Stratford Grammar School

Perfect Fit

2009-09-27T19:04:00.002-04:00

Last week was a productive one at Stratford Grammar School. Dagfari wrote his first college paper, for the 200-level art history class he's taking at WFU, and he also mastered (more or less) the 3 times table.

The former was his idea: he's auditing the class, so he doesn't have to do the papers or exams, but he insisted on it. The latter was accomplished with considerable coercion from me. He supposedly learned the multiplication tables in 3rd grade, his last year of non-home schooling. But they never really stuck, and it's frustrating to do more advanced math when you have to multiply using your fingers. So we're back at it. My latest strategy, suggested by another homeschool mom, is to do one fact per day. It seems to be working better than anything else we've tried.

Dagfari still resists math in all forms, mostly because it takes time away from things he really wants to study-- such as Luxury Arts of the Middle Ages, his art history class which he's absolutely loving. I worried a bit that D would get bored by a systematic study of art history, but he's taken to it like a duck to water. And his paper isn't bad.

So it's been a good week. And I'm reminded of the moment that sealed our homeschooling fate when D was 8 years old: the educational psychologist looking at his test results admitted that there was no appropriate school placement for him in our city. I guess it's not too suprising that there's no school for an 11-year-old who's working at maybe a 5th grade level in math, college level in art history, and somewhere in between for all his other subjects. Homeschool, on the other hand, is a perfect fit.

Living the Complicated Life

2009-09-03T19:48:00.008-04:00

I have to admit, I love those simplify-your-life, organize-your-house magazine articles. All those pictures of rooms with wide open expanses of floor and clean horizontal surfaces. Stuff stashed neatly in shelves, cubbies, and bins. I should know better than to think I could achieve anything like this at my house, but once in a while I try.

Last weekend it was time to tackle Dagfari's room, which in its natural state looks like a hurricane just went through (those of you who have seen it know that I'm not exaggerating). ProfDad got a spiffy new label maker from Costco, so I categorized D's art supplies-- which he was storing in a heap on the floor-- and put them into a bunch of neatly labeled plastic bins. It looked quite good, if I do say so myself.

And was Dagfari happy about this? Um, no. He was incensed. Why? Because "No one will take me seriously as an artist if I keep my supplies in labeled bins! Can you imagine Jackson Pollock with his paints in labeled bins?!!"

No, but I can imagine Jackson Pollock's mother despairing of ever again having a clean house.

At any rate, Art Boy can rest easy for the foreseeable future, since there won't be time for any big organizing projects. Our semester is in full swing, plus we have this year's BookMarks Festival coming up in less than two weeks. I'm serving as acting head of my department, probably for most of the academic year, and ProfDad is teaching four classes and serving on the University Committee from Heck. Oh, and we're still trying to arrange for the deconstruction and reconstruction of half of our house. Somewhere in there we also have to educate the boy. It doesn't appear that I'm going to be simplifying my life anytime soon.

Dagfari is loving the art history class he's auditing at WFU. It's exactly what he needs right now-- an introduction to the methodology and context of art history from someone who knows what he's talking about. So I'm bringing him with me on campus three mornings per week and hoping to recruit a student to hang out with him for a couple of hours before class. ProfDad has him on Thursdays, his Albanian Grandma takes Tuesdays. We're working on scheduling a couple more classes and companions to round out the week. Everything else has to get done between 5:30 p.m. and whenever we fall asleep. This will probably start to feel more manageable when we don't have BookMarks meetings once or more per week.

My friends with brick-and-mortar schooled kids are talking about early bedtimes and clean, quiet houses this week. I can't say this doesn't sound appealing. When we undertook this homeschooling with two full-time jobs experiment, we knew it would complicate our lives, and it has. But we never even considered sending D off to middle school this year. And I'd likely be even more stressed out if we had; it's become quite apparent that there's no way for D to fit comfortably in the traditional classroom. So for now we're living the complicated life, and yes, it's worth it.

Back to School 09

2009-08-25T19:12:00.002-04:00

Classes start tomorrow at WFU and HPU, so we've designated it as b-t-s day for Stratford Grammar School too. The schedule is still sort of in flux, but Dagfari is auditing an art history class at WFU this semester, and he'll go to the first class tomorrow. He's very excited about it, if a little apprehensive. I'm very happy that he'll have access to someone who knows more than he does about art history.

The WFU class meets MWF, so we aren't scheduling too many other classes until we get a feel for how much time the reading will take. Of course, D will still get at least one Albanian lesson per week by default. And we're hoping our lit tutor can fit us in again this semester. We're also going to force D to keep doing Teaching Textbooks Math 7, preferably with one of his homeschool friends.

Dagfari has been doing a lot of art again lately. This week it's been pastel chalk still lifes of pottery vases. They're quite nice, IMO, but of course the artist is unsatisfied with most of them.

Suleyman at the Siege of Rhodes

2009-08-17T18:53:00.000-04:00

Upon Being Asked to Clean His Room...

