Captain Underpants sighting:

Tra-la-laaaa!

"report cards"? no thanks

If there's one thing people should know about homeschoolers, it's that no two families are alike. Like-minded, sure. But part of the motivation for conducting school at home is that every kid is different! Part of the mindset of public school is to provide a platform for comparison and ranking, thus the testing, grading, and report cards, all in the name of "performance." Well, in our case, performing well on tests just isn't worth the trauma it causes our family. Once we pulled Adon out of public school, we swore we wouldn't let testing, grading, and report cards run (or ruin!) our lives.

However, we are cognizant of the need to show other people what the kids are capable of, both for entry into college (if and when that happens), and future possible employment. The kids are currently taking karate, and the school will give them gold stars to sew on their gis if they have a "good report card." So, what does that mean for us?

As a graphic designer and artist, I have spent years working on my portfolio. At my level, that's all that really matters. The question of my capability hinges less on how well I did in school and more on what I have actually produced as a designer and an artist. Scholars and academics work on their curriculum vitae for the same reason.

So, since we don't give grades and don't want to start, I am going to produce portfolios that have a semester's worth of activities, from all the traditional schoolwork that they do in their workbooks, to their list of books read, to field trips, whatever art they produce, individual projects, areas of interest, and whatever else I can point to to show the work that has gone into enriching their lives. I figure their portfolios can grow and evolve like my portfolio does, showcasing in detail the achievements that matter most right now, and consolidating and summarizing the stuff that starts to seem old and irrelevant, but still carries weight.

I am also going to ask the boys to work on it with me, since that is part of our goal as well -- to work together with the boys to provide the experience that is going to mean the most to them. I haven't run the idea by them yet, but it seems like at the very least they will be interested in coming up with ideas for things they want included in their portfolios, the things they are proud of accomplishing and want to show off.

I am open to suggestions! Please let me know if you have any ideas that will enhance our success.

the reading list

... for the eleven-year-old, in no particular order:

The Fire Within by Chris D'Lacey

Stoneheart by Charlie Fletcher

Have Spacesuit - Will Travel by Robert Heinlein

City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

A Wrinkle In Time by Madeline L'Engle

The Electric kid by Garry Kilworth

Tomorrowland: Ten Stories About The Future
by Michael Cart

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin

My Side of the Mountain by Jean George

The seven (almost eight)-year-old is starting the sixth book in the Harry Potter series today, so he will be occupied for a while.

ZOMG snails

From Fishtank Snails

We put a loupe up to the glass and then the camera up to that. Adon said "Look! The radula!" Yay for the arthropod expert!

lots to catch up on

We have had some adventures to write about in the last couple of months, but I have also been super busy in school myself, so I haven't had much time to write! Let's see:

The Tech Museum
The day after the big storm, we were scheduled to go to The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose. We had been there once before, when uncle Toby was in town, and really liked it, so we decided to make a return visit as a homeschool field trip. Almost everything is "hands-on," and demonstrates various principles behind a wide variety of innovative science that most of us take for granted, such as microprocessors, robots, Internet technology, and more. Since it was just us boys, we could spend a little more time examining the exhibits, and spend more time with the things we thought were really fun. Usually an IMAX show is part of the price of admission ($10), but there was something wrong with the projector, so we didnt get to see a show that day. They have kind of a unique IMAX theater, in that they project on a giant dome and it's even more immersive than a flat presentation. Oh, well. The boys had fun, and we got visit my dad afterward and have dinner (thanks, Dad!). See pictures here:

The Tech Museum

Explorit
Our next science field trip was to the Explorit Science Center in Davis. One of our friends from preschool is now a homeschooler too, and she organizes group trips for other homeschoolers. The subject was nature and ecology, and we did a little nature walk around the park behind Explorit's 2nd Street facility, dug around collecting some detritivores (worms and bugs, yay!) for later examination, and then did some "lab" work after lunch. Nice little trip for seven bucks a kid, led by an instructor, and covered a good comprehensive subject. The other cool bit is something common to and attractive to homeschoolers, the fact that we had a wide spectrum of ages all participating. There were kids from age three to preteen (maybe even early teen, I didn't ask). I'll ask our trip organizer if she has any good pictures she can send us; I forgot to bring the camera!

