so that I and my baby could sleep. The house party included girls dancing in bras and a suspicious-smelling smoke. Is this "the modern boy and girl"? Their parents are paying for them to engage in substance-abusing revelry in the middle of a school night as part of a college education? Truly this is a marked prolongation of adolescence.

My own story is quite different. I moved into on-campus housing and started as a full-time university student just before turning 17. I attended BYU where there is little in the way of drinking or drugs, and I studied a lot. Sunday nights, I went to bed early so I could be ready for the week's coming classes and assignments, and I don't think I was too different from most other BYU students in that respect. We were occasionally reminded that much of BYU's operation budget came from donations by LDS church members and that we were accountable for how we used our opportunities at BYU. While the student body fell short of perfection, it was still very hardworking. Also, I never lacked for opportunities for legal recreation (especially dances, which I loved).

Based on my own experience, I believe that it is perfectly realistic to expect a majority of college students to engage in responsible behavior and that we do them a disservice by acting as though they're incapable of doing so. We also don't help them any by setting low educational standards for them. I enjoy Sayers' essay because she imparts a vision of a higher, attainable standard of education than that which now prevails in mainstream US culture.

Dorothy Sayers and TLTOL (part one)

2010-12-01T20:16:00.000-08:00

In preparing to homeschool my children, I have read several books that reference an essay by Dorothy Sayers, "The Lost Tools of Learning", and it can be found online here. To help myself better understand the essay, I think I'll review it bit by bit here on my blog. The first two paragraphs are as follows:

That I, whose experience of teaching is extremely limited, should presume to discuss education is a matter, surely, that calls for no apology. It is a kind of behavior to which the present climate of opinion is wholly favorable. Bishops air their opinions about economics; biologists, about metaphysics; inorganic chemists, about theology; the most irrelevant people are appointed to highly technical ministries; and plain, blunt men write to the papers to say that Epstein and Picasso do not know how to draw. Up to a certain point, and provided the the criticisms are made with a reasonable modesty, these activities are commendable. Too much specialization is not a good thing. There is also one excellent reason why the veriest amateur may feel entitled to have an opinion about education. For if we are not all professional teachers, we have all, at some time or another, been taught. Even if we learnt nothing--perhaps in particular if we learnt nothing--our contribution to the discussion may have a potential value.
However, it is in the highest degree improbable that the reforms I propose will ever be carried into effect. Neither the parents, nor the training colleges, nor the examination boards, nor the boards of governors, nor the ministries of education, would countenance them for a moment. For they amount to this: that if we are to produce a society of educated people, fitted to preserve their intellectual freedom amid the complex pressures of our modern society, we must turn back the wheel of progress some four or five hundred years, to the point at which education began to lose sight of its true object, towards the end of the Middle Ages.

She starts off by saying that she, as a nonprofessional teacher, can critique teaching methodologies just as well as a bishop can discuss economics or plain men criticize Picasso's drawing ability. Frankly, I don't think that bishops are in a position to spout opinions on economics or that one could rationally claim that Picasso couldn't draw, so her first point falls flat. However, her second point is valid: we have all been taught in our lives, be it poorly or well, thus we can hold opinions on teaching obtained from our own experience. I read tonight that Sayers' father began teaching her Latin when she was six years old, so she certainly has a basis in her own early life for understanding classical education. There is a third point that she could have made in her introduction: that everyone can be a teacher, professional or not (Socrates preferred "not", and he is recognized as a great teacher).

Her second paragraph has been shown false. Many people have been influenced by her essay to "turn back the wheel of progress" to promote classical educations (e.g., The Well-Trained Mind and Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum). Progress originally meant "moving forward", not "moving in a better direction". The latter definition of "progress" as gradual betterment seems reflective of the optimism and/or arrogance of modern humans who think they are wiser than their ancestors. Taller, yes, but wiser? I'm not convinced of that. I'm OK with discarding some newer pedagogical ideas if it means my children are better taught due to use of older methods. Where's my hornbook? :)

Thanksgiving

2010-11-18T20:25:00.000-08:00

As this wonderful holiday of family and tasty autumn food approaches, I'm going to take a little cyberspace to say 100 things I'm grateful for: my family, the Bill of Rights, the internet, my husband's job, our house, libraries, friends, a working car, heat for our house, our refrigerator, freedom to homeschool, health, my life experiences thus far, plastic dishes, the rule of law, books, computers, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, beautiful scenery, four seasons, pumpkins, telephones, safe public parks, jet planes, imported bananas, disposable diapers, wipes, thrift stores, ultrasound machines, kissable babies, AP tests, BYU, generous people, smiles, falling leaves, DVDs, Stare Dobre Malzenstwo, raising our children to be bilingual, free educational websites, skin moisturizer, vaccines, clean tap water, the Rosetta Stone, popcorn, going for walks, toothbrushes, wall-to-wall carpeting, good teachers, charter schools, temples, LDS General Conference, telescopes, stars, the sun, bees, classical radio stations, playdates, legal research assignments, politeness, apologies, listening ears, skin, eyes, ears, sugar, cocoa, Facebook, pianos, violins, orchestras, dictionaries, forgiveness, others' patience with me, my crockpot, pay-at-the-pump gas stations, Louisa May Alcott's books, ice skating, dancing, laughter, hair, my bed, holidays, peace, good health insurance, warm showers, good architecture, insulation, lawns, completed craft projects, emails from loved ones, flowers, trees, red rock canyons, the local zoo, ballpoint pens, key fob car locks, coral reefs, and the atonement and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Homeschooling Carnival

2010-11-10T19:13:00.000-08:00

The homeschooling carnival is up here at The HomeSpun Life. It's so nice of blog writers to host the carnivals. I've learned a lot from them over the past couple of years.

Stuck

2010-11-08T12:50:00.000-08:00

Over a month ago, I optimistically posted that our math project for the next week or two was learning the addition facts. Here are the things I have done since then to facilitate dd6 in learning her addition facts:

1) Online games - turns out she's not much of a gamer (online puzzles, mazes, coloring games, etc. are liked, but not shoot-em-up, kill-the-alien-sum type games), so the free games on http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/ and other education game websites didn't do the job.

2) Addition fact songs scattered strategically throughout a newly-burned CD for car listening - dd3 now knows most of the addition facts, but dd6 must have already passed the stage where she memorizes every little thing she hears in passing. Most unfortunate.

3) Flashcards - moderately effective at reinforcing the sums she already knows and at giving me a chance to explain how to figure out other sums from the known ones, but kind of boring for both of us and so used only a few times.

4) We made 100 paper cutouts for the 0-9 sums in 10 different colors. I taped these on the kitchen wall and periodically ask her some of them. If she can answer one quickly, then I take it down. Over half are still hanging on the wall. Dd3 keeps answering my little pop quiz questions before dd6, which annoys me and probably frustrates dd6.

