We All Learn to Fear

 When I was a young woman I learned to be afraid of the public school system. I was taught this in a variety of ways from a variety of people, from the time I was a school girl all the way into my 40s. People in my "group," my "tribe," convinced me in quiet ways and very vocal ways, that the American public school system was evil, and that at all costs I should try to keep my children out of it. I believed them.

I never attended public schools. I married a man who had attended nothing but public schools until he went to the private college where we met. He did not seem any worse for wear, but he freely admitted that he considered his academic training to be inferior. So we decided to homeschool. Or rather, I decided to homeschool, and he readily agreed with me.

I picked something to fear. Everyone does. Right now, various Americans consider quite a few entities to be Things to Fear:

The government

Democrats

Republicans

The church (any denomination, just pick one)

The environmentalists

The young people

The old people

Black people

White people

Any race of people other than your own

City people

Country people

And sadly, Your own family members

All these fearful people have one thing in common: they're terrified, and they cannot be convinced otherwise. It takes a lot for people to change their minds about their fears. They have to admit their fears are unfounded, that they were wrong in their assessment. Then they have to accept the entity they used to fear, and see it as less harmful, perhaps harmless.

I could have saved our family a lot of grief if I hadn't been so afraid of the public school system, and so stubborn in my fear. Some of my kids might have been happier. They would have had more friends. I would have had more friends. We might have stayed settled in one place longer, and we certainly would have felt more a part of the community. Instead we slogged our way through two decades of homeschooling and various teaching stints at private schools. That wasn't all bad either, but we made educational decisions based on fear, which is never a good basis for decisions.

I didn't think I was afraid; I thought I was wise and well-informed. Perhaps the hardest traits in ourselves to admit are fear and stubbornness. When I find myself giving something a very wide berth, I must ask myself, "Am I afraid of it?" If the thing I'm afraid of it a large group of people, an organization, then almost always my fear is unfounded. It's too general. There's no way that all the individuals are evil, in a group of hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands of people. If I am afraid of an individual person, I also have to ask myself if my fear is valid, justified. If it is, then the  appropriate response is forgiveness. Forgiving them is the only way to free myself of the damaging effects of my fear.

On social media, I see so much fear, but it is expressed in anger. Usually when people sound angry, they are actually afraid. I'd love to get rid of my fear because then I could feel contentment and peace again. Fear crushes love, and drives out peace, and eats away the soul of the fearful.

Hodge-Podge

Yesterday was burn pile day. I do love a day outside, burning brush, carrying limbs and sticks, sitting in the grass with Adam and the dogs, feeling that good weariness after hard work, and the satisfaction of cleaning up mountains of brush.

This week Adam also removed our old HVAC system. Some kind stranger took it from the side of the road, probably wanting some semi-valuable component buried deep inside.

We're glad it's gone. When we receive a check for replacing it, Adam plans to install a duct-less mini-split heating and A/C system. Don't know much about it, but it sounds like a great idea, and no duct work under the house! Yay!

I finally visited the thrift store and discovered a basket of fancy yarns, 3 skeins for a dollar. Yes, you read that right. I was in Yarn Heaven. Do I need more yarn? No. Would I buy more yarn at Michael's? No. But would I pass up a deal like this? No way! Here's the addition to my stash:

$4.00 for ALL of that! (I think they gave me more of a deal than they were supposed to.) Here are some close-ups of various ones, for you fellow yarn slaves who cannot resist giving a new home to homeless yarn:

 

 

One of my favorite customers brought an interesting article to my table this morning for me to examine. It's a little traveling jewelry pouch.

She's had it for many years and hasn't been able to find a replacement. She wonders if I could make some. They'd make wonderful gifts. I might give it a try.

Lastly, I've decided to get rid of most of my old homeschooling books. I bought many of these as recommended by Susan Bauer's reading lists in her book. If anyone reading this blog wants any of these books, they are $1 each, and you must pay book-rate shipping. Just leave a comment and I'll be in touch. Here they are:

I'll end with a little photo and tiny poem that I shamelessly stole from Granny Marigold's blog. It tickled me and I just had to have it:

I can relate.

Oh -- did I mention that our black lab, Ned, is now transitioning to being a mostly "inside" dog? Since Baby died, he is just too sad and lonely outside in the pasture, especially at night. So we're working on adapting him to house life.

 I think he's doing just fine.

