HS Comments on the Fly

I am stunned. It reads like a science fiction novel, but it is true. There is even photographic evidence.

… NASA’s telescopes show the supermassive black hole as it begins shooting jets of radiation into the heart of a distant galaxy.

With tens of millions of stars in the black hole’s path it is likely that many planets will have been caught up in the deadly blast.

No life on any planet could survive the attack, according to astronomers. (source)

This is difficult to fathom. Here’s another snippet that tells that new stars and new solar systems could be the result of such upheaval.

The offending galaxy probably began assaulting its companion about 1 million years ago, which is relatively recent on a cosmic time scale….

“We’ve seen jets do pretty weird things to their environments, but a head-on collision is really rare and generates a [large] amount of information about physics that we can understand and use,” Evans said. “For that galaxy to be looking right down … the barrel of the gun of that jet is incredibly rare, so this makes it a really exciting discovery.”

Turns out that the “death ray” may not be all bad news for the victimized galaxy, at least theoretically, as such a massive influx of energy and radiation could help form new stars and solar systems by compressing gases. (source)

The second article has more photos.

We’re reading Galileo’s Daughter, which so far is much more about Galileo and his discoveries and troubles than about his daughter, which I’m happy with if you care to know. But the title, so far, is a tad misleading but may not be so as we get farther into the book. So anyway, I can’t help wondering what Galileo might have thought of black hole that’s on the offensive and what he might have postulated and/or concluded.

You’ve heard of Tycho Brahe, right? He was the Danish astronomer that lost part of his nose in a duel or something. Okay, then, here’s a funny bit from Galileo’s Daughter about Brahe’s beliefs:

According to the Tychonic order, the five planets orbited the Sun, while the Sun — surrounded by Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn — circled the stationary Earth.

Can you imagine? I can’t. Galileo dismissed this view of reality, btw. Seriously, I don’t know why Galileo’s Daughter isn’t on homeschooling reading lists. It has been a great read aloud for us so far and would be fine for about 6th grade and up.

Since I have been lacking inspiration lately, I went and dredged this entry up out of my old archives from 2003. I had recently read The Odyssey aloud to my students.

I re-found this really irreverent classics site while trying to find something else. Perfessr writes,

Homer is also the Emily Post of antiquity. The Odyssey is nothing if not a book about manners. In a world without law or government, the guest relationship is all-important. There were certain rules to be followed among the nobility, and the moral person was above all a good host. Martha Stewart has nothing over King Nestor, except possibly her strawberry tortes.

Many others have mentioned Greek hospitality (as described in Homer’s works) as being a theme of the poems. We have been noticing it, too, over and over again while reading The Odyssey.

At one point (can’t remember which book or even who), we were surprised that a stranger had to be fed and wined before the host could even ask him why he had decided to visit. Can you imagine? Also, it seems that you were supposed to send your guests off with gifts when they left — not a bad idea, but a little costly if you’re not careful.

In Book XV (Rieu trans.) Menelaus says to Telemachus, “I condemn any host who is either too kind or not kind enough. There should be moderation in all things, and it is equally offensive to speed a guest who would like to stay and to detain one who is anxious to leave. What I say is, treat a man well while he’s with you, but let him go when he wishes.” Okay. Fine. But what about those nasty freeloaders–the Suitors? Hmmm? Frankly, I think they abused the hospitality offered them. Why didn’t the laws of hospitality allow them to be booted on out of there?

And what about Hyperion? Why was it okay for him to withhold his sheep and cows from the weary travelers? But, you know, Polyphemus was the worst. He gobbled up his guests and washed them down with milk. Yeah, it doesn’t get much worse than that.

Oh, yeah, and we also read Perfessr’s column entitled, “Choose Your Truth” after we read Euthyphro and were shocked by how “the great Socrates” acted.

Question: If a homeschooling family is feeling a little under the weather on December 7, what should they do?

