Not Inadequate

• I have an HGTV specific pet peeve: The word “realtor” is pronounced “real-tor” not “re-la-tor.” Get with the program, voice-over people.

• Don’t you think doing voice-overs would be a great job? Go in a booth with no makeup and say things like “Shawna and Greg are looking for a house in Milwaukee.” Probably get a nice paycheck for 15 minutes worth of work.

• The other day, Big made a whole bunch of worksheets for me to do. He made me write all the numbers to 100. He thought this was HIGH-larious. He kept telling me if I wanted to be smart, I had to do my schoolwork. And to quit complaining, or he’d make me do more. He gave me a quarter for writing a story. I wrote one called Big Is A Turkey Butt. He made a chart and put a big red mark for all my mistakes. He didn’t even care that my hand got a cramp and I wanted to watch Tom and Jerry. 

• The Girl Scout Cookies are here! The Girl Scout Cookies are here!

• The pencil sharpener guy actually read my post and sent me some pencil sharpeners to give away! I am so excited about this! Stay tuned for a give-away.

• This morning we had Sausage Pinwheels for breakfast -

And they were voted delicious by my family.

Which is really cool, considering I only barely followed the recipe and added 2 TABLEspoons of yeast, not the 2 TEAspoons it called for.

Accidental Cooking WIN!

Plus, I am totally giving myself extra mom points for serving such a fancy breakfast on a freaking MONDAY*, of all days.

* The fact that I meant to serve them for dinner last night but did not read the directions in time to account for two rises is neither HERE nor THERE. 

Have a good week!

This is the last question for Ask a Home School Graduate. If you have any more questions, lay ‘em on me. Otherwise, this series has come to an end. Thanks for playing, everyone!

Connie asked: How do you organize your materials?

I have not answered this one before, because it took me 3 weeks to stop laughing.

Organize! *snort*

Well, let’s see…..I have this box, which I have been meaning to organize for only a year and a half -

Then there’s all this crap -

And another box over here -

And some bins….

So yeah. I’m all about the organizing. Probably I should write a book.

Here’s the one thing I have learned about supplies: don’t put them away. Keep your stuff visible enough so you don’t forget about it. I have organized my closets and cupboards mercilessly, only to discover that I never open those cupboards until the next year when I am taking inventory. While stuff was languishing neatly in the closet, my kids grew older and it was all rendered useless.

(hah! see what I did there? my messy room is not laziness, it’s a learning strategy!)

I had tons of manipulatives packed away – geometric solids, counters, fraction thingamabobs….until it dawned on me one day that waiting to get them out until we were studying that in school was pointless. They need exposure through playing with them. Sure, it might look like they are building a tower out of the prisms and cones, but they are also absorbing information about the shapes and building potential while they do it. Every so often they say “what’s this shape called mom?” and we talk about that while I print out some coloring pages or dot-to-dots relevant to the discussion.

To that end, I got those plastic drawers you see in the bottom picture. The top two are for stuff they can share, and they each have one of the bottom drawers. These are in my office closet, and are things I want them to play with under somewhat supervised conditions. These are the more educational toys, not the chuck-at-your-sister’s-head toys. They are free to get out anything in the drawers when they are hanging out with me in my office. Every so often, I rotate the stuff.

Here are some of the things my kids can have free, slightly supervised, access to:

• Those $1 coloring books and workbooks from Target.
• Decorative hole punches from the scrapbooking section
• Crayons, stickers, and construction paper; String Art and Mosaic Art
• Magnetic Letters and Tangram Shapes (I have two magnetic whiteboards at kid level)
• BambinoLuk and MiniLuk (these are really cool. I think even non-homeschooling kids would like them)
• Counters, Sequencing Games, Polydron Shapes, Geometric Solids, Angle Thingamabobs, and…

…and I have to go.

The Educator’s Outlet website is calling me. Need….more…..stuff…..

Hope that helps, Connie!

I have a few more questions to answer from my Ask a Homeschool Graduate post, so let’s get to it:

Applie asked: Did you have a graduation ceremony? If not, do you wish you did?

No, I did not have a graduation ceremony. High school just sort of…..trickled off. It wasn’t a big deal, but two years later when my sister graduated, she had a party and a cap & gown. I might’ve been a little jealous. I attended my college graduation though, and it was excruciating. The endless speeches, the long wait to march across the stage…boring, boring, boring. I have attended several other graduations since, and let me just say: Never Again. I will attend my children’s graduations and that’s it. I don’t love anyone else enough to put myself through that.

