Stuff We Like :: 10.13.17
The new midlife crisis sounds eerily familiar, the uneven burden of emotional labor, writers snarking on other writers, and more stuff we like.
Happy Friday the 13th!
around the web
Yikes, this sounds eerily familiar: The new midlife crisis
And possibly related: We talk about the inequity of pay for men versus women (not as much as we should, but we talk about it), but we don’t talk enough about the inequity of emotional labor.
I think we all know that I am always going to read accounts of writers snarking about other writers. (In this installment, Hans Christian Andersen is a TERRIBLE house guest, according to Dickens.)
Tough week? I bet you’ll feel a little better after Idris Elba reads you a bedtime story.
at home/school/life
on the podcast: There’s finally a new episode! We’re talking about finding new rhythms, juggling work and homeschooling, Ancillary Justice, and more.
in the magazine: I promise the fall issue will be available soon!
on the blog: I loved doing homeschool makeovers, and this one—helping a mom figure out a way to schedule part-time work into her homeschool schedule—was one of my favorites.
one year ago: At home with the editors: Our order of things
two years ago: Teaching the solar system in elementary school
three years ago: How to talk about homeschooling so people will listen
Reading List
Suzanne and I are reading The Rabbit Back Literature Society for the next episode of the podcast, mostly because Suzanne says it’s a combination of Twin Peaks and the Moomins. Who can resist that? (You should read it with us if you want to!)
I’m rereading The World’s Religions for the secular world religions class I’m co-teaching with my friend Shelly. (She covers the Asian religions, I’m jumping in next week with the Abrahamic ones.) I think this is a great resource for studying world religions because it includes Confucianism, which doesn’t always seem to get included in collections of world religions and which can start such interesting conversations about what a religion has to include to be considered a religion. Plus, I mean, who doesn’t like Confucius?
My 4th grader and I are starting The Book of Three together—he sat in when I was reading it with his sister, but he doesn’t remember much. (He was two!) I’m hoping he loves it—I feel like this series could be right up his alley.
At Home
True story: There is absolutely no balance in my life right now, and it’s driving me crazy. Either the house is not an insane mess, the children are actually getting some quality homeschool time, or I am actually on top of my work—never more than one of those at a time, though! I’m hoping things settle down soon.
Curriculum Review: Philosophy for Kids
Start honing critical thinking skills early with a philosophy curriculum designed for elementary-age kids.
Start honing critical thinking skills early with a philosophy curriculum designed for elementary-age kids.
Four hundred years ago, French Renaissance writer Michel de Montaigne asked society a thoughtful question: “Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it?”
Tuned-in parents and educators would agree that children are natural philosophers. As a group, young people are highly inquisitive, imaginative, wide-open thinkers. With enthusiasm, they constantly seek opportunities to develop a sense of self and an understanding of the world they inhabit. On many levels, children wrestle, just as philosophers do, with questions of morality, social justice, and human understanding. Oftentimes, they attempt this without a proper context in which to frame their questions.
Even an elementary understanding of philosophy provides the tools our kids need to question and evaluate ideas constructively. Philosophy teaches how to conduct organized and civilized debate. It cultivates appreciation and under- standing of diverse thoughts, and opinions and grows its students into responsible, empathetic, articulate world citizens. Philosophy, it seems, aims to achieve the very goals so many of us aspire to reach each day in our own homeschools.
Philosophy, and the thought-provoking discussions this subject inspires, can lead to deeply satisfying exchanges between you and your child. Fortunately for us, Prufrock Press has published an excellent resource to help families get started—David A. White’s Philosophy for Kids: 40 Fun Questions That Help You Wonder About Everything.
White has been teaching philosophy in colleges and universities since 1967, but clearly he understands the value of providing philosophical understanding to much younger students as well. Written for children ages 10 and older, Philosophy for Kids might also appeal to younger, highly motivated learners who enjoy engaging with thinking of this kind.
Philosophy for Kids is divided into four sections: values, knowledge, reality, and critical thinking. Each of these sections receives a brief overview from the author and is linked to a specific branch of philosophy—ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, and logic. Only one page in length, these introductions set the stage for a series of compelling problems for readers to ponder.
Each of the four sections is accompanied by a series of 10 units that open with questions such as “How do you know who your friends are?,” “Do you perceive things as they are or only as they seem to be?,” “If many people believe that something is true, is it true?,” and “Do you have free will?”. The first 29 questions in these units are connected to the work of a great philosopher. Kids will have fun deciding if they agree with such thinkers as Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates and will also love defending their own divergent beliefs.
To help learners consider all angles of each issue, White provides various exercises that include true or false and multiple choice questions as well as the chance to rank ideas according to the reader’s’ individual ideology. Although this traditional approach might sound dry to some homeschoolers, in this context the approach works well. The questions are entertaining, fun to wrestle with, and relevant.
“Children wrestle, just as philosophers do, with questions of morality, social justice, and human understanding. ”
Each short lesson closes with a section called “For Further Thought,” providing opportunities for students to delve deeper with more questions and activities. In one unit students are asked, “Can another person understand your feelings?” After completing several exercises addressing this question, students proceed to the “For Further Thought” section to consider “Is language the best way to express our emotions? Would the arts of music or painting represent emotions more vividly and truly? Select a work of music or art and analyze whether or not this work expresses emotions better than language.”
Additional ideas of great writers, mathematicians, orators, poets, and playwrights pepper the pages of this book and are wonderful aids for launching further thoughtful conversations.
The final 60 pages or so of Philosophy for Kids provide teaching tips, a glossary of terms, and helpful suggestions for further reading. Here White’s writing is as straightforward and pleasant to read as the rest of the book. With minimal effort, parents are able to glean excellent suggestions to enhance and facilitate meaningful discussion.
Whether your family chooses to work through this book chronologically or prefers instead to skip around to those questions of greatest interest, it makes no difference. A particularly fun aspect of a curriculum such as this is that it does not have to be a presented using a traditional format. If you like, simply use the material to foster deeper dinner time conversation or to pass time on a long car ride. However you choose to work with the book, your child will likely develop a new approach to critical thinking and have a terrific time in the process!
Philosophy for Kids could easily be adapted for use with one student or with many. I can imagine using this in a homeschool co-op with great results. Although a student could work through this book alone, I suspect an interactive approach would be preferable and loads more fun.
Very little preparation is required to use this book effectively in a homeschool. Parents may wish to read ahead to obtain a better command of the information. However, opening the book and reading it for the first time aloud with your child is absolutely fine. The book is a solid resource that is thorough enough to stand on its own. Especially enthusiastic students might enjoy supplementing with parts of the original texts cited throughout the book or with biographical information about featured philosophers. On average, expect a typical discussion to last 30 minutes or so.
The publisher’s price of $29.95 for this 193-page, soft- covered book is reasonable. This is a resource you should be able to find in your library as well.
In the introduction of his book, White writes of his desire to “foster a sense of wonder and to aim it in many directions.” It is my belief that the author achieves exactly what he set out to do. Taking subject matter that many might initially find intimidating, White presents philosophy as highly relevant, playful, challenging and fun.
Philosophy for Kids is a thought-provoking resource that will appeal to curious learners who enjoy puzzling over life’s mysteries. As a parent, you are likely to gain new insight into the wonderful ways that your child views the world as you delve into fascinating new subject matter together.
This review was originally published in the winter 2016 issue of HSL.
Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (10.10.17)
A surprisingly enjoyable Hawthorne biography, a weird take on a Russian fairy tale, a college murder mystery, and more books in this week's Library Chicken.
Welcome to the 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!
Man, Library Chicken gets a lot harder when I actually have a job and people expect me to do things. I’m going to have to give up sleeping (since I’ve already given up housework and interacting with the family) if I’m ever going to make it through the giant stack of library books next to the bed.
Rest You Merry by Charlotte MacLeod
Granted, it isn’t time to break out the holiday reading just yet, but I enjoyed this murder mystery with sleuth Peter Shandy (professor and radish expert), set on a college campus that goes way overboard with the Christmas decorations. There are several more Peter Shandy mysteries, so it looks like I’ve got another series to keep up with.
