June 28, 2010 5:42 p.m.

WARNING: This might be a boring post!


A couple of posts ago, I mentioned something about the loose schedule we have for completing our lessons each day.  I also mentioned that Chips decided to try to do his work independently last week, so I will update you on how that went.

On a typical day, we begin at 7:30 by working on memory work in the book Training Hearts, Teaching Minds by Starr Meade.  This book teaches, explains, and facilitates the memorization of the Westminster Shorter Catechism at the rate of one question and answer per week.  We are up to question #51, and we go back every day and review a third of the previous questions, so that they always remain fresh and available in our children's brains.  We then read Scripture and have a shared prayer time before beginning the duties of the day around 8 o'clock.  The children complete their morning chores, and we try to have breakfast around 8:30.

Our goal for beginning Calvert is 9:00 each morning, although we don't always begin that early.  Depending on how the morning goes, we have been known to begin as late as 9:45.  At this time, I sit down with Chips, and "roll out" all his subjects for the day.  This includes teaching what needs teaching, reading aloud what needs reading aloud, and discussing what needs discussion.  I then write down in bullet form all the independent work tasks that he needs to accomplish during the remaining part of the morning / early afternoon.  Then I "cut him loose".  He completes everything on the list, and at some time in the afternoon I sit down at the table and check all of his work.  Once this is done, we go over the discussion, comprehension, and critical thinking questions that pertain to the Reading, History, Geography, and Science assignments from that day.  Chips is in 5th grade.  The "rolling out" period takes between 45 minutes and 2 hours, depending on the activities (longer if there are more read-alouds and science experiments)

After rolling out the subjects for Chips and cutting him loose, I jot down the day's objectives in a work log I keep for our local homeschool county requirements.  Chips' independent work time is a large block of time during which I turn my attention to Sweet Girl.  Sweet Girl is in 2nd grade, so her work does not allow for a big block of independent work time like her brother's level.  So I pretty much work my way through the lesson plan for the day in the order of the lesson manual.  There is much more oral teaching, discussion, and working through things on the dry erase board with Sweet Girl's lessons.  When we get to a place in the lesson where Sweet Girl is supposed to do something (i.e. "seat work") I will take the opportunity to step out of the room and do something that needs doing around the house.  Her seat work chunks usually last less than 10 or 15 minutes, so I can't do much during those times.  I might use these snippets of time to test and check on the pool water, to transfer or fold laundry, to tidy part of the house, to plan dinner, to tend to the dog, or to check Facebook.  I forgot, I dropped Facebook, but I will still take a few minutes to check on email, online news, or blogs.  Anyway, I work steadily with Sweet Girl with the daily hope of finishing up by 1:00.  I wish I could say this happens every day, but it doesn't. Some days, not even close.

Nevertheless, when 1 o'clock rolls around, we do break for lunch, finished or not finished.  Then we head out the door to any afternoon lessons or appointments of the day.  If there aren't any, we go back to finish up what we left undone before lunch.  If there are no appointments, we are usually done by 2 or 3, including checking and discussion.  Then I put all the books away in their place, and store all the written (unbound) work pages in a hanging folder that is set up for each child.  Then I feel like I have really accomplished something for that day!

Now Calvert's daily lesson load is not always the same.  Some days are lighter, and some days are heavier.  On the light days, we finish unexpectedly early, and I can go about the rest of the day feeling no guilt because I know that we have, in fact, accomplished an entire lesson.  But those heavier days can be rough going, especially as the late afternoon comes around and my patience dwindles.

A bloggy friend commented on a previous post with a reference to her children planning out their outings, which included planning out their use of public transportation to get to and fro.  Or whose parents will drop off and whose parents will pick up.  Living as we do, out in the country, makes our situation somewhat different.  First, there is no public transportation out here.  Second, we don't live that close to anybody with whom we share activities and social life.  Everybody lives about 20-25 miles away, so it would be a true hardship to ask a parent to deliver our kids back home.  I have found that one afternoon activity can cost us a whole afternoon: typically 60-90 minutes in travel time, and 1-2 hours for the event or appointment.  When I return, it is often immediately time for me to begin cooking dinner.  We often complete cleanup of dinner around 7:30 or 8:00 p.m.  Then, and only then, can I return to check the work and discussion questions.  If there are many things to correct, it is possible that 9:00 can arrive without my having put Calvert to bed for that day.  Those are not happy days for me, but I have to remind myself that I would be living the daily evening crunch if my kids were in a brick and mortar school.

