Frugal Homeschooling: Is there a homeschool store in your cupboard?

Last spring I made a list, not of every book in the house, but of what we had in the way of homeschool resources. I set it up in the same way as my favourite homeschool catalogue, so that I could "shop" from it. I didn't include library books, but I did include downloaded e-texts and software.

A homeschool catalogue usually starts by listing how-to-homeschool books and parent resources. My list started like this:

General Books

Debra Bell—Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling
Ruth Beechick books—primary, grades 4-8
Books Children Love, other books of books
Homeschool Your Child For Free
Classical Curriculum (Berquist)
Charlotte Mason Companion
CM Home Education series
The Blackboard Book, by Eleanor Watts (e-text)
Free printables and websites, 2010 edition (e-text)

Next section in a typical Christian homeschool catalogue: Bible study resources. Again I just made a list that started like this:

Bible Study

Bibles—several translations
What the Bible is All About for Young Explorers
Old Testament 2-year Survey Class, by Meredith Curtis (e-text)
The Holy Land in the Time of Jesus
Everyday Life in Bible Times (NG book)
Bible for Today, 3 vols.
Barclay’s Gospel commentaries
Desiring God / Future Grace

And so on through Spelling Skills, Handwriting, Grammar, Math, History, Science, Music.

All of this counting and listing had a couple of purposes. One was just a general figuring out of what we had--a chance to count our blessings, if you like, and to realize how much we really didn't need to buy, how much was already right there for us to use. The other reason was to take that information and "shop" with it. From this "homeschool store," what would I buy to use for math this fall with Crayons? What resources could I combine to put together a French program? And was there something really lacking, that I couldn't figure out a way around?

Most of what we plan to use this year came from our own "store." We got planners for about a dollar apiece. We did end up buying new Key to Algebra workbooks for eighth-grader Ponytails, because that made the most sense. Later in the year I'll download the next Math Mammoth level for fourth-grader Crayons. I also bought John Hudson Tiner's Exploring the World of Mathematics from a friend who was done with it, and a set of Calculadder 2, although I'm having second thoughts about using it this year...that's something I need to talk over with the Squirrelings.

I bought a printed-out copy of Write with the Best Volume 2, although I do have my own copy of the file, to save myself the trouble and paper of having to reprint it. (You have to print out the whole book with that one--all or nothing.) And there have been a few other things that popped up along the way, mostly secondhand--like The Canadian Children's Treasury and Science on a Shoestring. Very recently someone on the Canadian used-curriculum exchange list posted a few items for sale, including some historical colouring books that fit with Crayons' history, and a couple of other things, so I have my order in for those. (I try to sell a few books here and there myself to even things out.)

Some printer paper, and I guess we're set.

To sum up: homeschooling is not totally free, even when you shop mostly from the cupboard...but it does help. You could say that I should figure in some amortized cost for books that I had bought previously and used for one or two other people. You could also say that I should include things like printer ink (some people do), staples, any books I haven't bought but might, any lessons or outings that we haven't registered for or attended but might, or even Teacher Appreciation Presents.

Hey, everybody's got a wish list.

This post is linked from the Festival of Frugality.

Let's make muffins

The heat level went down enough yesterday that we decided to make some of Chef Earl's Muffins. Chef Earl is Earl Johnson, who was the subject of a favourite Canadian Living article which also featured Potage Paysanne, a soup we try to make at least once a year just because it's so much better than the ingredients make it sound (turnip, leeks, parsnips--shudder). The story of how he won over the high school students in Winnipeg also made it into Reader's Digest.

His muffin recipes are a bit fancier and sweeter than my usual throw-it-in-the-bowl formula, but once in awhile--like the soup--they're fun to make. The recipes for Streusel Apple Raisin Muffins and Black Bottom Muffins made 24 large muffins and 24 half-size muffins, respectively. I found it was just as easy to get all the dry ingredients mixed for both (put the 2 cups flour for one in one large bowl, then the 1 1/2 cups flour for the other in another bowl, and so on), mix up the wet ingredients for both, and then finish putting both recipes together and bake them at the same time. If you have an extra willing pair of hands around, it helps too. (Ponytails put the Streusel muffins together.)

Note on the Black Bottom Muffins: they call for cream cheese, but I've substituted both sour cream and drained (thick) plain yogurt, and both work fine. They do tend to get sticky if they sit around, so you would probably want to keep them refrigerated or frozen.

Especially if it's the middle of August.

What's for supper? Sausage pasta with cherry tomatoes

This is Mama Squirrel's lighter version of a recipe that Canadian Living ran last November and that we adapted as well. I guess you'd call this the summer edition...small fresh chard leaves instead of big hoary late-fall ones...tiny fresh tomatoes instead of diced...and done in a skillet instead of baked.

Sausage Pasta with Cherry Tomatoes

Ingredients:

Two or three mild Italian sausages, uncooked, sliced (although you could use leftover cooked ones)
Several fresh mushrooms, sliced thin
A bowlful of very sweet, fresh cherry tomatoes
Half a can of no-salt chickpeas, drained and rinsed
A small bowlful of baby chard leaves, with the accompanying earwig discarded, rolled up and sliced thinly (EWW correction: discard the earwig, slice the chard!)
Cooked fusilli or other spiral pasta, enough to feed about four people
Some grated mozzarella or Parmesan cheese...you don't need too much

In a nonstick skillet, start cooking the sliced sausage; cook until all the pink is gone. Add cherry tomatoes and sliced mushrooms; cook for several minutes and drain off excess fat/liquid. Add chickpeas and continue cooking until everything is pretty much done the way you want; stir in pasta and chard, top with grated cheese, and let it all heat through for a few minutes. If you turn the heat down or off, it can sit for a few minutes without complaining too much.

You will notice that this is not a very tomatoey dish. If you insist on more tomatoes, you could add part of a can of sauce.

You will also notice that there isn't any extra seasoning added; this is because the sausage we get is already pretty flavourful. Otherwise I would have added some pepper.

(What's for dessert?)

When it's better the second day (dessert)

We had some of last night's steamed pudding left--mostly a thick fruit mixture (raspberries, rhubarb, peaches) and just a bit of the cake part.

This is what I did with it: in five fancy dessert glasses, I layered plain yogurt, leftover pudding (making sure each serving had a bit of cake), a smaller blob of yogurt, and then a spoonful of grated chocolate. (Mr. Fixit buys bittersweet chocolate bars at the downtown grocery store where they don't cost much.)

Better than your average leftovers.

What's for supper? (Mama Squirrel muses on sweet potatoes)

The Deputy Headmistress noted today that the subtitle of Martha Rose Shulman's 1982 cookbook Fast Vegetarian Feasts says something more about today's fast-fast-fast culture than was intended at the time: "Delicious, Healthful Meals in Under 45 Minutes!"

Wow, have things changed that much? I spent an hour puttering on tonight's supper and didn't think a lot about it, especially because I was doing other things as well while things cooked...but then we wash dishes by hand here too. To me that's just how long dinners take, unless you're having scrambled eggs or it's already in the slow cooker. I mean, even waiting for a pizza to come takes forty minutes.

What was tonight's supper? Kind of a smorgasbord, more food than we needed but some of it needed to be cooked and used up, so I cooked it.

Baked salmon fillets (the only thing that went in the oven, and that was the toaster oven)
Leftover sweet and sour turkey meatballs
Sliced sweet potatoes cooked on the stove top and with some chard leaves added at the end
The last bit of yesterday's bread (first time I've used the bread machine in awhile)
Fresh cherry tomatoes and cucumbers
"Steamed Pudding," made with frozen raspberries, fresh rhubarb, and a couple of peaches (it's not really steamed like Christmas pudding--you heat the fruit in a pot and then drop a pancake-like mixture on top, cover the pot and simmer for twenty minutes)

We like to eat, okay? And if it takes awhile--that's fine too. That's what at-home time's about. How hard is it to peel a couple of sweet potatoes, slice them and put them in a pot? It's not like you have to flambe them. How hard is it to slice a cucumber and arrange it on a plate around a bowlful of baby tomatoes? (Total time about two minutes?) How hard is it to put some fruit in a pot, mix about five batter ingredients, plop them on top, and then let the magic of electricity do its thing?

