On your mark, get set, go!

More on Pick Your Own Fruits:

Apple Picking - A Tasty Temptation

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Writers often feel as if they exist on the periphery of life.

Perhaps this is obvious to you, but it’s a revelation to me. 

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, in Pen On Fire: A Busy Woman’s Guide to Igniting the Writer Within, describes how writers often feel like they don’t quite blend in, like they are an “other” - an outsider looking on.  Writers are misfits trying to make sense of their world. 

I won’t lie.  I’ve always felt like I don’t quite fit in, but then, I just thought that I was an oddball.

As a little girl in Argentina, my brother and I were the only niños rubios in a world of brunettes.  Meme, my abuela, held us up so strangers could pat our golden blonde heads, just like toy poodles. ¡Que Lindos!

When we moved to the US, I didn’t speak a word of English in an American public school.  I didn’t speak the language, and I didn’t understand the culture.

As an Argentinean, I expected to greet friends with a kiss on each cheek.  But, my 7-year-old friend explained, Americans don’t kiss.

A lifetime later, I’m never quite sure whether to kiss, or not, and is it one kiss, or two?  This confusion leads to embarrassing accidents, where you make a wrong turn and nervously kiss someone on the neck, or worse.

By the end of the school year, I spoke American fluently, and I knew not to kiss friends, but we kept on moving from school to school in the Washington D.C. border states, before relocating to Puerto Rico.

Entering 6th Grade in San Juan, I barely spoke Spanish, and an Argentinean Spanish at that.  Over the year, I learned about guaguas, churros and chicharrones.  I discovered new friends and unprecedented freedom, but we weren’t there long enough to be anything other than outsiders.

In June of 1977, we moved to another Caribbean island - St. Thomas, USVI.  My parents still have this house, and it is where I put down my deepest roots.  Thirty years later, this is the place that I call home.

And there I was, entering Junior High School, a white Argentinean-American-Puerto Rican girl in the stew pot that is the US Virgin Islands.  Yeah, you could say that I felt like an “other.”

So, what do you think?  Which comes first: the writer or the otherness?

Pen On Fire Journey

In January, I made a Resolve To Write and gave myself permission to Steal Time for my dream because it’s never too late to be A Writing Late Bloomer.

I flexed my writing muscles on vacation in Travel Learning: The Art of Observation and then took shameless advantage of my children to describe the beauty of a Winter Wonder: Through a Child’s Eyes.

Preparing for more ambitious projects, I gathered my online tools and made a list Regarding Research.    And then, I was stuck on an endless replay while Teaching My Pen To Listen. 

Fortunately, I joined the Home Educator Writers Group, and now I’m back to cranking out the stories.

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We missed the fireworks this Fourth of July, but caught an explosion of flavors at Coney Island instead.

Our only plan this weekend was to pick up a friend at JFK Airport.  That’s all.

However, if you know anything at all about my family, you’ll know that we would never pass up an opportunity to turn a simple road trip into an adventure.

My daughter has been fascinated by corn dogs for at least a week, but she had never actually tasted one.  Since we were going to be in NYC anyway, how could we pass up an opportunity to taste the quintessential corn dog - the Coney Island corn dog?

Of course, we had to sample corn dogs from a couple of vendors.  Who had the best corn dogs?  Fugetaboutit, it was no contest.  Dave preferred Nathan’s corn dogs, but the rest thought that the no-name brand corn dogs at the corner stand were tastier.

And how do you follow the corn dogs?  Italian ices in delicious flavors - almond, spumoni, cotton candy, and so many more - are the perfect accompaniment.

We loved the food, and the rides - an old-fashioned water flume and the historic Cyclone wooden roller-coaster - but it’s the incredible mix of people that make Coney Island a unique experience.

Where else would you get the chance to hear a young Puerto Rican carny hurl insults at a “shoot the freak” paint ball exhibit?

I found this a curious choice.  Freaks, by definition, are persons who appear unusual. 

That might include everyone at Coney Island.  It is such a fascinating mix of people from every corner of the world, and from every possible socioeconomic background.