2009-08-16T18:53:00.007-04:00

Dagfari wrote a little essay, from which this is excerpted:

"The creation of art and literature are not to be countered by rules of cleanliness. The current home-school environment is not to be used as an excuse for the unlawful destruction of artistic or educational work-spaces. This should allow the student to move with complete freedom from one certified work-space to another. In other words, the education and enrichment of the members of this household is of greater importance than the enforcement of arbitrary rules of cleanliness.

Therefore, in the course of cleaning, this enrichment is still to be respected. The process of tidying should enhance it. The cleaning experience should be educational. This is the responsibility of the government, to step away from the current approach to sanitary enforcement. "

And so on. And he wonders why I give him the "just wait until you have kids of your own" speech at least once per week.

American Art, Ballet Blues

2009-08-13T12:28:00.002-04:00

Summer camp season came to an abrupt end last week, as Dagfari bailed on NCSA ballet camp after two days. Five solid hours of nothing but dancing was not his cup of tea, and it didn't help that he was once again the only boy there. NCSA is a pre-professional program, and, as D put it, "They make you feel like ballet has to be the most important thing in your life." Which is does, if you want to be a professional dancer. But Dagfari doesn't. D's teacher from last year told us we really needed to put him in the ballet prep program, but I think it's clear that this would not be a good fit.

Everyone says that it's great to be a boy in ballet, since boys are scarce. I guess this is true if you're a boy who is very serious about ballet. But the downside, we've found, is that a boy who's even mildly talented will find it hard to pursue a casual interest. If Dagfari were a girl, no one would be pushing him ahead into advanced classes or mentioning a professional career!

At any rate, he now wants to take a break from ballet this fall. I hate to see him quit completely, but I can understand why he feels the way he does.

The July Writing Adventures camp at Reynolda House Musem was more successful. Dagfari didn't love every aspect (especially not the group writing activities-- can't blame him!), but ended up having a good experience. The teachers were good and the museum staff were happy to have a kid who was so intensely interested in art. Many of the Reynolda House staff know him on sight now, which he hopes will serve him well when he goes looking for an internship in a few years.

ProfDad and I are hurtling toward the fall semester now, and there are some interesting things in the works for Stratford Grammar School too!

Summer 09

2009-05-20T20:59:00.003-04:00

I'm not quite sure how it got to be July already, but here we are. SGS is in summer session, which means that Dagfari gets to spend time at his old school doing some day camps. This year it's been all movie-making camps with the longsuffering Mrs. M., who takes 18 kids and makes a semi-coherent movie with them in the space of a week. The results are quite entertaining, if you're the parent of one of said kids. D is doing his third and last week this week. Then we have few weeks off (i.e. Albanian and Library Camp). At the end of July D is doing a camp at Reynolda House. I think he's planning on using the opportunity to lobby for an internship.

Dagfari rounds out the summer with two weeks at UNCSA Ballet Camp. If he likes it and they like him, he'll probably audition for their Ballet Prep program in the fall. His teacher at WFU strongly encouraged us to transfer him there. I'm still a bit wary-- a pre-professional program??I just planned on using ballet as homeschool P.E., since D hates team sports. So I figure the summer camp is a good way to test the waters.

No real vacations planned for this summer, since we're ripping off the back of our house for a remodel/addition. We did spend the better part of a week in Charlottesville last month. Dagfari and ProfDad had a good time bopping around Monticello and UVA while I was in RBMS meetings.

Dagfari is still updating his art website this summer. Scroll down for some previews of coming exhibits.

And if you need to track us down this summer, we're probably at the pool or Home Depot.

Spring 09

2009-04-10T10:08:00.004-04:00

I've gotten behind, as usual. Have been spending most of my home screen time helping Dagfari with his new website: http://sites.google.com/site/dagfariproject/ . He provides all the content, but I was doing the formatting, etc. at first. But he's catching on very quickly and now does most of the updates all by himself. So I figure we can add Website Design to our list of spring classes.
It's been a very busy and somewhat stressful semester for ProfDad and me, so we've pretty much outsourced all of D's formal classwork this spring. Which has actually worked out great. He's making good progress in Latin, taking two ballet classes per week (had to give up on the violin idea, since there really wasn't time), and learning some basic computer programming in Scratch with a HPU student.
He's also started tutoring sessions in literature. We were lucky to find a master teacher who is now a stay-at-home dad and part-time tutor. He and Dagfari are starting with the KJV old testament. This has been interesting, although the content is kind of questionable. For example, today D is reading Judges, and he asked me what was the point of the story about the Levite and his concubine (Judges 19, if you're interested). The point, as far as I can see, is that life in the Bronze Age really sucked, especially if you were female. I'm hoping Mr. B can offer more in the way of literary/historical context!
In his spare time, D is putting up art exhibits in his bedroom and writing a script for a film he's planning to make with two of his friends this summer.
We made a (long-overdue, in D's opinion) trip to New York last month and spent four days at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Whew. And now he's asking when we can go back...

