The Mystery Behind Our Homeschool Mystery

You may be wondering how we go about writing all these blog entries. It's not all that easy. Everyone has different difficulties in life, and I often struggle with writer's block. Recently, it took me four hours to get a single paragraph on the page of my AIMS writing practice test, and I am more than certain that I don't have more than four hours to finish it.

So back to the question of how do we do it. We always start with prewriting and brainstorming ideas for our topics. Once we have six or seven topic ideas, we sit down at the dining room table and discuss what we came up with for topics and how they would work. After we have narrowed down the ideas to about two or three, we do a quick cluster graph to get specific ideas about what we want to write about. Next, we draw an outline about what's going to be in each paragraph and how we're going to write it. Finally, I sit down at the computer and actually write it. If an outline was written, then this should cause the writer almost no problems because he or she pretty much already wrote it.

As I wrote in paragraph one, I often struggle with writer's block. Along with this problem, I also have trouble keeping my writing organized, and Rebecca also admits she suffers from that flaw, too. However, this isn't her biggest flaw. Her biggest "flaw" is her love to write. Her latest idea at our little writer's workshop was the "Camp-outs and Camp-ins" idea. Instead of my mom's suggestion for her to write about the latest camp-outs and sleep-overs, she wanted to write about "all the camp-outs" in her life! Current camp-out and sleep-over toll estimate: 2,000,362. Another example of this "flaw" happened when she received a writing assignment to write a short story about The Water Horse by Dick King Smith and began writing My Night With the Loch Ness Monster which according to her was supposed to become a 24 chapter book until my mom told her to end this copy and write the book when it wasn't due in two days.                                                                                                                          

So now you know how we go about writing our blog entries, but if you do get stumped writing your own blog or whatever it is you need to write, we found two books to be extremely useful quick references and guides. The first is Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing by Mignon Fogarty which is possibly the world's most useful grammar quick reference ever made. She starts by writing the grammar rule, and then moves onto explanations of why you use the rule. She then shows you how the rule would make no sense the wrong way, and then writes a sentence using the rule with her characters Aardvark the aardvark and Squiggly the snail. We were lucky enough to go to one of her book signings late last year where we learned that she started her writing career by doing podcasts in her closet because her clothes blocked out background noise and the small space amplified her voice (one of the questions I remember best at the signing was if she got a tax deduction for her clothes because they supported her business.) While we were there we also bought her latest book The Grammar Devotional and got it signed by her. We then bought the book The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier by Bonnie Trenga who was invited as an up and coming local author. We also got her book signed. Another good writing book we found was Writing Smart Junior by C. L. Brantley which is a book about three characters named Bridget, Babette, and Barnaby going on an adventure with their fat cat Beauregaurd to save the lost art of writing. It also happens to be where we got the outline idea for our writing process.

So as you can see there is no longer much mystery behind how we go about writing these blog entries since I just told you exactly how we do it. I hope this will help you!

Camp-outs and Camp-ins

There are many ways to learn through every day life. You can learn from cooking, cleaning, camping, traveling, eating, playing, and just plain living.You also learn from making mistakes. My family likes traveling and camping so you can guess that it's one of our main sources of learning.

It's quite easy to learn from traveling and camp-outs because it exposes you to different things. While you're there, ask your parents if you can visit a local museum or visitor center or search the web before leaving. I remember when my family and I went camping in Oregon, and we visited the whale watching center in Depoe Bay and learned about whales and whale migration. Camping is also a great way to learn about nature. When I was four years old, I went to Lyman Lake with my family, collected leaves in a journal, and later tried to figure out what type of tree it came from. Now, I write in my journal or draw what I see while we're camping. It's great to write about my travels so I can remember them without a camera. The writing is also part of my schooling so I can learn correct punctuation, spelling, and grammar. I love camp-outs because of the learning.

One of the other things I learn on camp-outs is outdoor skills. Back in October of 2009, I went on a beach camp-out with my friends and family. I learned fire safety, how to escape from a riptide, how the tides follow the moon which determines high tide and low tide, and how shark attacks are very rare. Since we were camping in California, we also learned about the animals in that area. I also go on camp-outs with my girl scout troop. One of the first camp-outs I've been on with my girl scout troop was when we went to Lost Dutchman State Park were we learned that if you're camping during a lighting storm you should go inside a car because it has rubber tires, to always hike with a buddy, and how to put up a tent. On another camp-out with girl scouts we went horse camping. There we learned all about a horse's body, how to take care of a horse, and how to ride a horse. I also find myself very lucky when it's time to ride the horses. It started back when my girl scout troop went to ride horses for a badge workshop. I got to ride the best out of three horses, Callie. It happened again at horse camp when I was supposed to ride Sassy Gassy (who, by the way, I'm deathly afraid of) but she turned out to have a hurt hoof so I got switched over to Daisy, who I found to be the best horse on the ranch. None of this would have happened if I hadn't camped in the great outdoors.

