The Glowing Edge

Tag: homeschool

  • First Day of Public School

    First Day of Public School

    All three of our boys have been homeschooled. Two years ago the First decided he wanted to go to public school for his 7th grade year, and he made the transition beautifully. Last year the Ice followed him, and had his first year of middle school. This year the Maker was ready to take his turn, and will be in fourth grade. (They really do get younger every year.)

    The Maker had selected his outfit (pictured) and kitted up his camo backpack well in advance. When his dad was going through the backpack one last time to make sure his pencils, notebook, and signed forms were all present and accounted for, he saw a new addition: a recorder.

    “Uh, Honey, what do you need this for?” he asked, stumped.

    “It’s my recorder,” the Maker replied, as if it weren’t patently obvious. His parents can be so obtuse.

    “You’re probably not going to need that… uh, today.” The thought of future recorder lessons crossed both our minds: oh fun! The Husband glanced at me over the Maker’s head. I gave him the nod: It’ll be fine.

    “It’s a Yamaha,” the Maker explained, as if to dispel the last of our doubts… about something.

    “But, then again, I think it’ll be fine,” his dad offered, as they zipped the backpack up again. “You know, I’m pretty sure Billy Joel kept a recorder with him on the road to compose with.”

    “Yeah,” I said, ready for my opening, “‘Cause a  piano won’t fit in a backpack.”

    We all nodded solemnly, sagely.

    Don’t know if Billy Joel’s was a Yamaha, though.

  • Eating Nevada

    Eating Nevada

    Saturday afternoon I was sitting in the kitchen happily enjoying a solitary lunch and reading a book. The Maker was over at the kitchen counter with an apple and a paring knife, making himself a snack. I only barely noticed that there were a lot more cutting and chopping noises than it normally takes to slice up an apple. Snick, snick, snick. Pause. Snick, snick. Pause. Snick, snick, snick.

    Finally my spidey-sense made me glance up to see what was going on and I was rewarded by a huge grin from the Maker. He hopped off his stool and pogoed over to me with one hand behind his back. “Guess what this is!” he squealed, whipping out one dirty fist and slowly uncurling his fingers to reveal a fragment of apple about the size of a bottle cap. I was aware that he was not going to be looking for the answer “A dirty bit of apple,” so I racked my brain. The bit looked randomly chopped, but not chewed. It reminded me of an injured square. Ahhh, I had it.

    “A rhombus?” I asked. “Quadrilateral? Dodecahedron?” I can’t remember any of my geometry.

    “Noooo,” he groaned. “Nevada!”

    Oh. My. Heavens.

    “I don’t even know what Nevada looks like,” I told him, but he had already boinged off to the schoolroom to retreive the globe.

    “Look!” he said, pointing. “Nevada.” He displayed the apple bit again.

    “Well, I’ll be.” I nodded. “Your apple is indeed Nevada. It’s quite obvious now. Yep. Nevada.”

    He popped Nevada into his mouth, grinning, and disappeared back to the counter. I went back to my paperback, enlightened.

    Thirty seconds later he brought me Oklahoma.

    oklahoma

  • Math and Jello

    The Husband just sent me this fabulous email:

    * * *
    A couple of weeks ago, The Maker asked me if we could make some Jello. This morning I asked him if he’d rather read or make Jello and he said make Jello, so I said as soon as he cleaned up his breakfast mess and put away all the clean dishes we’d make Jello.

    So I have him read the directions on the back (the word gelatin was challenging), and get out all the stuff we need, including the measuring cup, and as he’s getting out the measuring cup he asks if he can do all the measuring because he likes to measure stuff, and then he says, seemingly out of nowhere, “I like numbers.”

    I asked him why he liked numbers and he said, “Cause you can do so many different things with them. You can measure stuff, you can multiply them, you can add and subtract them, you can count with them. Also, they make patterns.” I said I liked the patterns that numbers make, too. Then I said numbers can also be used to predict things, and he asked what that meant and before I could tell him my example of a graph that kept going up so you could predict what the next number was going to be, he said, “Oh, I know!” and proceeded to explain how if you were counting by fours, you’d go 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, etc. and then you’d know the next number would be 24.

    Then we made the Jello. Actually he made it, I just sat and typed this email.

    * * *

    Happy sigh.

  • Second Day of School

    And this is what comes downstairs in the morning, “ready” to go. I said, “Dude. Your head.”
    Ready for school?

