Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (4.14.17)
Here’s your (new!) weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft edited by Leslie Klinger
I’ve watched television and movies inspired by Lovecraft’s tales, played board games based on his works, and read countless novels and short stories set in the world he created, but I’ve read very little by the man himself, which is embarrassing given my self-proclaimed status as a hard-core bookish sf/fantasy nerd. This beautiful oversized volume collects 22 of Lovecraft’s Arkham Cycle stories, with extensive annotations by Klinger and a short biographical preface. (Spoiler: Lovecraft was super racist!) Lovecraft definitely has a specific (and repetitive) style — narrators share events almost TOO TERRIBLE TO RELATE involving INDESCRIBABLY HORRIFIC TENTACLED ENTITIES the mere mention of which MAY DRIVE YOU MAD — and may not be for everyone, but this is a great introduction to his work, definitely worth passing along to any teens or adults who may have a Cthulu t-shirt or two but have never gotten around to reading the original. (LC Score: +1)
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
As a fan of Victorian novels, I can’t tell you how many characters I’ve watched gracefully waste away after being stricken with consumption. And there are times (especially after a not-so-successful day of homeschooling) where being an invalid on top of a mountain somewhere, breathing the crisp fresh air while a handsome young orderly adjusts my lap blanket before wheeling me to another part of the meadow, sounds pretty awesome. Except, of course, for the whole coughing up blood and dying part. Mann’s famous (and famously long) German novel, set just before the Great War, describes the kind of sanatorium I’ve always imagined myself in and the people that inhabit it more or less permanently. I enjoyed this novel, though I only understood about 80% of it, not including the almost-entirely-in-French chapter that my translation (by H.T. Lowe-Porter) didn’t bother to translate to English and which I didn’t understand t al, forcing me to spend quite a bit of time arguing with Google Translate before discovering a more recent and more friendly edition (by John E. Woods) online. (NOTE: For the past few weeks, I’ve been reading this book alternately with the Lovecraft collection and they went surprisingly well together. I have no idea what that means.) (LC Score: +1)
Mrs. Pollifax and the Second Thief by Dorothy Gilman
This 10th entry in the Mrs. Pollifax spy series — think Miss Marple, CIA agent — has, as usual, a faintly ridiculous plot (set in Sicily this time around), but makes a delightful change from tentacled monsters and German consumptives. (LC Score: +1)
The Rose-Garden Husband by Margaret Widdemer
I think I picked this up based on Amy’s recommendation — and it is indeed a charming little romance, once you get past the racism, which is still kind of charming. (At least compared to Lovecraft.) (LC Score: 0, read on Kindle)
The Year of Living Danishly: Uncovering the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country by Helen Russell
Russell, burnt out from her high-powered London life, moves to Denmark after her husband gets a job at Lego. This is the memoir of her “Danish happiness project”, investigating the claim that Danes are the world’s happiest people and trying to figure out why. I’ve had this book on hold since I read a similar travel memoir — The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia by Michael Booth — but apparently the idea of moving to Denmark strikes a nerve with my fellow metro Atlantans, because I had to wait months for it to become available. I was reminded of the very similar (but non-Danish) The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, and of the two Scandinavian memoirs I think I preferred the Booth book, but it’s still an entertaining read. It left me with NO desire to move to Denmark, however. (LC Score: +1⁄2, loses half a point because I returned it overdue)
Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist by Anne Boyd Rioux
I love a literary biography, especially of a female writer, but it’s unusual for me to read one about an author I’ve never heard of or read before. Woolson is primarily known today for her close friendship with Henry James, but in her time she achieved both popular success and critical acclaim. While the reviews of the day hailed her as a permanent addition to the American literary canon, my library doesn’t even have copies of all her major works, though it carries several biographies that (no doubt) emphasize her relationship with James and her death by probable suicide in Venice, proving that fame is fleeting but gossip is forever. (LC Score: +1)
Georgia Odyssey: A Short History of the State by James C. Cobb
I grew up in Florida, so while I learned how to pronounce Ponce de Leon correctly (hint to fellow Atlantans: ‘ponts-dee-lee-on’ is not the usual way to say the name of that street downtown where the Kripsy Kreme is located), I don’t know much about Georgia history. As I’m going to be teaching a class on the history of my adopted state in the fall, I’ve started reading up and have learned that most of Georgia history can be subtitled “Don’t Be Bringin’ Any of That Yankee Nonsense Down Here.” After reading a couple of volumes heavy on cotton crop statistics and making my way through all 1,037 pages of Gone With the Wind, it was wonderful to discover this lively and surprisingly entertaining history by native Georgian and UGA professor James Cobb. At just under 200 pages, it lives up to its title’s promise, but Cobb packs a lot in there. (LC Score: +1)
Library Chicken Score for 4/14/17: 5 1⁄2
On the to-read stack for next week:
Fanny Kemble’s Civil Wars: The Story of America’s Most Unlikely Abolitionist by Catherine Clinton (for the Georgia class)
Quite a Year for Plums by Bailey White (reread for the Georgia class)
Fanny Burney: A Biography by Claire Harman (because it’s the week of Fanny, I guess?)
Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (because I’m gonna need some space opera after spending all that time in Georgia)
52 Weeks of Happier Homeschooling Week 28: Focus on Effort, Not Accomplishment
There are weeks where things just click: Your tween masters algebraic equations, your kindergartener starts reading on her own, your teen puts together a textbook-perfect bibliography for his paper on the American Revolution, you do a fabulous job explaining the “no such thing as a free lunch” concept for your economics lesson. But there are plenty more weeks where you’re slogging along, doing your best, but not making any noteworthy advances. If you’re grading yourself on accomplishments, you’re going to have a handful of glowing weeks every year and weeks and weeks of “not applicable.” It can be kind of disheartening.
That’s why we need to create a new evaluation system to measure our homeschool success. Instead of focusing on accomplishments, which tend to come when they come, focus on effort: Ask “what did we do?” instead of “what did we accomplish?” Give yourself credit for working toward your goals, regardless of how much (or how little) progress you make on a given day. Slowly train yourself out of thinking of your homeschool as a series of concepts mastered and start thinking of it as a work in progress, where the progress matters just as much—if not more—than the mastery. Let the work itself—not the results of your work—become the point of what you do. We talk a lot about why this kind of focus is good for kids—it teaches them to get comfortable with mistakes, encourages them to work for the joy of working and not for some arbitrary word, and to feel comfortable taking the reins for their own projects—but it’s just as helpful for homeschool parents. When we slow down to appreciate what we’re putting into our homeschool every week, we’re better able to see achievements for what they are—the culmination of lots of effort on everybody’s part.
Your mission this week: Keep a daily log of the work that gets done in your homeschool: We worked on math problems for 30 minutes or We read a chapter of our book. Resist the urge to measure what you did by success—don’t focus on the percentage of problems your student got right or how much of the book you wanted him to read, just concentrate on the effort you put in.
