A friend from Massachusetts sent this “You know You’re FROM MASSACHUSETTS IF:” to me. I moved us to Mass from the mid-west after graduating with my MS, and we lived there for 16 years, 16 long years. Often when I think back to those years I really have to force myself to remember that there were some good things that happened while we lived there, in a tiny town 60 miles west of Boston. Yes, there were lots of difficulties, not marriage wise, but with trying to live in an area where being ‘from’ there, having your ancestors from there was so important to so many people. Just before we moved I visited my barbershop so Rose, my hairdresser for 16 yrs, could cut my hair one last time and I could say goodbye. While she cut my hair she asked me a strange question but it sums up quite well how the area felt to us;

“Please, tell me, how has it been living in Lrrrrrrrr as a foreigner?”

A Foreigner! Yes, that summed up my experience in a nutshell. American born I was absolutely considered a foreigner in the area since my great-grandpappy hadn’t been born there.

So as I read these statements I chuckled cause I ‘GOT’ all of them, and for a little bit it helped to remember these funny little things about the state and area. Thanks May.

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You know You’re FROM MASSACHUSETTS IF:

You think if someone is nice to you they either want something or they are from out of town.

The public transportation system is known as the “T” and you’d rather drive in bumper to bumper traffic for 4 hours to get to Boston than use the “Orange Line”. [[rode the Orange Line many times to Boston, since it really was a favorite of the boys. Before kids we avoided the “T”]]

You could own a small town in Iowa for the cost of your house. [HAHA, we purchased our home in DE with twice the land and 3x the sq. footage for what we sold our home in MA for. Yep, so true!]]

There are 24 Dunkin Donuts shops within fifteen minutes of your house, and that is how you give directions.

If you stay on the same road long enough it eventually has three different names.

53 degrees is “on the warm side”. [[Be forwarned if you ever visit us, that is about where I keep our house temperature in the winter. But I still laugh when I hear my MA friends discuss a Heat Wave. That means the temperature reached 90 for 3 days in a row. LOL!!!]]

You’ve walked to Brigham’s for an ice cream cone in the snow.

You cringe every time you hear some actor/actress imitate the” Boston Accent” on TV. [[I knew we had lived there too long when the folks around us sounded ‘normal’]]

You call chocolate sprinkles “jimmies”.

A water fountain is called a bubbler. (Say it “bubbla”).

You can go from one side of town to the other in less than fifteen minutes.

You know how to pronounce towns like Worcester, Haverhill, Peabody, Scituate, Leicester, Chatham, and Leominster.

You know what they sell at a “packie”. [[Guess what this one is, but only if you are not from MA]]

You keep an ice scraper and lock de-icer in your car all year round.

Paranoia sets in when you can’t see a Dunkin Donuts, ATM or CVS.

You’ve pulled out of a side street and used your car to block oncoming traffic so you can make a left-hand turn. [[Isn’t this what you are supposed to do? Still remember the time I freaked my SILs out when I pulled a U-Turn on MainStreet in their little town. They reminded me that I could be thrown into jail for doing that, however, that’s acceptable driving behavior back in that little MA town.]]

You’ve bragged about saving money at The Christmas Tree Shop or Building 19.

You know what a “regular coffee” is. [[We were introduced to this on our first trip into a Dunkin Dounuts. We said sure, expecting that it would be plain, black coffee. Oh my it wasn’t and the clerk let us know that we were really stupid for not knowing what “regular coffee” was. Two lessons in one minute, wow]]

You’ve ordered a coffee frappe. [[ahh, a frappe, I could go for one of those ]]

You can navigate a rotary without a problem.

You use the words “wicked” and “good” in the same sentence.

You know that life is “a pissa”.

You drink tonic, but would never consider using it on your hair.

You never say “Cape Cod” you say “The Cape”.

You went to Old Sturbridge Village, Plymouth Plantation and Bunker Hill at least once in elementary school.

You’ve ridden on the Swan Boats.

You know the Mass Pike and 495 create some sort of strange weather dividing line. [[This is so TRUE!!]]

Thanks to May, I guess I do need to head up North for a little visit soon.

