Unconventional Thoughts About Exercise

I was debating with myself about what to talk about next. Television was an obvious topic, the others are not as obvious. Now conventional wisdom about exercise seems to be:

1. It's good for you.
2. It helps balance out other bad behaviors.
3. It is work and only health nuts actually enjoy it.

My take on exercise is slightly different:

1. It's good for you if done in moderation.
2. It does not balance out other bad behaviors (those bad behaviors need to be dealt with in their own context).
3. It is only work and unpleasant if you are choosing your exercise poorly or overdoing it.

So starting with that ground work. Let me share some of my thoughts on exercise. When I was a kid, I played outside a lot. But, by the time I was about junior high age, I spent most of my time indoors. I watched a lot of TV and I was a bit of a book worm. My family would go camping and hiking a good bit as I was growing up. We also had a garden. We would go on neighborhood bike rides (which I hated with a passion). Also on my own I learned to ride a unicycle. I was also in Track and Field both in Jr. High and briefly in High School. With these types of activities, I discovered that I was actually a relatively active person despite my indoor tendencies.

In college, I had to still take some P.E. classes so I chose a par course fitness/jogging class, an archery class, a hiking class, and a wellness class where you chose your exercise and had to keep a log about how much you did. To one degree or other I enjoyed these classes. But, in college your time is valuable and I resented the time taken away from the other things I wanted to do. When you have a test to study for or a paper due in the morning, an extra hour out of your day can be burdensome. As soon as I completed my P.E. requirements, I turned my back on routine exercise with pleasure.

However, I have a few eccentricities that helped me stay in shape. I hate elevators. I am highly susceptible to motion sickness and elevators make me feel queasy. So, as long as I wasn't over-rushed for time, I would take the stairs instead. I also think it is pointless to drive circles in a parking lot looking for a close parking space. It reminds me of a vulture looking for road kill. I would rather find any parking place and spend that time walking to the place I need to be. I also happened to choose a college to go to that had an exercise program built in to attending there. Pepperdine University's Malibu campus is built on some coastal mountains overlooking the ocean. It is a great view. But it is on numerous hillsides. You literally can go up an down several hills in the course of a day on campus and there are stairs everywhere you go. It is possible but not easy to get around if you have a wheelchair (It takes a bit of planning). When I was a student at San Jose State, my library science classes were on the sixth floor of Walquist Library. I took the stairs most of the time unless I was late for class. Since having kids, however, I have had to resign myself to elevators. strollers don't work well on stairs or escalators.

But, Other than choosing to walk or take stairs instead of finding a method taking less effort, I didn't do much exercise. I was a college student. Then I was in the work world. That takes up most of the day and then meals and sleep account for most of the rest of the day. The few hours left to use as I chose, became time for TV, movies, reading, or sewing. All of which are rather sedentary.

It wasn't until I married that I started to do much exercise. Tim and I would occasionally take walks in our neighborhood on the weekends or on summer evenings when the sun was up late. After I wasn't working and became pregnant, my doctor emphasized to me the importance of exercise while I was pregnant. So I started to take walks on my own in the morning and walks with my husband on weekends and summer evenings. I discovered that I enjoyed this exercise for it's own sake. I liked looking at the houses and trees and seeing things at walking speed rather than driving speed. Then after the Pillowfight Fairy was born, I would take her out with me on walks first in a front carrier, then in a stroller when she was old enough to sit up. At this point, I realized that I relied on these walks for sanity. It got me out of our tiny apartment to breathe the fresh air and experience the seasons. It gave her some interesting things to see everyday. We both tended to be cranky if we didn't get our daily outing. I have kept up this routine ever since. Whenever schedule and weather allows, we get out and have a walk. Some of my neighbors have commented on how we look like a parade at times. Oh yes... neighbors... we actually get to know some of our neighbors from these walks.

The kids don't always appreciate the walks (especially the Pillowfight Fairy who isn't allowed to ride in a stroller), but they actually have fun playing along the way once we are outside. The two oldest are old enough to walk the route without rest stops now. The Happy Boy is confined to the double stroller for the duration (mainly because he's two and obeys like a typical two year old, plus he runs faster than I do now). I use the double stroller just in case the Adrenaline Junkie gets tired or hurt along the way, so I don't have to try to carry her as well as pushing a stroller. I have decided not to give the kids a choice in this matter. The walks are good for their mother's morale and the exercise is good for them. That should be reason enough.

In the process of this lifestyle of the last eight years, I have come to some ideas about exercise that are different from where I started.

1. Our modern American lifestyle is work intensive and recreation intensive, but unless your work or recreation has much activity in it, you don't have time for exercise. To exercise, people have to give up something else like sleep, time with family, favorite pastimes, etc. In a situation like this, it is unlikely that people will even want to make time for exercise on a regular basis because it is taking the place of something they would rather be doing.
2. Working out at a gym has it's benefits (you don't have to own and store the equipment at home for instance), but it is not as nice as taking a walk in the woods. To make exercise convenient to us, we tend to put it inside buildings and keep it fairly structured. That does not allow us time to relax our minds and feel the enjoyment of a natural environment. Even my walk in the neighborhood is walking among man-made things, but at least we can watch the plants grow, feel the breeze, and enjoy the change of seasons.
3. Most people who start to "exercise" for their health, start too big. I think the reasoning is that if I do more it will result in a change of habit. The problem is that starting big, wears you out too much and results in bad experiences. The more bad experiences you have the less likely you will stay at it until it becomes a habit. Start with a small change in habit. Something easy. After that much is a habit, you can increase it in some way to make it more challenging. Before long you not only are participating in some decent, challenging exercise, you have developed a habit, and still enjoy it.
4. Too many people choose a type of exercise because it is the trendy thing to do. If you are a particularly social person who needs to do your exercise in a group environment, by all means pick a popular pastime so you can do it with friends. Otherwise, choose something that suits you. I can't stand team sports, personally, so I'm not going to join a softball league. I'm a bit of an individualist, walking is just right for me (I just have a built in entourage).
5. People need to think a little more creatively about exercise. Walking when something is close, instead of driving gives exercise and saves gas. Don't prize the close parking places, let yourself walk. Take stairs instead of the elevator. Do your own yard work instead of hiring it out. Do your own housework instead of hiring it out. Do some aspects of your job involve bending or lifting, consider it calisthenics and weight lifting (just be sure to use good posture). You can actually purchase pedometers that you can wear during the day to measure how much you walk during the day. My parents got some through their HMO through a program that was trying to promote exercise. The idea was to try to work up to 10,000 steps a day as a routine level of activity. Think about your activity levels and embrace the activity rather than avoiding it.

Well, I'm having trouble thinking of more to say, so I must be done with this topic. I would like to hear other people's ideas about novel ways to include exercise into a busy schedule. What works for you? Our society is much more atuned to self-indulgence than self-discipline. How do you find ways to be active in your routine?

Unconventional TV thoughts

My husband challenged me recently to go ahead and share my unconventional thoughts on various topics. I readily acknowledge that I think differently than the majority of the population on these issues. However, instead of just writing me off as an oddball extremist, I hope instead that you will reserve judgment until you have considered my reasons for thinking the way I do.

I thought that I would start with my unconventional thoughts about television.

I was a kid in the 1970s. There wasn't a lot of concern back then about what kids watched on TV. It was pretty much assumed that if it was OK for the parent, it was OK for the kids. Parents would limit TV programs more on the basis of what made them uncomfortable, rather than what they considered bad for their kids. Besides, there was still some censorship and widespread public ideas of propriety. However, those things were starting to slide downward quickly. By the end of the 70s, many households had cable TV with all sorts of Adult-only viewing available to their kids. We never had cable TV at my house, but my friends did. My parents still don't have cable TV. We were late adopters of video recorders, also. But we did watch TV. My Dad was and still is a bit of a news junkie. He likes to either watch the TV news or listen to the radio news pretty much all day long, or at least several times a day. My Mom is more of a TV/video watcher when it comes to good stories (Movies, Mysteries, Dramas, Comedy, etc.) My brothers had their favorites and introduced me to Science Fiction. I grew up watching lots of TV. When I got home from school, I wanted to watch afternoon cartoons, then eventually I started liking the shows that ran in syndication after the cartoons. Then of course the sitcoms that came on after that. There was the evening news that my Dad watched when he got home from work. Then the prime-time shows after dinner. Before you knew it I was begging to watch the shows that were coming on as I was going to bed.

My life wasn't completely filled with TV at first. I still had to do my homework. But, I had to do it while someone else was watching TV in the next room, tempting me to lose focus. I still went to play outside and play with friends. But, the older I got, the more interesting more of these shows became. Eventually, I became what I consider to be addicted to television. I am not using the term "addicted" lightly. I think that I showed what are clinically defined symptoms of addiction. Here is a list I found for alcoholism and drug use, into which I have inserted "TV" to to show what I mean:

• use of drugs or alcohol (or TV) as a way to forget problems or to relax
• withdrawal or keeping secrets from family and friends (watching TV secretively)
  
• loss of interest in activities that used to be important
• problems with schoolwork, such as slipping grades or absences
• changes in friendships, such as hanging out only with friends who use drugs (or TV)
  
• spending a lot of time figuring out how to get drugs (or how to watch what you want)
  
• stealing or selling belongings to be able to afford drugs (lying to watch TV)
  
• failed attempts to stop taking drugs or drinking (inability to control TV viewing when it's available)
  
• anxiety, anger, or depression
• mood swings

I was addicted to TV. Thankfully I woke up to the fact that I was not becoming the person I wanted to be. I suspect it was while I was at college and didn't have a TV available to me that I started to realize how much it had taken over my life. But, every time I was back in a TV environment I was sucked back into my bad TV viewing behaviors. I even branched out a little when we got a video player. Now I could watch one program and record another to watch later. But I started realizing that I was having trouble finding time to watch everything I wanted to watch. There weren't enough hours in the day. I also found I had a weakness for video watching. But getting videos from the video store was expensive to do all the time, so I started checking out videos at the library for free. Yeah I was finding ways to further the habit when I could.

