What would you carry?

Today I had the kids complete a version of "If there is a fire in your house, what would you take?" but with a slightly different bent.

I am reading Suite Francaise. A novel about France as the Germans overtake it. Interestingly, the book is written by a woman who herself was there and was herself deported and later died in Auschwitz.



This book starts in Paris with the Germans on the march. The people of Paris realize that the fall of the city is imanant and that they must leave and so they begin to pack their cars to head to the contryside, so I posed the question to the children - If we had to escape our home quickly and could only take what we could fit in DH's truck, what would you take? They both scibbled down lists.

As the book continues, Petrol or gas runs out and people are forced to abandon their cars. I asked the children to trim their lists to what we could carry on our backs.

Futher along, there is a bombing that causes them to flee for their lives. Many of the characters are happy to make it out with their lives. I asked them to trim again to what they would carry at all times as not to leave something behind. I read them the following section:

She (Madame Pericand) looked again at everything she had brought, "everything she had saved": her children, her overnight cases. She placed her hand over the jewelery and money sewn into her blouse. Yes, during this terrible time she had acted with determination, courage and composure. She hadn't lost her head! She hadn't lost . . .she hadn't . . .Suddenly she cried out in a choked voice. She clutched her throat and fell backwards, letting out a low moan as if she were suffocating.
"My God, Madame! Madame, what's the matter?" exclaimed Nanny.
"Nanny, my dear Nanny," Madame Pericand finally groanded in a barely audible voice, "We forgot . . ."
"What? What did we forget?"
"We forgot my father-in-law," said Madame Pericand, dissolving into tears. (pages 112)

This led to a great car conversation about growing up in fear of Russia and in the importance of relationships and items. We were very happy to see that no only did they see the value and necessity of things, but also of people. They remembered to collect their grandfather (my father) down the street.

Can't Go Over it, Then Why Not Under it?

Sometimes when you homeschool, you wonder if you are on track. Are your kids going to make it in the outside world? Have I deprived them of something that they can never regain?

And then sometimes, you wonder . . .and I graduated from school (and college)??? How did that happen?

We have started letting our dog have roam of the house when we go to bed and when we go out. However, he has still been know to get into the cat liter. So I figured if we put up a baby gate, the cat could get in and the dog would stay out. But I could only find the very tall gate, I wasn't sure if the cat could jump that high. I must have verbalized my fear, because I hear from DS, "Mom, why don't you just put in up higher so that the cat can just go UNDER it but the dog can't?"

Wow, that made a lot of sense. I guess he got the critical thinking portion of our homeschool curriculum beat.

Integrating Technology and Learning

Since I have been hearing about this video all weekend, I figured that I should share it with you:



Mind you it does not strictly apply to us homeschoolers and many of us will see it as confirmation as to why we homeschool, but if you can get past that you may also be inspired. Of course DD's reason for her excitement about this video is that she sees it as yet another reason why she should get a cellphone. I'm not sure that that is going to work, but I am going to allow her to create a PowerPoint in leiu of a self test in Social Studies. We'll see how that goes and go from their. I'm also thinking, she may be getting some interesting emails. Also, I noticed that our library now has mp3 books on their website for downloading. This may be just the thing for DS.

Let me know any great technology ideas that you have.

Drawing Inspiration

I had intended to share with you a drawing made by DS today, but my scanner does not want to work. It says that there is a paper jam - not that a paper jam should have anything to do with scanning, but whatever - technology is great when it works and frustrating when it doesn't. So while I can't show you the picture, I can give you his words of wisdom:

"I start my drawings with a curved line.
When I start with a straight line,
I don't get any ideas.
I start all my drawings with a curved lines.
A curved line can be anything."

