Homeschool PE at the Beach and Just Enough Snow

Oliver and I went for a very long walk today in Santa Monica. It was a blustery day and incredibly beautiful. He actually skateboarded while I walked briskly, and I called it Home-school Physical Education. My sister, who lives in St. Louis, texted me the question how is the homeschool thing going? The meaty stuff?

I told her great. I told her that we would be doing another unit of history when we got home and then some English Language Arts. The more I do this, though, the more I realize that it might be the best way to educate, even to live. I wake up every morning in some bit of existential distress. What's it all about? I think. How do we keep on keeping on? There's so much suffering. I'm getting old. What if Sophie lives forever? What if I do? What if I don't? What if the world melts? What if the Republicans win in 2016? How will I afford college for Henry? Who's going to take care of this world? How do we go on? Why are we so lame? You know the drill. After working with Oliver, though, and learning myself, going on these outings, opening my eyes to the very real goodness that is my life, the existential angst recedes. I move outward, see blue.

On the way home, we faced the mountains, covered in snow. I decided that was all the snow I needed to see at just the right distance.

#IloveLosAngeles

Homeschooling in the Winter in Los Angeles

One of Oliver's instructors

I know that it's cold elsewhere, and the effects of global warming on our territory is an alarming lack of rain, but this morning Oliver paddled out into the ocean again for another stand-up paddleboard STEM class and I can't help but feel grateful, again, to live here. That fellow above was one of his instructors. The other is a woman who looks equally as fine, but I don't think you need a photo of her. Right? So much for those of you who say that you'd miss the seasons if you lived here in February.

We drove home from Redondo Beach in the early afternoon and delved into Egyptian history with a curriculum that uses the Usborne Internet-linked Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. We read about Hatsepshut, the queen who became king. Do ya'll remember learning about her when you studied Egyptology? I sure didn't, and it's quite a fascinating story. After being wedded to her brother for a bit (a common occurrence in ancient Egypt) and producing no heir (probably a blessing), her young nephew was next in line to be king but too young to rule, so she became a regent.

Eventually, she decided that she would be not regent or even queen, but King, was properly crowned and began to wear all the royal regalia that a male king would wear, including a little beard. Oliver wondered if maybe she was transgender, an interesting thought that I could only marvel over in its casualness. These open-minded millennials!  I told him that I didn't know but that he could perhaps one day write a doctoral dissertation on it.

Hatsepshut ruled for many, many years, but after she died, the pissed-off nephew became king and ordered all of her images and buildings -- everything associated with her --  be defaced and destroyed. Sigh. Some things never change. Evidently, Egyptologists are working on restoring some of the buildings that she ordered built, including a mortuary temple. Here's a picture of Hatshepsut, with her little beard:

So, it's been a productive and educational day. Onward.

Green Shells on Treetops and Vaccinations

That's a Manus Green Papuina, a rare snail from high tree tops on Manus Island, off the coast of Papua New Guinea. No I did not find it lying in the sand next to the Pacific Ocean. I peered at its outrageous green through plate glass in a rare shell exhibit at the Museum of Natural History today. Oliver and I had a field trip -- mainly to do an evolution/adaptation project in the Dinosaur exhibit, but we also paid a visit to the shell collection and the gem and mineral exhibit in hopes of finding some pearls which would round out our reading of Steinbeck's The Pearl. There were no pearls. But that green! Outrageous! The universe is abundant!

I also baked two loaves of banana-coconut-chocolate-chip bread and made one big pot of Mulligatawny soup and some jasmine rice. I responded to someone's Facebook post about the recent outbreak of measles at Disneyland, not because I wanted to get into an argument but because this person asked the question why people don't vaccinate which then provoked the usual nasty and sarcastic replies about how stupid and immoral they are, that then provoked my indignation and real desire to let people know that not everyone who refrains from vaccinating their children is an immoral idiot. Sigh. I wrote my last post on this issue here, so if you want to read it, you can. Since I wrote that post, as planned I've begun vaccinating Henry slowly and judiciously, so if you're new to the blog and generally restrict your reading to mainstream media, are getting all freaked out that this is some crazy person writing, you can rest assured that he isn't a danger to the larger community.