5) Cuisenaire rods - I pulled these out today and let her use them to show all the different ways to make sums up through 10. She enjoyed it, so maybe we'll use them again.

6) Addition Bingo game - dd6 enjoyed our Addition Bingo board game, but dd3 became temperamental and didn't want to play the game correctly, so I hesitate to get it out again. Same goes for Chutes and Ladders. (Ah, board game strife. When do they learn to cope with losing? Come to think of it, I still won't play Risk because I don't like that I never win....)

7) Various worksheets printed off from the internet and pages from sundry math workbooks - rather randomly chosen to keep her writing down math and reinforcing all the math that she has learned thus far.

We are stuck in our math worktext at the first page of double digit addition. I told dd6 a month ago that she needed to know her addition facts in order for her to learn double digit addition. She believed me, and now she absolutely refuses to work on double digit addition until she has memorized her sums. To tell the truth, I'm bored of working on 0-9 sums. But we'll keep at the task until it's mastered because it's truly fundamental. And because she won't let me move on.

What else to give them?

2010-10-27T07:17:00.000-07:00

Dh and I were discussing this morning how middle class college students generally have received so many material benefits growing up in the USA. He asked as he left for work what they will want to give their children "to give them what they didn't have growing up"? My immediate response was "homeschooling"! Once we've made sure children have food, shelter, health care, clothes and toys (I think American children are usually inundated with toys these days), what's left? A good education and time with parents. Put those together, and what do you have? Education by mom or dad. Happily, with the internet and the public library, even lower economic class families can give their children good educations once their basic material needs are met. How equalizing!

Because we can't afford private school, homeschooling is the only way for me to give my children a really good education, not just one that makes them "proficient" in "standards". If my children reach 18 without reading some Plato, learning calculus, or being able to write essays in a couple of languages, then I haven't given them an education even as good as mine was. Based on the results I see from non-charter public schools, there is no way for the current public school system to give my children this education, so I am grateful every day for the freedom to homeschool.

Homeschool update

2010-10-02T15:05:00.000-07:00

Dd6 just finished Chapter 11 (out of 21) of her first grade math book. She and I have less than 20 pages of Reading with Phonics left to go through with each other. Her writing is slowly getting better, she is pronouncing her r's better, and we have started reading a little in the scriptures each day. With the help of a $1 workbook from Target, we have learned about several countries (e.g., Kenya, Ireland, Australia, Egypt, Israel, France, China, etc.)

We started reading Volume 1 of Story of the World, putting a lot of focus on Egypt since we were planning a trip to the King Tut exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. Now that we've seen the exhibit, we should be moving on to Mesopotamian cultures, but I've hesitated to do so because dd6's class at her charter school (she attends about 7 hours a week) is currently studying ancient Egypt. It seems best to let her knowledge of ancient Egypt get reinforced at school for now. We can always cover Babylon later.

Speaking of school, she now attends Saturday School in German. It's only three hours and costs us, but it's worth it: she is finally starting to speak in German.

Our big task for the next week or two is to memorize addition facts up to 12+12 in order to prepare for math Chapter 12: Double Digit Addition. I looked at several different toys, games, and programs to help her learn her addition facts. In the end, I bought a set of addition flashcards ("Princess" cards because she likes them) from the dollar store and told her I'll give her five dollars to spend at the dollar store however she wants once she has all the addition facts memorized. She has a very good memory, so I don't think I'm expecting too much of her. She's already put in around an hour going over the flashcards by herself. I look forward to her reaching her goal of memorizing them all.

Fun with Liquid Measures

2010-09-21T09:29:00.001-07:00

Today we are learning about pints and cups. I let dd6 play around with cups and a pint (2-cup) measure. Then I asked her whether she could drink a whole pint of water. She managed about a cup, but she had fun watching the water line go down slowly. I kept hearing in my head the line from The Fellowship of the Rings: "You mean it comes in pints!" I live in Hobbiton. :)

New School Year

2010-08-30T15:16:00.000-07:00

We officially started the new school year two weeks ago. Dd5 is being homeschooled most of the time, but I have her in a local charter school for about 8 hours each week. I'm thrilled to have a school nearby that is flexible enough to be able to accommodate her need for social growth and group extracurriculars. I continue to take responsibility for her learning math, reading, writing, spelling, history (following the Story of the World books), and German; at school she makes friends, learns to get along with others, and does some history, science, art, music, and Spanish.

This year I am starting to keep records. It's a little nervewracking sometimes making sure that I've entered at least 4 hours of educational time per school day, as is required by Colorado law for children aged 7 and up. It's not that she's not learning enough. Rather, I'm too strict with myself when it comes to timekeeping. One reason I choose not to be a practicing lawyer is that I would have a hard time recording enough billable hours ("Oh, no, I can't count that as a solid hour because I got up to fill my water bottle...", etc.). It's a good thing I'm getting into the habit of timekeeping now while I'm still not legally subject to the 4-hour-per-day requirement.

"Stereotype threat" avoidance

2010-07-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

In this article, Negative stereotypes shown to affect learning, not just performance, study finds, it describes how women informed of negative stereotypes about women's math-related abilities had their ability to learn negatively impacted. The women apparently spent more energy trying to prove the stereotypes wrong than they did actually learning.

"(The present study) points to the importance of creating environments that reduce the impact of stereotype threat during mathematical skill acquisition by women," the authors concluded in their PNAS article. "If creating such an environment is not done, the learning deficits that result could well be cumulative, causing problems that continually worsen as development proceeds."

It seems to me that an effective way of avoiding stereotype threat is to create a learning environment where children are isolated from each other and from adults who express negative stereotypes. They have to be isolated from each other because children are always trying to categorize each other: "Herbert is good at math and he's a boy. I'm not a boy, so I'm not good at math." They need to be isolated from adults who can't keep from expressing negative stereotypes because the adults will hamper both their learning and their performance. Children also need to be shielded from media that will teach negative stereotypes.

Maybe robot tutors are the way to go....

In the meantime, I will strive to be the positive-thinking homeschooling mom that my girls need. Not that any of them will ever think that girls are "bad at math"...too many females with math degrees in the extended family. :) (That said, I do think that the male brain tends do better when one looks at the extreme high end of mathematics achievement. I don't consider that a stereotype because it's actually true. See my previous blog post.)

"Gender gap persists at highest levels of math and science testing, 30-year study finds"

2010-07-08T16:55:00.000-07:00

Here's a study result I find completely unsurprising. Girls in my family are very good at math; three of us have degrees in math. Yet none of us are ambitious to be great mathematicians or even stay in math careers.

Financial Decisions

2010-07-08T16:03:00.000-07:00

My husband and I are bookish. (Big surprising confession, that one.) We don't pay a lot of attention to things like the stock market. However, we have been unable to ignore that our Roth IRA accounts, modest as they are, have no gains (actually some losses, sigh), and almost equal the amount left on our house mortgage. So basically we have a net worth of zero! We hate debt and live well within our means. The only debt we have is our mortgage. (Well, OK, we feel a debt to society to live well and raise our children right and a debt to our parents for life itself and a debt to the Lord for everything. I meant a money debt.) We are considering closing out the Roth IRA accounts (no penalties unless you take out earnings, and we don't have any earnings) and paying off our mortgage.