New Books: A Face Like Glass
Once upon a time—and that is really the only way to start to talk about the fantastical world of this novel—a cheesemaker named Grandible finds an abandoned child in his labyrinthine home underground.
“‘It draws you in. You twist your mind into new shapes. You start to understand Caverna . . . and you fall in love with her. Imagine the most beautiful woman in the world, but with tunnels as her long, tangled, snake-like hair. Her skin is dappled in trap-lantern gold and velvety black, like a tropical frog. Her eyes are cavern lagoons, bottomless and full of hunger. When she smiles, she has diamonds and sapphires for teeth, thousands of them, needle-thin.’
’But that sounds like a monster!’
’She is. Caverna is terrifying. This is love, not liking. You fear her, but she is all you can think about.’”
Grandible isn’t just any cheesemaker—he’s THE cheese artisan of Caverna, a city with no shortage of spectacular craftspeople. Behind his well-defended door, the reclusive genius makes cheeses that are the stuff of legend: the emerald-rinded Whitwhistle, which issues a fluting melody as it settles, the paralyzing Poric Hare-Stilton which Grandible puts on double duty as a booby trap, and the labor-intensive Stackfalter Stilton that needs to be turned every 141 minutes exactly—a task that requires at least two workers to accomplish. Even in Caverna, a city where artisans compete against each other in an ever-more-spectacular competition to pique the jaded interest of the city’s immortal ruler. Grandible’s talent is the stuff of legend. He could be a darling of the court, but for reasons known only to himself, he’s gone into seclusion, barricading his doors against the world outside and refusing the society of the city.
And the child, who somehow finds her way into his tunnels and survives on his potent cheeses, is not just any child. Grandible protects the girl—he calls her Neverfell—the only way he knows how—by keeping her hidden and hiding her face with a velvet mask. But safety in Caverna is an illusion, and when Neverfell follows a white rabbit out of the safety of Grandible's tunnels, she must confront a dangerous world, where Facesmiths help citizens express subtle emotion through their features, where the Kleptomancer carries out spectacular thefts, and where every person she meets is caught up in at least one scheme. As Neverfell discovers the city’s darkest secrets, she realizes that her own forgotten history is tangled up with Caverna’s treacherous past.
This book is so wonderfully, eerily weird. Hardinge is brilliant at creating creepy worlds that slowly untether themselves from reality, twisting into complex, elaborately detailed fantasy lands. (See also: Cuckoo Song, The Lost Conspiracy) Nothing is ever simply what it seems—eddies of undercurrent swirl beneath the surface of every scene, every character, and every conversation. Neverfell, whose innocence gives her power even as it puts her in danger, is a tempestuous person, as emotional and changeable as her dangerous face, but it’s the other characters who make this book come to life: staunch, angry Erstwhile who grew up one of the city’s disposable Drudges; Madame Appeline, the celebrated Facesmith whose sad, sweet faces remind Neverfell of something she can’t remember; the Grand Steward, who has lived so long that nothing interests him and he’s started plotting against himself; and Caverna herself, a living city full of literal twists and turns with plans of her own.
I kind of loved this book. It’s beautifully imagined, and the writing has a dreamy lyricism that draws you into the complicated, shadowy world of Caverna. And it's so darn interesting: It raises all kinds of questions about the ways we know ourselves and other people, the importance of feelings—even when they’re bad or unattractive, the power of words and storytelling and believing. Like most Hardinge books, it’s for middle grades with an asterisk—it’s creepy and dark, and not all readers are ready for that, but it’s also a book that young adults and even adult-adults could really love. As long as you don't mind a little time on the dark side, put this one near the top of your library list.
Stuff We Like :: 4.14.17
You can tell that I’ve just wrapped up an issue because I’m suddenly very chatty! Pretend we're drinking wine instead of coffee.
around the web
I can’t decide whether I should be secretly proud or secretly embarrassed that I have read more than half of the most ridiculous Sweet Valley High plotlines. (That punch-spiking/drunk driving/evil twin drama, though!)
The internet has done many wonderful things, but perpetuating wrongly attributed quotes is definitely not one of them. (I do love the story about how Anne Rice accidentally attributed one of her own quotes to Kafka. I thank the internet for that.)
And since we’re talking about the internet, “what fresh hell” has become the jargon of our lives—which may actually be a coping mechanism. (This totally makes sense to me. And am I the only one who feels like she has to check the news just-really-quickly before bed just because if there is really bad news I don’t feel like I can deal with it emotionally before I have coffee? Even though I also probably really can’t deal with it right before I go to sleep. So it’s just basically touring myself.)
I mean, if you can resist the title, I don’t know if we can be friends: Toni Morrison is more Hemingway than Hemingway Himself
at home/school/life
for subscribers: A few brave souls have ventured into our new forum. You can join us by requesting your invite on the subscribers only page.
on the blog: File under not even a little a bit surprising: Wearing pajamas all day is the MOST HOMESCHOOLERY THING EVER. (The voting was really fun, though—thanks for playing!)
one year ago: Oh, I loved The Goblin’s Puzzle. Maybe I can convince my son to read it again.
two years ago: Resources for young entrepreneurs
reading list
My daughter and I are taking a brain break this week and not really doing any work, but we are having so much fun reading the first pages of books and analyzing them a la How to Read Novels Like a Professor. (If you’re not familiar with the book, it’s a fun read—he theorizes that you can tell most of what you need to know about a book from the first page, which you may or may not agree with but which is a fun way to spend a sunny front porch kind of afternoon.)
My best friend lent me a copy of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria: And Other Conversations About Race—it’s ultimately destined for Jason’s school library, but I get to read it first. (The perks of being a volunteer librarian!) I feel like racism is one of those things that I always thought “oh, yeah, that’s bad” about without ever really digging into the reality or how culturally pervasive it is—which is ironic, kind of, because I get so annoyed when people do that with women’s issues. Now I’m reading everything I can get my hands on and trying to help my kids navigate the world in a way that’s respectful and inclusive and aware.
I have recently discovered Barbara Comyns in my never-ending quest to find women writers I’d never heard of (see also Isabel Colegate, Mariama Bâ). I started with The Vet’s Daughter, which is like—what? Sort of suburban Gothic/British Flannery O’Connor with magical realism woven through it? I feel like that comes close but doesn’t really do it justice.
in the kitchen
Jas and I went out to brunch with the kids to celebrate our anniversary, and I had these amazing lemon-blueberry-goat cheese pancakes that I want to recreate at home. (Maybe I’ll start with this recipe.)
We have been experimenting with matzoh toast. So far, scrambled eggs have been the only universal hit, but I really like the avocado toast version, and my daughter is a fan of peanut butter and banana with just a little chocolate-hazelnut spread.
