If you’ve missed Helen and Margaret over the last year or so, you’ve missed out on some good laughs (and debates about whether or not they’re really two old ladies…). Today, Margaret has posted her family Thanksgiving letter which includes these brilliant and oh so true requests:
#1 If you put it on your plate, it better end up in your mouth. Last year I threw away enough food to feed the population of Wasilla. That is just wasteful.
#2 If you pop a top on a can of soda, please drink the entire can before popping another top. Last year after you left I found 32 half empty cans of soda around the house and my drink refrigerator out back was almost empty. What idiot really thinks that is appropriate? Besides being such a waste, I can’t just throw those cans into the recycle bin. I have to empty each one of them down the drain […]
Original post by paradisefound
This month, a good number of bloggers were asking folks to delurk, but my schedule kind of kept me from participating. But. I did want to give a shout out to some of the blogs I read, and thought you might, too. I have 50 or so blogs on my bloglines feed reader. There’s no way I can read through everything, every day. Sometimes I’ll read a blog twice a week, sometimes weekly.
There are a few, though, that I read faithfully, and if the author writes regularly, daily. As soon as I see a new post on bloglines, I click through. Here are the five blogs that I read every time they’re updated:
COD
Jody Mace
Enviroblog
Farm School
These Go To Eleven
What five blogs do YOU read regularly?? If you participate, leave me a link to your post. Maybe I can bump my bloglines list up to 100…
Original post by paradisefound
Not sure what’s not right at the moment, but I’m feeling a bit like I’m not really doing anything constructive and not liking the feeling. It’s rubbish because I am being incredibly constructive but I’m not feeling it. The girls are watching more tv than usual. Flopsy’s needing the company of older children more, I feel - we spend a lot of time with our friends who have younger children and/or have children in school, so Flopsy is nearly always the oldest by quite some way now. So I’ve been going to more HE meets - nearly one every single week now. We’ve upped the frequency of our own one from one a month to two a month. The next plan is to make more effort to see our HE friends (not so easy as seeing our schooled friends as our HE friends are not in the same town as us). […]
Original post by Clare
Bizarrely, having just had my fourth baby, I’ve just read no fewer than three different questions on different HE forums all asking how on earth one can HE with four very young children. So I thought I’d post how we do it!
For us, HEing four very young children is no different than simply living with four very young children. I think that you either have to be extremely structured, or allow your children to be completely autonomous - I think a half-way house would be the hardest route to take. If you worry about autonomous learning, and feel structure is important, I would say the most important thing to bear in mind is that in many other countries, your oldest wouldn’t even be in school doing formal learning until they were 6 or 7 years old, so while they’re still five, don’t worry about it :-) Just let them carry […]
Original post by Clare
Hubby: What did you guys do today?
Eldest son: I got a great skirt at the thrift store!
Halloween’s a-comin’
Original post by paradisefound
How many can you or your student guess? I only got 28 out of 100!
Blog Nod: Larramie
Original post by paradisefound
Cory Doctorow has a review of John Holt’s books, How Children Learn and How Children Fail up on the high traffic blog, Boing Boing. He seems utterly smitten with the idea of unschooling, giving a positive review of both the books and the concept of child-led learning. Tons of comments, too.
Blog Nod: COD
Original post by paradisefound
It’s a bit disconcerting to have your 15 year old start conversations that are peppered with words like Communism and Socialism. Of course, with the election running full steam ahead, I suppose it would be difficult to NOT be talking politics.
My son is a black and white sort of guy (It’s a character flaw that we’re working on - together), so many of our conversations start out with him stating that something is wrong. He’s adamant that attack ads, lies, and false promises by our presidential candidates are just wrong. He visits factcheck.org and realclearpolitics daily, and shares with me his opinions. It’s been interesting to hear his take on right, wrong, and unfair. Daily, he plops onto my bed to talk to me while I’m working (trying, anyway).
Where does the money come from for these buy-outs?
What exactly is the vice president’s job?
How does the Senate work?