ANSWER: Dig out their copy of Pearl Harbor and watch it. I hear a lot of people didn’t like it (or maybe it was just the critics), but I thought it was pretty good as war movies go. And they get extra points for adding in the Doolittle Raid (covered in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo in Landmark Books).

Tip for new homeschoolers: Under the Blood-Red Sun is a good boys book about Pearl Harbor. It would be a good read aloud, too.

Sure living books are great for grade school, but should a homeschooler still be using real books (aka living books) at the high school level?

I really don’t see why not. That’s how I, as an adult, learn. Think about it. All adults who are done with their classroom education use real books to learn. Oh, sure, you might use a tutorial to learn PostgreSQL, but a tutorial isn’t a textbook. While some college classes require a textbook, many also require that real books be read or consulted. If I want to know how to garden, I don’t grab the first botany textbook that I can find; I buy a gardening book. Take a look at your local bookstore. Is it full of textbooks? No. That’s because learning is best done through the use of real books.

So why can’t high schoolers learn by using real books, too? Why should high school science education be different? I guess it probably shouldn’t.

However, how can someone like me make sure that my students are properly prepared for college-level science if they’ve not covered what’s in the high school science texts? Well, a high-school-science-teacher homeschooling parent can figure that out. But I can’t. It’s easier and faster to just do what’s in the science text than it is to re-invent the wheel. No pun intended.

So we only do one year of “real book” science in high school. We title the class “Science Survey.” I have no idea if that’s the best title for the class, but it’s good enough for us. If you know of a better name, let me know.

For that class, the student chooses from biographies of scientists or any non-fiction science book that we can find in the library. It has to contain a lot of science; it can’t be a story about the childhood years of Enrico Fermi. My daughter’s already chosen and read a few books. She read that one about Archimedes, I think it was. She read another about a teenage chemist who became a perfumer. She’s read a few others, but I can’t remember the titles. She’s got them written down in her school records, but that’s at her desk a ways away.

Right now we’re reading Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel together as a read aloud. I’m enjoying how Sobel shows Galileo’s excitement about finding four “Jovian planets” and how that when he took a trip from Florence to Rome, he set up his telescope every night along the way. She also tells that when Galileo found two of Saturn’s moons that he sent an encoded note to Johannes Kepler in Prague. Kepler could not read the code, as intended by Galileo. But the code proved to the world that Galileo was the first person to find two moons of Saturn — or it proved it when Galileo released the meaning of the code. He was a little hesitant because he wanted to make sure of a few more things before he told the world, but yet he still wanted to get the credit for the discovery.

So far, it’s a good book and we’re enjoying ourselves reading it. It gives us an example of a real scientist at work and how he recorded his findings and why. Reading books like this makes science seem real to the regular person rather than something only done in labs by people with goggles on. I truly think I’m learning more by reading some of these books with my students than I did taking that required science class at the university. Science doesn’t have to be boring. There are all sorts of science topics out there to choose from when picking real books.

Anyway, if you want to see a list of the books my son read for his class, I’ve posted them over at Homeschool RAQ.

It took us 12 hours to read aloud The Lost Painting. I am pretty sure that is correct because I have a little form that I use as a bookmark that I note times, dates, and pages on. Of course, we discuss during that time, too. A straight read through would take less time.

It was a satisfying read. It would be great for a high school student who has an artistic bent. It covers things like restoration, provenance, artistic scholarship, etc. It is actually a non-fiction book but is written as a narrative. It reads just like a novel for the most part, but the names haven’t been changed to protect the innocent. Carravagio’s life story is creatively woven in also.

This is the lost painting.

If you do read the book, follow-up will need to include info showing that art experts found another version of this painting in Rome which was authenticated by Mahon and others. (source)

100 Books Your Child Should Hear Before Starting School

I found this list by clicking through from Painted Rainbows and Chamomile Tea.

I think it’s just stoopid to put “should” in the title of the list. Possibly “might” would be a better word.