Pinewood Derby
OK, so anyone who knows Scouts knows it's not Pinewood Derby season. That's not stopping us! The boys both got excited about the idea of building a car, and our local Scout store sells them year-round, so we drew up some ideas and went to get some kits. We have had a few attempts to learn about and use tools in the past that weren't quite as successful as I would like ("Wow! Sawing and hammering are hard!"), but this time they stuck with it a bit more, did all the sawing and sanding themselves, and got a little help from Mom and Dad with the other bits. I did the spray painting on Zan's car, and he did the gold details. See the boy's cars here:

Pinewood Derby Cars

As far as my graduate work is concerned, I have been doing a LOT of reading, got through a class presentation in one class and a ten-page research paper in the other, and have two more big papers to get done by the end of the semester: another ten-page paper in my Classics class, and a twenty-page paper in my Popular Culture class. Crunch time!

I am the captain of my soul

(March 2009)

sensei Zander

Today Zander and Adon got to talking about Zander's karate training. Zander has been taking classes twice a week at Kovar's Satori Academy for about six weeks now; Adon has been coming to classes once a week and watching with me. Adon is interested in signing up for classes, but we decided to wait until soccer season is over. In the meantime, Adon offered to exercise and practice moves with Zander if Zander teaches him what he's learning in class. So, Zander put on his gi and assumed the role of sensei for Adon. To his credit, Adon showed Zander the respect he should as the student in this situation, even going so far as to say "yes, sir!" when appropriate. Too cute.

wild and windy typhoonigator!

Wow, a nice windy rainy storm today. We have learned about different forms of weather, and classified clouds, and different wind speeds, so the boys are excited to see some real storminess. We even made an anemometer, but I think it would fly away in this storm! As usual, Zander wants to got out and run around in it, and Adon wants to snuggle in the couch and read a book. Of course, we have to be careful about falling branches and so on, but we can go explore a little bit.

We will probably go to Bouncetown today too -- we bought a few play sessions in advance; today would be a perfect day to go use them up. My old daycare teacher used to sit all the kids down on a rainy day and try to tell us about how we felt friskier because of all the negative ions in the air, but we just wanted to run around bouncing off the walls. Zap this!

Of course, I am going to have to ride my bike to school in this mess later. That'll be interesting. I just waterproofed my jacket and backpack last week, and bought a new set of yellow rain gear... I have a funny removable rain guard that attaches to my seatpost and blocks the spray from my rear bike wheel, too. I'm actually excited about riding in the rain, how weird is that?

Discovery Museum

We had further arthropod contact on Sunday; we went to the Discovery Museum, and they were hosting the UC Davis entomology department's display of live bugs. They had hissing cockraoches, walking sticks (the kind that look a little more like twigs with leaves), scorpions, spiders, and a live termite colony that had been collected from a redwood in Golden gate Park 12 years ago! They've kept it alive in a big petri dish all this time.

They also had a pretty good collection of pinned bugs on display, including some cases with just California species.

We saw some live amphibians, like this monster; and some tortoises and turtles, both inside and out at the pond.

We also played in the space display and caught the planetarium show:



The Discovery Museum is pretty small; they do a good job with what they have. It's nice to be able to take a quick trip locally and experience some decent science! We timed it so we would be there for the live animal discussion and display, the entomology exhibit, and the planetarium show; otherwise it would be hard to justify the cost of admittance.

They do have an interesting program occasionally available, their simulated space launch. It's conducted in a large simulated mission control center with 15 or 16 people assuming different roles during the simulated launch. Adon's interested; we may send him to it a little later in October or to the one in November. Check it out here.

the scouts

Adon was officially welcomed to the troop at a "Court of Honor" this week, and was awarded his "Scout" badge, the first level that you attain in scouting. The troop also gave him his troop neckerchief and slide, pictured here. Erika also received her first "Mother's Pin." She gets a commemorative pin for every level that Adon attains, to wear on a ribbon. I guess Dad just gets to say "That's my boy!"

