The Flexible Homeschooler

World Geography

2011-09-12T07:50:00.000-07:00

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I purchased Trail Guide to World Geography, by Cindy Wiggers, this summer to use with my 4th and 7th grader, and to let my kindergartner play along.

So far I have a mixed relationship with it. First off. Let me state that I dislike abbreviations. If a book title is so long that it must be abbreviated every time the book is mentioned then, it's just too long. I have many students/children doing many different curriculums. My brain is too busy to mess with TUG, OMB, and the million and three other references all constantly referred to by abbreviations.

You may have noticed I like to exaggerate. Maybe there are not actually a million reference books with this curriculum.

I somewhat naively thought that since I bought the cd to print out the children's workbooks that the workbooks would contain all the maps I needed for weekly work. I find it frustrating that I still have to print out maps that I can't stick in the workbook, since I had the workbooks spiral bound.

However. And that's a big However. I really, really, like the curriculum. I may even come to love it, once I feel more competent with it. I feel like my kids are learning a lot. I like the mix of different types of assignments. I like the fact that our geography conversations can include 3 children at different levels of comprehension. I like the fact that the kids have to search for answers.

Working for answers means they are retaining more.

I love that this curriculum can be used in many different ways for more than a single year. It's definitely a keeper. I'll continue using parts of it to support our history curriculum long after we have finished covering "geography."

By the time I finish schooling my troop of children I may even have all the abbreviations memorized.

Day 4

2011-08-25T04:40:00.000-07:00

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Every have a great beginning to a new school year?

One that confirms all you ever hoped about homeschooling? A day that you and your children click along and you can almost hear their brain neurons firing.... And then you wake up the next morning and catch yourself thinking, "What! I have to do it all over again for the next ___ years!?!"

Or what about a day where everything falls apart? Interruptions, missing book, tears....

Yesterday was hard. The day started with my kindergartner crying when I had to wake him up. "I'm too tired, I need to be in bed," he complained. The day ended with a different child calling some difficult German work, "Stupid." Not a word I take kindly to. Not my favorite way to end the day.

But... no matter my failings as a teacher, nor my children's failings as their own independent persons, today is the day that matters. I don't have to look ahead or behind.

Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:22-23

On Paper

2011-08-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

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I'm sitting on my front porch sipping coffee on the first cool we've had in months. My littles have pulled out every bike, trike, scooter and skateboard we own and are building a "store." Right in the middle of the front walk, of course.

I have paper and pen and am trying to write out a schedule for this year's school. This year marks the largest range in levels and learning styles that I've ever tried to teach at once. It's not just the age range that has me a bit stumped but the need that everyone will have this year for one-on-one instruction.

Long gone are the days of sitting snuggled with my three eldest, reading aloud their history and literature and everyone doing the same science experiments. Also gone is my ability to keep everyone doing the same subject at the same hour with me as wandering tutor. This year I'm going to be teaching "conference" style.

Johanna Gilbert calls it block scheduling and wrote a fabulous description of it in her blog, Life Of the Gilbert Gang.

I can't wait to give it a whirl. I think this it will help sort out a schedule complicated by not only multiple levels and abilities but also multiple teen part-time jobs and extra-curricular activities.

Time will tell.

Immersion Experience For The Unimmersable

2011-06-12T18:39:00.000-07:00

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A cheap, faked immersion into German with my favorite of all mediums... imagination.

I've long been a member of audible.com*, it's where I've purchase Pimsleur language learning downloads for my home school.

But recently I became happier because I realized that though I can't get German language novels through audible.com I can through audible.de. Wahoo.

It's way cheaper than I can order and pay for shipping of German language books on cd or print books at all. For my first book to listen to I chose a translation of a Nicholas Sparks novel. Umm, gag, I won't bother with any more of his. Not that I'm opinionated or anything. Imagine the oddity of an opinionated home schooling blogger.

Excepting the gag factor the Sparks book was a perfect first German audio-book. It was in a familiar setting so I wasn't thrown by cultural differences and I didn't have to translate difficult idioms.

For my next audio book I think I'll choose Cornelia Funk's Tintenherz for the opposite of the above.

I may not be able to travel at this point in my life to immerse myself with native speakers- but I can keep my brain active and trick it into thinking in German.

*Though I would love to be highly compensated for writing- especially if it involved very little work on my part- Audible has no idea how happy I am with them.

French

2011-05-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

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Last month I started a little French club with some of my younger children and some of their friends. For the record, I don't speak French even though I had years of it in starting in 6th grade in Canada and then through my sophmore year of college. Therefore, I'm not calling myself a teacher, I'm merely learning (or re-learning) alongside the kids.

We are using L'Art de Lire by Nallenart. The French Canadian bent suits me just fine. I figure as the kids get a little further along I'll add in Pimsleur and the accents will balance each other, and most hopefully of all, cancel out their Tennessee drawls.

So far the things I like:

phonetic layout and presentation
grammar within a story line context
useful vocabulary
easy to divide up daily work
the audio track reinforces daily work
almost no prep work required

All in all I'm finding the first book to be a very gentle introduction to a foreign language. Very doable for my younger students and an easy extra-curricular for my older students.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the programs builds and grows.

A Week Journaled

2011-03-14T10:56:00.000-07:00

In my life this week... My in-laws are coming this Thursday to whisk away my 9th, 5th and 3rd graders for a roadtrip to Washington D.C. The children are so excited they may end up vibrating out of the visible spectrum.

In our homeschool this week... I'm working on how to make change quickly and accurately with my 3rd and 5th grader. I'm also doing a brush-up course on American History and Government.

My 9th grader is still slogging through The Virginian. I got a good laugh out of the fact that she felt like I was doing her a favor when I allowed her to go ahead and start on A Comedy Of Errors. Owen Wister is not a favorite but Shakespeare is.

My favorite thing this week was... Our church's youth group cleaned up the yard of an elderly widow on Saturday. The sky was blue, her yard was a rambling gardener's paradise. The kids had a blast working. The day was satisfying on so many levels.

What's working/not working for us... The Young Scholar's Guide to Composers. Curriculum can't work if you never take it off the shelf. Somehow, I've just not gotten around to using it this year. In theory I still think it looks like a great music history curriculum and I hope to start using it after our June break.

Homeschool questions/thoughts I have... I'm looking at Hey Andrew Teach Me Some Greek because my 9 year old really, really, wants to learn Greek. I think the idea of a different alphabet is what he finds so enticing. I'd love opinions or advice on Greek.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share... My 16 year old has fallen head over heels into a book of Emily Dickinson's poetry. She was watching her littlest brothers play outside with sidewalk chalk... and copied a poem she found amusing.

Graffiti, home school style.

It's That Time Of Year

2011-03-12T14:02:00.000-08:00

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Things I love about this time of the school year:

Some projects and curriculum are coming to an end. My 9 year old just finished his Queens Spelling Workbook. It's a short curriculum, basically a really nice light review of spelling rules. Perfect for his needs this year. He was so proud that he could put away the book for his younger brother to use in a year.
It's the time of year that I start daydreaming about what I want to do next year. Daydreaming is always fun because all projects in my daydreams are glowing successes.
It's the time of year we always seem to start on a few short units that were not in my original plans. For instance, I recently realized my elementary aged children don't know how to quickly calculate change, so we are doing a "unit" of playing store and making change. To add urgency and excitement I told them if they could keep all the practice money if they became proficient before the end of two weeks. Often my spontaneous units are more fun and successful that my carefully planned ones.
Used Curriculum Sales.
Sunshine. How can you not love a day where your family does all their reading sitting outside in the sun?
I must repeat- Used Curriculum Sales.
I love looking back and seeing how far my children have progressed during the year.
With warmer weather open windows. Fresh air seems to brush the cobwebs of home school burn-out away.

Defining Fluency and Philosophy

2011-03-05T11:44:00.000-08:00

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Part of the joy/hardship of home schooling is that to a certain extent you decide on the degree of rigorousness you require of your students/children. Even harder- your philosophy of education decides the actual point of said rigorousness or... lack thereof.

I don't put a lot of faith in tests. At 17 I CLEP-tested out of two years of college French. However, at the time I couldn't have had more than a brief (and atrociously accented) discussion of what I wanted to eat and could have participated in only a basic touristy conversation. I was merely talented at- 1. reading and 2. guessing- which are two test taking super-powers.

My high school junior is going to be studying German in Vienna for part of her senior year. She has to take a placement test about a month before she starts class. It will be interesting to see how she does because she is my German-language-learning guinea pig.

There are not many home school German curriculum options. In fact, there is not a single one that I found tolerable. I tried a few versions of newer German language text books but they tended to be picture heavy, disjointed, grammar light, and didn't provide enough practice. The Practice Makes Perfect series is great- but only after you've already built a broad vocabulary base.

Instead, I've hobbled together Pimsleur German with an intense little college German textbook (purchased at Goodwill) from the 1960's, some dictionaries, web access to German language news and blogs, German language versions of popular fiction along with matching audio books, and English Grammar for the Student of German. She's also been emailing a couple of Austrian friends in German.

How I wish someone would create a Pimsleur-ish curriculum that includes a written component and that is less aimed at being a traveler and more aimed at living within a family setting.

Yesterday, I stumbled across an internet argument on what constitutes fluency. Curious, I goggled the matter: The Association of Language Testers In Europe had an interesting table. Given their parameters I certainly didn't deserve any college credit for French!

Given their parameters, I know where I want my daughter to be by the end of her senior year. In fact, I know where I want my German to be by the end of my daughter's senior year. Then, perhaps teaching my younger children German won't be the struggle it's been with my daughter.

Some interesting language links:

Fanfiktion
All sorts of educational links from a French site. Just click, "Allemand."
Netflix.com has a few German language movies- most of them inappropriate- but there are a few like Hilfe.
BBC.com
Deutsche Welle
How To Learn Any Language

For news:
Tagesshau.de
Bild.de
Welt.de

Don't forget to look on itunes for podcasts.
It's amazing if you goggle, "german language website," how many sites you will find.

On Foreign Languages

2011-03-02T10:00:00.000-08:00

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If you've ever searched reviews of a foreign language curriculum you may have noticed that the most positive reviews are almost always written by people who have been using the curriculum for less than a year.

I've been homeschooling since before the internet was useful. I've watched foreign language programs come in a blaze of glory and then disappear. Rarely do you see truly critical reviews. Even rarer do you hear about programs that worked (in a quantifiable way) long term.

In my opinion and experience sending a child to a tutorial to fulfill a high school foreign language requirement will do just that, and no more. Buying a curriculum and having a child complete it... ditto. And that's o.k. It depends on your goals and your child's goals. As well as inherent strengths. After all, I'm completely comfortable with wanting my children to fulfill their math requirements merely so they can score well on the SAT's.

However, I want my children to be able to converse with native speakers. I'm discovering that means I have to learn with my children so we can practice/converse at home. I have to search out opportunities for my children to be immersed in the language they are learning. It requires learning grammar.

Rats. That's a lot of work.

Most of the curriculum out there wants to be fun and colorful. They want you to learn "organically." It's a sales pitch. Rosetta Stone and their imitators especially irritate me. Think about it: A child learns a language organically by being immersed in it for about 6 years- and then they still have to be taught correct grammar and spelling and writing in school. Plenty of children need speech therapy for their native language. Give me a break- a computer program (even an over-priced one) can't do that in 30 minutes to an hour a day.

The only short-cut is hard work.

Rats.

Year-Round

2010-08-12T13:43:00.000-07:00

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We started back to school last week. Phew. Just in time. Summer break was wearing me out.

We used to school basically year round because with our Charlotte Mason approach it just worked for us.

Then a son took a dual credit course and a daughter started taking piano on a college campus with college schedules. Not to mention part-time jobs... It quickly became evident that I needed to start considering schedules other than my own.

Sigh.

Everytime I get a system down that works I revel in it. I think it will work always, for all time, forever. I often think that everyone should try my fantastic new system which could bring about world peace.

Then something changes, and I flounder and fuss until I realize that once again I must tweak schedules to meet life. Not life to fit schedules.

I would have made a grand Pharisee.

Gardening Assistant

2010-07-04T04:42:00.000-07:00

Gone Swimming

2010-06-17T01:37:00.000-07:00

Summer is here with a vengeance. Humidity is staying around 95%, heat about the same. Gills would be appropriate wear for our area of the country.

Tonight our friend-of-a-friend's-daughter arrived from Switzerland for a month long stay of language study. Her english is already wonderful, she will be mostly increasing her vocabulary and perfecting her grammar. I hate correcting her accent, it's so beautifully Italian with a pinch of the Brit thrown in.

