Castle in the Sea

Things and Thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 14:27:00 +0000

The purpose of learning is not to mold something formless into something having form. It’s not to perform a kind of soul-alchemy by which human dross becomes gold. What is human is not dross, in God’s vision as articulated by the Church, or in Miss Mason’s vision, either. It is not clay. It has within itself, “especially if it accepts the inspiration of the Christian faith,” the capacity to create and sustain civilization.

Me, at Things and Thoughts: Catholic Homeschooling and Charlotte Mason

Check it out!

Why We Homeschool

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 18:33:00 +0000

Not to hide from the world. Not to seal up our children hermetically in Catholic shrinkwrap. Not because I like long skirts and patriarchy. Not because I couldn't get another job. Not because we're too lazy to get up for the school bus. Not because we prefer ignorance. Not because we suffer from subclinical agoraphobia. Not (your favorite homeschooling stereotype here).

No, truly, the reason we homeschool is this:

. . . two women were discussing a mutual friend who seemed to be very uncertain of herself. She rarely chatted with the others at their meetings, never volunteered for anything, and would not venture to give any opinions unless coaxed.

The one woman was inclined to call this friend incompetent and dull-witted, but the other saw it a different way. She knew the home life of their mutual friend, and the requirements and expectations that had been perpetually placed on her, and she made this insightful observation: “She hasn’t a chance in the world to be a person. It must be awful: to have what you aren’t equal to thrust upon you, and no chance at all to do what you are equal to.”

And this, from Charlotte Mason:

“The central thought, or rather body of thought, upon which I found, is the somewhat obvious fact that the child is a person with all the possibilities and powers included in personality” (Vol. 1, Preface).

And this:

How many of us know adults who did not excel in the traditional school system as children? They are very talented in many ways, but not in the particular skills that were required in that system. They weren’t wired to play the guess-what-the-teacher-is-thinking game and memorize the expected answers at the expected pace. Yet that system was thrust upon them. And when it became evident that they were not equal to those skills, they were sometimes made to feel less than a person.

And all the rest.

Some Favorite Things at the End of September

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 13:01:00 +0000

* Learning German with Duolingo.com

*Audubon Field Guide apps on the Kindles

*Crockpot brown rice cereal: 2 cups long-grain brown rice, 4 cups water, some frozen fruit, vanilla. Cook overnight in crockpot. Makes a supply that will last as long as a week, depending on how many people you have to feed, and how many of them will actually eat hot brown-rice cereal. Enjoy with coconut milk, plus honey if desired. You could make it with milk and it would taste even better, but we're on an elimination diet right now on behalf of a child with persistent stomachaches, so things are rather bland around here . . .

*Art of Problem-Solving Geometry -- the 10th-grader is doing the actual online class, which is pricey but seems worth it, so far, in terms of the challenge it presents. He's done Saxon Algebra 1/2, Algebra I, and Algebra II, and my hope is that the creative-mathematical-thinking bent of AoPS will be a good brain-stretch. He seems to think it's pretty hard, anyway, and that's something.

*Writing for a new, soon-to-be-unveiled Catholic Charlotte Mason group blog. I've written one essay on the Thomist bent of Charlotte Mason's philosophy -- not that I am a Thomist in any formal, credentialed, credible way, you understand; I'm as accidental a Thomist as Charlotte Mason herself might have been -- and there's more to come, as well as contributions by Michele Quigley, Mary Ellen Barrett, and MacBeth Derham. Stay tuned for more details!

*Life of Fred: Ice Cream

*The dog's new cooler-weather bursts of energy, which make him, at intervals, hit us up to play the stomping game. We stomp on the floor; he levitates and comes down on his elbows, snorting, and then freight-trains it around the house several times. This game tends to leave the rugs all cattywhompus, and the floors are something worse for the wear, but it's funny to watch. To siphon off some of that energy, Aelred and I took him for a long walk late Saturday afternoon: down the rail trail to the baseball field and back up to Main Street and the square, where we stopped for a sidewalk-table beer at Osama's. They brought the dog a bowl of water, too. Add that experience to my list of September favorites -- possibly it's one that could extend into October as well.

*Mary Poppins, even if she is so unpleasant that it's hard to see just why Jane and Michael adore her so much.

*Mother Dolores Hart, and Benedictines in general. A friend just lent me Mother Dolores's book, The Ear of the Heart, which means that I can stop rereading In This House of Brede for a little while.

*Otherwise I'm reading Nabokov's King, Queen, Knave. As far as I can tell, I've vanquished all the Agatha Christie in the house.

*Fiction writing. I'm at a bit of an impasse with The Gift Girl -- Maris stuck in tower, how will she get down, where are the good guys all this time? -- so am working on some short fiction as an exercise in going against my own grain.

*The Litany of Humility. Always.

In Which the College Girl

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 02:36:00 +0000

is apparently having boocoodles of fun at school.

Everybody's Desperate . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 21:14:00 +0000

Which I guess is why, having read this this week, I found myself longing for this:

Words fail me to express how much I love this song, or the whole album, or Warren Zevon's voice, or the memory of lying on the floor in my bedroom listening to these songs at night in the 1970s, which feel now to me like an era of longing, and promise, and . . . well, other fatuous girly stuff that really doesn't seem consistent with listening to Warren Zevon songs, or with reality on the ground, either, but there it was.

This Week's Read-Alouds

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 18:28:00 +0000

Stories of Beowulf Told to the Children
The Shining Company
Mary Poppins Opens the Door

On their own, people are sucking up Hardy Boys and Trixie Belden, while I continue to read Agatha Christie, a.k.a. Trixie Belden for grownups.

This Week's Favorite Kindle (mostly) Math-Oriented Apps

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 14:52:00 +0000

Mathemagica: Range of math skills and operations covering all grade levels

Multiplication Genius: Basically flashcards, but good for drill

Kid Math: Sort of a flowery space-invaders kind of way to practice facts

Minecraft Pocket Edition: Work with 3-D shapes and spaces

DragonBox Algebra 5+: Thank you, Charlotte, for the recommendation.

Others we like:

Art Memory Game (lite)
Famous Paintings
Brain Gems
Journal
Picasso
*Knowledge Tube
SpellingCity
*SaintCast

*Must have web enabled to run these apps, and they don't work in Kindle FreeTime, i.e. the application which lets you set time limits so that you don't have to hover over people or worry about hearing the oven timer. Still, we like them a lot. The 5th grader has been full of cosmological information lately, gleaned from a BBC series on the planets, and we all find the SaintCasts fun. Of course, we can just listen to SaintCast.org on the computer, but the 4th grader especially likes having it on her Kindle, so that she can listen even when nobody else wants to.

