Welcome to the hairy potty homeschool. Please be seated and stop arguing with your sister.

I admit I’ve come rather late into the game. I have only just now been introduced to Harry Potter.

Yes, it’s true: Harry Potter has been part of our household for six years, and I have managed to avoid him. My husband read the first two books out loud to our son, then declared it of no further interest. Our son became obsessed, reading Harry Potter — or as he was often called in our house, Harvey Pooter — over and over. The library’s copies took turns living at our house, squirreled away in his bookshelves or under his bed till I sought them out, attempting to avoid yet more late fees.

Finally we bought our son a set, and promptly had to “disappear” them when he became way too obsessed. Since then, we’ve had to disappear them twice.

A boy needs some time to be Potterless, we believe.

But recently, we finished an audiobook in our car and had nothing new to start. Audiobooks are what keep my children from tearing each other apart in the car. It was a deeply scary moment, in which I pondered our being scarred for life after the duel that would ensue.

Then my son suggested, “I’ve got the first Harry Potter on my iPod.”

The sun came out and he plugged in. My daughter and I got introduced to Harry.

So far, we have finished books 1 and 2 and are on the third. So far, I haven’t really prodded my kids for much.

I will, though. This is a homeschooling moment too fertile to give up. Just why is every boy — and many girls — under 15 obsessed with these books? I am already planning how I might start working it into curriculum.

…Which leads me to imagine my children — perhaps all homeschooled children — as adults…

My adult child slinks furtively into an alley, his hands in his pockets. He sees a shadowy figure in a doorway.

“Do you got the stuff?” he asks the figure. He may be a homeschooled dork who hasn’t been allowed to watch TV, but he knows the lingo.

“I got it,” a gruff voice answers from the shadows.

“Is it…” — my son pauses with pregnant longing — “Do you guarantee that it’s not educational?”

“This is good stuff,” the gruff voice answers haughtily. “Not educational. What do you think I’m selling — Sesame Street?”

A hand exits the darkness holding the goods.

A book.

A book with absolutely no educational content. My son drools. His other friends who were homeschooled will be so jealous at this…

OK, back to our regularly scheduled blog.

Here’s my question: Why doesn’t Harry ever confide in adults?

Harry’s got Dumbledore, the most upstanding wizard of his generation. This is a man who sees all, and who understands all, and who forgives all. Note to self: Teach kids about Jesus figures in literature.

Why doesn’t Harry tell him that it’s Snape out to get him? Then everything would be SO easy. Dumbledore would explain why Snape isn’t out to get him, and how he’s planned the whole darn thing, down to Harry getting slime all over his socks.

Or something like that.

It fascinates me that this series has so captivated young modern Californians. Harry is so old-world. So pre-New Age. He never confides in adults. He doesn’t tell people what he’s feeling. If he did, there would be no story. Everything would be worked out so easily. All the happy people would hold hands, hug, and “make it right.”

But our kids are fascinated by these books. Our kids who have been raised to be so emotionally intelligent, to divulge their feelings and listen to the feelings of others. They not only read about Harry’s stiff upper lip and believe it….they eat it up. They love it.

I have no answer to offer here. I personally find Harry frustrating. Sheesh — why didn’t he confide in a trusted adult about the dogs? Oh, if only he’d told the truth when Professor Dumbledore gave him an opening.

But no, Harry never does confide, never does tell the truth when he could just forge on ahead and let his destiny play out. And we love him all the more for it.

There’s a moral here somewhere, but that will have to wait for another homeschool moment. Until then, join me in joking about our hairy potty. At least the kids aren’t fighting in the back seat.

