Work Plans for the Week of March 10, 2014: Sydney School

Just as we finally hashed out in our Family Meeting on Sunday, this week I only wrote lesson plans for Syd. Will has a math packet with a full five days of math, and she is welcome to join in with whatever lessons Syd and I are doing, but otherwise she has no requirements beyond our everyday outside activities and chores.

Will has always regularly protested her schoolwork, no matter how much I change my methods to suit her. And considering that this is a kid who reads nearly constantly, who watches documentaries for fun, who, for computer time, usually chooses something from my Educational Links page, and who is a precocious, quick learner, I'm willing to try out letting her manage her own education, to an extent. Syd, on the other hand, has no limit to her capacity for soaking in my attention, and thrives with my lessons and hands-on activities.

If this week is a success, I would like to put a little more structure into Will's studies, such as giving her book lists on specific subjects, having her write summaries of the books that she reads, guiding her to regularly write those research reports that I'm so fond of, and to complete the odd project. I also expect her to join in with most of the lessons that I do with Syd, knowing that quite a bit of her pig-headedness Independent Thinker with Leadership Potential-ness has to do with her automatic rejection of anything that anyone in authority would like her to do, and being invited and welcomed is a whole different animal from being required.

So with that preface, here's what Syd and I (and sometimes Will) are up to this week:

MONDAY: This is Birthday Week for the Girl Scouts, with Wednesday marking the organization's 102nd anniversary. Every day includes a special activity that a girl can complete in order to earn the Birthday Week patch. In our council, most of these activities this year focus on computers and animation--an odd focus, if you ask me, but we've got to sneak in those STEM skills, I guess! Yesterday, both Syd and Will worked for over an hour on that day's activity, that of creating a Google Doodle for the Doodle4Google contest. I can't help but add that Will was focused on her work and thoughtful with her design, simply after being invited to work with me and Syd. If I'd required it, there's the strong chance that she would have thrown a fit, then put in the minimum amount of effort required to meet my most minimal standards.

Syd worked on her keyboard lessons, we spent a furiously busy two hours at our weekly volunteer gig (some of the other volunteers didn't show up, so I was run off my feet--yay for good healthy activity!), there was a multiplication game and a Latin unit, and just like that, fuss-free, the kids were able to spend the rest of the day in play, and the day was actually nice enough that we could all head to the park after dinner, the kids to run around like maniacs (the wall that partly fell on Will yesterday, crushing her thumb, was now completely fallen down. I felt sick when I saw it, and wished that I'd had Matt pull it down in the first place; it could DEFINITELY have killed a kid) and Matt and I to unashamedly play bad basketball on the courts.

TUESDAY: We're eating apple pie oatmeal and leftover quiche right now, listening to "Morning Edition" while Will plays Minecraft on the computer, but in exactly three minutes, Syd and I are going to work through her Math Mammoth packet, read Pippi Longstocking out loud together, complete her next grammar unit, and get ready for a season full of bird watching (I plan to use my salary from last month for Indiana and US guidebooks for plants and animals--we're going to be naturalists this year!). I bet the kids will get into a big fight while learning how to play Pong together, but it's also another gorgeous day for playing outside, and later this afternoon Matt is taking them and a couple of their friends to something called a Girl Scout Songfest.

WEDNESDAY: I'm already worried about this horseback riding class that can't be rescheduled--Will's thumb is still awfully gory and swollen--but that's something that her instructors are just going to have to figure out. We're also going to watch a children's theatre production of Pippi Longstocking, and Syd's going to read Stage Fright on a Summer Night--all by herself!--so that both kids can attend Magic Tree House Club that afternoon.

We are also, although I haven't told the children this on account of I do not want them hysterical with excitement all freakin' day, going to make cake and ice cream from scratch in order to celebrate the 102nd anniversary of the Girl Scouts.

THURSDAY: I'd like to go on a nature walk and find animal tracks to make our plaster of Paris casts from, but it's supposed to snow again on Wednesday, so if all else fails, there's always clay and cats and seashells. There's an excellent, kid-friendly pottery book that we're going to look through together as part of Syd's Potter badge, and then there's an interesting nanosecond project to complete.