It's going to be a great month. She's going to help us with our Italian (currently non-existent) and with our embarrassingly awkward German.

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For those of you who have been faithfully checking back for Family Garden 101 and it's Monday linky. I'm so sorry. Summer has been busier than I could have imagined. I've been in the garden more than I've been writing about it!

I'll be back come Monday with a new linky, and if my wonderful husband manages to fix my camera I'll have pictures. I hope you'll link up with your green goodness too.

For now, when I'm not weeding, I hope to be swimming.

Family Garden 101

2010-05-10T11:55:00.000-07:00

Hopefully Late is better than Never.

That's the refrain that's been going on in my brain for the last two weeks. My garden has been drying out from the flood and blessedly my tomatoes have been thriving. Unfortunately I've not been able to get out to plant the okra, beans, and purple hulls or the companion flowers that I had in my mental schedule.

I also still do not know about all the seeds I planted before the flood. They may be sprouting in Kentucky right now...

Plus no pictures. Waaa. I really love pictures.

This week I hope to get the rest of my seeds in and then some young plants of a few variety of squash. Plus I need to figure out how to support my tomato plants. Not to mention I'm sure I've got some weeds that need tender-loving eradication.

On the home garden-box front- we've had more lettuce than we can eat, out of just 6 heads of lettuce! Yummy.

I hope your gardening week has been earthy and lovely!

Wild Turkeys, Flood Waters...

2010-05-03T09:53:00.000-07:00

My husband and two teen-aged daughters had managed to plant 72 tomato plants of several varieties and about 72 various types of pepper plants the day before all the weekend storms rolled in.

Our area got hit with about 20 inches of rain in 2 1/2 days. You can just see the top of a sign in the middle of the first picture. This lake is not supposed to be there. In fact that's not even an area that has a creek.

The second picture is directly to the right of the top picture. It shows the right half of the garden that was still covered this morning. It seems my garden area was not submerged- at least not for long, but not all the gardeners were so lucky. The back 1/2 acre is still covered with water.

I wonder where all the bush bean seeds I planted last Wednesday now reside? I'm not complaining, I'm warm and dry and my family is safe.

Please pray for all the families in our area who were not so fortunate.

Family Garden 101

2010-04-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

My normal gardening post is rather short this week due to health issues.- Unfortunately, I spent several days in the hospital with my 4 yo. He's much better and is currently sword fighting with his 8 yo brother.

We did manage to pick up our flats of tomatoes and peppers from the local 4-H sale. The sky opened and it rained and rained here. I can't wait to get out and plant. Hopefully the dust-bowl look will not return.

Blessings All!

Family Garden 101

2010-04-19T04:56:00.000-07:00

April 19th

The theme of this gardening-week is No Rain. As in none, nada, zilch. It's been the driest April I can remember.

The week was not without false alarms though. Saturday morning we were supposed to get thunderstorms so I drove over and spent an hour frantically planting Lavender, fennel, dill, swiss chard, chamomile, leeks, stock, and giant zinnia seeds.

Alas, the sky cleared; no rain.

Hope's hoses to the community garden spot were damaged. Let's just say 700 feet of neatly coiled hoses don't fare well when they are inadvertently run over by a tractor pulling mowing equipment. So... bring out trusty teens and water buckets.

I love these girls! I know that the watering was more fun because they got to ride in the back of the pickup from the water spigot to the garden. I just hope we start getting spring showers before the novelty wears off.

Under the top layer of the dust-bowl look the earth is still a bit damp. Surprisingly, in all that dust we have seedlings coming up especially the beets, and turnip greens.

Besides the watering we spent a bit of time weeding and planting bush beans. I put in 2- 40 foot rows that were 2 plants wide. I plan to plant 2 more rows in 2 weeks to stagger the harvest a bit. I also started the sunflower house. The seed packet didn't hold much; so far the house has 3 walls.

Our onions are doing well. We have several patches of both purple and white. I forgot to take a photo of the potatoes but they are up and pretty.

Totals for the week?

2 trips out to the garden and 3 hours time spent working/riding around in a pickup. No $$ spent this week.

Back to Work

2010-04-16T19:10:00.000-07:00

My family has been given the opportunity to participate in a community garden. I'll be posting updates on our grand veggie-experiment. Join me each week at Family Garden 101 with a link to your garden project and we'll have a virtual community garden to enjoy.

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After a week off, we were back to work this week. We did everything outside, if it was at all possible.

Spatial reasoning and pre-math.

Pre-reading and pre-spelling skills, i.e.- tree climbing.

Horticulture, ecology, design....

Nature study of Lilacs

Sketching Azalea blossoms

Literature, math, anything portable, which is almost everything. Now if I just had an Ipad...

It was a lovely week. The weather goes from mild to hot pretty quickly where we live. Already my two youngest can't play outside after lunch- it's too stressful for their metabolism. We are now spending the mornings outdoors, everyone working on their own projects and then starting "school" for the older kids right after lunch.

It was a wonderful idea, in theory. I'm loving the mornings. I'm not loving the afternoons. My brain simply does not want to explain math at 1:30 p.m.. I don't want to help with vocabulary words, or term paper questions at 3:30 p.m.. I'm not remembering to check german or copy work....

Time to rethink, re-plan, re-motivate. I don't want the school year to end in a whimper.

Family Garden 101

2010-04-12T04:59:00.000-07:00

Weeding and Waiting

Last week we didn't plant anything new. We are still waiting for our last frost date- the 15th of April is the magic day.

We did go out and check for wild turkey damage- blessedly there was none! We saw lots of deer tracks. I'm sure they are blogging a thankfulness post about the buffet someone is kindly preparing for them.

We also weeded for a little over an hour.

With 7 active weeders, the weeding was actually pretty easy work. It was mostly grass, but the ground was well tilled enough that the grass came up easily. You can see our onions in the foreground of this shot. They are about 3 inches tall and doing great. Our first visual sign of success.

Two not-so-active weeders got in a spot of trouble for running off to climb in the van in order to honk the horn. They look like the day laborers that didn't get hired.

With so many helpers I ran out of garden tools and decided to weed with a broken ruler. See my hand wrapped in a dish towel? That's so I could continue weeding after I gouged a hole in my hand. Very stupid of me. My hand still hurts.

On the home salad front: We are enjoying more and more fresh lettuce. It freaks my toddlers out every time they watch me cut some and eat it. We've had lots of discussions about how not all plants are edible but that all our food does actually come out of the dirt in some form or fashion.

We cleaned out some more containers for our home garden. I'm planning on planting mostly herbs and spinach for now.

Time moves slowly when you are waiting to plant tomatoes and peppers!

Family Garden 101

2010-04-05T05:14:00.000-07:00

April 5th Edition

Last week, we didn't go out to our community garden a single time. I thought about it a lot. I pictured it completely grown over with weeds or drowning in rain puddles. The only thing I didn't picture was wild turkeys.

Yes. Wild turkeys. I talked to my friend that owns the land- no weeds nor huge boggy puddles, but she did warn me that they've had a lot of wild turkeys this year.

Evidently wild turkeys love to ravage potatoes. You have to admit- that's just funny.

We are going out today to check our crops, to weed. and to plant another row of beets plus some mustard greens and fennel. Hopefully, we won't have to replant potatoes. My family is going to do all of the above and then my children plan on having chatting/playing/chasing time with the other families that will be there working on their plots. It's all good.

I'm also hoping to finish laying out, on paper, where the rest of my after-frost-date plantings will go.

On the home salad garden front, we ate lettuce from the garden for dinner yesterday. Everyone got a tiny, pathetic little piece of green on their sandwich. Everyone told me, with great sincerity, that it tasted great.

Have a great gardening week!

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In Which I Reveal My Stunning Lack of Focus

2010-04-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

My family has been given the opportunity to participate in a community garden. Each Monday I'll be posting updates on our grand veggie-experiment. Join me at The Flexible Homeschooler with a link to your garden project and we'll have a virtual community garden to enjoy.

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It's been absolutely gorgeous this week. We've spent every moment we could outside. Thus the title to my post.

My 10 yo is enjoying a Spring project. A few mornings a week she finds something growing in our yard that she thinks looks interesting. She then does a careful and detailed drawing of it in her nature notebook. Next, with my help, she looks up information about it. She then labels her drawing and copies the information she found most interesting. So far she's done entries on forsythia, violas, flowering quince and moss phlox.

Now if she would only let me photograph some of her project. She's rather shy about her artwork.

I'm thrilled that my 13 yo finished her math curriculum early this year. Wahooo! As for my 8 yo's lost math notebook. I think he ate it. Someone must have.

My 8 yo has his first piano recital on the 12th. He's starting to get excited and is practicing more and more on his own. We are still working on reading the notes without fudging. He keeps trying to count lines quickly thinking I won't notice. It's the equivalent of skip-counting instead of knowing the multiplication tables.

I posted my 18 yo son's Full Moon Film Festival entry on my other blog already- so apologies to those who are already fatigued by my exuberance but- They Won 3rd Place and Best Mockumentary!!!

Hamilton vs. Burr from Luke Tipton on Vimeo.

Term papers are in full swing. 18 yo is writing on the formulation of a world view. I have no idea how he is going to pull that off. 15 yo is writing on William Wilberforce. One of her favorite movies is Amazing Grace, which was about Wilberforce's struggle to end the slave trade in England.

A bit of this, a bit of that, and peach cobbler for breakfast on the deck. I love Spring.

To read what other home schoolers have been up to this week go to Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Mother Culture- The Ultimate Anti

2010-03-31T05:26:00.000-07:00

I've borrowed the phrase Mother Culture from Karen Andreola's book, A Charlotte Mason Companion. I define Mother Culture simply as practicing a lifestyle that keeps my mind grounded in faith as well as lively and always learning.

I've attempted to cultivate Mother Culture in my life over the years in different ways; sometimes my children are involved, but usually not.

Recently, I decided to create a photographic week-by-week record of my yard- sheerly to entertain myself and to practice the art of noticing. Here are just a few of the shots. What a difference a week can make!

Forsythia- week one

week two

Quince- week one

week two

Mother Culture- it's my anti-cranky, anti-boredom, and anti-future alzheimer medication. No known side effects.

It's what Works For Me on Wednesday , and any other day.

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My family has been given the opportunity to participate in a community garden. Each Monday I'll be posting updates on our grand veggie-experiment. Join me at the Flexible Homeschooler with a link to your garden project and we'll have a virtual community garden to enjoy.

Family Garden 101- #2

2010-03-29T06:04:00.000-07:00

I hope you had a good gardening week. Link up and share your progress!

We didn't have anything new to plant this week out at our garden site; so far nothing is peeking through. Next week we plan on adding another row of beets; but mostly we are just waiting for the freeze date which is April 15. Then the party really starts...

We have gotten quite a work-out putting on and taking off the cover for our salad 4x4 garden. From temperatures in the 70's, to freeze warnings, we've seen it all this week.

We learned that if you don't cover your box carefully, and it rains torrentially, the cover will smash your plants. Luckily nothing was irreversibly damaged. We also discovered that our kitten is quite ferocious and is thoroughly enjoying keep rabbits away. I hope he continues to enjoy the sport all season!

Something's sprouting- hopefully not my first weed. Silly me can't for the life of me remember what we planted there.

Not quite enough lettuce for our family of 9, yet. Notice the lettuce is labeled as red cabbage. I forgot to instruct my toddlers on the important matter of leaving the vegetable markers alone.

This is the slightly squashed broccoli.

Our red cabbage.

Total spent for the week:

I ordered Bradley tomato plants, Grape tomato plants, and something else... from a friend who is selling for his 4-H fund raiser. We will get them just in time to plant.

$37.50

I Can't Find My....

2010-03-26T18:15:00.000-07:00

The theme for this week was, " I can't find,"- fill in the blank. It was an epidemic. Certain multiple children lost pencils, pens, math books, notebooks, read-alouds, history books, their left arm, their shoes.

O.k., no one actually lost body parts but I was getting aggravated enough to consider duct-taping school books to bodies.

Monday we did school outside. I have to admit we all had trouble concentrating. However, it was lovely.

Tuesday was our state's Home School Rally Day at the capital. My 15 yo daughter lugged her tuba to the hill to perform. I only took my 10 yo to watch because last year it was such a long program. This year was better organized and much shorter- I wish I had taken everyone.

Wednesday I got the opportunity to take just my 8 yo out for a treat after school. We always celebrate finishing a math book or a difficult text with a treat out, one-on-one, with Mom. It's a big deal in a big family.

