Up on my soapbox

I've heard many stories from friends and acquaintances about people (strangers or family) quizzing their kids about random facts, simply because the kids are homeschooled. Assinine, at best.

Well today it happened to us. We've been homeschooling for 6 YEARS now and this is the first time it's happened. And it's not like it was a stranger who just happened to find out we were homeschooling - this is a friend of the family who's had fairly regular contact with Cody since we moved back to Oregon almost a year ago. Why on earth he felt the need to do this is beyond me.
Luckily, Cody didn't even realize what this man was trying to do (he just thought the guy was asking a hypothetical question).

Here's the really stupid part: the people who think that public school education is better fail to realize that even if you get blessed with good teachers - the books that they're using SUCK!

Here's an exerpt from a recent article in the Dallas Morning News:

Proposed math books for elementary school children and their teachers have resulted in one computation that publishers would just as soon erase – 109,263.
That's the number of errors that were uncovered in proposed math textbooks that are under review by the State Board of Education for distribution to schools in the fall of 2008.
The total number of errors was nearly five times the total for last year, thanks to one publisher whose books contained more than 86,000 errors – 79 percent of the total.

(And lest you think that all of these things get corrected, think again. Although the textbook companies can get fined for errors, it's often cheaper for them to pay the fines than it is for them to re-print tens of thousands of textbooks.)

Or how about this:
Twelve of the most popular science textbooks used at middle schools nationwide are riddled with errors, a new study has found. Researchers compiled 500 pages of errors, ranging from maps depicting the equator passing through the southern United States to a photo of singer Linda Ronstadt labeled as a silicon crystal. ...estimated about 85 percent of children in the United States use the textbooks examined.

In fact, hubby was on-line yesterday and there was an article on AOL about how many high school kids couldn't answer general American history questions correctly (approx. 25% of the students couldn't correctly answer basic questions). They had some of the sample questions in the article. Here's the kicker - one of the "correct" answers was WRONG!!!

OK, I'm done ranting now ;)

'Cause this is THRILLER!

A couple of months ago there was a little snippet on Comcast On-Demand about Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Turns out they had it in their video section. I called (loudly and repeatedly) for Cody to come into the family room so that I could share this little bit of my history with him. He reluctantly came in, and I regailed him with the story of how everyone couldn't wait for the video to come out, how there was a special screening at Skate World (where the coolest of the cool hung out on Friday nights ;) and everyone sat speechless as they played it on the pull down screen in the corner. Cody was polite enough not to roll his eyes at me. He reluctantly sat down to watch it, and ended up thinking it was pretty cool. He was most impressed with Vincent Price's voiceover, and we ended up getting "House of Wax" from the library so he could see one of his movies.

Flash forward to tonight. A commercial came on for some kind of flavored water and Cody said "I like the commercial with Thriller better." (There was a Super Bowl commercial for flavored water that used that song). Then he added "Do you think we can get that song?" I hopped on-line and one of the first things that popped up was this video, recreating Thriller using Legos:



When he finished watching that, he watched the real video. Since it was late, we gave our nightly hugs and kisses and he headed off to bed - dancing like the zombies in the video. From behind me my husband exclaimed matter-of-factly "I live with a bunch of freaks." I twirled around and said "You're a freak, too!" To which he replied "Ya, but next to you guys, I'm almost normal." OK, he might be right on that one ;)

Sled dogs and snow

We went up to Frog Lake sled dog races with some friends of ours who are also studying the Iditarod. It was perfect timing, as the Iditarod starts next Saturday! We had a great vantage point and were able to see the start of two races and the finish of a third, so it was pretty fun. We had to remind the kids (more than once!) to be quiet so they didn't distract the dogs ;)

We also got to see ski mushers, which we'd never even heard of before! It was pretty cool - here's a very short video:

Everyone was very nice and answered our many questions and even let us pet their dogs ;)

These are dogs from Karen Yeargain's team. You can check out her website at: http://www.tumnatkisiberians.com/

Of course, we made time for fun, too! There were plenty of snowball's flyin', sinking into the waist-deep snow, and sledding.

And this is what happens when you don't get out of the way of the next sledder!

Stargate - Atlantis & A Dog's Breakfast

Periodically we cycle through obsessions. Usually sci-fi in nature. Generally campy. Our current fetishes are no different.

