Columbus Day and Chimichangas

With all of the chaos involved in planning our move while spending much of our time commuting to Lexington for our homeschooling co-op and other activities, I didn't really plan anything school-wise for Columbus Day. A surprise visit yesterday from Kelly's parents on what is also Canada's Thanksgiving Day called for a meal out at the local Mexican joint, since Bonnie made a pretty reasonable argument that we needed to eat tacos to celebrate her Canadian heritage. Turns out that my idea of a reasonable argument is pretty much, "Hey, Mom, can we have Mexican food for supper?" But I digress...

So as I said, I didn't have much planned for Columbus Day, but being me, I still made time for Bonnie to read the chapter on Columbus's "discovery" of the Americas in Howard Zinn's A Young People's History of the United States.

In addition, I got my hands on a copy of Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, which contains many resources for teaching about the impact of Columbus's arrival in the Americas. As the editors state, "Our goal is not to idealize native people, demonize Europeans, or present a depressing litany of victimization. We hope to encourage a deeper understanding of the European invasion's consequences, to honor the rich legacy of resistance to the injustices it created, to convey some appreciation for the diverse indigenous cultures of the hemisphere, and to reflect on what this all means for us today." I'm going to use the book for a lengthy history unit.

Has everyone heard of the Zinn Education Project? It's a comprehensive, free resource for locating materials to teach the people's history in a worldwide context. There are free lesson plans and lists of resources. In short, it's awesome! I first learned about the Rethinking Columbus book there, and also found several appropriate books for Latino Heritage Month.

Life Lately

Summer seems to be flying by. Though we intended to have "school" throughout the break, reality kept us so busy that we have hardly done any school work. We're tiptoeing back in now, trying to find the happy medium between the unschooling I am drawn to and the structure that both Kelly and the kids need.

My biggest challenge is math for Bonnie. Saxon is definitely too rigid for our family, but we need something a bit more organized than what I was doing at the end of the school year, which was basically rushing through a few Saxon lessons and working on word problems with her each week. We're looking at Teaching Textbooks, which may just satisfy both Kelly's desire for structure and Bonnie's desire to be more independent. (She likes math, but doesn't like being told what to do. No idea where she gets that.) She's taken their placement tests and falls somewhere between level 7 and pre-algebra, so we are probably going to start with the level 7 and see how it goes. Trying as always to find that balance of challenging without frustrating!


Speaking of balance, I have quit my part time job that I'd had since last fall. I brought the kids with me, but the novelty wore off for them, and trying to get my work done with them in tow was becoming increasingly difficult. Next time I work outside of the home, it will be without my children, or risk losing my own sanity.


And speaking of sanity, I've been consumed with sibling stresses once more, as my sister relapsed and we had to have her hospitalized against her will a couple of weeks ago. In case anyone was wondering, the mental health care system in this country is completely and totally messed up. 


Has anyone seen Mr. Deity? Though this video does not particularly address the awfulness that is schizophrenia, it shows the absurdity in thinking that an all-powerful deity could allow so many evils in this world and also be good. Watch it and enjoy!

Fun at the Library

This summer we're participating in a cool program at the library where we go once a week for a catered supper and book discussion. Last night was our second time going, and it was wonderful.

We read and discussed three children's books, including Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. When the discussion leader asked us some ways we can all work through bad days, the kids answered with responses like "think of happy thoughts", "go back to sleep", and "do something really fun." But a truly amazing thing happened when one of the dads raised his hand and said, "I know when I have a bad day, I fall down on my knees and remind myself that no bad day can be as bad as Jesus's final day."

Nearly everyone in the room cheered. No kidding. Kelly and I looked at each other in amazement. He whispered to me, "Shouldn't these people be at vacation bible school instead of at the library?"

Summer Booklist

Life's been a bit chaotic around here, with the wrap-up of soccer season being one of the many things eating up our days. I'm struggling with this thing called balance and how to find it while homeschooling three young kids, working part time, being a soccer mom, and having all these visions of self-sustainability. For example, it's nearing the end of May and I haven't planted so much as a tomato plant. Sigh.

As the local schools are all finishing up for the summer, we've decided that our little unschooling adventures don't really call for a long break. A box from Amazon arrived last week, and look at the goodies it contained:

 

Included in our new stash of books is Joy Hakim's The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way. I've been trying to find something to get Bonnie excited about science, and this series looks like it might be it! The first chapters open with lessons on distinguishing between mythology and science. The author uses examples from Genesis, sacred Hindu texts, ancient Chinese works, and others to show the difference between creation stories rooted in oral traditions and scientific theories on the formation of the universe that are firmly rooted in facts. She talks about how myths are unchanging and non-evidence based, while science is constantly evolving as we learn more about the world around us. I love it! We also ordered a little Student's Quest Guide, but the verdict is still out on that one. I like it, but Bonnie is kind of adverse to anything that involves, well, writing.

I also picked up the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Fossils, so that Jack and I can identify the trilobites and other fossils we find together.

We're not quite finished with The Story of the World: Volume 3 , but will continue a chapter per week during the summer and start with Volume 4 as soon as we've finished. The authors really try to make the books non-Western centric, and though they don't always succeed, Bonnie loves the narratives and I find them a great starting off point for moving through history chronologically.

To help counterbalance some of the history according to Dead White Men, we picked up Howard Zinn's A Young People's History of the United States, which shares the too-often untold stories of women, slaves, immigrants, Native Americans, and workers. It came highly recommended by Jennifer at Home for Good, and we look forward to reading it. She also suggested The Book of Perfectly Perilous Math: 24 Death-Defying Challenges for Young Mathematicians, and I'm excited to work through that right away.

Bonnie just finished reading Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor, a photo journal depicting child laborers in the early nineteen hundreds. She flew through it, and it's hard to described how moved she was seeing pictures of those children, some of them even younger than Fred (who is only four.) This book should be required reading in every middle school. I want my children to know that we don't have to wonder what will happen if workers' rights and labor laws continue to be attacked.

