Some Jobs Get Dirty

Mike Rowe has been spending some time in our living room.  On the screen.  Showing us what it takes to keep our country humming along.  And some of it isn't pretty!  UGH.  Some of it is down right nasty and nauseating.  But these are the jobs that hard-working people take on every day to make a living and to keep  products on the shelves.  We have all learned so much about what some tasks take in the way of man power, dedication and olfactory tolerance!

Dirty Jobs: Collection 1

Since 2007, Mike and his crew have been scouring the back roads of America looking for dirty jobs that many Americans depend on for civilized life to carry on; except, most of us probably didn't fully realize what went into those jobs until now.  If you watch even one episode, you'll have a much bigger appreciation for many of the conveniences in your life.  You might gaze fondly at your toilet in a whole new way!  And be grateful for the people who willingly place themselves on the receiving end of that contraption EVERY DAY!  

The conveniences of daily life might not seem so glamorous anymore, and that might be a good thing.  Just to keep it all in check.  I think we do need to be grateful for people who tackle the unpleasant tasks, for the hide tanners and the sewer technicians and the walnut shakers and the high rise window washers of the universe.  We salute you!  And yes, I feel sorry for the cows whose hides get tanned and the pigs who are bred for the sake of our dinner tables - you might guess where I stand on these issues :).

Mike makes the learning process entertaining, if a bit sarcastic at times.  Also, note that a few harsher words are tossed around now and then, but the editors do a pretty good job of bleeping out the stuff you probably don't want your kids to spout the next time you're in the grocery store together.  Hey, you might even look at products on the grocery store shelves with a new eye, too. We've learned a lot by watching.  We've learned about methods-by-hand that were historically used to accomplish tasks and how technology has changed the landscape for many industries.  You get to 'meet' real people working hard all over the country and you'll probably see processes you've never even thought about before.   It is in this light that I think Dirty Jobs is a valuable offering.  I also like how the people Mike visits are polite and welcoming of him and his camera crew; they seem to enjoy the opportunity to teach and get a charge out of Mike's willingness to see the nitty gritty operations behind the scenes.

There are four seasons currently available.  We have been utilizing Netflix streaming via the Roku player to indulge in a little Mike Rowe humor.  Be prepared for some unpleasantness that will likely fascinate your children!  Oh, and don't eat while you're watching.  Just speaking from experience.  

Daily Life Around the House

Time to get serious about this whole schooling at home business.  Tonight I showed Max the moment when a pancake is ready for flipping (when the edges are a little dry and the bubbles on top are popping like mad), and it got me to thinking.  This may have seemed like a trivial interaction in daily life, but it's much more than that.  Isn't my job as his parent to teach him how to navigate the mazes he'll eventually face out in the world, and don't those mazes occasionally encompass the art of making pancakes?  I think so!

Perhaps an amount of time ought to be devoted to developing the important domestic skills in this journey of ours.  Now, of course, my mind is whirring with the possibilities of stuff we could cover!  Think of the breadth and scope here.........anything is fair game to be learned about.  We've already completed a few 'lessons', if you can call them that, on laundry and those went well.  Folding shirts out of the dryer takes practice, but he does a pretty good job.  I'm not a fan of the iron, though, so it doesn't see the light of day very often.  Vacuum maintenance could go on the list; as in how to change the bag and filters, too.  Changing light bulbs and the potential benefits of using CFLs.  Sorting the recycling comes to mind - separating the number 5 plastics from the 1's and 2's and making sure they get to the right place.

Putting together a budget.  Now there's a hot topic!  How about changing out furnace filters or maintaining a swamp cooler?  Learning when to call in a professional is good to know, too.  Cooking with a gas stove!  Lawn maintenance, although I'm by no means a good teacher in this arena because we have goats and I have given them free license in our backyard.  You could say we don't have to tend to much lawn maintenance.......Chewie and Fig have outdone themselves in taking out the weeds and anything else that happens to have a green tinge back there.  All except the Virginia Creeper vine; hmm.  They must know something about that vine because they won't touch it.  It's definitely a falsehood that goats will eat anything.  This afternoon I went outside with some watermelon for the boys and when I called for them, only Chewie made an appearance.  I went looking for Fig and found him in a tree, balanced on a branch, happily munching on leaves and little twigs.  He turned up his brown nose at the watermelon (he never likes to try anything new).

