"Be a rebel. Don't do subjects."

Another post from Karen Edmisten, who's been following Amyable's CM postings. Karen notes, "For example, when we read about Archimedes, were we reading about history or math or science? The kids, ahem, didn't really care which category it fell into."

Sometimes--especially as our progeny get older and we get into that mess of categories known as "credits"--it's tempting even to pass on a good book that doesn't fit nicely into one of those categories. Biographies can fall in there with the uncategoricals--and they're often the best books we read! (Is Plutarch a subject?) We can't break knowledge down into spoon-size bits and decide what goes in the mouth when. (Charlotte Mason referred to that as the horse that gets one bean a day.)

My own school was supposedly into unit studies, interconnectedness and all that progressive 1970's stuff (learning centers with headphones, open-ended "activity cards", and few textbooks around that I can remember, other than a few rather deadly language and spelling texts). But even so, there are things I learned about without ever making connections to their wider significance. I remember playing with magnets and dutifully making diagrams of which way the iron filings went; but I didn't learn until years later that those magnets had any connection at all to electricity--not only that magnetic compasses helped explorers find the new world, but that magnets made the doorbell work. Mr. Fixit, of course, seemed to pick those things up without being told, but he was a Mr. Fixit (or a Mr. Taker-aparter) from diapers on--and he was a Boy. My own completely unproven theory is that Girls--at least those who aren't parented by a Mr. Fixit--especially need that greater interconnectedness, or they will grow up (as I did) not really understanding much about how the world works (or even how the doorbell rings).

Here's the quote which inspired Karen's post:

"One thesis, which is, perhaps, new, that Education is the Science of Relations, appears to me to solve the question of curricula, as showing that the object of education is to put a child in living touch as much as may be of the life of Nature and of thought. Add to this one or two keys to self knowledge, and the educated youth goes forth with some idea of self management, with some pursuits, and many vital interests."--Charlotte Mason

Yes, we need to teach history, and geography, and as much knowledge as we can give of the world and the universe we live in and how it works, and the people who live and have lived on this planet--and of the King over it all. But we need to teach it as an all, not just as parts.

More from the apprentice

Well, I had my voice lessons yesterday...the teacher is quite nice and I had fun. She told me I had to bring two things next week: 1) A blank cassette. 2) A list of five songs I'd like to sing. Okay, so the tape I can handle, but the list? I am really having trouble with that. One thing is that I know it'll be easier singing songs with female vocalists, so that narrows it down a bit...but I still can't some up with anything! I think maybe one song might be Dancing Queen, but I know I'm going to have a hard time with four more. Oh well.

While I was getting the aforementioned can of icing, I stopped into the drugstore, because it's free sample week! (Sorry, I think it's only at this specific one.) So, what did I get? I got a nice assortment of stuff: John Frieda "brilliant brunette" Shine Release Moisturising Shampoo; John Frieda "brilliant brunette" Light Reflecting Moisturising Conditioner; John Frieda "brilliant brunette" Shine Shock perfecting glosser (stuff to make your hair shiny); Biore "Pore Perfect" pore unclogging scrub; Biore "Pore Perfect" Shine Control cream cleanser; Biore "Pore Perfect" Nose Strip (like a little mask for your nose). And...to top it all off, you can get different samples almost every day this week! Honestly, I think if I had gone the other days, and went in the days ahead, I'd have quite the arsenal of stuff!

On Thursday I'm having a knitting club at my house, I'm going to call it "Chicks with Sticks". So far, I've only got a few people coming. I hope I get a little more response. :( If you happen to be one of my friends reading my blog, and you want to come, let me know!!

I put some stuff in the sidebar: What I'm reading and what I'm knitting.

One little word

There are times when it's very nice to have the Internet handy--to be able to search quickly for something you really need to know, like how to "fudge" an extra cup of powdered sugar for a Treehouse dweller's chocolate birthday cake icing.

On the other hand, it's important to double-check your sources. The first "substitutes" site I found via Google suggested blending one cup of granulated sugar and 1 cup of cornstarch in the food processor. Thinking that sounded a little odd, I checked another site, which had an almost identical chart: 1 cup of granulated sugar--oh, 1 tablespoon of cornstarch. Well, that made more sense. Two more sites--both said 1 tablespoon. The first one must have been just a typo.

But boy, I hope nobody tries that 1 cup-1 cup recipe. Yech. One little word makes a big difference!

[Update: if you try this, it seems to take an awful lot of processing before you end up with anything close to powdered sugar--it's more like superfine. I hate to admit it, but we ended up using a can of icing from the corner store instead, after monkeying with that icing for awhile and still crunching sugar. What did we do with the first icing? Made it into cookie balls and sent them to work with Mr. Fixit (for his co-workers). There, now you know ALL.]

Some things we did this week

1. Met Coffeemamma and three of the Blue Castle progeny in the park, along with another Ambleside Online mamma and her family. It was so nice to talk in person after all these years of long-distance chats!

2. All the Squirrels went to the Elora Gorge, and had a good time wandering through the woods, oohing over the precipices, and climbing up and down 59 steps (Ponytails counted them) carved out of the rock.

3. Mr. Fixit, Ponytails and the Apprentice went to Cruise Night with Grandpa Squirrel. Ponytails says, "There were a lot of people, and we met one of our cousin squirrels, and he had some new wheels--it was long and black, one of those cars with no roof, and it had red seats, I think. It was really cool and it made nice smoke."

4. Ponytails made Shrinky Dinks (Shrink Art). Note to Coffeemamma: "thank you so much for the Shrink Art, it's very fun!"

5. We played a new game called Woolworth that we found in a Dover books preview. (This isn't the card game Woolworth, it's played with two nickels, two dimes and a printed-out playing board which would be really easy to copy yourself. If I can find this online anywhere, I'll post a link.)

Five Things by the apprentice

I don't know if I'm *supposed* to be doing this, but I figured it couldn't hurt. It sounded fun. :-D

5 things in my refrigerator:
*My* refrigerator? I don't have one. How about...what I would put in if I had one.
1. Cupcakes that my friend and her mom made, with little whales on top.
2. Twix ice cream
3. Diet Pepsi
4. Mr. Goudas or Chubby ginger beer
5. Nail polish

5 things in my closet:
1. Guitar
2. My memory box
3. A lot of bags and purses, because people keep giving me them
4. 3 sheer tops that I absolutely love (and got on discount)
5. My old cats-eye sunglasses that I stepped on but just can't throw away

5 things in my purse:
1. Pocket Neopet
2. Lip gloss
3. Nail file with a mirror on the back
4. I had some candy, but I ate it...
5. Bead store bonus card

5 things in my car:
Er...how about my bike?
1. Bell
2. Lock
3. Helmet
4. Seat
5. Me

And now I'm going to share a lovely lip gloss recipe I tried today:

Mix:
a chunk of Dora the Explorer lip balm
a squirt of Caboodles Dynamic Duo lipgloss in Grape
purple food colouring
lemon food flavouring

You need to heat it up in some way. You could microwave, or if you don't have a microwave, put your pot into some boiling water.

Many thanks to cyens on http://www.makeupalley.com/. She told me how to do it, and then I got very creative with the ingredients.

Books, more books

Finished:

1. The Talisman, by Sir Walter Scott. Heads will roll. Ewww... But it was an excellent story--knights and honour and chivalry and jousting in the middle of the desert.

2. The Treasure Seekers, by E. Nesbit, with Ponytails.  One of the Bastable Children books.

3. Ourselves and Philosophy of Education (re-read), both by Charlotte Mason. These two books are very closely connected--if you're into jotting in margins, you can cross-reference them back and forth in many places. In fact, two different parts of Philosophy are pretty much summaries of Ourselves. One of the points that keeps hitting me as I've been rereading through the Home Education Series (Charlotte Mason's books) is that The Curriculum is a vital part of what she's talking about (although some people have misbegotten the idea that a specific curriculum isn't central to CM), and yet it's not where you need to start working through her ideas, and it doesn't even take up a great amount of space in the books. She did give lots of detail on what school lessons should be like, and education, schools, and children were obviously where her heart was; but that was just one application of her bigger picture. I think that's why she made that somewhat mystical comment to a student teacher at her college: "My dear, you have come here to learn to live." (The Story of Charlotte Mason, by Essex Cholmondeley)

Working on:

1. A Biblical Psychology of Learning, by Ruth Beechick. You can see it with its new title here.

2. The Wouldbegoods (second in the Bastable series), with Ponytails

3. Finishing up some odds and ends and things I started too long ago.

Carnival of Homeschooling on its way

News from the carnival: The NerdFamily is hosting this week, but NerdMom has been under the weather, so it will be posted as soon as she is feeling up to it. (Update: it's up now, here.)

