Boyoboy

Back into the swing of things

2009-07-27T23:03:00.003-05:00

So, back here already. I was hoping O would make the right choice. School seems to have the worst effect on him. He just got himself convinced that he is stupid, that he was far behind and doomed to failure.

So, now we're 100% sure we're hsing, O is already bouncing back to his old self. He's currently playing an online text adventure game of Hamlet, amusing himself with trying to kill anachronous plot elements. We also did some Wiki-surfing, discovering to both our delights that the text that Shakespeare based Hamlet on was writing by Saxo Grammaticus, the hand's down possesor of the greatest name in history, at least in the history of Danish chroniclers. Seriously, does that not sound that best, most pretentious heavy metal band or what?

Down to business, a bit, I managed to get O to make a few decisions on curriculum. We'll be sticking with Math-U-See, and he even wants to get the honours book to go along with it. Tells a lot about why O hasn't succeeded well at school that he got excited over "more word problems."

Along with MUS, we'll be rejoining History Odyssey, that I picked up for O in grade 9, but we never got very far with then. Ancients is still not turning his crank, largely because there's not enough military and economic history in it for him (hint #2 that O is not really suitable for a public education, lol), but he's really excited about Middle Ages, quote from him when I read through the outline for him "Those are all the cool Empires!" He's especially looking forward to doing work on the Mughal Empire, and the assignment on tracking the spread of the Black Death with known trade routes of the time. He loves that kind of stuff.

This spring, while he was not doing photocopied worksheets of character studies and reading short stories written solely for high school english anthologies, what he was doing was reading everything he could on Swine Flu, and tracking media coverage of the flu against death rates and GDP's. You know. For fun. (hint #3, lol.)

So O seems happier than he's been for ages, he's getting out of the house, hanging out with friends, helping out around the house, reading, programming, and debating (everything, with anyone, online or IRL, who will debate back.) I was pretty worried about him for a while there, but so glad to have him back now.

The Return

2009-03-10T18:35:00.003-05:00

I may be back here after all. This school year has been an unmitigated disaster. The enthusiastic young teacher lasted all of one month before being fired. The self-directed program has devolved into worksheets and workshops. I warned ds before the program started that it`s not likely to stay as free and self-directed as it was presented for very long, bureaucrats get very, very nervous with anything new or different, but even I was surprised with how quickly it got crappy.

Ds says he`s 97% sure he wants to hs again this coming year. I`m just crossing my fingers against the other 3%.

Sliding into fall

2008-08-07T13:17:00.003-05:00

It just seems like the summer never really started for us, and now we're planning school and fall activities.

Yup, that's right, school (brrr.) O has decided to take a spot offered him at a model school program being developed at a nearby university. It's an environmental science-oriented, but supposed to be largely self-directed program for gifted, non-traditional students. The non-traditional aims at students who come from low-income, inner city, single parent or aboriginal families, and since he hits all 4 criteria, coupled with the kind of self-directed work he's been doing on his own for years, the school is drooling to recruit him.

They will have access to the high school program that has been run by this uni for years, all the labs, profs and resources of a small, but major university, plus grant money up the wazoo. They will only take in 20 students per year, so have put in grant applications to get each student a Mac Book, something that may have helped sell O on the program, plus funding and support for self-directed studies. The teacher hired for the program is very excited at O's Japanese obsession and wants O to teach him any Japanese words and phrases he's learned.

I've had too many experiences with self-directed learning programs with gov't funding to really believe it will be the program they are telling us it is. But O wants to go, wants to have more structure, wants to get out of the house, wants to guarantee acceptance at the university of his choice (as opposed to finding our way through a very uncharted unschooling-to-university route here in Mb.) So here's where we are. A totally unschooled teen who is choosing to attend formal school, take formal extra-curricular classes (bass guitar and Japanese language classes.) Who woulda thunk it? Especially considering this is a kid who, up until a year or two ago, didn't really want to go anywhere that would require pants, let alone a studious effort (for the record, he went out in shorts, not the Full Monty, we got over that phase years ago.)

Weekend plans

2008-08-02T12:27:00.003-05:00

O is still sleeping off the trip, or is it just the regular teenage boy stuff that has him sleeping 16 hours a day? Since I've been working so much, and O's been sleeping so much, we haven't had a whole lot of time together. This is a long weekend in Canada, and, as the new guy at work, of course I'm working the crappiest shifts, so I'm really looking forward to Monday when we can go out for the evening together. O wants to see The Dark Knight, hope it's as good as the hype, then we're going to check out a new Portuguese place called O Tacho. O loves Portuguese food, at least what he's had of it so far, thick chorizo and bean stews, squid as many ways as possible. Really, I think he should have been born a Mediterranean fisherman, he loves loves loves every Mediterranean cuisine he's tried so far.

I stayed up a bit late with O yesterday, to squeeze in some precious time together. He gave me a quick crash course in Japanese honorifics again, explaining why it's so hard to directly translate the term Mrs. into Japanese (san is the generic term used, but is gender neutral.)

O's also very happy to discover that his favorite bass tab sites are up and running again and has been busily practicing the theme to Tetris. I suspect that I will get tired of this long before he does. Next up, I'm assuming, will be the Mario Bros. theme song. I suspect, also, that the band he is forming will be an all-video game and anime theme song cover band. I guess there is a niche there somewhere, lol.

We're back!

2008-08-01T11:28:00.002-05:00

I'm back online (turns out the puter just needed a good virus cleaning) and O's back from his long haul trip across 4 provinces and 4 states.

I'm working too much in the next few weeks to post a good long tale of the trip, but here's a short observation from O:

After seeing so many roadside shanties selling everything from apples to fish, O was a little non-plussed to see, dotting the highways outside of Seattle, small mom and pop, roadside latte and cappuchino shacks. Too funny.

'nother quick update

2008-07-18T19:30:00.002-05:00

Still off the net, mostly, but hoping to have the comp up and running soon. I've been working too much to even miss my daily surfing time. O is currently in Victoria, attending a family wedding. This month we are learning how to function apart. Well, O isn't having much trouble, it's me who's learning how to be a single person again.

O is gone for another 2 weeks, taking a long road trip with the family. I'm staying home to work, with some yoga, shopping and writing time thrown in. I can't wait till O is back to show me what he picked up in BC (he was sooo looking forward to shopping in Chinatown in Vancouver and hitting the Japanese shops), and to talk about all the things he's done.

I went to my first Folk Fest alone, not nearly as dreary a time as I would expect, despite being the coldest, wettest Folk Fest in at least 20 years. Spent much time on the volunteer bus, but kept sitting down next to the Red Stick Ramblers, who played and drank the whole ride home, much fun.

Quick update

2008-05-12T15:04:00.002-05:00

Things have been chugging along nicely in the real world. Now that our puter is down, O and I have remembered that there actually is a real world out there. We've both been reading all those books we've been putting off for months, hanging out together more, and going Outside (I know, frightening though, but there's a whole world out there!)

O's gotten into a new anime big time, Code Geass, about an alternate future Japan that's been taken over by the evil empire of Britannia, and an exiled member of the Britannian royal family who leads a terrorist/rebel group. It's launched a lot of discussions about WWII, colonialism, and terrorism. Being anime, there's also an odd alien character who's a hot chick with an obsession for pizza. Shrug, I don't get it either.

O's mostly been busy lately decorating his room, getting ready for his trip this summer (he's opted to go on a road trip this July with my sister, instead of going to Folk Fest, so he'll be out of town for a month without me, sniff, sniff), and plugging away at his bass and his basic Japanese language books. He also announced the other night that he's going to start writing regularily (?!?!?!?) and wants to work at journalling daily (double ?!?!?!?!?). He's even mulling over having me go over his stories with him and teaching him a bit of basic writing stuff (ok, there aren't enough questions marks to express my shock and amazement at this, the last story he wrote he's never been willing to even show it to me.)

Football season is starting soon, sooner than O expected. His team starts practicing tomorrow night and has their first exhibition games at the end of this month. He's really regretting not hitting the gym all winter now. He's moved from the community club level to the midget league, much more competitive, especially at the club he's playing for, and it's going to be a bit of a shock to the system for him this month.

My poor 'puter

2008-04-26T15:32:00.003-05:00

Having computer trouble, it's just seized up and died. Too much anime and manga I think. I'll be doing updates from work, when I can, until I can get the computer up and running again. I think we're going to need a whole new operating system, and probably an upgrade on the graphic card and cooling system, at least. Hopefully it won't take too long, but it's oddly nice to not be wired up for a while.

O has filled his days, formerly spent mostly online watching the aforementioned anime and mange, by buying more anime and manga. Big surprise, lol. He's decided, though, now that he's spending more time in his room with his friends, that he just can't stand the mess anymore and has vowed to pare his possesions down to what will fit in one medium-sized box. I sometimes don't know who this kid is anymore ;)

O's latest interest, actually, a interest re-ignited, is Go, a game he's been playing for a few years now, but he's recently decided to start playing a lot more and a lot more seriously. The American Go Association has some great resources for teaching Go, and O has decided he wants to put together some workshops to teach Go and maybe pick up a few playing partners. He's going to put on a few one day workshops for local people, and for hsers, and is looking into starting up a regular Go night at a local cafe/used bookstore.

Oh how things have changed

2008-04-14T23:26:00.002-05:00

Just been rereading the blog here. I didn't realize I've been doing this for over a year now, and I had kind of forgotten just how frustrated I was getting with O there for a while. We went through about a year where things were not great. Not bad, really, but I felt we were just kind of disconnected and I didn't quite know what to do with him, and how to parent him.

As always, I have to worry non-stop about every little thing, am I doing the right thing? Is homeschooling still the right choice for him? etc etc etc... I couldn't figure out if things really needed working on, or he was just going through a transitional phase. And of course, hindsight is 20/20 and I knew that the disconnect and not-quite-working-out kind of phase we were in together wouldn't last, but I do have to have my worries.

Looking back over the last year, it's amazing to me just how much maturing O has done. Ok, he still thinks "Monkey Butter" is the funniest combination of words possible in the English language, but in many (non-monkey related) ways, he really seems so much more mature and composed.

I used to worry a lot (a common theme here, you'll see) that O was a little too malleable, that I could too easily sway him to hold my opinions or see things my way, and that I had to be really careful not to impose my own will on him too much. I worried that he could change his mind so quickly and easily, and I worried about how I could teach him more constancy. Cause, you know, I don't really have enough to do, so I have to find parental worries.

