. . . Chronic Learning

NaNoWriMo Day 30: The End

2010-11-30T17:15:00.000-08:00

Just finished up! Total words 50,006! (The extra 6 were just showing off, Phil says.)

Thanks to every single person who cheered me on. You were all literally the only reason I finished. I'd have given up the whole thing weeks ago as a stupid idea, but I couldn't stand to let down my husband, my children, my family, and my friends! Not to mention the whole world. (Or at least the part of the world that visits this blog!)

Suddenly, it doesn't seem quite so stupid any more! So thanks for holding me to my word, no matter what lame excuses I conjured.

Now I'm going to go read a book! I'll save scrubbing the shower for tomorrow . . .

NaNoWriMo - Day 29: Not Enough Words Left In My Brain For a Proper Post Title

2010-11-29T21:19:00.000-08:00

Back from Thanksgiving. Wrote 6,286 words today. Will write 5,322 tomorrow. Here's the video that the director of NaNo is suggesting as theme song for the last 24 hours:

Nice hair and make-up, huh?

See you on the other side!

NaNoWriMo - Days 22, 23, and 24: The rubber hits the road (literally)

2010-11-24T20:02:00.000-08:00

Well, here I am, gutting out the homestretch!

On Day 22, I had a Sick Migraine, and couldn't force myself to write more than 503 words. Actually, I was kind of proud of myself for getting that much done, since on that particular day I also considered it an accomplishment to get in and out of the drugstore without throwing up on the pharmacy tech. In comparison to that dubious achievement, 503 words looks pretty good, huh? (See, it's all in how you present these things.)

On Day 23, it was a gooood thing I was feeling better because I had one of my busiest days in a While. I have no clue how I did it, but 2,016 words were finished by the end of the day.

On Day 24 (today), I formulated a theory that the more free time I have to get words down, the more I procrastinate the actual writing thereof. Yesterday I had babysitting to do as well as cooking for and staying with my grandmother. I knew I had next to no free time available, so every chance I had to sit down and write a few paragraphs I took it.

Today, on the other hand, my husband was off work, and we had most of the afternoon and evening free. So I didn't start writing word 1 until 9:30pm. Oh well, at least I had plenty of quality family relaxation time before I got down to typing. And, tonight I completed a whopping 2,001 words. Yes, I was eeeeeking out every single word that last 15%. I told myself I could read for a little while if I got it all done like a good girl. And now, look at me - I'm being even more mature and putting up a blog update before I collect my reward. I should get a badge or something.

But today is the last day before our epic Thanksgiving mountain trip, which, with no fewer than seven total households participating bodes to be every bit as adventure-filled and entertaining as any National Lampoon Vacation movie. So I just wanted to get this update out there before we hit the road in the morning!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

NaNoWriMo - Day Twenty-One: Harry Potter awaits

2010-11-21T15:03:00.000-08:00

Despite the temptation to download hundreds of free books before midnight, I was able to restrain myself and finish up my last writing session of the day by 11:00pm. 6,079 words in one day! Awesome. Definitely a record for me, by the way. That brought my total up to 31,535. I was really excited to get past the 30,000 word mark, because it means I'm getting in range of being able to complete this thing! (Guess I better figure out an ending, huh?)

And, finishing up by 11:00, I was still able to download bushels of free books. In fact, it appears that it may have been a midnight-in-some-other-time-zone deadline, because I kept on downloading until about 1:30am. It is really hard for me to turn down free books. But, I have to admit, I'm a little concerned that someone is going to find the 200 Harlequin romances I downloaded and think I'm a porn dealer or something. Oh, well, I guess that's a chance I'll just have to take. I mean, they were free.

Now, you might think that all those shiny new free romances would hold me back from my writing today. But you would be wrong! I didn't even read any of them. And I just now finished up 2,037 words for a new total of 33,572.

My reward for a weekend of sticking to my writing goals is to go see the new Harry Potter movie with my friend and her daughters. This will be the first Harry Potter movie that our kids have been old enough to watch in the theater without getting too scared (hopefully), so I'm looking forward to it!