The DHM's Five Things, and Cooking By the Campfire

The Five Things part is a meme that the Deputy Headmistress sent our way. Cooking by the Campfire comes at the end, so hold on.

5 Things in my Refrigerator:
1. Head of broccoli
2. Package of tofu
3. A last bit of smoked Jarlsberg cheese (one of my favourites)
4. Half a pan of no-bake brownies (recipe below)
5. Last night's leftover Scoobi-Doos (coloured macaroni spirals)

5 Things in my Closet
1. Framed family photos we don't have anywhere to hang
2. A couple of toys that are "doing time" (confiscated)
3. The kids' too-big-too-small shoe box
4. About three dresses that need to be dry-cleaned
5. and two that need to be ironed.

5 Things in my Purse:
1. Library cards
2. Loonies and twonies
3. Boring stuff like keys.
4, 5. Dustballs.

5 Things in My Car
1. Mr. Fixit
2. Mama Squirrel
3. The Apprentice
4. Ponytails
5. Crayons

No-Bake Brownie Recipe (from Vegetarian Times)

I've doubled this recipe to make enough for an 8-inch square pan, but you could always cut it in half again.

In a saucepan, combine 6 tbsp. powdered milk with 2/3 cup water. (Or use regular milk.) Heat the milk, not to boiling but just quite warm. Stir in approximately 12 oz. chocolate chips (if you're short, you can make up the difference with a couple of unsweetened chocolate squares, or cut back on the total amount a bit), and stir just until melted and smooth. Stir in about 2 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs, and press into a greased square pan. (The original recipe called for nuts, but we leave those out). Chill until set, or just set aside if you don't have a refrigerator (the recipe was part of an article on camp food). Cut in squares. [2012 update: we have also discovered that these taste good if you stir in some mini-marshmallows at the end.  More like S'more.]

Oh, the wonders of the Internet: I knew that recipe I'd clipped was from a 1995 VT article by Jasmine Star, and a Google search for her name brought up the whole article online. It has lots of tips, grocery lists and recipes for campfire cooking, particularly for vegetarians. (I have not cooked over a campfire myself for a long time--we are pretty much homebody squirrels these days, and the closest we get is cooking over a barbecue.)

Scott? Who reads Scott?

The novels of Sir Walter Scott were so familiar and important to the educator Charlotte Mason that she not only included them in term programs as a matter of course, but referred to them frequently in her own writings. The second part of her book Ourselves is loaded with illustrations from Scott (as well as from Dickens, George Eliot, Plutarch, and other writers with whom she assumed teenagers would be familiar!).

I can hardly conceive a better moral education than is to be had out of Scott and Shakespeare. I put Scott first as so much the more easy and obvious; but both recognise that the Will is the man....Both Shakespeare and Scott use, as it were, a dividing line, putting on the one side the wilful, wayward, the weak and the strong; and on the other, persons who will.--Charlotte Mason, Ourselves

Unfortunately, most of us didn't grow up reading Scott, and although we might have a vague idea of what Ivanhoe or Rob Roy are about, or might have heard about some of his poetry, many of the other books are strangers to us. Scott's books aren't even on a lot of best-books-you-must-read lists any more, except again maybe for Ivanhoe, and some people don't even count that really as one of his best books. I read one discussion of "classics" (I've forgotten what it was now) that simply lumped Scott with "writers who are no longer read," implying that there was good reason for that. The books are long, the first chapters are usually boring, they're extremely politically incorrect in all kinds of ways, and there are said to be lots of historical inaccuracies in them.

But if you want to do some exploring of what made Scott so vital to the Victorian mind, or if you want to get some idea of the plots of the novels, the Walter Scott Digital Archive is a good place to start. If you click on Works, you get a page for each book, with plot summaries; and the site has lots more Scott stuff as well. There's also a complete list of the books, if you want to see the "Waverley Novels" all in order.

A bit of Scott trivia to end with: did you know that those were the books that kept Laura sane during a difficult pregnancy in The First Four Years?

And now the four walls of the close, overheated house opened wide, and Laura wandered with brave knights and ladies fair beside the lakes and streams of Scotland or in castles and towers, in noble halls or lady's bower, all through the enchanting pages of Sir Walter Scott's novels.

She forgot to feel ill at the sight or smell of food, in her hurry to be done with the cooking and follow her thoughts back into the book. When the books were all read and Laura came back to reality, she found herself feeling much better. (The First Four Years, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, pages 107-108)

I hope this helps anyone who's interested in Charlotte Mason but is as bewildered by all the references to Scott as I first was.

What I'm Reading

A Century of Kindergarten Education in Ontario, by Barbara Corbett (from the library) "In it, Dr. Corbett discusses the history and issues specific to kindergarten in Ontario 1887-1987 that mirror similar changes going on all over the world at the time."

The Talisman, by Sir Walter Scott (I'm almost done this one, and it's very exciting if you like Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. It was made into a 1954 movie called King Richard and the Crusaders, but I haven't seen it yet, so can't say if it's much like the book.)

Sir Kenneth was left for some minutes alone, and in darkness. Here was another interruption, which must prolong his absence from his post, and he began almost to repent the facility with which he had been induced to quit it. But to return without seeing the Lady Edith, was now not to be thought of. He had committed a breach of military discipline, and was determined at least to prove the reality of the seductive expectations which had tempted him to do so. Meanwhile, his situation was unpleasant. There was no light to show him into what sort of apartment he had been led---the Lady Edith was in immediate attendance on the Queen of England---and the discovery of his having introduced himself thus furtively into the royal pavilion, might, were it discovered, lead to much and dangerous suspicion. While he gave way to these unpleasant reflections, and began almost to wish that he could achieve his retreat unobserved, he heard a noise of female voices laughing, whispering, and speaking, in an adjoining apartment, from which, as the sounds gave him reason to judge, he could only be separated by a canvas partition. Lamps were burning, as he might perceive by the shadowy light which extended itself even to his side of the veil which divided the tent, and he could see shades of several figures sitting and moving in the adjoining apartment. It cannot be termed discourtesy in Sir Kenneth, that, situated as he was, he overheard a conversation, in which he found himself deeply interested.

Ourselves, by Charlotte Mason

Literature, a very Rich and Glorious Kingdom.––Perhaps the least difficult of approach, and certainly one of the most joyous and satisfying of all those realms in which Intellect is invited to travel, is the very rich and glorious Kingdom of Literature. Intellect cannot walk here without Imagination, and, also, he does well to have, at his other side, that colleague of his, whom we will call the Beauty Sense. It is a great thing to be accustomed to good society, and, when Intellect walks abroad in this fair kingdom, he becomes intimate with the best of all ages and all countries. Poets and novelists paint pictures for him, while Imagination clears his eyes so that he is able to see those pictures: they fill the world, too, with deeply interesting and delightful people who live out their lives before his eyes. He has a multitude of acquaintances and some friends who tell him all their secrets. He knows Miranda and the melancholy Jaques and the terrible Lady Macbeth; Fenella and that Fair Maid of Perth, and a great many people, no two alike, live in his thoughts.

Happy 5th Birthday...

Happy Birthday to all 3,114 of you (and you know who you are). We are firing a salute in celebration. (Hold your ears.)

Equuschick's Alphabet

,Equuschick at The Common Room posted her version of this ABC meme. Athena wrote one too. Here's Mama Squirrel's.

