Someone on a list that I am on linked to Alfie Kohn’s “Five Reasons to Stop Saying, “Good Job.“

It is an interesting read. There is a book I read called “When Slow is Fast Enough” that describes very convincingly the way that praise and positive talk is used to manipulate and control small children.

I know that when Aidan was going to Early Intervention I’d always have to detox myself from the “praise jargon” afterwards. It did become almost a verbal tic, as Kohn says, to the point where you almost feel like you are unilaterally disarming if you don’t “match” the therapists’ verbal showers with your own. I think the ultimate example (made into conscious comedy by a special education teacher we were working with) was:

“Aidan’s wonderful!”
“And you’re wonderful!” (talking to me)
Then, recognizing the humor in this,
“In fact, we’re ALLLL wonderful!”

Yep, precisely. This was it in a nutshell!

So I do think the self-esteem movement has exaggerated the importance of praise in confidence levels. Self-esteem is based on recognized self-competence more than anything else.

However, I just can’t see that praise, defined “as an expression of approval and commendation” is absolutely useless in this process.

One possible value of praising children is so that they get used to it. Many adults have a lot of trouble accepting praise — they take it too seriously or dismiss it, usually because they were not praised very much.

Another possible value is that praise is a social reward. Sure, rewards can be thought of manipulatively. But they are ubiquitous. and do make a difference to people. Kohn talks about the value of a job well done to the person himself, and certainly this is desirable. But we are social creatures, and a job well done is usually well done in relationship to someone or something outside of ourselves. If it’s not in relation to the crowd immediately around us, it is in relation to some wider community or even a past or future community. I am saying it that way because I can think of painters and artists, writers and scientists, who persisted in an achievement not recognized by their immediate community, but inevitably they had some community standard they were producing towards, even if it was an ideal future one. By the mere fact of trying to publicize their work they were expressing optimism that if not now and there, in some future then and there, their work would be recognized.

Approval is inevitably, and legitimately, a relationship-strengthener. Think of how much more you want to be around someone who genuinely seems to admire you in an affectionate realistic way, than someone who either is constantly carping, or frowning with disapproval, or conversely praising you in an unrealistic inflated way.

Certainly we can take away from this by indiscriminate, lavish praise (”good sitting! good paying attention!”). At the same time, achievement does not take place in a vacuum. When you are in a close relationship with children, especially parenting, you are unavoidably going to be expressing some sort of disapproval at some times, if only “blocks are for building, not throwing”. On the other hand, if the child is using the blocks to build a genuinely creative work, isn’t it a bit artificial to keep silent and neutral? I do see how you wouldn’t want to shout in joy every time a child puts one block on top of another, but I honestly don’t see how it’s possible to completely keep all approval and admiration out of the picture, either.

Alfie Kohn goes on to make this point, too. Verbal approval isn’t the problem, he says, in itself — it is the way it is often used:

This point, you’ll notice, is very different from a criticism that some people offer to the effect that we give kids too much approval, or give it too easily. They recommend that we become more miserly with our praise and demand that kids “earn” it. But the real problem isn’t that children expect to be praised for everything they do these days. It’s that we’re tempted to take shortcuts, to manipulate kids with rewards instead of explaining and helping them to develop needed skills and good values.

So what’s the alternative? That depends on the situation, but whatever we decide to say instead has to be offered in the context of genuine affection and love for who kids are rather than for what they’ve done. When unconditional support is present, “Good job!” isn’t necessary; when it’s absent, “Good job!” won’t help.

He is saying, I understand, that praise should never be used as a tool. Basically, humans are not Pavlovian dogs, and “Good Boy!” and “here’s a bit of kibble for you” are demeaning to children. If you feel you are praising to:

–Get the kid to perform the way you want
—Measure up to his preschool teacher or therapist ;-)
—Pretend to him that something is good even though you don’t really really think so
—-Feed his craving (or yours)

Then you are probably being excessive. On the other hand, stacking two blocks CAN be a wonderful accomplishment for an infant or a motor-impaired child like mine, so I don’t think it’s necessary or desirable to hold off on the approval until your child has completed his neurosurgery degree (when it would be too late, silly and sort of beside the point anyway).