(LC Score: +1)
Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente
Valente is at the top of my list of “amazing authors that distressingly few people seem to have heard of.” If you haven’t read her Fairyland series (beginning with The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making), you should do so immediately and then share with all the young people in your immediate vicinity. Deathless is another fairy tale of sorts, a retelling of the Russian story of Koschei the Deathless, set in the early days of the Soviet Union. It is wonderful and weird and much more adult than the Fairyland series (meaning I wouldn’t necessarily pass it along to younger fans). With Valente I never know if I should be upset that I didn’t hear about her sooner, or grateful that I can look forward to reading all of her books that I haven’t gotten to yet.
(LC Score: +1)
Hawthorne: A Life by Brenda Wineapple
One of my favorite Alcott-adjacent biographies so far, which was a bit of a surprise given the subject matter. Nathaniel Hawthorne was the grumpy loner in the Concord set (when he wasn’t using his political connections, including best friend President Franklin Pierce, to get government work), but Wineapple’s biography is entertaining and engaging, with just the right amount of quiet snark.
(LC Score: +1)
How to Read Novels Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
Follow-up to Foster’s How to Read Literature. Amy said I probably didn’t need to read this one once I’d read the first one, but WHATEVER, AMY, YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME. (Except, actually, in those circumstances where you are.) I thought it was worth reading for this comment (on T.S. Eliot and symbolism): “I believe that when very young, Eliot was badly frightened by a double meaning, hence his determination to exert absolute authorial control,” but maybe that’s just me.
(LC Score: +1)
And as I may have hinted above, the RETURNED UNREAD (AND OCCASIONALLY OVERDUE) count keeps going up. Sigh.
(LC Score: -6 ½)
Library Chicken Score for 10/10/17: -2 ½
Running Score: 102 ½
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
- Radiance by Catherynne Valente (just give me all the Valente books)
- Blindspot by Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore (American Revolutionary era hijinks co-written by one of my favorite historians)
- The Luck Runs Out by Charlotte MacLeod (Peter Shandy mystery #2)
- Emerson: The Mind on Fire by Robert D. Richardson (have I mentioned that the Alcotts had a LOT of famous neighbors?)
6 Curriculum Shopping Tips that Will Help You Make the Most of Your Homeschool Budget
However much—or little—you have to spend on homeschool materials, you’re always going to want to feel like you made a good investment.
However much — or little — you have to spend on homeschool materials, you’re always going to want to feel like you made a good investment.
However much—or little—you have to spend on homeschool materials, you’re always going to want to feel like you made a good investment. That feeling comes from a combination of things: finding a curriculum that you actually use more than once or twice with you kids, feeling like the curriculum did work you couldn’t easily have done on your own, and being satisfied with the cost-to-curriculum satisfaction ratio of your purchases. Before you click “checkout” on a new curriculum, mentally run through this checklist to make sure you’re on the path to homeschool spending satisfaction.
Limit your shelf space. If you know you’re prone to overbuy, set a physical limit: “These two shelves are all I get for curriculum.” Limiting space will encourage you to be thoughtful about what you add and vigilant about letting go of what doesn’t work. (Not sure if you’re prone to buy more stuff than you need? Count the number of history curricula on your shelves—if you’ve picked up more than two or three this year, there’s a good chance you might benefit from a self-imposed space limit.)
Shop for the homeschool you have. A new curriculum is probably not going to make your craft-hating kids magically love crafts or your fidgety 1st grader want to settle in for long stretches of quiet work time. It’s easy to buy into the fantasy that the right curriculum can steer your homeschool in a whole new direction, but you’ll get the most bang for your buck if you acknowledge the reality of your homeschool before you click buy. That doesn’t mean the right curriculum can’t make a big difference—it definitely can. It just means you shouldn’t expect any curriculum to change your student in a fundamental way.
Do not buy curriculum for the future. I know! It’s such a good deal! Why not go ahead and stock up? You just don’t know what’s going to happen: your perfect-right-now program might not be a good fit in three years, or you may realize that your child learns better a different way. Shopping for the future isn’t a waste of budget, exactly, but it’s rarely the best use of your dollars. Focus on what you need now.
Keep a master list. You will forget the cool book series you bought for earth science or the nifty novel unit study you snagged on sale unless you write them down. Use a notebook or a spreadsheet (I keep a low-tech index card file) to keep track of purchases—group by broad category (science) and then specific categories within that broad category (physics,chemistry, etc.)
Stick with what works. Suzanne’s homeschool mantra is “If it works, don’t change it.” She’s used the same basic curriculum for all four of her kids, and it’s worked fine for all of them. A curriculum doesn’t have to be life-alteringly joyful and exciting to be a good fit for your homeschool, so if you find something that’s working fine, stop shopping around for something that might be better. (Obviously if it’s not working for a particular kid, that’s a different story.)
Don’t automatically default to curriculum. Not every subject needs a structured curriculum. Hit the library, load up your Netflix queue with documentaries, and look for resources online before you spend money on a full curriculum. Curricula can be great resources, but make sure you really want to use one before you buy.
This was originally published in the winter 2017 issue of HSL.
Readaloud of the Week: Wait Till Helen Comes
There’s plenty of spooky in this book, but what elevates it above the classic ghost story is its acknowledgment that the worst horrors can be the ones we keep inside ourselves.
I'm a little bit of a chicken when it comes to scary books, so keep that in mind when I say that Wait Till Helen Comes still scares the heck out of me. The first time I read this (under the covers, with a flashlight, natch), I had to sleep with the lights on for a week.
The book's plot is pretty straightforward: When Michael and Molly's mom gets remarried, they get saddled with a younger stepsister, Heather, who is jealous, mean, and bratty. According to her dad—their new stepdad—Heather has been this way since her mother died in a fire when Heather was just three years old. They also get a new house in the country—a renovated church right next door (of course) to an old graveyard.
That's when things start to get weird. Heather starts talking constantly about her new best friend, Helen. The grown-ups (who, like almost all adults in kids' books from the 1980s, practice a super-relaxed kind of parenting) think Helen is just your average imaginary friend, but Molly suspects there's something more sinister going on, especially when she sees Heather visiting one of the cemetery graves with wildflowers every evening. The old caretaker warns Molly and Michael away from the pond, telling them that children have drowned there under mysterious circumstances. When Molly visits the library to see what she can find out, she learns that Helen and her parents died more than a century ago in a terrible fire—the same way Heather's mom died.
And that's when things get really scary. Because Heather's threats—"Wait till Helen comes," she warns Molly and Michael when she thinks they're being mean—aren't idle. Helen is coming. And she wants something.
What makes this a great readaloud: There’s plenty of spooky in this book—ghostly little girls, haunted jewelry, atmospheric old graveyards—but what elevates it above the classic ghost story is its acknowledgment that the worst horrors can be the ones we keep inside ourselves. Heather is susceptible to Helen's friendship because she has another, darker secret that she has to face if she truly wants to be part of the world of the living. And Molly, who would like nothing better than to get rid of her bratty little sister, finds herself fighting to save Heather. If your kids can handle a healthy dose of scary, Wait Till Helen Comes makes a great spooky season readaloud.
But be aware: The parents in this book are TERRIBLE. I mean, really terrible—they have no idea what’s going on with their children, basically yank the older two kids out of fulfilling summer opportunities so that they can baby-sit their new stepsister, and pay not attention to the worries that all of their children keep bringing them. I did not notice this a kid reader, but as an adult, it really bugs me.
Quotable: “‘Oh, Molly,’ Michael laughed, ‘next you'll be telling me you actually saw a ghost.’”
Stuff We Like :: 10.6.17
Living the dream, reasons to love Latin, a new episode of the podcast, give me your best slow cooker recipes, and more stuff we like.
It’s definitely one of those thank-goodness-it’s-Friday Fridays!