Zander went to his first Cub Scout den meeting last night, having practiced all the requirements to get his Bobcat badge. Now that he's signed off as a Bobcat, he can start working on his Wolf badge, which is much more comprehensive. He has already completed the fitness requirements for Wolf (it's Zander, duh), and has worked on a "windlass" project as well. He's loving it! Looks good in his uniform, too --

Super Racer Dude, by Zander

Hey! Now you can email my action figure! He's got the number 199, he races dirtbikes, and loves being flung around. He's tough. Just send an email to:

superracerdude@gmail.com

Here's his picture:

reptile show

The boys and I have been busy busy... I have a lot of reading to do for my own schoolwork, and chores and errands, and freelance work, and Scouts, and soccer, and karate... oh my goodness! So busy. We did manage to go to the reptile show here in Sacramento this weekend, though. The vendors had tons and tons of lizards and snakes. The lizards were mostly geckos, chameleons, and bearded dragons, but the snakes ran the gamut. The gamut of non-poisonous species, anyway.



Contrary to the name of the show, there were also amphibians and arthropods too -- we saw some awesome scorpions and spiders, some hissing cockroaches (Adon petted a few), and one giant millipede. Both boys got a chance to let it run around on their hands and arms; they reported that it felt tickily and prickily at the same time. I guess the ends of their little feet are pretty pointy, in order to hang on.



We looked at froggies and turtles -- one vendor had poison-arrow frogs in every color; I got a movie of the blue ones (click on the thumbnail below), but they had bright yellow, green and red too. Every person who came up to the booth asked if they could mix them in the same tank, and the guys behind the table just shook their heads sadly. I guess the little frogs are very territorial and keeping large number together or mixing species stresses them out. I read also that captive-bred species are not actually poisonous, and that scientists believe that part of their diet in the wild is what makes them poisonous. Wild-caught frogs actually lose their toxicity once in captivity as well.



Anyway, it was fun and interesting. A little different environment than a zoo, but lots to be learned. The benefit of going to a show like this with the boys is that they see a different aspect of animal enthusiasm; folks at these shows like to keep, raise and breed the animals, and their collective expertise is vast. We have a corn snake of our own, and I think it's good for the boys to see what's possible and available if their interest is piqued, and want to expand their horizons.

Beginning Photoshop

Adon is a longtime fan of Pokémon, he has a ton of cards and a few of the DS games. He loves coming up with his own Pokémon and imagining custom evolved versions of existing Pokémon. A couple of days ago he asked if he could use Photoshop to "draw" some of his creations... I held my breath a little; I would love to teach the boys Photoshop, but only if they really want to, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity.

Turns out what he really wanted to do was combine images of different Pokémon into new creations. Awesome! Love it. He started by searching the Web for images he wanted to use, and then we went back and forth for about an hour with "how to" questions.

"How do I color his hands a different color?"

"How do I make his head bigger?"

"How do I turn his eyes around?"

"How do I put his name on it?"

etc.

Once he figured out how to do one thing, he would come to a point in his composition where he needed to know how to do something else, and we'd go over it. Eventually, he was working on his own, and only asked for help very occasionally. Once in a while I'd show him the "easy" way as well as the "right" way to do things, and he could take it or leave it depending on what made the most sense to him.

The next day he said he had another idea, and went for it all by himself -- see below for his work!

HALP

Zan really likes LOLs --

Zander's Photoshop project for the morning

A la "I Can Has Cheezburger?", natch --

catching up

I keep track of what the boys and I are doing as we go through the day, and am going to use those notes to form a slightly more coherent post every couple or three days. So, for the most recent few days of note:

9/10/09:
Erika and I encourage the boys to use their homeschool time for creative play, including toys and on the computer. They are both really into LEGOs, both IRL and in LEGO's software program called Digital Designer. LEGO has a Bionicle-creating contest coming up, and Adon has been working on some models to submit. Working on Bionicles led to working in SPORE, which has a very robust yet intuitive creature-creating system. You can see some of his creations here (click the side-scrolling arrows to see more):



Check out his public SPORE profile here.

Zander and I went on a millipede hunt this morning, based on Zander's interest in the book Millipedeology. We looked and looked, but didn't find any. It led to a discussion about good habitats for millipedes and other insects, and the difference between "rolie polies" and insects. Rolie polies (or wood louse) are actually crustaceans!

