Homeschool Field Trip: The Pink Palace Museum in Memphis

When we have an all-day drive with the kids, we usually try to stop somewhere kid-friendly for a couple of hours at some point during the day. I'd rather arrive at my destination two hours behind schedule than keep two active kids trapped in car seats for 10+ hours of a day.

It's nice for the adults to stretch their legs and see some sights, too, of course!

We had a LOT of back-and-forth driving over the winter break, so I've got a couple more places to share with you, including this detour that we took to the Pink Palace Museum in Memphis. It's an ASTC Passport Program museum, just like our hometown museum, so being members of our hometown science museum means that we get free admission to this one!

Pro tip: Membership in an ASTC Passport Program museum is 1000% worth the membership fee. We visit Passport Program museums for free every single time we travel--not only is it incredible value for our money, then, but it's also educational, entertaining, and it sure as hell breaks up a long drive!

On this particular winter break trip, we spent a happy couple of hours exploring the Pink Palace. It wasn't as hands-on of a museum as Syd would prefer, but it did have some cool immersive exhibits to explore, as well as the usual informative displays:

I have never seen this before! It uses near-infrared light that doesn't fluoresce on the veins, so you can see them in the contrast! Those are my veins in that image! 

Syd is always willing to pretend to be attacked by animatronic dinosaurs!

 

There was an exhibit on microscopy that the adults found interesting, but it also included this microscope that's exactly like the one that Darwin used. We're currently listening to the Calpurnia Tate series in the car (and it's an AMAZING series--go read it!), so a Darwin-era microscope has excellent relevance!

Will, of course, loves museums even when they don't contain splashy, hands-on exhibits, and I'm pretty sure that she read every single sign and looked at every single display in the entire place. Here she is checking out bird skeletons!

hummingbird vs. emu

 

One of my favorite exhibits was the one on evolution. It includes fossil models that aren't behind a display case, so that you can actually see them up close from all angles, and it even puts many of them into context for you:

We did a human evolution unit early on in our homeschool days, and it's still one of my favorite subjects to continue to explore.

There was also a huge, fabulous FAQ schooling the citizens of Memphis on evolution:

And that's how one of my new fantasy projects is to create a religious-style tract on evolution, and then leave it under people's windshield wipers and pass it out in science museums.

Would I get the same horrified reactions from others that I gave to that horrible religious tract-wielding man at the Field Museum? Karma always prevails!

Junior Ranger Field Trip: Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site

We really did need to make the 11-hour drive from my hometown back to our home town in one day. And yet, the children were both writing an essay the next week, and one of the possible subjects for this essay is the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School...

On this 11-hour drive, we were driving right through Little Rock.

There is actually a National Historic Site, complete with visitor center and museum, for Little Rock Central High School.

And that National Historic Site has a Junior Ranger program.

Obviously, we went there.

My Master's in Library Science with an emphasis on Special Collections requires me to tell you that you really shouldn't write over the displays, but when the children have a booklet to fill out and no clipboard, I generally can't bring myself to enforce this.

 On the way to the site, we discussed the two main points of the essay prompt--the significance of the event, and how it inspires you--and in the museum, I took photos of almost every informational sign, which I've since printed out so that the children can use them as resources:

Since it was freezing outside and raining, we didn't hike around the outside of the school, and since we were on a schedule, we didn't take the guided tour of it, either. I am comforting myself with the fact that it's the events that took place at the school that are important, not the building or its neighborhood.

I still wish I'd taken that guided tour, though!

Nevertheless, the museum was excellent, immersed Will (Syd has less patience for museums, but wandered around mostly patiently while Will read every. Single. Sign), and offered a thorough explanation of the event, as well as the context to help one understand its historical and cultural significance.

You can see the high school in the background--it's still an active high school, and school was, of course, in session on this day.

 The kids did, indeed, earn their Junior Ranger badges--

--and are working on their essays this week. It's an interesting process, writing a research-based essay when most of the research was done in person; I'm encouraging the children to write in the first person, when necessary, and to use their experiences as evidence when relevant. I quickly realized, however, that they still need to look up all the same resources that they would have needed to look up anyway--the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site's website has the timeline facts and other historical details, all the little things that you need for an essay but that you of course didn't memorize from your visit.

I'm hoping, though, that the first-person experience will add depth to the children's writing, as I hope, and do feel confident, that it added depth to their understanding of US history, Civil Rights, politics, and ethics. Will, in particular, seems really interested in government and politics, and I'm eager to offer her the enrichment, whenever possible, that will give her an ever more nuanced understanding of these subjects.

And as a side-effect of her primary source research, she can now do a killer impersonation of a 1950s-era racist Southern politician. Seriously, Faubus, we can HEAR the entitled smugness in your voice!

Work Plans for the Week of January 11, 2016: Back to Work!

Well, I now know exactly one good way to find yourself excited about getting back to the regular schedule of a homeschool week.

