Author: Phoebe Gleeson

Homeschool: The Middle Ages

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

These are the history books I plan to use this year. We’re covering (mostly) Britain, from the exit of the Romans to Henry VII.

Nonfiction:

Our Island Story: A History of Britain for Boys and Girls, from the Romans to Queen Victoria. This is our history spine. Faith is All About Anglophilia, so we’ll be spending the majority of our time on British history. This should segue nicely into American history.

The Medieval World. The illustrations in this one are really nice. Tends to two-page spreads on a given topic, like ‘Hunting and Hawking’ and ‘Knightly Orders’.

Archers, Alchemists, and 98 Other Medieval Jobs You Might Have Loved or Loathed. This has short sections on various medieval vocations, each around 200 words, with clever cartoony pictures.

Fiction:

The Dark Is Rising Sequence: Over Sea, Under Stone; The Dark is Rising; Greenwitch; The Grey King; Silver on the Tree. I’m so excited about these. They are my favorite books from childhood, especially The Dark is Rising. Arthurian extrapolation, modern day.

Time Cat (Puffin Modern Classics) You can’t go wrong with Lloyd Alexander. This one dances through history with a boy and his talking cat.

Tales of King Arthur (Usborne Classics Retold). Modern-language Arthurian legend. The best I’ve found, very chaste but not babyish or stilted.

Catherine, Called Birdy. A delightful book. First person, diary of a 14 year old girl of minor nobility in the 13th century.

Son of Charlemagne. One of our ventures to the Continent.

Beorn the Proud . Vikings! Grr!

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village. This one is unique – it’s a series of monologues intended to be read aloud or performed. Everyone in it is a child or teen in a medieval English village. It’s really good!

Usborne Time Traveler. The Viking and Medieval sections will be used this year. I read this in fifth grade under a different title and was so happy when I redicovered it.

Castle Diary: The Journal of Tobias Burgess, Page. Be sure you get the large-format hardcover for this one. The illustrations are such a huge part of the book and they don’t translate well to small and no color.

Castle. A classic. The illustrations are most often mentioned but the story behind them is great too.

I also have religion, math, and science. Another post!

A boy and his logo

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

Bede loves the PBS logo. He draws endless comics of the PBS P-head on adventures with his fellow television and film logo pals, Viacom and Screen Gems. The DiC logo is usually the villain in the stories. I don’t know why. I myself find the Viacom V of Doom very creepy.

I have some of these to scan in. His volume is incredible. He produces about fifty drawings a day and it’s difficult for me to select the ones to show you. But that’s not why I’m blogging.

Last week, I ordered this for him from the PBS shop.

pPBS3-4260339dt

It came today.

I opened the box and peeked in. It was what I thought it was. I took it out of the packing materials. Bede was sitting next to me on the sofa, mildly interested in the boxes in my lap, but also watching Alice in Wonderland, backwards, in French.

“Hey, Bede. Look what I have!” I said.

He glanced my way, then did a double-take. His eyes widened and an enormous grin split his face. “Ho ho ho!” he chortled. He stood up and hopped in place.

“It’s for you. I got it for *you*, Bede.” I held it out towards him.

He moaned and ran across the room, hopped, then ran back. He was still smiling hugely. He whispered, so softly I could just hear him, “It’s PBS. On your *shirt*.”

“Do you want to put it on, Bede?” I asked.

“YEAH!”

So he did. I guided his head and arms to the correct spots and he looked down at his chest blissfully. He was near exploding from joy at this point. He ran to a window to see his reflection, then ran back to me.

“Do you like the shirt, Bede?” I asked, redundantly.

He flung himself into my lap and hugged me, smiling that incredible smile.

I’ll take that as a yes. I love you too, little boy.

still here, still plotting – er, PLANNING

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

Still gently planning the homeschool year. In fact, I nodded to Luke Holtzmann on Twitter about it: I can see why buying a year’s worth of scheduled readings, with open-ended discussion questions included, all for great, REAL books that are a joy to read… is a heck of a lot easier than doing it all yourself, from scratch.

I didn’t go with Sonlight again for several reasons.

1. *Sonlight is Christian but not Catholic*. Sonlight’s religious materials are Evangelical Protestant in tone and mission, which can be fine – or intolerable. This year, I am focusing on teaching Roman Catholicism to our kids, and I need the materials to support that. In our last Core I used Sonlight’s books and stressed the commonalities that all Trinitarian Christians share. This year, I need more than that. I could have gotten a Core but not the Bible, but the EP overtones are present in many of the other subjects too, notably History, Literature and Science.