A - Accent: Southern Ontario
B - Breakfast Item: I love granola (I guess that makes me one of those Crunchy people)
C - Chore you hate: Figuring out whose socks are whose
D - Dad's Name: Grandpa Squirrel.
E - Essential everyday item: The Equuschick said “Losing your glasses is distressing.” I haven’t lost my glasses for a long time (or sat on them), but yeah, that would probably be the most distressing here too.
F - Flavor ice cream: Chocolate ripple.
G - Gold or Silver?: Silver
H - Happy Place: Up in the treehouse.
I - Insomnia: Occasionally. Usually I would rather sleep.
J - Job - Love or want to leave: Mostly love, all except the socks.
K - Kids: Yes.
L - Living arrangements: 3 bedroom raised bungalow.
M - Mom's birthplace: in a hospital.
N - Number of houses you've lived in (there, I changed it from the original): Counting university living arrangements, I make it 16.
O - Overnight hospital stays: Not since 1969.
P - Phobia: Driving
Q - Question: Who makes these things up, anyway?
R - Religious Affiliation: United Church of Canada Presbyterian Church of Canada United Church of Canada Presbyterian Church of America Brethren in Christ Presbyterian Church of America Funky NonDenominational Lutheran Church Canada Fellowship Baptist Mennonite Brethren. You sort it out.
S - Siblings: One. Call her FarAwaySis.
T - Time you wake up: About 15 minutes after Mr. Fixit.
U - Unnatural hair colors you've had: Orange, when FarAwaySis and Mama Squirrel experimented with Sun In one summer a very long time ago.
V - Vegetable you refuse to eat: Turnip, beets. (sorry, Common Room)
W - Worst habit: Why would anybody want to know that?
X - X-rays you've had: Don’t remember exactly. Lots of dental, one big toe.
Y - Yummy: Lasagna. Pasta with sundried tomatoes and olives. Really dark chocolate.
Z - Zodiac sign: Doesn’t matter.

Finishings

The last day of Treehouse classes (we still have exams next week). This week is full of finishings.

The Apprentice finished Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, Whatever Happened to Justice?, and part 2 of How to Read a Book (the part that was assigned for this year). We're still working on The Betrothed, but that's all right.

Ponytails finished Pilgrim's Progress Book II (I think she would have liked a Book III to go on to next year). We also finished the geography story about mountains we were reading. We are one chapter away from finishing the last Narnia book, but she won't let me read it to her because then we'd be done.

And I'm trying to finish typing the last Plutarch study for this year. Almost there...

And when exams are done, we will celebrate the year's achievements in school, the beans climbing up the wall, Crayons' graduation to a two-wheeler (with training wheels), our wedding anniversary, the pink roses blooming, Canada Day, and the arrival of Coffeemamma's family.

Dads, Daughters and Cars

I thought Mr. Fixit and the Squirrelings might identify with this post on Ask Patty ("Automotive advice on car buying, selling, maintenance, repair, car care and car safety").

The logic of yard sales

We stopped at a yard sale this morning and I saw a small set of Sculpey coloured clay in a container of miscellaneous craft junk. I took it up to the seller to ask the price, and she said, "Oh, you're about the third person who's asked about that clay. It's really part of that container of craft supplies." OK, I get it--you're only interested in selling the boxful. How much? "I was thinking $3, but you can have it for $2." So I got the Sculpey kit plus a bunch of other useful stuff (Boondoggle cord, a glue stick, fancy beads, three paintable mini picture frames, dowels, stickers and so on) for $2, in a plastic lunchbox-type container.

And oh yes--like the old joke about the guy who's stealing wheelbarrows--the container itself still had an original price tag on it. $14.98.

And two other people passed up the clay because they had to take the whole works too?...beats me.

Crayons' map of the universe

Crayons stuck some stickers all over a piece of construction paper, and told me that each sticker was one place on the map: Russia, Australia, Niagara Falls, New York, the kitchen, heaven, where the devil lives, and where the treasure is.

Photos added to Lion Safari post

Just an update: I added two photos to our Lion Safari story.

Hey, that's a pretty cute idea

This week's Education Carnival is an end-of-the-year Staff Party. Pull up some (scavenged?) classroom furniture and get yourself a drink.

Jean Kerr and the DHM

Deputy Headmistress, you do have a way of picking out great passages from books. I loved this post with the wonderful passage from Jean Kerr. I think you're right--you should keep the book. And here's something else for you about Jean Kerr: a post about her from the Rage Diaries blog.

Carnival of Homeschooling--Father's Day

Beverly Hernandez from Homeschooling.about.com is hosting this week's Carnival of Homeschooling, with a Father's Day theme.

New Graphics Site is a virus

If you're on any Yahoo lists, watch out for messages with the subject line New Graphics Site. Just don't open them, even if they're addressed from someone you know. This seems to have affected Yahoo posting in general today--I've noticed that a lot of messages aren't getting through.

Class Field Trips. Family Field Trips.

Last week our family had the chance to visit the African Lion Safari--a sort of zoo near here where animals roam pretty much free. (Note of caution: stay away from the monkey area unless you want the trim ripped off your car.) Our homeschool support group went together to get a group rate, so I guess you could call it a group field trip; but really every family was on its own once we'd gone through the gates.

One of the attractions of the Lion Safari is the Elephant Swim. Every day at noon, the elephants walk down to the water near the picnic area for a swim. They walk lined up, holding each others' tails, and they have a sort of sheep dog that keeps them in line. We've been there before and knew what to expect, so we had our lunch at a picnic table fairly close to the water and brought along a couple of lawnchairs. However, this was also a big day for school field trips. As soon as the parade of elephants appeared, what seemed like hundreds of children and parents and teachers (all carrying heavy backpacks and smelling of sunblock) scurried down to the water to watch. Well, scurried isn't the word exactly. Do you remember the Flintstones episode where they're all sitting on the quiet beach and they suddenly remember that this is the place where there's a big surfing competition--and at the same second they get stampeded by hundreds of teenagers carrying surfboards?

They all crowded in there, pushing to see the elephants swim across the lake, and the parents were yelling things like "Mrs. Vanderboggles, come over here so I can get a picture of you and the kids." The kids who weren't really watching the elephants were all yelling and playing tag around the trees.

And then--this is the funny part--within five minutes, they all disappeared again. I don't know whether it was that the kids had a very short attention span, or whether their itinerary didn't allow them to watch elephants playing for more than five minutes, but anyway, suddenly they were gone.

And we sat in our lawnchairs, and our kids went down to the water's edge, and we got a peaceful and clear view of the elephants for as long as we wanted.

Retro Recipe Challenge

Now this is a recipe carnival like you've never seen before. Put on your high heels and enjoy the Retro Roundup (including a mystery meat casserole)--Mrs. MacGrady would be so proud.

Where I'm From

There is a kind of meme going around based on a poem by George Ella Lyons,"Where I'm From."The poem has become so widely imitated that you can now print out a template to help you write your own version. (The template seems to have been around for at least a couple of years, but I only heard about it recently.)

This is my attempt. I didn't do very well trying to use the template, so I just did it my own way. (I realize that for many of these things you'd need an annotated version or at least hyperlinks to know what I'm talking about (unless you came from the same place), but for now it's going to have to stand on its own.)

Where I'm From

I am from glass baby bottles, Buffalo markers in a tin, snowboots with buckles, Jelly Tots, and Brownie scarves with orange maple leaves

I am from the hard red swings in Soper Park, bike rides down McNaughton Street hill, Galt Arena skating races, and sunburnt afternoons on the sand of Georgian Bay.

I am from long voyages in creaking ships and Conestoga wagons. I am from weavers and blacksmiths and small-town storekeepers, from Branchton and Glen Morris and Killean, and other places gone from the map. From been-here-forever and make-the-best-of-it.

I am from the United Church of Canada, from Messengers and strawberry socials and stewardship and the Threefold Amen. I’m from the shakeup time and if you’re thirsty and dry lift your hands to the sky. And I’m from the after time too.

I am from Aunt Alma’s pastels and tubes of paint, and her shelves of old school books. I’m from Aunt Katie’s funny poems and card tricks. I’m from Grandma McKellar’s paperback mysteries and her backyard-plum jam—-bottled and sealed like the things we kept inside ourselves.

How to fool smart people

The EduWonks host this week's Carnival of Education. I didn't see much I wanted to check out until right at the end: Paul's Tips offers The Easiest Way to Fool Smart People. (Hint: make them feel they're smart.) Apprentice, you need to read this, after all the discussions we've had about logic and reading critically.

Paul's Tips also has a discussion of why high-school style popularity isn't all it's cracked up to be--especially after you graduate. He says:

In the adult world what clothes you wear, what music you listen to, how cool your friends are, and so on are of almost no consequence. Things like ability and maturity are much more important.

Even the ultimate status-symbol in teenage life - beauty - isn't worth that much in the adult world. There are plenty of beautiful people out there working in poorly-paid, degrading jobs. And there are plenty of ugly people at the top of the status tree.

Hmmm...that may be true, but how many adults do you know who are actually living in the "adult world"? (Can you say Brangelina?)

Oh, okay (I read further down)--Paul caught that one too.

Of course, some people never really manage to escape high-school. The keep up the petty rivalries and irresponsibility and look to celebrity culture to replace the cool-kids they used to admire. They long to return to the simple world of teenage life. Such people rarely succeed in the adult world.