Cookie of the week: Passover chocolate chip cookies
at home
My daughter and I have had so much fun with our Studio Ghibli movie/book combo class that I’m toying with the idea of writing a comparative literature high school curriculum along those lines. You know, because I have so much free time. (Or maybe I’m just looking for an excuse to give up laundry forever? Though I have kind of fallen hard for this honeysuckle laundry soap. Does having a favorite laundry product make you a real grown-up?)
Having a dog is possibly the greatest thing ever. While I write this, my son is reading Encyclopedia Brown aloud to the dog and pausing at the end of each story just in case the dog decides he wants to solve it before he hears the solution.
My district happens to be one with a spring election, and it felt so good to (early) vote after everything that’s happened in the past few months.
Homeschool Rewind: Winter
OK, I’m a little late with my winter homeschool update, but that is actually metaphorically sound. This winter has been a challenging homeschool season. I’ve been spoiled for most of our homeschool life by having a super-flexible work schedule and a partner whose schedule allows him to work from home most of the time, too. Now that Jason’s running an actual school, there are days when I have to get up and get dressed and get everyone out of the house before my second cup of coffee kicks in, and it has been an adjustment. These are the seasons when I am glad we homeschool year-round—otherwise, I’d be stressing about whether we were actually doing enough work.
Other than scheduling, this has actually been a lovely season of homeschooling. I was nervous about our first year of homeschooling high school (I might have mentioned it a few times), but now that we’re well into it, I think it’s one of the most satisfying years of homeschooling we’ve had so far. With earlier grades, we’re interested in “what does this mean?” and “why does it matter?” — totally valid, interesting questions. But I love that high school pushes us to also ask “what does that tell us about the world we live in?” and “how does that connect to what else we know?” The hardest part has been Japanese, which my daughter was passionate about studying but which no one in our family has any real knowledge of. I’ll talk more about it in my end-of-the-year wrap-up, but we ended up hiring a tutor and using a combination of GENKI I: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese and Japanese from Zero for texts. This was good for me: I can’t do it all, and I couldn’t do this. But I don’t have to do it all. It’s a useful reminder. (And our tutor is awesome.)
Having two kids is great because it keeps me from getting overconfident—whatever works with one of them is almost absolutely guaranteed NOT to work with the other one. This year, it’s language arts. Suzanne and I were talking about it on the podcast, but my daughter would write just because she loved writing — she used to play school and write essays for each of the different students, grade them, and have the students revise them. (Gunther, I recall, did only the most slapdash revisions.) My son, on the other hand, would happily embrace any reason not to write. (Recent reasons have included: “This pencil is itchy” and “The lines on the paper distract me.”) We’ve fallen into an uneasy but tentatively effective program, combining Patricia’s brilliant dictation method (I could not homeschool without it) and comic book pages (which he seems to have more patience with), and I’m trying to just take it one day at a time.
This is maybe a superfluous thing, but it’s been so great I want to mention it: For Hanukkah this year, my mom bought the kids bungee chairs. They are awkwardly shaped and look a little silly, but holy cow, these chairs are little miracle workers. My bouncy, can’t-sit-still son can read in one for long stretches of time and my daughter likes bobbing up and down while she’s doing math. Who knew chairs could make such a difference?
What about you? What was your winter homeschool like?
7 Books With the Power to Re-Inspire Your Homeschool
Whether you’re a brand-new homeschooler looking for guidance, an experienced homeschooler stuck in a rut, or just a homeschool mom in need of a little reassurance, a smart book can be your best friend. These are some of our favorites.
Whether you’re a classical-inspired homeschooler or have any intention of using this book’s detailed curriculum plans, you’ll find The Well-Trained Mind a homeschool book worth going back to again and again. It’s not so much the specifics of curricula and scheduling—though those can be helpful—but the way that the book makes academic homeschool seem not just theoretically possible but practically doable.
If you’re a new homeschooler or a homeschooler struggling to find a rhythm for your days, this book is just what the doctor ordered. Though it’s written for unschoolers, its homeschool-as-lifestyle philosophy and advice for making learning part of everyday life is inspiring.
This book is designed to supplement Miquon Math’s elementary curriculum, but reading it offers insight into how children learn math and different strategies for explaining basic math concepts. It could be easily be subtitled “How to feel more confident when you’re homeschooling math.”
Khan—whom you may know as the founder of Khan Academy, a favorite online resource for homeschoolers—takes on traditional education in this establishment-rocking book. His ideas about personal instruction and working to mastery especially will resonate with homeschoolers.
Grouping reading recommendations by grade level and subject (language arts, world history and geography, math, science, etc.), this resource makes getting started on those endless homeschool reading lists a little easier. You wouldn’t want to stop here, but it’s a great place to start.
Perhaps the classic book of modern homeschooling, Holt’s treatise on education is reassuring, encouraging, and exhilarating. Particularly if you’re feeling uncertain about whether homeschooling can give your kids a thorough education, this book will kick your homeschool motivation into high gear.
This one’s for the research nerds: Gaither’s examination of homeschooling through U.S. history offers a researched, balanced (though ultimately positive) look at the educational project we’re all participating in.
This was originally published in the spring 2017 issue of HSL.
52 Weeks of Happier Homeschooling Week 27: Give More Feedback
One of the things I love about homeschooling is that we don’t have to slap a grade on everything—it’s empowering to operate outside a system that’s interested only in whether you got the right answer, not in what you’re actually learning or why you got a not-right answer or what’s interesting about questions that don’t come with a right answer. Not having grades opens you up to being wrong in a way that’s really healthy: A lot of learning happens in the spaces where we don’t get the right answer, and not stamping a grade on everything takes the stigma out of being wrong and puts the possibility back in.
But while grades as a sole measure of academic achievement are problematic, most people work harder and feel better about their work when they get a little feedback. Scheduling regular check-in sessions with your student can make a big difference in your student’s motivation and productivity—which, in turn, can help you feel like you’ve got things under control. So if you’re not giving grades, how do you give feedback?
* Set a specific time. (If you can put it on the schedule as regular thing—say, the first Monday of each month—even better.) It’s not that kids can’t respond to feedback any time, it’s just that people absorb feedback better when they know it’s coming. Scheduling a time also gives you and your child a chance to gather your thoughts and think about what you want to say.
- Two positives, one negative. Criticism gets a bad name because people tend to associate it with being negative, but real criticism digs into what’s good, too. My husband jokes about my “sandwich criticism” (one negative sandwiched between two positives), but research backs me up: If you team up negative and positive feedback, your listener is more likely to act on the feedback you are giving.
- Be specific. If you say, “You’re being kind of careless,” your student may not totally get what you’re trying to say. Instead, say, “I notice that you’re missing questions in math that you would probably catch if you went back and checked your work—I think you could really rock those questions if you committed to being more careful.” Another benefit of this is that you’re tying your criticism to a behavior and not to your child’s personality.
