Lunar Eclipse

On Monday night, we had clear skies and a good view of the lunar eclipse. It was also 11 degrees though, so I wasn't interested in staying outside to watch. I picked a spot on the sidewalk and every 15 minutes, I ran out, stood in the same place and took a picture. Apparently my photography skills (and/or equipment) leave a lot to be desired because you can't really see the red that showed up in the shadows, but at least you get an idea.

Here are the last two pictures edited to show what you could really see in the shadow:

It just so happened that Sierra was finishing up a unit on the Earth and moon this week. She had learned that we have day and night because the Earth rotates and that the moon travels around the Earth and we see the different phases of the moon because of the shadows. Since it was so cold and required staying up a relatively long time to see the different parts of the eclipse, I decided (at the last minute) not to wake her up for it. Instead, we looked at the pictures and got out the globe the next day and pretended she was the sun and I moved the globe and pretended my fist was the moon to review the information and demonstrate why the lunar eclipse happened. Then, yes, she did a few of those evil worksheets to be sure the information "stuck".

Militant Unschoolers

It's been a while since I had an all out rant and I'm feeling a little rant-y.

I've recently come up against a very small group of people I describe as "militant unschoolers". Let me clarify right off the bat, I am NOT talking about people who say, "Hey, have you checked out this book?" or discuss their own homeschooling methods on their blogs. Those things are just contributing to the discussion and I welcome suggestions, whether I end up deciding to take them or not. But when someone goes onto a public forum and out and out berates anyone who dares open a text book or sit their child down with a worksheet, I have a problem.

Here's the thing: we chose homeschooling precisely because we can educate our children in the manner that is best suited for them. We don't have to teach in a certain way, or do things in a certain order just because that's what works best for the rest of the class. The militant unschoolers seem to have COMPLETELY missed the point. We opted out of the school system to get away from the rules and we certainly aren't going to let you stuff us back into a new set of your own making.

Let me describe a typical day around here. We get up, have a fairly lazy morning, then head upstairs to "do school" around 10. For the next 1-2 hours, we do seat work. There are a fair number of worksheets involved (gasp! the horror!), the math is done one on one with manipulatives, the history involves me reading from a book and then a website for her to explore or a project to do. Then we have lunch and the rest of the day is free time. Some days we might cook or write letters or talk to a clerk at a local store or just look out the window and those activities always present the opportunity for further learning. If something really catches Sierra's interest, we'll use this time to learn more about it. Hardly a "school at home" set up (which so many homeschoolers talk about with disdain). But, no joke, these "militant unschoolers" will directly insult such a set up and the parent who dares institute it because there is a semblance of a schedule and the children are expected to do any seat work at all. To make it worse, these people who are supposedly all about following the child's lead never seem to ask what the children think about it. Personally, my child has thrown screaming hissy fits in the past over WANTING to do workbooks. She learns really well from working through a practice sheet and being evaluated. She enjoys it. And frankly, in the early years, I feel like there is a base that needs to be laid anyway. A child needs to know how to read if they are going to learn about the topics that interest them. And while you can certainly practice math skills by having them add up totals in the grocery store, they're going to get awfully frustrated if you haven't at least given them the basic knowledge at home first.

I know plenty of unschoolers that are well educated. Many of them started out in school though and the unschooling part of life came later on, after they had already learned how to read, write and do basic math. I'm also aware that homeschooling is not the norm. While it's very possible for a homeschooler to get into a good college, there is a certain amount of "playing by the rules" required to get there. I'm choosing to leave that option open for my children in the way I teach and document their progress. That doesn't mean that I haven't "seen the light" as someone claimed, it means I'm not dictating my children's course for them while they are too young to have developed the logic and reasoning ability to make their own choices about matters that have such long-term consequences. That's hardly ignorant.

More importantly, our set up is what works for our family at this point in time. I respect that our way is not the best way for everyone, and I expect that same respect from others we associate with. I trust you've made an informed decision about what is best for your family, I welcome dialogue about the choices you've made and why you made them. What I have no room for is arrogant, belittling, close-minded people who assert that what was right for their kids is also right for mine. You have no right to dictate how a child you've never met will best learn, grow, and stay excited to learn about the world.

Reevaluating our Homeschool

Before Secora was born, our homeschooling days were pretty relaxed. Sierra loves worksheets, so we have workbooks for each subject and I would copy worksheets she needed a few days ahead of time. I decided what she was going to do each day based on how far along she was in each book and on her requests. So, if she was through week 12 of spelling, but only week 10 of science, I'd pull out some science sheets. If she was all gung-ho for a geography lesson, I'd get one of those out. This plan worked fine for the first few months.

When we made it back to Montana and got all of the school things out for our first day back (we had packed up what we needed and taken it to Texas with us), it didn't go quite so well though. I was trying to nurse Secora while I copied pages and Sedona was throwing a fit because she wanted to trace letters and Sierra was putting in requests for a certain subject. It was all too much input for my brain and I very quickly got frustrated and irritated, which are not quite conducive to teaching young children. I decided it was time for a little soul searching and a new plan of action.

I can't quite embrace what's typically described as unschooling (nor do I think Sierra could...she thrives on being evaluated). But I do want them to have some freedom to explore topics that are interesting to them and I don't want to have a rigid curriculum we're tied to for the year. When I thought about my goals, I decided that I'm not willing to do away with actual sit-down school time completely. I think at this age, there are some basic subjects that just need to be taught. To be clear, they WANT and actually beg to do these things. By "need to be taught" I mean that I think they will pick up these topics easier and with less frustration if they have some guided instruction. Sierra will continue doing her spelling, geography, science and grammar workbooks on a regular basis and we will continue following the math program we've started. I've decided to drop Spanish for now because I'm not sure I'm happy with the program (I think she'd like the online version from the same company much better). I also want to get a little more serious with history, which has fallen by the wayside, but I want to make it more hands on so more of it "sticks" for her. I'm also going to stop giving all the other stuff we do short-shrift and recognize that it's part of the school day...things like baking, sewing, and writing my grocery list for me are going on the school calendar just like math and history.

The biggest difference is going to have to be in how I organize all of this though. I can't just grab a worksheet here or there because I end up feeling overwhelmed with everyone's demands and just not doing any of it. So my new plan is to map out a week at a time. If we take a week off for a trip, no problem. If Sierra's having a really bad math day, we can put off the lesson until the next day. As far as organization goes though, I will have every worksheet, book and activity I need for the week prepared by Sunday night (and ideally put into a color coded folder, so all I need on Monday is the blue folder, for instance, and we're good to go). We'll still be flexible, we'll still go off on tangents and look up topics Sierra specifically asks about, but I won't be scrambling for materials everyday. I'm also going to plan activities for Sedona. These will all be craft/creativity/imagination type things and she can choose whether she wants to do them or would rather just draw or play with play dough, but I'll be prepared if she needs something to keep her occupied. She now knows her colors, shapes, and phonics and I don't plan to do any other formal things with her unless she asks or she's older. Just looking back over the last few months, I have a feeling she'll pick up reading and writing at her own pace within the next year and I'm not going to push it. Just like Sierra, we'll answer her questions as they come up throughout the day, explain things as we're doing them in daily life, but she won't have a more formal set-up until first grade.