Well, maybe. (Can you say Brangelina?)

23rd Carnival of Homeschooling

I always look forward to the weeks when Palm Tree Pundit hosts a carnival--her blog makes me think of tropical fish and coconuts. And wow, there are a lot of things to read on there this week (including our own Planning Process post). Have a look also at Life in a Shoe's Approach to Math, and The Thinking Mother's post about her Charlotte Mason support group meeting.

Aloha!

Crayons' Treehouse

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Photo credit to Mr. Fixit)

The way of the dodo

Homeschoolbuzz.com posted a link to this article about the rather posh homeschooling option of hiring a professional teacher or tutor. ("Another variant of school at home very different from the homeschooling most know," comments Homeschoolbuzz.)

What struck me most was this comment by Bob Harraka, president of Professional Tutors of America:

[he] cannot meet a third of the requests for in-home education that come in, he said, because they are so specialized or extravagant: a family wants a teacher to instruct in the art of Frisbee throwing, button sewing or Latin grammar.

My goodness, Latin grammar? What will they think of next? I guess one would really have to hunt far and wide to find a teacher versed in something so specialized and extravagant.

I could recommend a few homeschooled teenagers, though...

Funny post of the weekend

MerryK's Book Lover's Odyssey gives us a peek at the truly grinding work involved in going to used book sales (and coming home).

A narration about Theseus, by Ponytails

(Note from Mama Squirrel: Ponytails dictated this to me recently. It's from the middle of the story of Theseus in Charles Kingsley's The Heroes. Some background: Theseus has been on a quest to find his father, King Aegeus (who doesn't know him), and on the way he has had to kill various monsters and so has gained a reputation for himself; one of these slayings turned out to be some kind of a kinsman, so he had to go and get purified for that (forgiven, as Ponytails says here). When he finally arrives at the palace, he finds it has been taken over by his partying cousins.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Theseus went and got forgiven, and then he went on to the palace. He looked around for his father, but he wasn't there. He said, "Where is the master Aegeus?" "We are all masters here! You can ask one of us instead. Come and eat and drink with us (hic!)! Heh heh heh!" Theseus looked around, but he did not see Aegeus. Then he said, "Go and tell him Theseus is here!" "Yes, your majesty--Mr. Theseus--I will go and summon him!"

So he went, and next to him [Aegeus] was Medea, and she was a snake woman. So Aegeus turned pale, red and then white. He went out because he knew this was going to be important.

Theseus said in his mind, "I'm going to test him first before I say I am his son." So he said, "I have come for a reward." Aegeus said, "I cannot afford it." But Theseus said, "All I want is dinner." "Okay, I can give you that."

Medea was watching. She went back into her room, and she came back out. She said, "This is a troublemaker." She saw him [Aegeus] go red and white when he heard the word Troezene. So she was going to get rid of him, Ah ha ha ha! She dressed in jewels and got a golden bottle full of magic wine and a golden cup. And she came out to Theseus and said in a soft voice, "Theseus! Please drink from this cup! It
will give you strength and heal your wounds, it will give you fresh blood in your veins, so please drink." But Theseus saw the look in her eyes, the black smoky evil look with a tint of red, it turned up at the corners to make her look evil. He said, "You drink first." But she said, "I can't, I'm ill, I'm very ill. So I cannot drink." (But it's supposed to HEAL wounds!) He said, "Drink from it or you die!", swinging his club. She dropped the cup and ran. She called for her dragon carriage and went off, far away from the kingdom.

The stones bubbled from the wine she had spilled, and they just kind of disappeared.

Aegeus said, "What did you do? That was sort of my wife!"

But then he pulled out the sword and the sandals, and he said the words his mother bade him to say. And they hugged and wept until they could weep no more. The end!

The planning process

Melissa Wiley at the Bonny Glen (actually this is on her other blog), and others (linked from Melissa's post), have been posting in answer to some non-homeschoolers' questions about why we’d want to homeschool, or how we have the nerve to do this without courses in pedagogy etc., etc.

An analogy I used last year was that of a professional chef vs. cooking for your own family. I made supper tonight (in the middle of a heat wave) and we ate it (in the middle of a thunderstorm). Aside from the freaky weather, how did I know how to do that? How did I manage to get it all on the table, in the right amount, at the right time? We had chicken breasts baked in canned pasta sauce (in the toaster oven), whole wheat fusilli, spaghetti squash (cooked on top of the stove), raw broccoli and carrots (cut up yesterday), and a frozen ricotta dessert topped with leftover canned pineapple. And it wasn't a complicated meal to make; it was just experience, knowing how much chicken to thaw, how to thicken the sauce at the end, remembering that we had leftover veggies, figuring that the pineapple would go nicely on top of the dessert. At home, you learn to cook (see #s 18 and 19 there) based on experience, reading, watching, asking other people how they do things. Family meals aren't like restaurant cooking, and they're not meant to be (unless you're Anne Tyler). Homeschooling compares better to home cooking than it does to the surgery-on-the-kitchen-table analogy. If the math lesson doesn’t connect, you can try it another way tomorrow, or wait awhile and then try it again. Surgeons don’t have that option; homeschoolers do.

But back to the pedagogy, qualifications question that keeps coming up: somebody out there has an idea that I (or any homeschool parent) must have a little schoolroom in my house with a blackboard and a pointer, or at least a kitchen table with chains to keep the students there; plus a piece of paper from the government that says I took a course in how to teach and what to teach; and that if I don't, then I don't know what I'm doing and shouldn't be teaching.

So this post is meant to show anybody who's interested how the process of planning a school year works, after ten years at this. These are some of my real-life thoughts and experiences as I plan for Ponytails' grade 4.

1. Mathematics: I order Making Math Meaningful Level 4, since we'll be done Miquon Math and I need to find something that has a good dose of word problems in it--something Ponytails is still weak on. When I get the books, I realize there’s some repetition of what she's already done, so I figure we can complete it in 3 days a week next year, and that leaves 2 days for activities in geometry, and other topics that MMM doesn't cover. How did I get the general idea of grade 4 math topics? I compared a couple of scope and sequences and made a list of goals for next year. I checked those that aren't included in our main book against a list of good library math books (not textbooks--there are a lot of other books on the 500's shelf) and a couple of our other resources like Family Math--for instance, I want to work on using a calculator, and Family Math includes several calculator games.

2. Language arts: again, I have a list of typical grade 4 skills, which I’ve gone over with Ponytails in mind, eliminating what she already knows and adding in a couple of other things I would like her to work on. I have two main goals for the year—-increased independent reading skills (especially in non-fiction) and improved ability in writing—-not her ability to express herself so much (see Theseus here) as her level of comfort with written work—-mechanics, handwriting, spelling, all the boring but important stuff. Also she'll be working on skills in finding things out—-choosing resources (a dictionary? A thesaurus?) and using them.

And how will we be working towards those goals? By checking off pages in a language textbook? Am I ordering a creative writing program, a speller, and basal readers? No, we've never done things that way. At our house it's more like this:

Reading skills: This will be the year I ask her to read more school books on her own—-not setting her adrift, but giving her 15 minutes to read a section and then following up. We will start with short sections and see if she can work up to reading a whole chapter and then telling back what she's read. It means working on habits like attentiveness, not getting distracted. (Do we need readers with chapter-end questions? No, we have books, magazines, newspapers, emails...)
Writing: again, beginning short written narrations—-or writing some and then dictating the rest. Knowing Ponytails, she will probably initiate some of her own writing projects as well.

Mechanics: we will use copywork and dictation, from books across the curriculum, as a place to work on mechanics and very basic grammar (just parts of speech, not diagramming); on noticing story details and picking out homonyms; on experimenting with synonyms or changing tense. Will I have all those lessons prepared ahead of time? No, it’s not practical. If something needs extra work, we spend extra time on it. It’s a waste of time for me to write out 36 weeks of language lessons for Ponytails, just like I don’t buy her new shoes until she needs them. (We do have a couple of yard-sale grammar workbooks to fall back on too.)

Handwriting: besides copywork, we will use Ruth Beechick’s 3-week cursive improvement course (from You CAN Teach Your Child Successfully Grades 4 to 8). (That's less involved than it sounds; it just means having her write sentences and then looking at specific things that need improvement.)

Spelling: I don’t know yet how much extra time Ponytails will need on this next year, so we'll just keep working on it along with her other language activities.

3. Latin (the thinking continues here): I look at the Latin program a friend loaned us, and decide this is not the year to be adding another language. We’ll include some Latin roots when we talk about prefixes and suffixes.

