Life Skills

greetings

A few weeks back, I mentioned that I was looking into having JT take Spanish class through a local private Christian school. On Tuesday, we met with the school administrator. It looks like the plan is a definite possibility. We will be working out the details over the next few months, and if all goes well, JT will be taking Spanish class in the fall.

When I was getting ready for this meeting the day before, I started imagining JT meeting the administrator. I realized he may need a little prep work in order to know how to handle this bit of social maneuvering. JT practiced how to handle an introduction to a new adult by role-playing with his dad. Handshakes and eye contact were high on the list of practiced components. A lot of silliness happened that evening, but the main ideas were planted.

The whole thing made me start thinking of other aspects of life that we might want to start practicing with the boys, things like; shopping alone, banking, doing their own packing for vacations, asking for help from employees of stores or libraries or other public places, and finding their way in unfamiliar situations. I've seen the whole Free Range Kids idea, but that might be a little more than I'm ready to go for at this point. Right now I'd just like to know that if I asked my boys to go into a store and buy something, they wouldn't get lost trying to find their way back to the checkout. So that's something I want to start building into our regular outings - opportunities for the boys, especially JT at age 13, to start doing.

The meeting went very well. JT did exactly like he practiced. Handshakes for the beginning and end of our time with the administrator went well. And I know, in the blink of an eye, we'll be doing the same thing for college visits.

Changes

tomorrow's project

We have lived in the same home for nearly eleven years. In that time, I have painted JT's room once... eleven years ago. Many times in the last few years we have talked about painting it, but other projects took priority, or the idea of trying to shuffle everything around in order to paint felt overwhelming, or I'd convince myself we should wait a little longer so we'd only have to do it once before he grew up and moved out.


We finally reached a point where there was just no more waiting. JT is now 13 and really needs to leave the cars, trucks, and airplanes on his walls behind him. I bought the paint supplies about six weeks ago. I told myself we'd get to it on the next free weekend. So far, a free weekend hasn't appeared, so we'll just squeeze it into a normal weekend.

Cars and trucks and planes, oh my!

I don't really expect JT to help with the actual painting of the room. I want it to be a quick project so teaching a new painter would not help with that goal. But I did expect him to help me clear everything from the room to prepare for painting. Earlier today I had him start going through his room and moving things to the living room for temporary storage. We learned a few things. He has too much stuff. He has TONS of LEGOs. He can't part with things if they have even a slight chance of being useful to him in some way.

mostly LEGOs

This picture is a pile of the stuff we pulled from his room. The LEGOs really are a bit out of control. I'm still hoping that as we move things back in, he'll be able to part with a little more than he did when we moved it out. I may be overly optimistic on this point.

Tomorrow, while I paint, the boys will still be doing school work. I made sure I assigned things that they could, for the most part, do independently. EM will need me to do his spelling test and some help on corrections to work he did earlier in the week. But everything else should be accomplished without mom's input. We'll see how that plays out. I'm picturing myself, covered in paint, chasing kids away from computers and back to work. Or maybe I'm being a little pessimistic about the situation.

JT and EM are both currently working to wrap up our geography unit for the year. We have continued using a book I bought several years ago that teaches world geography, one continent at a time. This year we are studying Africa. We quickly learned that when you use an older text for geography, it is important to check if things are still accurate. Quite a few things changed in Africa since 1998. Even though this can be irritating to deal with, it also provides some great learning opportunities. When I had the boys research the official language of each African nation, they found that the list in the workbook did not match what they found online. When we found a discrepancy, they had to do further research. The final project I assigned is a report on an African country of their choice. EM chose Nigeria, JT is working on The Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly known as Zaire. I'm hoping that tomorrow they will wrap up their research and begin putting their reports together. I've really been trying to work more writing projects into the schedule this year. Sometimes that makes more work for me, but I know time is getting short to help them perfect their communication skills.

Tomorrow could turn out to be pretty messy, but thanks to our flexible homeschooling schedule, that's just fine.

Grammar

book sale find

From the beginning of our homeschooling adventure, grammar instruction has followed a crooked path. We started out using the Calvert workbook that came from our days with PA Cyber. Later we moved on to using materials we borrowed from our local school district. We have been having some success using Steck Vaughn's Language Usage and Practice series for the last two or three years. This year we also read parts of the book Painless Grammar aloud for a bit of fun. I happened upon a nice workbook for diagramming sentences over the summer. I decided it's time to incorporate that into our plan.

I know I did sentence diagramming at some point in school. I asked a friend that went to school with me to verify the fact. She said we did it in 7th or 8th grade English class. I'm guessing either I didn't pay much attention, or it was just easy and I didn't have to think about it too much, so I don't remember doing it. Last week I started JT with this book. He wanted to know why it's important to learn to do this. I told him that even though he won't be called on to diagram a sentence in his day to day life, knowing how all the pieces fit together can help him in his writing. I reminded him how sometimes I tell him to take a look at a sentence he has written and figure out why it just feels awkward. Because he is a voracious reader, I think he just has a natural feeling for the flow of writing. But there are times that 'feeling' isn't enough to come up with the best sentence. I'm hoping this diagramming workbook can give him that little extra something he needs to fill in those gaps.