It's interesting researching the pros and cons of such an action. The major pros seem to be 1) a guaranteed cut in living expenses (especially mortgage interest), and 2) peace of mind. The major cons seem to be 1) loss of mortgage interest tax deduction (not applicable for us because we don't itemize deductions), and 2) no longer having the Roth IRA accounts for retirement later on, when they are likely to have increased in value. This second con requires an optimism about our economy that I do not possess. Any readers out there willing to give me reasons to be optimistic about my retirement account mutual funds before I unload them?

Explora

2010-07-04T22:54:00.000-07:00

We just got back from a mini-vacation to New Mexico. While there, we had the chance to go to the Explora! center in Albuquerque. It was one of the most interesting science museums I have ever been to. It is full of hands-on inquiry exhibits. My children and I did some basic animation (computer and drawing frames), played with water and air and light and weight and color and bubbles, and saw a chemistry demonstration on density. Did you know that a Coca-Cola can will float in water, but a Diet Coke can will not? I didn't. (It's the missing sugar that causes it to have an average density less than that of water.) We had a great time!

Darwininan Garden

2010-06-24T11:55:00.000-07:00

I like this lady's approach to building up her garden. Still, it doesn't sound like landscaping my children would enjoy playing amongst. Yucca? Not with my little ones' eyeballs at risk, thank you. I guess I'll have to keep trying to get some sort of grass growing.

Update on Home Learning

2010-06-20T21:20:00.000-07:00

Now that dd5 has been out for summer from official school, part-time though it was, for a whole month, here's a list of what we do to keep educating her:

1) Nearly every weekday morning, we do 30-45 minutes of formal schooling. It includes 5 minutes of writing practice (copy one short sentence), 20-30 minutes of math (usually 2 pages from her math workbook), and 5-15 minutes of reading instruction from Reading with Phonics.
2) Much watching of Sid the Science Kid has been happening. I like the song that goes "I love my mom, my mom is cool."
3) We have occasional music lessons and went to a children's concert.
4) She is done with the library's summer reading program, and it did indeed jumpstart her reading on her own.
5) She doesn't let a day go by without doing something crafty: coloring, painting, paper plate masks, etc. Often her crafts are inspired by a book we've just read, such as the swans she painted today after we read The Ugly Duckling.

We also just play games, garden, visit friends and family, and go to parks. Summer is hot, and life is good.

Post Kindergarten

2010-06-04T20:35:00.000-07:00

Last month dd5 officially finished kindergarten. Her school district enrichment program ended, and she finished her kindergarten level math book. She is 2/3 of the way through her Hay-Wingo Reading with Phonics, and her handwriting is (very) gradually improving. She and dd3 are already working on winning prizes in the local library's summer reading program. We'll be doing school through the summer, taking breaks when traveling or doing special family activities. I think we would all be very bored if we just put away the books for 2 months.

Please just immunize!

2010-05-13T11:42:00.000-07:00

According to this article, "Doctors report alarming increase in mumps-related testicle problems among young males", parents who feared the MMR vaccine might cause autism and so had their sons go without the vaccine appear to have increased their sons' chances of fertility problems in the future. Not a good thing, especially since the alleged MMR-autism link just hasn't been proven. I immunize my children (late, sometimes, but what's the point in rushing all those shots when babies are still breastfeeding?) because vaccines prevent certain harm.

Weather

2010-05-11T21:06:00.000-07:00

I didn't post for a while because I just didn't have anything to say. However, today I have something to say about the weather.

It TOTALLED my brother's house yesterday in Oklahoma. Stinkin' tornadoes. At least my brother and his family are safe.

Things we have learned: have storm shelters or friends close by with storm shelters, and do an inventory (with a copy stored at someone else's house or on the internet) of the belongings in your house BEFORE disasters hit.

Where's the movie about her?

2010-04-26T20:34:00.000-07:00

While reading Strange But True America today, I came across the story of Buffalo Calf Road Woman, a Northern Cheyenne woman who not only risked her life to rescue her wounded brother on a battlefield, but also fought alongside her husband at the Battle of Little Bighorn and apparently gave Custer the last blow before his death! Now there's a heroine worthy of her own movie (and please not a travesty like Disney's Pocahontas).

Sleep

2010-04-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

While the world comes alive in springtime, the longer days also mess with my children's sleeping patterns. Me no likey.

My Urlaub

2010-04-18T19:29:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a family wedding. We had a seven-day trip, four of which we spent driving. I guess I'm not a real German when it comes to taking vacation. Sigh.

A Genuine German Restaurant

2010-04-07T15:44:00.000-07:00

Real Germans love their Urlaub (vacation). That's how I know Uwe's German Restaurant in Colorado Springs is a real German restaurant. I called their phone number this week and was told by the answering machine that they will not be open until April 15th. How many restaurants do you know of that close for a week or more at a time? I guess my Spätzle appetite will remain unsatiated a while longer.

Folic acid

2010-04-05T12:34:00.000-07:00

If you've looked over my older posts, you might have seen that I have reservations about widespread overdosing on folic acid because I think it may be contributing to the rise in autism. Here is an article from msnbc.com expressing similar reservations, although for a different reason: cancer.

Indeed, many scientists have grown increasingly concerned about mounting research — including a study published last winter in the Journal of the American Medical Association — suggesting that all the extra folic acid might increase your odds of developing cancer. "The more we learn about folic acid, the more it's clear that giving it to everyone has very real risks," says folic acid researcher David Smith, PhD, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Oxford in England....

The risk experts worry about most: colon cancer. Last year, health officials in Chile reported that hospitalization rates for colon cancer among men and women age 45 and older more than doubled in their country since fortification was introduced in 2000. In 2007, Joel Mason, MD, director of the Vitamins and Carcinogenesis Laboratory at the Tufts University School of Medicine, described a study of the United States and Canada suggesting that rates of colon cancer rose — following years of steady decline — in the late 1990s (around the time our food was being fortified)....

Other research links high doses to lung and prostate cancers. In one study conducted in Norway, which doesn't fortify foods, supplementation with 800 mcg of folic acid (plus B12 and B6) daily for more than 3 years raised the risk of developing lung cancer by 21 percent. Another, in which men took either folic acid or a placebo, showed those consuming 1,000 mcg of folic acid daily had more than twice the risk of prostate cancer. And a new worry recently came to light when scientists discovered the liver has limited ability to metabolize folic acid into folate — which means any excess continues circulating in the bloodstream. "Unlike folate, folic acid isn't found in nature, so we don't know the effect of the excess," says Smith.

Read more: http://www.today.msnbc.msn.com/id/35874922/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition//#ixzz0kFx8BW7n

There really can be too much of a good thing.