The last book in the box isn't for the kids: Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality. Though we rarely attended church when I was growing up, my parents were raised as staunch Catholics, and I received a hefty dose of trickle-down guilt. This should be a fun read.

What's everyone else reading this summer?

Three Good Books

I try to surround Bonnie with lots of good books and let her choose what interests her. Sometimes her choices are right up my alley too, such as is the case with the following three.

Lynne Kelly's  Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal does a great job of debunking popular superstitions and mysteries, including psychic readings, Nostradamus, telepathy, alien abductions, crop circles, astrology, and more. I like that the book gives practical advice to the reader on ways to think through and debunk the superstition for herself. One of my favorite chapters is the one on ESP, in which the author discusses the dangers of using anecdotes as evidence for anything. My kids will be faced with all sorts of anecdotal "proof" from religious folk trying to persuade them into believing in a supernatural god. It's good for them to realize that they need to find their own evidence in these cases.

Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos, does a wonderful job of helping us understand the vast and brutal history of the sugar cane industry, with a focus on the institution of slavery. It talks about how the farmers who grew sugar cane and planned on making sugar faced special challenges that caused the growth of a new form of farming: the plantation.

The only way to make a lot of sugar is to engineer a system in which an army of workers swarms through the fields, cuts the cane, and hauls the pile to be crushed into a syrup that flows into the boiling room. There, laboring around the clock, workers cook and clean the bubbling liquid so that the sweetest syrup turns into the sweetest sugar. This is not farming the way men and women had done is for thousands of years in the Age of Honey. It is much more like a factory, where masses of people must do every step right, on time, together, or the whole system collapses. (Sugar Changed the World 27.)

I want my kids to fully understand our nation's special history with slavery. Most of our founding fathers owned other human beings. What does that say about everything it means to be an American? I'm not sure how to get past all the questions that are raised through in-depth research into our history. But I know we have to ask them.

Finally, Bonnie loved Susan Campbell Bartoletti's Growing Up in Coal Country, the story of children growing up in the coal country of Pennsylvania in the early nineteen hundreds. The author was able to offer glimpses of hope and happiness while conveying the incredibly difficult, dangerous lives these children and their families lived. I love that Bartoletti discusses the banding together of miners to form unions. This book, perhaps more than any discussion I've ever had with Bonnie, has shown her exactly why we have unions today and why we must continue fighting for them. Though set in Pennsylvania, this is Kentucky's coal history too.

Jack Out of the Box

Of course, a child may not know what he may need to know in ten years (who does?), but he knows, and much better than anyone else, what he wants and needs to know right now, what his mind is ready and hungry for. If we help him, or just allow him, to learn that, he will remember it, use it, build on it. If we try to make him learn something else, that we think is more important, the chances are that he won't learn it, or will learn very little of it, that he will soon forget most of what he learned, and what is worst of all, will before long lose most of his appetite for learning anything. -John Holt, Teach Your Own

Jack and I spent the evening meandering through fields and scouring our driveway for trilobites. (No luck this time, but we found some fossilized clams and coral!) I love our quiet walks together, because sometimes he gets a little overshadowed by his very vocal older sister and younger brother.

Of all my kids, I think homeschooling suits Jack the best. He is very much an introvert, and needs his connection to nature the way most of us need oxygen. Some days he's outside before I'm out of bed, and it's unusual for him not to be covered in dirt. I honestly cannot imagine him in traditional school right now, as I think an integral part of him would be lost being forced to sit inside all day, five days a week. Short recesses on some manufactured plastic playground could never replace trees for that boy.

Jack is one smart six year old, and the questions he comes up with show the beginnings of great critical thinking skills. He will discuss subjects at great length and listen to books all day long, as long as the subject interests him. Interest is really key though, because as soon as I try to work with him on something he doesn't like, such as reading, he tenses up and it becomes a battle.

John Holt says that there are no teachers, only learners, which I am seeing more and more with our little homeschooling endeavors. I know there are hundreds of books about teaching your kid how to read (and I've tried several of them) but I really think it boils down to the kid wanting to learn for it to happen. I have NO doubt that by instilling a love of reading in our family and by the kids seeing Kelly and me read all the time, that Jack will also be a reader. But it's going to be in his own time. (Potty training analogies do not seem out of place here.)

Given all of that, as well as believing that it's not necessary for a child to read young to be a good reader later, doesn't totally take away from fact that, especially as a homeschooling mom, I feel pressure to have my six year old reading. It's kind of this benchmark that we all use to judge elementary kids, isn't it? And it doesn't help that Kelly (who incidentally was a very late reader who became a very good reader) isn't quite on board with all of this unschooling stuff, or that Bonnie is an amazing reader who picked it up very easily at a young age.

So, while pocketing fossils, picking wildflowers, and rescuing a box turtle from the dogs, I said to Jack, "I'd really like it if you'd let me teach you how to read."

He thought about it for a moment and replied, "I'd really like to learn how to swim."

Bailing on Screen-Free Week Before It Even Starts

So, Screen-Free Week is fast approaching, and I have come to realize that I just can't do it this year. I can't. This is the first time in my life that I have been connected with other Freethinkers, almost all via the internet, and I can't let go of it, even for a week.

Just today one of my dear relatives posted a comment on one of my Facebook links (one that was incidentally not about atheism, but simply about teaching children to question what they read. OK, so maybe that is about atheism after all.)  She ended with the statement that she wants to save me from a "miserable future and an everlasting punishment." That's right. I posted about teaching children to question everything, and she said she's worried I'm going to hell. And you know what? She is being a good Christian in saying that, isn't she? Because if you genuinely believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and our savior on earth, then you must also believe I am in some serious need of saving.

