Every day, something new

There are moments in my life when I truly wonder where I am -- the feeling of falling down a Rabbit hole is remarkably strong. Yesterday had one such moment:

I was sitting on my bed, reading aloud from 'The Lost Hero' (the second time we have done this). Xander was snuggled up on one side, Jason on the other. All of a sudden, Jason pops up and heads into my bathroom, 'Keep reading, Mom. I can still hear.' So, obediently, I keep reading. He then comes out (and I know that he has not washed his hands!), heading for the hall. "Jason!' I call, 'Your hands?' 'I still need 'em, Mom' Huh? A few moments pass and he comes back in, carrying the toilet brush. Into my bathroom and there is a sound of scrubbing. He reappears, sans brush, and heads towards the hall again. 'JASON! YOUR HANDS!' 'Still working, mom.' He reappears with a handful of Clorox wipes in his hands and reenters the bathroom. I see him sit down on the floor next to the toilet. It is too much for me. I ask 'What are you doing?' 'Cleaning' he replies, 'Please keep reading.' For lack of any other ideas, I do 'keep reading'. When he finally leaves the bathroom, I ask 'Hands?' He replies 'Yes, I washed them and then I used hand sanitizer.' I am too cowardly to ask 'where' and go with the safer tack in assuming that he meant 'on my hands.'

All of a sudden, Xander begins to cry. I am not a little startled and ask 'Xander? What is wrong?' He says, huge tears rolling down his cheeks, 'Jason did a job I wanted to do! I want a job.' I blink and allow as how I am sure I can find him a job.  Big brown eyes open wide and he asks, hope brimming in his voice, 'Can I do ALL the dishes?' YIKES! We have a sprayer attachment on the sink faucet. The last time he 'washed' dishes, the whole kitchen was washed away in the flood...

 

The Unsung... chickens and fire-crackers

I am a junkie... a junkie hooked on the high of learning and for me one of the unsung benefits of home-schooling is all the learning I get to do...

Take today for example: Today we went to Wilcox Farms in Roy, Washington with a group of Home schooled Scouts. No, this was not an actual 'scouts' event rather it was a small group of parents and children who know each other from Home Schooled Scouts.  One of the mothers, bless her, had heard about Wilcox and arranged for a narrated tour and I am so very glad that she did.

Wilcox Farms, Roy, Washington, is about an hour and a half drive from where we live. The trip out was arduous to say the least -- one of the children gets car sick and our drive down was interspersed with emergency stops. Of course, being that I had three boys, not all the stops were related to car sickness.  Driving along, thinking we were good to go, I would suddenly hear 'I gotta pee!', always AFTER we had just passed an exit or were on a country road with no shoulders. One boy would leap wildly from the car and race away to use 'the bushes'. A short while later 'I need the bushes' and another desperate child fly from the car... You might ask 'why not stop at the next rest stop and have all the boys go?' Answer: I did. I don't know whether it is an atavistic joy to pee in bushes or whether little boys just have a greater need to pee on long road trips but these three...

At any rate, several hours after we left, we arrived at Wilcox Farms in Roy. The scene is lovely and I had absolutely no idea what sort of farm it was... Turns out it is a chicken farm -- not the sort that raises chickens, however but a farm dedicated to producing eggs -- approximately 36,400,000 eggs per year. We learned all sorts of fascinating facts -- like the fact that it takes a chicken approximately 26 hours to produce one egg, that Leghorn chickens -- the ones that produce those lovely large white eggs -- are kept caged in 'conventional commercial' chicken farms because the hens are extremely aggressive and if left in a free range situation, they would kill each other.  Wilcox farms has both 'conventional' hen houses -- each house containing approximately 70,000 hens kept in pairs in cages (the Leghorns) -- and organic hen houses. The organic houses, which contain about 25,000 chicken per house, are 'free' range -- that is, the chickens are 'free' to wander around the hen house and the fenced chicken yards. And the hens in the organic hen houses are Rhode Island Reds. Apparently they are much more mellow creatures and highly social. According to our very knowledgable guide, when the hens hear the bus coming, they crowd up to the fence to take a look at all the people... On our trip, no chickens appeared -- to the distress of the children -- but the guide explained that hens in question were still only babies and would be kept inside until they were large enough to be safe outside.

Chickens, it turns out, are attractive to many predators: Bobcat, Coyote, Raccoon, Possum, Rats and ... Eagles. Now the first group of predators are relatively easy to defeat: the yard is fenced and nine dogs run the farm. Eagles, however, are death from above -- and, as they are an endangered species, the farmers cannot shoot them. So how then does one defend against them? Laugh. The guide allowed as how, when the Wilcoxes contacted Fish and Game with their problem, Fish and Game acknowledged the issue and provided a very creative -- and non-lethal solution. Fish and Game supplied the farm with hi-tech slingshots and large fire-crackers. When an eagle is spotted, one person loads and aims the slingshot while another person lights the fire-cracker. The fire cracker is then release up towards the eagle. They never hit the eagles but the noise is extremely loud and, after a couple such encounters, the eagles back off... for awhile.  I don't know that the children fully appreciated the elegance of the solution but I was in stitches.