I don't think it's just that people are lazy these days, that cooking has become a thing that comes out of a package. I think it's partly that cooking is presented as too hard by people who are too snobby, who make you worry too much about what goes in the pot with the sweet potatoes, exactly how you're supposed to cut them, exactly how done is done and all that, especially if your mother never showed you how to cook sweet potatoes. People cooked food before they had critics to tell them they were doing it wrong. Unless you burn them black because you forget to add any liquid, you cannot do it wrong, as long as they're the way you like to eat them when they're done. If you like mushy sweet potatoes (I don't), cook them to mush. If you like them cut very thin, cut them very thin. You're the boss of how you want to cook your food--now isn't that more empowering than opening a jar?

Just saying.

A Christmas post? Already?

Well, I was re-reading a book we have called The Perfect Basket. (We have an earlier edition.) It's actually a combination of two earlier books, according to an Amazon review: food mixes for gift giving, and general suggestions for things to put in gift baskets. I like the mix ideas better than the basket ideas, because when you start putting things in a basket (or a bucket or a mixing bowl) the cost can add up very fast. Even a Christmas stocking full of dollar-store things will quickly run well over a few dollars, unless it's a very small stocking.

But that made me think of one of the Deputy Headmistress's Frugal Hacks posts from last Christmas, about thrift shopping/grocery shopping for presents that sort of go together--for instance, a shark book and a shark toy, or a nutmeg grater with some nutmegs. (If you remember, we actually did find a real nutmeg jar and thought of that suggestion.)

And that gave me a couple of ideas to expand on...because it's the middle of summer, prime yard-saling season here, and because I've passed over a few things lately that could, if I had been feeling really creative, have been turned into gifts. I'm still a bit iffy on how much anybody would have wanted the ceramic squirrel-on-a-walnut, even if I had filled the walnut with, say, walnuts...but you never know.

Idea Number One: Focus on basket themes that, besides being appropriate for at least one someone in your life, lend themselves to frugality. For instance, a basket based on someone's favourite decade. Where else are you going to find REAL 1980's stuff except at a yard sale? (Or maybe in your own closet or basement, and then it's free.) Think movies, fad items, magazines, music, toys, gadgets, cookbooks, kitchen items--whatever suits the person. There are stores and online places where you can find favourite candies from each decade, but that might run your costs up. Our nearby bulk store carries some retro candies that don't cost much. Hampstead House (book overstocks in Toronto) is offering a reproduction 1956 guide to entertaining that would be a fun gift along with retro things, but you could probably find an original book like that at a grandma's garage sale.

Idea Number Two: Since it sometimes takes awhile to find enough thrift-shopped/yard-saled basket-worthy things, decide on one or two themes and start collecting up anything that fits. Not that many people are probably into sharks, so choose themes like apples, strawberries, teddy bears, cats, horses and so on. Once you've narrowed your focus, you'll probably start noticing things at sales (or on sale, or in your cupboard) that fit right in and that you would have ignored before. You don't need to get carried away, just a few co-ordinating things can make a basket-type gift special.

Idea Number Three: Go for either the severely practical or the dangerously silly. On the practical side: give a basket of emergency supplies, like candles, matches, flashlight, batteries, vitamins, first aid kit. Or things that are needed in quantity, like postage stamps and bus tickets. Or make a tightwad gift pack for a frugal friend or wanna-be: sandwich bags or foil (for washing and rewashing), calculator, DIY tools, piggy bank, used copy of The Tightwad Gazette, coupon organizer, rubber spatula.

Dangerously silly? Also mostly for those who don't think there's anything wrong with giving or receiving used items: give a nice selection of weird,wonderful and inexpensive. Dancing hamsters come to mind.

Idea Number Four: Use some of the typical basket/filling ideas, but concentrate on items that you have on hand or that you come across at thrift shops, or maybe on sale at the grocery store. How many of these would you skip over at the thrift store?: small rolling pin, cookie cutters, any kind of containers that might hold cookies or other baking, doilies, cutting board, cloth napkins, butter knives (to give with a teacup, scone mix etc.), trays, jars, clear canisters, Bundt pan (to hold homemade cake mix), funny or pretty mugs (to hold candy canes and cocoa mix), knitting needles (I don't see crochet hooks as often, not sure why), a cassette of fiddle music (maybe to go in a Little House basket?), seed sprouter (for a health food basket)...endless possiblities.

Idea Number Five: Get inspired by a book. The last Hampstead House catalogue had a lot of possibilities that could go well with gift items, and you can often find similar titles at thrift shops. Examples: Heart-Friendly Cooking. Chocolate Recipes. Green Clean. Guide to Walking in Canada. Shameless Shortcuts (a book of household hints). Porridge. Taking Tea. And so on.

Idea Number Six: Go totally original, but (repeat this carefully) do not go overboard if your aim is to keep the gift under a certain dollar amount. The following ideas could be made either inexpensively or VERY expensively, so keep it in mind: A new-homeschooler basket with a timer, pens, paper, Nerf ball, anti-stress vitamins, how-to-homeschool book, math manipulatives, magnifying glass, favourite readaloud, Sharpies, etc. A Little House in the Big Woods/Little House on the Prairie basket with a sunbonnet, small rag doll, candy sticks, jar of plum jam, string of beads, homemade pancake mix, Little House craft or cookbook or paperdolls, maybe some Lincoln Logs. An "I love my 18-inch doll" pajama party set with handmade matching pajamas or nighties and/or slippers for girl and doll, matching pillowcases (handmade, they're easy), popcorn, cocoa mix, marshmallows.

And of course you can go with more usual basket themes, like sewing or crocheting supplies, but again, be careful--these days even spools of thread cost more than you'd think. Maybe pick out one more expensive and wanted item, and fill in with scavenged and inexpensive things, like (thrift-shopped) pattern magazines.

Good hunting.

Why there is more to life (and math) than long division (thought for the day)

"In our age of calculators and computers, we must question how much time even good students of arithmetic should spend working pages of problems of ever-increasing size....Curriculum improvements come slowly in the school world. But homeschoolers have an advantage. With just a decision of one or two people, you can make any changes you want. Will you skip the pages with three- and four-place divisors and let your children, instead, learn some BASIC computer programming? The choice is up to you."--Ruth Beechick, You CAN Teach Your Child Successfully (1984)

P.S. In case you're too young to know this, BASIC here refers to the programming language, not the fact that it was basic.

Saturday's yard saling and thrift shopping and just not paying too much overall

We are trying hard to stick to useful stuff, not just frivolous...like the giant ceramic walnut with a squirrel on top that I saw at a yard sale yesterday morning and left right where it was. (Kind of like this one.) (Now if I had seen this one instead, I might not have been able to leave it there.)

What did we bring home?

The Bible Book of Lists, by Joy MacKenzie and Shirley Bledsoe--looks very useful

The Story of the Church, by Walter Russell Bowie

The Sacred Journey: a memoir of early days, by Frederick Buechner

Little Women Living Classics kit--not a book, a "treasure chest" with embroidery stuff, a card game, map of Civil War battles and so on--just a couple of the paper dolls and a booklet of game instructions are missing (OK, that IS practical. Not that things are missing, but that there's a brand-new mini-embroidery set in there plus all the historical stuff.)

See Through History: Ancient Rome, by Simon James (an illustrated book with transparencies)

A big boxful of ribbon for $2

Some knit fabric that Ponytails bought--how cool is that? (It's something she wanted.)

About $50 worth of groceries from Giant Tiger--enough to hold us for awhile

A pair of lace-up runners for Crayons, also from Giant Tiger

Graph paper and page protectors for The Apprentice's fall term, also from Giant Tiger

And The Apprentice brought me home three free Family Circle magazines that the hair salon was cleaning out. I appreciated that very much.

It followed me home, can I keep it? (book finds)

I have had a couple of chances to search through used book bins over the last couple of days...this is what made it home, more or less.

Shop, Save, and Share, by Ellie Kay (about saving money on groceries--unfortunately a lot of her strategy depends on Sunday coupon inserts and double coupon stores, neither of which we have here)

Felicity Saves the Day (American Girl)
Josefina's Surprise (American Girl)--our girls are into American Girl stories right now

Rob Roy, by Sir Walter Scott (just a paperback, but we didn't have a copy)

My Little House Christmas Crafts Book
Making Dolls and Dolls' Clothes, by Lia Van Steenderen (I was so happy to see this on the library discard shelf--we've taken it out several times over the years and I would have been sad to have it disappear)
Sew the Essential Wardrobe for 18-Inch Dolls, by Joan Hinds and Jean Becker (another book I was very happy not to miss--it even has its envelope of full-size patterns)
Hearthstrings: How to Make Decorative Garlands for All Seasons, by Carol Cruess Pflumm
A partially-there book of Dover birthday invitation postcards
Skills for Survival: How Families Can Prepare, by Esther Dickey, 1978. Includes such wonderful meal suggestions as cooked beets stuffed with greens.