4. Nature studies: I look at the fat handbook we’ve had forever but hardly use,and realize we can use it next year for some book lessons about ladybugs, spiders, ants, worms, and other wiggly crawly things we have close at hand. I was going to add to our collection of magnifiers and bug-lookers anyway, and this will give us some things to examine and maybe draw.

5. Music: At a rummage sale, I find a book & record set of Leonard Bernstein’s 1960’s young peoples’ concerts. There’s a whole kid-size music appreciation course in there, and I know our library has some of the videos too. At our support group's annual conference I buy 2 new Music Maker packs for our lap harp, including a basic music theory pack.

6. I list books we own and can use for history, Bible, science, poetry and more. I write down a couple of others to ask for on a swap board or to look for at the library. Something with legs crawls out of Five Little Peppers, so I toss the book in case the little thing is thinking about multiplying (it was an old tattered copy anyway) and make a note to replace it (the book, not the bug). (No, I do not want to do nature study on a silverfish.) I plan to use one book of Greek myths, but then pick up something I like even better at a library sale and cross out the first one. I decide to order an audio book of Robinson Crusoe, because it's probably the hardest book we’ll be doing this year. An online friend has written her own geography e-text, so I decide to use that for both of our elementary-aged students. I also plan for each of them to make a scrapbook about Canada.

Interlude: I re-read some of my favourite Charlotte Mason chapters and Parents' Review articles and underline key points about why we do what we do. Call it inspiration.

7. I write down the plans in a binder, print out ideas for memory work, favourite songs, and a few other Internet printouts. I divide them up into terms, then roughly by weeks. I collect the books, find CDs, save cardboard and pop bottles for science experiments. We’re ready to begin again.

And did you remember the point of all this? Does this sound like homeschoolers are competent to make curriculum choices, to find resources, to teach lessons, to modify and supplement when needed, to set goals and evaluate progress?

I hope so.

A funny from Crayons

Crayons came to me all excited, holding one of our fairy tale books. She'd just discovered that this particular book had a story she recognized. "Look! Handsome and Gretel!"

Blowdryer, by Crayons

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Let's go bowling

These pretty girls are Christina and Delancey. They're best friends.


They do fun things together, like try on silly hairstyles!


One day, they were just walking along when...


Whoops! They stumbled into a cosmic bowling lane! Those girls must have been really not paying attention...


But as they walked out, Delancy had a great idea.
"Christina! Let's go bowling with all our friends!"
"That's a great idea!"


So they made a couple calls.


And all the girls came: Chelsea, Delancey, Christina, Barbie, and Susan.



And bowled under blacklights!




What a groovin' time.

RARRRR!


P.S. Would you like paperdolls like mine? Here's Christina, Chelsea, and Delancey. I made Susan, and Barbie is an old punch-out paperdoll. I looked for pictures of her on Google, but she wasn't there. Pretty sure she was a Golden Book though!

Math stuff

Maria at The Homeschool Math Blog pointed out this post: Number Bonds = Better Understanding, by Denise in IL at A Home for Homeschoolers. [Update: Denise's blog has moved; that post is now here.]

This is the way we teach math too! Kids find it easier to see relationships between numbers when you show that a whole can be separated into two or more parts--and you can demonstrate that with a group of things (like a pile of blocks, as Denise's post describes), or a whole thing split into pieces (there we might get into fractions). The post and comments refer to Singapore Math, but we do much the same thing with Miquon Math and Cuisenaire Rods (picture here). [OK, that's changed too. Try this one instead--scroll down a bit to see the photo.] If an orange rod is understood to be ten units long (assuming a white rod is the basic unit), then you can make a "train" just as long as the orange rod by grouping two yellow rods (each 5 cm long), or a light green plus a black (3, 7), or a white plus a blue (1, 9) and so on. You reverse that by showing a white plus a blue and asking what rod will be just as long as that "train"--that's addition. Then you get even more complicated by showing the orange rod with a white rod underneath it, and ask for the missing piece that completes the "train." That's the beginning of subtraction. (Update: If you still can't get the idea of this, you can play with some virtual Cuisenaire Rods here--click on "Start the Integer Bars Applet." This site (www.archytech.org) calls the rods Integer Bars, and the only real disadvantage to them is that they can slide on top of each other in a way that real 3-D rods can't; so you might accidentally overlap your two yellow rods and think that they were equal in length to a blue rod instead of an orange one. The real thing is definitely better, but these at least can give you the sense of how the rods work.) [2012 UPDATE:  the virtual rods are long gone--sorry!]

When Ponytails was in first grade, we got a lot of math ideas from the Miquon First Grade Diary (not a diary you write in--it is a day-by-day description of a first grade math class back in the '60's). Lore Rasmussen (the author) described some hollow wooden tubes she had, each 10 cm long, into which you could insert Cuisenaire rods--any number of them that would fit into the tube. The idea was to play a guessing game. If I put a white and a blue rod into the tube, and cover up the blue end so that you can see only the white end--and I tell you that there are only two rods in the tube--then you can guess that the other rod must be blue. The game can get more complicated when three rods are used--if you can see the colours of the two ends, what is the hidden rod in the middle?

And where do you buy these tubes? I have no idea, but I made my own out of 3 x 5 inch file cards. I cut several cards to a 10 cm length (how do you like that for mixing measurements?), folded each one several times around an orange rod, and taped them shut. Instant rod tubes. When they wear out, you can make new ones in a couple of minutes.

We played other games too that develop the idea of whole/parts, particularly relating to the number 10. One game The Apprentice played in kindergarten came (I think) from Peggy Kaye's book Games for Learning. You need a bowl or other container, and five paperclips (for a young child). The bowl goes a short distance away, and you take turns chucking the five paperclips into the bowl. When you're done with your five, you say something like, "Oh, I got one on the floor and four in the bowl. I get four points." Then the child throws her five, and you say, "Oops, you got just two in the bowl and three on the floor." The point of the game is not to get to be a great paperclip chucker, but to get acquainted with all the "parts" of the number five.

Another whole/parts activity I've done with all the Squirrelings is to take several crayons, or blocks, or any small objects, hide them behind my back, and bring some of them back out--how many are still behind my back? Then they have a turn to hide the objects. Sometimes we just put a few objects on the floor--hide your eyes and somebody takes some away--you have to figure out how many are gone.

The Squirrelings have occasionally run into math blocks in other areas, but understanding addition and subtraction has never been a problem!

P.S. Here's a bonus for reading to the end: how do you say "Cuisenaire rods" in other languages?
French: les réglettes Cuisenaire
German: Cuisenairstäbe
Spanish: las regletas Cuisenaire
Portuguese: as barras Cuisenaire
Italian: I regoli Cuisenaire
Swedish: Cuisenaire-stavar
Polish: klockami Cuisenaire'a (Krakovianka, did I get that one right?)

Rhubarb, Year Two

What I'm eating: Coffeemamma's Rhubarb Muffins, made out of the skinny little fresh rhubarb stalks from our garden. We put the plant in last year (actually more than one, but this is the survivor), but it produced nothing all last summer. This spring it started getting leaves very early, and I managed to get enough from it today to make a double batch of the muffins that we never got to try last year. (See Coffeemamma's comment on last year's post; the comments in the recipe are hers as well.) (Update: Coffeemamma has been taking a break from blogging, for various very good reasons, but she's posted a Blue Castle Update today.)

Sour Cream Rhubarb Muffins

Blend these together in a small bowl:
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 large egg

Stir these ingredients together:
1 1/3 cup flour (I have successfully substituted 1 cup unbleached, 1/3 cup whole wheat)
1 cup diced rhubarb
2/3 cup brown sugar (or raw cane sugar)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt

Stir in sour cream mixture until moistened (batter will be thick).
Drop large spoonful into 12 greased muffin cups or paper-lined muffin cups.

In small bowl, combine these ingredients:
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. melted butter

Spoon this over batter (or lightly brush muffins with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar-cinnamon if you have a jar on hand). Bake muffins at 350 degrees for 20 - 25 minutes. (A note from the Treehouse: you might want to put a cookie sheet under your muffin pans just in case of drips--the sugar mixture bubbles a bit.)

I always double this recipe, and they are still gone the same day they are made ;-) Enjoy!

Big math, big ideas

Another culling from the Toronto Star Ideas section...The Curious Side of Big Math, by Siobhan Roberts, special to The Star from Atlanta (April 30/06).

