After my first thoughts on the Tiger Mom controversy, I haven’t had much to say. But today I chaperoned our chess club‘s first trip to a US Chess Federation tournament. And all of my theoretical appreciation for any parenting style that puts pressure on kids to “win” went out the window. In its place is a sense of superiority — which I know is wrong, but it may take a few days to get over it. I drove up with... Read more
Two books about idioms arrived today. The boys are calling them joke books and I can see why. Each books has great illustrations showing what the idiom would look like if you took it literally. As you might imagine, some of the drawings are absurd in a way that delights 7 and 8 year old boys. All the idiom talk around here got me thinking that it would be fun to give you a quiz of sorts. I’ll give you the picture,... Read more
Jeff forgot to call his mom on Mother’s Day. Who does that? I should have felt worse for his mother, whose ungrateful son probably broke her heart. But I had more selfish concerns when I found out about his transgression. I wondered how we were ever going to raise boys who invite us to move in with them when we’re old if we don’t even call our mothers on Mother’s Day? To make it up to her, and to make... Read more
Today’s post is “hot off the presses.” If you understand what that means, then you have interpreted an idiom. Idioms are expressions which have meanings other than their literal meaning. Most people learn the non-literal meanings of idioms as they grow up by paying attention to social contexts and emotional clues. But lots of people have trouble understanding idioms. For instance, non-native speakers of a language may never fully understand common idioms. And children who struggle with social communication... Read more
“Nafisa, do you like history?” Zach asked a fourteen year old friend who was here tonight. “I do like history.” “Then you are going to LOVE the volcano video.” “Zach, honey,” I jump in, “that video isn’t about history.” “But it has a lot of historical stuff in it.” “Well, history, as a subject in school, is really about the history of people. The history of the Earth is generally considered science.” “Oh. Do you like science, Nafisa?” Ha!... Read more
We went to a meeting tonight of parents considering a Christian, homeschooling cooperative of sorts. It focuses on providing a “classical education” as described in The Well-Trained Mind (see blog roll). One of their big selling points is that joining the cooperative would help keep me accountable. This way I’ll know that we’ll be on track for the kids to learn Latin and Greek, to understand calculus and the rules of rhetoric, to diagram sentences, and to have memorized huge... Read more
Until I started writing a blog, I didn’t read a single blog regularly. Now I regularly follow several. Some of them, like Shannah’s, Kathy’s, and Sarah’s are from friends. It’s a new way to share life with them — not really real, but more real than I expected. I read one blog by someone I now consider a friend even though we’ve never met. She found my blog through Jeff and has written admiringly of me – which, pathetically, is... Read more
When Zach was a baby, I refused to call him colicky. Even though he was absolutely colicky. He could have been the poster child for colick, but I wasn’t about to slap a label on my newborn. I didn’t want to call him a “bad” baby right from the start. People would judge him. Or judge me. You may think this is ridiculous, but I’ve seen the way people coo and smile at the “good” babies, the easy babies. And... Read more
We’re still working away on our “Mistakes” story. Tuesday, the boys and Wendy designed a survey to help them get a better sense of how adults experience mistakes. Here’s an email the boys sent to our friends today asking them to take the survey. After you read it, if you have two minutes, you can take the survey here. They are hoping to get 100 responses. Have you ever made a mistake? We would like you to take this survey about... Read more
I knew that we were going to have a hard time with Ezra when he was just two. I gave him his first time out for an infraction I no longer remember. I put him in his crib without his blankie, and two hours later he was still there, refusing to say he was sorry. He sat in that crib, crossed his arms, and looked at me like he had it all figured out. He could do whatever the heck... Read more
The Homeschool Chronicles
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