Weekly Wrap-up: Playing in Snow

Monday, the Daddy came home and did a little late-night painting with Hero and the others. Hero has been asking, and waiting very patiently, but Daddy is working a lot. This week, he expects to put in 60-70 hours, and that's becoming the norm. We are praying for a new job opportunity, but in the mean time, we take our Daddy time when we can get it. Including staying up late.

In history, we're continuing to work our way through the American Revolution. We read about the Boston Tea Party in Johnny Tremain, and we worked on reading the Declaration of Independence itself, using this book. It's great because it's the original text of the Declaration, but broken into bite-size chunks, with a single phrase on each page, so it's easy to talk about what the big words mean. And there's plenty of those!

Wednesday, we finally had all the gear, the milder temperatures, and snow, with minimal sickness: all at the same time! We headed outside and the kids had a blast! There hasn't been nearly as much snow as usual this winter, so this was a treat. 

We also had some breakthroughs in Japanese. The kids are happy and learning, so I am happy, too. 

Even though it's January, and last week was absolutely miserable, this week was very mild, and we made it out to our park for a short nature study. We looked at cattails and animal tracks and stomped snow and had a lovely time. 

And that's the highlights of our week! You can peek at what other weird, unsocialized homeschoolers are doing, if you like. I hope your week was as lovely as mine!

Trying Something New

I'm pretty excited with a new development in our Japanese language studies. There are two parts to what we do. One is that I try to use Japanese around the house as much as I am able, and encourage my kids to use what they know as well. This, my gut tells me is the more important of the two things, but the second is that we have some kind of instruction on grammar and vocabulary. Only, finding something that works for Hero(8) has been tough. He didn't like Mango, and he *really* doesn't like the podcast lessons that work so well for me; they're just too fast-paced for him. So, yesterday, when I was at Half-Priced Books, I grabbed a book about learning to read Japanese.

It's pretty cool; teaches things very incrementally. And we sat down and started writing. With my fancy brush pens that we haven't used in a long time. And both boys were totally on board with the idea, but Hero was really liking it. Instant success. A small enough amount of information - he controlled how far he went in the lesson - that he could handle integrating it. They had arranged it so that, with only 2 letters, he could write 3 words. He liked that. Even Dragon could do that, though he keeps writing the one letter sideways.

So, I got to thinking about it. I have been really resistant to the idea of getting a textbook and learning lists and doing things that way. But. This looks really promising. Only, when I read in the front of the book, this one is light on grammar, and recommends getting another to shore that up, so that you can really understand the sentences, once we have enough letters to start writing phrases and sentences. So I dusted off my first textbook that I used to use in college. Really, I don't like it. It's dry, and some of the dialogs have always struck me as being just plain dumb. (Are these socks nylon? Cotton? I'll take it.) But he doesn't have to learn the way I do, and he is much happier using the texts than he is with the podcasts; their pace is just too fast for him. And I prayed about it - it was in praying that I remembered that I have it, because I haven't looked at it in ages - and I think it's going to work. And that's pretty exciting.

 

Sourdough!

Last week, we were reading about the health benefits of sourdough. Which are cool. The cultures in the sourdough are supposed to neutralize phytase, as well as make a bunch of vitamins in the wheat much more readily available for the body to use. It's good stuff, and it an be pretty tasty, too, if it's not too sour.

Only problem is, I have tried several times to make the stuff, but never could get the hang of it. 

Enter Facebook. A while back I joined a group called Wild Fermentation, so this time, rather than just randomly trying recipes, I asked the group, figuring it'd be right up their alley. And it was. And they gave me a number of useful tips. I'd been trying to treat it like Amish Friendship Bread, and of course that didn't work very well. Made a real mess of my bread, actually. But my new friends taught me some things, like sourdough wants to be a fair amount more moist than white bread, and how much start to put into a batch. And it worked! I made some, and it had a very mild tang to it, a great crust, and it was easy! 

So here's my recipe. It's almost the same as this one that I started with, only I don't have fancy flour like she does. 