In Case the Amazingness of My 5th Grader Got Lost . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 13:02:00 +0000

. . . in yesterday's post, let me just say that today he got up at five with his older brother, who had an eight a.m. chemistry class. By the time I emerged at quarter to seven, he had done all his school reading: Bible, history, geography, literature, geology. I have heard, in great detail, about the Punic Wars, and about the surveying project which established the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, which was the subject of his geography reading. He's done his copywork, followed by half an hour's worth of multiplication drill via a Kindle app (Multiplication Genius, which we really like), and the next Life of Fred chapter on his own.

And he's put his laundry in.

So, it's two minutes to nine in the morning, and he's playing Minecraft. Deservedly. He can join us later for German, but otherwise, the day is his.

Random Quick Tuesday Thoughts About Homeschooling and Some Other Stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 18:30:00 +0000

1. Conversation with My 5th Grader

Him: Why couldn't you just give us a shorter school day, I mean, cut some of these books and subjects and stuff?

Me: Because then you wouldn't have a very full education, that's why.

Him: Well, but I mean, The Hound of the Baskervilles is just unnecessary literature.

Me: Literature is necessary.

Him: Huh.

What we have here is a failure of one philosophy to communicate with another. The Philosophy of 5th Grade Pragmatism is bound to lose to Mom's Inexorable Humanities Vision, just because, but it's determined to go down fighting. Which is kind of a drag, frankly, but there it is.

2. Math

I love Life of Fred. Really, I'm kind of surprised by how much I love Life of Fred -- I mean, I was disposed to like it because it's funky and weird and funny, but I did not actually expect to discover that it's hard. As in, Children Have to Learn Math. Somehow, in my mind, I hadn't correlated Thinking Mathematically with, you know, Being Able to Do Math; the impression I often get from conversations about Thinking Mathematically is that Mathematical Thoughts are big and capacious and creative, and sort of gloss over tiny mundane things like what 7x8 actually equals in boring old objective reality. But then, I realize that math is about expressing objective reality, far more than verbal language is. As far as I can tell, it's well-nigh impossible to lie convincingly in math.

Anyway.

We have had a routine going which works on some levels, but not on others. It goes like this:

a. Warm-up/facts practice/drill. Some days I put some problems on the whiteboard -- every day last week, we began with three problems on the whiteboard: a column addition because they had forgotten how to do these, then a 2-digit-times-1-digit multiplication problem, then a a division problem -- while on other days we fill in a blank multiplication chart on paper, while on yet other days I let the kids play a multiplication-drill app on their Kindles. All this is good, though as I've learned, it is better to specify which app I want them to do, rather than saying, "Pick a math app and play it," because the latter may result in a lot of time being spent picking the app, then figuring out how to do the app, then doing two multiplication problems before time is up.

b. Reading a chapter of Life of Fred aloud, demonstrating the various problems on the whiteboard as we go, then having people do the Your Turn to Play section as independently as they can, which some days is very independently, and some days is . . . not.

So, this would work just fine, and it often does work just fine, except that what I'm noticing is that when you have two kids doing the lesson together, it often transpires that while one child is listening and tracking what we're doing, the other is . . . well, today, for example, the other child was drawing pictures of hairballs all over the paper meant for writing math problems on. Everyone is still having trouble with the steps of long division, but not surprisingly, the person who spends the math lesson drawing hairballs (why hairballs? it only just now occurs to me to wonder) hasn't even arrived at the point of having trouble with the steps, because this person is expecting me to wind up doing the problem for everyone, which is not exactly my ultimate objective.

So . . . I was planning to separate everyone in math after Christmas anyway, moving the 5th grader into the beginning of the Life of Fred pre-algebra series and the 4th grader into the intermediate math series (for children under 10, or children who need more before embarking on fractions, decimals, percents, et al.) that follows on these elementary books, with which we're finally almost finished. We're nearly done with Honey right now, and I anticipate that we'll have worked through Ice Cream and Jellybeans by the end of this semester. I'd planned to keep everyone together through the end of the elementary series, but now what I think I'm going to have to do is shift math so that each child can have an individual lesson, from which it will presumably be harder to tune out. There's nothing hard about that, of course, except that the routine was going so swimmingly . . . How I hate sacrificing my lovely routine to the end of having someone learn something.

Or else we could just take turns doing the work on the whiteboard, ie being put on the spot. That could work, too. I think I'll give our combined math "class" till the end of this week before I decide to go torquing the schedule around too much.

3. So, what is good right now?

Reading and narrating are going well, though the 4th grader is a far more voluble narrator of her reading than the 5th grader is of his. From her I get chirpy little retellings full of detail; from him I get, "Mom, I don't talk about things I read." If I sit there implacably enough, I am eventually treated to some account of what happened with Hadrian's Wall, or Jeroboam, or Aeneas, or the earth's inner mantle, which leaves me not unconvinced that more than what I'm hearing was absorbed by the reader -- but not exactly wallowing in evidence of that absorption, either.

What are we reading at the moment? I'm sure I've written all this before, but just in case . . .

4th grader:

Literature: Stories from The Iliad by Jeanie Lang; Understood Betsy

British History: Cambridge Historical Reader (about which I cannot say enough good, as an alternative to H.E. Marshall's Our Island Story, for a reluctant reader)

Ancient History: The Children's Plutarch: Tales of the Greeks, F.J. Gould

Geography: First Lessons in Geography; Tree in the Trail

Science/Nature: Among the Meadow People, A World in a Drop of Water

Religion: The First Christians, Marigold Hunt; Great Moments in Catholic History; Hurlbut's Story of the Bible

5th grader:

Literature: Stories from The Aeneid by Jeanie Lang; The Hound of the Baskervilles

British History: The Story of the English, H. E. Guerber

Ancient History: The Children's Plutarch: Tales of the Romans, F.J. Gould

Geography: First Lessons in Geography; Adventures in Geography by Gertrude Alice Kay

Science/Nature: *The Practical Geologist, Junior Explorer Rocks and Minerals Activity Book

Religion: Pearls of Peace: A Scriptural Rosary Journey Through the Holy Land; Great Moments in Catholic History; Hurlbut's Story of the Bible

*Practical Geologist is turning out to be a little advanced even for the 11-year-old enthusiast. Rethinking a bit here . . .

Memory work and dictation are also working well. After much thought over the summer, I opted not to invest in a whole memory work "system," ie Classically Catholic Memory; instead, we're concentrating on memorizing geography facts, catechism questions, math formulae (eg, "divide, multiply, subtract, bring down" for long division), and sentences for dictation. For the last several weeks we've used one of our copywork passages for studied dictation on Friday, but this week I've just put a sentence -- taken from Edward Eager's Half Magic, as it happens -- on the board for people to study and memorize.

