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Monthly Archives: September 2006
Really Good Books, Right There on Your Screen
This morning, before a well-intentioned realtor played a game of Psych! with my day, I was raving to a friend about the fabulous, wonderful, incredible resource that is The Baldwin Project, and I realized I haven’t raved about it HERE nearly enough. I’ve linked to it several times, but I haven’t taaaaalllllked about it. And that’s what I do, talktalktalk about the Delightful Resources we use for the Cultivation of Mind and Spirit. (My more dignified and hyper-capitalized way of saying "fun learning stuff.")
So. The Baldwin Project. Do you all know about this? It’s books. Books that volunteers have generously devoted their time to scanning in or typing in or I don’t know how they get them IN, but they’re IN THERE, just waiting for you to read them to your kids. Print them out, download them, whatever you want. If you want a nice papery-smelling actual hard copy to hold in your bookloving hands, you can buy those at the project’s publishing arm, Yesterday’s Classics. At quite reasonable prices, I might add.
These are old books, books that went out of print or fell into the public domain. Lovely old books like Famous Men of Greece, Famous Men of Rome, The Blue Fairy Book, Among the Pond People, Tanglewood Tales, Wild Animals I Have Known, and oh how the list goes on. There are treasures here, rich books, living books, stories to make a mind soar and a heart grow.
If you’re an Ambleside Online user, you probably already know about the Baldwin Project. If it’s new to you, prepare to lose an afternoon—and gain aeons.
Limbo
I’m sitting here waiting for the phone to ring. A realtor called
shortly after noon, just as I was starting to make lunch for the kids.
She asked if she could show the house between one and three, with the
time frame somewhat flexible. Of course I said sure, even as the voices
in my head commenced their panicky clamor: The upstairs is a mess!
Rug needs vacuuming! Toothpaste spatters on bathroom mirror! Unfolded
laundry on bed! Dishes! Lunch! Baby’s nap! Oh look she just spit up on
the floor AGAIN!
But I’ve learned to ignore those voices. They never shut up, and you
could drive yourself (or more to the point, your kids) crazy by paying
too much attention to the pressure those strident little nitpicking
mind-voices love to heap upon you.
So I told the kids lunch would have to wait, assigned each of the
girls a job, and called pal Lisa to ask if we could barge our noisy
selves right into the middle of her day. Because Lisa is an absolute
peach, she said of course, and asked if I wanted to send any of the
kids ahead while I did the cleaning.
I decided to keep them here until the realtor called back (she had
promised to give me a heads-up when they were ten minutes away, so that
I wouldn’t have to keep the kids out of the house for a big long
window), and I’m glad I did. Because here it is a little after two, and
there’s been no heads-up call yet. I gave everyone a snack on the front
porch, but no one’s had a real lunch. At least I had time to get the
place presentable. Now the waaaaaiiiiiiting.
But I know this is part of the place we’re in. Limbo. I’ve spent a
lot of my adult life in one kind of limbo or another: in a state of "as
soon as we get through THIS, life can go back to normal." Somewhere
along the line it dawned on me that this IS our normal. There will
always be some factor turning life upside down: a new baby, a book
deadline, an illness, a new job. If I sat around waiting to JUST GET
THROUGH THIS, my kids would spend their entire childhood waiting.
Instead, I have tried to embrace limbo, to make it a place for real
living, not getting-through.
So we go on with our read-alouds and our nature walks, our silly sing-alongs and our bean feasts. We try—
Hey, the phone’s ringing! Maybe it’s the realtor!
***
It was. Calling to say: they aren’t coming. Someone locked her keys
in the car. This ate up all the buyer’s time and he’ll have to
reschedule.
I just called Lisa, cracking up. "I don’t know how you can laugh
about this stuff," she said. But she was laughing too because it really
is funny. As usual, life makes my point far more eloquently than I ever
could. You can’t let Limbo get you down. You have to put up your tent
and make your little ring of campfire stones and get busy roasting your
marshmallows right there in limbo, or else one day you’ll look around
and say hey, we finally got through it!, and you’ll discover that your kids are grown and they never got to try s’mores.
