Nine Worries About Unschoolish Ways That I Shouldn't Have Worried About

Now that I have a daughter in college and a high school senior who has taken classes,  I've seen some of the fruits of our relaxed homeschooling. I look back and recall the worries I had over the years, the ways in which I questioned myself, and wondered if what I was doing would work out.

So, here are some of the questions I used to panic wonder about, and the answers I've observed:

1. Will they ever learn how to adhere to an outside schedule if I don't impose a rigid schedule on them while they're growing up? 

Yes, they will. They will learn this: that you do what you need to do when you need to do it. Doing it sooner than you have to do it doesn't teach you to do it any more efficiently.

2. Will they ever learn how to get up early and get out the door to a class/a job, if I let them sleep in through all their school years? 

Yes, they will. They will learn that it is not "years of getting up early" that teaches you how to get up early. It is "an alarm clock" that teaches you how to get up early. Whenever you have to get up early, all you need do is set an alarm clock. No training necessary.

3. Will they ever learn how to read/learn from textbooks if I use real and living books for their home education? 

Yes. They will sometimes find them boring, but they will know how to read, comprehend, and use these schoolish tools. They may not like them as much as the vibrant books they grew up with, but they will be fully capable of using them.

On the other hand, they will sometimes love their textbooks. Anne-with-an-e loved her World Geography and Microbiology classes and textbooks so much that she was thrilled to be hired as a tutor in both subjects.

4. If I allow them to pursue their own interests in their formative years, will they ever learn the self-discipline necessary to succeed in college classes? Will they know how to meet deadlines and finish assignments? 

Yes, because they understand basic concepts such as time management, goal setting, and doing what is necessary to achieve a desired result.

5. Will they learn how to take a test? 

Yes. (See #1 ... i.e., they will do what they need to do when they need to do it.) And you will learn that, with very little formal curriculum, their ACT scores and college grades will show exactly what you always suspected: they excel precisely where you thought they'd excel, and they are weak precisely where you thought they were weak. Your suspicions (that you know your children very well) will prove to be true.

6. Will they know how to act in a classroom? 

Yes. They will understand the difference between sprawling on the couch at home and sitting at a desk in school. My daughters have never confused the two locations.

7. Will they learn how to tackle unpleasant assignments? 

Oh, yes. Family life is excellent preparation for general ed classes.

8. Will they resent me for hiding the truth from them -- that learning can sometimes be dull? 

No. They are thankful for years of a lively education, for all those days that we ate popcorn for lunch, read Little Women and Little House, Harry Potter, and The Secret Garden together, discussed The Hunger Games at two in the morning, learned about history, science, and literature from life and marvelous books and experiments in the kitchen and discussions over dinner and museums and walks at the lake. They will look up from a history paper they are writing, and sigh, and say, "I'm so grateful to Samantha. I learned a lot about the progressive era from her."

9. Will I ruin them? 

We all run that risk, whether our kids are in school, out of school, homeschooled with curriculum, or homeschooled without it.

But my guess -- if you love your kids more than your own life -- is that the answer to that question is, "No. A thousand times no."

"The Humerus Is At the End of the Table."

Anne-with-an-e is taking an anatomy class.

"Mom," she said, "this class has given me the opportunity to say things to my classmates that I never thought I'd have to say."

"Like what?" I asked.

The following are actual (or very close facsimiles of) things she said today:

"I'll go get us some femurs."

"Oh, look. A pile of knee caps."

"Could you pass me a rib?"

"Here's a leg, in case you need one."

"I have two right clavicles here. Where's a left one?"

"Can I borrow this tibia?"

In contrast, the most interesting thing I said today was, "I'd better change my shirt before dinner. I just know I'm going to dribble pizza sauce on myself."

It's My Super Power

Ramona: "Mom? Where's my Frozen book? I need your Mom Find-y Powers."

It's the Third Sunday of Lent: Do You Know Where Your Penance Is?

Time for a little self-assessment.

We're almost halfway through Lent. How's it going? Am I holding up my end of the sacrifice bargain?

Of course, the sacrifice thing isn't really a bargaining situation. It's not as if I say, "Okay, God, I'm going to give up my favorite stuff and in return You'll give me eternal salvation. Sound like a deal? Okay...Go!"