Error

2010-04-02T06:02:00.000-07:00

I did my federal taxes on paper (printed out from the computer), and we just saw that our tax refund was deposited in our bank account. Unfortunately, it's $800 more than it should be! Apparently, the IRS computers read a "1" as a "9". Now I have to call the IRS and get them to fix their records and mail in a check to them. Such a waste of time! Not to mention taxpayer money.

Update: I just got off the phone with the IRS. They say that we didn't overpay. They adjusted our refund upwards because we didn't give ourselves the "Making Work Pay" tax credit. Crazy. I never heard of it, nor did I notice it when I went through the tax forms and instruction booklet. Maybe if they had named it the "Free Money (For Now)" tax credit, I would have paid more attention to it on the tax form.

Enough and Narcissim

2010-04-01T06:42:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading through two recently-published nonfiction books: The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement and Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty. The first book includes a lengthy discussion of the boundless materialism that is one expression of a narcissism epidemic in US society, while the other contains stories and information illustrating how nearly a billion of the world's people still suffer from hunger and malnutrition.

I found the contrast between the anecdotes and data in the two books both painful and powerful. Our nation as a whole comes out looking like a bunch of selfish, oblivious, uncaring...narcissists. It also strengthened my resolve to be grateful for what I already have and live thriftily so I can help fund causes like microfinance and humanitarian aid. We are not close to being rich by US standards, but our family has a full refrigerator and enough uncommitted cash to be able to share.

Fashions

2010-03-31T09:55:00.001-07:00

When someone told me ten years ago that she didn't like my voice, I figured it was just because I couldn't mimic Alison Krauss the way she could. I love Alison Krauss's work, so it was understandable that someone would prefer her performances to my old-fashioned semi-operatic sound (I can do a rather good Marlene Dietrich imitation, to my husband's annoyance--Der Blaue Engel is one of his least favorite movies ever). Then recently I realized that choral music has changed dramatically in the last decades, too; for an example, just listen to the difference between this older Mormon Tabernacle Choir rendition of Handel's Messiah and their newest album, Heavensong.

As a child taking lessons and a teenager singing in school choirs, I did not realize that vocal technique specifics (e.g., placement, breathiness, volume, and vibrato) change over time even within styles. Now I believe that there is a faddish nature to what voices are considered "good" at a given time.

My mother is a trained singer who often sang solos for church events throughout her life. Her voice is quite powerful (i.e., loud), and I have inherited it (sadly to the annoyance of some people when singing next to me). She took some lessons later in life from an opera singer, whom she also paid to teach me a few lessons when I was a child. I took further lessons in the 80's and 90's from various classical teachers. As a result, I have a voice that now is hopelessly out of fashion. I feel rather like a castrato after the turn of the last century. At least my children still like to have me sing to them at bedtime. They will always be my favorite audience.

Curry

2010-03-20T22:29:00.000-07:00

I'm sad to say my dh is not a curry fan. Even in chicken divan. Sigh.

Applying Montessori principles in our home, part 3

2010-03-17T21:22:00.000-07:00

Chapter 7 of Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius by Angeline S. Lillard is about learning within meaningful contexts, which assists "learning by providing frameworks and motivation for the acquisition of new knowledge." (p. 256) Setting up learning experiences to be within meaningful contexts is part of Montessori's methods, but it can also be done in traditional schools. Obviously, it can be done very easily in a home setting: e.g., studying fractions while baking, researching botany for landscaping and gardening, learning civics and finance principles while doing the taxes, and composing letters to relatives that will actually be sent.

The next Montessori principle presented is the promotion of productive adult-child interaction styles. Studies suggest that child outcomes tend to be better where adults are sensitive to children's signals, interpret the signals correctly, and promptly respond to the signals in appropriate ways. The recommended parenting style is being "authoritative", a style characterized by high control (as opposed to permissiveness and neglect) in conjunction with high warmth (as opposed to being authoritarian or neglectful). The control should be tempered with an appropriate level of flexibility for older children and adolescents who can provide reasons for exceptions or changes to adults' rules. Montessori philosophy calls for giving children a great deal of freedom within certain limits, and Lillard presents this as consistent with an authoritative style. One of the most valuable insights I took away from this chapter is that adults need to be assiduous observers of children so they catch children's signals and respond promptly to them. It's a good thing our computer is in the room where our children usually play!

The last Montessori principle discussed in this book is order. In Montessori schools, the daily schedule is not ordered--the child has two three-hour blocks during which they are free to wander the classroom (or even over to another classroom) and choose what tasks they will engage in. However, each of the tasks is very ordered with specific steps to be accomplished in the dictated sequence. Montessori classrooms are intentionally clean, organized, and free of extraneous items, and the atmosphere is kept peaceful with just some quiet chatter or occasional classical music in the background. The Montessori curriculum is presented in a logical, coherent progression, an apparently unattainable goal in public schools in the USA which are always changing textbooks and dealing with students transferring in from all over the country. A lesson I learned in this chapter is that a flexible daily schedule is fine as long as I teach my daughter in an orderly fashion--no music with words or movies playing in the background while I am teaching her, a clean space at the table where we are working, an orderly and peaceful home, and adherence to a given curriculum for a decent length of time instead of being a curricula flibbertigibbet (of course, this means I have to do a lot of research before adopting a curriculum in order to be sure it's one we will want to stay with for a long time).

I recommend this book to parents and teachers looking for new insights in education and character development of children. Lillard doesn't pretend to have all the answers, but she is clearly very impressed with Montessori philosophy and practice and produces a great number of studies that support them. I am glad I read this book now as my children are still young enough for me to benefit from applying the insights I gained from it.

Applying Montessori principles in our home, part 2

2010-03-16T22:03:00.001-07:00

I finally finished reading Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius, by Angeline S. Lillard. It is a meaty book filled with discussion of many interesting ideas and studies.

Chapter 6 deals with learning from peers. In Montessori schools, children are grouped together in 3-year age groupings (e.g., ages 3-6, 6-9, etc.), and they are free to interact with each other in constructive ways as they work on various learning tasks. The research cited by the author indicates that children are more likely to imitate peers than adults, so younger children gain by being able to observe and copy slightly older pupils. I've been amused to note how my dd3 wants to do everything she sees dd5 doing, so I don't doubt the research findings on this point. Unfortunately for children in traditional schools, they are nearly always with peers of exactly the same age until they hit high school, which means they have only each other to imitate instead of being regularly exposed to slightly older, more advanced children.

This chapter discusses peer tutoring, which is naturally part of a Montessori education as the pupils can interact and the teacher can't work with every student individually all the time. From the research presented, it appears that more effective tutoring happens when the tutoring is specific and structured (Montessori tasks are very structured) and done by peers who are just a bit more advanced than the tutees. Peer tutoring is something that is already being incorporated in traditional schools, but my impression from anecdotes and parental complaints over the years is that its usefulness in that setting is hindered by children's ego issues (at least where tutor and tutee are of the same age) and lack of mastery by the child tutor.