One interesting thing about this story is the reason that Siobhan Roberts was in Atlanta to start with: G4G7, the seventh gathering of mathematicians in honour of Martin Gardner. (Get it?--Gathering 4 Gardner, number 7.) It's "all about invoking Gardner's abiding love for the play and fun in math." In other words, if you're a Lewis Carroll type of person, this is your place. It's a "four-day curiosity cabinet of....brainteasers." But there's a catch: you have to be invited. You have to be smart. And you have to be a mathematician.

That doesn't mean you have to be old. One of the invitees was Robert Barrington Leigh, a 19-year-old math student at the University of Toronto. This is a guy who's won a lot of math contests and is majoring in math...but think about this:

"[Barrington Leigh's mentor, Professor Andy Liu of the University of Alberta in Edmonton] said that Barrington Leigh was able to maintain his mathematical curiosity through his first two years at university....[but] his university syllabus of mathematical study doesn't allow him time [now] to do playful math. And finding himself [at the conference] among those who do have the time to indulge makes him a bit apprehensive, at first. 'I used to be more [into playful math] when I was younger,' said Barrington Leigh. 'It helps keep you sharp. But right now my work is more about remembering than being creative.' [Liu] noted that therein lies the value of G4G7, and the weakness in typical mathematics education. 'The worst thing the education system does is take away students' natural curiosity,' said Liu...."

Wow--even for math majors who get invited to G4G7.

Couldn't they just give somebody like that a degree and then let him go off and do "big math?"

And if that's the case for our best math students, how much more should we be concerned for those who aren't as highly motivated in math to begin with?

P.S. Oh yes--the other neat thing (if you didn't read the article) was this:

Gardner, now 91, lives in Norman, Okla. He did not attend his namesake conference; he has never liked travel (he spent the weekend at home, writing his umpteenth book, this one on the works of the "prince of paradox," G.K. Chesterton).

We still like Frye

Grandpa Squirrel made his usual weekend Toronto Star/Globe and Mail drop Sunday night, but I haven't had a chance till now to blog about one of the Really Interesting articles in the papers.

Between April and June of last year, I posted several times (here, here, here) about the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye. The last time was here. Since then I've gotten a couple more of his books, become slightly more confused about his theology (was he ever really clear on it himself?) but even more interested in his ideas on literature.

Last Sunday's Toronto Star had this article by Philip Marchand, called "McLuhan, Frye and the falling towers." Marshall McLuhan, for Americans or others who don't know, was another professor of Frye's vintage, and as Marchand says, he's best known for the phrases he coined: "the global village" and "the medium is the message." As Marchand also points out, Frye and McLuhan were rivals and each "thought the other was on the wrong track."

And neither of them, according to Marchand, is exactly on key with today's academic thinking. Frye in particular is "a distinct minority taste in an age when literary studies are heavily influenced by radical politics and the philosophy of deconstruction--twin wrecking balls sworn to destroy any literary cathedral in sight."

Yep, I know. Frye doesn't have enough duende. He's not hip. And neither is McLuhan, although you would think, of the two, that somebody so interested in the media would have held up better.

However, we at the Treehouse are not too much into hip anyway, and we still like Frye. So, apparently, does B.W. Powe, a York University professor who has "written brilliantly about both Frye and McLuhan in his books A Climate Charged and The Solitary Outlaw....". Powe recently got one of his classes to stage a debate about how Frye and McLuhan would have viewed events such as 9/11. Actually the class is about Frye and McLuhan, which sounds very cool. (Powe was a pretty cool professor anyway. How do I know? I was in one of his senior writing classes in my last year at York.)

It's amazing that there is a Frye-McLuhan class offered these days. It's amazing that anybody takes it. It's amazing that this debate sounds (from the description in the article) like at least some of the students peered out of their millennium-sized boxes long enough to get a handle on what these pre-deconstructionist geezers (dead white guys and all that) were saying. I would have liked to have been there.

Cookin' with math

We use Cuisenaire Rods as one of our main math manipulatives.  People always wonder about that strange name; actually, like many inventions, the rods were named for their inventor, Georges Cuisenaire.

Because the name's unfamiliar, people often misspell it. I've seen information online about Cuisinaire Rods, Cuisanaire, Quisenaire, Cuisonaire, Cuisinnaire, Cuisenarie, Cuisenare, Cuisennaire, Cuisenair, and just about every other spelling. (Even Ruth Beechick got it wrong once!) But this one (from the transcript of a legal proceeding involving mentally handicapped students) was new to me.

Mr. RHODES: ....We believe that to do this they've got to get a little messy, maybe, and from that mess we think something good comes. By way of example, I'm sure you're familiar with cuisinart sticks?

Mr. DICKEY. No. I'm from Arkansas.

Mr. RHODES. They're small sticks that are used to teach mathematics.

Mr. DICKEY. Are you saying cuisinart?

Mr. RHODES. Yes, cuisinart. They are small sticks that are generally in units of one to ten, and they are used to teach mathematics to preschool children. And that activity, that hands-on nature, is what seems to work. I know it did wonders for my daughter when she was three.

Not only that, they julienne and shred salad too.

(The quote was found here.)

Crayons-talk

To Ponytails, listening to music: "Let's dance our nightingales away!"

A funny from Crayons

New readers can unintentionally provide a lot of humor.

At lunch, Mr. Fixit was looking at something that came in the mail, and Crayons was looking over his shoulder. "Real...Easter...Update," she read. A real Easter update?

Oh, a real estate update.

I think I preferred Crayons' version!

This is too hard, too boring, irrelevant...

Mom makes us work too hard. Not another book! School is hard. If my children were talking Barbies, they might echo that unfortunate doll (who had her conversation chip yanked for saying that math is too hard). Yes, the Apprentice and Ponytails do complain about school, lest you think that these Shakespeare-reading progeny do everything excellently without ever needing to be prodded (that's only true of other peoples' children, right?). After all, The Apprentice isn't planning on going to university anyway...she alternates between interests in hairdressing/cosmetics, photography, and computer information systems (maybe she'll figure out a way to do all of them). Why does this stuff matter?

So I have some alternatives. I could buy a fill-in-the-blanks homeschool curriculum instead of boring them with Thomas More or Winston Churchill. (Jane Austen and Charles Dickens don't get the "boring" face, for some reason.) I could let them follow their own interests completely. I could buy some of those prepared novel studies, comprehension workbooks, language textbooks, and spend a lot more time teaching them to write five-sentence paragraphs. (Squirrelings, that's not meant to be a threat--some homeschoolers spend a lot of time on those things because that's just the way they do school, and it works for them.)

I could send them to public school, so that they could develop the the following characteristics of current university students. (This list comes from Barbara Aggerholm's story "Educating the next wave" in The Record, April 24, 2006. I'm only including some of them.)

* "Doing" is more important than "knowing." In other words, what you know is less important than knowing where to get the answer. "You don't have to master the subject anymore," Sharpe said. [Associate Professor Bob Sharpe of Wilfrid Laurier University, who led a seminar about preparing for the next generation of students.]
* They have zero tolerance for delays. When they send an e-mail to a professor, they want an answer immediately.
* They're consumers rather than producers of knowledge.
* They blur the lines between consumer and creator by sampling information on the Internet and producing new forms of expression.

(That last one, in particular, intrigues me. It sounds like one of those creative report card comments that really means "He cheated on his term paper.")

Or we can keep on reading writers who are much wiser and better educated than we are, taking what we can from their thoughts, and making our responses to their books a central part of Treehouse homeschooling.

In spite of the grousing, there are those moments when I know that what we're doing is what we're supposed to be doing. Like when Ponytails asked for a James Whitcomb Riley poetry book at a booksale last year, or The Apprentice kindly found me a volume of Tennyson at this year's sale. Or when I found The Apprentice reading her Canadian history book without being reminded, or saw Ponytails poring over a map of Narnia. Or when The Apprentice found a creative way to make her science experiment work even though somebody discarded the plastic pop bottle she was hoarding. (Sorry.) Or when Ponytails was genuinely sad at finishing a biography of Galileo. Or when Crayons read me back part of the Charlotte's Web chapter we'd just finished together (I had to work her into this post somehow).

We'll try to understand that delays happen...there are disappointments...and that not everything's fun (though something can be enjoyable in its own way without being fun). Maybe the Squirrelings will be strange enough to think that knowing something is even more valuable than knowing where to look it up (or where to copy it from the Internet). Maybe when we've read Utopia and How to Read a Book and Whatever Happened to Justice, there won't be so many blurry lines. Maybe they will be subversive enough to think that they can be producers as well as consumers of knowledge.