Anyhoo.

To tell you the truth, I feel like wolfing down both loaves of bread which would probably be considered emotional eating, no? Instead, I am going to contemplate that beautiful shade of green and the creature that lived inside a shell, high on a treetop on a tropical island, slow to respond and basking unaware in its own beauty.

Dispatch from the Revolution: Homeschooling Field Trip to Judson Glass and Memories of Pastry Making in NYC

Today, because we have all the time in the world (one day before we have to drive up to Silicon Valley, and I'm taking Sophie which means her first trip in years and thus a lot of packing and organizing), Oliver and I went on a homeschool field trip to a very cool place in Pasadena/Highland Park called Judson Studios. Judson Studios has been making stained and other decorative glass for well over a century, and the whole thing was fascinating.

We walked through each part of the studio and quietly observed the artists and glaziers and designers and craftsmen at work. Our tour guide was among the sixth generation of Judson's to work in the studio, and he explained the process of turning glass into windows, both colored and clear. At present, they were working on one of the biggest windows they'd ever gotten contracted to do -- a basketball court-sized stained window depicting Jesus, arms outstretched. It's destined for a mega-church somewhere in the heartland.

Yikes, is all I'll say about that.

Fascinating, right?

When the tour was finished, Oliver and I had lunch and then joined the others for a glass-blowing workshop in Highland Park.

 That, too, was fascinating, and despite being a pretty decent pastry chef in my day, including a steady piping hand and the ability to blow and shape sugar, it's damn hard to heat and blow glass. Oliver, of course, had a steady hand and those saxophone windpipes, so his piece was far superior to mine.

I'm not a woman who wants the public -- even ya'll -- to see what I look like blowing glass, so I'm not going to include a photo. Oliver didn't have the decency to refrain from taking a video, either, and I'll leave that horror flick up to your imagination.

It's important to maintain delusions and illusions.

It's for your own good.

I will show you what today reminded me of, though.

That's me and Mr. Kwak, my genius fellow-worker at a big New York City food show in the early 90s. I was probably wearing my glasses because we'd been up, working all night long. That white piece behind me is sculpted WHITE CHOCOLATE. I'm serious, ya'll. That's the kind of stuff we did. The pastry chef, Michael Hu (I wonder what happened to him?) was, essentially, an artist and food his medium. I think my job for that panel was to keep rubbing the pecs of the Greek gods until they shone. Mr. Kwak and Chef Hu were real artists, though. I appreciated their artistry, but I was never one for turning food into art. For my entry in the food show, I made a stained glass window with poured sugar, inspired by a Jean Cocteau. I'm going out on a limb to show it to you because it was the definition of pathetic:

I hadn't thought of that person, that me, in a very long time.

I'm still not showing you a picture of me blowing glass, though.

Japanese Samurai Armor Exhibit for Homeschooling Field Trip

Oliver and I had a Friday field trip this week to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where we visited an exhibit called Samurai: Japanese Armor. We had studied the samurai last spring in our world history book, so it was a nice complement to what we'd learned. Whether you're into Japanese warriors or not, and I'm actually not, the whole thing was spectacular. Those guys knew how to dress, and the artistry was fantastic. The fact that these elaborate costumes on both man and horse are from as early as the 14th century made the whole thing thrilling.

Reader, what did you do today?

Thank You and Gary Paulsen

First of all, thank you for all your kind comments both here and off-line after my post yesterday. I am going to attribute my relative melancholy and Sophie's increased seizures to solar flares and Mercury being in retrograde, because why the hell not?