Applie also asked: Do you like being a weirdo?

Yes. Yes I do. You’re weird, too. So there. See also: neener-neener.

Theresa asked: What about the boy thing…crushes, boyfriends, feeling comfortable talking to boys…how did you deal with this? I am worried that not being around boys a lot may impede my girls somehow.

Oh, Theresa…How can I answer such a personal question? I understand what you are saying – don’t we all worry about these things with our babies? I started thinking about the girl who will claim my son’s heart before he was even born. I try not to dislike her…

First, let me encourage you that homeschooling your girls does not mean that they will never be around boys. Maybe they won’t be around as many, but the number will be more than zero – and you will be right there to guide them. Truly, I think it has a lot to do with personality. You said you were in school, but were shy. I was not in school, and was an incorrigible flirt. I did not have a serious boyfriend until college, and I married him. Your girls do not need lots of boys, but rather that Special One. Have faith. That’s really all I can offer. I’m sorry, I hope that helps a little.

Melanie said: I teach my children at home, but I don’t really teach them anything anymore because they’re old enough to read the books themselves and I’d rather play on Twitter anyway.

I want to be Melanie when I grow up. Don’t tell her, I don’t want to scare her off.

On Monday night, I made this for dinner -

And then we all died and went to heaven.

I went twice, because EVERYone in my family ATE IT and RAVED ABOUT IT and did NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT ANYTHING…

…which frankly has never happened to me before.

Mad Hungry’s Spaghetti Carbonara

1 pound spaghetti
1/2 pound bacon, sliced crosswise into 1/2-inch pieces
3 large eggs
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus extra for serving (optional)
Freshly ground black pepper

Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat and cook the spaghetti. Meanwhile, in a large skillet, cook the bacon over medium-low heat until just crispy, 8 to 10 minutes. Skim off some of the fat. Drain the pasta, add to the bacon in the pan, and toss to combine.

Whisk together the eggs, cheese, and pepper in a small bowl. Pour into the pasta, and combine thoroughly. Serve immediately with extra grated cheese, if desired.

I added a pretty good sized splash of 1/2 & 1/2 to the eggs. I also tempered my eggs a little by gradually whisking in a few tablespoons of the hot pasta water. By the time I added them to the pot, they were probably around room temperature. I have a bit of Raw Egg Paranoia, so after I added the eggs to the spaghetti and got it combined, I put the lid on and let it sit in the hot pot for about 5 minutes, just to make sure everything was cooked.

I love Lucinda Scala Quinn’s recipes so much, I finally broke down and ordered Mad Hungry. I can’t wait to get it.

This post is linked to Mouthwatering Mondays, Tasty Tuesday, Tempt My Tummy Tuesdays, Tuesdays at the Table, Real Food Wednesdays, What’s Cooking Wednesday, Foodie Fridays, Food on Fridays,  and anywhere else I can think of.

• Thanks to everyone for their encouragement yesterday. We did indeed stop the stupid endless number writing. When I called my son in to start school, he visibly deflated at the sight of the math book. I told him that I had been thinking about it and all that number writing was unnecessary (I might’ve said stupid, but that does not seem like a Good Mommy word, so…), and we would be skipping the rest. I made sure I came out looking like a Hero, which I felt was only fair since last week I was the Bad Guy.

A special Thank You to Melanie for saying, “Please stop making that child write his numbers from 0-100.” which contained the exact right amount of validation and gentle prodding I needed to quit. Luckily, the advice hit me right between waves of peri-menopausal hormones, and I didn’t even burst into tears. ‘Course, I asked for advice, but as you know, that is neither here nor there.

• Someone tell me I am not the only hormonal female around these parts. I swear, us girls get the short end of the stick on all this crap.

• I was very glad to see a Girl Scout set up when I went in the grocery store yesterday. This must mean the crack cookies are in, and my little neighborhood pusher Girl Scout will soon be around with a fresh supply.

• When I came out of the grocery store, a person who was probably a drug addict hit me up for four dollars. Doesn’t four dollars seem awfully specific? What can you buy for four dollars? If I had four dollars I’d be driving to Starbucks, yo. She hit up half a dozen other people while I was unloading my cart. In the last few months someone asks me for money where ever I go. What is UP with that? It’s kind of scary. I can’t figure out why this is happening to me all of a sudden. Do my $6 WalMart t-shirts scream money? Do I look like a sucker? Or maybe I just look a middle-aged soft touch. This better not be some new and unpleasant side effect of rubbing up against 40, or I’m gonna be pissed off.