Heck, you could learn together about how a house is built, how plumbing is installed, how a house is wired for electricity........all that stuff we tend to not think about because it's easy to flip a switch or turn a faucet knob.  Although, I wouldn't recommend fiddling with the electricity; I would just read about it or look at home maintenance books!  Not that I'm teaching many of these things, mind you, but it could be a wide open subject for a homeschooling family, couldn't it?  The New Way Things Works by David Macaulay could be a neat adjunct text in this endeavor!

 The New Way Things Work

This tome doesn't concentrate on your house per say, but it does contain all sorts of nifty contraptions and principles of science.

The New Way Things Work 3.2

This looks so cool!  "Explains workings of more than 150 simple and complex machines and inventions. Examines fascinating worlds of history's great inventors from 7000 B.C. to the present. Guided by the humorous Great Woolly Mammoth, learn about 22 basic principles of science. Includes more than 300 wacky animations."  Excerpt from Amazon product description.

How Your House Works: A Visual Guide to Understanding & Maintaining Your Home

Not a children's text, but still could prove useful if you want to do a little research.  If you already happen to know all this stuff, then I am not worthy!  Home Depot has a similar text called Home Improvement 1-2-3.  You could really have fun making a unit study out of this topic. 

And lest we forget, how about composting, a subject near and dear to my heart!  I recently completed a set of classes and am gathering volunteer hours to become a master composter (like a master gardener, only focused in one key area).  We have two giant open bins out back which I manage on a weekly basis.  I think turning the pile is a fun activity.  It's definitely a workout, I am always curious to see how things change and break down,  and the end of the process yields wonderful material for the soil.  Teaching Max what is compostable is valuable - because I want him to know that much of the stuff we consider waste need not end up in a landfill, that it can be turned into something remarkable for the garden.  I sometimes think that composting can save the world.  Well, at least it's a step in the right direction, if you ask me.

All sorts of things can be composted (composting is just a natural decomposition process that breaks down organic materials - or things that were once living - into a wonderful substance called humus, which is the stuff of legend for soil improvement).  When you set out to compost, all you are doing is helping to create the right conditions for stuff to break down efficiently.  You need brown material, green material (more browns than greens) air and water, a spot to pile it and a pitchfork or shovel to turn it every so often.  Composting need not be expensive!  You can wire together four recycled pallets and have a serviceable bin.  You don't have to spend $200 for a fancy turning composter at Costco; you'd be better off reading a little about the process first and figuring out which system is a match for your household.  Worm bins are awesome for apartment dwellers, too.  Red worms are all the rage!  I have a thousand worms in one of our piles - that was a pretty exciting day when they arrived and I introduced them to their new digs.  I was practically giddy.

Toilet paper tubes, used Kleenex and napkins, torn up newspapers (preferably not the shiny ads, though), human or animal hair, paperboard or chipboard (as in ALL those cereal boxes!  Doesn't it seem like everything comes encased in paperboard???), veggie and fruit scraps from the kitchen, pesticide-free grass clippings, yard trimmings, egg shells, coffee grounds along with the filter, corrugated cardboard, old white cotton socks and underwear even!  If you have a rabbit, the wood shavings and poo from the cage are wonderful composting material (some of the best, in fact).  Just don't add cat or dog doo, meat or dairy products, or fats.  I recommend starting a compost pile and involving your kids in the process!  It's a highly satisfying endeavor, one that I wish more people did.  Our trash can at weekly pickup now is often not even half full, and that's great.

I think you might be getting the idea.  I've blogged before about how 'schooling' doesn't need to be limited to reading, writing and math.  There is so much good stuff we can share with our kids.  Just take a look around or start to think about your daily activities in terms of what can be a topic for learning.  It's wide open.  And that's one of the coolest things about homeschooling!   

Summer Read

We reached the suspenseful chapters in this book last night and couldn't put it down!  We took turns reading a chapter aloud.  Max was so excited to find out what was happening that he was skipping words, but I called him on it!  Reading aloud is a good thing for kids to get accustomed to, I think.

