Please Pray!

Please pray for Kim, a Catholic homeschool mom of eight (three in college) who died of complications relating to the flu (apparently not the swine flu) a few days ago, and for her grieving family.

Ugh!

Blight, originally uploaded by Chez VH.

Remember that gorgeous tomato vine picture I posted a mere five days ago? This is what it looks like today. Blight stinks.

A Delightful Surprise

Our local parish has always been decent, but honestly, it looks like a hospital. Everything is white and plain (it was an early 1990s complete rebuild of a 1950s Church - not a lot to work with). The tabernacle is raised up and relatively in the front, but to the side of the altar. The priest and altar servers sit in a half-circle shaped area under a little dome behind the altar. There's nothing on the wall behind them. Though a processional cross is placed on the altar during Mass, we've felt the lack of the focal point of a crucifix during the Mass (there's a statue of the resurrected Jesus way off to one side on the wall and a statue of the Holy Family on the far side. Because it's kind of a sideways-facing Church, the "front" wall is extremely wide.). The lovely crucifix from the old Church is presently located on the side wall of the Narthex/vestibule (with some nice votive candles underneath).

Anyway. We got a new pastor this summer and he's really great. Solid, engaging and gives the BEST sermons. One of the first things he did when he came to our parish was to pray with the Morning Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours each weekday morning with anyone who was interested. Nice!

But what happened this morning at Mass blew me away. First of all, very diplomatically, he made the announcement that he's interested in making a few changes to the church and was open to input from everyone. That got everyone's attention! :)

He had some background explanation (which was at the same time diplomatic, practical and spiritually helpful), but basically what he wants to do is move the tabernacle to the central area behind the altar. (John and I, surprised, smiled at each other.) He wants to move the priest's chair to the place where the tabernacle was. Next, even more cautiously, he explained that when he started talking to the parish council about the whole idea, they were also interested (and he thought it was a great idea) in moving the big beautiful old crucifix from the Narthex (duh!) to the front of the Church. I could hear a bunch of people around me whispering "Yes! Yes!" and suddenly the entire congregation erupted into applause. It was truly an amazing moment (I cried.).

Seven Quick Takes

I've been very here-and-there with the Seven Quick Takes, especially since we had so much company in August and lots of things on the calendar for the beginning of the school year. Things are a bit quieter today, so I thought I'd give it a try.

1. It's been a big year for prayer requests it seems and this week is no different. Please pray for Kevin Sinnott, a student at Southern Catholic College, who drowned while swimming in a lake this week. We were delighted to learn that two dads who had been out of work for awhile that we've been praying for have found jobs. Others have been added to our job prayer list this week too. Two close friends have learned this week that their mothers have serious forms of cancer. Please pray for them!

2. We had our first Lit discussion of the year this week - on Homer's Iliad. It's exciting to be finally getting to the ancients (we've been talking about doing it for a lot of years), but boy did we end up with a lot of mythology enthusiasts in the group! I've been reading up on my mythology stories the last few days just to get an idea of what they're talking about. ;)

We've also been re-watching (about half-way through at the moment) Michael Wood's In Search of the Trojan War which, happily, is available on Netflix Watch Instantly.

3. What with helping with the upcoming history issue of mater et magistra magazine and helping Ria prepare for the SAT Subject test in World History (her choice, even though it's probably more work to prep for than the U.S. one), we've been encountering a lot of history around here as of late. We're particularly fond of the board game Perspective: The Timeline Game and have played it multiple times this week. It bugs me that I can't quite figure out whether it's still in print. Anybody know?

4. We have three Girl Scouts in the family! A mom from our local homeschool group who has been involved with scouting for many years decided to start her own troup. It's close by and the girls are thrilled! It is also connected with the Catholic scouting organization and so, among other things, they get to earn some gorgeous badges on different mysteries of the rosary. They're working on a patch for the Luminous mysteries for next month (the month of the Rosary). We'll be hosting an event at our house once maple syruping season comes around. I keep running into more and more people who are interested in tapping their maple trees. What fun!

5. As you can see from my two most recent posts, our gardens are overflowing in a few spots. The only things that are still producing are the tomatoes and the zucchini, but the tomatoes are really going. I picked about 25 tomatoes yesterday (most of them not quite ripe, but I was a little worried about the vines that were withering in places and thought I'd play it a little safe). I think there are at least 50 green tomatoes still on the vines. Hope the weather and the vines hold out!

The apples are also well on their way. We need to start making some applesauce this weekend with the new Kitchenaid mixer attachment (we've owned a Kitchenaid mixer for almost 20 years and just finally bought our first attachment!).

6. Ria's working her way through a new book offered by Catholic Heritage Curricula (and published by the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia Congregation in Nashville, TN) called The Human Person: Dignity Beyond Compare. It combines religion, ethics and philosophy and looks really great so far!