Of course, again, I should have realized that inner strength and constancy isn't something that is taught, but is learned (and I'm learning that this goes for just about everything else.) He's become so much his own person, so quickly. He argues with me, backs up his opinions, sometimes sways me (and no, we don't only debate stuff like the great Han Solo/Boba Fett debate.) It really amazes me lately how much he knows his own mind and his self and how confident he is in both, in both large and small ways.

It's such a bittersweet joy for me, though, watching him in the final phases of his childhood. I really liked, nay, profoundly loved, having a little kid in my life. As far as I'm concerned, there is no "bad age" and each enfolding step in his development was fascinating and joyous for me. Unlike almost all my friends apparently, I loved the 2's and 3's (most of my mom buddies would never go back to the toddler years for any amount of money), but I love how completely in the moment and engaged with the world 2yos are. How seeing a squirrel could give O such incredible joy, how a construction site was possibly the most exciting thing ever!

I never looked forward to a time when he wouldn't be completely dependent on me. I never looked forward to daycare or school as "time off." I deeply loved our hsing time spent tramping the river trail, looking for raccoon tracks and water birds. I never found playing pirate or space man boring. And I am soooo not ready for this to come to an end.

But O is not dependent on me anymore, not really. He even has a job and his own money. He knows how to cook, clean and do the basics of taking care of himself (better than many adults I know.) And I've been fighting this a bit, I think. But I'm finding that, once again, when I let go of my expectations and my wants, and just engage with O and enjoy him, that I'm finding a much more subtle joy in mothering a teen.

Because, as much as he's a pretty independent, pretty confident, pretty self-contained person, he still does need me, in new and more challenging ways. And while it's been frustrating to work out this process, it's a whole new aspect of parenting opening up to me, challenging me to learn how to be his mom. And I love nothing more on earth than that.

gotta love those Winnipeg anarchists

2008-04-13T17:54:00.003-05:00

Spent the afternoon today at the Bike Dump, a free, volunteer run bike repair workshop. I fixed my bike up in a jiffy (all I needed from last year was a tweak on my seat, it kept tipping forward) but O's old bike (not all that old, I bought it at the start of last summer) is in a woeful state. One of the crank rods was bent, the crank itself was cracked, his seat is tippy and dangerous too, his back tire is bent, the gears don't really work and the brakes work too well.

O put about 3 hours into fixing the bike up well enough to ride today, while I did a quick snack shop at Sun Wah, a nearby Chinese grocery store (and one of my favorite places ever.) It didn't really work out too well for him, he and the Bike Dump volunteer got a new crank and rod on, but neglected to check the attachment hole before putting it all together, so O wound up riding home on a pedals that were at a 45 degree angle (or 135 degree angle, if you look at it the other way) rather than the standard, usable, 90 degrees. I thought he was going to throw the bike by the end of our ride home.

No big deal, though, since the Bike Dump has frames and cannibalized parts to put together a new bike for him later in the week. He needs a bigger bike than he's got right now, he's not freakishly big (6'2"), but his current bike, which has the largest mountain bike frame available (26") looks like a clown bike when he's on it right now. He's picked out another 26" frame, but it's a very sturdy ten speed frame, and with any luck, he'll be able to find a seat with a very, very long post next week, either at the Dump, or at a bike supply shop (we may have to pony up the dough for a new part), so it'll be more comfortable to ride.

The Bike Dump is part of an a loose anarchist collective that includes Mondragon, the Emma Goldman Grassroots centre, and Food not Bombs. And what a beautiful example of anarchism in action it is. The space is run by volunteers, runs on donations of both cash and supplies, there are volunteers available to help fix or build bikes, from mechanical experts, to people who've just learned how to change a tire and are eager to teach someone else their new skill. Tools and supplies are organized in freecycled bins and milk boxes, no one is in charge, everyone reminds everyone to put things back where they belong, jumps in to help out with a particularly frustrating repair.

I've had a few discussions over on MDC about the connection between unschooling and the punk anarchist DIY ethic, and this place was such a great example of the open sharing of skills, labour and supplies that I think typifies both worlds at their best.

Top 10 most bad ass people ever

2008-04-13T10:52:00.013-05:00

After watching Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back last night on tv, and having a long and (as always) pointless debate over who's cooler, Boba Fett or Han Solo (guess who's side I was on), O decided to write up a list of the 10 most bad ass people ever. Since most of the "people" on his list are fictional characters, we're taking the term people pretty loosely here.

In order:

1. Boba Fett

2. Captain Falcon

3. Chewbacca

4. L

5. Bruce Lee

6. Zolo O's note: his name is
Zolo, NOT Zoro (emphasis O's, not mine, lord knows I wouldn't know a Zoro from a hole in the ground)

7. Han Solo (ahem... 7? I don't think so)

8. Fonzie

9. Genghis Khan (seriously, he conquered most of Asia, and he's behind the Fonz?)

10. Samus

Honorable Mention:

Admiral Ackbar

O's business card

2008-04-10T20:14:00.001-05:00

I'm mildly speechless

ahh, a day off and springtime

2008-04-03T17:59:00.000-05:00

I had what had to be one of the single most stressful days of my life at work yesterday (lets just say that the fact that I only got one hour of sleep because of inventory that had to be done between back to back events was probably one of the better parts of the day, yeesh) so I took a complete sabbatical from responsibility today. Slept until noon (actually, 12:30pm), watched an episode of Spaced (again, O complained that I've already seen it a dozen times at least), and then we went out to run errands and do shopping.

O got his hair cut (hence the picture.) It was down past his chin, largely because he just hates having his hair cut, so it's nice to see his face again. The upside, too, is that now his sideburns are very noticeable, something he's deeply, deeply impressed with (as the only 14 yo in his acquaintance with luxurious sideburns, he's pretty stoked.) We then went to buy some anime and manga at the Japanese gift store, yet another new series, D.Gray-Man. Then we headed off to the library to pick up some books on basic Japanese, Kanji, and some learn to play bass dvd's. O's pretty happy, and will be well-occupied for weeks to come.

Speaking of well-occupied, huge thanks to Michael who sent me a link to GIMP, exactly the free, open license image editing program O needed to do Manga typesetting. He got his 5 page sample manga test 2 days ago is already half way through typesetting the translation, and is learning how to use the software really quickly.

And now, for some more Spaced:

O's new hobby

2008-03-30T23:20:00.000-05:00

O installed an IRC client on the computer this week (don't even ask me what this is, he took over being the technical person in the house when he was, oh, 6 or so.) Basically, though, it allows him to go into chat channels, very, very specific channels. Being O, he went straight to scanlation house channels, and has volunteered himself to do typesetting for his favorite houses.

So now he's shopping around for a cheap version of photoshop, or, preferably, a creative commons, open source version, to teach himself to typeset. Only this kid would dream of typesetting--when he took acting classes as a little kid, the teachers loved him because he was the only kid who didn't want to be the lead actor, he wanted to pull the curtain, make props and do sound effects. For an instrument, he chose the bass. He's totally the behind-the-scenes, indispensable but unnoticed kind of guy. I love the fact that he knows who he is and what he wants better than a lot of 40yos that I know.

The half-assed band

2008-03-23T03:19:00.000-05:00

O and his buddies want to put a band together (for the chicks, I'm guessing, though B may be in it for the sheer rock glory.) Since none of them can play their instruments, and none of them play drums (they've got 2 guitars, 1 bass and a fiddle), they are talking about naming the band Three and a Half Asses.

I am, unfortunately, responsible for this name. When B was describing how he could "half-assed play guitar, half-assed sing, half-assed play banjo, etc." I told him he had about 3 and 1/2 asses between them all. They all immediately decided that this was the perfect band name. I can only hope that I will not be mentioned in some future Spin magazine article.

Went to see TOFU today (Tons of Fun University, yeah, worst band name evah! but they rock, or, more specifically, talk-rock) then went for Shawarma and falafel.

TOFU at the Regina Folk Fest (not the Winnipeg show where I first saw them):

Curling, hockey and Untalkative Bunny

2008-03-17T19:30:00.000-05:00

Our life has been hijacked by an odd Canadian obsession, curling, specifically, the Brier, the Canadian mens championship and probably the largest curling event in the world, hosted, this year, at the arena where both O and I work. Now we have some back to back concerts and the end of the hockey season. School, and life, will resume after playoffs, hopefully!

Anyhoo, O and I had a day off today and spent it lounging luxuriously, watching kids tv and generally being lazy. We suddenly got the urge to watch Untalkative Bunny, one of the most sublimely genius kids shows ever, about a mute,vegetarian, jazz loving, urban bunny. And someone on You Tube has uploaded all of the shows available, so we're going to be going on an Untalkative Bunny spree for the next few months.

One thing that struck me was how much of an unschooler UB is, she's always reading, listening to jazz or the radio, and signing up for courses that sometimes she likes, and sometimes she doesn't and she just leaves. I love UB!

Here's a fave of mine, and I think quite suitable for an unschooling oriented blog:

Yoga day

2008-03-04T01:13:00.000-06:00

O is totally burned out on football (at his size, it's the first thing most people bring up), so I gave him a list today of some things he can choose from for a regular physical activity (none is not an option, though he did try to argue for it, lol)

Not surprisingly, since it's about -30 today, he choose to do yoga with me in the MPR. It's going to be a challenge to do some of the poses with him. He's just soooo big, he just physically can't do some movements, especially his legs. Even at a lower weight, he's just not going to be able to do some of these poses. His whole bone structure is so big (his knee cap is about as big as my face), I'm going to have to find ways to adapt poses for him pretty radically.

Ahh, relaxation

2008-02-23T20:03:00.000-06:00

Spent most of the morning, vegging on the couch and watching the NFL Combine live online. It was the O-line and Tight Ends today, but O didn't wake up early enough to watch it. Too bad, he would have loved to see guys his size running the 40 yard dash.

O has repeatedly told me that he needs, and I'm quoting here, me to kick his butt and make him exercise. So I did just that today and made him come out for, what was for him, an early morning walk. At 3pm, hehe. We went down onto the river skate trail again today, it was just gorgeous out, Winnipeg in February gorgeous, 3 below or so. O was not a happy camper at first, but perked up towards the end, and seems much more energetic today for it. I'd like to sit down with him later today and make up a list of fitness goals and agree on a plan together.

On the way home, we stopped at the library to pick up our holds, and the Dr. Who dvd we've been waiting for is in! O is on the next to last mission in Fire Emblem and we have a Dr. Who marathon before us (not Christopher Eccleston or Tom Baker Dr. Who, but still Dr. Who all the same.) What a fabulous day.

