This American Life & testing

Listening to "This American Life" on the radio last Saturday. Coincidentally it's about back to school and, specifically, TESTING.

http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/podcast/474.mp3

The point that made me sit in my car long after I needed to was how what predicts success later in life is not high school. It was found that kids who drop out and take the GRE GED perform poorly at other tasks later in life. The key is not the content of high school, though.

It is learning to stick with something. The kids who stayed in school did not gain advantage from the classroom content. They were kids more likely to stay through until the end of something.

What gave kids an advantage through life was having support from a trusted adult and a demonstration of "values" or "character traits."

It's being the mother duck to the ducklings: here's how we do this, how we do that.

Teachers don't get that latitude. Parents have the edge at raising successful people--as long as they know their power.

Please give a listen. 

Testy about testing

I didn't collect data, but if I had to guess at the second most asked question about home schooling?

Testing.

Do you test them?

"It is my favorite and my best"

 "It is my favorite and my best" 
~ Lola, 
of "Charlie and Lola." British cartoon.

At the store, we encountered one of my daughter's best school friends. She rushed up to us, looking three inches taller than when we saw her last year and wearing shorter hair and glasses. She beamed at M.

"Are you coming back to school?" she asked.

"Nah."

"Will you ever come back?"

"I wouldn't count on it," M. said, smiling tenderly. She likes her friend, and she did not want to let her down--but there you go.

Hammer time

Smashing rocks--a trick she learned from her best friend. Note: safety glasses worn behind that hair.

Recruited for removing carpet/tack strips from  the last bedroom. He *loved* it, working three hours that day to finish the room. I should have recruited him at the beginning of this project!

"Yes" to summer--finally

I say "yes" quite often. Will you cover this shift? Yes. Would you do this for me? Yes. Would you create this  class? Yes. Would you join us for this? Yes.

Hence -- I have had a summer-packed when the plan was for a summer-unpacked. Yesterday--Friday--was A Day When Nothing Else Had to Happen. No work; no class; no meeting; no play date.We went to the beach.

At first, Nate didn't want to go (shocking).

The Greeks persist

It's a struggle for me to let my kids learn in a freewheeling fashion; how many hours of watching Pokemon on YouTube can one permit?

It's a struggle for them to learn some of the things I deem appropriate; how many handwriting practice sheets must one do before the handwriting is good enough?

When our subject interests merge? It's glorious family fun.

Attention-deficit curriculum

I woke up early this morning, worrying.

It had been an unusually full day. I was in and out of my car eight times. It would have been ten, but my husband ran one errand for me, literally getting out of my car and into his.

So much running leaves me revved up.

Science + Art = Fun

Just because it's pretty...

We have not done physics or chemistry formally, but we have discussed the origins of life. We have picture books about the Big Bang, and coincidentally, M. asked "What came before the Big Bang?" just a few weeks ago. 

Now the diligent people at CERN have an explanation. Sort of. They explain and it goes over my head (mostly). Here's my favorite kind of lecture format--the "drawn as it is explained" style:

Higgs Boson explained

Scroll to the 2nd video screen. The first minute+ is an introduction with people in a cafeteria and some random talking. Then it gets to the drawings and graspable analogies for what the Higgs Boson experiment means.

Summer novelties

"Playing" an Atari controller candy box while displaying stuffed sea 

life

After a year of the same ole routines, June has been full of novelties.

A reader asks: how did I get here from there?

Why was I a reader?

Did the books we were made to read in school inspire me?

I don't recall any "reading circle" stories from elementary school. I remember visiting the tiny Nottawa library with Mom and bringing home books. I remember reading to myself during "silent reading time" in class (lots of horse stories and Little House books), and I remember the teacher reading to us (Superfudge, most vividly).

However, the forced, generic reading-for-comprehension didn't stick in my long term memory. That doesn't mean it was useless, I suppose. It certainly didn't make an impression, though.

I'll scramble; they're over-easy

Since we start summer in early May, the kids have floated along while I have been scrambling.

The practical, the whimsical

"Rainbow" soup

The week began rather gray and cool, so it called for a practical lesson in soup making. Also, I have been in a scramble: pulling up carpet, preparing to paint the kitchen (deciding what color!?), putting in a garden, doing more Thai bodywork sessions than usual--we needed something healthful and easy to heat in the fridge for the week. This calls for Rainbow Soup. I coerced Nate into helping with it. (Madelyn needs only be asked to cook and she's ready.)

First Lesson of Summer

Pulling pesky carpet staples

Our summer term begins in May. Our first lesson is the Real World chore of pulling up carpet: prying up nail-embedded strips, pulling up pokey staples, picking at crusty chunks of foam, and vacuuming a sandbox worth of sand. I used three vacuum bags--the dirt is that dense.

The math we'll need; the math we'll love

The assumption that we all need to take higher math is wrong. For those who love math, go ahead and wallow in the numbers! For most of us, though, arithmetic, thinking logically and reasoning is what we need most.

Based on math teachers' lectures on TED talks, taking Calculus and Trigonometry is practical for professions who put it to use--like engineers and technicians. The rest of us will remember just enough to pass the class or get through the SAT.

To keep math relevant and interesting, Nate and I are working through this book:

The Book of Perfectly Perilous Math: 24 Death-Defying Challenges for Young Mathematicians 

No assignments required

Barbie's homemade bed

We do a blend of home-school (math, history, typing) and "unschool"--wherein the kids have time to freely play and create.

Critical thinkers...who obey.

Easter Sugar Rush

We did our eggs and chocolate bunnies a few weeks ago, on the first day of spring. (Creation Potpourri). 

However, an article in Family Fun magazine was too easy to resist, and it gave us something novel to do on the weekend when so many are hosting dinner, dressing up, and attending church. We dress down and eat cheap, disgusting sugary snacks. Behold...Rice Krispie Treats a la Easter

The Ingredients  (the butternut squash is just observing, not participating).

 

 

 

 

The intent--and the recipe--called for molding the cereal goo into plastic eggs, leaving a hollow on the inside, cooling them, and putting a few M&M's in the center before sticking the halves together.

One shot at pushing the resilient cereal/mallow cement into a flimsy plastic shell made us reconsider. Our fingers were oiled to the tips, but they kept getting stuck as we tried to make the mixture stay in the mold.

"We can just spread this into a cake pan, cut it up, and decorate," I hinted.

"Okay," said kid baker, eager to break into the unnaturally blue hued, air-driven frosting.

Two Readers

I spent Wednesday morning perusing a recently-found and favorite blog: Wonderfarm. The author says, 

“If we want our kids to love reading and writing in the future, we have to help them love reading and writing today.”

http://patriciazaballos.com/2011/10/14/love-reading-today-love-writing-today/

Allies

I read several homeschooling blogs. The writers are my electronic friends (we have never met). Still--they are my mentors. They introduce me to things and give me the courage to try them. I put these friends in the right margin (there----->). Something about their approach or their resources suits me, and it is reassuring to not cut this that I don't have to break trail alone.

Another silent partner in homeschooling is interlibrary loan.

Creation Potpourri

She's looks like a Rastafarian, but really she's wearing her Scylla creation.

We read the Odyssey chapter about Scylla and Charybdis (a six-headed monster who eats men and a whirlpool monster who eats ships).

She tied her scarves together to make six necks/head. Then she wore it.