Be Encouraged, You Homeschooling Mothers ~

Adam and I are in the final throes of sending our fourth and youngest child off to college. We've had children in school non-stop since 1995 (I think) when Philip toddled off to a kindergarten class as a 4 year old at the boarding school where we worked. He walked over to his classroom across the grass from our house for a few hours each morning and walked back. Twenty-two years of education!

Some of those years our kids were in classrooms, and some they were schooled at home -- about half and half. And recently I'm more thankful than before for those years of homeschooling. They created a bond between me and my children. I do think we are closer than if I'd sent them off in a bus or dropped them at school. I'm sure there were failings (many of them) in our homeschooling, and disappointments for the kids. But recently several benefits of those homeschooling years have popped up, and I want to tell you about them.

Anna, with her students when she taught in China.
Now she teaches elementary kids in Japan.

Our daughter is a teacher. Sometimes I forget the truth of this: she chose education as a career partly because she grew up in a learning home. She saw us teach. At some point she thought a career in teaching was appealing. She saw all the rewards of teaching in our lives, and she saw all the ugliness too -- the mean, unreasonable administrators, the deceptive and lazy students, the insane, accusing parents. She saw us cry, sit up endless evenings grading papers, get fired, get thrown under the bus, get unfairly reprimanded, be praised and ridiculed by students. In spite of this, she chose teaching.

As Julia moves away, I like to note what her mind seems to have latched onto. She and Adam talk about math! (Can you imagine? Math?!) She likes math ideas, not "how to solve this equation" talk, but "Dad, what if we did this in math? She has a good math brain, in spite of the fact that we've struggled for years to teach her math. She won't study it in college; I don't expect that. But she enjoys using math thoughts to test her own brain. It's important that she just enjoy some subjects -- that learning be for the pleasure of it. She's branching out into various disciplines in interest, and I see her mind widening before she goes away, instead of narrowing. I hope our homeschooling contributed to this. I took to heart Susan Bauer's advice that each year and each subject was a "handshake" -- a handshake with an author or with an historical figure. It's better to go broad than go deep. They can study more deeply later.

Homeschooling produced many tears and regrets, many doubts about myself and my choices. It's nice at last to see we did something right in all those years.

Thoughts About Math

I warn you ahead of time: these thoughts are disjointed.

I'm not a math person. By that I mean that I do not enjoy math, I don't do math in my spare time, and when I am forced to do a bit of math I have to use my whole, aching brain. But I did well in math in school. I can do it if I have to.

Ha!!!

Adam is a math geek. He took AP math and tested out of 2 years of college calculus. (So did Philip.) He had to drop out of his math major because of the tinnitus that plagued his brain, but he remained a math whiz. He took all the course work online for the math degree at MIT. He got to know MIT math people and now he proofs work for them as they do big whoopie math. The math people he does proofs for live from Turkey to southern Africa. None of them are Americans. Do Americans get higher level math degrees at MIT anymore? I don't know, but foreigners apparently still think of the U.S. as a place to come to for the programs. How can we still provide the universities but not the students? That's a mystery to me.

Recently I heard someone talking about Common Core math in North Carolina. I've heard a lot of negatives about CC, so I was interested to hear a cheerleader, someone with deep knowledge of CC and its implementation. I was told that CC is designed to compensate for years of horrible math instruction in US schools. That CC is designed to give conceptual and procedural understanding -- a thorough, deep understanding of how math works instead of the hokey short-cuts we used. The "I-don't-know-why-this-works-to-solve-the-problem-but-I'm-doing-it-because-the-teacher-told-me-to" method of math.

I remember being a hokey short-cut math student. But I also know that over the years of math instruction I did learn math concepts. I did understand the why's behind the solutions. It was rote memorization at the beginning, but by high school the work was complicated enough that understanding the concepts behind the steps was necessary. I think that's true.

So I was surprised to hear that my math education had created generations of dummies. I was also surprised to hear that Common Core, with its lengthy approach to teaching multiple ways of understanding the math and solving the problems, including videos and lots of manipulatives, is a dream curriculum for Special Ed. kids, and is a great solution for all the average kids. But I heard that it is really frustrating for the advanced students, and that those whiny students, and their equally whiny and lazy parents, complain about all the work. That the advanced students just want the short-cuts because they want to get the answer, get done, finish the work, and get their grade. Because they're just grade hogs.