Cookies for cancer

I can’t do it better than Michelle, so I’m just passing on her note:

Dear Friends,

If you have spent any time on facebook over the past few months, you have no doubt seen me mention Prince Liam and the Mamas night out I am planning. For those who have not, here is a little background:

4 years ago, while reading one of my parenting magazines, I saw something about Gretchen Witt and her sweet Prince Liam. Liam, at just the age of 2, had been diagnosed with neuroblastoma.  I started following her blog in which you could feel the love she had for her children in every word that she wrote. Thrown into this new world of Cancer, she learned that only 30% of children survive neuroblastoma. She found out that these terrible odds were because very little money was being spent by the government and pharmaceutical companies on childhood cancer; something that was the leading cause of death by disease in children under 18.  So what did she do, she organized a bake sale. Gretchen got volunteers to help make and sell 96,000 cookies, and in just in three weeks raised $400,000 for childhood cancer research and cookies for kids’ cancer was born.

For almost 4 years I followed her journey. I organized a few bake sales and put her in touch with Cara Pearson, of Pacific Cookie company, a  local business that makes the delicious cookies you order on the cookies for kids cancer website. While Liam’s journey was not an easy one, he was a brave and strong little boy who always had a smile on his face and inspired people everywhere to make a difference and hold bake sales to raise money. I had no doubt in my mind that this little boy was going to beat this awful cancer and was going to have a long and wonderful life with his loving family by his side.

When Gretchen posted this update on facebook back in January, my heart sank.
“I can’t talk. The scans were awful. His disease is now at the point where it’s laughing at chemo. I need more time with him to love him and be loved by him. He is pure love and life and joy and kindness and strength. Why? And how can that be taken away from me?”

While the updates over the past few months, had not been so positive, I was still shocked to read such terrible news. A week after this update, Liam passed away. When I found out, I felt like someone had knocked the wind out of me and I began to cry. I cried for a little boy I never met who was taken much too soon and I cried for his mom who did everything she could possibly do to save him and now had to somehow go on without him. What kind of justice is there in a world where a mom who has done so much to raise money and awareness about childhood cancer, could do nothing to save the boy who inspired it all. It broke my heart to read that Gretchen had felt like she failed her son. She did not fail him, society failed him by not making a bigger deal about childhood cancer. While many in her position would be too devastated and angry to go on with fundraising, her resolve is now even stronger. In the days, weeks and months after Liams death, she has continued to encourage people to hold bake sales so that her sons death does not have to be in vain.

As the weeks went on after his death, I realized I had to do something. Something to show that I cared. Something to remind me that this could have been my child. Something to show all the moms out there who get the diagnosis of childhood cancer that I will do whatever I can to ensure that the 50 kids who get his diagnosis today will have a better outcome than he did. When Cara and I got together a few weeks after Liam passed away we both knew that we had to do something big. Over the course of our meeting; an idea that started as a birthday party/bake sale in May to honor Liam, turned into “mamas night out”. Moms everywhere take a break from their kids every month. Why not take this idea and turn it in to something good. We felt strongly that moms needed to show Gretchen and the thousands of other moms out there in the same situation, that together that we will a make a difference. This brings me to why I have stepped way out of my comfort zone to ask my friends for help. We are planning an amazing mamas night out event on May26th at the Top of the Ritt in downtown Santa Cruz. The attached letter talks more about the event and what we are looking for; raffle prizes and sponsorship. If Liam’s story has touched you and you want to help out, your kindness will be greatly appreciated. If you are not in a position right now to help out, please feel free to forward this email on to someone who may want to get involved. If you are planning to come to the event, you can buy tickets here: http://mamasnightout.eventbrite.com/.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.
Michelle Riddle

About Cookies for Kids Cancer:
In the fall of 2008, Gretchen and Larry Witt launched Cookies for Kids’ Cancer as a national non-profit supporting all types of pediatric cancer at leading research institutions. Pediatric cancer is the number one disease killer of children in the U.S. taking the lives of more children than asthma, AIDS, multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy combined. A lack of funding into new and improved therapies contributes to this sobering statistic. Through the concept of local bake sales and online cookie sales, Cookies for Kids’ Cancer inspires individuals, organizations, and businesses to join in the fight against pediatric cancer by raising the funds and awareness necessary to change the face of pediatric cancer and provide more families with the hope they deserve.
The organization is a recognized 501(c)3 non-profit

The Computer History Museum

I have been teaching a group of homeschoolers how to use the Alice programming environment. This is an environment created by researchers at Carnegie Mellon with young programming students in mind. Most of the kids using it are high school students, but the kids I’m teaching range from eight to twelve. If you want to know more about teaching programming to kids, visit my blog on that subject.