Over our extra-long break, I did require the kids to work on their Math Mammoth regularly, and Will to continue memorizing her spelling words (she has a spelling bee this weekend!), and the kids managed to earn TWO new Junior Ranger badges (Syd chose to re-earn a third one!) and visit a new-to-us science and history museum. Nevertheless, I'm happy today to be back on a regular schedule.

Well, I *say* I'm happy, but Syd didn't wake up until 10:00, primarily because I kept them both up until 11:30 last night to watch the new Sherlock episode, so we'll see if I'm still happy when we're doing most of today's schoolwork tonight.

You'll notice that I reworked our work plans over the break. I had been giving out a second sheet just for the kids' chore list, but two sheets are easier to lose and more inefficient and wasteful than one sheet, so I figured out how to squeeze everything onto one page. Now the kids' daily chores are listed in their plans to check off along with their schoolwork--

This is what unloading the dishwasher looks like--they never *quite* put the dishes away where I want them to.

--and the space for special chores is at the bottom--I tend to handwrite in at least one of the chores on the day of, because I like to have the kids help with whatever I especially need help with that day. The chore that's already written in is usually something that's been nagging at me for a while. So, for instance, one of today's chores is written in as refilling the fish tank completely, because the sight of that 3/4 full fish tank has been bothering me, but I decided just this morning that I also cannot STAND having the Christmas decorations up for one more day, so I wrote that in this morning.

I also have been wanting, for a while now, to encourage the children to do more independent studying in projects of their choosing, so I've tentatively incorporated a Project of the Week for this semester. The idea is that over the weekend, the kids, with my help, each choose a project or area of study or activity that they'd like to work on independently over the week. I then have time set aside every day that week for work on that project. This first week, Syd decided that she wants to create three of the recipes from The Nerdy Nummies Cookbook, which I have checked out from the library. She and her dad bought the ingredients for all the recipes last night, and she'll make them this week, probably with adult help. Will's project is to research the perfect flight simulator computer game to buy with the money that her Uncle Chad gave her for Christmas, then to learn how to play it using the joystick that he also gave her--this is a handy way to work around the fact that she's grounded from all non-school screens until Friday, on account of she pitched the world's most ridiculous fit about modeling fraction division with Cuisenaire rods last Friday. We'll see how these projects go!

Books of the Week include a couple more biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr., a couple more books about World War 2, and a few random books that I thought the kids would like--Amelia Bedelia for Syd, horses for Will, etc.

And here's the rest of our week!

MONDAY: Syd is in another time unit in Math Mammoth, while Will is finishing up dividing fractions. I have been surprisingly disappointed with the calculating fraction lessons in Math Mammoth--I feel like I have had to extensively supplement every single one, including making my own lessons in Adobe InDesign that model the calculations in understandable ways. I put so much work into these that I may put them up on Teachers Pay Teachers, so stay tuned!

We do a lot of writing, but I thought that it might be nice to try a more guided unit, so I'm going to experiment with the NaNoWriMo's Young Writers program--unseasonably, of course, but who says that you only have to write your novels in November? Lesson 1, which we'll do today, covers the definition of a novel, asks the kids to describe the characteristics of some of their favorite novels based on this definition, and then has the kids create an ad for one of those favorite novels. I'm curious to see if my two will want to videotape or write our their ads.

We're also going to spend one week a month using the MENSA A Year of Living Poetically curriculum, primarily because I like that the vocabulary and comprehension components of each poem are included. I'll introduce the kids to the poem today, then give them the rest of the week to complete the packet and memorize the poem.

Other work on this day includes our volunteer gig at the local food pantry, studying the spelling lists from the Scripps 2015/2016 spelling bee study guide, and a page from each kid's cursive workbook. We've also got a snowy playdate with a friend at the park this afternoon, and there will 100% be the selling of some Girl Scout cookies at some point. My kids are serious about their cookie goals this year!

TUESDAY: I'll likely be combining geography and history quite a bit during our American Revolution unit study, so before we even begin the history component, I'm having the kids simply memorize the states that were once our 13 original colonies, along with their capitals and geographic locations. I think this will add valuable context to our history studies right from the beginning.

Finally, both children are old enough to compete in the many essay contests that rule our winters--mwa-ha-ha! Happily, one of the possible topics for this particular Black History Month essay contest is the integration of Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Can you guess what city we drove through to and from my hometown last week? Little Rock! Can you guess where one of the places that the kids earned a Junior Ranger badge is? The Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site! We discussed the questions posed by the essay promote both before and after our visit, and so I think they'll be well-prepared to write this essay.

We've got a sledding playdate today, and I wouldn't be surprised if our homeschool group's playgroup on this day also involves sledding!

WEDNESDAY: I had a little time over the break to do some Girl Scout badge research, and so I have a plan to do some badges together as a family, sneaking in yet more academic enrichment as we do so--don't tell! The first badge we're doing together is the Animal Habitats badge for Juniors and the Animal Helpers badge for Cadettes, combining them so that each project that the kids do will count for each badge. On this particular day, we'll be watching episodes from PBS' Nature series (to meet a requirement for the Animal Helpers badge that asks children to research animal/human interactions), and then filling out this animal habitat form for three different animals found in the series (to meet a requirement for the Animal Habitats badge that asks children to research animal habitats).