I posted that photo of Oliver above because it captures perfectly what sort of boy he was and continues to be. Looking straight at you, right? He's the cleverest of children and always has been -- that's why his difficulty reading was so difficult for me to understand at first. When he came home from first grade, so many years ago, and claimed that he was a bad reader, I knew that he needed to be removed from Catholic school where rigor and conformity were prized and individual learning abilities not celebrated. He attended a wonderful constructivist public elementary school for four years where he was diagnosed with some auditory and visual learning issues and where he thrived despite an ever-growing dislike of books and reading. Middle school, though, was a disaster, much of it chronicled here, and last year about this time, Oliver's unhappiness reached its near peak, and I pulled him from school to begin our homeschooling adventure.

Last night, I downloaded the sixth or seventh Gary Paulsen book on Oliver's Kindle. Over the summer, he read four books, which I can honestly say is probably the most books he's read in his life. He read them on his own, listening to the audible version while he read and exclaiming after each one how much he loved it. It seems like a small miracle that my boy is reading and loving reading. That he reached this at the age of thirteen is perfectly fine. I shudder to imagine what might have happened had I left him at the Catholic school or even the middle school that had departed so dramatically from its original constructivist intentions. Every now and then I feel a bit of panic about what we're doing and how it's all going to shake out. We did the right thing, though. Oliver is reading with joy -- something I had imagined when he was a little guy but had thoroughly lost as he grew. And thank you, especially, to Gary Paulsen.

Dispatch from the Revolution: Homeschooling

Olympic Blvd. Los Angeles 2014

Virus or no virus, the show must and does go on. I woke, if not refreshed, then certainly feeling better, and Oliver and I both got busy, our second week of homeschooling. This eighth grade year will be a bit more scheduled -- more homeschool and less unschool, but it's still a daunting task that I am at once thrilled by and terrified of messing up. We're using some curriculum for writing and vocabulary, and today's "lesson" included the use of concrete nouns in a one page description of a painting or photographic scene in an art book. Oliver can't spell anything -- and I mean anything -- but he is a damn good writer. He generally writes something out on paper and then dictates it into an app on his iPad. Then we go through each sentence and proof it. Let's give a wild round of applause for technology! This year, we'll be doing the following:

1. Writing - we're using a textbook called Wordsmith by Janie B. Cheaney. I got this recommendation from a homeschool mentor, and it's a great, simple program, albeit a bit old-fashioned. I believe it's from a Christian homeschool source, but so far I've not encountered anything objectionable (we did a lower level book under the same title last year).
2. Grammar - Oliver is taking a high school grammar course at a very cool secular homeschool place called Urban Homeschool. He took a science class there last year, and while he has reservations about the kids that go (I think kids that have been homeschooled all their lives are different than the kids Oliver hangs out with), he appreciates having someone other than moi to work with him.
3. Reading - Can you believe that Oliver read three books on his own this summer? That is definitely more books than he's probably read in all the years that came before this summer. They were close to grade level, and he listened to the audible story as he read on his Kindle with the words magnified. Let's hear it again for technology! We'll hopefully continue with this and supplement his study of American history (see below) with novels and poetry geared toward it.
4. American History -- I'm so excited about the history book that we're reading. It's Howard Zinn's A Young People's History of the United States. It's adapted from Zinn's adult history book and basically tells history from the point of view of the people -- the farmers, the slaves, the Native Americans -- as opposed to what Zinn calls the leaders and the conquerors. This historical perspective is upsetting to many conservatives, and I believe it's part of the basis for that polemic of a movie America: Imagine the World Without Her. Since I have some family members who rhapsodize about that film, I'm not going to go into it here, but I'm as likely to go see it as I am to see a triple-x porn flick. Come to think of it, Michael Moore's movies, from the other side of the spectrum irritate the hell out of me, too.  Here's an excerpt from Zinn's book:  People who write and read history have gotten used to seeing terrible things such as conquest and murder as the price of progress. This is because many of them think that history is the story of governments, conquerors and leaders. In this way of looking at the past, history is what happens to states, or nations. The actors in history are kings, presidents, and generals. But what about factory workers, farmers, people of color, women, and children? They make history, too. I could probably type out the whole introduction for you -- it's that interesting.
5. Math - I don't do math and won't do math. Oliver goes two to three times a week up the street to a math tutoring place and works at his own pace. As far as I'm concerned, unless he expresses some over-riding interest in the subject, I hope he'll learn algebra and geometry, as well as functional math and then call it a day. I really don't understand why people are forced to take math well into high school, particularly if they abhor it. Oliver actually likes a lot of it, though, so who knows where he'll end up?
6. Science - Next week, Oliver will be starting at a school that provides one-to-one teaching and will be taking a Life Sciences course twice a week. The class is expensive, but it's a novel idea (originally used for kids who are professional actors or athletes or who just can't hack ordinary school) and really excited both of us when we toured the place. Options for high school abound -- you can basically take any high school requirement, AP classes and electives, art and music. When the proverbial ship comes in, I might transfer him there full-time and return to Bora Bora on that same ship. You know Bora Bora is my true home.
7. Electives - We've started with this free, cool program called OnInnovation that builds on Oliver's natural entrepreneurial instincts and have downloaded the lesson plans, watched videos and worked through the discussion sheets. Again, let's hear it for technology! I've signed Oliver up for free science classes once a month at the Science Museum of Los Angeles County, and we'll take advantage of field trips organized by the homeschooling group that we joined again.

