Nutcracker review

Nutcracker weekend was a great success! Dagfari did an amazing job-- his performance was totally spot on each time. I'm not sure where he gets his dancing ability or stage presence. Certainly not from either of his parents. At any rate, it appears that ballet will be a major part of the SGS curriculum for the foreseeable future.

Nutcrackers

The Nutcracker ballet is definitely our theme for this December. Dagfari's ballet school did selections for its fall recital last Saturday (his class did the Russian dance), and we went to see the NCSA production last night. And D is playing the title role of Nutcracker/Prince in a production this coming weekend. This came about because the daughter of a friend is playing Clara in this Nutcracker (which is put on by a dance school in Reynolds Auditorium), and there are no boy students in the school to play her prince. Rehearsal has been pretty intense-- basically ballet every night for a month, with a bit of a break for Thanksgiving. And he's giving three performances this weekend. Makes the whole end-of-semester/holiday season even busier for everyone, but D is having a great time, so it's worth it.
The SGS curriculum this month is mostly just ballet and art history. Sinterklaas gave D the DVD set of the BBC Private Life of Masterpieces series, which is interesting even for the non-art obsessed in our household. And he spends many hours each day practicing his dance steps, which is a bit dangerous what with the Christmas tree in the living room and kittens dashing around all over the place. Michigan relatives can look forward to a private performance over the holidays, I'm sure. Start clearing floor space now!

Catching up on October

OK, so Thanksgiving is almost here, and I haven't even caught up on my October posting. So in a nutshell, our major excitement in October was a visit to the Maryland cousins and D.C. area art museums during ProfDad's fall break. J and G, and their parents, were wonderful hosts as usual, and we had a great time. We also visited the Baltimore Museum of Art and the National Gallery, which was a great thrill for the budding art historian. The homeschooling thing is really paying off-- Dagfari pretty much gave us a guided tour of the museums and filled us in on the history, techniques, and significance of many paintings.

In keeping with the art theme for the month, David went out on Halloween as Vincent VanGogh. This costume was received very well (we seem to have a fairly artistically literate neighborhood) and earned him extra treats from an appreciative art teacher neighbor.

Obamarama!

Lots of excitement in the past month, which I'll need to catch up on soon. But this week SGS is winding up an intensive civics unit! Dagfari had been suffering from election fatigue (who hasn't?) and was less than enthusiastic about political signs in our front yard detracting from his Halloween decor. But the actual election was so exciting that he was quite won over. D was the one following the electoral results on both the NPR and MSNBC websites on Tuesday night, and he now has a much better understanding of the electoral college than I did at any time before November 2000. We all stayed up for the acceptance speech, and we celebrated again today when NC was finally declared officially blue. I like the fact that this is the first presidential election D will really remember.

D is now having a mock election with his stuffed animals (who are a contentious bunch), in which the big issues are national security, regulation of the candy mining industry, and an overhaul of the currency system. If the art history thing doesn't work out, I'm beginning to think D may have a future as a policy wonk.

El Greco to Velazquez

We went to see this exhibit at Duke yesterday. Spanish baroque art, quite impressive. D is reading through the exhibit catalog today. I still have trouble appreciating El Greco-- I always think his people look like they've been painted on silly putty and then stretched-- which probably just proves that I'm an artistic philistine.

But it was a really interesting exhibit in many ways. Paintings were arranged by genre so as to contrast how different artists interpreted the same themes. We highly recommend going, if you're within driving distance of Durham.

Dagfari's recommended background reading: How to Read a Painting: Lessons from the Old Masters, by Patrick De Rynck.

Dagfari's impressions of the exhibit:
"This exhibit not only captured the spirit of the art of the time, it captured everything that happened. One of my favorite paintings was Velazquez's "The Immaculate Conception". Velazquez has captured an air of tranquility in a scene that is full of motion and religious drama. I also liked Eugenio Cajes's " Christ at Calvary", which was a common theme and composition. Compared to similar paintings, Cajes's work has a feeling of loneliness, and the black background gives an air of cold and of night. I am hoping to go back and see it again!"

Ode to Fall

A poem by Dagfari, inspired, he says, by the prologue to the Canterbury Tales.

When Old Septembre
Came again
In glorious array, with
Shadows long,
And each blooming blossom
Giving homage to the sun,
In glints of dew.
'Twas then that even the spiders
Wove their webs of finest silk,
Which shone silver
In the morning light,
And shadows leapt around,
In playful dance,
To celebrate the coming
Of the Fall.

Dagfari Goes to Lake Wobegon

Author Garrison Keillor paid a visit to WFU this morning, sponsored by Bookmarks. I got to be the official photographer for the event (because we couldn't find a real photographer who was free on a Monday morning! ), and I took D along as my assistant.

We worked hard but had a great time. For any GK fans who are wondering, I'm happy to report that he was most charming, witty, and gracious. He was ostensibly promoting his new book, but he gave an hour-long talk on topics ranging from church music to Elizabethan sonnets.