Another shopping trip survived

2008-02-21T17:12:00.000-06:00

Well, we couldn't find a coat big enough for O, and he literally hissed when passing the changing rooms (what is it with the damn change room?), and 3 cabs were stolen from me on the way home from Superstore, but we finally managed to come home. O kept me from going completely insane in Stupidstore, and I thanked him for coming with me (and he commented "now I know why you wanted me to come with you, to stop you from killing someone") I don't know what it is about my ass that proves magnetically attractive to other people's shopping cart, but I can never get through a Stupidstore trip without being rammed at least twice. Sheesh.

When we got home O showed me what he and his best friend had been up to while I went to see Juno with B. They built a facebook page for Chewbacca. He then spent most of the evening taking quizes (Chewy is Catwoman!)

I've taken 4 days off from work so far, and will probably only go into to work for a few hours tomorrow. I really don't have much to do besides the scheduling, so I can take as much time off as I want. Everytime I take time off I'm reminded of how much living I'm missing out on when at work. I'm still really torn about quitting my job, I do really love it, and I'd still have to work, at a crappier job, but probably for more money. I miss my kid, though. Today I wound up napping in O's bed while he played Fire Emblem on the Wii, we hung out and talked and he was so happy to tell me about his game. We really need to have time like that more often.

Today's lesson

2008-02-20T13:51:00.000-06:00

Today O and I will be learning all about patience. Patience, tolerance, understanding, respect.

Yes, it's that time of year again.

Time for O to shop for clothes.

Wish me luck.

Better yet, pray for me, that I do not strangle my son when he grabs the first thing he sees, yells "this is fine, lets go!" then spends the rest of the shopping trip trying to sneak away to EB games to play the Xbox and avoid coming within 500 yards of that dreaded form of torture known as the "Changing Room" (said in tones of doom.)

Schedule vs. flow

2008-02-12T11:44:00.000-06:00

Things have not been progressing easily for us this year. With my work schedule, I've been struggling a lot to find a good rhythm for our days. This week I am working 7 days straight, Monday through Sunday, at least 8 hours each day, probably at least 60 hours this week, while next week I could take the entire week off if I choose (and if I can afford it.) This kind of random schedule makes it really hard to have a satisfying rhythm to my day, or to do anything spontaneously. Everything I do has to be laboriously planned out beforehand and too often I don't finish everything I need to do in a day, and rarely get to start on the things I want to do.

Now to be clear, I have absolutely nothing against having a schedule. We've just never really had one because we're more flow people than schedule people. My sister is very much a schedule and structure person, and we've had more than a few "discussions" over our differences. When I have structure imposed externally on me, I feel overwhelmed and out of control. By the same token, my sister feels the same way when she has no structure or schedule going on. I realized that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with any kind of structure or schedule, it's only what works for each person that really matters. And I've always functioned best with a very loose sense of flow, rather than a strict schedule.

But right now, I have no flow, and no end to this in sight. So now it's off to structure land. I just don't know where to start with this, though. I try to figure out a schedule that will work for us, but my hours, and O's well-developed sense of the spontaneous has thrown a wrench in the works every time. Maybe I should be looking more at listing the things that are really important to me and O to get done during the day, prioritize them, and work on reducing impediments to getting our stuff done.

Unschooling math

2008-01-28T22:11:00.001-06:00

This is the biggest stumbling block most new hsing parents have about unschooling is math. The idea of anyone willing doing advanced math, on their own, for their own pleasure, is difficult to accept. That's why I loved this site, both for it's illustration of how math is a tool, not a mystical secret, and for it's sheer geekiness. I'd have tried to do this too, if I could do the math.

Homeschooling for free

2008-01-24T12:54:00.000-06:00

Every few weeks this comes up on MDC, hsing for free, or at least very, very cheap. The last time it came up I realized that here, at least, I have, sadly, an enormous amount of experience and resources. I've been a single mom from the start, with no child support (O hasn't seen his father since he was 20 months old), not much family support (my parents were immigrants), and no career (at least when I had O.) So, one thing I've learned to do very well over the years is to live frugally and hs using free or used resources.

Since money is an issue for any family, no matter what their circumstances, and nobody wants to be wasteful, I thought I'd start logging in some of the sites I have found most useful over the years.

Ref Desk - this was our home page for many years, where we started our day, and the springboard for many conversations and hours spent searching new information. O is now past the age of wanting mere information, facts, or pictures, so he doesn't use Ref Desk much anymore, he has his own set of reference sites, but it's a great starting point online.

Budget Homeschool - just what it says, an enormous clearing house of links. Some links are broken, and some are trial and error, but it's still very helpful.

Ambleside Online - a free, e-text based, Charlotte Mason curriculum

An Old-Fashioned Education - another free, complete curriculum, based on public domain e-texts. Christian but still useful.

Free Curriculum on the Internet - this is by no means a comprehensive list of free curriculum and educational sites. Anyone with other clearing house type sites, please comment and let me know! I love to collect links (as you may be able to tell.)

41 Below

2008-01-20T09:21:00.000-06:00

That's what the current temperature with wind chill is. For those of you who think in imperial, that's...-42 Fahrenheit. Yup, you learn new things when you live in a deep freeze. One of the things I learned when I first started going online and talking to Americans (and therefore having to translate my wacky Canadian ways of thinking) is that the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales meet up at about -40. So anyway you slice it, -40 is freaking cold!

O is skipping his last day of football camp. I'm none too impressed, but he has had a cough, sore throat and fever since he started camp, and was near tears at the idea of doing 6 hours of blocking and running today, so, there you go.

Something I've struggled a lot with on my hsing journey has been how much to push O. I mean, it's not like I'm making him take piano lessons or something. Helikes football, nay, loves football, wants to play at a high level, aims to play in college and dreams of playing professionally, this is something he wants to do. But he gives up so easily, as soon as he's uncomfortable, or bored, then he regrets having dropped out of what he was doing.

My struggle has been, if I push him, am I imposing my will on him, or supporting him in doing something he wants? If I don't push him, am I teaching him to honour his body and interests, or to quit when the going gets rough. I never know if I'm doing the right thing. Left to his own devices, though, he has gladly spent hours every day in front of the computer, gone weeks without going outside, and gained at least 30 lbs back from last football season. It seems he's shown that he is just not able to push himself to get going.

Football camp

2008-01-19T01:17:00.000-06:00

O had his first day back at football training tonight, and his only comment so far has been "I've always taken breathing for granted up till now." Hopefully this is a lesson learned not to spend the entire off season in front of the computer next year. He's way out of shape and is going to have to work hard on his conditioning for a few months at least to be able to participate in practices in time soon.

Speaking of football, O is still mulling over attending school next year, at least for a few courses, in order to participate. The difference in the program between high school football and the community club teams is just so big, plus the reality of having to walk around the really, really, really bad neighborhood where his team would be located is having us both reconsidering school. Plus, the one school he's really interested in has had an hsing student before, and they sound like they might be willing to work with us to develop a program we could both live with.

I really don't want to lose any more family time than I already am with my job, and I really don't want to have some outside authority dictating my family life, and what my son should be interested in, not to mention how much I don't want him becoming bogged down in the social aspects of high school (especially the social aspects of being a high school football player!) But, ultimately, it's his life and therefore his choice, and being on a football team is such a huge motivation to him to get out of the house, to get in shape, and to hold himself responsible to someone other than himself. I don't want to deny him something worthwhile, and something he loves, because I'm attached to hsing.

So, here's the dilemma...can you unschool while attending ps? Here will be the experiment next year, perhaps. Not that we are total unschoolers, but I definitely want to keep the self-directed, interest-led part of our hsing going, and I don't want to see it going down the drain because of fear and neglect (O's fear of looking stupid or lazy to his friends and teachers, and my neglect of his interests because I just don't see him enough.)

He has months to make the decision, but I'm pretty sure he will opt for whatever will let him play the most football, and that is public school. We'll just have to find a way to make this work.

Just call me Cleo

2008-01-14T19:05:00.000-06:00

Ok, I just gotta accept that we are, like every other year I've lived in Winnipeg, not really going to go outside again till March. Just deal with it. No sledding trips, no late night skates at the Forks, no hikes down by the river bank. It's 31 freaking below today, that's the high, before wind chill. So just deal with it, we are indoor people for the duration.

Winter in Winnipeg is like childbirth, you don't really remember how bad it is until you're in the middle of it again. Now onward and upward until Spring.

Ah, the magical balm that is football

2008-01-13T01:19:00.000-06:00

Feeling much better today. O and I have had more than few little "talks" lately about helping around the house, and I've told him that I will try my best to let him figure our on his own what sort of schedule and routine works for him, but I really, really need more help around the house, and he seems to be trying harder to help out now that I'm not nagging him anymore. Which I knew already, but it's a hell of lot easier to nag than negotiate and discuss, right? ;)

O got out of bed on his own this aft, before 3pm even, with absolutely no input from me! I'm hoping this is a sign of the passing of this new phase. Being awake, coherent and aware before 10pm would really add to variety of activities O and I can participate in, like, say, anything outside of our home. O's getting bummed about missing Anime Club and the once a month Go tourney because he can't get himself moving in time. And since both start at 6pm, he's not getting much sympathy from anyone over this.

Since venting yesterday, I've been thinking about what's been going in with O, and really, it's almost like having a toddler around again, in a way. I knew going in that the early teen years bear similarity to toddler hood, but it's still a bit of a shock. It really is though, I was telling O this afternoon that if he could have articulated his thoughts when he was two, it would have sounded much like his usual reaction to any question right now: "NO!...maybe...hold on a minute...yes...what?" O thought that was hilarious. Just the fact that he can recognize that he's been a little belligerent and a little bit thoughtless lately, hopefully this signals the beginning of a new phase. A phase that doesn't involve staying up all night, hopefully, though I don't hold out much hope that it will involve less monkeys. I think I'm stick with the monkey fixation for the duration.

Today being the start of the 2nd round of NFL playoffs, I decided to go with the O flow, and sleep in, get comfy on the couch, and watched one of the best football games I've ever seen, Packers vs. Seattle, 4 touchdowns and 2 major turnovers in the first quarter alone! And so much snow they had to stop the game to clear the end zone markings, because the line judges couldn't see them anymore under the snow.