OR … wait for it … maybe the could produce a flyer that helps parents and children choose books all by themselves instead to fostering dependence.
Maybe the flyer could state:

• See the shelves (or bins) in the E section? Look through them and pick out some books that look interesting. (After all, why couldn’t any one of those books be a good book?)
• Parents should pick out some books that appeal to them personally because the parent may get to read it a few times if the child enjoys the book a lot.
• Buy books for your child and give the child unlimited access even if it’s a really nice book. If the book gets rough around the edges or falls apart, buy another.
• Not all children like to hear the same story over and over again.
• If the child is not enjoying the book, find another.
• Look for books that evoke happiness, peace, and wonder, ones with lovely illustrations and engaging characters. Reading should be enjoyable.
• The goal is to raise a person who, as an adult, enjoys reading — novels, newspapers, travelogues, how-to books, reports, history books. So try to make all reading experiences with your child enjoyable. Give them happy memories of trips to the library or bookstore with their parents. Give them warm memories of you, the parent, reading books aloud to them on the couch, in bed right before lights out, or out on a summer day in the shady hammock. If they are happy while reading, it will be a feeling that they will want to duplicate as the years go by which will result in a person who ends up loving to read.

One thing that really bugs me about the book list is that some of these books will be enjoyed more (or again) after a child is school age. Just because a book is listed on List A to be read during grade 1 doesn’t mean a 3rd grader may not enjoy the book also. Putting limits on when a person should read a book is foolish.

I know that we didn’t do the Macaulay books (City, Castle, Pyramid, Mosque) when the homeschooling catalogs said we should at around 9 years old. My oldest read City around age 14. We had already studied Rome a few times by then and so the info in City was easily assimilated and had a deeper meaning. If he’d read that book at age 9, he’d never pick it up again later, which is sad since it’s a great book on city planning — great light reading for a high schooler who may be considering engineering. Timing. It’s really important, but getting it right is a matter of serendipity, really. The only reason that City didn’t get read earlier is because I didn’t see it at the library and couldn’t afford it in addition to all the other books we truly needed. I finally found it at a library sale. You see, it wasn’t about sticking to a reading list; it was just how things turned out.

Ack. I just realized that I’ve already written an entry like this. Create Your Own Classics aka Skip Twist. Repeating oneself, a sure sign of getting old. I should be doing crossword puzzles to stave off Alzheimer’s, but crossword puzzles just make me cross.

Anyway, my point, lest I get lost in old-age-induced digressions, is: We can’t let self-proclaimed experts tell us what books need to be read when as if we are too stupid to figure that out for ourselves. A list may be a good starting point, but it shouldn’t be allowed to dictate our reading choices. If we do give it that type of power over us, we are limiting ourselves and our children — and sometimes just wasting our time on drivel-filled books.

But, back to that list for just a second. I do not understand why some books are on that list. I never read my kids Where the Wild Things Are. Teachers and librarians read that book to me incessantly when I was very young. I hated that story. It was creepy and gave me nightmares and made me afraid to go to bed at night.

Here’s how Amazon.com describes the book comments in [] are mine:

Where the Wild Things Are is one of those truly rare books that can be enjoyed equally by a child and a grown-up. If you disagree, then it’s been too long since you’ve attended a wild rumpus. [That’s me! Wild rumpus free for years and proud of it.] Max dons his wolf suit in pursuit of some mischief and gets sent to bed without supper. [Hey, that would be awful. Why scare kids with denial of food?] Fortuitously [Oh, yeah, lucky me], a forest grows in his room, [um … scary] allowing his wild rampage to continue unimpaired. Sendak’s color illustrations (perhaps his finest) are beautiful, and each turn of the page brings the discovery of a new wonder.

The wild things — with their mismatched parts and giant eyes [teeth, claws, fangs] — manage somehow to be scary-looking without ever really being scary; [Um … they are too scary!] at times they’re downright hilarious. [No, they’re not hilarious; they’re creepy.] Sendak’s defiantly run-on sentences [Oh, yeah, let’s teach the children well by using bad grammar defiantly] — one of his trademarks — lend the perfect touch of stream of consciousness to the tale, which floats between the land of dreams [I’ll make my own dreams, please.] and a child’s imagination.

