Have I written here yet about my favorite day of homeschooling? Because if I have, delete that post from memory, because today is my new favorite day.
My son is taking the AP chemistry test in Germantown, PA. It’s 45 minutes from where we live because public schools won’t let my son participate in their AP testing. (Because, in case anyone needs to be reminded, public schools do not have to serve their community, they only have to do what the law says they have to do.) Read more
Romon Todo, Glass Filled Books
Most of the “bad readers” are boys. This makes sense because most of the “bad dodgeball players” are girls. We don’t get up in arms about how girls don’t like dodgeball. Do we get tutors for the girls to tell them how to aim for the head while pretending not to be aiming for the head? Read more
I took the dog to Swarthmore. I didn’t initially. At first I told the boys we were each taking one backpack. And the cello, and the violin, and my laptop. Read more
We are studying architecture this week. I can’t remember the last time both my kids studied the same thing at once. Well, I guess in the olden days, when they were 6 and 9 and played Minecraft all day, you could say they were studying the same thing. But it’s been a while. Read more
This is a guest post by Lehla Eldridge. Her blog is Unschooling the Kids. Lehla’s family lives in Italy.
“I will read when I can read,” were my sons words. At age ten he is on the edge of flying into the world of words. The ‘not being able’ to read phase will soon be a sweet memory. I sit with him as he speaks the words out, I see a big complex word on the page and part of me hopes he will stumble, which is a funny thing to admit, since it is counter to how I was a few years ago around reading. You see the tipping point is coming, he is on the edge of it and it is a delicious honor to witness a child learning to read at their own pace. Like that moment when they learn to walk, or swim—it feels magical to me. Read more
For the first couple of weeks in August, we went to Aspen for music lessons. The Aspen Music Festival is huge, and famous, and drives up the price of hotels in Aspen (as if they can be driven up any further.) So we stayed in a town nearby, Snomass. It’s a ski town in the winter but in the summer, it’s a corporate training getaway. Read more
Tall people make more money as adults. There is lots of great research about this topic, but the most interesting, to me, is that on average, tall people contribute more to a team than shorter people in a business environment. Probably this is because tall people have more self-confidence because they get treated better because they are tall: geometrically multiplying advantages, or a sentence as an homage to Escher. Read more
My ex-husband’s father is from Peru. So when we were engaged, we had a big party in Peru. I was shocked to see that my husband never learned Spanish, so he couldn’t talk to anyone. I had already learned French and a little bit of Hebrew and German, so it was not difficult to teach myself a little bit of Spanish before the trip. Read more
Did I ever tell you about my failed reality TV show? I need to talk about it one more time because I still have photos from it. The show had a buyer, so we made a pilot. And then TLC said we are too normal. Read more
The pictures hanging up are from my niece and nephew. My kids don’t draw. They don’t color. The last time I recall one of my kids holding a pen was when my son wrote his Seven Games password on his shorts because he couldn’t find a piece of paper. Read more