It would be such a waste to lose the authentic flavor of this New York Institution; and yet, there are already plans to tear down Coney Island to build yet another generic condo mall.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love Starbucks.  I just would hate to lose the unique flavor of Coney Island for another gentrified shopping zone.  I can find that anywhere, but there is only one Coney Island.

If you want to learn more about Coney Island, and what you can do to save it, visit the following sites:

Coney Island History - The Coney Island History Project collects oral history interviews and preserves the legendary and colorful past of this vibrant neighborhood.

Save Coney Island - Grass roots campaign.

If you’re a NYC resident, contact your NYC government representative.  If not, consider contacting the mayor by e-mail or send a postcard to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, City Hall, New York, NY 10007.

Looking for ways to Change The World? Sign up to receive free articles from On Living By Learning by Email.  (Click this link.  Fill out the form.  Don’t forget to click on your verification Email.  Look for this in your mailbox.)  You can also click here to receive updates on a RSS Feed Reader.

It’s a holiday weekend in the USA - a time for picnics, fireworks, and Wordles.

Yes, Wordles - those nifty word clouds that turn a random set of words into a work of art.

Click on the image to see full-size.

The free Wordle generator gives you several choices for tweaking and sharing your word art.  You can type your own text, like I did with this Fourth of July “word cloud.”  Or, you can input your blog or other web address to generate a gorgeous composition such as this On Living By Learning Wordle:

Turn a poem into a visual work of art, make a special card for a loved one, or create a homage to Barbra.  There are so many ways to enjoy Wordles.  And, when you’re done, you can print, email, or copy the code to share your masterpiece.

Looking for inspiration? Visit the Wordle Gallery.

Share your Wordle with me.  I’d love to see it!  Just post your link in a comment.

For more wired world ideas that you can share with your family, be sure to visit previous Friday Finds:

Animoto - Create a music video with your photos.

Instructables - Discover instructions for all kinds of projects - from recipes to robots - or post your own.

Mr. Picassohead - Unleash your inner abstract artist.

Hulu - Watch a movie or catch up on your favorite TV shows on your computer.

Don’t miss the best of the web on Friday Finds.  Sign up to receive free articles from On Living By Learning by Email.  (Click this link.  Fill out the form.  Don’t forget to click on your verification Email.  Look for this in your mailbox.)  You can also click here to receive updates on a RSS Feed Reader.

Procrastination is no stranger to my life, but I’ve mostly tamed it until now.

The end-of-the year homeschool reports were due on Monday, and I finally Emailed them in tonight, one full day late.

Why am I late?  Is it that I am: Too busy? Summer fever?  Sheer disinterest in analyzing and quantifying our lives? All the above?

I’ve definitely lost interest in justifying our choice.  It’s working.  He’s learning.  I’m learning.  Isn’t that enough?

Our learning lives have evolved over the year, to the point that we don’t have much of a schedule anymore.  Alex has daily math and random assignments, but now he is mostly free to learn as he chooses.

With this freedom as our current mind set, it feels like I’m crossing a mind-numbing divide to fulfill New York State’s bureaucratic requirements.

There is an advantage to waiting until the last minute. 

Suddenly, I’ve gained a certain clarity, and a kick in the … from Homeschool Superhero John Munson, who advised me (and anyone else citing the homeschooling.families.com NY State requirement guidelines) that I really don’t have to fill in grades, or percentage of material covered, on the quarterly reports.

Since this guy has definitely done his homework figuring out exactly what is required in NY State, I decided to save myself a lot of grief and use his sample quarterly report and annual assessment.  You can find Munson’s forms in the files section of the NYHEN Yahoo Group, or you can just look at my reports below.

Homeschool Quarterly Report - 2nd Grade, 4th Quarter

Name: Alex

Blog Website: http://alexhomegate.blogspot.com

Grade: 2

Hours of instruction this quarter: 247.5+

Math:

In completing Singapore Math 2B, Alex studied the following: Multiplication and Division (by 4, 5, 10); Money (Adding; Subtracting); Fractions (Writing fractions); Time (Intervals); Capacity; Graphs (Picture); Geometry (Flat and Curved Faces; Making Shapes); Area (Square Units.)

