Percival Blakeney Academy

Books Read in 2011

2011-08-31T09:00:00.002-04:00

I had so much fun recording the books I read (and refused to finish) in 2010 and 2009 that I thought I'd keep at it. I think that last year's count was somewhere around 72 books. Looking forward to the coming year of reading.
January
Here Come the Brides - Bernard Glemser (I remembered reading this one out of one of my grandmother's Readers' Digest Condensed Books volumes and loving it. It was much funnier that I recalled. I don't think I was able to pick up all the little digs at personalities that he throws in. I was chortling so much that my dh picked it up and read it after me. He thought it was hilarious too.)
The Hunger Games - Susan Collins (Another book that I read and handed straight to dh. It is really quite good and left me eager to find the sequels.)
A Carribean Mystery - Agatha Christie
The Body in the Library - Agatha Christie
The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie (I have enjoyed all the Christie that I've read, but this one was especially interesting. It was the first work published and introduces Poirot as a Belgian refugee during World War I.)
Catching Fire - Susan Collins
Mockingjay - Susan Collins (I enjoyed the rest of the Hunger Games series as much as the first, although the pacing in the end of the first book did throw me a bit. Looking forward to having the older kids read it so we can talk about it. It manages to pull off a distopian situation that still provides a right path for individuals to tread. In an evil situation, one can choose well.)
Village Centenary - Miss Read (More of a chronicle of life in a village than a story with plot. But the most spot on character sketches.)
Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things - Frandy O. Frost & Gail Steketee (I think even if hoarding doesn't directly effect your family, it is worth considering the emotional entanglements we have with our possessions.)
January total: 9
February
Betsy - Tacy - Maud Hart Lovelace
Betsy - Tacy and Tib - Maud Hart Lovelace
Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill - Maud Hart Lovelace (I read these a few years ago, back when I was indulging in a lot of childrens' lit that I'd missed in my own childhood. Reading that three of the related books were going to be re-released reminded me of how much I'd enjoyed these. So I'm working through the books about Betsy and Tacy in order to better enjoy the new to me stories of their friends Winona and Emily. Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown has one of my favorite descriptions of a reader's feelings toward a library. Betsy and the Great World is a lovely description of Europe just before the darkness of World War One descends on the continent. And I was intrigued to learn that Heavens to Betsy was often not available in libraries because the topic of Betsy and her sister Julia changing churches was too controversial.)
Borders of Infinity - Lois McMaster Bujold (Two of the stories in this collection were in Young Miles, but the third was new to me. I think these are great stories for considering the meaning and responsibilities of leadership.)
Brothers in Arms - Lois McMaster Bujold
Shards of Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold
Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold (This series has been some good comfort reading during our unpacking and settling in time.)
Year's Best SF 15 - ed. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (Not the best of the best in my mind, but several were entertaining. Probably constrained by the short story requirement.)
Thrush Green - Miss Read
Methuselah's Children - Robert Heinlein
Lies Homeschooling Moms Believe - Todd Wilson (There were some good lessons in this book about the lies whispered in our ears about not measuring up to other homeschoolers. But I also think that he's too quick to dismiss possible shortcomings and failures as myth. It is possible to live in a way that offers our children a stone or a snake in place of the bread or fish that they are asking for and need. I'll try to write more on this one later.)
February total: 11
Year to date: 20
March
Neuromancer - William Gibson
March total: 1
Year to date: 21
April
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
The Evolution of Calpernia Tate - Jacqueline Kelly (I was a little hesitant to read this book when it came out last year. I've learned to be cynical about young adult books that are being pushed as the latest great thing. And I'll confess that I feared the book would have a plot pitting a plucky girl held back by her superstitious and stupid family. But this was a charming read. Calpernia is best described as curious and wondering, not bad traits to want to encourage in young readers. I thought the family was depicted gently. Not everyone holds Calpernia's interests in high esteem, but I never got the sense that the parents were being made fun of. If her mom is putting a higher priority on sewing and cooking, it is because she sees that the reality of life is that Calpernia's future family will have to depend on these skills. I enjoyed the story and hope there will be more Callie Vee stories to come.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J. K. Rowling
April total: 3
Year to date: 24

May
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner from Azkeban - J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J. K. Rowling (I could say that I'm rereading these book to get ready for my writing class. And that was part of why I picked up the first one. But I have to confess that I also very much enjoy reading these books and love the special little touches she throws into the stories.)
Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly - Gail Carson Levine (This is a nice writing book suitable for adults or for children. Chapters include some good authorship encouragement as well as some nice writing exercises. I like that she is a sucessful author, who remembers what it is to struggle with getting words onto paper.)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J. K. Rowling (My reading this prompted my older kids to reread it too. Now we're ready for the last movie.)
May Total: 7
Year to Date: 31

June
Shop Class as Soulcraft - Matthew B. Crawford (An interesting book about the emotional and mental satisfaction that comes from working with one's hands. The book is an expanded version of an article on the same topic. Definitely worth a look.
Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor - Stephanie Barron (I'm fast coming to the conclusion that some of the best writing is contained within mysteries. They weren't much to my liking when I was young - except for Dick Francis. But a well crafted mystery very much satisfies now. This series has Jane Austin as a sometimes sleuth. I thought it was well done.)
Hannah's List - Debbie Macomber (I have enjoyed this author and even the series this was from. But this wasn't her best. I forced myself to finish it and then forgot to add it to the list when I updated it.)
Jane and the Wandering Eye - Stephanie Barron
The Lost Hero - Rick Riordan (First book in the new series that follows the Percy Jackson series.)
The New Rules of College Admissions - ed by Stephen Kramer & Michael London
Acceptance - Dave Marcus (Exceptional book about the college admissions game.)
June Total: 7
Year to Date 38

July
The Homeschool Liberation League - Lucy Frank (Affectionate YA novel about school and homeschooling.)
A Presumption of Death - Dorothy Sayers
Murder Must Advertise - Dorothy Sayers
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Attenbury Emeralds - Dorothy Sayers
The Tripods Attack - John McNichol (Steampunk YA fan fiction with H. G. Wells, G. K. Chesterton and Father Brown. Quite entertaining. Looking forward to the sequel.)
July Total: 6
Year to Date: 44

August
The Language of Science and Faith - Francis Collins (Really excellent book.)
Her Mother's Hope - Francine Rivers
Nine Tailors - Dorothy Sayers
August Total: 3
Year to Date: 47

September
Jane and the Stillroom Maid - Stephanie Barron
Jane and the Prisoner in the Wool House - Stephanie Barron
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" - Washington Irving
Fairacre Festival - Miss Read
Shadow of the Moon - M. M. Kaye
September Total: 5
Year to Date: 52

October
A Little Princess - Frances Burnett
Crazy U - Andrew Ferguson

Novel Writing Coop Class

2011-04-27T21:23:00.003-04:00

We had so much fun with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the Secret Novel Writing Club last year that we're planning to do it again. This time we get to write with a bigger group.

I'll be using the How to Teach a Child to Write a Novel lessons from Little Blue School to teach middle school aged would be writers the elements of a novel and even to rough out chapters. If all goes well, we may even end the year with some rough drafts. These lessons are really nicely done, with a good mix of humor, literary lessons and practical wordsmithing. I can't wait to see what the group is like.

Maybe I'll even succeed in finishing NaNoWriMo myself this year.

College Basketball Star Reads First Book

2011-04-22T10:08:00.003-04:00

While I'll give the young man in this article a thumbs up for finally going after the degree that his prowess in sport gave him access to, I have to ask two questions. Will he manage to get an education in any sense of the word? And how can his former teachers and professors do anything but hang their heads in shame?

Read through the comments from other instructors who talk about how few of their students read.

The connection between reading and a household with books isn't because there is some magical power in text imprinted paper. The connection is between families who value knowledge enough to spend their treasure on it and children who will likewise grow up curious to learn. (If you know exactly how many bookshelves will fit in each bedroom but can't say how big your tv is, then chances are you know what I mean.)

On Buying Local in Homeschooling

2011-03-24T09:07:00.003-04:00

There is a spat brewing at the moment over the speakers' lineup at the MidWest Homeschool Convention that I'll be attending in a week. One particular speaker crossed the line in his behavior at a previous conference and was disinvited by the organizers. I personally won't miss him any. But I am bothered by the efforts of some of the attendees to encourage other vendors to pull out and to encourage registered attendees to not come.

I emailed a few vendors that were listed as coming to Cincinnati. I wanted them to know that I was looking forward to the vendor hall and going through all the options on homeschool materials.

Our background is that we've been outside the Continental US for all of our active homeschooling, until a couple months ago. We either had no conventions or only the small one that was in Hawaii (held at a largish church).

Several of the vendors have written me back. A couple of the comments struck me as notable.

One vendor said that while they had intended to come, he and his wife were in their seventies and they had realized that driving to four conferences in thirty days was beyone their physical capabilities. (He said that they would be providing the same free shipping that would have been offered at the conference, because they just had to cut back on their driving.)

Another vendor mentioned that they had been attending the conferences for several years but had seen that they lost money nearly every year. (I assume once they subtracted lodging, transportation and any vendor fee.) FWIW, this vendor sells books that are probably attractive to the same customers who are now considering not coming. So the kerfluffle will have a big impact on his customer base.

Finally, there was a comment on one of the convention's FB updates, that basically accused them of being in it only for profit and not giving anything back to the homeschool community. This struck me as rather uncharitable. (FWIW, my dh and I think that national defense is important enough to have devoted our adult lives to military service - but we still depend on the paycheck to pay our rent and buy our groceries. You can be devoted to something and still want it to be worth the time and effort that you put into it.) I understand that convention organizers would feel inspired to put in the effort to host a convention our of the idea that it is good for the greater homeschool community. Maybe they do even see it in terms of a ministry. But if I want a professional, well won conference, I don't think that I should begrudge them using the returns on it in place of a regular income.

There can be moments of sticker shock in homeschooling. I know there have been several times when I've totalled up my cart full of materials and then sat back and thought, "Really? That's a lot when it's all added up." I try to justify things by considering how many of my kids will use it or how many years it will be good for or by figuring the weekly cost. But sometimes I end up spending a few more hours combing through Amazon to see what I can get a little better deal on.

But to what extent am I cutting off my homeschooling nose to spite my face? Amazon may save me a few dollars. Sometimes it might save me even a hundred dollars in a years worth. But how much of that is worth spending in order to encourage the future production of more homeschool materials. Amazon is a delivery method. They don't research, write or publish books. They don't go through the painstaking process of editing copy. And as thankful as I am that they have been able to get me materials quickly and reliably, I also want to reward those whose hard work created the books in the first place.

All of which is just a gentle reminder that there is a way to "buy local" in homeschooling materials too. There are vendors who comb through products to find quality materials. There are curriculum developers who write study guides and writing or science programs. There are publishers who comb through old books looking for classics to reprint and who consider new authors looking for great potential. There are busy homeschool moms who polish the units they produce for their own kids in order to make it available to others. Buying from these producers of homeschool materials is a way of investing in the future. It's not always possible. But I think that it is worth considering.

Homeschool School Room Spring Cleaning

2011-03-14T17:47:00.007-04:00

Ok, urged on by the need to get this finished, a timely thread on The Well Trained Mind and a real need to stop reading about the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, I'm off to do some spring cleaning in our school room.

Actually, I'm not sure if you can call it spring cleaning, since I'm still unpacking and setting up the space. Our school room is in the basement. That will probably be lovely in the summer months, but it can be a bit chilly when it is cooler. I'm not really willing to use a space heater or to open up the heating vents down there, because that will drive our electric bill through the roof. I imagine that we'll be getting lots of use out of our snuggies in the winter.

This is the view from the stairs. As you can see, we have a few books. I was able to get most of them out of boxes and onto shelves, but they aren't arranged by topic as much as I'd like.

This is looking toward the back door. I'd like to move the table onto the rugs and put another rug on this side for Playmobil and Lego play.

This is looking toward the stairs. Those are boxes that need to be unpacked and dealt with.

All in all, I've got my work cut out for me. By the way, I don't think that a school room is necessary, essential or even the best way to homeschool. This is primarily to give us a place to put our books and to spread out projects without having to put them away for every meal. I imagine that even when this is finished, we will do a large part of our school on the living room couch or in bean bags in bedrooms. The kids are anxiously awaiting warm weather so they can do their work on the back porch. So don't take this clean up as a suggestion that you need to have some big dedicated space in order to be a good or effective homeschooler.

Plan for a Homeschool Convention

2011-03-06T20:08:00.003-05:00

I'm looking forward to the MidWest Homeschool Convention at the end of the month. It's been a couple of years since I was at a convention and I haven't been at a big, vendor filled convention since before we started homeschooling.

I'm making my plans and checking them twice. Trying to find a balance between hitting the talks I want to see and spending some hard time in the vendor hall checking out curriculum.

I was tickled to read the plan for coping with a homeschool convention that is on this homeschooler's blog. Lots of good considerations.

For Those Contemplating Homeschooling

2011-02-25T13:08:00.002-05:00

Welcome to the wild, wonderful and wacky world of homeschooling. I think it's a great choice to consider. I've had several friends and relatives asking me about starting homeschooling lately, and this is some of what I've been thinking about their questions.

One of the books that I frequently suggest is Lisa Welchel's So You're Thinking About Homeschooling. It has several chapters that profile a range of different homeschooling styles. There are so many different ways of thinking about and going about homeschooling, that it can be overwhelming to try to figure out what even looks good for future research. I think this book can give you some major subheadings to think about. Even if it convinces you that a couple approaches aren't to your liking, then that is something that you won't have to keep thinking about.

My bent is toward classical, literature heavy, academically rigorous homeschooling. But that doesn't mean that I expect kindergarteners to be writing essays or figuring out algebra problems. One of the main things you can accomplish in the early years is to develop a culture and habit of learning. That means that you and your kids are curious. You check books out from the library and read them together. You look at the nature around you. You spend time in museums looking and wondering about what you see.

But small digestable bits. Even if you have rigorous long range plans, it is better (in my opinion) to build a solid foundation gently and one day at a time. So let the books about science be picture books that you can read in one sitting. Let the nature outings be short and interspersed with playing. Don't feel like you have to enjoy every exhibit in the museum or every animal in the zoo in one visit.

It is great to look around at some of the cool high level stuff that homeschoolers are doing with older kids. But don't get too wrapped around the axle about it. It is hard to know with a kindergartener where their talents and strengths will be at 10 or 17. And the options you will have for school in 5-10 years will be totally different. (I could start naming major curriculum that weren't around when we started homeschooling back in 2003 and probably get to 20 before I had to pause and think. For that matter, there are some major providers who are no longer around.) Concentrate on basic skills like reading, counting, days of the week, seasons, etc. And on habits like sitting for 10 minute lessons with frequent breaks for playing.

My most recommended links for new homeschoolers are blogs. I think they are more dynamic than some of the big advertiser supported sites.

Guilt Free Homeschooling (Her kids are now graduated, but her articles are collected into nice topical groups.)

Handbook of Nature Study (Outdoor Challenges that can be used by anyone from preschool to high school.)

Harmony Art Mom (Same blogger as Handbook of Nature Study, but with challenges on art and music.)

I tend to use a lot of material from Susan Wise Bauer. She has some video Q&A sessions that I thought were nice. Some are about her oldest son, who is now in college, but there are also nice bits relative to younger kids (I loved the one about the mandatory quiet time for everyone in the afternoon.)

Paula's Archives has some good ideas about what to do with younger kids while you are trying to do school with the older ones.

The forums at The Well Trained Mind can be a good resource, with a couple caveats. There are thousands of board members with hundreds online at any one time. That means that you will find someone with a glowing and a glowering opinion on just about anything you can think of. So take any comments with a grain of salt. I think it is also human nature to rave about what you've picked up that is new. Sometimes these glowing reports don't outlast the season. It can be a great source of information and support, but like any big group, it can also be a source of discontent and irritation. Remember that you are the person who best knows your own kids and your own talents and limitations. (I also like the Curriculum boards a little better than the General board.)

Hope this is helpful. It's a wild ride, but I think it's well worth it. Don't think that you have to have the next 13 years planned out before you start. (I wish I had the carefully laid out plan I wrote years ago that detailed how I'd get the kids through calculus by 11th grade. There are days when I need the laugh.)

Book Review: Lies Homeschooling Moms Believe

2011-02-23T15:58:00.002-05:00

I just finished the book Lies Homeschooling Moms Believe by Todd Wilson.

The gist of the book (illustrated with cartoons that hit pretty close to home) is that homeschooling moms need to cut themselves a break, that they are driven to feelings of inadequacy and depression by continually comparing themselves to other homeschooling moms. He goes on to say that all homeschooling families and moms have areas that they struggle with, but that we tend to judge others by the small part of their lives that are on public display.

I agree with this, so far. The conclusion is where I can't track with him. His solution is for us to not worry so much about what we're doing. Not only about keeping up with the Jones' but also about how many subjects we're tackling and how much we're doing.

I feel like this is a little like my reaction to the Mary in a Martha World type books that exhort me to just let go more and enjoy the moment. That's great, except that my problem isn't usually in enjoying the moment. My struggles are with laziness and procrastination. It's not that I'm not spending enough time in communion with others but that my sink is full of dishes and the bed is piled with unfolded laundry. My homeschooling struggles aren't with trying to get third year Latin fit around the concert piano schedule, but in getting math and reading and history done.