Here's the book:

Masterpiece

Hooray for Marvin the beetle!  He lives under the Pompaday's kitchen sink in their New York apartment with his supportive and extended family of beetles.  The beetles, unbeknownst to the Pompadays, are very involved with the humans living in the apartment, one in particular - the oldest son, James.  James and Marvin form a charming friendship based on Marvin's incredible ability to draw with ink.  Together they learn about the Renaissance artist Albrecht Durer, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and, unfortunately, the underground world of art thieves.  It's a fun read and in bonus fashion, you'll learn a thing or two.  

I'm impressed with Marvin and his knack for caring about others, namely James.  Both Max and I are giving the book 5 stars!  A terrific book for the 9-12 year old.     

Wrap Up the Year on Paper

Next week I'll be setting about to wrap up our fifth grade year on paper.  All year long I've been keeping a journal on the computer of what we've done; this blog has also served as a wonderful map as it has diagrammed our experiences, materials, and some of my crazy thought processes.  Boy, I sure did worry some about math, didn't I?  Perhaps that was wasted worried energy now that I look back.  If there's one sentence I could utter to a new homeschooling parent, it would be, "don't waste too much time worrying - your child will get from point A to point B in his or her own way".   And, "you can do it!"

In the journal I kept track of what we covered in various subjects, what books we read, which ones I read aloud to Max, how we each rated those books, and some of my thoughts.  I also kept a three-ring binder with daily sheets that were used for planning and guiding him in his daily schooling.  It was an objective to encourage him to work more independently and by the end of the year, he was definitely managing to work much better by himself.  Last year in fourth grade I still spent a great deal of time with him or at least sitting near him at the table.  Even though he is working more independently, he tends to try to complete his work quickly so that he can move on to other adventures (adventures that don't entail school work.....)  And quick work doesn't equate to correct work most of the time. That's something we'll continue to strive toward in sixth grade - slowing down and concentrating!

I'm planning to write up a summary post to include what we covered during our fifth grade year.  I'm sure it's going to look ridiculous all typed up, but in truth, it really flowed well as we followed our interests.  We mainly concentrated on early American history and used that as a jumping off point, but I am easily distracted, so our rovings took us far and wide.  I read somewhere that you can turn your blog into a book and have it printed as a record of your journeys; I would very much like to do that!  Does anyone have experience with this endeavor?

Even though Max is finished with most of his work for the year (barring some math), I still have much to accomplish as far as wrapping it all up in a neat little package. There's something highly gratifying about this part for me!  I crave living in order, but can never seem to find that place on the map!  I've visited occasionally or have had brief glimpses of order from afar, but I tend to live out most of my days in creative chaos and befuddlement (population one billion, I'm sure......)  Order sure is easy to find in magazines or books on home design, isn't it?  I'll let you know if I manage to wrap up the year neatly and thoroughly so we can move on to next year and I'll try to share some of what we learned, both figuratively and literally!

Summer

We are wrapping things up around here and transitioning into summer blissed out living.  Figuring out what that means every day!  Our area has been inundated with smoke and ash from the giant fire that is raging in Arizona; it has made for interesting visibility and sunsets.  Having so much smoke from a fire that is hundreds of miles away kind of blows your mind!  If it's bad here, I really feel for the people who are having to deal with the actual fire.  The sky has offered up quite a color show, especially as the sun sets, and the light has just been plain weird.  Kind of a goldeny yellow that makes you feel like you're living on Mars.  Although, the light has been bueno for photography lately!  I've been out with the camera some taking pics of flowers, but haven't messed with any of the images yet.

At the end of the month (in less than 10 days - gulp!) I'll be participating in my first big art fair for New Mexico artists.  It's the 50th anniversary of the New Mexico Arts and Crafts fair and my work got juried in, so I'll be toting all of my prints, framed and canvas pieces there to be set up in a booth to hopefully sell a bunch of it!  I'm excited and nervous.  I surmise that it's going to be lots of fun, yet taxing.  Three very long days - guess I had better bring enough food to snack on and some protein bars to get me through!  If you are curious about my photography, here's the link to my Etsy shop or my website.   I hope that it is a successful weekend.

We have a trip to Colorado planned to do some hiking, soaking and relaxing.  We're going with another family, so Max will have a good time horsing around with their kids.  And then some time spent up in Angel Fire, New Mexico will round out the summer for the mountain fix (I am much more of a mountain girl than a water girl).  Max will also be attending a camp in August for some swimming and more horsing around.