Yeah, the eternal salvation thing doesn't really work like that.

But I do go into Lent feeling both a responsibility and a hunger to:

• Listen to the wake-up call. (There's always a wake-up call.)
• Be strengthened in the ability to resist temptations in small things (bacon's good for that) so as to grow in the ability to resist in the large things. 
• Grow closer to Christ. (Because that's what it's all about for me.) 

So, about halfway into the desert, I like to check up on myself and my progress (or lack thereof) in those areas.

Am I grumbling, like the people in today's Mass reading:

In those days, in their thirst for water,
the people grumbled against Moses,
saying, “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt? Was it just to have us die here of thirst
with our children and our livestock?”

Wow, God's people sure know how to pitch a good fit.

Sometimes I know how to pitch a good fit, too. I've had Lenten seasons wherein I can not stop grumbling to God, "Why did You let me choose this sacrifice? Was it just to have me die here in the midwest in abject shame and misery?"

At those times, I'm sure God wants to respond to me in the same way Moses did:

“What shall I do with this people?" 

Scripture doesn't record it, but I'm pretty sure there was an interrobang at the end of that question. "Really, Lord?!"

Poor Moses. He had an ungrateful lot to deal with. I know how it feels to be part of the ungrateful lot.

But this is not one of those grumbling years for me. This is one of those years when some sacrifices almost seem to be coming too easily. One of the things Atticus and I gave up this year was meat (except on some Sundays.) And it hasn't been that hard, really. I'm a pretty big vegetable devotee as it is, and this hasn't been that big a stretch. So I'm feeling a tug to tighten the sacrifice belt, so to speak.

It's all good.

I love and hate Lent, because it's beautiful and hard.

I'm reading Interior Freedom by Jacques Philippe, and I'll close with a quote from St. Faustina that he includes in the book:

Love is a mystery that transforms everything it touches 

into beautiful things that are pleasing to God. 

The love of God sets the soul free. 

Where Writers Write

I titled this post "Where Writers Write," thinking that in addition to sharing an encouraging article (that I sent to my teen writers' group this morning) from Writer's Digest -- 5 Writing Lessons Inspired by Famous Writers (which talks about Mark Twain's cabin, Walden Pond, Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, and Jack London’s ranch) -- I would tack on a couple more interesting/favorite writers' havens, such as E.B. White's writing space:

But then I decided to Google the phrase "Where Writers Write" and found all sorts of intriguing stuff:

This Pinterest page

"The Importance of Place: Where Writers Write and Why" from Poets & Writers Magazine

"A Writer's Room" from The New York Times 

"The Daily Routine of Famous Writers" at Brain Pickings

Maybe the best: Photos of Writers and Their Typewriters (I'm swooning.)

Something I can relate to a little better: couches, spare bedrooms, stolen corners: The Millions: "Where We Write."

"13 Quirky Workplaces of Famous Writers"

A Tumblr page

A Pinterest page full of dreams

"Learn From the Greats: 7 Writing Habits of Amazing Writers"

Have fun!

Ramona Does Crafts! (So I Don't Have To!)

Ramona is hooked on the tutorials at My Froggy Stuff. Their ideas are all for homemade doll furniture and accessories and the My Froggy Stuff YouTube channel has tons of videos about how to make everything from gumball machines to bathtubs to sugar cookies. 

Here's some tiny doll food: 

Ramona used printables from their blog for these, and filled the takeout boxes with thread, string, and beads.

I took this picture of the tiny chocolate chip cookies (made from toilet paper dough -- I'm not kidding) and then I realized that these photos cried out for a little perspective. 

The chocolate chips are craft foam. 

So we called a chocolate-chip-cookie-loving doll in to provide the perspective: 

Here's her sushi, too: 

Pony beads! Craft foam stuffed inside! Remember when I didn't know what pony beads were?! 

Her assorted perfume and lotion bottles: 

Beads and hot glue. There was also a time I did not own a glue gun, nor could I even have conceived of such a thing. 

A cake: 

Styrofoam, I think 

Rock candy: 

Beads again. And toothpicks. 

A cd player, cds, a clipboard and colored pencils: 

CD player is a  shampoo bottle lid. Pencils made from toothpicks. 