And while I can raise an amen with the reminder that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," the fact that we are all falling short every day doesn't really give me leave to rest on my laurels. I wish that there had been one more chapter or two that reminded me to check out the log in my own eye before inspecting specks in others.

Maybe the reason that my kids are falling behind is because I'm too eager to cancel school for a park day or a museum visit or a scout project (all good things individually, but with a time opportunity cost that must be considered). Maybe I'm spending hours on the boards talking about homeschooling instead of doing it. Maybe I'm searching for the perfect curriculum instead of getting 80% of the job done with what I already have. Maybe I'm avoiding school altogether because I don't want to confront the bad work habits and attitudes that I've allowed to fester (in part because they reflect my own).

Yes, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." But that includes me, it doesn't excuse me. Instead of waving a magic wand and excusing homeschooling moms of feelings of guilt, I wish that the book had considered, even for a moment, that the guilty feelings might stem from some sins of omission and commission on the part of homeschooling moms.

So by all means, read the book. Do take on the advise to stop constantly comparing yourself and your homeschool and your kids to the not totally real presentations on the covers of homeschool magazines or in decorative (but selective) blogs. But don't forget that there are problems in homeschooling that come from our hearts and actions. If I'm lazy or if I don't spend more time on school than on Facebook, it is hard to expect better from my kids. Maybe my kids' inadequacy with Latin has something to do with the crisp freshness of their unused Latin texts. Sometimes failure is a reminder to do better.

A New Campus for PBA

2011-02-23T12:04:00.002-05:00

We are nearing the end of the beginning of setting up the new PBA campus. A few weeks ago we found a nice rental house, which will not only give us enough bedrooms to let each kid have their own room, but will give us a good sized basement to use as a school space.

I will probably need a few trips to Ikea before the basement is quite ready for action. Several bookcases now line the walls and we're within the last few boxes of being unpacked down there. Throw down a couple rugs, move the old kitchen table in and I think we're ready to go.

Homeschool Curriculum Wisdom

2011-02-23T09:13:00.002-05:00

Like gardeners pining over showy blossoms and abundant fruit trees in the latest seed catalogs, homeschoolers often spend the dark ages of winter thinking about plans for next year's homeschool. By the time the spring convention season rolls around, my basket of homeschooling catalogs is overflowing with dog eared, tape flaged and highlighted offerings from various companies. Each one seems to offer the promise of a year of blissful learning where knowledge is gained with little extra planning, a minimum of effort and low time expendatures. Some seem to assure me that this product or that program will even make us happy.

The glow of planning can take you over the hump of cold dreary gray days. But it can also make you give up on what you're doing in favor of the mirage of "next year". But like in gardening, "next year's" bounty is probably more of the result of dilligent daily efforts, nipping small problems in the bud and perseverance than in some miracle root stock. I'm probably not the only one to notice that the spring and fall offers blog posts and board threads full of the wonders of this new scheme or that new curriculum. If you look closely, often the most rhapsodic are those who have only been using it for a few days or weeks. But by November, how many are looking for new uses for desk top organizers and plastic file drawers. How many have discovered that their shiny new curriculum does require effort and dilligence? How many are already looking for the next new thing?

I was reminded of this when reading a thread about high school planning on The Well Trained Mind Forums. One particular response caught my eye. After observing that we need to take our "blue sky" plans and then trim them down to what is practical and possible, Janice in NJ wrote this:

I think the hardest part of it was letting go of the list. It
took a LONG time and a ton of work to find it. Manage it. Locate classes and
resources. Etc. etc. etc. But in the end, much of it was a bad fit, so it had to
be chucked. (Depressing! Makes me feel like I'm wasting my life going in
circles! Tough to swallow. Oh well. I just had to get over it! ) It's a bit like
finding all of the "best" third grade curriculum. Once you find it all and you
buy it all and you spend your entire SUMMER scheduling it all, it's really tough
to abandon it when it doesn't work for your kid! Been there. Done that. Could
write the book on that one! But I ended up having to ditch it every time. And
then I had to resist wanting to tell everyone all about it - EVERY TIME! Even
though I was learning through experience that the best isn't the best if it
doesn't fit my kid. We older gals on this board generally stop answering those
kinds of questions over on the K-5 boards. The ones that go, "Which math program
is the best?" or "Do we have to diagram?" or "Which spelling program is the
best?" We know that the best one is the one that YOU have the potential, the
time, the understanding, and the ability to WORK WITH at your house. Everything
else will just end up being a black hole for your resources (time, money,
enthusiasm, and talent). And the list of things you and your kids have the
potential to use well is different for everyone. The 3rd grade writing program
that will work in your house is the one that you and your child have the
expertise and the motivation to USE! That's the best one. The great, best, cream
of the crop choice. Period. Same thing here.

The best depends on a lot more than "best of." Make sense?
It is so easy to get fixated on developing the perfect plan. But it's also easy to lose sight of the fact that what is best for our family may have nothing to do with what is common, popular or fashionable. Maybe the latest development in curriculum is just what we've been looking for. But maybe what we really need is the homeschooling equivalent of heirloom seeds (something that isn't burning up the homeschool boards, but has kept its place on our shelves because it works). Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

My Brush with Reagan

2011-02-06T11:52:00.001-05:00

I'm really too young to remember Reagan in much detail. But I have one near brush with him that meant a lot.

I was an exchange student in West Germany in 1986. I lived on my host family's dairy farm. But my host parents were determined that I was going to see more than just the farmlands of Gemmingen. So they arranged lots of day trips and set up visits with friends, family and all sorts of distant connections. The brother-in-law of a neighbor was a local politician in Berlin, so off we went to see the great city.

There were six of us - four German teens, myself and another American who was staying on a neighboring farm. We all packed into a car and drove the long way through East Germany to West Berlin. I didn't realize it at the time, but President Reagan was scheduled to visit Berlin that week. The first I knew was when all the Germans in the car started laughing and carrying on at something on the radio.
I asked what was so funny and was informed that my president had gone to the Berlin Wall and told Mr. Gorbachev to tear it down. They couldn't stop laughing at how idiotic a suggestion they thought this was.

During the visit I was able to visit the wall myself at Checkpoint Charlie and also where it snaked around to within a few blocks of the house where we were staying. It did look formidable and impregnable. And after all, it had been there in one form or another since before I was born. The Soviet Union looked strong and unlikely to want to tear it down anytime soon, unless it was in order to absorb all of West Berlin too.

I've had several opportunities to go back to Berlin, including the three years that I lived there. Only ten years after Reagan's speech, I visited with my husband. Wanting to show him where the wall had been, we went to the site of Checkpoint Charlie. Not only was there no wall, but there was another full block where I remembered the No Man's Land, double wall sections and watchtowers to have been. It was only by going back to Museum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie and then pacing east that I was able to give him an idea of about where the wall had been. A few years later, the Berlin city council voted to place markers along the streets of Berlin to indicated where the wall had once divided the city.

I loved to tell that story to Berliners and others when we lived there. Not as an I told you so about how great one American president or one political viewpoint was. But rather to remind them that dreams of change that can see impossible, desires to topple systems that seem of infinite endurance and to replace them with something better aren't just a folly worthy of mocking. They really can come to pass.

New Background

2011-01-21T11:28:00.003-05:00

I thought that since we'd been out of Asia for over a month, that it was time to update the blog design a little bit.

But I must say it is a little disconcerting that all the books have had their titles carefully removed. For someone who is happily married in part because my sweetie took the time to rearrange his bookshelf before my first visit, browsing other people's books is half the fun.

(Yep, evidently, bringing his copy of TASS is Authorized to Announce to the forefront was a shrewd move.)

BTW, We've been having a great time seeing friends and families, but are still only part of the way through relocating. Some of the hard bits are still to come, like finding a house and unpacking. So I imagine that blogging will remain light for the next month or so.

Middle Ages Homeschool Resources

2010-12-10T02:41:00.003-05:00

Here is a list of resources compiled from recommendations from other homeschoolers on the Well Trained Mind Boards. Books marked with an x indicate they were mentioned multiple times. I added in books that I was reminded of that we enjoyed last time we did the middle ages. I also have a few more books listed at the end that I found searching. I'll need to check these out to see if they are good.

The good news is that I am pretty sure we have over half of these books in storage. The bad news is that we're going to need a lot of bookshelf space for this era. And I think that our reading list will probably outpace the time alloted for the middle ages. But this is a good problem to have. Better than the alternative.

1066: The Year of the Conquest

Adam of the Road

Adventures in the Middle Ages: Good Times Detective Agency – Linda Bailey

Adventures with the Vikings: Good Times Detective Agency – Linda Bailey

The Ancient Celts (Scholastic; some detailed description of pagan practices)
The Apple and the Arrow

Augustine Came to Kent (Bethlehem Books)

Bard of Avon- Stanley

The Beduin’s Gazelle (stand alone sequel to The Ramsey Scallop)

Beorn the Proud – Madeline Pollard

Beowulf: A New Telling – Robert Nye

Beowulf – Ian Serraillier

The Bible Smuggler

The Black Arrow (by Robert Louis Stevenson)

The Blue Fairy Book (and other colors, by Andrew Lang)

Brother Caedfael mysteries – Ellis Peters

Canterbury Tales retold by Geraldine McCaughrean
Castle (by Macaulay)

Castle Diary - Richard Platt x

Cathedral – David Macaulay

Catherine Called Birdy - Karen Cushman

The Children of Odin (by Padraic Colum; Norse myths)

Crispin: Cross of Lead – Avi x
D’ Aulaire’s Book of Norse Myths x

Dark is Rising sequence – Susan Cooper (as a treat after we’ve read Arthur)

Days of Knights and Damsels (activity book)

The Door in the Wall x

Famous men of the middle ages x

Famous Men of the Renaissance

Favorite Medieval Tales - Mary Pope Osborne

Good Masters, Sweet Ladies x
The Hidden Treasure of Glaston – Eleanore Jewett (Bethlehem Books)

Ivanhoe Sir Walter Scott (Great Illustrated Classics)

Joan of Arc – Stanley xx

King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table – Roger Lanceyln Green

King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table – Rosemary Sutcliff (The Sword and the Circle, The Light Beyond the Forest, The Road to Camlann)

King Arthur and his Knights (CD) – Jim Weiss

The King of Ireland's Son (by Padraic Colum)

The Kings Shadow x

The Kitchen Knight – Margaret Hodges

Knight’s Fee – Rosemary Sutcliff

Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare

Leif the Lucky (by D'Aulaires)

The Little Duke – Charlotte Yonge

The Making of a Knight - Patrick O'Brien

Marco Polo for Kids (activity book)

Matilda Bone - Karen Cushman

Medieval Fashions (Dover coloring book)

A Medieval Feast - Aliki

Medieval Tales (by Mary Pope Osborne)

Men of Iron – Howard Pyle

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (by Howard Pyle)

The Midwife's Apprentice - Karen Cushman
The Minstrel in the Tower

The one and future king TE White x
Otto of the Silver Hand (by Howard Pyle)

The Pied Piper of Hamelin (by Browning; included here based on its setting of the late 1200's, not on when it was written)The

Ramsey Scallop – Frances Temple

The Red Keep – Allen French

The Road to Damietta by Scott O'Dell - about the life of St. Francis

Robin Hood

Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest

Saint Patrick: Pioneer Missionary to Ireland (Christian Liberty Press)

Saladin Diane Stanley

The Samurai’s Tale – Eric Haagard

The Seventh Expert

Shakespeare Stealer series

The Shield Ring – Rosemary Sutcliff

The Shining Company – Rosemary Sutcliff

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – Tolkein

Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady

Son of Charlemagne - Barbara Willard

St. George and the Dragon Margarete Hodges (My kids loved this so much the first time through the middle ages that we about wore out our copy.)

Starry Messenger (about Gallileo)

The Story of King Arthur and Other Celtic Heroes (by Padraic Colum)

The Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow – Allen French (Bethlehem Books)

Sword in the Stone xx (Separate entry because it was specifically mentioned)

The Sword in the Tree - Bulla

Sword Song – Rosemary Sutcliff

Tales from Arabian Nights (because it fit with the caliphat and harun-al-rashid)

The Trumpeter of Krakow -

Usborne Internet-Linked Medieval World

Usborne Norse Myths
The Viking News

Whipping Boy – Sid Fleishman

======

Books I found in my searches that look interesting:

Bearskin – Howard Pyle

Big John’s Secret – Eleanore Jewett

The Great and Terrible Quest - Margaret Lovett

If All the Swords in England

The Magna Carta – James Daugherty

Margurete Makes a Book - Bruce Robertson

Merlin and the Making of the King – Margaret Hodges

Minstrel in the Tower - Gloria Skurzynski

Lost Baron – Allen French

One Thousand and One Nights – Geraldine McCaughrean
Sword of the Rightful King – Jane Yolen

The White Stag – Kate Seredy

The big list is a little anglocentric. Having been in Germany last history cycle, we had a heavy exposure to figures like Charlemagne and William the Conquerer. I’d like to find more books about central European stories and history, like the Niebelungenlied and Ludwig der Springer. And religious figures like Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, whom we kept running into (but who I'd not heard of before as a protestant American). I think that I need to find some good versions of Grimm’s fairy tales.

Looking at the US with the Eyes of a Tourist

2010-12-08T01:04:00.002-05:00

After seven years of being global nomads, we're headed back to the mainland United States. The last time we lived there, Rutabaga wasn't yet of kindergarten age and Artichoke wasn't even walking. I have sadly observed that while my kids can cheerfully watch Amazing Race and point to landmarks in Rome or Hong Kong with familiarity, they can't consistently identify the regions and states of the US. Nor do they have much of a sense of American history excepted in a detached, something happened over there way.

So with the relocation of Percival Blakeney Academy to the US, it is time to put some serious effort into also grasping basic facts and nuanced stories that make up America. I want them to know not just that Kansas and Nebraska and Missouri border each other, but that there was a bloody history in the formation of Kansas that contributed to the Civil War. Even deeper, I want them to know that they have a family connection there that brushes up with the figures in history books like William Quantrill and John Brown.

So in addition to our regularly scheduled history studies, which are leaving ancient Rome and heading to the Middle Ages; we will need to add some basic American Studies. Some of this will be through local history in the DC area, which stretches from colonization to the present with highlights around both the American Revolution and the Civil War; through reading good books set in American historical periods; through a study of American holidays and through games and songs and art and anything else I can think to throw in.

This afternoon we played a couple rounds of USA Edition Borderline. This is a card game where each card has a US state or a body of water. You take turns playing a card with a state that borders the previous card. I gave myself a handicap by printing out a map with state names for the kids to use as a cheat sheet. They were pretty miserable at the beginning, especially before I gave them the map. But they both got better and got more excited at making matches. I think we'll keep playing this for a while.

December 7th

2010-12-07T19:31:00.002-05:00

December 7th went mostly unremarked here this year. Instead of standing in our back yard watching the ceremonies on USS Arizona, we were in the midst of packing up our apartment.

But I had to share this note home from a sailor on USS Enterprise from 1941. I think that there used to be stacks and stacks of these postcards for use in just such occasion. (For that matter, there is a family story of one of my uncles being stationed in Viet Nam and being ordered to sit down and write to his mom because it had been so long since he'd written that she'd contacted Red Cross.)

Thinking about Writing

2010-12-07T18:31:00.002-05:00

I signed up to do NaNoWriMo in November. No it isn't something related to a flesh eating virus. It stands for National Novel Writing Month and is a month long dare to write every day and eventually finish writing 50,000 words before the end of the month.

I failed.

I have a raft of excuses that I could float out. Probably it was more than idealistic to try to combine writing a novel and prepping for moving in the same month. I found that it was far harder than I realized to discipline myself to sitting down and writing. On the other hand I found that I thought more about what I wanted to write about than I had in a very long time. For ages I've had a story idea floating around in the back of my head, in such a formless state that calling it amoeba like would be a compliment.

One thing that did come clearly into focus is that while I have some prospectively vivid characters in my head, I don't really have a good solid conflict to write about. I'm not sure if this reflects a reluctance to throw really ugly things at my fictional creations or if it is a sign that for all the stress in my life, it is really pretty conflict free.

I also learned that I should go with what sets the stage for the most lively writing. Early on I had what felt like a brilliant and exciting idea. I made the mistake of asking other people what they thought. They couldn't get past the absurdity of the premise to see the potential in what would happen next. So I tried to make it smaller and more understandable. But I think that in the process I ended up gutting it too much.

I'm going back to that first, shiney idea that had inspired me and made me giggle and twirl my fingers in anticipation. So what if it is improbable and if you can come of with a list of reasons why it probably wouldn't happen that way in real life. This is my fictional story after all, not real life. Beginning in medias res, I am skipping over the hows and whys of the crisis and going straight to what happens to the people because of it.

I'm intending to keep writing. I may even be able to salvage some of what I wrote in November. I actually had a notebook out for some jotings while teh packers were here. I don't know if I'll be done in December or January or even in time for next November's NaNoWriMo. But I will be writing.

Campus is Moving Again

2010-11-20T08:54:00.002-05:00

It is time for Percival Blakeney Academy to pull up stakes and travel to a new campus location. It looks like the great powers that be have decided that it is time my kids actually spend some of their school years in the mainland United States. So once again it is time to clean all the cupboards, make massive trips to the trift store and make sure all the professional books are properly marked.