As far as homeschool stuff, we are finishing up the language arts section on Time4Learning this week.  He's taking the state assessment tests right now and he also finished up their amazing art program.  I'm going to blog about that separately because it was such a treat.  Then Dad and Max will continue to work on math throughout the summer using Key Curriculum Press workbooks and we'll check in to see what Fred is doing in LOF.  Other than that the boy is free to just BE!  Me, too :)

June Giveaway at Secular Homeschool is a GOOD one!

Several weeks ago my little eye spied this very cool manipulative math set that teaches algebra and my heart quickened!  Really, it did.  It does that when I stumble upon something that fits into a hole I am looking to fill, if that makes any sense.  Algebra looms on the horizon and instead of us looking out at dark and stormy clouds a way out there, I'd rather look forward to sunny skies dappled with some puffy white clouds - you know, the kind that are shaped like animals or things you can recognize!

Low and behold, Hands-On Equations is being given away to a lucky homeschooler during June at http://www.secularhomeschool.com/, one of my weekly haunts!  I love the people on this forum!  So much experience, support, curriculum ideas and encouragement is just a click away.  Here's the link for June's giveaway:

JUNE GIVEAWAY AT SECULAR HOMESCHOOL

Hands on Equations offers a way to play with algebra visually and kinesthetically to develop strategies for setting up and solving equations.  All you need to do is to watch a quick demonstration video or two to grasp how effective their method is in teaching algebraic concepts.  Again, I grieve for not having been able to learn math in this manner!  What an opportunity for clarity and true understanding of stuff that sometimes doesn't lend itself to clarity and understanding.  I'm very optimistic about this program!   If you are too, then please throw your name into the hat and see what happens! 

Another Reason to Homeschool

If there's one major thing I have learned over the last two years of homeschooling, it would be that it's imperative to remain FLEXIBLE.  Not as in yoga-flexible (although that's good), but as in time and attitude flexible.  Because stuff always comes up.  Life happens to you when you plan.  Expect it!  Then you won't be disappointed.  It is wise to plan for the unexpected and give yourself some wiggle room during your year, or cop an attitude of going with whatever happens.

We are trailing down to the end of the school year, but I don't have a date set wherein we'll officially stop.  Today Max yelled in celebratory parlance, "only three more days of school!"  Where did he come up with that number, I wonder?  We will likely continue on with some math through the summer courtesy of my extra generous husband who has agreed to strap the math load to his back.  Together they are working it out and I am humbly giddy about it!

With respect to being flexible, we dropped everything on Friday and made arrangements to fly to Minneapolis to attend my grandmother's funeral.  She was 99 years, 1 month and 2 days old.  Born in 1912, she lived out her entire life in a small farming community in Minnesota.  Those are my roots!  Deep in that black soil up there.  My grandparents were farmers and left me with many sweet memories of days on the farm, of all the animals they tended.  I spoke at her church service in an effort to share with everyone what it was like growing up as her granddaughter.  I hope I did the experience justice; she was a gift as a grandparent and I certainly was lucky to have her for 45 years.

This was Max's first funeral.  He's eleven, so I felt strongly about him attending and experiencing the custom of the wake and church service, even though we aren't active church goers.  He was extremely anxious about attending the wake as this would be the first time he would actually lay eyes on a real human being who had passed from life.  He had never seen a casket before, or a funeral home, or a cemetery, or his own grandparents crying.  It was an incredible experience from all angles and I couldn't help but observe him as the events unfolded.  It was an emotional ride for all of us, but overall Max handled everything very well.  He was exhausted by the time we boarded the plane last night to make it back to New Mexico in the wee hours.  Needless to say we slept in very late and completely ignored any school subjects today.

Not once did school or math or language arts cross my mind while we were gone. All of my energy was catapulted to another place so that I could say goodbye to my grandma the way I needed to and I was drinking up the farm, taking a walk through my memories.  An exemplary reason for homeschooling.  You can stop for as long as you need to to cope with life.  You are not bound to an arbitrary, contrived schedule dictated by others who are certainly not interested in the needs of your family.  You can create your own schedule on top of the ebb and flow of your own family's rhythms.