Language Arts:

Alex read several books, including: Dragon Rider, Inkspell, and Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke; Beyond The Lemonade Stand: Starting Small to Make It Big by Bill Rancic; a selection of Brer Rabbit collections; and various poems, magazine articles, and other material. He has been developing paragraph and essay skills and posts much of his writing on his blog.

Social Studies:

Alex completed an extended study of the ancient history of Mesopotamia. He has gone on to read about ancient India, China, and Africa.

Science:

Alex completed a Gifted Kids’ Network Space Colonies class where he learned about various factors to consider when creating a habitat that can sustain human life. At the Children’s Science Museum, he took the Turning the Tides class where he discovered how to assess water quality based on present organisms. At The Tang Museum, he explored Molecules That Matter with a bubble wrap project workshop. He also pursued various hands-on interests investigating plant and animal life and looking for the invasive species that he learned about in The Invader exhibit at the State Museum. Additionally, he presented a science poster at the Education Fair on “Autotomy: The Tale of a Gecko’s Tail.”

The Arts:

Alex continued with his piano lessons, practicing daily, and performing at a recital. He loves to draw, especially dragons and monsters, and has been developing cartoon drawing skills. Lately, he has started to take an interest in digital photography and editing, in addition to videography. In the past quarter he has attended several shows, including a school performance of Greek plays and The Laura Ingalls Wilder Story at the Albany Egg.

Health and Physical Education:

Alex has been expanding his cooking repertoire by experimenting with different ways to make eggs, in addition to learning safe egg handling techniques from Alton Brown’s cookbook. He also enjoyed learning how to decorate cakes, and the chocolate tasting class at the Hershey Factory. Meanwhile, he’s been getting lots of exercise walking the dog, practicing his upper body strength training and stretching for his gymnastics class, playing tennis, swimming, biking, hiking, indoor caving, and exploring our world.

Home Instruction Annual Assessment

June 30, 2008

Name: Alex

Alex has made admirable academic progress this year. Some highlights of the year include: participating in workshops at various local museums, winning the NanoWrimo Young Writer’s Program, service learning with his Cub Scout Wolf Den (and his sister’s Girl Scout troop,) a stellar piano recital performance, developing his weblog, exploring our natural world, and unlimited time spent reading. For more details, see the previously submitted quarterly reports.

“What really matters is what you do with what you have.” ~~ H. G. Wells (1866 - 1946)

Would you like to read more about our homeschool journey? Take a peek at our first year in these articles.  Or, sign up to receive future articles of On Living By Learning by email.  Just click this link.  You can also click here to receive updates on a RSS Feed Reader.

Have you read The Salamander Room? 

One of my son’s favorite books, this is a beautifully illustrated, imaginative story about a boy who wishes to turn his bedroom into a forest habitat so that he can bring home a salamander.

On a recent hike in the Clarksville Cave Preserve, we imagined that we were in this salamander room.

Arriving at the preserve after a torrential downpour, we were just in time to be greeted by dozens of Red-Spotted Newts, a type of salamander that we also find on the muddy trails of Grafton Park.

There were so many of these amphibians that Alex worried that we would step on them.  Not a chance.  It’s hard to miss these bright orange-red creatures.  The newts’ greater danger is that they could be loved into extinction.

This is Amphibian Ally Brigid Smith’s concern.  Noticing the decreased population of the Red-Spotted Newts at Camp Kresge, this young woman launched an outreach campaign to raise awareness about the proper handling of newts.  Brigid Smith’s fun and rewarding project has earned her the highest achievement in Girl Scouts, the Gold Award.

As a fellow amphibian ally, Alex knew that, no matter how adorable, the newts had to stay in their forest home. 

While Alex worried that we might step on newts, I was more concerned that we might land in a hidden cave.