Speaking of technology, I had the best exchange with my dear friend Marie Ange, whom I wrote of here the other day. We instant messaged one another for a half an hour early this morning -- a half an hour of heartfelt words and memories and laughter. I know many of you think technology is a burden, a time suck, and a destroyer of community, and I might be one of the world's biggest contrarians, but I am grateful for it every single day. I'm not just grateful that it's provided a way out of crippling isolation for the legion of persons with disabilities, but for me in particular to keep in touch with people I love who I ordinarily might have let slip away into fond memory.

Dispatch from the Homeschool Revolution: Field Trip to Cal-Earth in Hesperia, California

Earth turns to gold, in the hands of the wise.

Rumi

Nader Khalili was an Iranian-American architect and innovator of the Geltaftan (Earth and Fire)system known as Ceramic Houses, and of the Superadobe construction technology. He founded Cal-Earth Institute in 1991 in Hesperia, California to build and test earth architecture prototypes. Nader Khalili was also a lover of the Persian poet Rumi, and he translated much of his poetry. According to the informational pamphlet, his work has inspired a global movement, and the institute's current mission is to develop an international workshop program to help the developing as well as the industrialized world's disaster victims and displaced persons to understand and utilize earth architecture technologies and designs. Khalili died in the nineties, but his life's work lives on in this amazing place where young people are trained who then go out into the world and carry on its principles.

Our group had a wonderful tour of the barren and quite desolate facilities, bordered by a strange and vast tract housing development and miles of sand dotted with Joshua trees on the edge of the Mojave desert. We climbed on, in and around the structures -- both living structures and those used as temporary shelter in countries like Haiti and the Philippines  -- and then participated in actually building one, using only earth (the Institute never uses the word dirt) and sandbags.

I was struck by the structures' simplicity and by their great beauty. The director and the young interns on the site demonstrated that any family can construct using these principles on their own, in a matter of hours. The more sophisticated structures would, of course, take longer, but they, too, were a marvel of simplicity and stark beauty.

The photos, I think, speak for themselves. Throughout the day, it was impossible not to think about and to reflect upon how privileged we are, how grotesquely we exploit the world's resources here in the United States and how out of touch we are, as a rule, with our environment.

An arch is like a prayer

its strength is in its unity

its beauty in its repetition.

N. Khalili

Those bags are filled, literally, with earth -- the same earth you see on the ground. They are tamped down, and then a line of barbed wire runs down the center of the bag, serving as a kind of Velcro and helping to anchor the bags. The structures are completely wind-resistant and remain intact through even the strongest earthquakes.

