July-August 2019

TRAVELS

In July we travelled to Canada, and also west to Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah.

On our first trip we visited Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada. We loved the town. The lakefront has a beautiful park by the river. We took a boat tour which we enjoyed very much, and also found informative about this part of the world and its historical challenges. We also visited a trading fort whose dimensions amazed us all. The food was better and cheaper than the US, but the gas was higher. On this trip I learned two things: 1) even if your travels prevent you from checking in your hotel on the first date of your itinerary, you need to call the hotel or you risk your booking being cancelled, and 2) not all border crossings with Canada are opened 24 hours. So when traveling plan ahead.

We also visited Duluth and Bemidji in Minnesota. Both are charming gems hidden far far away from anything huge. The kids were for two weeks at a language camp in MN. They want to go back again.

Our trip west was to Glacier NP and Yellowstone. Glacier is an amazing place and everyone should see it multiple times. Yellowstone is huge but so are the crowds, which robs from the serenity I look forward to in such trips. We camped at the St.Mary KOA on the west side of Glacier and we found it to be a great starting place for many key destinations in the park, mainly anything west of Logan Pass, Two Medicine and Many Glacier. The visitor center at St.Mary is fantastic. The boat tour is not so great. Landing in Kalispell was a challenge for B, but landing in Idaho Falls was perfectly fine. Go visit Glacier, it is amazing. We loved all hikes we did- Avalanche Lake, Hidden Lake, St.Mary and Virginia Falls, Grenell Lake, and Iceberg Lake. AtYellowstone we loved Mystic Falls, we did the entire loop starting from the left heading directly to the falls along the flat path; climbing the falls and descending from there to the parking lot was a bit strenuous. We did not like Fairy Falls because it was too crowded. We also did not like Beaver Ponds because it was not an interesting hike, but we loved that the hike begins in one state, stays for a while in another state, before going back to the first state - basically we were in Wyoming and Idaho during the hike. In Yellowstone we loved Lamar Valley because there were so many animals to observe and listen to. We also spent a day at West Yellowstone in the Bear and Wolf Center which offers a two-day admission, with unlimited comings and goings. The town was a ghost town in the middle of the day which was a lovely observation to make.

READINGS

Me: Surviving Hitler, Animal Farm
S: Red scarf girl, Tangerine
B: Usborne: Life of Napoleon, and Who was Napoleon; Nick and Tesla-Solar Powered
PG: Vovo de no Pe

Read Aloud: We need to finish Narnia and Two Miserable Presidents. At the moment we are cutting through with Usborne's short book on Alexander the Great.


SCHOOL

We are a day away from school starting. We are not ready. Our sleeping schedules are off. We are also mentally not there given the thrill of our travels. I am not ready. Fourth grader is returning full time, if things are not working out with him, I will try to pull him out as a part-time student. Sixth grader is a floater at the moment. She is very dedicated to her instruments and with the unnecessary intensity and stress of school she may be conflicted, so I am leaning towards homeschooling full-time, but we will try to get her to attend part-time for Science, Social Science and English. The rules they have are crazy in these schools. Taking a kid from school for a trip is full of hurdles, but after that the kid itself has to go through loops to make up all the missed stuff. They have made it too complicated, way too early. Give kids a break, you are not making them Nobel laureates at 11. She wants to play basketball and play in the orchestra, but who, in their right mind, would ever ask kids to play music at 7am? Kids should be sleeping at 7am, and school should not be rolling until at least 8:30am. Middle schoolers need a lot of sleep. My middle schooler sleeps all the time because her body is changing by the minute. Administrators seam to forget that they were kids once going through the same metamorphosis. It is really puzzling what collective human stupidity looks like. Also optimizing as is done is wrong - they kill all creativity and hunger to learn, and to be curious; they create robots and this is shameful. I wish I had understood the fallacy of the "excellent school".

