Calling in backup

It's true: there are times in homeschooling when you realize that you need to take things a little slower. In the space that those weeks or months occupy, you sometimes find yourself employing schooling methods that otherwise would not have appealed to you. Such is the case, for me, with Time4Learning. Normally, I am not a huge fan of across-the-board computer-based homeschooling. I use games and websites to supplement but shy away from the full curricula approach. However ... I was given the opportunity to review this website recently and, with the addition of Manolin to our home, I decided that it was God's provision to allow me to be guilt-free while the three R's sink on the totem pole of my priorities for a time. I signed the bigger kids up (which was as easy as setting up a blogger account, by the way) and have been filling in the gaps with the Time4Learning lessons. I'll keep you posted on my thoughts.

Honored

Voting begins today in the Homeschool Blog Awards. I am absolutely humbled to have been nominated in two categories this year. Who knew that three people out there would take the time to punch this blog's name and complete address into an online form?

I realize that the odds of me winning SUPER-HOMESCHOOLER are roughly the same ones I'd be up against in persuading the bulk of dh's family that homeschooling is a good thing. Just being nominated is a bit of a chuckle for me because frankly, today I feel like anything but a super homeschooler. Kids run amok will do that to you, won't they? Total disclosure moment: I took the drastic and unprecedented step of banning any and all things Star Wars from our house as a punishment this morning. We'll see if that whips a certain disastrous duo of brothers into shape. I sure hope so, because the only discipline I can conjure in my mind that would be more severe would be denying them the actual right to breathe.

I was also nominated for Best Variety, which I think is a compliment--although I admit that the mention of ADD and hyper-focus made me scroll through a few month's worth of posts and wonder what a professional psychiatrist would make of the strange blend of homeschooling, theology, foster care, adoption and politics that is my life. If "variety" is a nice way of saying "eclectic, rambling and sometimes aimless" then I'll wear the label with pride--even if I find myself near the back of the pack. :-)

Strengths and weaknesses

What if one of the greatest strengths of homeschooling is also its greatest weakness?

I've been mulling this over all afternoon, thanks to a phone call from an acquaintance who had no idea that she was pouring boiling water on the wasp's nest that is my mind.

In a simple description of a situation she's facing with a new intern in her workplace, this bright, experienced professional rocked my world:

"It's been a lot of work getting her settled in because frankly, she's a homeschooler and everything has been so tailored to fit her learning style and needs that she's not really sure what to do when she has to just learn something point blank or soldier on through the boring stuff."

Ouch.

Take a minute to think that through. A young lady, aspiring to a particular profession, has taken the initiative and pursued an internship in a field that she thinks may be her calling. Clearly, she met the criteria set forth for the hiring of such interns and shows some promise in the field. However, her transition into the position has been rocky because her educational training has not challenged her to persevere through topics in which she has little interest, or to simply absorb information by rote repetition.

In other words, the creativity, inventiveness and customization of homeschooling has, in this instance, failed to produce a desirable employee. This young woman will have to garner those less-than-thrilling, but oh-so-vital skills called "real life" on the fly. With a potential future employer watching.

Pondering this has been very convicting for me. Like most homeschooling parents, I try to gear things towards the interests my children are displaying at any given time. I aim to make learning the hard stuff relatively painless. I strive to sprinkle success here and there when the light bulb is taking a bit longer to pop on. I listen carefully to my children and I make sure information is given to them in ways that fit their processing styles.

Is that so wrong?

I 've never thought that it was. After all, isn't the goal to raise children who love learning so much that they can be placed in a situation like this young intern is facing and take to the new environment like a duck to water? This is what I've told myself will happen. By the time my children graduate from our homeschool, I've always believed, they may not know everything, but they'll know how to find out about anything.

But what if I'm wrong? What if the educational professionals I've disregarded for the past seven years have theories that actually hold water? What if my brother-in-law, who is finishing his master's degree in school administration is right: if you change math curriculum every time you decide it "isn't a good fit," or if you plan out one course, then ditch it for another when you suddenly find an interest in a new area, then you're setting your children up for a lifetime of frustration when they realize that college, workplaces, etc., don't follow those same, "have it your way" rules.

This train is nowhere near the station. I'm not really sure where I'm going to land on this, so I'm throwing it out to my readers. What do you think? Is flexibility a strength in homeschooling? A weakness? Both? Let's discuss ...

Election Day, 2008

I had a wonderful post planned in my head for today, but Reneé stole it. :-) Go to her blog (Steppin' Heavenward) if you want to read what I consider some very grounded thoughts on today's election.

