Paracosm, Inc.

Playing BFG in the basement (now dry!)

We happened to catch a little bit of Studio 360 a couple of weeks ago. (Finding the balance of when to turn on NPR in the car so we can hear and discuss unexpected things in a time where bombings and violence dominate the news is a whole other tangent.  Suffice it to say that I’ve been having trouble with it lately, but I hate missing moments like these.)  The kids perked up their ears for this story about imaginary friends.  When the introduced the idea of paracosms, both my boys especially lit up.  ”We have a paracosm!”

In case you don’t know, a paracosm is an imaginary world.  As it explains in the story, we don’t know a lot about kids with imaginary friends and imaginary worlds.  Do they become more creative adults?  Do they become the innovators and artists of the future?  It would seem to make sense, but we don’t actually have the answers.  I love things like this, research being done in the moment.  What does make some kids have imaginary friends?  It wouldn’t be the same as the study in the radio story, but what if we asked successful inventors and artists and designers if they had imaginary friends and paracosms as children?  Would they be more likely than a random sample of adults to say yes?

Sometimes I feel like life at the rowhouse is ruled by paracosm.  I’ve posted here about the BFG (Big Friendly Good Company) and all its various exploits.  It’s the imaginary corporation that Mushroom and BalletBoy have been collectively inventing for years.  I’ve also posted about BalletBoy’s deep fears that growing up will mean leaving their paracosm behind.

One of the things I love about having twins is exact type of interplay.  They collectively create, imagine and negotiate with more ease than many other kids.  There is a sort of magic in seeing them work out this completely nonsensical world that is so insulated that they can’t even really explain it very well to outsiders.  It spawns signs, tickets, maps, and lots of fake credit cards.  There are heroes and villains and ongoing storylines so complex I never understand them very well.  They can play it together for hours upon hours.  Speaking of studies, someone should do a study of joint twin imaginary friends and paracosms.

I wish they would write it all down, but I think every time I ask them to try, it chafes their sense of ownership.

I Give Up

Well, I’ve been trying.  I’ve really been trying to get school done amidst other things.  I give from now until we finish our Macbeth performance.  This afternoon, we’re off to an important milestone for a family member and to celebrate Mother’s Day with my mother.  Then we’re back and it will be almost time to do the Scottish play.

In the last week, I’ve spent much of the week down in the basement trying to stem the tide of water from leaky pipes and then trying to get the moisture up out of the industrial carpet once they fixed the pipes.  It didn’t help that it was rainy at the start of the week.  Or that my entire front yard was dug up and that the grit in the new pipes busted the upstairs toilet.  All fixed now, but it feels like putting out fires.  Oh, or mopping up water.

We did get a little school in.  Here’s a math problem I made the kids do on Monday morning:  If the tank of the wet vac holds 2 and a half gallons of water and I’ve filled it nine times since yesterday, then how many gallons of water have I taken out of the basement?

Mushroom’s method: 9 x 2 = 18  and 9 x ½ = 4 ½ and 18 + 4 ½ = 22 ½

Very simple, very straightforward.  And very Miquon.  He got it quickly.

BalletBoy’s method: 2 and ½ is like $2.50 and that’s like 250.  So 9 x 250.  Hmm…  Oh, 10 x 250 = 2500 and 2500 – 250 = 2250.  Okay, so 2250?  No, that’s too big.

It was slow going.  I talked him through what he had done when he moved the decimal the first time and he moved it back and got the right answer.  Totally different method.  Totally good math reasoning.  Just missing some pieces.  And made it too complex.

My Homeschool Obsessions

If you happen to hang out with me online, you may know that there are certain things for which I am a complete homeschool evangelist.  Products that I think everyone should try and love.  Of course, no resource is right for everyone and so on and so forth.  And there are many things that we use that I find very helpful and solid.  But here are the things that I just love, the things I like to gush over.

The Boston Children’s Museum Activity Books
I know I sound hyperbolic, but I firmly believe that these are the best science activity books for children ever written.  They focus mostly on physics and are good for upper elementary and middle school.  Where many science experiment books lay out a proscribed set of steps and a predicted outcome, these books show you how to build equipment to let you actually play with concepts and test out and explore the science on your own.  We dabbled with them back in first grade, doing a few activities out of several of them.  Part of me can’t wait for fifth grade when we get back to physics so we can use them again.