I will only be doing light blogging until we're resettled, sometime after the new year. I would promise to catalog our re-entry and holiday celebrations, but I'm cutting back a lot of my responsibilities and blogging is going to be one of them until I've taken care of essentials like packing up one home and finding another.

However, I do reserve the right to drop in and post some fun pictures of our travels in Japan and Europe that I've never gotten around to chronicling. I just don't promise that they'll be in any sort of order other than because I felt like it.

Why Study Literature?

2010-11-16T08:25:00.003-05:00

There are times when it feels like I'm really swimming upstream with the amount of reading I want my kids to be doing in school. And from the posts people make here about feeling out of place around workbook orriented homeschoolers or unschoolers, I'm probably not alone.

I just read the best book review, 1648 and All That by Roger Kimball, which is a review of Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order by Charles Hill (the review, alas, is for NR subscribers only). The review would be well worth finding a library copy of the Sept 20 edition of National Review.

Since I can't link to the full review, here are some snippets.

After asking what you should look for in a well qualified diplomat, Kimball lists several attributes, then continues,

How about a deep acquaintance with the mountain peaks of literature, from Homer, Aeschylus, and Thucydides through Montaigne, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Milton, and Lock, and on to Madison, Schiller, Dickens, Bismarck, Dostoevsky, Kipling, and Hermann Broch?

[ snip]

...this last qualification may be as important as all the rest, not least because, if truly accomplished, it argues possession of brains, discretion, etc.

[snip]

The questions "What kind of society should we endeavor to make?" cannot be answered, cannot even be seriously entertained, in the absence of the questions "Who are we?" and "What do we want?" And those questions, Hill argues, have been entertained in the most sustained and penetrating way in imaginative literature - understanding "literature" in the large sense that embraces the works of philosophers and historians as well as novelists and poets. In brief, as Hill writes in his prologue, "statecraft cannot be practiced in the absence of literary insight."

at the end of the review, Kimball has a long quotation from Henry Kissinger:

We have entered a time of total change in human consciousness of how people look at the world. Reading books requires you to form concepts, to train your mind to relationships. You have to come to grips with who you are. A leader needs these qualities. But now we learn from fragments of facts....Now there is no need to internalize because each fact can instantly be called up on the computer. There is no context, no motive. Information is not knowledge. People are not readers but researchers, they float on the surface. This new thinking erases context. It disaggregates everything. All this makes strategic thinking about world order impossible to achieve.

I could cheerfully go on listing all the other parts of the review that I especially enjoyed, but I probably would end up retyping the whole thing. You'd really be better off to just get a subscription to National Review so you could enjoy this sort of writing all the time. So let's just say it struck a chord, especially in my current circumstances.

Yesterday I was on the phone with the supervisor of the local personal property office trying to explain to him that we really in fact did actually have thousands of books that fell into military professional gear because of the areas that my husband works with. I always find it so amazing that there is no problem thinking of a specially fitted flight helmet as pro gear, or musical instruments as pro gear for a member of one of the Navy bands, or of medical or legal books for a military doctor or lawyer. But as soon as a more generalist military officer starts to amass a library of much beyone the Navy reading list and Fleet Tactics you get weird looks.

I've had packers threaten to quit over how many books they were having to pack. I've had moving inspectors tell me that they'd never seen so many books in their entire military and civilian career scheduling moves. It gets so tiring to seem like a freak, because we think that the world of literature and non-ficiton writing has some purpose beyond the NY Times best seller list.

I've read (and less often heard) Christians objecting to reading anything that was fiction (while still somehow making an exception for the Left Behind series and whatever else was on the end cap display at their local chain Christian bookstore). And this is hardly a new problem. The introduction to Pilgrim's Progress is Bunyan begging forgiveness and indulgence for his daring to write a piece of fiction in the hope that it might enlighten and encourage.

Anyway, I'll be clipping Kimball's essay for future encouragement. If you can get ahold of the 20 Sep edition of National Review, you should look up the review (pg 50). And it encourages me to pull out my copy of Pilgrim's Progress and start tackling the Well Educated Mind reading list again.

Books Read in 2010

2010-11-02T17:27:00.003-04:00

I fell off the wagon on recording books read in 2009, even though I did keep reading. This year I'm going to copy Palm Tree Pundit's habit of separating the running book tally and comments on what I read. Should make keeping the list going a bit less onerous.

January
A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson
Pocketful of Pinecones - Karen Andreola (One of the few fiction books about homeschooling. Highlights the joys of Charlotte Mason style education and nature study)
Desolation Island - Patrick O'Brian (Book 5 of the Aubrey-Maturin series)
The Fortune of War - Patrick O'Brian (Book 6 of the Aubrey-Maturin series) NB: DH found that this series was mentioned as good reading by Adm Stavridis in Destroyer Captain, a short book about leadership and command that DH recently enjoyed.
Mairelon the Magician - Patricia Wrede
At All Costs - David Weber (book 11 of the Honor Harrington series)
Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin
The Grand Tour - Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer (Fun book. If you like Harry Potter AND Jane Austen, you should give this series a try.)

February
The Mislaid Magician - Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith (You can skip this. Most of what made it enjoyable was the improbability of Austen's work in such a setting. But he didn't completely pull it off. Just read the original. Really, you're up to it.)

March
The Lightening Thief - Rick Riordan
Tomb of the Golden Bird - Elizabeth Peters (from the Amelia Peabody series. I also really enjoyed Red Land, Black Land, written under her real name Barbara Mertz.)
Sea of Monsters - Rick Riordan
The Christmas Train - David Baldacci (recommendation from my mil, very nice.)
Saving Darwin - Karl Giberson (I'll have to mull this one over for a bit. More of a history of the science of evolution and the conflicts over it. It is a very good history of the conflict. But I was looking for a bit more of a creed to consider.)
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert Heinlein (Read this many years ago. Good representation of Heinlein's libertarian bent, the book is credited with popularizing the phrase TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. However, it also has features some of his libertarian views on marriage customs.)
Persuassion - Jane Austen (Still one of my favorites.)

April
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen (Very different from her other books, quite funny)
The Titan's Curse - Rick Riorday
The Big Four - Agatha Christie
The Bordeaux Betrayal - Ellen Crosby
Kris Longknife: Undaunted - Mike Shepherd
The Road to Serfdom - Hayek (Great book. Worth the four months that it took to absorb it.)

May
After the Hangover - R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. (Read to review; not a favorite.)
Bird by Bird - Anne Lamont
Lessons at Blackberry Inn - Karen Andreola (I liked this.)
God King - Joanne Williamson
The Last Olympian - Rick Riordan
My Lady of Cleves - Margaret Campbell Barnes (This was a new author for me. I'm looking forward to reading more.)
King's Fool - Margaret Campbell Barnes

June
I thought about only recording the worthy books and not the light summer reading that I've been grabbing for park benches and train rides. But then I'd like to see what my reading patterns really are, not just scrub for the highlights.

Blood Secrets: Chronicles of a Crime Scene Reconstructionist - Rod Englert
Crystal Singer, Crystal Lines and Killashandra - Anne McCaffery (Not as good as when I'd read them the first time.)
Big Jack - J. D. Robb
High Noon - Nora Roberts
Murder at the Vicarage - Agatha Christie

July
More summer reading
Remembered Death - Agatha Christie
Love on a Dime - Cara Lynn James
Towards Zero - Agatha Christie (I was a bit disappointed because I'd guessed the murderer about half way through. Then she shook up the plot, and it turned out that I was totally wrong.)
Murder on the Links - Agatha Christie
Blind Trust - Terri Blackstone (What you'd expect from a paperback romance. But I was intrigued by the fact that she'd started out as a romance writer, grown disillusioned with how far she'd strayed from Christianity in her writing and left that particular branch of publishing. Then had her early books' copyrights returned to her. This book is not just a republishing, but a rewrite of the story as she wished she'd written it the first time.)
About Time - Jack Finney (Short stories about time. Some of the finest writing I've read in ages.)
Planet of the Apes - Pierre Boulle (I was surprised to see that he was also the author of The Bridge over the River Kwai. But the original novel was as much about the nature of humanity and the effects of imprisonment as about a rise of apes. Don't mistake this for the novelization of the movie remake, which was some of the worst writing I've laid hands on. I couldn't make it through the first chapter of that hash, which was a novelization of a remake of a movie of a book. There wasn't much soul left. But the original story makes me want to go back and watch the 1960's movie and see how it holds up.)
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War - Max Brooks. (You'll have to just trust me on this one. It really isn't about gore. There isn't even the sort of story arch that you would expect from a novel. It's more of an exploration of how different societies would deal with an epic disaster. Where do the strengths and weaknesses of a culture lie and what hard decisions would have to be made.)
Digital Barbarism - Mark Helprin (Really an excellent book that is more about the nature of a life lived well than just copyrights.)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves - Lynne Truss (A fun little book about punctuation. Full of sadly humorous examples of why punctuation matters. It will make you want to attend your punctuating, even while texting. Might even make you reconsider emoticons and embrace the semi colon.)
A Presumption of Death - Dorothy Sayers and Jill Paxton Walsh
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J. K. Rowling
The Return of Philo T. McGiffin - David Poyer (A novel about the Naval Academy. Crackin' good yarn.)

August
Brief Gaudy Night - Margaret Campbell Barnes (a story of Anne Boleyn)
This wasn't much of a month for deep reading. I read many chapters of several books, but completed few of them. Some of this was because I was skimming several books to get ready for the school year.

Note: I found last year that I stopped updating my reading around midsummer. This year I'm having a similar struggle. Maybe I just read more in cold months. Or perhaps the summer lends itself to browsing. I found myself reading parts of books much more than entire volumes. Or maybe it was just the mental stress of trying to sustain summer activities and plan for the school year. In any event, I did still read a lot in June - August, but not a lot to log here.

September
Cordelia's Honor - Lois Bujold
I Love a Man in Uniform: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles - Lily Burana
Dragongirl - Todd McCaffery (He should spend some more time reading his mom's books and thinking about why they work, and why this book just doesn't.)
Summer on Blossom Street - Debbie Macomber (Follows the formula of her other Blossom Street books and it's no big surprise that there are happy endings all around. But I cared about the characters and felt satisfied with the hours invested, quite unlike the experience with Dragongirl.)

October
Summer at Fairacre - Miss Read (This author has long been recommended. Worth reading.)
Writing and Selling Science Fiction - The Science Fiction Writers of America (Getting ready for some intensive writing for NaNoWriMo [also known as proof that I've taken leave of my senses]. Most of the chapters were very good and helpful in a concrete way, vice the esoteric and meditative advice in many writing books. Maybe you won't have a bug eyed monster in your story, but the nosey neighbor down the street still has to ring true to be convincing. And I appreciate that the authors included are actually sucessful, published authors rather than people I've never heard of.)
One Corpse Too Many - Ellis Peters (I read this series many years ago. Nice to see that they still hold up. Brilliant writing that doesn't feel out of date. If you like Sayers or Austen, you should give this a whirl. I've long had a dream of spending a week in a beach rental in the winter with a stack of the whole series at hand. With hot drinks and hot soup, this would be an ideal vacation.)
The Virgin in the Ice - Ellis Peters
The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell (Intriguing book about why things catch on. It would be interesting to talk to him about homeschooling.)
Housing Boom and Bust - Thomas Sowell (Really good write up of the many bad decisions that led to the housing crisis.)
A Civil Campaign - Lois Bujold (I read this one last year, twice. And it was just as entertaining the third time, maybe even more so since I've since read the earlier books in the series. Not many stories I can say that about.)
The Heretic's Apprentice - Ellis Peters

November
The Summer of the Danes - Ellis Peters
Mission of Honor - David Webber (The Honorverse may have gotten a little to unwieldy.)
In the Presence of Mine Enemies - Harry Turtledove (Well done alternate history of Germania victorious.)
Nine Tailors - Dorothy Sayers (Maybe my third time through, but I still like reading her over and over.)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J. K. Rowling (I reread this after we saw the movie. I think I actually enjoyed it more this second time than I did when I read it the weekend that the book was first released. I wasn't rushing to the end to see what happened, so I was able to more savor what was happening.)

December
Clouds of Witness - Dorothy Sayers (Another repeat.)
Dunkirk Crescendo - Bodie and Brock Thoene (A "director's cut" of Twilight of Courage. An amusing read for being stuck in an empty apartment.)

I didn't set out to try to read a book a week or a book from a bunch of different genres. I actually mentioned book reading challenges to my husband last year and he observed that he really didn't need to make reading into an obligation that he was then failing at. I have to admit that I agree.

My reading isn't constant through the year. It ebbs and flows according to our level of busyness. I got a lot of reading done on bus trips and sitting around at soccer practice. But the end of summer found me reading more magazines and websites and chapters of books that entire titles. But in the end I've already read seventy-one books and I still have a few weeks before the end of the year, with at least one flight and one long drive that present possible reading time. And of course there is the public library book sale on the 22nd...

Long Headed Locust in Japan

2010-08-29T08:03:00.001-04:00

I was trying to identify a giant insect that we had land on our balcony last summer. In the process I found a cool site with little posts about insects and other animals in Japan. Natural Japan is based in Kyushu (southern Japan). But even so, it has some good info. If you can narrow your search down to an order (like arachnids - spiders, lepidoptera - butterflies & moths, or orthoptera - grasshoppers & related insects) you can click on that term in the sidebar and see all the entries for that order.

By the way, the lovely on the balcony was an oriental long headed locust. Below is another one that we found last fall on the soccer fields. I think it's interesting that they seem to change colors as the rice in the fields changes from green to golden brown. If you're headed out to harvest rice this fall, or just hanging around the soccer fields, keep an eye out for these hoppers.

Carnival of Homeschooling

2010-08-24T19:22:00.002-04:00

Get a wide look at homeschooling at the panorama edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling.

Taxes Favor Mortgages Over Home Ownership

2010-08-19T19:55:00.003-04:00

I liked this observation in this article, "The government allows taxpayers to deduct mortgage-interest costs from their federal taxes. The program doesn’t really support home ownership, then, but home indebtorship."

I find this to be very true. We started considering paying of our house early a couple of years ago. We kept getting counseled that we would lose the tax deduction. Aside from the fact that this meant that we'd be paying more interest in order to get a fraction of it back in tax savings, I have to think that this does support having a mortgage, not owning a home.

If home ownership is something worth favoring, why not continue to favor it after the hard work of paying it off is done? Does the tax structure encourage buying a larger or more expensive house than you would otherwise (ie, without the tax benefit off the repayments)?

Music Appreciation - Children's Music

2010-08-19T08:57:00.003-04:00

I've been working on our music and art appreciation for this semester. This is an area that I've had high hopes and poor execution on. So this year, I'm trying to be more specific and actually pick our composers ahead of time, as well as adding it into our schedule.

We're starting with a cavalcade of pieces written for and about children. Some of these are very familiar. Some of them I've never heard of before. A couple have surprised me with how familiar they are, even though I didn't know what they were (for example Aquarium from Saint-Saens' The Carnaval of the Animals). Speaking of Carnaval of the Animals, I'm using a version that I heard a decade ago, driving in to work and was finally able to track down. It includes poems for each section by Ogden Nash, read by Noel Coward. You can find it on iTunes listed under Andre Kostelanetz, the conductor of the orchestra that recorded it. Kostelanetz was evidently quite the pioneer in popularizing instrumental music, sort of the Erich Kunzel of his day.

There is quite a bit going on in this month musically, even though I'm looking for basic exposure to instrument sounds and developing a habit of music listening more than composer biographies or deep understanding of the music. Still, we will probably start this right away rather than waiting for September. [NB: The list of children's oriented music grew from a list from Ambleside Online from the 2003-4 school year. It seemed like a nice place to begin.]

September

Children's Classics – This is a month of a various works that were written to be popular to children or to reflect children’s themes. What we have of these in iTunes are in the folder marked Children’s Classics.

Do all of the following pieces

Benjamin Britten-Young person's Guide to the Orchestra

o Play game at http://listeningadventures.carnegiehall.org/ypgto/ (Each kid will need a log in) Plan to spend about 4 hours playing the game over a couple days.

o After completing game, then listen to entire symphony.

Sergei Prokofiev-Peter and the Wolf

o Listen to either Ferrer or Stewart version.

o After you’ve listened once or twice, try to act this out with stuffed animals or Playmobil.

Paul Dukas-Sorcerer's Apprentice

o Read the poem Der Zauberlehrling by Goethe, first in German, then in English

Do one of the following (or check our music collection and suggest an alternative piece about or for children from classical music):

Saint-Saens- The Carnaval of the Animals

o Saint-Saens bio

o Text of the Nash poems is available at http://www.wausaudancetheatre.com/studyguides/sg_Carnival.pdf

o P.D.Q. Bach has a different version (iTunes library) This is sort of a double joke, since the Nash poems were already tongue in cheek.

o Bond’s song Oceanic is a remake of Aquarium. Listen to the Bond piece from our iTunes.

o Listen to Aquarium. Does it remind you of any movie music? (It has been used as inspiration for several pieces of movie music.)