November

Books

A very good book. Well written, well paced, interesting, simple and yet can lead to wonderful conversations and explorations. I recommend it both as a read aloud for kids as young as Kindergartners and as a self-read for a child 9 years and above. Adults will enjoy it too. The European vs the American theme is a bit too naive and silly

After very little thinking, completely spontaneously, despite having intended to preserve this story for next month, I dove into it last night. As I was reading chapter one, the kids did express interest but mid second chapter asked for a break. We will go on because this will be a fabulous journey which will get better and better as we go on.

Every once in a while Ballet Girl interrupts, Her teachers at school have taught her to 'guess' what is coming next, what's the story is about, etc,etc. Sorry, while I do see some value in this 'technique' when one is learning to read, when a text is being read fluently, it is better to just sit back, relax and concentrate on what the author is presenting. Very simple.

This is the first book in the Narnia series and provides some answers to questions that may come after reading the LWW. It was a good, fast and interesting read but definitely not better than the LWW. I am glad that I read it, I recommend it but it's not a star book. This is the extent of my review.

I have found myself undoing a lot of unnecessary damage produced by the school. Also last night, while Ballet Girl was practicing her reading, upon encountering an unknown, not-easily recognizable word, she would lift her head from the text and her eyes would stare around but not in the text. After observing this a few times, it was time to interject and repair the damage-the word is not written on the fridge, on the ceiling or on my shirt. The word is written on the paper, you are better of looking there and putting some thinking into deciphering the word. Aye, Aye, Aye! What a major headache! The schools with their 'techniques' and 'strategies' are making the simple things be unnecessarily difficult. 

This is the first book I read this month. The paper used for this edition is pretty poor so on first glance I thought the book will not be interesting. It most certainly is. I don't know about accurate, but interesting-yes.

It is a Newbery Medal winner. I tend to be cautious with these awards. For instance, I object to the deCamillo's books, A Year Down Under, Holes, Maniac Magee, Secret of the Andes, Strawberry girl and the Voyages of Dr. Dolittle. King of the Wind deserves an award. 

This is what Ballet Girl is reading now. There are a few more books in the series for her to read before we find another series. So far the stories from the series that she has read have been very interesting. The stories are about horses, and girls interactions with horses; some feature 'real' girls, others feature princesses. For a beginning reader with interest in horses, I recommend this book. The reading level is 2.3-2.5. My daughter is 7 years old and in first grade.

LegoFest

We went to Indianapolis to visit friends, celebrate kids' birthdays and to enjoy LegoFest. I liked the event but I think this is the last LegoFest we will go to. It's the equivalent of LegoLand in Schaumburg with more sculptures, perhaps. From hiegene/health perspective, both the event and LegoLand are a brow-raiser. The bricks on the ground were not clean, as could be expected so we travelled with a hand-held sanitzer bottle.

No more BALLET

Ballet girl has not shown enthusiasm for dance this year. Is she tired? I don't know. It is hard to say, but the classes were not giving her much joy. So, after missing three weeks straight, I took the decision to remove her from all classes, along with Sunlight boy who was taking the boys' class.

Thus we are left with one weekly activity and much calmer existence. Wednesdays the little man can enjoy his entire nap and Fridays I do not need to rush but I can begin my weekend calmly.

Schoolish Things

For History this month we are reading about the conquest of America by the Europeans. We are looking at the European treatment of the locals, the life of the locals up to that moment, and we talked about pilgrims and The Pilgrims but we will talk more about them over Thanksgiving. 

For Science this month we haven't done much yet but we plan to talk about the seasons and health issues.

For Portuguese: we have read on and off because we have been busy with out bulgarian guest, but now we are back on track. We have listened/read Peter and the Wolf; we have read a few books; we have watched a few Disney animated movies. All good! Now we are going to proceed with reading the book again using different versions from the library, and we will listen to the Disquinho version. Next we will read Snowwhite and we will listen to Disquinho and we will watch the Disney move.