- Leave room for a response. Feedback shouldn’t be a one-way street, so leave space for your child to weigh in. Maybe he’s racing through math worksheets because they are so boring, or he may have missed a math concept so that he misses problems even when he goes back and checks them. It’s important to understand how your child feels about the feedback you’re giving—the good and the not-so-good.
- Leave it with something concrete. Try to come up with a specific plan of action to address challenges: Maybe your student will agree to double check five problems per lesson or to set a timer so that he’s spending at least five minutes per problem. It should be something that you can both agree on—if you want your student to change a behavior, it’s much easier when you have his buy-in. Take his opinion into account, too: If he says one reminder to check his work is fine but more feels like nagging, give his way a try.
Your challenge this week: Schedule a one-on-one feedback meeting with your student. Share two examples of great work and one thing she needs to work on—you can tweak this in the future, but in general, try to give more positive than negative feedback and don’t pile on too much information at once. Ask her to do the same for you: What are you doing great? What could you improve?
HOMESCHOOL MADNESS 2017: THE WINNER!
The votes have been counted, the results are in, and SPENDING ALL DAY IN YOUR PAJAMAS has been voted THE MOST HOMESCHOOLERY THING EVER!
Stuff We Like :: 4.7.17
I think everybody knows that the thing I like best is having the spring issue out! (It may not be available to download yet when you read this, but it will be available today.)
around the web
I would totally watch a remake of Mannequin with James Corden and Victoria Beckham—wouldn’t you?
Where are the people of color in the middle ages?
This is one of the most interesting pieces of long-form journalism I’ve read in ages. If you have a while, it's definitely worth reading.
at home/school/life
in the magazine: Did we mention the spring issue is out?
one year ago: The Pleasures of Spring Homeschooling
two years ago: Sorting through Subjects in an Everything-is-Connected Manner of Homeschooling
reading list
I finished A Tangle of Gold—and with it the Colors of Madeleine series—and I seriously think you should make this your 2017 Vacation Reading Series. It was very satisfying.
I am going to be reviewing A Face Like Glass and The Star Thief soon for the blog because they were both totally review-worthy.
We are reading The Lives of Christopher Chant for our family readaloud right now and enjoying it thoroughly.
at home
We got a dog! The kids named him Oscar Wilde von Pupper (apparently that The Importance of Being Earnest readaloud was a hit after all), and we’re all totally in love with him.
Cookie of the week: Snickerdoodles
We’ve all been putting so much time and energy into Jason’s school, so it’s really exciting that he pretty much has a full class for fall. Yay, Jas!
Some of Our Favorite Living Math Books for Tweens and Teens
Lewis Carroll. Thomas Pynchon. David Foster Wallace. They’re best known now as writers, but all of them started out as mathematicians — a fact that delightfully dismantles a piece of the divide between “math people” and “book people.”
In fact, math and literature have more in common than you might realize. One of the first novels about math was written more than a century ago. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott, published in 1184, is both an exploration of the nature of geometry and dimensions and a satirical analysis of Victorian social structure. Abbott’s story — about a Square whose world view expands when he meets a Sphere from three-dimensional Spaceland — inspired several similar works, including Flatterland by Ian Stewart and The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics by Norton Juster.
Bloomsbury offered a $1 million prize to the first person who could prove Goldbach’s Conjecture within two years of the publication of Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture, a novel by the Greek writer and mathematician Apostolos Doxiadis. No one claimed the prize, which is no real surprise since the life-shaking difficulty of the conjecture (which postulates that every even number is the sum of two primes) and its affect on one mathematician’s life is one of the key points of the book.
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series posits a system of mathematical sociology that can predict the future. Mathematical sociology — also called psychohistory — works a little like economics and can only be used to predict large-scale events. Thanks to mathematical sociology, the mathematician Hari Seldon is able to predict the collapse of the Galactic Empire and the Dark Ages that will follow it — and to safeguard human culture and scientific achievement.
In John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines, former math prodigy Colin Singleton is obsessed with proving his theorem, a formula that predicts which of two members of a romantic relationship will be the one to end the relationship. Colin grapples with the challenge that confronts many kids whose early giftedness does not clearly manifest itself as genius as they get older and with the mathematical mindset that failure is just as likely — and ultimately just as important — as success when it comes to proving mathematical theories. Similarly, the autistic narrator of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime uses mathematics to make sense of his world. But making sense doesn’t mean making simple, as Christopher explains in one chapter-long rumination on the Monty Hall program, a probability logic puzzle that baffles even some professional mathematicians.
Colin Adams — you may know him from the Mathematically Bent column in the Mathematical Intelligencer (and if you don’t, perhaps you should) — has collected some of his funniest math stories in Riot at the Calc Exam and Other Mathematically Bent Stories. In “The Deprogrammer’s Tale,” families seek help from a professional when their children are tempted to major in mathematics. In “A Killer Theorem,” a detective investigates a series of murders committed via an irresistible proof method for an unsolvable theorem.
This list is excerpted from an article in the winter 2015 issue of HSL.
Hands-On Science: Raising Tadpoles
Life science takes on a whole new meaning when you’re raising tadpoles from tiny eggs to hopping frogs.
For young children, the best science curriculum is simple acts of exploration and observation. Be open to new discoveries and seize opportunities to involve yourself in the unfolding of natural processes whether by sitting and watching, spending more time in nature, or being intentional about answering your questions. How does that happen? How does that work? Why? When? What?
A few years ago, my husband seized an opportunity for my boys when he took my youngest son (then 2 years old) to a park, and together they found hundreds of tiny black tadpoles in a pool of water in the shoals of a stream. With a cup from the car, my husband scooped up a few of the tadpoles, and my two-year-old proudly and carefully carried the cup back to the car. Imagine my eldest son’s surprise when he and I returned home, and his brother told us we were going to raise tadpoles. Could we do that without hurting them? I wondered. Raising tadpoles was much easier than I thought it would be. We used an old container box—the kind that can slide under a bed—and put it on the front porch. We filled it with water and some big rocks, and my husband used the water conditioner that we use for our fish aquarium to get the chlorine out. Later, we returned to the stream where we found the tadpoles and collected water from it because there are microorganisms in it that the tadpoles could feed on. (If you raise tadpoles, you might want to start with water from the source where you find your tadpoles, if you don’t already have a habitat set up.)
My husband also purchased a cheap water filter from the pet store, but we didn’t use it to filter the water. Instead, we let it gently circulate the water and make bubbles—this put oxygen in the water. Tadpoles have gills like fish and breath by passing oxygenated water through their gills. However, we have seen tadpoles living quite comfortably in puddles or stagnant water, so a filter may not be necessary.
