May 26, 2010 10:15 p.m.

Have you ever been so proud of your kids that you are just beside yourself?  That you are walking on clouds?  This is the way we have felt since Sunday.

Sunday was the annual end-of-year graduation recital of our local music school.  It was stunning.  So many fine students.  The entire time was emotional for me for reasons I will have to explain in a later post (I am not at liberty to write about it yet).

We have been with this music school for exactly 7 years now.  Chips was scarcely out of diapers when we began.  I think back to those early days in 2003 and then watch the children now and I am just amazed.  Of course, there are no miracles here.  It is simply hard work, daily practice, day after day, month after month, year after year, no magic.  But we couldn't be happier with the results.  And if I can't say this on my own blog, where can I say it?  As the owner of the music school said after Chips' performance, "his parents must be mystified!"

Today, I took an opportunity on the phone today to offer heartfelt thanks to our dear violin teacher for the difference she has made in the lives of our children.  They both adore her, more than ever, after four years of intense nit-picky study under her tutelage.  And we have developed a good friendship between us as well, because we mutually respect and appreciate each other for what each of us stand for.

Sweet Girl played Gavotte from "Mignon" from Suzuki Book 2 and played well for a relatively long piece for her to memorize.  Chips played Accolay like we have never heard him play.   It was emotional and bright.  The Trio played Uluru for the last time, also their final performance together as a trio.  Chips' concerto was the final act of the evening, and he brought down the house.  Even our violin teacher, who is virtually impossible to please (LOL!) called his performance "unbelievable" and that's a strong word for her.

Here is the videos for those of you who are willing to tune into them.  You music moms out there know exactly what this feels like!:

FOR TODAY... May 25, 2010 1:59 p.m.

Outside my window... actually, outside my front door, our dog is barking to be let back inside, but he does need to stay outside a few minutes longer and he needs to learn a bit of patience, since he only wanted out a couple of minutes ago.

I am thinking and praying... for a family who suffered the untimely loss of their father and husband, after two years suffering from A.L.S.; for a friend up north who is suffering acutely from a mysterious infected insect bite on her leg; for another friend's week, travels, and her parents who are dealing with difficult illness right now, that the doctors will be able to begin an effective treatment plan soon.

I am thankful for... The resourcefulness and calm temperament of my husband.  Also, the adults in our lives who care about and nurture our children's bodies, spirits, souls, and minds. 

I am wearing... navy blue shorts, a pink "homeschool mom" T-shirt, and my trademark athletic shoes.  Beginning tomorrow, I will also be wearing an orthodontic retainer.  Feeling young again...


I am remembering... exactly seven years of being taught at our local Suzuki school, and those days back when we began before Sweet Girl was part of our family, and when Chips was scarcely out of diapers.

I am going... to go on a van camping venture this coming Memorial Day weekend. 

I am reading... "Respectable Sins" by Jerry Bridges. 

I am hoping and praying... for the people who live on the Korean peninsula, especially the city where Sweet Girl was born, that war will be averted between the North and the South.  Don't even want to think about it.

On my mind... Not enough.  The fact that I have been blogging so infrequently is indicative of the fact that the pace of my life has been stifling any meaningful reflection on my part.  I am uncomfortable with this.  It isn't good.

From the learning rooms...  We have just about reached the one year mark of learning Westminster Shorter Catechism questions and answers.  Of course, the children have been memorizing it all.  I haven't memorized anything.  We have been using the book "Training Hearts Teaching Minds" by Starr Meade, and I always appreciate its concrete and clear explanations.

Noticing that... when you ask the Lord to reveal to you the sin in your heart that you don't see, he is very prompt about answering your prayer.



From the kitchen...  stuffed shells with tossed salad and garlic bread.

Around the house... greater than normal chaos, as we anticipate a road trip this weekend.

One of my favorite things... those moments when the children spontaneously embrace each other.  Usually (okay, always) initiated by Sweet Girl.

From my picture journal......

 May 24, 5:02 p.m.

A very dear lady at church has been sewing aprons to raise money for a worthy ministry : Wycliffe Bible Translators.  Anyway, we had requested a matching mother and daughter apron set, and so far, she has completed for us the daughter apron.  When my little girl reached into the bag to see her apron, a big smile came over her and she exclaimed "Pretty!!".

And pretty it definitely is!  I can't wait to receive mine.  I just love the pink and yellow combination, the daisy pattern, contrasting pockets and shoulders, and the bright yellow rick rack.  Can you see it?  So lovely, don't you think?