Our Alice Club went on a fieldtrip to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, which has recently been renovated and expanded. My kids had been there before; I had not. I have written recently on what I think makes a good science museum. This was an interesting counterpart because this museum makes no pretense at being a “hands-on science learning” experience. It’s about history, and history is already made.

Babbage's Difference Engine

However, this actually is a great science museum. We had a group of students and siblings ranging from one to twelve. Though the babies didn’t get much from the exhibits, they appreciated the open floorplan, the variety of textures, and the cool light exhibits like the moving pattern of 1’s and 0’s. Their mothers appreciated the fact that most of the exhibits were behind plexiglass and they weren’t mortally afraid that they’d have to dig out their own old Commodore to give to the museum. There were also ample places to rest and regroup.

There was some amount of hands-on stuff for the younger set. The first area of the museum teaches the pre-modern history of computing, with replicas of many of the computing machines designed and built through history. Some of these are very hands-on, allowing kids to manipulate old computing devices. They even had a slide rule, which was the first piece of equipment that made me feel like I might belong in a museum — we actually used those (and I enjoyed it!) in high school chemistry.

In the computer gaming room, of course they had some old games that kids could play, including Pacman. Now, that probably takes a few people back to youthful times!

But mostly, this museum is about looking and marveling. One of the most fantastic machines is one of the earliest designs and the most poignant: Charles Babbage designed his Difference Engine in the mid-nineteenth century. Existing technology didn’t allow the Victorians to build the precise mechanisms the machine required. Babbage died never knowing for certain that his engine would work. Now, over a hundred years later, they have one at the Computer History Museum…and it works! It wasn’t being operated when we were there, but it was positively elegant in the video. Sadly, by the time we had the technology to build his machine, our computers had made his obsolete.

Each area of the museum is about different historical periods or sets of inventions that were important in the development of computers. For elementary-age kids, or kids who have no prior fascination with computers, the museum provides a sort of treasure hunt that takes kids through the different areas in search of important developments. Kids who love computers probably already know enough just to be entertained on their own. Our two oldest kids, both boys who love computers, were completely self-entertained. Thinking that perhaps they’d just been hanging out and not really interacting with the exhibits, I asked my son about a few things I’d seen that meshed with his interests: he’d seen them all and had plenty of interesting observations that told me that I didn’t need to be there, quizzing him to make sure he’d been getting our money’s worth.

(Another benefit: The museum is $15 for adults, but free for kids 12 and under — it was a cheap visit for us all!)

As an adult, I particularly enjoyed seeing how computer history intersected with my life. I have direct or tangential experiences with a number of people who are featured in videos, which was pretty cool. (Not a one of them has aged since my Stanford days, I swear!) And it was frankly cool to see artifacts from my childhood and beyond: A robot I remembered some child having when I was a kid. My first laptop in pristine condition. (This was particularly interesting because we gave that laptop to our kids to play with, and they eventually dismantled it!) The very terminals I worked on as a student.

For the student of computer science, there was more: Recordings of various luminaries in the field talking simply about their approach to programming; in-depth analysis of what made various innovations important; a computer language time-line that I could have spent much longer untangling; and an emphasis on the fact that this is an ongoing process of invention and discovery.

I highly recommend this museum as an unusual stop for kids who might not think they’re terribly interested in computers, as well as the kids you know will love it. I didn’t see one bored kid in the place.