Thursday we lost things, we found things, and slogged through school. My 18 yo is continuing to read the Hobbit to my 8 yo. His reading is so animated that I find myself pausing to listen too. Lots of the children are coming to the end of this year's curriculums. I'm starting to day dream about next year.

Friday I enjoyed a Gross Motor workout with the three younger boys at the park while the older children worked at home. Sliding...

Climbing while making momma's heart stop...

The park was actually a big deal. My almost 3 yo cannot handle heat well at all so we have to make the most of park weather before the heat hits. It was especially encouraging to watch him run about like a madman with such obviously increased coordination and core strength.

My 18 yo is getting credit for "Distributed Education" by working freelance for several small production companies. His work has slowed dramatically so I assigned him the job of designing some blog buttons for this blog and for my main blog. I can be a very self-serving teacher.

My 10 yo is continuing to work on learning how to shade pencil drawings of fruit. I hope to post a couple of pictures next week- if she'll let me. We looked at a bunch of Cezanne's paintings of fruit. I have always thought that Cezanne's peaches look as if they could roll around with joy.

Now for a weekend of cleaning and reorganizing the school books. Hopefully I'll find the still missing math notebook.

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My family has been given the opportunity to participate in a community garden. Each Monday I'll be posting updates on our grand veggie-experiment. Join me with a link to your garden project and we'll have a virtual community garden to enjoy.

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For other Weekly Wrap-ups go to Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Family Garden 101

2010-03-22T04:54:00.000-07:00

We had a lovely day last Friday in our to-be-garden.

We were able to plant 10 lbs of red seed potatoes and 5 lbs of white potatoes as well as 1 1/2 lbs of onion sets both purple and white. I planted in 4 x 6 mounds instead of rows. We'll see in a few months how that works.

We also planted beets, brussel sprouts, turnips and collard greens. We planted the seeds in 2 foot wide rows. I didn't realize until after we had planted a 20 foot run of turnips that we weren't planting Purple-top turnips, which is what I thought I had purchased. Instead we planted Seven-top which is more for the greens than for the root.

It was first official "oops" of the garden; I'm sure it won't be the last! Does anyone know how Seven-top turnip bulbs taste?

It wasn't all work. By our space we have a handy dandy checkerboard.

As I was buckling my almost 4 yo into the van he said, "Actually the tractor was most impressive". All the kids got a laugh at that. We've been repeating him all weekend.

It rained all day Sunday. I couldn't stop thinking about how happy the rain makes my garden.

Totals

1 drive to the garden

3 hours of planting

$55 spent on potato and onion sets and a boat-load of various seeds.

Check out Homemaker's Monday

Life Skills

2010-03-20T05:32:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning feeling like I'd been flattened by a truck. We did school this week but we also did a lot of very physical Life Skills work.

The older children helped me paint the den, the kitchen and the dining area.

We also planted 360 sq. feet of cold weather veggies: potatoes, onions, brussel sprouts, collard greens, tunip greens, and beets in our community garden. Stop by on Monday to see our gardening progress. We are keeping up with the time, money, and labor spent on our community garden project as part of our home school. If you want to join us, I'll have a Monday linky set up so we can all share our gardening joy/hard work.

My 8 yo and 10 yo planted a 4x4 salad garden at home as well. Which I forgot to assign someone the job of covering. I've not had the heart yet to look this morning to see how the lettuce did overnight.

My 15 yo, who would prefer to eat only artisan breads and chocolate, laughingly said, "So I get to work hard planting and weeding in order to eat vegetables I don't like anyway?"

Why yes.

My oldest turns 18 tomorrow. Officially, he only has to finish up his english tutorial and a few more chapters of physics. Also, I assigned him a paper on his core values and why he believes what he believes. It will be the wrap-up for his philosophy class.

Pinch me, either I'm about to graduate one of my children or I'm just dreaming!

I'm looking at Farther Up and Further In curriculum for my to be 9 and 11 yo for next year, just to shake things up. Has anyone used this that would be willing to tell me what they think- positive or negative?

Have a great weekend and check out Weekly Wrap-up for a week's worth of learning from families around the world.

Taking the Edge Off Toddlers

2010-03-17T04:36:00.000-07:00

This is my favorite way to wear my toddlers out in the morning. Work.

We all have to eat. They love to help.

Grinding oats while wearing jammies.

It takes twice as long, but I know where they are- that's always important.

Especially with my ambitious 2 yo.

By the time breakfast is ready and eaten. My toddlers have had enough attention to chill for a while so I can get the school day started.

Well, they pretend to chill, anyway.

It's what Works For Me Wednesday or any other day.

The Gardening Outlook: Rain

2010-03-15T19:49:00.001-07:00

Last Monday was so exciting. Seeing the community garden space, walking through the dirt, and visualizing a postcard perfect garden.

Then rain and more Rain.

Then the disc on the plow broke. Then it rained some more. We've not been able to do anything else yet. Our local farmers co-0p has gotten in seed potatoes and onion sets that we will swing by and purchase in the next few days. Last year I waited too long and they were sold out.

Next we wait for sunshine. It's a farmer's life, in miniature. O.K. maybe just in miniscule.

If you visited yesterday to link with a gardening post- my apologies. My computer has evidently gone on vacation in mind only. Hopefully my problem will be solved today.

When It's Not Been Great...

2010-03-12T14:22:00.001-08:00

This was one of those busy, crazy weeks. I think I drove to the moon and back. Lot's of doctor's visits- but all with good news. Lots of last-minute business errands for my husband. Lots of teen-age activities. It was all a bit too much.

I'd like to commune with my rocking chair and read stories to my Littles for a few days straight.

We did accomplish things though. My oldest turned in his film festival entry on Monday. Then he picked up his physics and did some catch-up. He also started working on another script and got some college acceptances in the mail. Wahoo. Now he has choices to make. On his own. -Talk about surreal.

15 yo was asked to play the tuba on March 23rd at the state capital. She had taken a break from the group but now she's back. She's got to get her chops in gear and learn the music... quickly! No pressure. Sure.

13 yo continued with her regular list of school-work. She also learned to cook lasagna. A skill we all hope she practices regularly.

10 yo and 8 yo slid through the week helping me run and doing the bare minimum of school work. On the positive side, 8 yo just finished his history text and is now listening to 17 yo read The Hobbit to him.

3 yo is the little guy who had all the doctors appointments. It's pretty tiring for him- but we've had some great conversations about God and prayer during the slow moments. One of his favorite activities this week was early morning flashlight exploration.

2 yo has just been generally sweet/into everything. Every time I returned home from one of my 3,142 errands he would run up to me, hug my leg, and exclaim, "You came back!" His favorite activity was sticking things on his fingertips. I'll happily claim it as a math activity.

My favorite activity was watching the newest Emma from the BBC with my girls. We loved it!

So, though my week has not been great- or organized, it's nice to know that it's still been fine.

Why Do I Do What I Do?

2010-03-11T04:18:00.000-08:00

I was excited when I realized that the "Why" of home school was the topic for this week's blog hop. Some weeks, when it seems I'm trying to achieve an epic fail, it's important to remember why I do the things I do.

However, I can more easily spout off the reasons for which I did Not choose to home school. I did not choose home schooling for any of the below reasons:

My children are geniuses.
Public school children are horrible.
We live in a cave surrounded by guns and are waiting for society to collapse.
I am a genius.
We have so much money that I thought home schooling would give me more shopping opportunities.
Other people's children have cooties.
My children have cooties.
I have tons of patience.
I am incredibly disciplined.
We don't have enough money for private school tuition.

The reasons we initially choose to home school are so complicated and varied that it would take book to explain; but none of the above reasons were in the original decision making mix.

However, the reasons we keep home schooling are:

It works for us. My kids are learning and growing- academically and emotionally and socially.
It strengthens relationships within our family.
It allows me the opportunity to teach to each child's learning style.
It allows the children greater flexibility to work and travel with their Dad without being tied to a calendar.
It has allowed my older children more time to focus on their particular strengths and interests.
It gives me the freedom and the time to instruct our children in Biblical studies.
My chronically ill child can continue learning without the many absences and additional illnesses attending school would invariably entail.

Most of all, home schooling gives me time with my children. Time for them to experience life in a thoughtful way. Time for me to know them and answer their questions. Time for them to annoy the snot out of me. Time for us to all practice Love.

Community Gardening

2010-03-08T19:16:00.000-08:00

I used to garden every year- until we moved to our little suburban postage-stamp of a yard about 6 years ago. I sooooo miss fresh tomatoes picked early in the morning and eaten for breakfast.

My friend, Hope, offered us and a few other families garden space on her 17 acres. This is the view of the soon-to-be-worked spot for my family.

Hope always wears the prettiest smile; she only adds the funky blue boots when she's working outside. The dog is a bonus feature.

This is Hope's section- already disked but not yet plowed. See how fun it is to run across?

One of the benefits of gardening with Hope is that her teens and my teens are already friends. My Littles think nothing is cooler than getting a ride (a very, very slow one) with a pretty girl on a 4-wheeler.

This gardening venture is going to be incorporated into our home school. We plan to research and work and grow with learning and eating in mind. One of the things I'm going to have my children do is keep a careful accounting of how much we spend in money and in time on this project.

We have a lot of work ahead of us! Join me each Monday as I post our progress. If your family is doing a vegetable garden together let me know.

Who Pushed Fast Forward?

2010-03-05T09:37:00.000-08:00

I can't believe we are already into March. It makes my heart race a bit to realize how fast the year is going because my oldest graduates in May! Stunning.

Speaking of my oldest. He's working fast and furious on his film festival entry. He won't let me post anything from his project until the night of the festival- March 27th. I hope I at least get to see the final version before he hands it in.

Remarkably and fabulously there was no gnashing of teeth this past Monday. Somehow my 13 and 15 yo studied and finished all their work and made A's on all their tests. They really have figured out how to pace themselves and work independently. Maturity is an oh-so-wondrous-a-thing.

My 8 yo has reached a frustrating plateau with his reading. As a break from his regular reading work I've been writing silly paragraphs for him that emphasizes sounds that he seems to always forget.

My 13 yo evidently thought my stories were not clever enough so she started writing short stories for him too. Her stories all star my 8 yo son and all end in rather grisly ways. Today's story involved him falling out of a hot-air balloon and being eaten by sharks. My 8 yo laughed his head off. I'm not sure whether this is sibling bonding or future therapy bills...

My 10 yo is enjoying a new book on geography. Well not new, but newly found. One of the benefits of home schooling for a while is that you forget about titles that you already have on your shelves. She's also enjoying the fact that I've finally figured out how to check out audiobooks from our library via the computer. Watching her listen while she knits makes my heart happy.

My two littlest boys enjoyed making sugar cookies several times this week. They've wanted to for months but I've held off until I found a recipe that matched their dietary restrictions.

Christmas cookies in March. Smells good to me.

Introducing Shakespeare

2010-03-03T04:43:00.000-08:00

I do a literature based approach with my home school. Shakespeare was on the top of the list of literature I wanted to expose my children to.

Normally I don't choose abridged books; but early on I bought Edith Nesbit's, Stories From Shakespeare, and Lamb's, Tales From Shakespeare. Both books are well written, though sometimes Lamb's version reads a bit cumbersome.

About a year ago I discovered a series of picture books by Bruce Coville that retell some of Shakespeare's plays. They are absolutely wonderful. -They are beautiful picture books but they are not aimed at young children. My tween daughter adores them.

I have found that by using one or the other of these three authors before we see one of Shakespeare's plays enables my younger children to enjoy the play more. My older children have moved onto Shakespeare's original works with no difficulty.

In fact the oldest two have been reading Hamlet this past 6 weeks. They have been enjoying how funny Shakespeare is- even in his tragedies.

It's What Works For Me

This was not a paid endorsement, I'm just opinionated.

Blatant Self Promotion

2010-02-27T05:55:00.000-08:00

Only vaguely related to home schooling, in that most home schoolers are by constitution typically out-of-the-box sorts:

I guest authored a post on The Adventures of a Somewhat Crispy Mama's blog. It's my first guest-post ever. I'd love for you to hop over and comment. The topic was birth options, The Final Installment, and I shared a bit about my experiences with everything from an emergency cesarean to home birth.

The End of February

2010-02-26T15:20:00.000-08:00

It was a busy week with lots of irons in the fire.

