Percy Jackson Day!

My fifth grader is only one review lesson away from finishing Singapore 5B. This is huge considering we were wrapping up 4B at the beginning of the school year AND she also does about one Saxon 8/7 lesson a day as well (including fact practice and tests).

She was about to turn the workbook page when the doorbell rang. It was UPS.

She asked if she could bring in the package and I'm certain she assumed it was yet another school book I'd ordered. They've been arriving pretty regularly now. Anyway, after making sure it was okay with me, she opened up the box. It wasn't in the excited way you tear open a birthday or Christmas present, either. Just slow and easy and without any kind of expectation at all.

She was beside herself when she realized it was the fourth book in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. I'm sure I've given her birthday and Christmas presents that didn't elicit that kind of response. It was pure joy.

We had almost forgotten. Today was the release date for The Battle of the Labyrinth by homeschooling dad, Rick Riordan.

Today she was supposed to be working on ancient history, grammar, spelling and more math. She's already finished up with science and classical roots for the year. I've been pushing her pretty consistently this first year of homeschooling. So I thought, "What the heck. Let's call it a Percy Jackson Day!" I told her to scrap the rest of today's schedule and get reading. "Really?" YES, really.

Sometimes it feels good to throw caution to the wind and do something that just feels right. Today was one of those days.

Percy Jackson Word Problems.

Myth & Mystery - The official blog for author Rick Riordan

rickriordan.com

Check out the trailer and this snippet from The Battle of the Labyrinth, I Battled the Cheerleading Squad read by author Rick Riordan:

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Dr. Seuss, aka Theodore Geisel, whose timeless best-sellers used a controlled "scientific" vocabulary supplied by the publisher, demonstrated his own awareness of the mindlessness of all this in an interview he gave in 1981:

I did it for a textbook house and they sent me a word list. That was due to the Dewey revolt in the twenties, in which they threw out phonics reading and went to a word recognition as if you’re reading a Chinese pictograph instead of blending sounds or different letters. I think killing phonics was one of the greatest causes of illiteracy in the country.

Anyway they had it all worked out that a healthy child at the age of four can only learn so many words in a week. So there were two hundred and twenty-three words to use in this book. I read the list three times and I almost went out of my head.

I said, “I’ll read it once more and if I can find two words that rhyme, that’ll be the title of my book.” I found "cat" and "hat" and said, the title of my book will be The Cat in the Hat.

Arizona magazine, 1981

Total Lunar Eclipse

Wednesday's total lunar eclipse promises to be quite a display and Sky and Telescope has all the interesting details here. If you're on the East Coast, like we are, you'll want to adjust the viewing times to begin at 8:43 p.m. and end shortly after midnight.

The full Moon is going to get totally eclipsed on the night of February 20–21, putting on a gorgeous show as it glides through Earth's shadow. Skywatchers in nearly the entire Western Hemisphere will get an excellent view.

In the Americas, the eclipse happens during convenient evening hours on Wednesday, the 20th, when people are up and about. In the time zones of Europe
and West Africa, the eclipse happens during the early-morning hours of Thursday,
the 21st.

Earth’s shadow will totally engulf the Moon from 10:00 to 10:52 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, or 7:00 to 7:52 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. The partial phases of the eclipse last for about an hour and a quarter before and after totality.

Mark your calendar! If you miss this one, you'll have to wait until 2010 for the next lunar eclipse.

If I Ran the School

My Teacher Sees Right Through Me

I didn't do my homework.
My teacher asked me, "Why?"
I answered him, "It's much too hard."
He said, "You didn't try."

I told him, "My dog ate it."
He said, "You have no dog."
I said, "I went out running."
He said, "You never jog."

I told him, "I had chores to do."
He said, "You watched TV."
I said, "I saw the doctor."
He said, "You were with me."

My teacher sees right through my fibs,
which makes me very sad.
It's hard to fool the teacher
when the teacher is your dad.


by Bruce Lansky
If I Ran the School

Pourquoi l’Ecole?

In case you're thinking that North America has the monopoly on the education crisis, think again. Professor Ralph A. Raimi of the University of Rochester has, in a labor of love, translated an essay by the French mathematician, Laurent Lafforgue.

The following is excerpted from "Why the Public Schools?"

That parents should go so far as to remove their children from school, to teach them themselves, at home, or to form parallel classes for them in which they, themselves, are the teachers, to prefer a school to which they must pay the fee to the free public school, or to impose on their children and themselves the burden of a night school added to the day school they consider to be nothing but a holding pen, all this became and remains for me a theme of profound dismay. And I notice as well that these are surely the parents who enjoy a high level of education and – for those who can pay the fees of a private school – of income. And then I think of the other children, who do not have the benefits of having been born into families similarly favored.

[...]
Since we have said that it is necessary for us to make choices, let us look for some hints or directions that would help us to choose what must be taught. But look, we already have them in the definition we have just read – a definition much more helpful, to tell the truth, than what one may read every year and every month, as penned by those who govern our national Education system.

For years now, these last have placed at the top of their page that the school must no longer teach “knowledge”, as the dictionary has it, but “competencies” and “skills”. Just a few days ago, a member of the Academy of Sciences who specializes in education wrote to me that in school “one acquires abilities, such as thinking skills”. Well, yes, Mister Academician: in school one acquires, or rather ought to acquire, the ability to think. But, contrary to what you prescribe, only knowledge, not thinking, should appear in the curriculum. For thinking cannot be taught.

