No physical violence. Never, ever. To love a child does not include spanking, ever.

And yes, there are alternative means to discipline a child than using your hand or a paddle or some other instrument. Check it out, Spank Out

Back in ‘89 when my sister asked me why my DH and I did not have kids my answer was simple; I did not like the way our parents had parented us, nor the relationship we siblings had with each other. I also wasn’t interested in hitting a child as I had been hit but really knew no other means to correct or discipline a child. And I shared with her that I considered her to be extremely lucky, having kids that got along, were well-behaved, thoughtful and they enjoyed being with their mom and dad. She corrected me and informed me that luck had nothing to do with it. Nothing. If you want to do things differently than how you were raised, then read a book, search out alternative means to accomplish your goal.  Educate yourself.

That was just what I did and what I ask you to do too if you have ever resorted to spanking your child. I actually dislike that term, spanking. Makes the action of hitting, physical violence against a young, innocent child sound acceptable. It isn’t acceptable. Ever.

National Spank Out

National Day of Reason

ht Frankie at Kitchen Table Learners; and to Doc.

When I started homeschooling I didn’t need anyone to tell me what my weak educational areas were. I knew very well what they were, any area other than math or science. My desire though was that these would not be weak areas for my children and so I focused attention on these. It was why when I went to my first HS Conference I purchased Latin books; my kids were going to learn Latin since my foreign language abilities were lacking. Ok, non-existent. I picked up a grammar curriculum for the same reason. In our first week of homeschooling in ‘99 I came across the book, The Well Trained Mind, and so we started studying history chronologically. Believe me, when I say that back in those days I did not know who Alexandra the Great was, when he lived, or if he came before or after the Ottoman Empire. Pitiful, I know. And the Black Death and the Magna Carta, well, I had no clue about their role either in history, or when they happened or why I should have any knowledge about them. I could go on and on describing my poor history education but that has changed, thankfully. As any homeschooling mom knows, we learn along with our children, and so I can now diagram a sentence, translate Latin and I have a greater understanding of historical people and events.

Along with this educational void I didn’t know why art museums were important to visit and quite frankly and honestly I did not care to go to them. Even before we started homeschooling I took my kids to art museums hoping that maybe they just might enjoy them. Maybe, gasp, they would help me discover what was so fun about going to art museums.

It hit me though when we were in the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Saturday that I was actually enjoying looking at the collection. It was somewhere between looking at a suit of armor worn by Henry the VIII, and the one worn by Emperor Ferdinand I, that it really hit me that I knew these men, knew when they lived, what they did, and understood their place in history. The pieces came alive, not quite like they do in Night at the Museum, but it actually became fun to wonder from case to case, read who had owned which pieces and instantly know who the person was, what was going on in the world when the object was produced, and imagine the story the object could tell me if it only could talk. Oh my, somewhere in educating my own children I too have received quite an education. So much so that art museums are fun and I finally understand why we have them around.

It was also a delight to watch MilitaryKid excitedly explain to me the ins-and-outs of the different arms, and swords, and see that I had succeeded in having a hand in him enjoying an art museum. The precious moment though was when he said to his brother; ‘you have got to come over here and see this awesome painting.’ What a moment to treasure in New York City.

Sunday we went to another little deli for breakfast before going to the Metropolitian Museum of Art and got there when it opened. MilitaryKid liked their gun collection, NSS, DH liked their Craft period furniture, ScienceKid liked seeing the Impressionalists and I just went along to see it all. Late in the afternoon we left the Met and went down the street to the Guggenheim; none of us got that museum and I don’t know why my sister thought ScienceKid would like it. Maybe cause she doesn’t know him very well. We took a short break at our hotel before walking over to Times Square, and then to the same sister’s favorite Thai restaurant. It was a huge disappointment for us — MK’s chicken satay was dry as could be; DH’s Pad dish was served on a huge bowl of iceberg lettuce and not noddles; my shrimp Pad dish was just shrimp, no noodles either; SK’s catfish dish was hot as promised but full of bones. As SK said, he got his daily dose of calcium at that meal. DH will not complain at a restaurant and here I don’t think it would have helped since our waiter was really poor too. Oh well, we enjoyed visiting the M&M shop, and Hershey’s shop on Times Square afterwards, and seeing all the lights.