Curriculum-wise, as I mentioned, we will be going more hands-on with history. We are moving on to the Usborne Encyclopedia of the Ancient World this week and it is an internet linked book (you can go to the Usborne site, put in a page number for the book and they give you links to kid appropriate websites to learn more about that topic). I'm taking the time to look through the links ahead of time and pick one or two that would appeal to Sierra. For instance, later this week she is going to explore what a house in one of the earliest cities would have looked like and do an activity with one of her postcards to think about how archeologist interpret and reconstruct wall paintings. A little later on when we talk about early writing, I think I'm going to get a little clay to let her make her own little pictogram story.

I'm also going to change up how we're doing reading. I have some reading assessments I do with her periodically and she is WAY (way...extremely far...it's really a little scary) ahead on reading ability, but her comprehension hasn't caught up. So, we're going to put away the short stories and associated worksheets for a while and try something different. I'm going to have her start doing some creative writing (this week I'm having her write some sort of story involving Christmas, and then draw pictures that go along with her story) and also writing some letters to family members describing things she's been doing. I'm hoping that will get her thinking more about the meaning behind the words instead of just focusing on reading. I'm also going to have her pick a chapter book to read and I will also read the book and come up with some activities to reinforce thinking about the story as she goes along. I think things like drawing a picture of the main character, putting major events in the story in chronological order, answering basic questions, and/or writing a short summary of one chapter will be doable for her.

All in all, it works out to quite a bit of "homework" for mom (though, easier days) and about 2 hours of seat work a day for Sierra. The rest of her time is spent doing whatever happens to pop into her head (that can be good or bad....). Lately, she loves to watch Mythbusters...with my luck, she'll be asking to do physics next year!

Teaching Money Management

Josh and I choose to follow a budgeting system very similar to what is laid out in the book America's Cheapest Family. I keep the budget on paper because we used a computer based system for years and it just wasn't tangible enough for me to keep me accountable. I briefly explained the system back when I first implemented it.

Sierra knows we have a budget book and has asked me questions about it and I've explained the basic idea to her. She's been dying to have a budget book of her own, but didn't really have any significant amount of money to apply a budget to.

Lately though, she's had a birthday, and the Tooth Fairy, and she and I have also been going to the medical school here in town on a regular basis to be "standardized patients" (we pretend to have a certain ailment and the med students practice their examination and diagnostic skills on us). The standardized patient thing in particular pays quite well. I keep some of the money because I'm the one who really has an involved story to memorize and act up, but if she's the actual patient (which pays more anyway since two of us are "working"), I give her part of the money. All of this has added up to quite a substantial sum in the world of a six year old and I decided it was time to put an end to the "can we go to the store so I can buy something?!?" and help her set up her own budget.

The first thing we did was a fairly quick explanation of percentages (by drawing a circle and showing her what 100%, 50%, 25%, 20%, 10% and 5% are). Then I dictated that she has to put money in savings first and since she is young and doesn't HAVE to buy anything herself, 50% of what she gets will go into savings.

From there, she got to take over. I explained to her what types of categories we have in our budget and she thought about what categories she wanted. She came up with: toys; candy/food; vacation souvenirs; books/learning; crafts/art.

Next I asked her what category was most important to her and which was next important, until we had prioritized the list.

Finally, we split the remaining 50% between the categories she had picked depending on how important the category was to her and how expensive things in that category are.

The final product was the decision that money she gets will be split as follows:
Savings 50%
Books/Learning 20% (p.s. how awesome is it that I have a 6 year old that not only came up with this category on her own, but also made it her number one priority with no input whatsoever from anyone else?!?)
Candy/Food 5%
Crafts/Art 5%
Toys 10%
Vacation Souvenirs 10%

There are some changes I would like to make, but I'd rather focus on her being excited about making and following a plan for her money instead of trying to push too much on her right from the beginning, so aside from the savings thing, I left all the choices up to her this time.

Homeschooling Away From Home

A little less than 2 weeks ago, we packed up and drove to Texas for a long-term stay. Packing for 3 months, 2 seasons and 2 totally different climates is hard enough. To complicate things though, we know we will need to leave space in the van for another baby on the trip back to Montana. While I'll probably end up shipping a box or two back, I'd like to limit that if at all possible, so I was faced with the task of carting 3 months of homeschooling materials in as small a space as possible.

Primarily, this involved copying worksheets and putting them into two 1 inch binders (the binders are split by date, not by subject, so that I was able to just get out one binder while we were on the road). I have another 3 inch binder that I put the girls' completed work in (keeping everything is not required in either Texas or Montana, but I'm a first time homeschooler and I'm paranoid about proving what we've been doing, so I'm keeping things for now--I'm planning to clean out most of it at the end of the year). Then I needed supplies. I packed up a small storage box with our other school supplies (we also use these boxes to pack up medicine, thermometers, nebulizer tubing, and any other medical stuff we might use when we go on trips). It was a little more difficult to make sure I had all the supplies I needed--I started with the basics: pencils and a sharpener, a few pens, a 24 count box of crayons, a 12 pack of colored pencils, an eraser, scissors, glue stick and blank notecards. Then I looked through what work we would be covering while we're gone and put together necessary supplies that were specific to those lessons (math manipulatives, etc...). After all that was packed, I only needed to add a couple of small books for history, and a pack of construction paper (I had already put a pack of notebook paper in the 3 inch binder).

All together, everything fit into a pretty small space (it all fit into a larger box with baby supplies and clothes we had brought). In the hotel, it takes up one small section of the TV cabinet.

As far as actually completing the work, we are just following our regular daily schedule since we aren't on a vacation with a lot of new things to see. The only slight difference is that Sedona is going back to her old Montessori school 3 days a week while we're here. Sierra either does her work while Sedona is gone, or during Sedona's nap and I don't have Sedona do any extra (besides her speech work) when she gets home on those days.

I love having the flexibility to take off without worrying about someone else's schedule or minimum attendance requirements and their school hasn't been interrupted at all.

Day In The Life Week

It's Day In The Life Week on the Not-Back-To-School Blog Hop. This post is a little bit difficult for me to write because we're still working on finding out what will work best for us. We started out slow, only doing one or two subjects a day and have been adding in things as we go. I think that was one of the benefits of starting "early"--I don't feel like we're falling behind if we skip a day here, or put off a subject there. It's also hard for me to write because my favorite thing about homeschooling so far is the lack of schedule. I guess it's left over from my angst-ridden, "I want to be grown up and make the rules" youth, but I just can't fathom having my entire family beholden to a schedule created by someone else. Sure, we kind of do that with jobs, but we have the freedom to choose whether we are going to take a certain job or not and whether the scheduling and duties of a particular job are worth the money that it pays. But with the public schools, there's not really any choice in the matter and the buses start picking up at 7:10 (and if my research is correct, ALL students from K through 12 ride the same buses and some elementary kids even get dropped at one elementary school, then picked up by another bus and shuttled to a different elementary school...no thank you).