I worked on basic politeness issues with my 2 yo this week. He was not as excited about this as I was.
My 3 yo learned to dress himself from head to toes. Yes, I know he should have been doing this for a long time. Somehow with his hospitalizations last year I started babying him a bit too much. After some initial resistance he's very excited about his new independence.
8 yo worked on math drills with basic facts. I'm very unhappy with the math curriculums for his age group so I've decided to strike out on my own. He's working on subtracting double and triple digits, time and money right now. I've just been writing problems for him in a composition notebook each day.

10 yo continued her work on the Beatitudes and did a lot of reading and drawing this week.
13 yo squeaked by with the minimum of work this week. I foresee gnashing of teeth on Monday morning when she has to take her tests and turn in assignments. She was the photographer at her brother's video shoot. Her pictures turned out fabulous and she blogged a few of them.
15 yo was given "Superior" marking at her piano jury on Saturday. She was extremely pleased. Thankfully her teacher was hard on her during this week's lesson- and she has enough homework that she'll have no time for a big head. I foresee equal gnashing of teeth this weekend because she and her big brother have to perform a scene from Hamlet on Tuesday in front of her tutorial classmates; yet neither have their lines memorized as of yet.
17 yo entered Full Moon Film Festival. He spent the week writing a script, organizing a group of friends, and shooting the video. I'm praying he wins- scholarship money is always welcome! He also had me cut his hair, but only one side. He wanted to win a stupid hair contest. I think he did.

My Weekly Wrap-Up is linked to the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Cold Rainy Indoor Days

2010-02-23T19:54:00.000-08:00

Cold days with drizzly sleet for days on end make for a cranky mommy and hyper kids. Here are few things we do to get the wiggles out.

Some are loud:

House Tipping- You and the kiddos pretend that the house is a boat and that it is tipping over in a storm. This game involves a lot of rolling around on the floor, grabbing onto siblings and furniture. Not for the faint-hearted. I suggest starting the game and then pouring a cup of coffee and sitting in another room, preferably eating chocolate.

Burrito Babies- Take your children's comforters and roll your children up in them. Teen-aged big brothers especial enjoy facilitating the rolling.

Then let the races begin.

If you need a quieter and more contained activity and you don't mind sweeping, find tweezers,

and fill muffin tins with corn or beans. I think this only works if you use beat-up muffin tins; but maybe that's just because all my muffin tins are beat-up.

If tweezers are too hard, weird looking scoops are fun too.

Old medicine droppers make for some easy to contain water play. My 8 yo likes me to add food coloring and then he gets out an old science set of beakers to play "Mad Scientist."

Of course there's always dress-up, boy style. Just call him Sir Daniel Boone.

It's some of what Works For Me on Wednesday or any other rainy day.

No School

2010-02-19T07:08:00.000-08:00

Monday morning I realized we had not had a break in a long time. Normally I try to take a break about every 6 weeks. Sooo, after looking at the calendar and realizing that:

I needed to spend some time on taxes.
We had 3 different pediatrician's office visits scheduled.
My 15 yo needed extra practice for her piano jury on Saturday.

Though the older teens still have tutorial, we took the week off our regular school work; one of many reasons I love to home school. I love how our family can flex and roll with schedules.

The end result is my children have done as little this week as is humanly possible. I have a house full of eating/reading/movie-watching sloths. Except of course for my toddlers. My 3 yo spent the week asking as many questions as is possible to ask. The 2 yo employed his time climbing on top of and getting into everything.

Between "slothing" we did have time for some sofa cushion gymnastics.

Ready, Steady-

Go-

All in all, I'm ready for school to start again next week.

Teen Interests

2010-02-17T07:22:00.000-08:00

Something I never considered when I started this journey was how different all my children's interests would be. I also never knew how many odd opportunities there are for almost every interest.

For instance my 17 year old is into production: editing and filming shorts and creating special effects. One of his credits this year is for "Distributive Education." He works free-lance for some local production companies in various roles- assistant fetching coffee, pushing a camera man around on a dolly, grip, rough editing, etc. He's learning tons as well as earning money. He has entered a film festival, also as part of his credit requirement; he has to write, shoot, and edit a short about some event from United States history.

My 15 year old loves piano- well she just loves music period. We happen to live close to a university that has a pre-college program. I found out last year that they offer generous scholarships for their pre-college students. She had to go through a try-out, but was able to get a scholarship for wonderful classes. She's been involved in a home school band that provided her with a tuba and plays at the State Capital each year.

My 13 year old loves to socialize. We are part of a free P.E. co-op that is run by the teens. They get their P.E. credits, but more importantly they have a blast. She used to have a knitting club. Currently she has a friend that has organized a monthly group that gets together at a local bookstore. The group has a very serious life-skills sort of name; mostly they just chat and drink cappuccino.

What I've discovered is that there are groups for almost every interest and if there isn't already a group they are easy to form. If your child is competitive there are also competitions for almost every interest. I need to keep thinking outside the box for the rest of my children. I have an artist just a few years away from teen-dom.

Cringe Test

2010-02-17T04:48:00.001-08:00

Every once in a while I find it useful, if sometimes painful, to do a little testing on my family. I'll stand out of sight and call a child's name and watch for their reaction. Do they look up with an open expression and try to find out why I'm calling, or do they sink down and sigh before answering? Worst of all, do they sink down and feign deafness while pretending to be in Morocco?

Sad to say, I have a nag/fuss tendency. It seems related to how well I'm doing at being organized and self-disciplined. When I'm in a over-all good routine, it means that chores and schooling responsibilities are being accomplished, and my children know what is expected of them and when. It means they know when they have time for themselves. It means that I have the time and energy to keep up a spirit of fellowship and camaraderie with my children. Most of all it means that if I call someone- the underlying assumption is that my call might be a pleasant and welcome interruption.

When I'm in a nag/fuss cycle the assumption is that having one's name called means an interruption of one's current employment for an unspecified period of hassle. I'm pretty sure the thought process is something along the lines of, "Ughh, she's calling my name; I must evade capture."

I can always tell with my Cringe Test how well I'm doing in the family-fellowship department. When I fail the test, meaning my children cringe when called, it's time to remember to organize myself, lay off the family. Pray, prioritize. I need to pull out a deck of cards and play some games, lighten-up and enjoy my children.

Is it ethical to perform psychological testing on subjects without signed consent forms? Bah, motherhood is all about stealth, everything, from green veggies snuck into spaghetti sauce to stealth Cringe Testing.

I originally wrote this for my general blog, but I got to thinking how passing the cringe test is even more important if you are the mom and the teacher.

It Works-For-Me-Wednesday, and on other days.

Highlights

2010-02-12T05:20:00.000-08:00

My 2 year old worked very hard this week on Conservation of Liquid Quantity. Yes, that's what he called it. He's been studying Piaget.

The containers have to be small for his little hands, I figured they might as well be pretty.

My 13 year old did a lot of reading aloud to the 10 and 8 year olds from one of her favorite history books- Joan of Arc, by Diane Stanely. If you have not discovered Diane Stanely's history books you need to check your library. They are well written and beautifully illustrated.

My 15 year old was challenged by her piano teacher to really concentrate this week for an upcoming jury. It's always a challenge for her to find time to practice when the house is quiet so that she can really hear. Actually, that is more a challenge for me; I have to better facilitate that. Bad mom.

I took too long getting dressed one morning. A tent city went up.

My 15 year old read an essay titled, Of Adversity, by Francis Bacon and wrote this in her quote book:

"The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude..... Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue."

Children and Chores

2010-02-10T04:39:00.000-08:00

I've discovered a few things over the years about my large family and chore-doing. Namely, keep it simple and work together.

For a long time when my kids were younger I was on the search for the perfect system of organizing chores. Perfect as defined by an eternally spotless house, and cheerful children that did all jobs flawlessly and without reminders. Sort of like human Roombas.

I think I also visualized better drapes and antique carpets whenever I devised a new chore system- but I have a vivid imagination that defies logic.

To get to Perfect I'd often draw up complicated schedules, rotating work for fairness and excitement. It would generally involve an equally complicated system of keeping track of whether or not the work was done- as if I could ascertain bathroom cleanliness only from a peg turned to "Clean".

What I've found that works for our family is working together 3 times a day in concentrated bursts: after breakfast, before lunch and before dinner. Three times a day we put in music and dance around doing general clean-up and chores with me as a participating Mistress of Novices. It is amazing how clean we can get the house in about 20 minutes with everyone (even the babies) dancing about picking-up, putting away, sweeping, and vacuuming all at the same time. It's loud but effective. Sometimes fun, sometimes utilitarian.

As for individual chores, like bathrooms and dishes and laundry, etc. I split those up and only change assignments every 3- 6 months. Why change out every week? It makes it hard to remember whose turn is up. It means no one does anything long enough to have ownership of their work- or to really learn to do anything well.

We have generous escape clauses too. If someone really hates a chore- but is doing a good job at it, I'll switch things around. The beauty of an uncomplicated system is that as your children get older and busier out of the home, everyone is used to adjusting. It's a mindset of, "we work together because we are a family", not the mindset of, "I don't have to do that because it's not on my chart."

Right now, this is what works for us. Next year? My lawn-mowing son goes to college; we'll see.

Generation Gap and Walrus Ears

2010-02-09T01:16:00.000-08:00

I was reading Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear, by Eric Carle to my Littles when the 3 yo asked about flamingo ears. We chatted about bird ears for a while. When we got to the walrus page he had similar questions, plus he wanted a detailed explanation of what a walrus ear looked like.

I've read this book dozens of times over the years. If I include the number of times I read it when I taught preschool the number triples, at least. Yet, I had no idea what a walrus ear might look like.

So off we trotted to my computer to do a search. At Marine Science is an article full of walrus pictures. Including walrus ears.

It hit me as we left the computer that when my 18 yo was a baby we didn 't even own a computer, and even if we had, the internet was not what it is today. If my 18 yo had asked about walrus ears I would have had to: remember the question and gone to the library to look up a book with a good picture.

My oldest child is in a different generation than my youngest two children. So strange, I knew that sippy cup technology had changed from first baby to seventh baby but I never thought about how much the world itself had changed.

An Average Morning

2010-02-05T11:03:00.000-08:00

I often get overwhelmed with the "perfection" of printed home school schedules. It's easy to start thinking that bumps only occur in my own house, and that bumps mean failure. I thought I'd jot down an outline of an average morning in my home and school as things occurred. I picked a day that I didn't have anything momentous scheduled- just a humdrum rainy February day with 7 children.

Here are my notes on half of a school day, a morning slightly off schedule and started late:

5:30 A.M. 2 year old and I get up to make Daddy coffee before Daddy has to leave on a work trip.
6:00 A.M. First breakfast and medicines. I only had about 5 hours sleep and need to get some paperwork (ugh) and some blogging (yeah) finished. I'm diametrically opposed to t.v. but I put in the Wizard of Oz for the 2 year old and 3 year old to watch anyway. I field questions from the Littles as I work to assuage my guilt.
7:30 A.M. I read a huge stack of picture books to 2 yo, 3 yo and a sleepy 8 yo. The 2 yo is disgruntled that one of the characters shares his name.
8:00 A.M. Time for second breakfast with the rest of the family. 13 yo makes cocoa and I cook oatmeal. I sneak M&M's, no one notices.
8:30 A.M. The three youngest boys make a massive tent in the living room. Teen daughters check in on Facebook. People start chores. I realize that 17 yo son is still asleep- he stayed up late working on a school project so I leave him be.
9:30 A.M. 15 yo starts baking bread. 13 yo and 10 yo start on Math-U-See assignments and 8 yo starts doing Math-It and then a math sheet I just made up. 3 yo is exhausted and parks his body on my lap to rest, it's going to be a low energy day for him. We rock and cuddle and he sips milk. I sip coffee. 2 yo joins us, my heart is full.
10:00 A.M. 8 yo is finished with math. I tell him if he will pickup all the spilt pennies from the dining room he can have them. He takes me up on it and decides to add it to his piggy bank and count all his change: $6.86 worth. Littles get their penny collections out and count too.
10:20 A.M. Littles get bored and put away their pennies then work together moving about 30 books into the tent. I can hear them chatting. 13 yo moves on to Aplologia science while 10 yo moves on to Ace Paces science and social studies. 15 yo is finishing up The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. 17 yo has risen from the dead and is finishing up his chores.
10:30 A.M. Littles get in a fight, 15 yo takes them to another room to build with blocks while she reads. I knead bread into loaves and start soup while 13 yo narrates to me about her science chapter. Next, 10 yo does globe work with me, while 8 yo draws mazes. After I finish globe work 8 yo starts on his reading and handwriting with me.
10:55 A.M. 10 yo annoys 13 yo, 13 yo annoys 10 yo. 17 yo pitches a story idea to me about time travel and 13 yo leaves to work on her blog. 2 yo comes out with his hair done in a fake mohawk. Snack time for Littles, I'm caught eating some M&M's but I'm unrepentant and I don't share.
11:20 A.M. 17 yo is working on a Hamlet assignment. I rock 2 yo who is crying because he fell down, while 15 yo serenades us with her guitar. 3 yo is picking up a jigsaw puzzle as he listens to the guitar. 10 yo does copy work from the Beatitudes. I simultaneously check the work of several children.
11:40 A.M. 8 yo finishes his work and takes off to play in tent with and 3 yo. 15 yo leaves to do Aplologia biology, 10 yo starts reading a book about horses by Marguerite Henry. I leave to finish lunch and sneak more M&M's with 2 yo asleep on my shoulder.
12:20 A.M. We break from schoolwork to enjoy lunch.