Engelbert Humperdinck-Hansel and Gretel

o Read about Humperdinck http://www.firstcoastopera.com/humperdinck%20bio.htm

o Read a story version of Hansel & Gretel

o Read the synopsis of the opera http://www.firstcoastopera.com/hansel%20&%20gretel%20synopsis.htm

Claude Debussy-La Boite A Joujoux (The Toy Box, a ballet for children)

o Read Anderson’s The Steadfast Tin Soldier and The Tub People

o See illustrations for the ballet http://www.fulltable.com/vts/b/boite/boite.htm

Georges Bizet-Jeux d'enfants, op. 22 (Children's games)

o This is a series of short duets that are intended to represent various children’s toys or games. Listen to each one and make a guess what it represents. Check the titles of the pieces, then listen again.

Optional: Listen & watch Fantasia

Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra

2010-08-18T20:35:00.006-04:00

If you are working on music appreciation this year, you might find the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra game useful. It is a computer game that follows the pieces in the Britten symphony to teach students about the different instruments in an orchestra. The game features clips of the individual instruments playing as well as many repetitions of the main movement. I like that each phase of the game actually reinforces the characteristics of the instruments, rather than being arcade games or games that are exploratory (and sometimes fail because the student doesn't know enough about music to explore wisely). I don't have experience playing instruments, although I like to listen. I found that I was learning a lot about why instruments sound the way they do. It would take a couple hours to play through the entire game. With a free registration, the game can be saved and returned to.

The game is a production from Carnegie Hall Listening Adventures. Listening Adventures also has a feature for Dvorak's New World Symphony. Rather than a game, it is more of an illustrated performance. Images of both the featured instruments and the notes of the melody help you to "see" what you are listening to.

Carnival of Homeschooling

2010-08-17T20:19:00.002-04:00

I haven't done much blogging this summer, and it's been ages since I was part of a blog carnival. But I thought I'd throw a recent rant out to the wider world.

If you'd like to see the whole Carnival of Homeschooling, it is posted at Notes From a Homeschooling Mom.

Rockwell's Realism

2010-08-15T18:19:00.001-04:00

One of my favorite artists is Norman Rockwell. And while we're studying traditional masters like Monet, Durer and Carravagio, I decided to slide Rockwell in among them. The plan is to study him in November, a month when our thoughts tend to turn to family, traditions and American images. Rockwell's art seems like such a perfect fit for a month that includes both Veterans' Day and Thanksgiving (and is the lead in to the Christmas holidays, which feature in still more of his art).

Evidently an exhibit opened this summer at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. There was a long article about the exhibit in the Washington Post. Two comments in the article caught my eye.

Rockwell remains resolutely, immovably on the mild side even when he goes "serious," as in his famous "Four Freedoms" series from 1942. (The conservative critic Dave Hickey, otherwise a Rockwell booster, has said that "when he's doing ideas, he's really awful.") Rockwell's vision of "Freedom of Speech," included in the Smithsonian's show, doesn't invoke a communist printing his pamphlets or an atheist on a soapbox. It gives us a town hall meeting of almost interchangeable New Englanders, no doubt agreeing to disagree about something as divisive as the rates for those new parking meters. For this, the Founders risked powder and ball?

Well, yes, actually it was. The original goal of the founders wasn't an anarchist bombing of the king's coach. It was to join their taxation with representation in Parlaiment. And it wasn't until there had been years of failed efforts to gain this voice that they finally felt no other option than independence. And for all that freedom of speech does protect even the speech that I detest, I think that it takes far more courage to stand up in front of ones friends and neighbors than to run off a broadside in the basement (or on the internet) or to stand on a soapbox and preach to passing strangers.

The author snidely refers to parking meter rates as the subject matter of the local town meeting. But it could just as easily be about daytime curfews, homeschooling liberties, the integration of the local high school, enforcement of immigration laws, gay marriage, term limits, zoning restriction on businesses and on and on. And rather than seeing this group as interchangable cogs just because they are all Caucasion, I prefer to see them as men and women, business owners and hourly workers (perhaps even the unemployed), town dwellers and farm owners, college graduates and high school drop outs. Maybe this man is just standing up to say his piece. Maybe his opinion is pretty crack brained. But it could just as easily represent a moment of "speaking truth to power" and the rest of the story might include his running for and election to public office.

Later in the article:

Painting from scenes he set up, propped and cast -- or more often from snapshots of those scenes -- Rockwell achieved a photographic vision meant to convince us of the simple truth of what his images show. Even after all these years, high realist pictures never fail to play the magic trick of making us think that because they look so real, they must show things as they are.

I'm not sure if it is intended to, but it comes across as criticism to my ear. As if by being selective in setting up his lunch counter or living room or doctor's office, he is somehow being deceptive. The article goes on to point out that the point of view of the pictures sometimes couldn't exist in real life, belonging instead to a viewpoint that would have to float in mid air. I think this misses the point of the paintings and of the world the Rockwell was depicting, which might have been messier, but did (and does) exist.

I'm reminded of a painful tour I once had through a German museum of contemporary art. Spurning even modern art as too old and contrived, the currator explained that since a camera could capture "reality" so much better than a painting could, there was no reason for artists to even try to represent real objects in their art any more. So we were toured through galleries with installations that included open boxes of sulphur on long winding tables, "blood" spattered televisions and rocks in empty gilt frames resting on brocaded pillows. Really? Give me a room full of Rockwell any day.

I don't see Rockwell's vision or his product as "pandering" to his audience's "fear of change". I do see him chronicling a slice of the world that many Americans, then and still today, found worth valuing and protecting.

Homecoming Marine could be seen as a bunch of good ole boys swapping tales of derring do. I think it is more likely that they young Marine is explaining how the heroics that were reported in the paper were actions taken in the middle of a battle that was filled with chaos and sorrow. The older listeners seem to be thinking of other Marines, perhaps classmates or brothers, who didn't return from Guadalcanal or Iwo Jima. The young Marine's name is Joe and you can see his jacket hanging in the background. But he seems to still be a long way from being "home". A related scene, "Homecoming G.I." could be the World War II version of the viral You Tube clips that show returning soldiers surprising their children. This is a cover from the May 25, 1945 Saturday Evening Post, with Halsey's Typhoon, the loss of USS Independence and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still to come. There are three service flags in windows, representing five service members (there is a three star flag under the label in the linked image), but one has to wonder how many have yet to be filled in with gold.

Armchair General is one of my father-in-law's favorites. It shows the father of a Marine, a sailor and an aviator, painstakingly traking the invasion in Italy as he waits for news of the pending invasion in France. Flags on the map mark sons in North Africa and England. This is the same urge to gather news that leads my father-in-law to follow his son's command's homepage and my mother to follow the weather reports for where ever we are stationed.

War Bond could be read as jingoistic pap. Or as recognition that there are higher sacrifices than money in defense of freedom. And that some pay a price far higher than others.

And seriously, I defy you to look at The Golden Rule or Freedom to Worship or The Problem We All Live With and see Rockwell as an apologist for the one dimensional world that the art critic in the article thinks he was painting.

Online Art Resources

2010-08-14T21:34:00.003-04:00

I've been putting together my plans for artist study this year and found a great resource from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. It has essays on various themes from artistic movements to artists to specific subjects to specific objects. For example:

Japanese Art (over 30 essays)
Greek and Roman Art (over 90 essays)
Horse Armor in Europe, with links to related essays and exhibitions, including Let's Look at Armor, which compares European, Japanese and Ottoman Turkish armor.

Another favorite of ours is Janson's History of Art. There is an extensive companion website for Janson's that includes study guides and activities like fill in the blank, true false questions, essay questions and maps. If you hover above the chapter numbers at the top you can see what the chapter topics are. I have three different versions of Janson's and I'm going to be hard pressed to pick which one to get rid of when we move.

One more nice art resource is the National Gallery of Art's website. It has both an art education section with lesson plans and activities by artist and topic; and an NGAKids section that includes fun online activities using various artists and movements for inspiration. They have children's guides and longer Family Guides.

These can be helpful when visiting exhibits at local Japanese art museums, which might not have printed or audio guides available in English. When we visited the Pompeii exhibit in Yokohama this spring, they had lots in Japanese, a tiny bit in Italian and nothing in English. Fortunately I'd found guides for other similar exhibits in English that helped the kids put into context what they were seeing. NGA Classroom even has a cool guide for viewing a Pompeii exhibit with a Latin classe. It emphasizes the Roman culture and daily life as well as pointing out Latin inscriptions.

Homeschooling Moments

2010-08-10T20:19:00.003-04:00

Sometimes you just plug and chug your way through school. Even homeschool.

But there are other times when you really find your balance and are able to ride a moment to an awakening of senses and discernment and new ideas. Here is a lovely post about such a moment that has arisen out of a pioneer simulation.

Artist and Music Study

2010-08-08T09:09:00.002-04:00

I've been plugging away at making our school schedule for the coming semester. There are several things that I'm dropping as not adding enough value for the time we spent on them. And several subjects that I'm carving out time for: drawing practice; artist and picture study, and composers and music appreciation. I've picked out four artists and four composers to focus on, one per month. We'll also be going through the lessons in Draw Squad and some other drawing books.

Our artists will be Monet, Durer, Norman Rockwell and Carravagio. A couple of these are from the Ambleside Online list for 2010. I added Rockwell just because I like him and wanted to start pointing our studies toward some good Americana as a piece of re-entry prep after a long time away from American culture (Hawaii is part of America, but it is also a very unique cultural environment.)

Our composers will be Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi and a selection of children's classics like Peter and the Wolf. Oddly enough I found that I had hardly any classical music in my iTunes library. Eventually I realized that I had an entire binder of disks that I'd never entered into the library. So I've been plugging away at uploading them. It's almost like getting hundreds of dollars worth of classical music gifted to me. I've gone from having a couple pieces by Tchaikovsky to having over seven hours. From nothing to several hours of Vivaldi. And a smattering of fun children's pieces, including Peter and the Wolf narrated by Patrick Stewart. What a smorgasbord.

I expect that I'll be learning as much as the kids will in out music and picture studies. For example, I just played a snippet of a waltz from Swan Lake and realized that I've heard it over and over in movie ballroom scenes without realizing what it was.

2010-07-26T22:48:00.000-04:00

On a trip a couple weeks back, we visited the Fuji Sengen Shrine near Mt Fuji. It is a magnificent forest shrine. Massive cedars line the processional, dwarfing the stone lanterns that are taller than either my kids or I. This article explains a little about the Japanese thought toward sacred forests and forest shrines.

Looking out from the shrine back toward the entrance torii.

According to the article, it is tradition at the Ise Shrine to rebuild the shrine every twenty years using new timber. Some of the timber used must be hundreds of years old. What is more, facing a decline in timber availability around the shrine, they have started a process of replanting. They plant new saplings and pray that they will grow strong and be ready for use in 200 years.

When I was a kid, my dad worked mostly in the timber industry. So forestry and forest utilization were familiar topics at our house. But the scale of forethought here that goes well beyond the replanting in Douglas Fir forests for harvesting for paper or housing. There is a mindfulness here that is worth noting.

Moon Over Japan

2010-07-25T22:23:00.004-04:00

I was intrigued by the post about full moon names at Handbook of Nature Study. Curious to see if there were any similar names in Japan, I found this article all about the moon in Japan. For example, the Japanese don't see a man in the moon; they see a rabbit.

I didn't find different names for different full moons, but I did find a listing of the Japanese names for the different phases of the moon. Since we are having a full moon this week, we may have to have a private moon viewing. Maybe I can serve up some nice round pancakes.

The moon viewing room at Matsumoto Castle.

Homeschool Annual Planning

2010-07-21T07:45:00.003-04:00

So I've been working through the process of planning for the next school year. For a couple years, I just had a stack of books. Each day we'd do another math lesson, another reading lesson, another handwriting lesson, etc.

Unfortunately, I found that a couple things were happening. As the kids got better at reading and could do history reading on their own and even grammar exercises independantly, I tended to push back the subjects that needed my supervision. Sometimes I'd realize that I had some wonderful resource still on the shelf (like History Pockets) after we'd wrapped up the studies that it would have fit in.

The Sonlight schedules have helped a lot for the older kids. I'm able to tell them to do the day's work and they will, mostly, go down the list and complete the readings. However, this year I've tweaked the pace for history, slowing it down to linger a bit over the ancients. At the same time, I'm trying to maintain the normal weekly pace for science. Add in the third grader that I've got tagging along in history and making his own trail in everything else and I've got quite the ball of yarn to keep from snarling up.

I'm not the workbox sort of person. I would forget to fill them and wonder why the boys seemed to have so much free time. But reading a long thread at The Well Trained Mind boards about making a file folder for each week in the year, I had an idea that I think will work. I'm taking what has worked for us from Sonlight, the weekly schedules, and adding to each weekly tab the other sheets that I don't want to forget.

First I made a master schedule for Rutabaga and Cauliflower for each week. I'm not going into depth on history and science. I just list which week's work they have to complete.

Then I started on a master schedule for Artichoke. It is easier to have him tag along with history than to try to do two Sonlight cores. So I'm noting which Story of the World chapters his brothers are reading. He will probably listen to these on audio. We have a number of great grammar level books on ancients from the first time we went through with his brothers. I find that I forget to do mapwork with him and never give him the coloring sheets that I have stashed. So instead of leaving maps and coloring sheets in the SOTW activity guide, they are getting filed along with the tab for each chapter's week.

Next I needed to add science for Artichoke. I've printed out a semester's worth of Outdoor Challenges from the Handbook of Nature Study blog. I started with the first ten challenges as an introducation, then picked several that were both something we could complete here in Japan and appropriate for the season we'll be in.

I don't plan to break up anything that is a bound book or workbook. But I do still have quite a bit of scavenging among the bookshelves to do before I'm finished with this.

How You Wish Schools Operated

2010-07-14T23:34:00.003-04:00

We aren't directly refugees from public schools. We didn't withdraw the kids after some school or other failed to meet our needs. In fact, shortly after our eldest, Rutabaga, was born, I earned my Masters in Education. I had assumed when I started the program that I would go on and become a classroom teacher.

But it became pretty clear as I completed classes and practicum that the highlights I remembered from my own school days were mostly things that a teacher would not be allowed to do. Some things, like driving a student home, could get them in quite a bit of trouble.

And in addition to what had been lost there were whole new agendas that had been grafted onto the curriculum. Students leave elementary school having learned about Martin Luther King, Jr and global warming. But they may not leave able to competently read any of King's speeches for themselves.

Here is the back to school speech that I'd love to here in schools that were interested in real reform. From Dennis Prager.

H/T: National Review Online.

Reading Digital Barbarism

2010-07-14T20:25:00.003-04:00

I'm halfway through reading Mark Helprin's Digital Barbarism and I am so loathe to have it end that I've already ordered two of his short story collections from Paperback Swap. Digital Barbarism is on one hand about the assault on the concept of copyright, but on the other hand it portrays what we have lost in trading time and space in which to think and live for the pressures and demands of instant communications.

The sections on copyright combine the logic and self-evident conclusions of Friedrich Hayek with the understated put downs of Edith Wharton. But it is also a book about the writer's life, intellectual freedom, freedom of ideas, and the consequences to culture of an unbridled sense of entitlement. It is a response to those who think that because they can slap a book onto a scanner and upload it to the internet that they possess a right to thus steal another person's work. It also stands as an example of the value of a classical education, filled with demanding reading and reasoning. If you needed encouragement on why it is worth the hard work of reading classics, writing about them and studying logic, this book demonstrates the fruits of such an experience.

I recommend it highly. Though I suspect that you may think twice about copying a workbook or a friend's curriculum after considering his thoughts on copyright.

Beginning German Syllabus Search

2010-07-13T18:30:00.002-04:00

I'm trying to pull together a curriculum for German for the kids. The older two still retain quite a bit of German from our years living in Berlin. But Artichoke was still very young when we left, so he needs to learn it from the beginning. I have a lot of books in German and a couple grammars and Deutsch als Fremdsprache materials. I'm just having a little trouble putting it all together.

I found one syllabus for German from the Northside school district in Texas that gives an overview of four years of study, broken down into six week segments for each level. This may be my best bet since it is arranged topically rather than linked to a specific text.

German Steps is a free online beginners' German language course from BBC. You can even sign up for weekly emails with links to each week's lessons. (BBC also has beginning language programs in French, Spanish and Italian.) If you dig even further into BBC's language offerings you can find other readings, videos and even a language test to help place you into the correct program. I've even found German audio available for download on iTunes.

MIT has German courses (and several other languages) in its Open Courseware. (Although the textbook has typically high college text prices, it might be possible to get similar mileage out of a used and slightly older edition.)

This site had a collection of lesson plans and links to German activities.

I'm finding lots of syllabuses for AP level language and even some for college level German, but I'm looking for some guides that are a little more kid friendly. Any suggestions?

I did run into a cache of cool syllabuses for German studies courses. This is from a history list and covers topics that run the gamut from the Thirty Years' War to Cabaret to the Holocaust and on to the Cold War. Mostly at the undergraduate and graduate level, they might still provide a basis for some independent study.

Summer Reading Program

2010-07-04T20:47:00.002-04:00

All three kids are enrolled in the library summer reading program. But the one who has really taken off is Artichoke. Even though he's headed into third grade, he is just coming into his own with reading. I has warmed my heart to see him heading for a favorite corner in the children's book room to settle down with a Berenstain's Bear book and not want to leave until he finishes it.