The last part of the chapter focuses on collaborative learning. I admit, I'm not a fan of collaborative learning for younger children. I recognize its usefulness when dealing with adults or advanced students who have learned some material on their own already, but I don't think younger pupils in traditional US schools have enough in their heads to make group work worth the time it takes. Perhaps my negative attitude towards group work comes from the first major group project I ever did, a "Pharaoh project" in my sixth grade class for which much of the grade came from making a life-size stuffed-pantyhose dummy of our assigned Pharaoh; I had a traumatic experience trying to make the stupid thing myself late at night only to realize when they were all displayed that most other groups had clearly had their Pharaohs made by mothers, not sixth graders. (Also, I got a "C" on the project, and that was after the mother of one of my team members remade the dummy. Grrr.) Or maybe my negative attitude towards collaborative learning comes from remembering how in school I often felt like I was doing most of the work for the group and wondering what the point was of other children receiving credit for work they didn't do and didn't understand.

Interestingly, according to Lillard, collaborative learning becomes more beneficial with age; she says it appears not to provide much benefit before age 5. Other factors that affect whether collaborative learning helps include children's level of usage of interpretive statements, readiness to learn the task being taught, and the degree of friendship among collaborators. The freedom of the Montessori class setup allows children to choose to work in self-chosen groups on tasks for which they are ready. However, traditional schools do not have this freedom, and Lillard reports that some studies have found that "performance under no-reward conditions is no better than in whole-class teaching arrangements." (p. 219) Since my oldest child is now five, I expect I will have the chance occasionally to observe her learning in self-chosen groups, and maybe I will grow to appreciate collaborative learning in such optimal conditions. For now, though, I am not bothered by the fact that as a mostly-homeschooled child, she will be spared regular, mandatory group projects for the next few years.

Love Languages

2010-03-12T07:45:00.001-08:00

A very long time ago, I read a book about "love languages". It think it was The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. The focus was on learning how your spouse expects love to be shown to them and then applying the insight to improve your marriage.

The five ways discussed are 1) praise, 2) quality time (paying attention to a spouse...novel concept!), 3) gifts, 4) service, and 5) physical touch. If there is a mismatch between how one person expects to be loved and how the person trying to show love does so, then hurt feelings will likely result. In my opinion, this principle is applicable in all relationships, not just in marriages.

I saw long ago how one sibling's failure to understand this contributed to worsen her relationship with our mother. This sibling tried to make amends for the lacks she perceived in my mother's life, first with a diamond ring (my father had never bought my mother one), and then with a huge gift basket full of color-themed toiletries (I doubt my mother has had a bubble bath in over 30 years). My mother likes gifts, but not expensive, relatively useless ones, so she didn't appreciate the gifts the way my sibling thought she should. My sibling was very hurt and thought my mother horribly unappreciative. What was intended to create happiness backfired because the giver didn't know or just didn't pay attention to how the actual recipient would feel about the items.

As Easter approaches, I've been thinking that I need to find an Easter card to send to dh's mother. After a few years of marriage, I realized she was sending us cards at Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Easter, as well as a few other random occasions. Since I don't care that much for cards (but my daughters like them, especially if they come with stickers attached), I didn't understand why she sent us so many of them. But on consideration, I believe that cards are something she considers a true expression of love and would therefore like to receive more of herself. Thus, even though I'm not "into" holiday greetings, I make the effort to send them to her because I genuinely do love her and want her to feel loved in a way she appreciates.

Homeschool Carnival is up

2010-03-09T21:24:00.000-08:00

I'm grateful for the homeschool carnivals because they expose me to a variety of philosophies and approaches to teaching at home. This week's carnival is up at Homeschool Bytes.

Applying Montessori principles in our home, part 1

2010-03-08T09:41:00.000-08:00

I've been reading Montessori: The Science behind the Genius by Angeline S. Lillard. It pulls together various studies to determine how some of Maria Montessori's educational philosophies have been validated by recent science. The eight principles covered in the book are the following (from p. 29):

1) that movement and cognition are closely entwined, and movement can enhance thinking and learning;
2) that learning and well-being are improved when people have a sense of control over their lives;
3) that people learn better when they are interested in what they are learning;
4) that tying extrinsic rewards to an activity, like money for reading or high grades for tests, negatively impacts motivation to engage in the activity when the reward is withdrawn;
5) that collaborative arrangements can be very conducive to learning;
6) that learning situated in meaningful contexts is often deeper and richer than learning in abstract contexts;
7) that particular forms of adult interaction are associated with more optimal child outcomes; and
8) that order in the environment is beneficial to children.

It's fairly easy to apply the first principle in our own home--dd5 moves around a lot, so I let her. No school desks here. Any written lessons requiring a table are done while we sit (sometimes standing or wiggling for her) in various positions at the coffee table. I only admonish her to stay still when she has a word to read and, due to wiggling, is not even looking in the direction of the book. She must have a lot of excess energy, so why not let her move her body? It's not like she is disrupting a classroom full of other students.

The discussion of studies showing increased interest in and performance of freely-chosen activities was eye-opening. I am going to increase the amount's of choice in dd5's day. Until now, I've been requiring a small amount of formal academic time in the morning before she is free to choose her own activities. She used to be happily energetic in learning during that time, but she has definitely been losing motivation to work for even twenty minutes. So today I put the schoolbooks out on the table and didn't force her to do the work. As a result, she has only done her work in one of the four subject areas so far. It's only 11:30 a.m., though. I'll gently suggest we do the rest of the work throughout the day and see how that goes. In the meantime, she has dusted the living room (of her own initiative), read a story to dd3, made a tent, and started cutting up a box to make a boat.

The third principle helps me understand why "unschooling" can be so effective. While I accept as a premise that people learn better when they're interested in a subject, I think the studies cited here didn't adequately take into account the contribution of prior knowledge to learning performance. Knowing something about a subject both lessens the amount of working memory required to process new information about that subject and seems to increase the likelihood of finding that subject interesting. After all, don't your eyes skim right over headlines that deal with places you've never been and topics you've never learned about? Mine do. In helping my daughters obtain good educations, I need to make sure that--regardless of interest level--they have wide exposure to all kinds of topics, and then I should let them seek deep subject matter knowledge about subjects they find interesting.

I am still in the middle of the chapter on the fourth principle, but I am finding lots of food for thought. Apparently, rewards and evaluation tend to negatively impact motivation and performance. While I'm happy to see that I don't need to feel guilty for not giving my children gold star stickers for accomplishing tasks, I realize now that I could do even less to artificially motivate (i.e., bribe) them. Another interesting concept is that I actually hinder my children's learning to mastery by interrupting their work to praise, evaluate or even observe them.
Montessori said

Praise, help, or even a look, may be enough to interrupt him, or destroy the activity. It seems a strange thing to say, but this can happen even if the child merely becomes aware of being watched....The great principle which brings success to the teacher is this: as soon as concentration has begun, act as if the child does not exist.

