Schoolless

Light show

Yesterday we completed our routine tasks (yes, we have a few of those), and were at a bit of a loss. It was only 10:30. We needed something to do.

Peter assumed a bored expression, and browsed through "How Science Works" from DK.

"Perhaps we could try one of the activities?" I offered timidly, knowing that the DK books are marvelous to look at, but the projects tend to fall a little short in the execution.
"Nah, I'll just read," he yawned.

That seemed good enough for the moment. I turned away to shine my sink (more on that later), when suddenly my son announced:
"I might be interested in doing this one."

To an unschooling parent this is as good a hint as any. I sprung into action. Naturally, my son selected the most complicated activity  in the chapter on light: the light ray box. It involved drafting, cutting and gluing a little cardboard house, meticulously cutting out precise little slits, connecting batteries to lightbulbs with little alligator clips, and other annoying steps that unnecessarily complicate the project and do not add to its ultimate enjoyment.

I stood in thought in the middle of the kitchen for several minutes, and then raced up to the attic, returning with a cardboard gift box, packing tape, a craft knife, and one of those electrical cord things you can screw a lightbulb into to make a Chinese lantern. We were set.

The kids went about the house looking for glass containers, mirrors and magnifying lenses to use in the project, and I tried to think of an alternative to cutting out narrow slits in a cardboard box. In the end, I got Nadia, who was dying to use the razor knife (affectionately referred to as the "laser knife"), cutting out small openings in the cardboard, while Peter taped together toothpicks, picket-fence style, which we then placed inside those openings to create a slit pattern.

Then, we went down to the laundry room, the only space in the house that could be completely darkened, and played with light.

Blinded with science

So maybe I'm a glutton for punishment.
Or maybe I just like having a lot of kids around my house.

Blindfolded piano playing

One of the questions homeschoolers hear a lot, of course, is the one about socialization. Socialization isn't a big problem in our house. We find ourselves surrounded by families whose company we enjoy, and we are blessed with two kids who developed good social skills long before they parted ways with their diapers.

So our problem is a little diffrent. Whenever we do "learny" things at home, we do them alone. And sometimes we do feel the satisfaction of completing a task, or finishing a book, or moving to the "next level". But sometimes it just gets a little boring. Some learning is more fun in a group.

How'd they get their edges so straight?

I'm not quite sure how we stumbled into doing a segment on vision. It may have been simply that we were doing the chapters in Gee Wiz in order, and one on vision came up. Because Peter and Nadia were into it, I went on a hunt for more activities we could do, and it occurred to me that as long as I am setting it up for my own kids, I might as well invite some others to join us. So I sent and email to some friends announcing "Science Friday".

Awaiting the arrival of the scientists

As is usual with adults, I think, my plans were a little too ambitious. All these experiments looked so cool! Let's just try them all! I prepared everything meticulously, and an orderly table with neatly organized stations greeted the guests as they arrived. At the last moment, I realized that the perfect accompaniment to the occasion would be Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me With Science!" And, thanks to the miracle of iTunes, the musical selection became available with a click.

Watch that pupil grow!

As kids gathered around the table, it became clear that they cared not a whit for my plans or preparation. Although at first, I tried to direct their activities, I abandoned that approach fairly quickly, and let them simply plunge into whatever interested them. The much-anticipated vision meter proved too complex to be truly engaging. However, optical spinners of all kind were an instant hit.

Suddenly everyone wanted a piece of string to thread through holes in a cardboard circle, and watch a fish appear in a bowl of water, a butterfly hover over a flower, or colored rods meld into a constantly changing rainbow. "Ooooh, this one is cool! Try this one!" With very little adult guidance (usually only to solve technical difficulties), the young participants found their way through most of the activities laid out on the table.

Mirror maze

But was it science? There was no method in their madness. Their observations were not tabulated and analyzed. No hypotheses were posed. There is a part of me that wants that level of organization. But I'm not sure I can have it all at once.

There is a natural curiosity and exuberance in kids that makes them just want to make that interesting thing happen over and over again. I know this from my own school experience, and also from working with my own kids alone. The interesting part of the experiment is the doing. Discussion is fun too, as long as it's fairly spontaneous. Writing? Eh... that's not so much fun. Then we are getting "schooly".

So, first, I want to get them hooked working on these fun projects, and on working together. I want to give them the time and the space to explore "what happens, if", and to draw one another from one fascinating discovery to the next. Only after they do it enough times they may want to change some of the variables and note the differences. Who knows? Perhaps then the desire to monitor their findings will emerge.

Mind popping math

I'm not quite sure what I've taken on.