With all that said, we don't have a set time for everything and certainly not a schedule broken down by subject, but my kids (all kids?) do like routine, so we try to keep things pretty consistent. As I mentioned last week, I am not a morning person on the best of days and pregnancy doesn't help. I don't think my kids want to deal with me and my limited patience first thing in the morning either, so we get a slow start. They eat breakfast with daddy and then play by themselves while I get up, eat, check email and read a blog or two. I try to head up stairs for school time no later than 10am. I give Sierra her worksheets for the day to do independently and I sit down with Sedona to work on her things (typically phonics and her speech practice). When they are both done with those tasks, we switch. Sedona gets "worksheets" (which actually work on concepts like same/different and writing, but half the time she just grabs the box of crayons and colors all over them...whatever, she's 3), and I sit down with Sierra to go over things she missed and work on her math (which she almost always needs one-on-one attention for). We usually work until around noon, when daddy comes home for lunch. They show off their work to him and then we all sit down to eat. Right after lunch is nap-time for Sedona. Sierra and I sit down together and I read her a chapter out of a difficult book (we always start by talking about what we read the day before, then at the end, we review what we read that day). If we're behind on something else, we will do it then, but usually the rest of nap-time is quiet time for Sierra. She can read a book, watch a movie or play a game on her DS (she likes Big Brain Academy and Learn Math). Sometimes I even convince her to take a nap too. I sit down and rest, or catch up on chores. After daddy comes home and we eat dinner, sometimes all four of us will go back up stairs and do more school work if there is more to do or if the kids are driving us crazy to "go work" (yes, sometimes they out and out beg to do more schoolwork!). We will trade off which parents works with which kid, but they both get one-on-one time when we work in the evenings. Bedtime around here is 7:30 because we've tried later bedtimes and we get the same early wake up times regardless of bedtime, so they really don't get enough sleep if we let them stay up later.

The only thing different about speech therapy days is that Sierra's independent work is done at therapy. I explain any instructions I think might be confusing for her, pack the worksheets in a folder along with a pencil and any other supplies she might need, and she works by herself while I sit with Sedona during the therapy session.

I'd say there are a few planning things I've already had to re-think just in these early weeks. First of all, I was so concerned about getting the perfect curriculum (like most first time homeschoolers, I think), but I really should have been much more concerned with coming up with a viable plan to keep everyone happy. It has taken some trial and error to figure out how to get both kids to do something (even if it's "just" playing for Sedona) independently so I can work with the other one without ten million interruptions when I need to. I also knew I would need to do some prep work outside of our "school time", but I didn't really know how much. It's not overwhelming, but it can be time consuming. We still haven't started Spanish because I haven't previewed what the lessons are going to be like and gotten the materials set up yet. Same thing with history, I have ideas, but because of my lack of preparation, we haven't consistently added it to our schedule yet. We do have spelling, grammar, reading, geography, science and math in the regular rotation though, my goal is to get Spanish and history in there before the first of September!

Student Photo Week

It's student photo week on the Not-Back-To-School Blog Hop, so step right up and meet our students!

Sierra's my precocious 5 year old. She definitely keeps us on our toes! She has an early October birthday and was quite far ahead, so we decided to make last year her Kindergarten year. She was at a Montessori school in our old town for that and did amazingly well. So this year, she considers herself a first grader. She is currently doing a mix of first and second grade work, and based on the pace she's going at, I'm thinking she will be on all second grade with a little third grade work thrown in by the end of the year. Her favorite subject right now is geography and she excels at reading, while needing a little more guidance and TLC when it comes to math. She's been helping daddy build a new bed for the girls this weekend

Sedona's my playful 3 year old. She wants to do whatever big sister is doing, but just doesn't have the patience to sit still at all yet. She's interested in books, but seems much more naturally talented at numbers. I work with her on her speech therapy exercises and phonics (the two go together quite well) and when she's given a choice, she gravitates towards "money" (counting coins) and "writing" (tracing lines and letters).
Sedona shucking corn. Takes her a while, but she does a really good job!

And this little girl already has a pretty big impact on our day (I'm not a morning person anyway and pregnancy doesn't help). We expect she'll be joining us sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving (her sisters were a little early, so we won't be surprised if she is too). I'm just hoping that newborn "bump on a log" stage will last long enough to get me through this year and then I'll worry about how I'm going to incorporate a really young child into our homeschool set up!!

School Room Week

This week's topic on the Not-Back-To-School Blog Hop is School Rooms. As I've mentioned before, I originally planned on doing school at the kitchen table. When we got to this house (which we had rented sight-unseen) though, I immediately thought the little loft room upstairs would be perfect for school. So far, the only problem with that has been that we chose to start school "early" and we don't have an A/C. Even in Montana, the upstairs of a house gets mighty hot in August when there's no A/C. So the temperatures have dictated that our seat work take place in the morning before it warms up. Here are some pictures of how I've set the room up: We have two desks we got from my parents...my old desk I always used and an actual school desk (which the kids think is the neatest thing ever). The built-in cabinet is great for holding the things the kids aren't allowed to get into without asking. The bottom shelf has a big stack of paper and notebooks and my pens/highlighters/post-its. The middle shelf holds the workbooks, and the top shelf has the more bulky things like math manipulatives. The US map on the wall is down at their height and I've marked each state that they've been to. Whenever we're planning a trip, I have them find the place on the map. We also often review where in the country each of our relatives live.
From the other corner of the room, you can see the bigger desk and the shelves they ARE allowed to get into. There's a globe to look up countries and time zones, a jar of various coins for practicing money values or just counting, one shelf of books my 3 year old can keep herself entertained with, and several small boxes (one for crayons, one for markers, one for colored pencils, one for pencils/pens). I have the calendar up because my oldest was having trouble understanding days of the week, but now she's got it down and just gets a kick out of being able to see everything clearly and changing the signs saying what the current weather is. The easel is just for them to draw or paint, or to keep my younger one happy while we're busy.
This picture is from standing by the calendar. There are more shelves here that are "my" things again (some boxes with extra scissors and glue, blank paper, etc...). Our printer/scanner/copier is on top (it's wireless, which is helpful when I'm on the computer downstairs and find something I want to print). The little table is set up with all of their play-doh. Again, this helps keep the 3 year old happy when we're working. Since we are renting and I didn't want to risk messing up the carpet, I put an old rug we don't care about in the room. It's big enough to take the brunt of any play-doh or paint that falls and I plan to throw it away when we move.
That's it for the room, but this last picture just shows something that's been invaluable for me. I've decided to copy pages from workbooks instead of writing in them and buying new each year. I bought a one-inch binder and started out by copying about 5 weeks worth of worksheets and separating them by subject in the binder. Whenever both kids happen to be working independently, I'll quickly copy a week or two from one workbook and add it to the binder, so I always have what I need already printed out and no one's having to wait, nor am I up late the night before copying things.