Around the web
Living the dream: “I Ate Hundreds of Bowls of Queso and Somehow Lost 10 Pounds”
Why we should care about the end of Indian Country Today
Your kids should definitely enter the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival. (At least browse some of the previous years’ entries—some of them are awesome.)
I love this little essay on all the reasons one writer loves Latin.
At home/school/life
on the podcast: Suzanne and I literally dusted off our headsets to make a new episode of the Podcast with Suzanne and Amy. Look for it this weekend!
in the magazine: The fall issue is out next week! The Best Cities issue always seems to be a doozy of an issue to wrap up, but it always feels particularly satisfying to officially be done with it.
on the blog: What do you do when you hit a middle school math slump? (Start by recognizing that this happens for almost every student.)
one year ago: Shelli’s Bugs in Our Backyard citizen science project
two years ago: Rebecca’s review of History Odyssey
Reading List
My humanities class is reading Timaeus for the history of science, and we are having the best conversations around it.
I always so happy when I have an Official Reason to reread Pride and Prejudice. This is—gosh, it must be something like the twentieth time I’ve read it, and it still always feels to me like the Mary Poppins of books: Practically Perfect in Every Way.
I lucked into an advance copy of the English translation of the Dutch book The Song of Seven, which is playful, whimsical, philosophical, and pretty much all the things I like in a middle grades/late elementary-ish book. I especially like that the protagonist-hero of the story is harried school teacher who has to feel guilty for missing grammar lessons to save the day—maybe that part just feels particularly relevant to my life right now, but I am really looking forward to reviewing it closer to its February release date.
At home
It’s my best friend’s birthday this week, and I am so excited that I found the perfect t-shirt to give her this year. (We read Siddhartha for our student book club, and this happens to be all her favorite colors.)
I am in the market for more slow cooker recipes. If you have a favorite, please share! I’m terrible about pulling out the slow cooker, but it’s turning out to be a life-saver on the days when I get home right at dinner time.
I am determined to finish knitting my socks before cold weather hits, but I am definitely cutting it close on that one!
Spooky (and Not-So-Spooky) Books to Read for Halloween
Whether you're looking for a book that will have you hiding under the cover with a flashlight or just something that gives a nod to favorite Halloween traditions, we've rounded up a fun list of spooky (and not-so-spooky) books to enjoy in October.
It's the season for spooky readalouds! Whether you're looking for a book that will have you hiding under the cover with a flashlight or just something that gives a nod to favorite Halloween traditions, we've rounded up a fun list of spooky (and not-so-spooky) books to enjoy in October.
Spooky Books
Lewis didn't mean to wake the dead or start an apocalypse. Really. In this deliciously Gothic adventure, Lewis discovers not just that his uncle Jonathan is a witch but also that former owner of his uncle's house left a clock in the walls intended to bring on the end of the world. Oops.
Tales by horror writing masters including Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker make this story collection an ideal Halloween read. It's got a good selection of classics, including "The Monkey's Paw," "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and "The Masque of the Red Death." (Also, weirdly, "The Yellow Wallpaper," which I guess is kind of spooky if you read it the right way?
The history of Halloween comes to life in this haunting story of trick-or-treating boys who must travel through the past to save a friend.
All the classic slumber party scares (and some new ones) are in this spooky story collection. If you were ever afraid to get out of bed in the middle of the night, it was probably because of one of the stories in this book.
A level-headed heroine keeps this book from veering into too-too-scary territory. Lucy is sure there are wolves living in the walls of her house—she can hear them!—but no one believes her until it's too late.
Three seriously spooky girls (and one pretty spooky boy) have to help save the town of Widowsbury from a dark curse. People are disappearing, and the four misfits are the only ones with the ability to set things right.
Thomas is thrilled to learn his family's new home is haunted by ghosts from the days of the Underground Railroad, but he's not prepared for how spooky living in a haunted house can be.
A Revolutionary War soldier has a ghostly secret to tell in this not-too-scary book. Bonus: You'll learn a lot about the Battle of Princeton and the role of German mercenaries in the American Revolution.
After the rest of their family dies suspiciously of arsenic poisoning, Merricat and Constance live an isolated life in their family's grand old house. Jackson manages her usual balance of macabre humor and growing unease in this story that slowly grows more and more un-put-down-able as you read.
Witches are real, and the last place you want to be if you're a child is at their annual meeting. Roald Dahl is so silly, so funny, so charming that you almost forget to be completely terrified by this creepy tale. Almost.
If you haven't read this creepy book about a girl who discovers a strange world inside her new home, you should add it to your Halloween list.
Hansel and Gretel explore the darker side of Grimm's fairy tales in this book. Gidwitz is adamant that sanitized stories leave out all the good parts, so expect plenty of gruesome happenings in this wry retelling.
Russell's magic ring can turn him into a monster—but what will change him back? It's a fun intro-to-scary-books read with just enough thrills and chills to keep things exciting without keeping you up all night.
Not-So-Spooky Books
A bunny vampire sucks the juice from vegetables in this story told from the perspective of the family pets. My kids have read this book so many times, I think we all know it by heart.
Help this book's young hero find his perfect monster in the playful pop-up pictures.
The clues to tricky puzzles lie in the very detailed illustrations of this book.
This soothing book takes the spooky out of Halloween by focusing on its community spirit.
The little old lady's creative solution for her haunting pursuers makes this a fun — and funny — readaloud.
Spooky rhymes and a playful plot make this story more fun than fearful.
What do you do with a house full of monsters? Make friends with them.
A naughty boy breaks all the rules for hosting vampires in this silly story.
Poor dachshund Oscar doesn't want to dress up as a hot dog for Halloween, but when his friends are in trouble, he proves that he's a hero, silly costume or not.
Monstrous pop-ups illustrate a boy's hunt through creepy creatures for his mother in this whimsical book illustrated by Maurice Sendak.
Q&A: How to Deal with a Middle School Math Slump
Sometime between 6th and 8th grade, most students run into a math block. Could unschooling be the answer?
Math has always been a perfectly happy part of our homeschool—until this year. We’re using the same curriculum we’ve always used, but my 5th grade daughter is either bored or frustrated with every lesson. How can I put the fun back in math to get us back on track?
If you’ve been happily buzzing along with a math program that suddenly seems to stop working in 4th or 5th grade, you may not realize you’re part of a growing trend: the middle school math slump. Between 4th and 8th grade, math grades and test scores plummet for students in traditional schools. In other words, that calculus class that’s been freaking you out may not actually be the biggest hurdle you face as a homeschool math teacher.
Math is one of those subjects not even bona fide unschoolers always feel comfortable leaving to chance. (For every unschooler, there’s another who unschools “everything but math.”) So the idea of cutting the cords of traditional math study to unschool may seem terrifying— and a little crazy, to boot, especially in middle school, when kids learn most of the math skills they’ll need for everyday life—statistics, rates, percents, basic algebra, and more. And even if we forget higher math and college admissions for a minute, these are also the skills kids need to thrive in the real world even if they never study astrophysics or engineering, explains Phil Daro, a math education reformer with the Strategic Education Research Partnership. They’re important. They matter.
And that may be the perfect reason for taking a hands-off approach to them.
By fourth grade, your child should have a handle on math basics: adding, subtracting, maybe multiplying and dividing. She doesn’t need to memorize more facts. She needs to see that math serves a purpose. It can solve her problems (how can we split this cupcake equally?), answer her questions (how many hours until our sleepover starts?), and help her make sense of her world (how can I figure out how high my rocket went?). To do that, she doesn’t need worksheets and lectures. She needs space to ask questions and find answers, making math a fun and useful part of her life. Instead of workbooks, stock your bookshelves with creative math books and manipulatives. Instead of answering questions like “How long?” and “How much?” when they pop up in everyday conversation, encourage your child to find the answers himself. As your child realizes he can answer these questions, he’ll realize that math—like reading, like science, like history—is a useful tool, and one he can use with confidence and skill.
Unschooling isn’t the only approach to middle school math, of course. But if you’re feeling stuck, it may be that a less structured approach to math could yield better results than a new curriculum.
This Q&A was originally published in the fall 2012 issue of Atlanta Homeschool magazine.