2c whole wheat flour

1.5c all-purpose flour

1.5-ish cups water

1/4c sourdough start, grown and bubbly

1t salt

When you feed your start, it gets happy and grows. You'll also see air pockets if ifit's in a clear container. That means it's ready. Add 1/4c to all the other ingredients. You can use a dough hook, or, if like mine, yours is broken, you can also get away with using the paddle on your stand mixer. Mix thoroughly. You should get a moist, shaggy ball of dough. Adjust you water and flours until it's just a touch too sticky to handle with ungreased hands. Oil your hands, and move it to a glass bowl that's been greased or sprayed well with pam. Leave in a warm place 6-8 hours or overnight. I turn my oven just barely on, not even to where it says "warm," since my kitchen is chilly in the winter. When you are ready, preheat your oven with your cast iron Dutch oven inside. Move your dough, carefully, to the hot pan, shaping a bit before you put it in. Bake at 400F for 30 minutes in a pan with a lid, then uncover and cook another 10 - it will smell divine when it's done. Oh, and the lid is pretty important: I did another batch without the lid, and the crust was thick and over done. The bread itself was still pretty good, but the crust wasn't at all. With the lid, it's great.

Weekly Wrap-up: The Very Cold One

New Year, new(renewed) habits. I realized that I've been missing the Weekly Wrap-ups, so here's another one. Two weeks in a row. Yay me.

So. Our week. Wow, it's COLD up here in the frozen north! This, being the First Week of January, has been very cold. A friend posted on Facebook today that it's -35F. Local schools were delayed, but not closed. I'm trying to create a little cocoon of warmness, so I'm not looking. (Unless my friends intrude on my little denial thing, and go and post the temperature!) We have not been out all week. I love homeschooling extra-lots because I don't have to go out. I hate being cold. I'm not checking the weather much; I don't want to know. Give me my warm socks and my hot chocolate. Books. Blankets. Warm stuff. I'm thinking happy thoughts about all the icky bugs out there in the snow and the wind. They're dying. One of my friends told me, "There's always New Mexico." I declined; they can keep their scorpions and other poison things. I'll put up with the cold for a week.

Figures, though, that my daughter would pick this week to decide that she has to be potty trained. We're talking tantrums when I put a diaper on her. And, like her brothers before her, she does best if she runs around mostly naked. Yeah, she's spent some time this week yelling at me for putting clothes and diapers on her. She's making progress, but it's not as fast as it would be in May or June, when I wasn't worried about her freezing her gizzard while she figures out the whole Potty Thing. I'm betting it won't take too long anyway. She's doing great.

Tuesday, I fed my sourdough start on the leftover flour from when I got really excited about flouring my counter top for some bread I made. On Wednesday, I was pondering what I wanted to do with it when the bag came open while I was absent-mindedly mushing the ziplock bag. I'd just fed it; it was full and happy. Oops. It got all over my hand-- and Tigress was standing right underneath, trying to get a better view of what I was doing. She got more than she bargained for! And I got so involved in cleaning her up that I never anything baked that day. 

I took her and gave her a shower, of course, but since she didn't seem too traumatized by the while thing, I couldn't resist a couple pictures. Gotta love camera phones. This will make a cute scrapbook page!

"Mom. It's on my hand." She was much happier in the shower. 

We did well on our book work this week. Hero is starting a new phase of learning. Over the holiday break he finished the last of the Harry Potter series, and is a good, strong reader. So I'm starting to give him materials to read on his own. We tried it out this week, and it seems to be going well. I'm pretty excited about this development. Here's a selection of what he and I worked on this week. 

It was a good week for violin practice, too. The boys have a recital coming up at the end of the month, which is pretty exciting. It's their first recital, and the first time I've been a parent at a recital, rather than a teacher. 

Even Dragon is going to play. I'm not sure he really understands what the whole thing is all about. He may turn shy on me, when the big moment comes. Though he did his part in the Primary Program a couple months ago, so he may be ready! He'll be ready with his music, in any case. 

They're both doing very well. Which is how our week went. 