Here's the horribly offensive photo that incurred such venom, by the way. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I had also posted a horribly offensive picture of our President with a quote in support of women's rights the day before.)

Even my most supportive, liberal, and kind Christian friends and family (who I am incredibly thankful for) dodge the questions of why priests and ministers don't talk about how it's possible to be both a good person and an atheist. And as much as I love those friends and family of mine, I also wonder how they address atheism with their own children. I've said it before, and I will say it again, and I'll also probably say it even another time in the future: "Jesus is the only route to salvation" and "You can be an atheist and be a good person" can't really both be true. (Unless I am missing something.) So you're probably not going to hear a lot of Christians, even kind, liberal ones, loudly stating and teaching their children that it's okay to be an atheist. And certainly no church that survives on tithing is going to make such a statement either, is it?

I read once about a survey that revealed that people trust atheists LESS than known rapists. And while I really hope that isn't true, it wouldn't surprise me if it were. I've seen people seeking childcare that put the sole qualifier "has to be Christian" on the ad. Really? You think I'm going to eat your kid because I don't believe a fairy tale that was written two thousand years ago? THAT is what makes someone a good person?

In case it's not abundantly clear into paragraph six here that I'm a little frustrated about the whole atheist stigma thing, well, I'm a little frustrated with the whole atheist stigma thing. I feel some comfort knowing that various friends and family members have approached me in private confiding their atheism to me. My big mouth did that! Woo hoo! And I am going to keep on being loud as long as there are people who face fear and shame in admitting their atheism.

Oh, and back to the Screen-Free Week thing, since I started with it. We'll still do something to honor the spirit of the week, like maybe adding some more screen-free chunks of time, including a few screen-free days. I just can't lose this connection with the online atheist community.

One last thing.

Black History Month meets the American Revolution

Sometimes cool things happen when I plan poorly. In this case, I had about a million awesome books ready for Black History Month, while oblivious to the fact that February would also be the month we'd arrive at the American Revolution in our history book. This led to the unexpected juxtaposition of studying Thomas Jefferson's wording of the Declaration of Independence while reading slave stories.

The pivotal book of our unplanned little mixed unit became Kimberly Brubaker Bradley's Jefferson's Sons, a fictional account of the nonfictional children of Thomas Jefferson and his slave, Sally Hemming. The book asks "What does it mean when the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence is your father and also your slave master?" Bonnie flew through this one, reading it and a day and a half after reluctantly beginning it when I assigned it. (This strange combination of eye-rolling followed by nose-in-book happens often in our house.)

We read and discussed the Declaration of Independence, too, but studying Jefferson's eloquent words without the admission that he owned other human beings, his own children, would be, well, it would be what my elementary and middle school history experience was. The Founding Fathers were god-like in the reverence we gave to them. This led to quite a bit of shock on my part as a college student learning that both Jefferson and George Washington were slave owners. (I have to admit, it felt a little sacrilegious just typing that last sentence.) I'd like for Bonnie's foundation in history to be a little more grounded in, well, history.

At any rate, this was only one of many, many books we covered for Black History Month and the American Revolution, but for me, it was the most relevant and the most interesting. I don't want to be too cynical in my approach with American history, but at the same time, coloring pictures of Pilgrims and hero-worshiping the Founding Fathers doesn't quite cut it for me either.

Interesting Response to My Book Suggestions

Last week I wrote about three books I recommend for skeptical kids. Apparently Dan Porter didn't particularly care for my inclusion of The Magic Detectives, because he believes it incorrectly portrays the mystery behind the Shroud of Turin. I think his blog speaks for itself, but I just want to address a few things he mentioned. Here's one thing he said:

[The book was written in] 1989. One of the things I wanted my kids to learn was the value of fact checking. Much has happened since 1989.

First, I find it somewhat comical for a man whose faith is based on the Bible to criticize me for giving my kids a thirteen year old book. Much has happened in the past two thousand years, Mr. Porter.

But, mom, check out the factual content of this book as it pertains to the shroud.

As it turns out, I don't need any more information about the shroud. I've learned enough to know there is not sufficient evidence to prove it's authenticity, as has Porter. In fact I agree with his statement about the shroud on his own blog: 

We simply do not have enough reliable information to arrive at a scientifically rigorous conclusion. 

Of course he continues with some circular logic to justify his belief in the shroud despite the above statement:

Years ago, as a skeptic of the Shroud, I came to realize that while I might believe it was a fake, I could not know so from the facts. Now, as someone who believes it is the real burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth, I similarly realize that a leap of faith over unanswered questions is essential.

The burden of proof must always be with those asserting the claim, and not with those seeking to disprove it. Why is this often a difficult concept for people of faith to grasp? Just because one person believes something, or even if a million people believe something, it does not mean it's true. If a "leap of faith over unanswered questions" is essential to make an argument, it's a crappy, unsupported, illogical, bad argument.

Oh, and he closed with some special advice for me in response to my request for other skeptical children's books suggestions:

Mom, go to Amazon.com. Click on Children’s Books. In the search box enter the word Skeptic for 6 books, Atheist for 16 books, etc.

Thanks! But those search parameters were not really helpful, as they only came up with one children's book,  Maybe Yes, Maybe No: A Guide for Young Skeptics, which I already have. I really enjoy reading it with my ten year old, but I was looking for something for my four and five year old sons in particular.

Three Books for Skeptical Kids

Teaching my kids to think skeptically as they are bombarded with information and various worldviews is of great importance to me. I've said it before, but as a homeschooling mom, my goal is to teach my children how to think and not what to think. Of course we learn math facts, grammar rules, and history, but more important than filling their heads with particular knowledge now, is teaching them to love learning and to continue schooling themselves for their entire lives. To this end, here are three great books for teaching kids to approach life skeptically!