When I had time without a TV for prolonged periods, I discovered that I actually could live without it. I started to realize that I was spending too much time with friends just watching movies instead of catching up on our lives. I was becoming disgusted at the worse and worse quality of what I was seeing on TV and in movies. I finally decided to give up my own TV in my room at home. That helped a little, but there was still the family TV. I started to consciously avoid the living room when the TV was on, and started doing other useful things in my room instead. I started reading all the books I had which hadn't been read yet (I had always meant to get to them eventually). I started reading some of the great works of literature that I had always heard about but never actually read before. I started doing hobbies like quilting. I found that the more I did this, the less of a lure the TV had for me. When I finally married, I found myself marrying a man who had lived without a TV for a few years and who had discovered the freedom of not having a TV. We consciously made the decision to do without a TV in our household. We do allow ourselves the luxury of the occasional DVD played on our computer. But even there, we have become quite picky about what we will keep in our video collection. And currently at least half of our videos are kids' videos, for which we consider there to be some redeeming qualities. I also limit how much video time the kids get. No watching videos all day unless sickness is rampant in the household!

After having made this journey from TV addiction to non-TV household, I have developed some very unconventional ideas about TV. I hope you will be patient with me as I share them with you.

1. While not everybody who watches TV is tempted to addiction, I am guessing from my own observation that the majority of Americans have some level of TV addiction. This idea is reinforced in my mind by the number of news stories I have read over the last few months showing concern that not everyone will be prepared for the switchover to digital signal broadcast only.
2. It is assumed in our society that everyone has a TV. It is considered a necessity. Even many people in extreme poverty have TVs. We are constantly getting calls to try to switch us from either satellite TV or Cable TV to the other. The caller never asks "do you have a TV?", they ask if we have satellite or cable. They don't know what to say when I inform them that we don't have a TV. I have lived without a TV for 8 years now. It is not a necessity.
3. Even wary consumers are being brain-washed by their TVs. Some people are more resistant than others, but eventually the incessant, yet entertaining commercials have their effect. They actually start believing the lies they are being fed about products. And I think that the vendors know this, because it drives our TV programming.
4. I don't know if our social moral standards have declined because TV standards have slipped or vice versa, but they have definitely gone that direction together. I do know that I have had to build up my own standards from their previous low in my absence from TV. Now when I happen to see TV elsewhere I am appalled at what is considered normal.
5. The TV news is atrocious. I remember thinking back in the eighties that it was turning into a banal repetitive waste of time. I remember noticing that they would start the newscast by giving a summary of the night's stories, then they would slowly air short snippets of stories while giving teasers for the stories to come. However, they were spending so much time repeating what they were going to tell you, that the actual news stories were not much more than the teaser they already gave. Then they would finish out the newscast with a review of the night's stories. Back then, I noticed that I could find out more about what was happening in the world by reading my local newspaper. Later I decided even that was similarly biased. I found non-American news magazines refreshing. Although they had their own biases, they were different ones and I actually heard a few things you didn't get in the American news media. Now I am much happier with news on the Internet. If I want to know more about something, It's easier to find more about it from a variety of viewpoints.
6. I think the TV news media thinks it has the power to shape public opinion. To some extent, I think they are right. For all those people who watch the news (over and over again), they eventually think that the news as presented is the real story. Fewer and fewer people are able to tell the difference between a well documented story and an opinion piece. Fewer and fewer people are able to tell that they are not being given the complete story. It is brain-washing again. If you tell people something long enough they begin to believe you. If you convince enough people, you can change their behaviors and sometimes turn a lie into the truth. The end of the Vietnam War is a classic example of this in my mind. Militarily the war was being waged successfully, but the American news media turned the tide of American popular thought, which put political pressure on our country's leaders. They in turn finally pulled out of Vietnam in defeat, when militarily we did not need to leave in defeat. I completely believe that the news media's coverage of the Iraqi war was an attempt to re-enact this senario.

Whether or not you can agree to these points, I hope you can at least mull them over a while to see if you can see any truth to them. I notice every now and then that our pediatric clinic encourages families to turn off the TV for a week every year in an effort to improve children's health. I would encourage everyone who uses TV in their life to have a regular "TV is off" time. If it is widely acknowledged to be good for our kids, it is probably good for the rest of us, too. It also allows those who are too enmeshed in it, to start to make a needed break from it. Try it. Once a week, once a month, certainly more than once a year... take a break from it. Find out what else you like to do with your life.

I, personally, would like to see a measurable percentage of the population to begin to live without TV again. That itself could be transformative for our society.

Garden roulette

Every spring the same question comes to mind. When exactly do I plant my spring garden? You see, I haven't lived in this area all that long... just five years. I'm still learning when spring hits. Last year I thought I got a nice early start by planting on the first of March. But, most of our cool weather plants couldn't take the warm weather even that early. So this year I thought that I would try to get an earlier start. But how much earlier? We had a ridiculously mild January with many days getting up to 80 degrees by lunch time. But our nights were fairly cold. Then just when I thought it might stay mild, the frost came back.

I remember from my childhood in the Bay Area, that we would usually get some spring-like weather that caused everybody to plant their spring gardens. Then the frost would come back and kill everything off. Then people either would replant or give up. So, I'm trying to figure out if the same thing happens in this area. Did we get an early false spring this year? I've decided to take advantage of the prolonged rain forecast for the next week. I planted most of my spring garden today (in the middle of February) before the rain started up again. So we will see if I guessed right this year. In the meantime, we shouldn't have to worry about watering our garden for a week or two.

I hope I guessed right. If I'm right, we will start getting our spring veggies ripe in March and April this year. That is just about right for this year since our baby is due in May. I'm thinking that I'll be taking a bit of a break from gardening during the summer. If I plant anything for summer it'll be something that doesn't take a lot of constant care. I suspect that our family, friends and neighbors will be getting more of our fruit produce this year, too. Somehow I can't picture myself doing much fruit preserving while recovering from childbirth.

Maybe I'll skip summer gardening and do a fall garden instead. Then I'll have to guess how early it needs to be planted so that we get a harvest before the cold weather hits. If we stay in this area a long time, like we hope, I might get good at predicting the seasonal changes.

Month-long musings

It has been about a month since I've posted last. A month ago, we had just learned about our baby having trisomy 13 (confirmed since then) and had the hustle and bustle of Christmas. I've had a month to think about all sorts of deep thoughts. I've decided that I should take some time to share my thoughts, since I've gotten the impression that many people who know me, aren't sure how to talk to me anymore. They seem unsure about how I'm taking our news and don't want to say the wrong thing. For those of you in that category, I guess you haven't figured out yet that I'm fairly tolerant of what people say to me as long as they seem to be well intentioned and polite. I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt. So to help out these people and to share my thoughts with the rest of you, here follow some of my musings about our news of the last month.

I was not very familiar with Trisomy 13 before the diagnosis came. I was vaguely familiar with the term "trisomy" but I had to read up on it and learned quite a lot from the genetic counselor. It is a very serious condition and usually results in early death for those who have it. This was not something anyone wants to hear that their child has. It was a shock of course. But, I am not a person under the delusion that misfortune can't possibly come my way. Some people tend to say "why me?" when bad things happen to them. I tend to say "why not me?" There is nothing special about me or mine that would prevent misfortune from coming our way. Added to this, I am very aware of my age and the fact that the risk for birth defects increases as my age increases. Although the risk is much higher than if I were twenty years younger, I am realistic about the statistics. If I have a risk of 1 in 20 of having any chromosomal problem in a baby of mine, that means I have a chance of 19 in 20 of having a child with no chromosomal problem. Most women my age who have children, have healthy children. I was aware of all of this information before I became pregnant and before we heard the diagnosis.

Once we heard the news, we were very sad. But, we wanted information to help figure out what it meant for our child. So we took time to research what we could. It didn't make us feel any better. But, it did help us come to terms with what is knowable. Trisomy 13 results in several abnormalities in a child. No two children are completely alike in how they are affected. From the ultrasound, we have some knowledge of our child's abnormalities (at least those detected from an ultrasound). We know that we won't know everything about her abnormalities until she is born. We also know that we can't know for sure how these abnormalities will affect her ability to live and grow until she is born and is trying to live on her own (instead of inside Mommy). Many of these babies don't make it to birth. Many don't live more than a few days after birth. About 5% live 6 months. very very few live beyond that. That is what we know. That is also a little about what we know that we don't and can't know ahead of time.