Hiking these trails really means that you traverse “karst terrain (a bedrock surface that is highly dissolved and cracked) above Clarksville Cave.” (Dunn & Delaney)

Now, I’m not saying that there is any risk of falling into hidden caves, but that didn’t prevent us from imagining the possibility.

Then, again, when you explore the world with an imaginative crowd, you are likely to wonder about all kinds of things.  Like, why is it that in these beautiful, natural settings in New York’s Capital Region, it is not unusual to discover abandoned vehicles?  How did they get there, among all the trees?  Were they dropped from planes?

Beware falling cars!

So, what’s your theory?  How did these abandoned cars appear in the Capital Region forests?  Post a comment.  No suggestion is too wild for consideration.

Book Resources:

The Salamander Room (Dragonfly Paperbacks): Anne Mazer: BooksISBN: 0679861874 ISBN-13: 9780679861874

Trails with Tales: History Hikes through the Capital Region, Saratoga, Berkshires, Catskills & Hudson Valley: Russell Dunn, Barbara Delaney: BooksISBN: 1883789486 ISBN-13: 9781883789480

Exploring Our Tales From The Trails:

Our Grand Adventure: Lost In The Pine Bush at the Albany Pine Bush Preserve, Albany, NY

Mud People and Rainy Day Hikes at Grafton Lakes State Park, Grafton, NY 

Art on the Trail at Olana State Historic Site, Olana, NY

Spring Break at Home on Peebles Island State Park, Cohoes, NY

Girl Scouts Help Save The Earth on the Bradley Farm Trail, Mt. Greylock State Reservation, MA

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“You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” ~~ James Allen (1864 - 1912)

Have you noticed that some people are explorers, and some are not?

The other day my husband was asking how he could get a hold of the Barbie breast implant video. 

Okay.  This was a little upsetting. 

Not because he wants to see the video, but because he should’ve seen it already.  He gets all the On Living By Learning articles via his Email subscription.

Now, those of you who are explorers will already have noticed that you can click on the hyperlinks, or blue text, to: a) find the video; and b) subscribe by Email to receive articles from On Living By Learning.

These hyperlinks are an obvious call to action that no one can miss; however, finding the video on an Emailed blog article requires a little more initiative.  You have to click on the article title - which, while in blue text, doesn’t have the same recognizable hyperlink look.  This takes you to the online blog post where you can easily view the video.

Explorers of the wired world tend to find this out for themselves.

They don’t just look at a web page and assume that’s all there is.  They click around, finding mostly treasures, and only rarely a land mine.

Making the most of the wired world requires an exploring spirit and a sense of adventure.

Now, you might argue - like my hubby - that you don’t have time to follow online tangents.  All right.  I get it.  We don’t all have the time to turn over every rock.  We all have to make choices about how to allocate our most precious resource - our time.

So, I asked my husband how did he find the time to Email me this You Tube link?  Dead silence.

Join the On Living By Learning Community

Are you curious about what the wired world has to offer?  Would you like to find new online resources for yourself or your children?  Can I help you figure out how to make sense out of so many bewildering choices?

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Post a Comment

For those of you who share my spirit of adventure, I challenge you to take the plunge and post a comment.  Join our ongoing discussion of ways to share the wired world with your family. 

It’s easy to comment, just click on the “Comments” hyperlink at the end of this blog post.  Fill in your text in the empty box, and include your name and Email address.  You can also include your own web address, if you have one.  If you have a gravatar, it will upload automatically.  If you don’t have one, a random image will be displayed.  But, why not get your own gravatar?

Grab a Gravatar

Be original and grab a gravatar so that you can proudly display your own unique logo - whether it’s your photo or Bart Simpson’s - whenever you comment on any weblog.

What do you say?

Tell me, how do you share the wired world with your children?  Have you found any online treasures or land mines?  Can I help you find an online resource?  What would you like to find?

It’s summer, and I’m hoping most of you will be exploring the great outdoors instead of the wired world.