2. *Sonlight doesn’t have a Middle Ages Core*. The Middle Ages are covered in Sonlight’s World History Cores, but we wanted more detail. Winter Promise makes a full-year Middle Ages program but they also have the same trouble as reason 1 above.

3. *Sonlight is 36 weeks, and we wanted 45*. We’ll be doing four days a week for 45 weeks. Sonlight has a great four-day option that’s included with every Core but it’s still only 36 weeks.

4. *Sonlight is slightly more expensive*. Honestly, this isn’t much of a reason. I doubt I’ve saved much money. I’ve been able to buy a few things used, and I don’t have the expense of the Instructor’s Guide. Sonlight isn’t raking in the dough. Their Cores are expensive but you get real value for your money.

That’s about it. We will likely return to Sonlight in the future. Their High School Cores are very intriguing, and having everything just In A Box and DONE is worth a lot, let me tell you.

I’ll publish our schedule and booklist when I finish. I’m doing the first 15 weeks, so if we just hate it I won’t have wasted as much time.

he’s done it!

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

Just a quick note to say…

Bede brushed his own teeth tonight, the whole shebang!

We’ll slowly work toward putting the paste on by himself, but for now I say skill attained: CHECK! Woohoo Bede!

My previous posts on this:

[Introducing the process](http://www.feebeeglee.com/2010/04/autism-awareness-month-teeth.html)

[An update](http://www.feebeeglee.com/2010/05/toothbrushing-update.html)

this and that

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

The miserly Internet usage is going well. I have yet to hit the barrier. Idislike the EZ Timer though – the interface is poorly designed, it’s a real pain to configure and worst of all, it intermittently fails to load. I won’t be purchasing it.

I installed TimeTracker on the kids’ machine instead. It requires me to go over and look at the time and then say “Almost out for the day!” versus relying on a program to do that for me, and I guess there’s nothing stopping the kid from flat-out disobeying me and using the computer when I’m asleep or something, but I hope that won’t be a problem. If it is, I guess I’ll deal with it then. By and large my kids do what I ask them to do, you know?

Sean built that fort for the kids in the backyard, wanna see it? Well, you can’t. Because it’s not quite done and he won’t let me take a picture. But soon!

I’m shrinking! I’ve lost five pounds in three weeks! Go, me! I’m using this great plan called “Eating Less Crap You Don’t Really Want Anyway, Tubby” diet. Woo! My BMI was on the verge of overweight, and (more importantly) my waist-hip ratio was over 0.8, putting me at a higher risk for cardiovascular disease. I don’t want that. I hear it really sucks. So, less of me! Yay!

Homeschool planning continues apace.

going to eleven

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

I just downloaded EZ Internet Timer, or something like that. It’s shareware that will lock the internet on a computer after one’s time is up for the day. I set it to two hours. I’m going to use it for a week and see how I do. Then I’m going to put it on the kids’ computer too. Faith, Abaigeal, Gilbert and I will all be on the two-hour (each) internet plan.

I’m writing this blog post in Notepad because I don’t want to use up my browser time with blogging. That means I can’t look stuff up, like the name of the program, or link to its website. That’s different. Also, earlier I was at my folks’ house and I was reluctant to use my time to find a photo that I was going to use for gossip fodder. So that was a plus, I think, right?

It also means that I won’t be idly visiting sites through the day as much. I hope it causes me to avoid sites like Boing Boing and Drudge. They just end up blasting my mind with shiny but cause me stress in the long run, when I realize I have spent the last 30 minutes reading comment threads.

This is the most drastic step I have taken in Internet fasting. I started out with Time Tracker, and it helped but it wasn’t enough. Then i switched to Chrome and let even that minimal reminder go. Gave up message boards (that was such a relief!) Gave up Facebook for Lent, then gave it up entirely. But then replaced it with Twitter. Though Twitter has nothing on Facebook for timesuck, honestly. I think it’s because Twitter, at least through the web interface, is largely my conversations only, whereas Facebook is my conversations and my friends’ conversations.

But all that? Still I was relentlessly clicking refresh. On Livejournal, on Google Reader, on Twitter. And measuring out my life with coffee spoons.

No more, I say!

I have so many things to do in the Real World with Real Things. I want to read more Charlotte Mason – her actual writings, not just what others have written. And I’m falling in love with the Pragmatists again, that uniquely American school of philosophy. Did you guys know I was a philosophy major? Join us and you can make as much as some poets!

So if I want to read those things I have to get the Internets out of my brain. Sustained concentration, I don’t haz it yall. But it will come back!