And if it *doesn't* snow, maybe our homeschool group will be able to have our first Park Day of the year. I will be SO happy to get out of that dang gymnasium!

Friday: We'll be doing some natural history of Indiana, before we starting learning about the Native Americans. There's a great video to watch, and those guidebooks that I'm going to purchase, and we'll have the whole weekend for our nice, long nature hike.

I finally decided that we'll listen to the Bible chapter of SOTW, and do the mapwork, and color in a Bible coloring book to get a little better of a handle on the stories. I've also made a mental note to introduce some interesting stories from other religions at a later time.

The kids' drawing skills have been improving just a ton lately, so I'm excited for us to do the next lesson in Drawing With Children, and a word ladder should quickly finish up the day with a little logical thinking.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: I think I will send the kids to that drop-in pottery class this weekend--Syd's Potter badge isn't going to earn itself!--and we have a giant, three-movie Toy Story marathon to enjoy to round off Girl Scout Birthday Week. We might go rock climbing. We might take another hike. We need to build a better gate into the chicken yard. We need to have a Family Meeting to figure out if we're going to buy those couple of Easter Egger chicks that Will wants.

AND, speaking of Family Meetings, we'll need to see if Will's school week went well, or if it's back to the drawing board for that.

A Week's Accomplishments

In some ways, this week did not feel very satisfying.

On Monday, at our volunteer gig, I fell on a patch of ice and hurt my butt.

I waited eagerly to hear if Syd's outfit had been chosen for the 2014 Trashion/Refashion Show, only to be told--one day AFTER the results were supposed to come out--that they'd decided to push the entry deadline back another week.

Our Intermediate Ballroom Dancing instructor has only two new students--me and Matt--in this new session, along with all her other students from last session who are repeating the class, so she's teaching as if this session is a continuation of the other students' class, not a repeat. Matt and I have NOT learned all those fancy cha-cha steps that she begins every class with, and it's pissing me off!

Will, who is an independent thinker with leadership potential (this is what I'm going to say now instead of "pig-headed") was in full schoolwork rebellion for practically the entire week. This kid does not realize how easy she has it!

We discovered holes knocked with a hammer into the back of a rarely-used door, and it appears, after much separate questioning of the two resident suspects, that it happened during a playdate a few WEEKS ago. I don't know why, but I have the worst time getting kids to not destroy my house on playdates!

I hate Daylight Savings. Geographically, we ought to be in the Central Time Zone, so the Eastern Time Zone does not match well with our sunrise and sunset times. Daylight Savings does not help much.

So now, in order that I might have a productive Sunday, let me focus on what I DID accomplish:

I improved my slow mile by a full minute and a half.

This kid had an amazing Spring Ice Show--

--and says that she wants to be in the figure skating club next season. 

During Family Meeting this morning, we slogged through Will's school-related Independent Thinking with Leadership Potential-ness, and decided that for this week, I will only be writing lesson plans for Syd. Will shall be responsible for math only, but will be welcomed into any of the lessons that Syd and I are doing. I'm curious to see if Will participates more if it's not a requirement (she loathes requirements), and I'm also open to the possibility that I may just need to create a book list of every subject for her, and allow her to omit most of the hands-on lessons. Either way, she's getting old enough that she needs to be figuring out how SHE wants to learn, and not how to exercise her Independent Thinking with Leadership Potential-ness to get out of schoolwork.

I'm looking forward to a week with no fighting about schoolwork!

Other accomplishments included the kids playing well and creatively together--

--so that if I could have mustered the energy after fighting about schoolwork all morning, I *could* have accomplished many things! I'm counting that as a win.

Matt and the girls built the bookshelf that the girls need for their Girl Scout service project. I'm counting this as my accomplishment because I told them to do it. The kids are going to put a quick coat of paint and some paper collage on it today, and then we're going to install it and start stocking it next week!