Early morning found us walking again, but this time to a little Deli for an inexpensive breakfast before heading over to the Empire State Building.  Lines, upon lines of people were there.  First through security and then away from the lines to their Sky Ride.  Now that was an interesting look at the city (but personally I was glad this came with our NYC pass cause I would have been disappointed paying the extra bucks to go on it.  Then of course we were back in a line to get out picture taken before going up to the Observation Floor.  Lines, and more people.  Hardly like the scene from Sleepless in Seattle, but oh so fun to look out on NYC.  From there we took the subway over to the Natural History Museum and spent the afternoon exploring their extensive collections.  We didn’t take in any of their special shows but sure could see us coming back here again.  Rocks, gems, fossils, mammals, and Dum-Dum as seen in the Night at the Museum.   And while the there were lots of people it wasn’t overwhelming. I’m still trying to figure out when I can put our return trip into our fall schedule.

By now it was 5:30, late afternoon but you wouldn’t have known it by all the crowds still milling everywhere.  Since the other museums near NHM were closed or would be closing soon and we weren’t ready to call it a day we searched our NYC pass for our next activity.  We caught the subway downtown—-thanks to the unlimited MetroPass purchased on our first day—-and walked over to The Body Exhibit.  Wow!  This isn’t a place we would have visited without our NYC Pass but what a super exhibit.  Bodies, real bodies, cut this way and that to show muscles, or nerves, or organs, and all done with great respect and for a reason.  Nothing gross about it at all either.   When I picked up my backpack from the coat-check area the clerks were talking about restaurants they liked, that the tourists didn’t flock to.  Of course I asked where they would recommend and eat at that was nearby. Carmine’s, right around the corner, an Italian place, or Bennie’s  a Thai place.  Since MilitaryKid is a bit fussy and he was really hungry we headed over to Carmine’s.  The menu looked reasonable so we stepped inside.  What a great choice!  The food was delicious, the staff attentive without being in our face like the previous night, and the atmosphere was like being in our local neighborhood restaurant.  And no crowds.

Back at our hotel tonight and enjoying True Lies, and resting our weary legs.

By 8am we were on the filled train with locals heading into NYC. NYC!! I grew up on the East Coast but had only been in town one time before. For years I wanted to go back, and explore the city but other things always got in the way. Life, it does that to us. For at least the last two years ScienceKid has asked to go to NYC, first for his birthday day-fun, just for the day, but something, Grandad’s medical needs or my knee injury always got in the way. The solution to this problem—-since afterall, I believe that there is always a solution to every problem—-was to surprise SK with a family vacation to NYC as his sixteenth birthday present. And here we were, taking the train into NYC.

Our fellow companions were unaware of my excitement of heading into their town as I stood in the train’s isle. One older man sat reading a book, two folks were paging through the news the old-fashion-way, many were catching a few zzzz’s, while the vast majority of others were playing games on their IPods. Suddenly the lady sitting beside where I stood asked if I would like her seat. I chuckled, and realized that that was a first for me; do I really look that old? Isn’t that something you only suggest to old folks and pregnant ladies? There was one seat available on the train, right beside where I stood but the man (I refuse to call such a gentleman) at the isle did not move over to the center of the three-person seat but continued to play a game on his IPod. That was fine with me, really, I was enjoying the train’s movement and watching my boys expressions as we traveled east. They have been on numerous train trips before but this time we were heading into NYC.

We arrived at our destination with luggage in hand, found the elevator, I jumped in while the folks squeezed together to make room for the others, and then DH said, “We’ll wait for the next one.” The doors closed and the folks started laughing.

“You aren’t from New York are you? There was plenty of room for them.” I laughed with them and shared that DH’s roots were Ohio and no, he didn’t know there was plenty of room. We took a short cab ride over to the Omni, dropped off our bags and headed back out. We picked up our City-Pass at Planet Hollywood, found the subway entrance and took it into Chinatown. After a great lunch and long stares at the men playing checker-games in Columbus Park we walked over to the financial district. Sometime in this span the boys realized that they had already heard more languages spoken then ever before. We walked by Ground Zero, missed by a hair having a RAT run across the top of my shoe, continued to Battery Park, stared at the Statue of Liberty across the water, and suggested that we make it there on a different trip. SK thought the line for the boat to the SoL was the longest line he had ever seen. I agreed, and the characters we saw was fun too. Next we found the NYSE ‘BULL’ and chuckled at the folks taking their photo while touching his balls. We, on the other hand took the boys photo at the Bull’s head, and as one lady remarked, ‘a passport photo would show happier kids’ They were really happy however they don’t like their photo being staged. Next we walked to Wall Street, and after a short lecture about smiles being needed, they obliged.