Executive Orders

I'm a little slow, as it typical for me: I can't do Mothering the way I think it ought to be done, and keep up with blogging about politics in a timely fashion. But I still think about freedom, and the effects of our politics on it. Recently, Obama used some Executive Orders(EO) to get some immigration reform done-- without Congressional approval. There was a lot of conversation about that, and I have my $.02 as well.

The issue is not that he uses EOs, but how he uses them. What he is doing -creating immigration reform- is legislative in nature, and therefore, it is out of line. All legislative power has been delegated to Congress - and none of it to the President. It's the very first power granted; the first thing addressed after the Preamble.

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All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.
-Article I Section 1

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It really doesn't matter what vehicle he uses, whether it's EOs or memoranda, or whatever: the President is not to create law. That's not a legitimate thing he can do. If he tries, it is usurpation. When the Federal government overreaches itself, and take upon itself to do things outside its authority, it isn't law at all, though they would really like us to think and act otherwise.

The powers of government are separated for a number of good reasons, not the least of which it to prevent too much power accumulating in the hands of a single person. Allowing the President to do things which are legislative in nature destroys the careful balance of power in our Constitution, and that balance exists to safeguard our freedoms.  A number of people rightly pointed out that he is not the first to employ this sort of overreach, and I have friends who have tried to make excuses for him on those grounds. Really, it is immaterial who did what with them in the past. Those who, like Obama is doing, have used it to do things that are legislative in nature, have done so in violation of our law, and should have been called on the carpet for it. Considering that it endangers the balance of power, and the check and balances, impeachment is not an outrageous thing to be looking at. We are duty-bound to uphold the Constitution. Nearly every prophet has said so. That includes condemning gross overreach such as the one currently being undertaken.

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I repeat that no greater immediate responsibility rests upon members of the Church, upon all citizen of this republic and of neighboring republics, than to protect the freedom vouchsafed by the Constitution of the United States.
-David O. McKay (Conference, Apr. 1950)

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In my reading of the original debates by the Founders when they were writing the Constitution, it appears that Congress is responsible for uniform rules of naturalization only and the Founders intended that the several States would retain broad powers over immigration, including who, when, and how, with the federal government responsible only for uniformity in naturalization, to prevent some of the issues that had occurred under the Articles of Confederation, such as States being forced to give the rights of citizenship to all residents of another State, including both resident and illegal aliens. The limited naturalization powers delegated were designed to eliminate that problem, and the wide federal control of immigration we currently have is clearly not what was intended by the Founders, nor has it been authorized by an amendment, so it is also technically overreach. I have blogged about that before. That post goes more into detail on this topic, with the relevant passages of the Constitution.

However. Even if you grant, for the sake of argument, the legitimacy of federal involvement in immigration, failure to act effectively on it is not nearly so serious as a breach in the separations of powers. Failure to act does cause problems. Problems which both parties share the blame for, and which do need to be addressed. But it does not threaten the very structure of our Republic. We fought a war in 1776. It lasted 8 years and took a heavy toll in blood and treasure in order to get those powers
separated. The separation of powers is fundamental to the difference between a monarchy and a republic. A monarch may both create law and see it enacted. He does so by divine right. He is responsible to nobody. A president, on the other hand, is an executive only. He does not create law; he executes law that has already been debated and approved by Congress. His powers derive their origin from the inalienable rights of the citizens to life, liberty, and property, and are not intrinsic to his person. It's not the name of the thing -EOs are not an awful thing if they are used correctly and judiciously- it's the nature of the thing. If it creates law, its legislative in nature, and out of bounds. The president may suggest measures, but if he doesn't get what he wants, that's ok. We call that checks and balances, and it's part of the design of our government.

Another thing I've seen a number of times, given as a justification for the overreach, is the votes that both Boehner and Reid have declined to bring to a vote, but that's actually the Constitution working as intended. We call that "checks and balances" when we take Civics class, and it's not at all a crime. The federal government is intended to be a slow machine. It's also supposed to be quite small. Most things are supposed to be handled at the State and local levels. The level of Constitutional ignorance in our country is breathtaking; it is taught so incredibly poorly, when it's taught at all.