We decided that doing a couple of worksheets a day of math and writing would be a good way to keep our hand in the "basics." Adon has been practicing writing, and Zander has focused mostly on addition and subtraction.

Zander finished Harry Potter Book 1, so I told him he deserved the Reading Ranger award. He got very excited and asked what form said award would take! I said, "Uh...", thinking "whoops! Now I have to make him an actual medal or certificate or something!" Zander quickly proclaimed a trophy his favorite kind of award, and it gave me a good idea. I found one of my old Batman figurines and shaved off his Bat-ears, then spray painted it gold and fashioned a tiny little book to put in his hand:



I need to stencil "Reading Ranger" on it, then we'll present it to him.

9/11/09:
Adon continues to read about insects, working on the pile of books we got at the library the other day, and is also getting into snails right at the moment. Erika is home for furlough Friday, so she worked on long division with Adon. He got it quickly, kind of doing it his own way; Erika and I are happy with his grasp of the basics. We'll keep doing this kind of thing for practice, or if he really gets into some form of math that leads to one of his other interests (astronomy, robotics, physics)!

Zander turned on the juice and turned a big cardboard box into a time machine, using a calculator and an old toggle switch borrowed from Dad.

Dad did lots of homework too -- my reading assignments were piling up, so I took 4 or 5 hours and plowed through. I am excited about the subject matter (cultural studies as they pertain to popular culture), so it was actually very energizing and fulfilling, not a drain at all!

9/14/09:
This morning the boys were a little wound up, so we did P.E. We went outside and played Three Flies Up, Freeze tag, and played catch with a frisbee. Worked out some of the craziness.

When we came in we did some research and discussion on lasers; the boys knew a bit about it already but we talked more specifically about wavelengths of light and how lasers are different from normal visible white light. We have a little laser pointer, so after a bit of safety instruction, Zander had fun bouncing it and refracting it around the house.

reading time! today is arthropods

We made a library run to load Adon up on library books about... arachnids, insects, and other arthropods. He is obsessed right at the moment, so we grabbed everything we could find. This is what I love about homeschooling -- we can focus on whatever they want, and keep going as long as they want! If he wants to study arthropods, he doesn't have to stop every hour and switch subjects, or wait until he's done with school, homework, AND extracurricular activities to get a chance to lose himself in his passion. This is what it's all about: PASSION!

wild week

Whew! I seriously overcommitted last week. Monday and Tuesday were consumed by freelance work and my first days of CSUS, Wednesday and Thursday the boys and I went to Santa Cruz to visit my mom, Friday and Saturday my dad came to our house for a visit, Sunday the boys and I went to a lovely pool party/barbecue thrown by some old friends from high school, and yesterday I had to spend catching up on the homework I didn't have time for the rest of the week.

We had a couple of bright spots in the homeschool effort, though -- for one, Zander started reading Harry Potter! Yay! It's his most ambitious reading effort yet, and he's very excited. He's halfway through the book already. Adon and I have read the series already, so we're rooting for him.

We also signed up for a yearly subscription to BrainPOP, which is an awesome educational site with animated vignettes about a wide range of subjects. Art, science, health, math, etc. The kids love it, and are really... um... popping with info. The vignettes are pretty comprehensive, but are by their nature concise. They spark some good conversations and interest in further research.

I am looking forward to settling in to more of a routine, for sure. Wish me luck! :)

our basic philosophy

click to see a larger version.

marked absent on the first day of school

We have been looking forward to today for a while, since I am officially home for good and can concentrate on getting school started. However, Adon got sick this morning, and I had lots of freelance work to do (already!), so we wrote off school for today. The boys have been good about keeping themselves busy, and Adon actually spent quite a bit of time with his book "Physics: Why Matter Matters!" by Basher (illustration) and Dan Green (writing). It illustrates and explains both the mundane as well as the more complicated concepts related to physics and gives each a personality. Mass, weight, density, speed, etc. are given their own personalities as illustrated characters, yet explained in terms of physics. We also have the Basher book "The Periodic Table: Elements with Style!" Zander built Boom Blox levels for a while, then transitioned to LEGO for a while, and then jumped on the computer to create tone sequences on the following site:

aM laboratory

Simple, but fun for kids. I made a few sequences myself. We'll post some of our creations later; you can copy and paste them into the website's interface to hear them.