In writing this out I realize that I tend to praise (or affirm) my children more vocally BEFORE they are actually achieving something measurable, than later when they are getting more outside-the-family affirmation. I don’t know if this is the right way or not, actually, since I never really noticed it before. I tend not to praise overmuch except (1) when the child shows me something and seems to be asking for approval or (2) when I want them to know I am attentive to them not just to catch them out in error, but to see them acting positively.

If I see a child is engaged in a product (as opposed to behavior) I tend not to give much feedback unless they seem to want it. Small children usually want approval for the “process” or a discussion of the “content”– “LOOK Mom I painted an OCTOPUS!” or “Look, Mom, it’s a battle and this guy has a sword ….” etc. In one case, “Cool, you painted an octopus!” seems like the right response; in the other, “What does this guy have?” or “Who are the enemies?” seems more appropriate to what they are saying (though I always find it very tricky and challenging when I often have no clue what the picture is actually depicting).

Older children seem very vulnerable to feedback, so I treat it like poison. It tends to throw them off the inner requirements of what they are trying to do, whether the feedback is negative or positive. Their understanding of work and its relationship to them is still very much in flux and can be easily weighted in a disproportionate direction.

But again, I usually try to respond to the spirit of what they are asking or soliciting. If they are asking for approval, I try to say what I can honestly praise. If they are asking for how to make something better, I offer tentative suggestions while acknowledging that different people might have different strategies (sometimes I suggest a book or resource that might help them work it out themselves). If they just want to share the content with me, then obviously, again, questions and comments about the details, not evaluation, is what I offer. If they have been working concentratedly for a long time, I might say something in recognition of the devotion they are putting into the effort. But I might not, if it seems to turn too much attention to THEM rather than the work itself. Sometimes I might make life easier in some way for someone who is putting in intense effort on a creative task — I might do one of their chores, or bring them a snack or something hopefully to show them without words that I am in sympathy with their work.

In the teenage years they usually seem to really want to know how the “real world” would measure their efforts. That’s when outside forums can become valuable and when I will actually be more likely to give them feedback from a more objective perspective. IF they ask for that, and usually not unless they do. But at the same time, I see that a mother’s praise or criticism will be in one way less valuable and in another way more significant than an outsider’s. So I hesitate to be too detailed or austere, and instead I usually try to keep supporting them and helping them with their ongoing efforts, somewhat the way you support a close friend or spouse in their productive endeavours.

Sometimes, but not that often I try to “extend” the direction they are going in. This is something I am cautious about. I have to discern whether they are confident and want to stretch a bit more, or need to just rest in that place and consolidate. But I might make a suggestion, sometimes, to help them go further in the direction they seem to want to go in. Again, as Kohn says, you have to be careful that you’re not manipulating their energy in order to meet a “schooly” goal, say; or implying an insufficiency on the part of the work already done; or implying that they “have to” follow your suggestions in order to be good children. But in the right circumstances, it can seem respectful to the child’s endeavours to open up some new vista. I almost hate to mention it, because it seems so easy to do it wrongly, but it’s something I only recently learned so I wanted to put it down.

Boy have I rambled! The last few paragraphs are what’s evolved around here and not really a “thought out” standard. It’s nice to write it out, though, because I see that (as usual!) I have thought about it, but not in a sequential, ordered way — as usual, my vsl approach is to ponder associatively and non-verbally about the “big picture” and then find the bulk of it is already worked out.

Thinking about this also has made me think a bit more deeply about WHY I require certain subjects and WHY I’ve hesitated to meddle overmuch in areas like a child’s writing, where personal voice and personal toolbox seem so important to me. Somehow I’ve managed to raise 3 children who as adults write very well, but 95% of what I’VE done has been a careful, sometimes painful holding-back from too-early handing-overof tools and evaluation and shaping of method. I didn’t realize till recently that this conscious, energetic passiveness has actually probably helped them to develop as writers.