Thirteen kids aged 7 through 13 squeezed around my dining room table and looked at me with varying degrees of anticipation.
"I don't want this to be about rules." I ventured.

Running a math club for homeschoolers has been something I've been thinking about for several months. And now, it has officially begun. I imagine that a classroom teacher stands in front of her group of kids with a fairly firm idea of what she wishes to accomplish and how that's going to happen. I don't have a teacher's training, and had no such preconceived notions. I wanted merely to present what I hoped was a fun idea, and let the kids run with it. Yet now, running was something I was a little afraid of. There were, after all, thirteen of them.

Here was the problem:

How many kernels of popped corn would fit in my van?
You may use: one bag of popped corn, an empty box, a tape measure (optional), a calculator, plus paper, pencil and a friend.

The problem immediately had to get modified due to abundant rain, and a large quantity of squishy mud around my van. I desperately wanted that mud to stay outside. After a short deliberation, we decided to use various rooms around the house instead. I divided the kids into mixed-age groups, and set them loose.

Initially, they needed a little prompting. How would you go about figuring out how much popcorn will fill your box? Could you do it without counting the kernels? Could you do it without actually filling the box?
And they were off.

At first, four groups of kids crouched of the living room floor deliberating and scribbling in their notebooks. Then, for two hours, chaos reigned. Each team picked a different room to measure, and one team picked the fireplace. There were kids inside the fireplace. Others stood on the bathtub and the toilet. Still others climbed beds and each other's shoulders before they figured out they could measure the height of a ceiling with a stiff tape measure without actually climbing to reach it. Popcorn disappeared from bowls as great quantities of it were consumed or scattered on the floor in the course of the project. Calls for help were heard from one part of the house to the other. Younger kids needed explanations of what bigger kids were doing. Bigger kids needed conversion factors. Liam entertained everyone with stories of a monthlong ski trip from which he had just returned against his will.

But, in general, everyone seemed on board with solving the problem. Peter drew 3-d cubes and penciled in numbers along the sides. In between ski stories, Liam measured several corn kernels, and calculated their average size. Zola multiplied numbers into the tens of thousands longhand, oblivious to the presence of several calculators in the room. Zeb figured out that two boxes fit in a foot, and measured the room using boxes. Nadia wrote long paragraphs documenting every step of the process. Louise and Eric meticulously converted feet into inches and then into boxes. Mattie had a little trouble with writing some numbers, but seemed to intuitively grasp the concept of volume.

In the end, it was estimated that about 149,000 kernels would fill my fireplace, just over one million would be needed for the bathroom, and about three million for each of the bedrooms. As a bonus problem, we figured out that if we wanted to play a joke on Peter and literally fill his room with popcorn, it would cost us about $5,600. There were no takers.

Here are a few things I would consider for future math club meetings:

• Briefly introducing the basic concept of what we are doing. I wanted this to be as far from a "lecture" as possible, but a short demonstration of calculating volume with a few simple cubes might have been helpful.
• Having kids work in same-age groups. The idea of dividing them into mixed-age groups was, of course, to keep everyone involved, and to balance out different levels of ability. This notion of "balance" may be somewhat flawed. Younger kids may understand something conceptually, but are frustrated by the inability to express it in mathematical terms. However, they may be able to express it through pictures or narrative. Older kids who have the facility of using mathematical notations may find it more satisfying to use these shortcuts. I dunno. Different activities may lend themselves to different approaches.
• Allowing kids to choose to what degree they want to participate in the project. Kids have different attention spans. Many of the participants seemed quite eager to get down to the business of solving the problem, while others wanted to go exploring. I think that's fine, as long as they respect the essential integrity of my house. I prefer to have kids voluntarily engage in an activity. Perhaps if those who are genuinely engaged appear to be having a good time, the more reluctant ones will come around on their own.

I consider this our warm-up project. The kids almost certainly had fun. They probably learned something from the process as well, though perhaps it was not what I would have intended. Who knows. But, as usual, I myself learned a few things, and walked away with a lot of questions.