Not much to report today (and probably tomorrow neither), O and I will be spending the weekend relaxing and watching football. I guess given enough time, I can come up with an educational spin on a weekend spent completely absorbed in football, but I couldn't really be bothered. After 6 years of hsing, I have learned at least one thing, that rest is as important as work for a growing brain, and to trust O to, eventually, know where he wants to go.

Not so good day

2008-01-10T13:00:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was pretty well down the crapper. I went in to work for the Xmas party (yes, it's after Xmas), and what I thought would be an hour or two of basic administrative work, and wound up being stuck in the middle of a firing and new hire of a supervisor and having to mediate and almost translate between my boss, her boss and two other managers (the big bosses in my company have a very bad habit of ambushing managers with disciplinary stuff, usually just as the GM is walking out of the office, and usually, inappropriately, in front of others.)

And my stomach still feels like I've been eating rocks, so I was pretty wiped when I got home. O's sleep has gotten even more ridiculous, he was awake when I got up for work at 10:30am, not having slept all night, and was awake still when I got home at 6pm, and basically had to be ordered to go to sleep at 4:30am. He's messed around so much with his circadian rhythm and body schedule that he no longer recognizes when he's tired, hungry, etc. He's just basically cranky and needy all the time, sigh.

And then, somehow, O managed to re-injure his arm, that's still sore from football 4 months ago, while getting off the couch, and was even bitchier before bed. Sigh.

I just don't know how to get this schedule thing back on track. I'm sooo not a schedule person, and it feels weird and wrong for me to impose my own needs on O's body and self, but this sleeping for 15 hours every, oh, 48 hours or so (in completely random intervals), eating almost constantly, not going outside, and being too cranky/sore/sick/whatever to do any actual housework or pursue any interest, well, it's really unhealthy for him and it's pissing me off beyond belief. I've tried setting goals with him, not setting goals for him, backing off and letting him figure this stuff out for himself, nothing is working in any way that makes our lives livable together. My work schedule is so random too, that we just can't seem to get into a sync with each other. Short of quitting my job, working only Friday and Saturday night as a waitress or bartender, I can't see how this will really work out for us, short-term. I'm soooo sick of either nagging, or of doing everything myself (it took a lot of self-control for me not to blow up on O when he pulled out every single one of his video game cases, again, looking for a game he didn't put back into it's case, again, and left them all spread out on the living room floor, again, not ten minutes after I had picked them up and put them away, for the 6th time that day alone.)

I really don't want to be the nagging mom, but I also can't live my life following O around and picking up after him, when I'm not cooking a meal every 2 hours, doing the dishes so I can make yet another meal, doing his laundry again because he left all his clean clothes on the floor where the cats rolled around in them or peed on them, again.

I guess what I really want is a life of my own back. Geez, teenagers are more work than toddlers (almost, at least he's not nursing anymore, it was so much fun when he'd nurse standing up, and lean over and try to reach the remote, without letting go of my boob! I sooooo don't miss that-you know you're child is ready to wean when he's going through the tv listings while nursing, lol!)

Ok, vent over, now back to your regularily scheduled productivity:

Today's plan is, hopefully, to get down to the Forks, the trip we skipped on Monday because O didn't wake up until 4:30 and was cranky and sleepy until midnight. O wants to check out Muddy Waters Smokehouse for some meat, meat and more meat, and, just to switch things up, some smoked meat. It's pretty pricey for a restaurant where I can't, or won't, eat most of what's on the menu (no sugar, no dairy, no fried foods, whole grains, vegetables, not exactly choices well-represented on this menu), so maybe I'll try to talk him into going to the Village or the Market.

I'm hoping to establish a habit of not turning on the tv or video games until the evening, and spending some quiet time, reading, or talking, or doing something productive. Not that I'm averse to passive entertainment (ah tv: teacher, mother, secret lover!), but all play and no work makes Johnny a very dull, cranky boy indeed. We'll see how my incursions against Big Screen work in my home in the next few weeks.

Then again, it's cold and there's probably something good on tv...

;)

College plans, so far

2008-01-08T12:22:00.001-06:00

So I'll admit it, I have a problem, I have no control over it, I have been obsessed with O's college plans and opportunities, probably in inverse proportion to O's interest in that very same subject. O is quite content to stay at home and read manga, play video games and chat with friends (which sends me into a frenzy of fear that O will turn into this guy, but that's my own problem, really.)

So, after pulling many, many teeth, figuratively speaking, O and I seem to have worked out a workable plan for his college entry.

My biggest concerns have been that I just don't think O will be ready for university at 18 on the dot, considering he's almost 15 now and seems to have so much more childhood in him. He just doesn't really know what he wants to study or if he even really wants to go and I really don't want him taking out a student loan to figure this stuff out (he has all the time in the world at home to find himself.)

His big concerns have been understanding enough math to get into Engineering or Science, and where he will play football. The whole high school football thing is still an issue (O can only play on a school team if he is a "bona fide" student of the school, Manitoba High School Athletics rules, not school rules, grrr), so his choices are to enroll in high school, at least for 3 or 4 classes, in order to qualify to play football (he may be able to play rugby, since that's not a MHSA sport), or to play for the midget team in our catchment area.

Now I really, REALLY don't want him playing for this midget team. Last year, in the bantam age group (the oldest of the youth football age groups), this team was the worst in terms of dirty play, deliberately trying to injure star players to take them out of the game, and the parents were a nightmare. Almost every single parent behavior incident in the whole league were the fault of this one team's parents. This included an incident where a ref was physically threatened and almost assaulted. I really don't want to be part of this organization, and neither does O, but his old team does not have a midget level team (most players go to the local high school teams, which are very competitive and actively recruit.) His only options are to either go to high school, play for the bad team, or we will have to move into a catchment for a better team. None of these are exactly great options, sigh.

So, after long discussions (on my part, with O mostly trying to redirect the conversation to penguins, or monkeys, or an unholy race of penguin/monkeys--Menguins--with whom he will someday subjugate the earth,) we seem to have decided on something like a plan that will suit both our needs:

1) O will play for the local midget team for 2 years, at which point he can try out for the Winnipeg Rifles and (hopefully) play junior football until he is 21. Bonus is the Rifles are a traveling team and are seen as very desirable experience for college football, so there still may be a small chance of some scholarship money, once he decides to go.)

2) O will apply for the U of M as a mature student at 21, with my fervent hope that the U of M doesn't change any of its requirements for mature student entry in the next 6.5 years. This will mean the most amount of time for O to be a kid, allow both of us to save up some money for tuition and books, and eliminate the need for much documentation on my part. Not that I'm totally averse to documentation, but the U of M's homeschool entry requirements are that we show he has completed the equivalent of all public high school grad standards (and one of the reasons we hs is that I think much of these standards are pointless, at best) and that we demonstrate this with transcripts (official ones), outside classes, photocopies of the table of contents of text books used, etc. This means necessarily having to do much more of a school at home than either O or I are willing to submit to. I really hate the documentation game, too, because I get so caught up in "have we done something today that I can document" that I lose my appreciation for what O is doing right now. It's really pointless to live entirely in the future, trying to prepare for something O doesn't really understand, and I'm not sure if either of us want.

All in all, this whole plan has really helped me to relax from my "we're so far behind" panic, and to remember that I'm only educating O, and he's right on time for who he is. O seems pretty happy with it too, except for the midget team thing, though mostly I think he's happy with the thought of putting off adulthood for at least a few more years ;)

1st day of new term

2008-01-08T01:17:00.000-06:00

Not that terms mean much to us on a day to day basis, but it does feel nice to break the year up a bit.

O and I had planned on going to the Forks today, checking out the toboggan run and snowboard hill, and maybe climbing around the riverbank a bit, but that was waaaaay too ambitious for us at the moment. O didn't even wake up until 4pm. And by wake up I mean I poked him, jumped on top of him, and resorted to putting his "breakfast" on his pillow next to his mouth and trying to hand feed him (he didn't enjoy the airplane/hangar game nearly as much as he did when he was a baby.)

I had to wake him up to watch Oprah, though. Dr. Oz was on with an 8ft long tapeworm, and I thought he'd enjoy it. He did.

We wound up spending most of our day indoors, well, I went out to get groceries, I don't think O went out at all today. He's still recovering from his sleepovers this weekend. I think he is using the word "sleep" lightly in these sleepovers. I'm thinking there is way more "Playstationover" or "giddysleepdeprivedMSNtalkover" going on than sleeping.

We watched the BCS championship tonight, LSU wiped the field with Ohio State, just like I had predicted, then got to "work" at around 11pm. I remember my own teen years and going on all night and well into the morning and going to sleep at 7am, but I also had little or no adult supervision of any kind from the age of 12 on, and absolutely no adult direction, so I had thought that my teen years were not very typical. Ok, so O isn't hanging out at the bar every night, and that's a very good thing, but this staying up all night, sleeping all day is getting pretty damn annoying to me (and yes, it kills me to say this, yet another sign that I'm getting so old.)

Anyway, we did have a pretty good night, once it got going. I've decided to back off a bit on the assigned work, and just let things kind of develop organically, and focus on exposing O to new and interesting things, and trying to spark a dialog about the stuff we're exploring. We're still reading 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea, read ch. 22 today, O wanted to do that last, but I wasn't sure if I could stay awake long enough to do that, so I read it first and O nearly fell asleep on the couch. I'm thinking tomorrow I'll do what he asks and read it last. We then plotted out some of the Nautilus' voyage on Google Earth. Then we read the New York Times online, an article about Greenland's melting glaciers. This sent us back to Google Earth, since they've put in a layer on environmental changes. O commented that when Google Earth first went up it only had 5 year old shot of Greenland, but with the new update, there are newer images and he could see the glacial melting at a glance, at least a few hundred miles of coast line. The shots of Greenland were pretty low res, though, so I went over to the Himalayas, where the flow of glaciers are really dramatic.

We moved on to reading the Guardian online, read through some music festival reviews and found an act that we both really like, Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, described as Essex's most hirsute performance poet, and I can't think of a more accurate description. Thous Shalt Always Kill is my new favorite song.

Oh yeah, earlier we spent some time checking out Jimmy Wales new search engine Wikia Search.

I see the light!

2007-12-29T21:43:00.000-06:00

O and I are finally starting to feel close to our old selves again (at least I am, and O is settling in to his new, manly body) We've really shut down on outside activities, field trips, formal work at all, so it will be nice to get back into some sort of routine come January.