Book Nerd: The Under-Appreciated Authors Club
Jaclyn Moriarty is probably not the Napoleon of Crime, but she is an awesome YA writer whom you may not have discovered yet.
If you’ve missed Jaclyn Moriarty’s books, you’re certainly not the only one—but you should remedy this readerly omission as soon as possible.
Suzanne is having One of Those Weeks, so instead of Library Chicken, here’s a flashback to an author who made her TBR list totally explode in 2016.
In my last column, I highlighted the work of Chris Riddell, the award-winning British author and illustrator. (Late breaking update: A new Ottoline book, Ottoline and the Purple Fox, is coming out in September of this year. I’ve preordered my copy.) I hadn’t intended to make a habit of focusing on non-American authors who I think are criminally under-appreciated in the States, but Jaclyn Moriarty has a new book out and I just can’t help myself.
If you’re at all familiar with the name Moriarty (aside, of course, from the Napoleon of Crime), you may be thinking of Liane Moriarty, Australian author of the best-sellers Big Little Lies and The Husband’s Secret, among others. Jaclyn Moriarty is Liane’s sister and a YA author. While at times it’s been difficult to find her books here, all of the ones I’ll mention are currently in print or available as an ebook.
I first encountered Jaclyn Moriarty when I checked out a copy of The Year of Secret Assignments from my local library and liked it so much that I hunted up a used copy to add to my personal collection. In Secret Assignments, three best friends—Lydia, Emily, and Cassie—from a fancy private high school take part in a pen-pal assignment with three boys from the nearby non-fancy non-private high school and begin to suspect that at least one of the boys may not be who he seems. It’s an epistolary novel, made up of (as the title page explains) ‘Diary Entries, Rude Graffiti, Hate Mail, Love Letters, Revenge Plots, Date Plans, Notes Between Friends, and Famous Last Words.’ (Some of my favorite entries are the notes from parent to child. Emily’s father, a lawyer, begins one with: “I write to keep you informed of the progress of your parents, and to provide you with advice for your weekend. Your mother is currently: (a) blow-drying her hair; (b) shouting something inaudible down the stairs; and (c) cranky (because I lost the plane tickets).”) As the story progresses, we see romance, betrayal, and how far friends will go to look out for each other.
The Year of Secret Assignments is actually the second installment in the four-book Ashbury/Brookfield sequence, named for the rival high schools that appear in each book. Fortunately for me, since I hate to read a series out of order, the books focus on different characters each time and aren’t true sequels, though characters from one may appear in the background of another. Feeling Sorry for Celia, the first book, is also an epistolary novel centering around Ashbury-Brookfield pen-pals, but is more of a coming-of-age story, as the protagonist, Elizabeth, deals with first love and major changes in her relationship with her longtime best friend. Book three, The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie, focuses on Bindy, the smartest and perhaps most obnoxious student at Ashbury High as her life slowly starts to fall apart. And in The Ghosts of Ashbury High, book four, two mysterious students transfer from Brookfield to Ashbury, setting the school abuzz with speculation which we get to read about in the form of assignments completed for a college entrance exam on gothic fiction.
Ghosts aside, the Ashbury/Brookfield series is set in the real world, but the pen-pals in Jaclyn Moriarty’s new trilogy, The Colors of Madeleine, exchange notes (via a crack in an unusual parking meter) between two very different worlds. Madeleine lives with her mother in Cambridge, England and, having run away from her previous jet-setting life with her wealthy father, is homeschooled along with two new Cambridge friends. Elliot, however, is from the town of Bonfire in the Kingdom of Cello, where magic and technology coexist, along with wandering seasons and rampaging Colors (Elliot’s father is missing and presumed dead after a vicious Purple attack). Madeleine and Elliot accidentally discover each other’s existence in the first book, A Corner of White. Cello is a charming and unique place–I especially enjoyed the inhabitants of Olde Quainte, who are legally required to use meaningless similes several times during each and every conversation (“as a peacock to a snow shovel”) but it’s in deep trouble, and Madeleine, with an assist from Isaac Newton (whom she becomes fascinated by after a homeschool assignment), is determined to help. Her mission becomes even more important in book two, The Cracks in the Kingdom, and book three, A Tangle of Gold. I loved this series—I loved that it kept me guessing and that some of what I had originally thought of as writing flaws in the first book turn out to be set-up for unexpected revelations at the end. I also loved its depiction of homeschooling as no big deal, along with an interesting description of someone adjusting to traditional education later on in the series. I did not love the cover, so if you have the misfortune to pick up one of the early editions with a manically cheerful girl and her orange umbrella, the one that looks like the cover to a generic 1980s copy of a Madeleine L’Engle teen romance (no disrespect to Ms. L’Engle), please know that the inside is a lot more interesting than the outside would lead you to believe.
I can’t wait to see what Jaclyn Moriarty will write next and if you know of an under-appreciated author who I should be reading, please let me know! Happy reading!
How to Make Family Nature Study Part of Your Homeschool
Nature study doesn't have to be a fancy, complicated thing. These simple strategies make it easy to add a little nature time to your everyday homeschool.
Nature study reduces stress, improves focus and concentration, and helps your family get a little exercise—but you knew that already. What you may not know is how easy it is to integrate nature study into your homeschool routine, even if you don’t know a robin from a wren when you get started. With these simple activities, you can start a nature study program that’s fun to do and easy to keep up.
Give your kids the camera. You’ll be amazed by how focused they are and by what captures their attention in your backyard or the park. (My kids use the cameras on their iPods or my daughter’s Polaroid-esque Fujifilm Instax Mini to snap photos, but if I were buying something specifically for nature photo sessions, I’d look at something like the Kidizoom Action Cam—I think they’d love the bike mount option, and it’s designed to be durable and waterproof, two qualities I frequently wish more of my belongings had.)
Take a color hike. Celebrate the beauty of the changing leaves this fall with a color hike. Hit the hardware store to put together a collection of autumnal paint chips, then match them to leaves, flowers, bark, moss, and more on your next nature walk. (If you are in the northeastern United States or Canada, download the Leafsnap app to help you identify the leaves you find as you go. The developers—which include the Smithsonian and Columbia University—are adding info from other parts of the United States, too, and there’s a UK version, so you can test whether it works well for tree ID in your area.)
Make it a scavenger hunt. Whether you’re in the yard or on the trail, kids will delight in searching for something smooth, something rough, something shiny, something slimy, and objects that fit the other descriptions on your scavenger hunt lists. Shelli has some great ideas for outdoor scavenger hunts if you want a more specific plan. (If your kids get excited about nature scavenger hunts, they may be inspired to start a nature collection. If so, you should definitely check out Cabinet of Curiosities: Collecting and Understanding the Wonders of the Natural World—it’s written by a nature collector who started his first cabinet of nature curiosities when he was 6 years old and grew up to become a nature writer. It’s such a fun book, packed with interesting information for nature collectors.)
Keep a journal. Okay, you’re a terrible artists and you couldn’t draw a pine tree to save your life. Who cares? If your kids see you sweating the details in your nature journal, they’ll want to follow suit. (And do we really have to tell you that your pine tree is probably better than you think?) I found Clare Walker Leslie’s Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You incredibly helpful when we were getting started with our backyard nature journals because it had lots of specific advice for what to look for and how to set up a page, plus I appreciated the drawing advice for things like leaves and pinecones, even though my sketches will never be as pretty as hers.
Count your blessings. Sharpen your observation and your counting skills by choosing a natural object (like rabbits, yellow flowers, trees, or ferns) and counting how many times you spot it on your walk.
Stock up on identification books. Your photos and journal entries beg for identification, so make it easy on yourself by investing in a few good identification guides. Sure, you can look them up online, but flipping through pages lets the whole family work together to figure out the name of that cool butterfly you just saw. (The best tip a naturalist ever gave me was to pick just one or two things to focus on at a time for nature walks—it makes you observe those things more closely, which means you can identify them more easily.) For young kids, the Take-Along Guides (including Trees, Leaves, and Bark and Frogs, Toads, and Turtles) or Peterson’s Field Guides for Young Naturalists are excellent—with lots of information in an accessible, easily digestible format. Older kids might appreciate guides that focus on specific slices of nature: The Tree Book for Kids and Their Grown-Ups, Field Guide to Grasshoppers, Katydids, and Crickets of the United States, and the Sibley Guides are among our family’s favorites.