I know I always hated to have my mother listen to me practice singing when I was internally motivated to sing a piece well. Her compliments were just as unwelcome as her constructive criticism--after all, I wasn't doing it for her. I think I need to apply that lesson to my own mothering style by being more "hands-off".

Recipe to try

2010-03-07T23:37:00.000-08:00

I love curry made with coconut milk. I pulled out the crockpot recently to make a dish my husband loves - rice, kielbasa, and cream of mushroom soup. Since there are leftovers of that dish, I'm going to indulge my own curry appetite (one not shared by dh) with this Crockpot Thai Curry recipe Monday night. Mmmm.

Update: I made it, and it didn't turn out very well. Too much eggplant, I think. Or else the coconut milk was too thin? Sigh.

Again, juice isn't the problem

2010-03-06T14:54:00.000-08:00

Drinking sugar-sweetened beverages daily linked to diabetes. My mom always gave us milk, water or 100% juice to drink. So far none of us are diabetic. :) Good job, mom.

A challenge

2010-03-05T15:58:00.000-08:00

Try not to laugh at this.

Very cool

2010-03-04T08:38:00.000-08:00

According to this, 'World's Most Useful Tree' Provides Low-Cost Water Purification Method For Developing World, there is a simple help to the problem of dirty surface water right under people's noses in many areas of the world where too many people still die because of lack of clean water:

A low-cost water purification technique published in Current Protocols in Microbiology could help drastically reduce the incidence of waterborne disease in the developing world. The procedure, which uses seeds from the Moringa oleifera tree, can produce a 90.00% to 99.99% bacterial reduction in previously untreated water, and has been made free to download as part of access programs under John Wiley & Sons' Corporate Citizenship Initiative.

"Moringa oleifera is a vegetable tree which is grown in Africa, Central and South America, the Indian subcontinent, and South East Asia. It could be considered to be one of the world's most useful trees," said Lea. "Not only is it drought resistant, it also yields cooking and lighting oil, soil fertilizer, as well as highly nutritious food in the form of its pods, leaves, seeds and flowers. Perhaps most importantly, its seeds can be used to purify drinking water at virtually no cost."

This is yet another reason why we need to be careful to prevent species extinction. Who knows what uses may yet be found for the many, many kinds of plants out there?

Carnival of Homeschool

2010-03-02T20:09:00.000-08:00

Find this week's homeschool carnival at Carnival of Homeschool: Oddities Edition!

Reading instruction instruction

2010-02-28T16:37:00.000-08:00

According to the National Reading Panel, there are five primary components of reading instruction:
1) Phonemic awareness,
2) Phonics,
3) Fluency,
4) Vocabulary, and
5) Comprehension.

A good discussion of these components is found here on the National Institute of Child Health and Development website. Another website that I've learned from is BalancedReading.com; unfortunately, the website's author inexplicably disses synthetic phonics, but he has useful information on other elements of reading instruction.

I've already given dd5 a good start on reading, and she now reads books to herself on a daily basis. Looking back on what we have done, I see how I have been addressing all five components above with her even while I thought I was just "doing phonics"--
1) For phonemic awareness, I sing her an "ABC Song" nightly, a unique version each time, e.g., "A is for anteater, B is for bear, C is for calculator, D is for diaper, E is for eclectic, F is for Frank, etc."; her phonemic awareness has also been promoted by the games and activities on the Starfall website and a "lift-the-flap" Phonics book.
2) For explicit phonics instruction, we have been slowly working our way through Reading with Phonics (my mother, a former schoolteacher, gave it to me). The Starfall website has also been helpful in teaching dd5 phonics.
3) Fluency is gained through "practice, practice, practice", and that's what we do by reading and rereading favorite books--something we have done since she was a baby--and repeated reading of sentences and paragraphs in our phonics book that she didn't read fluently the first time around. I don't teach "sight words"; in fact, I consider the memorization thereof to be a waste of time (nearly all "sight words" can be sounded out mostly or completely) and potentially confusing. As she practices reading, she naturally memorizes words she sees repeatedly, and she learns the words in varied contexts, which contributes to development of her vocabulary.
4) I build her vocabulary by exposing her to a wide range of subjects via books, videos, and conversation. When we come across a word she doesn't know in any book she's reading (including the phonics textbook), I tell her what the word means. Sometimes I get carried away and start talking about vowel shifts in words borrowed long ago from old French or German, but she's tolerant of my linguistic meanderings.
5) I work on comprehension by talking with her about what she has read or watched. This is an area where a homeschooling parent has a huge advantage over a schoolteacher. One-on-one instruction means we can tell when our child doesn't really comprehend something and can immediately respond with activities targeted to help her understand a written or spoken text. In a group setting, it's easy to get away with not understanding something. I sat through many lectures in college that I didn't understand, and usually the professors had no clue that I was wallowing.

According to this report by the National Council on Teacher Quality, only 15% of the college/university education schools surveyed actually teach future elementary teachers about all five components of reading instruction. That is discouraging since these five components do not seem like they should be overly controversial or difficult to discuss, and it only fuels distrust of education schools generally. On the bright side for homeschooling parents who are sometimes questioned about their "credentials" to teach their children, by perusing my blog post and the linked material, you have likely learned more about teaching reading than over 80% of recent education school graduates. Isn't that reassuring?

La ironía

2010-02-27T10:34:00.000-08:00

Hugo Chavez, the hombre who gives expansive meaning to the word "windbag", was holding a press conference when the power went out at the Palacio de Miraflores (official workplace of the president of Venezuela). Apparently he was talking about George W. Bush when the power went out. Um, Hugo, GWB has been out of office and living quietly in Texas for the last year or so. Perhaps you should address more pressing matters...like domestic infrastructure maintenance and upgrades?

Music notation aid

2010-02-27T01:18:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I combined two songs from my church's hymnbook in a voice/violin arrangement. It took me about two hours using a great website I just discovered--Noteflight. It is a user-friendly online music notation tool that will store versions of your piece, play the different staves in a selection of music instruments, and insert text wherever you need it. Oh, and it's free! I highly recommend this if you have any composing needs.

Theft

2010-02-25T20:25:00.001-08:00

Someone recently stole our bike trailer from our mostly enclosed porch, and we just noticed it today. It's depressing to think that people would steal a used bike trailer from a family that clearly is raising little children in modest circumstances. Of all ten commandments, I think "Do not steal" is one of the clearest and one of the most violated. And I really wish we'd thought more defensively (i.e., chains and padlocks for things we didn't want to lose) a few weeks ago.