• Speaking of being old, the other night I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed, and I was almost blinded by the glare bouncing off the mirror from this huge streak of gray hair that’s appeared on the left side of my head. I called my husband into the bathroom and said, ”DUDE! Why didn’t you tell me I had all this gray right here?” And he looked at it and said, “That’s nothing compared to what’s happening in the back.”

• My husband thinks he is funny.

• He is mistaken.

Okay, here’s where I’m at lately.

Big hates handwriting. I think one of the problems is that his brain works faster than his hand, so he gets frustrated with how long it takes to write anything down. Plus, his hand cramps. He’s only six. I don’t think he quite has the hang of not using a death grip on his pencil. 

Pencil grips are not a huge help - in the past few years I have probably spent over a hundred dollars experimenting with various pencil grips (that sentence was not for you, husband!) I don’t know why that stuff is so expensive – and half of them don’t even fit a wooden pencil properly, they slide around. Maybe it’s a conspiracy…

We finally found a foam grip that he’ll tolerate, but he still doesn’t love to write. I finally decided to do one short page of handwriting practice every day (he has some very bad letter formation habits we need to work on) and we do most of the rest of his work orally. He does have to write for math, but I don’t make him write all the words out in his Explode the Code workbooks, and we do the majority of spelling orally. I think it’s harder to spell orally than on paper, so if that’s how he wants to do it, I say knock yourself out.

Now we have started to integrate Notebooking (I heart notebooking!) into our school day, which means I take dictation and he complains about my handwriting. My plan is to transfer the handwriting duties over to him as he gets older. I tend to think it will happen naturally.

But……

I have had this tiny, annoying, doubting whisper in my head the last few days that maybe I should start making him write more. That I’m not doing him any favors by letting him go at his own pace. Then I tell my self that’s ridiculous, going at your own pace is the only way to really absorb information (in my opinion). Notebooking is writing-intensive and that’s probably what’s highlighting the disparity. All the words are his, I merely serve as the person doing the writing. He draws the pictures and does the other activities.

Plus Math-U-See has had us writing out the numbers from 0-100 for our current chapter and it’s about going to kill me. It takes all morning. We haven’t done anything besides write numbers for over a damn week – and we aren’t even halfway done with the chapter. I am tempted to just forget the whole stupid thing, but then the doubting voice pipes up and tells me I am enabling him enough and to quit being such a coward with handwriting. Then I do that thing where I go around and around in my head, arguing with myself.

Probably I shouldn’t go into a lot of detail on the warring voices in my head, lest you all think I am a crazy lady.

On the other hand, I do sound like a crazy lady. I don’t even know where I am going with this rambling conversation.

Oh yeah – help me get the doubting whisper to shut up. It’s annoying. And singularly unhelpful.

Probably it’s too late to convince you I am not a crackpot…

Also, my daughter is a lefty. The only one one either side of our families. So anything I learned teaching Big how to write is out the window and I’m starting from scratch. If anyone has any VERY SPECIFIC SUGGESTIONS on how to teach a lefty how to do things, I am now accepting ideas.

Gah.

Thanks peeps.

My kids use wooden pencils for school. The most vexing part of using wooden pencils is the sharpening. I have a cheap electric pencil sharpener that I got at WalMart, but it does not do a very good job. The pencils don’t get sharp and it vibrates funny or does something that causes great hunks of lead to fall out.

So. Irritating.

Initially, I wanted an electric sharpener, because hey - we have electricity and I’m going to use it. 

I’m not trying to turn pencil sharpening into an exercise regimen, I’ll tell you that right now.

It was surprisingly hard to find an electric pencil sharpener that got good reviews. I did find one that people seemed to love, but it was A HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLARS, and. . .

. . .well there’s really no and, unless it’s and I refuse to spend nearly two hundred dollars on a stupid pencil sharpener.

I mean, come on.

In the course of searching, I accidentally forgot to add the word ”electric”  once when I googled ”best pencil sharpener,” and I stumbled upon this:

The Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpener.

I love it! Isn’t it cute? It’s so retro looking. And it was way cheaper than the electric one.

Like a hundred and sixty dollars cheaper.

