New Year

It is back to homeschool reality after the holidays. It was fun having Jacob around the house, and our Christmas season stretched into the New Year and we all enjoyed it. W was eager to jump back into his usual routines. The snow which the boys enjoyed so much is now melted away and hardened into icy patches. The snow people have gone away for now, but are sure to be reincarnated after the next big snowfall. Last week we "rowed" Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton, not the perfect week for it but it was still seasonal. W was already familiar with the story and it has nice illustrations that the readers can spend a long time looking at and discussing (especially the Geoppolis map page). It gets kids thinking about directions.

This year I couldn't bring myself to make resolutions, although one thing I am striving for is finding a way for myself and the boys to keep active inside even though it is freezing outside. Some solutions which I have found extremely helpful include: indoor basketball, dancing to CDs (especially Imagination Movers and Taylor Swift), the Fisher-Price SmartCycle (Toy Story, Thomas the Tank Engine & Bob the Builder games), and yoga for kids DVDs that we can do together. So far I have resisted the rather strong urge to invest in a "real" video gaming system now that there are some neat interactive games on the market now although I would refuse to buy anything violent. I was never much for video games (in fact my Mom used to be much better at me on the original Nintendo Mario, she was the original gamer Mom!)

Today we are "rowing" a non- Five in a Row book but one that could easily be one: The Year at Maple Hill Farm by Alice and Martin Provensen. It covers each month and shows the changes that each season brings to the animals of the farm. We are also reading Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder as a family read-aloud, and have a book club meeting coming up next week so we are working on quilt blocks as a long term project. January is actually a great month for reading both of these books, which begin in January and each span a year.

       

Optimism for the End of Government Schools

Gary North writes a lot about trends that are due to the decentralized web of communication that is the Internet.  One of these is the death of traditional newspapers.  Today he discusses schooling in Public Education Is Going Down.

One theme in North's article is that the web provides a wealth of tutors for the home-educated child; tutors who are free and who "make house calls".  The model of transporting students to tax-supported institutions is now out-dated, and home-schooling is a trend on the rise.  North writes: 
 
When you can buy from anywhere, local monopolies die. That happened to medieval urban guilds. It is happening to education. The local tax-funded school cannot deliver the goods. Today, it offers babysitting. It offers sports. It offers a central market where drugs are available. It offers opportunities for teenagers to hook up, which does not mean what it did in my day. It offers economies of scale in those features of education that are either peripheral or objectionable.


We should cheer the process of schools dying, even if it produces a period of painful adjustment for those attached to the system.  I am optimistic along with North, but there is also a lot of intertia in the school system, and bureaucrats who wield political power will not graciously let it go. 

Many parents also do not have the confidence in themselves to pull their children out of the government schools.  They remember all of the classes and grade levels, the sheer volume of material to master (or more correctly, temporarily remember), and the enormous cumulative preparation which all of that must entail. 

But it is not necessary for parents to recapitulate all of the work that culminates in an elementary school lecture.  First, I think we ought to question the traditional curriculum model that was, as John Taylor Gatto has written about, historically developed for the shaping of obedient factory workers.  But even if we think the school's model roughly "gets it right", there is no need to source this work out to a school.  The materials are available for anyone, and their costs are decreasing.

Merry Christmas!

We are enjoying our first Christmas in our new home this year. The boys went sledding for the first time this season, only a couple inches but I guess it was enough for the sledding hill. They also had fun following a snow maze Jacob worked on. Jacob and I are recovering from mild colds, but otherwise all is well. I have been working on a December update in my head but that probably won't be until January to recap some of our FIAR adventures. Tonight is the Christmas pageant at church (W will participate dressed as an angel, he is quite excited.) Better get started making some cookies for Santa. :)



Merry Christmas to you and yours! Here are some Christmas stories we have been enjoying lately.


   

Happy birthday to C!

C turns two years old today! Happy birthday to my little guy, he is really no longer a baby. I am taking some pictures and trying to get a last minute photo nice enough to mail out in some Christmas cards. The boys are looking forward to seeing their cousins this weekend. Today Auntie Julie is over to visit, and tomorrow C has a doctor's appointment for his 2 year checkup.

Yesterday was our Little House homeschoolers book club meeting and it was great to visit with our friends and talk about the books. It is a monthly group and we are going to work on a quilt as a group project over the winter. I think we will start reading Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder soon for storytime in the evenings (a chapter or two at a sitting). It'll make for nice winter reading with the boys as it is getting really chilly here in NH!

W has been reading The Birthday Box by Leslie Patricelli to C as it is very appropriate for birthday time reading. C received Tubby by the same author for his birthday, and it is so adorable. He also got a basketball hoop (little tikes size), puzzles and clothes. We made an ornament with his hand print to add to the tree, and baked some birthday cupcakes. Santa also sent video messages to Will and Caleb via Portable North Pole's web site. It has been a fun day.

When One Plus One Equals One

The other day W told me that sometimes one plus one equals one.  I was a little skeptical, but I've been helping him understand addition by showing him that it is a process of putting things together.  I've been emphasizing the process of addition because I don't want math for him to be what it mostly was for me and most children: meaningless manipulation of symbols.  I remember some half-hearted attempts at making math meaningful in school by making us solve contrived word problems or insisting upon units.  One teacher would become upset if the class answered "what is 3 pigs plus 3 pigs?" with "6" instead of "6 pigs". 

In any case, I asked W when it might happen that one plus one equals one.  He replied that when he attaches one toy to another toy, he has one toy.  I liked that example.  I suggested another by taking two glasses of water and pouring them into a third glass, showing that one glass of water plus one glass of water can equal one glass of water.  The best example was then suggested by Beth: if you add one herd of sheep to one herd of sheep, then you have one herd of sheep.  I was happy to see W developing an understanding that our answer depended on how we performed the addition, as well as what we were interested in counting. 

So there you have it.  Sometimes one plus one equals one.