When faced with the certain knowledge that you are going to lose someone you love in the near future, how do you react? How to you live after that news hits? Well, you still don't know when it will happen. You still have others that you love and care for to consider. You still have to go about everyday life. You still have to eat. You still have to sleep. You still have to do laundry and do basic housework. If you don't do these things, life becomes extremely unbalanced and you start to go downhill yourself in depression. Fortunately for us, we have three bouncy, energetic kids that need our attention and care. They help us to remember to live life day by day. After all, that is how all of us need to live. Today is the only day we know we have, so we have to do the best we can with what we have. I still have times (in the middle of the night when I get too uncomfortable to sleep well, usually) when I consider what is coming in the future and I start to miss my baby girl early. But most of the time, I'm in good spirits. I can still laugh and play. I can appreciate a sunny day or one of my children remembering to say please when they ask for something. I actually forget sometimes that people who have heard our news, expect me to be a morose, tragic figure, who is sure to be near tears at the drop of a hat. They come up to me with tears in their eyes and sad words and I feel the urge to cheer them up. I don't feel like a morose, tragic figure. I am also beginning to see our situation less as tragedy and more as life as it really is -- Riding down the road of life without the training wheels, so to speak.

I try to give myself perspective. My life is pretty good. Many others have had tragedy of one kind or another hit them. And yet, they survived and were perhaps the better for it. I like to think that God has his reasons for letting these things occur when and where they do. I do believe that God is in control, which is a thought that gives me comfort. We live in a world that is not perfect. It is corrupted by sin and the ripples of that cause all sorts of unpleasant things in our world. Yet God is able to take those unpleasant things and make something good and right come about. We tend to see our baby daughter's "abnormalities" as defects and undesirable. But, we don't know how God sees them. These abnormalities may result in a more precious relationship and stronger lessons in life than we would have otherwise had. She is still our daughter. It is still our job to love her and be her parents until she returns to God. She is still part of our family. None of us knows for sure how long we have here on earth. Life is a precious gift. We choose to face this situation with a love that is willing to feel the pain to come. We don't need to lose the joys of today, worrying about loss tomorrow. Nor do we need to shelter ourselves from future pain and thereby cut ourselves off from the support we have around us.

We have had a lot of support from people. I know we have literally hundreds of people praying for us. We have family and friends who are willing to help any way they can. We have good doctors who are doing the best they can to be helpful, supportive and give us the best care they can. I feel blessed by this crowd of people rooting for us, and feeling sorrow for us, too. The load is lighter because of it. I don't know why this tragedy in our lives feels so non-tragic right now. We really would have preferred to have another healthy baby. But this is our current reality. As a result, we seem to be learning things about life and faith that we would not have learned any other way. I wish I could say more about that now, but I don't think I can until the time and the perspective of hindsight helps me do so.

I also feel blessed that I am still in good health. The pregnancy itself is going as it should. The only thing wrong is a chromosomal problem that has severely affected our daughters physical development. When birth comes, that will be the time of decisions and our next chance to really know much more about how our child is doing. We don't know how well or poorly her abnormal organs will work. We don't know if she will live long enough to bring home. We don't know what life will look like during that time. But, I haven't been worried about my own health. I've been able to get my usual exercise. I've been able to continue caring for our kids and home. Tim has been able to continue working and not worry about things at home. I've been able to continue homeschooling and planning for next school year's work. I like to think that I'm mentally healthy, too. I am not in depression, which I imagine is a temptation to many in such a situation. If I am somehow mentally unbalanced and acting strangely, no one has brought it to my attention yet. So I have hope for the future.

Faith, Hope and Love... hmm. That sounds familiar. Yep, that is what gets you through the tough times alright. It's a combination I highly recommend.

Reflections on Christmas

It has been quite a while since I posted on this blog. Homeschooling has been pretty routine, so that didn't seem like a noteworthy topic. I have discovered that my allowing for only one week off school for the Christmas holiday was not very realistic. First of all, I need time to prepare for Christmas even if we keep it simple like we did this year. Secondly, The Pillowfight Fairy can't concentrate on school work if she hasn't had a chance to play with all of her new toys yet. So we are taking a second week off to help satisfy the kids and to allow the parents some time to get life back to normal.

For those of you who follow my husband's blog, you know that we received some unwelcome news that our expected baby is not the healthy baby we had hoped for. She has many defects that will probably take her life fairly early. This is not the kind of news one likes to get at anytime, let alone Christmas. But after the initial shock and sadness, we are finding ourselves managing fairly well.

Christmas is usually one of our most stress-filled holidays. I have to consciously limit my Christmas activities or I make myself sick. Added to that, we frequently have one or more of us involved with a Christmas program of some kind (practices are not easy to juggle when there are young children). Then there has been a death or other family struggle/tragedy in most of the holiday seasons for the last 15 years. On top of that is the "who do we spend which holiday with" family politics. Don't get me wrong. I love my family and I am quite fond of my in-laws. I like spending time with them. But it is not easy to pack up the family for a visit on particular pre-determined date, especially in winter. And somehow, kids are never on the same schedule as the adults, which adds to the general stress. Then there is the fact that all three of our kids have birthdays plus Christmas in the space of about three months and we are inundated with new stuff, requiring sorting, storing, rearranging, and the discarding of old things.

With all of that, somehow this has managed to be one of our better Christmases in years. The family Christmas celebration was just across town for us this year, so we didn't have the travel stress. None of us were in a Christmas program this year, though we did attend a couple as audience members. We did keep our Christmas simple. I didn't have a lot of time to prepare ahead, being busy teaching up until the week of Christmas. Then I had extra doctor's appointments and big issues on my mind regarding our baby. Somehow, anything other than simple would have been way out of place this year. I did have a cold, but it was going away by Christmas instead of just coming on.

All this makes me reflect on what would be an ideal Christmas in my opinion. My ideal Christmas would involve:

• Spending time with immediate family doing simple things that we don't usually get to do.
• Not being concerned about other people's expectations of gift giving and simply giving gifts as prompted by our hearts and perhaps doing more gift giving to those in need rather than people who have everything they need.
• Remembering that Jesus is what the celebration is all about.
• Treating the people around us better than we usually treat them and perhaps better than they deserve.
• Move the focus off of what we want, and put the focus on what God wants and what others need.
• Maybe we could sing and dance more, too.
• As much as we treasure particular things, we should never let them stand in the way of the lives and relationships we need to treasure more.
  

Somehow when issues of life and death are on your mind, most of the stuff that goes on around Christmas is so trivial it is ridiculous. But without those big life and death issues weighing on the mind, those trivial things start to take over. Although the unpleasant things of life are in fact unpleasant, they do help us keep in perspective what is important.

Accountability

About a month ago, I was talking with an older gentleman at church (whom I respect) and he brought up the subject of homeschooling. He had heard that we were homeschooling and, not knowing much about it, he was curious. He was not on the attack and he wasn't trying to condemn. But, I found it interesting that instead of bringing up the socialization topic like most non-homeschoolers do, he asked me to whom am I accountable.

I had a simple answer at the time that I think satisfied him, but I've been thinking about the question on and off ever since. The more I think about it, the more I think he was on the right track with his question. I'm sure that this "accountability" question probably raises just as many hackles with homeschoolers as the "socialization" question does. But, think about it for a minute. In the socialization question, people are saying that it is important to be like all the rest of us who educate our kids this other way. In the accountability question, it is asking who do you answer to keep you on track and doing what you should.

The way I see it, accountability is important to everybody. But, this gentleman realized that accountability is a separate thing from being like everybody else. Most people think that if you are like everybody else then the accountability question is taken care of through normal channels and they don't have to think twice about it. However, most homeschoolers are not satisfied with the accountability provided in the normal channels and for one reason or another reject the idea that they need to be like everybody else.

The public schools are accountable to parents, school boards, and government regulation. Private schools are accountable to parents, school boards, government regulation and in the case of religious private schools the faith tradition they are a part of. Homeschoolers are also accountable. Except in their case the parents are the school board and the teachers and the administration. Homeschoolers also have to satisfy whatever government regulations have jurisdiction over them. Many homeschoolers are part of a support group which can be an accountability partner for them to stay on track. Religious homeschoolers are either accountable within their faith tradition or accountable directly to God.

All of these methods of accountability are useful and good within reason. But any one of these can get overbalanced and become a tyranical dictator rather than an accountability partner in the education of our children. It is also this that scares people when they hear horror stories of parents who use homeschooling as a screen for mistreating their children. The public decides suddenly that there isn't enough accountability if it was allowed to happen.

The things that I see in all this is that there are good individuals and bad individuals and all of us have some mixture of the two (so don't get too puffed up about being a good guy). It is in every parent's best interest for their children to thrive and succeed. If we all operated on this self-interest, there would never be a parent who mistreats their children. Unfortunately, there are and they are not limited to any one segment of the population. For this reason, I understand the need for accountability. I consider myself personally accountable to God for my actions. I am also accountable to my husband, and he to me, in how we conduct ourselves with our children. We are accountable to extended family, who love our kids as much as we do (and for the record, most but not all are happy that we homeschool). We have church connections that help us be accountable as good parents. We are not thoroughly connected to a homeschool organization for accountability, but we do have several casual friendships with other homeschoolers. Living in California, we currently do not have many governmental regulations to be concerned about. On the whole, I think we are sufficiently accountable while at the same time having the freedom to decide what is best for our kids.