I didn't even manage to make dinner most days (thank goodness for pasta, smoothies, and the rice cooker!), but these kids managed to make king cakes from scratch, all by themselves--

--and this kid and I played with our natural food coloring and made colorful, braided challah: 

There! That makes the week sound much better, doesn't it? Next weeks's accomplishments will include the following:

1. Toy Story movie marathon
2. completing and mailing off a labor-intensive etsy order
3. warm weather and sunshine
4. ---

Wouldn't you know that I wouldn't even be able to get a *list* of accomplishments written? As I was about to write an ambitious #4, one of the kids came in bloody and screaming, so we went to the emergency room instead.

P.S. Kid's okay, more or less. What do you even need a thumbnail for, anyhow?

Montessori 3-6 Classroom: Throwback Thursday

I've spent a great part of my computer time this week searching through my execrably organized digital archives for a video that Will asked for, that of her 2011 Spring Ice Show performance. I've often waxed nostalgic about that particular performance--a cheerful number, with the children all dressed in yellow shirts and sunglasses, performing to "Walking on Sunshine"--and how its unanticipated beauty surprised me into tears, so much so that Will, who doesn't remember it, really wants to watch the video. It seems, however, that I neglected to videotape it for her, or that I've somehow accidentally deleted the video since then. Ah, well, these are what memories are for...

In searching for that video, however, I came across some photos from a particularly magical year in the kids' former Montessori school--Will was a kindergartner, and Syd was a youngest grouper, and they were both together in the same afternoon ages 3-6 classroom:

Here is the children's outdoor classroom. I didn't love it, because it wasn't large, and for a large area of it there was a "no fast running" rule, but Syd, at least, pretty much just always hung out in this truly excellent sandbox. I LOVE the tree stumps:

I was recently reminded of this further use of the Montessori map puzzles on Pinterest, and it's something that I'm absolutely going to reincorporate into out studies, because Will clearly loved it, if all the giant, traced maps of Australia that she brought home were any indication. This assistant teacher was another beloved element of the Montessori class--the existence of two assistant teachers brought the student:teacher ration down to 10:1, and since much Montessori work is done independently by the children, the teachers really could focus on whoever needed them:

Will's favorite spot was the classroom library, of COURSE. Naughty children were often asked to go to the library for some quiet, cooling-down time, and I suspect that Will, a VERY independent child whose major motivation when interacting with an authority figure is to specifically not do what that authority figure would like her to do, was egged on into further throes of pig-headedness by the thought that any defiant infraction would result in a stint in--ooh, darn!--the library!

The children all loooooooved the classroom guinea pigs, Cinnamon and Nutmeg, who, yes, were placed into a large bucket when a child wanted to pet them:

Although Will fights SO much with her sister, she's always done really well with kids exactly Syd's age, and I remember that she and this little youngest-grouper had a special connection. Older kids were always encouraged to do activities with the younger children, and here Will and this kid are completing a photo/object matching work. And yes, Will is wearing a velvet top, cargo shorts, green and black striped tights, and purple Dr. Martens:

One thing that I know I should have recreated in our homeschool, but never did, are these types of math sensory works--the pink tower, the red rods, and these graduate cylinders that grow in both height and diameter. Syd loved these works, and I can see now how useful and appealing they would have been to her in her early years homeschooling. She loves repetition, she loves manipulatives, and she requires a concrete grounding in whatever mathematics we're doing:

Here's a fun extension of those red rods that I just mentioned--you create a labyrinth by setting up the rods at right angles, leaving *just* enough room for a young child to walk:

I DID recreate this work at home, collecting enough Base Ten blocks of our own that the kids could concretely visualize big numbers by building them. Those Base Ten blocks may be the most used, and most useful, manipulative in our homeschool:

I've said before, many times, that this year was a sweet spot in the children's development--I loved having them in the same classroom, I loved the Montessori method, I loved having them gone for three hours each day and then having them come back to me. Frankly, if I could still do that--if I could still have my kids in the same classroom, if I could still have them immersed in a rich educational and child-led environment like Montessori, and ESPECIALLY if they could only be there for about three hours and then be free to spend the rest of their days as they pleased, I'd still be there, absolutely.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Spring Cleaning