Speaking of brick and mortar school, I have often heard mothers of children in those schools remark to me that they could never do what I do every day.  I have to disagree with them, though, and tell them that I think I have it easier than they do.  When they look surprised, my explanation goes something like this: "you can't control the relative workload in your days like I can.  When yours are in school, life slows down for you a little bit, and that part of the day is pretty calm.  However, after they get home, you have the daily evening crunch.  You have everything to do in the limited space of a few hours: interact with the children, provide afternoon snacks, supervise their homework and often help them to do it, prepare, eat, and cook dinner, prepare for the next school day, get the children cleaned up and in bed by a reasonable hour, and you have to get them out on time the next morning.  This can be a stressful rhythm, living by someone else's schedule!"  At which these moms often have to agree.

Anyway, about Chips.  Last week, he wanted to try taking on the responsibility of accomplishing an entire 5th grade lesson by himself.  So he took the lesson manual, read it, and accomplished almost everything he was supposed to.  I have to say he did a pretty good job that day, only missing one activity that needed doing, but otherwise completing everything.  After he was through, I sat down and checked his work, I asked him discussion questions about his reading material, and found things to be fairly okay.  However, when the next school day began, he wanted no part of it.  I said "Why not? You did pretty well yesterday," to which he replied "It was too hard".  So we are back to our regular routine (described above).  He is a young 5th grader, so it will be interesting to see how he feels about it when he gets into 6th grade.

 June 24, 2010 11:12 p.m.

Please pray for a friend of a friend's family.  Their little boy, Christopher, age 4 was diagnosed with a rare form of childhood cancer last fall, neuroblastoma.  He really needs a lot of prayer.  You can read more here and here.  Thank you!

 June 24, 2010 2:09 p.m.

Sweet Girl wrote this in her Composition Notebook for Calvert 2nd grade today.  She had to imagine herself in thirty years, as being famous, and write a paragraph to explain why.  She wrote this page, and included an illustration.  Can you read it?

 June 23, 2010 11:01 a.m.

We're out of sync with the rest of the world!

Summer has a full grip on us these days.  I mean, it is as summer as summer gets.  Long days, stepping out of the house at 6 a.m. to walk our dog, feeling the humidity envelope me and getting soaked feet from the heavy dew on the grass.  In addition, I have to be more vigilant when walking under the oak trees to make sure I don't walk into an orb weaver web.  They are difficult to see until the sun's rays begin to illuminate them.  The cicadas are still making noise at 6 a.m., too, which is the truest reminder that we are in the throes of summer.  So there it is.

By now, all of our homeschooling friends are on summer break.  I am starting to wish I were, too.  As many of you know, we are year 'round homeschoolers, and due to the climate of our state, we plan on getting more school accomplished in the summer than we do during the cooler seasons of the year.  The brilliant rationale behind this is because right now it is too darn hot to do much else, with the exception of swimming.  The plan sounded so practical, and some of my friends would comment on "what a good idea" it was.  But as the children get older, I find that we are out of sync with the world, and summer is not so simple as I expect it will be every year.

During the traditional brick and mortar school year, all of the outside activities are kicked up into full gear.  We are out of the house doing P.E., music, field trips and other activities so that we end up just managing to complete four Calvert Lesson-days per week per child.  Some weeks even less.  So it becomes all-important for us to do a full five lesson-day per week schedule during the summer, when most activities have ceased.  However, here's the deal.... when it comes to social days, visiting one another's homes for play dates and such, everybody is too busy to fit them in during the traditional B&M school year, and they are only free for such gatherings in the summer.  But summer is when we are trying to get most of our school done.  So we are out of sync, and again we are not fitting in those five lessons a week.  In fact, every Friday this summer, there will be a get together that will prevent us from doing school.  It is great, because I prioritize friends and getting together, but we are out of sync with the world, even the homeschool world.  Also, since there are fewer activities at this time of year, I have chosen this time to schedule all our medical, dental, and eye doctor checkup visits.  Then, subtract a week of Music Camp, where I volunteer, another week of VBS, and a few days of standardized testing, and before you know it, summer is gone.