Absolutely, every other president that did legislative stuff, however they did it, should have been impeached. But that's water under the bridge now. We The People (and our representatives in Congress) failed in our duty to uphold the Constitution then. That is no excuse for continued failure. Obama's immigration by Executive Order is illegitimate. There is no Presidential authority for this sort of action. He was, as his supporters like to point out, a teacher of Constitutional law; he knows very well what the powers of his office are, and chooses not to stay within them. For his usurpation he should be removed from office, and his measures should be defunded immediately by the House. Should they ever come before the Supreme Court, they ought to be struck down as the illegitimate usurpation that they are, and each of the individual States ought to be taking immediate steps to nullify his actions. Complacency is not how we retain our freedom.

8 Reasons I Love Homeschooling (For Me)

There are many reasons why I think homeschooling is the best thing since sliced bread. When people ask, the conversation usually focuses on benefits for the kids. And there are tons of benefits for them. But I suspect that one of the best kept secrets about homeschooling is that it's pretty awesome for Mom, too. Here are some things I love about doing the homeschooling thing:

1. The book budget. I get to buy books. Lots of them. Books about interesting things- and then I get to read them *and it's not avoiding work-- reading IS my work*, or at least a big part of it.  Box day is like Christmas; I love it! (My mailman has been known to grumble.) I'm a bit of a bookaholic. In fact, we've recently been discussing another bookshelf, again. 

2. All that reading means I'm learning. History is a huge favorite. I never had a world history class, and now I've just about finished the first trip through the whole of world history, and it's been fascinating. Even at an elementary level, I've learned tons. Speaking Japanese to the kids to help them learn is easily the best thing that's ever happened to my own Japanese study. I understand math better than I ever used to as well. I'm filling in holes in my own education, and since I'm the one calling the shots, much of what we study is stuff that I'm interested in. In addition to the nonfiction we read, we also place a huge emphasis on high quality literature, which often means the Classics. My own education was badly deficient in this area. I hadn't read many of the classics. I still have many that I want to read, but I've read quite a few. Related to that...

3. I've learned to study. I never learned to study in school, though in college I did finally start suffer for not knowing it. When I started to consider homeschooling, I read a whole bunch about it, and one thing homeschoolers discuss quite a bit is how to teach their kids to study. In reading about homeschooling Ive come to want to be better educated myself, and the same books and blogs and articles and groups that inspired me to want more also gave me the tools to get the additional education. I met other women who were activelt working to improve their own education, and I learned from them. I am better at studying now than I ever was while I was in school, and so I am learning and retaining more than I ever have before, about topics I care about-- and it is deeply satisfying to do it.

4. I make my own schedule. We take days off when we need them, add an extra day when we need it, and we're flexible around the Daddy's schedule. We can have a couple days when family comes unexpectedly, or work long a few days to have a short day. If we study astronomy, school is at night. If we have an early field trip, school is in the morning. Our school schedule is built around the things we value most- rather than working in the things we value around a rigid schedule someone else made.

5. It's good for my marriage. This works in a couple ways, actually. One is that since I'm learning, I almost always have something to talk about with my husband. It keeps me from getting stagnant. I'd probably do a certain amount of learning anyway, but because we homeschool, it's a big priority, and it happens naturally as I do stuff with the kids. Another way it's good for my marriage is that when my husband travels for work, and that's frequently, we usually pack up school and take it with us, keeping the family together. The kids like that, but given the way that he's had to travel over the past 7-8 years, this has been a huge blessing to my marriage. Some months he's more out than in, but because we homeschool, we can really minimize the strain that long separations bring.

 6. I am not concerned about someone teaching ideas or attitudes that are incompatible with our faith without my knowledge. Teaching my children the gospel is a huge priority for me, and I don't want school to be working at cross-purposes to that. I've been in the schools enough, both as a student and a professional, to know that they are relatively hostile to faith. But I don't have to worry about that; my kids are home. In addition to "extra" opportunities for teaching that would be lost if I sent my kids away, this brings me great peace of mind.

