10 things to love about homeschooling

(1) The pacing. Go fast, go slow, go a little of each. In homeschooling the limited number of students, only one in our case, allows the class to go at whatever pace it wants. And that pace can change throughout the year, as many times as you want. Maybe you flew through multiplication but are struggling with fractions. Maybe you sped through Animal Farm but are finding Moby Dick more time consuming. In homeschooling you can set your own due dates, and change them as necessary. No harm done.

(2) The personalized subjects. I do believe in the value of learning at least a little bit of everything out there, but personalizing our homeschool schedule allows us to devote extra time to the things Calvin loves. And again, we can change things up as the year goes on. We focused heavily on literature and science in the fall to go with our travel plans. This winter Calvin was enthralled by the math he was getting into, so we cut back on literature and gave more daily time to geometry. Come spring and good weather, we were back outside pursuing science again, this time with a side of art, because that's what tickled his fancy. We're doing at least a little bit of everything, but our focus shifts fluidly throughout the year.

(3) The personalized style. With regards to teaching and learning alike, we are all different. Some people are visual learners, others more hands-on. Some need lots of guidance, others are introverted, or autodidacts. And probably most of us learn different subjects differently. In homeschooling the method can be made to match the learner, the teacher, the subject, or a mixture of all of the above.

(4) Mix and Match curriculum. When we first started homeschooling I discovered and fell in love with The Well Trained Mind. In it, Susan Wise Bauer describes the benefits of a classical education and lays out, year by year, the methods and materials for achieving one. I sat down and with great dedication created a general map of the next four years, and a detailed schedule for the next four years, and immediately ordered all the materials we needed to get started. Oh the folly. It didn't take long to find that the package deal wasn't going to work, and by Christmas I'd already tossed the detailed schedule and reworked the four-year plan. We pick and choose our curriculum based on what's working, and feel completely free to change it up whenever something isn't. 

(5) The schedule. Or lack thereof, really. Some weeks we work every day but are done by lunchtime. Other weeks we work two or three full days  and take the others off. Sometimes we work on weekends, sometimes we take whole weeks off. When we're stuck at home with light but contagious illnesses we get lots of tedious work done and save our healthiest, most exuberant days for more fun stuff.

(6) The travel, or break, schedule. Related to the benefits of scheduling, we can take our vacation time whenever we want, meaning we get to go when the lines are shortest and/or the weather is the best. One of our favorite travel times is in early fall, after kids have started school but before they've started field trips, after the hottest days, before the coldest. Another great time is January, right between the public school breaks.

(7) Awayschooling. Speaking of travel, homeschooling allows you to take field trips to a whole new level. We spent three weeks in Italy once, discovering ancient  Rome through the Renaissance. Another time we spent a long week touring Washington D.C. after studying the American Revolution. Last fall we took our studies to the northwest. Awayschooling can be proactive or reactive. We've planned trips to go with our studies before, but more often we plan trips then tailor our studies to go with them. Either way, kids are learning in time and place what they could never really get so fully from a book at a desk.

(8) The socialization. What? Homeschoolers are socialized? Here's the thing. Kids are learning socially all the time. They learn from watching adults interact as well as from their own experiences. In a classroom kids spend most of their time observing an adult or two lecture a classroom of kids who may or may not care. The rest of their time they spend learning how to be social from others who are equally clueless in their cohort. You wouldn't ask the average first grader to teach another average first grader their academics, why would we ask them to teach each other manners, respect, or compassion? Homeschoolers spend their time in a more evenly mixed world. Some parents, some teachers, and other kids of a wide variety of ages, all working together to define society and culture. At the store, at homeschool group gathers, with kids in the neighborhood, at the library, at the post office...we learn about being social in the community from the community itself.

(9) The partnership. I am not responsible for the learning or the teaching in our household all by myself, it is a process that Calvin and I work through together. From the planning stage to the implementation stage to the grading stage, Calvin is a partner in every step of his education, and that gives him ownership over it. We all tend to respect our own things just a little more, and that ownership is a great way to keep kids engaged and respectful of their learning processes. It also gives them an understanding of the process, and a language for discussing it, that will serve them well for all their lives.

(10) The witnessing. This one is a little touchy feely, but I can't help it. I love spending our days together and witnessing all every discovery, every new skill mastered, every bit of excitement that comes in growing and learning. Not every day is great. Heck, some days are downright awful, but the bright moments are well worth the sacrifice and hardships. I truly love this life of ours.

Valentines 2017

Lion King in Detroit

Tickets to see The Lion King in Detroit were amongst Calivn's packages under the Christmas tree this year, the show date being a perfect couple of weeks after the difficult return from Hawaii. This is a show I have wanted to see for some time. We've all heard so many great things about the costumes, the music, the stage presence. It's an epic show with a legacy larger than most. As a recent presence, it outshines the epic productions of my youth, like Phantom, Cats, and Les Mis. So what I'm about to say is going to be very unpopular. I was thoroughly unimpressed. I might even go so far as to say that I was utterly disappointed. The movie was sweet and charming with just the right blend of humor and intensity, but while the story remained much the same on the stage, a lot was lost to poor pacing, uneven use of space and characters, tasteless comedic additions, and a few new songs that seemed oddly out of place. 

Over all I'm not sorry that we went, but it only gets three out of four starts from any of us. 