After spending a good portion of the last 2 years in worlds created by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly/Serenity), we were in need of some new sci-fi. Somehow we fixated on Stargate - Atlantis. I'm not sure how, as we never watched Stargate SG-1 during it's 10 year run - so why we chose the spin-off is anyone's guess. Anyway, we requested season 1 from the library and were hooked (by "we" I mean Cody and I and by "hooked" I mean watching up to 4 episodes a day ;) We've gone through 3 seasons in the last month or so. Here's a short clip from season 1:




This compulsion has led us to our newest movie love - A Dog's Breakfast. It was written by, directed by, and stars one of our favorite characters from Stargate - Atlantis, David Hewlett and he cast Paul McGillion in the movie (who plays our other favorite character in SGA). I found the movie by stumbling onto this clip on YouTube:



Here's the actual trailer for the movie:



After I finished howling with laughter, I put it at the top of our Netflix queue and went to the website http://www.adogsbreakfastmovie.com/ It arrived in the mail yesterday. I've watched it 4 times, including once with the commentary. Cody and Mike have watched it twice. Cody's already asking when we can buy it. What can I say? You may think we're crazy, but we say we're passionate ;)

Book Group

A friend of mine and I started a homeschool book group a few months back. Homeschoolers tend to do things a bit differently, and our book group is no exception.

The kids get to pick their own book to read out of a pre-chosen (by popular vote) genre. Since we have a dozen kids between the ages of 8 - 14, doing it this way allows for various reading levels. The kids also can be creative in choosing their books. For example, the "Adventure" category can be fiction or non-fiction and can include books as diverse as "Tom Sawyer" and "The Hobbit", to "Call of the Wild" and "Eragon". We also encourage the kids to build or bring props, wear costumes, and the like. Some of the kids get very creative, making puppets to help tell the story, building dioramas, and lego props.

For this months "Fantasy" genre, Cody choose "The Spiderwick Chronicles" by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi. Cody brought along "Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You" to help show the creatures that are in the story. Here he's showing a picture of the evil ogre Mulgarath. His favorite character was the hobgoblin Hogsqueal, who if he spits in your eyes will give you the sight to see all of the creatures around you (fairies, goblins, etc.)

Lunar Eclipse

This is a picture of last nights lunar eclipse - the last one until December 2010! I know it's a bit shaky, but it's the best photo we took. Here's a NASA link about the eclipse: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/13feb_lunareclipse.htm?list914996

With everything going on yesterday we nearly missed it! We were heading to the car when I looked up and noticed the moon was nearly eclipsed. I started yelling like a madwoman for everyone to look up at the moon (fortunately, everyone I was with already knows I'm nuts, so they won't hold my behavior against me ;) We spent the next 20 minutes or so watching the final stages, with the kids trying to get their countdown to coincide with the eclipse.

busy, busy, busy

We've had so much going on lately, we don't know if we're coming or going most of the time. Cody looked at our calendar the other day and wistfully announced how much he missed having more free days scheduled.

Between field trips, book group, our regular homeschool activities, 3 hours of yoga classes and 6 - 10 hours of rehearsals a week for the play, we're constantly running out the door and usually have activities 6 days a week. There were so few homeschool activities in Fresno, this was never a problem before. Now there's so many cool things going on, we have to turn down more and more.

Fortunately, the play will be over in 3 weeks (after 7 perfomances). Cody has really enjoyed doing it, but the amount of work and time involved has been a real eye-opener for him. They're talking about doing 3 more plays at that community theater this year, but Cody says he's going to think about it before he auditions for any more.

Getting ready for Valentine's Day

One of the mom's in our homeschool group (hi Jana!) is bravely hosting a Science of Chocolate/Valentine's party tomorrow. Thinking she'd get a small crowd, she instead received R.S.V.P.'s for 32 kids! Cody spent part of the afternoon today busily filling out valentines for the party. About halfway through, he exclaimed "Wow! This must be what it's like to answer fan mail!" What a ham. I spent the day baking over 100 little cupcakes (and if that seems like a big job, it's nothing compared to keeping my guys away from them!)





Every kid is in charge of making their own mailbox for the event. Cody chose to make his out of Lego's (no surprise there).





Here it is with the lid open:

Iditarod Map and Mushers

Some homeschooling friends of ours (hi Jana!) let us know about the e-iditarod project, an on-line study and following of the Iditarod. http://surfaquarium.com/eIditarod/ It sounded like fun, so Cody and I jumped on-line and signed up the beginning of last month. The first project was to make a large map of the trail route. This year they're following the northern route (odd years follow the sothern route). We mounted the map on cardboard so that we'll be able to put pins in to mark where the racer's are (obviously not all the racers, as there are over 100 of them!)

We've spent the last couple of weeks learning about Alaska: the different areas, cities, the Klondike gold rush, glaciers, etc. Now we're moving on to sled-dogs and the picking of our "official" musher that we'll be following. I thought this last part would be a little easier than it was. Since we were reading "Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northers" by Gary Paulsen (and he was on the list of mushers), he was our first choice. Problem was, he withdrew.