Keep a nature table. Set aside a designated space, and let your kids collect one or two items on every nature walk. Whether it’s a cool rock, a pretty flower, or a bird feather, they can add it to your nature table for the whole family to admire. (My kids enjoyed taking this further and making whole nature scenes—they got inspiration from Waldorf-inspired books like Making Flower Children and Making Peg Dolls.)
Readaloud of the Week: The Dollhouse Murders
The Dollhouse Murders is a just-spooky-enough mystery that will have everyone glued to her seat waiting for the next chapter.
Just in time for Halloween reading, The Dollhouse Murders is a just-spooky-enough mystery that will have everyone glued to her seat waiting for the next chapter.
On the surface, The Dollhouse Murders is a pretty classic ghost mystery story. Amy Treloar, who is taking a much-needed break from her family to stay with her aunt in the old family mansion, discovers a dollhouse in the attic. At first she's thrilled: The dollhouse is designed to look exactly like the house she's staying in, and the dollhouse family looks like the family who lived there: Amy's grandparents, her Aunt Claire, and her dad, who was just a little boy at the time. But then Amy notices something strange. Wherever she leaves the dolls, they're always in a different position when she comes back. And when she discovers that her great-grandparents were murdered in the house, she realizes that the dolls keep returning to the same positions they were in when her great-grandparents were murdered. Is the dollhouse trying to tell her something? Aunt Claire, who discovered her grandmother's body in the parlor and whose then-fiance died in a car accident the same night, isn't ready to talk about what happened to her parents, but the ghosts of the dollhouse aren't willing to be quiet about the past any longer.
What makes it a great readaloud: There’s more to this book than just a good ghost story, though—even though this book is prime read-it-with-the-flashlight-under-your-covers material. Amy is a genuinely interesting heroine, trying to figure out how to be a good sister to her brain-damaged sister while still having her own life and her own friends. Her aunt is equally complex—so torn by guilt about her teenage rebellion that she can't seem to make peace with her past. Solving the mystery of the dollhouse murders also helps Amy and Claire come to terms with themselves, so the solution (which feels a little ham-handed, honestly, on its own) is much more satisfying. Bonus: Random references to things like Charlie bath powder will remind parents of the awesomeness of living in the 1980s.
But be aware: Part of the fun of this book is its atmospheric spookiness, but the dollhouse ghosts might be too creepy for anxious or very sensitive kids.
Quotable: “Dolls can’t move by themselves, she told herself, and felt goosebumps pop up on her arms.”
Bespoke Book List: Great Books that Take You Back in Time
Grab your sonic screwdriver and do the past-future shuffle with one of these time-travel tales.
To celebrate H.G. Wells’ 151st birthday this month, we’ve collected some of the most engaging descendants of The Time Machine. Wells wasn’t the first writer to send a character through time to explore wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, but his time-traveling gentleman inspired generations of writers to explore the future and the past and gave science-fiction space on literary bookshelves. Grab your sonic screwdriver and do the past-future shuffle with one of these time-travel tales.
Time and Again by Jack Finney
Si Morley agrees to participate in time travel experiment that will take him back to 1880s New York City—but he doesn’t expect to fall in love with the past or the young woman he meets there.
(High school)
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time, and lives his life simultaneously, travel- ing in time from his childhood to his alien abduction to his shattering experience as an American prisoner of war in World War II Germany.
(High school)
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
If you read only one of Connie Willis’ time travel books, make it this one. Historian Ned Henry needs a break, but he’s not going to get one when he time travels to Victorian England in this P.G. Wodehouse-meets-Doctor Who romp of a book.
(High school)
Kindred by Octavia Butler
When Dana travels back in time from 1976 to antebellum Maryland, she learns first-hand how hard life is for a black woman in pre-Civil War America. But the situation is even more complicated than she first realizes.
(High school)
Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
When a restless Tom hears the clock strike 13, he discovers a secret garden and a girl named Hatty. But which of their times is the real one?
(Middle grades)
The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen
When Hannah opens the door at her family’s Passover Seder, she is transported to 1942 Poland, where Jews like her family are being rounded up and sent to camps.
(Middle grades)
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
Miranda starts receiving mysterious notes from someone who seems to know things before they happen— but what does the visitor from the future want her to help him accomplish?
(Middle grades)
The Children of Green Knowe by L.M. Boston
When Tolly comes to spend the holidays with his grandmother in the vast and ancient family manor, he discovers that the past is very much alive at Green Knowe.
(Middle grades)
Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer
Charlotte feels out of place at her new boarding school, but that’s nothing compared to waking up in 1918 with everyone calling her Clare.
(Middle grades)
A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley
While visiting her uncle’s house in the English countryside, dreamy Penelope discovers that she can visit the 16th century—and becomes caught up in a plot to put Queen Mary of Scotland on the British throne.
(Middle grades)
When Marnie Was There by Joan G. Robinson
Anna’s always been a lonely misfit, but when she meets Marnie on her summer holiday, everything changes. When Marnie suddenly disappears, Anna discovers that her first friend was not exactly who she thought she was.
(Middle grades)
Time at the Top by Edward Ormondroyd
Life in the 20th century hasn’t been particularly kind to Susan—so she’s thrilled when the elevator doors of her building open up and deposit her 80 years in the past.
(Elementary)
The Magic Half by Annie Barrows
As she’s unpacking her bedroom in her family’s new house, Miri accidentally travels back to 1935 and she meets Molly, who could really use a friend.
(Elementary)
A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones
A case of mistaken identity (or is it?) brings Vivian Smith from the London Blitz evacuations to Time City, which exists outside of the time/space continuum. But Time City—and all of history with it—is in trouble, and Vivian may be the only one who can help.
(Middle grades)
Time Cat by Lloyd Alexander
That mysterious habit cats have of disappearing and reappearing right in front of you gets explained by the author of the Chronicles of Prydain: some cats, like Gareth, can travel in time—and every now and then, one might take his owner along for the ride. (Elementary)
This list was originally published in the summer 2016 issue of HSL.
Stuff We Like :: 9.29.17
A great study strategy, what's up for the 2017 Kirkus Prize, that feeling when an awesome series gets picked up for television, and more stuff we like.
Oh, hey, it’s fall! Let’s just ignore the thermometer and enjoy it.
around the web
I have actually been doing this with my students this year, and it really does make a difference. (I didn’t know it was A Thing, though. Cool.)
Look what’s up for the 2017 Kirkus Prize! (I am cheering for Bronze and Sunflower, but there are a lot of good ones this year.)
You guys probably know that I’m always trying to get people to read Lockwood & Co. (and it’s almost Halloween so I should probably step that up again), about a team of adolescent ghost hunters in an alternate—and haunted—London. It’s always sounded like the perfect set-up for a television series, and now it might actually be one!
At home/school/life
on the blog: I'm a big fan of DIY curriculum, and here's my method for putting together my own homeschool curriculum.
one year ago: Great books for developing an everyday writing habit
two years ago: How to set—and achieve—learning goals in your homeschool
Reading list
I'm just about a quarter of the way into Magpie Murders (based on Suzanne's Library Chicken report), but I am already loving this quirky mystery-within-a-mystery.
I have been reading The Iliad and The Odyssey (I think the linked ones have ended up being my preferred version, but I could change my mind. Again.) over and over again this fall for my Greek humanities class, and it's reminded me how amazing it is to read something more than once or twice. I think I get very seduced by all the Shiny New Books (and I'd miss tons of great reads if I weren't!), but there's definitely something to be said for digging into familiar texts to illuminate new pieces of them.
My daughter is reading Akata Witch (hey, another Suzanne pick!) and comparing it to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for a paper for world literature. I'm just enjoying the book!