4. On the other hand, what's not happening at all?

Currently, art, composer study, and nature study are not happening. And here's why: our schedule, sparse enough though it seemed to me in the beginning, is too full of interruptions, mostly right around noon, when I'd want to be settling into lunch with read-alouds and discussions.

On Monday there's Gym and Swim class, and I've shortened our schedule to math-copywork-literature-religion to accommodate that. Gym and Swim is kind of a non-negotiable, being good physical activity plus social time with friends. Still, it creates a time crunch, and the rest of the week needs to absorb that, but . . .

Then on Tuesday, we've had an online MathArt class from Currclick. It's a great class, very interesting and worthwhile . . . except that it's at 12:30, so that we're just getting a longer day's work in, with math, copywork, literature, history, geography, religion, and science, barely in time to be ready for class, and by the time it's over, nobody wants to do any more school at all. In fact, by the time it's on, nobody wants to pay attention to anything any more.

I'm also finding that although it's advertised for middle- and high-schoolers, it's a little beyond the maturity and cognitive levels even of my 11-year-old. So I'm pondering dropping it and using our lunch hour for basket reading instead.

Wednesday is actually pretty open.

On Thursday we have Mass at noon. It's nice to go to Mass at noon, instead of at 8 a.m., but then again, it sort of bisects the day. But then again again, even if we didn't go to Mass at noon, there would be the siren song of homeschool rec swim at the Y, calling to us to drop our books and put on our goggles . . .

Friday is also pretty open, except for First Fridays, when we meet friends for noon Mass and a play day afterwards. So three to four weeks out of the month, this is another day that can absorb things not done on other days . . . except that it's Friday, and nobody wants a long school day . . .

Anyway, I'm very tempted to drop MathArt. Great class, not sure it's working for us right now. Too much stuff, when I'm trying to keep us Charlotte-Mason-ly simple.

Meanwhile . . .

5. Other things . . .

If you haven't signed up for Prufrock: The Books, Art, and Ideas Newsletter, you really should. I mean, if you want a daily dose of literary and cultural goodness delivered to your email inbox. Of course, if you don't, then by all means don't. But if you want to know about Evangelicals and Mariology, or how to understand Gravity's Rainbow, or what a "watergaw" is, AND if you want to read one good poem and see one good image every day between your rising and your going down, then you should subscribe.

Also, I seem still to be in a phase of adding to this ongoing novel thing. I can't tell how long it will last. Read now, while you can.

6. Oh, I forgot some things.

a. German. We have been memorizing this book, a sentence a week. It came with a funny little audio featuring very homemade wind, ocean, and bird sounds. The (spoiler alert) ship sinking is accompanied by a slurping sound that makes you imagine the ship being sucked, not down to the bottom of the ocean, but up from the bottom of a milkshake, via a straw.

b. The 10th grader's life is looking like this right now. Plus chemistry, German, soup-kitchen volunteering, and paid work at the vet's. And being drawn on by his brother with Sharpie while he sleeps. Yesterday he woke up with "Made in China" written across his back. Last time the 5th grader pulled this particular stunt, he took the precaution of hiding the Sharpie and leaving a dry-erase marker out in plain view, so that when the 10th grader retaliated, as expected, all the 5th grader had to do was wipe himself off. I think I'm going to write a study entitled, "The Dubious Uses of Genius in the Domestic Ecosystem."

And I think that's really all.

What It Was Like

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 13:16:00 +0000

It was like this.

Reading (You, Maybe)

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Sun, 08 Sep 2013 21:12:00 +0000

So, ages ago I was writing this story on a private blog to which about five of you were subscribed. Those five people, who had gotten all caught up in the story, were really really nice about the fact that I don't write in a straightforward, linear, "gotta finish Book Seven before the fans start camping out in the kitchen" kind of way. That is, I am not (your favorite author of addictive fiction series here) -- which, I guess, is why, whatever name you inserted in the favorite author of addictive fiction series blank, it probably wasn't mine. Or . . . something. What was I saying?

Oh, right. I was saying that ages ago I was writing this story, but then I didn't know what was supposed to happen next, so I stopped. I put it on pause until such time as I did know what was supposed to happen next. Of course, wouldn't you know that a year or more would elapse, during which time I found out all kinds of poems that needed writing, and some non-fiction articles, too, and also I did some home education all day every day, but I didn't know what happened next in this story.

Until last night, as I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep. A little window opened in my mind, and I saw . . . well, about three hours' worth of action and interaction which advances the story a few painstaking inches forward and also casts what has happened heretofore in such a light that I had to go back and adjust some things, so that they would represent what really happened and not what I thought happened, back when I couldn't see quite so far.

And so it goes. I really wish I had a better working method for fiction writing than "run until a wall looms up, hit it, and fall down," but I don't. Anyway, here is the new, improved, expanded, but still unfinished story:

Part One
Part Two
and now
Part Three

For a limited time I'll open up access to the story blog, so you don't have to subscribe. Not that subscribing costs you anything, but it's kind of a headache, especially when the story you've subscribed to dries up for, say, two years. Anyway, enjoy or whatever.

Reading (Kids)

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Fri, 06 Sep 2013 12:01:00 +0000

Current and recent pleasure reading:

9-year-old:
The Boxcar Children (the original story, not the spin-off series)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Understood Betsy

11-year-old:
Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins Comes Back
The Hound of the Baskervilles

School Reading:

9-year-old:

History/British:
The Cambridge Historical Reader

History/Ancient:
The Children's Plutarch: Tales of the Greeks

Geography:
First Lessons in Geography (a memorize-&-recite kind of thing, like a catechism)
Tree in the Trail

Religion:
Hurlbut's Story of the Bible
Great Moments in Catholic History
Mother Cabrini, Missionary to the World
The First Christians

Science/Nature:
Among the Meadow People
A World in a Drop of Water

Math:
Life of Fred: Honey

11-year-old:

History/British: Story of the English

History/Ancient: The Children's Plutarch: Tales of the Romans

Geography:
First Lessons in Geography
Charting the World
Adventures in Geography

Religion:
Pearls of Peace: A Rosary Journey Through the Holy Land
Hurlbut's Story of the Bible
Great Moments in Catholic History
Father Marquette and the Great Rivers

Science/Nature:
The Practical Geologist
Geology and Fossils Junior Explorer Activity Book

Math:
Life of Fred: Honey

Lunch-Basket Read-alouds:
Stories of Beowulf Told to the Children
The Shining Company
Our Island Saints
George Washington's World (continued from last year)
The Adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat (topics from our Tuesday MathArt class)

What is the 15-year-old reading?
All this stuff. He should be finishing Unit 1 this week.