And, in lighter election fare ...

If you've ever doubted whether or not you should be allowed to wield the mighty tool that is your right to vote, click here to take a simple quiz.

Here are my results.

You Should Be Allowed to Vote

You got 13/15 questions correct. Generally speaking, you're very well informed. If you vote this election, you'll know exactly who (and what) you'll be voting for. You're likely to have strong opinions, and you have the facts to back them up.

Should You Be Allowed to Vote?

Settling in

Just wanted to post quickly that all is well here with the newest little addition. I have spoken with Manolin's social worker and his GAL and am very optimistic about his case. Not to mention that he's adorable.

Now if only Oliver would fall in love with his new status as big brother ...

Review: Got books?

Admit it. You love books. Not just in that, "Yeah, I could look at a new book," kind of way, either. You love books in the way that makes you ponder just how many books you can put on your kids birthday lists and still make it look like they were the ones who made the selections.

Not that I've ever done that or anything. :-)

Enter Homeschool Library Builder.

This site has fabulous deals on books that homeschoolers salivate over. There's even a yard sale cheap section: a $1 bin, a $2 bin, $3 bin and a $5 bin. A quick look through the $1 bin turned up books from the Anne of Avonlea series, among others. Not your typical cast-offs!

In addition to your routine search by subjects, Homeschool Library Builder also has a tool that allows you to narrow your results by curriculum. I entered "Ambleside" as a search term and was rewarded with books in the Library Catalog listed by Ambleside Online Level. I noticed that this was a possibility with Tapestry of Grace, as well, and know that something like that would take a lot of work out of the more labor-intensive curricula available.

Memberships are available, but they are free. Essentially, you are just creating an account to make purchases, with one important caveat: for each dollar you spend, you earn a Book Point. Fifteen book points translates to $1 in your account to use toward future purchases.

The company also offers a newsletter, fundraising options, referral bonuses, and more. Definitely something to add to your bookmarks!

Review: A family Christmas, MG style

My mom knows how to do Christmas.

This is a woman who never met a Nutcracker she didn't like. Who slapped velvet and candy striping on every flat surface in the house. Who to this day still owns both a hat and a stocking with my name written in glitter across the cuff. Who invested bundles in those animatronic Santas sipping coffee, Tiggers bouncing on sleds and skeletal white deer grazing on ... is that fake snow?

Growing up amidst all that holiday splendor means that the bar was set pretty high for me as I approached the idea of setting my own family's backdrop for Christmas. Since my taste runs fairly well counter to my mother's in oh, call it every way imaginable, it wasn't very hard to walk away from the general trappings of Christmas.

(Except for the fake icicles. I don't know if you've ever had the bad fortune of walking past a fake tree that's been bathed in silver strands of metallic-looking tinsel, but let me tell you this--you simply can not escape without a few hangers on clinging, Mission: Impossible-style, to your rear-end. Consider them a souvenir for later, because it will take some sort of reverse ionization process to peel them away from your body. I speak from experience. Thanks to my mom's addiction to fake icicles, I carried a fabric softener sheet with me to school every morning from December first through January sixth until I was in college. My dad taught me how to de-tinsel myself in the school bathroom so that I could hold my head high despite the fact that I most likely smelled like one of my mom's cinnamon room sprays and was wearing a Santa sweater complete with glitter and bells. Not that any of this has shaped how I feel about Christmas or anything.)

I love Christmas. Actually, let me narrow that down for you: I love Advent. Advent is a season that I can connect with on a level that so often eludes me when it comes to holy days. Advent centers on waiting for a child. Not just any child, of course, but The Child. The One. The fulfillment of the promise and the prophecy. The Savior. And while I can say that I sit here today waiting on that Savior to come again, I can say even more heartily that yes, I have waited on a child. And I know what that anticipating feels like. I know the quickening in your chest. I know the pain of the days that pass. I know what it is to check and double-check a calendar. To pine. To plan and to hope.

Advent is a season that mothers understand almost too well, isn't it?

Because the focus of my family is on Advent, our decorating centers on that theme as well. Our Advent wreath is a prominent feature of our holiday display. Yes, we have a Christmas tree but no, we do not employ tinsel. We also have a row of stockings that will be growing this year. And, finally, the centerpiece: our nativity scene.

Our nativity was given to us as a wedding gift by my father-in-law's slightly eclectic older sister. As no single set met her strict criteria as to what a nativity should look like, she mixed and matched elements until she got it right in her eyes. As a result, we have a disturbingly anglo-looking Mary fluttering beatific eyelashes in the direction of a preschooler with blond hair who appears to be frolicking in a Montessori-inspired sensory experience that centers on hay. Hovering safely out of view is a supremely country-crafts angel that is made of completely different materials than the rest of the set. She is, we always say, just happy to be there.

