School Records

I just filled out our school records/grades. We just "officially" finished our school a little over a week ago (it seems we took a lot of extra weeks off during the year, so our school year dragged into the end of July - so, while everybody else is talking about what a great summer they had and gearing up for the new year, we're just starting our abbreviated summer vacation!)

I enjoy planning for school, and I feel like we're doing okay, covering lots of material, and I know my kids are learning . . . but when it comes time to fill out the grade reports, my confidence wavers and I begin to envy people doing a 'standard textbook' curriculum that gives quizzes and tests to base grades on and 'prove' that such-and-such was learned. What exactly are my kids supposed to know about geography, anyway? I know we've never memorized the 50 state capitals. My kids are reading about interesting people and places, but we have no flour-and-water relief maps or unit book reports to show. How do I know what kind of a grade my kids should get??

Anyway, grades are done, for better or worse, and it's another half year before I have to think about it again.

Wake Up!

This morning, as usual, Miss Moana was the first one up. I told her to go and wake up her brothers, as usual. Generally, she goes to their door (it has a baby-gate to keep her out) and she calls, "BRUDDERS! Wake up!" This morning I told her to "go wake up your brothers." And she said, "You mean T. Kekoa and J. Keola and L. Kahoa? I love them. They're mine. They're my brudders." Then she went to wake them up. :)

CM on the Brain?

This week I was making a green smoothie in the blender - I wanted it to be blended really well, so I let it run for a couple of minutes. And as I was letting it run, I was watching the mixture going around and around through the side of the container . . . I could see little dark specks kind of collecting together on the side in a few places, it must have been apple peel, and I started thinking of like attracting like, coagulating together like . . . apperception masses?

I think maybe I've been reading too much of Charlotte Mason's criticism of Herbart and his "apperception mass" theory.

New Dancing Dress

Miss Moana has loved the skirt I made her out of her old baby sling, but she wears it every day and I'm getting tired of looking at it and it clashes with some of her clothes. So, last night, instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing, I made her a new skirt. I bought some silky material at Walmart in a pink that will match almost everything she owns. I used a similar method (not really a pattern) that my mother showed me for making a pa'u hula skirt so that it would be really, really full for the best twirling effect. I was pleased that, when it's on, it looks like a ballet skirt. Perfect to go with "Donkey Honkey!" Here are some pictures of the skirt in action. She makes her own music when she dances, so she's singing "daaah-dah-dah!" in most of these pictures.

When Christendom Produces Cultists, Mockers and Atheists

Dana at Principled Discovery [I've spent a lot of time there this afternoon! ;)] has been blogging about an article called "The Descent Into Unbelief." It examines why Christian Victorians failed to pass on their faith to the next generations. Charlotte Mason must have seen some of this coming because she advocated exposing children to ideas -- instead of sheltering them from things like evolution, Biblical criticism and immorality, she thought they should be taught to think through difficult issues. Dana's posts confirm CM's advice.

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

Are Homeschoolers Guilty of Abandoning Ship?

I followed a link from Principled Discovery's blog to this post at Street Prophets titled "Homeschools offer no guarantees." It was interesting, and the debate in the comments is even more interesting. This, from one of the very last comments posted by a "Jeff G," struck me, it reminds me so much of CM's warning about utilitarian education:

"...big business--big corporations--are having a horrible impact on education. I fear we may be turning our schools into career grist mills, and to me that smacks of social engineering. Career prep is important, but education is about much much more than what you wanna be when you grow up. As Thomas Jefferson pointed out, education is critical to the functioning of a democratic republic. The ability to think critically is of enormous import. An electorate that cannot deconstruct the media, analyze and detect bias in news and information, think and analyze logically, and communicate clearly and effectively will not be able to sustain a democratic system."

The debate is interesting because, while I've thought about homeschoolers being guilty of abandoning the mission field by refusing to be "salt and light" in public schools, I'd never really considered that homeschooling is, in a sense, a self-centered action that leaves everyone else's kids to their fates in the system. Not that it makes me reconsider homeschooling - I don't think that having my children in the system would help the system or any of the other victims of it. I just hadn't heard of that argument before, or heard of people leaving their own children there, even when they're not doing well, for that reason.

Pool Pix

Miss Moana with her Daddy in her little pool. This isn't the only picture; I posted a few more on her picture page.

Miss Moana's Favorite Videos

Miss Moana gets so upset when her brothers and Daddy all leave to go to piano lessons or violin lessons, but she's so difficult to take out, so I usually stay home with her. Last week I discovered that she's much less upset if I let her watch videos while they're gone. So she's been watching more videos lately - a scripture song one called Hide'em in Your Heart for kiddies, Riverdance, and a Don Quixote ballet with Mikhail Baryshnikov that a friend loaned us (Miss Moana calls it "Donkey Honkey").