With these questions we’re […]
Original post by paradisefound
Kaleidoscopes have got to be the coolest toy ever. Maybe I’m showing my age, but long before the Internet and Wii, I could while away an afternoon looking at all of the pretty patterns I could create with just a turn of my hand. But now, courtesy of the Internet, we have this. Where I made this:
Take a closer look; that’s the photo of me zip lining! Can you believe how beautiful that is?
Original post by paradisefound
What a huge number of incredibly balanced and sensible comments have been posted in response to this most apalling of articles in the Independent the other day. Anyone who is in any doubt about how HE works should read through all the 220+ comments and anyone who is an HEor and wants a burst of pride for being one should do so too!
Original post by Clare
I’ve just come downstairs this morning to find DH and Flopsy looking at the Natural History Museum on google earth. We went there, recently, with Flopsy and Mopsy and they loved it. I don’t know how long they’ve been looking for things on there, but half an hour since I got up, I can still hear them in the next room exploring it. DH showed Flopsy a few London landmarks, and she got very excited when she saw a sky-scraper – she’s a bit keen on those at the moment…not sure where she’s learnt about them! Then DH got up to do something else leaving Flopsy to explore on her own – these are the things I’ve been hearing:
“I want to look at the whole world ball now, Daddy”
“Hey Daddy, look! It’s all blue! I’m in the sea!”
“Now it’s all white – I’ve found some snow!”
“Daddy, I’m much better at […]
Original post by Clare
Mopsy is still working on her alphabet book; Flopsy is sitting in the corner reading her new ‘first dictionary’
Original post by Clare
I’ve been prompted by a post on Sometimes It’s Peaceful to post about what we’ve been ‘working on’ this last week. One of the strangest things about autonomous learning, I’ve found, is the frequency with which children actually ask (beg, sometimes!) to do things that most of us autonomous home educators would steer well clear 0f - real ’schooly’ things. But then is the reason because they have never been put off schooly things because they’re done on their own terms - when and how they like, for as long or as little as they like? I think so, and I love the freedom of being able to say ‘ok, you don’t want to finish? that’s fine - do you want to finish it another time, or do you want me to finish it for you?’. There’s no pressure - it can just be fun.
Anyway, Flopsy has been asking to make […]
Original post by Clare
A good friend of mine has recently decided not to send her children back to school next week and to start on the HE journey instead. Naturally we’ve been corresponding a fair amount by email - I’ve only met her a handful of times IRL, but she’s stayed with us once and we are in contact quite a lot. I’ve never met her children but she’s, obviously met ours. She’s been considering HE on and off for some time but she says that meeting with other HE families has been one of the things to make her confident enough to take the plunge. She says that our family seemed so relaxed and happy when she met us and wanted that for her family again.
Lovely of her to say so, but I thought we were a pretty stressy family! Either we’re all very good actors, or we do have an underlying […]
Original post by Clare
Structure left over from a festival.
Remnants of a sugar cane mill
98 degree water near the volcano
Roadside conch shells
Local woman carrying bread fruit
The Pitons in the rain
Purveyor of coconuts and mangoes
Original post by paradisefound
As most readers of Seeing With New Eyes will know, we don’t have any educational structure at all in our house, and only a very loose daily pattern that we tend to follow to keep me sane, and even this is subject to huge amounts of flexibility and change. So how do the children learn anything??? Occassionally I’ve written posts discussing things like this. I don’t really like the idea of identifying learning taking place as I prefer feeling that the children really are just living and enjoying life and that they learn what is important to them, whether I can see it happening or not.
I also disagree with some writers on autonomy in childhood (most notably Jan Fortune-Wood) who don’t feel that John Holt was right in his trust that true learning was somehow mystical and worked by some unseen process of absorption in a way we can’t possibly […]
Original post by Clare
At the moment, the LA seem to know nothing about us. I know this because most of my friends, both HEing & schooling, got letters from the LA when it was the Autumn before their children would start reception year at school asking them which school their children would be registered at. We never got one for Flopsy. She will be of compulsory education age on 31st August, so just a couple of weeks away, and we’ve heard nothing at all. These letters used not to be send out because the health authority used not to share information with the education authority - clearly not the case now. Even children who’ve never attended a nursery or pre-school have had letters. We think we’ve slipped through the net thanks to changing doctors and moving house (didn’t do it on purpose!), and, of course, our children have never been registered with anything other […]
Original post by Clare
From the California Dept. of Education:
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell made the following statement Friday after the 2nd District Court of Appeal issued a 44-page ruling that declared, “California statutes permit home schooling as a species of private school education.”
