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January 30, 2008
Party Update
It was a blast (ha ha ha). Due to a little teeny tiny technical glitch, I don't have the pictures yet. But the cake was fairly awesome, and Alderaan was fantastic. No, the candy hadn't melted (although Alderaan had a giant rift crater courtesy of the fire).
Pictures as soon as my computer cooperates.
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January 26, 2008
Perhaps ...
Perhaps, since we put the candy in the piñata, and then sealed it up with more paper-mache ... perhaps we shouldn't have placed it in front of the fire for hours to dry.
My, it's going to be interesting, isn't it? Perhaps, if it's falling out of a blasted planet, one should expect one's candy to be melted and deformed?
Posted by lynx at 11:42 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 25, 2008
By the way, you might notice ...
I haven't exactly been keeping up with the site very well - many of the links are outdated, etc.
I am working on a redesign. I can't say it will be launched soon, but ... I'm working on it.
Posted by lynx at 11:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Another Week ...
It's Friday night, and I don't *quite* think we're finished with school yet. We had three afternoons out of the house, which always messes things up. Plus, we're getting ready for a birthday party. Party prep and playdates meant that we just didn't finish the work, and unfortunately, some of what was finished was, well, not quite up to expectations. Some students will be working over the weekend.
However, Alderaan is drying and just needs to be painted. It's filled with candy and confetti debris, and will be hung from the balcony to await its destruction by the Death Star of chocolatey goodness. Yes, I'll take pictures, and I hope it all works.
Connor: Three or four pre-algebra lessons with Dad, Latin Prep 5.1-5.3 plus four workbook exercises, a rough draft of a Classical Writing project, research on the Vikings, a paragraph about the Vikings, worksheets about haiku and limericks; plus, he read "The Vikings" by Elizabeth Janeway.
Aidan: Five Right Start math lessons, Latin Prep 4.4-4.5 plus three workbook exercises, A&I from Week 1 of Homer A; plus he read from "Famous Men of the Middle Ages," "The Phantom Tollbooth," and whatever science fiction he could lay his hands on.
Their current bedtime story is "The Subtle Knife."
Griffin: Four Right Start math lessons (rather, four sessions of working on Right Start math), four Phonics Pathways lessons, lots of "Magic School Bus," and a Starfall session. Plus lots of being read to about mummies, British Kings, Star Wars, cats, and his new favorite, the dictionary.
We still didn't manage to burn our Vikings this week. Hopefully next week. It would be nice to move on, at some point. The Battle of Hastings is rattling in the wings.
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January 21, 2008
Practical Education
I'm waking up the brain, here. Are you ready for something a little different? After all, House and LOST haven't started up again yet.
I have joined a mailing list on which we are discussing Richard Gamble's The Great Tradition: Classic Readings On What It Means To Be An Educated Human Being. The 650-plus page book is simply selections about education from great authors. We are going to read a selection a week, which means it will take more than a year to get through the book.
Grab your brain and some coffee.
This week's reading was from Isocrates, a sophist and a contemporary of Plato. This is the third week of readings. Last week I learned from Xenophon that Socrates did not altogether approve of subjects such as geometry and astronomy. He classified these subjects as pure theory, and as such not useful. Hey thought such studies were all right to a point, but also that they could occupy an entire lifetime, to the exclusion of useful studies. It makes sense, in retrospect, but I never realized just how utilitarian Socrates thought education should be. This is interesting, because we classical homeschoolers are often derided for teaching our kids all kinds of "useless information." Latin is "useless." So is ancient Greek. So is grammar, the progymnasmata, and reading Plato. It's all useless, right? None of it will help our kids to get jobs.
We argue that although Latin has no immediate practical application, it trains the mind. It's good mental exercise. Studying the ancients puts us in touch with the foundations of our society. The ancient forms trained the greatest minds from antiquity onwards, so they must be good for our kids, too. We argue that such learning is formative, and will allow our kids to turn their minds toward anything.
Would Socrates accuse us of being impractical? Or would he approve as long as such study doesn't exclude useful learning?
On the other hand in order to get the appropriate high school credits for college, and the appropriate credits for a degree, students are expected to learn all kinds of "useless" things. Isocrates' definition of "useless" is this: "none of these disciplines has any useful application either to private or to public affairs; nay, they are not even remembered for any length of time after they are learned because they do not attend us through life nor do they lend aid in what we do, but are wholly divorced from our necessities" (from the Antidosis). Certainly, most of us would put algebra, physics, geometry, chemistry, world history and the like into that category. We don't remember anything, but we had to take the class to get the degree.
Would Socrates accuse the modern school system of being impractical? Are any of us being practical?
