She came to the US in high school and worked as a software engineer and was pretty modern about women's lib and all. She was proud of how much she would get when she married, proud and relieved. This, along with the jewelry her in-laws gave her, gave her security. It was her own wealth, not her husband's. She said it was nothing like a bride-price like in India. To her, the difference was who owned the dowery. In terms of family economics, they probably are quite similar, but to the wife, I can see how they be entirely different things. She also said that her in-laws were expected to provide her with a fully furnished house. -Nan

In many times and places, parents are expected to set their children up in life. Here, now, it is usually done by providing education. Other places and times, it consisted of paying for a training or a place in the military or for a child to get into politics or whatever. Dowries were the way the fathers set up their daughters for life. I don't think they've entirely gone out of fashion, either; they just tend to be called something else and they usually no longer have to get around the problem of men managing most of a families monitary resources. How many of us women have received cars, furniture, first month's rent, house downpayments, stocks, or trustfunds when we married? I bet quite a few of us, if our families had the wherewithall. -Nan

First, I check out my spine. I sit down and read 10 pages of the spine and time myself. That gives me some idea of how long it takes to read a certain amount of material. Then I double it. That accounts for our discussion if I'm reading it aloud to the children, or the children's slower reading speed if they are reading it to themselves. If it is for my youngest and he is reading it to himself, I cut my time by a third because he reads much faster than I do. I look at how it is organized and make sure I want to go through it front to back. I look at whether I want to do all the chapters. I look at what activities the book contains and which of them I want to do. When I'm familiar with the spine, I come up with a routine surrounding it. For example, for Physics, we read the chapter aloud together, watch the video, make notes for the chapter, do the review questions and think and explains orally together, do the plug and chugs and then correct them. I have similar routines for all our subjects. This is key for me, since I mostly open-and-go (even in high school). Next, I get out the calendar and count up how many weeks of school we will do for the school year. I do count weeks following 3-day weekends, but don't count half weeks like Thanksgiving week. These are our catchup weeks. I divide the spine by the number of weeks and see how much we can realistically cover given the amount of time I want to spend on the subject each week. I usually discover that we will have to skip some things, or that we can only do extra projects and books for some of the things. I usually divide up the week up into reading, extra reading, and a project. Sometimes the extra reading works better if you do something like: read the spine and outline one spread of it and either trace a map or write a small report each week, and for each section, like medieval or Egypt or whatever, read one extra book and do one extra more time consuming project. In science, you probably can't do more than one lab a week, so you might read and do extra reading the most of the time, but only pick a few of the projects in the book to do. The planning part comes in deciding how many pages to get through each week, which page to outline (if you are outlining), and which projects to do. Then I make a list of what to do. In the lefthand margin of a page, I write the week number and it's dates. Then next to each, I write the spine pages to be read and what projects/extra reading we want to do. So, in a nutshell, you are going to figure out how to divide your spine into the number of weeks you have (sometimes 2 week chunks work better or whatever), pick something from each week's reading to do a project and/or some extra reading on, and then write it all down as a list to be checked off as you do it. You are going to assign any especially big projects their own week. You are going to leave a few weeks blank for catch-up time. If you get too behind, you are going to just read the spine until you catch up. Does that help? I have found that in a week, we could fit in reading two or three spreads, outlining one of them, reading one library book per main topic heading (mammals or Egypt or something), a little extra reading per week, and then either doing a short project (like making a map or researching about something or writing a short report on something or making a model or trying something (like chipping arrowheads or playing a game) or doing some artwork or cooking something or making a costume or ...). If it is science, we can read a spine, discuss it, read a library book about it, do an activity, and keep up with our nature journals. Trying to fit more into a week didn't work very well for us. Mostly, I just do what TWTM suggests GRIN. That is where I learned to plan this way. I have found fairly brief plans to be the best. I usually don't plan out our projects or our reading beforehand because the reading depends on what is available at the library any given week, and the children like to make up their own projects and activities. They are always full of ideas of things they'd like to try after we've read about something. -Nan

I think the problem is the limited choices. When you do this in your head, you break 46 into 40+6, deal with the 40 first, add whatever is left over to the 6, then deal with that. So, you ask how many 3's in 40 and the answer is (10 for 30 of the 40) + (3 for the other 10 of the 40) + 1 left over (which you add to the 6). Your partial answer is now 13 and you are working on 7. When you do long division, you can't answer 13 for how many 3's go into 40 because your answer is going into the 10's place and is reallly a kind of 10. What you are really doing is asking how many 3's multiplied by 10 will go into 40. This is really confusing until the child gets used to NOT answering 13 and leaving more to be shoved onto the next number. No wonder they get confused. -Nan

Any suggestions? Something like a particularly good teenage video game would be great. Thank you! -Nan

Peace walking LOL.