It's Spring Cleaning Week over at Crafting a Green World, so I celebrated with redos of my favorite recipes:

two-ingredient beeswax wood polish

and homemade laundry soap

Right now, we're in a fortunate cleaning groove here at home--I tidy up everyone's mess once, in our first break from schoolwork, and then for the rest of the day I point out each mess to the person to whom it belongs for tidying. The kids do a full load of dishes, and Matt does another after dinner. The kids also take down the dirty laundry and take out the recycling; I do laundry off and on, and Matt does more on the weekends, and sorts the recycling that the kids have put in the garage. I make most dinners each week, and try to make at least some food for other meals or snacks--baked goods, overnight oatmeal, tofu salad, etc.--and Matt makes maybe one dinner, and some nights we eat sandwiches or frozen pizza.

The key is that all this nonsense has to be done Every. Freakin'. DAY. If I'm busy one day and don't get the house tidied, then I guarantee that the next day, the mess will be too great to tidy in a reasonable amount of time, and the clutter will overpower all humans until the weekend. If I don't remind the kids every single time they've made a mess, they'll never clean it up. If two loads of dishes don't get done every single day, the sink will never be clear of dishes, probably for weeks. If I don't get into the kitchen to cook, we'll blow our budget on take-out pizza. We don't mop enough. We definitely don't clean the bathtub enough. 

And, of course, very, very soon, spring will unfurl and we'll have all-new outdoor chores to add to the daily list, and then nothing will ever be completely cleaned again, for sure.

Potter Badge Activity #1: At the IU Art Museum

Have I mentioned more than a million times yet how much we're all enjoying Girl Scouts? Since their activities are so cross-curricular, and really so embedded in academics, Girls Scouts has really been just a constant source of inspiration for our homeschool this year.

It was Syd's desire to earn her Potter badge that led us to the IU Art Museum on Friday morning, with 30 or so of our homeschooling friends and five docents, for an hour-long tour of the museum's collections. Our group was perfect--three second-grade girls, their parents, and one docent who showed the girls interesting pieces, asked open-ended questions, and took the time to listen to every single thing that every single girl had to say. Syd came away with a thoroughly pleasant impression of the museum, which was exactly what I'd wanted, so yay!

After the tour, my kiddos and I headed back to one particular gallery that had struck Syd's eye during the tour, so that she could complete the first activity for this badge: find a piece of pottery and sketch it:

Here's the piece that she chose:

And here's her sketch!

You can really tell the attention to detail that Syd poured into this sketch, and she's rightfully quite pleased with it.

Will, too, sketched--

--this guy--

--but she left her backpack and sketchbook in the car, I'm not going to go get it, and she, since she's currently running around the house with a friend and a sister, screaming "POW! POW! POW!", and insisting that she has "impervious titanium armor," certainly isn't going to go get it, either, so it will remain undocumented, I suppose.

Next up for the Potter badge are a few of the long-awaited pottery classes, and I'm equally grateful to this badge for being the impetus for me finally providing them for the kids. Here's to a house full of pinch pots, coil vases, and decorated tiles!

Work Plans for the Week of March 3: Latin and Libraries

I'm pretty well over the way that the Box widget that embeds my work plans always insists on scrolling immediately to them when my blog loads, and the way that Box has completely ignored my question about this, so at some point I'm going to have to make the time to research other document embedding systems, sigh. Until then, however...

MONDAY: While the local schoolchildren are suffering through yet another snow day here, it's business as usual for us--it looks like even our local volunteer gig will be open today, so add "De-ice the car" to my to-do list! Syd's working on her factor chart (I got the idea from an old elementary Montessori manual--I'll tell you about it another time, if it turns out well) right now, while Will, who's finished part of her reading work, is heating up some French bread for our breakfast.

We've got chapter 19 of Song School Latin today (more body parts), instrument lessons--and I am REALLY going to have to kick their butts on these, because it's been a while since they've really focused on regular practice--and we'll be able to spend a few weeks doing some regular creative writing, since our local PBS station finally got their butts in gear about the PBS Kids Writers Contest.

