Perseverance

One of the difficult things about encouraging child-lead learning and delight-directed studies is knowing when we need to step in and teach good, old-fashioned character traits like perseverance. On the one hand, we want to allow our children to develop and pursue their own interests. On the other hand, we don't really want our children to grow up flitting from one thing to another, giving up whenever something gets boring and difficult, and never developing the ability to stick with something.

Although this article deals specifically with martial arts classes, the advice in it can be used in other situations as well.

I'd appreciate thoughts on the subject. Obviously, we don't require ourselves or our children to pursue everything they begin for the rest of their lives. At the same time, it is not in our children's best interests to allow them to give up whenever they grow disinterested and discouraged. How do you handle it when your children want to quit something, such as piano lessons, sports teams, etc.? How do you handle when your children want to give up on difficult subjects or projects in school?

How are you teaching your children to persevere?

Kitchen Chemistry 2

We got one of the best Christmas presents ever from my husband's sister. She sent us a gourmet food brochure that allowed us to pick out something delicious from a tantalizing selection.

The beef wellington we chose was delicious. But, for the boys, the best part of the whole thing was that the food arrived packed in dry ice, which prompted hours of fun experiments.

I think this was the perfect present for a homeschooling family.

Kitchen Chemistry 1

Recently a friend of the family taught us to make several of his favorite health elixers. The first one was quite...how should I put it?...potently scented. It contained a mixture of lots of fresh garlic, onions, horseradish, ginger, and more.

As you can see, the boys without gas masks found their own way to deal with what they insisted were noxious fumes.

Even though it's a holiday...

...school is in session.

We're having quite the wind storm and some of our students were outdoors, checking for damage and battening down any hatches that needed it.

Suddenly (remember, these are boys) one of them felt compelled to do a science experiment. How far would the wind carry his spit? This so impressed a younger student, that he decided to repeat the experiment. Unfortunately, he was facing into the wind.

His pronouncement, "So this is what Mama means when she says, 'It's like spitting into the wind.'"

"They are like roommates!"

Having live animals in the home is so educational. I highly recommend it.

Today's lesson: predator and prey do not always act appropriately.

Our youngest student announced with quite some agitation, "The mouse is acting as if the snake is his best friend! He's using the snake's back to climb around the cage. The snake isn't eating him. They are like roommates!"

Maybe it's because it's almost Christmas.

History interrupted by nature study

So there we sat, in the living room, reading about the American Revolution from the British perspective (nothing like confusing the littles and causing them to exclaim in dismay, "Wait! Who are the bad guys and the enemies?") when suddenly eldest-son-at-home-during-school-hours jumped to his feet and rushed out the door with a cry of, "It's a snake!"

And the snake hunt was on.

Youngest child wanted desperately to keep the snake. I was almost ready to capitulate. It was some sort of garter or ribbon snake, and it was quite striking looking, what with its reddish pink underbelly extending down to the underside of its tail. But eldest-son-at-home talked us into releasing the snake once it was photographed extensively.

Perhaps I'll post the pictures another day.

History seemed a bit dry after the excitement of the snake capture.

Harris Hawk after a successful hunt

Chance
Originally uploaded by Keichu.

I missed seeing Chance swoop down on his prey, since I was making my way through some brush at the time. Here he is, happy that at least he was able to catch a bunny for his dinner.

I just hope this wasn't the Easter Bunny.

Flying the Hawk

Tama
Originally uploaded by Keichu.

It was a beautiful day, my second time out with my apprentice falconer son and his red-tailed hawk. This time we went with his sponsor, who had brought along his Harris hawk as well.

Tama did not seem overly concerned with looking for prey, at least not to me. But, then again, this is all new to me!

We traipsed through fields and bushes, looking for bunnies to flush out into the open. Tama flew to fence posts, to a telephone pole, to the top of an oil drilling rig. She would return, sometimes reluctantly, to my son's fist. Nothing was happening on the bunny front.

Finally, fearing she might be getting bored with the whole thing, they tossed out a lure, which she dove for. She was rewarded with food and returned to her box. In a few days, we'll try again.

Real Life Homeschooling

Our lesson in school today is all about septic tanks. Unlike the public schools, we do not believe in sheltering our children from life in the real world. Even if real life is sometimes a bit messy and smelly...

Yesterday, real life intruded on an already hectic and frustrating day. I'd been suspecting some septic tank issues for a few weeks now, but my concerns were dismissed. After all, what do I know about plumbing and spetic tanks? Besides, hadn't I read all about the proper care and feeding of septic systems over a decade ago, and hadn't I been carefully observing a regimen guarenteeing the best health for our system? And wasn't the fact that our septic tank had not caused us any problems in over a decade proof that my system worked? So why was I worrying?

Somehow there seemed to be a lapse of logic in all that. (Obviously someone has not been attending our logic lessons.) Yesterday, when our toilets steadfastly refused to flush and one rebelliously decided to back up, just to make a point, it became impossible to ignore the obvious truth any longer.

Eleven years is too long to go without servicing one's septic tank, especially in a household of eight people---no matter how large the tank and how diligent the homemaker might be in avoiding bleach, pouring Bac-out down the drain, and trying to keep her septic tank happy.

Once we called the local septic service, we were faced with our next dilemma---where exactly is the tank? We had a general idea, but attempts at probing revealed nothing. The hour grew late. Digging became out of the question.

Early this morning, our hero (in the form of a septic tank guy) arrived at the door, asking us questions about service history and then cheerfully groaning and citing the latest results of an indepth Stanford study (they study septic tanks?!) before setting off in search of our tank. This whole process has fascinated our young scholars, and they are now rapidly becoming experts on all things septic while observing the adventure taking place in the front yard.

In the meantime, I'm busily trying to come up with some sort of unit study...hahaha...