Cotton Candy: 

And, because Ramona doesn't want to leave Rebecca out of the fun, here are some accessories (and munchies) for an 18-inch doll. 

A brownie made from a painted sponge: 

A flashlight (made from the inside of an old glue stick), some milk and a cupcake: 

Cupcake is a bottle lid, string, a bead. The milk is lactose free. 

A camera (made from stacked cardboard with a picture of a camera glued on top) and a camera case made out of a dental floss container: 

This is probably my favorite because Ramona made this one up herself.

No catalog, no exorbitant prices, just creativity and fun. 

Oh, there is one drawback -- just when I am in full declutter mode around here, I find myself calling out frightening things to Ramona like, "Do you want me to save the lid from this juice bottle?" or, "Should we keep this plastic packaging?" 

Scary, but it makes my daughter ridiculously happy. 

The (Almost) Annual Hibernian Guest Post from Atticus

His past guest posts are:

2009
2010
2011
2012

This year's guest post needs a spoiler alert, as it is from the conclusion of Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Look away if you haven't read it.

And now, here's Atticus:

From the conclusion of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus is ready to leave and find all that his life has to offer:

APRIL 16. Away! Away!

The spell of arms and voices: the white arms of roads, their promise of close embraces and the black arms of tall ships that stand against the moon, their tale of distant nations. They are held out to say: We are alone—come. And the voices say with them: We are your kinsmen. And the air is thick with their company as they call to me, their kinsman, making ready to go, shaking the wings of their exultant and terrible youth.

APRIL 26. Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it. Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. 

APRIL 27. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

He sends you to James Joyce, I send you to Tomie dePaola for $1.99 on Kindle today. 'Twas ever thus.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Recent Reading: Mine and Ramona's

Recent reading for me:

I finally read The Book Thief. My sister recommended it to me ages ago, but I didn't get to it until last month, when Anne and Betsy both read it, too, for a book club. We all loved it. Heartbreaking, of course, and beautiful. I wasn't sure, initially, that I would like the writing style, but I ended up loving it. It was appropriate given the narrator, and it worked. Worked really, really well. Great book.


Recent read-alouds with Ramona:

Pie by Sarah Weeks. Sweet, funny, and touching. Ramona and I both loved it. Bonus: includes pie recipes.

Smells Like Dog by Suzanne Selfors. This one was a pretty cute mystery, and Ramona thoroughly enjoyed it, but I couldn't quite get past one thing.

*****Spoiler alert*****

*****Spoiler alert*****

Okay, you've been warned.

The thing I couldn't get past was this: the opening of the book makes a point -- a huge point, a very pointed point -- about the fact that this will not be a Sad Dog Story. You will not fall in love with this dog only to have it die in the end, we are told. And that is true. The dog does not die. The dog lives happily ever after.

However.

We then meet Homer Pudding and find out that his beloved Uncle Drake has died in a horrid accident. He was eaten by a giant tortoise, the newspaper reports. The tortoise was spotted with Uncle Drake's legs sticking out of his mouth. "Yeah, right," Ramona and I snorted. Since a tortoise couldn't possibly eat a person, and since we were just assured that this would not be a Sad Dog Story, we foolishly assumed it would also not be a Sad Uncle Story. We kept thinking that Uncle Drake would turn up alive at the end, fighting off the villain, solving the mystery, returning everything to order and explaining the so-called man-eating tortoise. Well, the man-eating tortoise was explained. He was a mutant, and he really did eat Uncle Drake. Silly, but icky enough that it might bother a younger or extremely sensitive child.

I seem to be the only person in the world bothered by this, though, so feel free to ignore me. Maybe I'm the extremely sensitive child.

Mara, Daughter of the Nile by Eloise Jarvis McGraw. Ramona and I both really enjoyed this one. Historical fiction, plucky heroine, bravery and self-sacrifice, adventure and suspense. Some romance, too (some of which made us giggle when it tilted slightly in the direction of a Harlequin, though it was nicely handled overall.) Must address the phenomenon of Attraction to The Bad Boy, though. I am foundationally unable to keep my mouth shut when a heroine describes her guy as both dangerous and irresistable.