10 of our favorite games right now

I am not really a game person. I love the idea of games, but I prefer reading, conversing, writing...just about anything to playing games. That being said, I think playing games as a family is a wonderful bonding tool. And these days the games market is hot. I'm not talking Matel and Milton Bradley, here. The unevenly weighted, entirely chance games of our youth bring out the worst in most of us. Losing a game of Sorry is a bitter childhood pill to swallow. It's just so unfair. But if you skip the game aisle and Target and go to a local retailer or do your research before shopping on Amazon, the modern Indie game market is something to behold. And even I enjoy family game night in the winter—it's second only to family movie night, which comes with popcorn.

(1) Castle Panic. This is a cooperative strategy game from Fireside Games. Monsters of varying strengths and abilities are storming your castle and you must work together to stop them. Take turns drawing cards of differing attacks and defences and work together to figure out the best way to use them to keep the hordes at bay. The game is fairly well balanced, so while winning isn't a given, strategic thinking will carry the day. 

(2) Betrayal at House on the Hill is a mostly cooperative tile and mystery game. All players work together to explore the haunted house until evil turns one of them against the group, then the remaining loyal members must work to defeat the betrayer before it is too late. The game layout is different every time, created as players roll dice and lay house tiles as they go, but the number of games is limited to the number of story lines provided in the book. An expansion with additional story situations is available.

(3) Forbidden Desert is a completely cooperative game. Having crash landed in the dessert, players must work together to recover the pieces of their ship, buried under sand, before their water runs out. The game is well balanced enough to be challenging but not impossible, and can be played at a variety of difficulty levels.

(4) Forbidden Island is another cooperative strategy game very similar to Forbidden Desert. Players must recover hidden treasure from a sinking island and escape via helicopter before no land is left. Play is much easier than in Forbidden Desert, but can also be played at a variety of difficulty levels.  

(5) Carcassonne is the first truly competitive game on the list. It is a strategic tile game in which players take drawing tiles and placing them strategically so as to eventually earn the most money from their lands. Strategic play includes considering land placement and land usage. Players keep track of their points throughout, and can earn bonus points for especially strategic play in the end. Play is well balanced and challenging without being confusing, and the original game can be expanded with a variety of challenging and hilarious add-ons.

(6) Agricola All Creatures Big and Small is a competitive strategy game for only two players. Make decisions about running your farm—what to build, how to keep your animals, what animals to keep—to out earn your opponent. Game play is definitely challenging, but it's well balanced enough to be fair and fun. Plus, cute animal tokens.

(7) The Scrambled States of America is a fairly funny family game. Players keep a handful of state cards and try to apply them to description cards turned over one at a time. The player with the most correctly played state cards in the end wins. When I purchased this game I had hoped it would be a fairly good tool for learning about U.S. geography, but it's not really a good learning tool per se. Description cards tend to include aspects of the written name or card art as opposed to geographic terms, although I suppose it would be a good way to learn the names of the states and their capitals. In general, charming, quick, and enjoyable.

(8) Apples to Apples (or Junior) is a game of ingenuity and hilarity. Players keep in their hand several cards with names of people, places, or things, or simple phrases on them. A round judge flips over a topic card with its own phrase on it and players anonymously lay down the best matching card in their hand. The round judge decides who wins the round based on their own criteria (funniest, most exact, most absurd, etc.). The role of judge passes with each turn. The best part about this game is the humor, and while it is intended as a competitive game, it can easily be played just for fun with no scoring involved.

(9) Facts in Five is another game of ingenuity and hilarity. Before play, five topics and five letters are selected and players each prepare a grid. They then have two minutes individually to fill the grid in with one answer for each topic that begins with each letter. At the end of play there is no one winning answer; all players judge the acceptability of answers given and each players receives points for all their acceptable answers. Final scores are tallied exponentially, so the more right answers in a column or row, the better. Although scoring is a little convoluted, play is a great mind challenge, and can be hilarious at times. This is definitely a game for adults, not because of inappropriate content, but topics will be too difficult for most kids. we have skirted this issue by creating our own topics. Also, it looks like it may be out of print.

(10) Dungeons and Dragons. I add this one here somewhat reluctantly only because we have not broken into this as a family yet. We tried a few years ago, but Calvin was a tad too young and I was a tad too impatient for Jon's novice Dungeon Mastering. This year, though, Calvin is taking a history class with our homeschool group that is taught using D&D, and he's loving it, so much so that we have made plans to play with family friends who have promised to teach us the ropes. So I'm including it because two out of three of us already love it, and family play is definitely in our future.

Returning

We are back from traipsing the globe, putting our jet-setting ways behind us, and let me tell you, that whole need-a-vacation-after-your-vacation thing is real.

Hawaii was glorious. The sun was warm, the air was sweet, the birds sang strange new songs to intrigue and delight me. I turned 40 surrounded by my most loved and favorite people. We wore ourselves out hiking, swimming, and partying...and then we came home to laundry and work and school. It's definitely enough to make one need a vacation. It didn't help that we all came home from our amazing trip sporting the newest, most stylish flu-like cold the airlines had to offer. A real doozy with fevers, sore throats, and plenty of coughing to go around. No rest for the weary.

But now a week has passed. Calvin is fully recovered while Jon and I are straggling along as adults with illnesses always do. Still, the laundry's done and we're back on a regular schedule with a few days of school under our belts, almost acclimated to the time and weather change. Only the dog seems unwilling yet to forgive us our absence.