I would challenge all parents (public, private, or homeschool) to consider to whom you are accountable. If you have a long list, you are probably doing all right. If you have a very short list or an empty list, you probably need to find yourself people to hold you accountable to be the person you need to be for the sake of your children.

Half-way Point

As of today, we have completed half of what I have planned for a 36 week year. We have completed week eighteen on time, without letting the schedule slide. I am quite pleased that we've been able to do that since I expected that sick days and other surprises would have caused us to push the schedule later than planned. But, so far the sick days were few enough to allow us to catch up with just a little extra work per day.

Keeping on schedule is very important for me this year. This is partly because I don't want anyone to be able to claim that I am incapable of teaching my daughter at the high standards we have set. There were some who upon reading the coursework we had planned, said that we had bit off more than we could chew and that we should thin it out and be more realistic. I have news for those people: It is working. Our daughter is being challenged at an appropriate level. She is not showing signs of being in over her head. She is making steady progress in all subjects. Some of it she likes. Some she doesn't. When I look at various standard lists of what my child should be learning in first grade I find that she is either at grade level or above.

The other reason I find that the schedule is important to me is that according to my calendar, my six week on one week off plan (with an extra week off for Christmas) results in ending our "official" 36 week year on April 24th. Exactly 3 weeks before my baby is due. I do have more work planned at a more relaxed pace during the summer. But, doing much schoolwork with a newborn infant in the house is folly as far as I'm concerned. 3 weeks is not a lot of wiggle room and babies are rarely inclined to appear at convenient times.

So if I'm on schedule and pleased with my daughter's progress, why am I nervous? It just dawned on me this week that I won't have the month or two of planning before the next year starts. Those months will be taken up by baby care and lack of sleep. I don't recommend doing meaningful planning in those circumstances. That means that I have to guess how my daughter progresses to the end of the year and make plans early.

With our bought curriculum, this isn't so bad. She is doing well with it. It seems well-paced for her. We will just pick it up at the next level. I'll just have to preview it to make sure there are no surprises. But I've made up my own lesson plans in a few areas. Preparing for a new year with these takes a lot more work. For instance I need to finalize new lesson plans for religion, literature, art, and science. I also need to research how we plan to teach cursive and get ready for that. I also need to research grammar curriculum since our daughter will be finishing up her current program early and I'm not sure that publisher has the next level to just pick up where we left off. You can't do planning like that in a day or two.

But even with the nervousness, I'm starting to get a little excited at the prospect of something new for the coming year. I always loved starting a new year when I was a kid. Besides, next year we are going to be studying two of my favorite areas of science: Earth science and astronomy (Yay!)

For our literature studies I have been trying to do literature from the time period we are studying in history. This year it has been Ancient history accompanied by myths and legends of the nations we study with Aesop's Fables filling up the empty spaces in the schedule. (As a side note: I highly recommend Aesop's Fables for children. My daughter loves them and they teach wisdom. They are also the perfect size for beginning narration training.) Next year we will be studying from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance. Yeah it's a cool time period to study. However, I'll have to take a slightly different approach to the literature since the writings from this time period are not necessarily child-friendly. One suggestion I've come across is reading lots of biographies of people from this time period. That idea has merit, but I'm sure that there are at least some primary sources that we could read parts from. Just think of all of the religious writings, scientific writings, chronicles, eyewitness accounts of historical events, fiction, and plays. Surely some of that could be read to a 2nd grader. But the question remains: "which ones do you choose?" There are a whole lot more writings available for this time period than for the ancient world. Any suggestions are welcome.

Religion won't be hard, just time consuming. We are reading through the Bible. By my schedule, we will be in the book of Numbers by the end of the school year. We are taking it very slowly in small chunks. So far we have only skipped a few passages that I didn't think I could explain with a simple explanation. I know we will skip more later on this year for boredom and redundancy reasons. However, I am trying to give as much of the original as I can since it all relates together and gives the broader context for later teachings. This means that I read through it all ahead of time to plan what those daily chunks are going to be.

With art I think I will probably take a different approach next year. I like the book we used "Drawing with Children," but I've found that it helps my daughter only so far. The Pillowfight Fairy has gotten to a point she is comfortable with and isn't making much progress. In fact the book encourages self-expression to the point that my daughter doesn't even want to do a straight copy job without altering the picture to fit what she wants it to be. I figure my daughter has no lack of self-expression. She is very good at it. What she needs to learn is a little more artistic discipline to learn new methods. So I'm on the lookout for something that can help us in that direction.

I have researched cursive enough to know that it is more commonly started in third grade. However, both my husband and I think that she is ready for it and will probably like it. She is becoming rather comfortable with writing and has developed a very nice print style. She likes her letters to be somewhat artistic. She is also sometimes frustrated when she tries to read script and then gives up. With her temperment, we can picture her either loving cursive because it is pretty or hating it because it requires constant practice. We don't think she is too young. My mother who has excellent penmanship first learned cursive writing in first grade. Of course more things were handwritten back then.

So as you can see, I'm already switching gears into my planning mode. I also have to keep in mind that I might be starting the Adrenaline Junkie on Kindergarten sometime next year. So I'll need a schedule that will allow me to teach two kids at different levels while having a toddler/preschooler and infant keeping me hopping. I keep hearing that the first year of homeschooling is the hardest. My question is, "Is that my child's first year of homeschooling or my first year of homeschooling?" Because this is my third year of homeschooling and it has been comparably challenging to our first year when she was a reading preschooler. And from this vantage point, although this year has been going smoothly, it isn't easy. Next year somehow seems like it will be harder with two students and two distracters.

Extreme tiredness

I had thought that I was doing fairly well this pregnancy with being able to stay awake and just keep on going. Yeah... so I do need my afternoon nap. Yeah... so I tend to run out of energy fast in the evening. But, last night I reached a new depth of tiredness that I had never achieved before.

I fell asleep while reading a book. OK, that seems like a perfectly normal thing to do. Let me revise my description to give you a better idea of how extraordinary this was. I was reading Dr's Suess' ABC to my son, aloud. I knew I was tired, but I didn't realize how tired I was until I felt this fuzziness fade over me and I woke myself by hearing myself continuing to talk as if I were reading but strange words were coming out of my mouth.

I had fallen asleep while watching videos with my kids. I have had close calls in the car on long afternoon drives (why I don't drive long distances in the afternoons when I am pregnant anymore). I had fallen asleep while breastfeeding. I had fallen asleep while bottle feeding. I have heard of people falling asleep while standing up. I have never fallen asleep while I was reading aloud before. Parenthood really is exhausting. First-time parents find that out pretty fast. What nobody tells you is that if you keep having kids, you learn new depths that you didn't know existed.

To be fair, some of the sleep deprivation is self-inflicted since I am determined to keep on going and keep up a normal pace of activity. I am grateful my husband can step in and help with the kids in the evening when I completely lose steam. Though I think he is getting tired of doing bedtime routines for all three kids while his wife is asleep on the sofa.

What is our child's educational level?

UPDATE: added a link to the site that estimates reading level with a little more detail about it.

The question came up again recently about what is our daughter's educational level. Since we are homeschooling and can tailor her education to fit her individual needs, the actual grade level is just a convenient label to us. Her peers are six. She is six. She attends a first grade sunday school class and thinks of herself as a first grader. But what educational level is she at? We don't feel the need to get her tested to determine her level so how do we know what to teach her?

Well, I guess we started with reading. She can read. So now it is a matter of what she likes to read. What stories grab her attention? What stories does she read to herself and what stories does she prefer to be read to her? Lately, I've been getting a lot of "step 2: intro to reading books" from our local library. They are simple chapter books with easy stories and vocabulary. The Pillowfight Fairy finds them easy and fun. Her little sister likes them too. The older reads them to the younger, then they spend the next week reenacting the stories in their free time. According to the information on these books the reading level is grades 1-3. That gives some clue, but as I said, the Fairy finds them easy. On the more advanced level she enjoys reading some of the Beatrix Potter stories. I found a site that gives the reading level for book titles that you enter. It is called Scholastic Teacher Book Wizard and you can find it here. When I looked up some of these stories on the site's "Bookalike" search engine it ranked the reading level and I found that the stories have a "interest level" of kindergarten through 2nd grade, but has a reading level of 3.5 grade level. "House at Pooh Corner" is listed as interest level of 3rd-5th grade and reading level of 5.1. Books that she prefers to have read to her are some like "Stuart Little," "Charlotte's Web," and "The Wind in the Willows." I don't think it is because they are too hard to read. I think it is because they are longer chapter books with longer plot lines. She can't finish them in one sitting, so she prefers to be read to so that her imagination can just take it all in. If she were reading it herself, she would still be dealing with the mechanics of reading and couldn't enjoy it as much. So we just try to get her good books, whether for her to read or for us to read to her. Our theory (taken from Charlotte Mason) is that if the child reads good literature and interesting books, the reading abilities follow along nicely.

We also started her out doing some spelling work to try to reinforce the phonics we had taught her. She loved it and is now in the second book of our chosen curriculum (Spelling Workout) which is labeled as for 2nd grade. I found that I couldn't advance her too fast in this curriculum, because it is aimed at a child who also has similar writing and thinking skills to the older age level. So I have extended the life of the curriculum by following the series of spelling lessons with vocabulary work taken from the dictionary in the back of the workbook.