February Art Exhibit

2009-02-16T09:47:00.012-05:00

LOVE ON CANVAS: A SPECIAL VALENTINE’S DAY EXHIBIT
by Dagfari

The Venus de Milo marks the height of the Hellenistic period, in its monumental form, the dramatic swirls of the drapery, and the sense of awesome power it contains. The figure comes forth in all her glory, yet with a sort of deliberateness that is not found in the Renaissance.
A thousand years separate this from the next great revival of classicism, led in part by the artist Alessandro Botticelli. And even now, Botticelli paints with classical subjects, not classical style. In his La Primavera, Venus gazes slightly downward, with the oval face and eyes of a typical portrayal of the Virgin Mary. This is emphasized by the appearance of Cupid, who may allude to the Christ Child. If these attributions are correct, then Venus here takes on the role not of a pagan goddess, but of a symbol who represents all spiritual love.
This whole picture is packed with allegorical scenes which symbolize, in one way or another, the many forms in which love is shown. On one side, Zephyr, the west wind, grasps the nymph Chloris with a firm, strong hand, representing a distressed lover’s last resort to violence. This particular section indicates that the work was meant to hang in the bedroom of a newly wedded couple. This conclusion may be at first astonishing to some, yet images of ill-matched lovers eventually coming together, as these do when Chloris, now transformed into the goddess Flora, agrees to marry Zephyr, were thought to soothe the young bride, in the notion that even the messiest pairings turn out in the end.[1]
But who would be able to afford such a large and detailed painting as a wedding gift? The answer is, of course, one of the wealthiest men in Italy: the great Lorenzo de Medici, known to most as Lorenzo the Magnificent. It is believed that he commissioned it in order to encourage his nephew’s marriage to Semiramide Appiani which was to create a significant political alliance.

Another great portrayal of renaissance romance hangs in the form of a small engraving, in a museum in Vienna entitled The Triumph of Love. Depicted here is a four-wheeled parade float, on top of which stands the familiar Cupid, who has just fired an arrow into the crowd of spectators. In some depictions of this same subject, such as the one in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, smaller cupids stand in for the flames shown here, creating a sort of army of love.
Real parade floats of this type would have been wheeled throughout the city streets, for a man to celebrate she who he loved, and hopefully to win over her hand. The lover would have masqueraded as Cupid, with wings pinned to the back of his shirt. One such float, made for the Medici family, is described by Rosella Bessi:
…Each side is five braccia high from the bottom, and is decorated with so many ornaments that it seems impossible to me that it could ever be made. There are many things worked in silver and gold, with so many enamels and pieces of glass crystal that one can see oneself reflected in it as in a mirror. It shines like the sun on all sides, and at the summit, in the four corners, there are four singular spiritelli…[2]

Vermeer’s The Love Letter contains more subtle symbolism, with paintings and maps which seem like they could be found in any ordinary Dutch house. We will begin to decode the painting with the objects closest to the viewer, in the dark, shadowy room which opens up onto the main space. The most prominent of these is the map of Holland which drips as though bleeding. This may be a key to the whole painting, which shows Vermeer’s defense of Catholicism, a faith which was outlawed in Holland during the end of the 1600s.
The ‘bleeding’ map could indicate that Holland had been severely wounded by the rise of Protestantism; however this dark, gloomy world where we the viewers stand gives way to the bright scene in the tiled room with the fireplace which draws us in toward the warmth.[3] But we, assumed to be protestants, can neither enter the room, nor see the source of the curious light which comes, not from the side as is typical with Vermeer, but from the heavens, revealing that love is portrayed in this picture as a catholic virtue.
The shoes which have been discarded and left in the entrance, are typical in northern scenes of romance and wedding ceremonies. In Jan van Eyck’s famous ‘Arnolfini portrait’, they represent the couple’s acknowledgement of the holy ground on which this event took place. This aspect may have appealed to Vermeer, but to the eyes of the patron, the pearls which embroider the shoes were the most significant touch, emphasizing the woman’s purity. A pair of shoes such as this, although, for practical reasons lacking in pearls, is shown in the exhibit.

The second northern work shown here is the Ill Matched Lovers of Quentin Massys. This great artist of the 16th century, seems to have been fascinated by money, wealth, and the human desire for them. Even here, in a painting which would seem to represent romance, there is an underlying theme of greed. The woman embraces the man for the sole purpose of slipping his sack of coins into the hands of her goblin-like accomplice.
Images of ill-matched lovers first appeared in engravings and woodcuts around the 1400s, and slowly made their way into paintings of greater importance, such as Lucas Cranach the Elder's 1530's work, also titled Ill-Matched Lovers. These pictures were inspired by many different literary sources, the earliest of which was written by the Roman poet, Plautus, when he warned older men not to court young women.

Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss is a fitting conclusion to this exhibit, for it captures the spirit of fulfillment in this single moment when the world glimmers with gold. The gold gives a sense of idealization to the picture, taking inspiration from gothic altarpieces. Klimt may have learned the techniques of gold plating from his father, a goldsmith. This gives the gold more character and liveliness than is shown in the gothic, where the painter and goldsmith were usually separate people.
Like the earlier Primavera, Klimt’s figures are set upon a flourishing field of flowers. Although these plants are described in very little detail compared to Botticelli’s photo-like rendering, they create the beautiful, swirling, natural backdrop, established hundreds of years earlier. The figures also add to the idealized, perfect quality of the painting. The man is strong and firm, whereas the woman has soft, pale skin, and red lips. It seems only right that The Kiss should be adapted into a ballet pas de deux later in the 20th century.
[1] This was especially significant in the 15th when marriages due to love were almost unheard of.
[2] Rossella Bessi-“Lo spectacolo e la scrittura”.
[3] The curtain is drawn back in a way which recalls the actions of Mercury warding back the clouds in La Primavera. Barriers such as this, being removed from the scene were common in Dutch allegories of love at this time.

January

2009-01-20T08:40:00.003-05:00

Happy Inauguration Day to all! Half an inch of snow and icy roads have given Dagfari and me two extra hours at home this morning, so I can finally catch up on our January doings.
Last week we had a much-anticipated (by me anyway) Bookmarks event-- an appearance by author Geraldine Brooks. As usual, we were all quite involved in the planning and execution of the author talk and accompanying receptions. It all went extremely well--Brooks is a wonderful speaker and charming person--and D got a signed copy of People of the Book to add to his collection (though I warned him off reading it until he's considerably older--definitely not a kid book).
Dagfari, meanwhile, has gotten back into the swing of things, schoolish-wise. He's been moved up to Ballet 2 (from Ballet 4), which is proving a much better match for him. Latin and science class have started up again. The latter is biology this semester, and D is enjoying keeping a nature journal with lots of sketches. He's still very interested in Spanish art, particularly Spanish Baroque. We made a trip last Saturday to the NC Museum of Art, which has a major expansion project underway. D was at first highly disapproving of the new building (did I mention that he dislikes change of any kind?), but after looking it over carefully and reading an interview with the architect, he now grudgingly approves.
And today, well, we'll probably devote the school day to a civics lesson and watch the festivities in D.C., while looking for J & G (presumably quite bundled up!) in the crowd.

Spring '09 classes at SGS

2009-01-03T19:39:00.004-05:00

We had an exciting trip to Michigan for Christmas, with lots of snow (also wind, sleet, rain, ice, and fog-- you have to love Grand Rapids weather!). Dagfari had a great time with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Lots of presents, cookies, dogs-- the usual holiday fun.

Dagfari entertained himself on the ride home with Peter and the Shadow Thieves on CD (thanks to Grandpa & Grandma Bos) and Prince Caspian on DVD (thanks to Grandma Brink). Now that we're home, he and ProfDad are working on getting Aunt Ann and Uncle Rich's telescope set up.

The new year is here, so it's time to start planning for the spring semester. Dagfari wants to take two ballet classes per week this semester and also start violin lessons. He'll continue with his Latin tutor, homeschool science class (biology this time), and history with ProfDad (continuing with the Renaissance). We're probably going to set up sessions with an English lit/writing tutor too. And one of his student minders will work with him on computers and math. Tutoring seems to work really well for D. Really, the hardest part of homeschooling now is not getting D (and parents) overcommitted.

In his spare time, D is still obsessed with art history. I'm thinking we may need to find a college student mentor for this, since it's really outside my area of expertise. We're hoping to make return trips to the National Gallery and the Met this spring too. Oh, and maybe study some astronomy, if we can master the telescope.

Nutcracker review

2008-12-15T17:57:00.002-05:00

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

2008-12-08T14:46:00.002-05:00

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

2008-11-25T10:40:00.006-05:00

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!

2008-11-06T21:27:00.004-05:00

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

2008-10-12T11:24:00.003-04:00

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

2008-10-04T21:00:00.002-04:00

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

2008-09-29T18:52:00.005-04:00

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

2008-09-21T18:47:00.008-04:00

"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

2008-08-25T15:28:00.043-04:00

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

2008-04-24T18:46:00.004-04:00

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

2008-03-14T13:06:00.003-04:00

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

2008-01-22T13:38:00.000-05:00

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

Christmas Eve

2007-12-24T14:17:00.000-05:00

Hello from snowy Michigan! Dagfari got back to his viking roots this morning, playing in the aftermath of yesterday's big snowstorm at Grandma's house. Presents tonight, more presents tomorrow, and lots of snow and cousins to play with. Life doesn't get much better than this when you're nine years old.

