Thanksgiving

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.)

Financial Decisions

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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?

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

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

My Urlaub

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.