Of course, it made me laugh when I saw this article about the wrong ways to teach grammar shared on Facebook today. The author starts the piece with this:

"A century of research shows that traditional grammar lessons—those hours spent diagramming sentences and memorizing parts of speech—don’t help and may even hinder students’ efforts to become better writers. Yes, they need to learn grammar, but the old-fashioned way does not work."

Oops. I might have to rethink my new plan. Again.

Thinking Ahead

re-purposing art for cat comfort

I was going through some paperwork last week and decided to check how many days we have logged for school so far this year. It was quite a shock to me to realize that I hadn't even been thinking about how many days we had left in the school year before now. I guess the days of starting the 180 day countdown on day one of the school year are gone. As our routine has become more relaxed, that need to know when vacation begins has gotten lost. I needed to look ahead and schedule our year-end evaluations for the boys, so an end date was needed. It turns out, as of today, we only need 49 more school days to meet our state requirements. If we don't take any days off from here out, we can complete our school year by the end of April. Wow! That's going to be an all-time record for us on early completion.

With that early end date in site, we are thinking about taking a spring vacation this year. We usually take our big family trips in the fall, but maybe this time we'll try something new. I've always wanted to go to Maine. Now that traveling with the boys isn't the insane undertaking it used to be, maybe we can pull that off in May. I'll be spending some time exploring those options this week.

Something else looming on the horizon is JT's high school planning. If we continue on our current path, JT will be starting 9th grade in the fall. Knowing that most colleges want a student to have completed two years of a foreign language in high school, we are looking into options to fulfill that requirement. We thought about web-based options, private tutoring, or textbook work. But this week I started looking into another possibility. I made a call to a the private Christian school my daughter attended. They are going to discuss whether JT can take just one class with them without enrolling in the school full-time. I really hope this option works out because it would allow him to learn a language in a classroom environment from a teacher who knows the material. Yes, I did take 7 years of Spanish. No, I don't think I can recall enough to teach it adequately.

The other idea I discussed with the administrator was whether or not JT could play on their basketball team in the fall. He seemed very open to that possibility as well, and will be speaking to the coaches this weekend to find out if JT would be allowed to participate. I'm especially happy about this because JT has really missed playing Upward basketball now that he's too old for their teams. I considered looking into the public school teams but it's actually a longer drive to the high school in our district than it would be to the private school.

I have also recently been working out arrangements for JT to have writing classes with a former high school teacher of mine. She is now retired and lives only a mile from our home. Known for always making her students work hard for their grades, she was the first teacher that really challenged me in school. Before she will take JT on as a student, she wants to show me what she plans to do with him. Apparently 'showing me' means I have to do the work that she will be giving to him. He will be reading Of Mice and Men, discussing the book, and completing writing assignments.

Now I have homework.

For the first time in many years, I am being required to read and analyze literature; waking up skills I have mostly forgotten. It's frightening to be on the other end of that teacher lens again. But doing this work has allowed me to see where JT needs to grow. And based on how hard this has been for me, and how much I'm already learning, he's going to come out of this experience ready to tackle college successfully.

Some days it feels like ages will pass before college choices must be made. Some days I can feel it right there on the other side of the door. I'm trying to be proactive early so we don't have to rush the process when time is short.

And I know it will be here in the blink of an eye.

Chemistry, Conferences, and Cooking

Fire!

I was planning to write a post last week, but time just kept flying by, and now it's Thursday again. I have a valid excuse. I went to the PDE Special Education conference on Thursday and Friday. Yes, I could have posted from the hotel room Thursday night, but I just couldn't get motivated enough to do that. Instead, I'll try to sum up two weeks in one post.

The beginning of last week was spent working on more of our chemistry unit. We learned the difference between exothermic and endothermic reactions. Then we mixed a little potassium permanganate with glycerin to experience an exothermic reaction. We did this outside to avoid fumes in the house. It was not quite as exciting as some of the videos we saw online, but it was still fun to see something burst into flame.

yummy

We also discussed catalysts and their effect on some chemical reactions. The chemistry book we are using gave an example using liver, specifically the enzyme catalase found in liver, to speed the process of hydrogen peroxide decomposing into water and oxygen.In the picture you can see me placing a lit match in the beaker with the liver and peroxide to show how the oxygen-rich air caused the match to flare more brightly. Having chicken for supper that night was more exciting when we realized we could use the liver for an experiment after we ate. Yes, we are a strange family.

Thursday morning I drove to Hershey to spend two days at my conference. There were two speakers I especially wanted to hear this year, Dan Meyer who blogs HERE and William VanCleave's website HERE. Mr. VanCleave's free downloads from his writing workshops are fantastic. I'm already using some of them with the boys. I also had time to catch up with some fellow parents that I don't get to see very often. My annual conference trip is usually a mix of learning and recharging. This year was no exception.

Have a seat.