I, meanwhile, have found several more Agatha Christies to hoover up. Everybody else go read and don't talk to me.

Reading (Me)

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 13:51:00 +0000

Recent or ongoing:

The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins
Glory, Vladimir Nabokov
various Agatha Christie mysteries
The Color of Magic, Terry Pratchett
Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov
Holy Sex, Gregory Popcak
The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene

Kind of a schizophrenic list . . .

Things We Like (Wired Edition)

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 20:54:00 +0000

Being a List of Techno-Stuff That Makes Our Life Better Right Now

I. CurrClick

Online classes, free clubs -- my kids participate in Lego and American Girl clubs, as well as a MathArt class -- homeschooling resources, freebies.

II. Kindle Fire

We were going to take a deep breath, shut our eyes tight, say a prayer, and buy a family iPad. Then we saw that the Second-Generation Kindle Fire was $159 on Amazon, and now we have two of those, one for each of the two youngest children, ages 9 and 11.

Why the Kindle Fire?

*Books. I already had a large library of free Kindle books, which we were reading on my laptop. Yesterday all the Mary Poppins books were on sale for 99 cents each. Can I resist these things? No, I cannot. Plus, I had all these e-books from Yesterday's Classics  and Heritage History saved in the Calibre app on my laptop, and now they're all loaded onto the kids' Kindles, to use for school. New books become available all the time.

And I don't have that much more shelf space in my house.

*Audiobooks. Our Audible library also becomes instantly available to household Kindle-users. Oh, how we love audiobooks. We listen to them regularly together, but it's nice for people to be able to listen on their own as well.

*Parental Controls. Like any electronic device that runs apps, a Kindle Fire can seem less like a tool than a toy. The parental-control feature, though, really helps mitigate against that. I kept my children's Kindles hidden for several weeks so that I could play with th-- I mean, so that I could work with them, to configure settings in such a way that only the things I want accessed are available. The web browser is blocked. Apps are blocked. The Newsstand feature is blocked (no browsing Us when you're supposed to be reading your history). Video is blocked. In fact, everything is blocked except books, audiobooks, and "documents," which covers all the books I've added from non-Amazon sources.

So when people open their Kindles, what they see are books they're supposed to be reading, either for school or for fun. Apps are available to them only through the FreeTime feature, which I sign them into only after schoolwork is finished. In FreeTime, furthermore, I can set time limits for activities: no videos, an hour for apps, but unlimited reading. My only complaint is that I can't load the books in the "Documents" library into FreeTime, and FreeTime doesn't include audiobooks; if I could add those things, the kids would never know that there was anything but FreeTime.

Our Kindle rules:

1. All apps are blocked in the "regular" format, ie what you see when you turn the Kindle on. Web is blocked. Everything is blocked but books, audiobooks, and "docs."

2. Apps are enabled for a limited amount of time in the Kindle FreeTime mode. I have to enter them into FreeTime, via password, and exit them from it. I control their time allotments. Video is totally blocked, unless I have specifically unblocked it for a specific and agreed-upon video.

3. App selection is very limited. I might add a game at my discretion, but right now virtually all of the apps on their Kindles are educational. We do have things like Boggle, Monopoly, Mancala, etc, but no really gamy-games, if you know what I mean. I have made begging me for apps verboten. I know what they like, and as a good semester progresses, I *might* add something more fun, like Minecraft.

4. If I want to use an app during school time (we have a journal app that my daughter likes to use for narrations sometimes), then I will provisionally unblock that app, and not deduct that time from playtime allotment -- BUT the child has to be right by me, so that I can see that no wandering-off occurs. When that app use is finished, then I re-block them all. (I wish I could pick and choose and block particular apps, but alas . . .). The same would go for math apps and so forth. They *can* play those during their FreeTime allotment (though they haven't been quite that bored yet . . .). Anyway, things I wanted them to use for school purposes I would unblock and monitor.

5. School reading must be done before any playing. Always. Well, I take that back. They do sometimes get up in the morning and play a little before we start school, but then they have less playtime afterward. And so far I've had no trouble getting them to stop and switch gears for school.

These convenient devices are really a lot of work, though I like them so far, with some minor caveats. While I have one Kindle-using child who really does devour books on his, my reluctant reader doesn't always choose to do that. Still, the books are available, just as they are all over our house, and that counts for something. That child also listens to audiobooks quite a lot, especially once her app playtime is up -- again, that's unlimited, we have a large Audible library, and I feel that that's time well spent. Meanwhile, I'm concentrating on feeding her as much good and challenging reading by way of her schoolwork as possible.

I also have instituted mandatory Kindle-Off time in the afternoons. They use them for school, and I give them some time to play right after lunch, but from 2-4, generally, all devices are OFF, and people must find something else to do: play, read a "real" book, do art, whatever. Amazingly, they really haven't resisted this rule, and I think that even that relatively small limit helps them to use their devices more wisely during their on-time.

III. Some Kindle Apps

1. KnowledgeTube. My 11-year-old's favorite video source. He gets to watch it only in limited slices, but suddenly he is full of information about atmospheric events on Jupiter.

2. SaintCast. My 9-year-old and I are listening to the Thomas Becket podcast even as I write. She's been playing the following two (nice quiet) apps while we listen.

3. Kids Doodle.  My arty girl makes funny little movies -- alas that we can't save them.

4. Famous Paintings Jigsaw.   Scrambles a famous painting, and you have to sort it out.

IV. (Recent) Favorite Kindle Books and Audiobooks

Mary Poppins Comes Back
The Boxcar Children
The Hound of the Baskervilles
You Wait Till I'm Older Than You

Audio:
Burt Dow, Deep-Water Man
Strega Nona
Winnie-the-Pooh

These links are not sponsored, by the way. I benefit by your clicking them only in the sense that sharing things we like is a satisfaction in itself. Our usual recommendations are so Luddite in nature that I thought I'd offer all this as a corrective to your view of our life here. It's not unplugged, that's for sure.

Seamus Heaney: Death of a Naturalist-Poet

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 13:38:00 +0000

Seamus Heaney has died, aged 74.

. . .

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Read the rest.

Today I'm inclined to reflect that ultimately each of us digs, daily, with the tool that best fits his hand, his own grave. Thank God for the people who dig with such art that we can stand the rest of our own lives contemplating the holes they leave.

via

Late Have I Loved You

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 02:52:00 +0000

. . . O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved

you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

Augustine, Confessions

via

(late have I blogged you, dear companion of my soul's imagination, but a happy feast to you anyway)

Cooking and the College Girl: Stocking the Kitchen

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 21:43:00 +0000

Let's say you're nineteen, and in six days you go back to school, far far away from Mom and the happy home kitchen, where you just got through washing about eight bazillion dishes so maybe we should be calling this post Escape From the Happy Home Kitchen, but anyway.