I am REALLY excited about our cooking lessons! I was given a free copy of Your Kids: Cooking to review, and on this day we start with lesson one, French toast. There's a DVD tutorial that kids can follow along, and extension recipes that kids can cook afterwards that build on the specific French toast skills. Frankly, this book is going to teach me how to cook, too!

Following my essay-writing plan, this is the day that the kids will each write the rough draft of their Little Rock Central High essays.

THURSDAY: Will wants to study rocks and minerals, so I found a 9th grade science textbook that we'll be using for this study. I chose this particular textbook because it begins with a chapter on atoms and elements, and then moves on to chapters on minerals, sedimentary, and igneous rocks. I'd been wanting to cover atoms and elements with the kids, so I'm happy that I don't have to wait for a unit on chemistry to do it. Some of the information in the textbook will be over Syd's head, particularly, but I can help her distill the most important facts while Will absorbs more of the material. As part of this chapter, we'll be making atom models for various elements using beads and wires (and perhaps also using them to explore isotopes and electron energy levels), and the chapter's experiment on isolating the iron from fortified cereal for our STEM lesson on this day. The kids will enjoy picking out some sugar cereal from the grocery store!

FRIDAY: I am VERY excited to study the 2016 election with the kids, especially as Will is super into politics and government. We'll be using Election 2016: A Guide for Young People as our spine, but with a LOT of supplementing. For instance, after reading about all the candidates on this day, I'll be having the kids research each candidate online, finding their photo and main stances, perhaps watching a campaign ad, then making an infographic about each one that will allow us to track their progress throughout the year.

We need to study health this semester, particularly women's health, and most particularly puberty, so on this day the kids will be making a kid-sized model of the human body, complete with organs, just so we know where everything goes.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Ice skating, a spelling bee for Will, and rock climbing for our Girl Scout troop! Also hot chocolate, I think. Maybe a Family Movie Night. Definitely a lot of reading on the couch. Brownies? Perhaps...

As for me, I'll be spending the week working on that health unit, making a couple of etsy orders, dyeing wooden beads for atomic models, doing TONS of Girl Scout cookie sales prep, and rethinking the bedroom nook where the children have their bunk bed. After all, Will needs a place to store her sword collection AND her dragon collection, don't you know?

Last Christmas

This holiday season was long and wearisome, and it still doesn't feel over, as Pappa's funeral was just this morning. Funerals are good only in that you know that after them, you can start to figure out how to feel okay again. It's officially after the funeral, now, so tomorrow I will officially start to figure that out. Feel free to post helpful tips.

And for as much as the New Year's holiday was spent mourning Pappa's death and even the Christmas holiday was spent hospital-bedside--

On Christmas morning, Pappa naps as Syd plays with her brand new Ponies.

--I am requiring myself to remember that quite a lot of it was joyful, as well. We baked a truly astonishing number of Christmas cookies, and decorated some epic gingerbread houses:

We did our usual tour of the most elaborately decorated house in Arkansas, and the town park with a Christmas lights trail and a Christmas train that runs through it:

We have seen every single member of our family currently living in the state, I believe, and even a few other out-of-state family members. The kids' favorite member of our family, however?

This new puppy of my mother's.

We ate ice cream floats from an old-fashioned soda fountain and visited the national historic site again so that Syd could show off her 4th Grader National Parks Pass and earn their Junior Ranger badge for a second time:

Such nice little lions...

...until they're not!

And we did, of course, have a lovely Christmas day:

Time for Daddy to wake up! 

My sweet girl is always the most excited to see others open the gifts that she gives them.

And I love that I caught Will's excitement watching Syd open a gift of her own.

Will, herself, mostly received dragons.

 See? It was a nice Christmas.

At some point, I know, the grief will fade from these memories of this holiday, and I'll remember again the happiness and contentment that I also felt. It will be easier to think of the last days that I spent with Pappa, without feeling sad that those were my last days with him. I know, intellectually, that this will happen.

For now, however, I'll just say that I will be very, very glad to see tomorrow.

Pappa

You might recall that I write about my Pappa in this space sometimes. Since my kiddos were born, one of my favorite activities of going home to Arkansas has always been watching the relationship between Pappa and these great-granddaughters of his grow. 

Pappa died yesterday, peacefully and at home, just as he'd wanted. 

Although I was his grandchild, he raised me as a daughter, so that I didn't have to know what it was like to not have a father in my life. He renovated the entire house so that I could have my own bedroom. He made me a fried egg sandwich for breakfast every morning, and when I was to be gone overnight, he'd make one for me to take with me. He drove me to school every day, but stayed home when I competed in the county spelling bee, because watching me in person made him too nervous. He taught me how to bake biscuits, how to change the oil in my car, how to drive, and how to fish, and when my own daughters came along, even though he was even older and even more tired by then, he baked them biscuits and taught them how to fish, too. When I was a kid, he didn't like me to ask him questions about the war that he'd fought in, but just this summer he let Will and Syd interview him about it, on camera, just to indulge the lot of us.