My friend, Anna Venger, sent me an email asking the question; “How come you haven’t updated your blog?”

Yes, I’ve been away for a week without updating my blog. Busy, busy week.

Well, let’s see. DH invited a couple from work to come over on Saturday. I never met them before so being a bit nervous about them coming over, I scoured the house from top to bottom. It hadn’t been cleaned like that since before Science Olympiad began early last year. It was ALLOT of work to get the house back into an OK shape.

Then there was the food shopping and fixing all the food for Saturday afternoon and evening ahead of time too. Of course we had too much food, but it has been nice this week eating from left-overs. The couple is really nice, with a too-cute toddler, and we had an enjoyable evening, but quite a bit to pull together by myself.

On top of being busy with getting ready for Saturday night I had someone else put something on my plate this week, or try to. I’m the Yahoo list owner for my local huge hs group. The group Pres called Wednesday or Thursday night, said that all the Yahoo email addresses had to be cross-referenced with our membership list, and confirmed as members before Sept 1st. I told her that no way could I do this with everything else going on, and I wouldn’t just unsubscribe folks from our Yahoo group whose email I didn’t find on our membership list without first asking the folks for their name. HA, Thursday night I couldn’t sleep so I started the process; doing a mass mailing to 97 folks which has meant tons of emails from folks giving me their names. Tons of time cross-referencing names and email address to our membership list.

My HS support group also had Family Night last night where all the clubs were there for families to talk to, and learn what the various clubs do. My Science Olympiad group had 3 tables for posters, and the various items the kids have built —- lots of folks, lots of interest in what SO is and how to get their kids involved —- and there were 4 other SO families there so we had lots of people to man our 3 tables. I had also volunteered to pull together the posters. Why do I do that? During the last week I pulled together photos from our Elementary and Jr High Science Olympiad families via email, edited them to eliminate red eye, and altered the brightness and contrast on loads of them, burned them to a CD, and ended up going to Wal-Mart 3 different times to get them printed. After that I mounted the photos onto 3 posters. They looked great, showing events, kids with medals, preparation shots, parades, pizza parties,……. Lots of time pulling the 3 posters together though which has meant no time to blog.

I also committed myself to not having the PC on during school time. Today was an exception since the garage walls went up today. I encouraged the boys to watch what was going on; book learning can wait, and while they watched the construction I went on the PC. Tomorrow the trusses go up.

This past weekend MK and I went on a shopping trip to get a suit for him, and a wedding present for Pat’s niece’s wedding next weekend. I also picked up a baby present for my nephew’s new baby, and a dress for me. I do not like to shop, but really needed to get that done, plus there was the back-to-school shopping that we had to do so we had notebooks and other little things for Mt Pleasant.

The week has been a whirlwind of activity. Oh yea, there also was the pool party SK attended prior to the Family Night, an hour away, with the Jr High Kids Activity group from our hs group. He enjoys getting together with these 60 or so other hs kids. Probable a few other things happened this past week that ate up time, like school-work, but my mind is still in a whirl trying to remember it all.

But here’s my new goal — to look like this lady when I’m 86yo; but hopefully way before then.

Oh my, look at the time! I have to get to my Civic Association Board Meeting. I’m their sec’t and we’re having a discussion about what to do about folks who do not follow the developments Deed Restrictions. I’m too busy for this!

If every school day was like yesterday morning school would be a breeze, but then the kids wouldn’t learn too much either. Ahhh, the fun of the first day.

In the past we’ve started school on the same day our local PS starts. Not this year. This year we started a week early so I didn’t take the kids out to breakfast as we’ve done in the past. We’ll do that next week, eating at the restaurant where we can watch the Yellow School Buses pull into the high school, and discuss nonsense stuff.