I probably invest so much energy into the restraint part of forming good writers because I feel so strongly about writing as a personal gift and expression. I probably don’t feel so strongly about this in areas like math because I myself learned math more mechanically than I did writing. But I suppose if I had that intuition about writing only applied across the board to all learning I would be a 95% unschooler instead of what I am now — somewhere between 60% and 80% unschooler depending on season and other factors.

REALLY rambling now! : D

Liam has been asking if Clare and I would try to play parts on a Mozart piece he found (I don’t know the name but it’s a very recognizable one). It has three parts.

We actually have five guitars in the house — two acoustic, but three classical…. mine, and two that my father gave me last year since he doesn’t play anymore because of the motor loss in his left arm from neuralgia.

So we spent about an hour working through the first two pages. I had the melody line. We had such fun! Liam didn’t start playing the guitar until 2 years ago and Clare didn’t start till last year. They are close to me, now, who played for years and years but is very rusty indeed. They are still young, of course, but I always think of John Holt and his cello. I am seriously, very seriously, thinking of taking some violin lessons from Clare’s teacher. Never too late!

It has been cooler recently, though hot enough when we walked up and down hill to the Post Office (about 3 miles round trip, I think).

I have been spending a lot of time on the deck, where the pines and cedars rustle gently under what Brendan calls a “hard” blue sky — really, in central California the summer sky does often look as if you could chip it.

I scrubbed the picnic table and BBQ out on the deck and Aidan insisted on washing the big “car” that we got when Sean was a toddler. It is big enough for a preschooler to ride around in. So ever since then he has been daily filling a bucket with warm water and suds and spending quite a long time peacefully washing down the car. Yesterday Paddy got involved too; he washed his Radio Flyer scooter and then washed the table again “so we can eat outside from now on”.

Sean is done with football practice, now, until school starts next month. He did pretty well in the Ultimate 100 camp and there’s a small chance he might make one of the top 100 across the nation.

Liam was offered some contract work by the company he did the free internship for. That is really nice since it means they liked his work during the internship. He got an excellent reference letter from the company head.

Clare got a scholarship offer from one of the colleges she sent her SAT results to. So that is good news. We were talking yesterday about one of the peculiarities of our own homeschool environment — very few comparisons with others until they get to the “real world” stage. This is good, but difficult in that the kids usually tend to under-estimate themselves.

This is one reason why I started calculating Sean’s GPA last year and letting him know the results. Other kids on his team will ask each other what their GPA’s are and at first he didn’t even know what they were talking about (until middle school my kids usually don’t know or care what GRADE they are in). Recently he told how one of the kids in the weight lifting room asked a simple addition question (if I add 40 to 2 90’s what will the total be?) and he was relieved he solved it before anyone piped up with the answer.

These “homeschool moments” are actually rather rare, so I thought I would memorialize one : ).

I was digging through old stuff and found a National Geographic planet diagram that I thought Aidan would like, because he has been in love with Saturn for the longest time. So I put it on the floor next to the flannelboard planets he had been playing with earlier.

As soon as he saw the diagram on the floor, he decided to “match” them to the felts, muttering to himself the names of the planets as he did so:

He was the one that requested that I take a picture.

I left it out on the floor and the next day Paddy saw it and remarked “Those must be the gas giants, right?”

That was unexpected. But I have been reading him The Magic Schoolbus and the Solar System again and again at his request and he must have been assimilating more than just the cute dialogue.

“The true object of all human life is play.”

GK Chesterton

“don’t use force (bia) in training the children (paidas) in the subjects, but rather play (paidzontas). In that way you can better discern what each is naturally directed toward.”

