Originally published at Life at Chez Smiffy

©2010 Misti Anslin Delaney-Smith

misti (at) delaney-smith (dot) net

I started this essay a year and a half ago, not sure that anyone would ever read it, but wanting to get my thoughts down in coherent form.
Over the last year and a half, I have had regular hits on it, even though sections two and four fell into a bit bucket, making section three very hard to find.
Now that I know that some folks really are looking for this information, I thought I’d sit down and try to recreate the missing information and update the essay with my new insights, having been at this a while longer.

Writing a curriculum for a truly personalized homeschool education

Before you consider writing your own curriculum

Writing a curriculum, takes time. Lots of time. And a lot of effort, too.
If you have a two year old, you have lots of time to pull together a curriculum.
If you are a newly minted ‘unintentional homeschooler’ at mid-year, this is going to take more time than you can expect to have in the short term. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing -- unless you plan to re-enroll next school year. (In which case, grab a copy of the Core Knowledge curriculum. You’ll be fine.)
If you’re thinking this is for the long haul, writing your own curriculum may well be worth your while. It will take time to do the research, but the payoff can be great.
Meanwhile, you’ll want to spend some time "deschooling" researching your options, and learning more about how your child learns best before you start any serious planning. Focus on making trips to the library, museums, and into the community the basis of your child’s education for the time being and explore different education methods as you come across them. Your child won’t fall any further behind than you can catch up.
Once you have a plan in place, there will be plenty of time to catch up. Remember that even the high school valedictorian, even a Ph.D., doesn’t graduate knowing everything there is to learn. The important thing for now is to make learning interesting and learn how you learn best together. If your scholar learns to learn and learns to love learning, there is no "gap" he or she can’t close. If that love of learning doesn’t happen, it doesn’t matter what you teach because there will be little learning happening.
On average, families finish in two hours what it takes the schools to cover in six. There really will be plenty of time!
The first question you have to ask yourself is...
"Do I really have to create my own curriculum? Why?"
There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of curricula out there. Some are free and some for sale. Of those for sale, some are very inexpensive and some are very, very expensive indeed. Some curricula cover all the subjects required for an entire school year and some are subject by subject, so that you can adapt them for the pace your child actually needs. (A star reader who has real trouble with numbers may be in first grade for math and sixth for reading! A third grade package based on age just won’t work.) Some curricula even come with an advisory teacher as a part of the package and many of them contain all the books and materials you'll need.
If you think you may want to stick with a prepackaged curriculum after all, you will still find the first part of this essay helpful in selecting one, and you can use section 5 for some guidance in finding the right curriculum.
A lot of this information is useful in planning your homeschooling experience, whatever method or curriculum you choose, so feel free to read about the parts that apply to you and skip the parts that don’t.
Were you hoping that you'd be starting right out with writing your curriculum? I don't recommend that you jump to that right away. Instead, it’s a good idea to get some idea of where you and your scholar are and where you want to go.

Step 1: What’s it all about? The purpose of education

OK, so you’ve decided that you’re in this for the long haul, and you really want and need to make a serious curriculum decision.
Before you get started, you'll want to take some time to think about what the purpose of education is. If you have gotten as far as homeschooling, and you are considering writing your own curriculum, you probably have a good idea what your thoughts are on this -- or at least a sense about why ‘the usual way’ doesn’t work for you or your child -- but it's very helpful to put it into words.
(I was sure this was a necessary step, but when I tried to get some ideas from other homeschooling families about what they though the purpose of education is, they looked at me funny and didn't really understand the question. Obviously, you can do a great job at homeschooling with no idea what education means to you. Still, I think it will be easier to write a curriculum if you know what your goal is. )
Rod feels that the purpose of education is to:

- lay before the child a banquet of information that represents a full measure of his or her culture’s endeavor from the beginning of time to the present day, and to show the child how to feast on that banquet.

- equip the child, in as many ways as possible, for the many roles he or she will play in the greater world.

- equip the child with the requisite social understanding, so that he or she can engage intelligently in the greater conversations of our times, among the educated and uneducated alike.

- equip the child with the tools of curiosity and reason, so that he or she will be able to learn any subject of interest.

- immerse the child in the spirit of endeavor and adventure that allows him or her to first understand those things that have preceded his or her life’s work, and then to improve on those things.

In my view, education's purpose is
to absorb enough knowledge of one's culture to be able to take a seat at the table and join in the Great Cultural Conversation. I don't mean that in the sense of being able to hold your own at a cocktail party (TV and the latest issue of Newsweek is probably sufficient for that, these days) but the ability to think clearly, using the insights of the great thinkers who have come before to help to shape our own thoughts so that we can develop our opinions based on reason and stand on the shoulders of giants, rather than reinventing the intellectual wheel at every turn -- or worse, being easily sidetracked by very common logical fallacies. It is also to help us to understand the place and the responsibilities of humans in the world.
Some of our family's homeschooling friends may share some of our views, but many of them have far different views and no two families approach home education in quite the same way.
I think you have to decide the reason behind your educational endeavor before you can choose the most appropriate style of curriculum. Keep in mind that if you don't feel that what you're doing has purpose, then it will seem pointless. If you feel it's pointless, so will your child.

Step 2: Establishing your child’s learning style

If you really want your child to connect with the topics you think are a part of a good education, then you need to represent the topics in the way the child can best appreciate them. That means having an idea how your child learns – often called the "learning style" or "learning assets" in home education circles.
My Jack is a reader. He will sit for hours reading a book or listening to stories, but he has never been much of one to explore with paints, crayons, or drawing. A literature based curriculum works well for him, but when I have experimented with art based methods, he gets frustrated very quickly. As he gets older he gets more flexible, and now we can add a colouring sheet while he listens to a story, but I doubt that will ever be his favorite method. I tried using project based ideas a few times, too, and while he was tolerant for a little while, it was pretty clear that he just didn’t get why I would want to make a costume and eat a meal or create a piece of jewelry based in the period we were studying. For him, if it’s in a book, it makes sense. He needs words to really be able to grasp an idea. His secondary preference would be to learn through games. Jack will do almost anything if it’s a game! He loves chess and battleship, he adore Great Composers, He learned numbers using dominoes and playing cards. He learned to read using Starfall.com, and he loves his art matching game. Given how much he loves games, we plan to approach spelling and vocabulary using Scrabble.
Your child, too, has a very specific approach to learning. It may be broader than Jack’s. It may be narrower. It is almost certainly different.
Take the time to observe how your scholar approaches a subject he or she really wants to know about. Does he ask to go to the library or the book store? Does she prefer to ask an expert to tell her how it works? Does he want to pull it apart and put or back together? Or maybe draw endless pictures of the subject in question or want to go and see it in a museum or the community? Those are clues.
If your child has spent time in a group classroom, you may find that experience has coloured (for better or worse) what it means to him or her to "learn". If you suspect that this may be the case, you might simply observe her learning for a while, and then experiment with a learning style you haven’t seen a clear indication of and see which styles actually speak to her. Over time, you and your child will come to understand what works best for you as a team.
Keep in mind, too, that as your child develops, his or her preferred method for learning may change and he or she will be more able to learn how to learn in new ways. Someone who can be comfortable learning in a number of ways will find it easier to absorb material, so start with what works best, but consider helping your child branch out into other learning styles once you have a track record of success together.