The tour was not just about chickens, of course. There was a one room school house  museum-- the children were less interested in the school itself (though they all ran to sit down at desks, something few of them had ever done before!) than in the fact that the floor of the school house was littered with lady bugs. (Xander made it his mission to find and 'rescue' the living ones and begged to be allowed to keep a dead 'zero spot' lady bug.) and a Farm Museum which contained an impressive number of ancient farm machines including a 'home made' tractor and an old delivery van. (That was a hit with the kids as they were allowed to climb in and around it.) There was a log cabin and an ancient chicken house plus lots of room to run and jump and yell. As a final 'high note' to the tour, we were taken into the 'egg processing' plant which stunk quite a bit and watched as eggs were packed into cartons.  We saw as the eggs passed over a light source and two women plucked out eggs that were cracked and tossed them in the trash. It was amazing to see how quickly their hands moved. And we saw the USDA inspector wandering the floor: "Anytime we process eggs, he is here." we were told. All in all, it was an impressive operation -- even more so when we learned that the Wilcox sends its 'Organic' chicken poo to the farmers who grow the 'organic' grain that Wilcox then buys to feed the 'organic' chickens.  A local business supporting and supported by other local businesses.

The trip was a success. When we got home and were having dinner, both boys were able to tell their dad quite a bit about the trip... though Xander did NOT tell his father that he planned to start a chicken farm...

 

Time Management, getting things done, and producing Excellence

"Four months before that emergency landing, Southwest had agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle charges that it operated planes that had missed required safety inspections for cracks in the fuselage. "

Okay, I know that for some, the link between metal fatigue in a plane's fuselage and time management skills in a homeschooled child would seem thin, if not non-existent. Bear with me and I will show you how the two fit together:

As someone who both attended college and taught classes in college, I know that many students arrive on the scene with NO time management skills. They wait until the very last moment to write papers, study for exams, etc and then claim that the reason for this 'delayed' response is because they have too much work to do.  Airlines use the same reasoning when they skip scheduled maintenance on planes. Inspections and maintenance are 'onerous,' especially when the airlines have schedules to meet. In the first case, the only one who suffers for sloppy work and poor planning is the student. In the latter, the possibility exists that many people will be injured or killed. But here is the question: Where do the people (working for the airlines) learn/develop the habit of 'putting off until tomorrow'? I would argue that they learn it early, at home, and have it reinforced by their own behavior in college... especially if they can get away with it.

Let me backtrack for a moment: When I first started teaching, I would assign a paper, offer an 'optional' deadline for drafts (if the student wanted me to review their work BEFORE the final turn in), and give a deadline.  Most freshmen did not take advantage of the optional draft turn in and the papers that they DID turn in, often in the last five minutes of the day, right before I headed home, showed clear evidence that they had been written in a rush, probably the night before.  I would spend, quite literally, hours going through those papers, editing the ENGLISH so that I could read the essay.  When I finally had the essays in readable form, I would find that the argumentation and the evidence were poorly done, if they even existed at all. After two semesters of this, I changed my approach. I made the draft mandatory... and after another semester, I made it a rule that if I found more than five errors in the ENGLISH,  the student had to take the paper to the English tutors and correct the draft before returning it to me to read through for the History.  Students groused about this, complaining that they didn't 'have time', that their course load was 'too heavy' to waste time working on drafts.  What kept me firm in my new approach was the fact that I had students, many of them older students who were also holding down full time jobs, who were ABLE to do what was asked. The difference between the two groups was that the first group (1)lacked time management skills and (2)did not have a developed appreciation of doing quality work. To this first group, class assignments were just a box that needed to be filled on the way to something more important and as such, these assignments were 'unimportant' in and of themselves.  A similar attitude can be seen in companies who 'skip' maintenance and inspections because they are 'onerous' and 'unnecessary.'

Colin Powell is credited with saying " If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude."  Thomas Jefferson said 'I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.'  In fact, if you do a search, you will find that many of the most successful -- and by this I mean people who have left a positive mark on the world -- people are those who understand the value of work. Moreover, they are individuals who have developed the 'habit' of paying attention to the 'small' things as much as to the big. When someone is trained from the beginning to focus on seeking to create excellence in what they do, whether it be writing a paper for a history class or meticulous maintenance of an airplane, the work is not onerous, it is simply 'right'. Pearl S. Buck, a fine American writer, noted that "the secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it." But in order to 'pay attention' to small things and to achieve excellence, one must know how to manage time. Much of the time the excuse for skipping the small things, for doing shoddy work or no work at all, is that there wasn't enough time. But things done poorly, or not at all, most often end up costing MUCH MUCH more -- in terms of time, money, and even lives.