Socrates. (Play and Education in Plato’s Republic)

I have been reading through old articles I printed out in the last year or so and found this one: Voices on the Green. It is a Waldorf article on the value of play. The author writes:

Children need substance upon which to put their culture to work in order to transform and remake the world in their own way. In our media-drenched society - a world of simulacra and superficiality where the characters of Neighbours are as real, or in some cases more real, than the people who live next door - our offerings to the child are not always beautiful, good or true and often fall short of being worthy of imitation. Children aren’t conscious learners like adults; the faculty of discrimination develops later and signals the child’s ability to hold back, whereas imitation has its roots in trust and total openness to the world. Knowledge of the young child is caught rather than taught (the acquisition of our native language being the prime example): just what the ‘catch’ of those early years will be depends on us.

I’ve written about the value of play here.

Science is not formal logic–it needs the free play of the mind in as great a degree as any other creative art. It is true that this is a gift which can hardly be taught, but its growth can be encouraged in those who already possess it.

Max Born. more science quotes here.

Homeschooling Carnival up at Red Sea Homeschool.

The heading quote is

Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability. ~Sam Keen

Funny — I should make that our motto this summer, though we haven’t been lazy precisely; just very quiet. No camps except for football camp; no real learning enrichment; in fact, very little traveling at all because just how many experiences are worth 30$ just for the gas?

In some ways the quietness has been nice. In another way, it’s uncomfortable. It makes me realize how much I am geared towards more quietness in the winter and more outside the home activity in the spring and summer. I feel like I’m being lax. Aidan’s neurologist asked at his clinic on Monday about our homeschooling: “What about educational activities? You know, like enrichment activities and lessons?” I looked at him blankly. “Um, he was signed up for T-ball a couple of years ago — he has therapy…” All the interaction with older siblings, the spectacular beauty surrounding the house (people go on vacation and travel here to our national forest), the texture of daily life — that is more difficult to explain and comprehend than a quick, “Oh, yes, he is at discovery camp this week and takes karate and an art tutor comes to work with our homeschool group and…. we are so busy we hardly have time to eat dinner, we have to pack sandwiches in the cooler!”

That is where I think that even deep summer, nowadays, doesn’t make laziness (defined as homeboundedness, here) seem respectable. All the homeschoolers in our area seem actually to be busier during the summer than during the schooling seasons of the year. I am letting down our side. … or being more like the moms I remember in my growing-up years. We didn’t have very many activities that I can remember during the summer. Actually when we did have Vacation Bible Study or some kind of art camp I sort of resented it, to be honest. That was MY time.

All this aside, though, the summer has taken on an interesting character of its own. We still haven’t gotten into the habit of going outside very much. I was planning to go on various nature expeditions this summer, including to the beach, but the fact that Sean and Kevin have our one car every afternoon because of football camp makes that a bit more difficult. Sure, we are in and out the house around our area but not quite the way I planned.

I have been continuing phonics with the little ones, and this brings back memories of teaching their two older siblings about a dozen years ago when I was pregnant with our fifth. I knew I would be busy once the 5th was born, so I decided to commit the summer to getting them reading. This time there is not much time pressure, which is nice. It gives me a chance to learn how to be somewhat consistent yet in a relaxed way, which is a new skill — usually I am one or the other, consistent OR relaxed.

Yesterday I just wrote words for Aidan, still trying to get him out of the habit of guessing based on the CV of the CVC. He likes writing and drawing so this held his attention a bit. It is funny when he draws, because he draws a shape and then decides what it looks like after the fact. “This is an OCTOPUS!” he announced yesterday. Another time he was delighted when his pen and hand produced a VACUUM cleaner! He has one of the strongest visual-associative imaginations I’ve seen even in this family of visual learners. He calls the small thin round pad that you put in his leg brace a “Pringle”.