This Sendak [non] classic is more fun than you’ve ever had in a wolf suit [Only wolves and werewolves have fun in wolf suits.], and it manages to reaffirm the notion that there’s no place like home. [There’s no place like home? That’s what Dorothy said after her scary time with the flying monkeys and witch. At least she got to make her own dream.]

Don’t you just want to buy a copy of your own?

I believe that the best* way to learn geography is the way we did it over the years. (Don’t I sound all braggy?)

We read books aloud in the afternoon for usually 1-2 hours, and we used our laser pointer to point out locations on the wall map.

So here’s how it worked: I’d read a book … let’s say He Went With Vasco Da Gama. It was a long time ago, so I’m going by memory here which is extremely faulty these days … okay? So, the expedition started out on the Tagus River. That is in Portugal, right? For some reason, though, I’m thinking the Tagus is in Spain, but I’m almost positive that Tagus was the river at the beginning of the Da Gama book. So, we point out Portugal on the wall map with the laser pointer. We just lay or lie there — whichever is the more proper (lie, probably, but I teach the kids that lying is wrong so laying could actually be more proper, especially for chickens) — and one of the kids will point to Portugal while I say something seemingly inane like, “It’s west of Spain and just north of the Rock of Gibraltar, you know, there by the Pillars of Hercules.” Inane, yes, but also instructive in a sneaky, possibly obnoxious sort of way that some kids don’t notice as being obnoxious.

On other days, I would say other trivial things like “Cape of Good Hope, Verde means green, residents of Sao Tome and Principe still speak Portuguese, Angolans might also, the Pope gave the eastern side of the Line of Demarcation to Portugal.” You get my drift.

Then, because our wall map doesn’t show the Tagus River or which cities prevaricate … I mean lie … on its shores, I pull out Goode’s World Atlas, which is not overly unwieldy, and pass it around. Sometimes, when reading a book with a bit of history in it, we have to resort to a historical atlas because the names and borders of the countries have changed. When we were reading about Cyrus the Great, we initially couldn’t figure out which was the Hycanian Sea.

So, back to Da Gama. We’d read He Went With Vasco Da Gama, and each day we’d get further along on the journey in the book. I seem to remember it ending in Goa, a city/province in India. And each day we would collaborate to retrace the trip that Vasco Da Gama and his men took, trying to remember his stops. I’d read (sometimes the kids read aloud) and we’d enjoy the story and keep track of where the characters were by means of the map and the laser pointer. By the end of the book, we had a pretty good idea of a number of places on the coast of Africa.

Oh, sure, I know that not all of the geographical information sticks, but a lot does stay with you. You’d be surprised. And if all that was gleaned from the exercise was just knowing the locations of Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Portugal, South Africa, and India, it still puts one a bit ahead of things and starts a framework for future geographical learning.

We also sometimes used a globe on a stand that I found at a thrift shop one day for a measly few bucks. It weighs about a pound and is still surviving. It has been awarded a prominent position in our living room behind a chair. It wasn’t too outdated when we got it. It has Zimbabwe and East Germany on it; the geographically average will be able to surmise the decade the globe was manufactured from that info. Because it’s on a stand, it’s pretty easy for us layabouts to pass around.

We also have two different inflatable globes that we tossed around to mix things up, you know, sedentary variety. After some years, my life partner made a map framed — one side was the US and the other was the world. It actually resides in a type of rack on the wall in the office, and it gets brought out to the living room to be set against the tv armoire during most school days. These maps were the most up to date that we could find even though the globes weren’t. That way we did have a definitive place to look for geographical truth. Of course, now Google Earth takes care of that.

Drats! I just tried to “save and continue editing” and it didn’t save and I lost some content. Drats. I can’t remember what I wrote.