At home
The Good Place is back!
I'm not saying it's been a long week, but I am saying I'm glad it's sidecar season. Even if it's still 90 degrees. (I guess there’s not actually a sidecar season, but I have to switch from negronis at some point so I can appreciate my first springtime negroni every year, right?)
How to Homeschool Preschool
You don’t need a lot of fancy equipment or experience to help introduce your 3- or 4-year-old to the joys of learning.
You don’t need a lot of fancy equipment or experience to help introduce your 3- or 4-year-old to the joys of learning.
Does this sound familiar? You’re delighted with your decision to homeschool your preschooler—until panic hits, and you wonder how you’ll ever be able to teach your child everything she needs to know to graduate high school. Your first instinct is to start searching for the perfect curriculum, but the truth is, you don’t need a curriculum to teach preschool. So how do you do it? That’s easy, but only if you love exploring the world and learning new things at least as much as your child does.
YOUR TEACHING INSTRUMENT IS YOUR VOICE
Talk to your child. Be patient. Tell her all the simple things you take for granted. “Tree.” “Green leaf. Isn’t it pretty?” “Do you like carrots? I like carrots.” As kids get older, your conversations will get more sophisticated. Ask your child questions. Answer their questions. Teach them everything you know through conversation and story. (Don’t worry about what you don’t know. As the questions get harder, teach your child how to find answers by letting them watch you search for answers in books, at the library, on the Internet, and by talking to others.)
YOUR TEACHING RESOURCE IS THE LIBRARY
Take frequent trips to the library. At least once a month, let your child pick whatever books he likes. Let him explore the library, play with the toys there, and take him to story times. Letting kids explore and play at the library will teach them it’s a fun place.
Reading, arithmetic, and all those other fundamentals can be learned by any child (or adult) who has a desire to learn. Don’t worry if your 4- or 5-year-old isn’t reading yet. Some children learn to read early; others aren’t ready until they’re 7 or 8. This has no bearing on their intelligence. It’s simply how they’re developing.
When you think about it, there are more important things young children should be learning. You may want to write a list of what is most important to you to impart to your children. It may look something like this: A love of learning, tenacity, kindness, and creativity.
Foster a love of learning by exploring the world with your child and being fascinated by it. Every child is delighted by those small things we take for granted—flowers, butterflies, a beetle on the sidewalk. If you don’t delight in these things, neither will your child.
Help your child find answers to his questions. If he asks a question at an inconvenient time, say, “That’s a great question. We can look it up later. Remind me, OK?”
If you show your children how you plan, set goals, and carry out your daily tasks, you will be a wonderful role model of tenacity. As your child takes on a project, be there with him. Don’t take over, but help him when he gets stuck.
To teach children how to be kind, we must be kind ourselves. Kindness is more than being kind to people. Teach children to be kind to animals and even bugs.
To foster creativity, let your children play and create. You won’t need to do any planning for this; just don’t squash their natural creativity!
Chances are with this formula, they will learn more than they need to know to pass traditional preschool, but you probably won’t need to worry about that. Enthusiastic parents don’t offer a child a curriculum—they offer them the world.
THE ULTIMATE PRESCHOOL TOOLKIT
Activities:
- Read together
- Spend time in nature
- Visit interesting places
- Make-believe
- Games
- Share your own work with your child
Toys:
The best toys require a child to use his imagination.
- Toy animals
- Any kind of building set
- Puzzles
- Puppets
- Pretend food
School supplies:
- Different kinds of paper
- Crayons, markers, pencils
- Scissors, glue, and tape
- Paint
- Air-dry modeling clay
- Other art materials from craft stores or the recycling bin
Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (9.26.17)
Asian sci-fi voices, stories of American utopias, apocalyptic fiction, classic Hawthorne, and more in this week's Library Chicken.
Welcome to the 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!
Last week was big for Library Chicken HQ: after an unexpected hurricane delay, we had our first session of Middle School Monday classes at the homeschool hybrid academy, which means that I need to stop having so much fun reading whatever I want and get back to the list of books we’ll be tackling in class!
The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu, translated by Joel Martinsen
Sequel to The Three-Body Problem. This science fiction novel (translated from the Chinese) imagines worldwide responses to the threat of an alien invasion that is still a couple of centuries away. I haven’t read much Chinese sf and I was fascinated by the differences in tone; there’s a sort of fatalistic stoicism that I haven’t generally encountered in American sf. Is that a cultural difference? Unique to this author? Unique to this series? Clearly I need to read more Chinese science fiction to find out (as soon as I finish the third book in this trilogy). (LC Score: +1)
[Note from Amy: I recently read Where the Stars Rise: Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy, an anthology of sci-fi short stories, and I totally picked up the same note of fatalistic stoicism in every one of the stories. Anec-data does not equal truth, but still—we definitely picked up the same vibe.]
The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi
Oh, man, I love Oyeyemi so much. This is her first novel, written when she was eighteen years old (EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD), and I couldn’t put it down. Jess, our eight-year-old protagonist, picks up an unusual friend (named TillyTilly) when she is in Nigeria, visiting her mother’s family. There are themes here that Oyeyemi will echo later on in her excellent ghost story, White is For Witching (that I now want to reread), and as is typical, she leaves certain plot elements vague and unresolved. And again, the writing is so good I don’t even mind about the unresolved bits. EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD, people. (LC Score: +1)
Save the Date: The Occasional Mortifications of a Serial Wedding Guest by Jen Doll
I first encountered Doll as a blogger and internet essayist on the late and very much lamented website the-toast.net, and I’ll eagerly read anyone who was published on The Toast. This is a memoir built around the many weddings Doll has attended. It’s a very cute idea, but the structure is a bit flimsy, especially as she tries to turn every anecdote into a deep meaningful moment. She has more wedding misadventures than most—as she jokes at one point, the memoir could be subtitled something like “Jen Doll Had a Drinking Problem There For a While”, but by the end of the book I actually found it more concerning than funny. (LC Score: +1)
Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism by Chris Jennings
New Harmony, Brook Farm, Oneida, the Shakers, and the Icarians: Jennings introduces us to a range of American communal societies in this entertaining overview. It turns out (who knew?) that the type of people who found these utopian communities are fascinating. Sometimes a bit terrifying, but always fascinating. I would like to immediately request full and detailed modern biographies of Robert Owen (of New Harmony), George Ripley (of Brook Farm), and MOST IMPORTANTLY, Frances (Fanny) Wright, founder of Nashoba. I need to know MORE. (LC Score: +1)
The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne
As I’ve mentioned before, Hawthorne was an early resident of Brook Farm, though he barely lasted six months. The Blithedale Romance, set at a suspiciously familiar utopian community known as Blithedale, is supposed to be his satire of that time, but he has little to say about the community itself. Instead, he gives us a romantic triangle with one man and two women: a Remarkable Woman With a Sketchy Past, and a Pure-Hearted Innocent. Unsurprisingly, the Remarkable Woman, though brave, intelligent, and beautiful, is brought low by her unconventionality, almost destroying the Pure-Hearted Innocent in the process. The Marble Faun adds an additional character (a romantic rectangle?) but keeps the Remarkable Woman vs. Pure-Hearted Innocent dynamic, stretching out the narrative with a large helping of anti-Italian and anti-Catholic bigotry. As you might suspect, I was not a huge fan of The Marble Faun, especially the coy ending where Hawthorne declines to explain what just happened, much less why (which also annoyed the readers and reviewers of the time, forcing him to add a grudgingly explanatory afterword to later editions). (LC Score: +1, finished the Library of American collection!)
The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
Reread for Apocalyptic Lit class. The Age of Miracles is the first novel I assigned to my Apocalyptic Lit students, even though it’s actually a coming of age story, cleverly set during the (possible) end of the world. (I’m happy to report that it was a hit.) (LC Score: 0, off my own shelves)
How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
Amy recommended this book to me and I’m so glad I read it. Foster talks about literary analysis in terms of memory (or intertextuality, aka how texts influence each other), patterns, and symbols, providing a handy and entertaining cheat guide for students of literature. Moral: Amy is always right and should probably just be giving me a to-read list each week. (LC Score: 0, got my own copy so I can pass it along to the high schoolers in the family)
[Note from Amy: Ha! Between this and the Faulkner I might be able to retire from book recommending in a blaze of glory.]