Loafing

I baked two loaves of bread today: one this morning, and another one for dinner.
No, I didn't spend a whole day in the kitchen. Each loaf took roughly five minutes. In fact, the second one went into the oven as kind of an afterthought, since it occurred to me, between handfuls of diced potatoes and sliced carrots going into the soup pot, that freshly baked bread might be a nice addition to the evening meal.
No, I do not have a bread machine.
And no, I've never baked bread before.
While I love the idea of losing yourself up to your elbows in a soft mound of dough, the trance-like condition that the rhythmic working of the dough with your hands is supposed to induce, and especially eating the heavenly results of these labors, I cannot see myself participating in this lengthy ritual on a regular basis.
Unless something revolutionary showed up, I was doomed forever to spending six bucks on a loaf of bakery bread at Whole Foods.
Something revolutionary did show up. It arrived in my mailbox inside one of the issues of Mother Earth Magazine. A ridiculously easy technique that, well, revolutionizes home baking: five minutes a day for fresh-baked bread. I know you don't believe it. I was a skeptic myself. In fact, I waited until the next issue of the magazine arrived to see what other readers thought of this technique, before I attempted it myself.
I donned a kitchen apron, something I've only done once before while canning peaches, and enlisted my daughter's help. Strictly following the recipe, I obtained a five-quart bowl, and proceeded to stir together water, yeast, salt and copious quantities of flour.



It looked bubbly, smelled yeasty and took about five minutes.
At the end of the stirring process, my five-quart bowl looked a little more than half-full. I eyed it dubiously, and, hoping for the best, covered it loosely with another inverted bowl. My daughter and I mosied over occasionally checking on the dough's progress. It continued its upward climb along the sides of the bowl. At last, the bowl could contain it no more:



The dough erupted from the cramped confines onto the kitchen counter. Clearly, larger quarters were called for. I plundered the forgotten corners of my kitchen cupboards searching for a suitable container, and came up with a stainless pot more than twice as large as my poor five-quart bowl.
As gingerly as I could, I dumped the monstrous heap of dough into its new home:



I worried that if I handled it too roughly, I would disturb the yeast and impair its growth. Unfortunately, moving the dough gently proved impossible.
I needn't have worried. The dough took readily to the new home, and continued to rise...

 
... and rise ...



... and rise ...



until at last it flattened a bit, and started to collapse in the middle. I put the whole thing in the fridge for a good night's rest.
Other than stirring the dough, moving it to a larger container and then spying on it from time to time (these last two steps uncalled for by the recipe, one added by necessity, the other by curiosity), I did nothing else to it. No intimate kneading, no punching it down, no folding in halves, no covering with a damp towel.
And this morning, I scooped up a stretchy hunk of dough, and, with floured hands, quickly folded it into a ball, set it aside to rest, and popped it in the oven. There it is: a thing of beauty; the taste of heaven.

Anniversary & Anticipation

Today, of all days, is the 30th anniversary of my arrival in the United States.

On this occasion, I would like to rerun a post I wrote just about a year ago. Maybe some of you remember it. Let's see if it rings any differently today:

(A sign spotted on the back of a freight truck in Kentucky.)

My USA

Offers comfort and shelter to those who can't find these in their native land
Opens opportunities to those whose lives would otherwise be without hope
Weaves its multicultural heritage into a quilt of many colors
Speaks in many voices and languages
Listens to its people
Fiercely protects the inalienable rights of the individual
Guards individual freedom
Understands that there can be no freedom if the soul is not free
Values freedom above selfish gain
Supports each person in pursuit of his or her own happiness
Gives liberty and justice to all
Upholds the self-evident truths upon which its foundation was built
Trusts its citizens to make independent and informed decisions
Is for the people and by the people
Practices what it preaches
Holds other nations to its own standard, but guards and preserves their sovereignty
Is bountiful, generous and kind
Cherishes its land and natural resources
Provides for its poor
Is compassionate
Is not vengeful
Distinguishes between a threat to our freedom, and a threat to our profits
Does not send its children into harm's way
Values humanity before all other values
Does not destroy lives
Does not replace god
Offers its hand in peace
Stamps out poverty, cruelty and injustice around the world
Is my land, and it is your land

Our USA, where art thou?

Today is the day my faith in this country is restored. Let's Polka!

Count your blessings, son.

Room service!
Instead of making him get up, make his bed, get dressed, brush teeth, stand up straight and shape up, I indulged him. After all, we don't have anywhere to be this morning.
Did the young man desire a bowl of cereal? Or perhaps some piping hot cream of wheat?

Scrambled eggs with cheese and an English muffin!

Oh yes, that'll do nicely, thank you. And give me my book.

I did draw the line at hot chocolate in bed, but only for the very prosaic reason of there being no place to put it next to Peter's captain-style bed. But the whole morning did make me marvel at the freedom we have to enjoy these unhurried, drawn out mornings, to read for hours at our leisure, to adjust the speed of our waking to the mood and the weather, and to decide together what we want to squeeze out of the day.

Routine comforts

After several amorphous months of aimless drifting, we have settled into a bit of a routine.