  • Worm babies, maps, and vending machines

    Our new worms are faring well, I think, although as the Husband quipped recently, “they don’t talk much.” But we have nonetheless learned quite a bit about them, and we’re here to pass this valuable knowledge on to you.

    Where worm babies come from
    Believe it or not, actress Isabella Rossellini (remember that freaky David Lynch film Blue Velvet?) dressed up in pink taffeta to show us how worms excrete and how they make babies. No lie. You have to see it to believe it.

    The worm map of the universe
    Free-range worms live everywhere, presumably. But 15 gallon Rubbermaid bin worms live in air-conditioned comfort in homes across the world. After I posted my worm pictures on Flickr, I received a very polite message from Steven Chow — known as Mushroom on Flickr –who saw my pictures and not only sent me a picture of his worms, but also invited me to add our Fellas to the interactive, um, Worm Map that he made. So we did! He also taught me the word “vermicomposter” which is what one becomes, when one keeps bins of compost-eating worms in the house. There’s an entire Ning group of such persons, if you can believe that.

    Worm vending machines
    On a related note, I took the family to the lake for a picnic after church on Sunday and was stunned to see a worm vending machine there. Such a machine does not in fact provide worm Nip-Chee’s, or worm Moon Pies, or even worm Wrigley’s (I thought of that my very own self!). No, but it does provide worms AS snacks… for fish. I’m a city girl, I thought I knew about vending machines. I am now much smarter than before. Did you know that such a machine sells not only redworms (30 count) and nightcrawlers (12 count), but also floats, split-shot sinkers, barrel swivels (size 5 and 7), and fishing hooks in four sizes?

    I decided not to tell our Fellas about the vending machine. Don’t want to give them nightmares.

  • Our new pets are worms

    We recently acquired a pound of worms to eat our garbage and teach us something. The Maker, age 7, is the boss of all these worms and the font of all the following information.

    1. We have one pound of worms.
    Are they a herd? A warren? A flotilla? Unknown at this time. We also don’t know how many worms are in a pound. We would open a betting pool, but then we’d have to count them.

    2. Our worms are vegan!
    They don’t eat meat or dairy, and they don’t want any cooked food. Who knew? I wonder if all worms are vegan (The Maker doesn’t know).

    3. Our worms are shy.
    We aren’t allowed to look at our worms for one entire week. They apparently get upset and need time to adjust to their new home, our Worm Coach tells us. However, we looked at them a couple of times (we even took their photo and published it on the internet) and they didn’t holler or anything.

    4. What are our new pets named?
    One wise-cracking geek friend (Hi, Bob!) suggested we name them using a hexidecimal system, but he didn’t have any ideas about tagging for identification. The Husband says he’s just gonna call them all “Fellas” which aroused a debate about the gender of our worms. The Maker assures us they are all boys.

    5. Worm marriage
    The Maker explains: “How they get married is, um, they find a partner – it doesn’t have to be a boy and it doesn’t have to be a girl – then they stick their bodies together for a couple of minutes or a couple of hours, and then the sticky stuff goes away and they’re married.” We tried to find out about worm babies but both The Maker and Wikipedia were unclear.

    6. Worms want a quiet, stable environment
    Without lots of loud noises, vibrations, excessive thumping down the stairs, hollering, fart jokes, rudeness, or bad smells. If our worms are this uptight they may not make it in this house. Sometimes we like to pogo to Led Zep.

    7. Holding our new pets
    If you want to hold a worm, says the Maker, you are supposed to spritz your hand with water first. He was the one who was hot to hold one, but since we have to leave them alone in a quiet environment for an entire week I told him he can hold one next week after they are all dead.

  • ten sentences in 24 hours

    The Maker created a bit of a stir this week. He had a homeschool assignment to copy ten sentences of his choice from the book of his choice as a writing exercise. One might think, since he’s done this routinely before, that this would be a non-remarkable thing. One would be wrong.

    Book: The Great Illustrated Classics version (the kids all loved these) of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped. (Pirates rock.)
    Starting time: Monday, 1 pm.
    Finish time: Tuesday, 1 pm.

    I can’t even begin to list the excuses that were offered on a regular basis during that twenty-four hour period, but the Maker was not allowed to leave his room — except for meals — until he finished, and honestly I had NO IDEA he had this kind of stamina! I’m wondering if he could be, like, an ultra-runner in the making. Something that takes extraordinary perseverance and willpower for an extended period of time. I mean, my estimation of him skyrocketed.