7. The inner geek in me is having way too much fun trying out the Eye-Fi Memory Card (via the Amazon Vine reviewer program). John and I bounced around town last night, trying to get a download from a "hotspot" and seeing where it worked. The geotagging is great (though bloggers need be aware of the potential security hazards of letting people know exactly where a particular photo was taken), but we haven't fully downloaded a picture yet from a "hotspot". It is pretty neat, however, to take a picture at home, and have the picture automatically and wirelessly download onto the computer and then onto Flickr (or other photo site of your choice). It took a bit of set-up initially (ours isn't the most friendly camera to the technology), but I was able to do it without bringing in my tech-savvy husband and it's working great now. Fun stuff!

And More to Come...

DSC_2664.JPG, originally uploaded by Chez VH.

Tomatoes!

DSC_2663.JPG, originally uploaded by Chez VH.

College Stuff

(cross-posted from the Love2learn Blog)

We're starting the college admissions process with my oldest, and there's a lot of good stuff we've been running into of late, so I thought I'd collect some of it here.

Catholic College Month: Homeschool Connections is hosting "Catholic College Month" next month with free webinars hosted by representatives of Catholic Colleges. What a great service! Check out the details at the Homeschool Connections website. I'm really looking forward to these!

Catholic College Guide: The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College has just been released in its new second edition - and is available in its entirety free online (my alma mater is pictured on the front of the print book with their beautiful new chapel). Take a look at the Newman Guide website. The guide offers lots of helpful information on 21 exceptional Catholic colleges in the U.S. and a handful of overseas and online schools.

Another Excellent College Guide: I stumbled upon the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Guide to Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth About America's Top Schools when I found a copy of their 2008-09 guide at a local thrift store this summer. I am very impressed by the thoroughness and depth of the content. The guide provides helpful and critical information (approximately 7-8 packed pages) on 134 "top" schools in the U.S. You will find the ups and downs of each school's academic quality, political makeup, student culture, safety of campus life and even recommended professors and courses to get a solid liberal arts foundation (and much more). Very honest and very eye-opening! The Intercollegiate Studies Institute is a Catholic-friendly organization dedicated to promoting solid college academics, free of political nonsense. (Their Student's Guides to the Major Disciplines are also highly recommended.) Their College Guide website is also very helpful. There's a lot of free information, including a guide to "Entry Requirements for Homeschool Students", and you can purchase an online version of their college guide for $25.

We've been navigating the waters of standardized testing for college admissions and I thought I'd share a few tidbits here in the hope that they'll be helpful to others.

ACT Test: This is one of the two most common required standardized tests and covers the following subjects: English, mathematics, reading, and science as well as an optional writing segment. I found the website quite easy to navigate and the homeschool options were very clear. Apparently this is the more common admissions test in the Midwest, while the SAT is more common elsewhere. My daughter is taking both.

SAT Test: The SAT Test covers Math, Critical Reading (including Vocabulary) and Writing. We found their website somewhat difficult to navigate. We had a very difficult time finding the "homeschool code" which we finally got from a friend. (The code is 970000). Also, if you sign up for the SAT test first, it won't show you the options for the SAT Subject test on the same day (since you can't take them on the same day), so you should probably schedule your Subject tests first - especially if you're taking a Latin or World History Subject tests which are only made available twice a year (in December and June).

SAT Subject Tests: A few colleges (a very few as I understand it) require these, particularly for homeschoolers, as an objective assessment of subjects not covered, or not covered as thoroughly, by the SAT and ACT tests themselves. SAT Subject Tests are available in five basic subjects: English (Literature), History (U.S. or World), Mathematics (Level 1 or Level 2), Science (Biology, Chemistry or Physics), and Languages (Chinese, French, German, Spanish, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, Japanese, or Korean). You can take up to three Subject tests in one day (though not on the same day as the SAT itself, and taking three on one day is the most cost-effective way to do it).

You also may want to sign up for the free SAT Question of the Day on the SAT website.
Test Preparation: Finally, Ana recommended the Princeton Review Guides for test preparation. We picked up a few of these and I'm very impressed so far. I particularly like how they have you take a test and then explain a little about all the choices (these are multiple choice tests) and why the correct answer made the most sense even if you didn't quite know what it was.

Also see on Love2learn:

Homeschooling High Schoolers Section
Homeschool-Friendly Catholic Colleges

Contemplating 25 Years... Part Three (Very Rambly!)

First, I wanted to say a little more about that "It's about the family" thing. It concerns me that this concept is easy to misunderstand. What I mean is that the family's faith, attitudes, culture, habits, personalities and whatnot have a stronger influence on the child's educational outcome than their general educational choices. For example, a family with lots of engineers (ours falls into this category) will probably tend to have strong math students whether those students go to public school, private school or are homeschooled. Also, though our society tends to think that everyone should be strong in Math, the reality is that each person (and each family) has their own unique gifts to be developed and appreciated.

The second thought swirling around in my head today is another educational concept that I started thinking about in high school and still have a similar belief today. I think there are some that will disagree with me, but perhaps if I explain it clearly, some of the disagreement will turn out to be just a misunderstanding.

