Strange Conversation
Hubby: What did you guys do today?
Eldest son: I got a great skirt at the thrift store!
Halloween’s a-comin’
Archive for home education
100 Most Common English Words
How many can you or your student guess? I only got 28 out of 100!
Blog Nod: Larramie
Unschooling gets a Thumbs Up
Cory Doctorow has a review of John Holt’s books, How Children Learn and How Children Fail up on the high traffic blog, Boing Boing. He seems utterly smitten with the idea of unschooling, giving a positive review of both the books and the concept of child-led learning. Tons of comments, too.
Blog Nod: COD
Political Discussion as Education
It’s a bit disconcerting to have your 15 year old start conversations that are peppered with words like Communism and Socialism. Of course, with the election running full steam ahead, I suppose it would be difficult to NOT be talking politics.
My son is a black and white sort of guy (It’s a character flaw that we’re working on - together), so many of our conversations start out with him stating that something is wrong. He’s adamant that attack ads, lies, and false promises by our presidential candidates are just wrong. He visits factcheck.org and realclearpolitics daily, and shares with me his opinions. It’s been interesting to hear his take on right, wrong, and unfair. Daily, he plops onto my bed to talk to me while I’m working (trying, anyway).
- Where does the money come from for these buy-outs?
- What exactly is the vice president’s job?
- How does the Senate work?
With these questions we’re able to start a dialog that ultimately leads to learning, often for both of us. We’ll pull up web pages, dig out books, and discuss our thoughts. It’s been really interesting to see how caught up he is in this election and how he is seeking the facts he needs to make an informed decision - even though he’s far from voting age. He is designing his own education, daily, digging what he needs out of the heaps and heaps of information out there.
So, what about Communism and Socialism? How does that fit into the picture?
One of the books he’s recently read is in my sidebar. Are You Liberal, Conservative, or Confused is a very interesting look at political labels and the original American philosophy. I highly recommend this, as well as the other books by Uncle Eric, which make American government and economics accessible and understandable to the average person.
Hi Tech Kaleidoscope
Kaleidoscopes have got to be the coolest toy ever. Maybe I’m showing my age, but long before the Internet and Wii, I could while away an afternoon looking at all of the pretty patterns I could create with just a turn of my hand. But now, courtesy of the Internet, we have this. Where I made this:
Take a closer look; that’s the photo of me zip lining! Can you believe how beautiful that is?
Edited to add: How to make a hand-held kaleidoscope.
St Lucia Sights
Structure left over from a festival.
Remnants of a sugar cane mill
98 degree water near the volcano
Roadside conch shells
Local woman carrying bread fruit
The Pitons in the rain
Purveyor of coconuts and mangoes
Success in California Court Case
From the California Dept. of Education:
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell made the following statement Friday after the 2nd District Court of Appeal issued a 44-page ruling that declared, “California statutes permit home schooling as a species of private school education.”
Read the entire press release, here.
Unschooling in Action
Miranda has a new post up, detailing the learning that has occurred at her house this past week. For anyone who’s wondering if kids really learn anything without following a textbook plan, this will be enlightening.
As a side note, we’ve never done traditional spelling. Well, I take that back. We’ve done a little spelling, when the kids have used a workbook to fill in the blanks until their interest waned. Spelling tests and rote memorization were not part of our day. Mostly, we talked about how words sounded, or different spelling rules (and all the exceptions!). My feeling was that as avid readers, they’d come to recognize the way a word should look. And, I didn’t want them all hung up on how to spell a word, when they were trying to put a creative thought on paper.
There were some dicey years when I really questioned whether or not it would work. When Brad was young, if he didn’t know how to spell a word, his solution was to add the “magic e” to the end of it, which created some really interesting correspondence. His spelling has improved over the years, and it occurred to me the other day that two different things he wrote were completely error free. It’s a different way of learning, and in this case, substantially slower. He’d never have passed “tests” using this method. But he got here just the same.
My Week of Crazy
This week brings with it stacks of laundry, an unswept floor, and suitcases to pack, times two. You see, quite by accident I find myself preparing to go away. First, I found out about a work related trip to the Caribbean (yes, this is one of those times that I love my job!). I agreed to go (duh), so in mid-August, Evan and I travel to the island of St Lucia where we’ll spend five days ziplining, tubing, beaching, and jeep riding. The zipline portion of that sentence scares me senseless, by the way.
What more could a gal want? Hey, how about more to squeeze in?
Last week we found out that Brad was awarded a scholarship to attend the American River Acoustic Music Camp. Oh, yeah. I forgot he applied for that. The dates? The week before we fly to St Lucia. And because he’s a minor, I’m required to go. So, after a week of music and camping (and likely not sleeping) we come home for ONE day, then head to the airport. I’m hyperventilating just thinking about it, and yet I’m totally excited about both opportunities.
In any case, this week is the week that I have to get packed and ready for both trips. And people keep asking me if I’m ready for school to start. Let’s see. Camping and playing with professional musicians, eating food prepared by the same folks who cooked for the Grateful Dead, a scholarship winning essay, flying through two American cities to which we’ve never been, exploring a Caribbean island, swimming in a new-to-us ocean, hearing a new language, testing our limits. Yep, I’d say we’re ready for school to start.
Elemental Brilliance
If you’ve not discovered the Periodic Table of Videos, take note. This is - in my opinion - pure brilliance. I remember trying to memorize that %#&*! table. This site has a short video for each different element, making it a bit easier to understand exactly what each element is. The hair on the narrating professor? Purely a bonus.
UPDATE: I passed this site to my 15 year old last night and he watched these videos for *an hour*. He kept going from one element to the next, thoroughly fascinated. I watched over his shoulder a bit and discovered just how much I didn’t retain about the periodic table. Neon is an element? Who knew?