Okay, so, let’s see … after a while I started bringing out my change jar. I’d read aloud and ask questions as I went. I’d ask questions, some geographical and some not, and the first to answer would have a random coin tossed to them. Sometimes I’d ask a specific question of each student and other times I’d give a bonus if the students could stump the teacher with one of their own questions. I’m not sure that it’s really a good idea to drag out the money, not just because I about went broke playing that game, but because I tend to believe that learning itself should be its own reward, Alfie Kohn, and all that. And once you start the whole money thing, it’s difficult to go back to the way things were. It does add a spark to the reading period if you can get the right balance. Grapes could also be the reward if you want to do the reward thing. Marbles. Legos. M&Ms ::Shrug::

I think I got off of the topic of geography. Um. The best* way to learn geography, right? So did it work? Yes, fairly well. I don’t believe that my students need to know the location of every country and its capital. However, something close to that would be ideal. I believe they should know where about 98% of the countries are. (You know, Upper Volta is in Africa, near the Sahara, and Malaysia is a bunch of islands basically northwest of Australia. Mumbai used to be Bombay and Myanmar used to be Burma and the capital of Australia is not Sydney.)

MAIN POINT: I think that geography is something more easily retained when learned in context. When it’s married to a story, it tends to stick around longer. When it’s part of a shared story between family members, then we can together refer back to that information for years thus supplying us with a painless method of review. Oh, I know, this method takes years to implement, but we started early … like from Day One. I think I started it initially because I spent day in and day out with these children and when I discussed country X, I wanted them to know where I was talking about — we needed a common ground, so to speak, when having discussions. A basic geographical knowledge is something that most people should bring to the table; I think most people agree, probably.

In the end, we can use World Discovery Deluxe (discontinued) and Geosense.net or some similar software program to learn the capitals and countries that were missed somewhere along the line. We have a GeoSafari Laptop, too, which provided some enjoyment over the years and can help fill the inevitable, but mostly inconsequential, gaps. And we are currently enjoying Geosense.net quite a bit. You log in (only a user name and password) and play online with others. My daughter and I can even sometimes manage to play each other. It’s not an easy game; it’s actually challenging because time is also a factor. It’s fun to see how close you can get to the proper city. I am awful at all those countries that used to be part of the USSR.

*Of course, I don’t believe that our way is best. I’m poking a bit of fun at “the experts” who have a penchant for telling us what is “best.”

‘Tis the season to shuffle books, or maybe you’d prefer the term redistribute. Recently I sorted quickly through my books, culled 1500, and off they went to the thrift store.

I only have one year of homeschooling left and many of the books were part of our home library “just in case.” You know, just in case someone needed something to read or had a sudden interest in some event, topic, or person. It was difficult parting, though, because I still wanted to read many of them. An example would be Nina Brown Baker’s He Wouldn’t Be King: The Story of Simon Bolivar. I got rid of some really great books and a few duds, too. So now I’ve got a little more room on my bookshelves.

Last year about this time I also performed a book purge, though not as extensive. I took those to the local homeschool book swap. That was a little strange. Many of the folks selling their stuff had really good prices on their curriculum and books. However, very few people were buying. It seemed really strange. Even Sonlight and Usborne titles in immaculate condition didn’t sell for even 25 or 50 cents. I hid a nice, pretty old-fashioned-looking Henty for $5 in the middle of a box as a treat to the person willing to search. So that was fun to watch. She was so surprised to find it. I can’t remember the title, but it was one I bought but ended up not using because, for us, Hentys didn’t live up to their hype.

At the end of that sale, I donated a bunch of the books to some group that claimed to provide curriculum to “destitute” homeschooling locals and gave about 5 boxes to the thrift store to be sold at exorbitant prices. So that purge went well also.

Anyway, I feel so much lighter after getting rid of 1500 books. In just another year, I’ll get to do it again. I’m sort of looking forward to it.

Lisa and Lottie is the story of Disney’s Parent Trap and Parent Trap.