For Math: With Ballet girl we are learning about the concept of area, slowly, and she is learning the multiplication table by doing exercises (she has understood multiplication for well over a year already). With Sunlight boy we are learning about adding three digit numbers.

Both kids are reading bulgarian 3-4 times per week.

Piano-Ballet girl had a Halloween concert on November 1st and Barnes & Noble. It did not go well initially but ended well. She played her piece beautifully despite forgetting how it started; I helped her. This weekend she is performing at the schools fall's recitals. She is performing the next longer piece. She is ready and I hope this experience proves positive for her.

Burned Out Already?!

We started school six weeks ago.

For Sunlight Boy nothing changed but the frequency of homework. While during the summer we were casually skipping and skimming, now we stick to a 5-homework days per week. Our school days are Monday-Thursday and Sunday.

For Ballet Girl things have only mildly changed. She reads some Bulgarian and some English  and plays piano 20 minutes per day during our school days. The new is that I introduced spelling twice a week (Sunday and Thursday).

The evenings have been slightly stressful (for me) because I have tried to cram in some history and science-half month dedicated to history and half a month dedicated to some scientific concept. In addition, I have been strict about the presence of Portuguese in our lives-we now dedicate at the minimum 15 minutes per night to it.

Since the weather has been keeping steady and good for the most part of the last six weeks, we have emphasized outdoor play too. So, we should not be burned out. Yet, we are. So, next week is our vacation week. I looked at the school calendar of the kids and it more or less follows the same pattern-six weeks on, one week off- and for once I agree with the school, but conditionally-and the condition is that learning continues year round.

Our next planned vacations are for the weeks of 11/24, 12/22, 12/29, 2/16, 4/6, 5/25. The summer we will go to a reading/math/piano routine only, and only  4 times a week.

Homework

I was reading through the pages for the classes in the kids' school. I was mainly browsing because I was interested in finding what and when and how was covered. Along the way I found more than I expected.

Starting in 3rd grade teachers become obsessed with homework - incomplete homework, missing homework and late homework. There are forms, conferences, referrals associated with all these - goodness gracious!

No teacher, however, mentioned anything about the quality of homework -the quality did not matter as long as the homework was completed in a timely fashion. This reminded me of the exams on which one is always better off guessing. This also reminded me of how much negativity is an ingrained element of the western world, ingrained by choice, habit and tradition. Everything in the west is seen from the most negatively biased lens - let's see, the sun is shining brightly, what terrible thing is this natural phenomenon a precursor to? In principle, I do agree that there should be policies to tackle in a consistent manner negative outcomes. However, I only tolerate them when there are corresponding policies for responding to positive outcomes.

Homework-I don't actually remember doing homework or having homework checked ever in my non-US schooling. Here is my reasoning to the lack of homework: if you wanted to move up a grade, or get good grades, you had to do work-what work (how much reading, what reading, how frequently, when and how) was your own business. We were allowed to figure it out on our own. There were no surprise quizzes or schedules exams- there were oral exams and there was the chance of being called on the black board to solve the problem or show the location of some natural resource on the map. Putting the burden on the student was the key. If you got low grades, it was mainly because you did not find the golden formula or you did not try hard enough, but it was your own doing. By having homework assigned, the burden for student readiness falls on the teacher.


I am also against tests. Scheduled, scripted, never-changing tests. They do not resemble anything in the real world-there is no problem that is solved by taking tests. Problems are solved by working at them, trying a strategy, failing, trying an improved strategy, failing, getting up and moving on. In fact, failure by being more frequent should be praised more than success  when the evidence for effort and diligence is present.






I am a proponent of oral exams. Not the freak-me-out-of-my-wits Q&scriptedA nightmare I know.

No, a genuine conversation in which you can learn from the student in an amicable, stress free way what he has retained from what you have related. I support individual independent research interest-driven projects culminating in a research seminar with Q&A sessions. I support full-blown large-scale research interest-driven projects resembling the large scale physics collaborations that teach dependence, accountability, responsibility, team work, respect.