Christmas Preparations

2007-12-10T09:24:00.000-05:00

Lots of holiday preparations going on at SGS this week. The Christmas tree is up and decorated, and E.B., the little cat, is having fun whacking at ornaments and drinking out of the tree stand. We're reading Dickens's Christmas Carol for our literature study this week. My favorite CC trivia so far: in Dickens's early drafts, Tiny Tim was called Tiny Fred, after one of Dickens's own siblings. Dagfari finds this quite amusing, since our Fred is a very chubby guinea pig. I fear D may be inspired to film a piggie version of CC!.

Lost Colonies and Nutcrackers

2007-12-03T10:58:00.002-05:00

Field trip weekend at SGS! Dagfari and I accompanied ProfDad and some of his Honors history students to the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh, where we saw the Lost Colony exhibit. Most impressive for D were the 70 John White watercolors and Theodor de Bry engravings on loan from the British Museum. I found White's (completely fanciful) paintings of ancient Picts and Britons especially interesting, since I'd never seen them before, and since we're reading up on ancient Scotland for our Macbeth study.

White's Pict has no basis in historical fact, but he puts modern tattoo enthusiasts to shame! White supposedly included these pictures in his album on the Algonquin to show his British audience that their ancestors were even less civilized than the North American "savages". Whatever you make of his premise, the pictures are fascinating.

On Sunday night D and I attended NCSA's production of the Nutcracker (poor ProfDad had to work). Tchaikovsky's holiday confection is wonderful performed by young, talented, and energetic NCSA students. Dagfari staged his own version next to our Christmas tree when we got home. Unfortunately he only got to do the first half, before his philistine parents insisted on going to bed. He was most indignant, but the suffering is probably good for his art.

November

2007-11-28T15:22:00.000-05:00

It's been a busy month here at SGS. A few of the highlights:

Dagfari finished his drama class with a performance of a very short play, written by the kids in the class, and very loosely based on Fiddler on the Roof. The community theater group which sponsored the class was doing FotR this fall, so we got tickets to the real performance too. A decent performance, with some good singing talent... and a Cossack sheriff played by what looked and sounded like Barney Fife's first cousin :). D is now taking another acting class, this one in W-S, with a Commedia dell'Arte theme. It seems to involve a lot of improv and boys being silly, so of course he's having a good time.
D's art class has also finished up for the semester. He had a really good instructor and has been inspired to do a lot of drawing and painting recently. His current interest is the Surrealist movement, especially Dali and Rene Magritte.
We're winding up our study of Beowulf with a foray into Monster Theory. D is greatly enjoying this, as you can imagine. We won't bother seeing the new Beowulf movie, however, since my favorite Anglo-Saxon expert says it's not very good. Next up in literary studies: Macbeth, King James, and witchcraft in 17th century Britain.
History studies have been eclectic this month. We've done some research on prehistoric humans (I guess this is technically anthropology), and have also dabbled in study of the Crusades. Terry Jones, of Monty Python fame, has a good series out on video.
I still want D to start piano lessons soon, but the piano repair person stopped answering my emails after I told her the make (Remington) and condition of our piano. Apparently the Remington is kind of the Yugo of pianos. So I guess we got what we paid for there (it was free). From a musician's standpoint, we should probably chop it up for firewood. But since it's here and it sort of works, we'll use it for beginner lessons anyway.
Math is still done infrequently and under protest, but D has decided that his new pre-algebra workbook is much better than the multiplication/long division he had been doing.
Dagfari's current reading list:

Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann. I'm reading this aloud as our bedtime book. It's about a flock of intelligent sheep who try to solve the mystery of who killed their shepherd. Very entertaining, not really a kids' book per se.
Valley of Secrets by Charmian Hussey. I haven't read this one, but D says its good. The cover says it's an "ecological adventure fantasy".
Macbeth by You-Know-Who (no, not Voldemort!). A re-read, but always good. The American Shakespeare Theatre is doing a production this winter.
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke. D just started this. He says it's good, although it's got the ubiquitous Dead Mother theme. This doesn't bother D at all, though. Indeed, he claims that killing off, or at least dispensing with, the main character's mother is necessary for a good kids' book. Agree or disagree?
Cats in Ancient Egypt by someone whose name I can't remember. This is research for a proposed documentary on Cats In History. If this project comes to fruition, we'll at least have plenty of actors.

Dagfari's Book Reviews: Mattimeo

2007-11-12T19:16:00.000-05:00

Mattimeo
By Brian Jacques

Mattimeo is at first a naughty young mouse who is always getting into trouble. Even though his father Matthias, who learned what it is to be a warrior through battling Cluny, a terrible rat who tried to conquer Redwall Abbey, tries to pass his knowledge on to Mattimeo, the spoiled little rascal won’t listen. And so he has to learn the wisdom of a warrior the hard way, through slavery and hardship.
All through his perilous journey, Mattimeo’s friends look up to him as their leader, and even though he struggles to live up to their expectations, he succeeds in standing up to Slagar, their captor. Mattimeo even gives his companions hope while they are imprisoned in Malkariss, a place which is dreaded by all creatures, even the rats of Slagar’s troop.
After his terrible journey is done, Mattimeo finally is able to take up the role of protector of Redwall Abbey, like his father before him.
I enjoyed this heroic tale because of its wonderful characters. Slagar makes a very interesting villain, because he is much more intelligent than your usual villain, and he has a secret identity as one of the more minor characters from Redwall.