Brave Writer
Yes, you all know, I’m a Brave Writer devotee.  When I first heard Julie Bogart speak, it was like a revelation.  She reminded me of all the things I had learned about teaching writing when I was a school teacher, but she had somehow made it add up with the things I was learning about teaching younger children, particularly about the value of copywork and other old-fashioned writing teaching methods.  To me, Brave Writer is the most positive and flexible approach to writing I’ve seen.

Tin Man Press
These workbooks are so much fun and so whimsical that I fell in love with them the moment I saw them.  They do for logic and writing what the Anti-Coloring Book series does for coloring books.  They’re like anti-worksheets.  We’re especially big fans of Wakeruppers, but I have a few things from them and look forward to getting more.  Nothing I’ve gotten has been a dud.

Miquon Math
We started slow with Miquon, just trying out some of the Orange Book, but not really finding it fit us.  However, when Mushroom became math anxious at the end of first grade, we had to throw out all the math curriculum we had been using.  Eventually, we went back to Miquon, finishing the Red Book, then the Blue, Green, and Yellow volumes as well.  I learned to really use the Annotations and to refer to Rosie’s videos at Education Unboxed when I needed some inspiration.  To me, Miquon is the most flexible, in depth, deep thinking math program there is out there.  I thoroughly love it.  I have delayed us finishing Purple by bringing it down to just a very little bit every day, but it will be at an end before the school year is through.  If only there was a Miquon Mauve and a Miquon Black and a Miquon Navy!

Those are my homeschool obsessions.  What are yours?

Testing, One, Two, Three…

For the first time this year, we decided to have a go at “standardized testing.”  I chose not to bother with a “real” test.  We are fortunate to live in a place where we don’t have to test, so for this year, I just gave them a practice third grade test from a cheap test prep book.

When I first got into education, before I had kids, I went in with a total animosity towards nearly all forms of standardized testing.  Teaching history in a public school in Virginia under the SOL tests didn’t dissuade me from it either.  The tests were over-emphasized and poorly written.  It was hard not to want to rail against them.

Since then, I’ve come around about testing.  In context, I think it’s a good thing.  The problem as I see it is that these standardized tests have become the whole, overarching focus of public schooling when, in reality, they are one small measurement.  I often say that they are the thermometer of education.  Useful, but not a complete picture of health.  For that, you need x-rays, blood panels, swabs of various sorts, weight and height, and so on and so forth.  Well, I already know my kids’ weight and height and so forth, so I decided that third grade was a decent time to take a practice temperature reading.

My main goal was simply to introduce the idea of testing.  They learned to bubble in, which was an amusing skill they lacked (they initially wanted to circle the answers).  To make them feel at ease, we had muffins and fruit and classical music during the testing.  It mostly worked, though Mushroom had a very rough morning on one of the days and had to take a long break from the math test in order to calm himself down.

I don’t know that I learned much about them.  They both did extremely well on the reading section, respectably on the math section, and poorly (though in totally different ways) on the language section.  The language section of the practice test we used wanted them to be able to find a lot of errors and spell words with a lot of difficult spelling rules.  I’m sure most third graders have memorized them instead of learning the spelling rules and that they have a lot more of these sort of “find the error” lessons, which we’ve done a few of, but not that many.  It also asked them to alphabetize things, a skill we haven’t ever practiced and they didn’t quite get since they use electronic dictionaries more than the old-fashioned one.  Most amusingly, it asked where you would find the phone number of a restaurant.  The right answer, said Mushroom, should have been, “the restaurant dot com.”  The test mistakenly thought it was “a telephone directory.”  Silly test makers.

Next year, maybe we’ll give a “real” test and see how they stack up against other kids instead of just how they did on their scores overall.

Life Interferes

Out for breakfast with the grandparents.

What is it about spring that makes it so hard for us to get on track? Lately, we have just been stuck for getting our basic stuff accomplished. We’re doing okay on things, but I wish we were doing more. We have just stalled out.

And it’s not just the pollen or the warmth in the air calling us back outside. It’s just been life.

We have been seeing the husband act, enjoying a visit from some grandparents, and taking advantage of the return of baseball.

We have been finishing essays for the contest for the friends of the library, preparing presentations for co-op, finishing out our Destination Imagination season, and making those literary Peep dioramas for Easter.

We’ve been diving into the Mindstorms set the kids saved up for, trying to keep the biology experiments from expanding beyond the dining room mantle, and playing around more with Scratch programming.