So this morning his brothers suggested that he read a Transformers book that Cauliflower had checked out. They told him they didn't think it would be too hard for him and they were right. Although Cauliflower did provide the useful tip that if he ran into any really long words that he couldn't figure out, it probably meant "gun."

Pomp in the Senate

2010-07-01T21:51:00.004-04:00

We don't have the same number of pomp filled ceremonies as some other countries. Which is probably fitting our status as a republic of hard headed, opinionated rugged individualists.

But the death of a sitting senator certainly gives more than a few opportunities for pomp, including the resting of Senator Byrd's casket in the Senate chambers and the draping in black of his Senate desk. The casket is placed on the Lincoln Catafalque. And his desk is a design that has changed little since the desks were replaced after being destroyed by the British during the War of 1812.

Makes me want to spend the weekend reading the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and comparing the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers.

I think that Senator Byrd was a scoundrel, but he was the duly elected scoundrel of West Virginia. They certainly had opportunities to choose differently yet time and again returned him to the Senate. That may tell us as much about American voters as it does about Senator Byrd.

As Winston Churchill observed, "Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

RIP

Book Review: Love on a Dime

2010-07-01T04:14:00.002-04:00

I just finished Love on a Dime by Cara Lynn James and I have to confess that I enjoyed it. Set mostly in Newport in the summer of 1899, the book's heroine is a young woman of status who is secretly writing dime novels. Unfortunately not only are such books considered trash that is beneath contempt by the society ladies in Newport, but even holding a job is held suspect.

Throw in an entirely unsuitable suitor (with the prerequisite harridan of a mother), a love returned from the past determined to regain her affections, and a heartless gossip columnist set on exposing her secret identity as an author and you have plenty of conflict.

This isn't deeply philosophical book. It actually parallels the dime store novels in the plot in not shying from being an entertaining read while also managing to slide in some commentary about greed and truthfulness (especially to oneself). This is a good summertime beach book and I look forward to others in the series.

(A free review copy was received from the publisher as part of the Book Sneeze program. No other compensation was received.)

Lord of the Rings Literature Study

2010-06-27T21:04:00.002-04:00

If you are looking for a nice resource for exploring Tolkien, check out the free Lord of the Rings literature study at Houghton Mifflin. These are high school level, in depth unit studies that go well beyond what happened in chapter 4 type questions. Instead they explore the nature of myth, quest, free will and fellowship, good and evil, and what makes a hero.

More Hiking in Yokosuka

2010-06-21T03:54:00.003-04:00

I tend to pick up tourist brochures, even when they are mostly in Japanese. Often they will have a map that I can figure out by matching it with the names of the train stations. Or it will have a website that I can use a translation program on to get more info.

This weekend, we were exploring Kannonzaki Park, a park that I've been hearing about the whole time we've been here, but hadn't made it to. It has a big roller slide, which is a slide made out of box rollers that you slide on using a piece of foam or cardboard or carpet square. It was so fast that we adults were having to brake ourselves on the side to slow down a bit.

Anyway, I found a great guide to the park at the Rest House across from the parking lot. It had a very detailed map that was labeled in both Japanese and English. I found the same guide in the Yokosuka Natural History Museum and the Visitors' Center. The Kanagawa Parks site has more info on Kannonzaki Park. I use Google Translator and it makes the Japanese pretty readable, at least for meaning. (The Naughty Trail is really just the trail that takes you to all the play areas. Maybe it is some word that means rambunctious or something similar.)

I also found a series of cool guides at the Visitors' Center that had themed walks throughout the Yokosuka area. Turns out they are actually produced by Coco's a local curry place. Check out the guides marked Scap 1-6 here. This page of Yokosuka walks and trails also has maps of some nice trails like Takatoriyama, which is a place my kids have done a lot of rock climbing. Again, the map and guide are in Japanese, but I think I have figured them out. And even a map marked in Japanese is an improvement over the vague directions that I sometimes get from people. I'm looking forward to the trail around Taura, which seems to go up to the site where William Adams is memorialized. He was an inspiration for the figure of John Blackthorne in the book Shogun. That is the sort of place that I would end up walking past, having no idea what I was seeing.

Might even get me to try out Coco Curry.

Hiking Near Yokosuka

2010-06-16T19:40:00.003-04:00

Found another link today for hiking near Tokyo. This one has some easy/winter hikes and a smattering of others. What is really nice, though is that he has some references to topo maps, which I've been unable to find other places.

I'm itching to head out to Kamakura and do some hiking, especially since the hydrangea in Kamakura are in bloom right now. Maybe I can get more of the Daibutsu Trail in since this goes all the way up to Kita-Kamakura and I've only walked about 1/4th of it.

Yokosuka Homeschooling

2010-06-09T19:19:00.002-04:00

If you're homeschooling in Yokosuka, a homeschooler moving to Yokosuka or someone in Yokosuka who's thinking about homeschooling, you might want to check out the new blog Yokosuka Homeschooling from Kanto Plain Home Schoolers.

The purpose of the blog is to be a gateway of information for homeschooling and life around the naval base in Yokosuka. It is a great place to find out about field trip ideas, life in Yokosuka, and homeschooling.

The blog is a group effort by several bloggers who are in Yokosuka, who are experienced homeschoolers, Japan hands or both.

World Cup Time

2010-06-09T18:41:00.002-04:00

At our house, we're getting antsy for the beginning of the World Cup. Geography, probability, statistics, even a little bit of political history and foreign cultures just naturally flow from watching the games. Or at least that's what I tell myself.

I don't know if any of the early games will make it onto AFN. But a friend of ours sent me a link to the broadcast schedule for the Japanese channels. If there is an X it means that the game won't be shown on Japanese tv. For late-night TV 3:30 is dated the day before the date is written as 27:30.

If you're looking for more educational tie ins, I found a world cup soccer lapbook project template and some projects that you could fold into a unit study.

I may even have to get some movies to tie in with the games. Das Wunder von Bern for German studies and maybe the Pele/Sylvester Stallone movie Victory. Anyone have other movie suggestions?

Festival Fun in Yokosuka

2010-05-22T23:28:00.000-04:00

We went out in town last night to eat dinner and unexpectedly ran into a mikoshi festival. We ate our way up and down Blue Street instead of hitting our favorite restaurant.

Giant crepes, fried round potatoes (with options of garlic, mayo or chocolate sauce), bits of fried chicken on a stick, little Pokemon shaped doughnut holes, pork yakitori (again with options of garlic salt or chocolate), and then shave ice (no, not as good as the cart at the foot of Diamond Head, but with Japanese Matcha - Green Tea as a flavor option). For all our sakes we avoided the stands with little doughballs filled with squid, although at the booths here, you had the pick of long tentacles the size of a good cucumber that they would chop up or having a whole small squid in each ball. Wait, I just realized that I totally forgot the long pineapple slice dipped in chocolate and sprinkles. The chocolate covered banana probably would have been a bit easier to eat.

It took us about 90 minutes to wander down the street and back, a walk which we can usually do in about 15 minutes. Great people watching. There were lots of families and young kids out. The festival seemed to be especially kid friendly, with masks of anime figures for sale, booths selling shiny plastic baubles by the scoop, and pellet gun shooting, ring toss and tombolas for prizes. The kids spent about ten minutes watching one target shooting game and concluded that it was almost physically impossible to knock the prizes off the shelf to win them, a lesson in the house always winning that I hope they realize transends location.

There were also booths where kids could get goldfish and tiny green turtles. Naturally there was a bit of a contest aspect. At the fish booths, you were given a bowl and a flat net. You had to try to scoop the fish into the bowl with the net. Seemingly you get as many fish as you can scoop up, however the net is just a loop of wire with paper stuck to it. Even harder was the turtle catching. Here you were handed a skewer with an edible ice cream cup stuck onto the end. Evidently you have to try to scoop up the turtle and get it into your bowl before the cup dissolves.

Walked home tired but pleased with our unexpected brush with Japanese fun. No fish or turtles (or prizes from the shooting galleries), but the kids were plotting how to use their shave ice cups for breakfast drink.

After the Hangover Disappoints

2010-05-20T22:50:00.002-04:00

I just finished reading After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr as part of the Thomas Nelson Booksneeze program.

Considering myself a conservative, I looked forward to reading this book. I thought that it might provide a thoughtful analysis of where conservatives have drifted away from their core values. I found on the whole that the book disappointed me. The first half struck me as an extended introduction. The historical retrospectives didn’t go back far enough for me, leading the reader to think that conservatism started in the 1960s without considering that it might have any older origins. There were few if any references to the founders or to conservative thought from the 19^th or early 20^th century.

Tyrrell often classifies people or groups as movement conservative, neo-conservative, and new conservative without taking enough time to explain what he sees as the distinctions between the groups. For someone who criticizes what he sees as insufficient interaction and mutual reference between conservative writers and intellectuals, it seemed like most of his references to other conservatives were negative. Even William F. Buckley, whom Tyrell admires, was criticized for not staying in the thick of the battle through his last decades. What struck me as even odder was his relative silence on the influence of conservative talk radio and internet blogs and websites.

I’m not really sure what the intended purpose or audience of the book is. While complaining of the pervasive effects of what he has termed Kultursmog, he gave insufficient historical background for his points. Even as a 40-something who has voted in six presidential elections, the stagflation and oil rationing of the 1970s is at best a dim memory of childhood. I think that younger readers would find many of the conservative figures mentioned to be less than even a distant memory. There also didn’t seem to be a detailed vision of what a conservative movement would believe or advocate (his policy points are limited to a few pages in one of the last chapters). He also seemed to ignore the concept of social conservatism, with little discussion of how viewpoints on issues like abortion, marriage, immigration or parental rights affect a voter’s willingness to label themselves as conservative. In fact the short paragraphs that he spends on immigration in the last chapter seem too approving of amnesty for this conservative’s ears. It strikes an especially off note given the furor over legislation passed in Arizona since the book’s publication.

All in all, this seemed less of a book about conservative ideals than about Mr. Tyrrell’s position in the conservative movement. Even viewed as a memoir of his role during the waxing and waning of conservative influence, it still felt like it was a series of columns hanging loosely together.

I received a copy of this book for review from Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Dinner Tonight

2010-05-18T03:47:00.003-04:00

So my dear husband spends a fair amount of time traveling, in this job to exotic places like Jakarta and Borneo and Singapore. I don't get to go with him, but he has learned to be a wonderful personal shopper.

And he has started hitting up grocery stores for spice mixes. Last time he was away, he brought back several Maggi packs for fried black pepper beef that were luscious. This time he bought an entire box of them. And a few other goodies like 5 Spice chicken mix and satay sauce.

Tonights dinner is Thai style chicken satay. I wonder how you say Betty Crocker in Thai?

Read Good Books

2010-04-14T20:35:00.003-04:00

Mama Squirrel at Dewey's Treehouse tipped me off to this article about the nature of what makes quality education. Mama Squirrel goes on to point out that there is a level of quality implied when one is talking about using "living books" as Charlotte Mason, and others tend to refer to them. There are books that really have a bit of life inside of them and there are others that just happen to not be textbooks.

I think that we forget how much even we adults have to train ourselves to have the vocabulary and stamina to read meaty books. And we also tend to discount the satisfaction gained from reading something with a little challenge to it rather than something that was sweet and tasty but ultimately unfufilling.

The more you read books that push you, the better you become at reading them. You assimilate the vocabulary, the literary allusions, the style of using compound complex sentences rather than simple sentences and short dialogue. For example, I've read some of Jane Austen's books several times each. I just read Northanger Abbey for the first time about two weeks ago and I breezed through it, laughing all the way.

Similarly, I tried to read Master and Commander over a decade ago. While I could appreciate that the writing was finely crafted, I had trouble following the story. Last year I gave it another try. Looks like ten years of reading Austen, Dorothy Sayers and other harder books had given me the scaffold I needed to enjoy the O'Brian.

There are lots of ways to feed your inner reader. The Well-Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer is a nice place to start. I has a section on how to read a book and then a listing of recommended classics, with some overview and probing questions to help you think through the story.

Another thought is to grab one of the great books lists and just start reading. Start with what you can handle or that is a mild stretch and just keep building.

Another idea is to use a list designed for classical homeschooling like Ambleside Online. Designed for kids, but there's no reason that you can't enjoy the same selections too. I read about a homeschool mom who was using AO for self education and thought that this was a brilliant idea. Even if the early stories are some that you might have read before or that you can easily handle, they will help you form a basis for enjoying the jewels that are to come later.

You can even just walk through the fiction section of the library and grab a handful of classic books that you've heard of but never really read (except, maybe in an illustrated abridged version or comic book form). That was how I put together my Boys Good Books reading list. Browse through both the adult and the children's fiction. It is hard to predict where some titles might end up. And you don't want to miss something great either because it was just a children's book when initially published or because it's now been moved to the adult section because kid lit has gotten so watered down

Sure you've seen movie versions of Alice in Wonderland, but have you read the book? How much is Pirates of the Carribean riffing on Treasure Island? Did you know that Heidi has a theme of redemption and reconcilliation running through it? Did you catch the Lilliput allusion in Night at the Museum? Are you ready for the grand-daddy of all vampire stories - Dracula?

Don't wait for the best time. These are the rich stories that will help you to cope with the uncertainties of today. You really are capable enough for these books. Just read it.

Books I Didn't Read in 2010

2010-04-08T23:14:00.002-04:00

Maybe it has something to do with having thousands of books and knowing that I have so many more good ones left to read. Maybe it is a side effect of switching between really meaty, well written books and series fiction. Maybe it is just that I'm getting older and don't feel like I have so much time to waste. But I am finding that I'm more than willing to stop reading a book part way through and declare that it just isn't worth finishing.

So to go along with my Books Read in 2010 post, here are books that I just couldn't finish.

The Eugenics Wars vol 2: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonian Singh (Star Trek). I read the first volume back when it was new in the early 1990s. There was a long enough gap in publication that we only just got the second book. Great example of a book that relies so much on current events that it just can't endure. Not only did I feel like it didn't add much to the Star Trek genre, but also it was simply tedious.

Dune: The Battle of Corrin. This is part of a series of prequels written by Frank Herbert's son Brian and Kevin Anderson. While I mostly enjoyed the first trilogy of prequels, which ends just before the setting of Dune; I had trouble with the set that went futher back in time to the Butlerian Jihad. The books are long and complicated, which lots of intertwined plots and a long drawn out style of presentation. But more than that, they are just badly written. Maybe it is a sign of the decline of editing emphasis among the major publishing houses. Maybe it is just a sympton of publishers' willingness to put up with long winded writing from authors that sell well.

Here are some selections from a chapter about cymek Titans who have existed for over a thousand years and are at war with both the evermind, Omnius and the contemptable human rebels. Agamemnon and Juno are both cyborgs who long ago had everything human but their brains replaced by machinery.

Juno, his lover, had matching ambitions and goals. Returned from the other cymek planet of Bela Tegeuse, she faced him in their expansive stronghold on Richese, swiveling her head turret to show off her sparkling optic threads. Even in this strange inhuman configuration, Agamemnon found her brain and her personality beautiful.

****

Moving with implacable speed, he lurched his walker-form through the archway, already transmitting orders to teh neos to prep his fastest ship. "You and Dante remain here and shore up our defenses against the thinking machines. I will locate another world for us to rule." He flashed his optic threads, which sent a constellation of Juno images flooding into his mind. "With luck, Omnius won't find us for some time."

And it goes on in this vein chapter after chapter. Sometimes about the cymeks, sometimes about the seemingly implacable thinking machines, sometimes about the plucky but relationship challenged humans. Ugh.

I remember reading a review about twenty years ago that commented on the trend toward trilogies in science fiction. Multiple books were becoming common as science fiction sought to satisfy readers' desire for more characterization. You can see this if you go back and read classic science fiction like Heinlein or Asimov. Or even Frank Herbert, who created a vibrant galaxy, with political intrigue, revolution and trade tensions in a far more concise style. Dune is about 150 pages shorter than Dune: The Battle of Corrin in mass market paperback versions. My impression is that Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson take more words to write less convincingly about a plot that honestly grab me very little. Seventy-four pages was really all that I could handle (and that was with at least four of the prequels under my belt already).

Book Arts Bash 2010 Winners

2010-04-02T02:11:00.000-04:00

A few months back, the kids and I started working on the Kids' Secret Novel Writing Club from Little Blue School. We had a blast. We haven't completed a novel yet, but we all learned to appreciate the hard work that goes into our favorite books. We also were able to consider why books we don't like just don't seem to work (poorly developed characters and lack of proper conflict mostly).

In order to further encourage novel writing, Little Blue School also started a novel writing contest for homeschooled authors, Book Arts Bash 2010. There was a $100 prize for the top story in each age group and critiques from literary agents for the top three.

The winners of Book Arts Bash 2010 have just been announced.

Kindergarten and First Grade:

Winner:
A Big Problem by Brianna T.
Runners up:
Adventures of Big D and BMC by Emma W.
Zoo With A Strange Zookeeper by Vivian L.

Second and Third Grade:

Winner:
The Adventures of Blue Flame the Heroic Giant Squid-Fighting Hero by Sage M.
Runners Up:
Ruby, A Twisting Tale by Emilie M.
Mittens the Cat by Melea von T.

Fourth and Fifth Grade:

Winner:
1 by Nicci M.
Runners up:
One Girl Revolution by Sadie Z.
Blaze by Alexandra S.