Step 3: Figuring out where to start - assessments

If you’re starting homeschooling at the very beginning, this is going to be easier. You simply start at the beginning, with the alphabet and phonics and counting and recognizing numbers.
If you are going to homeschooling after a group school experience, you will want to know where to start – especially with reading and math. Don’t count of the grade level completed having any bearing on where your child is. Math and reading especially build on what has come before, and if your child is missing some basics, it will cause trouble down the road. If your child is ahead of the curve, there is absolutely no point in boring them by spending a lot of time with material they already know.
For reading, there are several approaches. If you have a reader, you can check the levels of their favorite books on a leveled book list.
Alternatively, you could use the leveled book list and the library for a fun little experiment. Get a couple of appealing books from each level and increment. Stack them in order of difficulty, and then have your child read to you until he or she makes three or more mistakes in one book. (If you’ve been at it for a while, come back to that book and make sure it wasn’t wandering attention.) The point at which your child falters is where you start with reading.
The curriculum company Singapore Math provides math level assessment tests to help parents decide what level to start their children on. They are geared to the math taught in their system, so they might be a good place to start, but they may not help you catch everything your child might be behind on if you plan to use another method.
Alternatively, you could use math printables (one sheet for every level) or assessments – and do a little a day until you find the place where it stops being easy. (Again, three or more mistakes suggests that this is the level at which your child should be working.)
Other subjects can be assessed in the same way, if you feel it’s necessary, but most other topics don’t build on each other in quite the same way as math and reading so it’s easier to jump in anywhere interesting and go from there.
Now, here’s is perhaps the most important thing to remember. Try not to attach judgement to what your assessments turn up – those numbers are a guide about where to begin, they are not a sentence for life nor do they define your child. You are a homeschooler now. Now there is no "ahead" or "behind" here. There is only "where we are" and "where we are going". Wherever you start, once you know where your child is and you know how he or she learns best, you will make steady progress.
If you find that your child is progressing well on a subject, you may well want to ‘give them their head’ to explore that subject on their own and put more emphasis on other more challenging subjects as a team. If you find that your child is missing some of what might be expected, start where they are and experiment with ways to make the information easier to absorb. Progress is far less important than understanding. Once understanding is achieved, progress will take care of itself.

Step 4: A method to the madness – selecting a method (or three)

OK, now that you have an idea what education means to you, how your child learns best, and where you need to start on the big stuff, it’s time to have a closer look at what methods appeal most to you and are most likely to meet your scholar’s needs. You might find a page like this helpful.
It's a good idea to get some background in education theory, even if you think you know what you want to do because it’s working so well for your best friend’s child. You don't have to devote years to it, but having this background will help you to adapt more quickly as you learn more about your child's learning style.
Read at least three or four books by different experts, because each expert is talking about one kind of learning style, but they're all quite sure that theirs is the only answer for all children.
If you only research one method, you will probably choose the one that would have worked best for you. The odds are pretty good that it will also work for your child...but what if it doesn't?
If you have several different ideas about learning in your arsenal, you will be able to move more quickly in finding a new way to approach materials if what you're doing isn't working.
Also, if you have many tools in your kit, and boredom strikes, you can switch up the presentation for a while to make everything fresh again.

Some books I recommend:
· Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling by John Holt
· The Absorbent Mind or The Montessori Method by Maria Montessori
· A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver Van DeMille
· Charlotte Mason's Home Education (Free online)
· Cultural Literacy by E. D. Hirsch Jr.
· What Is Waldorf Education?: Three Lectures by Rudolf Steiner
· The Well-Trained Mind: by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise
· Better Late Than Early by Raymond S. Moore and Dorothy N. Moore
· The Marva Collins Way by Marva Collins
Pick three or four to read -- ideally one or two by the originator of the methods you're considering, and one or two by someone with very different ideas. Keep in mind that although some of the ideas are going to resonate with you far more than others, these books are largely based on experience, and there will be elements of truth that you can use in all of them. You'll be amazed at what keys you may find amongst the dross of a "completely unsuitable" method!
Because homeschooling is so much more a lifestyle than simply a choice for educating children, I think that it makes sense for everyone to read a book or two about unschooling and delight-led education. Unschooling isn't our first choice of education methods, but it has none-the-less deeply influenced the way we think about putting together our days, because it is very much geared to observing the way children actually work and learn.
Given our family’s views of the purpose of education, a Classical Education based on literature seems like a good fit for us. We're combining a classical literary approach with a lot of delight-led concepts in our own home school, since nurturing Jack's curiosity is equally important to both of us.
Now, think about your child or children. Regardless of what *you* think about education, the reality is that your child is the one being educated and no one can teach anything to an unwilling scholar. There is no goal that is unsuitable to a specific type of child, but some will be easier than others and in many cases, the character of the child in question will be the primary influence in the methods you choose to reach your goal.
If you have child who can sit and listen to stories for hours, a literature based method (Charlotte Mason, Trivium/Well trained Mind, Robinson, Thomas Jefferson, and Marva Collins) may work well for you. If, on the other hand, your scholar is always on the move - building something, disassembling something, or creating something, you may want to consider something far more kinetic. (Like Waldorf, Montessori, unit studies, or a project based curricula). If your scholar is pleased with rules and lists and steps, a traditional "school at home" education might be just the ticket.