Thanks to some of the spelling and vocabulary work we have done, she has made good progress with her writing skills. She doesn't like writing sentences, but she can do it well enough now that she will sometimes compose several sentences for fun during her free time, on whatever topic is of interest to her at the time. She still prefers to use simple words when writing, but she will take a chance on spelling a more complicated word if it is the one she wants to use. As far as her ability to write, I would rank her as about 2nd or 3rd grade. However, the content is more along the lines of a 1st grader's simpler view of the world. During the course of our current school year I have increased the amount of writing that I expect from her. She used to do one sentence per writing assignment at the beginning of the school year. Now she is doing three sentences per writing assignment. I have added an additional sentence every six weeks. It has worked out so well that I plan to continue it until she is writing six sentences per assignment by the end of our school year.

We are using Horizons math with her at the 1st grade level. We are satisfied with the steady and challenging work she is getting with it. She is picking it up at a reasonable pace. She also seems to prefer word problems, which I detested when I was her age. But it fits the way that she thinks.

As for her other subjects: history, science, religion, art and music. This is more fluid. None of it is actually graded. The history is designed to be used for any kid between 1st-4th grades. The Science is handled in a similar way. The teacher adjusts the lesson for what the child is capable of. The art is simple enough for any age level (child through adult). For religion, we are reading from a children's Bible that is at a 3rd grade reading level. The piano work is based on completion of lessons in order rather than "grades." So these areas of study either mirror her progress in reading and writing or they train for specific skills that are not quite so age related.

Just writing this post is reinforcing to me that the basics of reading, writing, and math really are the basics. I feel it is important to develop these abilities so that she will always be challenged a little more. If we can keep her at the level of steady improvement at a challenging level, I think she will be capable of the same level of work in the other subjects that are dependent on reading and writing and eventually also math. So, I guess my determining factor in our child's educational level is in reading, writing, and math. She is reading and writing much better than the typical six year old. She is doing math at a first grade level. She still thinks like a six year old however and has the emotional and activities needs of a six year old. I sort of see the information she is picking up in history, science, religion, art and music as frosting on the cake. She is learning new facts that she doesn't have a lot of context for yet. We are trying to provide some of that context for her. But I can see good things coming from following our current path. For instance, how many six year olds are confident about how to spell: Egypt, Pharaoh, Abraham, and Osiris. She is learning about lots of different kinds of animals. She is hearing the actual bible stories instead of paraphrases. She is getting training in art and music at a level that suits her abilities.

We still have a little over half a school year's work yet to go, so it will be a while before I can start planning for next year. But, I can see how each year lays a new layer to the foundation she is building on. I don't have any concerns about her not being ready to advance to new levels in reading or writing. She is right on track with her math. This year's work has shown our plans to be successful as far as material covered and educational level to follow. Looking ahead, I can still see the basic subjects (reading, writing, and math) to be the arbiters of how challenging the other subjects (history, science, religion, and fine arts) will be. And in the end those other subjects will become foundational later on when she starts hitting the logic stage, and she has to start wrestling with the facts that she has already been exposed to.

The more I look toward the future, the more I get excited about the shape it is taking. I almost feel sorry for my daughter that she doesn't have the perspective yet that allows her to look ahead at what the future holds for her. She has had such a good beginning. Yeah, she grumbles and gripes with the best of them. But she incorporates what she has learned into her play as if it is now a natural part of her. She doesn't realize how much she has changed in just the last few months. To me, as her parent, it is exciting and hopeful. I almost look forward to the day when we will be wrestling over arguments and grappling with great ideas.

In the meantime, I'm starting to teach the Adrenaline Junkie phonics. I get to learn how to juggle the educational needs of two kids in a more formal fashion. I get to figure out what my second daughter is ready for and whether we will start kindergarten next school year or in the following. (Her birthday is just a few days after the official cut off, so that will be it's own challenge.) After that, maybe I'll write another post about educational level. After all, I don't have a lot of experience dealing with more than one person. I'm sure I'll have figured it out a bit more after that.

Why do we homeschool?

As I look back over the last two and a half years of homeschooling, I have realized that our original reasons for homeschooling have transformed a bit. So I was wondering if I ever posted about why we homeschool. After looking back in my archive, the answer is: not really. I have mentioned reasons in passing, but mostly I wrote about how we decided to homeschool, not why. So in an effort to spread some enlightenment, I'll try to address the whys of our homeschooling journey.

Both my husband and I went to public schools growing up. We did not have any horribly traumatic experiences that changed our lives forever and caused us to swear that we would never inflict that on our children. We both had good educations growing up. But, neither of us saw our good, public school education as problem free. We each have our weaknesses and strengths. As a result, we saw that our good, public school education allowed us to coast on our strengths, while avoiding the need to address our weaknesses. As for socialization, you could say that neither of us saw public school socialization, in general, as a positive thing. In every group of people (in school or otherwise), you have leaders, followers, and a few odd balls that neither follow the leaders, nor inspire followers. The public school system is designed to work well for leaders and followers. Both Tim and I were odd balls. As a result, we saw how it did not always work well for people like us.

After High School, both of us went off to college. Tim went to a state college and I had a varied journey through a public junior college, a private university, a state college, and a small private college. We had good educations and got decent jobs. As newly married adults, we found that we were both of the mind to examine the choices we made before we automatically followed the crowd. As a result we found that we often did not follow the crowd. One decision we made early on that went against societal norms was to do without a television. Our household has been TV free since 2000 and we haven't regretted the decision.

As we started making plans for having a family, we would talk about what we wanted for our children and the topic of education would eventually come up. We both were of a mind that we wanted not just a good education for our children, but an excellent one. We expected that we would be the ones to decide what that education would look like when the time came. We talked over the pros and cons of public, private and even homeschooling, but never came to any conclusions. After all, we didn't actually have any children at that time so it was all theoretical.

Once we had our first born, the Pillowfight Fairy, theory started to be met with reality. We were a happy little family with nary an educational care until about the time she turned two. You see, this little girl was a bit on the early side for just about every childhood milestone. But, since she was our first child, we didn't have much perspective on what was normal, except what the people around us would tell us. They were astounded when she was crawling and pulling to a stand at six months. She was walking by nine months. They were shocked to hear her pronounce words perfectly at ten months. She had memorized some of her favorite books by eighteen months and could recite them to herself happily. By the time she was twenty months, she had words like "metronome" in her speaking vocabulary. But what really started to make us realize how unusual her skills were was when she memorized the 50 states by shape, location, and name (sometimes mispronounced) two weeks after her second birthday thanks to a map puzzle she was given. That sort of tipped us off that this kid was not learning things in quite the same way as the other kids her age. That is when we started evaluating what should we do for her education.

The first question was whether or not to send her to preschool. Many of our peers were planning to send their kids to preschool when they turned three, partially to prepare them for school, partially to give them some fun activity with other kids, and partially to allow the parents to do other things. When I looked into what was taught in preschool, I realized that my two year old already knew most of it. So, academically that choice didn't make sense. Socially, we are not isolated. Between our church connections and my MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group, she was getting lots of time with other kids and fun activities. As for myself, I was still going to be a stay at home mom. By this point, we had our second daughter (the Adrenaline Junkie) and I was going to be home taking care of her and didn't see any reason to ship off one kid so that I had more time alone with the other one. So Tim and I kept thinking about educational options. by the time she turned three, we had decided that we can do her preschool years at home. That way we can teach her what she is ready for and not be concerned about being out of sync with the preschool. Besides, I just didn't like the idea in my gut to send her to someone else to teach when I was perfectly capable of doing it myself. I don't think kids should be separated from their families as much as is common in today's society.

Not long after we solved the preschool issue, wouldn't you know it but our little angel decided to spontaneously start sounding out words on her own at three and a half years old. That's when the next question came up. Do you delay teaching her to read because that happens later in school or do you go ahead and teach her and deal with the fallout from that decision later. Tim and I both agreed that you teach what a kid is ready to learn, regardless of whether it is convenient. So, we did a little research on reading lessons, did sounding out practice with her, made a few mistakes and came back to phonics in the end. In the process, we were discovering more about how our daughter thinks, how she reacts to lessons, what kinds of strengths and weaknesses she had. We were also watching how she interacted with other kids her age. We knew that the decision about kindergarten was just around the corner. Would we put her in public school for kindergarten? Would a private school be better? What about homeschooling? We knew that at the rate she was going, she was going to be academically advanced for her age. But socially and emotionally, she was not. We knew that if we placed her based on her age alone, she would be hopelessly bored. We knew that if we placed her based on academics, she would be horribly handicapped trying to deal with kids more socially and emotionally mature than her. We were realizing that, based on our own experience in the public school systems, that public school would be a bad fit. The more we researched and read, the more we realized that a private school would not be much better. The issue we were dealing with was how to teach a kid who was her own category. There was not going to be a classroom of kids exactly like her to put her with. We wanted her to have an excellent education, but we were not willing to make the compromises necessary to force her to fit into a classroom setting. The classroom setting became the focus. You see, any time you bring a group of people of varying skills into a classroom to learn, you have some who learn quickly, some who learn at an average speed and some who for one reason or another learn slowly. You also have to deal with the dynamics of one teacher having to juggle the needs of all of the students. No matter how good the student-teacher ratio, the attention given has to vary based on need. We knew our daughter to be a fast learner. We found that she also has a lazy streak and resists new things if she thinks she doesn't want to put much effort into it. After all why work to learn something when you could just learn the things you like that don't take much effort at all? We could see her in a classroom setting excelling in her favorite topics, but getting bored and not doing what she was capable of, since it wasn't expected. Yet at the same time, she would be labeled as uncooperative or even behind in some areas because she would refuse to do the work to learn the material. There aren't many teachers willing to break through our child's stubborn/lazy streak to get her to do what she is perfectly capable of. I have even noticed in the community classes and chuch classes she has been in, that she has a knack for manipulating the teacher to make exceptions for her. The more we watched her as we taught her at home, the more we realized that the classroom environment was the biggest issue we had. We also realized that we as her parents could get better results from her than other teachers. I think this was partially because we knew her so well and partially because we have a vested interest in her success.