To be honest, those months did not seem aimless to me personally. They were full of anxious activity, frantic travel, and getting things done. But because the things getting done were largely on behalf of someone else -- my mother -- I spent a few of those months with the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that my own life was coming apart at the seams.

It wasn't, really. It was just that, while I was preoccupied, my husband went about his necessary business, as our children drifted around the house in pj's, or whatever clothes they had gone to bed in the night before, resorting far more often than I would like to the computer for learning and entertainment, erecting elaborate playhouses of books, legos, and odd pieces of bedding and furniture throughout the house. They subsisted seemingly on breakfast cereals, mac & cheese and ice cream, which they consumed whenever fancy struck, half-sitting, half-standing in the kitchen, or by the computer in our bedroom, or crouching on the basement floor.

Meanwhile, rehearsals for the play they were in demanded more and more time, and soon were virtually the only obligation we managed to keep. At the same time, the performance became for us the culmination, the turning point, after which, free from this monumental responsibility, we would resume a normal, ordered life.

Ahhh, the happy, unfettered life of unschoolers! How uneasy you made me feel during those months! How I longed for the comfort of some sort of predictability, some routine!...

I started dropping broad hints, that after the play was over, it would be time to put our noses to the grindstone, to get back on a schedule, to get things done, once and for all. My children glanced at me with doubt and mistrust, and slunk away to their own pursuits when they knew I wasn't looking.

But when the day finally arrived, to my infinite surprise and relief, the routine was warmly embraced. No, I didn't really make them put their noses to the grindstone. But I did insist on dedicating our mornings to more structured or planned activities. It seemed downright refreshing to wake up in the morning knowing that there will be something concrete to do.

That I was relieved came as absolutely no surprise. I craved some kind of ordered comfort after months of the ground slipping out from under me. The new routine energized and motivated me, and within a few short days the chaos that had begun to overwhelm my house was gradually pushed out as I cleaned, organized, sorted and mercilessly purged every corner, until I could gaze upon a surface and see not another project, but a place to rest my eyes.

What was surprising, was that my kids also appeared to welcome the new routine. And, although I involved them to some extent in planning what we were going to do, it was definitely a mom-led process. But instead of the expected protests, procrastination and downright avoidance, I got... cooperation. Math lessons were dispensed with in a matter of minutes. Handwriting, as long as satire was tolerated in the margins, was completed with relish. Writing, not the most popular subject with my son who prefers to express himself through visual arts, suddenly engrossed him, and he spent long periods covering the page with his elbow, and scribbling furiously, and, in the end, decided to start writing a family newsletter. Art and science never required much encouragement, and now began to be the juicy points of the day that we look forward to.

So, what happened?

I haven't the faintest idea. Let me just say that the follow-through on my part, and the cooperation on the part of my children, are far from perfect. They cannot be. We are fundamentally flawed, spontaneous, easily distracted free spirits, who abandon the comforts of a routine at the slightest provocation. But the thing is, that I think we all, my kids and I, deep down, need to know that the safety net exists. It's one thing to be going, Alice-like, down, down, down, with no predictable end in sight, and quite another to take delight in falling freely, knowing exactly where you're going to land.

Composed slowly, the message endures

Thank you, Lori, for introducing me to slow blogging...

Our neighbors on Boblo Island relish the slow life. Every summer, they leave behind their home town of Grand Rapids, and spend several weeks in this place that time forgot, where there is not even a grocery store, let alone internet access. They spend time outdoors, on the water, or in a cottage they built themselves, constructed and furnished with salvaged or found materials. They shower in a clawfoot tub tucked behind a curtain outside their back door. They write messages with stones.

Sadly, our summer neighbors left before we arrived. We found their message, but the cottage was empty. And we, too, wanted to leave them a note in case they came back after we were gone.

This genre demands deliberation and brevity dictated by the medium. Composing requires intense concentration, as you sift the landscape for suitable elements. There are so many stones on Boblo...

Scan, stoop, sift, draw the fingers of your hand through the stones that are smooth and fluid and also rough, and lift one, turn it this way and that, and toss it, or hold it up to the light, squint and put it in your pocket. And again...

They stony landscape, monotonous as it seems, draws you on seductively. How can there not be a perfect stone among so many. Some stones are ideal for skipping. So we stop, and have a contest. As we skip stones, our feet move very slowly in the direction we were heading, without any apparent conscious decision on our part. We just drift slowly down the water's edge, and find ourselves further away.

The monotonous landscape hides secrets, that only reveal themselves when you travel this way.



To stretch your shoulders, you look up at the horizon now and again, and you see gulls. Sometimes there are as many gulls as stones, other times just a few.

And then you go a while without anything interesting happening, and the kids get bored, and wade into the water, shoes and all, and you come up with one perfect photo.