NaNoWriMo - Day Twenty: The Universe is Conspiring Against Me ;)

2010-11-20T18:38:00.000-08:00

Are you kidding me?! I'm sitting here trying to have a 6,000 word day (and doing pretty well, thank you) when I check my email and see this:

Kobo Book Sale Hundreds of Free Books

The catch? The coupon code expires at midnight tonight. It takes a while to find and download 100's of free books. Argh. Must. finish. goal. Must. not. try. to. buy. 100's. of. free. books.

I'll let you know how that works out.

NaNoWriMo - Day Eighteen: Gearing up for a big weekend

2010-11-19T21:11:00.000-08:00

I've blocked off this coming weekend to free up as much time as possible for writing. I'm ready for a full-on sprint to get thousands of words done. This is an officially recommended technique for week 3, since often people are a little behind on their word counts and don't want to go into the last week with insurmountable deficits.

According to No Plot, No Problem!, a book written by Chris Baty, the inventor of NaNoWriMo, the suggested technique is to get up in the morning. Set the timer and write for 30 minutes, take a 10 minute break, set the timer and write for 30 minutes, take a 10 minute break, and set the timer for another 30 minutes. Then at midday, repeat that sequence. Do the same in the evening. With any luck, you'll have a 6,000 word day in your rear view mirror.

Now, I can totally see myself doing all that and not having 6,000 words, but I am absolutely certain that I would have more words than normal.

So I'm going to start the technique tomorrow and keep my fingers crossed! Of course I will let you know how it goes.

Oh, and before I go, I found a Today Show interview that aired today featuring Laura Hillenbrand and Louie Zamperini talking about Laura's new book about Louie's life, Unbroken, that I mentioned a couple of days ago. I thought the interview was quite interesting, particularly the part where he said he sent her his Purple Heart because he thought she deserved it more than he did. Wow. (You may get to watch a short ad before the clip plays, lucky you.)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

NaNoWriMo - Days 17 and 18

2010-11-18T20:28:00.000-08:00

Okay, yesterday I did 504 words, and today I did 2,010. That puts the total at 25,457, which, according to the goal meter in my novel writing software (which I will write more about later, count on it), that puts me at 50% complete!

In honor of reaching the halfway mark, I just had to share this video that the NaNo folks produced for this week. Totally the geeky kind of humor I love!

NaNoWriMo - Day Sixteen: Yet another distraction

2010-11-17T20:29:00.000-08:00

I tell you, I am so good at finding distractions, especially when I have challenges looming over me. I really had no idea how many distractions I could find until NaNoWriMo! This morning I almost started scrubbing my shower before I reminded myself that I really did NOT have time for that today. Well, this week I have another temptation to deal with (one much more compelling than scrubbing showers!)

There's a new biography out that I've really been looking forward to reading. It's called Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. I know, random, right? Well WWII isn't my usual genre, that's for sure, but this one sounded really interesting, and the author is almost as interesting as the story she wrote. Laura Hillenbrand is the author of Seabiscuit, so this is her second biography. (I count a story of a racehorse as a biography, okay?) Laura Hillenbrand also happens to be an extremely ill woman. She's had severe chronic fatigue syndrome from the time that she had a virus when she was in college. She is almost never able to leave her house. And, according to some of the articles I've read, she has such severe weakness and vertigo that she can't even read books anymore. She told one interviewer that she had to skip her morning shower in order to have enough strength to even be interviewed.

This woman is so sick that she's never gotten to meet the subject of her biography, who is, in fact, still alive and in his 90's. They've done dozens of phone interviews, and apparently she has done a remarkable job of remotely researching her topic. I'd never even heard of the man about whom she wrote, but after reading the synopsis I am not sure why he hasn't been a household name to this day - his story is certainly incredible. Louie Zamperini was an American Olympic runner who competed in the Berlin Olympics, met Hitler, and then stole a German flag off the Reich Chancellery! So, yes, it seems that he was a spunky fellow. Which was a good thing, I guess, because in the war, his plane crashed and he was marooned in a raft with two other men for weeks and weeks and weeks, drifting thousands of miles, living on rainwater and bird blood, being strafed by Japanese planes and followed by sharks. The survivors found land only to be taken prisoner by the Japanese, and it gets crazier from there, apparently. The final portion of the book tells of how Mr Zamperini handled the emotional aftermath of this trauma.

The reviews are phenomenal, and I just got an email from Amazon that had this book recommended as one of the ten best of the year.