Our next school "term" will be starting January 7th--more like a date to aim for being more active and cutting down on the tv/internet/video game usage. O has chosen his field trips for the season, and, unfortunately, the Zoo is still at the top of his all-time favorite places list. Not that I don't love the Zoo, even in winter, it's a great time to have the place to yourself, and to get a really good look at the animals, but I've done so many winter Zoo trips and I was kind of hoping for something different this time. Oh well. He's also picked the Conservatory this time, something he's never been interested in before, but I find it really helps the cabin fever to spend some time in a huge tropical greenhouse.

O and I are also going to start working through the set of Boy Mechanic books he got for Xmas and I'm really looking forward to that. Spending more time working on fun projects at home with O is one of my New Years resolutions.

Let's never fight again

2007-11-12T14:19:00.000-06:00

I have been neglecting you, dear blog-o-mine. It's not you, it's me, really. It's just that I've been so busy. It's not another blog, really, you gotta trust me baby.

I promise I'll be a better blogger from now on, now let's never fight again.

And I don't even own a light saber!

2007-10-28T00:25:00.000-05:00

Ooof

2007-10-20T22:49:00.000-05:00

We've been having a bitch of a time in the last few weeks, both of us sick for ages, then 11 days straight of work for me. O's football team was knocked out of the playoffs in their first game. The new cat got a urinary tract infection and has been pissing everywhere. Just not a lot of fun, let's say.

On the up side, we did start the History Odyssey curriculum last week, and so far, so good. O really seems to enjoy the straight-forward, reading/research/writing-based learning of the program, and appreciates that there are very few "make learning fun" kind of activities. He really seems to like the very basic, old-fashioned, 3 R's approach to learning, and doesn't have much tolerance for craft-projects, reading responses, "pretend you are a Roman Centurion writing a letter home to mom" kind of assignments, that I always did like when I was in school, mostly as a break from the stuff he loves!

He also commented to me recently that he likes to write, but just doesn't know what to write about. Ok, so the years and years of incredible resistance to any form of writing was just about not quite knowing what to write??? I don't think so, but maybe this means he's going to be more open to some writing exercises.

He also seems happier to be doing some more structured work, and seems quite open to starting the daily schedule we have planned for starting in November (after the next spate of events in the arena.) It's taking months of talking it through, but I think he's seeing for himself how much he misses out on when he lays around all day doing nothing.

Plan 9

2007-10-07T23:16:00.000-05:00

As usual, while I've been trying to figure out the best way to organize our life, O has been quietly going about his thing, and has developed a bit of an obsession for etymology. He's starting to figure out bits and pieces of Japanese from the 2-3 hours of anime he watches nightly online, and has been toying with the idea of learning German through the free Rosetta Stone site we have access to through our library. Still throws a wrench in my hopes to ever have a French conversation with my child. Seems he thinks that since I already speak a Romance language, he doesn't need to learn one, he'll just ask me. Oh well, at least he's efficient, lol.

Homeschooling links

2007-09-23T23:14:00.000-05:00

Stellarium - a super cool downloadable planetarium simulator

New York Times Learning Network - lesson plans based on current events, and access to historic front pages

Metropolitan Museum Artwork of the Day - pretty self-explanatory

Fun stuff

2007-09-17T14:06:00.000-05:00

O's been spending time lately on Nation States, a build-your-own-country game, and he's managed to create a "liberal Scandinavian paradise" where the citizens enjoy almost total civil freedoms and often walk around naked. Ahh, my little libertarian.

What a great day!

2007-09-17T01:10:00.000-05:00

O and I stayed home, took the phone off the hook, and watched NFL football all day. O explained some of the more obscure aspects of the game to me, and we watched the whole days roster of games, plus post-game shows. O was so happy to have me sharing his day and his interests, and I'm so happy that we finally seem to have found something that we both enjoy again. It seemed for a while there that we didn't have anything in common anymore, I just couldn't get into car stats and first-person shooter games, and he's not exactly fascinated by knitting or the finer points of broth-making.

I've found, though, that I really enjoy football, both the game itself (now that I know what's going on) and the trappings of being a football mom (sitting in the bleachers on a crisp fall day, cheering on the team, drinking cocoa, eating hot dogs and cheeseburgers and chatting with the other moms, all of whom don't think there is anything at all weird about hsing, how cool is that?)

We took a walk to Dairy Queen for blizzards, and watched the cars going by (Sunday night is cruise night on the major street nearby, so there are loads of classic cars, souped up hondas and hyundais, a few ridiculous hummers and pimped out suvs, basically cheap entertainment for a car nut kid. Watched more football when we got home, read part of the intro to Gilgamesh (it's a lot racier than I expected, don't think I'll be reading this one aloud, don't think O would survive the embarrassment of hearing his mom say some of those phrases, lol)

O finished reading The Lightning Thief and asked me to put the other two volumes of the series on hold at the library. I guess he enjoyed it. We watched Mean Girls and talked a bit about what it was like for him to go back to school 2 years ago in grade 7, he said he felt as odd and out of touch as Cady in the film. After that we watched more football, post-game shows, and two episodes of Spaced while O played more football on the Game Cube and now he's watching Mythbusters. I'm off to bed soon, happy that I have had a completely non-productive day, and that I plan to be even less productive tomorrow, though maybe with a bit more movement and a bit less screen time, lol.

New week, new plans, new job (I hope)

2007-09-16T12:19:00.000-05:00

I think I've finally decided to find a new job, the one I currently have just impinges too much on my family life and hsing and stresses me out waaaaayyy too much.

On a bright note, I do actually have two days off, in a row (how freaky is that?!?) And I vow not to spend these days on housecleaning and errands and all the other stuff that hasn't gotten done around here. It's going to be two days of me and O, and hopefully a little bonding time.

The weather has been gorgeous lately, just getting into the beautiful part of fall, all bright primary coloured leaves and huge blue prairie sky, crisp days and cool nights, before it gets to the wet and cold and moldy and mucky and gross part of fall, and before the snow falls in October. I'd love to get out to the zoo tomorrow, if O is still interested. He's changing so much lately, I never know what will still pique his interest. The zoo always been a favorite place, though.

We've also been trying to find the time, though, to get out to the electrical supply store to browse and pick out some projects for O to tinker with. Maybe we'll do that instead tomorrow, it all depends on when I can get O out of bed.

Speaking of which, he's still in bed right now, sleeping off both yesterday's football game (they won 47-13, and O, as the biggest kid on the team, was, as usual, the focus for, shall we say, special treatment from the defense, including one kid who repeatedly gave up a chance to sack the quarterback in favour of landing on my kid. Well, he might have lost his team the game, a lesson O took away from that kid's bad sportsmanship) and last night's Beyonce concert. Yeah, you read that right, he went to a Beyonce concert with my sis, two of her daughters, and a small gaggle of incredibly excited 13 year old girls. When asked how it was last night, all O had to say was "It was the Beyonce Experience!". And, apparently, the 13yo's enjoyed it quite a bit, spending the drive home shrieking out the car windows. Glad it wasn't me, that's all I can say.

A new chapter

2007-09-12T23:33:00.000-05:00

My heart just isn't in homeschooling at the moment. I realized tonight that I'm just plain bored with the way we used to do things, and so is O. We're drifting into couch potato-hood because I just can't come up with any alternative activities that don't bore the crap out of both of us.

The problem is, I think, and has been for at least a year now, that O is not a kid, in any way at all, anymore. He's a full-fledged teen, and I don't know what to do for fun with a teen. I never spent any time at all with my dad when I was teenaged (at least, not if I could help it) and my dad wasn't the least bit interested in me until I was, oh, 30 or so. Since Mum died when I was 12, and I'd spent the better part of 4 years before that nursing and taking care of her, I really don't know what it is that teens do with parents, parents that are interested, involved and physically and emotionally capable of engaging with them.

I don't have the time to spend on video games like I used to with O, I don't have hours to get deeply into a campaign or dungeon and I don't like the one-off sports or battle games (my adolescent Ms. Pac-Man addiction notwithstanding.) I can't afford to go to movies or shows every weekend, and even if I could, I'm often working. O used to be willing to go around galleries and museums, but he really has no interest anymore, and if I'm totally honest, neither do I, really. I mean, the Mb Museum is pretty cool, but we can only do that so many times, and there is no way in hell I'm going to spend my afternoon making doilies at Dalnavert, or admiring textile advances at the Crafts Museum (even if that Nasak hat making course looks really cool!)

It's just such new territory for me. At his age I was spending most of my time trying to stay out of my dad's way, or at the very least not attracting his annoyance or anger. I hid in my room, or went for long, long walks alone. I don't know what any teenager does for fun, let alone a teenage boy, and I certainly don't know what that boy would do with his mom.

I was so panicked and lost when O turned 12, from that point on in my life I'd had absolutely no parenting of any sort, and I didn't know if I'd be able to figure the teen stuff out. I'd used Mum as my model for how to parent, and I really have no idea how she approached the older kids teens, Dad spent so much of their adolescence enraged about something or other, and most of what I saw Mum do was putting out fires. I've been muddling along with this mom of a teen thing, and I'm finally feeling comfortable with the whole thing, but the realization that I suddenly have no idea how to socialize with my son, without falling back on tv and movies, it's a bit of a shock. No wonder we are in such a rut.

Maybe if O were another kind of kid, we could work this out a bit between us, but getting him to pick something for dinner is like pulling teeth (I dunno, just make anything...) asking him to pick out an activity or show or event for us to do together... I'd really rather gnaw off several limbs, and so, I'm sure, would he. I don't know if he just doesn't have any opinions of any sort (beyond "monkeys are funny"), or if the Y chromosome renders any display of anything that may at some point possibly lead to an approximation of emotion, a condition that kicks in around 13 (all the boys in the neighborhood seem to be suffering from idunnosinosis.)

I just don't know how to go about engaging him anymore. It was so easy when he was younger, all I needed was to point out amusing squirrel antics, or sing a mildly naughty song. I just don't share his obsession with manga, monkeys and food of any and all kinds.

Hot schooling!

2007-09-08T01:08:00.000-05:00

What we have done this week, so far, is to watch Hot Fuzz over and over, followed by Shaun of the Dead, and then to look up old episodes of the Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright/Nick Frost show Spaced on You Tube. I don't know how educational this has been, but they are freaking funny!

O has been studiously employed in trying to completely destroy our PC through continual Stumbling on Firefox. He's found some pretty cool stuff, but our poor 'puter can barely get through the day without freezing up once, let along half a dozen times. Nearly crashed the whole damn thing, and I think I'm going to have to move the computer into my room, so he can't stay up all night looking for weird and freaky things online.