1. Bonnie loved reading The Magic Detectives. The book features thirty short real-life mysteries, from Bigfoot to the Shroud of Turin to UFO sightings. After studying each case, the reader can think it over before flipping the page to read the solution to the mystery. Bonnie flew through it, then we adapted one of the suggested assignments in the back of the book. She wrote a small essay on the ethical difference between tricks used by phony "psychics" and stage magicians.

2. Nibbling on Einstein's Brain: The Good, the Bad and the Bogus in Science is another great book for budding skeptics. This book teaches kids to spot bad science, question new information, maintain a watch on the media, avoid their own mental pitfalls, and to employ lifelong strategies to think clearly and critically about science. The format is fun and easy to read for late elementary and middle school aged kids. I particularly appreciated the lessons on critiquing advertising, as I'm trying hard to teach Bonnie to see the dangers of television for herself.

3. Bonnie and I read How Do You Know It's True?: Discovering the Difference Between Science & Superstition aloud together. It's a little heavy, but we paused often and enjoyed reading it. Bonnie was moved by the account of the Salem witch trials, which we'd also discussed previously in history. I love the author's definition of superstition: "A superstition is a belief that is held despite evidence that it is not true. Superstitions are based on the belief that some people, plants, animals, planets, stars, words, numbers, or special things have magical powers...Superstitions are examples of fairy-tale thinking. But, unlike fairy tales, which people know are imaginative fiction, superstitions are wrongly believed to be true." Well said!

Have you found any other good books for little skeptics? Especially for younger readers?

Misquoting Jesus

I've continued finding more time for reading, and was impressed with Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, which is one of the ten books recommended by Sam Harris in his Letter to a Christian Nation. Kelly and I both read the book, and enjoyed discussing it over a period of days.

The book focuses on the scribes whose job it has been to pass on the texts of the New Testament for nearly two thousand years. Ehman reveals what is likely not surprising to many, that scribal error has resulted in modern Bibles being based on inferior texts that often don't represent the meaning of the original texts. You know the story about Jesus and the woman taken into adultery? Yeah, that doesn't belong in any of the original Gospels, but was added by later scribes. (Ehrman 64.)

Ehrman first dedicated his life's work to studying ancient manuscripts of the New Testament and their many differences when he was a young, devout evangelical Christian, as he began to question, "What good does it do to say that the words are inspired by God if most people have absolutely no access to these words, but only to more or less clumsy renderings of these words into a language, such as English, that has nothing to do with the original words?" (Ehrman 7.) As Ehrman continued his studies, he found that there are "more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament." (Ehrman 10.)

There seem to be two basic views of the New Testament by Christians: one is that the Bible reveals the unerring words of God, and the other is that the Bible is "inspired" by God. I dismiss the first claim as completely ridiculous, as my ten year old can point out errors in the Bible. As to the second claim, Ehrman says, "even if God had inspired the original words, we don't have the original words." (Ehrman 211.) Spoiler alert: Ehrman is no longer an evangelical Christian.

I enjoyed this book, and though the errors and contradictions of various Biblical texts didn't surprise me, it was nice to see specific examples. When are we going to let this Bronze Age text remain the interesting piece of literature that it is, and stop looking to it for our morality? School boards across the country are trying to base curricula on this bunk, and politicians are campaigning with policies based on their Biblical understands of the world. I for one don't want our leaders making environmental policies, for example, based on their own interpretation of an incorrect copy of a copy of copy of the books of Revelations. (Or a correct copy, if such a thing existed.) If you think the world is going to end in our lifetime, please go hole up somewhere and enjoy your final days with your family, and feel free to laugh at me when you are right and I am wrong (which doesn't seem very Christian of you but won't happen at any rate.) Don't ruin the world for those of us who plan on having generations of descendants here!

And to my progressive Christian friends who roll their eyes along with me at the fundamentalists: read this book, and read Sam Harris's book. You are good, moral people, not because of your belief in a God, but because you are good, moral people. You are already using your own code of morality, not that described in the Bible, when you don't put your disobeying child to death, when you don't advocate for stoning adulterers, and when you read accounts of slavery with disgust.

Teaching Kids to Turn Off TV

Bonnie and I are still working out the kinks in our new system for time management, and I feel like she is starting to get a real concept for the value of time. She can see first thing in the morning all of the activities she has allotted for that day and how much free time she will have if she completes everything in a timely fashion. She's learning the hard way that piddling away time between and during subjects is a poor use of her free time. Of course I told her that before, but seeing it is making it more real for her. She remains most excited about the extra time we've "uncovered" for her to read more books. (She's still working her way through the Mensa for Kids recommended reading list, in addition to regular school reading.)

Another topic Rafe Esquith discusses in his book Lighting Their Fires is television. He quotes Raymond Shaw in the Manchurian Candidate: "Have you noticed that the human race is divided into two distinct, irreconcilable groups? Those who walk into rooms and automatically turn television sets on, and those who walk into rooms and automatically turn them off." Esquith goes on to state, "Parents, television is killing your child's potential...Everyone seems to know that children should not be spending enormous amounts of time in front of screens, but the fact is, they are, and not enough is being done to stop the development of a behavior pattern that is fatal to a child's potential."

As I was reading the above words, I nodded in agreement and thought of all the media limits I've imposed with my kids, but Esquith helped me realize that it's not enough for me to set limits on the amount of screen time my kids have. As he says, "The ultimate goal in raising a child is to get him to turn off his own television set." While the boys have no problem turning the television off by themselves, they will sit in front of a computer game until I make them stop. Bonnie isn't even close to self-monitoring her television usage, and if unsupervised, I'm not sure she would ever turn it off.