I found that description of them to be offensive, so I challenged it, and the person backed off a bit. I argued that many advanced math students have an impressive intuitive understanding of why math works the way it does -- they grasp the concepts and the steps quickly and don't need it drawn out repeatedly three different ways.

I was told that we really don't have many kids like that in our county because we mostly have poor, dumb kids here who don't perform at that level. Okay, the person didn't use "dumb" but we all knew what was meant. We don't expect that level of understanding from our local kids. Maybe that's part of the problem!

Some friends noted that there's less actual work done by students at home -- maybe three problems instead of ten. The kids aren't required to do lots of repetitions of the work to reinforce it. And this is apparently true! In fact, a teacher may assign 3 problems to child A, 5 problems to child B, and twenty problems to child C. I was told that repetition is not a good thing; if the child is doing the work incorrectly, lots of repetition will only reinforce the wrong methods! And then it's hard to reverse that ... so it's better to do very few problems. I don't even want to begin to investigate how wrong-headed that thinking is!

People, where did we go wrong? Adam noted to me that back in the 1950's and 1960's, we produced rocket scientists and math geniuses. What math were those kids taught in the '30's and '40's? Can we go back to that?

I'll end with Julia, and our anecdotal homeschooling evidence. Julia is me -- not a "math person." She dislikes it. In fact, of all her homeschooling work, the class that finally ended it all for us ... was math. She and Adam came to an impasse. They could not do math anymore without fighting. Math is important to Adam; it's beautiful and eternal and reflects the mind of God. And to have his middle school daughter repeatedly dismiss and insult math was just painful. We tried textbooks, Khan Academy, less supervision, more supervision -- nothing helped. In 9th and 10th grades, her math study was rather pitiful, and I was worried. I didn't know where she was, to be honest. Finally we realized we'd better get her into a community college for a math course (and chemistry, because I didn't want to do labs at home) if she were ever to finish high school.

She enrolled in pre-calculus algebra. She ended up dropping chemistry because this math course was so, SO stressful. She got a 70 on her first test. She complained and whined and made our lives miserable. Oh My Word, was it awful! It was as bad as homeschooling her in math! But we told her flatly that she must do this if she ever wanted to go to college. Her next score was a 73, and then gradually her scores climbed into the 80's and 90's. Her last two tests were 103 and 104, the highest score this teacher gives on tests. She's clearly mastered the material and is excelling, even though she's not a math geek, even though she still dislikes it.

Is it just her brain? I don't know. What did we do right all those years of Math Suffering? I haven't a clue, except as homeschoolers we tried to teach her to THINK, to problem-solve, to stick to it, to reason well. We never, ever taught to a test, and we did not focus on assessment. We valued the information itself, even if she didn't.

If we, who did such a poor and incomplete job teaching our daughter math, could see her flourish this way after only two months in a community college, why can't our public school system, with all its resources, do better? I look at the Common Core work that kids are dong now, and  scratch my head. I do believe the intend is noble: to improve conceptual and procedural understanding of the work. But for some reason I don't think this convoluted curriculum will work. In spite of what I was told recently, I don't think kids are being taught basic math facts. They are not memorizing them. They are confused. They need better thinking skills, better problem-solving skills, but I don't think they're learning them in those classrooms. I hope -- I dearly hope -- I'm wrong.

I don't write any of this with a political agenda. I don't give a flying fig if either political party endorses or opposes Common Core; they're always looking for the latest football to fight over. I care about the kids and what we are doing with their minds during the many hours they are in our care in school. Both kids and teachers are desperately eager to perform well on EOG tests. This test-desperate approach makes them desperate for the answers -- not the concepts, not the procedures, not the deep understanding. They want the answer and the grade. Until we reduce the pressure to perform there, we will not make student minds eager for understanding. I feel we do not need more, but less. I would love to know any thoughts from readers out there who know more about math, or Common Core, than I do, or who have experiential knowledge from teaching. That should be about 90% of you!

The Dog Days of Winter

I haven't posted since Sunday -- that's rather a long time for this blogger. It just hasn't crossed my mind. What've I been doing? Crocheting first. The stripey blanket is at row 90 out of 131. And I've been homeschooling. I'm sure some of you wonder what in the world homeschooling would be like. What exactly is a smart 10th grader up to in school, in February? (If you don't want to read about homeschooling, just zip down to the last paragraph!)