We found Wall Street, popped into Trinity Church and found that it was really at the wall just as it is described in National Treasury. We next walked on over to the Seaport area, and enjoyed some street food along the way. By this time we were bushed, sat on a park bench in a little park and relaxed a bit before walking to the subway for a ride to Central Park. Yes, we did more walking around the park before heading back to our hotel. Finally we went out to dinner to an Italian restaurant that Zaggart gave a 22 to for cost. Yea, right. $245 later we left the place and while the food was delicious we did not have appetizers, or a salad with our dinner, or any side dishes of vegetables, and each refrained to one drink apiece. DH insisted that we each have a desert, which was delicious too, but ouch, I didn’t expect such a huge bill. Sure the service was superb but ouch. Our Chinese lunch was only $40 for the four of us, with drinks, more food than we could eat, and it too was delicious with great service, and sure this is NYC but ouch.

ScienceKid returned from his speech competition and reported receiving an EXCELLENT rating in Impromptu.   Nice job. (And don’t tell him, but I would not have wanted to give an impromptu speech on some topic)

He said the low point was when 180 people in the cafeteria sang Happy Birthday to him.  How many folks have that many people sing Happy Birthday to you?   What a memory he will have!   And although he might not appreciate it today, or wish to acknowledge how special that was, I think he thought it was grand.

ScienceKid is 16 today. Sixteen years, oh my, the memories, where did the time go? He has become a wonderful young man who I enjoy immensely and am so proud of too.

****

Last week ScienceKid, while sitting at his desk, turned to me and complained about a discomfort in his chest. He had mentioned it to me before but the worry look in his face caused me to call the Dr. We were in his office the very next hour, and he was soon ordering an x-ray and ECG.

We went for the x-ray but had to wait a day for the ECG since the center’s machine was being repaired.

That was last Friday. Yesterday afternoon we went in to the Dr for our follow-up. I was thinking of blowing it off cause SK says the discomfort is pretty much gone and ‘we’ figured that he just strained a chest muscle moving all those blocks for his Dad two weeks ago when they made my mudroom-outdoor steps.

However we went in to the Dr., a she this time. She asked SK all kinds of questions and then told us that the ECG was abnormal, but she was 99.9% sure that the computer had just misinterpreted the chart. We need to go see a cardiologist and have him interpret the ECG.

But of course, as any mom would do, I used the internet to research what this ECG computer says my precious son’s heart condition is. The cardiologist has an opening today, however SK is spending his birthday with his Rhetoric club at a speech competition in Lancaster, PA, so we have to wait a week to see what a human says about this ECG. A week that will be filled with worry and concern.

I presently have books everywhere, all over the floor and my school table, trying to figure out grammar & lit & writing for next year for MilitaryKid. This year he worked through R&S grammar 6th grade and has done rather well but he hasn’t done their writing assignments. MK has made it half-way through Editor-in-Chief A1, and has made great strides at catching errors as he proofreads their writing. He hasn’t transferred this new skill to his own writing yet. For writing he’s written too few topic reports in history or science, but has made it through Classical Composition’s Fable and half of the Narration book. His writing is choppy, filled with run-on sentences, punctuation errors, and it is not even close to being 6th grade level writing. Maybe 3rd grade level. He’s a reluctant student too, and would rather be playing with the dogs then doing school of any kind. I’m reluctant to say he’s going into 7th grade too; educational maturity is lacking.

For Language Arts for MK I plan to drop R&S grammar since their 7th grade textbook gets too abstract for even me; and will drop Classical Composition for writing.

This is what I have for next year, for Language Arts, just grabbing books off my shelves:

GRAMMAR

Editor-in-Chief — it’s working and we’ll stick with it. LOL, I have books A2 - C2

Rules of the Game — Books 1 & 2

Jensen’s Grammar — iffff Rules of the Game goes quickly we’ll add this in. It might take us 20 weeks to get through Rules of the Game or 40 weeks, hard for me to say right now. If it takes just 20 weeks we’ll move on to Jensen’s Grammar.

Literature:

In the past I’ve ignored doing a formal program here and instead have relied upon WTM and Sonlight book lists and asked MK questions about his reading or had him narrate the story back to me. This approach worked great with ScienceKid but MK dawdles so much that his ‘read book list’ is quite short this year. I want something that guides me a bit more too, something a bit more directed learning. Frankie at Kitchen Table Learners suggested Lightning Literature and a local HS friend happened to have it for me to borrow. After close examination I do not care for their writing assignments but their literary analysis lessons are something I have not touched on at all. We’ll try this for the coming year.

The big switch will be in writing. I’ve looked through my Writing Strands books, and the Writing Power book sitting on my shelf, and just couldn’t see what I wanted or thought MK needed. I have Put That in Writing — and I think that will work for us. “trains students in techniques for developing paragraphs with strong topic sentences and supporting points that are both logical and topical.” He’ll also write reports in History and Science related to what he is studying, and really the quantity needs to be increased ten-fold.