Sally Go Round the Sun, a book of songs by Edith Fowke. My Squirrelings are too old for this vintage book, but I thought it was worth bringing home.

The Watsons Go to Birmingham 1963, by Christopher Paul Curtis
The Pool of Fire, by John Christopher (one of the Tripods series)
One Tintin book
One Happy Hollisters book
Teddybears ABC, by Susanna Gretz (also too young for our girls, but we like Gretz's teddybears books) [Note: this one was recommended for tiny ones, but we looked at it and don't like it quite as much as Teddybears stay indoors. The Apprentice thinks it's too much like Alligators All Around.]
The Bears on Hemlock Mountain, by Alice Dalgliesh

The Bug Game, by Ampersand Press (not a book, but it came home with the books)

Apprendre à Ecrire Sans Faute (Write Without Mistakes--a language workbook)

Wild in the City, by Jan Thornhill (picture book about urban wildlife)
The Kids' Science Book, by Robert Hirschfeld and Nancy White
Science on a Shoestring, by Herb Strongin

Sugar, sugar: improvised butterscotch sauce

We had some maple icing in the fridge, leftover from Mr. Fixit's birthday cupcakes (which were really banana muffins). Actually it was more butter than sugar--I got the proportions a bit off. I had the idea of thinning it down and using it in rice pudding, but we were out of rice.

We also had some leftover butterscotch pudding, the instant kind--something Crayons had asked for, but we didn't eat the whole package.

I combined the chunk of icing and the pudding with a bit of water in a large measuring cup, microwaved it for a minute, stirred it, and microwaved it for another minute.

Instant warm butterscotch sauce. Good over plain cake, muffins-in-a-pan, or something else not too sweet.

Not that I'd expect that everybody (or anybody) out there would have leftover maple icing and leftover butterscotch pudding, but when you have potentially compatible leftovers, it's always worth a try.

What to read with your kids?

Check out Ann's photo post "Best Picture Books" at Holy Experience.

Why we are not good mall material

We haven't been to the big mall here in awhile. It was rainy this morning (i.e. no yard sales), and a couple of us were looking for shoes and other things, so Mr. Fixit suggested we go shopping.

Crayons and Mama Squirrel went to the discount department store and bought a pair of summer shoes for Crayons marked down from $10 to $5 and then they took another 50% off at the checkout, so the final price was $2.50.

And we found an Algebra Adventure DVD for Ponytails, in a clearance bin for $2.99.

Then we went to the bookstore. Mama Squirrel spent a gift card on a book about staying out of debt. (Note: I respect this author's financial expertise, but she does use some language that some people would find offensive. Just saying.)

Other than that...well, Mr. Fixit and Ponytails found a couple of things they wanted as well (Ponytails got a tank top, a shirt, and a pair of church shoes). One store was offering a discount to "students and teachers with i.d." so Ponytails used our support group's membership card (the clerk asked "what is that?" but accepted it anyway). They saved about $15 overall. The shoe store offered a discount to Canadian Automobile Association members, which at least helped with the sales tax...and then Mr. Fixit got another 20% off Ponytails' shoes because the cashier said that if he texted a certain number and typed the name of the shoe store, he would get an instant coupon over the phone that he could use right there. So he did.

We did pay full price for a box of Timbits. :-)

An addition to Crayons' Grade 4 Literature

I forgot we had a copy of this: Life of Robert Louis Stevenson For Boys and Girls, by Jacqueline Overton. I think we can fit that one in, or at least part of it. There are so many Stevenson books and poems that are part of our school that it's good to be able to connect them a bit.

How do you spread out a school year?

Day by day, like Cindy?

Listed by chapter or page but undated, like the Deputy Headmistress?

I have settled on a middle place: I have a year's plan divided up by months. I like to know how many chapters we are supposed to be into a book by the end of October, or roughly when we're going to get to a science or craft project that requires supplies, or when a library book needs to be put on hold. That way if we miss a Monday for Thanksgiving, or someone's sick, it doesn't mess the schedule up too much to have to put the week's work off till next Monday. The idea is just to get to where we're supposed to be by the end of the month.

I take into account things like really only having three workable school weeks in September, two in December, and three in March (we take March Break).

I can always sit down on Sunday night and figure out how big a piece of the month's work we can reasonably chew off in the coming week...but I'm not doing that this far ahead. I just like to have a rough idea at this point.

It helps to go into enough detail to include chapter titles and topics--you sometimes see connections and patterns that you might have missed. Whatever Happened to Justice? mentions Thomas Paine, and one of the Write with the Best lessons uses an excerpt from Paine. I don't usually try to jiggle them closer together--but it's nice to have a note that we'll be returning to a person or a topic later on. Or if there are chapters covering almost identical material in different books--I make notes on what to skip.

It also helps when you can see where a book's probably going to be done before the year's end, or where you're going to have to double up on readings. One of Ponytails' history books will be done in May; luckily, that's just where we're going to have to pick up the pace with the other one.

It also helps if you look at the month's work and feel either motivated or exhausted. Exhausted probably means that you need to stretch something out or cut it out altogether. I cut out a few things after looking at the year's plan...I had hoped to read a book about Alexander the Great with Crayons, but it's just not going to happen with the rest of the history we have to do. Maybe next year.

Here's a sample of the plan for the upcoming year. I don't bother to include things like Bible reading (unless there's a specific place we're trying to get to) or daily grammar pages. I also don't have a lot of details included about Ponytails' science lessons, since she does that with her dad. My plan's in a Word table, but this is a text version.

Ponytails, September:

Christian Studies: Mr. Pipes: Clement; Hail, Gladdening Light; Gregory of Nazianzen; Prudentius. Lewis readings 1-3.

History: Justice: Cause is Law, Higher Authority, Higher Law (refers to Thomas Paine). Foster: Intro (Janus), Under a Lucky Star, Ides of March, Cleopartra, Caesar's Son, Cicero, Conspirators. Bauer: 6, 7, 8. Story of Canada: chapter 7, Confederation Days, to top of page 178.

English: Elements of Style, 8 lessons. Begin writing Unit 1: Free Verse. Weekly Wordplay Cafe.

Literature: Watership Down, 2 chapters/wk so approx. 6 chapters. Read Bulfinch chapters 2-4 (skipping 1 for now). Start reading Shakespeare play. Poetry as assigned.

Science and Geography: Richards: Universe & its Origins, Dead Planets Living World, The Odd Planet. (May not get that far if we're doing map work.) Biography chapter 1-3. Readings from geography list. Nature readings together.

Math: Start work with Dad. Weekly group math time (3 times).

Languages: Latin lessons 1 (Days 1-5), 2 (Days 1-4). Learn Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in Latin. Learn "In Nomine Patris." French 3x/wk (approx. 9 lessons).

Fine Arts and Citizenship: Streatfeild: The Six, Mr. Fosse. Music and picture study. Ourselves chapter XII. Start Plutarch (should get to lesson 2 or 3 of 12).

Gracious Arts: Alcott chapters 1-3. Schaeffer chapter 1 The First Artist, chapter 2 Hidden Art.

Crayons (some of her books are the same so I won't repeat them):

September:

Christian Studies: Bible studies, 3-4 lessons.

Language Arts: Daily work with Mom, still to be planned. Weekly Wordplay Cafe.

Math: Daily work with Mom, weekly group time.

Literature: Poetry, start Stevenson. Kidnapped--start and see how far we get.

Science and Nature: Read How to Think Like a Scientist. Start some Franklin experiments (still to be chosen). Start Story Book of Science if time.

History: Read book about Franklin. Start GW's World, through "The Friendly Printer." Also read Seventh and Walnut (it's short). Writing/narration activities as planned.

More on this fall's homeschooling (Part 3)

MATHEMATICS

I already mentioned briefly what we're doing: Ponytails is finishing off Key to Geometry and Key to Decimals, and then will be starting Key to Algebra, and probably doing practice Gauss competition tests at the grade 8 level. She's planning on doing most of her math with Mr. Fixit again this year.

