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