So, If we didn't put her in public or private school because of the classroom dynamic, that left homeschooling. Homeschooling solved a lot of issues for us. We didn't have to worry about what the other kids were learning and whether our child was on track with that. We just had to teach our child what she was ready for. We didn't have to worry about whether she was emotionally or socially in sync with her peers (she will always be a little out of sync), she would be in an emotionally and socially accepting environment of her family. We had already been teaching her from infancy, and knew that we could. I never had any doubts as to my ability to teach the subjects. My own education was well rounded to the extreme. My college majors were (in chronological order): Physics, History, Library and Information Science, and Bible and Theology. I have taught adults how to do basic research at the college level. I have the ability to teach my own children. The only thing that was still an open question for me was whether I could do it as well as raising my kids (the third child being on the way at the time), taking care of the house, being a wife, all without exhausting myself or destroying our family. I am ambitious, but I do recognize that I have limitations.

What finally helped me realize that I could in fact do homeschooling, was a visit from Tim's uncle and aunt. They homeschool and I was able to watch them in action and pick their brains a bit to understand what homeschooling looks like at the daily level. Like most people with a institutional school background, I was still thinking within the box. If I tried to homeschool before that point, I probably would have exhausted myself by trying to reproduce the school setting at home. After that visit, I had a new vision for what school can be.

Ironically, we have chosen a completely different path than Tim's uncle and aunt. We did our research, figured out what was important to us, and figured out what we thought would work with our child. As a result, we have chosen to follow the classical model of education with plenty of emphasis on history and literature. Up through our daughter's kindergarten year we just worked with reading, writing and arithmetic. This year is her first grade year and we have added spelling, grammar, memorization work, history, science, religion, art and music. So far we have covered 13 weeks of school and seem to be on track with our goals.

During this time I have noticed that my ideas about homeschooling have continued to evolve and develop. We have found homeschooling to be very freeing. We are able to cover the material much faster than is done in the classroom setting. Once she has mastered one lesson we can move on to another or otherwise adjust the schedule as needed. We can take holidays and breaks when we need them rather than at the convenience of the school schedule. If we suddenly need to travel, we can either take a break from school or take it with us. We can work around illness in a more flexible way.

We have also found that we are more in tune with our responsibilities as parents and teachers to give our child an education that is tailored to her abilities. We now see having someone else teaching our child as "outsourcing" the job that is our responsibility. The biblical exhortation for parents to teach their children as they go about their everyday activities resonates with us like it never did before. We always expected to teach our children in that way, but now with homeschooling, we find that the verse mirrors what we do much closer than it would otherwise. We also feel more empowered to be active participants in our child's education. We don't have to find an expert on children's literature to read to our child. We don't have to wait for a specialist to tell us how our child is doing, we can see for ourselves by being there when it happens.

We have found that we are separating the concepts of learning from school insofar as lessons don't have to look like the schooling that we had. Yes, our daughter has plenty of sit down lessons. But, she also likes to play verbal games of word problems at the dinner table (her initiative, not ours). She likes to read to her sister (reading practice or social time? Maybe both). She decided one day, during a lesson on addresses, to write a letter to her aunt and uncle who live across town. So we had a lesson on proper epistolary composition which I've been wanting to do with her, but it was her idea completely.

We have found homeschooling to increase our joy. We get to hear first hand some of the quirky things our daughter comes up with in that brain of hers. We get to see the younger kids wanting to do "school" too. We get to enjoy our kids for who they are as we help them reach toward their potential. Each one of our kids is different. The younger ones might even fit in slightly better in the classroom setting than our first child. But, at this point we can see the benefit of homeschooling so well that it seems silly of us to even consider it. Our second daughter is much more active and loves to act out the stories read to her. She is also more precise in her writing and drawing than her older sister was at this age. Our son is slower to talk, but has managed to learn his phonics sounds before he turns two. He seems to be a self-motivated thinker and problem solver. We are expecting a fourth child in May and are curious to find out what this one will be like.

We do have daily struggles over how much work our daughter puts into her lessons and whether we have made reasonable goals. But, through these struggles we know each other better and find ways to work together to meet our goals. Our daughter is even learning some negotiation skills. It is said that relationships become strong when you struggle and work together. It is our hope that at the end of our homeschooling journey that not only will all of our children have an excellent education, but that the relationships will be strong because of the journey we have followed together. We hope that this homeschool journey will not just prepare our kids for their future lives but will teach them about life itself and how to live it well.

Mommy Fashions

I've been thinking lately how silly some of my fashion choices have been lately. To give you some background, please understand that I have never been a fashion maven. But, I do have a conscious fashion identity that I have shaped and molded in various ways since Junior High School. I like certain styles and rejoice when they come back into the latest trends. I hate other styles and think that those clothes should be buried somewhere obscure in the deep of the night. I tend to like classic styles (those styles that last longer and don't really follow the ebb and flow of the current fads). I also like a few fun eccentric things, that most people would probably avoid simply because "everyone isn't doing it." I tend to do my own thing and toyed with going into fashion design in during my High School Years. It is probably good I didn't. I'm too much of an independent thinker. I've never noticed anybody treating me like a trend-setter. In addition, I have a huge practical streak. Practical and Fashion almost never work well in the world of trendy culture. It drives me nuts every time I find something that works for me because it is practical, then within a year I can't find it anywhere because the latest thing pushed it out of the market. But the latest thing is cutesy and very impractical.

So, what kind of fashion choices have I made that amuse me? It is the Mommy Fashion thing. Things that I do simply because I'm a mommy. Things that I probably would never have thought of otherwise. Auntie Jean pointed one out to me about a year ago that I hadn't really noticed, but was kind of funny. No matter what I wore, I would always add a little touch of white, usually tossed over a shoulder like a loose scarf. This bit of white scarf was of course a burp cloth made from a thin cloth diaper. I've done this for most of the first year and a half of each of our kids' lives. To someone who knows me, it's become my normal fashion. To a complete stranger, they probably wonder about my sanity.

Another one I noticed this past summer was a fun little colorful accessory. If you plan ahead, you can even coordinate with your day's outfit (which I never did). This accessory was a pacifier on a strap that was usually clipped to my belt-loop or pocket. This position ensured that the child to whom it belonged would not be dragging it through the dirt. But, for my benefit, it provided a fun little swinging motion every time I walked somewhere.

The latest addition to my wardrobe that amuses me is a pair of shoes. I love shoes. I am one of those people (if I didn't have a practical streak) who would have a pair of shoes to match every color of outfit I own. I have always liked three inch spike heels (which make me 6 feet tall). This is not at all practical with young kids in your life (possible but not practical). I also happen to be rather active. I don't do sports. I don't do a gym. I don't run or bike or swim. I walk. I currently have a daily walk of about 1.2 miles (pushing a double umbrella stroller). I have found that with a combination of young children and the daily walk, I am incredibly hard on shoes. I usually would choose athletic shoes as the most practical choice for my daily footgear. No matter what brand I would choose, It would fall apart quickly and I would be shopping for shoes again. Cheaper brands fell apart faster. But the expensive ones didn't last long enough to justify the expense. My last pair of athletic shoes looked terrible (cracking, tearing, soles pulling away from the shoe) in just one month. What's a mom to do?

Heh, Heh...

Men's workboots. Stanley brand. Steel Toes! (how many times does a mom have her kids step on her toes!) Fashion-wise they resemble black and grey hiking boots. They were $30 at Payless ShoeSource and half price on day I bought them. It took me about a week to break them in. So far they seem to be doing a great job. We'll see how long they last.

So, it makes me wonder what is next? Knee pads? Face mask? Funny hats? Then I started to wonder if other people do strange things like this or is it just me. So if any of you reading this have stories to share, please do. I would love to know that I'm not the only one.

One quarter of the school year is complete!

I'm feeling rather accomplished at the moment. I've kept up the discipline and made the Pillowfight Fairy do her schoolwork when she would rather be playing. We have now completed nine weeks, which in a 36 week school year equals one fourth. She is learning. She is making progress. For one thing, she is getting more comfortable with writing longer sentences. She is also getting more comfortable about risking misspellings if the word she wants to use is long and/or complicated. I see this as definite progress for a little perfectionist. She has developed the habit of checking the spelling in a book where she knows the word is used, to help her when she is uncertain (that was her own idea).

