NaNoWriMo -- or, Proof That My Family is Fabulously Crazy

National
Novel 
Writing
Month

(NaNoWriMo)

If you have read any of my posts, you may have figured out that my family enjoys learning and school and all the things that go along with it -- not saying we all aren't challenged by certain subjects, but overall the learning process is something that kicks along without many interruptions.  Couple this with the fact that we don't know what to do with ourselves when we're not "doing school" and you have a family that feels pretty ahead of the game by mid-October.
So, this year we are going to turn our attention sideways for a month and dedicate most of our school time and energy toward a gigantic writing project:  NaNoWriMo.

From their page (www.nanowrimo.org)
"National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing. On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 PM on November 30.
Valuing enthusiasm, determination, and a deadline, NaNoWriMo is for anyone who has ever thought fleetingly about writing a novel."

I have participated myself three times, and found it an incredibly rewarding experience.

(SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT!)  One product was a young adult novel actually eventually worthy of a Kindle version, which can be found here:  The Birdland Experiment on Amazon

:)

Why participate in NaNoWriMo with young people? 
1)  It is a good lesson in the reality that productive creativity (in any field) comes at the cost of hard work.
2)  It is a project with a beginning, middle, end, and definite goal.
3) Whether the novel produced at the end of the month is a Hemingway or a Horrible Mess, writing will improve during the course of lots of practice.
4) It will teach not only perseverance but teamwork as we encourage each other through the creatively dry times and celebrate the successes!  


I have found with any creative project that even though artistic and creative license can take over sometime during the course, detailed and intentional planning before the project is begun is the best assurance of success.  

The planning process that will take place over the last weeks in October is as follows:

1) Brainstorm.  Write down every topic that has ever crossed your mind as a good story and every character that you have ever thought would be interesting.

2) See which of these characters and stories will match well together.  (For example, a swashbuckling 1700's pirate with OCD and claustrophobia may not be available for a sci-fi story taking place in the caves of a faraway planet... but who knows?)

3) Read the preparatory advice on the NaNoWriMo site and SIGN UP!  (As they say, no one has ever "won" without starting...)
 https://nanowrimo.org/sign_up

4) Write a (very brief) summary of what is going to happen in your novel.  Just the beginning, middle, and end.  Where we start, where we end up, how we get there.  Very general.

5) The most important step!!  Write a detailed outline.  Plan how many chapters and basically what plot steps from there to here need to happen in each one.  Figure out how many words need to happen in each chapter.  
My favorite NaNoWriMo year was the one in which I planned the number of sections to coincide with the number of days in the month and knew what I was going to write about each day.  (Then my characters took over and had stuff happen to them that I never expected! But at least I had a framework to get them back on track!)

6) Remember that you are about to write a ROUGH DRAFT.  This is not a time to edit and it is not necessarily a time to flesh out past the number of words you have set for each section.  The goal is a completed novel with a beginning, middle, and end.  The rough draft may be the very short version!  Go fill in the rest of Les Miserables or The Eye of the World or War and Peace in December, and fix your errors, find the perfect word, take out parts that just don't fit or insert those perfectly crafted dialogue zingers then also.   Not in November!
(For your post NaNoWriMo crafting, I highly recommend "Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook" by Donald Maass.  In it are lots of ways to bring an already completed novel to a higher level!)

So here we go!  I am very excited to hear what stories are generated by my kids and if you or yours come along on this adventure please keep us posted in the comments!  

More details on "How it all works" here:   
http://nanowrimo.org/how-it-works

Go!  Write!  Win!  
:)

Where We Are Now

Amazing how time passes, isn't it?
Since last I wrote, I turned my attention to completing two novels, which took up any blog-writing time, have been working on the preaching team at our church, (more writing!) and moving along with my work as a vocal coach and musical theater/opera conductor.
However, homeschooling has continued to be a passion and something my family is dedicated to.
Today my son (now 13 years old and in 8th grade) and I had a conversation that began as a "why can't we all get along" and evolved into a treatise on religious tolerance while maintaining a deep faith that made my jaw drop. My children are not quite ready to emerge into a world filled with challenges I could not have conceived of at 10, 13, or 16 -- but they are getting close, and I believe that education with that goal in mind has helped and will continue to help them on their journey.