You can learn a lot from camp-ins, too. Now you're probably wondering what a camp-in is. Sometimes it means to stay in a hotel, but in our case, it's sleepovers, slumber parties, etc. Most camp-ins teach you about what no to do. Sometimes they include eating too much sugar before bed and feeling sick the next morning, running around the house and hurting yourself, and staying up late then being crabby the next morning. The most important thing I've learned is that you should not eat more than five pieces of chocolate before bed and zero before breakfast, but don't get me wrong, I love camp-ins. All your friends coming over to play games and eat candy, it's so much fun, and you learn stuff, too!

As you can see, I have learned a lot from my camp-outs and camp-ins. It is very sad that the Arizona State Parks are closing due to budget problems. Many of these campgrounds that I have visited will be closing or have closed already. To learn more, go to http://www.azstateparks.com/.

How I Was Taught to Ski by Beaverman

By now I think I may have already mentioned this to anyone actually reading this blog, but last week I was taught to cross country ski by a beaver. Or a man. Or a Beaverman. I'm not sure.

It was an unexpected twist to the snow adventure that my son and I took last week. It all started after my "unsocialized" homeschooled son worked at the church rummage sale all day without his parents around: one was working and the other one was peddling Girl Scout cookies. My son was picked up on the front porch at 5:00AM, and he did not return home until 3:00PM that afternoon so he had plenty of time to check out the merchandise. He was assigned as a "floater" at the sale, relieving the other youth for their breaks, but found the "Sporting Goods and Hardware" section to be in particular need of help. Apparently, he spotted a snowboard being sold for the whopping price of $5. Having been taught from an early age never to pass up a bargain, he bought the snowboard, brought the thing home, and for every day afterwards was snowboarding in the living room. This is what happens when you are brought up as a desert rat. This is also what happens after Shaun White sweeps the Winter Olympics just weeks before the snowboard is spotted, and you are a homeschooled kid who has just spent the last month using the Olympics as the basis for geography, history, and science lessons. (I'm adding another link here for a good science site.) This is the second time we have used the Olympics in our homeschooling adventure; the first time was the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I was recently "organizing" homeschool stuff (ha ha, the task that never ends) and came across the 50+ page "Educational Kit" that I printed off during the Beijing Olympics (x 2 kids = 1 printer cartridge), and I'm just so thankful that we didn't get knee-deep in the Chinese "fuwa" mascots again because that was a lot of ink! Remember them? They looked like little Pokemon, but they were a fish, a flame, a panda, a bird, and an antelope. All color ink, by the way. So this year's Olympic studies concentrated in the online.

Anyway, time had come to take the kid to the snow so we decided to try cross-country skiing, but we brought the snowboard along. The thinking here was that if we got really good at cross-country, then we could take on the half-pipe later in the day. We are nothing if not optimists. The other thing at work here was the fact that the one and only time I went skiing, when I was just about the same age as my son, I ended up riding the ski lift downhill after a little mishap where I failed to get off at the top. I'm still recovering from the humiliation of arriving alone back at the embarkation spot with my skiing companion laughing his way down the hill. I will try downhill skiing again when I get good enough to ski to the top.

So we arrived at the Flagstaff Nordic Center all set for a day of "easy" cross-country skiing, and I encountered yet another skiing obstacle: I couldn't get the ski on. There were seven of us enrolled in the beginning class, and they all got their skis on prior to the instructor's arrival at the meeting spot. So when the instructor walked out there, all six of them were there (my own son had already disowned me), but I was about 20 feet away at the ski put-on place frantically trying to shove right boot into right ski to no avail. Here's where I first encountered Beaverman. I had heard stories about the infamous half-man, half-beaver Scottish hobo, but I hardly expected to find him in the Coconino National Forest teaching ski lessons (although stranger things have happened to me.) I'm sure it was him. When I master adding photos to the blog, I will post a picture of him, but he was most certainly my cross-country ski instructor, taking time out of his busy day munching wood to get me skiing. Thankfully, Beaverman also got my ski on.