So in a way I am busier these days than I expected.  Not what I expected from summer.  The cicadas I expected, the schedule I didn't.

Well, I won't be complaining this fall when our family takes a 23 day vacation trip (sans schoolbooks)!  But I'm afraid we won't be getting as many days off at Christmas time as I am used to.  Oh well.  Complaining about the trivial stuff, I guess.

So, why do I have time to write this boring blog post, you might ask?

That leads me into a discussion about Calvert.  As I expected, I find that teaching Calvert 5th grade, and Calvert 2nd grade, in the same year makes for a pretty teacher (mommy) intensive year.  I look forward to, and wonder, what it will be like next year when Chips is in 6th grade with Calvert.  For 6th grade, Calvert writes the lesson manual to the student, thereby giving them an opportunity to begin true independent study.  While I have heard of Calvert parents who haven't been able to pull this off with their 6th graders, I am holding out hope that we will when that time comes.  Then I will be able to concentrate on my 3rd grader more, earlier in the day, and hopefully have more efficient school days.  We shall see.

Which brings me to today, and why I have time to write this blog post.  Chips came to me this morning and said he wanted to try to navigate the lesson manual himself, today.  He wanted to go through each subject and teach himself the material, working through all the homework as he goes, no mommy needed.  I looked through his assignments for the day and said, "Okay, let's give it a try".  He might be on to something, and I don't want to squash his desire for independence in this area of life.

I will write my next post with a discussion of what my daily Calvert schedule has looked like up until this point.

June 15, 2010 6:52 p.m.

If you are like me, you are severely myopic.  Which is not great when I am swimming under water.  When I go swimming, if I plan to keep my head above water, I will keep wearing my prescription eyeglasses and sunglasses, but I have to remove them before going under water.  My eyesight has been so bad for so long that there was never a time in my life when I could see clearly under water.

Then, I found out about these inexpensive prescription swim goggles.  They are made to fit all sizes, including children.  I cannot believe the price, either.  Just $7.95 plus shipping.  So I purchased two  pair, one for Chips and one for myself.  My eyes are so bad that I had to specify a diopter value of -7.0.  No, the prescription is not perfect, especially when you have astigmatism, as I do.  But it is certainly good enough for swimming.

Anyway, they arrived this week and we both tried them and they are fantastic!  A whole new world has opened to me; I can actually see clearly and sharply under water for the first time in my life.  I highly recommend these goggles, and consider them my great find for 2010 (so far).  Chips is very satisfied with them, too, and his diopter value is -2.5.

UPDATED: 9:37 p.m.


Photo added and comments at end.


June 11, 2010 4:18 p.m.

Teachers, if you want to win the hearts of your students, don't try to be Mr./Ms. "easy fun" teacher, and don't be an "easy mark".  Instead, love your students enough to push them to be work hard and reach their potential.

Chips had a composition to write this week for lesson 81 of fifth grade Calvert School.  He was to write about somebody he admired.  This is the result:



       Miss Svetlana is my violin teacher.  She is kind, amazing, strict, and is one of the best violin teachers I know.  Miss Svetlana is seventy-two years old.
       Miss Svetlana is very kind, but is really strict.  I have noticed that she does not say, "Good, good!" all the time, or else the student will think he is perfect and stop working hard.  My playing always has something wrong and Svetlana will find it!  She has a good sense of humor, too.
       Svetlana came from Russia at fifty-eight years old and learned to read, speak, and write in English!  She teaches about forty-two students.  My sister, C____, and I both get chocolates after the lesson.
       I admire Svetlana because she came from Russia and learned English, and can play violin so well.  I also admire her because she is so very dedicated to her students.  Svetlana is the best lady I know besides my mother.