Isocrates was more sympathetic to the theoretical disciplines than Socrates was:
For I believe that the teachers who are skilled in disputation and those who are occupied with astronomy and geometry and studies of that sort do not injure but, on the contrary, benefit their pupils, not so much as they profess, but more than others give them credit for. ... For while we are occupied with the subtlety and exactness of astronomy and geometry and are forced to apply our minds to difficult problems, and are, in addition, being habituated to speak and apply ourselves to what is said and shown to us, and not to let our wits go wool-gathering, we gain the power, after being exercised and sharpened on these disciplines, of grasping and learning more easily and more quickly those subject which are of more importance and of greater value.- from the Antidosis
Maybe in Isocrates we have a rationalization for both the "useless" learning of a classical education in a modern world, and for the teaching of "useless" subjects such as algebra, high school calculus, physics, advanced grammar, poetry ... etc. Even if they are not of immediate use, even if we forget everything we learned, the work still sharpened our brains. It made us better thinkers.
Well, that's the theory.
The general curriculum was both much simpler and much more difficult back in ancient Athens:
Whom, then do I call educated ...? First, those who manage well the circumstances which they encounter day by day, and who possess a judgement which is accurate in meeting occasions as they arise and rarely misses the expedient course of action; next those who are decent and honourable in their intercourse with all with whom they associate, tolerating easily and good-naturedly what is unpleasant or offensive in others and being themselves as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as it is possible to be; furthermore, those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not unduly overcome by their misfortunes, bearing up under them bravely and in a manner worthy of our common nature; finally, and most important of all, those who are not spoiled by successes and do not desert their true selves and become arrogant, but hold their ground steadfastly as intelligent men, not rejoicing in the good things which have come to them through chance rather than in those which through their own nature and intelligence are theirs from their birth. Those who have a character which is in accord, not with one of these things, but with all of them - these, I contend, are wise and complete men ....- from the Panathenaicus
Whew. Is that all?
So. Character is everything. And what was the best means to form that character? Learning the art of political discourse, of course, guided by teachers who were themselves of excellent character and accomplished in discourse.
That's a pretty sobering list. Most of us, when we think about educating our kids, think of lists of subjects and books. We plan to fill them with knowledge, or put them into circumstances in which they can discover knowledge for themselves. It's much, much easier to teach subjects, isn't it? It's much harder to think that my real goal is to try to turn out Isocrates' educated man - and be a model for that man in the process. Ouch. But even though we all want our kids to have those attributes, the teaching of them tends to take a back seat to subjects. And modeling them? Oof. Yeah. After the next TV show, maybe?
And this list, this character training, was the education that was practical; the character formation, and the subjects that were immediately useful in forming the character.
If we place character education in the forefront of our efforts with our children, I think homeschoolers have it both easier and harder than non-homeschoolers. If your child goes to school, you have to pack all that character training in around the edges, in the evenings, and on the weekends. You might have to counteract "character training" that is happening in school. Homeschoolers, however, have plenty of time. We have all the time in the world to work on character ... and they have all the time in the world to observe and absorb every character flaw we have. Isocrates might not be impressed. I know that many of you homeschool for the purpose of putting character education first; that has never been my primary reason, but I can take this as a call to do better.
Posted by lynx at 10:48 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
January 19, 2008
Weekly Report
Frankly, starting back into school has been like crawling up from the depths of some pit. For me, that is. The kids are doing well. Me? Well, I have cut coffee back out of my life. That explanation should cover everything.
The nuts and bolts: Our holy trinity of math, Latin, and Classical Writing and piano (oh, wait, now it's a quad - ? Quadrant? Quadrivium? Quadruped?) is going smoothly. Very smoothly. We're still very, very happy with Right Start, Singapore Math and Dolciani pre-algebra; we're still massively in love with Galore Park Latin; and I am still in love with Classical Writing. I think I can safely say that it is unlikely we will ever change from these programs. Everything else is subject to change at my whim.
For history, we learned about Vikings this week. We read about Vikings (Viking World, Who Were the Vikings?, Vikings, Life in a Viking Town, Life on a Viking Ship, and The Vicious Vikings). We perused some cool Viking websites. We colored some maps. When I can scrounge up some cardboard we'll pull out the old favorite of making cardboard Viking shields and axes, because they're boys and this is what boys do. We also plan to involve fire, which is always a good choice for engaging the children's minds, right?
What we're reading: Connor has discovered Orson Scott Card, and has read Empire and Ender's Game. No, he devoured Ender's Game. We knew he would. Aidan is reading the last Timothy Zahn book, Allegiance; The Phantom Tollbooth, and the Horrible Histories book on the Vikings.
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