An Alert a Day Keeps the Email, um, Coming
The other day I mentioned that ClubMom is offering a nifty Daily Alert email to let you know when your favorite ClubMom blogs have updated. Well, now they’re offering incentive for you to subscribe to your very most favoritest MomBlogs, hint hint. If you 1) join ClubMom (it’s free!) and 2) subscribe to the daily alert (by the end of September), you get 50 ClubMom points. Rack up enough ClubMom points and you can go shopping at actual (well, virtual) stores like Lands End and Barnes & Noble.
There are also prizes being awarded to the ClubMom bloggers who wind up with the most daily alert subscribers at the end of the month, but to be perfectly honest (in, um, a hyperbolic and metaphorical way), competition gives me hives. So let’s just forget about that part, shall we?
Click here to join ClubMom. Then you can set up a profile in the MomNetwork and do all kinds of fun stuff.
Click here to subscribe to the Daily Alert email. It’s like having me email you every time I update, only without the obnoxiousness. And if you already subscribe via Bloglines, you can still sign up for the email alerts to get your 50 ClubMom points!
Fun with Search Engines
Like many bloggers, I am fascinated by my referral stats, especially the search engine referrals. Some people keep lists of the funniest hits that brought people to their site; I wish I had done that from the beginning. I’ve had some doozies, but I forget what most of them were. I did get a kick out of the time someone found my blog by Googling "homeschooling your obnoxious teenage son." I don’t suppose I was much help that time: sorry about that, whoever you were.
Jane reminded me of the time someone searched for "popsicle sticks peacock." I wasn’t much help there either, but we sure had a good time exploring the other links Google brings up for that string.
These days I’m getting a lot of hits from variations on "mom planners" and "planner for moms." My favorite: "planner obsession." (Which: I’m the number three hit on Google for that string. A dubious honor!)
But I’m glad the planner series has been helpful—and guess what! More to come! I have two more planners awaiting review. Oh, the giddy joy!
Another topic that appears frequently in my stats is hearing loss. Here’s a sampling from the past week:
speech banana
funny asl photos
deaf aid hearing funny home
funny american sign language quotes
preschool sign language curriculum
asl videos lending libraries
is montessori education a good option for hard of hearing children?
I’m afraid I wasn’t much help on that last question, but it’s sort of gratifying to come up on three different searches for the humor in hearing loss.
There are always many hits from people looking for homeschooling information, curriculum recommendations, unit studies (especially for specific books), Charlotte Mason, unschooling, and related topics. Lately I’m seeing more and more searches for "classical education" and "Latin-centered." It’s fun to track the waves of interest in certain educational methods by their frequency in the stats.
At first I was excited by this hit: "caterpillar parsley fennel." I know the answer! It’s a black swallowtail! Then it struck me that that person would have landed on our grisly and tragic adventures with poor Homer, and that probably isn’t what he or she was bargaining for.
Someone Googled "charlie brown linus cracker bend" and I felt a rush of warmth—oh! a friend! someone who appreciates the brilliance of Snoopy! (The musical, and also the dog.) And it’s true, you know: you CAN’T bend a cracker, no matter how hard you try.
How proud am I to be the number one hit on Google for "Schoolhouse Rock 30th"? All those hours spent sitting through bad Saturday morning TV, waaaaaiiiiiting for the next Grammar Rock spot—not a waste after all! I know my parts of speech AND I’m a search-engine top spot for the, um, must be millions? of people who are interested enough in the fact that Schoolhouse Rock celebrated its thirtieth anniversary to actually look it up. Okay, maybe not millions. Maybe two. Or one. But you, whoever you are: I am so with you. It was a day well worth celebrating. I’m willing to bet that ninety percent of the American children who learned the preamble to the Constitution in the last thirty years owe that knowledge to Schoolhouse Rock.
(Admit it. You’re singing it right now, aren’t you?)
Well, I AM Opinionated…
…but no, I think I’ll pass on the opportunity to rap with Dr. Phil. Now, if Jon Stewart wants to talk homeschooling, I am so there.