    Truly, if as a parent you are going to have to endure a tantrum, this is the kind you want. Very low maintenance for the parent, big impact on the kid. On Tuesday shortly after noon he had completed two of the sentences, but the sun was shining, the basketball goal was waiting, and he’d presumably gone through all the toys available to him in his tiny domain. So the last eight sentences were zipped off in short order.

    Here they are, precisely as they were recorded by the Maker, just for posterity:

    1. Some seamen were asleep in it.
    2. Ransom told me this was the brigs boat waiting for the capiten.
    3. He turned away quickly crying goodbye and set off at a jogging run.
    4. I watched him as long as I could.
    5. He nevre stopped hurrying nor once looked back.
    6. He ternd away quickly crying goodbye and set of at gogging run.
    7. I wached him as long as I cood.
    8. he never sttoped hurrying nor once lookd Back.
    9. ther were ships in the inlet and a flage up on the casele at edinburgh.
    10. It was my first vyou of the sea and I stood in the wonder for som time.

  • Math Genius?


    During a recent parent-child homework session we discovered that the Husband can instantly and simultaneously solve four addition flash cards, held upside down by one bemused wife and one increasingly astonished 7 year old son. If we’d had more sons present at the time, the challenge might have escalated. So here is a sentence I thought I would never utter: We’re all looking forward to the next math study session.

  • Report: First Week of Public School (or: girls, food, and fire)

    I asked the First, first time public-schooler and seventh-grader, for the lowdown on his first week of school. The report falls into three categories: girls, food, and fire.

    1. Girls. They have some cute ones there.

    Mom: So do these cute girls know your name?
    First: Yes.
    (long silence)
    Mom (once it’s clear no more information will arrive unsolicited): Do they sit by you in class?
    First: No. We have assigned seats.
    Mom: Bummer.
    (short silence)
    Mom: Is it a bummer?
    First: Nah. It’s okay.
    Mom: Oh. Okay.

    2. Lunch. They offer it there, and it’s pretty much about eating.

    First: Lunch is good, you can sit anywhere you want.
    Mom: If you are in the lunch room with no one to sit with, what do you do?
    First: I invite people to sit with me.
    Mom: Wow! You invite strangers to sit with you?
    First: No, I invite people I’ve met.
    Mom: So do you ever make new friends at lunch?
    First: No, you make new friends at the lockers.
    Mom: Oh.

    3. Fire. Where the real education began.

    Mom: What was the strangest thing about this week?
    First: The fire drill.
    Mom: A fire drill the first week of class, woo-hoo! You get to get out of class… Why was it so strange?
    First: Well, when they first told us we were going to have one, I thought they meant we were all going to run out of the building as fast as we could. But what they actually made us do was line up at the door and walk out very quietly. It was weird.
    Mom: Hm, I didn’t realize we had missed that in our homeschool curriculum, but I guess we did.

  • Five Ways the First is Cool

    Last week the First attended a public school for the first time in his life. He’s in seventh grade. When he came home I asked him what the best thing about his first day was, and he told me he had participated in a game in one of his classes in which each student had to tell five interesting things about themselves to the rest of the group. Here’s the First’s list:

    1. I’ve flown a plane by myself before. (True, when he was 10 we sent him up with a friend of ours who is a pilot. It’s been his favorite experience of all time ever since.)

    2. I broke my nose playing golf. (Sort of true. When he was five, he and some friends were whacking stuff with golf clubs in the back yard — unbeknownst to me — and one of the older boys wasn’t looking when he swung, and cracked the First right between his eyes. Very bloody, long day in the ER, purple glue instead of stitches, you can hardly see the scar anymore. Don’t let your little boys play with real golf clubs, buy them the plastic ones. Also no bats, no sticks, no spoons, forks, or knives. Never mind, it’s pretty much impossible to avoid this stuff if you have boys.)

    3. I once went 25 mph on my skateboard. (Um, unknown and unknowable. However, he was skateboarding down the hill in our subbie when a generous neighbor went by in a car and “clocked” the First doing 25. Interpret how you will.)

    4. I’ve been homeschooled all my life. (Yep.)

    5. I don’t have a TV. (Also true, and a continuing source of annoyance to our three boys. Although not as much an annoyance as our lack of a PSP, Wii, and/or XBox. I think the First won the Pity Vote with this one, if he didn’t already have it with the nose-broken-while-playing-golf story.)