 Tuesday, May 18, 2010 3:48 p.m.

Last week was a week of celebrations in our family.  May 8th was my birthday, followed by Mother's Day and then our 16th Wedding Anniversary on May 14th.  These celebrations come together every year, and Mother's Day sometimes even lands on the 8th or the 14th.  So it is a big week for Self-Reliant Man and me.


By the time our anniversary was approaching, we decided that there wasn't anything that we needed to purchase for each other.  So we chose, instead, to have dinner at a nice restaurant in the area, and chose a local French restaurant for this venture.

Of course, our family culture dictates that we bring Chips and Sweet Girl with us to celebrations, even on our  anniversary.  (Now some folks would insist that this is the mark of an unhealthy marriage, but hey, I grew up in a family that did this, and my parents stayed happily married until death parted them after 43 years of marriage.  But I digress...)  This outing would prove to be a good opportunity to show our children what it is like to dine at a very fine restaurant.  I must say that we were not disappointed.  This restaurant was a very pleasant place to dine, and no detail was lost on our children.

We are sick and tired of corporate-owned eating establishments and it was a refreshing change to visit a 27 year old local family-owned establishment with real chefs who use their creative talents to invent dishes for their own menu.   This restaurant is not only surviving, but thriving, in a city of prodigious competition for dining and entertainment dollars (and that is an understatement!)  And they deserve to.  Not only was the food excellent, but the level of genuine friendliness and superior service exceeded our expectations.  This restaurant was all good food and service and no gimmicks.  And our family appreciates that!

Of course, when the owner (and chef's wife) visits our table a few times and bestows smiles and affection on our kids, that goes a long way with me!

So we had a blast ordering items like soupe a l'oignon, salade laitue et noix, poulet "coq au vin",  steak au poivre, and snapper avec shrimp et scallops.  Not to mention desserts such as creme brulee, mousse de chocolat and pain perdu aux framboises et chocolat. 

We also enjoyed teaching Chips and Sweet Girl all the details of fine dining.  Chips could not get over the amount of attention the waiters bestowed on our humble little table, anticipating every need, filling our water glasses, replacing flatware that had the residual taste of the previous course so that it would not affect the taste of the next course.  Could this be how service used to be in most places a long time ago?  My parents thought so.

And it is always a good deal of fun to be addressed as "Sir" or "Miss" when you are just 10 or 7.

 
It was a happy, pleasant evening out.  I am hoping that we can repeat this outing for our next anniversary.



p.s. Chips advised the owner that he would be ready, in a few years ("perhaps when I'm thirteen," I think he said) to play violin for the customers there.  She smiled broadly, and exclaimed that she would be happy to hire him.  So she shouldn't be surprised when he approaches her in a few years (we know a couple of piano / string students who have been able to make money playing music in their early teens; hearing things like this is a great motivator for Chips!)

 May 10, 2010 4:52 p.m.

A past violin teacher of Chips moved to Ohio four years ago, but she surprised us all by spontaneously flying down to Florida to attend the state music / strings competition back on April 30 and May 1. Her mother owns our local Suzuki school, and is getting older, so she decided to fly here to help her out with the grueling competition schedule.

We were all very happy to see her, and she was proud of her young beginner of seven years ago (Chips) doing so well at state. She was also amazed by how Sweet Girl had grown, and was playing music, especially since Sweet Girl was still in a stroller eating Cheerios when Chips was her student.

This afternoon, she sent us this nice photo taken of Sweet Girl shortly before she played her solo at the competition.  I really like this photo.  Her confidence that day really shows.

 May 8, 2010 8:09 p.m.

I hit the big 4-0.  Yep, that I did.........exactly seven years ago today.  I don't often get a new toy.  I usually receive clothes, books, and grown up things like that.  Never a toy.

This year, I got a new toy! A Sirius/XM satellite radio tuner and Speaker Dock. Self-Reliant Man installed everything today. He installed the antenna, tuner, and vehicle dock in my Hyundai. He also installed another antenna on the eave of the house so that I can listen to the tuner in the speaker dock.

Anyhow, I am loving the new world of commercial free music that has opened up to me.

Here are some photos highlighting this event in my day.   First of all, these tabletop roses were given to me by a special friend.  Aren't they lovely?

Here is the radio in the speaker dock in my kitchen. I think it sounds very good, like a Wave Radio might sound.  The tuner display shows the channel, the song title, artist, and sometimes even the year.  I am so bad when it comes to knowing song names and artists, so this is appreciated.