Step 5: Getting a look at how a curriculum is organized

OK, you've been reading and plotting and planning. You have, piles of notes about things you'd like to accomplish, and you have ideas for how you'd like to cover them. You have theories about how (your) children learn best and what methods will work best in your family.
Are you overwhelmed yet?
I think that this is where a lot of people get lost and give up and just buy something. But really, you’re almost there. You have most of the information you’ll need to create a thorough education for your scholar.
Let’s go on, shall we?
The next step is to get an idea how other curricula are laid out. To do that, we are going to visit three web sites. (I would suggest that even if you decide to go with unschooling, this would be a valuable exercise. Children can only be interested in what they encounter, and part of your job as an unschooling parent will be to make sure that your child encounters lots and lots of interesting ideas. You might find it helpful to have some ideas of what more traditional curricula look like as a prompt to include exposure to ideas that might not have occurred to you.)
First open your state’s department of education website in your web browser. (Generally you can find it by searching on department of education) This is my state's page. Some states have clearer curricula than others, but it never hurts to know what the neighbor kids are learning.
Now, go to the page with the content for the grade you're planning for.
Read over the material for your child's age group. If you see something that would be interesting to cover at home, feel free to add it to a card in your stack, but the point here is to get a look at how your local schools arrange their expectations.
This is what my state expects to be covered. It's explained in greater detail in the attending materials, and it's full of legalese, but this gives you a look at what little kids in Michigan are expected to know about science.
Now take a look at what you have decided you want to cover. Think about whether you can group any of it similarly to this. Or can you split some of your topics into subtopics in this way?
OK, the public schools were one source of food for thought. Once you’ve had a look at what your state is doing, we’ll have a look at a very different style of curriculum.
Next open the Core Knowledge Foundation Curriculum Sequence in a new tab. Open the page for your child's age.
Again, if you see something you'd like to add to your own ideas, feel free to - but mainly, look at how information builds on itself over time with this approach. Can you see possibilities in this nice clear example of a curriculum? Go ahead and organize your cards a little more. As you organize them, you may find that there are "bridge" topics you'd like to add.
As you can see, there is no one way of approaching writing a curriculum, and no two sources agree about exactly what children should know when.
Something to keep in mind as your ideas grow: with one or two (or six) children at home, not every topic is going to require hours of study. In the classroom, the topic has to be covered and covered and covered again until most of the children have gotten it. Once yours have it, you can move on. You may need days of discussion...or you may need only 15 minutes and you’re done.
That means you can plan to cover more in a period of time in homeschool than would be required at school -- or that you will have lots more time for free exploring. Either is a good thing!
OK, one last look at another idea.
Open the World Book Typical Course of Study in a new browser tab. This is quite a different take on what your child can be learning. It looks more like your list at the beginning, I'll bet. It sure looks like what I started with at the beginning of all this four years ago. Again, if you see anything you want to add, feel free to do so.
But mainly, observe that there is no one right way for your curriculum to look. Note, too, how different the goals for each of these professionally designed curriculum are.
Feel better? Your curriculum is going to be just fine.

Step 6: Examining existing curricula

Most of the available curricula are based on one method or another. Before you start writing your own, it’s a worthwhile exercise to make yourself aware of what's out there. Having a look at a web page like this might help.
Another advantage to checking out what has been done before is that writing your own personalized curriculum is an ongoing adventure. Seeing how other educators have handled things means that when something doesn’t work for you the way you originally envisioned it, you’ll have a lot of fresh ideas to try.
Make sure to check out at least two or three curricula that are based on each of the methods you are thinking of incorporating in your curriculum. As you look them over, try to articulate what else you would add or what you would do differently. When you come across a good idea, write it down on an index card. When you come upon a resource list, bookmark it, and add a note to an index card. You’ll be borrowing heavily once you get to the writing the curriculum down part of this exercise.

Some curricula you might explore:
Ambleside online Charlotte Mason Style (religious)
Well Trained Mind History-based classical style (most libraries have or can get the book, I think) (religious)
Oak Meadow – Waldorf style (religious)
Great Books – literature based
Core Knowledge – standards based
World Book - standards based
Tanglewood School – combination of classical and Charlotte Mason

A note on religious based curricula

If, like us, you are not Christian, you may initially be put off by the vast number of very highly religious resources out there.
I’d suggest that you take a closer look at them. If you’re buying a pre-packaged curriculum, you may end up buying books that you won’t use, of course. If you’re writing your own or if you are responsible for getting the books on your own, on the other hand, you might want to look into how easy or difficult it would be to substitute more suitable books for the ones that are recommended. There are a lot of high quality ideas out there, and until more recently, the folks doing most of the work were Christian, so their priorities are what we will find most of. We are, as I have said, using a Charlotte Mason based style – and yet we have never come across a secular (much less pagan) Charlotte Mason curriculum. We borrow ideas freely where we find them, leaving off the books that don’t suit us and adding others that approach subjects from a more suitable angle.

Step 7: Creating the curriculum map

Ok, now you've got a preliminary idea what your curriculum is trying to accomplish and an idea or two of the methods you like and think will work for your scholar. You've looked at what's out there, and none of it quite works for you, though you probably find that parts of what you see out there are close, but not quite right. In reading books about your favored methods, you've probably started to develop an idea of how one would go about using that method to explore the various academic areas.
You're still sure you want to write your own? Nothing out there (that you can afford) is quite right?
OK, then the next step is to decide *what* you need to or want to cover in your curriculum.
I have to be up front with you -- my method won't help you to figure out how long it will take to cover the material, so you won't have "Year One" finished at then end of this ... but you will have a complete place to start and a good idea of where to go next. One reason I can't help you to time this, is that I believe in mastery. I think you should stay on a topic as long as it takes your scholar to "get it". But I think you shouldn't stay much longer than that unless, having got it, your scholar is still fascinated, in which case, it's time to move deeper than you may have originally intended. Keeping that in mind, you’ll want to make notes of ideas and sequences, without worrying too much about how long it will take. Just plan to find books only as you need them so that you don’t have a stack of book much too advanced for the development of your child when it goes much faster than you expected – or a stack of books better suited to last year’s development!
Simply Charlotte Mason has an excellent planning guide that will work for designing just about any style of curriculum. Look over their guide and get to know how it works, then make your own study guide. Make a list of the subjects that your family wants to cover -- you probably have some that the SCM list doesn't and you may not find everything on their list suitable. That's OK, it's the exercise and not the details that matters most.
I have done that for our family here. Add and delete from your source list until the list seems just right.
Now you have a list for your overall plan. Make a copy and narrow it down to what you feel you can successfully cover right now. Remember, you don't have to cover everything all the time. This will be the plan for the very first lesson plan. Depending on your style, that may cover a week, a month, or a year.
Once you have that first lesson plan, it’s time to figure out exactly what you want to cover and in what order. For example, you want to be sure to cover math. First you will work on verbal counting, then on recognizing numerals, next on identifying "how many". Once you have that, you might move on to simple addition, then to addition of two digit number, then to simple subtraction. For literature, you might decide to spend the first year focusing on Great Animals in Literature and read Potter, Bond, Milne, Graham, Sewell, Lasky, Jacques, and Hunter. Next year, you might focus on children in literature, and then on great adventure stories.
Rather than trying to figure it out all at once, write your ideas for subtopics you want to be sure to cover in index cards. Then it’s easy to add another idea and reorder them until you’re happy with what you have. Then it’s easy to transfer your list in order on a single lesson plan sheet.