Library Chicken Score for 9/26/17: 5
Running Score: 105
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week
- The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi (had to check this one out AGAIN)
- Death’s End by Cixin Liu (final book in the trilogy)
- Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey (the only Tey novel I have left to read <sniff>)
- Hawthorne: A Life by Brenda Wineapple (I will enjoy judging Nathaniel after reading all those novels)
How TV Time Fits into Our Homeschool’s Daily Routine
Shelli's family watches documentaries every day—and screen time has become an important ritual for their homeschool routine. Here's why their daily documentary works for them.
Shelli's family watches documentaries every day—and screen time has become an important ritual for their homeschool routine. Here's why their daily documentary works for them.
I commit that primordial parenting sin: I let my children watch a lot of television. And not only that, I let them watch during lunch and dinner. If you are shaking your head and thinking, Never would I allow my children to do this!, I don’t blame you. There was a time when I thought the same thing, and I fought against so much TV viewing. But in my house, I felt like a fish trying to swim upstream because I was the only one spoiling the fun. My husband loves watching TV, but fortunately, he’s not the kind of person to waste time in front of the TV or watch useless programming. On the contrary, he uses it to learn and relax. It took me a while to jump on board this boat.
I think the reason I fought against it is because when I was little, I usually ate alone with my food on a TV tray, watching TV My siblings were so much older than me that they were rarely home at mealtimes, and my father worked late, and my mother would wait to eat with him when he got home. When I became an adult, I longed to have a family meal around a table. Now I realize mealtimes at a table are more helpful to families who don’t spend all day together. My husband works at home, and we talk frequently during the day.
We decided we should make a habit of watching documentaries at least once a day, and with our Apple TV and Netflix, we have hundreds of documentaries we can watch. The thing about watching at lunch is that we always have this time to sit down together. During other parts of the day, one or more of us is too busy, but during meals we can relax, and the boys stay quieter and eat better while they watch television. So we watch part of a documentary every day at this time for about 30 minutes. (During dinner we may watch a cooking show or something else fun, though usually educational in its own way.)
The boys love the documentaries because they have been watching since they were babies. They don’t think documentaries are boring. There is something about watching them every day as a family that makes them extra special, and not only that, the documentaries have spurred interests, deeper inquiries, and good conversation, too. I can now challenge anyone who says that watching TV is passive and non-interactive! It all depends on how you do it.
For many years, we had to watch nature documentaries, i.e. documentaries about animals, because for little boys, any other documentary was a little boring. But now as they’re getting older, I see their interests expanding. They loved a documentary reenacting the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb, one about the Vikings, and they’re enjoying the more complex NOVA science documentaries too. They have probably learned more about science through these documentaries than all the science classes at the nature center or any of the science books I’ve read to them.
We have watched so many documentaries now that sometimes we visit the same place with a new photographer. “Oh, I remember seeing this place in another documentary,” one of us will say. Or we’ll notice when two documentaries use the same footage, which rarely happens, but occasionally it does. It’s always exciting to see something completely new, and this happens often. “Wow. I never knew that!” or “Where is that?!” we’ll cry out. Sometimes we are critical of the documentaries, and we discuss how the director may have manipulated the footage to make it too dramatic. Though we realize sometimes nature documentarians have to manipulate images or set the scene, we appreciate when this is done sparingly and only when necessary. So we have our favorites (BBC, PBS Nature), and then we have those we are wary of because too much license is taken.
We have also become huge fans of David Attenborough, considered a “rock star” to us geeky, documentary-watching families. I even went so far as to write him a letter, thank- ing him for his excellent programming, and he wrote me back a hand-written letter! (Swoon! I have framed his letter.)
I teach geography with the documentaries. I keep our globe handy, and I’ll find the place the documentary is taking us to. I’ll point it out to the boys, and we’ll all huddle around the map for a few moments. Sometimes the 6-year-old will go get the globe when I forget. I’m impressed that my boys know more about our world than I ever did at their age.
I have lived and traveled abroad in real life, and I will say that nothing quite compares to being in a foreign land, smelling the smells, listening to the sounds, and trying to speak the language. You can’t capture that with video. However, when you watch a documentary every single day over many years, it does something to your awareness of your place in the universe. You begin to piece together that vague and indescribable puzzle of how our world is functioning, and it reminds you that your troubles and cares are very minor in the big scheme of things.
You are also reminded that most of our world is incredibly beautiful. There are places I will never go, but I’m so glad someone ventured there so that I can see it through their lens. My boys have watched a tiger tend to her cubs and followed the dolphins in their cooperative effort to hunt for food. We have seen blizzards rage in Antarctica and watched Snowy Owls feed their chicks in the Arctic. We’ve seen tribes in the South American jungle who live strikingly different lives than we do, and we’ve followed an eccentric chef on his travels around the world.
You also begin to see how humans and animals are so similar.... a reminder that we are actually animals ourselves. We have similar needs, and our basic daily tasks are the same. When there is an anomaly in nature, we ooh and ahh, such as watching the male seahorse carry the eggs with his babies in a pouch on the front of his tail until the babies emerge, fully developed. It’s fascinating because it’s so out of the ordinary.
I have also learned that, as someone in a documentary so eloquently stated, “Life depends on death.” Everyday I see how this is true, and even as I sit there eating my lunch, my life depends on the death of other living things as well. The best documentaries do not gloss over how dangerous it is in the wild and how cruel nature can appear to be; yet somehow this realization has been uplifting to me. I am grateful for my life, and I fear death very little.
I no longer worry about the amount of television my boys watch. I have realized it’s up to me to make sure their lives have a variety of activities in them. So I schedule time for everything. We read books, do meaningful lessons, cook together, visit museums, play games together, and when the weather cooperates, we go outside together. When you look at all our activities as a whole, television is a mere fraction of that, but truth to tell, those documentaries are high on my priority list now, too.
I will even go so far as to say that spending the last few years watching nature documentaries everyday with my family has been one of the best experiences of my life. It is nothing like my experience watching TV alone while I was a child. We are a family who learns together while we eat. I have even seen the benefits of watching movies, children’s programming or the cooking shows we love because it is not a passive viewing. We don’t sit all day idly watching TV. We have specific goals to achieve, and the television is one of the tools we use to achieve those goals. When you gather around your television and use it to spark conversation and deeper learning, it’s a very worthy thing.
Readaloud of the Week: Frindle
A made-up word sends a classroom into chaos in this lively elementary readaloud.
As a long-time logophile, I’ve more than once seized on an obscure word and proceeded to use it as much as possible in casual conversation (“Sorry to eat and absquatulate!”), but the hero of Frindle does me one better: He makes up a word that, meme-like, becomes a part of the English language.
It all starts with Mrs. Granger, Nick’s infamously tough fifth grade English teacher. Nick is a bright kid, smart enough to have the art of distracting his teachers down to a science, and he quickly cottons to Mrs. Granger’s weakness: the dictionary. “Where do words come from?” he asks, and Mrs. Granger’s answer gives him a brilliant idea: He’ll make up a word himself. Soon, all of his classmates are calling their pens “frindles,” following Nick’s lead, and Mrs. Granger is apparently horrified by their off-dictionary vocabulary. Before he knows it, the word “frindle” has swept the school, the city, and finally the nation, and when the story ends ten years later, “frindle” has worked its way into the dictionary, too—much, Nick is surprised to discover, to his old teacher’s delight.
What makes it a great readaloud: Besides being a fun and funny elementary book, Frindle raises great questions about how language develops and who decides what a word means. Sure, the book sticks with fairly straightforward answers, but it points the way to deeper discussions about how words have entered the lexicon (such as “truther” and “humblebrag,” which debuted in Merriam-Webster in 2017) or changed their meaning over time (see “nice” or “awful”). Frindle also encourages young readers to get excited about the possibilities of language for themselves, whether they want to make up new words like Nick or just use words in new ways.