I remember reading an article that came out soon after they released the movie version of Seabiscuit. In that article, Laura explained that during the course of writing Seabiscuit her health had deteriorated significantly. At the time, she really sounded unsure that she would ever be able to complete another book, and frankly, it sounded like an open question of whether she would even want to, given how much the first one had cost her in terms of her health. So I was very happy to learn that she was successful in writing another book, and one that sounds very well received, too.

And that really makes me want to read it.

(Yesterday I completed 1,940 words, for a total of 22,943. Still working on today.)

NaNoWriMo - Days Fourteen and Fifteen

2010-11-16T05:49:00.000-08:00

Just jumping over here to do a quick update. Things are still progressing! But I've been spending time writing and sleeping instead of blogging.

The distractions are getting pretty intense right now! Yesterday I was all set to make tons of progress, and I did. But it was painful progress, the kind you have to fight through, because a) I found out there were like 30 new Kindle and Nook books for free on Amazon, and I downloaded a bunch of them and b) I found a new app that allows me to check out ebooks from my library and read them on Paddy (the iPad). Argh. All that free reading just had to come right in the middle of WriMo, didn't it? But still, how cool?!

Despite the lure of free reading, I was able to get in 1,938 words yesterday. And on Sunday, despite having way too much fun with friends, I did get in 685. Plus I have a few more already logged for today, bringing my total up to 21,311. Sooooo close to that halfway point. I need a big week this week, since we have Thanksgiving coming up. If anybody makes plans during the week, don't tell me about them!

P.S. - Even if you don't have an ebook reader, you can still read the Kindle books and library ebooks on your computer. Not my favorite way to read a book, but hey, the price is right, and if the book is good then you'll forget where you're reading it! (Been there, done that) Here's a link to the Kindle Apps for PC, Mac, iPhone/iTouch, iPad, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Phone 7. And here's the Barnes and Noble equivalent for their Nook Books. You may as well start collecting some of the free ones now, for the inevitable day when you succumb to the lure of reading digital books! Any books you collect from the Kindle store or the Barnes and Noble store (free or not) will stay in your account forever, and can be read on any or all of those devices, and they even remember where you were when you switch devices. Check a library near you for their digital offerings.

NaNoWriMo - Day Thirteen: Write or Die

2010-11-13T19:39:00.000-08:00

2,094 words written. 18,280 total. 36% done.

'Nuff said.

Oh, come on, I'm a writer. I could never make a 9 word blog post! So instead of leaving well enough alone, I'll tell you about Write or Die, instead.

Write or Die is an online tool for NaNo writers. It was created by Dr. Wicked, and it was designed to give writers some real, short term consequences for failing to meet the goal for their writing session. Now I know that we writer types are grown-ups (the ones of us who are over 18, anyway) and we should be perfectly capable of disciplining ourselves to meet long-term goals without having to go to crazy lengths to make sure we do our writing for the day. Should being the key word here - reality works a little differently, and it seems that many writers benefit from some extra motivation. Hence, Write or Die.

The idea with Write or Die is that you have to start writing and keep writing until you have met your goal, or face the consequences.

You can pick a word amount and/or time limit, and you can choose from a range of consequence levels:

Gentle
Normal
Kamikaze
Electric Shock(!)

Gentle mode just displays a pop-up reminder to get back to work. Isn't that sweet? In terms of useful consequences, it's not nearly enough for the hard-core procrastinator, though.

Normal mode is much more effective, in my book. It starts playing annoying sounds if you pause too long. The only way to stop the sounds is to keep writing. Everyone in my family hates annoying sounds, so keeping them happy would be an extra incentive for me to keep the fingers clicking.

Kamikaze mode is just evil, I think. In Kamikaze mode, if you stop writing for too long, it starts erasing what you already wrote! Horrific! (But very effective.)

And finally, Electric Shock mode . . . doesn't actually work. It's a joke, people. This isn't literally Write or Die - that's just an expression.

I think the idea of Write or Die is fascinating. I've never used it, though, because I just can't commit. What if the doorbell rings? Or the kids need me? Or the kitchen catches on fire? You never know when something is going to come up, and then where would you be?