Pappa was 96, and we all knew that this moment was coming. Nevertheless, I have recently discovered that I still need him desperately, and I can't quite imagine how my life is meant to look without him now.

Cool Math Games: Winter Edition

You might remember that I like to supplement the children's math curriculum weekly with cool math games or projects or activities. Some work well at any time of the year, of course (Syd and I still play Multiplication Touch regularly--even after you've got the facts memorized, it's still fun!), but there are some that are especially fun when done seasonally. Here are some good winter math games!

3D paper evergreen. This is a geometry, STEM, and fine-motor skills project that makes magic out of a single sheet of paper. The tutorial includes a printable that makes the cutting easy, but you could turn it into more of a challenge by simply giving verbal instructions. When I was a kid, a project very similar to this was given to me with the instructions merely to "make a hole in a single piece of paper large enough to fit your entire body through."

Want to know how to do that one? Get your scissors and figure it out!

bean mosaic. Since it's winter, I'm imagining that you've got loads of dried beans on hand. Kids can play with pattern-making and symmetry while they make their own mosaics using the wonderful variety of sizes and colors of dried beans out there, and then you can cook them up for dinner and they can taste all those varieties, too.

build-your-own calendar. The time before New Year is a great time to get kids thinking about how months and years work, and therefore a great time to have them build their own calendar for next year!

Christmas-themed printable mazes. These aren't super challenging, but they give kids who can't stop thinking about Christmas something engaging to do on a car ride or before the big feast.

Christmas-themed online games. These aren't hands-on, of course, but if you had a Christmas like mine, and you and your kids spent a lot of time visiting relatives in hospital rooms or nursing homes, then some easy and festive online games are handy to have in your toolbox.

circular perpetual calendar. This is a different kind of calendar to make that focuses less on the mathematical progression of days and months, and more on the circular progression of the months and the seasons.

DIY dominoes. Plaster of Paris isn't so messy that you can't do it indoors, and yet it's still a good, gloopy sensory experience for the kid who loves to make a mess. You can make these plaster of Paris dominoes look traditional, but kids would also love to create dominoes with other symbols or patterns or imaginative beasts--and then they can create their own games, too!

embroidered Christmas cards: The kids and I embroidered Christmas cards this year, but I was actually the only one who made these mathematical ones, mostly because I wanted to test that they worked before asking the kids to try them.

Verdict: They work!!! They are super fun, pretty simple, good practice measuring, and the patterns that they make are magical. They're a little fiddly, though, with the embroidery floss and needle, etc., so I'm considering setting the same activity up on a pegboard, or with nails, to let the kids try it out on a larger scale.

Fibonacci art project. Here's another really cool number concept for kids to explore through process-based play.

homemade Hex. I love that you can make every single component of this game, from the game board (Sharpie on cardboard) to the pieces (paint and clay).

m&m wreath. The kids made this one year when Syd was a preschooler, and it was super cute. If you've got a little one, it's great for one-to-one correspondence and fine-motor skills. If you want to discourage excessive munching, have the kids use white glue to glue the m&ms to the wreath.

number Scrabble. This game is a fun DIY version of Scrabble. Grab an old Scrabble game from a thrift store, and rig it up for this.

prime numbers game. Kids who have just discovered prime numbers will enjoy exploring them in more depth with this game.

printable hexi cards. Ugh, the weather today! We might go bowling later, or to the indoor pool at the Y, but we're certainly not playing outside! These hexi cards or other similar pattern-making cards make something new and different to pull out for the kids on a miserable winter day.

printable mazes. I LOVE these sets of printable mazes. I've been using them with the kids since they were wee, and because there are several levels of difficulty, we're still using them!

rounding practice snowball fight. Use up the backsides of previously used paper for this game, which I think could also be easily adapted to practice different concepts.

Tenzi. Scrounge up the necessary dice from your other board games for this fast-paced game.

toilet paper tube snowflakes. You can't find a better demonstration of rotational symmetry than in snowflake crafting! These toilet paper tube snowflakes are a cheap craft, since the material comes from your recycling bin, AND you can leave them up all winter, since snowflakes are festive even after Christmas. Add more to the project by painting the snowflakes, adding glitter, hanging them with fishing line from the ceiling, or even making them into a mobile.

