Monthly Archives: August 2012

Homeschool

Wading into ‘Green Gables’ and other homeschool pursuits

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Catherine M. Rooney, 6th grade teacher instructs her alert pupils on the way and how of War Ration Book Two
This is pretty much what our days look like.

We’re finishing up our second week of school today, and so far it’s going swimmingly. Poppy has been eager to get to work every day. Pete has been a little difficult this week; I think he’s entering a Whiney Stage of Development. He settles down and actually enjoys himself once he finally succumbs to the learning process.

Would you like to know a little more about what we’ve been doing this week? Allons-y!

Reading

Our first read-aloud of the year is “Anne of Green Gables,” because that’s what I picked up on my last mad rush through the library. I’ve tried to read it before on my own without much luck. I just have a hard time getting into the story. Pete has been paying very little attention to it. He wanders through the room while we’re reading, but that’s about it. I don’t think it’s Poppy’s favorite book ever, but she enjoys the cuddle-on-the-couch time anyway.

We’re going to be studying the Middle Ages in history this year, so after we finish “Anne” I’m going to try to choose read-aloud books that are at least tangentially connected to that. Here are a few I’m considering:

  • “Igraine the Brave,” by Cornelia Funke
  • “The Squire’s Tale,” by Gerald Morris
  • “The Adventure’s of Sir Gawain the True, by Gerald Morris
  • “Favorite Medieval Tales,” Mary Pope Osborne.

    • Poppy’s daily schedule this year includes 30 minutes of free reading. This week she read a lot of books from my old “Sesame Street” collection as well as a new “My Little Pony” book from Grandma.

    Teaching Pete to read is one of my primary goals this year. We’re using the BOB books, and he read the first one on the first day of school with hardly any help at all.

    “How’d you know all those words?” I asked him.

    “Oh,” he said. “I’ve just been learning.”

    I’m hoping he magically absorbs Calculus the same way in a few years. Speaking of which …
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    Social Media

    MomComm gives me some constructive criticism

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    When Mel at MomComm started offering blog critiques, I kind of wanted to sign up for one. But I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to be critiqued, and then her queue filled up and stayed full forever. She offered a lot of great advice in her critiques, though, and it made me wish I hadn’t been so averse to criticism.

    So when she asked for another wave of blogs to critique, I signed up. This time she’s looking at specific pages; today, she’s focused on my About page.

    As always, Mel has a lot of great advice, and it’s stuff that’s applicable to any blog. She suggested, for example, that I change my permalink structure — that’s the stuff after butterscotchsundae.com/ in the location bar up there — to make things more SEO-friendly. Another web-savvy friend suggested I do that some time ago, but I’m wary. I’m afraid it’ll break my web site.

    I’m not afraid of any of the other suggestions, though. They’re just going to take a little time and effort to rearrange and rewrite some things.

    Thanks for the advice, Mel!

    Diversions

    Maybe FDR was right about that unreasoning, unjustified terror

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    I’m afraid an airplane will crash into my house.

    I’m afraid I’ll look out the window at night and see someone staring back at me.

    I’m afraid a sinkhole will open under my feet.

    I’m afraid a snake will slither over my foot while I’m driving.

    And those are just my irrational fears. Which let’s be honest aren’t really all even out of the realm of possibility. Is there any such thing as an irrational fear? Airplanes crash into houses. Creeps are everywhere. A sinkhole opened in a parking lot across the street from my house last month. My mother-in-law found a snake in her car a few years ago. These things happen.

    But what are the chances they’ll happen to me, and why do I spend so much time worrying about them? Sometimes I think I’m taking a Bob Wiley approach to life: “If I fake it, then I don’t have it.” That’s not healthy. I know that. But I can’t stop myself. I think it comes from reading too much John Irving in my formative years.

    (Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be paranoid. Don’t let ’em read Irving, Dean Koontz or Stephen King. Make ’em read Austen and Alcott and such.)
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