Next we wondered what to feed our tadpoles. Luckily we found some frog/tadpole food at the pet store, but we also put frozen spinach leaves into the box—the tadpoles loved it! And as I said, we gave them water from the stream so they could eat any microorganisms from it.
When we weren’t keeping vigil over our tadpoles, we kept a piece of old window screen on top of the box to keep out mosquitoes or any predators that might come up on our porch. We felt it was important to keep the tadpoles outside so that they would experience the same temperatures they would have at the stream.
After the habitat was set up, all we needed to do was watch them grow. And they grew fast! As it turned out, our little frogs were fowler toads, which we recognized as soon as they started to get their spots because fowler toads like to live around our house too. Other frogs might have taken much longer to transform into adults, but since I had two little boys watching the whole process, I was grateful for the quick transition. Every morning we would run outside to see our tadpoles, and we could see a difference in them. They got bigger and bigger, they sprouted back legs, front legs, and their coloring changed. Oh the excitement!
During this process, I learned from my herpetologist friend that whenever we find tadpoles around here (in north Georgia) that are solid black, they are definitely toads. Other tadpoles, such as those from tree or chorus frogs, are clear, and if viewed from the bottom, you can see an orange-colored circle, which is their intestines.
We learned on the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory’s (SREL) website that female fowler toads lay eggs in strings with clutches of up to 25,000 eggs in spring or summer after a heavy rain, and that tadpoles go through metamorphosis within two months. But we only had our little tadpoles from June 15 to July 4.
Two out of three of the toadlets lost their tails within a day and were sitting up on the rocks in the habitat. Since they were no longer tadpoles, we no longer knew what to feed them, so on July 4th—a very fitting day—we decided to release them back near the stream where we found them. The third one, which had always developed about one day behind the others, was still in the water and had a tail, so we found a shallow part of the stream to put him in with plenty of leaf cover for him to hide under.
It was a wonderful experience for me, let alone for my children, who delighted in the whole process. I am happy that my husband took that opportunity to do something special with his boys, and I’m glad we gave those three little tadpoles a safe place to grow and reach the next stage of their lives.
Tadpole Notes:
If you want to raise tadpoles, you should first check your state’s regulations about collecting them from the wild. Some states prohibit this. Furthermore, if you buy tadpoles online, make sure you find a species that can be released into your area (if you plan to release them).
Carolina.com is a reputable resource for schools, and many of their products can be used in the home as well. (This is the company that we purchased butterfly larvae from. You can read about that in the summer 2014 issue of home / school / life.) They will state on their website, if you live in a state where a live specimen cannot be shipped.
This column was originally published in the spring 2015 issue of HSL.
52 Weeks of Happier Homeschooling Week 26: Add Meditation to Your Routine
Come on, how often can you do something the Dalai Lama and Katie Perry both love? Just the fact that meditation is a must-do for both the spiritual leader and the pop music star should be enough to convince your family to give the ages-old art of mindfully focusing on the present moment a try. But situational irony isn’t the only reason to tap into regular meditation. Meditation can help your homeschool take a turn for the happier in a few different ways.
Meditation helps your brain work better. One downside of modern life’s constant multitasking is that it can bog down brain function. During adolescence, kids train their brains to think critically and analyze information, a process that requires focus on one topic at a time. Switching back and forth between your iTunes playlist, texting about theater practice, and memorizing biology facts can actually stop your brain from building the deep neural connections associated with sophisticated thought. It can be hard to focus on a single subject when so much information is so easily accessible, but people who meditate can hold their concentration better than those who don’t, found researchers at the University of Washington. Meditating for just ten minutes a day made people faced with a to-do list less distractible and better able to stay focused on one task a time. (And in case you were curious, meditating super-focusers finished their task lists at the same time as those who multitasked their way through the list.)
Meditation helps reduce stress. You can train your brain to manage stress more effectively the same way you train your body to run a marathon, says Richard Davidson, M.D., author of The Emotional Life of Your Brain. Even just a fifteen-minute-a-day meditation session made test subjects at the University of Massachusetts feel calmer and less worried during exams than their non-meditating peers. Students started out consciously using the breathing and concentration techniques they used during meditation to calm themselves pre-test, but after eight weeks of regular meditation, they calmed themselves without thinking about it.
Meditation can boost your memory power. Worried about falling into the memorize-it- for-the-test-and-then-forget-it trap? Meditation can help. Researchers at the University of Washington discovered that students who meditated before tackling a list of projects were better able to remember the information they worked on than students who didn’t meditate, even when both groups spent the same amount of time on task, suggesting that meditation strengthens the effectiveness of your working memory.
Meditation can help manage mood swings. Adolescent mood swings are the stuff of legend, but teens who meditate are better able to deal with the hormonal upheaval. A combination of deep breathing and meditation helped teens manage mood swings and improve their overall moods in a study conducted at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Meditation can bolster self esteem. As any John Hughes film will tell you, being a teenager can be hard. Meditation may help smooth some of those rough edges, if a study in this spring’s global Journal of Health Science is any indication. In the Korean study, kids who meditated reported higher self-esteem and adapted more easily to new situations than those who didn’t practice meditation. Solid self-esteem can make it easier for kids to form relationships, make smart choices about things like sex and drugs, and improve overall confidence.
Your challenge this week: Just getting started with meditation? One of the simplest ways to ease into the practice is lying down with a small stone on your stomach. Focus on the stone and its movements as you breathe in and out.
Stuff We Like :: 3.31.17
I have to be honest: Most of what I’m doing this week is trying to finish the spring issue of the magazine! Still, you know what they say about all work and no play.
around the web
So true: Kon-Mari for homeschooling moms
This article really hit home with me—I love the easiness of the LIKE button, but I miss the conversations we’ve given up because of it. (Toward that end, I’m setting up a little forum for subscribers that I hope to have ready to roll out with the spring issue — but we’ll see!)
When I read The Handmaid’s Tale, I seriously thought it was the scariest book I’d ever read. It seems even scarier now. I’ve often wondered how Margaret Atwood feels about her dystopia in light of current world events, and now I know! (Aside: Are you planning to watch the TV adaptation? A year ago, I would have been all-in, but now I’m worried that it will just freak me out.)
at home/school/life
on the blog: It’s your last chance to vote for the MOST HOMESCHOOLERY THING EVER.
one year ago: Ideas for celebrating every day of National Poetry Month
two years ago: 3 Fun Ways to Welcome Spring to Your Homeschool
three years ago: Sentimental flashback: How this magazine got started
reading list
Colors of Madeleine update: I finished The Cracks in the Kingdom and am moving on to A Tangle of Gold. As soon as the spring issue ships. (I guessed the big twist — I made Suzanne tell me that I was right — but that didn't make it any less brilliant. I'm enjoying these books so much.)