Step 8: Putting it all together

OK, You now have a lot of ideas, you have lists and stacks and grids and cards but they may be starting to get hard to keep straight. Time to start organizing them to help clarify your thoughts.
Start by getting an index card box to hold your cards and several packages of coloured cards. (If you’re good with computers, this can be done electronically, too – but you’ll want to have a portable way of carrying notes.)
Assign each subject to a colour. Write down each general topic you want to cover on a separate card of the assigned colour. Math on blue, and science on green, for instance. Then make another card in the master colour for each subtopic. Counting to 20 on blue, and how plants grow from seeds on green, perhaps. As you do this, note on the back each card any ideas you have for how to cover the topics. (The name of a book, field trip idea, experiment, etc,)
When you have all the ideas written down, organize the subtopics into a logical flow. Use a paperclip to keep major topics and subtopics together and in order and store them in your card box.
Now when you come across a new idea, you’ll have a place to write it down where you can still find it when the time comes to use it. Because the ideas are all on cards, it’s easy to introduce a new subject between two others or move an idea forward or back.

On getting too attached

Until you’ve been at it a while, you won’t know how much *your* family can cover in a period of time, so you’ll have to be adaptable, either in how long to work on a subject or in how much you want to cover before you move on. Be careful not to beat a dead horse - remember that the weeks a school class devotes to a topic is intended to reach the 'least able' child and the daydreamer.
Because you are able to cover topics in the way that works best for your child and then stop, your child will catch on to many things much more quickly than he or she would have in school. He or she will be learning in an engaged manner and not bored to death, so daydreaming and trying to understand something taught in a mysterious manner won't be a problem. Plan for lots – but don’t be too attached to the details.
You’ll find that some ideas will be a bust. Drop them and approach the subject from a different angle later.
Some ideas will catch fire and your scholar will want to stay with it and learn for more than you had planned. When that happens, drop everything and dedicate your time to the topic that really grabs your child’s attention. This is, after all, the whole point to a personalized education!
Step 10: Selecting a Spine
Now you have a neatly organized stack of cards that cover your ideal course of instruction and a sheet of your first thoughts on what you want to cover. Pull out that list of the topics you want to cover and your stack of idea index cards. There's a lot there, isn't there? Compare the order of index bundles to the planning sheet. How do you decide what order to cover things? How do you make sure that you're making steady progress on everything you mean to cover?
One thing that many people find to help, is to find a "spine" for their curriculum. That is, figure out what will be your main focus, and then you can arrange the rest of the subjects around that in a way that draws relationships between subjects.
For me, the obvious spine was history -- we could start at the beginning of time, and study history in order, adding the art, music, and science, even the math, based on the knowledge of the time. That even meant that the other subjects (and the detail of what we know about the history) would get more complex as Jack grows. Rod finds that math and music are his obvious twin spines, and another homeschooling Mamma I know uses art as her spine. Anything can work, if it makes sense to you!
Trying putting the cards side by side, in an order that draws on relationships between topics. Once you’ve hit on something that works, print another copy of your curriculum grid, and copy the topics onto that in the order you’ve settled on for the first unit of work.
Even if you plan to use unit studies or unschooling, this can be a valuable exercise, since it's important that your child be exposed to many, many subjects and have a banquet of knowledge laid out before them from which to choose.

Step 9: Finding materials

And finally, we come to what you probably came here for in the first place. You have looked at the basics of home education, you have an idea what styles of education might work best for your family and you know what you want to cover, for now, anyway. Now, we'll need to get a good feel for how to find ideas for materials. The materials you'll need will be heavily based on the homeschooling style you’ve chosen; you’ll have some ideas on the back of your index cards.

I'm not an expert on any method of homeschool, and I don't have a clue about how some of the most popular methods work, so I will choose two or three methods to show how finding and choosing materials might work, and you can work from here to figure out how to do it your way.

My first suggestion is to visit the library with your list and see what books, videos, and other resources you may be able to find there. Next use a search engine to create searches for resources. A search on Amazon can give you a list of books and sometimes videos on a topic with reviews, so that you can search out specific books on your topic of choice.

Since we’re using a literary approach, I find free materials all over the web, at Project Gutenberg, for instance, and The Baldwin Project. I also use book lists from ForRealLearning, Ambleside, Tanglewood, and Mater Amablis.

If I were following the World Book Typical Course of Study for the second grade, and I want to find ways to teach Holidays and festivals, I can do a search on "Holidays and festivals homeschool" which brings me to this, this, and this. A book search on Amazon gives us these ideas

If I am following Core Knowledge for the fifth grade and I want to find ways to teach "Classifying Living Things", I can do a search on "Classifying Living Things homeschool science" and find this, this, this, and this. A book search on Amazon gives us these ideas.

One really, really major suggestion: find other parents who are using the methods you prefer and share ideas! Check Yahoo and Google groups as well as forums associated with your favorite methods and styles of education.

Some of my favorite resources are: The Secular Homeschool Forum, the Secular Homeschoolers Yahoo group, the Secular Charlotte Mason Forum, and the Secular Charlotte Mason Yahoo Group.

Originally published at Life at Chez Smiffy

©2010 Misti Anslin Delaney-Smith

Another rambling update

Now, where were we?

Ahh, yes. Rumours around the office about unpaid time off on the horizon turned out to be true. Yesterday was my first day of furlough, and I will have one extra day off per week until just after mid-summer. Word is, as well, that unless some miracle appears, there will have to be another round of layoffs as well.

My first furloughed day went pretty well. Rod and Mark went out and got the materials to make an extended garden table for my potted garden, and the materials to put in a very large rabbit proof garden.