As a mom, I must add my own thoughts to Chips' composition.  I recently wrote a letter to this lady to tell her my own thoughts and feelings about what she has done for us.  From the first day we entered her home, nearly four years ago, she set a tone for the duration of the lesson that was all about the business of learning the instrument, very little small talk, and an atmosphere that fostered seriousness during lesson time.  Until this time, our children had never set foot in an environment quite like hers.  Chips was six at the time, and we did have our concerns about him.  He didn't seem to take anything, or anybody, in life seriously.  Not a bit.  Now you might say "he was only six" and while that's true, we noted a marked irreverence and distractibility about Chips that didn't seem typical for his age.  He also had very "busy" hands, needing to keep them engaged in unrelated and exploratory pursuits at all times while awake.  He had already been through three years of violin lessons with another teacher, and it was a good thing that teacher was tolerant of very young kids' antics, because Chips had a million of them to display.

But from Day One of entering under Miss Svetlana's tutelage, all that changed.  There was something about her that commanded Chips' respect immediately.  She wasn't harsh, or mean, but she was quietly serious and focused and kept a subdued tone about her lessons.  For a long time, she even refrained from small talk with me, considering every minute of the lesson as precious and not to be wasted.  She was creating an atmosphere, and it worked.  As Chips grew and matured over the months and years that followed, we were amazed at his level of focus while working with her.  Nowadays, she can keep Chips engaged in highly-focused, intense lesson work that can last for up to, and over, a solid hour.  I marvel when I see him working with her.  She keeps him extremely busy every second.  He hangs in there, listening, doing as she asks, and never even speaking, for the entire time.  This is nothing short of a miracle, and it will definitely serve him well for all his life.  It is this, alone, that is worth millions to us, never mind the violin playing.  She has taught him to focus on a task for an extended period of time, to work hard, and to be truly excellent at something.  For that, I am forever in her debt.

Sweet Girl is learning, too, although she is somewhat more wiggly than most of Svetlana's violin students, especially other girls.  Miss Svetlana and I do have our laughs about her level of gross motor activity during lessons, as every little bitty break in the work results in Sweet Girl practically climbing over the furniture and camping out on the floor.  Oh well, she is still growing.

Both children, Chips and Sweet Girl, adore Miss Svetlana.  More and more each year.  Enough said.

June 8, 2010 9:50 p.m.

I just quit my Facebook account.  Or to use the proper term, I deactivated it.  For awhile I have had the gnawing feeling that I need to disengage from my virtual world somewhat.  Then I read this article in the NY Times yesterday and I found I could relate somewhat.  No, I am not nearly as bad off as some of the folks used as examples in this article, but I have been feeling the mental effects of too much "virtual" in my life.  It was time I curtailed it some.

Not to mention the fact that Facebook has had a deleterious effect on the content of this blog.  Oh horrors!   I had gotten used to writing up life in little snippets of under 200 characters or so.  My writing had lost much all of its reflective quality.

Oh, and not to mention that I have been feeling uncomfortable with the parallel nature of my mental life.  I don't want to think and do things in parallel anymore, or at least I want to minimize it (some is unavoidable when you're a Mommy.)   I want to become sequential again.  In fact, it has been getting more difficult for me to concentrate on tasks that are sequential, and I have had to go out of my way to pause and think about what I am doing as a step-by-step process so that I can stay focused.  I thought it was due to aging.  Maybe yes, but after reading this article, I see it is also possible that my virtual life has had something to do with it.

I can totally relate to the experience (cited in the article) of interrupting my own absorbing, important, and often urgent task because I caught a headline out of the corner of my eye such as "Man Found Dead inside His Business" and I had to stop what I was doing and check it out.  It is getting more difficult to filter out the unimportant and irrelevant.  Scary.