My poor abandoned children, who are cruelly forced to entertain themselves while I am in get-this-issue done mode, are reading The Wingsnatchers and say, “It is really good, which you would know if you were reading it with us.” So parenting fail, but at least they are reading something good!
Meanwhile, in academic reading: Ancient Greece: From Prehistory to Hellenistic Times, The Scarlet Letter, Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography, A Room of One’s Own
at home
I have discovered this British version of House Hunters on Netflix, where people shop for houses in the English countryside, and I tell you, it is like balm for the soul.
Again this week, we are subsisting on Trader Joe’s Mandarin Orange Chicken and takeout Mexican, and we did not actually make cookies this week. (We bought the frozen macarons at TJ’s instead.) This is how all my big deadlines end up.
I’m thinking of making this Amaretto Olive Oil Cake for Seder this year. But there has to be something chocolate, too, right?
Bespoke Book List: Civil War Reading List
If the Civil War’s on your to-study list, these books will help you dig into the complicated, bloody conflict that continues to inform American consciousness today.
If the Civil War’s on your to-study list, these books will help you dig into the complicated, bloody conflict that continues to inform American consciousness today.
Albert Marrin’s Civil War trilogy — Commander in Chief: Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, Unconditional Surrender: U.S. Grant and the Civil War, and Virginia’s General: Robert E. Lee & the Civil War — makes a great read aloud spine for your Civil War studies. Marrin does an excellent job illuminating the personalities and events of the Civil War while still presenting a straightforward, chronological history.
Janis Herber’s The Civil War for Kids: A History With 21 Activities includes hands-on projects like making butternut dye (used by Confederate soldiers on their uniforms), baking hardtack (a food staple for soldiers in the fields), and decoding wigwag (a flag system used to pass messages long distances during the Civil War).
The Civil War was the first technology-assisted war, and new weapons, communication devices, and transportation systems played a significant role in the war’s outcome. In Secrets of a Civil War Submarine: Solving the Mysteries of the H. L. Hunley, Sally Walker explores the history of the Confederate submarine that became the first submarine to sink a ship in wartime — though it never resurfaced after the battle. Walker tackles both the science and history of the submarine’s Civil War days and the modern-day forensic work of discovering and investigating the sunken vessel.
How can neighbors fight on different sides of the same war? Harold Keith’s Rifles for Watie does a nice job illustrating the complexities of the war through the experiences of fictional Kansas teenager Jefferson Davis Bussey, who finds himself fighting for both the Union and Confederate armies over the course of the war. Keith also focuses his narrative on the war’s western front, which may not be as familiar to younger historians.
When Steve Sheinkin was writing history textbooks, he hated that the most interesting bits always seemed to get left out. He cheerfully remedies that problem in Two Miserable Presidents: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn’t Tell You About the Civil War, an engrossing, anecdote-rich history of the War Between the States that’s equal parts smart and surprising.
Talking about slavery can be one of the hardest parts of studying the Civil War with your kids. Many Thousand Gone: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom by Virginia Hamilton manages to tackle to subject with a rare combination of sensitivity and thoroughness.
Irene Hunt’s Across Five Aprils focuses on life on the homefront. There are no heroic charges or dramatic battles for teenage Jethro Creighton, just the increasingly difficult task of keeping the family farm going while his brothers are away fighting in the Civil War.
Paul Fleischman’s Bull Run is a collection of sixteen monologues reflecting the personal experiences of people of different ages, races, genders, and regions during the First Battle of Bull Run.
Soldier’s Heart by Gary Paulsen is not an easy book to read, but this novel about 15-year-old Charley Goddard, who enlists with the First Minnesota Volunteers at the start of the Civil War and who returns home four years later, forever changed by his experiences, is powerful stuff.
The lasting impact of the Civil War is the central focus of Tony Horwitz’s Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. Though it’s more appropriate for older readers, Horowitz’s journey into the legacy of the Confederacy in the modern-day South raises the kinds of questions that can keep you talking for days.
This list is excerpted from an article in the spring 2015 issue of HSL.
History at the Movies: The Middle Ages
These movies bring medieval history to life.
Not all movies set in the Middle Ages are created equal—which makes sense, since our understanding of what the medieval period was actually like has changed over time and remains fairly limited. But film can be a great way to bring history to life, and while these movies don’t get everything right, they make an effort to be accurate. And nitpicking the details is part of the fun anyway, right? (I think most of these are appropriate for older students, but you know your kids best and pre-watching is usually a smart idea.)
THE LION IN WINTER (1968)
About: Henry II, his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, and their four sons spend the Christmas of 1183 at their castle in Anjou, sniping at each other. Eleanor is on holiday-release from the prison where her husband has her locked up while he tries to decide whether to cement an alliance with France by marrying the king’s sister (who also happens to be Eleanor’s ex-sister-in-law). Meanwhile Richard (the Lionheart), John, and Geoffrey try to jockey for position as their parents’ favorites. It sounds like a crazy, mixed-up family drama because it is—but also because that’s how things often ended up as royal families married each other and struggled for precedence.
Quotable: “Well, every family has their ups and downs.”
About: The life of the prophet Muhammad is chronicled in this film, which generated controversy and violence when it was released in the late 70s. In the early medieval period, Muhammad established Islam in the Middle East, and this film faithfully chronicles the history of early Islam. Following Islamic tradition, viewers never see or hear Muhammad directly—instead, we follow other characters reactions to his presence or words. The Middle East played such a significant role in medieval history, it’s fascinating to see a slice of that history from this perspective.
Quotable: “Mohammed, when I hunt the desert at night, I know God is not kept in a house.”
About: Sir Thomas Moore’s refusal to recognize Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon and his assumption of the title of Supreme Head of the Church of England ultimately leads to his downfall. Though the film paints Moore as a hero, which may not be completely historically accurate, it captures the tension between the church and royalty that defined so much of medieval political history.
Quotable: “I do none harm. I say none harm. I think none harm. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, then in good faith, I long not to live.”
THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928)
About: This story of Joan of Arc, based on the actual historic records of her trial and sentencing, takes place after she’s been captured by the English. Believing she was called by God, Joan successfully led the French army to victory in several significant battles during the Hundred Years War, and she’s sentenced by the English-influenced clerical court to be burned at the stake for heresy. This film is a hero story for Joan, but it also captures the complex political maneuvering between the French and English and the vital importance of religion in everyday life.
Quotable: It’s a silent movie, but Maria Falconetti’s heart-wrenching performance is so powerful, you won’t miss the dialogue.
About: Andrei Tarkovsky’s film about the life of a fifteenth century Russian icon painter is rightly considered a cinematic classic. Set during a particularly turbulent period of Russia’s history—one that would end with the establishment of the Tsardom—it’s a thoughtful meditation on the role of art, and the interconnected, episodic structure captures vignettes of medieval life, including its violence and hardships as well as its simple beauty.