Eventually, the boys run off with the camera, and we are left to rely only on our eyes and our memory, to catch a small movement in the driftwood landscape, and watch the drama of nature unfold.

And hours, days go by before we have gathered the materials to compose our heartfelt message:

Our friends will know, knowing us, and knowing this place, that our message contains all that we found here, all we experienced, all we saw, and the small fraction of it that we remembered.

And days, weeks, months go by before we return to Boblo, and walk in seeping rain down the beach, and find our words again, as we had left them.

Thanks a lot, meme!

Thanks a lot, Lori, I can't believe it's been a year since the last time we did this!
It is a given that we are thankful for our families, pets, warm homes, our new president-elect, and, heck, I would even say that Jon Stewart is a given ;)
Without further delay, the not-so-obvious things, that make my enjoyment of the obvious things more complete, ahem!...

1. My Shred Alert fleece beanie. Lets me go out of the house with my hair wet.

2. Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything on audio. Kept me entertained and informed for many hours on a recent solo drive from Florida.

3. Knudsen Cranberry Juice Concentrate. Not to sound like an old lady or anything, but drinking this stuff every day (diluted, of course) is making my joints very happy.

4. Half Price Books. If I lived in Hyde Park, I could go to Powell's, but I don't. Half Price gets most of my annual book budget. We especially like their dollar bin, the great coupons they send out, and we love taking our unwanted books there to resell. They may not pay as much as Powell's, but they take the lot off your hands.

5. Grass-fed beef from Wettstein Farm (chickes, too!). Local, organic, affordable and delicious. Because our freezer is always stocked, we rarely get take-out anymore.

6. Homeschool swim at the Y. A great way to spend a part of every Friday catching up w NUG moms, while kids swim.

7. My compact upright bagless vacuum. Now that I don't have to drag the monster up from the basement, my house is a lot more hair-free a lot more often.

8. Teeccino, especially the Mayan Chocolate flavor. Brews like coffee, tastes a little different, perhaps even better. Great for reducing caffeine consumption around here.

9. Because of my recent costume-making stint with Mudlark Theater, I have rediscovered the joys of thrift shopping. Thank goodness for Unique Thrift Stores, their clean, well lit aisles, and organization by color.

10. And last, but not least, my favorite discovery this year, the thing that helps me save face every day, Weleda Iris cleansing lotion. Never in a million years would I suspect that a cleansing milk is just what my generally oily skin needs, but once I tried this stuff, there is no going back to soap.

Thank you, Lori, for inviting all to play.
And won't you join us, gentle reader?

Communing with Nature

This is a picture of our toilet on Boblo Island.

You will note, that although it is a perfectly serviceable toilet, it is situated outdoors on a deck, where its normal use is somewhat impractical.
Issues with the toilet on Boblo have a long and colorful history. Last summer, Chris spent two days beating it into submission, and we were finally able to make partial use of it. This time, too, the toilet's capricious nature made it necessary for Chris to remove it from its usual location while he attended to needed repairs.
I mention all this only to explain how it was, that I found myself in the thicket, with a shovel and a roll of slightly damp toilet paper, communing with nature.
While I was thus engaged, I heard knocking. It wasn't the insistent tdtdtdtdtdtdtd! of the woodpeckers I've grown accustomed to in Chicago, but rather the slow, deliberate knock!.... knock!.... knock!... of a much larger bird. I quickly composed myself and pointed my face up into the tree canopy. And there, on a branch not ten feet above my head was the most beautiful pileated woodpecker I ever saw.
I've glimpsed others before, and they were doubtless just as attractive. It's just that none ever sat still long enough for me to appreciate its charms. This one continued its laborious knocking, slowly circling the tree trunk as it went about its business, as if I hadn't been there.
This was, understandably, one of those moments when I didn't have my camera. I rose to my feet and gingerly started to move in the direction of the cabin. The bird continued to ignore my presence. Encouraged by this, I ran to collect both the camera, and members of my family. Alas, while the woodpecker was tolerant of a solitary person in the vicinity, a larger group alarmed him, and he took wing, and disappeared from view. Chris and the kids gave up on him, but I was determined to get a photo. I knew where he had gone, and reasoned that if I stay still enough, as I, after all, had been doing when I first spotted him, he was sure to reappear.
He did. But, sadly, I never got close enough to him to get a decent picture. He was now aware of my presence, and every time I raised my camera, he flew off to a more distant branch. I followed him as stealthily as I could through the damp woods, and I was able to observe him quite well in flight, but this was the best I could do. This one's for Kim, such as it is.