Sixth Grade:

Winner:
The Princess by Lena G.
Runners up:
Becoming Callie by Lena G.
Trixie by Lydia A.

Seventh Grade:

Winner:
Happy Ending is a Place by Mandy H.
Runners up:
Violet Fire by Bryn B.
Kite by Hannah S.

Eighth Grade:

Winner:
Hollin by Garrett R.
Runners up:
Common Animals by Thomas B.
Little Angel by Adayla S.

Ninth Grade:

Winner:
Why I Missed the Second Set by Rose C.
Runners up:
Untitled by Larissa S.
Tales of the Humbats: The Seventh Piece by Raven M.

Tenth Grade:

Winner:
Children of the Stars by Holden M.
Runners up:
Shattering Darkness by Vienna H.
The Scouser Cap by Emily V.

Eleventh Grade:

Winner:
Cadence by Scout G.
Runners up:
Vengeance: 25 cents by Kathleen M.
Don't Look Down by Tanya S

Twelfth Grade:

Winner:
If Pearls Could Sing by Pamela C.
Runners up:
Broken Things by Emily D.
Falling Night by Anna W.

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The next round of Book Arts Bash will be for entries completed by January 1, 2012. That's only 20 months away, so get writing. If you don't know where to start, check out the lessons for the Novel Writing Club. I know that I'm planning on dusting off our writing club journals and finishing up the chapter outlines for my story. See, there's this homeschool support group with a bunch of . . . well, you'll just have to wait and see.

Need More History in My Historical Fiction

2010-03-25T23:44:00.001-04:00

I was intrigued to get a copy of In the Shadow of the Sun King by Golden Keyes Parsons to review. In 2006, we visited Versailles on a trip to Paris and I was surprised to see what a complex figure Louis XIV was. His reign lasted over 70 years. Versailles and the court culture surrounding it was at least in part an ploy to keep his nobles under control by forcing them to spend vast amounts of money on luxury items and parties thrown for the amusement of the court and the king. His reign began around the end of the Thirty Years war, a war over sovereignty and religion in Europe, and lasted well into the age of exploration in the New World. I was hoping that this book would explore this time and the changes and conflicts that made visiting Versailles interesting.

I was disappointed. The story focuses on one Huguenot family living in the countryside. Through a series of heavy handed actions, the family is soon separated and in dire straits. But because this occurs so early in the story, I found that I was having difficulty not only following the motivation for the family’s choices but even keeping the characters straight in my mind. Because there hadn’t been much foundation laid down about Calvinism’s earlier spread in France and the crown’s reaction to it, I found it difficult to understand the fears and pressures that the family was under. Instead of seeming desperate and heroic, the main character came off as naïve and foolhardy. A chapter or long prologue featuring the main characters (or their parents) during events like the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre or the persecutions that were occurring as the story begins would have done more to set the stage for the family’s actions.

I think that because this story represents at least in part the story of the author’s family that there may be a pressure to tell the story as the family history recounts it. Unfortunately, that may assume a higher background knowledge than a reader who is unfamiliar with the frictions in Europe over religion at the time brings to the story. The wars over religion in the 1600s were over far more than the minor bits of doctrine that separate modern American denominations. These were differences worth killing and dying over. But the seriousness of the divide didn’t come through for me. Instead the story seemed to assume that the reader would identify with the family because they were fellow Protestants or in an anachronistic sense of the importance of freedom of religion (an concept that didn’t exist at the time). There wasn’t much discussion of the idea that Catholics might have resisted Huguenots not just out of a struggle for power, but because they viewed Calvinism as a heresy.

I would be interested in reading a sequel. But I hope that it would come with a heavier dose of historical leavening in the story.

(I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher.)

Good Books Reading List

2010-03-21T08:08:00.003-04:00

I mentioned previously that we had decided that we weren't getting around to reading quality literature and had decided to add a good books reading list to our school. I put together our first draft of a reading list by taking a couple books off our home bookshelf and then cruising the library children's section for whatever looked old and interesting. Here is what I came up with.

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

Caddie Woodlawn by Ryrie Brinks

The Schoolroom in the Parlor by Rebecca Caudell

Black Fox of Lorne by Marguerite de Angeli

Pirate Dog by Catherine Cleven

The Story of Roland by James Baldwin

The Number Devil by Hans Magnus Enzensberger*

The Book of Dragons by E. Nesbit

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kippling

Space Cadet by Robert Heinlein

We pulled out all of the books and did an impromptu book talk with me presenting a few and the kids reading the book flaps. Rutabaga was especially impressed by the idea that The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was old enough that both Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln could have been familiar with it. I was tickled to see that both kids immediately picked out a couple to read. Rutabaga picked The Story of Roland (and declared that he wanted to try to draw the picture on the cover of Roland in full armour). Cauliflower picked E. Nesbit's The Book of Dragons. I think he has already finished with it. I'm hopeful that he may want to read other Nesbit now.

I'm sure that the list will grow as we go along. I was flipping through some of my booklists looking for other worthy additions. Any favorites that the boys shouldn't miss?

The Boys' Reading Program

2010-03-18T07:40:00.004-04:00

DH and I were talking about this year's homeschool a while back. While I'm generally please with the rotation we're doing between a month of following the Sonlight schedule and a month of intensive research and writing, he noticed that we weren't doing much reading of literature. There are lots of great titles on the Sonlight schedule, but less at this level that is just fun and rewarding reading.

So he challenged me to put together something of a reading list (the military is all about reading lists) for the boys to pick from. I had a couple in mind, and then I just went to the library and started pulling classic books off the shelf and piling them up.

Treasure Island was the first book that I thought of. I have a great copy from the Whole Story series. These have the full text, but include lots of illustrations and DK style sidebars of related information. I had a copy of Swiss Family Robinson as a kid from a similar series that was one of my favorite books (and has become a favorite of my middle son).

My thought is to put together a list of about twelve to twenty titles and have them read at least one every two weeks. The kids are voracious readers who will easily go through 2-4 novels a week. I want to make sure that I'm feeding them some quality, time tested stories in addition to the young adult novelas and space opera that is their normal entertainment.

Coming next: The Reading List

Carnival of Homeschooling

2010-03-09T19:11:00.001-05:00

New Carnival of Homeschooling is up at Homeschool Bytes. Come check it out.

Questions about Homeschooling

2010-03-08T05:34:00.002-05:00

Last year our support group had a curriculum fair. This might be rather unexceptional, except that we are a small support group on a military base overseas. Since we don't have big bookstores or an expansive library system, we have to do a lot of guesswork about the suitability of curriculum.

Our fair last year had several tables where families brought items to sell, projects to show off and some of their favorite curriculum to show and tell. I raided my shelves for math, science and language curriculum for folks to page through. We even set up Rosetta Stone in a corner so that people could try it out and see how the program worked (my middle son was the demonstrator).

We not only had many of our support group families, but also about a dozen non-homeschoolers, who dropped by to check things out and ask questions. At least a couple started homeschooling the following year.

We're doing another fair this year. This time, we're adding two question and answer panels. Experienced homeschoolers will field questions about why and how they homeschool. I'll be moderating and helping to keep things flowing. I'm hoping that we'll have a cross section of homeschooling styles and people with kids at different levels.

What I don't have is a great set of questions to ask the panel. That's where I'm looking for help. I'd love to hear your questions about homeschooling. Maybe they are the questions someone else patiently answered, giving you some confidence in your decision to homeschool. Maybe they are the questions that you seem to field over and over. Maybe it is the thing that you still haven't quite settled in your mind or the new issue that popped up after a couple years of homeschooling. Maybe it's the thing you've always wanted to ask a homeschooler, but never had the chance.

I've been homeschooling for a long time and chose homeschooling when my kids were quite young, so I don't always remember what I was uncertain about when I was first starting out. It would really help to hear someone else's questions.

Treasure Island Unit Study

2010-03-02T19:43:00.003-05:00

Even though we've been reading a lot of books with our Sonlight Core 6 study of the ancients, I realized that good quality literature was sort of taking a back seat.

I wanted to put together a reading list of about 12 books and have the kids pick eight to read over the next few months. However, the only book that I've managed to decide on so far is Treasure Island.

So I perked up when I found this cool literature study for Treasure Island. It was written by a homeschool mom for a coop and it looks great. It includes chapter highlights, pirate songs, activities and more. High quality literature study on the level of what you would buy in an education store. The author used this in a boys book club, but I think it would also be a great resource for scout groups or even just a rockin' pirate birthday party. Great job Lydia at Little Blue School. (BTW, she's doing the Aeneid this year.)

Hat tip: Dewey's Treehouse and Homeschool Freebie

Spices From Afar

2010-02-26T03:22:00.003-05:00

DH hit a Singaporean grocery store for me and brought back some great spice mixes and a little recipe book (a little like one of those Betty Crocker or Philiadelphia Cream Cheese recipe booklets from the checkout stand, but with recipese for curry and spiced fish head on rice).

One of the spice packets was Perencah Berlada Hitam, a black pepper mix packet from Maggi. Wow was it yummy. And surprisingly, even all of the kids gobbled it up.

Now I have the quandry of having used up the packet and having no idea what the recipe for Malaysian/Singaporean black pepper meat might be.

Books and Basketball

2010-02-21T18:28:00.003-05:00

Great article a few days ago in the Wall Street Journal about how NBA basketball players love reading . It seems that in days gone by, many basketball players were well known for bringing loads of books to the locker room or on road trips.

The revival of reading has largely been led by the NBA's international players. There is a cute vignette about a couple of players arguing over the latest books sent from family members in Moscow.

Not only is this a refreshing article about sports figures who care more about a good read as about trash talk or bling, but it hints at the deleterious effect that electronics has had on our reading lives.

I'm planning on taking my copy of the article in to our library for the bulletin board.

Backyard Bird Hunt

2010-02-16T00:10:00.003-05:00

We aren't in the US so we weren't active participants in the Great Backyard Bird Hunt over the weekend.

But I did discover a new favorite treadmill at the gym. This one looks out over the harbor at a couple of ships and the tug boat area.

During my 30 min treadmill walk I saw 17 crows (jungle or carrion), 2 herring gulls, numerous LBJs (little brown jobs, probably sparrows), and a pair of cormorants (including one that was diving for fish).

Winter Tree Observation

2010-02-04T18:41:00.002-05:00

It hasn't really felt much like winter here. It did get chilly and I had to break out the hats and warm coats. But nothing like the incredible tons of snow that the east coast is getting. But this is likely to be all that we get, so there is little reason to keep delaying out winter nature challenges.

We got out yesterday to look at a few trees. We have a lot of Japanese cherry trees around the apartment. Right now they are leaf-less and you can pick out the little branches and even see some of the buds waiting for the beginning of spring.

One tree in particular was obviously much older with a nicely divided trunk. It was also covered with some strange growths all over the older stretches of trunk. Rutabaga thought that it might be galls. It looks like something had happened under the bark and the bark itself had errupted in an irritated response. Maybe it is an insect infestation, because much of the tree showed signs of being rotten.

This tree was in nice contrast to the cedars growing nearby, which still have foliage and have one straight trunk with loose peeling bark instead of the cherry's smoother bark. The cedar looks like an upside down ice cream cone balanced on a stick.

Then we sat down to sketch one of the trees by the road. Another Japanese cherry tree, but not as old as the first. I was very please with what the kids saw and tried to capture in their drawings. Each focused on something a little different, but they all clearly reflected that they had looked at and seen the tree for what it is right now.

I'll have to go back and take some photos to add.

Ramen in Japan

2010-02-01T16:12:00.001-05:00

I can't claim that we've ranged far and wide exploring Japan's food offerings. We started out with ton-katsu (which is pretty much a pork cutlet) and gyoza (which are yummy little pork dumplings). We have finally branched out into steamed dumplings (I call them moanapua, but they probably have a real Japanese name too) and ramen.

The Frugal Traveler from the New York Times has a long piece about Tokyo's ramen shops. We have been to the Shinyokohama Ramen Museum (shown above), which I think depicts post-war Japan c. 1958, not the 30s as the article suggested. The museum is fun, featuring restaurants from all over Japan who come and set up shop for a few months. The museum actually goes around auditioning restaurants from different regions. But it is something of a bother to trek so far for ramen, when nearly every street has at least a couple of shops on it. I think our favorite so far is the ramen at a shop in Kamakura that has a spicy chili sauce in the broth. Looks a little like this.

There is a ramen shop right outside the main gate here in Yokosuka. It is popular as an entree into Japanese food and rightfully so. Having had to ask the waitress to come outside where I point to various pieces of plastic food and wave my fingers around to order, it is wonderfully helpful to have a bilingual menu in hand. After our last visit, Rutabaga, my oldest son, turned to me and sighed. "Mom, I love Japan." Well worth the price of a visit to a ramen shop to hear that.

Letter Shy but Media Savvy??

2010-01-31T12:47:00.000-05:00

Many writers suggest that while modern students might be poor readers, who struggle to follow what is going on in a book, they are instead media savvy consumers of film and other visual content.

Thomas Bertonneau suggests in Can't Read, Can't Watch, Can't Comprehend that they aren't that great at reading a film either.

I would suggest that several things feed into this from the general passivity that is fostered by heavy media consumption, to the shallowness of much of what passes for modern media to the self-centeredness and short attention span of the average young adult. Watch even a television series episode from twenty years ago and marvel at how long some of the scenes are, how little it flits from one locale to another. Then try to watch something like Manon of the Spring or even an older action movie like The Great Escape or Rear Window. You do in fact have to develop an attention span and the background to understand allusion. It doesn't just come upon you one day while you are texting.

Picking Homeschool Curriculum

2010-01-27T18:06:00.003-05:00

I enjoyed this post from Peace Creek on the Prairie about when not to make a change in curriculum. Reminds me of the refrain in Brave New World: I want new things. I don't want old things. I want new things . . .

Last year we did our first Sonlight core after years of happily doing other stuff. We loved it, but I'd viewed it as a departure from norm and set about trying to plan what came next. I was having conversations with my husband along the lines of, "This year was great, but I have to change." Finally he asked me why I was putting so much work into planning a switch from something that I'd been pleased with.

I was truly speechless. And that's pretty rare.

Turns out that I hadn't realized how much the reputation of Tapestry of Grace had swayed me. I was turning my back on something that had worked really well for our family because it didn't match up with the time I thought we should spend on historical periods. But I was turning to a curriculum that matched the time periods, but where I was spending hours on the computer trying to figure out what books we owned I would use instead of the listed books.

I was proposing spending a couple hundred dollars on a framework, but I was going to change the books and ignore most of the questions in favor of my own. Tapestry of Grace has worked perfectly fine for many other families, including some dear friends and homeschoolers I trust. But I was spending hours trying to make it perfect and I hadn't even gotten past the trial weeks.

My husband asked me why not just do two cores over a longer period of time so I could use Sonlight's scheduling and still have the time sequence that I was looking for. That was such a wonderful cutting of the Gordian knot that I couldn't really argue with it.

So that is exactly what we've done. Sonlight Core 6 schedules about 18 weeks of ancients. That was quick for me, plus it would have swiftly carried us into midaeval and the books for this era are all in storage until we move again. So what we're doing is alternating Sonlight's reading schedule with a few weeks of independent research. We've started with four weeks of Ancient Egypt from the core schedule. Then the kids get four weeks of ancient Egyptian research projects. They pick one topic a week to read up on and make a report for. This is also giving me some space in which to really concentrate on their writing skills.

After the four research weeks are done then we move on to Greece, which will probably have a couple of cycles of alternating schedule with interest units. It will take some discipline to make sure that we do stay on track with the research and writing. But I think this is working so far.

Updates to follow as we see how everything holds together.

Will the Brits Ban Homeschooling?

2010-01-26T17:35:00.002-05:00

Having lived in Germany for three years, I'm well aware of the fact that homeschooling is not universally legal nor are parents universally considered to be operating in the best interests of their children. In fact in many places, it seems that the movement is to assume that the children's interests are best determined by outside government officials and "professionals," who operate under guidelines about what is good for "children" even though they may have only a couple hours of experience with the particular child in question.

So I sat up and took notice when I read about some of the proposed legislation to radically regulate homeschooling in Britain. It would seem that the legislation would mostly be effective in England and that it would give immense authority to (dis)approve homeschooling on just about any pretense.

Homeschooling and parental rights protection isn't just an uphill battle. It is a struggle that must be continued by each generation. I'm not a sky is falling conspiracy theorist. But I don't think for a minute that the powers that be on the other side will ever concede that maybe their ideas are beneficial than the decisions of millions of parents who act based on a lifetime of experience with their children.

H/T Why Homeschool

Boom and Bust

2010-01-25T19:31:00.003-05:00

I love reading about economics. But even if you struggle to understand the basis for economic policies, I think that you'll enjoy the new Boom and Bust video from Econstories.tv the brainchild of a video producer and an economics professor from George Mason University (also home to Walter E. Williams).

Love it.

Carnival of Homeschooling - Library Week Edition

2010-01-19T23:47:00.002-05:00

The latest carnival of homeschooling is up. This one is the library edition at Home School Dad.

In addition to all the posts about homeschooling, the host describes his family's tradition of spending one week a year just visiting different libraries. It makes for a pretty cool adventure, comparing all of those different libraries.