You can have space to grieve your losses.  The world needs more spaces like that!        

Gladly Passing the Reins

Tonight I popped THE question lovingly to my husband.  "Honey, would you consider taking over teaching math to Max?"  Without hesitation he asked to see where we were at in our quest and agreed to take the reins.  I am practically swooning with relief.  I need a break from Max's math monsters!  He holds such disdain for the material and it wears me out at times to try and find different ways to engage him.  We've just come off of a two week break and I can't tell you how nice it was not to have to deal with math-itis.  I've lamented about this many times on my blog and have wavered between loosening up on math, to changing curricula, to playing lots of math games, to not doing any math at all.  I was very excited to purchase the first Life of Fred book on fractions and thought for sure it would be a hit; Max is super-sleuth when it comes to sensing math, though, and he immediately recognized the book as such and lumped it into the "NO" category.  I adore the Life of Fred series.  Max enjoys the stories but resists working out the problems at the end of each chapter. 

I have come to the conclusion that Max, math and I should not hang out in the same room together, at least for the time being or the rest of this school year, which ever comes first.  We coexist very well with language arts, history, literature and geography, so we'll stick with those subjects in the 'Mom' camp.  Dad and Max can play video games, paint trim, practice skateboarding and do math together.  It should be great!  Mom is going to put up her feet and grab a good book (probably some nonfiction on how to teach kids math).

My husband is planning to make breakfast for Max in the morning and work on math together before he leaves for work.  We'll see how Day 1 goes........wish them luck!   

Later.........Day 3 and all is well so far.  Max and Dad are hammering away on least common denominators in the early morning and I haven't seen any formal complaints filed from either of them.  This is great!  Three days in and they are working well together.  It's given me a breath of fresh air to concentrate on all the other stuff we're doing.  Yay!  Max and I seem to be having a bit more fun during the day together!  

Create-A-Story

I don't know if you experience this, too, but it seems that when you become aware of something new, you begin to see reminders of it EVERYWHERE!  For instance, you've recently peed on a stick and two blue lines appear in the little window (oh my!); from that moment forward everything and anything remotely related to pregnancy catches your eye, including all the pregnant animals at the zoo.  Pregnant people or babies pop out of every nook and cranny, you glance up just in time to see a baby jogger rolling by in front of a huffing mama, the color pink suddenly becomes interesting........it's just a phenomenon that I've noticed with all sorts of topics!  If I'm interested in a Subaru, I start to notice them all over the road in all manner of colors and styles.  Prior to that I never paid them any heed.  It's like your brain throws a switch and you suddenly see!  Does this ever happen to you?  I think it's weird.  Not saying I'm pregnant!  That's merely an example to get my point across.  Really. 

What I am becoming more and more aware of lately is information and materials to help teach a bouncing kinesthetic learner all sorts of things from world history to math to writing and more.  You know you have a kinesthetic learner if he or she has a hard time sitting still with pen in hand.  While helping him sort out the directions to an assignment your happy little kinesthetic child vaults from his chair to "go get something".  He returns a moment later with his rubber sword and a cape, stuff he says he needs to complete the assignment that you have so diligently planned out the night before.  You had intended that he'd sit at the table quietly and his little hand would craftily wield the pen, creating a mighty hand-written story replete with stunning character development, witty verbal exchanges, titillating plot sequences and a nicely wrapped up moral lesson that executes itself exquisitely in the last sentence.

Instead, your brave little swordsman leaps into action to slay the invisible dragons in the living room, the ones belching fire from behind the couch, the ones that apparently you can't see, but they are going to set the curtains on fire any second.  He insists that the house must be saved and he is the only one to do it!  You are left standing next to the table holding the pen, a bit bewildered about how he slipped out of the writing assignment.  Again.

Well, you have a couple of options.  You could grab your laptop and join your little knight in the living room and ask him to narrate his story, capturing his skill and prowess while faced with a fire-breathing beast surely set to gobble him up at any second.  You could video tape his play and have him watch it later while he narrates what happened.  You could also let him play out his dragon theme for awhile and then call him back to the table to play a very fun game called Create-A-Story!