In literature, we have read many Aesop's Fables, Some Egyptian Myths, a tamed down and shortened version of the Epic of Gilgamesh as well as a pretty good section of the book of Genesis. She has worked through nine lessons of basic spelling words successfully. She has memorized two poems. We have covered the differences in common nouns and proper nouns. I had intended to get her to write letters once a week. But, I have discovered that she has more writing assignments than I had originally realized and so we haven't done that yet.

In math, she has covered the basics of single digit addition and subtraction, measuring, telling time, money and fractions. We are still practicing those. She has just recently started double digit addition (without carrying) and adding a list of three numbers.

In history, we have covered early nomads, Ancient Egypt, Sumer, Akkadia, Babylon, and the Assyrians. My husband reminds me to say that this is not an exhaustive study. We have touched on these areas of history to give her a familiarity with it. First graders do not study history in exhaustive detail. This is an introduction to help her start to put the pieces together for future understanding. In my parents' last visit, my Dad was surprised to hear that we were teaching her history already. I realize that first graders don't usually get a lot of history. Usually it is social studies more along the lines of family relationships, neighborhood "helpers" and major holidays. In the classical method we are using, the framework is history. First graders start to learn about the world from early times to the present. Seeing as she is already getting the other "social studies" in our everyday life, I don't see this as a problem. My hope is that it will help her develop a bigger perspective.

In science, We are still covering the animal kingdom. Twice a week we do reading on a different group of animals. Then she has to tell me something she has learned and write it down.

In the fine arts, she is studying art and piano. Once a week she has a lesson regarding art technique. Once a week she studies an historical piece of art. The rest of the week we have fun art (sometimes connected to a lesson, sometimes not). For piano, her Daddy is giving her lessons from a piano instruction book. She is still in the "I don't want to practice" stage, but she is making progress even so. We'll see how she feels about it as she gets better.

I mentioned her religion instruction in the literature section, since it has mostly been reading through the Bible. I keep the readings very short. We have only skipped a few things that I thought were too complicated to explain to a first grader. We are currently in the story of Joseph. She also gets classes at church on Sunday mornings, and Wednesday nights.

For exercise we walk about 1.2 miles every day.

So, what are my impressions of my first year of full homeschooling so far? Well, it's a lot of work. The lessons are not difficult and she learns very fast so I'm not having to work hard at teaching. The work is actually to keep myself disciplined so that lessons don't slide, to keep her focused when she doesn't want to do her work (which is most of the time), and to keep on top of the paperwork and check her progress (so mistakes get caught and corrected). There is also, filing away the work she has done and preparing for the next day. I find that I have to know what I'm covering for a day's schoolwork the night before, otherwise there are too many distractions to keep it all straight. Despite some of the daily frustrations, I think this is working out.

Another thing that I'm proud of is that I started doing phonics work with the Adrenaline Junkie this past week. Just a few minutes a day is all we do. She is enjoying it and doing well. She is getting better at sounding out words and even wanted to play the sounding out words game this evening before bed.

The Happy Boy is still a little frustrated that Mommy can't always give him attention when he wants it, but I console him with books and puzzles in my available times. He is getting pretty good with his letters and numbers. Now if we could only get him to say more words.

If we stay on schedule, we will finish 36 weeks in late April. I do have more planned for the year, but the rest is more along the lines of filler to keep her in practice and not forgetting what she learned. Of course we haven't been hit with the winter sicknesses. That will throw things off. But, with one quarter done, the rest of the year looks possible. That's a good thing. If you have visited my husband's site recently, you may have seen that baby number four will be coming sometime in May. I hope we can get most if not all of the year's essential work done by then. After all, I'll need some of the time after the baby comes to plan next school year for not just one but two kids.

A Well Deserved Rest

As of last week we finished our first six weeks of school. We have kept on schedule and didn't have any missed days (excepting the important holiday of Mommy's birthday). The Pillowfight Fairy has been making steady progress, so to celebrate we are taking a vacation week this week.

Her writing is improving. I have determined that she has neater writing on the smaller lined paper (1/2 in size) rather than the big stuff (1 inch?) used for young learners. She has done well enough with the written narration pages that I've upped her from one sentence to two sentences on topic. If she finds the reading interesting, she is usually wanting to compose the sentences herself. If she isn't interrested enough to compose, Mommy comes up with them and she gets dictation practice. She also has shown me that she does better verbal narrations when she has done the actual reading herself instead of listening to me read it. (I understand that some people do better the other way around, go figure.)

She is right on schedule with her math work. Which reminds me that both with her math work and her spelling work, she now has tests. Every ten lessons in math (once every two weeks by our schedule) and twice a week in spelling, she has tests. She is having to learn to follow the instructions exactly without reminders and do her work without Mommy checking it until she is done. That is a bit challenging since she likes to do things her way and prefers immediate feedback, but even so she has done excellent work.

The new subjects this year are History, Science, and Bible. She seems to have mixed feelings about history. She gives the impression that she isn't interested most of the time, but later on she will say or do something that tells me that she did pick up some of it. I keep reminding myself that she is a first grader. The object is to introduce these facts and ideas to her now so that they can be built upon later. I suspect that she actually has very good retention for a not quite six year old.

In science, we have been learning about animals by reading through an animal encyclopedia and any science books I can find from the local library. One book series that her Daddy and I find annoying, but she enjoys immensely is the Magic School Bus. So far we have checked out one that talks about bees and one that talks about Ocean life. She rereads them several times a day when she has them and can tell you all you want to know about bees. The one covering ocean life impressed her more with the plot line of the story than all the animals it talked about, but she can still talk about many of the animals listed. So now every time I go back to the library, I check to see if they have a magic school bus book on a topic we are covering.

In her Bible studies we are reading through the Bible starting at the beginning. I've tried to keep the readings small, so that it would be simpler to do narrations. I haven't left much out. I was concerned about how much to read in some of the stories since the Bible doesn't hold back on some of the nasty stuff people do. Also, as my husband has pointed out in his blog, the version we are using is at a third grade reading level making the text understandable at a third grade reading level. I finally decided to use a simple rule of thumb. If I can't explain something to her with a simple, quick explanation, it is probably better to leave that story (or part of the story) for another reading when she is a little older. As a result, she is reading about all sorts of villainy that is easy to explain. I've only held back on just a few stories because they dealt with more complicated villainy than usual. Still, I've noticed that you can't leave too much out because those stories are referred to later on. The biggest gap so far has been a few paragraphs in the Sodom and Gommorah story and the story of Lot's daughters after they all fled to the hills. It is still an exciting read even so. She liked the story enough to illustrated a picture of it along with her usual narration page.

We do have a pretty full schedule, but she can usual finish most of her work by lunchtime if she stays on focus. My biggest challenge is to juggle keeping The Pillowfight Fairy going with schoolwork (sometimes with me, sometimes on her own) while keeping the Adrenaline Junkie and the Happy Boy going with appropriate activity. Some days that works just fine and some days the house is a disaster area at the end of "school-time." There are usually a few times when I can read to the other two or play with them. They can also play on their own at times. But, I need to find a way to get a consistent time with the Adrenaline Junkie so I can start working on her reading skills. She is right at the prime time for learning to read. She is interested. She knows her letters and the sounds they make. She can even write most of her letters. She has learned how to sound out simple three letter words that don't have anything tricky about them. With practice and a little teaching, she will be well on her way to reading. But I need to find some time every school day to spend time with her doing it.

The Happy Boy is sort of in his own category right now. He wants Mommy's attention. He wants Mommy to read any book he wants repeatedly ad infinitum. If left to himself he would climb into off-limit places and cause havoc. He is also in the midst of teething his last four molars and eats everything. Tim wants to change his pseudonym to the Omnivore. I'm holding off, because I think he'll grow out of it. He is now eighteen months old and seems to be entering the terrible twos a little early (all of ours hit it about this stage). He gives the biggest tantrums of our three kids. I think that part of it is fed by frustration. He hasn't learned to say very much yet. He laughs for "yes" and he shakes his head for "no." He is making sounds like he is attempting to say things and gets close enough for me to recognize it in context. But, no one would call what he says understandable talking. Added to it all, his wishes are getting more complicated than he is able to communicate. This causes frustration and big tantrums. Ironically, he has fallen in love with our videos that teach the Junkie reading skills. He knows his letters and their sounds already. He is acting like he would like to learn to read before he has finished learning to talk. So, I keep trying to encourage him to try to say simple useful words. He's made some progress, but the same sound can mean half a dozen things. Some day I'm sure the switch in his brain will flip and he'll start talking in full sentences. In the meantime it is frustrating for all of us.

After writing that, I realize that I will probably get people saying "don't worry about it, lots of kids don't talk until two or after." Yeah, I know that already. I'm not worried about it. I'm frustrated because he is hard to understand and he's frustrated because Mommy isn't reading his mind. You see, I never had a kid this age and this stage not talking yet. Both of his sisters were earlier talkers than this. The oldest was saying perfectly pronounced words at ten months. The second was starting to say her first words around one year (less understandably). So, this is a new experience for me. It is unusual to me to have an eighteen month old who can't verbally tell me what song he wants or which book he wants or what food he wants, but who has all the same preference levels that his sisters had.