But be aware: Clements’ books are delightful, but a lot of them do follow a similar pattern (kid has a great idea, great idea kids gets in trouble, kid is eventually vindicated, harmony is restored) —Frindle is no exception.
Quotable: “Who says dog means dog?”
New Books: The Exact Location of Home
Zig sees the world as one big circuit, and his engineer’s brain wishes life could be as simple as fixing a broken toaster
The Exact Location of Home
by Kate Messner
(Middle grades)
Zig’s a tinkerer, so when he lucks into a box of miscellaneous electronics at a garage sale, he’s intrigued by the GPS unit inside. As he’s checking out geocaching locations, he notices one poster with a name that could be his dad’s—and he wonders if it could be his dad’s way of contacting him, leaving him clues in the geocache. It’s a bright spot in an increasingly difficult time: His fun-loving but perpetually busy dad has been MIA for years, his mom’s waitress job is barely covering the grocery bill, and their nice landlady has been replaced by her son, who says they’ve got to pay their back rent or he’s going to evict them. Zig never thought he’d be sleeping in the car and sneaking in a shower at school or that a family shelter would start to feel like home, but that’s what happens when they can’t come up with the rent payment.
Too ashamed to tell his friends (including Gianna, whom you may know from The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z—and if you don't, you should) what’s happening with his life, Zig can’t understand why his mom refuses to ask his dad for help—Zig knows if he knew what was happening, his dad would be there in a second to rescue them. He starts searching for geocache clues more and more, trying to figure out where his dad really is and what he might be trying to tell Zig.
Homelessness is one of those Issues that used to pop up in my Scholastic book order form (along with Teen Pregnancy, Child Abuse, and Drugs), and it would be very easy for this book to veer into After-School Special territory. It doesn’t though, thanks in large part to Zig, who manages to be a normal, slightly geeky kid who just happens to become homeless. There’s no drama about it, just a slow, inevitable process of not being able to catch up the bills—his mom picks up every shift she can, but waitresses don’t make a lot of money, and she’s still trying to finish nursing school. Zig never falls into the stereotypical role of Homeless Boy; he’s just Zig, who happens to be homeless right now. This book manages to walk the fine line of being an actual story about an interesting person and addressing an important social issue.
Readers will suspect long before Zig that there’s a lot of wish-fulfillment going on in his geocaching search for his absent father, but the clues are fun to follow and his adventure’s resolution has surprising sweetness. It’s also interesting to see the role school plays in Zig’s new life: School is a place where he can safely take a shower, get free lunch, and get support from a kind librarian who notices when a kid is missing school supplies, but it’s also a place where people might tease him for being poor and where clueless teachers talk about helping “the less fortunate” while some of those less fortunate are squirming in the desks in front of them.
Zig sees the world as one big circuit, and his engineer’s brain wishes life could be as simple as fixing a broken toaster: Once you find the problem and repair it, the circuit completes and it starts working again. Having to figure out how things can work even when parts are missing or broken is part of Zig’s journey.
Stuff We Like :: 9.22.17
Witness trees, Jacobean traveling libraries, our current reading list, and more stuff we like.
Happy New Year! (Even if you don’t celebrate Rosh Hashanah, everybody could use a bonus fresh start, right? :)) We have had a wonderful week because my sister-in-law and her sweet family (including my new baby nephew who is perfect in every way) are visiting and I got to complain a lot about how terrible Agamemnon is while teaching the Iliad. (He’s the Worst, though!)
around the web
I had never heard of witness trees, but now I’m fascinated. (And they remind me of Katherine Applegate’s new book, which is at the top of my reading list.)
Ha! Excerpts from the all-girl remake of Lord of the Flies.
You know I will read anything about libraries in history, so obviously they had me at “Jacobean traveling library.”
at home/school/life
on the blog: We’re bringing back the newsletter!
on the blog: Maggie has some great advice for when your student can read but doesn’t want to.
one year ago: Carrie on why homeschool parents need field trips, too
two year ago: An imaginary friend helps a boy through a tough time in Crenshaw
reading list
My 10-year-old and I have been laughing our way through the Fudge books together, and I’m sad we just finished Fudge-a-mania because that means we’ve only got Double Fudge left.
I’ve got Sourdough waiting for me on my bedside table—hoping I have a chance to pick it up before the library demands it back!
I ordered a copy of the 10th anniversary edition of Veganomicon. My copy is pretty battered at this point, and I couldn’t resist 25 new recipes.
at home
I’m still trying to find my balance between teaching and working and homeschooling and mom-ing, but I keep reminding myself that I’m incredibly lucky that I love all the things I’m trying to balance.
Suzanne and I joined litsy together as home-school-life-reads. (This is totally because of Stephanie, and she says you can blame her if our obsession with this Instagram+Goodreads social media app makes us late with the fall issue!)
5 Things to Try When Your Child Can Read, but Doesn’t
What about when a child has completed a reading program but still isn’t eagerly seeking out reading material? Here are five things to try.
You know those people who make you feel like you’re a failure as a parent if your child isn’t reading at least three years above grade level or reading chapter books independently by kindergarten? They push my buttons, too. Parenting has a way of keeping us humble. The reality is that sometimes even when we’ve tried doing all the “right” things, we still end up with reluctant readers.
What about when a child has completed a reading program but still isn’t eagerly seeking out reading material? Here are five things to try:
1. Book Teasers
Simply put, a book teaser is a brief read aloud from a book. To really boost your signal with book teasers, you’re going to need to do a little work on the front end. Choose a book that’s in your child’s “just right” reading zone (not too easy, not too challenging). It’s got to be the kind of book that sucks the reader in almost immediately, the kind of book that hooks a reader and demands to be devoured. During a readaloud time, you’re going to read just the first chapter of the book. If your child is resistant to readalouds, consider just starting without warning while the child is otherwise quietly engaged, maybe crafting, eating, or playing with Legos. Even if the child tunes you out at first, more likely than not, you’ll find that you soon have a listener who’s engrossed in the story in spite of him or herself. Then when you’ve finished that first chapter, ideally ending with a cliffhanger, you’re done, you big tease. When the child asks what happens next, let him or her know where the book will be located. Drop the mic.
2. Bathroom Books
Sitting on the toilet is boring. So is sitting in the car. Use that. Comic books and joke books are perfect candidates for bathroom and car book baskets because they’re practically irresistible to kids, and the format lends itself to just a few minutes of reading at a time. No, it’s not Shakespeare, but think of these as the gateway that will get you there one day.
3. Let It Be Fun
Would you be excited to pick up a new book if after finishing it, you knew that you would be required to write a book report, take a quiz, or answer comprehension questions? Sometimes with all of our great intentions, we adults have a tendency to steamroll all the fun right out of reading. Certainly, we need to attach thinking and writing exercises to books, but we don’t need to do it all of the time. If you have a reluctant reader, consider throwing out accompanying assignments for a while, and just let reading be fun. How will you know that they’re reading if they aren’t doing worksheets or answering comprehension questions? You’ll observe them reading, and, we hope, eventually talking to you about getting more books. Let that be enough, at least for a while.
4. Appeal to an Obsession
Whether it’s bugs, puppies, World War II, the Titanic, gymnastics, or… whatever, find books about that subject and keep presenting them. The more reluctant the reader, the more you should steer towards books that are picture heavy. I’ve yet to meet a kid who couldn’t be enticed to at least flip through a book or magazine about a subject near and dear to his or her heart.
5. Give Some Thought to the Possibility that There Might Be Something Else Going On
It’s not easy to let your mind go there, but if your child reads very slowly, struggles with following directions, or has a hard time retaining information, it’s worth a chat with your pediatrician or another developmental professional to see if an evaluation is appropriate for your child. A learning disability diagnosis can truly be a gift for your child and your family if it means getting directed toward therapies and accommodations that can open a world of hope and make learning fun again.
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.