Or, if your kids are as obsessed with Perler beads as mine currently are, make your snowflakes out of Perler beads, instead!

window stars. Winter is when I always want to make window stars! They require instruction following, pattern-making, and fine-motor skills, and the finished product always displays something beautiful and geometrically fascinating

There are basic window stars, and plenty to play with as far as size and color with just that one template, but for the adventurous crafter, there are tons of more sophisticated window star patterns out there.

winter-themed pattern block templates. Pattern blocks are always fun to play with! My kids use them for pattern-making and problem-solving, but it's also fun to follow patterns using templates like these. To make the activity more challenging, trace out only the overall outline of each shape, and have the kid try to figure out how to make each one, as well.

woven snowflakes or stars. This craft is especially on point for any kid learning or practicing skip counting, since that's what you need to make these stars, and in fact this circular skip counting method is used to teach multiplication in the Waldorf method--Waldorf loves its pretty patterns! Regardless, the patterns that you make are so interesting that anybody will love this project, and you can easily add more intricacy to it, change up the craftsmanship by using more colors, etc.

Anything strike your fancy as a fun winter project? I'm a mean mom making my kids continue their regular math curriculum this week (AND spelling, AND Book of the Day, AND their newspaper project), but we'll also be setting aside plenty of time for sneaky math, too.

Window stars? Definitely Perler bead snowflakes!

The Kid is Too Cool for Santa

It's not like I didn't have my suspicions that this could happen.

That's why, on the eve of our trip to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis to visit Santa there, I told the kid, "Listen. If you don't want to visit Santa, then just tell me now, and you can go to the library instead of the museum with us tomorrow. But if you do come to the museum with us, then I want you to promise me that you'll visit Santa and let me take your picture. It is VERY important to me."

"I promise," said the kid.

"I mean it," I said. "You really have to do it if you promise."

"Ugh, Mom, I PROMISE!" said the kid.

And so off we all went to the Children's Museum the next morning, the kid throwing me attitude the whole way--"WHY do I have to brush my hair?!? Ugh, what if I WANT to wear shorts--so what?!? I can't believe you want me to load the entire dishwasher right now!!!!". Insert all the sighs and eye-rolls, as well. The boneless flopping of a body simply too exhausted to do as you wish. The inability to find shoes. The refusal to eat breakfast. A hundred more acts of tweeny attitude--just insert them all right here.

At the museum, itself, it was still nothing but tween 'tude the whole time. Just one year ago, this ten-year-old kid was happily ice-fishing in the Jolly Days exhibit; this year, she wouldn't even wear her elf ears! I took my requisite Kid Wearing Elf Ears photo with Syd alone:

My requisite Person Imitating Giant Statuary photo? Again, just this kid:

But none of that, none of it, could compare to literal pain that I felt in my heart when, as we stood in line to visit Santa, that kid said, "Ugh, do I really have to do this?"

No, I told her. No, of course you don't have to:

I kind of wish I'd made her. I kind of wish that I'd gambled on the possibility that she'd get her game face on and do it anyway if I just reminded her of her promise. But this kid is never one to gamble on with that--sure, she might get her game face on and I'd get my cute picture and she'd get another year of Santa memories, but it's at least as likely that she'd throw a huge sulk, refuse to sit down with Santa, glare icy daggers at me, and ruin Syd's time, as well. 

So I picked the plan that, although it wasn't satisfactory, at least kept the peace and kept Syd's fun intact. I played in the museum with Syd all day and ignored the bad attitude of the visibly disgruntled tween too-cool-for-schooling it at her side. 

And, while Syd drew dinosaur teeth fossils and Will sulked, I told all my troubles to my secret boyfriend, Dracorex Hogwartsis:

 

Isn't he handsome?

Fortunately, this other kid of mine had a wonderful enough time for the both of them:

The other kid boarded the carousel under her own power, but certainly wouldn't go so far as to grace it with a smile.

Ha! Caught her having fun when she didn't realize that I could see her!

And fortunately, it turned out that there is one Children's Museum holiday tradition that even a tween can't resist.

Indoor snowball fight!!!

The big kid acted like she wasn't going to participate, hanging back as Syd and the other kids eagerly listened to the referee and got their instructions, but as soon as the first round began, in she dove, pulled in like a magnet to the fun:

In the middle of this video, something happened that I really enjoyed watching. Both kids are happily engaged in their snowball fight, when over comes another random kid who takes issue with the legality of Will's participation, as she is neither "Argh"ing nor roaring as she throws snowballs, even though this round is Pirates vs. Dinosaurs and you're supposed to "Argh" or roar. Will listens to him, a little sheepish, suddenly recalled by his protest to the ridiculous frivolity of what she's doing. But before she can come to herself completely and abandon the game, bop!--Syd hits the kid with a snowball, Will laughs, and together they turn away from the still-protesting kid and continue to pitch snowballs.

This is life with kids. They grow up. One year you celebrate the fact that they still love to play and pretend and tell their desires to Santa, and the next year, the very next year, you watch them, heart aching, as they look with disdain at those very same things. 

So this year, this very year, I am fully embracing every single thing that every single kid really likes to do. Later this afternoon, we're all baking cookies together, and making gingerbread houses, and when that big kid got excited about the possibility of putting gummy sharks and centipedes on her gingerbread house, I said, "Of course you can. Put it on the shopping list." Tomorrow, we're having a Christmas movie marathon, and when that big kid, asked for movie requests, responded with "something low-budget and obscure," I said, "Sounds great. We'll add the Star Wars Holiday Special to the list."