Other than his newfound stumble addiction, O has been reading Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carre, and From Hand Ax to Laser by John Purcell, and listening to some best of shows on Stimulated Boredom. After he was listening to the show on the battle of Thermopylae, I pointed out to O that we do own a copy of the Herodotus' The Histories, that I bought in spring, meaning to read over summer, but will most likely just stay on my TBR pile.

The plan changes

2007-09-08T00:58:00.001-05:00

This week totally did not turn out the way I had planned, and what I've mostly gotten out of this week is that I hate following plans. Adding yet another layer of things to nag O about was not what I wanted after all, and we will be returning to a more unschooling kind of flow for our days.

The biggest problem this week has been me feeling really resentful of doing all the work around the house and O not helping or appreciating this, and taking me for granted. The school structure was supposed to help with this, and may have if I'd stuck to it for a long time, but I'd be angry, frustrated and bored out of my mind by the end of it.

I'm rethinking what it was that I wanted from a more structured school approach, and it's mainly that O is exposed to great literature and thinking, and that he has the critical faculties to understand and engage with this material. Dictating his day has only been pulling us further and further away from this goal. Every time I give him a task, it just seems to drop his standards that much more, it's one more thing that he will avoid doing.

The tv thing I'm still wrestling with. Because we both love tv, and there are some shows we will both really miss, but most of the time it's just on and we're just passively sucked in and don't really get anything out of the hours and hours we spend in front of it. And when I turn off the tv and ban it for the day, suddenly we're reading, or talking, or watching a movie we've been meaning to watch for a long time, or any of the long list of things we never seem to get around to because we're so busy watching tv all day long. I don't want to lose the option, but it's like having an easy button to push whenever I don't feel like making any effort of any sort.

The war continues...

2007-09-03T20:03:00.000-05:00

Went in to work to do a few things I can't do at home while O went out and about with his friends. Came home to him watching tv and using the computer, while nothing on his chore list had been done. I guess all the talks I had with him last week about "no tv till your work is done" and how I would cut off the cable and internet access if he couldn't do this by himself were completely pointless. I wouldn't mind if he didn't spend all his time when I'm trying to talk to him rolling his eyes and saying "You already told me this Moooooom".

Well, it is the first day of school, can't really expect him to totally self-regulate, yet (can't I? He is freaking 14 and these are NOT new rules!!!!!) One thing I totally love about hsing, though, is that our schedule is our own. I can do my work, and tend to the house and run errands when I have the time, and we can fit our school stuff in where we can. We're finishing up the school day now, at 8pm, a school day that started with a tickle fight/wrestling match on his bed at 2pm, rather than me just yelling "Get UP!" at 7am and running around like crazy trying to get him together long enough to get out the door.

We read ch. 4 of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, O did not appreciate my French Canadian accent for Ned Land (hmmph! My talent is never appreciated! Just because he couldn't understand a word I said!) O then did his math work, just a couple pages to start with, then got to the fun stuff of making and testing paper airplanes. He couldn't test out his home-made design in the hallway, it had too much lift and kept hitting the ceiling, so he tested it out in the stairwell, dropping it the 5 floors straight down to the main floor, getting in some aerobic stair climbing as well.

Finished out the evening by listening to an Ideas episode about the politics of design in everyday objects. The part about designing limitations into a project was really interesting, how it's now thought that the designer of the California highway system was deliberately limiting access to the beaches and natural areas by designing roads and overpasses in such a way that only cars and private passenger vehicles could get to them, no busses at the beach means a nice, white, middle class crowd. That sparked quite a long conversation.

You may have won the battle, but I will win the war!

2007-09-03T15:34:00.000-05:00

Said to me this morning by O, on my efforts to wake him up for school, spoken while curled up in a ball on the couch wrapped in a blanket.

Me: Do you want breakfast?
O: Yes, but I'm going back to sleep right after!
Me: I won't make breakfast unless you wake yourself up.
O: It depends on what's for breakfast.
Me: Either scrambled egg burritos or muesli and yogurt.
O: Scrambled eggs I predict a 97% chance of wakefulness, muesli, 13%
Me: That's blackmail.
O: Blackmail is such a dirty word, I prefer extortion.

Eventually he did wake up (does that mean I won the war?) and we got to start school work. Listened to lecture one of the Teaching Company course God's Prophet: The Religion of Islam, talked about the US war with the Barbary Corsairs and why they lost (I'd never heard of this war, O read about it on Maps of War. )

We went over the assigned reading for the month: From Hand Ax to Laser and The Hero with a Thousand Faces. O opted to start with Hero and we went through the table of contents and the illustrations, and discussed how the general idea of the hero cycle fits in to the stories illustrated (Odysseus, Gilgamesh, Perseus, Star Wars, and video games.)

Then some of O's friends, bored waiting for school to start, came over and now I'm trying to decide at what point to kick them out. I do want O to be able to maintain his friendships and social life, but they've come over to insult each other, insult O, make fun of friends who aren't here, and play with O's video games, sigh.

Later on today, we'll get to math, our read-aloud, O will pick his current reading from the suggested reading list, and we'll read about aerodynamics and put together some paper airplanes from the imaginatively named Paper Airplane Book. Dictation from The Once and Future King, and some housecleaning will round out our day.

I can't wait, I can't wait, I can't wait!

2007-09-02T17:29:00.001-05:00

School starts tomorrow! School starts tomorrow!

Ok, I'm a little excited, I love the first day of school, always have. Shopping for new clothes, new lunchbox and sneakers, new books, school supplies, just getting that list sent me into little ectasies.
Even the first day of homeschooling is a great first day for me. Going out to the bakery for croissants, hitting the newly empty playground, walking down by the river bank looking for turtles and beavers, celebrating back to school with the librarians at our local library (they are oh so happy to see the kids go back to school!)

O, on the other hand, has never really been as enamored with the smell of new markers, the squeak of new sneakers. He just always could really care less, even when he was in school. At 14, the back to school ritual is even less evocative for him.

All to say that, I'm really excited and O keeps saying "what? school? oh yeaaaah..."

Sigh.

No TV week

2007-09-02T00:08:00.000-05:00

I've decided to go with Monday as our 1st day of school. I have been planning on a "no-screen" week for the 1st week of school, meaning no tv, no video games, no computer. That's going to be a tough one, I think, no passive entertainment of any sort. It's going to be a bit of a shock for O!

2007-08-31T18:44:00.000-05:00

O's foot is not quite so gross today, but to make sure it actually heals, I'm having him rest completely. Which means a lot of video game and tv time, again. I did suggest we "start school" a few days early, but it didn't go over too well, lol.

I am really looking forward to the new school year, even though I'm already having to rearrange our schedule and turn down field trips and events. We've never yet managed to get out to a "Not Back to School" picnic, and this year will be no different, thanks to the 2.5 hours a day that my boss has scheduled me for next week, 2.5 hours right smack dab in the middle of the day, sigh.

I do want to make sure we make a library trip as soon as possible into the school year, and since our books are due on the 5th, it gives me a good excuse to push O out of the house and into the actual (gasp) outdoors. I'm hoping to brainstorm a booklist with him this weekend, for the first month or two of school. I have some suggestions in my list, but unschooling would go a lot more smoothly if O had an opinion as to what he was going to do!

Big Owie

2007-08-31T00:17:00.000-05:00

O has absolutely mangled his foot! He is actually missing a large patch of skin on the top of his foot where he got the huge scrape last week. It is beyond gross, the "skin", if you can call it that, in the infected patch looks like the interior of an eye socket (and yes, I know what that looks like, my bf when I was a kid was blind and wore glass eyes, she had to take them out nightly to wash, the inside of a human eye socket without eyes is fish belly white with hundreds of tiny red capillaries running all over it.)

He can't really walk or get around well right now, which is something I should be used to by now, he's incapacitated about 1/3 of the time lately, this year alone it's been a broken collar bone, sprained ankle, strained back, sprained the other ankle, and now his foot looks like a special effect from a Wes Craven movie, yeeeuuch!

Between his franken-foot and my migraine yesterday, we've pretty well been wallowing in the frat boy lifestyle (we actually ate potato chips for dinner last night, and even that was too much for me, the crunching hurt my head and jaw sooo bad. I hope to never have another migraine as long as I live, and with the memory of how bad yesterday's one was, I'm even trying to stick to my diet now.) I now have to work afternoons for most of the month, though only 2.5 hours most days. I have to do some major hiring again, but will hopefully be able to fit that in to the catering I'm doing.

This will all, of course, impact the schedule I have planned. A week until school starts and I'm already starting to drop stuff, lol!

I do this every year!

2007-08-29T11:47:00.000-05:00

I'm already hating the schedule I came up with! I do this every year. I hate how sloppy and disorganized we are, so I spend weeks coming up with schedules, plans, lists, and then I hate following them by two weeks into the school year.

This time around, we haven't even started the school year, or the schedule, and I'm already chafing under my own bit. I don't want to go to bed early, I don't want to get up early and get busy and be productive. Well, I want to, but I want it to be easy and fun and involve late night tv.

I think it's the tv thing that's really bothering me the most. I like tv, I like vegging out and watching tv. That's the problem. We would both happily sit in front of the box passively absorbing entertainment rather than do anything. When the tv is gone, we are suddenly way more productive, reading, writing, going out, listening to the radio, documentaries, discussing and debating stuff. The tv has to go. I know this. O knows this. But neither of us want to be the one to cut the ties. It's like having a really fun but really irresponsible and crazy room-mate who always has something fun and stupid to do, and you know you have to kick him out and get on with a grown-up life, but life without him is totally lame. And since I have been the irresponsible and crazy room-mate in most of my friends lives, it's ironic that I'm the one to have to show tv the door.

Things to do at a cabin

2007-08-25T13:06:00.000-05:00

I wish I'd sent the camera along with O to the cabin, then I could post some pictures. I'll have to make do with O's description of his week, which consisted of driving a golf cart around 5 gravel roads near Grand Beach around and around for 12 hours a day. Ahh, the freedom of the open road.

There were 3 of them, O, his 12 year old cousin K, and her 13 year old friend S. As O bragged to me, "I only feel off 3 times, K only fell off twice, and S only ran over my foot once." Also, K apparently nearly drove the cart into the lake several times, and just nearly missed a boat (oh, how I'd love to hear the conversation with the authorities on that one! At least, for once, it wasn't my kid injuring himself and laughing hysterically doing something simultaneously stupid, dangerous and pointless.)