Sometimes it is boring to work by yourself. My son felt hurt at the end of 8th when I suggested he be more independent, and begged me to keep doing things as we always had. In retrospect, I can see that he was right and am very glad I listened to him. Glad the schedule is working. :)

I'll get back to you. We spent a fall reading Sophie's World and I felt the same way (or at least, as far as I can tell by my quick scan of your post). I also feel like we've been pretty successful at not letting this high school stuff get in the way of education. So the short answer is: no you are not crazy, and yes, it is well worth it. -Nan

That covers history, literature, philosophy, and government all together.

We ALL need to know when school is over. That doesn't mean that they don't have some "homework", but I try to be very consistant about what is assigned. They know they have math and Latin, and on the weekends, they have to read. In other words, they know when they need to be working, and when they are free. This isn't perhaps the best for making them independent, but I do at least have cheerful, cooperative students this way. Independence seems to be coming along fine as they get older, too. My 11th grader is doing his CC classes completely independently this semester, other than getting signed up for them and driving back and forth. I really, really recommend having a set schedule if you don't have natural scholars. That and trying not to talk about school except in school. The unschooling ideal of learning all the time is great if you are actually unschooling, but can be a bit much if you aren't. Also, as they get older, they have to work harder at the boring bits to get the satisfying bits. The stuff they are learning just doesn't have much immediate gratification involved. It takes a long time to adjust to this. I think this accounts for a lot of the lack of motivation that shows up about 7th or 8th grade. I try not to pretend that school is all light and joy and we are naturally going to love every minute of it. That strategy works well with younger children, but fails as they have to work harder. I try to be sympathetic about this. HTH -Nan

Using Creepy Crawlers and the Scientific Method, I taught my son how to design an experiment and write it up, and I taught him how to use nature guides and keep a nature journal. Then we did tons of natural history while he made up his own experiments in all kinds of other things. We worked on getting our ham radio licenses, became volunteers at Audubon (plenty of field work opportunities there), did Lego Robotix, did the chemistry book recommended in TWTM (Fun with Atoms and Molecules? I learned more from it than I did in my college chem class and it was totally hands-on), did some archaeology, used a telescope (there are nice books that tell you what to do with one), watched Novas, built catapults and other things associated with our history, measured the height of trees, tidepooled, worked on weather, tracked hurricanes, checked out vernal pools, ... His older brother certified a vernal pool and he was involved in that. I got stacks of library books out of the children's science section and he read them. I just let him BE a scientist until he had enough math to do Singapore's Interactive Science and this year Conceptual Physics. We tried a few outside programs but we never managed to get the level right. People have recommended Prentice Hall's Explorer texts, too. My sister is using these with 7th and 8th graders (not accelerated), and in general she says she likes them, but occasionally they are frustrating because they simplify things, obviously, and sometimes they do it so much that the science breaks down, a problem for very bright children. I vote you teach him how to keep a lab notebook and design an experiment, get him lots of library books to give him ideas, and let him play with that for a few more years until the program levels catch up to him. HTH -Nan

My children are gymnasts, but I haven't listed that as phys ed but as extra curricular. That way, it looks like the after school varsity level sport that it is comparable to, making my children look like the athletes they are. Under extra curriculars, I wrote, "Men's Gymnastic Team, competed at the regional level". I also put "Snowboarding". I, too, am doing transcripts by subject, not year. I put in a physical education catagory and listed a one credit course, Rockclimbing, since he has had some formal instruction in that.

Sigh. They think of ingenious ways of not following the directions and the awful part is that by the time they explain to me why they can't or don't want to, they have me agreeing with them. Learning to type well, using a word processor, and doing various brainstorming activities first then getting something, even if bad, down so we move out of the original writing stage and into the fixing stage has been helpful. It is hard to write enough for the process to speed up and the writing to improve when you write slowly. It is a vicious circle. I didn't do a lot of fixing until they sped up. -Nan

And the best thing I've seen for explaining the scientific method and getting my children to invent science experiments themselves is Creepy Crawlers and the Scientific Method. It complements nature journals very well.