funny kid

Zander has a lot goin' on in that little noggin. He frequently comes up with wildly imaginative ideas for creating obstacle courses, race courses, LEGO creations, outdoor games, indoor games, and... things that defy categorization. A lot of it is influenced by TV and videogames; I try to moderate the screens, but I'm not going to forbid them. I love TV and videogames! Zander synthesizes all of it into stuff he wants to do IRL anyway -- he'll only sit in front of screens for so long before he wants to jump up and play. He also reads a lot of Calvin and Hobbes comics, which is a serious case of life imitating art or vice versa. He identifies quite well with Calvin and loves recreating things he sees in the strip; needless to say, we identify even better with Calvin's mom and dad and remind Zander pretty frequently that Calvin is imagining those adventures!

We play a lot of Boom Blox on the Wii; we recently rented the sequel Boom Blox: Bash Party too. At some point last night, Zan was done with the electronic version of the game and came wandering out looking for cardboard boxes he could use to play Boom Blox in real life. True to form, he played "real" Boom Blox for a good 45 minutes and never did go back to the Wii version. I'm not sure what that means; at least he's not a total screen zombie! :)

a little glimpse

I got a bit of an idea what this gig will be like today -- I have had exactly one other chance to spend a day with the boys and focus completely on them, and I wrote about it here (Haven Independent is no more, sadly, a casualty of our decision to take this on ourselves).

Adon wandered out after having read another great big book about "bugs" and asked if I knew what the "largest land bug" was. I said we were going to have to talk about the term "bug" first, since it could mean insect, spider, scorpions, other arthropods, or the cute little VW. He said it wasn't an insect or an arachnid, but rather a robber crab, AKA the coconut crab.

Awesome little tidbit to use as a jumping-off point for more investigation and clarification. Turns out the pictures in his book didn't do the beast justice, and both boys were truly horrified to see the size and sheer gnarliness of the thing. We found out that even though they're crabs, they are specially adapted to breathe air and drown in water.

That last bit was a big relief to Zander, who immediately began formulating strategies for fighting off attacking coconut crabs. We had a bit more of a discussion about geography and ecological niches to reassure him about how far away coconut crabs live were and how they wouldn't want to come to Sacramento anyway.

:)

begin the begin

The countdown has started --

I gave notice at work, which is both scary and awesome. My last day is the 28th of August. The first day of school for me is the 31st; the boys, of course, are learning when the opportunity arises, day or night, weekday or weekend. That is the core of our philosophy, that kids learn best when they are excited and involved in their own learning, which means that my wife and I (mostly me, now that homeschooling is my responsibility) need to be ready to follow up whenever something piques the boys' interests.

Adon and I had one of those moments over the weekend -- I was sick and not being very involved, and Erika and Zander took off to go check out a capoeira studio and get some shopping done. I was watching TV, and Adon was in his room. When I finally managed to get up to check on him, he had his ginormous astronomy book ("Voyage Across the Cosmos" by Giles Sparrow) out and was just reading. Okay, so, I didn't bother him and went back to zoning out in front of the TV. When he finally popped out of his room, he had been reading this fairly hardcore (though still designed for kids) astronomy book for over two hours. The first thing he said to me was: "Did you know the three ways the universe will probably end?" It led to a lovely discussion about dark matter, the origins of the universe (can't talk about the Big Crunch without talking about the Big Bang), and what we as humans really know and don't know about physics.

Later, Adon asked Zander the same question, and I got to loop the little one in to the speed of light, what a light-year is, and why certain numbers are referred to in scientific notation.

I'm really looking forward to shifting my focus to learning, both my own and the boys'. I still need a little bit of a plan, because even though we like to have learning occur fairly organically, we also believe in presenting them with subjects and activities that stimulate their interest and provide insight into things they might otherwise miss.

"And this here's the TV. Two hours a day, either educational or football, so you don't ruin your appreciation of the finer things."
-H.I. McDunnough