Dispatch from the Revolution: Homeschool Adventures

By the time you read this, Oliver and I will have traveled to the edge of the Mojave Desert and will be participating in a wonderful field trip at a place called The California Institute for Earth Architecture. Here's a wonderful short video that I hope you'll watch as a preview:



If, for some reason, you don't see the video, you can watch it at this link, which also has a great description of the place.

Homeschool Substitute Teacher Day

That lovely lady is one of my oldest friends, Sarah, who has lived in Paris (yes, that Paris) for the last 25 years with her Parisian husband and their three children. She is visiting California this week and stopped to stay with us for three days. One of the reasons I haven't been around to visit your blogs or even to update mine is because Sarah and I can talk for hours. Hours and hours and hours. The only way we break up the talk is by laughing at something we're talking about. Right now, I've snuck away for a moment to come here, and Sarah is teaching a writing lesson to Oliver in my stead. Sarah is an accomplished journalist, so Oliver is learning from a master. I don't know how long I can stay away from her, though, before intruding for some more conversation and laughter.

Home School Field Trip Extraordinaire

Have I ever told ya'll about the time in college where I thought I'd branch out from the English and French literature courses, the Chinese language, folklore and history and take a course in the Engineering school titled Solid Waste Management? It's dim in my mind, but I trudged over hill and dale to a part of the UNC campus unknown to those immersed in Auden and Balzac and learned about how our waste is managed. God, it was awful. The textbook was graphic, as I recall, and the professor insanely dull. I have no aptitude for such practical matters. It was probably the worst class I'd ever taken, right after Advanced Calculus. I remember absolutely nothing about it except for that. I blamed myself for the desire to be well-rounded.

Anyhoo.

Nearly thirty years later, I participated in a field trip today with other homeschoolers to the Edward C. Little Water Recycling facility, the largest water recycling facility in the United States. After donning a hairnet, safety glasses, a vest and hard hat, we were taken on a tour throughout the actual facility, and it was easily the second best field trip I've ever been on (after Alcatraz). Fascinating stuff, ya'll, and not a little sobering. We walked over vast vats of bubbling sludgey water and were so high up at one point that I felt a little nauseous and had to talk myself out of crawling across what to you might have looked like a steel catwalk but to me was a precarious vertiginous path to nowhere. I knew Oliver would rather have jumped into said sludge than see his hair-netted matron of a mother on her hands and knees, so I sucked it up and looked straight ahead.

Weirdly enough, we've been delving into chemistry and had just read about chemistry and technology, so this was just about the most perfect accompaniment we could have imagined. Days like this make me so grateful that we've made this decision -- Oliver AND I learned so much today it was almost exhilarating. I'd even go so far as to say that in 2014, I'm far more well-rounded -- in every way -- than I ever was in 1985.

Dispatch from the School of Revolution: CBD Edification

This won't be a post about Oliver and our efforts homeschooling. Things are going very, very well on that end, and I've nothing earth-shattering to report other than Oliver likes school!

I did read the following information, though, about a presentation given by Dr. Bonnie Goldstein who is following Sophie as we journey down the medical marijuana path. I do not know the person who wrote this out, but from what I can tell in an initial read, it does a great job summarizing some of the science behind cannabis. Dr. Goldstein is wonderful -- the kind of doctor who you can call or text at any time of day or night with questions -- the kind that you DON'T abuse with said questions and answers because you trust that she will get back to you immediately (ahem -- O Neurologists I Have Known).

Here's the link to read the summary of her talk/presentation that she makes around the country.

Email me if you have any other questions.

As we speak, Sophie has been having stellar weeks with little to no seizure activity, a revolution indeed.


Oh, and you might want to watch Sonjay Gupta's Weed, Part 2 which is airing on CNN tomorrow night (March 11th).