We've finished four books (out of 21) of this:

It's been reasonably enjoyable for us. New vocabulary words, like unnethe, interest us and keep us typing "define: ----- " into Google. Unnethe, by the way, means "with difficulty." We're skipping book five, in which Arthur defies the Roman emperor, subjects all of Europe under his thumb, arrives in Rome to be crowned Roman emperor, and then goes home. We'll move on to book six, the stories of Lancelot's adventures. We may spend another month in Le Morte d'Arthur.

In history reading, Julia is proceeding through the 1300s, and we've watched loads of great videos, everything from Stephen Fry (Jeeves!) investigating the development of the printing press with Mr. Gutenberg, to the Scottish victory at the Battle of Bannockburn. Julia will be writing a short paper on Henry VIII, whom she finds rather disturbing and creepy.

She does science first, a kind of broad-spectrum study focusing on astronomy, planetary science, physics, and anything else fascinating that Adam finds for her. Generally I guess you'd call it an earth science with lots of fun stuff thrown in. She listens to a podcast or (more usually) watches a video on Adam's playlist for about 45 minutes, and then does pages in her textbook, a self-study guide to astronomy.

We finished Algebra before Christmas, and now we are doing a semester of Geometry, and this textbook (Abeka, I think?) is tougher than any of us expected. Poor thing. Right now she's going back and writing every theorem, corollary, and definition on a flashcard, for memorization. Geometry has gone beyond measuring angles and drawing trapezoids, I'm sorry to say!

We finished the last of her high school grammar, and now she's going through a series of geography quizzes online, one last time. This is our third time to do this website, and I think it's given her a great grounding in knowing her world.

French is going much better this semester than last. We are keeping up. I'm enjoying reacquainting myself with the language. I think we will finish the level 1 book by May. She's finishing a chapter about every two weeks, so 32 weeks of school, 16 chapters. That's good!

I do one-on-one with her: literature, history, and French. I started her in grammar each day, if there were concepts she didn't remember. Homeschooling occupies nearly all my time from 9:45 a.m. -- 1:30 each day. That's a big chunk of time, but so worthwhile for the sake of her education, of her mind and for my peace-of-mind, knowing exactly what's in her head. I want her to have a broad, rich knowledge of the world.

I called the local community college representative about dual enrollment for her next year. They have classes she can take for free. I'm looking at chemistry and her 3rd math. Apparently they don't really do "Algebra II" anymore, but something else, depending on the student's academic goals. Julia will take a placement test; the lady said she's never had a homeschool student not do well on it. I'll submit her high school transcript thus far, which I've kept in (too much) detail. And I'll hand over my North Carolina Dept. of Non-Public Education I.D. card, so they know I'm legal.

All that to say, for those who know little about homeschooling -- yes, there are families who stumble through homeschooling, do indifferent work, don't keep good records, don't teach the kids rigorously, but -- don't have college as a goal. Compulsory school age here goes until 16 years old. These  homeschoolers differ little from some public school kids who are not academically inclined and are not college-bound. Not everyone should be. But many homeschoolers are highly invested in their children's educations and strongly encourage them to attend college or otherwise pursue academic enrichment after high school. It takes work! We all admire what high school teachers do to prepare kids for college; remember that hundreds of thousands of homeschooling parents are doing that too -- training your future doctor, nurse, policeman, CPA, attorney, or real estate agent to be dedicated and gifted at their jobs. Appreciate the homeschool parents you know!

Well, THAT was long-winded! Otherwise, Adam is riding his bike a lot, even when it's freezing outside, or bodaciously windy. I am cold. Even in the house with the heat on 70º, I'm still chilly. We're tired of winter, but these are those weary "dog days," when we get tons of schooling done, tons of yarn work done, lots of reading. Otherwise ... we're boring! But the daffodils have pushed well up through the old grass, and the bees have survived the winter. Philip has bought a new-to-him car, a 1999 Mazda Miata convertible. Pretty nice! Peter keeps looking for a car to buy, with no luck so far. Anna makes plans to go back to China, probably next fall or winter. Wedding plans for Philip and Kara proceed happily. Generally, life is good. But I'll be glad when warm breezes blow from the south, and we can take walks in the evenings again.

Shadows of Middle English

Julia and I are reading around in Chaucer. Honestly, we should not dip in and dip out of Chaucer's tales. It's a mistake to extract only the Pardoner's Tale or the Wife of Bath's Tale, and read them standing alone. The fun parts are the dialogues among the pilgrims, stuck between the tales. We didn't read the Miller's tale because it's very bawdy, but the conversation beforehand ...? So fun!