When we are in the US, we tend to haunt used book stores. We are lucky to have family living in areas with Half Priced Books and good library book sales. We even managed to once stumble across a newly opened Half Priced Books in a suburb of Kansas City. We spent the evening eating ribs and visiting the bookstore. Our kind of vacation.

Daibutsu Hiking Trail - Kamakura

2010-01-16T19:53:00.000-05:00

I’ve been itching to go on a good hike ever since the Webelos hike up Jinmuji got rained out. So with my in-laws visiting in December, we decided that it was the perfect time for a hike around Kamakura.

The Kamakura tourist websites have several nice walking tours and hiking trails laid out. And we have picked up the trick of taking a digital picture of the trailhead maps for future reference. This is especially helpful when the map has Japanese and English but the trail signage is only in Japanese. We stopped at a couple of trail markers to compare the kanji with our photo.

We started out at the Daibutsu in Hase. From Yokosuka, this is a short ride on the JR train from Yokosuka station. Then you change to the electric train to Enoshima. Hase is the third stop. I had no trouble reading the line map, but the ticket machine stumped me. Fortunately, the ticket window staff had no problem helping me out. The walk to the Daibutsu was pleasant, with lots of fun shops along the way.

The Daibutsu is one of the most famous Buddha images in Japan. It is a hollow bronze statue and visitors are allowed to go inside, where you can see some of how it was constructed. Don’t miss the giant plaited rice straw sandals next to one of the shops inside the grounds.

The Daibutsu Hiking Trail starts outside the Daibutsu temple area. We left the temple and continued down the street to the right. Just before a tunnel, there is a set of steps heading up the hill. Somehow, I’d neglected to associated “natural walking trail” and “along the ridgeline” with having to go straight up at least a couple times. The kids did fine, but I have a lot of practicing to do if I’m going to climb Fuji-san anytime soon. The trail map was at the top of the stairs.

The trail was well used and generally obvious. There was a fair amount of climbing up wooden trail steps or up the natural steps made by roots. None of the kids had any trouble with the trail, although it would probably be tough for kids with shorter legs.

The upper sign here shows the way to the Daibutsu, while the lower sign indicates the path for the hiking trail. After about two km we emerged into a neighborhood with a view of the bay. From here, most of the walk was on pavement.

Shortly after the trail met up with the road, we took a set of stairs down the hill, following signs to the Zeniarai Benzaiten Shrine.

The Zeniarai Benzaiten Shrine is also known as the money washing shrine. There is a natural spring here. Tradition holds that if you wash your money in the water, then spend it, that it will come back to you many fold. It is a quiet hollow approached through a tunnel in the rock face.

Then we continued down the hill toward Kamakura, generally following signs either for Kamakura Station or Kamakura Hachiman Shrine. Along the way, we took a quick side trip to Sasuke Inari Jinja Shrine.

It has a trail up the hill that is lined with vermillion torii gates. The shrine has scores of fox statues, large and small. The fox is considered a messenger. It is a pretty shrine with trees all around. It was very photogenic with reddish leaves and large ferns, punctuated by the red flags and shrines.

Once we emerged from this neighborhood we were quite close to the main section of Kamakura. We just kept following the signs.

We crossed a set of railroad tracks and then emerged on a side street quite near the Hachiman Shrine.

This is the gate at the entrance of the shrine (from the shrine side looking out). There was a large crane perched on top of the torii posing against the setting sun. We have had good bird watching here, seeing ducks, cranes and even a kingfisher.

We fortified ourselves with sweet potato and green tea ice cream in order to have the strength to make it to our favorite ramen shop. They were out of dumplings and ton-katsu, but we made due with some fried rice and numerous bowls of ramen. They were all good but the one with hot chili sauce was especially welcome on this chilly December day.

Egyptian Art Projects for Kids

2010-01-14T00:40:00.005-05:00

I've been thinking about adding more art to our week, especially as I admire Barb at Harmony Art Mom's projects with her older kids and I realize that we'll never get there in the high school years without some steps now.

The way that we're stretching out ancients this year almost begs for some good projects (the kids are asking to do a chicken mummy, which would either mark me as totally nuts or the greatest homeschool mom ever).

By far, the site that seemed the most promising was The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia which had a section on Treasures of Ancient Egypt for kids. These activities struck a chord with me because they were about emulating Egyptian art or trying to copy a specific style or technique, rather than being observant about a particular object. I have a pile of Sculpy clay that may become a faux Egyptian scarab in the near future.

I did run into a number of other big museums with education pages about Egypt. Some were keyed to specific exhibits. Others seemed dependant on the museum collection. Others were very nice background info and would probably be a good resource for an afternoon of browsing. I'm sure that I missed several good sites. I'd love to hear about your favorite in the comments.

I checked the National Gallery of Art's education and kids' pages about art, which I had enjoyed before to see if there was anything we could use. They do have the family guide for The Quest for Immortality, an Egyptian exhibit in DC back around 2002. But unfortunately, Egypt isn't this museum's strong suit.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's website was more of a success. There is a guide for looking at sphinx sculptures and a guide for looking at mummies, especially later mummies with painted faces from the Greco-Roman period. Also The Art of Ancient Egypt, a web resource which has connections with several curriculum areas. I think you could use these guides if you lived anywhere that had a moderately sized Egyptian collection.

The British Museum had some interesting pages, including a link to their site specifically on Ancient Egypt . This was more directed to teaching about Egypt than discussing art. But it was still a nice resource.

And yes, I did look up the directions for a chicken mummy. I'm still waffling and wondering if a pizza mummy would do instead.

Carnival of Homeschooling

2010-01-12T20:12:00.002-05:00

The latest Carnival of Homeschooling is up at Alasandra's Homeschool Blog.

In this age of failing magazines (not to mention the extra month some take to arrive in my mailbox) and homeschool boards that have been consumed by discussions of appliances, movies and political rantings (from every conceivable viewpoint and a few that aren't all that conceivable at all) I'm finding blog carnivals very helpful in discovering reliable and helpful blogs about homeschooling.

Some of the best ideas and my favorite blogs were discovered from past carnivals. I hope it's the same for you.

Homeschool Mini Conference

2010-01-08T21:00:00.005-05:00

Our homeschool group has about forty families, who are ever changing since we are mostly military families stationed here in Japan. Last year we had a delightful curriculum fair that was a chance to swap and sell books, show off some of our curriculum and stand around talking about the highs and lows of homeschooling while eating and having our kids play on the playground outside. I found that it was very encouraging and was also an opportunity to showcase homeschooling to the dozen or so families who dropped in just to find out what homeschooling is all about. It took some advance planning but I think it is something almost any small group of homeschoolers could pull off.

Location: We used the party room of one of our apartment towers. The room is pretty big, about 30' x 80' with a few tables and chairs. This tower happens to be within sight of a nice playground, which allowed several of the moms to just bring their kids along.

Setup: We added a few folding tables and set out all of the tables along the perimeter of the room. One by the door held piles of catalogs and information sheets. A table nearby was a place to put books, manipulatives and toys that families were giving away. Another table by the kitchen held food. Other tables were for various homeschoolers to display some of their favorite materials. If they had things for sale, they were labled and on the table or under the table in baskets.

Advance Work: The mom in charge spent a couple months before the fair emailing companies and asking them to send copies of their catalogs for the curriculum fair. Many companies were incredibly generous. A couple even sent sample copies of some of their materials. Try to give an estimate of how many people will attend. One company sent about 75 copies of their catalog, which was far more than we could use, even after giving some extras to the library. One of our handouts included a list of over thirty different homeschool publishers and vendors.

Advertising: We simply put out the date on our email list and posted flyers in the housing areas and at the base grocery store and library. This year, we may add some take home flyers that we could set out at the library and community center or for our members to pass to interested friends. We may also try for a short notice in the base newspaper. I think that email contacts and word of mouth may be the best way to get the word out about this sort of homegrown curriculum day.

Attendees: We had not only about twenty families from our own group, but a couple of families who were brand new to the base and were long time homeschoolers, a number of moms of kids who were interested in learning more about homeschooling and even the base school liaison.

Program: Last year we were very free form. We had about a half hour of set up (which could have been a bit longer). In general folks just stood around their tables and talked about what they'd brought. As non-homeschoolers filtered through, we would answer whatever questions they had about homeschooling in general and subjects and curriculum in particular. I brought a lot of science, history and language curriculum that I've collected over the years, just so people could page through them. Since we have to order everything online it really helps to see what different programs really look like. One of my sons set up a laptop with Rosetta Stone in the corner and demonstrated the program to anyone who was interested.

Timing: Last year's fair was around May, which was a good window. Families here tend to go on long trips back to the US over the summer and generally want to have books ordered well before September. This year we're going to try March, which would give non-homeschooling families a chance to visit with us before the April school registration window. If I were doing this somewhere that did have a large conference with a vendor fair, then I would plan the mini conference for earlier so families could look over the show and tell materials and do some research before trying to buy from the larger conference's vendors.

Workshops: Last year we just answered questions as they came up and let the conversation flow. This year we're talking about adding a couple of panel discussions. One thought is to have a discussion on homeschooling in general, especially the rules that govern it and common styles and practices. Sort of a Homeschooling 101 session. Another idea is to have a break out session on a topic, like upper level math, history or writing. Possibly a panel discussion to give us a chance to discuss multiple approaches and viewpoints. This will be something quite new for the group as we tend to focus on field trips and activities rather than philosophical discussions of subject and technique. I'd love to hear what sort of topics other homeschoolers would be interested in hearing in an hour long workshop.

There was some advance preparation required, like ordering catalogs and arranging for a date and location. But other than that, it was pretty much a matter of setting out tables and giving everyone a chance to open up about what they loved and what frustrated them. I think this is an approach that even a small group could pull off. Even a handful of homeschoolers meeting in a living room or church classroom would probably have plenty to share.

Field Book Bag from Jeans

2010-01-07T05:23:00.003-05:00

I once saw a set of directions for making a bag for holding a field book or sketch book out of an old pair of jeans.

I can't remember where I saw it and my internet searches are failing me.

Before I had the directions and no old jeans. Now I have several old jeans and no directions.

Does this ring any bells?

2010 Declutter Challenge

2010-01-07T05:17:00.004-05:00

Someone over at the Well Trained Mind board suggested a challenge for the year of decluttering one thing a day. It doesn't matter if it is big or small, just so you pick at least one thing a day to get rid of.

For me that is so simple, because our apartment building has the custom of leaving unwanted items in the lobby. I've seen (and left) furniture, clothes, books and appliances. Most of the time whatever I leave is gone within an hour or two. So all I really have to do is to decide what I'm decluttering and set it out. No trips to the library or thrift store required.

I thought it might be amusing to keep track of what I get rid of, just to see the quantity of what I didn't need to keep maintaining.

January:
large tub of Tinkertoys, 4 Ikea dinning room chairs, child's folding camp chair, cookie press, candle chime, Hawaiian Christmas cards, slippers, suitcase

Photography as Life Skill

2010-01-06T22:37:00.002-05:00

It honestly hadn't occured to me to consider photography as a potential life skill to encourage, although you'd think I would, given all the photos we have that are blurred, too distant or missing the tops of heads.

The One Thing has a post on photography that includes several links to tips for better pictures and a photo challenge with levels for different ages.

This was part of the recent Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival hosted by Adventures on Beck's Bounty.

New Winter Nature Study

2010-01-05T02:33:00.002-05:00

If winter is getting you down because you feel like you've been cooped up by snow and ice with no fun nature stuff to look forward to until spring, then you should check out the upcoming winter nature study at Handbook of Nature Study.

You can participate in weekly nature observation challenges available for free each week. Or if you are a planner, you can get all ten weeks at once (with notebooking pages tailored to the study) from Barb's ebook shop. You can even buy just the notebooking pages. Barb has even incorporated music and art study into the nature study.

This is one of the first years in several that we've experienced a good winter (not counting last year when we were totally heads down in moving overseas). We may not have much snow here, but we do have winter birds, bare trees and hibernating insects (not to mention howling winds and alternating cloudy and breathtakingly clear skies).

Looking forward to shaking off some of the post holiday blahs with some good outdoor nature time.

Coming out of Vacation Mode

2009-12-30T20:38:00.002-05:00

Took a bit of a blogging vacation over the last few months. I was more than busy with getting ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas and enjoying time with the family.

But having gotten Pocketful of Pinecones for Christmas, I'm thinking that I would really like to have more detailed recollections of the year to look back on. I suppose that makes it one of my New Year resolutions to be a more frequent blogger.

Saints Ornaments

2009-12-10T00:16:00.002-05:00

If you like the idea of a Jesse Tree, you might also like the cool Saints ornaments for Advent from Under Her Starry Mantle. I especially like the idea that I might be able to make these using stuff from my scrapbooking stash. She also has O Antiphon ornaments for the later days of December.

This would also be a cool activity for studying the Middle Ages, with its emphasis on the rise of the Catholic church.

This combination of chipboard letters and color images is a good technique for other holidays and studies. For example, I have a page a week Japanese art calendar that would yield good images. A bird calendar would provide good images for ornaments that also helped in identification.

h/t Paper Dali

Homeschooling Links

2009-12-09T23:50:00.009-05:00

Over a couple years of blogging and a few more years of homeschooling, I've collected an awful lot of cool links for teacher's guides, experiments, lapbooks and other homeschool goodies. I decided that it might be nice to collect them into a big index.

Art

Deep Space Sparkle Art Lessons

50 Ways to Use Museum Postcards

Maths and Islamic Art

Jainism: Art & Design

Bible/Christianity

Readings for Advent

Jesse Tree Devotions

Geography

Australian Alps Teaching Guide
Northern Territory (Australia) for Kids
Northern Territory (Australia) for Teachers
Northern Territory (Australia) Junior Ranger Newsletters
Kakadu (Australia) Visitors' Guide
Uluru Visitors' Guide

Hawaii
Unit Study for Hawaii

History

Debunking Myths of September 11th
Historic Paper Dolls (possibly suitable for timelines)
Edo Period Japan
Young Indiana Jones lesson plans
List of Historical Fiction by Era
National Mythology Exam

Japan
Geography of Japan, especially Kanagawa prefecture and Kanto Plain
Nature Activities in Japan
Rice link collection
Edo Period Japan (for use with The Master Puppeteer)
Buddhism: Art & Design

Languages

North American Computational Linguistics - includes practice problems

National Latin Exam

Exploratory Latin Exam

Math

Nature

Birds of Yokosuka Naval Base
Nature Activities in Japan
Rice Link collection
Zoo Activity Packs: Ft Wayne Zoo
Northern Territory Junior Ranger Newsletter (Australia)

Reading

Librivox: Free Audiobooks
Activities tied to books by Tammy Yee

Science

Forensic Entomology: What the Blowfly Saw
Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body: Entomology in action
Debunking Myths of September 11th
The Space Place: NASA activities for kids
Zoo Activity Packs: Ft Wayne Zoo
Bottle Biology science experiments
USGS: Earthquakes for Kids
Science Project Ideas for Kids
Color Matters for Kids

Scouting

Songs for Scouts to Sing
NASA activities for scouts

Writing

Creative writing example: Brooklyn Suprehero Supply Co.
Kids' Novel Writing Club

I only made it back to September 2008, so more links are coming, especially nature and Hawaii related stuff. Interesting to see what interested me a year or so ago. And sad to note the resources that I'd stumbled upon and then forgot that I'd found when we were studying Asia.

Judgemental Christian Homeschoolers

2009-12-09T19:04:00.002-05:00

Successful Homeschooling has a lovely article about (not) being a judgemental Christian homeschooler that is worth checking out.

I've been on the receiving end of patient and kind love from some of my homeschool mentors, including a couple times when a friend met me at the curb as I dropped of kids with no notice.

While I fear that God will give me opportunities to practice up, I am hoping that I will grow into such a gracefilled example.

Christmas Carnival of Homeschooling

2009-12-08T17:55:00.003-05:00

The lastest Carnival of Homeschooling is up at The Homeschool Post with some fun and encouraging posts.

I'm taking the Christmas holidays to retool some of what we're doing. I'm hoping that a short break will make the changes easier than if I tried to just make incremental changes. Almost every carnival gives me some ideas to ponder and try to incorporate.

This post about the automatic first response to homeschooling at A Tings Thinking Corner is a good one.

Jesse Tree Ornaments

2009-12-07T21:32:00.002-05:00

I've been slow off the block in using the Jesse Tree ornaments that I made last year. One thing that I forgot was that we didn't bring our little tabletop tree with us to Japan. So I need to come up with something to pin the ornaments to for display.

This just isn't the year for doing a lot of holiday crafting, with scout events over the next week and then family visiting. So I won't be making any special tree or calendar background out of felt. But I am thinking that pinning them to a table runner may work just as well and I certainly have plenty of those.

I did really enjoy making the Jesse Tree ornaments last year. I found that the consideration that I gave to picking the images and making each one was its own form of advent meditation. Some ideas for Jesse Tree advent ornaments. Links to completed Jesse Trees.

Are You Qualified to Supervise Your Children

2009-10-28T21:25:00.004-04:00

UK's Daily Mail is reporting on a council where parents are not being permitted to supervise their children on public council playgrounds. The playgrounds in question are "adventure playgrounds" open to kids 5-15. They seem to be staffed by council employees (I think that a council is parallel to a township or a small city) who supervise the play at these playgrounds.