Cameron presenting his research on the evolution of photosynthesis at the Evolution Institute at the American Museum of Natural History this past summer in NYC.
20 kids were accepted into the program and only a handful were from America... We actually had no idea quite how amazing the program was or how exclusive when he applied -- we were looking for something for him to do while his sister did a musical theater intensive! It was an amazing experience which included extracting DNA from plants, using the museum's lab equipment and meeting and working with some of the world's top research scientists.


With one of his instructors, a leading Irish botanist!


Megan, now 16, and Cameron were about to start rehearsals for Phantom of the Opera as Carlotta and Piangi in the county office of education youth theater when we returned home, so a little intensive study was in order... We met Norm Lewis after seeing him as the Phantom in the Broadway production.


A friend we met when Erin, now 10, played Little Cosette in Fresno Grand Opera's production of Les Miserables, brought her onto the stage of Matilda after the performance. She is determined to spend time on Broadway stages with an audience out there as soon as possible!


At the American Museum of Natural History this summer.


As a homeschool, ours is a culture of curiosity and stretching into new experiences, not only tangible ones but academic experiences as well.

So what are we doing this year?
Let's start with this week and move on from there!

The fifth grader...

Math: Erin is using LifePac math for fifth grade as well as Singapore and Miquon to supplement and learn different ways of thinking about math. iPad games for multiplication and division facts are still a good practical thing as well.

History: The History of Us is a great series. She is reading it out loud in case of unfamiliar vocabulary or concepts. She'll finish book one this week. We are also using some LifePac American History to reinforce and write about it.

Reading: "Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims" and "Anne of Green Gables," which she is listening to on Audible. More about Audible when we talk about the High Schooler! I love this resource!

Language Arts: Journaling pages and writing prompts, LifePac Language Arts. Every week there is a larger writing assignment that relates to another subject. This week she will be writing plot summaries of "Kiss Me, Kate" and "The Taming of the Shrew."

Science: She will do a packet of experiments on Forces and Motion with her older sister leading her through it on Friday when Megan doesn't have any community college classes.

Erin is extremely serious about dance and takes ballet, tap, and jazz at a local school. Plenty of PE there but we also try to do strength training and swimming at a gym a few times a week.

The eighth grader...

Math: the Key to Algebra series. He is on the third book and factoring polynomials. Thank God for answer keys and YouTube help! Next year I send him to college classes! He is also doing "Classical Logic" from the Classical Trivium Core Series. I cannot say enough good things about this curriculum. More in another post about this and their Latina Christiana!

Science: He is reading "Exploring the History of Medicine" by John Hudson Tiner. This is firing up his imagination and fueling his already considerable love of science. He lost a friend to a rare bone marrow disease in the early fall and has been thinking seriously of medicine as a career ever since. Meeting the research scientists in New York last summer has opened his eyes to possibilities I think.

Reading: Cameron's first history unit was on the history of Japan and the novel Shogun is taking more tine than the history unit! A chapter a day for this literary project!

Language Arts: He has the 8th grade language arts LifePacs for grammar... Honestly not impressed for him but will keep using it for the moment. They are good for Erin. He and my oldest are using a 12th grade public school writing book as well. That works well, though obviously the 16 year old is writing at a somewhat higher level.

History: Cameron will finish reading "Abraham, a Journey Into the Heart of Three Faiths" this week as a first step into a unit looking at the history of the Middle East and how we got where we are today.
He is also doing a couple of selected LifePacs in the 9th grade series that focus on American Government and its structure.

The 11th grader...

Well I have started to give up on her...
Just kidding.

She is taking Algebra 2, Abnormal Psychology, and Ballet at community college. This is her second year as a "concurrent" high school student. The goal is for her to have an associate's degree and a state transfer certificate one year after high school. Looking good!

History: The Great Courses are on Audible!!!! They are phenomenal. Megan is working through a lecture series on Great Philosophers at the moment.

Reading: She began the novel "Obasan" by Joy Kogawa this week. A beautiful novel set in the Canadian Japanese internment camps.

Writing: the public school 12th grade course discussed above. Combo are and Contrast essay this week.

Foreign Language: Rosetta Stone Japanese.