If they turned out like that, I wouldn't mind at all.

Four homeschool days with Ponytails

This is a four-day school week for us (we took Monday off), so these lessons cover what Ponytails did over the last two days and what's planned for the rest of the week. This week also marked the start of our spring term, although a lot of what she's doing is just continuing from the winter.

Tuesday:
Bible: listen to part of Proverbs 1. Start keeping a new illustrated copybook for Proverbs (one verse and one drawing for each chapter).
Copywork: one verse from Proverbs, see above.
Grammar and spelling: Ruth Beechick-style exercises based on The Enchanted Forest (a fairytale in chapters that Ponytails is reading to herself)--looking for synonyms, spelling patterns, word meanings, etc.
Miquon Math: Division concepts.
French: short lesson about "Je sens avec le nez."
Canadian History: Canada's Story, chapter 7, about Champlain and Captain Kirke (really).

Wednesday:
Pilgrim's Progress, Book II--about four pages (part of this section)
Copywork/handwriting: worked on capital G in cursive.
Miquon Math: Reviewed division lesson; did five adding/subtracting word problems.
Shakespeare (with Mom and The Apprentice): read two scenes from Two Gentlemen of Verona.
British History: An Island Story chapter 84: King Monmouth. Marked her timeline.
Minn of the Mississippi, chapter 14 (and an online jigsaw puzzle about the Mississippi)

Thursday:
Bible: Proverbs 2.
Copywork: verse from Proverbs.
Read poems with Mom.
Language work: same. Read some of The Enchanted Forest alone.
French: short lesson.
Natural History: Secrets of the Woods--finish the Tookhees chapter.
Canadian History: Canada's Story, chapter 8 (the death of Champlain). Timeline.
Read Children of the New Forest with Mom and The Apprentice.

Friday:
Bible: Proverbs 3.
Copywork: verse from Proverbs.
Language work: dictation from The Enchanted Forest.
Miquon Math.
The Heroes, by Charles Kingsley: Theseus, part 1.
Science: The Story of Inventions, pages 271-280, about Alexander Graham Bell. Do some experiments with sound.

Other things Ponytails is doing:
Reading The Magician's Nephew with Mom
Listening to Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang read on CD
Making clothes for a felt doll
Playing outside
Eating Easter candy
Loving her "pet bird" that drinks water
Watching everybody's beans sprout (a science experiment)

Well-mannered

The Squirrelings are not always well behaved. (!)

Crayons' account of a fracas she got into with Ponytails:

"I was just colouring nicely, and she hit me. And after that we took turns hitting each other."

Well, at least they were polite about it.

Stuff and nonsense

My friend the DHM at The Common Room quoted Charlotte Mason today:

"There is absolutely no avenue to knowledge but knowledge itself, and the schools must begin, not by qualifying the mind to deal with knowledge, but by affording all the best books."--Towards a Philosophy of Education (Vol. 6), pg. 347

Did she mean the most serious books? The hardest books? The longest books?

Just before Miss Mason gets to that point in the chapter, she has been describing the sad case of two young men who had a half-baked education (in her view), who "laboured indefatigably" at making sense of the books they picked up as young adults, but who admitted themselves that "You and I go at a subject all wrong!"

What was one of the books they couldn't make sense of? Alice in Wonderland.

Deeply impressed he bought the book as soon as he returned to London and read it earnestly. To his horror he saw no sense in it. Then it struck him that it might be meant as nonsense and he had another try, then he concluded that it was rather funny but he remained disappointed.

Here, again, is another evidence of the limitations attending an utter absence of education. A cultivated sense of humour is a great factor in a joyous life, but these young men are without it. Perhaps the youth addicted to sports usually fails to appreciate delicate nonsense; sports are too strenuous to admit of a subtler, more airy kind of play....

So we have to give our children more than facts, more than vocabulary drills. Knowledge, yes...the DHM's post points that out well, along with the sad fact of our culture's anti-knowledge bent. But also another kind of knowing...an understanding of laughter and nonsense that goes beyond the usual nose-picking humor found in childrens' books. They need to meet characters like my aged Uncle Arly, sitting on a heap of barley...and the Humbug...and the White Knight, one of my favourite characters in any book. They need some silliness, some furry squirrel puppets (I promise we'll do a post about Dewey soon), some knock-knock jokes, some James Thurber, and eventually some Wodehouse and Chesterton. They need to let their brains learn to play and dance and jump around with all the wonderful connections that a sense of nonsense allows. They need some nonsense so they can understand inventiveness...and a mandatory credit in inventiveness and creativity will not substitute.

I found this posted on the Catholic Culture blog:

A friend said all this reminded him of the scene in The Chronicles of Narnia where Aslan (God) creates Narnia, including an odd little bird which, like all the animals, can talk. The bird says something ridiculous and all the other creatures laugh. Turning to Aslan, the bird says, “Oh, Aslan, have I made the first joke?” “No,” Aslan replies, “you are the first joke.” My friend says there is a moral here.

I think he's right.

She knows what she likes

Crayons' comment about today's lunch:

"I could eat a hundred grilled cheese sandwiches. And a hundred macaroni and cheese (that wasn't on the menu). And a hundred kiffle. And a hundred of my favourite beans."

What more could you ask for?

Good Friday Thought

After an emergency or a crisis, there is always the time when you come back and look around at the place that you left in such a hurry.

About ten years ago, my grandmother got very sick and was rushed to the hospital. I went to my parents’ house and found a crockpot full of chili sitting on the counter that had been there since suppertime the night before. You don’t always stop to clean things up when you’re in a hurry.

I was wondering who cleaned up after the last supper. Were some of the disciples intending to come back after their after-dinner walk with Jesus? Then everything was interrupted. Was it hours later, even the next day, that anyone came back into that upstairs room where Jesus had washed their feet and talked about the bread and the cup?

What did they see? Was there maybe the bowl and a still-damp towel, sitting on the floor? Maybe there was a cup that someone had knocked over, with the wine spilling out. Maybe some of the bread was left on the plate, leftovers broken in pieces. Maybe there were candles burned down to stubs, or empty oil lamps that they had used to light the room during their last meal with Jesus. Had they expected to come back to a room that felt so empty and yet that held so many things that reminded them of their Lord?

What did they do with the things? Did someone get busy then and wash the dishes? Did they pack everything away as it was, not wanting to have to deal with such things at such a time? Did they call some women in and ask them to wipe everything up?

Or did someone else come in and clear everything away, not knowing anything about what had happened there that night? Did the disciples come back to a room that was empty, cleaned out? Maybe the whole thing seemed like a dream that had never happened.

What do you think?

Good Friday

And all three stood and wept. Even the Lion wept: great Lion-tears, each tear more precious than the Earth would be if it was a single solid diamond....

"Son of Adam," said Aslan, "go into that thicket and pluck the thorn that you will find there, and bring it to me."

Eustace obeyed. The thorn was a foot long and sharp as a rapier.

"Drive it into my paw, son of Adam," said Aslan, holding up his right fore-paw and spreading out the great pad toward Eustace.

"Must I?" said Eustace.

"Yes," said Aslan.

Then Eustace set his teeth and drove the thorn into the Lion's pad. And there came out a great drop of blood, redder than all redness that you have ever seen or imagined. And it splashed into the stream over the dead body of the King.

--C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

Thinking outside the package

Several years ago, I went to a post-Christmas sale at a craft store. In the final-clearance, nobody-wants-this bin, I found a couple of Christmas-themed cross-stitch kits that came with some kind of square plastic frames, and bought them for about 75 cents apiece. When I got home, I realized that floss was not included in the kits. I didn't have much floss and definitely not in the right colours, and I don't get to the craft store much. The kits sat. And sat. I kept thinking "someday when they've got floss on sale, I should go and match up all the right colours, and get what I need, and make up those kits." But it wasn't really high on the list of priorities. I'm not even a very good cross-stitcher.

I tried to give the kits away to a crafty friend, but she didn't want them. So they sat.

Finally I was about to put them in a thrift-shop box. And then I took another look at the packages, and a light went on. Those things in my hands were meant to be coasters: nice, heavy-duty clear plastic coasters that you could insert your needlework into. Or anything else! Aha! (You mean I'm allowed to throw out those cross-stitch patterns I've never used? Sigh of relief.)