We read the Pardoner's tale, the Wife of Bath's tale, and are now reading the Nun's Priest tale, a darling account of a rooster named Chauntecleer and his wife Pertelote. Next we'll finish with the Clerk's tale, which I've never read, but the summary of it sounds very exciting. Chaucer seems quite taken with the theme of marriage and man/woman relationships in his tales.

We came upon one word in Middle English that I enjoyed: "everich." This word, and variations of it, Chaucer uses quite often. Everich means "every." Everichoon means "every one." You find it in this quote describing the Friar: "He knew the tavernes wel in every toun, and everich hostiler and tappestere." (Now see -- that's not hard at all! "He knew the taverns well in every town, and every hosteler and barmaid." Even "tappestere" makes sense -- someone who minds the tap, right?)

I love words. I rolled that word, everich, around in my mind. And then I recognized it. I'd heard it from elderly people, country people, all my life. My grandmother, I guess, and older people in Mississippi, and even here in coastal North Carolina. You'll hear them say something like this: "We tried it ever which way, but couldn't make it work." Remember the song from a few decades ago -- "Every which way but loose ... You turn me every which way but loose." And that's close, but not as close as "ever which." And I realized that what I'd been hearing from those old country folks wasn't ignorant, stupid English. It was language closer to Middle English.

That thought made me tingle and think, "Ooooooh." Because I love language and words and things old and the past. I will now proudly say "ever which way" whenever I can!

I plan to give Julia a quiz just on the language, with a vocabulary section of single words, but also a chunk of text, about 10 lines, for her to render in modern English. Should be fun. We've both gotten quite good at reading Chaucer's English with ease and understanding. And when we come across a word that's a puzzle ... and we pause for a few seconds ... and then one or the other of us says, "Ahhhh" ... and we laugh and realize what we just read! Those are moments that make homeschooling quite priceless.

Did you know that the phrase "Murder will out!" is from Chaucer? Sure is! Did anyone use it before him? I don't know. "Mordre wol out," Chauntecleer says.

The rooster, who is afraid of his nightmares, is advised by his mate Pertelote to take medical action.  "Now, sire, whan we flee fro the bemes, for Goddes love, as tak some laxatyf." (When we fly from our roosts in the morning, take a laxative!) Julia recognized that word before I did :)

In this particular tale, I also found it fascinating that Middle English speakers had so many words for "dream." They called it a "dreme," (or "dreem") but also a "mette," and a "swevene." Why did we lose those words, and when? "Swevene" (or sweven) can also mean "vision" but it's a vision in one's sleep, in a dream.

Our language is narrowing in many ways. We expand vocabulary as we add technology words, scientific words, foreign words. But we lose the careful distinctions of certain verbs simply by not using them. How often do you hear someone use the verb "swum"? I know of elementary teachers (nice ladies, all of them!) who abuse verbs horribly, and I wonder how their students will ever acquire a full usage of English if their teachers say, "I had ran," or "She had swam." I hate to lose anything from a language.

I'll be sad to finish Chaucer, and I think I'll continue reading all the tales after Julia and I have completed her study. And maybe ... just maybe ... one of you will join me?

Homeschool Update

This is for anybody out there who's interested in what Julia is studying this year, and how our homeschool year is progressing. Are we accomplishing what we'd hoped this year?

Well, we read a good bit of St. Augustine. We read a good cross-section of Bede's History (6 or so selections from each book). That wasn't as hard as I'd anticipated. We read and studied all of Beowulf. We just finished Dante's Inferno, the entire piece. We skipped the Song of Roland, sadly, because I found I didn't have a copy of it, much less two. I guess when I taught little chunks of it before, it was in a school's textbook that I didn't keep. The only translation online was a bit stiff and boring. Hmm. May return to that later, but not likely.

I had two copies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but not by the same translators. So I ordered two used copies of Tolkien's translation, and we'll read it together. I enjoy studying literature this way -- aloud, together, sitting on the couch, stopping and talking about it. While waiting for the two Sir Gawains to ride up to our house, we're studying Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales first. We began that a few days ago, with a biography on the author and are well into the prologue. I have an old 1928 copy of the tales in Middle English, and a newer Norton critical edition, also in the original. So I'm reading it aloud to her in Middle English, and she's learning a newish language while we're at it. (Actually, she gets a good study in how a language changes over time, which is useful.) Most people think Middle English is too scary/hard for the modern person to read, but it's not, with a little help. Chaucer will take us all the way to Christmas, and into January, but I may well stop in the middle and pick up Sir Gawain -- it begins on Christmas Day :) Nice holiday story!