Have any of you ever tried to deactivate a Facebook account?  First of all, when you try to do it, you are given a guilt trip: large photos of six of your Facebook friends telling you that they will "miss you".  HA HA HA!  That's funny!  Then you are asked to give a reason why you are deactivating your account.  When you select a reason, it quickly flashes a suggestion as to how to improve your Facebook experience so that this reason is no longer a problem to you.  Again, HA HA HA!  It also reminds you that your Facebook lifestyle eternally awaits; all you have to do is say your email address and password, and Abracadabra, your account and all your Facebook friends can be restored at any time.  Whenever you come to your senses and decide to return.  This is too much, my friends.

Facebook.  You can check out anytime.  But you can never leave.

 June 5, 1020 6:27 a.m.

So sad today about Pensacola Beach.

Pensacola Beach, of all places.  It is hard to believe.  Gooey sticky tar balls that you can barely wash off your hands.  White powder being transformed into a yellow globby cake, coming in with the suddenness of a single morning when beach lovers discovered it on their early morning walk.

Will this beach ever be the same in our lifetimes?

We knew it was happening; after all, the media have plastered this story all over the place.  I think part of me was hoping that this was subject to some of the same hype that the MSM has applied to other stories, especially since this pertained to "Big Oil".  We were hoping it wasn't really as bad as they made it sound.  It was out there.  Somebody else's problem.

But as quickly as a wave crashes onto land, this story became reality when it started affecting one of our famously pristine beaches, and the first beach in our state.  All in the suddenness of a single morning.

We just spent Memorial Day weekend in Pensacola, but we didn't go to the beach.  We were visiting my MIL in her nursing home.  During some free time, we met with Self-Reliant Man's uncle, a beach lover, who had been there.  We asked him if he had seen any oil, and he shook his head vehemently while uttering a staccato "No!"

Five days later, it has all changed.

Memorial Day weekend may have been the last weekend that Pensacola Beach was clean.

And you all missed it.

This fills me with anger and I don't know where to direct it.  In fact, I am surprised at my reaction to this.  I guess I am more of an environmentalist than I realized.  Now, as reality hits, I do find myself wondering if it really could be carried around our coast by the Gulf stream.  I find myself wondering what would happen if a typical summer tropical storm or hurricane -- you know, the kind that hits that part of the gulf nearly every year -- were to bring about a big storm surge right now.  I am wondering when, and where, it is going to end.

It is unspeakably sad.

Saturday Morning Update:  As daylight hits the Gulf Coast, they are now reporting sheets of oil coming ashore at Gulf Shores, Alabama, just to the west of Pensacola and Navarre.  Residents of the area are in tears.  I'm afraid it's over, folks.

 June 1, 2010 5:07 p.m.

The title of this post might seem mysterious until I tell you that on Wednesday of last week, I began to wear an orthodontic retainer, after not having visited an orthodontist in 29 years.  Now those of you who remember what it is to experience orthodontics need no further explanation.  But for the rest of you..

It all sounds so simple, you see.  You are handed an innocuous looking clear plastic devices that presumably is custom made to fit.  You are told to simply "wear the retainer 24/7 for two weeks, only removing it to eat.  Then after two weeks, you may wear it only at night.  Any questions?"

"Oh no, of course not," I think to myself; after all, how difficult can that be?  But as I smile a reply, I can't help noticing that this plastic device seems to not quite fit as comfortably as I expected it to (hoped it would).  So, I usher my children out the door and we head home.

Except that a few hours later, I realize that I have become short-tempered and grouchy and my sinful nature is becoming more evident than usual.  And as hour after hour wears on, I realize that this darn contraption is exerting forces on my teeth that I would prefer not to have to deal with.  And when dinner time comes and I remove it, I feel my teeth instantly move back into their normal places and say "ahhhh..."

Only to have to put it back in after dessert.  And wear it at night.  And then, homeschool my kids the next day, reading aloud to them and teaching myself to speak correctly again.  That was not one of my magazine photo picture perfect homeschool days, I remember that much.

Well, now here it's been six days since the torture device retainer has been placed, and I have to say that my teeth now know their new places, my bite has been altered as it needed to be, and the retainer apparently has done the trick.

Oh, and apologies for grumpy mommy/ wife have been delivered all around.  Now I remember why I didn't miss this particular part of my teenage years.