Our Junior Novelists Club

National Novel Writing Month (NanoWriMo) is coming! Each November writers across the country put their thinking caps on, find a quiet place to hide and start on a crazy adventure together: writing a novel in one month. Actually, the official goal is 50, 000 words in one month, but we are all aiming for a finished novel. This year there will be five new novelists working toward the finish line through Nanowrimos Junior Writer's Program.

Friday afternoon, five brave little souls from the Levy Homeschool Group started their own Junior Novelists Club. I had the immense joy of leading them through all the rites and rituals pertinent to starting a new club such as creating a secret handshake (shhh! Its a secret!), writing a solemn oath (I pledge to never write a boring story...) and making up a really cool, totally original name for our club (The Creative Adventure, Flying Bionicle, Gorgeous Novelists Club).

Once all the official work had been completed, we got down to the real business of writing. Each member is working to earn their badges and this week they explored the concept of Genre. Then, each member chose a genre for their novel and began writing a list of items that they felt MUST be included in their book. What creativity! I can hardly wait to award those lovely badges this week at our next meeting.

{By the way, lest you think I am inordinately gifted with creativity, please be aware that I borrowed all of these ideas from another source who freely offered it to those of us who want to lead young minds toward literary greatness. Email me if you would like to view the link.}

Quiet Moments

I know I have been posting mostly about all the big, fun projects we have been doing lately, but I've decided that as much fun as all of that is for me, it is really the quiet moments that make this experience so rewarding. Here are a few examples:

The other day we were sitting in church and Evie took out her notebook to entertain herself. After doodling for a while like she normally does, she turned to a fresh page and began writing a few of the words she has learned in school. I sat smiling proudly at her, tears in my eyes, when suddenly I noticed Graham look down at her paper. He looked up at me in astonishment and I nearly lost a tear. What a precious moment we shared over that child's golden head, there in the silence of church.

Grayson decided at the beginning of the school year to skip second grade math and go straight to multiplication. Despite a few small concerns over this, I have moved forward with the theory that student-led learning is more effective (a theory you can read about in many educational journals, but hardly practiced in our schools.) Well, we have breezed through the "times tables" and he is just amazing me with his understanding on this subject. What normally would have taken several months in 3rd grade has only taken us three weeks in 2nd grade. Yesterday I introduced the 9s to him and he panicked. I showed him two different tricks and then remembered a third, but he kept saying, "I just don't see it!" Finally, I got out a fresh sheet of paper and wrote as clearly as I could, keeping all the numbers in straight, even columns to encourage the visual pattern in the list of multiplication facts. Then, I asked him to explain to me what I had just said. He did this word for word, but still seemed convinced he didn't understand. So, I gave him a sample problem and showed how I could come up with the answer just by using my "tricks" I had shown him. He got it. He did 5 more problems, including one that was basically algebra to show me how he understood. Wow! We did a happy dance with his sisters to celebrate. Once again, what would have taken a week (at least) in public school had only taken us 10 minutes at home. Incredible.

Today I got the kids started on their lessons and then went to start laundry and return some phone calls. Suddenly, I realized that all the kids had disappeared and the house was eerily quiet. I went upstairs to shepherd them back into submission, but when I opened the bedroom door, the scene that met me nearly melted my heart. The younger two were cuddled up on either side of LilliAnn as she sat in her bed reading Heidi. How could I interrupt such a precious moment?

As I tiptoed away I said a prayer of thanks to God for our new lifestyle and all the quiet little moments of learning and love that now fill our days.

Weekend fun

The fabulous thing about homeschooling is its flexibility and ability to bring a family together. Last weekend we got to enjoy both of these benefits on a little trip out to Camp Carter. For those of you who don't know, Camp Carter is a property that Graham's family owns out near Quitman, Arkansas where we all like to go play in the woods. They are building cabins there and we generally enjoy family time and nature hikes while we are there. So, it seemed the perfect place to get messy with a big project I had been planning for our Egyptian study.

After spending the morning with grandma and grandpa, Graham took the kids into the workshop to help them build wooden frames, which was a lot of fun to watch. They all did really well, but Evie seriously impressed Daddy with her skills. She was not at all afraid to put a little force behind that power drill and she handled it like a pro (well, like a pro who is only about 3 feet tall, but still...)

Once they were finished, the kids and I hiked down to the creek to begin the real point of all this: making mud bricks. We had been studying in Bible about how the Israelites were building cities for pharaoh out of mud bricks and I'm sure you all remember how one of the ways pharoah punished them when they asked to leave was by taking away their straw supply for the brick making. I always thought this meant they had to make bricks without straw, but actually, Exodus says they had to go find the straw themselves and still make thier expected quota of bricks, which considerably added to the length of their workday.

Well, we decided to see how hard thier work must have been by testing this out for ourselves. We started mixing mud in big buckets using a mixture of clay, soil and sand from the creek bed, water and straw. This alone turned out to be an extreme task. Not only does it take an enormous amount of mud, but a seriously strong arm to stir such a nasty mixture (did I mention the mud smelled incredibly foul since it held a lot of rotten leaves. The kids kept asking why it smelled like poop.) After all this, we finally decided it was ready (or at least that WE were ready to move on) and we began pouring/scooping the muddy mixture into the brick molds.

The first one was horribly sloppy and water seeped out of the bottom, trickling into pools that we now considered to be the equivalent of stinky booby traps. Moving on to the next brick we had a bit more success, but by the time we got to the third brick frame the mud was almost gone! We only had enough to fill it half way. (Did I mention these were giant buckets?)

So, here is what we learned through this messy adventure:
1. Brick making is hard work that would have to be perfected in order to ever make any substantial structure.
2. It takes a lot of work, time and physical stamina to make mud bricks (although a few thousand slaves would certainly make the job easier.)
3. Not only does it take a while to make the bricks, but it takes a lot longer for them to dry. One could argue that in Arkansas, they might never be dry. Good thing we have so many trees.
4. Homeschooling rocks!