You might notice there aren't many books. Because our stairs aren't exactly kid-safe, they aren't allowed upstairs alone. Since I want them to have access to a lot of books all the time, all of the kid books live downstairs. There are plenty of things my 5 year old can easily read independently, plus some more challenging books that she can get through if she takes her time, and some non-fiction things that I hope will grab her attention soon just by being there. Also plenty of books my 3 year old can flip through and "read" as well as the regular pre-K books that we read to her.

There are plenty of other "school rooms" we use too: we've been visiting a lot of National Parks this summer, sometimes we will sit at the kitchen table during the younger child's naptime (in the afternoon, when it's hot) to work on those subjects where my daughter needs more help, and I've decided to utilize my younger daughter's speech therapy time as school time too (I pack up the worksheets my oldest would normally do independently in a vinyl folder along with a pencil and she sits at the kid's size table in the therapist's room to work while I pay attention to what's going on with the therapy). Using that therapy time has been really great because we are going several days a week and it keeps my oldest occupied so she's not interfering, and also gives her time to get her work done on a day when she would be rushed to finish it at home.

And one last note: obviously they both picked their own outfits that you see in these pictures. I put a few limits on what gets worn outside the house, but they get free reign at home--sometimes the results are....well, interesting.

How Homeschooling is Going

Angie at Bring The Rain recently posted about her homeschool plans for the year and included a linky for other people to post about their homeschooling plans. I haven't updated in a little while, so I thought now was as good a time as any.

If you're new here, I have a homeschooling tag you can click to see what I've written before. I have one child who finished Kindergarten at a Montessori school last year and another who just turned 3 and was doing pre-school at the same Montessori school. There is also a baby on the way (due around Thanksgiving), so I opted to start the school year early because I fully expect it will take time to figure out how to balance the school day with baby care. We have been doing a very laid back and lax schedule for a few weeks now.

When I looked around at homeschool curriculum, I couldn't find anything I just really loved that taught what I wanted to teach in a way that would fit with my child's learning style. So, I'm jumping in on the "pick and choose" bandwagon from the get go. Which is scary. I think every new homeschooling parent is a bit paranoid about forgetting to teach some key element.

Here's what we're using:

• Evan-Moor Grammar and Punctuation
• Evan-Moor Spelling
• Evan-Moor Geography
• Evan-Moor Non-Fiction Reading (I'm not too terribly impressed with this one)
  
• Evan-Moor Reading Comprehension
• Evan-Moor Science
  
• Right Start Math (I really like this, it's been good for my not so mathematically inclined child)
  
• PowerGlide Spanish (we haven't started this yet, so I can't vouch for it)
  
• Usborne Prehistory (we are teaching history "classically"--in chronological order over a period of four years. Every 4 years, we will start over at the beginning and go into more detail. I use the books as a guideline and create my own activities to go along with them.)
  
• Usborne Ancient History

You'll notice it's extremely heavy on seat work. That's because my oldest LOVES worksheets. I can't keep the child away from worksheets. She is thrilled to pieces if I hand her a stack of worksheets and tell her to have at it. She loves figuring it out herself and she loves "handing it in" to me when she's done. It's just her thing.

In all honesty, we've probably really sat down to work about 3 days a week since we started. We've also taken a lot of trips recently and I turn that into a learning thing. We always find where we're going on a map (and she's already learned the handy "Never Eat Slimy Worms" acronym to remember her cardinal directions), and we take advantage of the kid's programs at National Parks. More importantly, we just walk around and look at things and do our best to answer any questions that come up, or find the answers.

We don't do every subject everyday. I set out to follow a loose schedule, but what it's really turned into is, "oh, you're on week 3 of geography and week 2 of grammar, so let's do some more grammar". I have been giving my oldest child her worksheets to do independently while I work on phonics with my youngest (we play games, mostly) or to do while we are at speech therapy with the youngest. I'm really liking that I didn't go with one boxed curriculum, because I was able to pick different grade levels for different subjects and that's been nice. I've also recently been clued in to the idea that in addition to letting kids read on their own, you should also read to them at a level above their current ability to expose them to a broader vocabulary. It makes sense to me and I plan to start this very very soon, but haven't decided just what book(s) we'll start with.

There are plenty of other random things we throw in. I try to make just about anything we do educational without making it seem like school work. Since I'm brand new at this, it's going to take a while to build my confidence and I've also really enjoyed reading other family's thoughts on homeschooling to get new ideas and resource suggestions.

Some homeschoolers that have inspired me:
Pioneer Woman
Derfwad Manor
Christine

Edited to Add: I also just found out about the Not Back-To-School Blog Hop, which will have a different topic for each week of August and this week was curriculum, so I'm linking up to that and will participate in the other topics each Monday.

Great Free Coloring Pages

I've mentioned before that I'm a Crayola loyalist. I'm also on their email list and got a new email with some links to neat coloring pages. I went to their site and looked around and found some great things I didn't know were there!

Take the time to check it out, they have language arts, math, science and social studies pages that are educational and free to print out. There is also a section with some great pages for younger kids. Fun stuff!

Not At Home-Schooling

A few weeks ago, I mentioned Sierra had convinced me to start in with the year's schoolwork. We have been doing a very non-labor intensive school schedule, mostly focusing on her spelling with some grammar and geography thrown in. I've found I'm doing a lot more of handing Sierra her work (because she can and will work independently) and spending more one on one time with Sedona. I've discovered Sedona thinks the "hand me the...." game is absolutely fabulous, so I've adapted that to working on her letter sounds. It started out with a quick check of her colors (I discovered that if I point to a color and ask her to name it, she has trouble, but if I name the color, she can pick it out). I laid out 8 cards, each a different color, and asked her to hand me the red one, the blue one, etc... When I picked up cards with letters on them, she told me to lay them out again, so I work in batches of 5 or 6 letters and ask her to hand me certain ones (using the sounds of the letters, not the names). So far this set up is working pretty well for us. If we are doing a more difficult subject for Sierra, like math, we wait until Sedona is down for a nap.

But then there are these trips we've been taking. I'd say a weekend trip causes us to skip "seat work" for two days (one day we're packing, one day we're--or I'm--recovering). She's 5 and it's July and I'm not too worried about that. However, there are plenty of opportunities to keep her learning without sitting down with worksheets. We talk about the trip ahead of time and I have her find the location on a big United States map I have on the wall. With the national parks, we've been having her do the Junior Ranger programs (and any other kid programs the park might have) so she learns a bit about the area we're visiting. A note about those, it would be helpful to keep a small pencil pouch in the car with colored pencils, a pencil and pen, and a pencil sharpener to use for the activities. I've been picking up the information pamphlets at each park or national monument and plan to hold onto them to have as a resource in the future.