I am, I can, I ought, I will!

getting medieval

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

I’m trying to plan the year for our homeschool. We school pretty much year round, which lends us great flexibility. Legally I am required to have 180 days of attendance for all of my children between the ages of five and 18 years, equivalent to about 1000 attended hours in a year. Going all year means we do four hours a day, five days a week. These are not like hour-hours, but are attendance hours, and are better thought of as “lessons.” (In other words, I don’t teach them all for four hours every day. That counts the time they read to themselves or work alone and the time they discuss what they have read or worked on with me.)

It is MUCH easier for me to take attendance with Charlotte Mason than it was when we were unschooling. It always felt like unschooling took so much explaining, especially to the governmental types. For such a simple concept it can be remarkably difficult to understand, if you think children only learn when they are taught.. When we were investigated by DHS, Faith was the only child of school age, and she was five – it’s not difficult to demonstrate unschooled learning in a five-year old. But with older kids, it’s trickier, or it can be.

Since we’re studying the Middle Ages, we’ll be covering about a thousand years, approximately 500 to 1500 AD. Conveniently, Our Island Story and A Child’s History of the World both finish up the Middle Ages at chapter 61! This would be even more convenient if they both started at the same chapter. But… no. A Child’s History of the World starts the Dark Ages at chapter 40, and Our Island Story starts them around chapter 8.

(That’s if you consider the Dark Ages to have started at a different time on the continent than in Britain, which I do. If you don’t think that, then OIS starts it at chapter 12. But I digress.)

259 pages for OIS, 93 for CHOW. So what we’ll do is read two or three chapters of OIS for every one of CHOW. There’s several read-alouds in there too. I think they’ll be for another post, as will our math plan…

Tomorrow, bring a spatula

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

That’s what Faith just misheard me say. The poor child must be addle-pated.

I’ve been reading The Shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains. It’s not good. I mean, the book is good – quick read, informative, engaging – but the Internet is not good. Reading it has cemented my feelings that we are changing from mostly-unschoolers to mostly-not. I knew we were moving that way but I was filled with self-doubt because I didn’t want to take away any choices from the children as far as how they wished to spend time. Now that I’m convinced that the Internet is rewiring their brains to suit it I’m convinced that I need to give them a better framework. I’d say we’ve moved fully into Charlotte Mason territory where we had heretofore been only dipping our toes, to mix a metaphor.

Just now, Bede said “Look. Mom. Come and See! Tell it to me on your computer!” and dragged me to his computer, where I was to read what he had typed. (it was a SpongeBob script) and then say “Oooh, cool.” The language was Dalek stilted but, some appropriate pronouns! Shared attention! He’s so awesome.

i have a post planned with the full list of medieval books we’re going to use. But now Gloria is crying! Dearie me.

the clean(er) Internets

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

I’m sharing my computer with the kids, like I was considering a few weeks ago. That means I have the Procon Latte content filter on here now – it blocks pages with the word “f*ck”.

So some of you guys who be the cussin’ sort might not see me cause I won’t see you unless I go to the trouble to turn it off. Which is, like, 30 seconds of work, man. *Quelle drag*, you know?

Bede’s speech and language: June update

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

hi!
will you play with me?
you’re weck-ome.
ladies and gentlemen, it’s Mom! (applauds)

are all unprompted and unsolicited utterances of my oldest son, today! I think there are some changes going on in his language centers.

The other day he said “I love you too” when I said “I love you kids!” And last night we had a conversation, which is unheard (ha, ha) of.

I said “Hey, Bede. Are you tired?”

He said “No.”

I said “I’m tired. Are you sure you’re not tired?”

He said “Yeah. I am tired.” and yawned.

I said “Gloria and I are going to sit on the sofa. Do you want to sit on the sofa with us?”

He said “Yeah. I’m tired. I want to sit on the sofa.” and made no move towards the living room.

I said “Well, let’s go then, buddy,” and he was up and off to the sofa.

That’s more give and take conversation than I’ve ever had with him, I think. Mind you, he stiil sounds like a Dalek, with that charming flat autistic prosody and inflection. It’s very appealing.

Now he’s reading Calvin and Hobbes. What a cutie.

Feed, by M.T. Anderson

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

Just read it – it was mentioned by James Sturm in Offline, his column about giving up the Internet. Or maybe it was Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows. I can’t remember.

The ‘feed’ of the title is the internet feed reader everyone has implanted in their brains in the future. This is relevant to my interests of late in this our Digital Age.