So, this is our vacation week. I've decided on a break roughly every six weeks. That seems long enough to make progress, but not so long that we get burned out. So what do we do for our vacation break. We play more, we read for fun, watch an extra video a day, we play our video games. The Pillowfight Fairy still has piano practice. We still go for our morning walk. But the schedule is just a lot more flexible for doing fun things. When I told the Fairy that we were taking a week off from school work she said "I don't want a vacation!" (this from the child who complained nearly every day that she didn't want school work). So, whether the Fairy wants it or not, Mommy gets the vacation. Would you believe that on the first day of our vacation all three kids were showing signs of a variety of mystery illnesses (one cold, one fever, two with intestinal issues). So much for the vacation. At least the illnesses are currently mild, so we can still have some fun. maybe the worst will be over by next week and we can pick back up with work again.

Thoughts on Teaching the Bible

After my husband published a post about the dilemma of reading all of the Bible to a five year old during our homeschooling lessons, he received a few comments back that definitely show different people's approaches. I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I definitely have some opinions about teaching the Bible. Before I start spouting off on one or more of my soap box issues, it would probably be good to give a little background. That way you might be able to see a little bit of where I'm coming from.

I have a fairly conservative Christian upbringing. My parents raised me in the Church of Christ. One thing about the Church of Christ that many people (even some who belong to it) sometimes mistakenly overlook is that although many congregations appear to be the same, the reality is that there is no official connection to keep them all in cookie cutter unity. Each congregation is in control of its own affairs and tries to follow the Bible or get off track in its own way. The church I grew up in was a bit of a trend setter (at least during my childhood and high school years) that was usually middle of the road or slightly liberal leaning within "the brotherhood" of Churches of Christ. My parents' faith experiences also colored my religious background. My Dad grew up in the same faith background that I did. However, my Mom grew up going to any church that the most available family member with a car went to that week. She had a big extended family and they went to every church on the map. With that background, she helped bring a little perspective to what I grew up with.

When I say "conservative Christian," I know that many people will want to stop reading right there. And others, who have had bad experiences with my denomination, will want to stereotype me there. To that I can only say, if you wish to remain ignorant of another person's faith journey, so be it. Stereotypes are just that, stereotypes. They can't tell you about a specific individual. I think that it would be accurate to say that although I have encountered closed minds, faulty logic, and hypocrisy among my fellow faith travelers, I have also encountered plenty of open minds, well refined logic, and sincere faith among many of them, too. So, please give us a chance. I was raised to know the Bible. I was raised to follow God and my conscience to the best of my ability. I was encouraged to think critically and be well educated.

As a result of this background, I entered a long college career that took me to four colleges and four majors in completely different subjects. The one that applies to this post is my last one. I was a Bible and Theology major. For a variety of reasons relating to family responsibilities, work responsibilities, social life and such... I didn't finish my degree. I was about five classes away from my 2nd Bachelor's degree in Bible and Theology. I make no claims to be a famous scholar. I never even took Hebrew or Greek. But, I still think that I probably have a better religious education at the college level than your average person off the street. The education I have does impact some of my thoughts on teaching the Bible.

When we started homeschooling our daughter she was preschool. The Bible classes she got at church were fine. Then she was Kindergarten and I tried to supplement her classes by following up on the Memory verse work and asking her questions about her lesson. I could write another post solely on my opinions of church Bible classes. I did quickly determine that my daughter found the memory verse work so easy she was bored with it. And she was more interested in the crafts than the stories (unless they were "icky" stories such as those my husband mentioned in his post). In talking with the people in charge of the curriculum to know what was to come in the grades 1-6, I learned that they didn't start a systematic study through the Bible until second grade.

We didn't start homeschooling for religious reasons, but we are religious. And our faith is important enough to us that I knew that one class a week on Sunday morning was not going to be good enough for us. So I decided to add religious studies to the schedule when I was planning for this year. We are following a historical structure in our studies so, she will learn about world religions as we encounter them in history. In fact, we our learning some of what the Ancient Egyptians believed, in our current studies by reading some our their myths. But, for our own family's faith, we are reading the Bible since that is the core of our religion.

Some people think that collections of Bible stories are most appropriate for young children. I agree up to a point. I've been reading Bible stories to her from numerous books of compilations since she was interested in being read to. She knows all of those stories, but she is lacking in context. And all of those convenient compilations are paraphrases. They are not actual translations of scripture. On the plus side, they eliminate most of the scandalous violence, the breaking of sexual taboos, the grievous misdeeds of the heroes of faith, and the difficult to explain passages about God himself.

I have a strong bias toward reading primary source material. Don't slice and dice my literature, history or even religion please. There is so much to gain by listening to an author as he or she intended to be heard. So, I made the decision that if I am teaching our daughter world history and literature in first grade, then I will be reading her an actual translation of the Bible. This gives her the context for those stories she has learned. She learns the order that things happened. She learns a lot more about how God interacts with people, than the cut and paste version served up in story books.

In addition to this, she learns that there is usually more to the story than she has ever heard before. Some of that story causes me my dilemma of whether to read absolutely everything. I mean... she's only five after all. She doesn't need to hear about everything does she? So, since I make a detailed lesson plan, I started reading through the Bible trying to divide up the readings in appropriately sized chunks.

I was a little nervous about including Noah getting drunk (remembering some of the interpretations of that story that I've heard through the years), but It went OK. It helps that I went out and got a translation that aimed at a third grade reading level. Some of the more difficult phrases to explain become euphemisms. The next problematic story was the story of the visitation of the angels to Sodom and Gommorah. I haven't got to that one yet, so I can't tell you how I'll handle it yet. Either I will edit my reading to give the gist of the story (it is a major story that is revisited many times later and therefore necessary to my eyes), or I will read it straight and deal with any questions from my daughter as they arise.

Of course there are all the long genealogy passages... I'm reading them. Genealogies were important to the people of that time and you can learn the occasional tidbit from them. Then there are the long passages in Exodus where God describes in detail to Moses how to build the Tabernacle, then Moses describes in detail to the people how to build the Tabernacle, then the people build the Tabernacle and it is described in detail. Whether or not that section takes up half of the book of Exodus, it feels like it does. I'm planning on editing that down to give her the highlights and give her an idea of what Israelites were told to do in their religious practices. Then later on there are all of the Levitical laws about how to do the various sacrifices, how to do the various feasts, the day to day legal issues, cleanliness laws, etc. I will try to give her some of it, but not too much. These laws are brought up later. Every time I considered skipping something, I would be reminded how it is brought up later with the assumption that it is no longer new information. Yes, much of it is deadly dull to us. Yes, some of it is downright icky. But, I found that in small chunks, it didn't look so bad and the few sections that I had the most problem with probably should be skipped for attention span reasons. She is only five!

I do not feel guilty leaving out a few things. You see, I'm leaving most of it in. Very few things hit my don't read threshold. And those are mainly because of her age. This will not be the only time we read the Bible. As she gets older, we will read every bit of it. By the time she is in high school I expect reading the whole Bible to be at least an annual activity. We are going slower this time through. I plan to be most of the way through Numbers by the end of the school year.

Another consideration is that we are following an educational approach that encourages exploration of facts and information for the youngest kids. It is not to gain mastery at the beginning. It is to lay foundations for further study. I learned from my Master's program (Library and Information Science), that people learn things better if they have already been exposed to that information. But, the young age level is not necessarily very good at analyzing what they read. It's the older kids that wrestle more with why and wherefore. So I feel comfortable with providing a much bigger slice of the picture than most kids her age get, with the idea that the small bits I've left out, will fit better when she is old enough to handle a little bit more heavy-duty mental wrestling that some of those passages prompt.

One commenter at my husband's blog made the helpful suggestion of starting with the New Testament in our reading. I appreciate the helpfulness, truly, but the suggestion undercuts a basic premise in my teaching of the Bible. That premise is that it is almost impossible to get a full understanding of the New Testament without a firm grounding in the Old Testament. I'm sure that steps on a few toes, because I have known many people who think that the New Testament somehow overshadows the Old to the point of making it obsolescent. In my mind, reading only the New Testament is like reading the end of a story but not the beginning. Have you ever flipped channels on your T.V. and been sucked into a movie only to find out that you watched only the last 15 minutes. Yeah, you saw the climax and the way it ended, but you are completely oblivious to what put the characters in their situation to begin with. You didn't see the character development or the trials and victories that came before. And remember, the people who wrote and read the New Testament when it was new, thought of the Old Testament as their scriptures. The Old Testament was their Bible.

So...I suppose I should report on how it is going. After all, we've been doing Bible readings for the last three weeks. Well, I have found that by Genesis chapter 15, I have not had to edit anything out. My daughter likes some of the readings but not others. I can tell how much she likes it based on how eager she is to come up with a sentence for her narration page and whether she wants to illustrate the passage (this last being completely optional). Some of them are pretty bland, but some are hilarious. For instance, the story of Cain and Abel. She never mentions the fact that Cain killed Abel (the obvious point for most of us). Instead she was impressed that Cain farmed, so she wrote "Who likes crops?" and had a picture of a very happy-looking stick figure of Cain showing off a platter of vegetables. I keep all of her work in a binder to document her progress. But even without that motive, The Pillowfight Fairy's work shows a very amusing view of the Bible.