When we're in the park, we do our best to answer questions that she comes up with or to find out the answer. For instance, being at Yellowstone led to quite a few discussions about people being on the outside of the earth and what is inside the earth and what makes volcanoes erupt and what is heating up the geysers. At Glacier, we talked about...well, glaciers. We've gotten to talk a little about the difference between a glacier carved canyon and a river carved canyon as well as why naturally occurring forest fires are a good thing. Last year when we spent a lot of time on the east coast, we talked a lot about what causes tides and what kinds of animals live in what kinds of shells.

We buy her postcards to send to all of her friends, which helps her with her writing skills. She also has a small journal that I have her write in when we get back. I'm focusing on her handwriting with that one, so she tells me what she wants to say and I help her form it into a coherent, grammatically correct story and I write it down on a piece of paper, then she copies it into her journal. Depending on how much there is she wants to write about, she might take two or three days to actually finish copying an entry.

There's been some complaining from her (the kid likes structure--she's not a fan of "missing school"), but I like how it's going so far. We had been planning a trip to Mt. Ranier National Park in the near future, but due to the distance and only having a weekend to cover it, we're thinking of changing that to Craters of the Moon National Monument (where she can do the Junior Ranger AND Lunar Ranger programs!), which is a little closer to us. If anyone is interested, there is also a web ranger program kids can do to learn about the parks even if they can't visit.

Holes Already

Sierra wore me down and convinced me to start school. I figure it'll make it easier to take a vacation when the baby comes anyway. To start off, we made a list of the different subjects and how much time we expected each lesson to take. Then Josh and I discussed how often we thought she should do each subject. Things like spelling and handwriting (which she really needs to work on) will be everyday. Things like math will be almost everyday, because she needs it, but doesn't like it so I'd like to strike a balance between pushing her and not burning her out. Other things like grammar and geography will be once a week because the daily lessons are ridiculously easy and I think she'll get more out of it doing a full week's worth at once. So I made a loose schedule (what subjects on what days) for this week and we're seeing how it goes and what changes need to be made.

And of course, it only took me 10 minutes to realize I had made a big fat planning mistake. Sierra wants to sit down and do work book after work book. She wants to be at a desk, pencil in hand, and just keep handing her worksheets or setting up a computer lesson to click through. Sedona, on the other hand, does not. I already knew that and had planned on Sedona playing with blocks or coloring while Sierra worked (and I helped as needed). That completely did not work. Sedona was more interested in getting into and grabbing things that weren't her's and my patience with that lasted all of 10 minutes seconds. I tried going through letter sounds with Sedona after I got Sierra started on something, but she was only interested in that for two repetitions. I think I have grossly overestimated the planning I need to do for Sierra and grossly underestimated the planning I need to do for Sedona. I found a webpage full of ideas for keeping preschoolers occupied while older kids do school work and I will need to put together some activities for Sedona.

And just to prove we're not exactly cracking a whip with regards to education around here, this is a picture of the girls this morning. The movie on the TV screen is Madeline, and I've lost exact count but I know for sure this is at least viewing number 12 (yes, TWELVE) since last Thursday. Apparently it's the best movie ever, I just wish I could get the music out of my head.

Edited to add: WOW. I just checked my Netflix viewing history and Madeline has been on TWENTY hours since Thursday. I'm willing to bet money at least 90% of that time it was actually being watched. Lazy Parenting: 1, Kimberly: 0. They did get to swim in the kiddie pool outside today and walked around the neighborhood yesterday and Saturday. Still, 20 hours. wow.

All The Colors

I have a slight addiction to crayons. Okay, it might go beyond that...I bought crayons and coloring books for myself right on up through college (now I pretend they're for the kids) and I might get a little giddy when packs of crayons go on sale for $0.25. I've been known to buy an entire case of crayons some years. Yes, yearS and therein lies the problem. I was a little lax for a while about letting the girls get into the crayon stash, so there were A LOT of partially used crayons lying around. As I was setting up our homeschool room here, I decided they only needed one big school supply box of crayons and what didn't fit in the box, would have to go (not counting my not-yet-opened stash, of course).

So, Sierra and I sat down and picked out all the broken crayons and the really well used crayons and then just grabbed out a few more so the box would close. We peeled all the paper off these crayons and put them in baggies to save for crayon reincarnation (turns out crayons are slightly Buddhist, who'd have thunk it?). None of the ideas I list here are my own, they're widely talked about in various places on the internet and I can't even link to something specific, because I read a lot of pages and then just gave it a whirl.

First, we did window hangings like we made when I was a kid. I haven't found our crayon sharpener yet, so I just used the small side of a cheese grater to shave the crayons. A crayon sharpener would work a lot better if you have one. The shavings are put between two pieces of wax paper: Then newspaper is put on top (to protect the iron). Set the iron on low and briefly iron over everything, checking frequently to see if the shavings are melted yet. Once everything is melted and cooled, cut it into a shape you like. Cut a frame from two pieces of construction paper and glue them on both sides of the wax paper.
Hang in the window to enjoy! Sierra decided she'd rather use less shavings next time so it's not so dark looking in the middle.

The other project we did today was making new crayons. Broken up pieces of crayon (may be easier to do this with a knife) are put in a muffin tin. Bake at 250 until they are all melted (it takes a little while, but do not leave the oven!!), then carefully take out of oven (careful not to swirl your colors together) and let cool completely. Voila, new, multi-colored crayons. I should have put more crayon pieces in each muffin tin.

I have plans to make candles as well, but can't find wicks here in town. We'll be heading up to the "big city" of Missoula on Saturday for an appointment and I'm assuming I'll be able to get wicks then and try out the candles this weekend. I'll post about it when I do!

A few small tips: I'm a crayola loyalist, other brands just aren't the same. I've read other brands may not work as well for some of these projects, but definitely don't mix brands in one project because they may have different melting points. I've also read washable crayons are more brittle when they're melted and cooled, so they don't work well either.

School Daze

Wow, three posts in three days...I think I'm getting back on track with this whole blogging thing.

Today's post is all about homeschooling. Sierra is ready for "first grade" (which is really a mash up of first, second and third grades, depending on the subject) and Sedona is ready for some hardcore, strict daily reading lessons. I kid, I kid! Sedona will be doing plenty of arts and crafts and maybe we'll sit down with a BOB Book or two early next year (she does know most of her letters and their sounds, but she's more interested in counting). My biggest internal debate with her is whether or not I should spring for the pre-reader or alphabet BOB sets...we LOVE the regular BOB books, but I haven't see the pre-reader ones in person yet.

