Home»Archives for education
Monday, September 3, 2007 in holiday fun, how my children learn, travels

Mommy, I wanna learn about oceans

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That was Emma and her wish for what to learn about next. Our recent library trip cleaned them out of at least half of the ocean-related books they had, and behind the scenes Ron and I thought up a couple of related activities we could do.

Seeing as we’re somewhat near the ocean and all… ;)

Ron is on vacation this week and we had talked about places we wanted to go, so after a quick consult over our morning caffeine, we decided to head on down to St. Andrews and visit the Huntsman Marine Science Center. It’s a family favorite and Emma couldn’t remember the last time we were there. Hmmm, maybe it was three years ago…

It was a little over two hours to get there, but the drive down was not bad because we were excited and it was a different highway than the ones we normally travel on. Still kinda boring with all those trees though.

We had a great time at the aquarium, going over all the exhibits, taking blurry pics, trying all the touchy-feely things and watching the seals. They even had a tank with some shiver-inducing GIANT sturgeons. A couple of them were as big as me, I swear.

I had a long conversation with another mom over Emma’s pink hair and how it got that way. She said it was a beautiful color (which it is).

After that, we headed downtown with no clear idea what to see next, but the spirit of whatever looked interesting. Lo and behold, there was the Block House. We explored quite a bit there and scrambled over some rocks as high tide came in. And rather quickly too. We continued on and explored downtown, which did not seem to be doing as well as it has in past years. We also toured an old historical home once belonging to the local sheriff.

Sarah did a write-up on her blog too. I think she maybe had a not-bad time. ;)

Even though we were cranky when we needed food NOW, the drive home was long, and I had to lie down when we got back, I was so pleased to hear Emma say what a great day we had, and how she learned SO MUCH and not just abut oceans and things. She really got to see how exploring one topic can lead in all sorts of unexpected directions and adventures.

Pictures to follow, we have two computers on the go today with three people clamoring to use them.

Tuesday, August 7, 2007 in homeschooling, how my children learn

Remember how I used to talk about homeschooling?

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I can honestly say that over the past year or so, homeschooling (as it were) has been the furthest thing from my mind. You’d be incorrect to assume that the children didn’t learn anything or weren’t taught anything though. Lack of “school” does not equal lack of learning.

I read or skim far too many posts about planning, angsting, second-guessing, decision-making and the like from many homeschoolers. In the end, the kids learn stuff anyway. That’s the biggest thing the last few years have taught me, and now I don’t really do anything but let that knowledge wash over me. Melissa coined the phrase tidal homeschooling and in many ways it seems the tide has been out here for some time. Looking deeper, you;d see that despite that, things are moving along. I just no longer worry about it I guess. It just *is*.

Maybe this nonchalance about the whole thing led to the following conversation Emma and I had at the library.

Me: “Do you want to get more story books and easy readers?”
Emma: “No. I want to learn stuff. I want to learn about.. .OCEANS!”
Me: “Okay.”
Emma: “Mommy? Am I in grade one yet?”
Me: “You wanna be in grade one?”
Emma nods anxiously.
Me, shrugging: “Okay, fine, you’re in grade one.”
Emma BEAMS. Then she heads to the desk and flags down a librarian, “Excuse me, can you show me where the books about oceans are?”

Meaghan asked me recently when kids here start school. It’s earlier than the rest of the province because it all centers around the potato harvest. She’s planning on starting next week, and to that end went around the house gathering books she wants to read and study. No word from me beforehand, this was all on her own. She is almost done reading the entire Harry Potter series all the way through from start to finish. Again. this is how she “does school”, which may not be how you pictured it or how others do it, but it works for us, so we run with it.

There’s all sorts of other things going on in the background, things that the kids are involved with that don’t look anything like school but will eventually help them become independant adults. And to us, that’s what matters.

Sunday, June 24, 2007 in education, I'm a computer geek

Managing a VPS and WPMU tweaks. And a learning tangent.

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I’m mostly writing this up for reference, and if someone else stumbles across it needing help.