Self-Reliant Man had the existing car radio apart within minutes. He is amazing.  I am a retired electrical engineer, but I wouldn't be able to take these tasks on anywhere near how he does.  And certainly not so quickly.
  I think this little antenna is amazing.  It can pick up so clearly from the satellite.  This is before all the wires were concealed.



A couple of hours later, everything was installed, and it looks very professional, don't you think?  But the most important thing is, it sounds great!!


But if you ask me, this is my favorite birthday present by far!

May 6, 2010 10:09 p.m.

I have a friend who lives nearby.  She has decided to homeschool her two sons, who are now preschool age.  She apparently has been doing quite a bit of online reading and research on the topic of homeschooling.  She knows we use Calvert, and have been doing so for seven years (I can't believe it!).  I invited her over yesterday to take a look at what Calvert is like, fully advising her that my goal was not to persuade her to use Calvert, but rather to just give her an opportunity to get an up close and personal look at one curriculum.  This way, she would have a benchmark in her mind for comparison with other educational materials.

Having said that, I honestly feel that I couldn't have made a better curriculum choice, and that some other choices might mean that I would not have survived these past seven years of homeschooling.

So she perused some of the books, glanced at Sweet Girl's work portfolio, and chatted with me about homeschooling ideas for an hour and a half. After she left, I reflected upon how much about Calvert she may still not know.

As a somewhat homeschooling "veteran", I have made some of the following observations.

Children tend to try to negotiate themselves out of doing work tasks that they don't like, or that require extra mental effort than a simple rote worksheet.  Examples range from answering "I don't know" repeatedly to
critical thinking questions, to whining and complaining when a composition is assigned ... again.  "That's two this week, Mom!"  You want to set in place ground rules for your children, and for yourself, on what work items are negotiable, and what are not.  This is especially important in composition, where the effort-to-production ratio is high, but the need for practice is often greatest.

This is where I appreciate the Calvert lesson manual.  For example, I will make all "Enrichment" items optional, for the most part, based on special interest in a topic.  But work tasks classified as "Applications" I
will generally consider mandatory (unless I decide in advance the task is worthless, which occasionally happens, and then I won't even mention it on lesson day).  Tasks classified as "Practice" I will require only when there seems to be a problem with doing the exercises correctly, as in Math.  I have had to hold the line, and if I firmly believe in the value of a task, I have been known to say "but Calvert requires it" when he/she has balked (regardless if it is an A.T.S. requirement.)  If I am inconsistent about this, showing myself to yield more easily on some days than on others, then they will try to negotiate their way out of anything that calls for higher order thinking, and then I will have additional battles to fight.  I don't like to fight battles that I can head off in advance.

I realized today that many of the benefits of our curriculum are invisible to a person who is merely looking through a stack of books and written assignments, as my friend was yesterday.  For example, there are many features of Calvert's daily lessons that I neglected to mention to her in detail.  So I advised her afterwards that when she is evaluating other curricula, she should try to find hard evidence that the curricular material challenges the child to do high order thinking tasks.  This is not always evident from brochures and sales materials.  For example, some homeschoolers I know have discovered over time that their language arts programs appear fine on the surface, but don't dig deep enough or challenge the student enough.  One mom recently told me about a popular languages arts program.  In this case, the product was attractive, the literature was engaging, but the depth of the material was lacking.  This only became evident to this mother after a year of use, after which she was in search of something else for the next year.  I see why the homeschool convention season is in the month of May!

So I wanted to list here examples of some of the common higher-order tasks that Calvert calls for in the lesson plans, things that I might not think to do on my own, or be motivated to do, without seeing it suggested there in the lesson manual.  These are the types of things one should look for when evaluating other
curricula.  Please note that I am referring to the requirement of my daughter, during her First and Second grade years. 

a.  Create a Venn diagram displaying similarities and differences between characters' personalities in two separate reading selections.

b.  Either read aloud, or have the student read, a short passage and have the child identify the main idea, the setting, and the characters.  Be sure the student expresses himself with complete sentences, either orally or in
writing.

c.  Answer a broad range of comprehension questions / critical thinking questions / inference questions ranging from the simple recollection of story details to the drawing of conclusions about an unstated moral or theme in a passage.  Have the student answer in complete sentences, whether orally or written.  This often requires a lot of patience on the part of the mom, in order to draw out the child's thoughts, which take effort for the child to formulate and express.  The mom may find it tempting to short circuit this process by spoon-feeding too much of the answer too soon.  (**grin**  Been there more than I care to admit).