Sierra, however, will be doing "real" school, so I have a little more anxiety there. I have no doubt we will start some things, decide they don't work and switch things up. That's not really a problem, but it's just a little daunting to get started. A lot of people who homeschool will state their homeschooling "philosophy". Some people "unschool", some follow a set pre-purchased curriculum, some have a strict schedule they follow and some have set school times, but are flexible with when certain subjects are taught, and some have no schedule at all, just weekly, monthly or yearly (or heck, even lifetime) goals. I don't really have strong opinions on any most of these things. We're starting out with what I think will work best for Sierra and we'll tweak as needed. I figure it's imperative that I take a big ol' piece of humble pie now and prepare myself to have no hesitation or shame in buying different books, teaching differently, or putting her right into school if it turns out that's what she (or in a few years, Sedona) needs. Humble pie is not my favorite dish, but it must be done.

So, to start with...I never intended to have a "homeschool room". I was going to allow school to happen at the kitchen table for the most part, but also provide a desk because sometimes she just wants to be where she can be alone and concentrate. When we got to the house in Montana though, I walked upstairs to what had been called the "loft" and laid eyes on the most perfect space I ever could have imagined for homeschooling. My immediate reaction upon seeing it was "that's the school room". I started unpacking things yesterday and this is what we have so far:



I have a set of workbooks for Sierra to start with for spelling, grammar, science, geography and reading comprehension, plus a Spanish program (we bought the older, "power glide" version and I'm totally NOT sold on it being a good program yet--but we'll be trying it) and a math curriculum. Most of the workbooks are supposed to be done every day, but would only take Sierra 5 or 10 minutes to do. Because she needs A LOT of work on her writing and spelling to catch up to her reading level, she will do spelling and some sort of dictation or copy work every day, but for things like geography and grammar, she will probably cover a week's worth of work in two or three days a week, so she can focus on one thing for a little while and not have it so broken up. My biggest curriculum hang-up at the moment is history. Taking a classical approach to history makes sense to me--you follow history chronologically in blocks of 4 years and each time you start over, you add in more detail. This appeals to me because chronological order just makes sense and I think setting it up in this way will make it easy to teach all my kids at once (down the line, I could have 3 kids studying Greece, but where the youngest might limit their study to tasting hummus and feta and doing an art project, the oldest will be researching and writing a paper on Greek myths). I was all set to buy The Story of the World because I'd heard a lot of good things about it and the activity books looked really neat, but when I got to Amazon and used my trusty skepticism (i.e. I read all the 1 star reviews to see what, specifically, people didn't like about it), I was more than a little worried by the number of history majors going on huge rants about how inaccurate the books are. So I scrapped that idea. I'm going to stick with the classical history idea, but I'm going to do a more "on my own" approach. Instead, I bought the Usborne Prehistoric World and Ancient World books (which I also haven't seen, but I'm impressed with the other Usborne books we have) to give us a timeline and we will fill out the spaces with our own research and activities. I also love the idea of doing a LONG timeline on the wall at kid's eye level, like I read about on Pioneer Woman a little while back. In fact, I love this idea so much, I'm strongly considering buying the Book of Time shown in that post in a year or two (I think a wall time line's better for younger kids than having it in a book) even though I'm not a fan of Sonlight. All those stickers to color and place...oh the kinesthetic and visual learning! I might just buy one for me to do (I also bought and colored these books for fun when I was a teenager). But enough rambling, I think I have a jumping off point for teaching history.

My other hang up is when to start school. Sierra is begging to get started. Part of me wants to make her wait through the summer, but then I remember she's actually been out of school for over 2 months already. Long term, I think it'd be nice to follow a flexible year round schedule--taking several weeks off when someone needs it, but avoiding the three month, retention-killing break of summer. After all, we'll have the flexibility to stop and start whenever it suits our situation. But for this year, it's not really hurting her to miss 4 months straight--she's not forgetting how to read, she's not forgetting how to add, her science and history are still at a level of basic knowledge that she has just soaked up and already adds to every day through her endless questions. My mom has the very valid point that our winters up here will be long and it'd be better to get out of the house all summer and save the schooling for those cold snowy days. I'm thinking getting an earlier start will make it easier to take a break when the baby's born. Also, homeschooling doesn't take the same 7 hour block of the day that regular school would, nor does it have to take place at home. I haven't come up with an answer to my "when to start" question yet, but Sierra sure is wearing me down--it's a little frustrating and just kind of wrong to always been getting on to your kid for sneaking into the workbooks.

Quilting as Homeschooling

I will start a series of "quilting 101" posts very soon that follow along as Sierra and I work on our quilts, but today I wanted to take a moment to point out all the things you can teach a child with an activity that might seem little more than hobby:

• Obviously, there's the practical skill of learning how to sew. Everything from learning what a selvage is to how to use and maintain a sewing machine.
• Planning and organization. It is very helpful to gather all your fabrics and cut them all out at the same time, before you start sewing and it can be good for a kid to get started with the habit of organizing their project and workspace.
• Colors: a younger toddler might be able to sit next to you and practice their colors ("hand me the red square") or help find the color of thread that matches a fabric, while an older child can begin to learn about a color wheel and creating color harmonies with their fabric choices (fair warning, we are NOT doing this with our scrap quilt!)
  
• Shapes: With all these pieces of fabric around, it's a perfect opportunity to learn the differences between a rectangle, square, triangle or circle
• Measurement: in the process of cutting fabric, you can teach how to read and use a ruler.
• Math: a younger child might stand close by and count squares on a ruler or cutting mat or count fabric pieces and sort them into stacks of 10 to help you keep a total count. An older child can begin to learn what fractions are and start adding and multiplying them to make cutting go faster. They may learn to figure area and how much fabric they need to get a certain number of squares. They can learn how many inches are in a yard, multiply the price per yard by the number of yards being purchased and count out money to pay for the fabric.
• "Real World" practice: they may ask a question of the sales clerk at the fabric shop, ask for the amount of fabric they need to be cut, handle the check out process on their own
• And every question in between: plugging in the sewing machine might lead to discussion about how electricity works, ironing might lead to a history lesson of what the original irons were and how they were used or a lesson about how an electric iron gets hot or how it removes wrinkles from fabric, looking at fabrics can spur a discussion about cotton vs. polyester and then how cotton is grown and turned into fabric. Kids will come up with an amazing assortment of questions from one seemingly simple task. Don't worry if you don't know the answers, those are good opportunities to teach them how to find information on their own and you can both learn together.

Happy learning!

The Beginning of an Era

You always hear about the END of an era, how about a beginning?

I expect 2010 to hold a whole slew of "experiencing new things" posts. One of the biggies is going to be homeschooling. It's easy for me to talk about homeschooling--we haven't started yet! I have no doubt I will be able to look back at these posts in a few years, or even a few months, and blush in embarrassment over my naiveté, but life is more about the journey than the destination, so I'll have to take the risk.