I think I need this game or I need to design one like it and use it.  Max hates to write and he's clever at coming up with ways to avoid it.  During game play players work their way around the board and pick up story cards that provide the characters, plot, dialogue, moral or lesson, problem, resolution, ending, etc.  Then you use the handy outlines that are provided to help organize your very silly story and make it work.  It seems that humor surely comes in handy during this game, of course.  At the end of the game, the child writes out his story and hopefully it wasn't too agonizing for him to do so!

Stuff like this is popping up all over my radar screen, which is great.  I obviously need to pay attention and to continue to seek and find.  Maybe you've got a little dragon-slayer lurking in your household, too?  Let him wear his cape, brandish his sword  and try games like Create-A-Story to help make the learning stuff fun and more aligned to his style.  It might just be the best thing ever!

NOTE AT A LATER DATE:  I ended up purchasing this board game and we've had it out to play it.  Fun!  Challenging, too.  We giggled several times as we drew our characters and descriptors and tried to fit them together in our outlines.  Getting Max to do the outline was easy and I saw him think through several possible scenarios.  He wasn't so excited, however, to figure out what happens first, second and third and how to pull it all together into a story, so I wrote the first one.  He loved it - it was about a mummy getting to meet the president at an amusement park on the hottest day of the century.  We'll continue to work with this game; the important thing is that he gets a feel for elements in a story and how to tie them together.  It's tricky sometimes to wrap up a story neatly with the resolution and lesson!  Fun game, though.

JUMP Math

Was pointed in the direction of a pretty cool math curriculum yesterday that may be a good fit for Max.  We'll see.  I researched it a little more today and like what I see so far.  Currently we're using a mix of Key Curriculum Press workbooks for fractions, Life of Fred for fun, and some Math Mammoth for clarity, along with some clever Nerf math and other games.  Max likes Life of Fred the best, at least the story (the story is beyond fabulous - I've read ahead several chapters just to find out what happens), but he doesn't much care for doing the practice problems at the end of each chapter.  He'd rather gloss right over those puppies.

Gradually I've learned that he benefits best from a mastery approach, versus a spiral approach.  Sometimes I think we underestimate just how much we have to practice something to really have a grasp, at least a working grasp that we can carry with us to the next concept, right?  And sometimes getting a grasp on a new concept isn't all that straight forward because the leap from where you are currently to where you need to be is much too large.

Enter a program called JUMP Math.  I read an article in the New York Times about it.  Here's the link to the article:

New York Times - JUMP Math 

Kind of unique because this program is primarily used in the UK and in Canada; I haven't taken the time to correlate their standards to ours, and if you've been hanging around my blog long enough, you probably already know that I don't pay that much attention to standards, anyway.  Manmade gobbledy gook in some cases.

What's really different about this program is that it breaks down concepts in math into micro steps; tiny little incremental jumps (ahhh - the link to the curriculum's name!) that allows a child to experience success and build confidence in doing math.  It also puts a different spin on math problems and helps a child to "see" what is asked for in the problem.

Jump Math, at least in Canada and the UK, has been successful in doing away with the bell-shaped curve in classrooms.  Teachers who have implemented this special curriculum have been able to bring ALL of their students up to the 90+ percentile.  No child is left in the dust to fend for him or herself!  Kids that were labeled as slow learners have gone on to compete in math competitions and have done great!  That's what strikes me about JUMP - it believes in the child until the child is able to believe in him or herself.  Cool!

The program's originator, John Mighton, believes that all children can acquire math skills all the way up through the university level and flourish while they are at it.  Here is what the website quotes:

JUMP Math believes that all children can be led to think mathematically, and that with even a modest amount of attention every child will flourish. By demonstrating that even children who are failing math or who are labeled as slow learners can excel at math, we hope to dispel the myths that currently prevail. We offer educators and parents complete and balanced materials as well as training to help them reach all students. 

I've looked over the sample worksheets, the introductory program on fractions, and some testimonials so far.  Good to this point.  Still want to dig a little deeper.  The introductory program on fractions is available as a pdf on their website, free of charge, so it wouldn't be a problem to at least try JUMP at home. 


Here's a link to their website:  JUMP Math 

JUMP math even has a YouTube channel!  Might be worth a peek.  I bet the article in the NY Times will help boost their exposure and that's probably a great thing for kids!  Check it out if you're curious.