Crayons will be finishing Math Mammoth Light Blue Grade 3, because we got into it late in the year, and then we'll download Grade 4. I've been very interested to see where/how the Miquon Math she'd always used fit in to this newer curriculum; where we can go fast because we've already covered a topic, and where we have to slow down for math potholes. Not surprisingly (if you know Miquon), she has a very good sense of place value; she has a good understanding of how numbers work, and she's probably a bit ahead in multiplication, since Miquon starts that early. She's great at money math, not so good at telling time, but we'll keep working on that.

We'll be doing a weekly joint math time--I'm still working out the details on that. Some of what we'll be doing will be coming out of Critical Thinking's Math Detective book (the gr 5-6 level), since we have it on hand; but I don't want to do exactly the same format every time...the goal is to get a bigger sense of mathematics, to learn about the really interesting parts of it, not just "what you get in school." (If you've never checked out the Living Math website, there's lots of inspiration there.)

GRACIOUS ARTS

Otherwise known as Home Economics or Family Studies...but it's more than that. We are going to read through The Hidden Art of Homemaking (maybe just parts of some chapters), and supplement that with Marmee's Sugar N Spice Studies (nice around the holidays), a book on teatimes, a book on making basket gifts for people, and other books on crafts and creativity. We'll also read Louisa May Alcott's novel Jack and Jill, since a lot of that book is about "brightening the corner where you are" and finding the beauty around you.

CITIZENSHIP

A catch-all category. Whatever Happened to Justice? could fit in here, but I'm counting that under history this year. We'll be reading Plutarch's Lives (probably just Ponytails the first term), some of Charlotte Mason's book Ourselves, and Noel Streatfeild's book The Fearless Treasure. (We've never used that last one yet, so it will be an experiment.)

FINE ARTS

We'll probably follow the Ambleside rotation for picture studies and composer studies, except that I want to include Tom Thomson in this year's studies...it's a good year to do this since at least one museum within reach will be hosting a Thomson exhibit.

Art instruction: this is pretty much open. Crayons, although she loves to craft, is going through a spell of thinking that she can't draw, so it's not something I'm going to push right now. Ponytails has her own artistic interests she's working on. We will incorporate narration drawings and other activities into the year's work and leave it at that. (I was pretty happy, though, to find tins of watercolour pencils and charcoal pencils at Dollarama this weekend for $1.25 each.)

LATIN

We'll be following the lessons in Our Roman Roots, probably three times a week.

FRENCH

I had planned to have Ponytails start one of the Mission Monde levels, and work something out myself for Crayons. When I got started working on Crayons' curriculum, I realized that we could probably do at least the first half of the year together, and then maybe get MM for Ponytails after Christmas. I looked at the Ontario ministry guidelines for grade 4 and grade 8 French, and they're really not that complicated...no offense to anyone who might be offended by that, I just mean that, for a ministry of education outline, it's pretty simple and clear what's supposed to be taught, and we can cover that with our own books. Our theme is going to be Les Insectes, based on a Canadian activity book (from a used book sale) called Les Insectes (surprise). We'll learn bugs along with verbs.

I think that's it for now...

What's ahead in the Treehouse homeschool?

Up in the Treehouse, Mama Squirrel has been hunched over a desk with a pen in her furry paw, post-it notes stuck to her tail, and a look in her eyes similar to that of a determined but frustrated suitcase-packer.

However, that's not a very leisurely place to be, for either Mama Squirrel or the Squirrelings. And the answer, of course, is not to cram everything in tighter, but to let go of what most likely won't matter on the trip. Or afterwards.

Leisure is having the freedom (time, space, opportunity) to discover what makes you fully human.

Okay.

But we are still going to fit in a travel-sized package of Latin this year. And work on French, in which we have gotten unavoidably but sadly behind.

Crayons, going into Grade 4, will be doing Ambleside Online's Year 4, more or less, which covers mostly American history of the 1700's. (We won't be reading This Country of Ours or Abigail Adams.) Geography, nature, and some of the science will be different. However, we're at a very interesting point with the two Squirrelings that are left homeschooling, since some of the Year 4 books also appear on Carol's Pre-7 book list, which we like very much and which gave us a base for planning Ponytails' Grade 8. So this year we'll be doing Age of Fable and It Couldn't Just Happen together, along with Shakespeare and some of the usual other together-things.

Ponytails will have two strands of history: Augustus Caesar's World by Genevieve Foster, and world/Canadian history from 1865 to 1965, using The Story of the World Volume 4 and The Story of Canada which covers, in this squirrel's opinion, too much too fast to be a favourite CM resource, but which is good for a middle-school look at Confederation, the World Wars and so on.

Math will be mostly Math Mammoth for Crayons and Key To books for Ponytails, although we'll also be doing some math journalling. Crayons will be reading Jean-Henri Fabre's The Story Book of Science and doing some Benjamin Franklin science experiments (maybe these, maybe these). Ponytails will be continuing to study science with Mr. Fixit (a.k.a. Dad) but will also have a (short) science reading list.

I'll post more details as I pull them from my tail notebook.

Duplo becomes a learn-to-read tool

Filth Wizardry has a great idea for repurposing Duplo blocks.

Cooking without recipes: Summer Edition

What's for supper?

Pizza Pasta. I had thought of making Pizza Roll-ups, but it was too hot to turn on the oven. So this is what I did: browned a pound of ground chicken in a non-stick skillet, added some cut-up pepperoni, a few mushrooms, a chopped green pepper and a bit of canned pasta sauce, and let all that cook while I cooked a potful of fusilli. Just before the end I melted some mozzarella and cheddar over the top of the skillet.

BTW, one of the best frugal and energy-saving tips I've tried recently from the Tightwad Gazette books is the pasta method from the late Mary Leggewie of HomeschoolChristian.com. Bring the water to a boil, add pasta, bring it back to a boil, turn off the heat, cover the pot, and cook for about twenty minutes, stirring a couple of times to keep the pasta from sticking. It really works!

Raw vegetable plate: cucumbers, zucchini sticks, a few carrot sticks.

Chocolate Microwave Cake with Raspberry Sauce. (our post about microwave cake) The raspberry sauce was made like this: I partly thawed some frozen raspberries (a couple of cupfuls?). In a saucepan I combined two cups of water, two tablespoons of cornstarch, and a couple of good spoonfuls of raspberry fruit spread; I cooked that until bubbly and then added it to the berries, and we drizzled the sauce over slices of chocolate cake.

Happy Canada Day from Dewey

Bettina's Baked Cottage Pudding

From A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband

I've tried versions of Cottage Pudding before and always found them too dry or bland--I prefer baking muffin batter in a pan if I want something quite plain, or vanilla microwave cake, or maybe the biscuit batter from our shortcake recipe. But Bettina's version--with a couple of adaptations for 2010--is quite good, and three out of five Squirrels would like to have it again. Mama Squirrel was unsure of the amounts on this, but it made plenty--especially because only three out of five squirrels tried it.

Bettina's Baked Cottage Pudding with Lemon Sauce

1 cup flour
1 2/3 tsp. baking powder (who wants to measure that? I just put in about 2 tsp.)
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 cup sugar
1 well-beaten egg
1/2 cup milk
2 tbsp. melted butter (I used canola oil)
1/4 tsp. vanilla or lemon extract (I used lemon)

"Mix dry ingredients, add egg and milk. Beat well and add melted butter and extract. Bake 25 minutes in a well buttered mould. Serve hot with the following sauce...." My notes: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease or spray a small lidded casserole, and bake for about half an hour or until the edges are pulling away from the pan. Let it stay in the pan while you make the sauce.

Lemon Sauce

1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tbsp. flour (I used about 2 tbsp.)
1/2 tsp. salt (I used about half that)
1 cup hot water
1 tsp. butter or to taste
1 tsp. lemon extract or 1/2 tsp. lemon juice (I used 1/2 tsp. lemon extract and that was plenty)

With a whisk, combine dry ingredients in a saucepan. Slowly add the hot water. Cook over medium heat until thick and bubbly (this only takes a few minutes if you start with hot water). Mix in the butter and flavouring.