She had a private dance class today with a young woman who is trading for vocal coaching.



Music:
We are all working through Tony Award winning musicals. This week is Cole Porter's "Kiss Me, Kate." We watched the PBS telecast of the revival this morning on YouTube and tomorrow we will watch "The Taming of the Shrew" on which the musical is based. We are listening to the cast album during chore times and in the car. My oldest and I also watched "Evita" while I was writing tonight and she was doing homework.
Megan and Cameron are in rehearsals for Phantom of the Opera and Megan is in the Fresno Grand Opera Chorus. Erin is in the FGO Children's Chorus.
All three kids spend time practicing piano daily and I fit in music theory and sight singing when I can. Thank goodness they are all good at it... Being my own profession they can get short shrift in music when I am tired of it!


There! I have started! Looking forward to sharing more of our journey!

Location:Visalia, CA

Science in Song

We have an amazing educational gem that we return to at least twice a year, and so few people seem to know about it that it seems like a great thing to share!
LYRICAL LIFE SCIENCE, text and lyrics by Doug Eldon and performed on CD by Bobby Horton, is a fantastic resource. It packs a huge amount of information about specific topics into songs set to well known tunes. For example, the first song in volume one is about the scientific method, set to the tune of "Dixie." Once kids have memorized a song, they have a wealth of information at their fingertips -- and you know how kids retain music!
We are currently dipping into volume one to memorize the song about "Vascular Plants" (to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic.") as we begin a unit on plants and gardening.

Verse one goes like this:

Xylem carries minerals and water to the sky
Phloem carries food on down and that's the reason why
The most important cells are those producing both of them
The cells of the cambium!
Vascular, oh Vascular plants (3X)
All have transporting tubes!

Great stuff to hum while planting seeds and creating gardens!

Other songs in volume one cover topics such as Living Things, Invertebrates, Birds, Genetics... the list is long!
Volume two covers "Mammals, Ecology, and Biomes," Volume three "The Human Body," and there is a new volume that we haven't checked out yet, but I look forward to -- "Lyrical Earth Science."
You can learn more about this at http://www.lyricallearning.com/
"Good music, good science, good time learning!"
Have fun!

The Murky Quagmire of Mathematics

All right. I confess. Math -- not my thing.

I have been told for the last 30 years of my life that I have the right kind of brain for math, that mathematics and music require the same mental muscles, even that advanced music theory is so close to math that I might as well have swapped in grad school. I don't believe a word of it. In fact, without the motivational factor of homeschooling I may have happily lived my life without glancing more closely at mathematics than my computer's calculator function.

All that being said, I do not want my children to share this prejudice.

There are a lot of math curricula out there. I have spent too much of my life reviewing textbooks and trying to figure out which method will best serve my family. The best answer I can come up with, appropriately, comes from a musical: "Then from out of the blue, and without any guide, you know what your decision is -- which is not to decide." (Sondheim -- "Into the Woods")

My daughters struggle with making mathematical concepts "stick." My son tends to get it the first time and usually figures out how to do the next thing without being shown. To accommodate them all, I flit from method to method in a conscientious attempt to help them see math from every angle, without getting bored or frustrated with one method. This is what I have found.

Public school materials, at least the ones used in our California school district, tend to be tedious in the early grades. Necessary, but tedious. My son gets frustrated with the sequential approach and likes to skip to the end of the chapter to find out "how you really do it." My daughter in sixth grade has had a different experience. The pages are so terribly full of information that she either is overwhelmed by it and shuts off or she tries to digest it all at once and cannot. We use these books, and use them regularly, especially since they will have to take the tests that they teach toward at the end of the year, but they aren't anyone's favorite.

Miquon Math is my third grade son's favorite by far. It encourages creative thinking in math and recognition of patterns. It often takes a concept farther than other methods would but since the student is learning how the concept works it happens in a natural way that feels "easy." Miquon transitions into the Key-to series where it continues to work sequentially with patterns to learn fractions, decimals, percents, and algebra. The Key-to series has been excellent for my oldest daughter because there are not very many concepts per page. The clean presentation helps her to remain focused, and the creative thinking appeals to my more math-oriented son.