On one hand, parents are objecting to the idea that they have to be background checked in order to take their kids to a playground. The Council counters that there are plenty of free and unrestricted playgrounds in the council, but that these supervised play sessions are not open to parents except under special circumstances.

While this does strike me a bit like asking parents to drop their kids off at Chuckie Cheese and not remain on site, and further seems more than a bit over the top, two other things about this bother me.

Take a look at this quotation from the Watford Council statement.

We have simply reiterated that the fully supervised play sessions we run at our adventure playgrounds - Harebreaks and Harwoods - are for children aged 5 -15 years old, and that parents/carers of children and young people who visit these play sessions are not able to stay on site with their children during play sessions. This reduces any potential risks to children and ensures they are able to play freely.
[Bold mine for emphasis.]

Not only does this suggest that the parents of children are deemed to be a potential threat to children using the playground (and one that can't be sufficiently mitgated by the presence of council staff at the playground), but there is also the suggestion that the kids will play more freely without parents there. Maybe the author of the statement only meant to suggest that kids would play more freely without the presence of lots of unknown parents. But it smacks more than a little of a suggestion that the presence of any parents, even those belonging to the child are a hinderance to free play.

So first you create an environment where kids don't have a lot of opportunity for adventurous, risky free play (an environment that you find all too often across the US, where tree climbing, creek poking, woods wandering etc are discouraged or actively prohibited), then you create a tempting "adventure playground," then you prohibit parents from accompanying their kids because they are somehow a risk to the other children. I've been rereading Last Child in the Woods by Louv and this whole scenario bothers me on so many levels.

One thing that the council fails to clarify is how these unscreened parents wouldn't also be a danger to children playing at the councils "4 community centres, 5 children’s centres, over 40 areas of park and playgrounds, as well as a museum, two libraries . . ." Seems like the unprotected children of Watford Council would be much more in danger from unscreened adults at an open playground or park than in a relatively controlled area like this adventure playground.

For my part, I'd appreciate a whole lot more parents, particularly engaged and parenting parents at the local parks on base. Far too many kids with no supervision. Last time we hit the park next to our apartment, I watched a group of children "playing" by grabbing each other by the legs to knock each other down. It was really rough, to the point that I was expecting a child to hit their head on the ground or twist an arm. We actually went over to a park down the street, much to my own kids relief. There were about eight kids, young elementary age (ie, all too young to be on the playground alone, per base rules) and only one other adult in the playground. She also looked uncomfortable, but didn't do anything to correct her kid(s) or any of the others.

No, Really

2009-10-25T05:31:00.002-04:00

I'm the type of person who likes to be helpful in the library. I make book suggestions, show folks where the children's fiction is (not anywhere near the children's room), tell them about interlibrary loan, etc.

I was chatting with another mom this afternoon and she asked if I knew where the tax law books. I ask if she was looking for books on doing your taxes or something else. She explained that her husband had been doing research on the 16th amendment and had discovered that income tax was unconstitutional because there wasn't really a law authorizing income tax. They were trying to do a little more research before they wrote up an email sharing this new knowledge with all of their friends.

I managed to not actually take a step backwards, but I must have looked dubious because she added, "No, really you can read about it on the internet."

Really what was there to say? I told her that political and economics books were in the mid 300's and pointed her to the stacks.

I did add however that I knew of officers who had been kicked out for failure to pay their taxes (failure to select). Personally it would seem to me that being a tax protestor is a difficult stance to take as a serving military member.

I'm sure that I will offend someone with this, but I've rarely been in the situation of hearing such utter nonsense coming from what looked like an otherwise rational person.

Scout Songs

2009-10-23T07:59:00.002-04:00

Here is one of the better lists of songs for scouts to sing. I especially like that while there are some silly songs, there are also a lot of traditional, heritage songs to sing. It looks like this is part of a collection of Girl Scout links.

Mikoshi Parade Video

2009-10-19T06:03:00.002-04:00

I learned that my little camera is not at all up to capturing video. But with the wonders of Youtube, I can already share incredible video of yesterday's parade.

This is the portion of the parade that is on Blue Street (Yokosuka Street?), the main shopping district outside the base. The mikoshi go down Blue Street and then come onto the base. It was fun to see them right on the other side of the base. We could hear the drummers as soon as we went outside.

But next time we are definitely heading out in town where we can eat some of the yummy looking goodies. I didn't come to Japan to eat pizza.

Mikoshi Parade in Yokosuka

2009-10-19T05:11:00.008-04:00

Sunday was a Mikoshi Parade in Yokosuka, both in town and on base. A mikoshi is a portable shrine from a Shinto temple. During various festivals, the mikoshi from the shrine is paraded through the neighborhood or through the town.

I went out expecting that there would be one mikoshi representing the base. Instead, we found a parade with about two dozen mikoshi from different shrines around the area, each with their own group of bearers.

The bearers of each mikoshi tend to wear matching jackets and towels wrapped around their heads or their necks.

Each team has someone keeping the group in step, either with a whistle or by a call and response routine. The teams shuffle, bounce, and dip from side to side. A couple turned the mikoshi in place or did quick reversals. One source that I read suggested that the wilder the ride, the more the kami (shinto spirit or deity) in the mikoshi is pleased. I'm sure that there is also a certain amount of friendly competition amongst the teams.

This one is the base mikoshi. The lanterns at the top are labeled with the ships and commands at the base. The team is wearing special CFAY jackets. This was one of the larger sized mikoshi. We saw one being taken home later that night. It took three large flatbed trucks. The poles that the teams are carrying look like 4 x 6's and they are about 20 feet long. The whole thing must be incredibly heavy. It looked like most teams had a full replacement group to switch with. The base was looking for 80-100 people for their team.

Several of the mikoshi were accompanied by wagons with drummers and other musicians like flute players and bell ringers. The ladies in the first picture are sitting in one of the more ornate wagons. These were pulled rather than being carried. After the mikoshi had completed the route, the were set on stands. The drum wagons were all parked together in a group, where they kept playing as other teams filed past.

Most teams seemed to have brought take out bentos or boxes of onigiri. But there was also a brisk trade in pizzas, cinnabon and American grilled specialties. My favorite was the large handwritten poster explaining the contents of a taco platter in Japanese.

I'm a Mom, What's Your Super Power

2009-10-14T22:50:00.002-04:00

You have got to click on over to the site for the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company, but please swallow what you're sipping before you do.

This has to be one of the cleverest creative writing projects I've every bumbled upon.

H/T: The Corner at National Review Online

Birds of Yokosuka Naval Base

2009-10-14T21:49:00.003-04:00

I got tipped to a cool website that lists common birds found on Yokosuka Naval Base. It has thumbnail photos of the birds and pretty good descriptions of where on base they are found.

The website, Our Geo Japan, also has a recommendation for the Yokohama Nature Sanctuary, which sounds like it could be a very good daytrip. Both pages would be a good resource for nature study or scout groups and is also an example of what you can do now with online resources. Unfortunately, the site lacks a search window and contact info. But I hope that they keep adding to the site.

New Carnival of Homeschooling

2009-10-14T07:25:00.001-04:00

It's been a while since I had time for a Carnival of Homeschooling, either as participant or as a reader.

This week's is hosted by The Nerd Family.

Rice Harvesting

2009-10-12T08:32:00.001-04:00

Back at the end of August, we went rice harvesting with a group of homeschoolers from Kanto Plain Homeschoolers. We drove down to Kurihama and took the ferry over to Chiba. From there we had a winding drive to the rice farm. I was expecting something rustic, but it turned out to be quite the triving business, with rice, crawdads for the kids to play with, persimmons and a gift shop with local specialties.

They walked us down to our assigned field, which coincidentally the group had planted in the cold and rainy spring. The wet rice paddies of the springtime were gone. Now the rice was growing from dry ground. You could still see how they had been planted in handfuls.

The farmers lined us up along the edge of the field then walked down the row and handed everyone a sickle. Yep, rusty edged farm implements in the hands of everyone, even the kids.

Then they showed us how to grab a handful of rice stalks and slice them off a couple of inches from the ground. We would collect several handfuls and stack them on the berm near the field. Ten handfuls one way, then ten handfuls laid across them to make an X. We tied them together using a bit of rice straw.

It was pretty hot work and we took a few breaks beneath a shady persimmon tree. The tree was home to several types of jumping insects like crickets and praying mantis and walking sticks. There were even dragonflies, lizards and maybe a quick sighting of a snake.

Once we had cut and bundled the whole field, the farmers put up a frame of bamboo poles, tied with the same rice straw in longer lengths. We put each of the rice bundles across the frame to dry in the sun.

One of the neighboring fields had several scarecrows. There were some sort of signs with them, possibly some kind of Japanese Burma Shave style sayings.

2004 was the International Year of Rice. There are a ton of educational links about rice and rice growing at this Australian site.

Webelos

2009-10-12T04:30:00.003-04:00

Feel free to pray for me over the next month or so. I'm doing research and preps to help lead Webelos activities at Cub Scout day camp and lead a group of them on a three mile hike up Takatoriyama.

It will either be really cool or a huge headache.

Churchill Motivational Posters

2009-10-09T18:36:00.004-04:00

If you like the style of motivational posters, check out this great set based on Churchill quotations. Far better than the standard versions with anonymous pictures and platitudes.

[Insert snarky comment about latest winner of Nobel prize who sent Churchill's bust back to the Brits.]

Books for a Desert Island

2009-10-06T01:35:00.004-04:00

What books would I want on a desert island? I'm going to try to restrict myself to books that I actually own.

1. A Bible. I would say that it goes without saying, but it doesn't really anymore. But a Bible provides literary enjoyment and spiritual consolation. Imprecatory psalms for when I'm raging against my plight and psalms of praise and wonder for when I'm marveling at surviving whatever deposited me on the island. Many years ago, in my first weeks at the Naval Academy, I read Job, in order to draw comfort from the story of someone whose position was worse than my own. I imagine on my island exile that I would have ample time to voice Job's complaints and to be chastened by God's response. It is tempting to make this a bilingual Latin/English Bible and get double duty here as language study.

2. Boy Scout Fieldbook. I think that this has a nice blend of necessary help and interesting nature info. Plus since it's written for youthful scouts, I would probably be able to follow most of the directions. Actually, it might be even better to have a copy of Baden-Powell's Handbook for Boys since it would have more emphasis on basic skills and less of a Leave No Trace emphasis. I think given the scenario, it would be better to trade a No Trace philosophy for a good set of handmade shelter directions.

3. A literature anthology. I can picture the blue bound volume that I want, but I think my copy landed in storage this move. Beowulf, selections from Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare, poetry, and on and on. A long drink of the best of literature and expression of feeling in my mother tongue. Ending mercifully well before the contemporary drivel.

4. The Lord of the Rings. I won't cheat and include The Hobbit in this. But the opulent red bound slip-cased single volume that was one of our wedding presents would provide a healthy dose of myth and inspiration.

5. Handbook of Nature Study. While Comstock's classic is meant more for temperate climates than a tropical island, it is a masterpiece of observation and information. I could do worse than use it as a jumping off point for observing whatever beasties share my isle.

6. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.

7. Hmm, what for the last book. Resource, reference, consolation, entertainment? Gaudy Night by Sayers is tempting, as is Austen's Persuasion. A hymnal or Favorite Poems Old and New? Robinson Crusoe or The Swiss Family Robinson? But what I keep looking at on the bookshelf is The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin. Boorstin is one of my favorite historians and this is part of a set that I haven't gotten around to reading. Plus the subject matter is one that would seem to be encouraging in my predicament.

HT to Mama Squirrel, who tipped me off to the Great Books Week.

Halloween Booing

2009-10-05T11:34:00.007-04:00

So the last couple of years, we had a lot of fun with Halloween Boo bags, bags with some Halloween treats and decorations, a You've Been Boo'd poem and a We've Been Booed sign. We especially had fun with the special boo bag that we did for an exchange officer's family, since they didn't have much experience with Halloween at all. That bag was extra special with holiday books and little stuffed animals for the kids.

Last year we were the first in the neighborhood to deliver boo bags, starting right on October 1st. We moved before it came back around to us, but one friend was thoughtful and sweet and boo'd us at the hotel we stayed at our last week.

But now we're living in an apartment tower. I haven't seen much sign that this is a tradition here. I'm wondering if it is something that we should try to start or just let it be. I sort of hate to let the tradition die off. On the other hand, we live in a little island of Americana. We can't exactly rush out to Pricebusters or Big Lots for cute Halloween items.

Any thoughts?

Update: If you do put together a boo basket this year, I'd love to see it. Leave a link to a photo in the comments section.

Great Books Week

2009-10-05T11:25:00.003-04:00

Mama Squirel at Dewey's Treehouse has extended an invitation to celebrate books during Great Books Week. Here's something I can really get into.

Here are the blog prompts for the week from the board where Mama Squirrel heard about it:

Great Books Week

I'd like to invite you to participate in a Blog Tour in honor of Great Books Week which is October 4-10, 2009. There are special blog topics for each day, and you're invited to write a post and link back to the NAIWE NewsWire blog so that others can find your post. This holiday is jointly sponsored by Excellence in Literature and the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors.

Here’s the schedule of topics:

Monday: If I were stranded alone on a deserted island with only seven books to read over the next few years, I would like to have…

Tuesday: When I was a child, my favorite book was… because….

Wednesday: I’d write my autobiography, but I don’t need to, because my story has already been told in… [what classic book?]

Thursday: I hated … when I had to read it in high school, but when I read it on my own later, I loved it because….

Friday: When I want to give someone a special gift, I give them [name of book] because…

Here's the introductory post.

Here's the Facebook Event page.

There will be a daily post with each topic so that you can leave your name and link in the comment section for the appropriate topic. I encourage you to share this invitation with other book lovers, and post it on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. Let's make it a big celebration!

Blessings,

Janice Campbell
www.Everyday-Education.com

Takatori-yama

2009-10-04T00:27:00.001-04:00

We're thinking of taking the Webelos out on a trail hike of Takatori-yama, where Rutabaga had a couple of rock climbing outings in the spring.

This mountain biking site has great photos and trail info for the area.

(G)O Canada!

2009-09-23T08:47:00.003-04:00

Canadian Mission to the UN set to walk out on Ahmadinejad. Saying that his insistence on denying the Holocaust is shameful, they will leave the opening of the General Assemby when he takes the podium.

Bravo! A sincere hat tip if they go through with it. And shame on us for sitting there to listen. Actually, shame on us for allowing him a visa in the first place.

For Insect Fans

2009-09-18T07:23:00.001-04:00

Forensic Entomology Lesson Plans on the use of blow flies in dating corpses.

In Memory

2009-09-13T09:42:00.002-04:00

Eight years on, it is already getting hard to find a concise list of the friends and shipmates that we lost on September 11th without having to sift first through links to various conspiracy theories and promises to reveal the untold story.

Here is one of the untold stories of men and women who stood watch while other Americans were safe in their beds.

Dan Shanower
Vince Tolbert
Angie Houtz
Jonas Panik
Darin Pontell
Brady Howell
Jerry Moran

A friend of mine had served on an AFS with Vince Tolbert when she was a brand new ensign. She told me that he was the best Officer of the Deck a new watchstander could ask to serve under. High praise, since the officer who trains you has such an impact on how good of an OOD you become.

Also in rememberance of CDR Pat Dunn.

Debunking Myths about September 11th

2009-09-11T09:59:00.002-04:00

I hate the fact that while I'm having trouble finding the names of all of our friends and acquaintances who were killed in the Pentagon on September 11th, sites that claim to demonstrate that the attacks were an inside job by the government keep popping up within the first page of search results. I do hope that this sort of nutty conception will remain repulsive and subject to ridicule. I dread the idea that someday my kids might end up in a college class where these conspiracy theories are voiced in the name of giving all sides of the story.

Popular Mechanics has a good debunking of September 11th myths. I printed it out in case it becomes too hard to find online in the future.

I would also recommend Freedom Isn't Free, written in 1997 by (then) LCDR Dan Shanower for Naval Institute Proceedings. CDR Shanower was killed in the Pentagon on September 11th.

Poisonous Plants

2009-09-10T09:12:00.003-04:00

Since I've been sending my eldest off to scout outings nearly every month, we've needed to pay a little better attention to the poisonous plants here. Japan has a couple varieties of poison sumac, which is actually the source for the lacquer in lacquer boxes. They are all part of the toxicodendron family, which also includes poison ivy and poison oak.

Barb at Handbook of Nature Study has some info on poison oak and poison ivy. She also mentions that her dh, a woodlands firefighter, uses something called Tecnu. Might be something to add to a first aid kit.

Ah, poison oak and fires. In my dad's volunteer firefighter days, there was one involved brushfire that exposed everyone to poison oak. Since it was in the smoke, a lot of the toxins ended up inhaled. They ended up with rashes everywhere, including in mouths and noses. Not nice.

Homeschooling Boys

2009-09-08T21:39:00.002-04:00

We are reading Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes as part of our couple weeks studying Japan. Today I read the chapters where Sadako realizes that she may die from her leukemia and where a friend teaches her to fold cranes and tells her that if she folds 1,000 cranes, the gods will grant her wish to survive.

Then I pull out stacks of origami paper and we settle down to make cranes. But by the second set, all the boys are making dragons and pterodactyls.

So much for the dewy eyed teaching moment.