Oldest temple yet found

2010-02-24T09:00:00.000-08:00

Here's a fascinating look at the excavation of the oldest temple yet--"Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?". It predates Stonehenge by millenia, and there's more time between it's construction and the Sumerians than there is between the Sumerians and us! Because archeological evidence found thus far indicates it was built by a hunter-gatherer society instead of an agricultural one, it's changing views on how civilizations come into being:

To Schmidt and others, these new findings suggest a novel theory of civilization. Scholars have long believed that only after people learned to farm and live in settled communities did they have the time, organization and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures. But Schmidt argues it was the other way around: the extensive, coordinated effort to build the monoliths literally laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies.

The immensity of the undertaking at Gobekli Tepe reinforces that view. Schmidt says the monuments could not have been built by ragged bands of hunter-gatherers. To carve, erect and bury rings of seven-ton stone pillars would have required hundreds of workers, all needing to be fed and housed. Hence the eventual emergence of settled communities in the area around 10,000 years ago. "This shows sociocultural changes come first, agriculture comes later," says Stanford University archaeologist Ian Hodder, who excavated Catalhoyuk, a prehistoric settlement 300 miles from Gobekli Tepe. "You can make a good case this area is the real origin of complex Neolithic societies."

I would love to tour these ruins someday!

Now I'm not quite as embarrassed...

2010-02-23T07:34:00.000-08:00

Throughout college, I regularly took naps during the daytime in campus classroom buildings, even when I lived on campus. If I couldn't find an empty bench or set of chairs, I would occasionally find a less-traveled part of a corridor to rest on. I safeguarded my belongings by using my backback as my pillow, and my winter coat became my blanket. I probably didn't add to the aesthetic appeal of my university. But, according to this article, Findings Suggest That A Biphasic Sleep Schedule Not Only Refreshes The Mind, But Can Make You Smarter, I was helping my knowledge acquisition abilities.

If you see a student dozing in the library or a co-worker catching 40 winks in her cubicle, don't roll your eyes. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour's nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter.
Conversely, the more hours we spend awake, the more sluggish our minds become, according to the findings. The results support previous data from the same research team that pulling an all-nighter - a common practice at college during midterms and finals - decreases the ability to cram in new facts by nearly 40 percent, due to a shutdown of brain regions during sleep deprivation.

I felt that all-night cramming was counterproductive, so I didn't do that. But I took the naps simply because I was so tired. I'm glad they had a beneficial effect on my brain and my GPA. Now if I could only convince my children to let me take a midday siesta....

Surprise - Adults are role models.

2010-02-23T07:18:00.000-08:00

According to this article, Children Don't Trust Each Other When It Comes To Learning The Rules, children believe and follow adults more readily than other children. Given our concepts of authority figures and role models, the outcome of their study is what I would expect.

Dr Rakoczy said: "The results from our study suggest that children prefer to learn from adults rather than other children when it comes to rule-governed activities like learning a new game. They also expect other people to learn and perform actions in the way that the adults do, demonstrated by the expectation that the puppet would also follow the adult actor's actions and not the boy's."
"These findings tell us that young children will accept adult's behaviour as being right, and that adults behaviour should be followed. This could have implications for wider social learning of both good and bad behaviour."

As the primary adults in our children's lives, my husband and I have the greatest responsibility of all in teaching and modeling good behavior for our children. Not to sound like a broken record, but I am very glad that I can stay home and be the primary caretaker of my own children.

The power of exponential growth

2010-02-22T08:15:00.000-08:00

A Jewish woman recently passed away who had 2000 living descendants! The story is here. I like how the story points out that her numerous progeny is a thumb in the eye of the Nazi regime, which tried to kill her off at Bergen-Belsen. Next time either of my parents speaks with pride of their 30+ grandchildren, I'll tell them about Yitta to keep them humble. :)

I LOVE this ad.

2010-02-20T17:47:00.000-08:00

This commercial has had me and dh in stitches!

Enjoy. :)

So cute!

2010-02-19T16:07:00.000-08:00

My youngest was born last fall, and she's become the cutest little baby. Soft, smooth skin, happy smile, and sweet coos and trills. And those bright little eyes! She's very aware of what's going on around her and learning quickly. I missed much of this stage with my first two, so I'm surprised by just how wonderful a four-month-old baby is. This is so much more rewarding and amazing than any other job I've ever had. I've never been the "I love kids" type, but I love mine!

Addressing the real issue

2010-02-19T00:59:00.001-08:00

Here is a Forbes article addressing the low percentage of women in corporate leadership positions. Instead of mistakenly blaming the small number of women CEO's on current sexism, it focuses on the real cause of women not making it to the top: motherhood.

Our survey results reveal that women tend to make many more compromises to their career paths than do their male partners. They are nearly twice as likely to take a flexible career path or a leave of absence and three times as likely to work part-time. The majority of promotion processes and career paths thus have a built-in biological bias, linked to the time women take off for having and rearing children. Some estimates show that more than 90% of women want to return but only 40% can find full-time jobs.

As a State Department employee for nearly five years, I ran into problems with its internal employee ranking system because of my first pregnancy. After my nine-week maternity leave, I was forced to go back to work full-time. The fact that the government was footing the bill to have me posted overseas meant that I couldn't work part-time. I understood that and was OK with it. But then, because employee evaluations are not allowed to include information about health issues, I was hurt professionally later by having one lackluster employee evaluation from the time when I was pregnant and on leave. It's difficult to do impressive things in your job when you're about to give birth or at home with a newborn, but no explanation of my health "problems" was allowed in my evaluation. Despite being "neutral", the system actually worked against me as I think it works against all mothers by not taking into account a temporary change in workplace productivity typical of females only.
I am curious to see the efficacy of some of the authors' ideas--not penalizing employees for taking more time to reach professional milestones after having children, encouraging stop-and-start career paths to the top--to facilitate women in progressing in their careers following the disruption of having children. Will those ideas help me at all a decade or two down the road or will I never have a full-time professional job again because of my decision to stay home now with little ones? I don't want credit for time I didn't work, but I don't want it to count against me that I'm much older than similarly-experienced and similarly-capable people who didn't take more time off to be with their own offspring. (I don't want to get into the "mommy wars"; it's simply that daycare during most of my children's waking hours is an unacceptable option for me.) I'm just one person, but given how many highly educated women we have now in our country, it seems a colossal waste of resources to perpetuate career structures that prevent women from returning to leadership-track employment once they are ready to return full-time.

No wonder Finnish kids do so well in school...

2010-02-17T22:17:00.000-08:00

According to this Medical News Today article, A Crucial Tool In English Language Development: Reading To Our Children, there are other languages that don't require parental support at home in order for the kids to learn to read:

Georgiou notes that students are able to learn to read faster in languages such as Greek and Finnish, because there is one-to-one correspondence between a letter and its sounds. This difference with English, he says, implies that Greek or Finnish parents do not need to read as frequently to their children to give them an edge on learning the language. Simply put, Greek or Finnish children will eventually learn to read regardless of how rich the home literacy environment may be.