Because next year, perhaps I'll have two kids who no longer want to see Santa. Perhaps I'll have a big kid who is now too cool for gingerbread houses. Perhaps I'll have a little kid who is no longer obsessed with playing Christmas records, or one or two kids who no longer think that decorating the Christmas tree is super fun. 

This year, especially, I am cherishing these kids, and all the Christmas magic that they're still willing to bequeath to me.

I Got Bullied in My Homeschool Group

NOTE: This essay is the very definition of tl;dr. If you do not have, like, half an hour to muddle through the ridiculous drama that I, the person who loathes drama more than any other person ever, have been dealing with, then I suggest that you read the first three paragraphs below, then scroll down to the completely made of drama picture waaaaaay down the page.

You might remember that a few months ago, I wrote that I had left my old homeschool group, and become more active in a different one. You might have noticed (or not! Totally okay either way!) that I wrote about how much happier I was with the change, how comfortable and welcomed I felt.

What I was leaving out of that was the reality that in my old homeschool group, I had been bullied for years.

I mean, why would I talk about that? How embarrassing, right? As a grown woman, why would I let myself be bullied, and simply put up with it for years? How can I be a good role model for my own children if I can't even model for them how to not be a victim in my own, self-chosen social situations?

For most of my time in that group, I thought that I was doing it for my children. Most of their friends were members of that homeschool group, and they played with them at weekly Park Days and parties. We participated in academic fairs through that homeschool group, and went on field trips with them. I felt that my kids would be missing out if I left the group simply because *I* was being excluded, and made to feel uncomfortable, and being gossiped about.

Also, I did have friends in that group. I did enjoy the academic fairs, and I enjoyed sharing resources and organizing field trips. I told myself that I was really only being bullied by one parent in the group, and even if she was able to get others to exclude me, or spread rumors about me that caused other parents to dislike me, or sometimes publicly embarrassed me, then that was still just one clique, and I had other friends who made being a member of the group worthwhile.

Matt didn't really buy my reasoning, but of course he's willing to support me in whatever crazy mess that I get myself into. He decided that change comes from within, and if we wanted our homeschool group to be truly welcoming, then we needed to be more active and more vocal in making it so. He became an active participant in the group's regular parents' planning meetings. He wasn't super successful, as the parent who was bullying me was the person in charge at those meetings, with her friends in most of the other volunteer positions, but keeping the conversation going is important. Showing that we care about the group as a whole is important. And speaking out at the meetings to say things like he doesn't think it's fair for one parent to offer the group's volunteer positions to her friends rather than open up the position to volunteers from the group? Well, that's important, too. That's the kind of hard conversation that a group needs to have in order to be better.

Except... things didn't really get better. By this time, I was used to sitting alone at Park Days and parties. Matt was used to my bully opposing everything that he said at parents' planning meetings. People often sit alone, and struggle to work in a committee even when they're not being bullied. Such is life. My policy was to pretend that I wasn't being bullied, to continue to share resources with the group as a whole, to continue to attend group events, even if I often sat alone, and to continue to organize interesting events and activities for the group's homeschooled children. Sometimes people from the group would tell me that they were sorry that I was being mistreated, and sometimes people would stick up for me, and often people would share with me stories of others who had been bullied by the same parent, but nothing ever happened that changed my situation, or gave my bully less power to mistreat me.

And then things got worse. For a few weeks, I had been active on the homeschool group's Yahoo forum, planning to provide some new academic fair options for the group. We'd been doing the same three academic fairs ever since I'd joined, and I thought that perhaps some members would like some additional options. So I posted a poll that families participated in, selecting academic fairs that they would be interested in. One of the top selections was a History Fair, something that I was already interested in doing this year, and so I volunteered to organize it. And then one of my bully's friends posted a message to the entire homeschool group, stating that I wasn't allowed to organize an academic fair. It was, apparently, a rule of the group.

It's pretty definitely not a rule of the group, at least not one that's ever been mentioned in the 5+ years that my family had been a member of the group, nor ever at any of the parents' planning meetings that either of us had ever attended, nor was it written down anywhere. In fact, other families had organized other academic fairs since we've been members, most notably a Creative Arts Fair that one family had organized for the group less than a year ago. Nobody mentioned any rule against this when she was doing so. Nevertheless, I apologized to the group, embarrassed at being publicly chastised.

Fortunately, there was actually a parents' planning meeting scheduled in the near future, so Matt decided that he would just figure out what was going on then. He attended the meeting, and so did my bully, her husband, and her friends. He debated with her, because he's brave, but she wouldn't change her mind, and nobody else there challenged her made-up rule. I'm sure the entire dialogue was extremely confusing to the newcomers to the meeting.