So, for now, I'm having to power through with the only motivators to which I've been able to commit - my husband (who, it turns out, can be quite the nag) and my friends (less naggy, but also very motivational). So far so good, but it's nice to know I've got options if I need to move up to more dire consequences. Maybe in week 4!

NaNoWriMo - Days Eleven and Twelve: I couldn't be a Pantser, could I?

2010-11-12T19:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was just as busy as I thought it might be, and my flare was no better, either, so I fell asleep after 558 words and no blog entry! I'm not complaining though, because a) I'm so glad I got to go to the Christmas Show with my daughters and my friends, and b) I finally toughed through the worst of the flare, and today I'm much better in a lot of ways, despite having a migraine for the first 12 hours or so. If you'd told me a few years ago that I'd be happy to have a day with "only" a migraine, I'd have thought you were crazy! Isn't life funny? Everything's relative, I guess.

Anyway, to prove that today was better, here I am at 9:14pm, and I've already completed 1934 words today, for a grand total of 16,286. That's 32% of the total, so I'm very close to 1/3 done with the 50,000 word goal.

But enough with the statistics - On to the main topic of this blog post. Maybe you are still wondering what the term "pantser" means? I have to say, it's certainly not something I ever thought I would be. In fact, there was probably a time when I would have said pantsers were foolish and asking for trouble. I would have said it, that is, if I had known what it was! Then NaNoWriMo came and turned everything on its head. Not only did I discover the phrase pantser, AND learn what it meant, but I also came across some strong evidence that I might BE a pantser. Wow.

Okay, okay, before I force you to resort to a Google search out of frustration, I'll get to the point. It seems that most people are either plotters or pantsers. That is, they either outline their writing ahead of time, or they show up at the computer each day and fly by the seat of their pants. Guess which one I am? Oh, yeah, anyone who knows me would be probably say I'm a plotter. Heck, I would say I'm a plotter. Ever since English 101, I've loved outlines. They are awesome! You just organize your thoughts, jot key points in order, jiggle them around a little, and then your hard work is done. From there on out, you can just systematically turn each point into prose and you are golden.

Of course, I've done a lot more non-fiction writing than fiction . . . Still, I would never approach a novel without knowing what it was about. Or would I?

Going into this NaNo project, I had an idea for a story about three weeks before the official start. For NaNo purposes, you are allowed to do all the outlining and organizing you want before the start of November, as long as you don't start the actual writing of the book itself. So I spent the three weeks brainstorming, thinking through storylines, working out plot points, and I didn't have enough time to get it all completed. I had a good idea of where I was going and how, but not nearly to the point of a scene by scene outline. That had me a little nervous, but I didn't have much choice about it.

So, on November 1, 2010, I booted up my laptop, pulled up my barebones outline, and promptly changed the entire audience of my novel before I'd finished the first sentence. My plot and outline were for a children's book. I was writing a children's book, I tell you. But when I started writing that first sentence, I found out that I didn't think I could make this a children's book. The character wanted to be older. So right now, she's older. And so far I've just shown up at the computer every day to see what will come out.

Now, despite how much I like plotting and planning with non-fiction writing, I really shouldn't be surprised by how this has turned out. An honest appraisal of my character would have turned it up in a heartbeat. Fact is, I'm obsessed with planning. I love to research, I love to organize and make plans and set things up. But when it comes time to follow through? Man, I chafe at being held to a schedule. I'm like this in homeschooling too. Every summer I spend weeks researching and ordering and making up schedules. By Christmas, we're lucky if we are still using half of what I planned. The rest has been switched, dropped, or tweaked beyond recognition.

I've decided that's because creativity calls for flexibility. The more creative the endeavor, the more necessity there is for the whims of the muse or the needs of the moment. It is hard to predict the future with creative projects, and that's what planning tries to do.

That said, I still love planning, and I do think there is a place for it, a big place, in my creative "stuff". For example, the more research and planning I do, the more I learn. For me, planning is the place to start, whether it is for homeschool lesson plans or (apparently) a NaNo project. The ideas get to germinate, take root, get ready to sprout up. And then we get to find out what kind of plant they really are. Maybe we thought we were planting radishes, and it was really carrots. Who knew?