Quotable: “I am what I am. You couldn't teach me integrity.”
About: A murder at a Benedictine monastery famous for its library is investigated by a Franciscan monk with a knack for puzzling out mysteries in this adaptation of Umberto Eco’s book. This film really illuminates the insularity of monastic life, the earnest work done by monks to preserve classical literature in the middle ages, and the conflicts between and within different monastic orders.
Quotable: “My dear Adso, we must not allow ourselves to be influenced by irrational rumors of the Antichrist, hmm? Let us instead exercise our brains and try to solve this tantalizing conundrum.”
52 Weeks of Happier Homeschooling Week 25: Start a Family Book Club
For homeschoolers, reading is a way of life. So the idea of a family book club—a regular reading discussion group around your family’s kitchen table—can either sound like the most brilliant idea ever or like literary overkill. In fact, it’s just logical.
A family book club helps you navigate that magical middle ground between the books you read to learn something and the books you read for fun—the place where real literary criticism and analysis happens. Book clubs don’t just encourage us to read—they encourage us to form opinions about what we read and to express and support those opinions. Kids who’ve spent evenings arguing about whether it matters why the Pigeon wants to drive the bus or how the Sisters Grimm series changes traditional fairy tale characters and what those changes might mean, won’t be fazed when someone asks them to talk about symbolism in Hemingway’s short stories or to discuss narrative reliability in The Catcher in the Rye.
We tend to save that kind of literary analysis for high school, but starting early can have big benefits. For one thing, it makes reading a much more interactive and exciting experience. For another, this kind of critical thinking naturally lends itself to conversations about big ideas—those things you really want to talk about with your kids but that can feel kind of awkward when you bring them up without context. Reading a book like Catherine, Called Birdy—about a fourteen-year-old girl trying to resist an arranged marriage in medieval Europe—lets you talk about the challenges of growing up and the importance of balancing what your parents want with what you think you need. When you talk about a book like Holes, you have the opportunity to really think about bullies and adults who abuse their responsibilities. Because you’re talking about fictional characters and situations, sensitive topics aren’t as emotionally charged.
“Parents who participate in a book club with their kids send the message that they think their children’s opinions and ideas are worth the time it takes them to read, listen, and respond,” says Eric Meadows, a reading specialist for the New York City public school system. “Book clubs build trust and communication skills between children and their parents.”
Starting a family book club is as easy as choosing your first book—which, for some of us, isn’t all that easy. Balancing a range of ages, interests, and time commitments can be a challenge. If you have non-readers, someone has to make time for readalouds in order for everyone to participate. Finding books that appeal to a teenager and a preschooler may be a challenge. Like any homeschool project, you’ll want to tweak and adjust your book club to make it work for your particular family.
If you’re new to literary analysis, downloading a reading guide for the book you’re reading can help you steer your conversation—though after a book club or two, you’ll probably be pretty good at coming up with your own questions. Set a different family member up as moderator for each meeting—everybody should get a turn. Kids may like to have a list of questions to work from or they may want to come up with their own list, so chat with your moderator in advance and come up with a plan together. The moderator may have ideas about what kind of food or drink to serve or about an activity to go with the book, or you may want to ask someone else to come up with the food and activity ideas. (An activity can be a great way to keep the conversation going because sometimes people just find it easier to talk when their hands are busy.) There’s really no wrong way to do it.
The key to a successful book club is to keep pushing each other. “Did you like the book?” is an interesting question, but “What did you like about this book?” is a much more interesting one. Read passages you like aloud to each other. Say “This part just didn’t make sense to me. What did you think about it?” Talk about the plot: What happens in the book? Is it logical? Where it’s not logical, are you willing to cut the author some slack? Talk about the characters. Do any of them change over the course of the story? Does your perception of them change? Which characters are the most interesting? Which characters are likable? Which aren’t? Does their likability correspond with whether the characters are good or bad? Talk about the language the author uses. Why does she use one word to describe something and not another word? What does she include that you think is unnecessary? What does she leave out that you really want to know? Read the first paragraph together out loud. Did the book end up where you thought it would after reading that first paragraph?
Books with historical settings can make great book club reads, but don’t turn them into extensions of history class. Focus on the merits of the book itself, and consider the role that history plays in the book. Treat books about different cultures or different countries the same way—if you have information to share, that’s great, but the goal is to talk about the book itself, not to research the history/culture in the book. You don’t want to turn every book into a major research undertaking, or your book club can burn out fast.
It’s also important to acknowledge that there will be times when kids just plain don’t like a book or can’t get into it, and it’s important to be respectful of that. (Come on, do you really always finish the book for your own grown-up book club? If you’ve never skimmed the last hundred pages, you’re a better person than I am.) Kids can stop halfway through a book, but they should be prepared to talk about what made them stop. If the book was boring, what made it boring? Were the characters’ actions too predictable? Did they get turned off by pages of descriptions when they wanted to know what was happening with the story? Talking about why a book isn’t appealing can be just as meaningful as analyzing what you did like about a book.
And be wary of making a book club an extension of your child’s school. You don’t want it to feel like homework. Ideally, family book club should be a fun activity that you all actively participate in, so fight the urge to say “Shouldn’t you be reading your book club book?” Instead, show your kids that you’re engaged in book club—read a chapter of your book in the evening and invite your kids to snuggle up with you for their own reading. Make it clear by your actions that family book club is something worth making time for, and your fellow readers will quickly follow suit.
Your challenge this week: Hold a family meeting to choose your first family book club read. Give yourself a generous amount of time to prepare for your first official book club meeting—a month is a good bet.
Homeschool Madness: The Final Vote!
It's all come down to this!
All March we've been voting for THE MOST HOMESCHOOLERY THING ever, starting with sixteen contenders. Week by week, being on a first name basis with your librarian, carschooling, not being able to eat at your dining room table because it's covered in book, and more fell off the list as you cast your votes. In the final four, "spending all day in your pajamas" barely edged out "going on a field trip and complaining about all the school groups there" by a scant few votes, while "having your kid's big wish be to someday ride a school bus" beat out "deciding that you're done for the day around noon" by a single vote. Now, it's in your hands—what's THE MOST HOMESCHOOLERY THING EVER?
Cast your vote through FRIDAY, MARCH 31.
Stuff We Like :: 3.23.17
It’s spring—which probably means it’s going to snow now? I’m so confused about the weather.
around the web
I’m in love with this: Muggle artifacts on display
In praise of literature’s bossy big sisters
Great read: When picture books get political
I will never hire children living in a boxcar to solve a mystery again
at home/school/life
on the blog: I love this community education project Carrie’s community has created
in homeschool madness: Tune in this weekend for THE FINAL TWO.
one year ago: Three bookish biographies for Women’s History Month
two years ago: Flashback to Shelli’s 2nd grade and preschool
reading list
My daughter and I are reading Letters of a Woman Homesteader out loud together and enjoying every minute. My son and I tried to read Wildwood together, but he hated it so much we switched to Witch Week.