The next day, I posted a link to a homeschooling resource to the group board, only to discover that I was no longer allowed to post to the group unless a moderator, my bully, approved it. I posted to ask why I was being blocked but it never went through, and nobody ever responded. Matt tried to post a comment to the parents' planning meeting notes that had been posted, and discovered with that, his first ever post on the group board, that he, too, was being blocked. Nobody ever answered his emails about it, either.

At that point, I resigned from the group--and that post, conveniently, was sent through--because after that rude post to me about the History Fair, my friends stepped in for me and encouraged me to instead transfer my energy. A bunch of us have a casual weekly playgroup, and we decided that it wouldn't take much more work to transition it to a more active homeschooling group, one that would welcome everyone and encourage everyone's participation. I was thrilled to be able to leave my toxic situation for this. Matt, however, still didn't think that it was right to leave an entire group just because of the behavior of a few. He sent in our membership check, anyway--because yes, all of these years I'd been paying for this treatment--and tried to open a dialogue about what had been going on and why it had been happening.

But do you know who's uninterested in dialogue? My bully. Look what we were sent by certified mail, under the name of our homeschooling group:

This group's Park Days take place in a public park. They're banning me from a public park, y'all!

I have no idea what unacceptable behavior the letter is referring to, except that perhaps it was unacceptable for Matt to disagree with my bully at parents' planning meetings, or unacceptable for me to show up at weekly Park Days for years after my bully had been made clear to me that my presence was unwelcome.  I've asked around, however, and I haven't yet found anybody from that homeschool group who knows anything about this letter; it's apparently something that someone anyonymously wrote and sent under the name of the group.

In case you've never experienced anything like this before, that's how adults bully each other. Other than the legalese and the committees and the spare cash to spend four bucks on a certified letter, this looks a lot like the way kids bully each other, doesn't it? Kids probably send mean texts instead of certified letters, but they definitely exclude other kids, tell them that they can't belong, embarrass them publicly, won't let them talk or play or do fun things, gossip about them to their friends.

But the thing that, to me, is the most disturbing, is this: I tried to ignore being bullied, and it didn't get better. Matt tried to stand up to my bully, and it only got worse. I don't know what to extrapolate from this to young people who are dealing with bullying, but the only thing, the ONLY thing that made this situation better, was when I simply... left. I left, and I didn't go back, I threw all of my energy into a different group, and I relished their welcome. I put myself out there again with all new people, and these people were really, really nice to me. In my new homeschool group, when someone walks away to go to the bathroom, nobody starts to gossip about that person. In my new homeschool group, when somebody wants to plan something, everyone says, "Great idea! Let me know if you need help!" In my new homeschool group, I can actually talk to people, and it feels really great, and I never would have had that if I hadn't left my old homeschool group. And sure, my bully is apparently doing her darndest to follow me home, now that I'm not there to be abused, but a letter, at least, is something that I can share with my friends, and be comforted about. And if another letter comes, well, I don't even have to open it!

Can you imagine what it would be like if you were a kid, and you simply couldn't leave the situation in which you were being bullied?

Work Plans for the Week of December 14: 2015: Christmas and the News

Christmas is coming a little too fast this year, or maybe I just need to settle down and focus on it. We haven't yet done most of our Christmas traditions--no hot apple cider and hot chocolate and popcorn while watching Christmas movies (Nightmare before Christmas 100% counts as a Christmas movie!), no cinnamon dough decoration making, no driving around to look at Christmas lights. Hell, the kids haven't even visited with Santa yet!

To that end, I am officially declaring that Christmas traditions begin NOW. I swear to god, my family WILL spend quality time together celebrating the festivities of the season!!! So you'll notice, then, that schoolwork is a little light this week. The kids' newspaper is taking a lot more time than I'd estimated, so I did carve away plenty of work time for them to hopefully finish it this week, but I've also carved away plenty of secret time for "spontaneous" Christmas activities. I've got a couple of the more academic pursuits on our work plans--there's no way that Will would write a letter to Santa just for "fun"--but I've also got all the ingredients for cinnamon applesauce dough at hand, and tomorrow my etsy shop closes for the season and we can focus on gift-making for family and friends, and Wednesday night, after we've spent the day at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis (conveniently visiting with Santa while we're there!) would be the perfect Family Movie Night, and Thursday might just turn out to be a great day to bake some Christmas treats, and... you get the idea.

Daily memory work for the week is also on the light side, consisting of just a page of cursive daily (I am thrilled to report that both children's handwriting is improving massively!), spelling, and our traditional review of "'Twas the Night before Christmas." I doubt that there is anything in this world cuter than four-year-old Syd's recitation of "'Twas the Night before Christmas"--

--but I'm eager to convince her that I should also videotape her nine-year-old version. Many mommy sniffles ahead!

Books of the Week are still very World War 2 heavy, although there are also a couple of picture books about Martin Luther King, Jr., in there, one random book on the ecosystem of the Himalayas, and Syd, who was asking last week about why people can't just purify seawater to have clean water, has A Thirst for Home. This isn't the first time that Syd has asked about clean water, or the first time that we've explored the issue, so I may try to research out a couple of hands-on projects for the kids about it. Maybe for a Girl Scout service project?