Now I'm sure Bettina would have nicely unmoulded her pudding and then served it drizzled with some of the sauce, maybe passing the rest in one of her wedding-china sauce servers. But this is what I did: I left the cake in the pan, went around the edges with a sharp knife and also sort of cut through it three times each way. Then I just poured all the sauce over the top and served it from the pan.

(And now you know why housewives were so happy to discover self-saucing puddings!)

"Permission to be serious": Carol Bly on education

I just finished reading the late Carol Bly's Beyond the Writer's Workshop. This wasn't much like any other how-to-write book I've ever read...most of them are set up more like "classes," with "lessons", or are at least fairly sequential. This was more like having a very smart but very intense person come for a visit and talk your ear off for a week about everything that's on her mind and then some...and then try to connect it all back to writing.

I found myself getting more and more frustrated with her obvious biases, her meanderings into psychology, her anecdotes that were intended to prove a point about writing or thinking but that just made me wonder more about why she was telling them or why she had reacted to certain events as she did. Then I got to the chapter on teaching writing to elementary students, and this:

"Throughout the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth, schoolteachers were likely to be joy killers--they were people who disciplined us for not practicing penmanship just so or for misspelling or for laughing aloud in class or for not folding our hands on our desks. In reaction, first the "progressive" schools, then other private schools, and finally the public schools, began in the 1930's to encourage individual personality and especially fun in elementary classrooms. Quite right too.

"The irony is that American children have been watching kidding and practical jokes on television for fifty years. They are a long way past the days when children learned somber hand skills and violin playing in the cultivated living rooms of their elders. These days they are tossed into fun day-care groupings at less than age one. They are bused to fun, interactive museum demonstrations. At home they master fun computer games at an early age. They are choking with fun. Schools of education....need to pull up rein and consider whether or not a better task for education might be saving the children's own serious nature, not barreling them into still more and more superficial fun.

"We had better do the oddly psychological work of giving children "permission" to be serious."--Carol Bly, Beyond the Writers' Workshop, published in 2000.

In that regard, I think Carol Bly and Charlotte Mason had a common philosophy. The business of education is a serious one, and though it can also be enjoyable, we need to take learning seriously and make sure our children understand that as well.

I had a short conversation this week with my nine-year-old about that. We were reading The Insect Man, Eleanor Doorly's quirky but interesting little biography of Jean-Henri Fabre. Did you know that, at least according to this book, Fabre lost his teaching position and was essentially drummed out of town for promoting higher education for girls? I pointed out to my daughter that we women enjoy a huge privilege that wasn't available to many girls even in the 1800's. I did not go into the fact that it is not available to girls in many parts of the world even today, but it was on my mind as well. If our right to an education was so important that someone like Jean-Henri Fabre was willing to put his job on the line for it, what right do we have to trivialize it?

Ricotta desserts, and ricotta whipped topping

"Bettina" might not approve of putting ricotta cheese to use in desserts, and usually it is too expensive for us to recommend it as a frugal ingredient; but our local supermarket occasionally runs specials on an Italian-style brand of dairy products--their Parmesan, their ricotta and so on--and that's when we pick some up.

We haven't made frozen Tortoni for awhile, but we do sometimes make Cocoa Ricotta Cream when we have a container of cheese on hand. It's very good, but you don't want it after a heavy meal--ricotta desserts aren't usually sweet, but they are rich.

Tonight we had one of those sale-priced 2-cup containers in the fridge, and Father's Day company coming (just Grandpa Squirrel, but he's important), and strawberries and raspberries to make shortcake with, but no whipped cream. We could have used plain yogurt, or just had the fruit on top of the plain biscuit cake, but there was the ricotta, and Mama Squirrel remembered a recipe for Ricotta Topping in the Goldbecks' American Wholefoods Cuisine. So that's what we did. Short version: run the ricotta cheese plus some yogurt plus some honey plus a little vanilla through the food processor, or beat with electric beaters until fluffy. The recipe also called for a bit additional cream cheese, but that seems optional if your ricotta is already pretty creamy.

An option to make all this more frugal would be to use a homemade version of ricotta cheese, like the Hillbilly Housewife's version. I've made it and used it in main dishes, but haven't yet tried it in desserts. If I do, I'll let you know.

The Ladybugs' Picnic

Made by Ponytails for the Apprentice's "young ladies'" party this weekend: Taste of Home's Ladybug Appetizers. (Photo at that link.)

Notes from our experience making them:

1. Use sturdy crackers. We forgot to get round crackers and settled for saltines, but after even a couple of hours in the fridge, the crackers started to get a bit limp. They still tasted good but you had to pick them up carefully.

2. We didn't have any chives, so left them out of the cheese mixture and used bits of parsley stems for the antennae. (Somebody on the Taste of Home site commented that ladybugs don't have antennae anyway. But we thought they were cuter with them.)

3. Ponytails tried to follow the exact directions at first, but found that with our tomatoes (we had grape tomatoes, not cherry) she needed to use more than the half-tomato recommended to make a ladybug that looked like more than just a splotch of red on the cracker. Instead of cutting the half in half, she just put a slit in the back for "wings." Once you've done a couple, you'll see what we mean. Just cut them the way that makes sense to you.

4. Black food colouring added to white cream cheese and sour cream doesn't make black, it makes gray, as any kid who's ever painted can tell you. After adding quite a bit of food colouring and still getting somewhere between purple and gray, we experimented with adding a bit of brown and a bit of royal blue, and that did darken it a bit more; on the tomatoes, it did look pretty much black. I think another time I would just try for purple spots or whatever you think looks good on a ladybug. (Maybe yellow spots?)

5. In spite of all our little difficulties, Ponytails did a fantastic job decorating the bugs, and all the young ladies were Amazed.

I'm in the mood for frugal

For the next little while, we're going to hang out with my new frugal superhero: Bettina from A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband, by Louise Bennett Weaver and Helen Cowles Le Cron, 1917 edition. (Downloadable in lots of formats.)

The recipes in this book, as the planksconstance review says, are, um, very 1917. They remind me of the ones in my great-aunt's 1920's Modern Priscilla Cookbook. Lots of canned pimiento, beefsteak, and white sauce over everything. One quick little dinner Bettina whips up has no less than three sauces made from scratch. But on the other hand, Bettina is a generous soul who likes to help out her not-quite-as-economical friends; she's up on all the latest fuel-saving technology (did you know fireless cookers were a hot kitchen gadget in the early 20th century?); and her principles, if not always her exact recipes, are worth examining.

The Depression Kitchen blog also reviewed different editions of this book--there were revisions in the 1930's and the 1940's. Only the first edition is actually online. "Bettina's" sequel, A Thousand Ways to Please a Family, isn't online either--maybe somebody will upload it sometime. (Note: Kessinger Publishing has reprinted both books.)

Anyway, our first look at Bettina's housekeeping comes in the first chapter, as she and Bob (who looks like a 1917 Ken doll) return from their honeymoon and make themselves a "simple" dinner from their emergency shelf (and from a few fresh things left by relatives who guessed they'd be returning soon).

So what does Bettina keep in her pantry? Canned pimientos, of course. Canned everything: tuna, salmon, dried beef, corn, mushrooms, peas, string beans, lima beans, devilled ham, tomatoes, condensed milk. Marshmallows (definitely something you can't live without!). Salted codfish. Cookies. Olives. Pickles. It reminds me of Mr. Drucker's Deluxe Special. (Scroll down there.)

And what do Bettina and Bob cook up for themselves in ten minutes? Creamed tuna on toast strips--and buttered rolls. (have some bread with your bread, dear?) Canned peas with butter sauce--I assume that's the only way they could choke down the canned peas. Strawberry preserves that magically appear from somewhere. Hot chocolate with marshmallows (obviously they had some chocolate, sugar and vanilla and a few other staples).

Bob is very impressed. Obviously the marshmallows helped.

So what's the point of all this, now, in 2010?

1. Have some sort of easy, long-lasting food put by, both for major-major emergencies like ice storms, and for more everyday last-minute meals. Your shelf doesn't have to include pimiento or capers or preserved kumquats. What will you and your family actually eat? Years ago tofu was our after-work-fast-meal standby, but since then some of the Squirrels have found they can't eat soy, so that's off the list. Be creative, but also realistic: if your kids like canned baked beans with sliced wieners, then do that. Add in a few carrot sticks and call it a meal. Not everything requires butter sauce. Or marshmallows. If it's peanut butter sandwiches, eat it with thanks, and plan better for next time.