7. There's a bunch of minor perks too. This week has been brutally cold in our area. I stayed home, and I didn't worry about my kids being warm enough, because they were home with me. We go to museums (I love that) at off-peak times, and often have the place to ourselves. Same thing with parks and other attractions.

8. I get to be there. When the kids struggle, I get to help them. When they get it, I'm there for that too. I get to be the cheerleader when things are hard, and when they finally get it, I'm there for the moment the lightbulb goes on. I absolutely treasure that.

 

Link Roundup: Homeschool Inspiration

I recently hit up a Classical group and a Charlotte Mason group for some bloggy inspiration, as I've been feeling somewhat uninspired and distracted. They did not disappoint. I'm having a lovely time browsing around and seeing what the girls are doing. Here are some of the things that caught my eye. Certainly not an exhaustive list of the lovely things I've looked at; these are only the ones that I think might be helpful in our home.

Over at AfterThoughts, Brandy has some great examples from her family's notebooks. Her kids are a bit older than mine, but still, there are some similarities. It was really nice to see her pictures because I often have that nagging voice in the back of my mind: I'm doing it wrong, or not enough, or... But her blog was well recommended in the group, and her stuff doesn't look so different from mine. She's got a whole series on notebooking that I want to dig into a little deeper.

This tutorial on how to print out an out of print book and "bind" it into a pretty convincing book-like-object is pretty cool. I'm excited; those older books are often very high quality writing, but they can be harder to find -- and expensive when you do. I am in the process of printing and binding my first one, to see how it goes. I'll post pictures; so far so good. I'm trying it out Secrets of the Wood, one of Ambleside's recommendations for Nature Study/science in 3rd grade.

I'd never given serious consideration to memorizing a timeline. But there are some pretty compelling reasons for giving it a go in this post from Golden Grasses. The reader's digest version of her post is, "Memoria est mater studiorum."

This link doesn't come from a Classical or Charlotte Mason blog, but I'm definitely interested, nonetheless: it's a podcast on raising Constitutionally literate kids. Definitely something I'm trying to do.

This video is Latin, from the Vulgate, from John. Our Latin hasn't been very productive lately: we lost some of the pieces of our curriculum and have been struggling without them. Learning this might be a good way to start getting that back on track. It was part of this post from Mt. Hope Chronicles. That post also has some cool stuff for learning the periodic table of elements. I love how she does her photos; they're so beautiful.




Come to find out, the lady that made the lovely Latin video has a great YouTube channel. Looks like there's a ton of useful stuff on there.

Weekly Wrap-up: Holiday break

I say weekly, but the fact is, I'm terribly inconsistent with these. But I like to do it, when I can create enough time. So here one is.

Christmas was fantastic. We had a very quiet New Year - most of the family didn't stay up, even though we're habitual night owls and it's not that late. My sister got married between the holidays, and she looks like she's deliriously happy, as she should be days after her wedding. Unfortunately, I couldn't go; the plans came on a bit suddenly, and it just wasn't in the budget for us. But I sent happy wishes!

We didn't do much school, it being the holidays, but after Christmas was over, I found myself missing the structure, so we did do a little bit. I am amazed at how quickly Dragon is learning to read! He's still in the early stages, and only reads limited vocabulary readers, but he's getting more comfortable with them all the time. It's so fun to watch! Hero's really coming into his own with reading. He's about to finish off the last of the Harry Potter books. He spent a lot of time curled up with those big books this past couple of weeks, and has been enjoying them immensely. I had him do a little bit of writing, just to keep his hand in as well. His writing has come so far in the past couple of months.

I actually got out and visited a couple of blogs, and that was really nice. I always find that so inspiring. People do some amazing things with their efforts to offer a good education to their kids. I came across a new blog, Golden Grasses. And she was talking about this cool concept: memorizing timelines. It doesn't sound cool to just say it, but when she was talking about it, and the benefits they see from it, it made me rethink my disinterest in memorizing the dates.

And that's pretty much it for school! We'll be starting up next week with some more. What are you up to? Leave me a comment - and a link to your blog. I'd love to come visit.