On another topic, the new household rules are really working well, O is fine with cutting off the cable (they only had the 4 basic local channels at the cabin and O apparently rediscovered how much he likes to do things other than tv, yay!) O recognizes that we have to get a little more disciplined around here, just doesn't like having to do it. I still have to wake him up with food in my hand or he'll just burrow under his blankets, but the whole change in routine is doing both of us good.

I love books but I hate spending money...

2007-08-23T14:39:00.000-05:00

I finally ordered the History Odyssey level 3 Ancients study guide book last night. I love looking for curriculum and books and things we might use, but man, do I hate having to actually fork over the money for it. I checked out all the books used in the program on different sites, looking for the best deal and checked out the lesson plans and book list soooo many times, mulling it over and over. And I still didn't buy the full program, just the study guide that cost me all of $40.

Since we already have most of the books used (yeah, I just happen to have a copy of Gilgamesh kicking around, that's how freaking geeky we are), I'm just going to try to cobble together the rest of the books, depending on how much of the program we wind up using.

Ooooh, I forgot to mention I received the Teaching Company set I'd won on Ebay, an older set of lectures on Islam, which will go nicely with the History of Religion course I'm planning for this year.

Folk Fest stuff

2007-08-22T16:49:00.000-05:00

O and I have been going to Folk Fest since he was 5 or so. When he was younger, we rarely left our compound in the campground. We camped with a bunch of friends and neighbors with young kids, and were surrounded by many other similar compounds, so the kids would wander the field, stopping in and chatting, playing games, getting snacks and generally ruling the roost in a dozen different campgrounds.

Now that O is a teen, the Festival itself is folding a bit more interest for him. It was really cool this year, since he was a lot more aware of bands before going in and was far more interested in the performances (and the occasional bikini-clad, fairy-wing wearing teenage girl), than he was in the back stage kitchen or campground shenanigans that held so much interest for him in years past.

We were really looking forward to The Earl Brothers and were not at all disappointed by their show, even if they did get stuck in the 11am Shady Grove spot performing for the most hung-over crowd in the place. That One Guy, whom I've been raving about here, was a gem of Fest discovery. He played the mainstage on Saturday night, never one of my favorite parts of the fest to begin with, and he didn't impress me much, but then played at the Pope's Hill stage in the campground at a 1am show and it was just amazing. Total perfect blend of music, venue, audience, and artist (he was accompanied by film collage shorts put together by a Winnipeg Film Group artist, totally surreal 70's tv animated collages.) The crowd was just going nuts, at one point That One Guy remarked "This is epic" and it was. He plays a really dancy, electronica kind of music, but uses a "magic pipe" he built himself with strings, horns, tape loops, effects pedals, etc, all on it, so that he builds up and layers sound into something totally indescribable (so I'll stop trying.)

O was so glad he'd stayed up for the campground performance. He was just going to sit back in our little nook in the campground, playing "will it burn" with the guys across the path from us. As much as throwing pennies and various bits of camping equipment into a fire was appealing to him, he enjoyed the show even more. That's the great thing about Folk Fest, though, is you never really know what you're going to see, enjoy or get into before hand. There were a few shows that sounded great in the program, but we didn't really get into (and I can't even remember the names of the bands now), but it's always the stuff you didn't expect to be amazing that jumps out and grabs you (like T.O.F.U. at last year's Fest.)

Other than the shows, O bought himself a didgeridoo and has successfully been able to produce a drone in one note for several months now. I'm really looking forward to a 2 note drone (as are, I'm sure, the neighbors.) We enjoyed the back stage food prepared for volunteers, as always, and I ran into an old friend who told me that his wife is pregnant. I'm so excited for them and I'm already trying to put together a pattern for a skull and crossbone baby blanket.

Folk Festin' is hard work

A truly horrible picture of a truly fantastic show, this, cause you probably can't tell, is That One Guy with his Magic Pipe homemade instrument

The Earl Brothers Rock!

Fire dancers in the campground, unfortunately O was so tired from his wanderings that day he slept through the whole thing!

Looking cool!

His folk fest buddy C. spent most of the weekend trying to get O to take off that hat, until some girls in bikinis told him they thought the hat was cool. Then he spent the rest of his time trying to steal the hat.

The quiet, the quiet!

2007-08-22T15:41:00.000-05:00

So O is at the cabin with my sis for the week. It wound up that I have to work a few says this week and couldn't go, but I'm really enjoying the time alone I'm having. Spending so much time with O and on parenting and homeschooling, I tend to forget to have a life of my own sometimes.

I've spent the time cleaning up and sorting out our place, and trying to plan out some work areas so they will fit how we actually use them. We, and O especially, are function over style kind of people, but we're also clutter-bugs and our work areas quickly get over-run in crap like pamplets and magazines (me) and video game cheat sheets and food wrappers (O). And we usually tend to just put a table in the corner and leave it there, even when it doesn't really fit how we're using the space. So, while O's gone, I'm going to work on getting rid of some of the crap and move stuff around. It's not that he gets in the way when he's here, it's just that, when he's around, things seem to never get done, I don't quite know why. Not to mention moving the computer table will necessarily involve turning off the computer, something that doesn't happen often while O's awake.

I've also put some time into coming up with a suggested reading list for the year, or at least the first few months. I'm wanting to put on a lot of classic gothic horror kind of books for the fall, to fit in with the weather and general dark and brooding kind of tone Winnipeg takes on in October and November. I'm having trouble coming up with lists of classic books for teenage boys, though. When I google, I get loads of "great books for girls", and few, desultory book lists for boys that either have books on it that O read in grade 3 or so, or are totally loaded with the "adventure" books (meaning 3 word sentences and lots of action that publishers think boys want to read.) I'm looking for a good list of classic books. I know what I would suggest for a teen girl, but I have no background in the good old swashbuckling kind of lit, and after putting down the obvious ones like Frankenstein and Ivanhoe and some R.L. Stevenson books, I'm kind of stumped. It's crazy that the librarians are a bit stumped too. There's been so much emphasis on trying to get boys to read, that they seem to have forgotten the boys who actually do like to read.

O's rate of reading has slowed down in the last few years. That one year in junior high really killed his love of reading for a while. His interest in books is slowly rekindling over the last year of deschooling, and, since I'm gong to be seriously restricting tv and video games for at least the first few months of the new school year, he should be back to reading several novels a week, which means that I'm going to be back to my almost constant hunt for good, interesting and well-written books. It seems that at the teen age, though, publishers are focusing almost exclusively on girls.

I've narrowed down some choices for books this year, got to take a good look at some recommended physics books, and realized one was far too advanced for O, too much math for the guy right now. I'm going to pick up a copy of the other one I was looking at, Science 101 Physics, it covers exactly the sort of wave and matter questions that O has been wanting to get into lately. Though O really wants to get into electronics and electrical engines and stuff like that, I'm hoping to also delve into energy a bit more too, specifically energy use and efficiency. I'm hoping to tie this in to doing a deep study of our own energy use and waste and figure out how to run our household as efficiently as possible.

What we've learned this summer

2007-08-19T08:43:00.000-05:00

Wii's are fun:

Cats are wierd:

Chicks dig hats:

September plans

2007-08-14T12:22:00.000-05:00

So I've been looking forward to using September as a special project month for O and I, but he put a crimp in my plans when he announced that he's not really interested in animals anymore, but wants to learn more about physics. Huh? The kid who read paleontological textbooks as bedtime reading when he was 4! The kid who always told me that "physics is boring and I never need to learn it"!!! Now he wants to learn about electricity and wave behavior (!!!!)

So, there goes all my plans for nature observation and writing a guide to the natural environment of our neighborhood. In come plans to design and build evil looking, but probably entirely useless, electronic devices.

I hope, also, to delve a little more deeply into astronomy than we have in the past, O is interested, but has never been really willing to do more than just learn names and places before now. I'm hoping that his newly discovered interest in the physical, and not just natural, world will lead to a deeper understanding of the physical universe. I've been dying to try using a set of lessons and experiments from UC Berkeley, At Home Astronomy. The astrolabe and measuring type lessons are especially up O's alley, and I hope will also provide a path into more advanced math work for him. He's been doing great in picking up his basic math skills to a more functional level, so hopefully he will be able to re-kindle his interest in the more abstract math stuff now that he can do some of the actual math work involved.

For Language Arts, we will just continue in the very low-key way we've been doing things this summer, reading through our TBR lists, reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as our read-aloud, and doing journal writing using A Writer's Notebook. While O still doesn't enjoy the writing process, it's becoming much less of a onerous burden, and a little more of a mild annoyance for him. Because he had such serious problems with the actual physical part of writing, and such bad experiences in public school, with the resource and classroom teachers telling him he would never learn to write, ever, just getting to the point where he will grumble a bit and dash off a quick paragraph is a huge victory for the both of us. Now I'd just like to make sure he can communicate clearly when writing (legibility is still a huge concern), and can write a few basic essay formats if needed.

For math, we're still both loving Math-U-See and O will hopefully be finishing up Delta by October and be ready to start Epsilon, which will be mostly review for him (fractions.) I want him to do this level, though, because he still has some odd gaps in his skill level, dividing fractions, and some of the more functional type of skills, percentages, stuff he'll need to understand statistics when he comes to it. I'm hoping to get him through 3 levels this year, bringing him up to Pre-Algebra in time for grade 10, and then aim to work through Pre-Algebra and Algebra 1 next year. That will allow him to be finished up through Pre-Calculus almost in time to graduate at 18. If he takes an extra year or two to be ready for college, though, I would rather he go to university mature and prepared, and have had some more fun time and time to himself, than be " ahead of the game" and go to university too young.

For Phys. Ed. I still have to go down to the high school I've chosen to discuss the possibility of O competing on their sports teams while still homeschooling. This school used to have an innovative homeschool program, and it was cut by their current principal when he took over. He's notoriously not homeschooling-friendly, but I'm hoping the fact that their football team graduated all their large players last year and is having to rebuild for size will help our cause. It doesn't hurt that the school is one of the football powerhouses of the province, and has a very active, and very vocal, alumni who want to see results. I'll be curious to see if greed for a good player will overcome the principal's principles.

Summer laziness and Fall plans

2007-07-29T12:04:00.000-05:00

Well, we haven't actually been all that lazy this summer, I just haven't been blogging anything. O has been doing lots of math and reading, and has joined a football team. His team is training up to 5 nights a week, so I've been letting him off a bit easy this month.

