We saw a great movie this past weekend, The Philadelphia Story, with Katherine Hepburn, James Stewart and Cary Grant. It’s from 1940 and the characters and dialogue are just excellent. What’s fun to realize about old films is how well done they are without so many of the pizzazz elements common in today’s films. For example, the camera shots are simple, straightforward. There’s no frenetic cutting, jittering and swooping. The actors don’t swear much (by today’s standards) and the conversations are complex — how unusual! Consequently, the characters are more complex and interesting. And the cast is small. A fun film!
Trip update: we booked our stay for Disney World. We will be there for Halloween, which should be fun since you can trick-or-treat in the park. This means we’ll be at Danine’s brother Chris’ wedding in early September and then we’ll have over a month to meander down to Florida. That’s the perfect pace.
Beyond the exciting worlds of dump tanks and axle ratios, lies the tricky and overwhelming domain of homeschooling. Now, I have a Masters in Education, have taught 3rd grade in the public schools, and still do curriculum consulting for Fairfax County Public Schools. All of that has been a breeze compared to the task that lies before me. We’ll be homeschooling Elise next year for 2nd grade. The schooling part will be a blast, I think. The science and social studies will be all around us. In fact, part of Fairfax County’s science curriculum for second grade is Animals and their Environments. How perfect is that? The part that is currently stumping me is how to pick out what to teach. The resources out there are endless. I had no idea I could teach math so many different ways. I could easily exceed our trailer’s weight limit with math manipulatives alone! I ordered some homeschooling catalogs and one in particular is 1,189 pages long – filled with book titles and descriptions in very small type. I haven’t even started to look at that one!
But I’ll have to, and sometime soon.
My sister-in-law homeschools her two girls and recommended a book to me that I love. It’s called, “The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home” and I have really enjoyed reading it. It talks about giving the children “pegs of knowledge” to “hang their hat on”. For example, history (ancient civilizations to modern day) is taught over 4 years, starting with ancient cultures. For the younger grades, you teach broad concepts. At the end of the 4 years, you start over again, and this time your teaching is more in depth. But when the kids get to it the second time, they have had some prior exposure and can “hang” their new knowledge on the “peg” they got, say, in first grade. It’s pretty cool.
So I have to decide what math and language arts series to use, what texts to buy. Books are one of the things that can weigh the most in a trailer, so I have to be careful about how much I get. A friend right now is having an online Usbourne book party and I could buy one of everything and still want more for next year. It’s hard to know where to STOP!!!
So Bobby obsesses about dump tank hoses (really) and I obsess about undereducating our child. It’s a fun house to be in right now. Come on over!