And here's the rest of our week!

MONDAY: Considering that right now Will is outside and Syd is sitting on the couch playing with a Christmas sticker book (festive!), today's plans remain just plans, but at some point we'll kick it into gear and get going!

For math, the kids each have one more day of drill with worksheets from this site to cement the concepts that they both worked SO hard to master last week. I mentioned to you that I was making my own math lessons for them? Well, it took forever and I had to learn how to use an entirely new graphic design program to do it, but it was 100% successful:


Y'all, I actually made the concept of multiplying a fraction by a fraction CLEAR! I made MODELS for it! I am now officially a genius and a hero.

Over the weekend, Syd expressed some anxiety that she hadn't yet gotten around to writing a letter to Santa this year, so we'll be relieving her stress and getting in some lovely handwriting and composition practice with that. Because you know that Santa likes to see a child's best handwriting when they write to him!

Last night, Matt sat down with the kids and showed them how to use the graphic design program that he thought would work best for their newspaper, so I'm hoping that they can buckle down and get the project completed this week. Although I am requiring that they write an article on their interview of the newspaper reporter who came to interview us last week (a little meta, I know, but just go with it), I'm sorry to say that most of the rest of the newspaper is turning into rather a lampoon edition. I tried to convince the kids that it would be fun to write REAL stories about events like the great Rainbow Tag game that got played at play group last week or all the eggs that were donated to the food pantry where we volunteer, and real reviews of some of their Books of the Day, and maybe a real editorial, but they're mostly interested in locking each other in the closet and then writing stories entitled "Sister Locked in Closet!" Ah, well... Plenty of time for hard-hitting exposes when they're older.

Later today, we also have our two-hour volunteer gig with the food pantry. Will there be more egg donations? Stay tuned to find out!

TUESDAY: Our homeschool group is going bowling on this day. Syd is super excited about it, but Will is not, and I am not going to deal with her attitude in yet another bowling alley, so I'm foisting Syd off with another family. She can bowl, and Will can get her math done.

The kids are both back in Math Mammoth on this day. Now that they've gotten the basic concepts in their units down, hopefully the other lessons, which are mostly extensions of those concepts, will be self-explanatory. If not, however, I now know how to make both fraction models AND full-scale Cuisenaire rod models in Adobe InDesign!

We finished our last culminating activity of World War 2 last week, with a giant chalk paint world map on the driveway--

--as the stage for a complete retelling of World War 2, but I mentioned before, I think, that we still have a few random activities to finish up, including cooking this World War 2 recipe that Will chose from a cookbook at the Clabber Girl Museum. I'm hoping that we can successfully substitute cooked ground beef for the "finely chopped cold meat" that the recipe calls for. Otherwise--barf, right?

WEDNESDAY: Field trip to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis! We'll visit Santa, of course, but otherwise I think the children will enjoy an entire day at the museum with no further obligations of volunteering the Paleo Prep Lab or taking a class, for a change. Our membership runs out at the end of this month, as well, and I *might* take that opportunity to switch it out with an Indianapolis Zoo membership for next year, so I want to get in at least one more full day at the museum just in case.

THURSDAY: The Christmas card exercise is really just an excuse for us to play with these geometrical Christmas cards. Seriously, how cool are those, right?!? If they turn out to be impossibly frustrating for the kids, I can just invite them to punch out other lovely designs to then stitch while I sit and obsessively make many of these cards by myself.

FRIDAY: Will loves the series of girls-only podcasting workshops that the library has been hosting this semester. I'm hoping that after this newspaper project is complete, the children might want to try making their own podcast next--I think Will now has all the skills to do it!

Okay, she says she doesn't. Fortunately, she has more workshops that she can attend!

On this day, however, I'm most excited about going to see a local theater production of Mary Poppins with our homeschool group. They brought in a flying rig, and apparently Bert is really going to dance on the ceiling. Super excited.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Our only commitment is Will's last ice skating class of the semester, and then we're on Christmas break! 

Well, maaaaaybe we're on Christmas break. My workaholic husband is still debating his willingness to accede to my request that he simply take off next Monday, the ONE day that he's scheduled to work next week. Don't you think that would give us so much more family vacation bang for his family vacation buck? Anyway, if he takes that day off, then we'll definitely be living in Family Vacation Time, but if he insists on going in, then I'll probably make the rest of us do a day's schoolwork, too, just so we can complain to him about it and tell him that it's his fault.

As for me, this week I am living in Homemade Gift Land. I don't tend to give homemade gifts to Matt and the kids, since I make handmade stuff for them so often that store-bought gifts are actually the novelty, but I really like giving homemade gifts to everyone else. I also have several writing assignments to complete, the kids' wardrobe to go through yet again (Will will NOT stop growing! Last month none of her pants fit, and now all of her T-shirts are too short!!! ARGH!), and, most importantly of all, many Christmas festivities to force upon my unsuspecting family.

It's going to be a wonderful week!