The Story and Its Writer is our main lit selection for the year, I think. When we’re not reading something else, we’ll be reading that. It’s such a fantastic compilation because it has a good selection of authors and also a great selection of literary criticism and essays at the end, many by the authors themselves.

And T.J. can find out if he loathes Hawthorne or loves him. Much like his writing, people rarely seem to find a grey area for ol’ Nate. I won’t tip my hand and tell you whether I like him or not.

Today when T.J. came over my friend Renée was here with her two kids (who are also homeschooled.) They left fairly soon after he got here, but not before Renée presented us with a real-world architectural problem that she needed to solve. She will shortly be building a new garage, and she wants the attic space to be 7′ at the inside peak. Given that the width of the garage is 22′, she wanted to know:

1. how long the roof beam would be from floor to peak (the roof proper, if you will)
2. what the angle was between the roof and the floor*

*left as an excercise for the reader

We figured it out, with some help from Pythagoras and a cosine table (it was more trig than geometry, the second part anyway) and with the admonition to check it thoroughly, sent them on their merry way. As Renée&co were leaving, she said to T.J., “See, there’s another reason besides just doing better on the ACT for why you need to learn geometry. You never know when you’ll need it!”

I agreed with her at the time, but on reflection I think we got it exactly backwards. I think her problem and our solution demonstrate why you don’t need to learn geometry, beyond a vague notion as to what geometry does for you and what its uses are. And then, when you need it you can find out how to do it then, right when it’s applicable to the context of your life. Not five or ten years before, when you learned just enough of it to get the grade you wanted on the tests and promptly forgot it.

And of course that’s what life learning is, after all. Just about any subject can be substituted for geometry, from English literature to European history to Euler’s Seven Bridges. When you need to learn it and you want to learn it, you learn it. Just like life. I’ve never had geometry. I sat through about two weeks of trig in college summer school before I decided that since I didn’t need it to graduate and it was a lot of work for something I wasn’t particularly interested in I should drop the course, and I did. So it’s not that I had the stuff and it leapt forth from my brain. I just had some idea that I needed geometry to solve the problem.

Anyway it was Unschooling In Action, for sure, whatever your take on learning and coercion.

In a related development, T.J. is enjoying the pure deductive reasoning portion of our geometry book so much that he wants to pursue a course in logic. Hiding my glee, I said I’d get right on that and had my first-order logic texts out faster than you could say ‘Kurt Gödel’ Hahahaha!

I’m told that this blog is being used by family members who have an interest in T.J. but for whatever reason may prefer not to comment. As I had largely been keeping it for my own recordkeeping, thoughts and musings, I’m glad to know that others have been finding it useful! I’ll be updating it frequently with what he and I are doing.

T.J. and I are switching from a two-day a week schedule to a three-day a week schedule. We were both losing touch with where we were by only meeting twice a week, so starting next week we’re going from our Monday-Thursday evenings to Monday-Wednesday-Friday afternoons. Although I expect many evening spillovers for movie nights, most likely Wednesdays. Ah, Netflix!

T.J. has been very kind to accomodate my very real need for scheduling - if I had my druthers we’d play this more by ear, but that’s just not possible with our situation. I have to have blocks of time consistently set aside for this endeavor that I can plan on and have to cramp the true unschooling style, whatever that is. We’re still completely learner-led, just that the facilitator (that would be me) has to impose a routine structure on what is chosen to be learned. Make sense? I think it’s also realistic. Anyway, thanks T.J. - you are a good man to be patient with this busy mother and her fits and starts. We’re on this road together, rah rah, jolly good etc. The growing pains will iron out, to mix a metaphor.

Oh and geometry is going well.

T.J. and I are breaking each chapter into halves and have planned our attack. He thinks we can do this in the time I have allotted as well, and was pleased at the idea of doing in one semester what a institutional school would take a full year to cover.

So the first part is about the nature of deductive reasoning which is a lovely stroll down Memory Lane for me as a philosophy major with a logic specialty. Ah, sweet sweet inference! We’ll be into the ‘meat’ of geometry proper next week, so stay tuned, geo-wonks.

Got my book today, and the answer key, and the chapter/midterm/final exams with answer key.

We’re planning to do a chapter a week. I think we may step that up - as usual it’s up to T.J. what the pace is since it’s his school and all. At any rate he wants to be done by Christmas, and he’s quite fond of math.

So hold on, here we go! Next stop: Knowledge!

I got one of the Jacobs textbooks in the mail today. Looking through it, it seems as though it will be everything I hoped. I like when that happens!

Now we’re just waiting for the other copy to get here and we can get started on geometry. Jommetry!

In T.J.’s honor we’ll be upping our Netflix movies-out number from 3 to 4. He’ll have to listen to an endless litany of “Oh wow, you mean you never saw that? You must, posthaste!” but I expect he will take it with his typical good grace. It is a 16 year old’s lot in life, after all, to be introduced to bits of the world they have not yet met. T.J. tends to do so with aplomb and good cheer.

So anyone seen any good movies lately?

T.J. and I decided on geometry this year. One of the unique properties of our homeschool is that one of our students does not live here, so we need doubles of texts if I’m interested in the subject too.

Well, I dilligently researched and ferreted out what I hope will be our dream text - Phoebe the philosophy major demanded rigor! deduction! Proofs! and T.J. the college prep student wanted whatever would give him the best foundation for higher math… I present to you Harold Jacobs.

So I found us some decent used copies and away we’ll go! Yay, geometry! We’ll be using the Keys to Geometry and the Standard Deviants video course if we need any extras.

We got some (un)school supplies last night. Markers and paper and a fancy purple binder, for Faith, who is officially old enough to school now. Were she attending an institutional school she would be starting kindergarten this year. Here’s the Priority Academic Student Skills (PASS) for Oklahoma, which is what the inmates will be doing. I dunno what we’ll be doing. Rest assured that I’ll let you know as we do it, however. I know I’m getting The Story Of the World: History for the Classical Child; Vol. I to read aloud to the girls, and Faith (but not Abby) will be in dance once a week which she is looking forward to HUGELY. And we’re all going to be learning sign language just for fun and because Gilbert is really wanting more than, uhm, ‘more’ as far as signs go.

I’m also facilitating someone’s learning on the other end of the spectrum; my nephew T.J., aged 16, will be directing his own education and life from now on after much deliberation. You can go read what he thinks about stuff here. If I can rip him away from that new guitar in a few weeks we were talking about taking the ACT. I don’t know if he wants to stuff some geometry under his belt first or just see what’s what. His call.

So, Gentle Reader, that is all. I’ll get some categories in here soon, and other refinements I’m sure. Just keep checkin’.

Math: Geometry (Jacobs)
English: Elements of Style (Strunk), SAT or ACT prep
History: History of the American People, Intellectuals (Johnson)
Science: Short History of Nearly Everything (Bryson), Lives of a Cell (Thomas)
Literature: Various, to be determined as the mood strikes. See below for possible candidates.

Electives throughout the year will include whatever T.J. wants to do - literary pursuits, guitar playing or perhaps even construction, skateboarding, computer programming… the field is wide open!

Animal Farm
The Great Gatsby
The Wizard of Earthsea
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Red Badge of Courage
Don Quixote
Huckleberry Finn
Tom Sawyer
The Catcher in the Rye
Walden, Or Life in the Woods
The Divine Comedy
The Illiad
The Odyssey
Heart of Darkness
Democracy in America
Complete Father Brown
Shiloh