We went to Folk Fest at the beginning of July, had a fantastic time, I'll eventually post some pictures if I get around to it. Best show by far was That One Guy in the festival campground at 1am. Crazy one man band guy surrounded by 2000 half-naked dancers covered in glow sticks, running up and down the hill in the dark. A total Folk Fest kind of experience.

O is really starting to make some progress in bringing up his math skills. I wouldn't really be pressuring him so much, but he has so much stuff to make up, in terms of basic math skills, and he wants to start studying some more advanced science, and has nowhere near the math skills to do it. Thanks to Math-U-See, he's really starting to grasp division, after 6 long years of both of us banging our heads against the wall. I've decided to go ahead and buy Epsilon next, even though he doesn't need most of the program, because he still has so many little gaps and a thorough review wouldn't hurt. I hope he can get through Epsilon, Zeta and Pre-Algebra this year, so that he can start with some serious math at the same time that he wants to be doing some serious science.

Math has been so frustrating for both of us, because he's had such a hard time learning the really basic stuff, like subtraction and division, but has no problem with, and grasped at a very young age, much more advanced stuff, geometry, algebra, game theory, probability and ratios, fractions and percents. As long as he isn't required to write it down, and do something really hard like subtract double digit numbers, he's away and flying. But since he's so science-oriented and has plans, possibly, to study science at a fairly deep level, he's going to have to buckle down and try to learn the basics. He's always been a kid for whom really abstract concepts were easier to grasp than concrete basics. It's added a special flavour to our homeschooling journey. The kid who could discuss marxist theory at 10, couldn't figure out how to write on a line, not under, hovering above, or through the line.

I've been doing lots of planning over the last month. I think I've pretty much chosen our plan for next year, which will, of course, change almost immediately. I'm planning on buying History Odyssey level 3, Ancients for the fall, probably I'll just buy the course book to look over, since I have many of the books used in that level anyway. I also want to be able to have a good look through it before I commit to buying a $200 program (see, I'm learning!)

For science, I'm still looking for something that satisfies me, and will be challenging for O, without being Christian, a tall order in the homeschooling world. Another mom pointed out Spectrum Chemistry 's high school program as not being overly Christian, despite the extremely creationary bent to their life sciences junior high program. I would love to be able to use something like this, because it's so complete, but will have to look more into the religious content. The life sciences were so ridiculous in it's creationary content that doing the course, even from a point of view of critiqueing the religious content would be totally useless from a transcript point of view.

I feel perfectly comfortable putting together my own resources and programs for the history/literature/writing end of O's education, but in science I'm wading into the deep end of the pool of my personal knowledge, and I just don't know enough about actual practice (as opposed to history of science) to put something together on my own. My big fear, too, is that I don't know enough to really parse out the religious content in some programs. We might just wind up using the provincial Distance Education program for science, but the grade 9 and grade 10 program are so far beneath his level, and he doesn't have the math or lab background to go into the grade 11 programs, so that's just a place-filler more than anything right now.

I've been putting a lot of work lately into the history courses, outside of the classical history cycle, that I want to put together for O. We've decided right now on a Military history course, along with a History of Religions and Holy Wars course. I'm thinking of a History of Terrorism course. Along the way I will need to put together a History of Canada that isn't painfully boring, and a History of the US, that isn't painfully jingoistic. Probably we will do some in depth study of the Revolutionary era, that will include the American and French revolutions.

Animals

2007-05-08T15:55:00.000-05:00

This guy was posing for me

you can just see the baby gibbon here

Squirrel Monkeys!

Jenga-licious

Ok, so it's been a while since I last posted. So much has been happening. Well, ok, I'll admit it, mostly napping has been happening.

We have, however, been busy with our new cat, Jenga. He's such an odd cat, he's incredibly limp, fuzzy, and stupid. He loves to have his armpits scratched, goes completely limp when he's picked up, has the softest fur of any cat I've ever met, and when I spray him with the water bottle he just looks around to see where that annoying water is coming from. He's basically become Oboy's cat, he sleeps on the computer chair, or next to Oboy's head, meows non-stop when Oboy goes out, and runs to the door when he comes in. In contrast to the sibling rivalry that Marbles has been subjecting Oboy to for the last few years (Marbles gets jealous when I pay attention to my human child and tries to climb between us), he's so happy to have a pet that loves him back.

We seem to have finally slipped out of our winter stupor, with leaves budding and plants growing and flowers blooming, and typical of Winnipeg, we have shot straight from winter, through a truncated and explosive spring, into a hot and sultry summer in about 2 weeks.

We went to the zoo for the first time this year a few weeks ago, with my sister and neice. My sis was mesmerized by the Squirrel Monkeys, I think they're pretty cool too. The kids were more interested in the gibbons, especially since we have a new baby gibbon, it was maybe 2 weeks old when we were there.

Oboy's been so excited to finally get out fishing. He's been reading fishing books and plans to try out a few spots on the rivers.

WWBBD?

2007-04-02T23:44:00.000-05:00

Oboy has finally found a way to occupy himself that doesn't involve broken furniture or bodily injury: teaching himself to use Windows Movie Maker. His first chef-d'oeuvre is well received on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9avq1UfhWE

Spring is slowly creeping up on our town, but Oboy discovered this morning that Moscow is enjoying warmer weather at the moment than we are, and that Winnipeg typically has longer, colder winters than most of Russia. This was a bit mind-boggling for him, since he's been reading for years about how long and brutal Russian winters are and how the Russian winter was the reason for the failure of any land invasion of Russia in history, and he wondered what Napolean or Hitler's troops would have made of our winters. Makes us feel a little heartier, if not any warmer.

Oh so tired

2007-02-12T10:33:00.000-06:00

Still too cold, still sick, even the cat is cranky. The only bright spot of the week is listening to Scooter Libbey's trial on Stimulated Boredom-burn, baby, burn.

Nesting

2007-02-03T23:25:00.000-06:00

It's still way too cold to anything worthwhile, and we're both miserable with colds, so Oboy and I have spent the last few days wrapped up in blankets on the couch, taking turns being petty and demanding. All in all it's been fun, if not terribly educational.

Got my latest homeschool purchase in the mail yesterday. I'm so addicted to Paypal shopping now. It's just too easy, and if it's "educational", it's totally excusable, right? Latest purchase was a series of high school history project books from History Scribe. It's a fundamentalist Christian company, but I've gone through all the books we've gotten, and the bias is (mostly) tolerable. Even where they've gone over the edge, the questions are still interesting, and I can't wait to here Oboy answer them from the standpoint of a born atheist. We were reminiscing today of the time I had to carry 6 year old Oboy out of a Catholic church, crying and wailing "It hurts, Mommy, religion huuuuurts!" Got some interesting looks that day. The incense was bugging him, but it was riotously funny (to me at least)

Oboy is looking forward to doing the Age of Exploration book. I don't know how the drawing portion will go over with Oboy, but the small area for essays is a big hit. Oboy usually has so much information about a topic he doesn't know where to start to write about it, and just gives up, overwhelmed. He's quite happy to see how little is actually expected out of an academic essay for a grade 8 student. We both read through all the topics and essay questions last night, and spent a few hours debating cultural expropriation (started with a question on how the ancient Greeks might have felt about Rome adopting and adapting their religion and culture, but we wound up talking about the current European fad for "Indian" camps and aboriginal culture in general, and how a repressed culture can wind up as a fashionable hobby, and how freaking annoying that must be.

We've been listening to Richard Dawkin's newest book "The God Delusion" on Stimulated Boredom http://www.stimulatedboredom.com, an interesting listen, don't agree with everything he has to say, though, I don't think that fundamentalist atheism is any better than fundamentalist anything else, and any belief system that presents itself as the only answer has to be questioned and challenged. Anyway, been listening to the book on Stimulated Boredom's Live365 feed http://www.live365.com, but mostly I've been listening to great alternative stations, after my blues and funk binge last month, I'm enjoying some punk again. Oboy has discovered a love for The Decemberists http://www.decemberists.com/, while I've been obsessively listening to the Mountain Goats No Children over and over again, especially after I found this video on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXrDIBl0CUI, despite the Lego, it's not for little kids.

Field trip day

2007-02-01T19:36:00.000-06:00

Today we went on our first homeschool field trip this year, what was supposed to be a day trip to the Forks http://www.theforks.com/

for a winter arts/culture fun day. What we learned mostly is...Winnipeg is being left behind in the global warming fun times. It was -42, doesn't matter what scale that's in, Celsius or Fahrenheit, it's just freaking cold. We mostly learned about hot chocolate and the glorious fireplace in the Atrium at the Forks. Oh, yeah, and napping has educational value, trust me.

What we've been doing this week:

Oboy:

Math-U-See (program he chose over a zoo membership, hope it's better than a roomful of monkeys!)

Writing Strands: first lesson, Following Directions, to maintain his perfect score in this regard, Oboy promptly ignored the Following Directions directions

Zelda: the Twilight Princess http://wii.ign.com/objects/748/7 48589.html

CivilizationIV http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/home.htm

Planet Project: started with Nasa Planet Quest http://astroventure.arc.nasa.gov/ but Oboy has decided he wants to design a planet with non-carbon-based life forms and is trying to figure out if he could possibly create a uranium-based life form

Arms and Armour history project: to put Oboy's extensive knowledge of arcane weapons and explosives to good use, by making it all sound edjymacashunal, ya know. I'll try to post this project when, and if, it ever gets completed (remind me to tell you all some time about the 1 paragraph Island assignment I gave Oboy in Grade 6 that turned into his own, pre-conquered, civilization)

Oboy is currently reading:

Classics of Strategy and Counsel, the Collected Translations of Thomas Cleary, Vol. I in his never-ending quest to conquer the world, or at least, play a really good game of Chess and Go

Ahlimah:

After screwing up my knee at work last week, and coming down with more infections than a pre-schooler now that I've finally got some time off work, I've been spending most of my time lying on the couch acting like Marie Antoinette, eating ice cream for dinner, and demanding (but not receiving) foot rubs.

To spend the time, and make me happy, I've decided to embrace my inner girl and have been knitting myself a new pink hat.

I'm reading The Science Book, by Singh, Tallack and Greenfield, that I bought for Oboy for Xmas, but it's got one page sections and that's all I've got the time for lately

Been trying to get through The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, but have not time and no concentration for fiction lately. When I finally have some time to breathe, I will also finally finish Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, I love Neil Gaiman, and really want to get into this book, but just can't seem to dive in.

Read-aloud:

The Once and Future King by T.H. White