That's so unfair. How can we get English to have one-to-one correspondence? Dropping the letter "c" would probably be a good start. Still, having mastered English myself, I don't want to give it up. It's pretty.

Homeschool Carnival

2010-02-16T23:12:00.000-08:00

The Carnival of Homeschooling was just posted today at Small World @ Home. There are many worthwhile submissions to peruse.

NurtureShock chapter "The Inverse Power of Praise"

2010-02-15T13:35:00.000-08:00

Nurtureshock, the book I mentioned in a previous post, has so much interesting information for those who interact with children and youth. The first chapter discusses how constantly praising a child in an effort to build his self-esteem can backfire. For instance, praising children for being "smart" causes them to be afraid to take risks when confronted with challenging problems; it's far better to praise them for their effort so that they realize they can tackle difficult exercises without having their self-esteem in doubt.

"Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control," [Dr. Carol Dweck] explains. "They naturally come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child's control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure."

Junior high students who were taught how intelligence is not innate (i.e., they spent 50 minutes learning about how the brain grows new neurons when challenged) improved their study habits and grades.
It appears the self-esteem movement has been less effective than anticipated. A former proponent of self-esteem has concluded in light of the studies done on the subject that having high self-esteem did not improve grades or career achievement or reduce violence and alcohol usage. There is evidence for the helpfulness of specific, sincere praise, but general praise by adults is often viewed by youth as a sign that they are lacking in ability and need encouragement. Unfortunately, they have found that overpraised kids become "more competitive and interested in tearing other down" because "[i]mage maintenance becomes their primary concern."
One of the authors notes that he realized he was giving his child nonspecific praise as a way of expressing unconditional love. He changed to giving specific praise after finding out about the negative effects of praise. I learned a while back that telling a child that she is "smart" often leads to perfectionism and failure to achieve in the child, so I've been careful to not say that. Now I will be even more confident in the specific praise I give my daughters and when I want to express my love for them, I will just hug them and say "I love you very much." Might as well say what I mean. :)

Don't they tell us something like this every Valentine's Day?

2010-02-14T13:30:00.000-08:00

Could Eating Chocolate Reduce Your Risk Of Having A Stroke? Apparently so! Enjoy a little chocolate with your loved ones today. :)

NurtureShock chapter "Plays Well With Others"

2010-02-13T08:03:00.000-08:00

Last night I finished reading a fascinating book, NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. It discusses several assumptions and ideas currently in vogue in child rearing and how research disproves them. One chapter, "Plays Well With Others", discusses how we try to instill good social skills in our children. Especially interesting to homeschoolers, who have to field questions about whether their children are missing out on socialization, is the following paragraph (p. 194):

We thought that aggressiveness was the reaction to peer rejection, so we have painstakingly attempted to eliminate peer rejection from the childhood experience. In its place is elaborately orchestrated peer interaction. We've created the play date phenomenon, while ladening older kids' schedules with after-school activities. We've segregated children by age--building separate playgrounds for the youngest children, and stratifying classes and teams. Unwittingly, we've put children into an echo chamber. Today's average middle schooler has a phenomenal 299 peer interactions a day. The average teen spends sixty hours a week surrounded by a peer groups (and only sixteen hours a week surrounded by adults). This has created the perfect atmosphere for a different strain of aggression-virus to breed--one fed not by peer rejection, but fed by the need for peer status and social ranking. The more time peers spend together, the stronger this compulsion is to rank high, resulting in the hostility of one-upmanship. All those lessons about sharing and consideration can hardly compete. We wonder why it takes twenty years to teach a child how to conduct himself in polite society--overlooking the fact that we've essentially left our children to socialize themselves.

I describe myself sometimes as a part-time homeschooler because I take my child to a public school enrichment program (art, music, and PE with other homeschooled children) for seven hours each week. From what I read and see around me, most homeschooled children do get out and spend time in group learning environments on a regular basis. It seems then that these homeschooled children are getting socialization. They're just not getting too much socialization. This seems to be another one of those issues where going to extremes is a bad thing--zero hours a week with peers prevents development of peer social skills needed for current happiness and later interaction in the adult world, but 60 hours a week with peers sabotages parental efforts to teach, among other things, consideration and kindness.

That's a relief

2010-02-12T08:12:00.000-08:00

Childhood obesity: It's not the amount of TV, it's the number of junk food commercials. I'm so glad to hear this because although we don't have a TV, I do let my children watch a lot of DVDs. With all the scary headlines about childhood obesity, I worried that I might be contributing to obesity in my little ones by letting them watch so many programs. If it's only the junk food commercials that are to blame for increasing obesity, my children will be just fine. Let the videos roll!

Mockery

2010-02-11T21:21:00.000-08:00

Today I found myself in a conversation about politics with a stranger--I try to avoid those, but I got sucked into it by a comment I'd made on a Facebook friend's link to an article. At the end of our conversation, which stayed amicable despite the other party's rather insulting style, I found out that the other person likes to go to a website that couches its opinions and commentary in a mocking way. I do not like mockery. I didn't like it as a girl when I was told my clothes were ugly followed by a laughing "Just kidding!", and I don't like it any better now. Mockery is a pride game, a way of saying "I'm so smart/awesome/pretty, and you're laughably not." There is humor, and then there is selfishly making fun of others, and I hope I can teach my children the difference in such a way that they will always opt for kind-hearted humor.

A Malaysian homeschooler

2010-02-10T10:37:00.000-08:00

Taking the Homeschool Leap - IslamOnline.net - Family. This is a fascinating article because of the similarities between her motivations and those of many in the USA. My favorite quote:

I would not hand my car over to another person five days a week. Thus, leaving my absorbent sponges with teachers who I do not know personally, and who were not going to get to know my children personally — no further than the grade they were going to achieve at the end of the year — is no longer an option. I realize that educating my children is the most precious gift I have received besides my children themselves.

Carcinogens form from third-hand smoke

2010-02-09T09:36:00.000-08:00

From Science Daily, Carcinogens form from third-hand smoke. This is seriously disgusting. I remember getting some free clothes and toys from a family through craigslist a couple of years ago. When I arrived at their house to pick up the items, I realized that they were heavy smokers. I washed the clothes repeatedly, and I washed and air-dryed the toys. Even after weeks outside, the doll hair still stunk of old tobacco smell. I finally had to give away all the stinky toys. Good thing I did, as according to this article the smoke residue was dangerous to my children's health.

Science Fun

2010-02-08T14:12:00.000-08:00

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Pancreatic Cancer Linked to Sodas?

2010-02-08T12:38:00.000-08:00

Pancreatic Cancer Linked to Sodas?
But no increased risk occurred in connection with juice. Interesting.

Good Examples

2010-02-07T18:34:00.000-08:00

If you want to do good in this world, then watch uplifting things more often. According to this study, watching others perform a virtuous deed makes someone more likely to exhibit altruistic, pro-social behavior. Not a huge surprise, but good to see confirmed in our modern era of sadly unheroic celebrities.