I enjoy watching certain television programs, but Bonnie enjoys watching almost anything on television. If there is nothing on that she really wants to watch, she'll watch something she doesn't even like. (For example, it might be a show geared toward toddlers.) I can't stand this! She and I have spoken at length about the dangers of television and of advertising. She watches very little commercial TV, and our family has a rule that commercials have to be muted. If we are watching something as a family that includes commercials, I try to use them as an opportunity to talk about marketing. But at the end of the day, Bonnie LOVES commercials, and the only reason she mutes them is because I tell her to. Sigh.

As Esquith points out, it doesn't help a parent who tries to limit screen time to live in a society that encourages more and more screens. His book is set at a baseball game, and he mentions the screens there. A live baseball game isn't enough entertainment on its own? In addition, I don't remember the last time I was in a waiting room that didn't have some kind of media playing on a screen. Don't even get me started on screens in class rooms, but the amount of non-educational television viewing in our local public school played a huge role in our decision to pull Bonnie out and start homeschooling. And what was the number one sought-after toy for kids this holiday season? The LeapPad, another screen. I love my local library and have always taken my kids for "story hour" there, but I have a problem with the fact that they occasionally show short movies during the 45 minute program. Seriously, can't we stick to books in the library, of all places?

Thankfully Esquith gives us a game plan for teaching our kids to resist the draw of television and other screens. At his suggestion, Bonnie, Kelly, and I are currently reading Fahrenhiet 451 out loud together. I first read this book in college, and while I loved almost every word of it, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have considered reading it with my ten year old had Esquith not suggested it as necessary reading for all middle and high school students. It's a powerful and disturbing book. We are working through it at a slow pace, and I hope that Bonnie takes the messages to heart. In Esquith's words, the book is "downright brilliant and shocking enough to jolt young people out of their submission to their own 'parlor walls.'" In the spirit of transparency, I have to admit that she only agrees to read it with me in order to be allowed to watch a little television after her brothers are in bed. Another sigh.

Of course Esquith also points out that it takes time for kids to learn to turn their own televisions off. Another advantage to our work with time management is that Bonnie can clearly see that a choice to watch television takes away the option to do something else, and time can never be recovered. When I tell the boys it's time to turn off the computer or set the iPhone down, I need to be clear about why we are turning the screens off, so I can start building their own ability to monitor themselves. Teaching my kids why we need to limit screen time is proving considerably more difficult than simply limiting it. I want them to be in the group of people who walk into rooms and turn television sets off!

Lighting Their Fires

My aunt suggested I read the work of inspiring teacher and author Rafe Esquith, and I was not disappointed when I read his book Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World .

Within the narrative of a nine inning baseball game field trip with five of his students, Esquith discusses nine concepts he thinks are important for raising kids to be extraordinary: time management, focus, television awareness, decision making, pride in work, empathy, humility, school, and delayed gratification. I know I need to work in several of these areas with my kids, and will be spending multiple blog posts on these topics.

I thought it was interesting that Esquith started his book with an emphasis on time management, because one of the things I love about homeschooling is not being on a schedule. A downside to this is that we don't always get to what I have planned for the day/week/year. (And by not always I mean rarely ever.) Bonnie and I have struggled with the issue of completing tasks on time, etc. Though we always start the day with a list of subjects and assignments we plan to cover, I don't usually include a time frame for any of the activities. As a homeschooler, it's very easy to stretch a school day well into the evening if other things have sprung up or if there have been unnecessary delays between subjects. Likewise, it's very easy to move something to the "tomorrow" pile because we're running out of time today.

I don't believe the above problem will disappear completely, (nor am I sure I want to abandon all of the free-spiritedness of our little homeschool experience) but with Esquith's suggestions, I do want to get more out of each day. He does an activity with his students on Friday afternoons to help teach them time management, and I've implemented a similar activity with Bonnie, so far with good results. Esquith sits down with his students and figures out how many hours they have until they will be back in class on Monday, then figures out how much is used by fixed activities such as sleeping, eating, homework, sports, free play, etc. Once time for all of those things are taken away from the total, he reveals the leftover time that can be spent "doing nothing" or used towards achieving excellence (reading an extra book, practicing an instrument, doing a community service, etc.) According to Esquith, extraordinary children learn to harness that extra time. (And it's not enough as a parent and/or homeschooler to tell the kids to do that extra work over the weekend, it's about showing the kids how that extra hour or two of violin practice can add up over the course of a month, year, and so on.)

Bonnie and I now do a similar activity in the morning before we start school. We start with the list I always had, and estimate (high) amounts of time for completing each subject on the list. Then we subtract that from the hours she has before bedtime. Next we take off time for eating meals, practicing piano (she finally started formal lessons in November), bathing, doing chores, watching a conservative amount of TV, and having lots of free play. Because I place a huge value on unstructured play, she probably has more built in to her days than Esquith's students, but I'm not certain. At any rate, after all of the above activities are completed, she has about an hour of time that is still unspoken for. She has so far used that time for reading above and beyond the hour and a half she already has assigned each day. An extra five hours of reading per week will have a huge impact by the end of the school year.

Most of the time on the weekends now, Bonnie has all free time except for family activities and a few chores. I've been hesitant to "assign" things to her over the weekend, because she and I really need a break from the teacher/student relationship after the school week. After reading this book, I do plan on sitting down with her on Friday afternoons like Esquith does with his students to help her make a game plan for herself. There are plenty of hours in the weekend for free time while still harnessing some of those hours for pursuing excellence in something. She almost immediately saw the benefit to using extra time for reading by finishing a book quickly. It will take a little longer to realize the benefit, however, of finding the time for two extra half hour piano practices a week.

An unexpected result of sitting down and doing these time activities with Bonnie has been a better personal awareness of time for me. For example, Tuesday I had 18 minutes after completing school activities before I needed to get in the car to head to my part-time job. Normally I would have used that time to look around on Facebook or "do something" online. That day I set the elliptical workout time for 18 minutes and had a mini-workout. And then later that evening, when I was exhausted I didn't have to find as much time for exercising, because I'd already done some of it that morning. In the evening, when all I really wanted to do was sit down with a book and go to bed, that little 18 minutes I saved meant a lot.