But my troubles did not stop there. As it turns out, Beaverman quickly identified that I had not yet mastered walking. So while my six other classmates were already far ahead, Beaverman removed my skis, and instructed me to "walk around for awhile" until I got the feel of it. I have a long history of sitting in the back of the class, never asking questions, figuring stuff out for myself, etc. so I was really happy to have all this extra attention! It was so great to have come all this way to walk around in the snow! I think Beaverman sensed there was some hostility because after my walking demonstration he said, "Here, come give me a hug, you're doing great! What do you do for a living?" I said, "I'm an emergency nurse." To which he said, "Oh, well there are no lives to save here today, we're just having a good time." Hmph.

Things did get better, and as soon as I got my skis back on, I pretty much ditched Beaverman. At the end of the class, my son and I did a loop trail, on skis, and it was really fun. So I'm recommending cross-country skiing. Thumbs up. We also stopped at Montezuma Castle, and we're still pondering how it is that Montezuma Castle and Notre Dame Cathedral were built the same year. It's mind boggling. Here are some photos to compare:

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We got started early this year by making corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and Irish soda bread last night since we were all home together. There are leftovers for tonight anyway, and now we can go have someone else's cooking tonight and take in some local Irish music and dance. We do this every year. So of course the question . . . "Are you Irish?" No, I'm not! I'm also not Mexican, but I still cook Mexican food every year on Cinco de Mayo. We've taken to going out for Chinese food on Chinese New Year because we like the free calendar they give us at our Chinese restaurant; it's the scroll type with "Year of the Tiger" 2010 pictures on it since we can never remember what animal is associated with what year (thank you Blogger for automatically figuring this out for us on our blog profiles!) So in our house, we treat St. Patrick's Day like no less of a holiday than say, for example, Thanksgiving.

Which has got me thinking . . . these celebrations are another component to our homeschool "mystery" as we've taken to calling it since no one knows exactly what we're doing on the inside here! The transformation of this blog started like this: first, as a writing project to get my kids writing more if they got to see themselves "published." Then, as a sort of "off the beaten path" travel blog since people were always asking Mike and I about all our little unknown restaurants, trails, yurts, hidey-holes, etc. Finally, as a way to explain and dispel myths about homeschooling. What I have come to realize is that the homeschool blog idea really encompasses all of our prior blog ideas because homeschooling is more of a way of life. The word "homeschool" itself is more commonly used as a verb than it's counterpart "school." For example, I would say, "I am going to homeschool my child." I could say, "I am going to school my child," but it is more likely that I would say, "I am going to send my child to school." There is nothing that angers the homeschooling community more than seeing this word broken down into two words "home school" which implies that we have a school in our home, and if you were to see my home right now, it is more reminiscent of a "home zoo."

So from here on out, holidays, travel, and the basic day to day are all fair game for the homeschooling blog since these are all ways that we educate our children. "Oh, so Kathy you guys are unschoolers?" Not exactly! At this very moment, my kids are taking an AIMS practice test because they will be taking this standardized test the second week of April at their homeschool enrichment program sponsored by the local school district. I think the mere fact that two days per week I send my kids to a program sponsored by the public school, pretty much disqualifies us as unschoolers. Aren't labels fun! "Oh, so you guys are Evolved Homeschoolers because you believe in evolution?" True, that we believe in evolution. My daughter still talks about the trip we made to La Brea Tar Pits when she was about 5 years old. I can't believe the stuff she remembers from that museum. It must've had a profound effect on her because she remembers the mammoths, saber-toothed cat, and even the 9,000 year-old woman that fell into the tar. I have no idea how people can doubt evolution. One of my daughter's best friends just told my daughter the other day that scientists mix up the bones of a bunch of different animals to make something that didn't exist. ??? However, since we also go to church, I think we're disqualified as Evolved Homeschoolers as well. I am the World's Biggest Doubting Thomas, and it is my nature to question everything, but I am fortunate that the ELCA that I belong to is a bunch of rebels, in the spirit of the biggest rebel of them all, Martin Luther. So once again, I am without a label, being completely disgusted with Right-Wing Christians in America, but at the same time, respectful of the fact that this group is also making up a large percentage of homeschoolers, and I include many of them as my friends.

So today we are celebrating St. Patrick: a man who found God as a teenage slave and who isn't really Irish, but let's label him that way anyway! I personally like to think of this "holiday" as a day to be thankful for Irish American immigrants, and the struggles and prejudices they overcame to be respected members of our society. I hope homeschoolers will someday overcome these same things too.