So say you're going back to school and this year, because you are an official Big Girl On Campus, you are not moving back into the dinky dorm with the electric kettle balanced on the edge of the shared sink, oh no: you are moving into An Apartment. With Friends. And a Kitchen. And No Meal Plan. Which means . . .

Pop Tarts.

No, try again. I mean, it could mean Pop Tarts. You can have Pop Tarts for dinner (just don't tell me if you do). But what you hope, and what I hope, is that it means cooking for yourself.

And really, you're a pretty good cook. Those pork chops last night: good. Brownies: to die for. Dijon chicken: delish. Fancy tuna salad with craisins and grapes and pine nuts: a thing of excellence. So we know you can do this, right? But what we also know is that it's a lot easier to cook good meals in a reasonably well-stocked kitchen, which yours will not be -- until you stock it, that is.

You'll be going grocery shopping right smartish, I presume, since they who do not grocery shop should not eat. So let's think about what ought to go on that first list, that list not only of what you want to eat RIGHT NOW, but of what you want to keep on hand so that you can make what you want to eat RIGHT NOW, day after day after day.

Item 1: The Spice Rack

This is important. Spices can be a little pricey, but a bottle will last you a long time and see you through many different kinds of meals. Buy them now, and you're set.

Here are my staples:

salt
ground black pepper
white pepper (good on pork; Julia Child loved it on just about everything)
*garlic powder
*onion powder
chili powder
curry powder
cinnamon
nutmeg
ground cloves
cumin
basil
oregano
thyme
sage

*I know, I know. Better to use fresh. But when you're in a hurry, and you don't have a car to get to the store, it's nice to have a reasonably imperishable supply that doesn't grow green stalks when ignored.

I feel as though I'm forgetting something important on the spice list, but I can't think what, and I'm too lazy to go look at my own spice collection. Anyway, that's more or less my list of basics, without which the kitchen cannot function. After the first shopping trip, you can strike off that part of the shopping list and only replenish things as they run out.

Item 2: The Cupboard

* 1 5-lb bag flour
(whatever kind you like. I'm a King Arthur Whole Wheat kind of person myself. Even for brownies)
*baking powder
sugar or honey or both
cocoa powder (also really good in homemade chili)
oil: I'd get both olive oil (not extra-virgin, for cooking) and coconut oil. You can get some extra-virgin olive oil to have on hand for salad dressings. Keep it in the cupboard, out of the light, when you're not using it, and it will stay non-rancid longer.
can tuna
**can soups
**can beans
***can diced tomatoes/tomato paste
rolled oats/oatmeal

*For those who like to bake. Otherwise, don't bother, though you do use flour for things like sauces. A sack of flour will last you a good while. You may wish to put your flour in a glass canister to keep bugs out of it, and to keep it from spilling annoyingly in the cupboard. So "glass canister" would be a good item to add to the list for the first shopping trip.

**more expensive than making your own soups and dried beans, but let's be real. This is a college apartment, not a third-floor homestead. Look for sales and stock up on whatever is marked down this week. These are good for emergency meals, when you're in a hurry or out of everything else.

***The Organic Food Stasi want you to know that eating canned tomatoes will kill you. Mom wants you to know that eventually and inevitably something will kill you, and canned tomatoes are one of the slower methods. Meanwhile, they're awfully useful for chili, soups, pasta sauces, dumping on chicken or pork chops with some herbs, and so on.

Item 3: The Fridge

These items you will buy weekly:

milk
butter
cheese
eggs
*meat
**produce

*You might plan 3-5 meat meals per week and buy very small packs of the meats you want: chicken, pork, beef. Alternatively you can buy a huge pack of, say, boneless pork chops or chicken thighs, and cook it up at one go, then use the meat in different ways for days on end: a pork chop for dinner, then a pork sandwich for lunch, then chopped-up pork in stir fry or fried rice or a burrito . . . A rotisserie chicken can last you for several meals, too. Omelettes are a good Friday and emergency stand-by, as are the tuna, beans, and soup you have stockpiled in your cupboard.

**Don't go that overboard on fresh fruits and veggies -- that is to say, don't buy more than you can eat before they go bad. Besides, you have . . .

Item 4: The Freezer

When I was in college, the freezer was where you kept your Lean Cuisine. You, however, are smarter than that.

frozen vegetables: chopped spinach, green beans, peas, lima beans, whatever you like

frozen fruit: blueberries, raspberries, peaches (good for smoothies, for putting in muesli and oatmeal, for making cobblers for dessert, and so on)

maybe some frozen meat: a bag of chicken leg quarters (cheap, and you can pull one out at a time, at need, and they'll last you a long time) or burger patties.

I have to go finish making dinner now, and I'm sure I'm forgetting all kinds of things. Please feel free to fill in my blanks for me in the combox. Oh, and pop tarts. Don't forget the pop tarts.

ADDENDUM: In Which the College Girl Gets All Domestic Goddessy (yes, that's her real hair)

Heart and Leaf

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Sat, 24 Aug 2013 00:31:00 +0000

A moment later my first poem began. What touched it off? I think I know. Without any wind blowing, the sheer weight of a raindrop, shining in parasitic luxury on a cordate leaf, caused its tip to dip, and what looked like a globule of quicksilver performed a sudden glissando down the center vein, and then, having shed its bright load, the relieved leaf unbent. Tip, leaf, dip, relief -- the instant it all took to happen seemed to me not so much a fraction of time as a fissure in it, a missed heartbeat, which was refunded at once by a patter of rhymes: I say "patter" intentionally, for when a gust of wind did come, the trees would briskly start to drip all together in as crude an imitation of the recent downpour as the stanza I was already muttering resembled the shock of wonder I had experienced when for a moment heart and leaf had been one.

Vladimir Nabokov
Speak, Memory

Back to School, Back to Blogging (maybe)

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 19:55:00 +0000

OK, so it's been ages, during which much rain has fallen, the back porch and everything on it mildewed (first tip-off: back door, usually white, suddenly spotty black. oh no), and the cosmos grown taller than I am. Even as I write this, the sky above Rebecca's roof next door has assumed its glowering look again, and the dog has become very present. I am also eating sunflower seeds, harvested from our garden and roasted by Crispina, who seems pleased with herself.

This week we're back to school. I don't always love starting back, but this year entering into a routine of reading and other work feels very much like settling into a good warm bath at the end of a long and active day. Summer was great, but man, do I love copywork. For other people.