Singapore Math emphasizes mental math and problem solving. It is worth noting that the grade levels in Singapore Math are not at all comparable with U.S. equivalents. Singapore Math was made available worldwide after students in Singapore were found to be in first place in mathematics in the TIMSS -- Trends in Math and Science Study -- in each of the first four-year cycles. It is very quickly paced and uses different and interesting ways of thinking about and visualizing math problems. All of my kids think it's "fun."

Saxon, Horizons, and Abeka Math are homeschooling standards. They are "spiral-based" programs, unlike Singapore and Miquon which are "mastery based." This means that where Miquon and Singapore might have reviews every so often for groups of concepts, in Saxon, Horizons, and Abeka review forms the majority of each lesson with only one new concept being introduced each time. Being told that these curricula were very user-friendly for homeschool moms that weren't so keen on math, I have given Saxon and Horizons a try -- in complete truth, we were all bored to tears. I do, however, use the Saxon skill review worksheets for drills -- the pace is so much slower than the public school standards that both my 6th and 3rd grader currently use drills from the 7/8 skills book.

Switched on Schoolhouse is a computer based program. The isolation was not appealing to my children, even though they all enjoy using computers. The version we tried out got a little bit bogged down in the steps the student needed to take to do simple things like borrowing which are so easy with pen and paper but required several mouse clicks to do in the program. However, this was in 2007 and more modern versions may be easier to use. It, like the other homeschool standards, is spiral-based and does not focus on mental math or creative problem solving.

Speaking of computer programs... wouldn't it be nice if we could point and click our way to mathematical perfection??? I haven't found a way to do that yet, however, there are some programs that my family has enjoyed and that have proven valuable.

Timez Attack is a multiplication tables drill that looks a lot like a video game. Need I say more?
Rainbow Rock, Vroot and Vroom, and Wiggle Woods are corny names for the CD ROMS that go with Singapore math. My kids loved the first two and I need to invest in the third as soon as possible.
Mathletics was recommended to me recently by another homeschool mom. She says it is fabulous and has watched her daughters' skills improve through its use. I plan to try it out soon, too!

Middle Ages and Renaissance Reading Lists

These are the rest of our books for this school year. I have divided them into Middle Ages, Renaissance, and a few "Just for Fun."

Middle Ages

Flame Over Tara (Polland)
Beowulf -- A New Telling (Nye)
The Apple and the Arrow (Buff)
Tam Lin (Yolen)
Inferno (Dante -- Pinsky verse translation + Italian)
Otto of the Silver Hand (Pyle)
The Beduins' Gazelle (Temple)
A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver (Konigsburg)
The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)
Adam of the Road (Gray)
Catherin, Called Birdy (Cushman)
The Door in the Wall (de Angeli)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Tolkien)
The Once and Future King (White)
Matilda Bone (Cushman)
Joan of Arc (Stanley)
Saint George and the Dragon (McCaughrean)


Renaissance

Michelangelo (Stanley)
Leonardo Da Vinci (Stanley)
Treasure Chests: Da Vinci
Luther (Nohl)
Master Cornhill (McGraw)
I, Juan de Pareja (de Trevino)
The Prince and the Pauper (Twain)
The Shakespeare Stealer (Blackwood)
Shakespeare Stories (Garfield)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare)
Sonnets (Shakespeare)

"Just for Fun"

Mountain Born (Yates)
The Wheel on the School (DeJong)
The Phantom Tollbooth (Juster)
A Little Princess (Burnett)
The Hobbit (Tolkien)

Ancient History Reading List

As we aim for a literature-rich program that enlivens the history and cultures we're studying, "The Reading List" is the most time consuming and intense item in our preparation for the school year. I draw from Sonlight Curriculum, The Well Trained Mind lists, public school recommendations, and various websites that may have suggestions for certain periods or cultures. Of course this number of books gets very expensive -- the library hasn't worked well for us because these books become like old friends my children want to return to time and again. They fight over who gets to take which books when they move away! I highly recommend half.com, the used bookstore to the world -- I get beat up discarded library copies that have super tough bindings!
This year our history takes us from Ancient times through the Reformation. The following reading list is our complete literature for the Ancient World -- some are read aloud by me, some are read by the third grader, some by the sixth grader and some by both.
As a basis, the sixth grader has worked through the public school text book for sixth grade history, Ancient Civilizations, published by Pearson/Prentice Hall. There are extensive writing assignments throughout. The third grader has read through A Child's History of the World (Hillyer). We have listened to Margaret Wise Bauer's The Story of the World (volume I, Ancient Times) on CD all together, so the kindergartner who isn't yet a fluent reader got her first taste of the ancient world as well.