I've also been making a concerted effort to read more during the day. I read so much over the holiday break... it was wonderful! During the school week, it's just very hard for me to find the time for reading until late evening, and by then reading unfortunately makes me very sleepy. Now I am determined to find the time each day for it, because it's important to me. No, I'm not going to discover huge blocks of time to sit and read multiple chapters uninterrupted by my kids, but a few pages here and there between tasks add up by the end of the day, as Esquith shows with an example from author Stephen King, who was spotted on camera reading a book between innings at a baseball game: "When asked by a reporter why he was doing that, King answered that he could usually read eighteen pages during the game, but with Fox doing the broadcast, their longer commercials gave him time for twenty-seven!"

Holiday Reading

In the midst of all the gift wrapping, cookie making, and holiday book reading with my overly-excited kids this week, I carved out the time for Sam Harris's concise book Letter to a Christian Nation. I have never read one piece of writing that so echoes my personal fears of religion.

I'm finding it hard to pull specific quotes from the book to share here, because almost every sentence he writes speaks to me. I'm sure that most non-believers will agree with what Harris has to say in his book, but I wish more of his intended audience would actually read it as well. I would love to see a genuine discourse about all the subjects he raises so well.

The choice before us is simple: we can either have a twenty-first-century conversation about morality and human well-being-- a conversation in which we avail ourselves of all the scientific insights and philosophical arguments that have accumulated in the last two thousand years of human discourse-- or we can confine ourselves to a first century conversation as it is preserved in the Bible. Why would anyone want to take the latter approach? 

Read the book.

And now I will return to remembering the "reason for the season," as so many of my Facebook friends and family members have been reminding everyone this week. I have more than one reason to celebrate: family, friends, thankfulness, and peace to fellow humankind. Oh, and books, I want to celebrate them, too.

Holiday Fun

We've been crafting, reading, and generally being laid back as the holidays approach this year. The kids had a wonderful time making and decorating dough ornaments with friends earlier in the week, and plan on giving their creations as gifts.

I've gathered an assortment of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa books to read and discuss. Tomorrow is officially our last "school day" of the year, but we'll continue reading through these books and working on crafts most of next week. We love learning about different cultures and the history behind some of our holiday traditions!

Happy Holidays, everyone!!

The Birds and the Bees and Other Recent Reads

As always, we've been reading lots of good books here, and I'll take these few peaceful moments while the kids are playing out in the sunshine to share some of them. Here are a few of our favorites from the past two weeks!

Bonnie loved Diane Swanson's book Nibbling on Einstein's Brain: The Good, the Bad and the Bogus in Science. Kelly and I are trying to raise our kids to be skeptical, and this book does a great job of teaching how to spot scientific fraud. Since reading this book, Bonnie's pointed out bad science in several commercials and other occurrences. It's so important to me that my kids expect evidence rather than believing things blindly, and this book encourages critical thinking in an entertaining way. Bonnie actually read this one in bed several nights in a row.

The boys enjoyed The Different Dragon, by Jennifer Bryan. The story features a little boy with two mothers, one of whom tells him a good night story about a dragon that doesn't do what "normal" dragons do, like breathe fire and scare little kids. The little boy lets the dragon know that it's okay to be different, and that he will still play with him. It's a simple story, but one with a lesson that many adults would benefit from as well. As I've mentioned previously, my kids are not likely to run across a lot of openly gay couples raising their kids here in our home town, but I want to make sure they know those families are out there, and that they deserve just as much respect as traditional families.

We've found another version of one of our favorites, The Emperor's New Clothes. The kids enjoyed the comical illustrations in this book, and I enjoyed the underlying skeptical message that we should not believe things simply because we are told, especially when our own eyes tell us differently.

Finally, we've been reading a book about where babies come from. Yes, I went there. My mother did not believe in sex education for kids, and refused to allow me to participate in the only sex ed class given while I was in school, which was in sixth grade. (I was the only student in the school not allowed to attend. That was fun.) Really, I wouldn't have had a problem with this if my mom had taught me about sex at home. But she didn't. At some point in early high school, my mom handed me some kind of Catholic book about sex, which I read cover to cover, multiple times. The only thing I learned about sex from that book was that "sometimes when a married man and his wife lay close together in bed, they start a baby" or something like that. The rest of the book was about not having sex if you're not married. There was no discussion with my mom and no more info, ever. Luckily, my mom didn't censor the books I read, so I picked up more info on my own in my teenage years.

As a consequence of this complete lack of dialog on the topic of sex with both of my parents, I find it awkward to talk about sex with my kids, even though I know logically that I shouldn't. The book It's Not the Stork!: A Book About Girls, Boys, Babies, Bodies, Families and Friends by Robie H. Harris has been a very useful manual for me in opening that dialog with the boys and continuing it with Bonnie. The book is age-appropriate for four-year olds and up, and I really can't say enough good things about it. Right now, the kids do not associate shame with their bodies, and I feel a huge responsibility to keep it that way while giving them truthful information about human anatomy. The book is full of good illustrations and pertinent facts. I let the boys flip through it and they ask me questions when something strikes their eyes. It's really geared toward younger kids, but Bonnie also read it. I'm currently searching for a good middle-grade sex education book to read with her next year. Would love to hear suggestions if anyone has some!

On that note, my peaceful moments have been shattered by hungry, tired kids.

Road Trippin'

Last night our family returned from a last-minute road trip to visit family in Michigan, which we decided to take before Kelly started his brand new job today. We drove 450 miles on Friday, stayed two nights, and drove 450 miles back home yesterday. Visiting family was, of course, awesome! But some of the best part of the weekend was the time we spent traveling. It's not often we have 18+ hours of completely uninterrupted family time.