Some of the issues I had were;
- users unable to upload new custom headers or avatars
- tinyMCE’s spellcheck not working and throwing an Ajax error
- SpamKarma’s captcha not working. It bombed spectacularily. Then let the comment through.

After some research, and noting some warnings elsewhere, I figured out I had to add some modules to Apache and rebuild it. Part of knowing what to do is how to do it, so I had to figure out where. I plunked one of the messages in Google *with* quotes and got some very specific help.

I then logged in to WHM on the server, went to Software -> Apache update… and lo and behold was presented with a list of exactly what modules were installed and unchecked items that weren’t. Including the GD Image library AND pspell.

Whoo hoo! So I checked them off and click the rebuild button. Oh, and crossed my fingers. ;)

One of the things I thought about was how much I love google and how easy it is to find information if you know how to search for it. Also, Ron and I really like to dig in to things and get our hands dirty. Taking stuff apart to figure out how it works is pretty much the norm here. Computer servers are no different. Although I probably wouldn’t take one apart. (I bet Ron has though.)

Anyway, many of the computer things I’ve learned over the past few years – especially the last two to five – haven’t been from expensive or even extensive training (and especially nothing much to do with the one year of computer Programming course I took in college), but merely the spirit of being willing to click a button, change an option and just see what happens.

That’s why the first thing we do before that is save an extra copy. ;) So it’s easy to revert back if we need to.

Saturday, June 23, 2007 in how my children learn, I Forgot To Pick A Category

Emma’s word play

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The other night, while I was trying to settle her down for bed, I asked her, “What’s the biggest word you know?”

Her answer?

“Exhilarating!” And then she jumped all over the bed, clearly demonstrating she knew what the word meant. “Isn’t this exhilarating, Mommy?” She stopped, gave me a thoughtful look (probably because I hadn’t moved from my prone position and had one eyebrow raised), and asked me, “Being a mommy isn’t very exhilarating, is it?”

I gave her the best answer I could: being a mommy has tiny exhilarating bits, very far apart. :)

***

We cleaned up a pile of books off the floor and found a workbook for beginning to read, level K. The year she just would have finished, had our family been “normal”. She thought it was really cool because it had stickers. She read instructions, placed stickers and did whatever she felt like doing, which was pretty much most of the book. All the stickers are in the right spots, half the work is done, and she had fun doing the practise tests at the back. I think she found it highly amusing they were called “practise” tests.

Before that, she updated her blog. I helped with the typing & spelling, though.

Monday, April 30, 2007 in all about me, how my children learn, Sunday Dinner

I think the end is near

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I took a walk. To the post office. And my tummy just growled, so I have an appetite for a change (not that the lack of one has stopped me from eating).

Anyway, I picked up some ATCs in trade (ooo! nice ones!), mailed some out (oops), and picked up some rubber stamps I bought off ebay. Winter cards are gonna be NICE this year, lemme tell ya.

Sunday dinner

Sunday dinner was so beautiful, I had two plates. And dessert.

There’s a handful of Flickr pics up too. Not much else to report, just tiny incidental things. My brain is coming back sometimes, which is nice. We get together just like old times. I even wrote notes for future blog posts / articles.

So I’ve covered food, how I’m doing, and no new news. The only thing left is Emma. :D She has discovered subtraction and we were discussing it in bed the other night.

Me, thinking up another example: “So we had six people live in our house and one moved out. How many are left?”

Emma, counting on fingers: “Well, we have Mommy, Addison, Kaytlyn…”

Me: “Why are you counting Kaytlyn? She never lived here.”

Emma: “What? She’s a good person…”

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 in crafty things, homeschooling, how my children learn

This is what we did today

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Just a few more stitches...

Emma sewed a pillow for her dolls. And then she sewed another.

Poking the needle without getting the fingers is the hard part

Afterwards, she said she thinks she’d like to learn how to knit – this came soon after I explained knitting and sewing were two different things. “Knitting, sewing, whatever,” she said. But knitting is with yarn and sticks and a little harder to get the hang of.

“What’s so hard?” she asked, “You just knit 1, purl 2, and make stuff.”