Halloween

2007-11-06T17:14:00.000-05:00

We all had a good Halloween. The weather was perfect, as it usually is this time of year in NC. Dagfari finally decided to be a Redwall vole (see photo). This caused some confusion among our neighbors during trick-or-treating, which I think was his intention.

D also decorated the yard extensively. See here for more pics. Now that Halloween is over, he wants to build a model of the Mayflower to put in the front yard for Thanksgiving. I think this is somewhat beyond my crafting skill level. We may have to make to with falling leaves in the yard, until Christmas season rolls around.

Field Trip: Baltimore

2007-10-29T13:23:00.000-04:00

We visited cousins near Baltimore last week, which means that we're playing catch-up this week. But Dagfari had a great time with his homeschooled cousins Jorunn and Godfred (we had to put them through the Viking Name Generator too). We visited a wildlife center and hiked in a state park, and then toured the National Aquarium in Baltimore (we're in the Australia exhibit in picture). D had plenty of time to play stuffed animal football and swordfight with G (J is way too mature and civilized for this sort of thing!). J and G's parents were very gracious hosts, especially considering that they had to make a fast trip to Michigan the next weekend.

Having seen what J & G's mom has to go through with Maryland homeschool regulations, I am very appreciative of NC's minimalist oversight. I would be in trouble if I had to keep a portfolio and fake an organized curriculum!

We stopped in Charlottesville on the way home and spent too much time and money in bookstores there. Heartwood Books, one of my favorite used bookstores, is still in business and remarkably unchanged from my days as a grad student at UVA. Dagfari has added UVA to his list of potential colleges (along with WFU, HPU, William and Mary, and UNC-CH).

Back on the home front, D is enjoying is art class at the Sawtooth Center, acting out the plot of Beowulf with Playmobil, and finishing up an essay on The Book of Three. Oh, and agonizing over his choice of Halloween costume, which is still up in the air at this writing! Stay tuned for more information.

SGS Fall Catalog

2007-10-21T17:45:00.000-04:00

Last week Dagfari decided we should make a course catalog for Stratford Grammar School. With a few notable exceptions, the classes are of his design.

Here's what we came up with:

Stratford Grammar School
Fall 2007 course list

Art
Drawing and Painting 101. Students will learn basic techniques of drawing and painting and will also do special projects. Offsite location: Sawtooth Center.

Nature Photography 102. Students will learn basic techniques of nature photography with a digital camera. Includes field trips.

Computer Science
Keyboarding 101. Introduction to basic keyboarding. By the end of the class, student should be able to type with all ten fingers.

Web Page Design. Create a personal web page using Dreamweaver.

English
English Lit 101. Survey of literature in English, beginning with Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon poetry, through Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Student will be expected to do daily reading assignments and write weekly short essays.

Modern Children’s Literature. Student will read and discuss a series of modern works of literature for children.

Foreign Languages
Intermediate Albanian. Continuation of Introductory Albanian, taught by native speaker. Student will learn the basics of oral and written Albanian and experience Albanian culture.

Introductory Latin. Introduction to classical Latin language and grammar.

History
World History 101. History of the world from prehistoric times until whenever. Student will write and produce a documentary.

Barbarian Europe. Study of indigenous European peoples from prehistory through the fall of the Roman Empire.

Home Economics
Cooking 101. Introduction to basic cooking techniques. Student will learn to make green and fruit salads, scrambled eggs, and a variety of sandwiches.

Mathematics
Mathematics 4A. Continuation of Mathematics 3B. Student will learn and practice a variety of mathematical concepts, while whining and protesting loudly. Student will be expected to have mastered multiplication tables 1-11 by the end of the class.

Architecture 101. Student will practice building structures with Legos.

Music
Music Appreciation. Student will listen to a music from a variety of classical composers and discuss the historical influences and qualities of each.

Piano Lessons 101. Student will begin study of piano.

Philosophy and Religion
World Mythologies. 2 semester course. Historical survey of mythology and its influence on human thought. Student will begin research on topic of choice, on which he will write a term paper during the spring semester

Physical Education
Bicycling. Weekly biking trips, including field trip to New River Trail in Virginia.

Swimming. Recreational swimming at Wake Forest pool.

Psychology
Introduction to Cognitive Science. Study of how humans develop thought processes and acquire language. (Course dependent on instructor’s ability to brush up on Noam Chomsky, Stephen Pinker, et al. May have to be postponed until Spring semester.)