I wouldn't trade this set for the world. It is nothing that I would ever pick out on my own, and it couldn't be farther from the slim, glass figures that my mother displayed every year as I was growing up. No, this little hodge podge scene is special. It was hand-picked for us. It's unique. And it's a conversation starter, to be sure.

But it is completely off-limits to my kids. Why? Because it is a one-of-a-kind. Irreplaceable. And not something I want to part with lightly.

This saddens me. If there's one element of my mother's idea of Christmas that I want to preserve in my own traditions it's the sense of approachability that my mother mastered over the years. You see, while I may still cringe at the thought of my mother's outlandish apple garlands circling the entire circumference of the family room, I can still bask in the knowledge of the fact that none of those things that cluttered our home during the month of December were verboten to me. If anything, my mother loved sharing her whimsy with us, encouraging us to come alongside her as she crafted her own ideal winter wonderland. That kind of memory covers a multitude of sins--maybe even the sin of playing Christmas music the day after Halloween. (Well, maybe not.)

I realized that I was falling short in this area when Jo was just a wee one. She was drawn to our nativity set like tinsel to just-pressed wool, and it was all I could do to keep it out of her reach. The thing was, though, I didn't want to keep it out of her reach. I loved the questions that she was inspired to ask. I loved that she wanted to engage in the story of Jesus' birth. But how to compromise?

The answer seemed to come, a decade ago now, in the form of a small, wooden nesting box filled with weeble-like figures representing the nativity story. Each piece was shaped like a tiny bowling pin, all the way down to a bowling pin donkey and a swaddled up Jesus shaped like (you guessed it) a bowling pin. The drawback in this set was its size. The pieces were too small to be handled safely by toddlers (I can't tell you how many times I had to ask visiting two year-old to spit Joseph out of their curious little mouths) and just the right size for losing. We managed to keep the set together but every year, it was a scavenger hunt to locate the missing wise men before the Christmas boxes went back into hibernation.

Having a toddler once again, I knew that I'd once again look forward to helping a little one begin to piece together the miraculous puzzle that is the story of our Savior being born. I was looking forward to acting out the story with Oliver, who loves figures of all sorts and is especially fond of "feeding" any and all characters. But I knew that his tendency to stick things in his mouth would probably keep me from pulling out our little weeble nativity. Who wants to go to the ER to have an X-ray to confirm that your two year-old has a shepherd in his stomach?

Thankfully, in the ten years that have passed since Jo was a toddler, the market for nativities for kids has exploded. A quick on-line search yields offerings from many of the larger toy companies, as well as a smattering of smaller products with specific markets--soft cloth nativities, build-your-own nativity, etc. Who knew?

Most exciting to those of us who are into the hands-on storytelling opportunities provided by a nativity are the nativity playsets. These are actual toys--meant to be played with. I can't tell you what I would have done for such a thing back when Jo was using her Miss Clavel doll to approximate the mother of God. The chance to act out the story, to take a small part in the action, brings children so much closer to understanding what Christmas--and Advent--are all about.



This is Oliver, trying out the Nativity Figurine Set from One 2 Believe. The set comes with 14 PVC figurines, a manger, a palm tree, a hard plastic creche and a small storybook that outlines the basics of the Biblical account of Jesus' birth. This set has become Oliver's number one plaything as of late. He likes to set up all of the figures in a line, or tote them around in a yellow plastic bucket that he seems to always have in hand. The pieces are the perfect size of playing, and seem to be durable enough to withstand some fairly constant wear and tear at the hands of a child who doesn't necessarily understand the meaning of the word "gentle" just yet.

I will say that as a Christ-follower, I am forever flummoxed by the attributes that normally crop up in nativities. Blue eyed Josephs, blond shepherds and what on earth are those wise men doing there?!?! This set stays true to the societal norms and encompasses the usual inaccuracies.



In researching for this review, I found loads of other similar sets--many at comparable or lower prices. While I am not wowed by this particular set, I will say that it seems to offer more pieces (and therefore, more options) than several of the others I saw. This one seems to be geared toward the younger set; several are clearly more life-like, while the facial features and general feel of these figures are cartoonish and playful. Oliver has a particular affection for the two sheep, while the older children are impressed that a camel is included.

Al in all, the set accomplishes exactly what I was looking for: an approachable way to allow my children to participate in the most important part of the Christmas. No tinsel needed!