It turned out to be a morning full of bumps, a morning that barely matches my personal home school schedule- but it was a good morning nonetheless; full of conversation, fellowship, and thinking.

Linked to the Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Memory Work, Gentle Style

2010-02-03T04:21:00.000-08:00

For years I watched my older children memorize a short memory verse, handed out on a little strip of paper each Sunday, just to get the treat and/or to not be embarrassed in front of their Sunday school class. What I particularly noticed was that they never remembered the verse for more than the required day of recital.

One semester we attended a Community Bible Study that had classes for home schooled children. Their teacher had them memorize all of Matthew 28 in that short semester. We never "worked" on it at home. The teacher read it to the children; they spent time understanding it, and then the children simply recited it all together once or twice each week with the teacher.

In my opinion it stuck because it was a story in context. Not a bunch of unrelated and truncated "memory verses".

So I started experimenting at home with various bits of memory work. With my Littles I found that if I read the same poem each morning out loud for a semester- even if the poem is long and the language complex; my children end up memorizing the poem without conscious effort.

Scripture- it doesn't seem to matter how long the passage is. If the passage being memorized is not butchered to make it "easier" and if it is a complete thought or story in itself, all I have to do is recite the passage out-loud with my children consistently and over time. It may take weeks or months even; but I have been amazed at what they can memorize and retain.

It makes total sense, anything you hear repeatedly seems to stick in your head. Especially if the language is rich or well cadenced. After all, it's the principle commercial jingles are based on- Memory work, gentle and insidious style.

Linked to Works For Me Wednesday.

Emergency Home Schedule

2010-01-31T13:52:00.000-08:00

All of my teens have had advanced Red Cross training. It's about time to re-certify and it occurred to me that having Red Cross training is good for any teen, especially if they have younger siblings and it counts towards their P.E. credit. For that matter an Emergency Home Schedule also wouldn't be a bad idea for any home school family.

My 3 year old and my 2 year old were born with a form of Fatty Acid Oxidation disorder. Our home school schedule is now occasionally interrupted by hospital stays or prolonged sick days. At first if we were in the hospital with one of the little ones it would be an automatic day-off for the rest of the children.

I thought the extra free time and getting to watch movies would make the days go faster for the kids at home- a treat to compensate for the stress everyone felt each time the babies were sick.

However, last year we had over 8 hospitalizations. The problem wasn't so much that we were getting behind in school work, the problem was that the lack of routine during stressful times was taking it's toll on behavior and coping skills.

I didn't even see it happening- my attention was brought to the matter by my 17 and 15 year old. My two oldest actually came to me and requested some sort of schedule on hospital days because their younger siblings needed more structure.

Keep in mind on hospital days- generally I'm at the hospital and my husband will work from home. It's not as if we push the other children out into the streets to fend for themselves- but I'm not at home and I'm pretty much our home's cruise director.

So, I complied with my older children's request and we made up an Emergency Home Schedule that is kept posted on the fridge. Blessedly we've not had a hospitalization for 10 months now- but we use the schedule when I'm with the little's at lengthy doctor's appointments or when they are ill at home and I have to sleep for part of the day to make up for being up all night.

Basically our emergency schedule gives "bones" to the day- as well as a treat for the end of the day. In my schedule I have in writing (helps prevent arguments) who does which chores, and an order to both school work, chores, and relaxation.

On nights when I've warned the older children that by morning the 3 year old will probably have to be in the hospital I've watched as they quietly check the schedule and mentally get their thoughts in gear- with no prodding from me.

I don't know how I would schedule things if I didn't have teens in the house. I do know that if we had to depend on someone other than family I would still have a schedule to give to the substitute caregiver. Having an emergency schedule has made a huge difference emotionally as well as physically for the entire family.

13 Books

2010-01-27T20:47:00.000-08:00

My family is hard on books. We're a bunch of hardcore readers, which means reading in bed, reading while walking, while bathing, while flipping pancakes, etc. Which of course means that our books are constantly out and around being read, dropped, spilt on and generally loved.

Then of course there is the matter of re-reading. When you think about the fact that there are nine in my household a beloved book probably sees more action than most public library books.

I got to thinking about the books I've replaced the most often. Here's a list of 13 beloved, thus most often destroyed/replaced books.

Brown Bear Brown Bear- Eric Carle
Goodnight Moon- Margaret Wise Brown
Owl Moon- Jane Yolen (children's writing at it's most beautiful)
Peter Rabbit- Beatrix Potter- (add her book, The Fierce Bad Rabbit too.)
The Little Train That Could- Watty Piper (you've got to see the newly illustrated version)
Go Dog Go- Theodore Geisel (I'm not sure why I still replace this one- I can recite the entire thing)
Blueberries For Sal- Robert McCloskey ("...all mixed up on Blueberry Hill," gets a laugh every-time)
The Narnia Chronicles- C.S. Lewis
Lord of the Rings- J.R.R. Tolkein
Harry Potter- J.K. Rowling
Redwall Series-Brian Jaques
Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austin
The Bible
Where the Sidewalk Ends- Shel Silverstein (I know this is number 14, I cheat.)

Actually there are so many more- it hurts not to list all our favorites worn out titles- it feels like I'm snubbing a family member.

Simplified Record Keeping

2010-01-25T05:43:00.000-08:00

I'm a cheater with slight OCD symptoms.

I love to plan things, make schedules and lists for home schooling. I heartily dislike have to cross out my home school plans and scribble all over my home school teacher book. However, anytime I make detailed lesson plans in advance my life intervenes, and not in a kindly manner.

Years ago I figured out that I could have my cake and eat it too.

I write out goals for each child at the beginning of each year, then break it down to each semester. I get pretty specific and set goals for academics and relationship, character etc.

However, I do not write my exact plans for each day in a "teacher book" or calendar until after the day or week is over. See the cheat? No scribbling-out because what I write is what my child has already accomplished. At the end of the school year I have a neat record of each child's school work.

Simplifies my life.

Linked to Works For Me Wednesday.

Booklists

2010-01-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

I'm a huge reader. I read constantly growing up. I'm blessed with a house full of readers. I never expected that this could cause a problem but my children devour books. I have to work really hard to keep them stocked with titles. I know for a fact my 15 year old had out- read me in the classics by the time she was 10.

The challenge for ferocious readers as well as reluctant readers is to keep challenging them with well written books they love that are not too emotionally mature. My daughter may have loved reading Jane Austen at 10 years old but Thomas Hardy deals with subjects I didn't want to have to discuss at that point.

As a result I have come to love book lists. Here are some links to lists that I have used for years to get ideas.

Ambleside

Sonlight

Booker Prize (these are all adult titles- use with great caution)

Carol Joy Seid- Her seminars are well worth going to just for the wonderful book lists she has. My son would never have discovered the history books written by Marrin if I had not attended her seminar.

This last link I just discovered listed on a forum I'm a member of. http://www.classical-homeschooling.org/celoop/1000.html

If anyone knows of more links I'd love for you to share!

Teaching Reading, a Warning

2010-01-20T20:01:00.000-08:00

My 5th child is on the cusp of moving from beginning reader to Reader. As in, I'll have to start taking his books away from him at bedtime. It's a really exciting time for both of us.

I remember this point with all my children though none of my children have had the kindness to have similar learning styles as an older sibling. Therefore teaching each of them has been a learning experience for me as their mom/teacher.

But..... with all of my children I noticed a couple of things that drove me absolutely nuts until I realized it was normal.

When your child is learning to read they may (will) have totally unexplainable and unpredictable periods when they seem to have forgotten all of the basics. You will wonder if they fell out of their bed onto their head that morning. You will wonder if they are purposely torturing you. Breathe deeply. Remember how much you love them.

It is not your fault.

They will also have totally unpredictable leaps forward in their comprehension and ability. Generally this will happen after you realize that you've been a terrible mom and have totally dropped the ball with their reading program. You'll sit down with your child with feelings of great trepidation only to hear them sight read 3 syllable words and suddenly be able remember the phonic rule you had been tempted to have tattooed on your forehead.

It is not your success.

In the absence of learning disabilities it isn't going to matter terribly what curriculum you use if you remember two things during each lesson: they are the ones learning how to read; and you really,really, love your child.

Check out Thirsty Thursdays for great teaching tips.

And Works for Me Wednesday for more tips on everything.

Nature Readers

2010-01-16T07:20:00.000-08:00

My 8 year old is loving the Usborne, "First Nature Reader" and James Herriot's "Animal Stories". Every few days I have him do a drawing from the reading. I loved this one:

My 3 year old just loves to draw monsters. His wall above his bed is decorated with monsters; why this doesn't give him nightmares I don't know. This was his cow monster. I'd love to understand the inspiration.

Math-It

2010-01-12T18:29:00.000-08:00

This is not a paid review. Only in my dreams would some one give me money for blogging. I just really, really like using Math-It for learning math facts.

I've used it with 5 different children now- even though it is not my main math curriculum. My children would not rise up and call Math-It blessed. They pretty much all rolled their eyes at having to use it- but the system really helped all of them get those pesky math facts firmly in their heads.

The funny thing is that I've found that when I'm doing bookkeeping for my husbands business and I have long columns of numbers to add- I now use the Math It technique of adding.

Just goes to show that old dogs can learn new tricks.

Chronic Illness and Scheduling

2010-01-09T07:21:00.000-08:00

Every home school is unique- but every home school also has changing needs which make each year or even each semester within the same home school unique. Sometimes it's time to revamp schedules or curriculum.

One of my greatest challenges has been to figure out a schedule that is flexible enough to accommodate the needs of my chronically ill 3 year old. For weeks at a stretch he sometimes requires multiple blood sugar checks and feedings every few hours during the night. Occasionally he has to be hospitalized for a few days for I.V. treatment. Then there are the doctors appointments which tend to come in clusters and are capable of wiping out the best laid plans. Last but not least there are the times when he is just "low" and things need to be calm and relaxed and at home.

The following schedule is working for us this semester mostly because school is more spread out over the day than I've traditionally liked. I also have a cushion (due in great part to the baby-sitting super power of my older children) built in during the afternoon which I can use to sleep during times when I've been up all night caring for my 3 year old. I haven't included chores- but we definitely work as a family to keep the house running. Though I don't list them, the extra activities and lessons my teens are involved in all occur in the afternoons this semester.

My schedule calls for "sibling leadership":

Our 8th grader reads a history, science, and literature selection to the 2nd and 4th graders each day. The reason is three-fold. First, the 8th grader is benefitting from the review and the responsibility. Secondly, it's a bonding activity. Thirdly, it gives me afternoon time to focus on my 2 and 3 year old doing fun and usually messy pre-school activities.
My senior son reads history to his second grade brother. This lightens the load for me but it also is the highlight of my 2nd grader's day. His big brother makes the history reading come alive.
During my morning "table time" my senior takes an hour to read and play with the toddlers in another part of the house then my sophomore does the same for another hour. This makes table time a truly focused and productive school time, building the "habit of attention".
I've incorporated some workbooks into our schedule for the first time so that if I'm away for a hospitalization the 10th grader can keep Table Time going for a few days at a time.

9:00- 11:00 Table Time with my 2nd, 4th and 8th grader. We use this time to do math, bible, artist study, copy-work... basically anything that is more pencil and paper oriented, or Mom lead.

11:00 Outside- nature studies, walking, gardening or reading in the sun.

12:00 Lunch

12:30 Nap-time for toddlers. For the first 30 min. 2nd grader reads to mom and then has history read to him by big brother. Older students read and study- Mom is available to answer questions and direct work. 10th grader practices piano.

2:00 8th grader reads to younger siblings. Mom has Toddler Time.