It has been interesting to watch what Clare has done with her time since she graduated in June. She plugged away all year at giving a final shape to her senior year transcript. Now, when she’s not focused on requirements — well, for several days she played the violin all the time. Now she is spending more time at the classical guitar. She is taking long walks and working out a lot, too. She read Plato’s Republic and several other “steep” books including a couple of biographies all within 2-3 weeks. Then she decided to read a bunch of the books she somehow missed reading in childhood — Alice in Wonderland, Kidnapped, Secret Garden, Heidi, Water Babies, At the Back of the North Wind. So basically an immersion in Victorian childrens’ lit.

Paddy has suddenly become quite interesting to talk to. He has been staying up till almost midnight and our new thing is me narrating stories to him. He listens with huge interest and asks all sorts of questions. Another example of how sometimes I fall into traditions without even “deciding” to. I guess I read a lot about narration recently and thought that it would be hard for a 6 year old to start narrating when he had never seen it modelled, but I had made no resolution. The other day I was telling him about a video that Aidan had seen that he hadn’t — and it went from there. I can see that this could be valuable in several ways — he is learning to listen without visual helps, he will have an example and experience with narrating in the future, but more importantly, it is such a fun relationship time and plus, I am learning to get past my own hesitation about oral “storytelling” since this is so fun and relaxed, and now narrating doesn’t seem so artificial and school-y to me since I can see how it fits into real life communication.

So that is nice ;-).

They are cutting down trees across the street. Nothing like a 50 foot sugar pine crashing to the ground to shake the house. Aidan has been delighted.

We drove down to our weekly homeschool meeting, but it had been cancelled — probably a good thing, because the air was bitter and dull with smoke from the wildfires in our region combined with the typical San Joaquin Valley inversion. Up at our altitude, the air is clear, and it’s cooler today. I have walked through today feeling subliminally relieved because of the absence of heat, like when the headache you hadn’t really noticed disappears.

The house is a mess, though. I watched part of the new Sense and Sensibility miniseries with Clare — it came from the county library system. We think Edward and Willoughby were miscast. It does have a bit of a mini-series feeling but like all the Jane Austen adaptations is visually beautiful with interesting, non-standard faces in the different roles (even when we don’t agree on the casting).

I spent the rest of the day organizing the binder I am making to help me through the rest of the summer.

Tomorrow Liam arrives by Amtrak.

I have been staying up late because it’s the only bearable time of the day, and I am feeling the effects — a bit of that dull smokiness in my brain. Have to get back to more of a routine soon!

I love the way Aidan uses words. He just brought Sean the DVD of Citizen Kane and said, “Let’s watch the movie of the wickedest man!”

I thought I would try to get back into the habit of journalling the day here. I’ve gotten away from it because of being in “big picture” mode recently, but now I want to pay attention more consciously to what’s going on around here.

For one thing, it’s been HOT, as I mentioned. Kevin has put sheets across our upstairs picture windows, to cut down on the afternoon sunlight. This actually gives the loft a slightly subdued, peaceful look that makes a difference in my mood. Odd how we are probably always coping with subliminal minor stresses and hardly noticing, until they are gone.

Yesterday afternoon Aidan started acting a bit strange. He lay down on the couch for a few minutes and then got up and asked if he could watch a movie because “I am sick.” His eyes had the tightly focused look that makes me think he is fighting off a seizure. He ate a good dinner but then in the evening started looking disoriented again. He never showed any of his classic seizure symptoms except the slight fixity of his stare, and once he gagged. Eventually he went to sleep, slept well, and woke up EARLY in a great mood. With anyone else, I would suppose they had simply been tired and perhaps that’s all it was. Anyway, he has an appointment with the neurologist next week so I will mention it then and also ask for a new Rx for his precautionary dose of diastat, since the old cartridges are past their expiration date.

Paddy, on the other hand, goes to sleep late and wakes up late. Last night he was spooked about monsters and cuddled up next to me for a long time asking whether his guardian angel would protect him from monsters, why it was that big people shouldn’t fight, who was the leader of the angels, why we can’t see them, and so on.