TUESDAY: The kids have both Math Mammoth and First Language Lessons today, which I always appreciate during lesson planning since they're so blessedly easy to schedule. A playdate and baking a king cake to celebrate Mardi Gras will use up most of the rest of the day, but we'll also be working on the kids' Girl Scout service project. They need to provide a bookshelf as part of this project, and at first I thought that we might get it donated, but the dimensions required are pretty specific to fit into a limited space, AND Will has expressed so much interest in woodworking lately, that I've finally decided that we'll just make the bookshelf. It's still a little cold for woodwork outdoors, so we may find ourselves with lumber, the portable work bench, and the circular saw in the living room, but I think it's going to be a great beginning woodworking project for the kids, and one that they're guaranteed to see in use every week at our regular volunteer gig.

WEDNESDAY: Will's big Spring Ice Show performance is this night--wish her luck!

THURSDAY: We've still got a couple of chemistry experiments centered on acids and bases to perform, but I didn't get around to getting all the materials for those yet, so I'm moving us on to the paleontology that we'll be studying off and on as we lead up to our dinosaur dig this summer. I imagine that we'll be interspersing this paleontology study with seasonal studies, like botany and animal biology, and kid-led interests, but for now, I'll be grounding the kids' understanding, and sneaking in a little more Latin!

I think the kids are also ready to start interspersing Drawing With Children lessons with other types of hands-on art, so we'll be trying out this copy of The Color Book that I was sent to review (ooh, I just saw that it hasn't been officially released yet--how fun to have it in our paint-covered little hands!)--it's focused on exploring color through a variety of activities, so it should be a fun integration into our week.

FRIDAY: We're soundly into our Indiana study, but I wasn't quite prepared to move into the next chapter of The Story of the World (nor am I quite sure, yet, how I'm going to handle that chapter, since it highlights one of the book's few flaws, Bible stories treated as history--we may end up just listening to the chapter one week and then moving on, but first I need a little more time to decide if there's anything really historically relevant there), so fortunately, there's ALWAYS something more to do with Ancient Egypt!

The kids get in moods in which they seem to forget about formerly favorite pastimes, sometimes, so this week's logic is a board game of each kid's choice, to remind them that they like to play board games! That, combined with a library program, should round out our school week on a VERY fun note.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: We might go to the Indianapolis Museum of Art as a family, or we might send the kids to a pottery class and claim some grown-up time. We might go hiking, if the weather warms, or we might drag the bikes out and get them ready for a season of riding. We *might* order a couple more chicks from a local hatchery, although every time you ask me that one, my answer changes.

Patricia Bath: The Amazing Ophthalmologist Who Invented a Laser that Removes Cataracts

Will wrote just a big ole' research paper last week! She had a choice of five African-American inventors, and she finally settled on Patricia Bath. I was pleased about her choice for two big reasons:

1. Bath is female, and 
2. Bath is still alive.

The second part was especially fortuitous, because Will found, through Discovery Education Streaming, an actual interview with Bath; so cool when history literally comes alive! Will also used the book Women Inventors Who Changed the World, and articles on Grolier and World Book Online (you can check out my Educational Links page for the best scholastic search engines). 

To put together this bigger research paper, I taught Will about outlines, then had her dictate her outline to me while I played scribe. I wanted to model how it *is* possible to handwrite long passages without throwing a fit, and also show her a couple of little tricks for when you inevitably realize that you want to include something else some place in your outline, but you're out of room. The guidelines for the essay contest that prompted this research paper included some topics that each essay should cover, so figuring out to integrate these into the essay made for another excellent lesson (and one that I wish all my former freshman comp students had mastered before they showed up to my classes):

I wrote down Will's words verbatim as she dictated her outline (both children have already learned quite well that one must never simply repeat another author's exact words and phrasing in their own work, so that's never a problem), but I did often, after she had reported a fact, prompt her to now explain the importance or relevance of this fact, or to put it into the context of her overall report. At this point, I'm privileging acquiring that skill OVER acquiring the skill of creating a flow of logic throughout the paper, so it's okay to me that some of her points are off-topic--as long as they're original thoughts about the facts, they're acceptable.