We bought small sketch pads in which each page was half unlined, half lined. We put that and a pencil and a small magnifying glass (wrapped in kleenex so it couldn't start a fire) in a ziplock (very important GRIN). When something exciting happened, like a crows mobbing a hawk, or a strange looking caterpillar, or a funny print in the snow, I had my children draw it and write a few sentences describing it. We also used the nature journals to keep track of the weather and make predictions for the afternoon. They'd note the type of clouds and the temperature in the morning and try to guess what it would be like in the afternoon. Anyone who guessed right got an m+m. When we went somewhere, we brought our nature journals and sketched tidepool creatures or the fish at the aquarium or something. We sketched the birds at the feeder and made notes about their behavior. We also used lots of nature guides; when the children saw a bird, I had them draw it, look it up in a nature guide, and then make add notes about what the nature guide said to their own notes. Also extremely important was coming up with further questions about the creature. They didn't have to be answered, but coming up with them encouraged them to think. All in all, it was a very worthwhile endeavor. The children learned tons of science vocabulary fairly effortlessly, learned about the plants and creatures around them, improved their drawing, learned to observe things closely, learned to be curious and think of questions (good for science, writing, English discussions, and many other things), learned to pick out important information and take notes, practised writing, and learned basic research skills. Pretty good for something so relaxed and fun! -Nan

I was nervous, too, because I relied on them for NEM 1 and 2, but we seem to be doing ok without it for 3. NEM3 introduces some new topics at the basic level, which might be why we're ok. Or maybe it is because my son is older now and can figure it out better on his own. Anyway, I vote you give it a try.

These things do tend to run in families GRIN. The medium may be different, but the creative drive is the same. :) Good luck and best wishes! -Nan

You know how people make allowences allowances? for people who are artists? And they don't expect them to be well-rounded? Well, they make similar allowences for people who are programmers. When I was working, everyone else wore suits. The programmers wore sweaters and jeans with holes. Everyone else went home at 5. The programmers stayed all night at critical times and played computer games during the day during the off times. Nobody expected their offices to be neat as long as their code was. The lucky ones had some concept of how to feed themselves on something other than twinkies out of the vending machines, so their bodies worked a bit better. I'm not saying that you shouldn't work on getting him to keep his closet organized, just that I knew lots of brilliant programmers who were similarly organizationally handicapped and people might be more forgiving about it than you'd expect. Make sure he has his morals firmly in place respecting privacy and theft because understanding computers can make you much more powerful than other people and you have to understand when and when it is not ok to use that power. I know you are afraid of letting your son down. Most of us are. I think you probably don't need to worry too much. Most programmers I know are good at self-teaching provided they are given the time and access to resources, both of which your son has. Computers make that easy. It isn't like learning welding or something like that that can't be done from home. Later, in college, they take formal programming classes and unlearn a few bad habits, learn how to structure huge programs, learn how the business works, a bunch more about the innards and uses of computers, and some more languages. Meanwhile, they teach themselves and talk to each other via computer and find the information they want via computer. They just need lots and lots of time. Fortunately, homeschooling will allow your son that. Don't give up on the basic academics and organizational stuff, so he can survive college, and don't give up on the history and literature stuff so he has material to be creative with, but be encouraged that the brain wiring that makes those things difficult for him will probably make the programming easier for him than for other people. If he seems to be floundering or wants a leg up or is getting frustrated, then a programming class in VB or C++ is a great idea. If it is an online class, though, make sure YOU keep track of the assignments and find the time for him to work on them and help him get the assignments back to the teacher. This is something that was totally beyond my son's capabilities until this year, when he is 17 and has done it a few times already. -Nan

biling-fam@nethelp.no It is something you subscribe to, so I'm not sure this is the right address for subscribing. If you can't figure it out, let me know and I'll look in my records and figure out how I subscribed. -Nan

I overheard my youngest on the phone telling his friend that Dante was some wicked famous poet from a long time ago who was very cool and describing the bits he thought they could incorporate into their D+D game. Guess he's digesting his reading ok. My older one woke up the morning his first CC composition class paper was due and noticed that there was nothing to it, managed to rewrite it in the car, got a B-, and went to the prof to find out what to do to raise his grade. He also managed to get the train home by himself. The youngest learned to snowboard. And having learned in physics why something floats or sinks, the older one suddenly said, "Now I understand that movie where the guy drowns in the beer vat! Alcohol is less dense than water so swimming didn't work. At least that was the idea behind it." I guess that's 4, but one of them isn't really learning, just doing. -Nan, who's husband's solution to the Feb. blues was to take us all skiing for the weekend, a really special treat! It was glorious to be outside all day long moving.