To help fill out her history study, she's reading a Western Civ. textbook by Spielvogel, plus a different Spielvogel book with primary source material, plus more primary source documents from the Fordham.edu website, which I love to use as a resource. As you know, she has a huge history timeline book, and keeps a timeline herself, to keep everything in order.

Our progress through the French I textbook has been slower than I'd hoped, so we've picked up our pace. We're finishing chapter 5, but there are 18 chapters in the book, so we will be doing French next summer, I presume.

Algebra I is nearly finished, as I'd planned. We covered it last year, along with Geometry, using Khan Academy, which Julia thought she'd like, and which (I think) did get her back on the right track with math. But this year she asked for textbooks, and knowing that the Khan website had tested her on both Algebra and Geometry last year, I decided to cover Algebra again this year in first semester, and see if she could fly through the book. She has. She didn't realize how much she'd learned last year. Algebra is easier for her than she'd thought; she doesn't complain about it anymore -- no tears or breakdowns. She feels more confidence. And in January we'll leap to a Geometry book, which she'll enjoy more. Plus, structuring it this way, I think she will both retain and integrate the information better.

And she's about 2/3 through with reading Ivanhoe. I'm still several chapter ahead of her :)

But Julia loves science above ALL! She adores biology, and studies a more advanced biology text on her own at night.

I sneaked into her bedroom and took a photo of her biology book, on her floor.

It was open to this section on molecular bonding.

She's taking notes. She'll probably kill me for posting these pics.

She still does her astronomy study each morning, listening to many podcasts that Adam selects for her, completing a self-study guide on the subject, and doing early-morning observations with Adam. This year's science also has to be an "Earth Science" to meet state university requirements. So he's adapting her study of the universe and other planets to emphasize a study of Earth too.

That's it so far! Schooling is definitely taking more of my time this year than previously. Homeschooling in high school, especially if your child is college-bound, is not for the faint-of-heart! It takes my entire morning and a good chunk of my afternoons. I do feel I have so much more time with Julia than I would otherwise. We have a thousand memories together, little things here at home, that otherwise we'd never have. It's precious. I want her to understand that learning is a life skill, a way of living, something you do with each breath, and not just in a classroom for 12 years.

Next semester: The Book of Margery Kempe, Morte d'Arthur, the Fairie Queene, and two or three Shakespeare plays! And I might have to go back and visit the valiant Roland on his battlefield. So tragic! So noble! And it's my last chance for all of this with Julia -- must make the most of these quick years.

Spring and Fall

to a young child

Margaret, are you grieving

Over goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves, like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! As the heart grows older,

It will grow to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow's springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

(I adore this poem and had forgotten about it until a friend reminded me of it yesterday. I wanted to give it to my students for years, and required them to memorize it, hoping it would sink into a mind or two, and its beauty and truth survive there and thrive. Julia and I studied this poem together a bit. She'll recite it next Wednesday. I found, gladly, that I still had it memorized. Do you have poetry memorized still?)

The October Party

Julia and I love October; we love autumn. Actually, I love winter too, but I won't go there. Too many people take exception to that attitude.
Anyway, I decided we'd have a party day on October 1st, so we did. First, I let Julia sleep in a little longer. Second, she made pumpkin coffee and I made a new pot of chai. Third, we took a nature walk. That's where you come in.

experimenting with the "macro" setting on my camera

 We found a bird's nest besieged by cobwebs.

 Julia wanted her picture taken in what she calls the prettiest place in the village --

  -- under the bridge --

 We spotted this murky damp area, which thrilled Julia's heart because lately she's decided she loves biology. She's using an old textbook of Philip's (I think from college?), and doing an independent study of biology from it this year. She wants to take a sample of this sludge and examine it under her microscope.

 I prefer things like this, as I walk through Oriental:

 Anywho, we placed our items on the table, pulled out the paints, brushes, paper, pencils, and other paraphernalia, and commenced to do art.

 Autumn things are so pretty, aren't they?

 They have a dainty-deadness that reminds me of Miss Havisham.

 Julia sketched and colored this -- a tree. She spent some time on Pinterest looking for inspiration.