I am favorably impressed and recommend it to anyone who likes speculative fiction in general, YA scifi and dystopia fiction specifically.

I’ll post some of my reactions in the comments so as not to spoil the book.

Feed, by M.T. Anderson

Homeschool: Trixie and Starfall

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

Trixie, age four, has a hard time using a computer mouse and becomes upset by her own lack of dexterity. This sets her up to miss again, because the more upset she is, the less skill she has at her disposal. Feedback loop, you see.

As a result, she doesn’t use the computer, and doesn’t get any better. She doesn’t care a bit, as she is content to watch the older children. I don’t care either because she’s four. So what if she can’t use the computer. Except… she kinda wants to, now and again

I guess this is all my roundabout way of saying I had the obvious idea to hold Trixie on my lap and be her mouse, clicking where she told me to on the Starfall ABC page. (Duh. See, six kids and I still miss the soft questions.) We had fun! I’ll try to set aside time for this more often, but I want it to be entirely fun for her, with no sense of work or unease, for several reasons:

1. She’s four.
2. She loses 50% of her ability after one failure, and 100% of it after two.
3. More than fifteen or twenty minutes and she loses focus, and I don’t want to say “Trixie, look here..”

I don’t care a bit when she starts reading. She may be six or she may be ten (although I doubt that) but she will read, and effortlessly. In the meantime we will continue with our vigorous program of lazily reading whatever books she demands I read to her throughout the day.

[Learn to Read at Starfall](http://starfall.com)

[Farenga and Holt on late reading ages in homeschooled children](http://books.google.com/books?id=WjCqjXsvVyoC&pg=PA234&lpg=PA234&dq=john+holt+late+readers&source=bl&ots=ijZrL5430Y&sig=O_J-Ft34HV-jag7buE-xN_3ysso&hl=en&ei=sXUaTKr9FIzYMIXCnNEF&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=john%20holt%20late%20readers&f=false)

better with two, or even three

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

Faith and I went on a walk in the early evening. We retraced a route that Gilbert and I took yesterday. It’s amazing what you notice, walking. Gilbert and I discovered a small creek, hidden from the road. He was very excited, but told me we shouldn’t get in it because if we followed it we would get lost. He was gobsmacked by the realization that we could just follow it back to where we started. On TV they never do that, see. Dora gets to where she’s been yelling at everyone to hurry up to, roll credits, nick jr is just for me. He also liked finding a prickly pear patch and looking up into the Eiffel Tower-esque power tower.

Faith, having heard all about this from Gilbert, was dead set on making the same walk. She noticed a mimosa tree in full flower, some Queen Anne’s lace, and a large white flower, twisted shut, with a beautiful fragrance. On that flower we saw a spider with a white body and pale green legs. “I love nature! This is the best neighborhood.” saith she.

Bede wanted to go too. His turn tomorrow!

addiction, habit, what-have-you

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

In my ongoing attempts to scale back my Internet habit I have switched back to Firefox from Google Chrome so I can use the Time Tracker add-on for Firefox. My goal is less than two hours of Internet time a day, which sounds simultaneously decadent and difficult. Decadent because, come on. Two *hours*? When there are people who walk miles a day to get water and wood to cook with? Poor widdle me, wif my two widdle hours! Difficult because, ack! Only two hours!

Time Tracker doesn’t track while you’re idle (mine considers ‘idle’ to be 30 seconds without mouse movement, the default is 60) and can be set to not track particular sites at all (I don’t track Pandora or this blog server, for instance.)

If I can’t do this the next alternative for me is to not have an exclusive computer, and put this one into communal use. I don’t kick the kids off the computer unless I have to look something up like a recipe or a phone number, and I give it right back. The interesting thing about that scenario is the lack of stress involved. I’m much more likely to be jonesing for my computer when it’s MY computer, and not in use unless I’m using it. When I shared a computer with the kids before I got this one I didn’t resent it at all, even though there were days when I didn’t get on. Maybe I should just do that.

Is this all part of the bargaining addicts do rather than quit for real? Probably. But maybe I’m not addicted so much as a heavy user. If I can control my habit, then I’ll know. If I can’t then I’ll deal with it then. Gulp.

Here’s a guy who has asked himself the same questions: Slate columnist James Sturm is halfway through his four-month Internet hiatus. After the first shock it seems to be largely a non-event. Could it be that easy? [Offline: What happened when I gave up the Internet](http://www.slate.com/id/2249562/entry/2249563/).

long tall Gleesons

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

I’m tall for a woman (I’m 5’10”, or 178 cm) and Sean is 5’9″ (175 cm). Our kids are all normal to tall, but some of them are very tall. Among the girls, Gloria is the 99th percentile for height and is predicted to be 5’10”-5’11”. Faith is very tall right now but will likely end up about 5’8″. Trixie is slated for 5’9″. Abby is supposed to be the shortest, at around 5’6″ (168 cm).

