What did you learn in school today, honey?

Last night while telling their father about school GooseyGirl saw something crawling across the ceiling. "Daddy, look! It's an arachnid!", GooseyGirl hollered. Sure enough, there was a spider crawling on the ceiling.

Being the man of the family, Shawn got up and attempted to reach this spider but since the ceiling is 9' tall, he was unsuccessful. GooseyGirl brought him a stool and that helped get him a little closer but not quite all the way up there. Keep in mind that spiders make Shawn squeamish... very, very squeamish.

Shawn decides that while he cannot reach the spider himself on the stool, a child sitting on his shoulders WHILE he is standing on the stool, could reach it easily. BirdMan, being the brave little man he is, volunteers for this dangerous assignment. You must remember that BirdMan is the biologist of the family. He tells us he has been born to care for animals. The last thing he wants to do to any critter is kill it, especially something he just studied in school.

BirdMan gets atop Shawn's shoulders. Shawn climbs up the stool. Mr. Spider watches all of this transpiring and starts forming a plan.

This two tiered man-boy-spider-killing-machine approaches the spider and BirdMan reaches out with his little wad of tissue to get the spider which is now directly above Shawn's nose. Of course, BirdMan is simply trying to gently pluck the spider from the ceiling in order to lovingly carry it to a new home outside. He has no intention of killing the thing.

Shawn isn't aware of this aspect to the plan.

The spider goes into free fall right in front of Shawn's face. Shawn tries to stay calm but his suddenly loud high-pitched voice gave him away as he screams out, "GET IT! KILL IT! SQUEEZE IT!"

"Ummm.... where is it, Dad?", BirdMan says.

The other two cry out, "It's on your leg, Dad!"

Shawn got the child off his shoulders and got off the stool in one fluid motion. I never knew he had that talent!

We found the spider dangling from Shawn's pants. I suppose the rapid twitch of Shawn's leg must have convinced the spider to make a run for it because the spider bounced to the floor. BirdMan then spent the next five minutes finding a way to gently cushion the spider in the tissue in order to carry him outside. Shawn's heart rate was still racing as he kept saying to BirdMan, "Just kill it! Step on it! Smoosh it!". But BirdMan was committed to helping Mr. Spider relocate to more desirable neighborhood.

More than once BirdMan would stop, backtrack, find the spider again and pick it back up, only to drop it two steps later. Of course, before we said goodbye to Mr. Spider the kids had to count his legs and body parts.

I should have had the video camera going. We could have won a lot of money.

Arachnid wrangler

Today we started the Arachnid unit in our science curriculum. I had pulled a bunch of books about spiders to show the children the eight legs and two body parts that make up a spider. I was excited about this unit but the photos were about as close as I wanted to get to the real thing. I begin the lesson by explaining that we are going to look closely at a spider to identify it's body parts and start to get out the books and photos I had collected.

BirdMan leaps up and says, "I know where there's a spider!" He walks about two feet from where he is sitting and says, "See, mom, right here!" Sure enough, in the corner of the room was a spider and its web.

At this point I'm seriously considering what this means about my housekeeping skills and nothing positive springs to mind. RocketMan brings me a container and hands it to me expectantly.

That's when it hits me. They want me to PICK UP this spider and place it in a container! I notice my heart rate has just skyrockted as I say to myself, "Well, I'm a grownup, surely I can do this without freaking out and embarrassing my children."

A few minor squeals later, the spider is in the container and three children are armed with magnifying glasses excitedly counting legs and body parts. Not the way I had planned our lesson but forget the photos and books, a real live critter is MUCH better.

Meanwhile, I'm dreading Thursday's lesson on ticks and scorpions. If BirdMan leaps up and declares he knows where one of those can be found, I'm bolting.

The value of a dollar.

A few weeks ago BirdMan decided to climb on the toilet paper holder in order to look the window. Of course, the holder ripped out of the wall and crashed to the ground. This was one of those fancy toilet paper holders that has porcelain trim and it all broke in too many pieces to count.

BirdMan was very sad and was told he'd have to earn some money to pay for it. They've also been told that they'll need to earn some money to pay for the Christmas presents they are buying for their siblings. The warm weather over the weekend gave us an opportunity for them to learn about earning money.