Via Spunky:
Do you think home schooling children is the best way for them to be
educated? Do you believe the home environment allows children to learn
at a pace that they’re most comfortable with? Do you think it’s
important for children to decide what subjects they’re interested in so
they can concentrate on what most stimulates their mind? Or do you
home school your child to protect them from being teased, taunted, or
bullied. If you want to tell to Dr. Phil why you have a strong opinion
on home schooling, please tell us your story!!!
I love the disingenousness of this blurb from the Dr. Phil website. Do you believe the home environment allows children to learn
at a pace that they’re most comfortable with? Well, yeah. But at least it seems like the folks behind it have made a stab at doing their research…sounds like they’ve picked up on unschooling as a possibility, and they’re aware that people are choosing home education for a variety of reasons, and that there can be many different "strong opinions" about why homeschooling is a great choice.
But the headline on that web page is "Believe ONLY in Home Schooling?"—which is a loaded question and makes me suspicious…I hope the show doesn’t end up being a showcase of strident, extremist personalities who leave viewers with a bad impression. So go ahead, you nice, sane, personable Lilting House readers: go out there and show the world how charming we are!
Welcome Aboard—No, Wait, Make That “Welcome Off the Train”
Rick Riordan, author of the popular Percy Jackson novels, has decided to homeschool his eleven-year-old son.
"I was sure he’d be ready to run for the hills by now, but nope. He tells me every day that he loves home-schooling.
"Some
of the things he’s done so far: He has learned the basics of geography
and designed his own continent, complete with maps, a narrative
reflecting the five themes of geography, and a bar graph showing
immigration patterns. He has begun writing a short fantasy novel (His
idea, amazingly, not mine – I would never wish my choice of professions
on anyone unless they were truly determined and a little crazy!). He
spent a morning studying minerals with his grandfather, a retired
physician who has been itching to share his love of science. He takes
walks every morning with his mother. He reads about twice as much as he
used to, and sometimes even reads more than he’s required to. Gasp! I
am teaching him guitar and he’s learned seven chords. He’s taken a
pottery class at a local art studio. In English, we’re doing a unit on
Norse mythology. He’s watching his own stock portfolio and learning to
invest. And of course, he still has his friends over to play in the
afternoons."
I just got so happy reading this. Yes, yes, this is why we do it! The meaningful connections: with science, music, literature, history, art, finance, geography, and most important, people. Time to take long walks with mom, time to compare notes about the maddening joys of writing with dad, time to explore grandpa’s favorite subject with grandpa himself.
Rick expresses some of the concerns many new-to-home-education parents have, but it sounds like the whole family has embraced this new adventure with gusto, and I wish them great joy.
Busy Week, Busy Weekend
I have nothing for you today. But please go read this post by Moreena at The Wait and the Wonder.
But this is also the kind of life that allows you glimpses into the
amazing kindness and generosity of friends and strangers alike. This is
the kind of life that finds you walking the streets alone on Christmas
morning, sobbing with no shame, and then allows you to accept the
comforting words of a homeless man (true story). It’s the kind of life
that allows you to see people at their most frightened, and then share
Chinese takeout together on New Year’s Eve, eating crab rangoon while
watching your kids hooked up to ventilators. And still find something
to laugh about (also a true story). It’s the kind of life in which a
mother who has lost her daughter sews homemade hospital dresses for
your own daughter, and they fit perfectly. Because that mom knows
exactly where your daughter’s funny bulges will be…
It’s 10 PM. Do You Know Where Your Post Is?
The reason I haven’t posted yet today is because last night I read this post by Willa which mentioned this post by Sandra Dodd, which put me in the mood to work a jigsaw puzzle. So this morning I dug out the Global Puzzle
If you don’t know this puzzle, it’s awesome. And HARD. In a fun way. It’s a map of the world, and unlike other map puzzles, in this one the pieces are cut to match the individual countries. (Except a few really tiny ones clumped together. Very challenging! I need not point out what a terrific geography lesson it is.
Now good night! I have to go finish Africa.