General

Usborne Time Traveler
Historical Atlas of the Ancient World (Hays)
The Encyclopedia of the Ancient World (Hurdman)
Learning About Ancient Civilizations Through Art (Chertok)
Ancient Civilizations (Hart)
A Child's History of the World (Hillyer)
The Story of the World (Bauer)

Prehistoric Times

Boy of the Painted Cave (Denzel)

Ancient Egypt

Hieroglyphs from A to Z (Der Manuelian)
History Detectives -- Ancient Egypt
Kids' Discover Magazine -- Mummies
Tut's Mummy -- Lost and Found (Donnelly/Watling)
Mara, Daughter of the Nile (McGraw)

Ancient Middle East

Kids' Discover Magazine -- Ancient Persia
Hittite Warrior (Williamson)
The Golden Goblet (McGraw)
The Bronze Bow (Speare)
Beyond the Desert Gate (Ray)

Ancient Far East (This isn't much -- we studied non-Western cultures last year)

The Great Wall of China (Fisher)
The Samurai's Tale (Haugaard)
I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade (Wilson)
A Single Shard (Park)

Ancient Greece

The Greek News (Powell, Steel)
D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths
Usborne Greek Myths
The Iliad and The Odyssey (Homer)
The Trojan War (Coolidge)
The Aesop for Children (Ill. Winter)
Pandora of Athens (Denenberg)
Theras and His Town (Snedeker)
Archimedes and the Door of Science (Bendick)

Ancient Rome

Detectives in Togas (Winterfeld)
Mystery of the Roman Ransom (Winterfeld)
The Ides of April (Ray)
The Lantern Bearers (Sutcliff)
The Eagle of the Ninth (Sutcliff)

Byzantine Empire

Anna of Byzantium (Barrett)

Coming up... Dark Ages through the Reformation!

Homeschooling for a Global Future

How can homeschooling today give children an advantage as they emerge into a world that is more connected, more culturally globalized, and more conflicted than the one their parents emerged into?

To address this question, first I need to express that my philosophies differ greatly from many -- not all, thankfully -- homeschooling families I am in contact with or know of. My general philosophy is one of MORE. More cultural connections, more history, more scientific knowledge, more language, more understanding of the world. We are dedicated Christians, but unlike many families, this was not a factor in our homeschooling decision.

The public schools in our community tend to fall flat in three areas. History, arts, and foreign languages. Above all, if our children will be able to exist and thrive in a global culture, these studies should instead be paramount. How will they understand a person from another culture if they are unaware what shaped that culture? The history, the religion, the triumphs and the tragedies of that part of the world? The language, also, helps to shape how people think.

Our curriculum starts with history. We build literature, art, and music studies around the culture and era that we are studying. I find that this approach works extremely well when combining ages -- the sixth grader has been through Ancient History before, for example, and is taking from this year a far deeper understanding than the kindergartner who is seeing the sights for the first time, but they both enjoy the trip.

Science, of course, has its own timeline, however studying the inventors, scientists, and philosophers of the historical eras helps to understand the current science we study as well.

Foreign Language. Currently my family seriously studies two: Spanish because we live in a part of California that was recently Mexico, and it seems only fair to study the language. Mandarin because it is the major commerce and scientific language of the Eastern world, as English is in the west. I am operating on the idea that whatever field they choose, knowing English and Mandarin will serve as life insurance.

It is well documented that music study, particularly piano, makes connections in the brain that are a significant help to math, science, and language skills. Add to the the tremendous enrichment and enjoyment that the arts bring to both cultural and individual life and the need for arts education becomes apparent. We study classical piano and singing, and other forms of art in connection with history.

Will all this enable them to function in a global culture? I hope so. At least they will grow up with a profound respect not only for other cultures but for their own. That respect could lead to greater understanding and a greater chance for a peaceful world for their children to emerge into. That's all I can hope for.