Here are the schedules we're currently following for the primary grades:

GRADE 4 SCHOOL SCHEDULE 2013-14 (CRISPINA)

Follow this routine every day, doing your subjects in the order listed

DAY	MATH	GERMAN	ENGLISH	HISTORY	GEOGRAPHY	RELIGION	SCIENCE
MONDAY Read your chore chart and do your chores Morning Prayers	Life of Fred w/Mom		Grammar w/Mom Copywork Iliad Read 20 minutes, narrate 1			The First Christians Read 20 minutes, Narrate
TUESDAY Read your chore chart and do your chores Morning Prayers	MEP Y4/ Life of Fred w/Mom Tuesday Afternoon: MathArt on CurrClick	52 Weeks of Family German w/Mom	Spelling w/Mom Copywork Study passage for dictation Literature Read 20 minutes	Cambridge Historical Reader/ Read 20 minutes Work on Book of Centuries	First Lessons in Geography: read and memorize one lesson, to recite for Mom	Story of the Bible Read one story Narrate	Among the Meadow People/ Read 20 minutes, narrate
WEDNESDAY Read your chore chart and do your chores Morning Prayers	MEP Y4 page/Life of Fred w/Mom	German reading/ Read aloud with Mom	Copywork Study passage for dictation Grammar/ Diagrams literature Read 20 minutes	Tales of the Greeks/ Read 20 minutes, Work on Book of Centuries	Tree in the Trail Read one page, Narrate	Great Moments in Catholic History/ Read one “moment,” Narrate	World in a Drop of Water/ Narrate
THURSDAY Read your chore chart and do your chores Morning Prayers	MEPY4/ Life of Fred w/Mom	52 Weeks w/Mom	Copywork Study passage for dictation Literature Read 20 minutes	Tales of the Greeks Read 20 minutes Work on Book of Centuries	Tree in the Trail Read one page, Narrate	Great Moments in Catholic History/ Read one “moment,” narrate
FRIDAY Read your chore chart and do your chores Morning Prayers	Life of Fred w/Mom		Dictation with Mom Guerber’s Shakespeare 1 act per week Narrate			Saint Story Read 20 minutes, Narrate	Online science fun as directed by Mom

GRADE 5 SCHOOL SCHEDULE 2013-14 (HELIER)

Follow this routine every day, doing your subjects in the order listed.

DAY	MATH	GERMAN	ENGLISH	HISTORY	GEOGRAPHY	RELIGION	SCIENCE
MONDAY Read your chore chart and do your chores Morning Prayers	Facts/ Life of Fred w/Mom		Grammar w/Mom Copywork Aeneid read for 20 minutes narrate			Pearls of Peace/read and pray one mystery
TUESDAY Read your chore chart and do your chores Morning Prayers	MEP/ Life of Fred w/Mom Tuesday Afternoon: MathArt on CurrClick	52 Weeks of Family German w/Mom	Spelling w/Mom Copywork Study passage for dictation Literature Read for 20 minutes	Story of the English/ Read for 20 minutes, Work on Book of Centuries	First Lessons in Geography: read one lesson, memorize, and recite for Mom	Great Moments in Catholic History/read one “moment,” narrate	Practical Geologist Read for 20 minutes Narrate
WEDNESDAY Read your chore chart and do your chores Morning Prayers	MEP/ Life of Fred w/Mom	German reading Read aloud with Mom	Grammar w/Mom Diagramming Copywork Study passage for dictation Literature Read for 20 minutes	Tales of the Romans/ read for 20 minutes, Work on Book of Centuries	Charting the World Read for 20 minutes Narrate	Bible read one story from Hurlbut or regular Bible Narrate	Geology and Fossils Junior Explorer Activity Book
THURSDAY Read your chore chart and do your chores Morning Prayers	MEP/ Life of Fred w/Mom	52 Weeks w/Mom	Copywork Study passage for dictation Literature Read for 20 minutes	Story of the English Read for 20 minutes, Work on Book of Centuries	Geography Adventure Read for 20 minutes Narrate	Saint story Narrate
FRIDAY Read your chore chart and do your chores Morning Prayers	Life of Fred w/Mom		Dictation with Mom Guerber’s Shakespeare 1 act per week Narrate			Great Moments in Catholic History Read one “moment,” narrate	Online science fun as directed by Mom

Here's our daily "Lunch Basket" of read-alouds and combined activities:

BASKET 2013-14

DAY	BOOK 1	BOOK 2	BOOK 3	Book 4
MONDAY	poetry	George Washington’s World	GYM AND SWIM DAY	Afternoon/Evening: Lego Club/Currclick
TUESDAY	12:30 pm MathArts (online class) – 8 weeks. Then Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain	Picture book	Novel
WEDNESDAY	Penrose the Mathematical Cat (Fibonacci numbers)	Famous Men of the Middle Ages	Usborne Art	Novel 4 pm: American Girl Club/Currclick (1x/month)
THURSDAY	Our Island Saints	Young Folks’ Picture History of Music	MASS AT NOON
FRIDAY	Nature notebook: Fibonacci numbers & Golden Rectangle in nature. Pressings, drawings. Class blog.	novel

So, you ask, what does this mean that we actually do? This week our days went roughly like this:

Go to 8 a.m. Mass & Morning Prayer.

Eat breakfast, make beds, straighten rooms.

Begin school day with

1. Math

a. some kind of short drill or facts work; this week we've done multiplication copywork and an addition table

b. one exercise in the MEP Year 4 practice book

c. one chapter/lesson in Life of Fred, doing the "Your Turn to Play" exercises at the end on individual small dry-erase boards bought at Dollar Tree for this purpose.

2. German (three days a week -- I forget how I have it on the schedule, but that's what we did this week). I'm using a book called 52 Weeks of Family German, focused on integrating German conversation into the daily life of the household (this week: "manners words"), plus some little illustrated storybooks I found for Kindle. One of them comes with audio, so that you can read along and hear the story, in a sort of immersion thing. Then you learn vocabulary. Starting next week I'm going to integrate our German into our copywork, about which more shortly. Anyway, we're doing very short German lessons, 5-10 minutes three days a week. And I do them right after math, so we can't possibly forget to do them.

3. English

a. The night before, I have written out copywork on the whiteboard and in each child's copywork journal, writing on every other line, so the child can copy on the line beneath my own writing. All writing is in cursive this year.

b. Before children begin to write, we look at what's on the board. We identify parts of speech (this week: nouns and verbs). On Wednesday we did simple subject-verb diagrams, so now we find the subject and verb, and they tell me how to diagram them on the board. We look at capitalization, punctuation, and any potential spelling pitfalls (i-before-e issues, etc.).

c. Children write for about five minutes, currently, with nice music on. They also study one day's copywork for dictation on Friday, when I do not give more copywork, but have them write that passage from memory as I read it aloud. (As part of their study, I let them do the good old British thing of Cover-Write-Check).