One of the things I love the fact that Jason is starting a school is that I have an excuse to test-drive books for classes. I am not sure if his students are going to end up with copies of Welcome to the Universe: An Astrophysical Tour in the fall, but I am sure that’s what my daughter and I are going to use as the spine for astronomy next year.
I picked up a copy of Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue when it was cheap for the Kindle (I try to mention these things on our Kindle Deals page), so of course I had to interrupt all my reading lists so that I could immediately read it again.
at home
I did almost no cooking this week, so the kitchen doesn’t deserve its own section, but don’t worry, I kept my priorities straight. We’ve got a cookie of the week: John Legend's Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies
I’m working hard on wrapping up the spring issue, so it’s all chaos and copyediting this week. It’s coming together, though!
Mindful Homeschool: 10 Things to Let Go Of in Your Homeschool Life
So often, the secret to happiness—in homeschooling and the rest of our lives—is to let go.
To borrow a phrase from Rumi, sometimes the challenge of life isn’t figuring out what would make you happy but learning to recognize the barriers to contentment that you’ve built up within yourself. So often, the secret to happiness—in homeschooling and the rest of our lives—is to let go.
Let go of the idea that you have to a map to get where you want to go. You’re writing the map every day of your homeschool life. It’s OK that you don’t always know where the next turn will take you. You don’t have to be in control all the time for your homeschool to be successful.
Let go of the nagging thought that everyone else is doing this better than you are. Trust me, people are thinking the same thing about you. When we compare the highlights reel of other people’s homeschool lives to our own bloopers reel, we’re always going to fall short.
Let go of the idea that there’s a right way and that if you keep researching Facebook groups and buying curricula and going to seminars, you will eventually find it. Focus instead on what works well enough, and concentrate your energies there.
Let go of feeling like you need to be perfect. Something has to give. If it’s the laundry, or dinner, or a math lesson, accepting that you can’t do everything is an important part of feeling peaceful about your life.
Let go of guilt. Don’t hold onto mistakes, which you will inevitably make. Learn from them, forgive yourself, and move on.
Let go of the notion that life has to be busy to feel successful. Slow down. Do nothing. Let your kids play outside all day, or build a pillow fort and draw comic books all day. Don’t check your email at lunchtime. Resist the urge to multitask. Focus all your senses on drinking a cup of tea.
Let go of your fear of failure. Your kids will fail. You will fail. With the right attitude, failure can be the most empowering experience in the world. It’s how you learn, and it’s how you practice getting back up and trying again.
Let go of your expectations. It’s easy to imagine what a “perfect homeschool day” might look like, but if you get too caught up in trying to replicate your vision, you miss the opportunity for your homeschool to unfold naturally. There’s nothing wrong with planning, but be open to following the path where it leads you instead of trying to force it in a specific direction.
Let go of worrying about the future. It’s OK that you don’t have it all figured out. You don’t always have to know what’s going to happen next. Focus on the step you need to take right now.
Let go of micromanaging. It’s easy to get distracted by things like “how much multiplication should a third grader be able to do?,” but getting too focused on small details can get in the way of seeing the big picture. What’s your goal for your homeschool? When you start to get bogged down by too many micro-details, shift your focus to the bigger picture and let that guide you instead.
What have you learned to let go in your homeschool journey?
A Fun Living Math Curriculum for Elementary to Middle School: Your Business Math
Here’s something I should have written about sooner: A math curriculum that my math-hating daughter actually loved.
Here’s something I should have written about sooner: A math curriculum that my math-hating daughter actually loved.
Simply Charlotte Mason’s Your Business Math is designed for elementary school-age students, but I think it would be ideal for any kid who’s at that stage where she’s got the hang of basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) but needs some reinforcement before you can feel confident that she’s really mastered them. (For my daughter, 5th grade was perfect timing.) The premise is simple but brilliant: You’ve opened a pet store, and now you’ve got to manage all the inventory and accounting for your business.
My daughter was hooked from the first assignment, which was—instead of a review of her multiplication tables—a project requiring her to create her pet store’s name and logo. After getting set up and ordering the initial inventory, assignments are broken down into monthly duties: filling orders, updating inventory, paying bills and taxes, figuring out profits and losses, and dealing with chance cards, which are sometimes happy (Yay! A celebrity visits your pet shop, and sales skyrocket) and sometimes not-so-happy (a busted pipe means a pricey visit from a plumber). Kids have their own checks, ledger, and inventory records, and they have to do math—mostly addition, subtraction, multiplication, decimals, and percents—to keep up with their income and inventory. After the first month, most kids will be comfortable working through their monthly duties on their own, and by the end, most will be working completely independently.
For most kids, this wouldn’t work as a spine for a math curriculum. Its nature is necessarily limited to the math you need to keep a business going, but it’s a terrific resource for reinforcing basic operations skills and helping kids make real sense of decimals and percents. (Don’t be surprised if your child starts calculating sales tax in line at the grocery store.) It’s a light math curriculum—the monthly assignments break down into just ten tasks—which is great if you want to opt for a period of relaxed math or if you want something fun to supplement your regular math curriculum without eating up too much extra teaching time.
There were a couple of things that we tweaked as we went. The “imaginary pet shop” was more fun when my daughter could imagine the real pets, so she made little cards for each pet. (She’d look up pictures of different kinds of ferrets or dogs or hamsters, draw pictures of them, and give them names, then laminate them with packing tape. When a pet got adopted, it would move to a special adoptions folder.) As she got more comfortable with the math skills needed to complete her monthly tasks, some of them started to feel a little routine, so we added special orders. (We also added owls to the inventory so that Hogwarts students could order their school pets from the store.) I also made sure that we started in January, when the pet store calendar starts, so that we were working in the right month. Obviously you could do the curriculum any time, but it would have driven me crazy to always be in the wrong month. (This could be a me problem.)
What we loved about it was how engaging it made the basic math that my daughter usually hated. She was excited when it was time to update her pet store inventory or figure out how a big order affected her profit for the month. After years of fighting against practice math problems, she practiced her math cheerfully because she understood the point of doing it. I can’t overstate what a revelation that was for our homeschool life. Math didn’t magically become her favorite subject, but it did become something that she was at least willing to try.
The spiral-bound Your Business Math: Pet Store, which contains everything you need, is $24.95. (You can also get the ebook edition for $18.95, but I think you’d just end up having to print a lot.) If pets aren’t your kid’s thing, there’s also a sports store and a books store option. Not all the Simply Charlotte Mason resources are secular, but this is.
SUZANNE REZELMAN is home | school | life magazine’s Book Nerd. Subscribe to home/school/life to read her brilliant book recommendations and literary musings every issue. Your library list will thank you.