They stacked firewood. Hard, sweaty work for an hour and they each earned $10. They were thrilled with their money but had a new appreciation of how hard it is to earn money for what you want.

Fast forward to Sunday night. GooseyGirl and I go to the grocery and stop by the pet store to look for a Christmas present for her brothers. This new pet store had a beautiful, quiet, well-behaved Amazon parrot. The price, $1500 and then you have to buy the cage, the toys and the vet bills.

We came home and GooseyGirl told BirdMan all about the parrot. BirdMan got more and more excited with each revelation. You could literally watch the sunshine spread from his eyes to his entire body as she described the beautiful parrot. More than anything in the world, this boy wants a pet bird. He checks out books about it, he writes about it, he talks about it, he dreams about it. He wants a bird.

Then GooseyGirl told him the price. It was like someone had hit BirdMan in the head! He reeled back and said, "Oh, no, that will take me FOREVER!" Suddenly that bird looked like a TON of firewood to BirdMan.

But I secretly smiled. The leap was made in his mind for the first time between hard work, money and objects of desire. It clicked.

All was going well until BirdMan said, "Momma, we'll just use that MASTER card to get me a bird!"

Ahhhh.... two steps forward, one step back....

Why Classical Education?

Someone emailed me recently and asked, "What are the advantages of a Classical Education"? I thought I'd post my response here. I really appreciated this question because it allowed me to think about a succinct way to express our educational approach. I could go on for quite some time about this topic but here was my response.

The thing I like about the classical method is that it is goal-oriented with clearly defined progression in terms of tackling subjects chronologically and skill mastery. I think maybe "logical progression" is the expression I would use to best define classical homeschooling. It's a very good methodology for breaking down subjects into learnable "bites" with an emphasis on critical thinking.

Classical education makes use of the three stages, or trivium, in which children (and adults) learn any subject. In the Grammar Stage (1st-4th), the foundation of each discipline is laid. This is a time of gathering facts and developing basic skills.

The second stage is the Dialectic Stage (5th-8th) in which the student learns to reason or apply the basic facts he has learned. In this stage logic is introduced. The student concentrates on the cause and effect, or the "why," of a subject.

The final stage of the trivium is the Rhetoric Stage (9th-12th) in which the student learns to communicate what he knows about the subject at hand in the most convincing way. The child is led to see the interconnectedness of all academic subjects and to apply their skills to synthesize their subjects.

Basically it teaches our children HOW to learn so that they will have the tools of learning at hand enabling them to teach themselves any subject. This approach resonated with me.

Homeschooling is a decision of the heart and the classical education method is my map.

Theseus and the Minotaur

Today in history we talked about Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The kids loved this myth and proceeded to make a maze out of their blocks and toys for their animals to act out the story. These are pictures of their mazes.

GooseyGirl is holding the Minotaur (Ruff the dog)and RocketMan is holding Theseus (silver the cat). BirdMan built his own and that is his Theseus (kiwi the bird) who will soon fight the Minotaur (Elizabear the bear). BirdMan's maze is surrounded by LAVA! In case you couldn't tell, they had fun today!

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

Today during our grammar lesson we talked about the pronoun "I". The children were asked to dictate a story about themselves to me and I typed it on the computer as they spoke. What I discovered is that they rarely speak in the first person. Instead they speak in a collective voice.

It isn't, "I found a frog". It is "We found a frog".

It isn't "My mom gave me a cookie". It is "Our mom gave us a cookie".

It isn't "I am 6 years old". It is "We are six years old".

The tiny psychologist within me is fascinated by the notion of growing up in a group setting. I was an only child until I was 16 so, as the poem says, "It was I, I, I. It was me, me, me." The proportions of my teenage self-centeredness astound me.

I didn't have to share my toys, share my room, share my clothes. Everything in the house that was for children was there for me and me alone. It took a loving husband and three kids to break the selfish cycle that I lived in. Now, my life is spent on others. I have to remind myself to take time out just for me and my interests. That transformation was a huge life lesson which is why being a triplet is so fascinating to me.

How will their development be impacted by being a part of a collective? What does it mean to consider yourself as a part of a whole? I can see the good and the bad side of this issue. There are many books written about birth order and how that affects your personality on a fundamental level. But there aren't many books about being a triplet and how that impacts your self worth and identity.

The next 14 years should be an interesting ride, eh?