While they were gone, Jack and I hiked the mile over to the farm market to pick up some more seeds (and, of course, some grapes!).

The live plants we had gotten over the last several weeks were started in vermiculite and they looked pretty unhappy, so we sat in chairs around the driveway while Jack and I made our plant food supplement and re potted the live plants in larger pots with some real soil, while Rod leant moral support. That's 12 cabbages, four corn, four acorn squash, and four cauliflower all looking much more enthusiastic.

After work, I plan to start the seed we can start in pots. Of course, we also have potatoes, beets, turnips, and a handful of other root crops that Rod has recommended against trying to transplant. He says that root plants are best not moved, so we'll put them directly in the ground and hope for a late autumn this year. ;) Next task is to figure out how to grow peas, beans, squash. and tomatoes in the relatively small patch we're fencing. They sprawl, and while the plot looks immense now, I have a hunch that it's going to be cramped come September. Up seems like a good plan...but the times we've tried to train vines up before, they've managed to pull the support right over. Back to that drawing board.

Jack is still in his own room, and has been making relatively few visits to our bed, so I think that six is the 'magic time'. I have started moving the "prince bed" (the old crib mattress) further into the bedroom, and hope to get him into the big boy bed at some point. Of course, until he's more used to sleeping on a small bed, closer to the floor is probably good. I still find him on the floor several feet from his bed in the morning as often as not.

I had high hopes for working with Jack on homeschooling yesterday -- and we did, in some sense. Our walk to the farm market was fun, and full of botany, zoology, and physics observations. He was just not interested in settling down with the books though, until after supper when I was whipped and ready for bed. But then again, he wanted to explore everything except hat we are scheduled to cover.

One problem seems to be is that Jack is convinced he "isn't learning anything from the books". That struck me as mighty odd until Rod and I started talking about it. Jack's best friend, Connor, is unschooled. He is also a child who is focused completely on facts and has no use at all for stories (to his mother's dismay). Connor is also an extremely verbal child who has narrated instinctively as long as we've known him. (Since he was three, at least.) Connor is a very confident fellow and he's nearly a year older than Jack, so we suspect that Jack is comparing himself to Connor and coming up short in his own eyes. Jack loves stories, and he learns a lot from them. He isn't a "narrator" in the sense that Connor is. Jack shares lots of facts with us and uses plenty of new information is his imaginative play, but he can't open his mouth and disgorge everything he knows on a subject.

We think that perhaps working with Jack on narration will help his sense of "knowing". At least one of my Charlotte Mason books lists six as the age at which one starts teaching narration, but regardless of the recommended age, it seems like it would be a skill Jack would find useful. It's not something that I ever learned to do, though, so I think we'll have to work on it as a family. I'll check with Rod and see if he was taught to narrate and if not, then perhaps we can all learn together. Perhaps starting very small and taking turns as we read together until Jack has the idea.

Of course, I have also suggested that perhaps we could go back over his books and he could dictate to me what he thinks it's important to remember from them, so that he has a lapbook about what he has learned. Rod thought it was a great idea, but Jack is less impressed.

My first instinct is to be frustrated with my opinionated son...but of course, he came by that trait honestly. And over time, we have managed to solve these challenges together pretty quickly and easily once they've been identified. It'll be interesting to see how this works. One thing I know, though. You can't force knowledge into an unwilling mind. If we don't find ways that work for all of us, we might as well sit Jack in a classroom to daydream as keep him home.

OK, off I go. If I don't hit the shower, I'll be late for work again. Thanks for your patience is checking back when I've been so bad about making time to blog lately. (And still no photos!)

Thanks to Teacher of One of Bys + Academy for this cool quote seelctor!

Update

I've been a slug.

I keep thinking of things to post -- but somehow, I never get the chance to sit down at the keyboard long enough. Something about the sound of tapping on keys brings a small boy barreling from wherever he is in the house to sit on my lap. I have a half-dozen half-written blog posts to show for my efforts. All about things like Miss Mouse and her move to the country and flooded basements full of sewage, and the brilliance of lilacs in May. But that kind of post is much harder to get back to than the diatribe I posted last night. My thoughts on Disney have developed over decades. Miss Mouse was of passing interest and the backed up sewer lines aren't something I really want to dwell on.

Word around the office -- rumour so far -- is that I may have extra time to try to blog over the summer, courtesy of Chrysler. We aren't sure what form the furlough will take --two equally likely scenarios seem to be circulating - one has us off for a couple of weeks, the other has us working short weeks. Money will be tight in either case -- but I have to say, more time at home is nonetheless sounding good to me. The garden will help defray some of the food bills and we won't have winter heating and lighting bills...so as long as its not too extreme we should be OK.

Jack turned six yesterday, and for the last two nights, he has moved his "Prince Bed" from our room into his own. Wow...that was abrupt. So much for the theory that once you start the family bed, you'll never get the kid out. This was Jack's idea. The ned was too crowded, so he moved from the family bed to the "Prince Bed" on the floor. Then, once he was on the floor anyway, it took a week for im to move it to his own room. I can't say how long that will continue, but Rod and I both feel the empty spot between us. We gaze with mixed feelings in Jack's direction, then grin and cuddle up together like we did in the old days.

Homeschooling is going pretty well. Jack and I are reading Seth of the Lion People as a part of his Neolithic unit -- excellent story! I wish I could find one more novel, but Sheldra of Neolithic Orkney, a picture book, was pretty good and was the only other book I could find that was suitable. It gets easier after this unit, though. Especially once we hit Egypt, the problem won't be in *finding* a book but in narrowing it down. Other than stories, jack and Rod seem to be focussed on arithmatic right now -- Jack has been on a push to learn his addition and subtraction tables because he wants to learn to multuiply and Rod refuses to teach him until he has the basic addition and subtraction tables down (so that he can grok multiplication).

Publish Post

Oops -- it's getting late. I fit this in by writing *before* I had my morning chores done and now I'll have to hurry. I still have mothers day cards to finish!

So, what do you have against Disney?"

"What do you have against Disney?"

A couple of years ago, we published a blog post about how we are exposing Jack to 'popular culture' by going back to the original sources Disney used in creating his most popular movies. We read the books -- some of which are great literature, and some of which aren't, then we get the most "true to the book" movie (not the Disney version) we can find, and we watch that.

Why go to all the trouble? Why not watch the Disney films, like his friends are doing? The short answer is "Because we don't want Jack's world 'Disney-fied'".