I am actually, experimentally, doing a brief weekly spelling lesson, based on this. We're looking at letters and sounds, and how letters work together to make sounds, so that we can notice things in our copywork and discuss them. Dictation, of course, is a spelling test as much as it is anything else.

4. Reading. We're roughly following the two years of Mater Amabilis Level 2, which encompasses fourth and fifth grades, with some substitutions to accommodate books we already owned, individual reading abilities and difficulties, and so on. Both children, particularly my more reluctant 4th-grade reader, have remarked that for goodness sake this is a LOT of reading, but I think they'll get used to it. I find that I'm buddy-reading with the 4th grader right now, more than I had intended, but I'm hoping she'll get back into the swing of it soon. Anyway, our daily reading covers literature, history, geography, and science.

5. Lunch-basket reading, as above. In a minute I'll discuss in detail what we did today before lunch.

6. One online class. This year we've discovered CurrClick, and oh, my stars. I forget now how we stumbled on it, but immediately we did, we signed up for the free online Lego club and discovered a world of fun. You log into the online "classroom," where you can chat with other kids (publicly, so both the teacher and your attentive parent see what's going on), and then the teacher leads you in building something and, incidentally, delivers quite the geometry lesson -- this month's focus is 3-D shapes, for example. Lego club was so much fun that we signed up for American Girl Club, also free, and then registered for an actual class, MathArts, which focuses on discovering mathematical patterns in nature. This week we did Fibonacci Numbers and the Golden Rectangle; today, to revisit those concepts and come up with some kind of journal entry about them, we watched Vi Hart --

-- and then tried some of the same things. Here's my rather spiky Fibonacci-engendered spiral:

The writing is backwards because we were taking webcam pictures. No visual backwards masking here. "S'moM ralugnA laripS" does not spell "Paul is dead." I promise.

Here's Crispina's version of the same:

And here's a sunflower, the number of whose spirals I think I miscounted. I got 48, which isn't a Fibonacci number, so either I'm wrong, or this sunflower did not get the memo that all nature follows a beautiful golden order . . . Anyway, later Crispina harvested all those seeds and roasted them, and now we're eating them.

Here is a pinecone

with 5 spirals one way and 8 another. I really liked Vi's glitter glue, but we didn't have any. Must remember this spiral-counting Fibonacci thing at Christmas, when we might want to do crafty things with pinecones.

Meanwhile, my 10th grader has been abroad in the world, by which I mean that three days a week he's been getting up in the dark to make it to an 8 a.m. chemistry class and I don't see him until suppertime. So, he's taking chemistry and German at the college, and for the rest of his studies, he's doing this. To keep up with him and his written work, especially as I see him so relatively little, I've set up a blog (private, so I won't be sharing it here) for which he and I are both authors. I've subscribed us both to it via email, so each of us sees immediately -- well, immediately on checking email -- when the other one has written a post or a comment. The idea is for him to use this blog as a course notebook, maintaining an ongoing timeline and writing narrations of his reading. I've also provided some literary-analysis prompts and composition assignments; all of it goes on the blog, where I can enter into conversation with it.

So, um, there you go. Home Education Year Eleven: So far, so good.

PS: The college girly is spending much of her time with Elizabeth Bishop, with whom and whose work she will be on intimate terms by the end of her Junior Poets semester. Her mother, who spent much of graduate school reading and writing about Elizabeth Bishop, and wishing she wrote like Elizabeth Bishop, says huzzah.

PPS: For the benefit of Micaela's blog readers, who might wander here via her helpful linkup, I should say that although this post isn't about planning, per se, it does reflect my planning style: loose, general, and flexible. I spent most of the summer changing my mind about books and moving blocks of time, as represented by the blocks on these schedule grids, around in my mind. Now that I have something up and running, I can continue to tweak as I go, but life can go on if I don't. Each child at home has a copy of his/her schedule, in a page protector, slipped into his/her school box (this year, a plastic "in-box" tray, big enough to hold all books and notebooks on end, not big enough I hope to collect all random junk that blows through the room), and I have the same saved in a special folder on my computer desktop. Children are directed to consult their schedules daily, but I also pull up the master copies, so I know what they're supposed to be doing. I can also change things in various blocks as I need to -- I've already axed history reading on Fridays for now, for example, to give us time to do nature study and journaling related to our MathArts class -- print out a new schedule and slip it into the page protector, and my unsuspecting scheduling victim never knows what hit him. Or her.

I also spent the summer planning out an independent study course for my 10th grader. He just came in to tell me that I should specify more clearly that he does not have to read and narrate absolutely every reading on his list for this week -- he did do it, but I'd meant it more as a pick-and-choose kind of affair. I made his day by telling him he didn't have to do all that, but I'd have made it more by telling him sooner.

It's a Working Vacation . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 18:07:00 +0000

Breaking my silence to say that student plans for Western Civ 2 are FINISHED! That is, they're drafted, worked out in a useable form with links to most readings, and ready to go -- but also ready to be tweaked, added to, and amended as we use them ourselves.

So come and check them out. I need to edit my course overview for parents somewhat, as I revised our schedule of writing assignments as I did the student plans -- still, if you click the unit links, you can see readings and resources at a glance, in order to preview. In the student plans I did not use absolutely every reading or every resource; basically I just sketched out what I want my own student to do. This, as I say, is all subject to change as we go, which is one reason I opted not to publish printed plans for this course this year. Comments on the Abandon Hopefully blog are welcome, especially as other people work through the course (as I hope they will!) and add other resources or find that certain things don't work. By the time I do publish a set of printed plans, which I hope will be this time next year, my aim is for them to be a field-tested and collaborative project. Meanwhile, I have to admit that I am pretty proud of what I've knocked together for this year. I think it's a pretty good course.

Where Has This Blog Gone?

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Sun, 30 Jun 2013 10:59:00 +0000

On vacation, apparently. And indefinitely. Leaving no forwarding address.

Father's Day: Here's to All the Men Who Make Us What We Are

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 01:34:00 +0000

On Ignoring Children

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 11:43:00 +0000

LET THEM HAVE TIME TO THEMSELVES- time that is not overseen, interrupted, controlled, regulated, or organized or watched. We will see happier, healthier children who are capable of solving their own problems and manipulating their own world rather than expecting somebody else to manipulate it for them. We will see children who recognize the needs of others sometimes trump their own desires. We will see better and more giving children who just happen to be HAPPIER.

More . . .

via Kyra and Melanie and my number-one world-ignoring mechanism, Facebook

Script for a Summertime Mother-Rant

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 17:10:00 +0000

The family is the laboratory of charity -- This is a useful papal-or-saintly soundbyte which I think I just made up, although it's entirely possible that I read it somewhere.