Today the boys got a bionicle order in — they had pooled the order to avoid high shipping costs. So the bionicles took up most of the morning.

Kevin took Sean off to practice. Yesterday was cut short because one of the coaches was sick and because of the foul air quality in the valley from the wildfires. It is possible that he will come home early again today which would be fine, because it is going to be well above 100 degrees down there.

Most of my best (most successful) resolutions are laterals…. that is, they appear sideways or in reverse rather than in a forward direction. I suddenly decide to just start doing X, or find I have already been doing Y and then it’s easy to continue. When I plan to accomplish Z, I had better write it out in “baby steps” or it probably is about the last thing that you will see me doing.

I wanted to take the little ones outside more — but I have hardly stepped outside the house myself, partly because of an intense heat wave. It is going to be 113 tomorrow down in the valley; which means in the 90’s up here, and no air conditioning for mountain people like ourselves.

On the other hand, I didn’t really resolve to slow down a bit and talk more to Paddy, but I have found myself doing just that. We have been reading together more, too.

Then somehow I found myself already carrying on a habit of bringing out the phonics book for the two younger ones every day. From there, I decided to just keep doing this throughout the summer and get a head start on their “first grade” next year. Paddy is one thing. I find that he can read probably 30% of the simpler words on a page. Dolch type words like “hello”, “look” “the” “yes” “what” that often start off a sentence. However, he reads them from sheer visual memory. He doesn’t have a clue about phonics. I know this because he will unhesitatingly say that a word like “Will” is “can” if it seems to him to fit the context. So I’ve been trying to work very briefly to show him the decoding rules. I have him sound out a few words every time he wants me to read a Tintin, since I’m getting so bored with Tintins. That way, we both get something out of it.

I find I don’t really WANT to teach him to read yet. For one thing, he is probably going to get there mostly without my help if I just wait. I just want him to know HOW you do it, that there is really a “code”. I want that understanding to have some time to sink in. So his “lessons” are extremely short.

Aidan has developed a habit of sounding out like this: Cuh–aah—Tuh. This is why decoding a word is a three-step process which needs my intervention, as I described in my last post. So then of course, he has no clue what he has just read. I am vexed at how to teach him to blend properly. The special education teacher at the school suggested “singing” the blends. Well, it works great in one respect. He can hear me, now, sounding out a word slowly, and tell me what word it is. But I can’t get him to do this himself. If I try to show him, he simply shouts the word out. If I try to help him with the glides, he takes the book off and says “I’ll do it!” Well, that is pretty clear.

But he will spend close to an hour studying his phonics book and attacking all the words. I was watching him yesterday and thinking “genius”, which was a funny thing to think under the circumstances. But that intellectual energy and curiosity is what I associate with brightness. Frustrating that I can’t get him past that block of the extra syllables. We shall simply persist.

It has been a quiet summer so far — not for Sean and Kevin, who are going to all these football things, but for the rest of us. It will start getting more lively soon, though, when Liam comes back and we get involved in various other visits and expeditions we are planning.

Next time I blog on here, I won’t post about reading, OK?

I brought out our beginning phonics books yesterday in order to plan a bit for next year — 100 Easy Lessons and some sheets I made last year.

Paddy and Aidan both picked them up and started working on them and to my surprise, they had both gained ground since we “stopped” sometime in May. Aidan can sound out words easily though he still needs help blending them. Once I have “said it the slow way”, though, he is easily able to figure out what word I am saying, which is speech-training as well as phonics and was very difficult for him just a month or so ago.

Right now he is flipping through the worksheet pages and sounding out words at random. Our ritual is that he sounds it out “C–A—T”. Then I do the intermediate bit “cc–aaaa—ttt”. Then he says, with an air of great revelation, “CAT!!” Then, recently, I’ve been trying to use the word in a sentence just to make it “real” for him, that he has read a real word not just a collection of letters. It is very fun for both of us, but if I try to help him figure out how to do the middle stage for himself, he says, “Uh — I’ll do it myself!” So right now we’re sticking with the 4 part ritual.