So here is my point: Time Management skills are as important as mathematics/reading/writing/science in ANY educational program. I used to grouse about the fact that when I was in school, home economics class taught us to wash eggs and how to cook peanut butter cookies with peanut butter frosting. They did NOT teach us useful skills -- like how to create a budget, balance a check book or how to schedule our time effectively. Those were skills that would actually have CONTRIBUTED to our success as adults. To my knowledge, schools still do not teach those skills... though there may be the exception. For the most part, if you want to be taught those skills, you need to seek out a course and pay money for it... I did that when I was a senior in High School. I told my father, 'I have found a two day, weekend, course that will teach me note-taking and time management -- and I will need both to succeed in college.' My father agreed, I spent my money, and he made sure that I was able to make the course. How much simpler it would've been had I had those things taught to me earlier in my educational career...

Homeschool parents are in a unique position, one that we do not always appreciate, I fear. We have a chance to look back, over our own education, and to see what skills we wished we had been taught -- life skills as well as academic subjects. For me, one of the most critical skills is Time Management and one of the most critical attitudes is the high valuation of excellence, especially in the small things. With training in time management and an appreciation of/determination in excellence in both small and large jobs, I know that my sons will succeed in whatever they chose to do... and that, in the end, is one of my goals for our homeschool.

The Little things

My youngest son loves bats. In fact, if you ask him, and even if you don't, he will tell you that he is part bat.  I am not sure where this fascination came from but I can understand it. Unlike some who are terrified of the creatures they call 'flying rodents', I have had an affection for the creatures ever since I was in fifth grade.

That year we were living in Massachusetts, in the small town of Sharon. It was really the best year of my public school life. Because of my family's late arrival to the place, I was placed in a separate portable where two teachers, Mr. Chick and Mrs. Borenstein, team taught. I was terribly shy, awkward with being the 'new' kid, and when no teacher called my name for their class, I wanted to curl up and die. It was then that I was rescued by one of the loveliest souls I have ever been honored to know. Hilary Karas, the girl with the brilliant smile and bouncing black curls, saw me. She called out 'Mr. Chick, nobody called on her. Can she come with us?' Bless the girl. We became good friends that year... And Mr. Chick, of Chick's Rule for foursquare, and Mrs. Borenstein, with the one white streak in her otherwise midnight hair, were wonderful teachers. Mr. Chick, who taught Social Studies amongst other things, had us march through Mrs. Borenstein's class while reciting the Preamble to the Constitution. Grin. I have a load of tales to tell about that man and I do remember that the whole class was DEEPLY disappointed to discovered that these two teachers couldn't be married -- they worked so very well together and made their classes full of joy.

And that was the year, to return to my discussion of bats, that they arranged for a lady from the Audubon society to come in and share with us. She came once a month and we all waited breathlessly to see who she would bring... She always brought someone. (Once she brought a skunk, descented, but OH! Did we laugh when Mrs. Borenstein, all unsuspecting, pulled open the drawer that the skunk had been investigating!!) And one time she brought a little brown bat...

She let each of us, those of us who wanted to do, hold the small creature. It was so tiny, so fragile, so delicately made -- and so terrified. I remember feeling a kinship with it because I knew very well how terrifying the world could seem when you are little and not in control. And I was fascinated at how delicately it had been shaped. It was not some accidental, gross creation, thrown together from left over bits. Every part of the bat served a very specific purpose and its wings... Have you ever considered the construction of a wing? The difference between a bird's wing and a bat's? They are strikingly different. I realized, holding that small creature, how very amazing the world, and its creatures, really is.

But what, you may ask, brought these reflections on? A news article in the Times: "The Economic Cost of Losing Bats".  The boys and I have been reading the Percy Jackson series and in it Grover, the Satyr, finds the Lord of the Wild, Pan, as he is dying. Pan leaves Grover with a heavy burden, to spread the word to EVERYONE that saving the planet is each person's responsibility. 'The damage is too great, the burden to heavy for just one god.' Pan tells Grover and his friends. And here again, as with the stories of the Bees dying off and the Frogs disappearing, we see an indication of just how fragile our world is. We really do need to take responsibility -- or the world that our children inherit... It scares me to think of what will/won't be left.

So today, in honor of the little creatures who contribute so much to our world and our survival, I think we will start a series of units focusing on these little ones. We will start, I think, with the bats. There are many resources. Homeschool Share has a bat lapbook/unit study and one on Nocturnal Animals, both for free. If you are feeling flush, Hands Of A Child has a Bats Lapbook (12.00$)that you can purchase with an optional Kit pack (also 12.00) if you don't want to have to fuss with photocopying pages out of the Lapbook project pack.

Then there are the unit studies: One is called 'The Wonderful World of Bats

For frogs I have found: Just Mommies Frog Study

In the end, I think the poet, William Blake said it best when he wrote his poem, Auguries of Innocence

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

Perhaps with our study of the 'little things' we will be able to hold onto that innocent appreciation of 

the wonders of this world for just a little bit longer.