d. Create tables / charts / word webs with the student supplying information classifying and categorizing a variety of details from one or more stories recently read.  The student fills them in to compare and contrast poems, characters, and ideas brought forth in reading selections, to classify and categorize events, animals, characters, etc.

e.  Read and/or listen to a selection and narrate the story back in the child's own words.

f. Have the student summarize a story, without telling too much, or too little, information.

g. Have the student create a sequence of events for a reading selection, and/or recognize an incorrect (illogical) sequence of events.

h. Have the student narrate an original story to the mom to be written down.  Make sure the story has all the elements: characters, setting, a problem to be solved, and a resolution, and that the story proceeds in a logical
manner.

i.  Have the student determine the meaning of new vocabulary words strictly through use of context clues in a sentence or paragraph.  Have him indicate which clues helped determine the meaning.  This should be done, even if the word is already in the child's working vocabulary.

j. All new vocabulary words or sight words should be used in complete oral sentences that demonstrate that the meaning of the word is understood.

k. Recognize the difference between fact and opinion in a selection.  State one's own opinion and back it up with facts or details.

l. Recognize the difference between fantasy and realism in a selection.  Be able to identify elements of a selection that demonstrate one, or both.  Be able to recognize the difference between fantasy and realistic fiction, or realistic vs. unrealistic fiction.

m.  Have the student stop reading, periodically, and make predictions about where the story may lead.  Then have them compare the actual outcomes with their predictions at the end.  Have the student propose alternative outcomes to a story as well.

n. Have the student be able to distinguish between important and minor details in a selection.

o. Creation of K-W-L charts for a topic to be studied, as in science (three columns - what I KNOW, what I WANT to know, and what I LEARNED).  These charts I really hate to do, and I sometimes skip them, although I see why they are useful for subjects such as science topics.

That's all I can think of right now, after brainstorming and looking more closely at some of Sweet Girl's 1st and 2nd grade work.  These types of tasks we usually do through oral discussion and on the dry-erase board.
Therefore, I had little in the way of "hard copy" evidence of their accomplishment for my friend to peruse.  As a result, I feel that she missed picking up on the full richness of Calvert.  They are tasks that can take time and patience; for which coming up with the ideas demands mental energy and creativity that I don't ordinarily
possess.  They also require the student to really evaluate and to think, exercise their brains, and practice precise, succinct oral expression.  I don't know whether many other curricula do these types of things so
regularly, but they are the types of exercises that one should look for in a curriculum, activities that are worth doing (even if they can be rather laborious at times).


There. Now I've said it.

May 2, 2010 11:05 p.m.

We are not allowed to take photos or record video in the competitions, so I have merely uploaded the most recent practice session at our teacher's home.  This is Chips playing Kuchler's Concertino Opus 15, mvt. 1.  at Miss S's house last Monday.  She is accompanying him off camera on piano.  It is the piece whereby he won the violin SOLO state competition.  Thanks for viewing!

p.s. to Linda in Scotland -- I am definitely thinking of you and your kids on Monday.  Can't wait to hear!

Sunday, May 2, 2010 2:09 p.m.

Just got the news after church today from Miss S.  Sweet Girl got Honorable Mention at our state competition, too, for her Violin Solo!  Yippeeeee!  She played her piece, short as it was, with such feeling and expression for such a young girl.  We are so proud of her, because honorable mentions are hard to come by.  I don't have any photos of her with her ribbon yet; she will get it next week.  It has been an encouraging year for us and we are truly thankful that her hard work has rewarded in this way.

 May 1, 2010 8:30 p.m.

NEWS FLASH: We got the results in from Chips' state music competitions. We are still waiting to hear about Sweet Girl's competition.

We are thrilled to report that Chips' won in two events. He was the sole winner of the Violin Solo Medium I competition, and he and his buddies were the winners of the Chamber Piano Trio competition. He/they had competed against students who are as much as 5 years older than themselves.  We are all so thrilled. This day was long in coming, and we rejoice!

Sweet Girl also did very well in her Violin Solo but we are still waiting to hear the results of her contest.

To say we are happy, gratified, encouraged, and thankful is the understatement of the year. It is such a sweet blessing to have won these trophies, especially the solo trophy, since it has eluded Chips for so long.

Here are some photos from this weekend...