This past year MK took a break from spelling and vocabulary work. This coming year he’ll have vocabulary study back on his plate with the emphasis on learning Latin and Greek roots. SK used Vocabulary from Classical Roots and while I really like this program MK is just not ready for something this rigourous yet. It will probable be way, way too high for MK but I’ll give it a try. If we have to bag VFCR for a year, I’ll have him work through Words on the Vine first, to get him into the groove of doing root-work and a bit of time to mature as a learner too.

Another school year to plan. For ScienceKid I’m taking the easy way out for some of his classes but will more than make up for it with the other classes. SK and I liked his first online course. AP Biology through PA Homeschoolers so we are taking that course of action again. He will be in eleventh grade and will be taking:

AP Chemistry online through PA Homeschoolers. This course includes a lab, with materials being sent to us.

AP English Language and Composition online through PA HS’ers. Ahh, someone else can teach him writing.

AP AB Calculus. I’ll be taking him through this using Foerster’s Calculus book. I will need to clear a few cobwebs out of my brain but it should be fun to get back into Calc. I have not run into anything to date that wasn’t rather fresh in my memory from my college days so I am not too concerned about this one. Math is by far my strong subject.

AP Statistics. I’ll be teaching this to SK along with a few other kids. I use to teach this and it really is a fun course so I’m excited to get back to teaching it again.

May of 2009 SK will take an AP test in each of these subject areas too.

World History, 1650 - 1850, We’ve used Spielvogel World History Vol 1 for the last two years, along with DVD’s from The Teaching Company. SK will just move up to Vol 2.

Great Books SK is an avid reader and will find it actually relaxing to have a few great books to read over the year. For the past two years he has written several papers connected to each Great Book he’s read. Before reading the GB he had to write a context paper detailing historically what was going on around the author when the book was written. He also had to write a short biographically sketch of the author. Since he will have the AP Lang & Comp course, which will require an essay a week, I’ll probable have him skip writing these papers. The book list he’ll chose from is right out of TWTM and will be books written during the time period 1650 - 1850.

Spanish 2 He’s made it through Rosetta Stone Level 1 and while ‘they’ say it is worth 2 high school credits I do not agree. Probable having 2 years of Latin using Henle Latin helped tremendously this is still where I’m putting him.

Physical Education —- Three or Four times weekly to the Y for a 90 minute workout plus Inline Speed Skating Team workouts for 4 to 6 hrs weekly should be worth a full PE credit.

Industrial Arts —- SK will continue working on building his wooden kayak, and helping his Dad around the house. I’m not planning out this course at all and will build a course description after I see what is built.

Science Field Ecology II — In a couple weeks SK, MK & I will take off for a cross-country camping trip exploring the great outdoors. We plan to be away for ten weeks this time and will travel through TX, NM, AZ, Southern CA, southern Utah, southern CO, and finally cross the Great Plains through NE. It will be an area of the country they have not been to, and like our last trip, time will be spent look at our country’s geological formations, study ecology, explore archeological sites and cultural past. Our inspiration for the trip comes from a similar trip I took with my own high school when I was 16yo, and the trip earned me a full high school science credit. It will do the same for SK.

So, I’m finished planning out SK’s school for the coming year but what to do with MK?? Some of his is still very much up in the air.

Last Saturday at the Delaware Science Olympiad Award ceremony, Middle School Division, we learned that our Tri-State Homeschool Team took fifth place in the state of Delaware. We looked at all the medals our kids took, every child with a medal, and wondered what on earth had happened, and inside and confiding to each other, that we must have really screwed up an event to not finish higher. Fifth; huh, what happened? We had more medals then the other teams around us, and could only explain it by wondering how poorly we had done on the 6 events our kids hadn’t medaled in.

By Monday morning we finally saw the score sheets and our coach quickly contacted the organizer. Seems one of our numbers had an extra zero, turning a 4th place finish into a 40th place. This little extra zero, and 36 extra points to our score where low-score wins, is what had done it all. Once corrected the standings were changed; we had finished THIRD in the state, with a team composed of ten new kids, mostly 6th and 7th graders going up against teams comprised of ten 8th graders and five 9th graders. Experienced kids and our young kids had done great and were just a few points shy of coming in second in the state.

The final standings were:

HB Dupont 1st

Newark Charter 2nd

Tri-State Homeschool 3rd

Independence 4th

HBDupont, second team, 5th

It would have been so nice to know it that evening, and be able to pick-up that Third Place Trophy then. Oh well. It was really nice to see MK with three medals and a First place medal. His speed skating coach told me today that MK really lit up when he was telling him about the competition and his medals. Proud of his accomplishments. He should be, and so should his team.