It looks like the novel I'm writing now was, in fact carrots, not radishes. So I'm using the basic plot ideas, but changing huge parts of the story, and mainly showing up to see what happens next. Hey, I'm in good company - apparently both Stephen King and Nora Roberts are known pantsers. They do pretty well for themselves.

The worst thing about pantsing is that a lot of what I write might end up needing to be changed. It might be really bad, even need to be deleted outright. But, as I've said before, I don't mind revising at all, so that's probably not such a bad thing for me.

The best part about pantsing is that I get to be just as interested and surprised as the reader. Doesn't that sound like fun?

NaNoWriMo - Day Ten: Good thing I got my quota in yesterday . . .

2010-11-10T20:17:00.000-08:00

Wow. Yesterday was something, and today was something else! By late afternoon, I was extremely glad that I had gotten as much done yesterday as I had. Tonight, I got myself started and pushed through more than 50% of my quota (900 words to be exact), and I didn't have to feel bad about turning in early. Usually the most severe part of these unusually strong flares only lasts two-three days, so there is light ahead - I'm banking on it!

You can tell it's bad today, though, because I'm not even tempted to blog a dissertation on some cool NaNoWriMo term. Nope, I'm thinking I need to start the unwinding process and hit the hay. Maybe then I can get a little early morning writing done to make up. It's another really busy day tomorrow, so I have to admit I'm a little nervous about that. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are pretty much free and clear though, despite my crazy cousin's attempts to ensnare me in a plot to attend a drive-in movie in the middle of November. Nice try. Sleep and writing and a heating pad, that's my plan.

NaNoWriMo - Day Nine: 25%, but I can't believe I got there today

2010-11-09T21:48:00.000-08:00

So today I passed the 25% mark of my 50,000 word goal for the month. I wrote 1888 words, for a grand total of 12,894. According to my noveling software (more about that another day) I have the equivalent of about 37 pages of paperback book text.

I can't believe I got those words in, though, because I felt sooo crummy. Let's just say it was not a good evening, and I didn't get started with word 1 until around 9:30. I was seriously tempted to give today a skip, and hope that tomorrow was a better day.

I have found with other goals that the key, for me, is to just get started. Getting going is so much more difficult than keeping going. So the good news is that often, if I can just get started, I can keep going for quite a while. The bad news is, it can be so hard to get started that I just don't.

My carefully honed technique, therefore, is to bargain myself into starting. I'll offer myself a deal. "Self," I'll tell myself, "you don't want to have to make up all these words tomorrow, do you? Even when you are feeling bad you can write for a few minutes. How about this - how about you just do 500 little words? You can knock that out in a half hour or so, and then you can still get a full evening of rest and relaxation in. No further obligation, promise!"

Even though I know that it is all just a dastardly plot to get myself started, and even though I am really hoping that I will write a lot more than 500 words, still, there is a part of me that will often buy the act. I'll think, "You know, I'm really tired tonight, and feeling crummy. I won't feel up to writing it all, but I will get a little bit done, just to keep from losing all my momentum. A little bit won't be too bad to manage." Sucker!!!

On days when I'm lucky, I'll get started and keep right on going. And that's what happened tonight.

I did stop briefly when I got to 63% of my quota, to go check on what Phil was up to. My poor hubby has had to deal with me writing most evenings, and I couldn't help but feel bad that he was being so neglected. I figured he might be getting sick of being ignored in favor of my alphabet soup of a manuscript. A misguided, amateur-hour manuscript he might not even get to read, it's so questionable.

I told him I was trying to decide between writing more or taking a shower. "Write more!" he said. I told him I was close to 70%. "Then get to 80!" he said.

So I guess he's not too sick of it, yet. Or possibly he just wanted to get back to his Blackberry Word Mole game. But either way, he wasn't missing me too much, and I had no more excuses for feeling guilty.

So I got back to it, and knocked out the last big chunk, and I even set a new record for the month. And you know what? I still feel crummy. Very, very crummy, especially since I forgot whether or not I'd taken my pain medicine this evening, so I couldn't take any more just in case. (Like I've said before, my wonky memory makes life more interesting than it has to be.)

But now I feel crummy AND I finished my quota! Which definitely beats the alternative! In the immortal words of London Tipton, "Yay me!"