2. Bettina points out that they got better deals on their canned goods by buying in larger amounts. It's the same now. Stock up on staples when or where they're cheapest for you. Brenda says that she buys lots of her favourite canned tomatoes when they're on sale. (Brenda is always a great source of pantry inspiration.)

3. Don't be rummaging through recipes when dinner has to be on the table in twenty minutes. Have a few things you know how to make really quickly--like eggs, or salmon patties, or hot sandwiches. But when you do have time, do a little research. Look for inexpensive, pantry-friendly, adaptable recipes. Student cookbooks are often a good source.
4. Bettina sets great store on having things "nice"--hence the pimiento, the toast strips, the butter sauce. The marshmallows. Not to mention her trim percale bungalow apron. In later chapters she also manages to have some kind of flowers or fruit on the table for decoration. Now I do not wear aprons, and I hardly ever put flowers on the table--bringing the outside in is not always a good idea for Mr. Fixit's allergies. But there are other ways to make even a quick meal a little better than just "the ordinary." What can you add for "some little surprise," as Charlotte Mason suggested? Sometimes I find something nice on sale--shelf-stable juice, chow mein noodles, a box of cherry tomatoes--and I save it till we need a little extra touch with dinner. Leftover pumpkin doughnuts or something like that add a little humour, if perhaps too much sugar, to the breakfast table.

5. Enjoy the people you're eating with. That's why Bob and Bettina are such a cute couple.

Just Carrot Cake

This isn't the customizable Blinky-Blink Carrot Cake I posted about a couple of years ago. This one has no nuts, no coconut, no raisins, and no pineapple--which is exactly what The Apprentice requested for her birthday this week. (It's also dairy-free, unless you frost it with cream cheese frosting.) I found it in The Harrowsmith Cookbook Volume 1. It makes lots (a 9 x 13 inch pan), and has a noticeable honey flavour since you're not blocking it out with other ingredients.

Carrot Cake

submitted by Lynn Hill, Ilderton, Ontario

3 cups flour (I used unbleached)
2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. cinnamon (I used only 1 1/2 tsp.)
1 cup honey (I had only 3/4 cup honey, so I filled in with 1/4 cup brown sugar)
1 cup oil
4 eggs
2 cups grated carrot
1 cup raisins or chopped nuts, optional

Measure dry ingredients into bowl. Stir and add honey, oil and eggs. Beat hard by hand for 1 minute. Add carrots and nuts/raisins if desired, and beat to mix.

Pour into a greased 9 x 13 inch pan and bake at 350 degrees F for 35 minutes. But be careful--it will brown quickly because of the honey, and might not take quite that long--ours was done sooner. As soon as it smells "done," it probably is.

We covered it with cream-cheese frosting and put an enormous number of candles on it.

A package from Hampstead House

We don't get brand-new books all that often.

But I saw some things that might be useful in the last HH catalogue, and I had a credit note for some stuff that had gone out of stock, so I decided to send in an order.

Violet Comes to Stay: this will be a birthday gift for a young relative later this year.

World in a Box: I posted about this earlier today.

Watching Water Birds, by Jim Arnosky.

Mouse Tail Moon--a book of poems, also for a birthday gift.

Stars & Planets: a book with lots of tabs, things to unfold, photos, and a poster in the back. Even The Apprentice thought this was pretty cool.

Photos: Ponytails

Learning Geography (Things we like, including Aunty Dot)

Aunty Dot's Incredible Adventure Atlas, by Eljay Yildirim, is Crayons' favourite geography resource right now [2013: and still is!]. We bought it a few years ago from Hampstead House; it was published in 1997 but is still listed on Amazon. Aunty Dot and Uncle Frank have won a trip around the world; the book is full of their letters home (real letters in real envelopes), maps of their travels, and photos of their souvenirs. "Well, here we are in busy Beijing. Elephants weren't such a good idea--if we'd stuck with them we would never have gotten here! Beijing is a real contrast from our journey across the Tibetan Plateau, where we hardly met a soul. There were plenty of yaks, though--very useful animals!"

Children'sAtlas.com: "The Book, CD-Rom, and Website That Work Together." I posted about this rummage-sale find a few weeks ago. Published in 1997, still occasionally available (on Amazon); the CD-Rom runs fine on our computer but the website is gone. Crayons found this a lot of fun and fairly challenging, although she bought up all the "souvenirs" so fast, by playing a couple of favourite games and winning a certain number of points, that she lost some of her interest in trying out the other activities...we'll probably bring it out again next fall anyway.

We found Hammond's Discovering Maps in a sale bin at a department store. There is another edition available on Amazon, but this one is pretty up to date (2006). Ponytails has been using this for general map skills, and the Apprentice also found it useful for a twelfth-grade class that required knowing facts about the "world's longest rivers" etc. It also offers little tips like the fact that if you point at the North Star with one hand and at the horizon with the other, the resulting angle will tell you how many degrees north or south of the equator you are. (How you're supposed to measure the angle while holding your arms like that, I'm not sure, but anyway...)

Maps and Globes: a classic Reading Rainbow selection--looks like a little kids' book, but there's a fair amount of information in there. "Globes (unlike flat maps) are shaped exactly like the earth--like a ball or sphere. They are very tiny models--the earth is really 30 to 40 million times bigger than the globe in your classroom. Globes, because they are round, put all the world's geography in its proper place; they give the truest possible view of the whole earth."

Geography Songs--don't all homeschoolers know about these? "The British Isles, the British Isles..." The Apprentice used to sing the Scandinavia song at the top of her lungs on the swingset, which the elderly lady next door found amusing as well as educational.

[2013 Update:  There were a couple of other resources originally included in this post, but they turned out not to really make the grade, so I've cut them out.]

Food we really eat, recipes we really make

Specially for Ponytails: here's a link to the webpage for CBC's Best Recipes Ever, a cooking show we both like to watch. If you like Canadian Living-style family-oriented recipes, this is your show. If you like to see how those recipes are actually supposed to look, this is your show. If you like food adjectives like ooey-gooey-goodness, this is definitely your show.

Very educational.

New nightwear for Crystal

Crystal is Crayons' 18-inch doll. We found her at a yard sale last summer. She's very pretty but needs The Apprentice to help her with a bad case of bed-head.

The patterns are from the doll pattern book that goes with Bunkhouse Books' Stitches and Pins. There are doll-size patterns available for all the sewing books, including the boys' book Buckles and Bobbins (although the doll clothes there are still modelled by girl dolls!). They also sell individual patterns, including the pajamas, but the books are a better deal. You can probably follow the doll package patterns without having the main book to refer to, especially if you have medium sewing skills and have done doll clothes or real-size clothes before; but I wouldn't give just the doll package to a young or inexperienced sewer unless there was someone around to help. The patterns are full size and easy to photocopy, but the directions are brief and (at least in the pajama pattern) occasionally forget to mention things. The Triangle Scarf, Pajama Pants and Top turned out well; I tried the Slippers but they didn't stay on Crystal's feet. [Forgot to mention: Crayons did some of the sewing on this along with Mama Squirrel.]

If the fabric looks vaguely familiar, it's because we used the leftovers from last year's "Sense and Sensibility" apron project.

"OK, guys, photo shoot's over."

They don't make them like this anymore

Some finds from a Saturday yard sale...History of Ancient Rome, by Jean Defrasne, from the Myths and Legends series, the same small books as Stories of Alexander the Great and Stories of the Norsemen. They're unassuming little dustjacketed books, translated from French and printed in Britain in the 1960's. They have only a few pictures. But they sure do keep your interest...people in these books scale mountains, stagger and collapse, harass the Carthaginian army, and resist the onslaught. Centurions shout commands in hoarse voices. The trampled soil disappears in pools of blood.

The vocabulary is challenging:

"Already, Hannibal was growing weaker. His thoughts seemed to be far away with his native city of Carthage now, abased and defeated.

"'I have done everything for my fatherland,' he continued slowly, 'but what has my fatherland done for me? After Zama I was appointed Head of State. I restored order. I filled our treasury with gold, I covered our countryside with olive groves and orchards, I prepared our revenge, prudently but persistently. My adversaries betrayed me to the Romans and so I was exiled, declared a public enemy, my house was razed to the ground and no one was even allowed to pronounce my name.'

"He shivered; his strong body began to struggle against the grip of death.