Which led us back to the list of 100+ mushers. I came up with some criteria that I thought would help Cody narrow it down (we can follow as many mushers as we want on our own, but have to "offically" pick and sign up with one on the Iditarod website). Male/Female, American/Foreign, Veteran/Rookie - problem was, Cody knew he wanted veterans, but didn't care who they were or where they were from. The first three elimination rounds still left us with over 70 mushers!

So, onto the Iditarod site we went and read the biographies of, you guessed it, the remaining 70+ mushers. Cody was very particular about what he wanted to find out from their bios, and if they didn't put enough information about their sledding experience they were off the list. After this round, we were down to about 25. Cody slept on it, then chose Paul Gebhardt because he "just got a good feeling about him." Here's Paul's bio: http://www.iditarod.com/race/musherprofiles/musherbio_52.html

We'll also be keeping track of the leader, last place, and the mushers from Oregon: Liz Parrish, Cliff Roberson, and Rachael Scdoris (who's blind!)

Who says geography is boring?

We've never "officially" studied geography. Generally Cody picks it up while immersed in his latest history obsession. During his current fixation with WWII he's absorbed tons of geographical facts about Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Russia, Japan - you get the idea.

Occasionally we'll come accross a geography game that EVERYONE in the family ends up playing! Like:

This one is like tetris, only with states (you can also choose to do Europe, Asia, etc.)
http://www.mapmsg.com/games/statetris/usa/

Here's another one where you drag each state and try and place it in it's exact location:
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/USA_Geography/USA_G1_double2.html

And if that's not enough for you, here's some more:
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FF#

Suburban wildlife

After 5 years in Fresno with literally one squirrel that had to be shared by everyone on the block (and was one of the few signs of animal life!), we have loved having critters around. In the 10 months we've been back in Oregon, our backyard has had regular visits from at least 15 different species of song birds, squirrels, a blue heron, a fat pair of raccoons (who feasted on the fish in our pond!), and a mating pair of mallards (that Cody named Mike and Carol) who would come and "knock" on the sliding door every summer night at dinner time begging for bread scraps.

This is our "pet" squirrel, Jenny (Weasley), so named for her red hair. Jenny has become a daily fixture in our backyard. Oh, we have other squirrels that stop by (one named Harry after Harry Potter), but Jenny's our favorite. Even the dog tolerates her! She used to run off every time we threw out seed, but after a while she got used to us. Occasionaly, if there's no seeds or nuts that have been put out for her and the birds, she'll scratch on the sliding door. If I'm in the kitchen and she's really trying to get my attention, she'll hop on one of the hanging planters at start swinging it back and forth.

Greek Mythology

Cody shares my love of Greek Mythology. We've read it for fun off and on for years, but this year he's really wanted to delve into it. We've been very fortunate, too, in that a family on one of our homeschooling groups is Hellenic (which means they practice the ancient Greek religion as their faith). So thank you, Melissa, for your invaluable information!





After reading about Asclepius, the demi-god of healing and medicine, Cody decided to make a traditional offering. We learned that people would leave carvings in the shape of the body part that had been healed as an offering, so using Sculpey, he made a foot as an offering of thanks for the healing of his foot after surgery last year. He also made tributes to other gods and goddesses with their names and identifying symbols (Athena's had owl's on it, Zeus' had lighting bolts, Poseidon's had tridents, etc.)

These are some of the websites we've visited:

National Mythology exam (not just for Greek mythology)
http://www.etclassics.org/NMExam.html

Great site that has cartoons of Greek mythology, games, crafts, history, etc.
http://www.abc.net.au/arts/wingedsandals/default_lowband.htm

Explore inside and outside of a 3-D Parthenon
http://www.3dancientwonders.com/3d_parthenon_virtualreality.htm


Here's some of the books we've read:

Geraldine McCaughrean's "Perseus", "Theseus", "Odysseus", and "Hercules".

Rosemary Sutcliff's "Black Ships before Troy".

Usborne's "Illustrated Guide to Greek Myths and Legends"

D'Aulaires' "Book of Greek Myths"

Rick Riordan's "Percy Jackson" series - The Lightening Thief, Sea of Monsters, & The Titan's Curse (I swear Cody has these memorized!)

And about 4 years ago I made of find of "The Book of Greek Myths Pop-up Board Games" at a garage sale. It's published in England, and I've never seen another copy of it (and I've been looking!) It comes with a spinner, a bunch of little people (the Minotaur, Odysseus, sailors, etc.),and a little book of Greek myths. It has boards for the Trojan horse, Odysseus. Theseus and the Minotaur, and Daedalus and Icarus. Cody loves it and we play all the time.