Yesterday I started with SK who is going into 9th grade. We went over the goals for each of his umpteen subjects for this coming year, tied that in with the goals we have for his high school transcript, showed him his books, and let him get started. He’s taking:

Rhetoric—he’ll work through:

Anthony Weston, A Rulebook for Arguments (9 – 14 wks)

Edward Corbett, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 4th Edition

Thomas S. Kane, The New Oxford Guide to Writing

For each book he’ll ¨ Read a section in the text under study, outline the content of the text. And then provide two examples of the text’s lesson either from someone else’s rhetoric or of you own creation

Great Books (combination of History, and Literature),

I spent quite allot of time this past year compiling book lists off the net, and SK will chose at least 8, hopefully 12 Classics from the Ancient time period to work through.

Math– He’s finishing up NEM 3 and will work through Dolciana’s Algebra II and Trig book

Computer Programing — He’d like to have this as one of his electives this year, but I think he’ll have enough on his plate without trying to fit this in.
Science—Biology,

He’ll use Inquiry into Life by Mader Pat used this text in college and really liked it, so since it was on our shelf it was a no-brainer to go with it.

LA’s —grammar, Well, I think he laughed when I pulled out all the grammar books I’ve picked up for him over this last year. There’s Editor in Chief, Rules of the Game, Jensen’s Grammar books, and a few others. He was happy to see he wasn’t going to work through R&S grammar this coming year.

Writing—he’ll work through Writing Strands 7 & 8, and finish up Vocabulary from Classical Roots

Latin– Henle Latin Book 1; geez I hope he gets through the book this year.

Spanish–he’ll use Rosetta Stone’s Spanish CD’s

Art Unbelievably I actually have a book for SK to work through, The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art history from Prehistoric to Postmodern, Carol Strickland, and he is receptive to read through it.

Music—SK is an avid Classical and Country Music listener and I picked up: The Classical Music Experience: Discover the Music of the World’s Greatest Composers, Julius H Jacobson and Classical Music 101, Fred Plotkin for him to read through.

PE-–For us this just happens; ice skating, roller skating, bowling, pick-up kick ball games, hikes, bike rides,…..

Then it was MK’s turn to see his books. I started showing him the books he used last year that we are continuing with; Spelling Power, R&S grammar 5,…..and then I showed him his history program; Ancients by Pandia Press. Well, he was like a kid in a candy shop when he saw the History Pockets for Egypt book. He was thrilled that I allowed him to jump right into making two of the craft projects from the book. He loves doing hands-on stuff and this history program has lots and lots of that for him. He’s going to have a good time, for sure. He even shared with a neighbor that school was awesome today.

Unfortunately by evening MK was quite sick with dual ear infections. We just returned from the Dr, who confirmed my diagnosis and placed him on antibiotics. So much for school or the beach today.

I’m not too surprised by my nerd score, after all, I’m an engineer, and while there are HUGE differences between male and female engineers—don’t even get me started on this, no,no,no—- it is still a nerdy field. Probable why I classically school, I’m just too nerdy not to.

Thanks to Doc over at Sunrise Rants for posting this quiz.

The garage continues to take shape. The foundation walls are in, yesterday 145 tons of dirt were delivered, and moved to fill in this hole. Hopefully another 100 tons will arrive this week, free of charge, from a local construction project, and the exterior foundation walls can be backfilled.

While DH moved the dirt using a little front-loader, SK used a tamper to pack it down. Sorry, but since I was off at a fund-raiser there aren’t any photos of SK working.

MK is sick—headache, earaches, sore throat, vomiting, fever—I’m not concerned about his illness but just trying to set the stage.

A little while ago we noticed that MK’s chin is all blue. WHAT???

We figured it out — he had a litte water in a plastic glass this morning. While laying in the big chair he entertained himself by sucking on the glass and getting it to stick to his chin. I saw him do this once and didn’t think too much about it. Seems he did it allot.
Seems he gave himself a HUGE HICKEY!

I do hope it disappears soon cause we need to have passport photos taken and this thing is sooooo red and blue.

A HICKEY! who’d of thought of that at age 10?