How do we get by? Homeschooling families talk about how to make ends meet

From the outside, homeschooling sometimes seems like a luxury to families who think they can’t afford to have one spouse “not working.” But homeschooling families say that no matter what their finances or their family structure, they find a way to make it work.

Probably the commonest scenario is that the primary homeschooler has to cut her (or his) work down to part-time. Substitute teacher Maricela Sandoval did just that, and she loves the flexibility.

“I enjoy my job because if we decide it’s a beautiful day to go to the beach, we go,” Maricela explains. “I don’t have to call off work.  I just don’t take any assignments for that day.  Yes, I don’t get paid, but sometimes that doesn’t compare to family time.”

Other homeschooling parents might run a business out of their homes that they can do when the kids are busy. Or they might offer a homeschooling related service, such as teaching or childcare.

Homeschooling mom Jaime Smith moonlights as G3 instructor Headmistress Guinevere at the online homeschooling academy she created at first to fulfill the needs of her daughter and her friends (see OnlineG3.com). At this point, Jaime admits, “If I added up all the hours I would probably frighten myself!”

Some parents are able to share the homeschooling and the work, which can lead to a rich homeschooling life for the parents and kids alike.

“We both work about 75% of a job, allowing us to each have time to homeschool the kids and all of us to have family time together,” says high school and college instructor Jennifer Henderson. “We are tied to the school calendar, which is often disappointing, but we know how fortunate we are to have the jobs that we do.”

Other careers that work on shifts, such as nursing, can work well with homeschooling, as do careers that can be done at unusual hours, such as bookkeeping.

Henderson points out that when you can do some of your work off-site, the bits of time when your kids are occupied can be used to chip away at work. “We are able to do a lot of the work at night, while we are watching the kids take classes, or in small chunks of time throughout the day as the kids allow.”

Homeschoolers are also ingenious about finding cheap and free ways to educate their kids. Aside from the obvious – the public library, the Internet – there are all those ways you can avoid buying expensive curriculum by making it up yourself.

“99% of my son’s schooling is done via TV, Xbox 360, and the Internet,” says Carrie Courter, a single mom who started homeschooling her teenage son this year. “I’m forever recording programs that we’ll both find interesting, and we watch some of them together, pausing to discuss things, look things up on the Internet, etc.  Usually most games have something in them that is historical.  So he researches to see if it’s accurate or not.  He started this on his own, but what he’s learned is mind-boggling to me.”

Local parks can be a free or cheap way to learn as well. “We went to Joshua Tree National Park,” Sandoval remembers. “This activity cost only $15 for admission into the park and entertained us all day, not including gas.”

Previous editions of The California HomeSchooler have included lists of free services provided by your public libraries. Book clubs, math clubs, and drama clubs can all bring homeschoolers together while costing  literally nothing. If three homeschooling families get together and share their skills, homeschooling can be enriching and allow the parents to have some time off for making money or recharging their homeschooling drive.

“We also try to take advantage of freebie activities like going to the museum on free days or  discounted rates to zoos or amusement parks,” Sandoval adds. “In addition, I try to take advantage of activities with other homeschooling families whenever possible.”

Homeschoolers show that the key to getting by is being creative with what you’ve got… and remembering to enjoy it.

This article was originally published in The California HomeSchooler.

From scratch

Things are going a little overboard these days at my house. Something’s growing in my kitchen.

No, we haven’t had an invasion of ants (though that has happened) or mold (ditto). It’s not that we’ve found a new unusual cuisine to pursue (though my husband is always on the lookout for that).

What's more beautiful than radish sprouts greening up on the windowsill?

I have started to realize that I can make pretty much anything better than it’ll be coming from a package. And if there is someone making a good version of something, I bet I can make it cheaper at home.