Dagfari's synopsis: "He said that his writing style originally came from his childhood and his family's religious beliefs. Also that it was good that he suffered as a child, because through suffering comes a need to express oneself. He had to read the King James bible a lot, so he was prepared when, at school, his teacher had him memorize Shakespeare and other poets."[Shakespeare trivia from Dagfari: Shakespeare may actually have contributed to or edited the KJV. He would have been 35 years old when it was written, and the 35th word from the beginning is "shake" and the 35th word from the end is "spear".]

GK also talked a lot about poetry in general and sonnets in particular, especially about the way the limitations of the sonnet form help to distill a writer's thoughts by forcing him to choose his words carefully.

We had a great time, and I even got some good pictures!

Math with Leonardo

"If I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child's natural curiousity and love of pattern-making, I couldn't possibly do as good a job as is currently being done-- I simply wouldn't have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education."-- Paul Lockhart, "The Mathematician's Lament"
http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

I love this essay. It certainly describes my experience with math in school-- a bunch of random facts that inspired boredom, anxiety, and in the end the conviction that, however well I did in other subjects, I was not really smart, because I was bad at math.

My experience isn't unusual, so it's not surprising that math is intimidating to homeschoolers. Even unschooly types seem more likely to resort to a packaged curriculm for math. That's what we did last year-- the only workbook we had was the 4th grade Singapore Math. Dagfari worked his way through it because we insisted. I think I hated it as much as he did. I couldn't pretend that this math was anything but boring, and I didn't know how to connect it to anything D was actually interested in.

So when I ran across Paul Lockhart's essay this summer, I decided that we had to make a change. There was not much point in Dagfari learning to hate math as much as I had. But how to make math an interesting, creative endeavor for a boy whose obsessive interest at the moment was Renaissance art?

The answer came as I was browsing the shelves at the library and came across a book called Math and the Mona Lisa. This sounded somewhat promising. After I listened to an interview with the author on NPR, I decided to use it as our math textbook for the fall.

And so far, it's working. I'm reading it aloud to Dagfari, and we're both having the novel experience of finding mathematical principles that are relevant to things we're actually interested in. We not only understand the Fibonacci sequence (more or less), we also understand why we should care about it, why mathematicians find it fascinating. And Dagfari even got out his old math workbook to investigate the geometry section further.

So for now, we've shelved the long division and pre-algebra and "math facts". We have, for the first time, a fully integrated homeschool curriculm. And more importantly, Dagfari doesn't hate math.

Summer '08

As usual the summer went by all too quickly, and for us it's effectively over this week. Students are back and classes are starting at WFU and HPU, which means that Stratford School had better get its act together too. But we had a good summer, as you'll see from the following recap.

In MAY we wound up the semester with the usual flurry of activity, then headed up to Chicago and Grand Rapids for Memorial Day weekend. Had a good time with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins (both human and canine).



JUNE arrived, and with it swimming pool season and Medieval Camp. This year's camp theme was Viking Invasion. As a result we had an enrollment of 17 boys and 1 girl. A very high-energy group! But they were very enthusiastic about all things Viking. Spear-throwing, archery, and other forms of faux violence were predictably popular. But the little Vikings were also fascinated by Beowulf and Norse mythology. Professor Head Viking was very tired by the end of the week!




In JULY Dagfari went to a couple of camps not taught by his parents. DVD copies of this year's Stars of the Silver Screen production, Illinois Johnson and the Pirates of the Prairie, are available on request. We also had our dog cousins visit us, as the brave Aunt Ann and Uncle Rich drove down from Chicago with the pooches (who were actually very well-behaved). So Dagfari had a week of dog training and woodworking camp, and we now have two new bookcases in the living room!

After Simon and Donovan left, Dagfari started lobbying for his own kitten (the four family cats apparently not being cute and cuddly enough for him). I had no intention of adding to the feline family immediately. But since the Humane Society is just down the street, D and I figured there was no harm in stopping by one Saturday morning, just to look.... with the result that kitten siblings Avril and Oliver joined our family the next week.

They are as cute and cuddly as anyone could wish, and they both sleep with D on his top bunk. So we now have six cats. Good thing we don't have a bigger house and yard, or we'd end up like this lady.

Anyway, here are a few cute kitten pics. Oliver is the black/white one, and Avril is the tabby.

AUGUST found us heading north-- way north-- to Isle La Motte, Vermont. We spent a week there with extended family, enjoying Lake Champlain (no colder than Lake Mich) and exploring and visiting friends in the area. We highly recommend Vermont as a vacation spot, the only drawback being that it takes forever to drive there.

We especially enjoyed Shelburne Museum, which combines a restored 19th century town with an excellent small art museum. An impressive Mary Cassat exhibit was there when we visited, which Dagfari liked very much. We also paid another visit to the small museum and gift shop devoted to Wilson A. "Snowflake" Bentley, of award-winning children's book fame.

As soon as we got home, the beginning-of-semester events started to fill our calendar. Summer is over; our second year of Stratford School is about to begin. The first big event is the 2008 BookMarks book festival, for which ProfDad and I are members of the planning committee, and Dagfari is a de facto member, since he comes along to all the meetings (fortunately two of his best homeschool pals are there too). We're all looking forward to meeting some interesting authors and reading some great books!