Science
Animal Husbandry. Student will learn about animal care and behavior through interaction with guinea pigs and cats. Occasional dogsitting also involved.

Robotics 101. Student will build mechanical stuff with Legos and other kits.

Darwin and Evolution. Study of life and work of Charles Darwin, including the impact of evolutionary theory on modern thought. Probably a 2 semester course.

Theater
Introduction to Theater. Students will learn basic acting and playbuilding techniques. Offsite locations: High Point Regional Theater, Little Theater of Winston-Salem.

Shakespeare in Performance. Student will study Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, and will make a field trip to see a performance at the American Shakespeare Theatre in Staunton, Va.

Writing and Rhetoric
Creative Writing 201. Continuation of Golden Paper Clip Award series. Student will work on weekly story or chapter of creative writing of choice.

Fall Happenings

2007-10-08T16:27:00.002-04:00

I've fallen behind on blogging-- and on most other things, for that matter. This is typical of September, which tends to be quite busy for those of us in academia. By October, things have usually settled down into a routine.

This seems to be true of our homeschooling venture too. Our kid-minders are all working out well, and various classes are underway. Dagfari goes to work with ProfDad on Tuesdays and Thursdays, even though his homeschool drama class in High Point was canceled due to lack of enrollment. He's going to a class on Saturday mornings now, which he likes for the most part, even though they're not doing Shakespeare. Art class starts this Thursday afternoon. And on Fridays D is with his Albanian "Nona", learning unusual language skills (I'm told he has an excellent Albanian accent!).

Dagfari is still loving the homeschool thing and doesn't miss school a bit. We've been very unstructured for the past few weeks (mostly out of necessity), which D has enjoyed. He has learned to ride the spiffy new bike that he got for his birthday in April. And he's gotten into Lego in a big way, which is a new thing for him. He's also made progress in his typing tutoria l , taken lots of pictures of the guinea pigs, and finished the new Spiderwick book. D has actually requested that we get a bit more structured in our study of literature, mythology, and history, so we're working on that. Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth is proving to be right up his alley, so we're using that as a jumping-off point.

We've also had time for some not-so-educational activities, like the Dixie Classic Fair! The guys liked the funhouse, as you can see.

We met up with the secular homeschoolers group again last Friday afternoon. There are a bunch of boys ages 8-11, and Dagfari had a good time. The only problem is that D appears to be the only 9-year-old boy in the universe who has no interest in video games. This was an issue at school too. Maybe somewhere out there is another boy who can't partake in a discussion of Halo 3?

Field Trip: Chicago

2007-09-05T10:04:00.000-04:00

We just got back from a stay in Chicago. I attended the Society of American Archivists annual conference (more interesting than it sounds!). Dagfari and ProfDad spent two days at the Field Museum and the Shedd Aquarium, which D loved. Especially the Field Museum. There were special exhibits on Charles Darwin, the Maori of NZ, and new dinosaur discoveries. I now need to find a good kid book on Darwin/evolution for our science "curriculum", since that's what D seems most interested in.

We also spent quality time with D's aunt, uncle, and dog cousin, and we attended a RenFaire with the whole family. D is now planning a RenFaire for our backyard. This has been his major project since we returned. He's also writing a graphic novel, starring his guinea pigs and stuffed animals.

We're definitely unschooling this week, since ProfDad and I are dealing with the beginning of semester craziness. I'm also on the programming committee for the BookMarks book festival http://www.bookmarksbookfestival.org , which takes place this Saturday.

Muppets and Museums

2007-08-23T16:01:00.000-04:00

Well, Dagfari is pretty much over the fascination with workbooks and to-do lists. I figured it wouldn't last long, and frankly, I'm a bit relieved. I mean, if he wanted to math problems and analogies and books reports all day, there was no reason for us to overhaul our lives in order to homeschool him.

For the past week and a half, D's time has been devoted to watching Season 2 of The Muppet Show (got the DVD set cheap at Costco), and turning the upstairs into an art museum. He's back into drawing, and even painting, which he hasn't done much of for a while. And he even unearthed the bin of plastic dinosaurs, which haven't seen the light of day in about five years (the dino era came to an abrupt end when we started reading Harry Potter, the week after D's 5th birthday!). He's spent a good bit of this week watching his old favorite video, Walking With Dinosaurs, and setting up dino exhibits. I figure this counts as science.

We also survived two visits to the dentist, the first a checkup, the second a cavity filling. D wasn't thrilled, but he was 100% more tolerant than last time we attempted the dentist (which, was, ahem, nearly four years ago). Nitrous oxide was a bad idea, though. It seemed to have the same effect on D that it does on me-- increases anxiety, rather than the reverse.