It's easy to tell what she watched last - after the song one, she'll be singing. After Riverdance, she asks to put on a dress, and then she puts her hands on her hips and jumps and kicks. After "Donkey Honkey," she asks for a pink dress, and then she twirls and does a lot of big arm movements.

Her other favorites are Winnie the Pooh, Bambi and the old Lassie TV series - but those are for special occassions.

Looking Closely: Answers

Here are the full pictures that the close-ups were taken from. (Original post here.)


1. Dandelion

2. Leaf with dew

3. Morel mushroom (I believe this is a yellow morel)

4. Orange day lily

5. Dandelion seeds

6. Iris

7. Chicory

8. (To be truthful, I don't know what this is myself. It's a fairly common weed around here, but this is the first time I've seen one with this sort of coloring.)

9. Mushroom (this is in its youth; I have other pictures of it fully-grown)

10. Chicory again

Exam Time

We're just now finishing up our final term of the school year, so we'll be doing exams next week. I've come up with exam questions based on Charlotte Mason's exams, except that I'm only assigning ten questions per student. It's summer and we're all ready for a break, I didn't want to tack on a grueling week of exams to a vacation that's only starting in the middle of July. Summer's going to be short enough as it is.

Kahoa - Year 3.5

Bible
1. Tell about Gideon and his three hundred. (Judges)
2. How is Jesus better than the angels? (Hebrews)

3. Writing/Dictation (poem by Christina Rosetti)
Look over first, then write:
The city mouse lives in a house;--
The garden mouse lives in a bower,
He's friendly with the frogs and toads,
And sees the pretty plants in flower.

History (A Child's History of the World)
4. Tell about "Bibles made of stone and glass."
5. What do you know about Napoleon?

Literature
6. How did Myles help his father? (Men of Iron by Howard Pyle)
7. What happened to Gobo? (Bambi by Felix Salton)

Geography (Elementary Geography by Charlotte Mason)
8. What do you know about the surface of the earth? Name some continents.

Science (All About Famous Inventors and Their Inventions by Fletcher Pratt)
9. Tell about the invention of the cotton gin and who invented it, OR the airplane.

Math
10. 232 x 34
6x + 4 = 40
Write three ways of dividing 28 by 4. How much is that?

--------------------------

Keola - Year 6

Bible
1. Tell about Gideon and his three hundred. (Judges)
2. How is Jesus better than the angels? (Hebrews)

3. Writing/Dictation
So Gandalf went on with the tale until he came to the fight in the dark the discovery of the lower gate, and their horror that Mr. Baggins had been mislaid. (The Hobbit)

History
4. How/why did Augustus get his title, and what was his name before? (Augustus Caesar's World by G. Foster)
5. Describe a Roman triumphal procession. OR tell what you know of Cleopatra.
6. Tell what you admire about Churchill OR Galileo's contributions to science/math. (Never Give in OR Galileo and the Magic Numbers)

Geography (A Child's Geography of the World by Hillyer)
7. Tell about "the land of the new moon" OR the place where there are "man made mountains."

Natural History/Science (The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson)
8. What do you know about waves or currents?

Citizenship (Plutarch's Lives)
9. What good did Romulus do for Rome?

Picture Study
10. Describe Waterhouse's painting "The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius"

---------------------------

Kekoa - Year 10

Bible
1. Tell about some of Israel's judges (Judges)
2. Compare Jesus with the angels. (Hebrews)

History (Churchill The Great Democracies)
3. Tell about American Reconstruction after the Civil War.
4. What do you know of the rise of Germany OR the struggle for home rule in Ireland?
5. Why was Victoria so beloved by her people? (Queen Victoria by Sarah Tytler) OR Describe Frederick Douglass's "escape from slavery." (Essays)

Government
6. What is the role of government in a free state? (On Liberty by John Stuart Mill)

Geography
7. Describe the terrain of Scotland (In Search of Scotland by H.V. Morton)

Citizenship (Plutarch's Lives or Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin)
8. Contrast the leadership of Theseus and Romulus. OR explain "all literature and all education are only useful so far as they tend to confirm this calm, beneficent, and THEREFORE kingly, power--first, over ourselves, and, through ourselves, over
all around us."

Science
9. Tell about "winter animals" (Walden by Henry David Thoreau) OR How does physics relate to biology, astronomy, geology, or psychology? (Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman)

Literature (Silas Marner by George Eliot)
10. Describe the character of your favorite person in Silas Marner OR compare the characters of brothers Godfrey and Dunstan.