Today we had a little more snow. Just what we needed. I tried to keep some kind of schedule going, but after all that shoveling, none of us felt like doing a full day of schooling. Instead, we bumped a few subjects to tomorrow and covered just what we needed to do to feel justified in counting it as a school day. JT had a practice test for his Thinkwell math course, both boys worked on their current composition assignments, and we read our American history book aloud. Plus, all that shoveling should count for gym class, right?

hot wings?

The final part of our school day was a little cooking instruction for JT. He's always wanting me to teach him how to cook. This week he's been helping me in the kitchen to put supper together. A couple days ago, a friend shared a recipe for chicken 'wings' that are really cauliflower made to taste like wings. The cauliflower is coated with a mixture of buttermilk and flour, baked in the oven, then doused with hot sauce or BBQ sauce. One recipe used Balsamic vinegar instead. We found that although the cauliflower did make a nice vehicle for the wing sauce, they weren't much like the real thing. At least they were fairly healthy. We also made bean soup to go with it.

JT is starting to understand how much work goes into making balanced meals every night. He was setting the table while we waited for the wings to come out of the oven and he asked what silverware we'd need. I recommended forks and spoons. He said, "Why bother giving EM a spoon? You know he probably won't eat the soup." I told him we should still give him one anyway since he would have to try at least a little bit. 

JT said, "Now I understand why you get so annoyed when he doesn't want to eat the things you make. It takes a lot of work to cook every night!"

Even if he doesn't turn out to be a great chef, that knowledge alone will serve him well in the future.

Trudging On

what it looks like now

It's cold here. Going out in this weather takes a lot of effort on my part. The boys are showing signs of cabin fever, too many fights and no motivation. Schooling just feels... blah. We did make it to book club on Tuesday, so that got us out of the house. We also had a short visit with friends on Wednesday.  But I think all we really need is a day with lots of sun to set things right. Hurry up spring!


In the meantime, we have been having more fun with our chemistry studies. This week we did a few experiments with lime water. The boys also learned a little about balancing equations. While looking for examples of exothermic and endothermic reactions, I found some really great ideas to try. I plan to do the elephant toothpaste experiment next week. Although, I'm not sure I can get the 30% hydrogen peroxide soon enough. If I can't, we'll try the kid version found on Steve Spangler's site. Speaking of Steve Spangler, this guy is my new favorite science guy! He has been a guest on the Ellen DeGeneres show many times. I've been watching them on YouTube all day. My favorite is probably this episode where he toilet-papers the studio. I love how excited he gets when he is sharing science with people. I get like that when I'm telling people about our experiments. It's good to know I'm not the only one. We'll be trying a few of his tricks this week. I'll try to get a few videos so I can share them soon.

Next week I'll be at the PDE Special Education Conference in Hershey. I don't know if I'll get a chance to put a post together while I'm away. My husband is taking two days off from work so he can take over as teacher for me. Hopefully his students will behave. If not, at least I'll have some interesting stories to share in my next post.

                                                     Think spring!

Controversy?

So...earlier this week I read a blog post written by Matt Walsh titled, Thank God I Wasn't College Material! and decided to share it with my Facebook friends. Well, things got a little hot in the comments of my post until I pointed out that I just wanted to share Mr. Walsh's ideas with my friends, not tell them his educational path was the one and only way to go. After things calmed down I started to wonder when education decisions had moved into that category of things we don't talk about, things like religion and politics.

I've never really been the kind of person who tries to force my opinions down other people's throats. I think sometimes people misinterpret my motives because when something really makes an impact on me, I can get a little too excited in my sharing. In the last few years, homeschooling, organic eating, and running have all been high on my list of things I want to share with others. When I get interested in something new I spend a lot of time reading everything I can find on that topic. This results in my perceived need to talk through my new knowledge to help me better understand what I am learning. Just ask my husband. He has been the target of this out-loud organizing of thoughts.

My quick summary of the Matt Walsh post is that college may not be the answer for all kids. In fact, maybe it's not the answer for most kids. I agree with him that certain careers obviously need to start with a degree. But are we really doing our kids a service pushing college as the 'best' path? As someone who has already pulled her kids off the normal educational highway by homeschooling, I am familiar with the doubt that comes with such a choice. So far, that move has paid off for our family. Now don't get me wrong, I plan to continue to prepare both boys for the possibility of college. I will make sure their writing skills are up to par, I will sign them up for the PHAA diploma program, I will help them work on their organization and study skills. But I will not tell them college is the only option.

I look at JT and see a kid who has always excelled in everything academic until now when he's really starting to struggle with the application of some concepts he's learning in early Algebra. It's a foreign language to him. Of course, he can get through it. But I wonder how much of it is really making sense to him and how much is just him learning to imitate the examples shown in the videos. I was an excellent math example imitator, but after Algebra, that skill stopped working and I had no idea what was going on most days. I see him approaching math the same way I did. It's a completely different story for EM. He just takes one look at his math book and can apply what he's seeing and it makes perfect sense to him. But EM doesn't want to write a four sentence paragraph because writing is not natural for him. Yes, I know they both have time before the college years are here. I just don't want them to think when the time comes, they have only one option, even if that option doesn't fit them well. 

We've come this far off the beaten path. Who's to say they can't continue down the road less traveled?

Not me.