If you've written a great outline, then most of your work for the report is already done--you simply have to write your outline in essay form, creating good connections and filling in any gaps that you now see. I was surprised that Will often wanted to delete most of the interesting aspects of her authorial voice at this time, which would have turned her essay into something very dull and dry; I discouraged her where I could, but since it's her paper, ultimately they were her choices to make, and she did choose to delete some of her witty, humorous observations--ah, well...

After the essay was finished, I let it sit for a day, then printed it and gave it to Will to read and edit. She found a couple of punctuation errors (oops!) that she wanted to correct, so we did so, then printed the essay again and gave it to Will to read and edit. I believe that we did this twice before Will finally had a totally clean copy with nothing further that she wanted to edit. THAT'S the essay that gets read in triumph:

Whew! These are not everyday parts of school, these multi-page research reports, but they're definitely regular parts--by junior high, I want the kid to be so accustomed to writing them that she can just whip them out like a grad schooler, no biggie.

P.S. If you're interested in African-American inventors, here are some other library materials on that topic that we enjoyed:

Work Plans for the Week of February 24, 2014: Workbooks and Water

With two full-day field trips this week, daily Spring Ice Show rehearsals for Will, and several imminent work and academic deadlines looming, I gave the kids responsibility for their own school this week. I told them that I expect them to each put in a full two-hour work period every day, INDEPENDENTLY--asking to play board games with Momma doesn't count!

As a matter of fact, I *really* only had to completely ignore them on Tuesday, when I spent a good ten hours creating Syd's fashion show pants out of prom dresses and stress (Matt made us a celebratory pitcher of frozen margaritas after I was finished and the kids were in bed--those two Game of Thrones episodes that we watched afterwards were totally wasted on me), but to my surprise, the kids have taken off with this responsibility, and have spent the majority of their days in academic pursuits.

Their inspiration? Workbooks, of all things. I have a large collection of workbooks that we don't often use (they're a crutch for weeks like these!), so on Monday night, after our day-long ski trip and Will's evening Ice Show rehearsal, yawn, and before we all crashed out early--seriously, I accidentally fell asleep at 9 pm while Matt was trying to have a conversation with me about what we should eat for dinner--I dragged out all our workbooks of math drills, geography, puzzles, mazes, and cursive, etc., and laid them out on the coffee table. It turns out that the kids were happy to do pages and pages of math drills, as long as they got to choose what math to do; Will loves word problems, and Syd feels like a real ace at multi-digit addition.

Each kid has also been doing a lot of math puzzles--Syd likes this number cross puzzles book, and Will likes this book of easy sudoku, and they both love an old daily calendar of tangrams that I bought them from Goodwill many years ago--and coloring books of things like artworks and tesselations, and Will has spent hours poring over this art history sticker book, but the most fun that they've had has been inspired by a workbook of science experiments that their grandmother once gave them. Matt bought Will a package of gummy bears so that she could follow the workbook's instructions to measure it, immerse it in water, and measure it again later, and their fascination with how the gummy bear expanded in the glass of water reminded me of our collections of super-absorbent polymer--we've got spheres, cubes, and crystal shapes, and the kids were thrilled with them all.

The polymers are easy to dye in colored water, so of course we then had to get out the color-mixing tablets, and one entire day was spent in color mixing and pouring, baths in colored bathwater, growing polymer shapes and dyeing them and mashing them and playing with them:

In the process, Syd made another VERY interesting discovery:

How cool is that?!? Time for a mini-unit on optics!

The Comic Creator, and the PBS Kids Writers Contest Runaround

We've been doing a lot of writing lately, in this late winter season just before we can restart all of our wonderful, hands-on, OUTDOOR learning. Essays and biographies, stories and poems, letters and book reports, and also comics:

This astronaut is enjoying a lovely spacewalk, until his rocket unexpectedly powers up and crashes him onto the moon--yikes!!!