What can be taught are the words, the vocabulary, the verbs, the conjugations which render thinking possible and which give it form.

What can be taught are the rules of grammar, which provide a considered mastery of the language, that open the way to the rich language of books and to the precise, structured and abstract language of the sciences, which are the introduction to logic – that basic logic which is today so lacking among the majority of today’s university students.

What can be taught are the organized forms of reasoning such as: in mathematics, the careful writing out of the solution of prosaic problems in arithmetic, and later of proofs;

[...]
What teaches is still the culture, the knowledge of those great works which will become the material for thought.

What teaches is still and forever that well defined knowledge that is the means and the conditions of thought, but not thought itself.

Mister Academician, Ladies and Gentlemen who have brought our school to where it now is, have you ever asked yourselves if it is possible for a teacher to say to his students, “For tomorrow, you will learn how to think”? Thinking, like all other aptitudes, is only cultivated laterally, indirectly; one doesn’t teach in the hope of developing it except in looking at it from the side while speaking of other things infinitely more modest and infinitely more precise.

In the definition of the verb “to teach” given us by the dictionary, one must presume that the student “assimilates” the transmitted knowledge. The student must assimilate the knowledge as an organism assimilates food, and not at all the way a computer receives a program. What the verb “assimilate”, with its underlying metaphor of nourishment, is saying is that a student is not a machine but a living being.

This is an extremely important point, one too much forgotten by the technocrats of education imbued with a scientistic vision of man, something they reduce to a mechanism whose functioning is something that needs governing. It is this vision that has made possible the domination of the schools of education by the so-called “sciences of education”. It is also what leads to the incessant questioning of whether what is taught in school will be useful in later life.

-- Laurent Lafforgue, Why the Public Schools?

Protractor Passion

My kids usually get pretty excited when a package is dropped off at the door. Now that Christmas is over it's practically a mob scene because it's a rare happening.

Well today we received a package. Of course, they wanted to know what it was.

We opened it right up to find it filled with protractors of different types and sizes. You'd think it was filled with candy and video games they were so besides themselves with joy.

It warms my heart.

I'm raising three little nerdy kids who find great happiness in mathematical tools.

You gotta love it!

A young writer's work in progress

Just when I was wondering if my daughter's writing program was taking her somewhere, it all came together in Lesson 11, Writing a Complete Essay. When she got to Lesson 12, Evaluating Your Essay, I was feeling pretty good about choosing Grammar & Writing 6 by Curtis and Hake.

The sequence of the writing program to date is as follows:

1. The Sentence
2. The Paragraph, Part 1
3. The Paragraph, Part 2
4. The Paragraph, Part 3
5. The Essay: Three Main Parts
6. The Essay: Introductory Paragraph
7. The Essay: Body Paragraphs
8. The Essay: Concluding Paragraphs
9. The Essay: Transitions
10. Brainstorming for Ideas
11. Writing a Complete Essay
12. Evaluating Your Essay

In Lesson 10, she was provided with the thesis statement "I can do things to make the world a better place." After brainstorming for supporting ideas, she finally put it all together in Lesson 11.

The following is her essay after Lesson 12.

Even though I may be only nine years old, I can make a big difference in this world. There are small things I do that will make the world a better place.

One important thing I do is protect natural habitats. I do not feed wild animals because it disrupts the balance of nature. I pick up my trash and sometimes even clean up other people’s litter. I also try not to disrupt the order of natural habitats by using paths instead of trampling over plant life when I am outside.

When I am inside, there are certain things that I do to conserve natural resources. I turn off lights when I do not need them. I make sure I turn off the faucets when I am finished using them. One other thing I do is keep my showers brief so that I do not waste water.

Recycling is yet another important way to care for our environment because it saves trees, water, energy, and landfill space. I carefully sort out items that can be recycled and place them in a special bin. I try to find new uses for things instead of buying something new. Finally, I use recycled paper and biodegradable products whenever possible.

When all is said and done, taking care of our planet is a huge responsibility but I am able to do things that make the world a better place. I can protect natural habitats, conserve natural resources, and care for our environment by recycling. If I can make a big difference by making small changes, maybe you can too.

This is a huge milestone for my very reluctant writer. She is extremely bright and very verbal, but she doesn't consider herself a writer. This process gave her the "recipe" for writing an essay carefully walking her through each step in a way that makes sense. Hake has unraveled the mystery of writing a clear essay by providing an easy to follow "recipe".

I particularly liked the fact that even after Lesson 11 when the essay was quite good, in Lesson 12 she was asked to go back and evaluate her writing critically because writing is always a "work in progress." Mary Hake reminds the young writer "The knowledge that writing is a process should guide your thinking throughout the construction of an essay." She then goes on to prompt the writer with questions which help the self-evaluation process move along.

As a disclaimer, I have to say that I don't believe the writing component would work as well without the grammar, dictation and journaling exercises. There is a sequence to the lessons and we have been following the suggested schedule. She also consistently outlines and summarizes information in her world history lessons and this has fine-tuned her writing further. Book reports on classic literature are part of her studies as well. Nevertheless, I don't believe she would have been able to write such a logical, clear and well-thought out essay pre-Hake Grammar & Writing.

My next task as her teacher, is to finish reading Writing to the Point by Kerrigan. From what I understand so far of Kerrigan's approach to teaching writing, it seems to fit in very well to the Hake approach to teaching a much younger writer.

Who knew that learning to write could be so logical and presented so very clearly.

Grammar and Writing
Christie Curtis & Mary Hake