School is starting on Monday for us, and this post is about what we have on our shelves for MK to work through this year. Sometimes, as we found out last year, life events result in the books going off the desk and back onto the shelves. Sometimes the books never even make it off the shelves and onto the desks during the year but that’s OK too. This will be our seventh year hs’ing and I really feel like this is going to be an exciting year! MK will be entering 5th grade, the Logic Age as we Classically Educators call it, and even his older brother has been noting how MK’s argumentative skills are constantly showing themselves. Mark has on his shelves:

MATH

Singapore Math 5A & B

Calculadders

Extra Practice for Primary Mathematics 4 & 5

Mathematics Topical Problem Sums 3 & 4 (these are quite challenging word problems that get us both stretching our brains)

Family Math — I never got to this one when SK went through this age so we’ll see if it even makes it off the shelf this time.

Then there are all those fun math picture books and math games that we will pull out over time too.

Language Arts

Writing

Copywork 2x weekly from whatever Great Book MK picks from

Dictation 2x weekly from whatever Great Book I happen to grab at the time

Narration 2 - 4x weekly from MK’s reading; either Fun Books—he won’t even know that he’s doing school when he tells me about the story he is reading, or Science, or History, or one of his assigned books. He’ll write up one or two of these every week.

Classical Composition–Fable Stage

Grammar

Rod&Staff 5 — we will continue doing the vast majority of this program orally. Great one-on-one time and MK has plenty of other writing he will be doing.

Since I want both MK and SK to improve their proofreading skills I picked up:

Daily Paragraph Editing 4 & 5 (picked this one up from Rainbow Resource)

Editor in Chief A1

Spelling

Spelling Power — this will be MK’s second year with SP. His spelling skills really improved last year, and he loves doing this subject now.

Vocabulary

Worldly Wise 3000 Book 2

Handwriting

Pentime Cursive by Pentime Publishers — this was something I found at the Amish BookStore I visit and MK enjoys working through the books. Rainbow Resource has these books too.

Latin

Matin Latin Book 1 & 2

MK has already worked through these two books but to build his understanding of Latin I’m going to have him work through the books again. He really isn’t ready or eager to move on to Henle Latin so he’ll have this year to gain confidence in Latin by reviewing what he’s done before.

Logic

Mindbenders B Series

MK started into this series last year and it is a favorite pastime of his to work these logic puzzles. A friend shared Perplexors with me and I plan to purchase some of these books for MK to work through too.

Science

As usual I put together my own Life Science program for MK. I can’t even say that we are using some book as a spline since I’m drawing from a 3′ long shelf of Biology books. He’ll be doing lots of hands-on stuff and we’ll take as much time, or as little time as he wants on this. I might post my outline in the resource section of this blog later on.

History

For the last four years we’ve used Story of the World and really enjoyed it. This year we are moving on and I’m turning to a program from Pandia Press,

History Odyssey Ancients, Level 2

History through the Ages, Timeline Figures

Plus 9′ of Ancient History books, and tons of library books will find their way into our home and most will be read.

Music

MK plays the piano and after this long summer break he’ll probable have to start back at the beginning.

PE

Hiking, biking, canoe rides, ice skating, roller skating,…. This just sort of happens around here.

Art

The Renaissance Art Game — it was on our shelf last year and perhaps it will actually make it onto the desk this year

I was cruising around the Blog World and stopped to read Barefoot Musings What type of homeschooler are you? post and decided to take the quiz to see what type of homeschooler I am. Self-doubt raising its head again,…maybe I should be approaching our hs’ing someother way. After all there are allot of unschoolers here and their posts do tug at me, for a little while. Our approach has been enjoyable for seven years now, and the kids seem to love it but the thought flashed through my head that maybe this quiz might point out something I didn’t know about myself. (In all honestly though, SK is really the one that has demanded the structure of the Classical approach time and again over the years.)

So, I answered the questions and you can see for yourself the result:

What Type of Homeschooler Are You?

Galileo - If it is worth learning, it has been printed in Latin. You want your children to have a classical education. You teach the Trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the Quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Ancient history is fascinating to you, and you own several Greenleaf Guides to prove it.
Take this quiz!

Ahhh, I’m ready to start another year, not that our schooling every ends, but the chapters do change everyonce in awhile.