We’ve been distracted by the board game Dix-It that we bought at a co-op outing to the games store, the art book The Great Art Scandal which we spent two days solving during school time, and Shakespeare prop and costume makings.

Honestly, with all that going on, who has time for schoolwork? On the other hand, at least we’ve got a rich and full life.

More Poetry Books for Tea Time

We have been very irregular with poetry teas, but they are still happening here, at least every couple of weeks.  One of the nice things about them is that the kids are often the impetus behind them.  They pick out many of the library books we use.  They often urge me that it’s time for another one.  And at our most recent poetry tea, Mushroom made the cookies and BalletBoy set the table.

Of course, we keep returning to the poetry books I’ve mentioned previously here and here.  But we also discover new ones like the ones I’m listing below.

 

The Monsterologist by Bobbi Katz
This may be a case where the design, by Adam McCauley, surpasses the poetry.  However, the poems are fun for kids and the design is really stunning.  Each poem is about a different monster, from the Loch Ness Monster to the mysterious one that eats your socks in the washer.

Spot the Plot by J. Patrick Lewis
This cute group of riddle poems about classic children’s books was so fun to read that we read them all at the first poetry tea where we had them.  There’s something so perfect about riddle poems that get kids to really listen up.

Poetry by Heart edited by Liz Attenborough
This was one of the best collected books of classic poetry for kids that I’ve seen.  I loved that it ranged from classics to fun, silly poems.  The intention behind it is also excellent as it’s one that is meant to be a base for memorization.  It’s out of print, but you may know there’s a new memorization collection that just came out from Caroline Kennedy.  I haven’t seen that one yet though!

Casey at the Bat by William Thayer
I picked this one out for the start of baseball season (Go Nats!).  There are so many versions, but I chose the old-fashioned illustration style of Christopher Bing’s version, which is filled with newspaper clips and allusions to nineteenth century baseball.

Come to the Great World edited by Wendy Cooling
This collection was another gem.  The poems are from all over the world and chosen to appeal to children as well as to highlight themes of play and peace.  I usually swap out all the library poetry books every time, but I held on to this one through three poetry teas.

Required Reading Redux

It’s now been several months since we started our “required reading” program.  You can find the first post with the book list here.  Basically, I made a list of books I thought would be good third grade books.  Every month, they had to read one of their own choosing.  I purposefully listed some easier and some harder books as well as a wide variety of genres.

Fast forward to now.  Early on, we made a rule that you could choose one sequel or book by the same author to count as well.  And now we’re pretty much untethered from the list and I need to make a new one.  However, I wanted to celebrate all the books the kids read so far.  Of course, they’ve continued to read their own books for fun as well, but those are mostly easier and lighter reads than these.

Mushroom’s Books

Tornado by Betsy Byars
Paddle to the Sea by Holling C. Holling
Frindle by Andrew Clements
A Week in the Woods by Andrew Clements
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin
Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater
Jenny and the Cat Club by Esther Averil
Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary

BalletBoy’s Books

Tornado by Betsy Byars
Frindle by Andrew Clements
Jenny and the Cat Club by Esther Averil
Jenny at Sea by Esther Averil
Runaway Ralph by Beverly Cleary
Freddy the Detective by Walter Brooks
The Enormous Egg by Oliver Butterworth
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle by Betty MacDonald
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s Farmby Betty MacDonald
*Additionally, I’ll give BalletBoy half credit.  He read half of Ribsy, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Poppy.

Overall, I’ve been incredibly happy with our required reading system.  Mushroom has read a great variety of books, which he has loved.  BalletBoy has discovered that while he dislikes real animals, he really likes them in books.  Also, I’ve discovered that he’d rather read a sequel than anything else and that while he’s more likely to stay up late reading, he also is the pickiest reader ever!

Right now, Mushroom is working on The Bad Beginning from the Series of Unfortunate Events.  BalletBoy is thinking about reading another Freddy book since he’s so fond of always picking the sequels option.  I’m thinking about having them read a book together, namely My Side of the Mountain, which I think we would all enjoy and which would fit in with our nature study this year.

Of course, the kids read for pleasure as well, but neither of them are voracious readers and if given the choice, I’m pretty sure BalletBoy would never finish anything.  This has ensured that everyone keeps going with reading a good, challenging book, even though making time for it can be tough sometimes.