Anyway, the family is the laboratory of charity. Where else you gonna learn it, I ask you? What else are we all doing here? In what other context can you screw it up as thoroughly as we all do screw it up, and come out forgiven and still beloved on the far side?

What does this mean, that the family is the laboratory of charity? Well, on one level I guess it means this:

Except that if that's the case, too much of the time we're walking adverts for the Epic Fail of Christianity.

(Did you just call me a moron? Because yesterday he called me a moron, and you told me I couldn't call anyone a moron, so why can everybody call me a moron when I can't call them a moron?)

Um, so that's why I said laboratory, and not Exhibit A. Meanwhile, instead of concentrating on feeling all one-in-the-Lordy, which if you were looking for an actual recipe for the Epic Fail of Christianity, that would probably be it, I think it's probably more useful to concentrate on the practicalities of experimental charity. Love is not an emotion, after all, so much as a thing you make yourself do, day after day after day after day, which frankly comes as a huge relief to me. My feelings are chaos; on the other hand, O my many best beloveds, I can fold your laundry. And you can fold mine. That's how you know . . .

Or, well. Here would be an example: A person in the laboratory of charity could consider that even the bathroom is part of the lab. This would be why, say, when that person, and I name no names, I point no fingers, opens a package of toilet paper, he, or she, or whoever, would walk the extra three steps to the wastebasket and deposit the plastic toilet-paper wrap in the wastebasket, rather than, say, dropping it on the floor beside the toilet. Not that anyone here would ever do that, but just say.

Maybe that person's feelings are in chaos; maybe that person is thinking about something else. Maybe that person is just as glad that the Scoutmaster doesn't live here and accompany him (or her, or whoever) to the bathroom in order to lecture him (or her, or whoever -- maybe it's the dog who does these things) about the Leave No Trace principle. And maybe that's a good thing. On the other hand, in the absence of the Scoutmaster, let me be the one to ask why a person should be more solicitous of the campground and the strangers who will use it next, than of the bathroom in his (or her, or the dog's) own home and the known and beloved family members who will use it next. So I'm asking. Why?

(Are you calling me a moron? Because you told me --)

I could go on and on here, because that's what I do. Tone of voice: Why do we speak nicely to people we hardly know, but call the people in our own house --

(Morons. Exactly. He called me that, and you said --)

And so on. And what occurs to me is that this thing about Leave No Trace, and about speaking nicely to people we hardly know, is easy as long as the other people involved mostly stay away from us. Picking up trash so that strangers won't think we're slobs is the chore of a moment. Being nice to somebody for five minutes makes hardly an inroad on whatever personal reserves of niceness we might happen to have built up in the course of a day. Those reserves, however, tend to be shallow, and when they run dry, then what? What if you've got nothing else to tap into?

Well, that's why the family is here. On a private, household basis, Lake Nice, that popular reservoir, is kind of a year-round mud flat. That's why we're not the laboratory of nice. We're the laboratory of charity, which doesn't not include nice, but happily transcends it. You can be in a crappy not-nice mood and still hang up a towel, or iron a napkin, or count to ten before spraying what's on your mind all over the unsuspecting bystanders. Or hide in the laundry room, where there's something to do with your hands besides hitting, pinching, or tickling another person. Or take out the garbage. Or sweep the porch. Or . . . you get my general drift. Learn it here, live it everywhere. So, so many opportunities to train yourself to love your neighbor. And, since it's summer, so much, so very much time.

So: The Family Is the Laboratory of Charity. I'm not a saint yet, but I'm ready with the quotable saying, just in case.

Homeschooling as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:UPDATES

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Thomas) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 14:41:00 +0000

Moving us even further into Mater Amabilis Level 2, figuring that it's better to repeat Greece and Rome a little now, and then be ready to move afresh into U.S. History in Level 3. Trying to make all our lives easier and more coherent . . .

UPDATED SCHOOL SCHEDULES 2013-14 (AGAIN)

GRADE 5 SCHOOL SCHEDULE 2013-14

DAY	ENGLISH	HISTORY	GEOGRAPHY	RELIGION	MATH	SCIENCE	GERMAN
MONDAY	Copywork Aeneid/narrate	Our Island Story/narr		Pearls of Peace/seasonal	Life of Fred
TUESDAY	Copywork literature	Famous Men of Rome/narr	Seabird/Adventures in Geography/narr	Great Moments in Catholic History/narr	Life of Fred	The Body Book/narr	Duolingo
WEDNESDAY	Copywork poetry	Our Island Story/narr	novel	Bible/seasonal	Life of Fred	Blood and Guts/narr	Duolingo
THURSDAY	Copywork literature	Famous Men of Rome/narr		Great Moments in Catholic History	Life of Fred
FRIDAY	Dictation with Mom Shakespeare	Our Island Story		Bible/seasonal /narrate	Life of Fred		Duolingo

GRADE 4 SCHOOL SCHEDULE 2013-14

DAY	ENGLISH	MATH	GERMAN	HISTORY	GEOGRAPHY	RELIGION	SCIENCE
MONDAY	Copywork/ myths	Life of Fred		Our Island Story/narr		The First Christians/season/narr
TUESDAY	Copywork/ literature	Life of Fred	Duolingo	Children’s Plutarch/narr	Tree in the Trail/ Minn of the Miss	Bible/seasonal	Find the Constellations/narr
WEDNESDAY	Copywork/ poetry	Life of Fred	Duolingo	Our Island Story/narr	Tree in the Trail/ Minn of the Miss/narr	Great Moments in Catholic History/narr	The Librarian Who Measured the Earth/narr
THURSDAY	Copywork/ literature	Life of Fred		Children’s Plutarch/narr		Bible/seasonal
FRIDAY	Dictation with Mom/ Shakespeare	Life of Fred	Duolingo	Our Island Story		Great Moments in Catholic History/narr

LUNCH BASKET 2013-14

DAY	BOOK 1	BOOK 2	BOOK 3	BOOK 4 (COULD BE BEDTIME)
MONDAY	Abraham Lincoln’s World			novel
TUESDAY	Famous Men of the Middle Ages	Saxon 6/5	101 Questions About the Seashore	novel
WEDNESDAY	The Road to English	Saxon 6/5	Young Folks’ Picture History of Music	novel
THURSDAY	Saxon 6/5
FRIDAY	Art book	Saxon 6/5	Video fun	novel

ADDENDUM: To the Lunch Basket, as a quick daily religion read: Saints and Feasts of the Christian Church. Also adding it to the Western Civ 2 reading list for high school, and including as daily reading in each unit.