However, when you’re ready to veg out with some serious screen time, consider Hulu.  You and your kids can view classic movies such as Monty Python’s Meaning of Life or Planet of the Apes right on your computer screen. 

Personally, I’m going to host a family version of Mystery Science Theater 3000 where we hurl insults at some of the worst movies ever made.  Checking out the movie section of Hulu, I found some winners: Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine; Attack of the Puppet People; and The Extreme Adventures of Super Dave (a personal favorite of my own “Super Dave.”

Then, I’m going to hog the computer screen to catch up on all the Highlander episodes that I missed - probably only 5 out of the 117 that are online. And, of course, I may have to review Burn Notice’s first season before Season 2 airs on July 10.

If you would like to join our learning journey, sign up to receive free articles from On Living By Learning by Email.  (Click this link.  Fill out the form.  Don’t forget to click on your verification Email.  Look for this in your mailbox.)  You can also click here to receive updates on a RSS Feed Reader.

If I succeed in nothing else as a Girl Scout leader, I hope I open girls’ eyes to their own ability to change their world.

Photographer Chris Jordan shares a similar mission - but on a global scale.

He creates art exhibits that visually demonstrate the impact that each person has when multiplied by the many in America.

For example, it’s one thing to speak up about the growing epidemic of breast implants - even when it’s described as the gift of choice for graduating girls.

It’s another thing to see 32,000 Barbie dolls, equal to the monthly statistic of American breast implants, as the pixels in a canvas displaying a female torso.

You just can’t deny a direct correlation when you see it, and feel it.

That’s Chris Jordan’s goal, and he does a stellar job of achieving it.

Now, I just have to find a way to sneak in viewing this video into one of our Girl Scout meetings.

Tell me.  I really want to know.  What’s your gut reaction when you watch this video?  Do you feel a sudden desire to change your consumption habits? 

I’m discovering a renewed desire to renew, reuse, recycle.

If you would like to join our learning journey, sign up to receive free articles from On Living By Learning by Email.  (Click this link.  Fill out the form.  Don’t forget to click on your verification Email.  Look for this in your mailbox.)  You can also click here to receive updates on a RSS Feed Reader.

Each box that you mark on each test that you take,
Remember your teachers, their jobs are at stake.
Your score is their score, but don’t get all stressed.
They’d never teach anything not on the test.

From the lyrics to Not On The Test by Tom Chapin and John Forster

It’s a gentle song with a powerful punch.  And, despite the song’s digs at teachers, it’s intended in support of programs that help them reach their students.

Even as Secretary of Education Spellings is strengthening No Child Left Behind, Tom Chapin is gathering a groundswell of support  on notonthetest.com to speak up for keeping music, art, drama, and sports in education because:

It’s no secret that American industry has outsourced most factory jobs to other countries to take advantage of cheaper labor costs. So why are we putting so much effort into a form of education in which there is no creativity? This is the time that our youth should be taught to think ”out of the box,” not be put into a tighter one!

As some of my favorite public school teachers have described, NCLB is sucking the joy out of teaching (and learning.)

I’m signing up to act now for Not On The Test, but I’d love to hear a follow-up to this song that highlights how our nation’s brightest are being left behind.

The Fordham Institute’s latest report confirms that:

1. The nation’s top pupils have “languished” academically while the lowest-performing youngsters have gained dramatically.

2. Most teachers feel pressure to focus primarily on their lowest achieving students, and neglect the high achievers.

Any suggestions for a song title?  Here’s my lame song title attempt - Shut Up, Turn Off Your Mind!  Come on, I know you’ve got some good ones.  Share them in a comment.

More On Living By Learning articles on creativity and school:

In this TED Talks video, Sir Ken Robinson questions: Do schools kill creativity?

Advocating for change in education is a slow process.  In the meantime, creativity is one reason to homeschool.

If you would like to join our learning journey, sign up to receive free articles from On Living By Learning by Email.  (Click this link.  Fill out the form.  Don’t forget to click on your verification Email.  Look for this in your mailbox.)  You can also click here to receive updates on a RSS Feed Reader.