We have been considering homeschooling as long as we've been considering kids. Both of us felt there were flaws in our education that we were capable of fixing and that it was worth giving a try. Since the original idea came up, we've done a few things that I think are pretty reasonable for a parent looking into education choices:

• We looked into schooling options: We've done a fair amount of research into the public schools, charter schools, and private schools available. None of them are horrible, just not our first choice. As Sierra got older, we became more familiar with things like age cut-offs, placement exams, grade skipping and extra-curricular options.
• We looked into homeschooling options: You can go it alone, you can join a co-op and share the teaching with other parents (which would allow a science-focused person like myself to take on extra kids for science or math and send mine to someone else more qualified than me to teach music or art), you can even join an online program that lets you follow a regular school curriculum at home.
• We researched homeschooling laws. These are different in each state and range from basically no requirements, to heavy monitoring of the homeschool by the local school district. You can get a basic run down for each state at the Home School Legal Defense Association website.
• We researched our fears about homeschooling and found many of them to be myths.
  

So here's where we currently stand: Both girls attend a small Montessori school. Sierra is in her Kindergarten year there, a year earlier than the public schools would have let her start. She is having no trouble with first and second grade materials. Sedona just started there this year and has a decent grasp on pre-school concepts like colors and same/different. She is just starting to count and can pick out and say the appropriate sound for some letters--she is reading very basic, "short a" three letter words.

Here's the reasoning: From all the research I've done, I don't believe the schools will adequately accommodate Sierra's academic needs. My short term goal is to keep her interested in learning, without letting her get too far ahead--I regularly turn down her requests to do extra workbooks at home in the evenings and on weekends. My long term goal is to teach her what she's willing and able to learn, but not to allow her to start college until she's 17 (the idea being she would turn 18 at the beginning of October in her first year), at the earliest.

We'll get the social issue out of the way here: I don't buy into the socialization argument against homeschooling. I've seen first hand in the Montessori school that there is a big benefit to mixing ages and I would rather my children live each day among a mix of people rather than spend 12 years grouped within an age group and being prepared for "the real world". My vision of homeschooling includes much more than "school at home", and I plan for them to be out and about, meeting people and learning from several different sources.

And here's the plan: We've decided that it's easier to move into public school rather than leave it (both from a legal and adjustment standpoint), so we will try homeschooling first, but are not opposed to changing our minds about that if it turns out not to be a good option for our kids. We will have a "core curriculum" that we'll supplement with researching topics the kids are specifically interested in, traveling to interesting sites, and taking outside classes.

I wanted time to create a rough schedule (it will be flexible, but I need something to follow), so we've got all of Sierra's core things for next year already. We have math, reading and comprehension, grammar, science, geography, spelling and Spanish. I had originally planned to do a Charlotte Mason curriculum with her, but had an ah-ha moment a few weeks ago and scrapped the whole plan. I liked Charlotte Mason because it's heavily based in reading and Sierra LOVES to read. However, she's my child and it suddenly dawned on me that if I require her to read so much, she will start to hate reading. It has to be HER idea. I did soooo much better with self-guided learning when it was offered, and she is very much like me. Sedona's still so young, it will take a while to see what her learning style is going to be. She will focus on picking up wherever she leaves off at school--I expect that to be continuing with letter sounds and reading, along with basic number recognition. She will only be 3 and I don't intend to do a more formal curriculum with her until she's 4. Right now, she likes to be in the middle of everyone else's work, paying close attention to what's going on, so I'll go with that and let her work on whatever she shows interest in.

Now I have to go hide all the books...Sierra is already trying to talk me into starting them now.

Always Learning

Looks like the blog updates won't be too terribly frequent throughout the summer!

We'll start with the garden:

Ollas: The ollas are still working well. The bed they are in does not get watered except through the ollas and the plants all look as healthy as the rest of the garden. The one problem I did start seeing was some blossom end rot on those tomatoes. Since I'm not seeing it in other areas of the garden, I'm assuming calcium deficiency is not our problem, which leaves us with lack of water. I had only been filling the ollas every 3 or 4 days and finding them just about empty at that time. Since researching the blossom end rot, I've started topping off the ollas every day and that seems to be working better.

Early Blight: Darn the stinkin' early blight! This is a problem every year in our area. Since this is a fungal disease that splashes up from the soil, I preventatively prune the plants as they get bigger. Typically, I cut off all the branches/leaves that are within about 12" of the soil. Then, as the season wears on, I go through once a week and cut off any leaves that are showing signs of blight (I see brown spots first, then yellow/brown rings, often starting at the edge of the leaf). I bag these diseased leaves and throw them away so I don't contribute more blight spores to the compost/soil. Every year, I start to panic about how much foliage I'm cutting off, but every year we get a good yield and very little if any fruit affected. We had a humid and rainy start to the season, which contributed to blight problems. While my Neem oil spraying has kept the powdery mildew completely at bay, it doesn't seem to be helping with the blight. Our tomatoes are in new beds that we just put in this year and I have noticed that two of them don't get sun until late morning. These shadier beds are definitely more affected by the blight, which makes sense because their leaves are staying more wet in the morning. Ideally, we would have no overhead watering (and go purely to ollas and/or drip system) to combat this, but it's so prevalent in our area that the rain alone would keep it going to some extent. Since the Neem hasn't worked, we are trying an organic spray with sulfur in it this week. I'm not holding my breath that'll make a huge difference, but thought it was worth a try for future knowledge.

Yield: Our strawberries are giving less. There are still a few berries here and there, but they either get eaten right away, or thrown to the chickens...they aren't making it in the house anymore. We got a big handful of blueberries off the bushes we planted this year, which was unexpected and exciting. We have eaten one pound of fresh picked green beans so far and the tomato plants are heavy with fruit, but nothing ripe yet. The black beans have put out lots of pods and we will those dry on the vine. Black eyed peas are fattening up in their pods and the okra looks like it will start to bloom any day now. Those are the only exciting things at the moment.

Sierra is still bugging me to do workbooks every day. On Tuesday we headed to the local library for "big rig day". It is part of their summer reading program to have some activity every week and I expected this to be a small event---maybe a fire truck and police car and that would be it. Well, it was a HUGE set up. I think they probably had one of every type of vehicle the city owns there! We got to talk to several very polite city workers about what the vehicles did and what different parts of the vehicles were for. The kids could sit up in them if they wanted. They also handed out free popsicles for everyone. She mostly chose math to work on this week, so we did lots of addition and worked a bit on subtraction. Today we read a book about tornadoes and made a "tornado" with two 2-liter bottles and a little connector. Our neighbor is an "archery in the schools" teacher and had family visiting, so he set up all his equipment and invited us over to join in. Sierra enjoyed her little archery lesson and Josh got a chance to pick up a compound bow (he was on the archery team in college, but shot recurve).

School's out for summer!