It's beginning to look a lot like...

Christmas? Check!
We spent the weekend shopping for a "simulated" Christmas tree and then putting it up in the family room. Of course, the kids wanted to get all the decorations out and deck the halls. So... we are now ready for Santa! Actually I'm grateful we got the decorating done early. Now we can enjoy the holidays just a bit longer and it gets me in the spirit of things.

This is the first year that the children will be buying presents for their siblings. They are so excited and have spent a great deal of time thinking about each other and what would make a good gift for each person. The hard part will be finding the time to shop individually with each child as they shop for their siblings!

They've been thinking of the gift in light of what each person's passion is. N loves birds, E loves cats, L loves maps and numbers. We've talked about how every person has different passions and how those passions are glimpses into the gifts and talents that each of us possess.

Yesterday we were watching a rodeo on TV. There were men strapping themselves onto the back of a fierce bull and then getting flipped into the air as they attempted to both land and scamper away from the hooves and horns aimed at them. E looked at them and said, "Boy am I glad THAT's not my passion!"

Funny, I thought the same thing and then I thought, "Where's his momma!?!"

Talk amongst yourselves

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -William Butler Yeats

The Great Worm Hunt

We use a science curriculum that is hands on and requires lots of squishy, dirty experiments which my kids LOVE. This week we are studying worms and Monday we went on our great worm hunt. 6 worms, 2 slugs, a centipede, a purple mushroom and 4 pills bugs were found. The 6 worms were then examined with magnifying glasses in our schoolroom.

Lesson #1:
If you place your worm on the table and then leave to go to the bathroom, it will be gone when you get back.

Lesson #2:
Worms camouflage perfectly in dark green carpet.

After examining our backup worms we then made a worm habitat which we built out of layers of moist sand and oatmeal.

Lesson #3:
When carrying your worm habitat don't hold it only by the flimsy lid.

The habitat was placed in the basement so that we could observe the composting abilities of our worms.

Lesson #4:
Worm habitats stink after 3 days.

Today we held the Great Worm Experiments. First we had to get one of our worms out of the habitat we had built for them.

Lesson #5:
Worms aren't as stretchy as you might think. If you are pulling on one end, be sure your brother isn't pulling on the other.

Using another back-up worm we were able to find out that they like cold, dark, wet places. But I'm pretty sure we knew that when we found our worms huddled in the moist dirt under that rock in the freezing cold three days ago.

Science lesson..... CHECK!

We're back!

We had a great vacation in our nation's capital. The kids attended a soccer workshop led by Uncle Ole and Auntie Juliet. There is a rumor circulating that N scored on Ole but that is disputed by some parties.

Strangely enough, while at the White House, a group of tourists from Japan figured out that the kids were triplets and then asked to get their pictures taken with our children. So there they were in front of a tourist destination, the White House, standing with the "Triplet" tourist attraction from Fisherville. That happened once before in Georgia at Stone Mountain and it was weird then too.

The kids were very impressed with the Lincoln Memorial. They just couldn't believe what a great job the builders did making that memorial look just like the building on the penny!

Now that we are back, we got started with our lessons again. However, this morning when I went down to the schoolroom I found that our big fat cat, Yogi, had been locked in the basement all night long. While locked in the room, he needed to use the facilities. Fortunately, he managed to perch himself on top of the Sheriff Woody hat located in the middle of the floor and pee perfectly inside it. I thought I had really gotten lucky since his mark was true and the hat wasn't picked up by an unsuspecting child and put on the child's head. So, my job was very simple, I thought, empty the hat and throw it away.

Mission accomplished! Time to start our day, right?

However, that wasn't the only present Yogi left for me. Apparently, he also pooped in the corner. How did I discover this gift, you ask? I didn't. N did.

He stepped in it.

Then N panicked and ran to tell me that he had stepped in cat poop which successfully tracked the poop through the schoolroom. At that point his brother, L, who couldn't understand why N was screaming, ran into the schoolroom to determine what was amiss. Can you guess what happened next?

Yes, L then stepped in the poop and he also panicked. L started screaming and running to tell me what happened which made an identical but separate poop track through the schoolroom, right next to his brother's.

This afternoon I'll be shampooing the carpet in the schoolroom. BLEH!

Hiatus

Fisherville Academy will be on fall break until November 14. Check back then!