"'Carthage,' he said, staring with glazed eyes, 'land of greedy and cowardly jackals, you will die. Your conquerors will scatter salt on your ravaged soil, and your proud elders will end their days in the underground cells of Rome.'"

I also found a book called When the World was Rome, by Polly Schoyer Brooks and Nancy Zinsser Walworth. Apparently the same authors wrote books on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but I'm not familiar with them. The format is kind of like one of those junior Time-Life books, sort of a chunky hardcover with some black and white photos and drawings. The language is fairly difficult for children, so I'd guess that the book would be good for maybe the middle school years, for students who still like the feel of a bigger book. This one doesn't have the staggerings and shiverings of the Myths and Legends volume...it's more straightforward history, but not uninteresting. Sample:

"But power soon corrupted Nero and he sank lower and lower into vice, losing all sense of decency and morality. When he divorced his wife to marry the vicious, seductive Poppea, his domineering mother tried to interfere. Poppaea taunted him with being afraid of his mother, who, she said, was plotting his downfall in order to rule as empress herself. So Nero consented to poison his mother, but Agrippina had antidotes for poison. Nero then staged a shipwreck, but his indomitable mother escaped and swam to safety. Finally he left it up to his soldiers, who stabbed her to death."

And on that note...

No-bake fruit and chocolate balls, latest incarnation

I've posted about this "recipe" before, but it changes every time I make it. It can be made gluten-free, dairy-free or whatever depending on the chips, cereal etc. that you use.

Latest version, with amounts very indefinite: most of a 12-oz. bag of chocolate chips; half a bag of unsweetened coconut; 1 package (about 12-15) dried figs, with their hard little stems chopped off; small amount of orange juice; and a couple of cupfuls of rice krispie-type cereal, divided. Also something to roll the balls in, either coconut or something else like ground oatmeal or graham crumbs. Run all ingredients except for about half of the cereal through the food processor, until it is a fairly solid, slightly sticky mass of pulverized stuff. Add a little more orange juice if you have to, but not too much. It's okay if there are still some small bits of chocolate etc. that don't get mashed before the mixture won't move around the bowl any more.

Transfer to a larger bowl and mix in the remaining krispie-type cereal, enough to give it some texture but not so much that it won't hold together in balls. Roll in small balls and roll the balls in coconut or other coating...or leave plain if you prefer.

I don't always have rice-krispie-type cereal around and you can make very good balls without it, but adding it seems to lighten up the dense fruit-chocolate mixture a bit, and it also adds a bit of crunch.

Math is more than minusing

Ruth Beechick once complained that school readers used to push all the really interesting stories to the back of the book, and maybe you got to them at the end of the year. Supplements in math class can be like that too--if you do them when you get around to them, you may never get around to them. We don't always have to be bound to the Big Fat Math Books, at least not all year long.

I think that's what was wrong with most of the math education I got during school: most of it, progressive as we were all supposed to be in the '70's, was simply arithmetic. A few angles here and there, but mostly it was about doing the basic operations. Once in awhile they hauled out the expensive kits of attribute blocks, or gave us laminated cards with "math experiences" on them, but even the teachers didn't really know how to use that kind of math stuff, so it was always back to arithmetic in the end.

Which, in a way, didn't serve us too badly; at least, as I've said before, I do know my times tables and I don't get caught too often on those silly trick questions like "what's 8 divided by 1/2?".* But I also hit that girl's grade 4 math block around long division, and it was never the same after that. I do know for sure that we never did any math research, or studied mathematicians, or looked at mathematics as something big and interesting that grownup people did. It was just what you did after reading class and before gym.

So I was very interested to read "Mild-Mannered Math No More" by Cheryl Bastarache in The Old Schoolhouse, Winter 2008-9 issue, and to also find it online. This article talks about basing your math course around a math notebook that's full of more than just sums: you can include "notes, copywork, research, challenges, responses, and fun stuff." In other words, like a scientist's journal, or a Book of the Centuries, or a Latin notebook, or any other notebook-with-a-plan like that. A book full of stuff that's actually interesting...and, as Cheryl says, if you're brave enough, you could make that "the centerpiece of your curriculum."

*The answer is 16. 8 divided by 1/2 means how many halves fit into 8?

Ooh, oxygen!

Fun with chemistry and Jean-Henri Fabre: click on the PDF of Eleanor Doorly's Insect Man and read the chapter on pages 20-21. (Penelope, Geraldine et al are an English family visiting France and trying to find all the places where Fabre lived.) We happen to have a set of Bonjour magazines from Mama Squirrel's own school days and one of them has photos of Avignon, which we used along with this chapter. Since most people haven't saved their 1977 Bonjours, you can look at these pictures on Wikipedia.

Well, at least nobody got killed.

Rummage Sale Geography

Something neat we found last Saturday: the Interfact Reference Children's Atlas. And the CD-Rom still runs on our XP system, even though it's ten years old. Not bad for a dollar!

One more reason I am still liking Math Mammoth

Is it only coincidence that the two math programs we have liked best both have the initals MM?

Actually, so did one we didn't like as much, but never mind.

This is what I'm happy about: included in the support materials with the downloadable Grade 3 Light Blue curriculum is a worksheet generator for all the Grade 3 topics! Times tables, measurement, money, clocks, addition, subtraction, everything.

I also like that you get a Canadian version of the money chapter (there's a European one as well)--very helpful.

Switching to this program is probably one of the best things to come out of the Review Crew this year for Crayons. I'm only sorry that I didn't use it earlier with Ponytails, because I think she would have liked it too. (Ponytails has been using some of the Key To books this year.) I know there are lots of other good math programs out there, but I'm happy we got a little shove into using this one.

On birthdays and frugality (links and thoughts)

Getting Freedom From Debt (or Cents to Get Debt-Free) has a guest post about DIY Birthday Cakes.

Nothing New Nothing Wasted has some thoughts on the wastefulness of birthday decorations and disposables.

Here's our own post about Birthdays, Frugal and Otherwise, from a few years ago, with a link to this frugal-birthdays post at The Common Room. And here are the posts from Crayons' Horse Party (last year), Flower Fairy Party Menu (two years ago, with extra comments about the cupcakes), and Butterfly Birthday (five years ago). Other ideas we've used are meeting friends at a park (booking a (free) gazebo in case of drizzle) or having a party that's mostly outside--does save on decorations. Or a tea party for little girls--if you already have the teacups and things, your decorating problems are solved. I read, I think in the Tightwad Gazette, about a parent who took birthday guests to either a flea market or a thrift shop, giving them each a couple of dollars to spend. As far as the issue of the guests bringing presents goes...we've struggled with that one, and solved it at one party by asking them to bring supplies for MCC school kits instead. (That inspired one of the guests, who asked the kids at her own next birthday to bring needed supplies for an animal shelter. We've also been to a wintertime party where it was requested that we bring mittens, hats etc. for a mission for homeless people.) Our kids have been to some very creative parties too where the main activity was sewing or some other craft...one of them brought home a rice-filled hot bag one time. For the Apprentice's ninth birthday, we hot-glued things on painters' caps (cheap from the paint store) and had backyard games like charades.

One idea that was less successful for us was the time we took little Apprentice and her friends to a McDonald's playland--I posted about that a long time ago. That was a year when we opted for "simple" (as in "make it simple for us") instead of "frugal"--but some of our "frugal" parties have gotten better reactions from the guests. This weekend's bowling party was more on the "simple" than "frugal" end, and we did use some disposables (because it's hard to manage china plates at the bowling alley), but there's nothing to say that you should never have parties like that either. We like to support that family-run business, they charge a reasonable price for an hour's bowling plus free chips and drinks, and it was something that Crayons was really looking forward to. We thought about doing a home-based superheroes party, but this time around, she really wanted to do something like bowling...and after a busy rest-of-the-weekend, I was just as glad not to have to figure out party games. So I don't apologize for that. (Besides, we lucked out--the people who had the party room just before us left all their pink balloons up on the wall!)

Anglewings or angelwings?

We're not sure--anyway, this looks just like the butterfly that Crayons found this morning. Folded up, it looks like a dead leaf--but when it opens, you can see the tortoiseshell pattern.

Forgotten fractions?

I found this article (and quiz) by Brian D. Rude through a comment on another blog.

Can you pass the fractions test he gives his first-year college students? Can your kids? And what does that say about the success/failure of North American education?