That attitude seems to confuse people sometimes -- after all, Disney is all about what's right with America, right? It's hot dogs and apple pie and white picket fences. It's diversity, and family values, and tradition. Isn't it?

Well, it certainly is sold that way, I grant you that. But I think there is both a lot more, and a lot less, than that going on with the Disney thing.

My objections are manifold, and it's hard to prioritize them. The short answer to what we have against Disney is "nothing". Disney is a corporation, like any other. It is well within it rights to make money hand-over-fist from anyone who wants to contribute to the corporate coffers, within the laws of the countries within which it operates. Just like Wal-Mart. We are also within our rights to decide which corporations we want to support.

We don't support Walmart either.

Why not? Well, let's stick with Disney.

My first and largest objection is that Disney butchers and eviscerates some of the finest children's literature in the English language. You probably know Disney's Winnie the Pooh. Have you read Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh? You no doubt love Disney's Peter Pan; are you familiar with Barrie's? All the little girls love Disney's Little Mermaid -- but perhaps the message of Andersen's would be healthier for them. And, believe it or not, before Disney got their hands on him, Bambi was well beloved from A Life in the Woods.

When I was a child a half century ago, many people had read the original stories and almost everyone knew they existed, so the Disney movies were "a cute new take" on a familiar story. Increasingly, though, I find that people aren't even aware that there was an original of most of the Disney stories or that the Disney version isn't the same story at all.

On an individual basis, it is a matter of personal preference whether you like the Disney version or the original better, but as a culture I think we lose a lot when we dismiss the depth and breadth of our cultures stories and replace them with the sanitized, ultra-simplified versions in which the details are changed to make the story less challenging. (But ...can it truly be "personal preference" if you weren't aware that there was another choice?)

Somewhere in Disney's history, it went from FINDING literature that fit its magical formula, to FORCING all literature to fit into its now very successful formula. The result is that the great narratives and stories of our lives are stripped of everything that does not fit the Disney formula, and the remaining characters are altered to fit. That is so sad, and so limiting.

But Disney doesn't just gobble up literary characters for its movies. It also pushes out a thousand products to sell those characters. Disney is, by no means the only culprit but certainly they are masters at it.

That leads to my second objection, Disney does nothing without merchandising it. The dangers of the commodification of our kids is a big enough topic for the dozens of books that have already been written, so I won't try to cover all of it here, but calling a fondness for the Disney version over the original character from literature a "personal preference" is pretty disingenuous when Disney buys the copyright to the name of literary character after literary character and makes their own version ubiquitous, while the original becomes legally pretty much unavailable, usurping our choice.

Love Winnie-the-Pooh? Want to use the images in your child's nursery? Good luck finding E. H. Shepard's illustrations brought to life. The only thing available is Disney's version -- and that's the only version that will be available, because Disney's legal ownership of the copyright on the name ensures it. What's more, when a child is old enough to read Milne's classic, and sees the E. H. Shepard's illustrations, he or she is likely to react to the illustrations as "wrong". After all, Pooh bear looks like Disney -- they know that because they've seen it a million times, in Disney's book, on TV, on sheets, on pre-school walls, on t-shirts, and on sippy cups!

The Disney Princesses are not just cute movie characters, they have become an obsession -- little girls can (and do!) build their entire worlds (and sadly, their self images) around these characters, from the movies to the merchandising books, the dolls, the dress-up clothes, the backpacks, the wall paper, the table place settings, the stationery, the birthday cards ... ad nauseum. (And lest we forget the little boys, have you tried to buy a gift for a little boy that *didn't* have a licensed character plastered all over it? Not an easy task in most stores.) Once your home, yard, and car are completely given over to Disney, your vacations can now we spent even more deeply immersed -- whether you want a stay at an amusement park or take a cruise on a Disney themed ship, or simply stay home and cruise Disney.com or Club Penguin.

Humans are inclined to identify ourselves with something larger than ourselves. First it was the tribe or family, then it was nation or religion. More recently, we have convinced ourselves to identify ourselves with the the brands we prefer, including Disney. If you truly want your identity to be "in support" of a corporation that exists to get more money from you, that is certainly your choice. I want a different identity for myself and I hope for Jack to find his identity elsewhere, too.

And, then there is the fact that we simply don't like the world that Disney has created.

In Disney's world, there is a clear line between the good guys and the bad guys. Always. There are rarely any grey areas or mitigating circumstances. Good guys always do good and bad guys do bad things because they are bad guys. Good guys may be tempted by bad decisions, but they rarely succumb to them. In Disney's world, there is an evil that opposes and threatens to devour every good, and the triumph of that good over the dark and ominous evil is Disney's signature story line.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that story line, beyond its very shallow and binary nature. As one narrative among many, it pretty harmless and there is a place for every taste. If Disney had stopped at one, I would not be writing this piece, but it doesn't. Disney makes EVERY storyline fit that one exclusive binary narrative and there is so much wrong with that way of thinking as an approach to life! This is the world-view has given us a world in which we have red states and blue states and politics has become a zero sum game. We are no longer able to see each other as patriots with a different point of view. We can't work together to find better solutions that make our country more comfortable for all of us, because anyone who doesn't believe exactly what we do must be a "bad guy".

(A particularly insightful three year old (as reported by his mother on a homeschooling list discuss) explained his terror at watching a Disney film this way:

"The bad guys are SO bad, and so so so SMART, and the good guys only have luck, because they're stupid... how could the good guys win?" and another time "I must be a bad guy, because the good guys always do the right thing, even when they do the wrong thing it ends up being the right thing, and i DON'T WANT TO BE EVIL AND BAD. I don't want to have to be killed or locked away forever by someone who hates me!! i don't want to be hated for just being me."

I had missed that part, but he's right. In Disney's Universe, smart is a bad thing. Yuck.

It has given us a world in which you are on the inside or on the outside. Where there is one right way to be. Women must be beautiful and sweet -- and that always means thin, athletic, and talented. Women and girls who are not "up to the standard -- ugly or fat or opinionated, for instance -- are ‘bad guys’. Men must be muscular, handsome, and brave. Men who are otherwise must be villains or they are patsies who enable the bad guys to do evil. Occasionally men and boys who look "ordinary" will turn out to be secretly brave and much stronger than they knew -- and my gosh, look how handsome they are when the truth is revealed!