In critter news... we have acquired two more guinea pigs, Fred and George. These came from a person on the local homeschool list, who needed a home for her two female guinea pigs. Thinking that Robin and Percy might like to have girlfriends, and maybe eventually father a few baby pigs, I volunteered to give these pigs a home. D tentatively named them Petunia and Lily... until a look at their back ends necessitated a name change. Robin and Percy were not at all happy with the idea of two much bigger roommates, so Fred and George now have their own cage, and half of our kitchen is now a pig farm. D finds this all very amusing and thinks we should now get four female pigs. I'm not sure I'm ready for quite that much of a biology lesson.

And here I worried that science was going to be the weak point for our homeschooling!

Pictures of Summer

2007-08-14T11:49:00.000-04:00

Summer 2007: Dagfari discovers that the diving board is fun!

More photos on the flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7332078@N02/

It's Official

2007-08-13T15:41:00.000-04:00

We received our little orange card from the NC Dept. of Non-Public Education last week, which means that Stratford School is officially open for business.

I was assuming that we'd just continue on with unstructured summer vacation until after Labor Day. But Dagfari was eager to start "doing homeschool" last week, since all his summer camps are done. So we devised a daily list of stuff for him to do-- a bunch of reading, a page from a couple of math/logic and analogy workbooks that I'd picked up, some Minimus Latin, etc. Our "unschooling" is looking pretty schooly at the moment, but this is entirely at D's insistence. I guess this is what happens when two geeky academic types reproduce-- you get a kid who learns Latin for fun.

D is also heavily involved in a project of filming Shakespeare plays using his many stuffed animals as actors. You haven't lived until you've seen Marc Antony played by a stuffed sheep! I think we'll soon need some video editing software, which I know nothing about. Any suggestions are welcome.

ProfDad and I are gearing up for the start of the fall semester and trying to stay cool in the east-coast heat wave. We're hoping D's enthusiasm for the homeschooling project continues next week, when college classes start and the new schedule is put to the test.

Back to School

2007-08-04T20:43:00.000-04:00

Dagfari attended the last of his weeklong summer camps last week. Fifteen kids and one incredibly patient teacher came up with a screenplay of sorts and filmed a movie on school grounds. The result was entertaining, as one might expect, and D had a great time.

(The photo above is D at the Borders Harry Potter party. He's dressed as Nearly Headless Nick.)

Now summer camp is over, August is here, and ProfessorDad and I are headed into the always-busy beginning of another academic year. It's going to be strange not having D headed back to school too. But our homeschool curriculum is starting to take shape.

ProfDad ordered a laptop for D to use, so that we won't have to fight for computer time at home. I've ordered Singapore Math materials. This will probably be our only "canned" curriculum, and I chose it because it seemed to have the least bells and whistles of any ones I've seen recommended. D's school used Chicago Math, and he hated all the games and group activities. This is typical of D-- hates the things teachers do to make school "fun" (I was the same way as a kid). Must be darned annoying for the teachers.

We're also going to get some keyboarding software (again, he doesn't want any games!), so that he can learn to do his own typing.

I guess D and I will probably come up with a reading list of some sort. He's been very interested in myths, folktales, and fairy tales, and he wants to do a research paper on the Grimm brothers. I found a nice bio of them by Donald Hettinga, who was a very young English professor when I was an undergrad at Calvin. ProfDad might do a history study of Napoleonic Europe to complement this.

We also learned about some homeschool drama classes starting up in September, so we'll sign D up for a couple of those, and maybe an art class too. When it gets less hot outside, I'm hoping to take another stab at getting D on the dreaded bicycle. This should count as P.E.!

This should keep us quite busy, I think. The next thing we have to address is recruiting college students to look after D while I'm at work and ProfDad is teaching. Homeschooling with two working parents is apparently a very unusual concept. When I tell people we're homeschooling next year, most of them immediately ask if I'm quitting my job! But I think it will work out, and will even be beneficial to D, if he gets to spend time with some interesting people.

Why are we doing this?

2007-07-24T15:43:00.000-04:00

Dagfari (no, not his real name; it's from a Viking Name Generator) is nine years old. Instead of going off to fourth grade next month, he's going to be homeschooled.

Why are we doing this?

The short answer is, because it's what Dagfari wants and needs. School -- even his lovely and progressive private school -- does not fit the way he learns. He's intense, an introvert who likes to think things through before speaking. He needs quiet, solitude, and time to pursue a subject in depth. He's not antisocial, but he prefers to socialize with people who share his interests, regardless of age or gender. School is not conducive to any of this, and it was making him frustrated, depressed, and physically ill.

By the end of third grade, it was clear that we needed to try something different. So Stratford Grammar School was born (in NC you have to give your homeschool an official name, which is not as easy as it sounds-- and there are no Homeschool Name Generators on the Internet!). We're taking an eclectic and unschooly approach, with no particular curriculum as of yet. ProfessorDad will be as fully involved in instruction as I will, since I'm planning to continue working full time. We have no religious agenda, and our politics lean toward the left, so I don't think we'll be participating much in the conservative Christian local homeschool association. We will be oddballs even among homeschoolers, I'm afraid.

But it should be an interesting ride!