This was our first week of summer, which may explain why I haven't posted anything. On the one hand, I feel a bit bored and lost because Sedona and I used to snuggle and read books for the majority of every morning and now she's more interested in chasing around big sister. On the other hand, the house is amazingly more difficult to keep clean with TWO kids and a stressed out dog around all day. Just the dog hair is ridiculous. It's a cruel twist of fate that kids get out of school at the same time dogs are normally shedding anyway. Rather than snoozing away the morning, poor Angel (who's an 11 year old lab) finds it necessary to move from place to place, trying to find a spot that's both quiet and hidden from sticky fingers. Every time she gets up, I swear she leaves half her coat behind. I completely filled up the vacuum cleaner Friday and again today. Surely the cure to male pattern baldness lies in my dog's amazing ability to seemingly regrow her entire coat overnight. Then there are the crumbs. Because my children never stop moving, they also never stop eating. I'm seriously considering a "snacks may only be eaten outside" rule.

And, of course, there is my oldest's bitter disappointment that it is summer time at all. Every single day this week, we have had an emotional tantrum because she wanted to do workbooks, or do MORE workbooks, or go buy some workbooks. I have limited her to a few workbook pages and reading one primer story each day. Some days we have a fun activity to go along with the "seat work" or a little science experiment to do. Some of her favorites:

• She read "The Little Red Hen" and then we baked bread together while talking about where flour comes from
• She read "The Gingerbread Boy" and then we baked gingerbread men and women
• We made frost: mix 2 cups of ice and 1/2 cup salt in a stainless steel bowl and cover with saran wrap. Let sit 10 minutes and record observations. Frost will form on the outside of the bowl. Have fun explaining to a 4 year old that the ice did not move through the bowl, rather the water vapor in the air around us condensed and then froze on the bowl because it was so cold.
• We made gloop: mix 4oz white liquid glue and 1/2 cup water. In a separate container, mix 1/8 cup (2 tbsp) water and 1/2 tsp borax. Pour the borax mixture into the glue and stir, stir, stir. It will start to clump up. Continue stirring, until it's mostly clumped, then knead with your hands and let the kids play with it. It's a rubbery/bouncy consistency and doesn't stick to your hands at all. If you have older kids, you can explain the process to them--the borax polymerizes the glue.
• We made...ummmm....not sure what it's called: Mix 1/2 cup cornstarch and 1/2 cup baking soda. Mix in 1/4 cup water. This one is messy and we did it on the driveway---if you move fast, it will act like a solid, move slow and it will act like a liquid. Stab it with a spoon and you won't get anywhere, slowly move the spoon and it oozes right in. Pour it out on a cookie sheet and pick some up to roll into a ball. Set the ball on your palm, and it turns right back to liquid. Fun way to introduce the concepts of states of matter.

We are also doing a couple of reading programs. Our local library has a great summer reading program going on. The kids can do the reading themselves, or if they're too little, the parents can read to them. They keep a log and get several prizes throughout the summer. There are lots of fun activities going on in conjunction with this. And if you have a Half Price Books near you, they are also doing a summer reading program.

Here chickie, chickie, chickie...

We have been offered about 50 free 6 week old broilers (chickens that you slaughter for meat). Since you generally only raise these birds until about 8 weeks, this is a great money saving opportunity. It's not necessarily the breed of bird we would have picked and they haven't necessarily been raised the way we would have done it, but we can finish them out on non-medicated feed and let them run loose in a section of the yard (I'm hoping they'll still forage a bit, Josh thinks they won't know what to do with grass and bugs), process them ourselves and have a freezer packed full of meat for less than $1/pound. I am in no way the chicken expert here, Josh has done all the research and I just do what he says. It appears we will get about 300 pounds of meat for less than $200 though (the cost depends on what we need to buy to build a coop tomorrow before getting the chickens on Sunday--we have wood already, but will need some supplies). This will be our first foray into processing chickens, so I'm sure there will be some missteps, but our neighbor has done it before and has agreed to help/teach in return for some of the meat. We weren't quite ready to do this this year, but it's an offer we decided can't pass up. We will be busy tomorrow fencing off the section of yard they'll be in, building a coop for them out of scrap wood, buying feeders and waters for them and buying the first few bags of feed.

There are also some less gory things going on around here. Read a blog today that reaffirmed my eagerness to home school. Those who know me know I don't deal well with being told what to do. I was always the nerdy good kid--never got in trouble, always did what I was supposed to do. So, since I was getting the job done anyway, I really resented being bossed around. This was one of my biggest problems when I was in school. I'll never forget the time I got in serious trouble because I had finished writing a computer program before anyone else and started playing chess. The teacher insisted I needed to help the other students. For many other reasons, I had zero respect for the man by this point in the year and in an uncharacteristic moment (I very rarely talked back to adults, I had a fear of authority), I told him it was HIS job to teach the students, not mine. Maybe I should have been more gracious and helpful, but I had about 10 years of being given extra work because I finished mine quickly under my belt and was tired of being "punished" for doing well. This basic sentiment has stuck with me. If I'm getting the job done and it's done correctly and efficiently, I have very little patience for arbitrary guidelines. I'm not a Libertarian, but I imagine my thoughts about schooling line up with that philosophy the best----how dare someone make me feel like an incompetent subordinate when it comes to my children? This particular blog was all about groveling before the elementary school secretary to get a tardy pass for her daughter, who she had brought to school 5 minutes late. I understand in a practical sense that you can't have kids straggling in at all hours every day and disrupting the rest of the class, but it's just the mindset, that as an adult I have to justify to another adult why my child is late one day (maybe the dog puked on the rug, maybe someone had an episode of raging intestinal upset and just couldn't get out the door on time? Maybe I don't want to explain myself and shouldn't have to). Then of course, there is the dictate about what vaccines you have to put in your child and at what time so they can go to school (and for the record, I'm pro-vaccine, but that's MY choice to make, not the government's). Then there's just the whole idea that another set of adults who have known your child for a year or less trump you as the parent when it comes to making decisions. I've heard of way too many instances where the school hands out a dictate rather than working with the parent. Just a few of the things that irk me. And no, I don't think the teachers are bad, I think we've got a really messed up system. The good ol' one room schoolhouse was less standardized, but there were huge benefits to that set up too. I don't have any answers on how to mesh the two ideas, but I do know that for my family, for right now, homeschooling's the answer (unless, of course, I can somehow convince Sierra's teacher to extend her school past kindergarten!)

And lastly, I finally read The Red Tent. A review is in my 50 Books in a Year list. To me, it feels like there is largely a split between people who feel like un-medicated birth is absolutely the way to go and those who think it's absolutely nuts. The parts of this book that are about midwifery do a good job of explaining how I felt during/after an un-medicated birth. Specifically, the part where Dinah delivers her baby (after serving as an apprentice midwife) and explains the difference between knowing about birth and experiencing birth perfectly put into words my thoughts on the experience and the benefits of going through it without medication. Also, the birthing culture described in the book (midwife on hand, surrounded by women, respecting and fending off the proximity of death as you bring forth life) closely parallels what I've experienced (and rejoiced) in home birth. I'm big on accepting that my choices are not right for everyone and that obviously goes for this too, but the parts of this book that are concerned with birthing came closer than any pregnancy or birth book I've read to describing the points I keep trying to get across to people.