Again, if it stopped at one, it wouldn't matter, but it is EVERY Disney piece that espouses the same virtues and the same evils. It is virtuous to be attractive, well-built and beautiful. Frumpy, dowdy, and ugly are evil. The dowdy hero who "makes good" suddenly morphs, thanks to the magic of the screen, into something more acceptable... which leads us to social acceptability, the ultimate Disney virtue.

Good, bad, ugly, or beautiful, if people don't like you, you're in trouble in Disney's World... and the tension, fear, evil, and nastiness builds to breaking point until the hero finds some way, some virtue, some miracle, by which he or she can find the most highly prized virtue of all, ACCEPABILITY!! Once you are acceptable, all other flaws of character and persona are entirely forgiven. Redemption by popular opinion.

The saddest reflection of all, something which I constantly encounter, is that people tend to feel immediately inferior when someone casts a disapproving glance at them... one has to wonder if Disney is reflecting reality, or if, by market saturation, Disney is creating reality for a larger number of people with each subsequent generation.

Then, there is the use of fear and emotion as a cudgel, to build up the tension to an almost unbearable degree, only to offer an easy resolution in the form of one or another of Disney's pet resolutions -- acceptance, conformity, or the like. It serves to entrench a bunch of stereotypes that severely limit the perceptions of its most innocent and impressionable viewers.

Is there something innately bad about such a limited world? Must every film be 'politically correct"? No, of course not. There is a place for every taste. Those messages are incidental, anyway. The only message intentionally and consistently sold through Disney marketing is that kids and families *need* Disney for a happy childhood and family life.

The embedded and incidental messages are based on assumptions in our culture that I find offensive and they won't change until our culture changes. However the Disney machine also reinforce those ugly and limiting assumptions and they are becoming the overwhelming majority of the messages fed to our children through movies and marketing as entertainment companies rush to imitate the acknowledged leader in kids entertainment.

Disney, for its part, has found a formula that works. Lots of people like the formula, and lots of people can relate to it, which means that they have greater success in marketing their productions. This is great news for Disney, because it increases their market share and their sales. Do I, as some people assume, think that Disney is "doing something wrong"? Do I think they should be stopped? Oh no. They are a business, doing what businesses do best - making money. That they contain a lot of really yucky (to me) messages is just one factor among many. Disney is fine. They have every right to be the empire they are and to entertain the people who love them. Just as I have every right to decide I don't plan to drink that particular kool-aid.

But when something is sold so enthusiastically and persistently to impressionable young people, I think it's reasonable to assume that questions are warranted. I think it's only responsible for parents to ask themselves what overall message are their children getting from these 'indoctrinations as amusements' and to ask themselves whether it's the message they want their children to be exposed to on a continual basis.

Our family has asked ourselves those questions, and our answer is "No, thank you. That's not how we want to see the world".

Fascinating article and a hairy week

The older I've gotten, the less I have found myself agreeing with "the party line" -- any party line -- about anything.

It's disconcerting, though I guess it suggests that I am more inclined to think things through for myself as I get more experienced at this life thing.

I came across an article recently that just fascinates me.

Liberals and conservatives conceive of morality in decidedly different ways. Jonathan Haidt has mapped out their competing ethical universes in hopes they can learn to peacefully coexist.

...

In a creative attempt to move beyond red-state/blue-state clichés, Haidt has created a framework that codifies mankind's multiplicity of moralities. His outline is simultaneously startling and reassuring — startling in its stark depiction of our differences, and reassuring in that it brings welcome clarity to an arena where murkiness of motivation often breeds contention.

I have been pouring over his work for a couple of days now, and I have to say that I think he may be my new hero. Not necessarily because he has it all right. I don't know enough about how "the other guy" thinks to know whether he has it right. But I think Mr Ault has hit the nail on the head for what we need to do if we're ever to get this country back from the brink of ruin that our current all or nothing political workings have wrought.

I am, again, late into the shower before work, so I don't have time to sort my thoughts and be erudite about this, but I wanted to share this with you.

It's been a wild week! I'm sorry I never got back to post last weekend. I try to post at least once a week to reward the patience of the 15 people who come by every day to see what we're up to. ;)

I will try to update everyone tonight or this weekend...but thanks for checking back!

Quiet because the weekend isn't ...

The Galileoscope™: An IYA2009 Cornerstone Project

Are you all aware of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first astronomical observations through a telescope?

The astronomical world is all atwitter!

And in celebration, the Galileoscope Project, a joint effort of the International Astronomical Union's Galileoscope task group and the American Astronomical Society's Telescope Kits & Optics Challenges working group, with educational support from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, born in 2006, is working hard to see that everyone who wants one, can get their hands on a working telescope of the type that Galileo himself used.

The Galileoscope™ is a high-quality, low-cost telescope kit. With this easy-to-assemble, 50-mm (2-inch) diameter, 25- to 50-power achromatic refractor, you can see the celestial wonders that Galileo Galilei first glimpsed 400 years ago and that still delight stargazers today. These include lunar craters and mountains, four moons circling Jupiter, the phases of Venus, Saturn's rings, and countless stars invisible to the unaided eye.

The Galileoscope costs US$15 each plus shipping.

You can order one here.

You think you know who your socially conscious purchases support?

I recently came across an article that reinforces my determination to buy local and to focus on purchases that are of basci components rather than "manufactured" goods, whereever possible.

AlterNet ran an article, which Joseph Mercola picked up, about how all those old community co-op standbys are being gobbled up by MegaCorp.

What's wrong with that, you wonder? Just means broader distribution for a good product you say?

I wish.

When they buy a brand for its goodwill value, MegaCorp rarely leave its formula alone, and I doubt they have much concern for the values that made the product popular in the first place. It's all about the image.

When Coco-cola bought Odwalla juices, it stopped producing the fresh squeezed orange juice that had made it famous because the time and distance involved with Coco Cola's SOP was the ruin of the fresh squeezed flavor. When PepsiCo bought Naked Juice, the first task on the list was to pasteurize it.

If that's what you're paying extra for -- image with only what substance is convenient, that's cool. Buy away.

Me, I'm going to go buy some oranges and some oat groats for my porridge and OJ breakfast.

And the bedroom is painted!

We finished painting in fours hours, thanks to Bob. Not only is he fast, but he's so skilled that even moving like lightening, he did a much better job than I did.

Isn't it beautiful?
We spent yesterday Friday getting ready to paint. Saturday we did the painting, and on Sunday we put the bedroom back together.

I am utterly delighted with how it came out. (So is Rod. Every time he walks into the room -- even when he thinks I'm sleeping-- he says "This room is so pretty.")