A Month with Charlotte Mason, #30 (On Dandelions)

How are we supposed to end this?

We started with A Leisurely Education. Freedom from the small round of busywork, opportunity to grab hold of something bigger, learning to see ourselves (including our children) more as we are in God's time and in God's universe. Living without futility.

And I'm ending with dandelions.

The Treehouse backyard this week has been covered with yellow dandelions. Much-maligned little flowers that provoke criticism from the neighbours (spraying's in disfavour, but they would like to see us at least hard at work rooting them out). They're not good for much except making more dandelions (okay, I know you can eat them too). The first big batch are either going to seed or were cut off last night with the lawnmower, but they'll be back. [As in, within 24 hours.] Nobody really gets rid of dandelions forever, even if they want to--they're stubborn. And we don't want to get rid of them. In spite of the seasonal allergies kicking in around here, we like our dandelions.

I get the feeling that cultivating a yard full of unfashionable dandelions is somewhat like our approach to education, and maybe our approach to life. This is a time of too many conflicting ideas, at least around lawn care. Lawn spraying is now illegal here (we didn't spray anyway), but people still expect you to have a weed-free, dandelion-free, well-trimmed piece of grass around your house...more or less the same as anyone else's. Educational powers talk about diversity while squeezing out the individual. They dump a lot of fertilizer, if you'll pardon the metaphor, and try to control what grows and what doesn't.

Keep the dandelions growing, if only as a reminder that our natures are stubborn and won't be satisfied with educational sludge. Leave enough room for the intangibles and the poetry--as Cindy said, we can always catch up on grammar later.

A game of romps (better, so far as mere rest goes, than games with laws and competitions), nonsense talk, a fairy tale, or to lie on his back in the sunshine, should rest the child, and of such as these he should have his fill.--Charlotte Mason

A Month with Charlotte Mason, #29: Fragmentation, trivialization, and redemption

"Our four children came home from their private boarding school in Rhodesia for the last time. They were well-dressed, well-shod, well-fed, prosperous-looking children. Only when one listened to their vapid chatter, limited by both vocabulary and knowledge, did one glimpse the distressing poverty of their minds."--Joyce McGechan, "To Prosper in Good Life and Good Literature," Parents Review, 1967

I've been struggling to write the last two posts in this series, trying to decide on an ending. I think I just had this one handed to me in one of Grandpa Squirrel's Toronto weekend papers. Click over to Saturday's Globe and Mail and read Margaret Wente's interview with Camille Paglia. [LINK FIXED] (Warning: several of the comments afterward contain language that is just not nice.)

I do not agree with her viewpoint on other important issues, but she has gotten the problems of education absolutely correct. Just--wow.

"When I went into graduate school at Yale, the professors of poetry were the leading lights on campus. Can you imagine anything comparable today?"

"Art history survey courses are in the verge of extinction. Teachers have no sense that they are supposed to inculcate a sense of appreciation and respect and awe at the greatness of what these artists have done in the past. The entire purpose of higher education is broadening. But since then we've witnessed the fragmentation and trivialization of the curriculum."

"The long view of history is absolutely crucial....I believe in chronology and I believe it's our obligation to teach it. I've met fundamentalist Protestants who've just come out of high school and read the Bible. They have a longer view of history than most students who come out of Harvard."

"Educators need to analyze the culture and figure out what’s missing in the culture and then supply it. Students find books onerous. But I still believe that the great compendium of knowledge is contained in books."

"At the primary level, what kids need is facts. They need geography, chronology, geology. I'm a huge believer in geology – it's all about engagement in physical materials and the history of the world. But instead of that, the kids get ideology. They're taught that global warming has been caused by factories. They have no idea there’s been climate change throughout history. And they're scared into thinking that tsunamis are coming to drown New York."

How can we stay out of this "landscape of death" and create an oasis of hope? According to Camille Paglia, the answer is not in teaching critical thinking, ideology, or hysteria over drowning polar bears. It's in poetry, geology, the long view of history, physical books, geography, art appreciation. It's the struggle against fragmentation and trivialization. Question is, will anyone listen?

"Our shabby little crew, with few material advantages, have a good life. They work hard at lessons and on the farm. Then duties done, they run free on the veld, catching butterflies, collecting stones, watching birds, gathering wild flowers. Evenings for them are all too short. Specimens must be identified, labelled, catalogued. There are still unread books on the bookshelves, as well as old friends to be re-read. Daddy must hear someone's latest effort at poetry composition, or told the anecdote about George IV's false teeth.

"Thanks to Charlotte Mason and the PNEU school these children of ours are, in fact, rich."--Joyce McGechan

A Month with Charlotte Mason, #28: Sunday Ponderings from the Parents Review

"Geology I dabbled in, having met with "Lyell's Principles" in the School Library. A piece of spar still remains which I obtained from the lowest Lias at the deep cutting, then being made, on the London and Birmingham Railway; I loved to gaze from the top of its banks on the three spires of Coventry. The slight knowledge acquired of what was then a new science was like a seed thrown into the ground, which did not germinate till long years after. I still eagerly pursued Entomology, chiefly with Wratislaw."--"Memories of Arnold and Rugby 60 Years Ago," by a Member of the School, in 1835, '36 and '37. Parent's Review, Volume 7, 1896, pg. 127

"Fifty years ago, when that famous pioneer of science, Dr. William Buckland, was Professor of Geology in the University of Oxford, it was his pleasant custom on occasion to announce to his class at the close of a lecture, 'Tomorrow, gentlemen, we shall meet at the top of Shotover, at ten o'clock.' And to the top of Shotover Hill the class would ride or walk from Oxford the next morning, and there the professor would talk to them in his vivacious, impressive fashion about the formation of the hill on which they stood, its limestones, clays, ironstones, gravels or fossils, on the evidences of denudation or the methods of stratification. And if things got a bit dull he would take especial delight in giving the most fastidious of the equestrian freshmen a practical lesson in geology by leading their horses through the stickfast mud on the slopes so that they might remember the nature of the Kimmeridge clay. And, doubtless, they did remember it, with the help of Common Room jokes thereon.

"Dr. Buckland, like every great man of science (and if one may presume to judge from programmes alone, like the truly scientific promoters of the work of this Union) was thoroughly convinced of the supreme importance of the school out of school, of out-door education. Buckland used often to say that such geological terms as stratification, denudation, faults,--to mention only a few of the commonest--could never be understood through lecture-room teaching alone. Shotover Hill was to him a lesson in geology, far superior in force to any which could be learnt from books or lectures, however admirable, and however rich the illustration by diagrams or pictures, or even by actual specimens of rocks and fossils. And all such illustrations in the lecture-room itself, Buckland used with a liberality that was utterly astounding and disconcerting to the academic Oxford of his day.

"Yet Buckland was teaching young men, not mere children, and might justly have relied to some extent on their fairly mature intelligence to grasp his verbal explanations of geological phenomena. But with the true teacher's instinct he studied his own mental processes, and asked himself, 'Now, could I really, thoroughly understand what a fault looks like, could I have a vivid mental picture of it from books and diagrams if I had never seen the thing itself in the rocks?' And being aware that the intense reality of his knowledge came purely from his early friendship with the rocks themselves at Lyme Regis, and Bristol, and elsewhere, from a long-continued intimacy with the thing and not the name or even the picture of the thing, he made it his business to bring his students to see the thing itself, since in such a case the thing could not be brought to the students.

"This, then, is the testimony and the practice of one who was a master of earth-lore. No less significant is the evidence of one whose study lay amongst the great stone-books of art. As Buckland was the pioneer of geological studies in Oxford, so was John Henry Parker (now resting in the quiet of St. Sepulchre's, near Jowett and T. H. Green) the pioneer of the study of Historical Architecture. In one of his books on Gothic Architecture, which have been the source of a new joy in life to throngs of students, Mr. Parker tells us with the brief unmistakable words of a master: 'The only real way of thoroughly understanding architectural history is to go about and see the buildings themselves.'"

"If Buckland and Parker thus insist on the necessity of bringing the real thing before the eyes of students of university age so that the thing may teach its own lesson, how much more essential to right understanding is this 'real' teaching for children of school age, and how absolutely the only right sort of teaching for the very young whose school days have not yet come."

--"At School on Hampstead Heath," Parent's Review, by Mrs. Grindrod, 1897