The way I thought of this in high school is that children sometimes need to be "pushed" (I'm sure a nicer word would be required or even encouraged, but "pushed" is what made sense to me at the time). What I meant by this might best, perhaps, be explained through an illustration I had in my head at the time. I remember having trouble understanding certain math concepts until I had completed a number of problems and then suddenly the concept became clear. While I was wading through the problems, I would sometimes be frustrated, but knowing I had to get through a certain number (even if it was simply to turn in the homework assignment the next day) or sometimes having a parent or teacher encourage me to do a few more was precisely what I needed to get through just a few more until I understood it.

This is part of a tricky educational concept of keeping a balance between freedom and non-freedom (whether that be limits, respecting authority, fulfilling certain requirements, etc.). I've spoken a bit about the freedom aspect of things and I think it's something often underappreciated by society today - particularly in the realm of education. And yet, I think it's possible to go to an opposite extreme too. I always loved Montessori's concept of "Freedom within limits" because it helped me make sense out of some of my questions about whether or not children should sometimes be "pushed".

I don't have a final answer on this, but I've seen some things that work with myself and with my children. The parts with affecting my children are a lot easier to explain.

It seems that my children are more eager to learn when they have some reasonable requirements and some structure to get them interested in things and perhaps keep their brain moving. This plays out in different ways. I've noticed that the freedom of unscheduled days after Christmas actually leads to some wonderful days of learning, but I strongly suspect that this still relates to some requirements on other days and the joy of having time to freely choose what to do. It also seems that if we have a few strong hours of formal school, the rest of our day tends to be used in good ways too.

On the other hand, some of our requirements are very basic, more like "limits" within which we require them to work for a time. For example, this year the kids have six "essential" subjects that I want them to work on a little each day (this applies primarily to the four older children - grades 4-12, though Ria, in grade 12, makes quite a lot of these sorts of decisions for herself at this point).

The different subjects have different kinds of structure, for example:

Reading is required for an hour a day. They get to choose the book, but I have to approve it (the requirement being mostly that I want it to be something at their reading level, somewhat worthwhile for school). So this has a double structure of time and parent approval.

Math varies according to the student and the particular material they're studying. It's generally a certain quantity of math (like a lesson or two pages), but can sometimes be based on the amount of time.

Music - They're supposed to work on a musical instrument for about 20 minutes each day. They get to pick the song and the instrument (piano and recorder are the basics). Though most of them are reluctant to either take lessons or work on it on their own (with another huge exception with Ria who is a completely self motivated piano student), having a little nudge is really motivating for them. After two weeks they're starting to enjoy playing again and are getting back into working on learning how to read music.

A general thing I've learned about myself is that if my expectations are too high, things fall apart quickly because I get overwhelmed with the size of the list. I've found that a balance of requirements and freedom works best for our family and keeps us the most productive. The balance point is affected by things like personality and learning style.

Contemplating 25 Years... Part Two

Funny, I thought this series was going to be so easy, but it's really hard to sort out thoughts and ideas in a chronological way. The thing that comes to mind at the moment is something I thought would make an ideal homeschool situation back when I was being homeschooled.

I remember specifically thinking that more formal work in the morning and more relaxed work in the afternoon (reading, field trips, outdoor time), etc. would be an ideal balance. I still pretty much think of this as an ideal. I was fascinated years later, when I met my friend Ana, to learn that in Brazil, the norm for schooling is to go to a school in the morning and spend the afternoon with your family. That background was a part of her own family's decision to homeschool. Makes a lot of sense to me!

And a slightly tangential note relating to my earlier thought on how it's easier to follow a schedule someone sets up for you than to hold yourself accountable... To me this partly involves giving our children enough freedom to take responsibility for themselves.

I've mentioned before that my 14 year old son has struggled with reading to some extent, though audio books and read-alouds are fabulous! We've put a lot of effort into helping him read through works of literature for study groups and such (and those things are SO motivating for him!). It's partly a focus difficulty for him as he reads clearly and smoothly out loud (and also the fact that he's a very strong auditory learner - really the opposite of his mom!).

Well, this summer we read Pope Benedict's book on St. Paul for our catechism discussion group. We missed all of August and had 5 chapters to finish discussing last night. Gus had quite a bit of reading left yesterday afternoon when I was reading to myself, so I offered to read it out loud to him. He politely declined because, he told me, he was aiming at reading the entire book to himself. It took a great effort and quite a bit of his time before the class started, but he did it! (I'm so proud!)

Christ as Head of the Cosmos

We're finishing up Pope Benedict's book on St. Paul for tonight's catechism discussion. This quote is amazing:

Therefore there is not, on the one hand, the great material world and, on the other, this small reality of the history of our earth, of the world of people: it is all one in Christ. He is the head of the cosmos; the cosmos too was created by him, it was created for us to the extent that we are united with him. It is a rational and personalistic vision of the universe. I would say that it would have been impossible to conceive of a vision more universalistic than this and that it befits the Risen Christ alone.