3:00-5:00 Free time and music practice time

Evening: Older students often read or study later in the evening (when it's quiet) to keep up with work load.

Bedtime for younger boys includes Bible stories.

Phonetics Fun

2010-01-07T08:43:00.000-08:00

My 8 year old and I wrote this poem this morning:

Phonetic Mysteries

I don't know how, I don't know why.

I don't know why "y" is called a "y".

I don't know how, I don't know why.

Why is an "i" not a "y"?

I don't know how, I don't know why.

Why "y" is not "i" or why "hi" is not "bye"?

I don't know how, I don't know why,

but I do know that "I" am not a tie.

January's reading list

2010-01-06T12:09:00.000-08:00

So far so good. I love my new schedule- the kids love the new schedule.

Memory work: the Beatitudes, Lamentation 3:22-24

What we are reading this month (some titles will be continued for the rest of the year) and generally enjoying:

8 year old's list (mostly read alouds):

Farmer Boy, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Story of the World Vol. 1 by Susan Wise Bauer
America's Paul Revere, by Esther Forbes
Black Ships Before Troy, Rosemary Sutcliff
Usborne Complete First Book of Nature
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling

10 year old's list:

The Wheel on the School, DeJong
The Gawgon and the Boy, Lloyd Alexander
Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Story of the World Vol. 1, by Susan Wise Bauer
America's Paul Revere, by Esther Forbes
Black Ships Before Troy, Rosemary Sutcliff
All About Horses, Marguerite Henry

13 year old's list:

Othello, Shakespeare
The Once and Future King, T.H. White
Public Enemies, Bryan Burrough
Mystery of History Vol. II
Love Comes Softly Series

15 year old's list:

Hamlet, Shakespeare
Rob Roy, Sir Walter Scott
Les Miserable, Victor Hugo
And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
The Complete Collection of Edgar Allen Poe
The History of The English Speaking People, Winston Churchill
Francis Bacon The Temper of a Man, Catherine Bowen
The Song of Albion Book 2,
How To Read a Book, Mortimer Adler

17 year old's list:

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austin
Hamlet, Shakespeare
Dracula, Bram Stoker
The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis
The African Queen, C.S. Forester
History of The English Speaking People, Vol. I, Winston Churchill

My list:

Your God Is Too Small, J.B. Phillips
The Twelve Spiritual Disciplines,
City of Thieves, David Benioff
Breaking Dawn, Stephanie Meyers
The Tipping Point,
Innumeracy, John Allen Paulos

Carrots and Sticks

2010-01-02T15:21:00.000-08:00

The Problem: As my teens have gotten older the time their schoolwork requires has expanded. This last semester I had a constant problem with work not completed on time and tests not taken on schedule.

I also saw a growing problem of a blame game being played. A home school variation of "my dog ate my homework." The song and dance that goes, "I'm not ready for this test because we went on that field trip Wednesday and then on Thursday we worked all day on a different project and you didn't remind me I had a test today...."

The Solution: I'm changing the school week to start on Tuesdays and run to Mondays. This will give them the weekend to catch-up. Spending the weekend studying may be so distasteful to them that they will plan their weeks better, if they don't- at least they have the extra 2 days.

The Diabolic Carrot: My teens are all a part of a P.E. group that meets Monday afternoon. This is their group, their friends, their time. My kids love this group.

The Even More Diabolic Stick: If their work is not completed, if all tests are not taken then P.E. is forfeited until the next week. A home school version of no pass no play. Cue evil laughter.

Though to be honest, I hope they don't ever have to miss- the exercise and fellowship of this group is a great thing.

Curriculum Switch Trap

2009-12-22T00:20:00.000-08:00

I've been searching the internet for that perfect curriculum. The perfect curriculum that will: teach my children, clean my house, run a home based business, care for my ill child, be a perfect help-meet, all while I vacation in Switzerland.

So far I can't find it. I'm not sure why. I've googled every key word possible.

I get this way. Maybe I'm the only one. Maybe not. I do know that perhaps this time I do need to make some changes in my curriculum. But a curriculum does not make the home school. Mom's attitude makes the home school.

If I stay focused on God and his leading I'll find the way.

God, not google.

Schedules... Again

2009-12-16T11:53:00.000-08:00

We are on Holiday break. It came at a perfect time- the kids have been passing a virus around. What's more fun than being sick when on vacation, even if it is just a vacation at home?

This Fall was not a stellar semester of school. In fact I would give myself low scores as a mom in general, much less as a home school mom. I spent too much time feeling overwhelmed and under motivated.

The culprit? I allowed too many activities to overwhelm our routine. So what if everything we do is worth-while? If it is too much to do, then none of it ends up being done in a worth-while manner. Not to mention that when life gets too hectic, toddler-training takes the back seat to expediency.

I'm back in the saddle again and thinking about next semester. I've already cut out some time (and money) sucking commitments.

We are taking a semester break from band. The kids will continue their music lessons, just not the home school band organization.
My senior is not taking a dual enrollment class next semester.
I'm dropping my Thursday night church church group.
I'm only buying from the whole-foods coop every other month.

These may sound like small things but added together and then subtracted from my life they add up to a bunch more time to be, well, to be an actual mom.

Maybe even a sane, fun mom, one who loves to learn with her children.

Dual Enrollment- Lessons Learned

2009-12-10T11:59:00.000-08:00

In Tennessee a home schooled junior or senior in high school can take college classes for either college credit or dual credit. Scholarships are available to help cover the cost.

My oldest child is a senior this year and takes his first college final exam on Monday. He's learned a lot of college level math and I've learned a lot about home schooling high school students. Everything he's learned is way above my head but I thought I'd share what I've learned:

1. Colleges usually require an SAT or ACT score to apply to take dual enrollment courses- so plan ahead.

2. A dual enrollment scholarship is a breeze to apply for online, and is a breeze to get.

3. Most community colleges are also a breeze to apply to online.
4. Your umbrella school may require you to fax copies of your grandmother to set up the dual enrollment, so plan ahead to leave time for registering for actual classes.
5. Your umbrella school may rather arbitrarily decide not to allow dual credit for the class your child wants to take, but that does not mean your child cannot get college credit. Once again, plan ahead.
6. When figuring the cost of the class don't forget to figure in expensive college texts and possibly required computer software.
7. When figuring cost of the class don't forget to budget commuting costs. Oops, my bad.
8. When scheduling classes don't forget that parking on most college classes requires a lot of walking- which greatly adds to time spent commuting.
9. Keep in mind that some college scholarships will not be available to students with too many dual enrollment hours. The reasoning behind this escapes me. Our reasearch indicated that you only start running into problems if your child has upward of 9-12 credit hours of dual enrollment.
10. Letting my son figure out how to not study well, helped him to learn a lot about how to study.

This is part of Thirsty Thursdays at Five J's

Super No Va

2009-12-09T04:57:00.000-08:00

Or, Poetry for the Sleep Deprived

Motivation

Mo' vacation please?

Motive shunning, shirking notice of mental relocation.

Motivation.

Where's the sense of my vocation?

Motive shrinking, shrieking gone, chased by mote sleep's ration.

Motivation

Found Object Lessons

2009-11-19T07:34:00.000-08:00

Preschool at my house is a low key, homemade affair. In fact I don't call it preschool at all, it's just life. Sometimes life is pleasantly slow and full of free connections that my toddlers create independently.

My 2 year old was enamored of the newly emptied baking powder container. When I handed it to him and saw how perfectly it fit his chubby hands I had to laugh. It looked made for him. Immediately he sat down to screw the lid on and off and then flip open and shut the flip side of the lid. He looked up at me from time to time to make sure I was sharing the delight. Quickly I cannibalized a board game for plastic counting chips. My son then slowly and deliberately dropped in each piece as I counted for him. We did this approximately a billion times. I was just glad I had only found 12 counting pieces.

Learning/playing in an empty cupboard while wearing jammies; life doesn't get much better.

My two toddlers love the book "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom", by Bill Martin Jr. I don't know which is more appealing to them, the rhythm, or their toddler fascination with all things that fall. One day after reading the book my 3 yo suddenly exclaimed something I didn't understand and ran off. He came back with an old box of wooden magnetic letters and proceeded to open the book to the inside cover and match the magnet letters to the drawing. The fonts were almost identical. Not a formal lesson, not an object lesson, merely a free found-object lesson.

This post is linked to Thirsty Thursday- have fun.

The Great Penguin Search

2009-11-18T11:46:00.000-08:00

While I was out schlepping the girls to their band practice my 17 yo, Luke, stayed home to babysit his youngest brothers. While I was still out I got a phone call from Luke that raised the hair on my head. There was a strained quality to Luke's voice that had me on instant alert- until I realized that his voice was strained because Luke was struggling to speak without laughing.

"Mom"

"What's wrong, are the Littles up?", I asked in a panic.

"Um, yes I just called to-"

"Have they eaten?" I interrupted.

"Yes, they're fine, I just wanted to tell you that I was explaining to them about penguins and showed them a bunch of pictures on the computer." Luke continued, now snorting more uncontrollably.

My hair settled back on my head and I was able to listen to the rest of the story.

Evidently after Luke showed his little brothers pictures of penguins and explained that penguins live in cold places on ice, he then left the den for a moment. Passing through the kitchen on the way back to the den he discovered the two yo standing on a stool in front of the wide open freezer searching inside it for... penguins.

Chartres Cathedral

2009-11-14T15:51:00.000-08:00

In 2000 my husband shot this footage while on a job in France. The amazing thing is that the audio was captured by the video camera.

Very peaceful. Enjoy.

This is part of the Mom Link Round up, enjoy all the links!

Where Charlotte Mason Left Off

2009-11-09T18:33:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of September my 15 yo and I were working on her goals for the school year. Science is not her favorite subject; it became late and we got a little punchy. We ended up designing a video-education curriculum for high school sciences.

Actual facts and real information contained in the following curriculum are entirely spurious and purely coincidental:

For Horticulture- The Happening

Astronomy- Deep Impact

Physics- The Matrix

Biology- Evolution

Geology- Dante's Peak

Climatology- The Day After Tomorrow

Oceanography- Waterworld

Criminology- Minority Report

Pschology- Rear Window

My apologies to Charlotte Mason.

Veteran Home Schooler?

2009-11-04T15:41:00.000-08:00

I’ve always found it a curiosity that the term “veteran home schooler” has become a title signifying required respect. “So and So, a veteran home schooler, is giving a lecture on how to teach Klingon to fulfill high school language requirements,” or, “so and so, a veteran home schooler talks about how to make algebra your child’s newest hobby.” The term “veteran homeschooler” alone is supposed to denote authority, competence and success, and cause you to buy their seminar/product/philosophy/tutorial.

To my twisted mind it always brings up an image of a 37 year old woman wearing a denim jumper and flak jacket. In my imagination the "veteran" is talking into a microphone to a bevy female spectators as she shoots a barrage of flashcards out of a cannon into an opposing ditch filled with her offspring. The offspring are warding off the flashcards with an assortment of shields made of pots, pans, Harry Potter hardbacks and Bionicle warriors. The bevy of spectators file up to buy the flashcard system as soon as the children are led off for a snack.

Am I perhaps a tad cynical? Am I experiencing a wee bit of home schooling burn out? Perhaps. However, ponder a moment. How does one cross the line from home schooler to “veteran” home schooler? What are the requirements?

Is veteran status earned merely after a certain set number of years in the trenches? If so when do you start counting? At birth, at age 5? Are years home schooling with greater challenges weighted like A.P. classes are? For instance, every year you home school while pregnant or nursing could count as 2 regular years. Every year spent teaching beginning reading counts as 2 1/2 years, etc.

Does veteran status require a certain number of children in your home school? If so, are you disqualified from ever achieving veteran status if not all of your children are home schooled or if you only have 1? Are you given faster promotion to veteran if your children are unusually close in age. What about extra credit for an especially aggravating child?

Does graduating your oldest from high school instantly qualify you as a veteran? Does it count if you didn’t home school the entire 12 years? Relatedly, does veteran status require having your child/children accepted to college? Or does it require having children accepted to Ivy League Universities? What if they drop-out of college to move to a remote missionary post? Can your veteran status be revoked?

Who is the accrediting body anyway?

I prefer another term, "Mother." Hopefully "Mother" connotes love rather than war, as well as implying warmth and dedication. I want to be a mother, a good mother. One that just happens to also organize my children's education at home. One that doesn’t claim to know everything but is willing and ready to learn with my kids. One that doesn’t’ have to run in circles following the latest guru; one that can fall down and get back up.