It seems to me that the chocolate walls make the frilly, girly, "Pre-Rod" decor less girly than it was with red walls. That and the good solid 1950s bedroom suit add a decided masculine touch. Dontchathink?

The original plan had a subtle tone-on-tone stripe, but Bob recommends that we wait a few weeks for the base coat to cure before we tape off for the stripe.

I'm happy to do that because this looks just lovely the way it is. I still need some more art--this room is much bigger than the last couple of bedrooms I've had and the art that filled them up nicely looks pretty paltry in this one. Ahh, well, something will turn up, I know.

Now the major areas feel like home. Not bad for three years residence, eh? *grin*

Of course, there are still areas that could use attention -- like the peeling wall paper in the foyer (that has to be bad feng shui, doesn't it?) and the no longer possible to clean upstairs bathroom walls. But that's part of the fun of being a homeowner -- and the smaller rooms are less daunting. Painting them doesn't require that the house be thrown into disarray.

Oh, and through all of this, we played round robin with the flu, which I believe I mentioned in an incoherent post yesterday. We're all better, though none of us are back to optimal just yet.

It seems like I should have something profound to say. But I don't.


I think it may be the fever. Fever always makes my thinking strange for a couple of days -- things seem like they should be important.

Jack was very ill on Thursday with a fever and a digestive upset. He kept us up all night Wednesday vomiting every 10 minutes, poor kid. Just as he was recovering on Friday morning, Rod came down with a very high fever and a headache. Just as Rod was starting to recover on Saturday (he was still not looking great), I came down with it.

The catch is, I had set this weekend aside to paint the bedroom. This was our third try. I actually bought the paint almost a year ago. Every time we set time aside for this job, one or another of us had been sick. I gave up and called in professional help. Bob is fast! I had set aside four days because that's how long these projects tend to take Rod and I. Bob was done in four hours, even with our ineffectual "help". I realized as I was cutting in the corners that I wasn't feeling so well, and by the time we were done, I was so sick I could barely stay upright. The guys ate lunch, and I crawled into bed where I alternated between the complete inability to get warm and feeling like I was going to set the sheets ablaze.

Anyway, I think the fever has broken, and I know that the bedroom looks amazing. Today, within the limits of the available strength, we'll put the bedroom back together.

Maybe later today I can be coherent.

SNOW?!?!?!?!

No, no, No!

I love winter, but it was spring! I know it was -- I was outdoors in spagetti straps! It's SPRING! It's time for spring!!!

Or... maybe not. I woke up to a white, white world.

Oh well. Gotta love April.

Jack and Oliver on the train after a hard day at Bus Fabriken

It was a good weekend. Well, give or take a mouse.

On Friday, we went to a party at Miss Debra's house. It was lovely to see everyone and we had a good time, though on Friday everyone is tired, and we all called it a night pretty early.

On Saturday, we made the kitchen mouse-safe by moving everything into glass or into the refrigerator. Then we dropped Rod off at the Ypsi Citizen gathering and Jack and I ran errands -- we got to the library to pick up some things we had on reserve, then we went to the coop and got the tea and sugar to make another batch of kombucha, then we went and had a snack and read our books at the Corner Brewery while we waited for Rod's meeting to be over.

On Sunday, we had breakfast with Steve and Maggie Pierce at Cafe Luwak's new breakfast buffet. That was lovely. I really enjoy their company and wondered why we haven't seen more of them! Then we ran off to get Grandpa John, and then Mark T. And then we went to the Great Lakes Primitives demo out in Chelsea. It was very interesting, not very crowded, and we all had fun. It took as long to get there as we felt inspired to stay -- but Jack scored an obsidian arrow-head and an animal bone bead, and I was able to watch a very talented lady make a basket from plant stems. I would have liked to have a chance to talk to her more about that, but the guys were getting restless, so off we went.

We had some dinner in Ferndale and then dropped John off and were home in time to get the pantry organized into glass before bedtime. It's funny how, with everything in jars, how little room it takes and how tidy it all looks. It took an uninvited boarder to inspire us to action, but I'm glad we did it. I think cooking is about to get a lot easier! (And I think fewer things will disappear into the stacks and go unused.) We may even have less duplication now that we can see everything easily.

I do find myself wondering whether Jack actually learned anything about flint knapping...but I did. I had a blast! Happy Monday, everyone!

Spring!

The sun is bright! The buds are bursting forth!

Oliver in the tree at Lund's Cathedral

The squirrels and rabbits are bounding enthusiastically all over the yard, chasing the subeams and each other!

Spring has sprung beautifully (never mind the snow predicted for Monday.)

Of course, spring has sprung and now we have a mouse. Without the girls here, we have to figure out what to do about that ourselves. First step is to make the pantry just a little less welcoming. We have seeds and grains and dried fruits in paper and plastic packaging; it's time everything went into glass.

Then we can encourage them to leave. (We've seen one...but mice never travel alone.)

In the meantime, Rod and Jack have been digging in to Unit three with some enthusiasm - - and inventing projects on their own, which is even better! Jack was playing in the yard last week and he was able to get very close to a bird he didn't know. He observed it carefully, and then came in and mimicked it's song for Rod, and then they looked it up. It was a chickadee!

A few days later, they got a good look at a pheasant as it flew so close to the car that Rod was afraid they'd hit it. A few minutes later, Rod's bird totem (cedar wax-wing) drew their attention. I love hearing about their observations!

Instead of starting on one of the historical fictions about the unit they're on, Jack decided that he wanted to jump ahead to Rome, so we're reading Detectives in Togas. I am surprised at how much we're enjoying it. As with much formula fiction, the character development is a little weak, so it will never be a "classic", but it's en enjoyable book with lots of history and logic woven in. It's done very gracefully I have to say. Fortunately, it has a sequel, so we can get that one and read it when we get to Roman history. Next, though, we'll visit with Sheldra and Seth.

Tomorrow, we will be heading out to see the Great Lakes Primitives demonstrating all kinds of paleolithic and neolithic skills. It's a shame we won't be able to make it there in time to see the spear throwing contest at noon, but it has become far too complicated an adventure for that to be likely. It does seem to be a twice a year even, so perhaps another time we'll make it for that.

Now, off to clean the pantry and do laundry.

Unit three is up

Finally, we have Unit Three up. In a few days, I hope to have the overview up as well. There isn't a lot there that isn't in the Units, but it does include a couple of planning tools.