Maybe you already knew that, but I just figured it out. I was culling our home library because the kids are older now. This book had been sitting on our shelves for years … unread, btw. Amazon.com gives it 5 stars. And there aren’t that many cheap copies out there, so buy it now!

Lisa lives in Vienna and Lottie lives in Munich. That quite a change from the California/East Coast version. Anyway, I’ve transferred Lisa and Lottie to my nightstand and informed my daughter.

According to a recent article, Flying Point Press has started printing a nonfiction series for boys aged 10-15. It has pulled a few of its titles from the critically acclaimed Landmark series (my review).

Here are the first fifteen titles:

• The Stout-Hearted Seven: Orphaned on the Oregon Trail by Neta Lohnes Frazier
• Lawrence of Arabia by Alistair MacLean*
• Geronimo: Wolf of the Warpath by Ralph Moody*
• General George Patton: Old Blood & Guts by Alden Hatch
• The Sinking of the Bismarck: The Deadly Hunt by William L. Shirer*
• John Paul Jones: The Pirate Patriot by Armstrong Sperry*
• George Washington: Frontier Colonel by Sterling North*
• The Barbary Pirates by C. S. Forester*
• Teddy Roosevelt: American Rough Rider by John Garraty
• Behind Enemy Lines: A Young Pilot’s Story by H. R. DaMallie
• Ben Franklin: Inventing America by Thomas Fleming
• Admiral Richard Byrd: Alone in the Antarctic by Paul Rink
• Path to the Pacific: The Story of Sacagawea by Neta Lohnes Frazier
• Amelia Earhart: Flying Solo by John Burke
• Alexander the Great by John Gunther*

It looks like these books would be fine for girls also if you ask me.

My son really enjoyed Lawrence of Arabia when he was about 14 or 15. I imagine most boys that age would, considering it was written by the successful and talented author Alistair MacLean. Here’s a little more info about it that I tried to decipher from the dustjacket:

“[Lawrence of Arabia’s] passions affected the outcome of a world war and helped determine the future of the Middle East.

This is the story of how one man, a young British officer, fell in love with the mystery and romance of Arabia, and how he helped build a mighty army out of scattered Arab tribes. His tale is filled with impossible marches through waterless deserts, ambushes of Turkish troop trains, blinding sandstorms and blizzards, and fierce battles on camelback.

Alistair MacLean uses his remarkable storytelling skills to bring to life an army of colorful characters in Arabia: British officers, Turkish soldiers, and Bedouin warriors. With amazing details of bloody battles and desert treks, MacLean gives us an important insight into the origins of the Middle East as we know it today.”

We listened to The Stout-Hearted Seven way back when and thoroughly enjoyed it. I imagine that many children would be inspired by the Sager story. I remember my teacher reading to our class about the Sager children.

Anyway, Landmark Books have long been a staple in homeschools. We have quite a few still on our shelves, and I intend to keep them for the grandkids. Some are just so helpful, but others can be a bit dry. It just depends. There’s a list of the “World Landmarks” and the “US Landmarks” on this page near the bottom.

I’m not sure that buying a book and handing it to a teen is always the best way for the student to enjoy the book. For us, it sometimes worked better if we read the book together as a way to wind down to the school day. Sometimes the student will ask to read the book on his/her own after getting a couple of chapters finished, and I often went along with that and still read it aloud to the other. But sometimes, we just read it all together, taking turns and folding clothes. Sometimes we’d play “Stump the Smart-Aleck Mom.” Sometimes the book was a dud, but usually not. Sometimes I had to leave a new book on the coffee table and hope for the best. I ended up just buying books (mostly from thrift shops or I’d have gone broke) and then letting the kids take their pick out of a pile or off the shelf. You know, “Go read something from the Colonial Period.” Sure, I have lots of books that my children never read, but they did read a lot and so did I. So, I can’t say I regret overbuying. And now I’m just blathering on … blah, blah, blah.

hat tip: Farm School

*part of the original Landmark series