There it is, out in the open, I turned the BIG FIVE-ZERO today.
I did a Google search on turning fifty. One site suggested that I should buy a box of chocolates with fifty candies and eat one a day for fifty days? I know me well enough to know I’d eat all fifty in fifty minutes, or fifty seconds Chocolates and me are best friends. I’d love having a big party, however, we have been gone so often this past summer or DH was off on a business trip that the party never was planned. Oh well, that is the way life is sometimes. And then there are those signs; you’ve seen them:

Fifty is Nifty—-or so they say—-a friend sent me that one on a card. I sure didn’t feel so nifty after hiking Mt Marcy. The sore muscles seem to come oh so easily after any strenuous workout, and stay and stay and stay. What is so nifty about turning fifty?

The one I saw in the campground last week was much more to my liking:

Growing Old is inevitable, growing up is optional.

Now that saying suits me much more. I really like the idea of not growing up, however it is only from thinking about what I have witnessed over the past years does it hit me how many years there have been. So even though I so often feel that I am still in my thirties, the birth date on my driver’s license confirms what my experiences tell me. I’ve seen many changes during my years, enough for fifty years.

I remember homes without air conditioning, or TV’s let alone color TV’s. During the Cold War years I remember how we practiced sitting in a tuck position in the school’s hallway in case of a nuclear attack. Then there was that day in 2^nd grade when the announcement came over the school’s loudspeaker system that JFK had been assassinated. I remember sitting with my classmates in the school’s assemble hall to watch the first rocket launch to take a man around the Earth, and sitting there again as he was fished out of the ocean. I remember the Beatles first appearance, peace marches, Woodstock, staying up late to watch the first man walk on the moon, the Viet Nam War, Watergate, the impeachment of Nixon, and the advent of the kitchen microwave. I remember seeing my first pocket calculator in ’74 and then purchasing my first calculator for $150. Oh the joy of not having to use a slide rule in my engineering classes. I was one of the first engineers to use a PC in the huge R&D Engineering firm I worked for in the early ‘80’s and then saw it replace the electric typewriters the secretaries were so fond of. The telephone went from being a rotary box to little cell phones. And the birth of the Internet; my how far that has come.

Fifty years have passed, but it still seems so hard to believe. I’ve seen a lot of changes but somehow it feels like I’m only in my thirties. It helps that I do look much younger than my age, and while this was aggrivating when I was younger it is quite nice now. Once while cruising through a wine store the clerk demanded that I leave the store since I looked underage. She exclaimed as she looked at my driver’s license, “OMG, you’re older than me!” Yes, I was in my late twenties and others thought I was under 21. Those youthful looks are nice now since others often believe me to be 10 or 15 years younger. So, I’m not too interested in growing up and acting over fifty. Naw, for now I’ll still keep acting young. But a new page is turning for me,…mid-life crisis—that’s not for me, Fifty, hmmm, I think I’ll go out for a 50 minute walk.

We have been doing some fundraising this summer for our homeschool Science Olympiad team. The funds will be used to send several moms’ to SO training in October, for the purchase of SO study materials, and hopefully building materials. Some weeks ago we went out and purchased Italian Ice — quite expensive—-and sold it out front of one of our SO member’s store. The traffic was heavy but we sold little.

Then two of our moms had an idea on a very hot weekday — let’s just go and give away free freezer pops at the local WaWa and have a donation can sitting there. They already had permission from the store to stand outside the store and collect money. The results were favorable so yesterday was our second collection day, and we grossed a tidy sum in a couple hours.

Sometimes we gave away just freezer pops, and sometimes the person just wanted to give a donation, and sometimes both. But then there were the times that we shared information about Science Olympiad and what kids do in SO, and it was fabulous to watch folks faces light up when they learned what the kids do. I heard “Amazing” so often yesterday from strangers as they saw and heard about SO. What a great way to spend a few hours on a Saturday. We only had one person who was screaming at us as to how we were destroying society by hs’ing our kids and taking salaries away from PS teachers since our kids weren’t in school. Uninformed folks—our taxes still go to the school and we still have to pay for the school books our kids use. And that doesn’t count the salaries we all give up by staying home. Thankfully the store started to power wash the side of their building during his rant so allot of it was drowned out. But he was the only one, among hundreds of supportive folks.