Side Story: After I bought this, I told my husband “check it out – I made $160 today!” and he said, “oh yeah? how?” and I said, “I totally did not buy something!”

That’s how I look at these kinds of things. I didn’t spend $20, I saved $160. You see how that works? Who’s with me?

Look! There’s even a video showing you how it works -

So if you find yourself being frustrated by pencil sharpeners, check this one out. I love mine.

It works and it’s cute. I like cute things. Why do you think I had kids? To be surrounded by cuteness. No one told me about the LOUDness (of the kids), but I’ll manage.

As per usual, I am just talking about this because I think it’s neato. No one asked me to talk about it, or gave me large sums of money to talk about it, or gave me free stuff for talking about it. That’s not to say I wouldn’t take some free stuff. Or large sums of money. Heck, I’d take small sums of money.

Are you guys bored with this subject? I quite like it, but if you need more Real Housewives talk, let me know. I will watch more teevee if you demand it.

I’m a giver that way.

I do want to answer all the questions even though I have doubts as to whether I have anything relevant to offer the homeschoolers of today.

So, let’s carry on!

Jessica asked:

I would love to know what your college application process was like. Did you take the SAT? Did you have an “official” transcript from high school? Do you feel you got more out of the college experience because of the freedoms you had to learn at home?

I want to answer the last question first, because I have something to say before your eyes glaze over at the sight of all this boring text and you click over to Dooce.

Without a shadow of a doubt, there is one thing I know being homeschooled gave me: immunity to peer pressure.

Being homeschooled gave me the chance to become…settled within myself. I had time and space to think. I didn’t have a bunch of rules given to me by my parents; I had opinions that were my own, developed away from the unceasing influence of teenagers. (Nothing against teenagers, but they are not known for their stellar decision making skills.) Somehow, not only was I confident in my positions on drinking, sex, and drugs; I truly did not care what anyone else thought of them, and didn’t hang out with people I knew would be a bad influence. Looking back, I am amazed and grateful at how relatively unscathed I grew up. I believe that being homeschooled gave me the gift of strength.

So, homeschool moms - while we all have doubts about which grammar program is the best, let’s try to remember the intangible lessons we are teaching our our kids. Lessons that can’t be graded or written on a progress report, but which are quietly shaping our children. And on those crappy days when we realize we haven’t done math in six weeks, let’s cling to the knowledge that we are doing other things that are even more important.

(Copy that last bit into an email and send it to me the next time I whine about being behind, okay?)

Next question – the college application process was painless. I did not have any trouble, and that was twenty years ago (gah! twenty!) In Colorado, we take the ACT, so that’s what I did. I called the university I was applying to, found out when they were giving the test, and spent half a day filling in little ovals. As I mentioned previously, the math section kicked my butt, but it didn’t keep me from getting into the school. We homeschooled under what was called an “umbrella school.” Basically, it was a private school somewhere in Texas. We were completely independent, but sent them my grades and they created a transcript for me. So my transcript read as if I went to high school in Texas. 

I realize this is very little help to people who are now preparing high school transcripts for their kids. I have a few friends who are in the midst of this process right now. One has a son in art school and a daughter presently doing the music school audition circuit. I have asked my friend about the process and she said it’s no big deal. When her son was applying for art school and they asked for a transcript, she told them ”well, he was homeschooled,” and the school said, “oh, okay,” and moved onto the next question. Seriously, I have tried to get more information from her about this, but that’s what she said – the school didn’t even bat an eye. Her daughter is a gifted musician and has already gained entrance to a lot of fancy colleges – Oberlin College, Johns Hopkins University, The University of Denver, Rice University - and is currently auditioning to be accepted into the music schools associated with those universities (The Peabody Institute, The Lamont School of Music, The Shepherd School of Music, etc.)

I know of another homeschooler who never went to public school a day in her life. She was not a great student and did not score out of the ordinary on the SAT. Out of the 6 or 7 schools she applied to, she was admitted to all but one WITH SCHOLARSHIPS TO EVERY SINGLE ONE. A full ride to The Colorado School of Mines! Do you know how hard it is to get into the School of Mines? She did not attend because she did not want to be an engineer, BUT STILL. Her story just flabbergasts me.