We don't have DVD players for the kids in the van. We watch little television at home, and have made a conscious decision not to have television in our vehicles, whether for everyday use or for longer trips. We made the decision after a trip to Florida when Bonnie was about two and a half years old, for which we had purchased a portable DVD player. It was one of the most peaceful car rides we've experienced; in fact, it was almost as quiet as when Kelly and I traveled before having children. Alas, we came home and returned the DVD player to the store, after realizing that maybe road trips with kids are supposed to be different than they were before having them, and wondering what sights and questions Bonnie had missed by looking at that screen instead of out her window.

Instead of watching DVDs, we listened to a lot of music on our trip. By a lot of music, I actually mean a little bit of music over and over again, because my kids usually listen to one thing they like until we all go crazy and need a break from it. For this trip, it was They Might Be Giants' Here Comes Science, which I've praised before. The music is ridiculously catchy and started a lot of questions and discussions about everything from white blood cells to electric cars. We're all still singing the songs today.

I brought a book to read aloud, not sure how it would go over in the car, but it worked out really well. I read about half of In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World, some on the way up, and some on the return trip. We heard short creation stories from Native America, Siberia, Guinea, Melanesia, China, Russia, Benin, and Australia so far. The book isn't heavily illustrated, but we stopped after each story and discussed it a little before continuing. It was fun seeing the connections the kids made between stories. Bonnie decided she didn't particularly care for the way First Woman is often portrayed! We'll finish reading the book this week and I'm sure will enjoy learning more creation myths, including those from West Africa, Zambia, Iceland, Nigeria, Babylon, Tahiti, ancient Israel, Egypt, and India.

In addition to the things we did as a family, Bonnie brought along her own books to read, and the boys each had a couple of small toys to play with while Kelly and I talked and listened to the radio. Thanks to the suggestion of an awesome friend, on long car trips I bring along several wrapped dollar store toys for the kids to open along the way. As always, the little presents were a huge hit. We tried to stop often and only at places that allowed space for the kids to run around and stretch their legs and have fun. It was probably the second most peaceful long car ride that we've had since having kids.

What We've Been Reading This Week

As usual, we've read a lot of good books this week. There are far too many to list here, but I'll recap a few of my favorites.

To go along with our study of German history, we read several books of German fairy tales, including stories by the Brothers Grimm. Bonnie and Jack both loved Paul O. Zelinsky's beautiful Rapunzel the best. I'd grown up being familiar with the tale of Rapunzel and knowing the line "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair," but had never read or heard a version in which the wicked stepmother found out about the Prince because Rapunzel's pregnancy was starting to show. That made for unexpected family discussions.

The boys wanted to read Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story over and over again. Bright illustrations and simple, flowing text make a great introduction to evolution for preschool and elementary aged kids. The book was well below Bonnie's reading level, but she still enjoyed the pictures and story with us.

Bonnie and I read two books about religious faiths this week, What I Believe: Kids Talk about Faith by Debbie and Tom Birdseye and One World, Many Religions: The Ways We Worship by Mary Pope Osborne (author of the popular and awesome Magic Tree House series for young readers.) Both books did an excellent job of conveying the basic message that there are a variety of religious faiths, but that they are all basically the same. The books encourage religious understanding and tolerance, and are clearly written from the point of view that religious faith is a good thing. Osborne's introduction says this about the seven main religions she chooses to discuss in her book:

They all seek to bring comfort to their followers. They all offer thanks for the world's great beauty and goodness. They all express awe and humility before the mysteries of the universe. In this sense, they are all wise and enduring.

Obviously I believe the above passage reveals that the book is less about religious education and more about religious promotion. While her book does a great job of talking about the good aspects and customs of different religions, she completely leaves out minor details like the fact that the "big three" have been perpetuating horrors against each other for centuries, and the implied lesson is that any religious faith is better than no faith.

The Birdseye book features the stories of six American middle school kids talking about their family's religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Native American. Bonnie liked reading about the different ways kids practice their religious faiths and about the different views they hold. And though Bonnie and I didn't discuss it (because I am letting her make those connections herself) I liked that the kids were pretty obviously just repeating what they've been taught about religion by their parents. Original, critical thought need not apply! I do see the beginnings of skeptical thinking in the Christian boy Alex, who says things like "I believe in God because there are some things that cannot be rationally explained" and "Some people think that God still works miracles. I believe maybe, occasionally." He also talks about not taking the bible literally and not being sure if he's heard god's voice personally, or if they were only his own thoughts.

The best book Bonnie and I read this week was Tobacco U.S.A: The Industry Behind the Smoke Curtain. It's written for young adults, and while Bonnie could read it herself, I read it aloud so that we could stop and talk any time she had questions. Tobacco is a personal topic to me, as I have struggled with smoking in the past, and I lost my mom to COPD and lung cancer. In addition, my siblings and many other family members currently smoke. This book does an excellent job of describing the role tobacco played in the founding of this country, the perpetuation of the slave trade, and in making anti-trust and child advertising laws necessary. Bonnie received a great introduction in our flawed political system that allowed Big Tobacco to remain unchecked for so long. For some reason that is inexplicable to me, there are some who would suggest this book is "biased" against the tobacco industry. To that, I would reply that much of the information found in this book is taken right from the records of Big Tobacco, such as their development and marketing of Joe Camel with the specific goal of attracting new customers in the 14-18 age bracket. In addition to bringing up discussions about child advertising and political lobbying, this book brought up the topic of globalization. We learned that much of the world's tobacco is now grown under the supervision of Big Tobacco in third world countries. The tobacco companies build the same fancy tobacco barns we have here and supply the farmers with the same toxic pesticides. The result is tobacco of the same high quality with farmers existing at a subsistence level and Big Tobacco paying less than 1/3 what they would for the tobacco grown here. Tobacco seems to have come full circle to its slavery roots.