It sounds from your description like he's doing exactly what he should be doing. Probably he has a particular problem and is looking in all those books for a way to solve it, or he is exploring the possibilities of his medium. Neither of those things requires that he go through a book from beginning to end. In fact, that would be a seriously inefficient way to go about teaching yourself something. I also suspect that he isn't wired in a particularly sequential way. I usually read books back to front in bits first. That's how I pull out the pieces that I need/want. Most books contain lots that I already know, and lots of sort of connecting or introduction or conclusion pieces that aren't very important, and I can just as well skip those. I also like to see what I'm going to learn before I go about learning it. This means that I'm better off reading the bit at the end of the book where they tell you what you've learned and how to use it in the future FIRST, then the particulars. That's why I often do it back to front. Have you heard of the SQ3R study method? It uses something very like that - first you survey, then you make up questions about the material, THEN you actually read it and find the answers to the questions. This doesn't entail reading the book from front to back sequentially. I suspect, from the number and types of books that he is getting out, that he is surveying the programming world, seeing what different languages are capable of doing (each has its specialty), what sorts of restrictions apply to each, what sorts of situations each is good in. He needs this information before he can choose which particular language to write a particular program in. Also, programming languages are very similar to each other, so you don't necessarily want to read all of the book. Programming is a very doing orientied thing, so it is easier to learn a language bit by bit as you need a particular command. Often, the books are sort of dictionaries of commands, and not particularly useful to read straight through. You'd never remember all the commands if you did. Honestly, what he is doing is exactly what an adult pursueing a hobby would do. I've been doing the same thing with watercolour books as I try to teach myself to watercolour. One year, I decided to make a Japanese garden, a pretty intense undertaking. Over the course of 3 months, I got every book on Japanese gardens available through interlibrary loan. I read bits of them all, looked at all the pictures, surveyed a few books on history and gardens and pruning and bonsai and Japan in general, read large portions of the few that really were helpful, and then and only then did I have enough knowledge to plan our garden. I did the same thing with homeschooling. You know when you go to cook something, how you read all the recipes for that thing that you can find, and then make up your own? It is sort of like that. When you do a research project, you don't read all your reference books cover to cover, either. This gives you several options for structuring and assessing classes: With all those library books being taken out, you can definately have a "Survey of Programming Languages" course. Input for the course you can leave to your son. He's doing a great job on his own. For output, you could ask him to write a report on each language. Each report could include: What is the language used for? Who invented it? Where was it first used? What can it do well? What can't it do? How is it different from other languages? Give some examples of where it is used. What sorts of computers run it? Give a brief example of the code (write a short program). If he is writing programs in a language, then you can design a course around a particular language. You could call it "Introductory VB", "Intermediate VB" or whatever. List his main reference book as the text (but don't expect him to have read every word of it). Then look at the programs he's written. This might be one big one, or several small ones. If it is one big one that doesn't work yet, have him write a bunch of small ones: one demonstrating different looping commands, one demonstrating different types of variables, one demonstrating different ways of storing data, one demonstrating how to use subroutines, one demonstrating using sound, and one demonstrating different ways of using graphics. That, together with a bigger project, would be a year's output, I should think. It may be difficult to think up examples of these things. If it is, you might look at the sorts of programs a tutorial has students write. He can use games to demonstrate these structures. Tictactoe, black jack, go fish, a simple dice game, and games like that could be used to demonstrate the things above. A simplified Dungeons and Dragons type game is good for demonstrating data structures. If he took a class, he'd do more programs, but he wouldn't be coming up with them himself and he'd have more guidence on writing and fixing them, so I, personally, think this is a reasonable amount, especially if he has put in time learning the language up until now. This is just his output for the class. This is somewhat hard to judge, though. Remind him to use lots of comments and pay attention to the flow of the program and how the data is passed around and make sure he is trying to do this gracefully - no spagetti code. He can write a sort of lab report for his large program stating its purpose (just a general statement), its specifications (it will do this and this and this), its design (a list of variables and data structures, a list or diagram of the flow of the program, possibly a list of subrountines needed, and whatever else he needs), and a plan for testing the program. He should do this before he does his program, because it will force him to work out the general structure before he begins, sort of like planning a paper before you write it. If he has already begun his big program, then he should stop and write it, then continue. This bit is a drag and no fun, but will give you a rubric with which to decide how well the program worked. Did it meet the specifications? Unlike a lab report, this process is probably going to be rather cyclical; as he writes the program, he may discover his original design won't work and change it. Have him not only rewrite the code, but update his report as well. Don't have him leave it until the end. Any outside course that he takes can have its own credit. You will have to decide how much credit to give based on the amount of time involved. If it is an adult class, you could mark it honours, or double the amount of high school credits it is worth. Don't forget that there is no reason why you can't assign a class a quarter of a credit or a third of a credit. When I said organize a paper like a program, I meant organize a program, not organize his learning. Programs are organized in pieces - this piece does this and then there is another piece that does that and then another bit to do something else, sort of like paragraphs in a paper. The part where you declare your variables and things at the beginning is like the introduction. HTH It's been a long time since I did any programming, so if something I've said doesn't strike your son as right, ignore it. I'm probably remembering wrong. -Nan