Since it was close to Father's Day, I found a couple of colourful family pictures that we'd taken at a mini-golf course; stuck them on some printed origami paper (because the pictures were smaller than the coasters); got the kids to sign their names below the pictures; and inserted the whole works into the coasters. One for Mr. Fixit, one for Grandpa Squirrel. Mr. Fixit now uses his coaster every night for his bedtime tea.

Now I'm not expecting that you're going to run out and raid the bargain bins looking for useless needlework kits. But it does illustrate a basic frugal principle. As the DHM at the Common Room likes to say, what do you have in your hand? And if you can't use something in the way it was intended, could you use part of it for something else? Sometimes you'll come up with something even nicer than what it was really meant for.

Money habits...and promises

LRJohnson's Savings Blog posted recently about Habits, Habits (linked through the 18th Festival of Frugality). She points out:

I did not start buying oatmeal at the same time that I stopped buying pre-made cartons of juice. Powdered milk came into my life at a different time than the concept of having a max price I’d pay for an item. (For me that’s an In My Head Price Book.) I didn’t start putting leftovers in salsa tub Tupperware at the same time I decided to buy generic or store brand for everything. TVP and bulghur and beans entered my life at different times. But all of these thrifty skills and habits accumulated, over the years, to become a low grocery bill. I incorporate a new habit every now and then, and add it to the routine.

And so on.

The Squirrels can identify with this. We have often had people ask exactly how we have managed to stay out of debt, have Mama Squirrel stay home with the Squirrelings, etc.; and it is often difficult to answer; or, to be more exact, any honest answer makes it sound more difficult than it has been. At the time we got married, we agreed to keep a running journal of our joint budget and expenses for the year, and to stick as close as possible to the amounts we had agreed on for things like clothes and groceries. We also treated Mama Squirrel's rather paltry wages as extra money but not something to be counted on--which was a good thing, because the Squirrelings started coming along very soon after that. (We still keep a budget binder--it really helps with each year's planning.)

Like LRJohnson, we acquired different habits of saving at different times--or changed them as we went along. There are things we do better now than we did fifteen years ago--those are the habits we've learned. Some things we figured out ourselves or from reading; I think some of the rest are ideas we picked up from watching what our parents and other relatives did. We might not have acted on them until we got married, but they were absorbed!

Some of the habits don't seem money-related; they just involve taking care of things so that they don't have to be replaced as fast or cleaned as often. (We rarely eat meals or have drinks in the car; we don't wear shoes in the house.) We buy store brand groceries, eat leftovers, pass down clothes, go to yard sales, and use/wear/drive things until they won't work/fit/run anymore. (And we try to replace parts before tossing things--that's getting harder to do all the time, though. Most things now are made to be tossed, not fixed, and the parts cost more than the original gizmo.) There are other things we stopped doing...at one time I attempted to keep Mr. Fixit's work socks darned, but his workboots kept putting so many holes into them that I gave up. And anyway, he no longer wears workboots.

But there's one other factor that comes into it for us. Along with habits, we needed faithfulness--and we had to be committed to that from the start. Before we knew each other, and even during the year that we dated, we each had different spending patterns than we did post-wedding. We went out for more meals (and fancier ones), we bought more new clothes, we just seemed to go through more cash in general. But somehow, along with the promises we made to be faithful to each other in other ways, we both came into marriage with a feeling of "this money we have now takes care of both of us--so we have to be responsible to each other with it." No spending sprees, no "I worked for this so I should have more of it", no demands for things that the budget wouldn't allow (brand new furniture or vacation cruises), no tossing the toothpaste tube before we'd squished the last squish. I don't know that we ever even sat down and spelled all that out (definitely not the toothpaste part); it was just understood. We also knew that we weren't accountable only to each other: we were responsible to God for what he'd entrusted us with.

And that--as much as frugal habits--is what's kept us solvent.

Only in Canada

Tonight I was reading our family favourite Little Tim and The Brave Sea Captain to Crayons. Then she read some of it back to me. In the story, Tim stows away on a ship and is made to work as a cabin boy. And then the weather gets rough. Crayons read,

"But alas, Tim soon began to feel sick, and when he went down to the galley he could not eat any of the titbits that the cook gave him."

Only she read it "any of the Timbits."

Well, it WAS a Little Tim story.

Postscript: Crayons now says that she wants to be a sailor too.

Good Friday Kiffle

We have a Good Friday food tradition at the Treehouse. Some people eat hot cross buns on Good Friday; we make and eat Mr. Fixit's German grandma's Kiffle.

Kiffle (they sound like kee'-fa-la) are not those rolled-up European pastries called kipfel (although Grandma did make something like that too). These Kiffle are more like Polish Kolacky or Czech Kolache--a small, sweet yeast bun with fruit or jam filling poked into its side. We didn't have an authentic recipe for them from Grandma--I don't know if it was ever written out, she did most of her cooking without recipes. There are Kolacky/Kolache recipes online that sound pretty close-- this one is much like ours only it makes twice as many and uses a whole lot more butter.

The version we came across a few years ago and make every year (because Mr. Fixit says it's reasonably close to his grandma's Kiffle) comes from Dorothy R. Bates' Kids Can Cook vegetarian cookbook, published by The Book Publishing Company in Tennessee (yes, the tofu people). It makes about 24 small rolls, most of which get eaten pretty fast.

(A historical note from Grandma: she told us that when she was growing up in Eastern Europe, the traditional snack on Good Friday was popcorn. So sometimes we make popcorn too.)

Kolacky (or Kiffle)

1. Mix in a small bowl: 1 tbsp. yeast, 1 tsp. honey, 1/4 cup warm water.

2. Cream together: 1 stick (1/2 cup) margarine or butter, softened; 2 tbsp. honey; 1 tsp. salt.

3. Stir in and beat well: 1 egg, 1 cup warm water, 1 cup flour.

4. Add the yeast mixture and stir well together.

5. Slowly add, while stirring: 3 to 4 cups flour. Use enough to make dough soft but not sticky.

6. Turn it out onto a floured surface and knead it a few times. Put it in an oiled bowl and turn it around to coat with oil.

7. Cover bowl with a clean towel. Let rise for about 45 minutes, until doubled in size.

8. Knead down, pinch off balls, the size of a walnut, place on a lightly greased baking sheet.

9. Let rise another 30 minutes.

10 Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Press down the centers with your thumb to make a small hollow. (The online Kolache recipe notes that you have to press down good and hard, because otherwise the indentations will "pop out" while they're baking.) Fill each hollow with 1 tsp. apricot preserves, or peach preserves, or apple butter.

11. When oven is hot, put rolls in oven and bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Tops should be lightly browned.

12. Remove from oven and cool. If desired, sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Tastes of home

Did you ever notice that, although you might not think too much about what your normal, everyday family food tastes like, it always tastes the best when you've been away and then come back? You get used to your own spices and your own ways of chopping things (or your spouse's, or your mother's), how big you make your muffins, what your regular brand of peanut butter tastes like, whether or not you ice your brownies (or put nuts in them, or put chocolate chips on top)--and you don't notice those things really until you're eating somebody else's food. I remember visiting Quebec a couple of times (a long time ago), and every time I ate lasagna, it had chili pepper flakes in it. Unheard of around here! When Mr. Fixit and Mama Squirrel were on their honeymoon in the mythical days before squirrelings, they stayed at a resort where every night's dinner was something fried and battered: battered fish, chicken nuggets and so on. Finally Mr. Fixit admitted, "I just want to get home and eat some tofu."

For the Beehive folk, it's Texas tacos and cheeseburgers after their trip to Scotland.

For Mr. Fixit, who had to suffer through a fancy filet mignon dinner last night and another fancy lunch today (he REALLY doesn't like sushi), it was coming home to some Kitchener Special tonight.

What's your taste of home?

April Fools Day,by Ponytails.

Today is April Fools Day, and we've done a lot of pranks. To start off the day, Mama put big salad spoons for little spoons to eat cereal. And she put ketchup and relish and mustard on the table for a joke. And Mr. Fixit put a spider under the napkins and pulled it across the table. I knew it was there because I saw the white string. Then we went grocery shopping and I was putting some juice in the freezer and.........I saw a fake spider jumping out at me!!!!! It was then hanging on the Fridge! And when I opened the fridge....I was freaked out at the spider when you see it was hanging on the fridge and when I was opening the fridge the fake spider started crawling up the fridge!!!!!!!!!!! And when I anwsered the phone it was one of my friend's sisters, and for an April Fools Day trick they said that my friend had laryngitis and I couldn't call her for 1 or 2 months!!!!!!!!!
~~~~~Ponytails