In late winter, I also always seem to arrive at the theory that everything is more trouble than its worth. Case in point: my attempts to enter a story by Syd in the nationwide PBS Kids Writers Contest. Back in early February, I went to the PBS Kids Writers Contest web site, saw that I needed to enter through my local PBS station, WTIU, found the correct contact info and link, and clicked on the link.

Yeah, that's the link for the WTIU home page. No writers contest entry forms there.

So I emailed the contact person, telling her the issue and asking for the correct information.

Crickets.

And thus, for sixteen days, "enter Syd into the PBS Kids Writers Contest" remained on my to-do list. I do NOT like things to live, uncrossed-off, on my to-do list. It's a thing of mine. Everybody gets to have a thing. So sixteen days later, again seeing this darned uncrossed-off chore, I filled out one of those Have a Question? contact forms on the WTIU web site, telling them the issue and asking for the correct information.

Happily, I was emailed within the hour by WTIU's station manager himself! Unhappily, his sentence-long email simply referred me back to the PBS Kids Writers Contest web site. You know, the one that refers me back to WTIU to obtain the entry form?

So I immediately replied to him, telling him the issue with even more specificity and asking for the correct information.

Crickets.

Seriously, am I crazy, or is that legitimately super annoying? Actually, it's fine to tell me that I'm crazy, as long as you also tell me that it's legitimately super annoying.

And maybe it's late winter, when EVERYTHING is super annoying, talking, but this brings me to one of my Homeschooling Pet Peeves:

It is so much more annoying to have to schedule every single thing yourself, and organize every single thing yourself, and figure out every single thing yourself, when you homeschool. If I want a spelling bee, or a pinewood derby, or a field trip to the art museum, or an entry for my kid into a writing contest, I figure it out, organize it, and schedule it myself. Sometimes, as with the field trip to the IU Art Museum that we're taking next week, I find myself dealing with amazingly organized, competent, knowledgeable people. Sometimes, as with the spelling bee, I find myself working with people who may not know any more than I do, but they're willing to work with me and help out. And sometimes, as with this stinkin' writers contest, I find myself working with people who don't have the thing organized, don't seem to know what's going on, and don't actually seem to care.

Okay, ugly rant over. And to be fair, I do have solutions! Matt suggested that I visit another PBS station's site, get the entry form for them, and just overwrite it with the correct information for my PBS station. My own idea is that since the outreach coordinator who's listed as the contact person for this contest has a campus office, and campus is in walking distance for us, we just walk to her office one nice day and ask her in person. And today, actually, is already a very nice day. The sun is shining, the temperature is [barely] above freezing, and right now the children are outside cleaning out the chicken coop and tidying the yard that's finally free of most of its snow. I have the pants for Syd's fashion show garment figured out, and merely have to sew them. The kids have lots of activities in the next three days, giving me plenty of time to myself to get all my work done, stress-free. Matt and I have our weekly ballroom dance class tonight. I really, really, REALLY like the novel that I'm reading right now. I have a new idea for a short story. And I'm going to take a nice, deeeep breath right now... there. Better.

Also, I think I'll go eat breakfast. I find myself much less grumpy after I've eaten. At least everybody has *that* particular thing, right?

A Liberal Trying to Liberate More than the Law Allows

The kids are VERY into comic books and graphic novels of all kinds. Our public library has a large collection of juvenile graphic novels in the children's department, and since the graphic novel section is also where we station ourselves when we spend time there (big round table, relatively more quiet than the part of the department that has the play room and train table and board books, near the door to the program room so we can easily see when it's time to go to whatever we've signed up for), the kids early on discovered the joys of browsing and reading and checking out the graphic novels.

Now that both kids are such voracious readers, I also don't do as thorough of a job checking out their reading material as I used to do--now I mostly skim something or read a page or two of one of their books as I'm picking up after them. The other day, Syd had gotten a bunch of Archie comics from the library, then left them lying around after reading them. As I was picking them up to put them away, I flipped open one of them to check out a random page:

Um.... yeah. Archie comics probably aren't appropriate reading material for the seven-year-old.