That is totally awesome! Programmers are a breed apart. They usually are lopsided because of the huge amounts of time needed to get good at their medium. Think of it more like art than liberal arts and you'll do fine. -Nan

LOL - and two more thoughts: Remember that programming is almost purely creative. If he's doing a lot, he probably doesn't have much energy to spare for other things like academics. Think of someone working full time. And when you are feeling gloomy and time crunched, remember that it is probably better to make him really good at something he is talented at than mediocre at things that he isn't good at and doesn't want to do. -Nan

You might want to point out that he should organize his papers the same way he organizes a program. If he hasn't thought of that before, it might be helpful. He already knows how to do that, and do it fairly well. Just another thought. -Nan

Don't worry! He is learning to think just fine. Originally, a classical education was designed to teach people to be successful politicians so they could influence their neighbors to vote their way. This gave them power. Later on, its purpose was to teach people to be good Christians. Still later (like when my mother was sent to the local Latin high school), it was to teach people to think. A liberal arts education was meant to continue to produce a well-rounded thinker. Logic and grammar Latin are supposed to teach a certain kind of thinking to a certain kind of person. That person is a word oriented, people oriented person, the majority. If you are aiming to make your children into politicians or missionaries, it is exactly the sort of education you want, no matter what sort of child your child is, because it emphasizes verbal convincing skills. It also is a very good general education for the average word-oriented, people-oriented child who doesn't know what they want to do when they grow up. Notice nobody is particularly worried about teaching engineers to think? That is because their education pretty much automatically ensures that they learn to think. The problem is that if you are a people-oriented person, you would die of boredom going through engineering training. Classical education gets around this problem for everyone else. At least that is my engineering perspective LOL. Don't get me wrong; I love TWTM education and I am giving it to my engineer youngest, but I am, naturally, modifying it. The programming your son is doing is going to teach him the skills many people use logic and Latin and grammar for, just in a different medium. You are so, so lucky! Your son knows what he wants to do and actually IS someone. He even knows how he wants to get there, and it is within his capabilities, and he's working hard right now to get there! If you aren't a programmer or a musician yourself, it may not look like much, but I can think of a number of families in my area who would be delighted to have your son GRIN and would not be worried about his future. Don't forget that he can take CC classes earlier than he enrolls in CC. We started them junior year with a few very gentle classes to ease him into the classroom environment. The scary part was taking the placement tests. Perhaps you can keep those in mind as a goal? I'd concentrate on the math for now, and make sure he is reading easily and well (usually a matter of reading lots of slightly too easy books), and make sure he can write a 5 paragraph paper, not a spectacularly interesting one, but one that is technically (with the help of spell-checker) ok. Jensen's Format Writing is doing the trick for my engineer son. Study skills and time management are good goals, too. All that will prepare him for surviving CC. Meanwhile, as others are saying, you probably should put a huge amount of time into getting a math book finished each year. Sometimes this takes us 3 hours a day. I would forget about grading. I can't teach mine properly and they can't learn properly if they are worrying about their grade. Perhaps you can assess him some other way? It sounds like he has a couple of programming credits already. Perhaps you can assess how many by using Carnegie hours? Does it matter if you take more than a year to finish the science? And as far as literature and history go, I'd go lightly. If he reads a few books each semester, that together with the writing should be good for an English credit. And he could just read history and use topics from it for his writing. You might want to remind him that lots of games draw on history or literature for their ideas. I just wouldn't expect too much output from an engineering-type person in those areas. You might look at the PASS stuff. That seems to be an efficient way to get a subject you aren't particularly interested in out of the way. Don't forget you can spread history out over several years, too. You don't need 4 years of it. I bet you'll be very surprised when your son is about 17 and you look back on this post. I certainly am! They grow SO much! Hope this helps a bit. Hugs. I SO SO know how you feel. -Nan