Kelly brought next week's books home from the library yesterday. I love seeing my kids stand around the book bag, eager to see what it contains. And I love learning right along with them.

Raising Skeptics

This morning I read a blog by skeptic Kylie Sturgess, in which she discusses and suggests books that encourage skepticism in children. Bonnie's already read several of the books mentioned, with plans to read more. Sunday and Monday are usually when I reserve my library books that we'll use the following week, giving the library time to gather the books from different branches by the end of the week. Choosing which books to reserve is one of my favorite things about homeschooling, and parenting in general. I love raising my kids to be skeptics and find that, for the most part, it's easy and fun to do.

One of the reasons raising little freethinkers is easy is that all children are born skeptical. One of a toddler's favorite questions is "why?", and as long as kids get positive affirmation that questioning is good and that no questions are off-limits, they will continue to ask why. This of course means that the parent of a skeptical child will be answering lots of questions, and equally and possibly more importantly, teaching the child how to find answers on his or her own.

This brings me to a key point of raising skeptics, that the kids have to know that parents are one source of information, but not the end-source of all information. It's not just okay, it's vital for parents to sometimes answer, "I don't know, but that's a good question!" and then work together to find the answer. The awesome thing about this is that we parents get to learn so much through this process, because kids ask some pretty amazing questions. For example, Jack and Fred recently asked Kelly what skunks eat. Did you know they eat insects, larvae, worms, rodents, lizards, frogs, birds, eggs and berries, roots, leaves and nuts, among other things? We didn't!

One of the best ways to allow skepticism to thrive in our kids is to surround them with a wide variety of books, from all ranges of history and written from many different points of views. Even though I am an atheist, I do not shelter my kids from reading books written from Christian or other religious world views. Much of the greatest literature written has come out of mythology, whether Christian, Greek, Norse, Muslim or other, and my kids read it all. Because I do not sit over their shoulders constantly elevating one particular mythology as fact, they naturally view them all as fiction. In addition, our method of teaching history chronologically with the classical method of homeschooling reveals an undeniable evolution of religious mythology throughout time. It would take considerable effort on my part to keep my kids from seeing these obvious connections of all mythologies and religions.

Along the same lines as surrounding kids with books, I encourage my kids to remain skeptical by surrounding them with science, sometimes through books, occasionally through television programs, and most often by placing them outside in nature as much as possible. A couple weeks ago, we were watching one of our family's favorite TV programs, PBS's Nature, and it was all about hummingbirds. The kids were enthralled, and Kelly and I enjoyed it as well. At one point they mentioned something interesting, that hummingbirds are the evolutionary cousins of swifts and swallows, and used slow-motion video to show them hunting insects in the air, much the same way as swallows do. We had observed ruby-throated hummingbirds coming to our feeder all summer, but had no idea the sweet-looking birds were formidable little hunters as well.

This brings me to a disturbing thought that I often have when watching nature documentaries that inevitably mention evolution: I think of all the little children of creationist parents who either do not get to watch these programs at all (because they mention evolution), or whose parents have to spend time explaining why their Bronze-aged bible knows more about science than actual scientists in the year 2011. The amount of energy necessary to squelch the natural skepticism that would allow kids to buy into such a outrageous concept is mind-boggling to me, especially when contrasted with how easy it is to feed their natural skepticism instead.

Keep on Readin' in the Free World

The kids have been up to some fun reading this week!

We checked out And Tango Makes Three from the library and have been reading it with the boys. It's the wonderful, true story of two male penguins in Central Park Zoo who became a pair and raised an adopted chick. Jack and Fred love it! And the underlying message, that there is no single right kind of family, is beautiful. After reading it, I understand why some (most?) people in the conservative right don't want their children reading this. Opening your eyes to non-human homosexuality kind of makes the whole being-gay-is-a-choice-and-not-natural thing, well, not believable. I'm glad I saw this one on a banned books list and decided to get it.

Another book we've been reading and rereading is The Butter Man, a story about a little girl whose father grew up in Morocco. When she complains about "starving" while waiting for supper to cook, her dad tells her the story of when his family nearly went hungry during a period of drought in his childhood. I make an effort to teach my kids not to turn their noses up at food when there are people in the world who have far too little, and I believe books like this do much more to drive that concept home than my lecturing. It's one of the many books we've been reading to help better understand the current crisis in the Horn of Africa.

Jack and Fred are also currently obsessed with Is a Blue Whale the Biggest Thing There Is?, which is a great book for helping kids of all ages understand relative size and the concept of the universe.We love it!

Bonnie is immersed in the recent Rick Riordan book, The Son of Neptune, which she is over halfway through after having checked it out from the library late yesterday afternoon, one day after it was published.  (I just interrupted this blog entry to confiscate said book because she was reading it while she is supposed to be working on a math test.) Today she said she can't wait to finish it but doesn't want it to end, which is surely a sign of an engaged reader with a great book.

We're learning about 17th century Persia in history this week, so we've been reading various tales from Turkey and Iran. Bonnie just finished Pea Boy and Other Stories from Iran yesterday, before I let her start the Rick Riordan book. I know that seems kind of mean, but I knew I wouldn't be able to get her to read anything else once she started her book. Because I've made the happy mistake of locating too many books to supplement this history chapter, we're going to continue exploring Persia next week.

As a homeschooling mom, I think putting a variety of good books in front of my kids is probably the most important part of my job right now. We're not in multicultural area, by any stretch of the imagination. The chances, for example, that my kids will see two gay men holding hands or caring for their baby in the grocery store is close to nil. But I can still make sure my kids know those people are out there and realize that they deserve the same respect and rights as the families we see out at the soccer fields every week.

Cue Reading Rainbow theme song. You're welcome.