It started with the granola. My husband and I got into granola in a big way, and started to try out all the various types we could find. The stuff in the bulk bins varies in quality depending on how long it’s been sitting there. The packaged granolas that say “low fat” are too sweet. The high fat one we liked was unbelievably expensive. Finally, one day I cracked open the amazing and wonderful “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone” by Deborah Madison, which everyone should have even if they are rabid meat-eaters. I love VCE the way my mom loved the old Betty Crocker (which you can’t get anymore; the new one is so wimpy). Madison, of course, had a recipe for granola. I tried it out.

Granola is unbelievably easy and cheap to make. And when you make it, you get to choose the ingredients. I love cardamom, for example, so my recipe has cardamom in it. I want it to be relatively low-fat but not too sweet. I love nuts.

So, OK, I had to make granola approximately every week and a half. I can handle that.

I eat my granola over yogurt, and soon I was noticing the stacks of yogurt containers that I was keeping, not wanting to recycle them because who knows when you’ll need a yogurt container? So I started making my own yogurt.

Yogurt is a little easier to mess up than granola. At first, I tried to make it in my crockpot. I screwed up too many times, forgetting to turn off the pot and killing off the yogurt culture. So I bought a yogurt maker. It’s pretty fool-proof, though I haven’t found one that makes quite enough yogurt to last me a week. Now I have to make yogurt approximately 1.2 times per week.

OK, I can handle that.

I will take a moment to say that I already make most of what we eat. We aren’t fans of packaged food (well, OK, we’re not fans of all packaged food though Indian Fare and TJ’s mini pizzas do creep in). I grew up in a house where we made our own desserts, so when we have dessert, unless it’s ice cream, I make it. (Please, don’t tell me I need to get an ice cream maker! Our freezer is too darn small.)

But what I’ve gotten into doing is making even our most basic foods. Not just things we eat occasionally, but things we depend on.

My latest is pickling in brine. In the summer time, I usually get around to making a few batches of half-sour pickles, which are great and easy to make. And I make preserved lemons. And we usually do some jam. But then the sauerkraut guys started coming to the farmer’s market and selling their excellent, expensive, hand-made sauerkraut. We saw our farmer’s market outlay go up an appreciable amount.

If you’ve only had it from a bag or a can, don’t think you know what sauerkraut is. Sauerkraut is one of a family of brine-aged vegetables that cultures all over the world make. In fact, the recipe I found was for “sauerkraut or kim chee.” The only big difference is in the flavorings. The new bible of the live culture vegetable set is “Wild Fermentation” by Sandor Katz. These pickles are supposed to be excellent for stressing out your immune system and making it flex its muscles.

The amazing thing is how our kids can scarf it down. So a few weeks ago, I joined the craze by starting to make my own sauerkraut. The first batch was too salty and too mushy. The second is actually quite nice, though I broke my crockpot’s crock in the process of making it. Oops. Good thing I have a yogurt maker.

But really, at this point I’m starting to feel like a slave to my family’s bottomless stomachs. I haven’t even mentioned my longer-running tasks: making the family bread and weekly challah (though the wonderful Heather’s Bakery sells cheap and excellent challah, I have found a way to make it with whole wheat and wheat germ). What else? Periodic vinegar-pickled vegetables (sorry Sandor, we actually like these, too, even though they aren’t full of immune-boosting super-bugs). Last summer I couldn’t bear to throw away the amazing bounty from our tomatillo plant, so I made gallons of salsa and canned it. I make most of the cookies we eat and all of the cakes.

This summer we’re going on a three-week roadtrip and I already had a panic attack about fulfilling my gastronomic duties for our family: How am I going to make enough granola for a three-week trip? Where can we stop so I can make bread?

I imagine myself out on the mesa in New Mexico, rising bread on a flat stone like my children’s ancestors fleeing Egypt.

No time for challah this week, kids. Roadtrips are what matzoh was invented for.

Then I wake up and remember: I’ve been making my own sprouts, too.

Oh, boy. Something is going to have to give.

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