Read the entire press release, here.
Original post by paradisefound
Miranda has a new post up, detailing the learning that has occurred at her house this past week. For anyone who’s wondering if kids really learn anything without following a textbook plan, this will be enlightening.
As a side note, we’ve never done traditional spelling. Well, I take that back. We’ve done a little spelling, when the kids have used a workbook to fill in the blanks until their interest waned. Spelling tests and rote memorization were not part of our day. Mostly, we talked about how words sounded, or different spelling rules (and all the exceptions!). My feeling was that as avid readers, they’d come to recognize the way a word should look. And, I didn’t want them all hung up on how to spell a word, when they were trying to put a creative thought on paper.
There were some dicey years when I really questioned whether or not it […]
Original post by paradisefound
This week brings with it stacks of laundry, an unswept floor, and suitcases to pack, times two. You see, quite by accident I find myself preparing to go away. First, I found out about a work related trip to the Caribbean (yes, this is one of those times that I love my job!). I agreed to go (duh), so in mid-August, Evan and I travel to the island of St Lucia where we’ll spend five days ziplining, tubing, beaching, and jeep riding. The zipline portion of that sentence scares me senseless, by the way.
What more could a gal want? Hey, how about more to squeeze in?
Last week we found out that Brad was awarded a scholarship to attend the American River Acoustic Music Camp. Oh, yeah. I forgot he applied for that. The dates? The week before we fly to St Lucia. And because he’s a minor, I’m required to […]
Original post by paradisefound
If you’ve not discovered the Periodic Table of Videos, take note. This is - in my opinion - pure brilliance. I remember trying to memorize that %#&*! table. This site has a short video for each different element, making it a bit easier to understand exactly what each element is. The hair on the narrating professor? Purely a bonus.
Original post by paradisefound
The other day, my eldest wondered aloud what our country would be like today had we elected Al Gore as president. Oh, wait. We did. But what if he had actually been honored with that position? No one knows, but I’d wager a guess that at least once in awhile, someone would make a statement that I haven’t heard much lately: “Our president is so smart!”
Check out this snippet from a speech Gore recently made:
…our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of these challenges - the economic, environmental and national security crises.
We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that’s got to change.
But if we grab hold of that common thread and pull it hard, all of these complex problems begin to unravel and we will find that […]
Original post by paradisefound
I’ve wondered about introducing my kids - esp my youngest - to a speech and debate program. Anyone know of a secular organization like this one?
I’m also interested in suggestions for logic programs/lessons/instruction. My youngest worries me sometimes in that he seems to lack a certain amount of common sense and the ability to deduce likely consequences. We’ve used logic workbooks (the series name is escaping me) and he likes the process of deducing who was wearing the green dress by using the grids provided. However, he seems unable to translate that skill into real life. If you’ve got a product suggestion, I’m all ears.
Original post by paradisefound
Beyond Nutso!
Original post by paradisefound
In my earlier post about teens and drinking, Tim said:
I wouldn’t draw too heavy a connection to the fact that the kids are in the public school system. My wife and I came from similar middle-class backgrounds and attended similar public high schools in Texas. She drank in high school, I didn’t.
While I agree that kids differ and lines are not always drawn along the homeschool/public school boundary, there is a difference in how kids are perceived in the different camps.
Becky said:
I think many parents, especially institutional school parents … have a certain set of expectations for teens, not limited to alcohol (and/or drugs). One of the biggest ones seems to be about the withdrawal of teens from family life in particular and adults in general, which I’ve watched sadly in my own nieces — it seems “natural” to expect them to become surly, snarly, and silent around adults, not […]
Original post by paradisefound
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