10 Years

Dagfari celebrated a birthday this week, the big one-oh. Celebrations were fairly subdued this year, since we're all tired out from a busy few weeks. I took the day off, so that we could stay home and relax. D enjoyed his birthday presents, including many books, an artist's desk (I'm hoping this will keep the art projects in his bedroom, rather than all over the living room floor!) and a tiger puppet who can play Hobbes when he and his partner in crime make Calvin & Hobbes videos.

There was also a birthday cake inpired by Jackson Pollock.

Asked to recount memories of his first decade, here's what D came up with:

• Wailing in the church nursery until the keepers got Mom out of the service


• Playing trains with Dad while Mom was at work and being a train engineer in a cardboard engine for Halloween


• Giving a tour of the house to visiting Grandpa and Grandma Bos, and being told not to linger on the cat beds because of Grandpa's allergies (this was upsetting until Mom distracted him with his Fisher Price kitchen) (Mom does not remember this incident at all)


• Switching interests from trains to dinosaurs after seeing a dinosaur book at Target (this would have been age 3)


• Creating a Walking With Dinosaurs type show for home video and getting frustrated with Mom's amateurish camera work


• End-of-year program at Montessori preschool, during which D refused to go on stage


• 4th birthday party, with plastic dinosaurs on cake


• Starting JrK at Summit School and meeting friends Dylan and Katie


• Transition from dinosaurs to mythical beasts, which made for some confusion among teachers and friends, who couldn't discern between dinosaur and dragon drawings


• Learning lots of fascinating things at school, like life cycle of Monarch butterfly


• Being William Brewster in class reenactment of Pilgrim voyage


• Demanding that Mom read the first Harry Potter book shortly after 5th birthday; then insisting on her reading all 5 existing books over the summer, even though she found them too scary


• Having a crazy teacher in first grade


• Being Thomas Jefferson for Famous Americans Day


• Becoming interested in Shakespeare and getting a Shakespearean costume for Christmas from Grandma Mulder


• Starting second grade and deciding that his main goal for his education was to avoid math as much as possible (poor Mrs. Standerfer had to disabuse him of this notion)


• Beginning social studies class and becoming fascinated with different cultures


• Native American Day, favorite part of which was writing Wise Eagle story


• Helping Mom and Dad with Medieval Camp in the summer


• Starting third grade and learning Stoeri Language


• Being Prince Percy in the third grade play


• Studying vampire bats and writing the Bloody Bat Bulletin


• Deciding to start homeschooling after third grade


• Becoming interested in modern art after taking class at Sawtooth Center


• Visiting New York City and becoming extremely inspired by MOMA and especially the Metropolitan Museum of Art


• Coming home and turning the house into an art museum


• His latest interest: museum design


• 10th birthday: sleeping in... until 6:45 a.m.

Clearly it's been an eventful ten years. Who knows what Dagfari will do in the next decade? Stay tuned...

Field Trip: Manhattan

We were blogless in February, mostly because there wasn't much to write about, other than lingering cold viruses and unpleasant weather. But March got off to a more interesting start last week, as we spent two days of ProfDad's spring break in New York City. Dagfari is still very much into modern art, so he was itching to see MOMA and the Met . Fortunately for us, Skybus now flies out of Greensboro, so we flew into "New York" (actually Newburgh) for under $100 each.

Dagfari has promised to post his own account of our trip, but suffice it to say that we saw a lot of art and did a lot of walking. D loved it all. His only disappointment was being forced to admit that it is not humanly possible to see all of the Met in one day!

We also managed to squeeze in a visit to FAO Schwarz , which D found nearly as interesting as the art.

Snow Days

OK, so there is one undeniable disadvantage to homeschooling: no snow days. We had one of our periodic ice/snow storms last week, and all of the county schools, including Dagfari's alma mater, were closed. But not SGS! In fact, since my campus was shut down for the day, we had extra time for lessons!

Granted, one of these lessons involved sledding down the big hill across the street, and observing how one's velocity is affected by the amount of grass and mud poking through one's sled trail (this is about as far into physics as I can go!).

Our winter term is off to a somewhat creaky start, as always seems to be the case in January. It's never as easy to get motivated for the spring semester as it is in the fall. We're tired out from Christmas travel and festivities; the weather is nasty; colds and flu are going around. A snow day or MLK weekend seems to put us right back into vacation mode, from which it's hard to drag ourselves back out. But classes have started at ProfDad's and my colleges now, and Dagfari's various "extracurricular" classes are starting up. So we're getting back into the swing of things.

D is taking another acting/improv class, a homeschool drama class (we hope), and he has started ballet class. He's really into the ballet, and has taken to dancing around the house and making up his own ballets. Last night he did one inspired by Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights , which was interesting, to say the least.

Dagfari's current reading list:

• The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett
• The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis
• The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg
• Shakespeare After All by Marjorie Garber