Paddy is a different story. I think he could have been reading last year as far as , but I didn’t want to hasten it because he is still very butterfly-like in his attention span. He wants to just READ so he will guess wildly at a word just to keep going. However, he was easily able to get past lesson 20 in 100 Easy Lessons so I guess you could say that they are both reading at a very simple decoding level.

I am trying to keep notes on this because the literacy process is fascinating to me.

I have continued to be immersed in planning. It takes on a life of its own, which becomes a bit scary when you think it over — at least, when I do.

Planning while my kids are left to the guidance of Pokemon Stadium and Sonic Hero? (cringing). This kicks off my hypocrisy meter. When you think of it, there’s a lot of fear and concern about the addictive power of VGs and TV. No one ever mentions the addiction a person can have for WORK and how powerful that can be, and much easier to justify to oneself than an entertainment itch. But the addiction to work may even be more of a problem to society than the addiction to play — and in fact, I wonder if they are two sides of the same coin, and the antidote or corrective is something else altogether.

For some reason, we haven’t been spending as much time outside this year as we did last year even with the chickenpox and the trip to Ireland, and I’m not sure exactly why. Particularly when a lot of the Charlotte Mason I’ve been reading emphasizes so strongly the value of outdoor time. When I read her words, I am struck by how the time spent and the investigation and “being” of an outdoor life is a kind of counter to the kind of bright-screen, hurrying mode or life that you can get wrapped up with even up here in the quiet mountains.

I grew up in Alaska — it is said that even the most remote bush village now has a TV, and it has changed the traditional culture. I would imagine our “work ethic” has changed the culture just as much, though no one points a prophetic finger at the weirdness of desiring to wear dull suits or uniforms and go to a prison-like concrete building from 9 to 5 in order to get bits of paper that you can trade in for goods someone else is working in a building or elsewhere to produce in mass quantities. And getting into a yellow mobile container to go to another prison-like building from 8 to 3 and then coming home with more paperwork to bring back there the next day seems just as weird, too.

One more thought — I have to say I am glad that I have been homeschooling for long enough so that I don’t HAVE to buy anything new for next year. I remember those days of catalog uncertainty and this was even before the internet — it seems worse to me now in the cyberworld. Someone mentions a new resource and the “buzz” starts and then everyone has to either buy it or use a lot of mental energy resolving NOT to buy it.

Such anxiety and high hopes and hunger. In a strange way, it reminds me of the courtship days before you find a life partner. It can look almost desperate. In that way, I am glad that not only have we our collection of tried and true resources, but that we have limited income, so not many homeschool resources look thrilling enough to make up for the pain of parting with quite a few hard-earned dollars.

Good books are actually still the best curriculum bargain out there, and the outdoors, and a few art and construction “tools” and a creative family life are even more of a deal.

When I was talking about this with my daughter in relation to classical homeschooling, and thinking about the Brave Writer post “Can we just stop talking about curriculum?” , my daughter, “Why do classical homeschoolers need to curriculum hunt? You can pick up a copy of Plutarch and Plato quite easily.”

LOL.

Yes, I finally got around to it. And being the obsessive person that I am, I have been spending hours and hours getting everything just right. Now to see — will I be so sick of the books by the time August comes that I will throw the whole thing out and start from scratch? That’s what I’ve been asking myself. I’m going to give it a rest now, and pick it up in about six weeks.

Recently I’ve only been about one-third an unschooler — but I hope to restore the balance soon.

A few other quick updates:

Sean started football practice with the high school team. So far, so good.
Liam is still up in Oregon interning.
Clare is writing out college applications and essays.
Brendan is turning twenty! and making a list of life goals.

Sean also got invited to the Ultimate 100 West football camp. He is one of only 5 8th grade quarterbacks nationwide to get the invite, or so I hear.

I guess that’s all for now — back to planning.