My good buddy, Other Deb has a daughter (M) who has been accepted into the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, as a Dean’s Scholar. This, according to Deb, is a BFD. All materials for application were due by December 1. Two weeks later she was accepted into the university; a day later the acceptance into the Honors program was sent. Most applicants will not even be fully-reviewed for another month or two and may not even receive acceptance until spring. Other Deb is pretty busy right now figuring out how to fill out all the stupid paperwork required to send her amazing daughter off to school, but I have prevailed upon her to write us a guest post in the future telling us exactly how the whole creating-a-transcript/applying-for-college process went for them. M is the very first homeschooler to be accepted as a Dean’s Scholar, which just ups the awesomeness even further.

So, let me conclude by saying to all you homeschool moms who are worried about college: Stop It.

Ta Da! Problem solved! You’re Welcome.

If anyone has any more questions, let me know. If I don’t know the answer, I will make something up. This is my solemn vow.

The other night, I stayed up to watch The Real Housewives of Atlanta reunion show. It was kind of bland. I prefer it when there are fisticuffs.

When it was over, I got sucked into some show on some science channel about Stephen Hawking and the Theory of Everything. Or something like that. I did not understand a word they were saying, but I was riveted nonetheless.

RIVETED.

Did you know that they don’t think electrons orbit the nucleus of an atom anymore? Now they say the electrons randomly wink on and off, popping up and then disappearing - and can even be in more than one place at a time (uh…what?) When did this happen? Do they know that for sure, or are they making stuff up?

Also, why do they hate Pluto?

Pluto will always be a planet to me.

Anyway, apparently Stephen Hawking was determined to discover the origins of the universe. He intended to marry Quantum Mechanics (the physics of atoms and other very tiny things I have never heard of) and Einstien’s Theory of Relativitiy (the physics of big stuff, like planets). Those two branches of physics contradict each other and Hawking wanted to combine them so they…wouldn’t.

I guess he cleared everything up when he theorized the universe began when a singularity at the bottom of a black hole exploded (do black holes have bottoms? who knows) and spit out the universe; then combined that stuff with some other stuff about virtual particles being able to escape the gravity of the aforementioned black hole (doesn’t virtual sort of mean imaginary? or pretend? is science even real?)

Ta Da!

Previously, Stephen Hawking believed that God created the universe, but then later figured it out in such a way that “a creator was not necessary.” (how do people even find the nerve to say that out loud?)

They didn’t explain where the singularity that exploded (Big Banged, as it were) came from in the first place…but like I said, I didn’t really understand a thing he was talking about.

But then! 

I remembered that I believe in Creation, and don’t really care what happened who-knows-how-long ago. Probably I could understand M-theory if I wanted to, but I have my hands full making sure making sure everyone around here poops on a regular basis.

And then I was able to turn to the teevee off and go to bed, satisfied that while I might not know as much as Stephen Hawking, it’s mostly because I am very busy.

That’s my story.

And I’m sticking to it.

Anyone know when The Real Housewives of Miami starts?

• I can see that some people come to my blog from Facebook. I do not understand how this happens. I do not have any link from my Facebook page to here; indeed, I reserve Facebook for people who don’t know this blog exists. How are people linking to me from Facebook? I can’t follow the link back, it goes to the main page. I tried searching for myself, but nothing comes up. This vexes me on a weekly basis. Ideas?

• A few weeks ago, my daughter was running full steam ahead, tripped, and fell. She landed with the full weight of her body against the tile edge of the stairs, right on her chest. After I got her settled down enough to have a look at her, I determined she was fine; scared and probably bruised, but fine. She kept clutching at herself though – and not always  just for dramatic effect, like she did during face-washing.

My daughter is very dramatic. She can cry REAL tears, on cue, for a GAME. It’s a little disturbing, actually. I have forbidden her from growing up to be a telenovela actress.

We decided to have her looked at, just in case. Our pediatrician said she was fine and nothing was broken. He sees that sort of thing in high school athletes all the time.

I find the idea that my 4 year old daughter has an Old Football Injury so hilarious, I’m already planning how to work it into conversations for maximum comedic effect.

• I recently discovered The Homeschool Apologist, and they make a lot of interesting points. This one about that tiresome ”S” word and this one on why not public school particularly struck chords with me.

• My daughter told me that she can tell who they grown-ups are because they are the people who are tall and old.

• My daugher thinks she is funny.

• Can someone tell me what is happening here?

That is a guy.

Wearing a giant red bird costume.

On national television.

Right?

• Happy Valentine’s Day, peeps!