However, if I ever have twins that are still nursing while I'm concurrently teaching reading and high school chemistry all while traveling in an R.V. on a history tour of America- I want the appellation of "veteran" instantly granted.

Naptime Chez Tipton

2009-10-24T13:19:00.000-07:00

Home schooling Feng Shui; the back of our piano is against the wall of my Littles' bedroom (their new napping room) and my daughter, Grace, practices piano intently during the Littles' nap time.

After the wiggling, flopping, and humming settles into snuggling my two Littles start noticing Grace's piano music. Lately Grace has been starting her sessions with "Star Wars" themes because she knows the Littles enjoy it.

The first time Grace sight-read through Darth Vader's Theme I was still in the Littles' bedroom watching them settle down. I could see Jack's eyes looking off into space as he relaxed into his pillow, his eyes tracking from side to side as Grace played. At her first stumble his eyes froze, only to resume tracking as she resumed playing. Anytime she had to pause to work out the music his eyes stopped tracking and he almost seemed to hold his breath, waiting for the musical resolution.

I'd love for both Littles to be musically inclined but if the end result of their early exposure to music is merely less time required memorizing math facts... it's all good.

Fall Break

2009-10-16T08:04:00.000-07:00

This week has flown by. I want a "repeat" in order to accomplish all that I foolishly thought I could accomplish in one week off school.

Why have I been going to bed each night feeling as though school has been off-track? I spent a morning this week looking over my schedule to find out where the flaw was. I found one major no-brainer flaw. When I put together my schedule for this Fall I didn't take into account travel time for the various classes my high schoolers are taking as dual enrollment. No wonder I can't figure out where the time has gone. It's gone the same place as my gasoline budget...

Live and learn, we've never done dual enrollment and tutorial before. Though I think the programs are valuable they certainly take a chunk out of the week.

Really, I Just Have Something In My Eyes

2009-10-02T12:47:00.000-07:00

May 30th, 2009

A loud-breathing presence at my bedside, I open one eye. A small face is peering at me. I attempt to focus through the pre-dawn darkness on my 19 month old, Samuel, as he shouts "JUICE!" I try pulling him into bed in the vain hope that he will simple cuddle up and go to sleep. Nothing doing, he struggles back to the floor. Through squinted eyes I can see him retrieve my water cup from the bedside table and gulp down the last of the water with shaking hands. My brain is starting to send alarm signals.

Samuel shouts, "Juice" again, and then quivering from head to toe, throws the now empty cup. The cup bounces comically off my head with such force that it ricochets and knocks my bedside lampshade askew. Now I am wide awake. Samuel is not quivering with rage, he is quivering from a blood sugar crisis. His first one. I'm too familiar with the symptoms of hypoglycemia in Jack not to recognize them in Sam, especially when hit in the head. A handful of raisins later a suddenly calm Sam politely asks for breakfast.

Sam's first crisis occurred almost exactly a year after Jack's first hospitalization. A year in which we were told that Sam was probably fine, probably free from the genetic disorder that Jack has. It was also the morning of a chapter meeting of The United Mitochondria Foundation. I went on to the meeting (my first one ever), feeling unreal from the events of the morning. Have you ever had allergies that made your eyes water uncontrollably? After I got to the meeting, that's what happened to my eyes. They just started "leaking". I quietly went to the rest room a couple of times and held paper towels to my eyes- willing them to behave, only to have them start watering again within 10 minutes. The meeting's featured speaker spoke on grief. She stressed dealing with the grief of chronic illness or your grief would "splash" over into other areas of your life when you least expect it. Duh, I was the better than any power point presentation, exhibit A in "splashing".

During the following brunch I took the opportunity to corner the geneticist who is on the board of the local UMDF chapter. He'd seen Jack before, so I re-introduced myself and asked if a normal child in the absence of an acute illness could just happen to have episodes of blood sugars in the 40's that resolve with carbohydrates. A long pause followed, during which I'm sure he was thinking something along the lines of, "Crap, she's already looks stressed and she's asking me a loaded and stupid question, and the door to the room is blocked by the bloke eating cake." He of course advised me to get in touch with our doctors and start Samuel on corn starch at night until he was seen...

My eyes continued to leak off and on for a couple of days. I wasn't prostrated on my bed with flower petals scattered across the floor during this time. I was cracking jokes with Greg and the kids, doing chores- doing all the normal weekend stuff. Just occasionally my eyes would start streaming. It was completely unlike anything I've experienced before. Samuel, whom we had thought was our round, sweet, sturdy, healthy, bonus-baby was suddenly all those things minus the healthy. Yet at the same time I knew we were so blessed to already know the basics of how to recognize and handle metabolic issues.

I knew that Samuel's diagnosis would be difficult. Our family doesn't bother with garden variety illnesses. I was right, a few months later and we are working with a diagnosis of Ketotic Hypoglycemia for Samuel, but we don't really know. Lately he's been having more frequent morning episodes of hypoglycemia even on his corn starch regime. I'm watching, praying and researching, but I'm not "leaking" anymore. However, I don't think it was such a bad thing. Embarrassing perhaps, but the slow release of tears as I went on with normal life was a bizarrely helpful way to process my grief and fears. Moms are all about multi-tasking, I just never thought to multi-task grief before.

The Colors of Autumn

2009-09-30T04:58:00.000-07:00

Artist at work.

Perhaps "washable" and "indelible" are actually synonyms?

My proud minimalist next to his "pièce de résistance" entitled "Red."

Black and White and Brass. Doesn't she sound great?

Smallday

2009-09-28T17:54:00.000-07:00

Some Mondays seem maliciously and anthropomorphically bent on proving what a small person I am. Today was such a Monday. True suffering, and momentous calamities, are different from mere aggravations, yet there is something peculiarly difficult about quantity of small troubles regardless of their quality.

Aggravations on top of aggravations can lead one to entertain thoughts representing smallness of mind:

1. Recalcitrant math student? One might be tempted to respond, "Fine, double-digit addition with carrying is stupid, don't learn it!"

2. 8 yo with flu symptoms? One might picture a backyard quarantine-yurt.

3. More month than money? One might idly wonder how much is in the 3 yo's piggy bank.

Monday, in anthropomorphic glory, saved it's coup de grace for the afternoon mail. A letter bomb arrived- well, actually a post card from a dear friend. The picture was of a beautiful vacation spot on the Adriatic. As soon as I saw the picture I was there, sitting at a cafe in loose white clothing while a waiter poured my drink. Greg inexplicably had a dark moustache. I could feel the heat of the sun on my skin, hear the water and sounds of the children playing at a distance while their nanny carefully looked after them.

Zap. Then I remembered I was in my dining room setting out bowls of cauliflower soup (yuck, but the kids like it) on a tablecloth that hadn't been properly cleared since breakfast.

I love the sender of the post card. She is one of my oldest friends, and the most beautiful of people. I'm so happy that she's on vacation as a celebration of finishing her Master's thesis. However, my first reaction was of utter jealousy instead of joy for my friend. That's the definition of smallness.

Smallness, meet me. Me, meet Smallness.

Did God know today would knock me flat? Is that why during my morning shower the hymn, "Be Still and Know That I am God," kept coming to my mind? God, the antithesis of smallness.

I'm glad tomorrow is Tuesday...

Silly Similes, S'Aliteration

2009-09-18T10:32:00.000-07:00

Gray days, for days on end, get me down, make me cranky. Time to look at silly, sunlit, Summer photos. Tennessee Teen Takes Toddler from Tuba would be a great headline.

My 15 yo daughter (who, minus the toddler, plays above-pictured Tuba) was given a writing assignment to compose a poem using similes, but instructed to strictly avoid cliches. She too gets cranky and contrary on gray days. She just couldn't resist. If you make your teacher smile does that off-set doing an assignment exactly wrong?

A Poem of Cursed Similes

The blue of the sky,

was as blue of the sea.

The clouds were as ships sails,

waving o'er to me.

The green of the grass,

was as green as sea-weed,

Those greeny masses

that came and then flee'd.

The brown of the tree-trunks,

was as brown as the mast,

from which a sailor,

was crying, "Avast!"

The red of the flower,

was as red as the face

Of the red coated Marine

yelling, "About face!"

The black of the cannon ball

was as black as the earth.

To which they would go,

not long after their birth.

Sneakers, Swords, and Taillights

2009-09-09T05:28:00.000-07:00

Fall is shoe buying time. With 7 kids obviously we try to squeak by with the cheapest footwear we can. When I happen along on a sneaker sale it's a happy day. All my boys are fast now. They'll tell you that repeatedly, if you can catch up with them. The 7 year old wanted a non-sale sneaker, until my husband remarked that if he got the same kind as his brothers they would look like a kind of team, or even a group of super heros. Spin-it Baby. Parenting at it's best.

We have a family friend who is a sword maker. Yes, I said swords. Noble Armory has a faithful following of Tipton children who are always willing to try out the new models. The normality of it for our children has led to some unusual angst. Ben, when he was 4, announced that when he grew up he was going to stay at home and "make" his wife go to work. When I asked why, with tears of anxiety sparkling in his eyes he said, "Because I don't know how to go on airplanes (his own Dad travels a lot for work), and I don't know how to make swords."

Fast forward to yesterday. The three youngest boys in their new sneakers battling with neighbors. Evidently the level of testosterone in the body is directly linked to the newness of footwear. An epic sword battle in the driveway led to the death of my van's left taillight cover. Mayhaps it was a burning one-eyed dragon?

Cost of sale sneakers + cost of new tail light cover is still cheaper than cost of regular priced sneakers. If you figure in the amount of energy expended outside (and by definition Not inside), the character developed upon coming inside to confess the injury of said van, the level of hand eye coordination developed with the self correcting feed-back of physical reality... I'm way into black ink.

Children's Logic 101

2009-08-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

Hypothetical Syllogism as used by Luke (at age 5): "If magic isn't real and Santa's sleigh flies by magic, then Santa isn't real."

Deductive Argument as used by Grace (at age 3): "I don't know why Sarah is crying- I didn't hit her that hard."

Part to Whole Reasoning as used by Sarah (at age 5) after discovering that I was the tooth fairy: "Mom, Olivia Sholey lost a tooth today, MOM, did you hear me? Olivia Sholey lost a tooth today, don't forget to go to her house tonight."

Argumentum ad baculum as used by Rebekah (at age 4 1/2): While attempting to force her will upon her older brother she shook her tiny fists and threatened him with this misquoted movie line, "Oh yeah, do you want a piece of meat!"

Inductive Reasoning as used by Benjamin (at age 4): At the funeral of a pet rabbit Benjamin noted, "If our rabbit dies on it's own we don't eat it, but if we kill it while it is still alive then we can eat it." *

Truism as stated by Jack (at age 3): "If your tummy hurts... you should go to the bathroom."

Repetition as a Rhetorical Strategy as used by Samuel (at age 2): "No No No."

*Our family may live in TN, but to date we have eaten neither roadkill nor family pets.

7.5 Inches of Storage Space

2009-08-21T07:13:00.000-07:00

Because we do not have a Sub Zero we have space for...

Startling Mom is always exciting.

Schedules vs Reality

2009-08-17T20:23:00.000-07:00

We start school next week. I've been working on our schedule with great difficulty for several weeks. A wise friend pointed out that a schedule only works if it is based on the realities of your life- not based on an imaginary ideal life.

What I can imagine:

6:00 a.m.- Get up and dress, make coffee, have prayer time.

6:30 a.m.- Greg gets up and we drink coffee together while having a meaningful conversation.

7:00 a.m.- I wake the children, they rise calling me "Blessed" and then dress & clean their rooms.

7:30 a.m.- Breakfast.

8:00 a.m.- I direct morning chores.

8:30 a.m.- I take care of business and personal emails and phone calls.

9:00 a.m.- The children and I "start" the day refreshed and dressed and with a clean house.

An Amalgam of Recent Summer Realities:

2:00 a.m.- One of the "littles" gets out of bed, I settle them back down.

4:30 a.m.- 3 yo gets in bed with me and asks for milk before falling promptly asleep. I lie awake wondering about his blood sugar.

5:15 a.m.- 2 yo gets in bed with me and falls asleep but not before waking 3 yo.

5:30 a.m.- 3 yo wakes Greg who gets up to visit the bathroom. Greg wakes 2 yo.

5:45 a.m.- 2 yo starts talking loudly about juice. I get up and start coffee and feed the two "littles" their first breakfast of the day. They look cute at the counter.