A Game to Play in the Car

As we drove to drop off our food entries at the fair. DS asked what “STC” stood for on a stop sign. I had no idea what he was talking about. I expected to look over and see some kind of graffiti on the sign, but what he was talking about was the tiny little imprint on the very bottom edge of the stop sign. Leave it to DS to notice the smallest possible thing. Something I hadn’t noticed on a stop sign ever. I’m not sure if it was the acronym of the company that made the sign or the department that might authorize the sign, but of course in a homeschooling car, it led to a game of acronyms:

Save the Camel
Sterile Turkeys Captured
Stalking Talking Computers
Sell the Car (see DD’s post about my car)
Stop the Car
Soon to Collide
See the Color
Swerve Toward Chimpanzees
Sweep to Clean
Service to Country
Stop Talking Computer
See Turbo Chameleon
Spend the Cash
Spare the Child
Shoot to Chill (we’ll it should be kill, but we all know that is not nice)
Spend Time Carefully
Savor the Candy
Sink the Canoe
Sift the cranium
Shake The Caboose
Swim to Canada
Shuck the Corn (which pathetically started as Suck the Corn, but we decided Shuck might be a better word choice)
Service Tall Candles
Supply Treasured cookbooks
Sing Traditional Carols
Silly Trained Chimpanzee


One of them was “Stop Talking C”. DD did not appreciate that very much and was bummed that no one else had an initial that she could use in an acronym.
This is a great silly game that can be played with any letters you might find and is a great way to work on synonyms, adjective, and brainstorming.

Let us know if you come up with any that are really funny.

The Frustration of Thinking Differently

Oh, my goodness. How do you teach a child whose mind works so much differently than yours? Sometimes when he is thinking, I wish I could take a magnifying glass and see what is going on in there. His mind works with such different gears than anything I’ve ever seen. It frustrates me to no end, but is also holds endless fascination for me. Ever since he was little he sees things that the rest of us don’t. If he shares his thoughts, then “aha!” we cry as we view for just an instant what he sees all the time.

I should have known how frustrating this would be way back when I tried to show him the idea of subtraction using grid paper. I tried to adapt to his visualization by using manipulatives. I cut out the number of squares in a long series to represent the first number, cut out another line of blocks to represent the other, and then place them one atop the other to show the difference between the two (like Cuisenaire rods). We would then cut the longer one so that the two rods were the same length and then count up the number of boxes in the cut off piece and there was the answer along with a visual representation of difference. But no, he had some way that he knew how to work it. He had no interest in looking at it the traditional way. I cannot even begin to show you his process because I still don’t understand it.

Today is this same battle just with a different part of math. He is working on division. The book has recommended that he round the divisor so that he can best begin to estimate his answer. Of course that just helps you to come up with a guess. You still have to multiply by the divisor and subtract, but he thinks it’s easier to multiply his guess by the approximation he used, calculate the difference between the approximation and the real divisor, multiply that by the guessed number, and then add or subtract as necessary to come up with the remainder. Gee, I wonder why he is frustrated . . .that is an awful lot to keep in your brain. I can’t seem to get him to understand that writing down the process of math is not cheating. I tried to show him that while this strategy may work with 628 / 23, it would be very difficult when we got to 6457 / 432 and that we were really focusing on the process of division not necessarily just the product (or in this case quotient). No, he insists that his way is better. After watching him struggle, I finally insisted that he did it the proper way and he completed the entire set of problems in just a couple of minutes. Of course I will admit that the most frustrating part is when he gets it right with his way of thinking and his explanation, while it may be the longest possible way to come to a solution, is correct.

Of course to compound the issue, he has to think – outloud. Now I don’t mean adding or subtracting outload. He has to hum or bang his pen or play with the walkie-talkies. He has to think with noise while I’m trying to type and the repetitious noise makes my brain want to explode. While I think silence does the same to his. He doesn’t like others to make noise, but he can sing an opera as he solves his problems. It is funny how we all have our different styles of learning. Clearly ours don’t line up that well. But on the otherhand, I cannot imagine what would happen to this child in public school.


“Genius . . . is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.” -Ezra Pound