 I just did some branches and leaves. That's about my speed. But I think they turned out fine.

 Then we looked at Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem, "Spring and Fall," which I love so much.

 I didn't calculate, and ran out of room, sadly. The poem is wonderful. Hopkins makes up words, so you need a soft and pliable mind to recognize them.

 Julia will memorize the poem and recite it next week. I made pumpkin bread for lunch, and then she finished her sketch. Now she's reading two more chapters of Ivanhoe, a book that feels autumnal to me. I think it's because they spend so much time riding around lost in the forest.

I found this half-finished bookmark and completed it too, along with the start of a card for a special friend. Oddly, although I paint bookmarks and have even sold a few, in my own books-being-read here at home, I tend to use old junk mail and scraps of paper for saving my places. Why is that? How silly! I I took this one and placed it in my Gladys Taber book.  Perhaps bookmarks should be reminders of things, things we've forgotten. What do you think? I could make ones that say, "Kiss your husband today," or "Have you shaved this week?" for winter months. (hahaha!) I won't make any that read, "You really should be washing dishes instead."
And that's homeschooling for October 1st.

A Homeschool Friday

 On Friday we went to the beach. This is one of the advantages of homeschooling flexibility and part of why Julia loves being homeschooled. I've noted that homeschooling isn't for everyone. Then again, I can think of hardly any child who wouldn't love going to the beach on a school day.

The skies were phenomenal.

 And it was a school day, not a vacation day. She did science before we left the house, did two sections of Algebra in the car on the way, read her history assignment on the way home, and I read ten pages of Beowulf aloud in the car too. And she added a chapter from Ivanhoe that evening. A good school day!
But enough of school. This is about the beach!

 I always tell myself I will not pick up any more shells, and I never listen.

 A little watercolor, a little sand.

 It was a bit windy for painting, but I would try.

 This trip was Adam's idea. Last time he really (really) enjoyed sitting in the surf. After three hours of sitting there, being gently pounded by the ocean, his bad leg feels like its run a marathon -- a good workout.
They sat together. Every once in a while Julia would come tromping up to me and show me the treasures they'd dug from the sand beneath, once a solid piece of oil. Adam is a man who cannot ever stop learning, even if he wanted to. All of life is a private education for him, and if he's with a kid, he can't help sharing it. This is one of the reasons homeschooling works well for us.

 Probably hundreds of conversations over the years between us have begun with the words, "I just watched this documentary, and ..." from him.
I photographed broken shells on this day.

 I love their texture.

 I love how they look with the water's glisten still on them. They don't look this way after you bring them home.

 So delicate! I pick it up as if it were crystal, but it's survived pummeling from the ocean. What harm can I do it?

 I saw this and thought, "piano!"

 This shell is the universe. A gray swirl of galaxies. A vast blob of nebula. A sprinkling of stars.

 I finally decided these look like ice cream cones.

 This shell is such an orange! And if it were whole, I'm sure it would be identical to millions of others in the ocean. But its jagged brokenness, while marring its perfection, also makes it unique. Isn't that true of humans as well?

 A tiny black shell is imbedded in its end.

 Walking on sand is challenging for Adam, and he takes his cane.

Of the few humans on the beach, some were die-hard beach fans, some were skipping high school classes in thoroughly impractical bikinis, and some were fishermen.

 Julia and I were anti-fishermen. Once she felt something light glance across her shoulders -- a fishing line! (grrr -- they should be careful!) In her aggravation, she yanked hard on the line to give the fellow unsubstantiated hope. Ha! He stood up, looked alert, reeled in his line, was bemused and confused at the empty hook.
On my stroll far down the beach, I found a 5-gallon bucket with a tight lid snapped on and lots of holes drilled in the side. Upon close inspection I realized there were fish inside. Fish, dying, flapping, trapped on the beach. Where did it come from? Who would leave them to die? Why? I'm not a weird tree-hugger, but for goodness' sakes -- why catch them only to leave them to die? So I pried open the lid and tried to release the fish into the surf. They struggled. One fish I had to scoop up in a handful of sand and fling into the waves. In the end they all swam away. It was quite satisfying.

Only a certain amount of learning can be done with one's nose in a book. Books are quite valuable. But at some point we must put down the book and step out into the world to test the things we've read. I think homeschooling is rather good for this, although it can be done by any student. I love giving Julia the chance to dig in the sands of the world and find treasure.