6:00 a.m.- I'm turning on my computer, opening curtains and breaking up baby tussles when 7 yo silently materializes on the sofa asking, "What's for breakfast"? Startled, I spill my coffee. I read to the three boys then check personal email.

6:15 a.m.- Greg stumbles in with his coffee. 3 yo attacks Greg with another book request. As I attempt to email my father I hear the front door open and close. It dawns on my that the 2 yo has left the premises. I fetch him.

6:30 a.m.- Greg and I attempt a conversation. 7 yo interrupts with, "What's for breakfast'? 10 yo wanders in, trailing an afghan which knocks over 3 yo's lego structure. Tears ensue.

6:45 a.m.- 10 yo sweetly takes 3 yo to "help her" feed the cat. 15 yo walks in while reading and trips on aforementioned legos. Greg shows me a shortcut on my computer.

7:00 a.m.- 7 yo asks, "What's for breakfast"? 10 seconds later 13 yo walks in while reading and asks, "What's for breakfast"? 15 yo begins playing Mozart's "Turkish March" at 3 times normal speed. 2 yo spills my coffee.

7:30 a.m.- I drink more coffee. 17 yo is still asleep so with somewhat cruel glee I awaken him. 17 yo gets up and swings 7 yo old around in the air. Greg flees to his office after sharing the last of the coffee. I give 3 yo his meds. and check business emails while 15 yo starts pancakes.

8:30 a.m.- Breakfast dishes are now mixed with an art project 10 yo pulled out while my back was turned. 15 yo begins a Chopin piece purposely transposed into a weird key. 7 yo is flinging his body around the house "dying". 2 yo, for a reason not apparent to the rest of us, is taking all dining room chairs into the living room. 3 yo has poured out the box of lincoln logs in the den. I answer the phone while logging onto Facebook, change a diaper, blow a nose not my own, and make more coffee.

9:00 a.m.- I'm still in the yoga pants I slept in.

A Break

2009-08-12T05:42:00.000-07:00

I'm more of an idea person. Or so I like to think, in order to justify my hatred of and incompetence with paperwork. I learned to hate paperwork as a child listening to my Dad do our taxes. I can still visualize the small card table pulled out each year and piled high with papers. There sits my father for hours on end grumbling like a small avalanche. It is one of my most tangible early memories, probably etched the more firmly because my birthday is April 16th.

Right now I have a lot of joyless paperwork to do. Taxes, insurance forms, school forms, dual enrollment forms for my 12th grader. Speaking of dual enrollment forms, silly me logged onto my son's Mac not noticing it was in the Window's application. Said application is not yet connected with the home printer network. Why on earth, when filling out an "online" application, should I need to print and sign and MAIL a hardcopy of my signature on a $10 application fee? Argghhh!

Why are the details so amazingly hard for me to deal with? Paperwork makes me mean. Paperwork is pushing me to the brink, that yawning chasm of joyless insanity is calling me. I'm pretty sure insane people don't have to do paperwork.

I took Luke's saxophone to Nashville to be repaired in an attempt to escape my paperwork. In comparison driving in rush hour traffic was a welcome break. Once there I had to parallel park for the first time in 12 years. One try and Utter satisfaction. A small sort of accomplishment.

In the music repair shop I waited while an elderly gentleman dressed in shabby janitorial clothing tried out his newly repaired sax. His saxophone looked like it had been passed through the intestines of an elephant. I've truly never seen such an ugly instrument. I think it had moss growing on it. And then... the sounds that came out of that squashed, dull, beat up sax were nothing short of pure and utter Joy. A 60 second vacation. Too bad sound doesn't photograph well on my camera phone.

Many Returns

2009-08-04T02:32:00.000-07:00

Lilly the Kitten, who turned out to be Linus the Kitten, didn't come home Sunday night. Rebekah was beside herself. She searched, she cried, she worried. She organized a grassroots organization of neighborhood kids to search along with her. Believe me, there are a lot of neighborhood kids. We watched Rebekah's heretofore undiscovered talent with community organizing. 28 hours after Linus disappeared 3 boys from down the street found and returned him. There was great rejoicing along with fresh milk and treats for Linus. Never has a kitten been so petted.

An hour or so later I went outside to talk with Linus and couldn't find him. Rebekah had him locked in the garage. She was afraid to let him go back outside. Mind you, this is an outdoor cat and it's hot in the garage in Tennessee in August. The conversation I had with her about "letting him go" bordered on cliché.

My oldest son, Luke, came home from his 3 1/2 week trip to Guatemala not an hour after Linus' return. There was great rejoicing along with grilled steaks and fresh peach cobbler, but RATS; Luke doesn't like the garage either- he's already planning his next trip. I guess clichés become clichés for a reason.

Names, Shmames

2009-08-02T04:56:00.000-07:00

Misunderstanding song lyrics and movie dialogue has a long tradition in our family. Recently a misunderstanding merged the two genres. Grace is a huge musicphile. She likes to set up different classical music for Jack to listen to during his nap time and is fairly systematic about it. Though Jack doesn't listen to music during every nap, Grace will introduce a new piece to him and then play only that piece for several weeks before starting a new piece. Yes I know, she's a better home school mom than I am. This summer it was Tchiakovsky's 1812 Overture. Evidently Grace peaked Jack's interest in it by explaining about Napoleon's siege of Moscow in very dramatic terms. Jack fell in love with it immediately.

After a week or so into listening to the overture I was putting Jack down for his nap and he asked to listen to the "Monster" music. I couldn't figure out at first what he meant until he showed me the CD box. "Monster" music, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, whatever. I set it up for him. We got used to Jack calling it that though we didn't understand why. I thought that he was perhaps imagining Napoleon's troops as monsters. One day Luke walked through Jack's room during nap time and came out laughing. Jack had asked Luke to turn on the "Monster" music, and when Luke didn't know what that was Jack explained very slowly, "You know, Wachowski's music, the music that Mike Wachowski wrote about the bad guys attacking the city". Who knew animated characters were that, well, 3- dimensional?

Later, I lay down next to Jack and asked him to explain what was going on in the music. Did you know that at the end of the overture what you might have mistook for cannon fire is actually the sound of the good guys chasing the bad guys away from the front door with whips?

Letting Go

2009-07-28T05:00:00.000-07:00

Several things are spinning around in my head right now:

When I was 15 my family lived in down-town Vienna, Austria for a year. The freedom I had because of the amazing public transportation was... remarkable. Coming back to the States was... hard. I'm thinking a lot about my son's last week on his adventure in Guatemala. I'm thinking about how weird it is going to be for him to adjust to being back home and sharing a room with siblings. He loves us and will be happy to be home, but we will be something of a let down. In 17 1/2 years of mothering I've moved from being the center of the universe to being a let down, though to be honest, I'm glad. For one, I don't have a basement he can move into.

I'm also thinking about the other end of my parenting spectrum. Jack has been wanting to hold the glucometer himself. I've not been encouraging it until today. I realized he's going to have to eventually take care of himself. He might outgrow the hypoglycemia but he might not, so I need to let him hold the silly glucometer. I also need to teach him the names of his medications and how much he needs of each. It's not rocket science.

With kids ranging from 17 to 1 1/2 it's hard to keep a handle on slowly letting go of everyone at all their different levels. However, Samuel's bid for independence will be nipped in the bud. He's figured how to get the child safety door knob off the front door and let himself out of the house. I'm pretty sure that's a bad thing. At least he can't (yet) get the car key in the car door.

Schedules and Stirring

2009-07-25T05:23:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here surrounded by train track. The Train Track was picked up last night at least twice. However, it was not put under armed guard and stored secretively in the toy closet. At some point Samuel hijacked the container and re-stirred it out onto the floor, without me noticing.

Everything within climbing distance in my home is picked up and redeposited elsewhere, all day long. Thus a full household Stirring occurs every 6 hours. I think that should be the official job description of toddlers, Stirrers.

I'm getting ready to start thinking about, thinking about school starting again. I've got to get back on a schedule of sorts. The older kids and I had a steering committee meeting about our schedule for the rest of the summer. Kind of a "Flylady" meets "Managers Of Their Homes" moment. Hopefully the kids all felt like they got the jobs they like best -or at least dislike the least. We'll see.

The only really strict schedule we have right now is posted on the fridge to be used for Hospital Days. It's been worth it's weight in gold. We don't have family in town, and let's face it, the ordinary civilian is not equipped to invite 6 children over. So when Jack is in the hospital the kids have detailed job assignments and a schedule to give structure and during the school year to keep the school work moving. Our own personal "No Child Left Behind".

Oh, lovely. Samuel and Jack just brought me a stack of clean cups from the dishwasher.

Phones and Humility

2009-07-11T04:46:00.000-07:00

I have unusual teens in that none of them really like to talk on the phone. Our family policy is that you get a (cheap) cell phone when you can drive and until then you share the (cheap) kid-cell phone with the other kids. Therefore our 17 yo, Luke, has a phone and the three girls all share a phone. The rest of the boys are still too young to care. Luke's cell phone has a broken screen but he can't get a free (and cheap) upgrade until December, so for now he's stuck with it. He really doesn't care because he would have to be lying in a ditch needing help before he would voluntarily dial someone anyway. However, as I was helping him pack up his phone and charger for his three week trip to Guatemala I became concerned that he might have trouble making an international call without being able to see his screen, so I swapped the girl's phone with his.

I forgot a few things, things like...

1)The girl's phone says "Bump it to the trumpet" on the outside screen.

2)The girl's phone says "Hey, girl!" when the phone is opened.

3)The girls asked me to pretend to be Aunt Petunia from Harry Potter- and they recorded me. The ringer doesn't ring instead it repeats, "Mummy is calling, my little diddykins", over and over and over.

4)The girls programed all this and locked it with a password that no one remembers.

My husband called to remind me of the above, ostensibly to ask for the password so they could fix the situation. But he had already rightly guessed that no one would know the password. In reality, he simply called to share the situation with me because accidentally humiliating your teenage son is just good clean fun, especially if your spouse is the guilty one.

Somehow I have the feeling that I will not be hearing my son's voice for about 3 weeks. I'm just glad there's email.

Fail

2009-07-08T15:09:00.000-07:00

"Fail" is the name of a popular Internet meme where users superimpose the word "fail" or "epic fail" onto compromising photos or short videos.^[1]The meme is widely believed to have come from the arcade game Blazing Star. When the player loses, the message "You fail it! Your skill is not enough! See you next time! Bye bye!" is shown.^[2]

This wiki entry was my day. We sent our oldest child, a 17 yo son, off to Guatemala for a three week intensive lanugage school, studying, you guessed it, Spanish. He is such a great kid and has turned into a great, shall I dare say, adult. A seriously fun to raise child, except for a brief time when he was 6 and inexplicably wanted to spit everywhere. This trip is a big deal for him and for my husband and I. A day of independence for him and a day of letting go for us. I had so many images of a happy, maybe even tender farewell, images of my husband and I praying with him before they drove off, taking photos as they left. Not.

Instead there was the small problem of his debit card being cracked, which we only discovered on Monday morning. Then there was waiting for the new one (which we paid $25 stinking dollars to have expeditied), then there was the mix up with the PIN. Instead of happy family photos around Dad's car there is Mom, still in her night gown, in the driveway saying in a screetchy, unpleasant voice, "What do you mean you don't remember your Social Security number...." All while inside the 18 mos old is tirelessly unpacking the momentarily unguarded suitcases.

At least it may take him longer to be homesick.

Fast forward to the pool (let's just skip the crying jag), we are having fun. The older kids are enjoying being with friends and I'm starting to relax. Jack and Sam are jumping off the edge of the pool into about 6 inches of water in order to show off for a random cute little girl and her mom. Suddenly little girl's mom stiffens and moves little girl away. Always a bad sign. Jack has vomited into his Spiderman swimsuit. Luckily the suit is one of those body suits with floats inserted into it, so the vomit is all caught neatly and disgustingly in an indentation around the neckline. I whisked littles out and away. Jack's blood sugars were fine, not great, but fine. No idea why he threw up. He could have just swallowed some water when I wasn't looking. He's fine. We are home taking it easy.

I just hate this illness. I hate it for Jack. I hate it for the other kids. I hate it for me. I hate the way it ambushes us when I least expect it. It ambushes, gives an adrenaline rush and then 98% of the time nothing happens. I give some carbs and protien and everything is fine. Then I'm stuck with a bunch of adrenaline, feeling foolish and slightly crazy. The alternative is worse. The 2 % of the times that carbs don't work means the hospital, and pain, and more fear, and interminable waiting.

"You fail it! Your skill is not enough! See you next time! Bye Bye!"