Tumtum & Nutmeg: Adventures Beyond Nutmouse Hall by Emily Bearn. There are no words to express how much Ramona and I love Tumtum and Nutmeg. One can never have too much Tumtum or Nutmeg, and Tumtum doesn't make me talk about Bad Boys. Gotta love him for that.

Poetry Friday: Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry.
Do I need to say anything else to make you click through?
I doubt it.

But just in case I do, here are the final lines of the poem "VII":

...And you, who are as old
almost as I am, I love as I loved you
young, except that, old, I am astonished
at such a possibility, and am duly grateful.

Go now. It's at The Writer's Almanac today.

You'll be duly grateful.

~~~~~~~

The Rogue Anthropologist has the round up today.

Who Needs Bacon, Anyway?

So, Atticus and I gave up meat for Lent. Last night I made waffles and bacon for the girls, and since bacon can have a siren effect on me, I needed something more tempting than waffles to get me through. So, I made these Hot and Cold Sesame Noodles.

I first got this recipe from my friend Bridget and then found Rachael Ray's version online when I wanted to send the recipe to my sister. I always tweak according to what I have in the house -- I never have sesame seeds, use whatever soy sauce I have, add less than two tablespoons of hot sauce (I just throw in a few shakes so it's a little different every time), never have bean sprouts, sometimes have scallions, sometimes not, sometimes throw some peanuts or cashews on top. You can also throw chicken into it if you want to carnivore-it-up.

It has a vegetarian version of the siren effect on me. It is delicious. I don't want to stop eating it. As a matter of fact, there's nothing penitential about shoveling this dish into my mouth, so I may have to go back to grilled cheese or something.

But I didn't miss the bacon.

Cathy Duffy's Review of A Little Way of Homeschooling

Cathy Duffy (whom I think of as more of a legend than an actual, breathing human being, and I mean that entirely as a compliment) recently did a wonderful review of A Little Way of Homeschooling: Thirteen Families Discover Catholic Unschooling.

She writes:

While this book is clearly about Catholic unschoolers, it is also one of the best on unschooling in general. Through the different stories, we see the common thread of concern for the individual nature of each child and a rejection of the prevalent school model that treats children like programmable machines. Because of that, learning is viewed by unschoolers as a normal part of life that does not need to be scheduled and forced. Instead learning is an integral part of life that takes place whenever and however seems best.

She concludes the review:

I have rarely reviewed books on approaches to education in recent years because most seem to repeat what’s already been said elsewhere, but A Little Way of Homeschooling deserves to be an exception!

You can read the entire review here.

Thank you, Cathy!

A Fat Tuesday Post: Five Things I Love About God

This post was originally a response to a Lenten meme a few years ago, but it seems a fitting way to say farewell to Ordinary Time for awhile.


Five Reasons I Love Jesus:

1. 
He loved me when I didn't even know He existed; He loved me when I knew He existed but I ridiculed Him; He loved me when I broke down, sobbed, asked Him to forgive me my countless sins and transgressions. He loves me now as I stumble through my life as a Christian. I love Him because He first loved me.

2.
a.) He sacrificed His Body and His Precious Blood in order to save me. And He repeatedly offers me His Body and Blood, and saves me again and again, every time I assist at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

b.) Sacraments. They are like Divine Magic, minus the sleight of hand, plus the ooohs and aaahs. They stagger me. They are weird and brilliant.

3.
He makes all things new.

4. 
He laughed. He wept. He got frustrated. He celebrated. He grieved. He knows all things. He knows why I laugh, why I weep, why I get frustrated, why I celebrate, why I grieve.

5.
Confession! It's the best. Even when it feels like the worst. The worst becomes the best. (I told you He makes all things new.)

6.
Did I mention that He first loved me?

7. 
He forgives me for cheating at/ignoring the rules about memes and about how many things one should list.

We Have Different Dreams

Ramona: Do I have to do math today?

Me: Yes.

Ramona: Why?

Me: Because. Plus, you haven't done math since Thursday. 

Ramona: Exactly! I'm livin' the dream!

Do People Still Propose That Way?

Ramona: I had this crazy dream where there was some ancient, Biblical tradition that if someone gave you five gummy bears you had to marry them.

Betsy: I must immediately give five gummy bears to Tom Hiddleston.