The boys. Bede is predicted to be 6’1″ (185 cm), and Gilbert is the beanpole, likely to be 6’2″-6’3″ (190 cm).

It was fun to predict these!

[Kid’s Height Predictor](http://children.webmd.com/healthtool-kids-height-predictor)
[Child Height Predictor](http://www.babycenter.com/child-height-predictor)

sunday

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

We went to Half Price Books yesterday and got some good ones. Everyone else made me leave before I was ready because I can outlast almost anyone in a bookstore. I worked in one for years for a reason, after all.

Today I have baked bread, put away clean clothes, washed dishes. Also listened to the children tell me things of interest: Faith kept having me read from her new Calvin and Hobbes, Abby and I discussed what sort of book she likes, Bede read to me from Flight: Explorers (an excellent graphic novel), Gilbert played with the Cuisenaire rods and taught me about multiplication and division, Trixie showed me the elaborate foods she was feeding to her toys, and Gloria showed me how her toys can dance.

Now we’re off to my folks’ house!

read books -> get free books -> read more books

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

The summer reading program at Half Price Books is underway! Kids 14 and under can get a $3 card for Half Price Books EVERY WEEK from June 1st through July 31! That’s nine weeks, guys, or $27 bucks!

Your kid (or you, if you have a non-writing kid) have to fill out a log showing at least 15 minutes of reading time each day, but it’s not an annoying log like in fourth grade.

We’ll get $162 in free books chez Glee, and since it’s Half Price Books, it’s actually $324. *Ohhhhh yeah*!

[Feed Your Brain at Half Price Books](http://www.halfpricebooks.com/feed_your_brain.html)

medieval historical fiction

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

Here’s my preliminary list of Middle Ages or so historical fiction for middle grades. We’ll start a high-tide period with some or all of these in the next month or so.

(This is just novels. We’ll also have nonfiction and some other books. When I get the final list compiled, I’ll post it too. All links go to the books’ pages on Amazon.)

400s Between the Forest and the Hills
597 Augustine Came to Kent
781 Son of Charlemagne
800s Beorn the Proud
1100s Red Falcons Of Tremoine
1167 The Red Keep
1170 If All the Swords in England
1171 The Hidden Treasure of Glaston
1200s The Magna Charta
1200s Adam of the Road
1200s Catherine, Called Birdy
1381 Crispin: The Cross of Lead
1400s The Door in the Wall

like a big pizza pie

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

I made pizza for dinner. I do that about twice a month, as scratch pizza is an undertaking, you see, and not one to be done lightly. Tonight I had help from this fellow here:

DSCF0177

who looks much less ghostly in real light.

He came in as I was plopping the crust on the pan, and said “Mama is making bread. Hmmhn.”

I said, “It’s pizza.”

He said “PIZZA!” and was so overcome with excitement that he had to skip off and touch the laundry room wall, then come back.

I said, “Do you want to help me?”

He said, “Hmmhn! Help me.”

I said, “You need oil on your hands. Here is oil.” and spread the olive oil on his hands so he could help press the dough. He did so, pressing perhaps a bit too firmly, but trying so hard to do it just right. I let him do a little, then directed him to the sink while I finished. He washed his hands and dried them, with prompting, and I applied the sauce. He was watching, and deeply wanted to write in the sauce, but restrained himself. Then we did the cheese, which he did perfectly.

My favorite was the application of the pepperonis. He skittered off mid-cheese and I thought he was overwhelmed and done with the whole thing. I finished the cheese and was putting the pepperonis on when a little hand snaked in beside me and placed a slice next to mine. He had gotten a stack of them and proceeded to put them on, precisely, until there was no room for more.

We finished then, and I got on my knees to hug him. I said, “You made the pizza, Bede! You are a wonderful pizza maker!” and he smiled.

I took his picture and then we settled down to watch it bake. Now we’re going to eat it, and it will be the best pizza ever.

And that, my friends, *that’s amore*.

cookies

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

I’m going to bake 144 cookies today, I think. It will please the children VERY MUCH. It will not please my attempts to shave 2-3 inches off my waistular area. Can’t have everything!

Perhaps I will post pictures of the cookies. Oatmeal chocolate chip, yall. NOM.