NaNoWriMo - Day Eight: Resisting the Siren's Call - (Frontierville)

2010-11-08T20:37:00.000-08:00

I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook's associated plethora of time-wasting, soul-sucking games like Farmville and Frontierville. I hate them because of all the, you know, time-wasting and soul-sucking. (Admittedly, the jury is still out on the soul-sucking - that's hard to prove in this lifetime, but I have my suspicions. . .)

On the other hand, I also love the games because they are extremely fun, and also because I really, really like to earn things - even so-called "things" of very dubious value. I never got to be a Girl Scout, but if I had been, I'd have collected every single badge I could possibly get my mitts on. I just love completing goals and earning badges and pins and things for my efforts. Even badges made of bytes, like the sort they gave out on my most recent obsession, Frontierville.

By the start of NaNoWriMo's writing-an-entire-novel-in-one-month-craziness, though, I had finally gotten a little tired of the amount of time and energy it took to keep my frontier town thriving. I already had a neglected Farmville account languishing in my rear view mirror, and I'd learned from that experience that once you manage to go a few days without checking in, the game loses most of its allure, and you can suddenly step back and see that it is, in fact, just a silly game that is striving (futilely, in my case) to get you to spend real money for fake stuff.

So it has been several weeks now, since I bid the (fake) frontier farewell and headed off into the sunset. But Week Two of NaNo has been nothing but a big temptation to relapse. See, here you are, staring at the computer screen, and suddenly you can't write another word without your head just exploding, so you click over really quick to check email, and . . . nothing. For like ten minutes at least, your friends haven't sent you a single silly rhyming email designed to drive their sisters crazy (true story) or even a decent chain email threatening death and destruction if not forwarded to 80 friends in the next 14 seconds. Not even an email with cute pictures of kittens!

So there you are, with nothing, and then Facebook starts calling your name. Frontierville is luring you back like a true siren, pulling you away from your novel-writing and towards the terrible dangerous rocks of time-you-don't-have-to-waste. Don't you deserve a break? You have a terrible headache from all that serious writing. Don't you deserve to have some rest and relaxation and good times with your friends, sending and receiving items and earning . . . badges? What about the badges April? How could you forget?

Well so far, much like Odysseus on his great, well, odyssey, I've tied myself to the couch and kept my mouse away from the "Frontierville" button with success. Okay, so Odysseus tied himself to the mast of his ship to avoid answering the sirens' call, which isn't much like a couch at all, and I'm pretty sure Odysseus would have thought a WriMo was a disaster sent by the Greek muses (well, actually, hey - that part might be pretty accurate) but anyway, my POINT is, this is the 21st century. We modern day heroes have to adapt!

And so, at least for now, my Frontierville bookmark is safely tucked away. Just in case, however, I do have a secret weapon if the urge to earn badges becomes too great! How cool is that?!

Words written today: 1,779. Total: 11,006. Badges: None yet, but I can order them in a jiffy if I need them!

NaNoWriMo - Day Seven: One Week Down . . .

2010-11-07T16:58:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm one week into the NaNo experiment, and so far things are going better than I'd expected. I mean the writing quality itself pretty much stinks, but it has been doable to meet the goals each day. Well, except for the two dud days. Plus yesterday when I stayed up half the night. But overall, four out of seven days went smoothly, and I can live with that! ;)

Today I completed 1,798 words, for a total of 9,227. That means tomorrow I should cross over 10,000 words. I'm really getting into this quantity over quality thing. I think I can learn a lot just from writing thousands and thousands of words, regardless of how many are actually usable in any public venue. I keep telling my children that the best way to learn is to practice. Even if you start off unskilled, with practice something is bound to improve. I keep hoping, anyway!

Now, I mentioned yesterday that I'd explain about the shovel of death. When I signed up for NaNo, I had no idea how geeky these people were. Almost as geeky as I am! So they have this whole culture on the forums there, where they support one another and generally get together to commiserate and blow off steam between chapters. And one of the traditions that has taken on a life of its own at NaNo is the shovel of death.

Basically, when the Shovel of Death thread comes up on the forum, people who want to participate immediately begin working out how to incorporate a murder (or at least serious injury) by shovel into their day's writing. Then they tell their fellow NaNo's the results of their experiments into shovel deaths. Some of the people on the forums tell how they have incorporated shovels of death into every NaNo project they've ever attempted.

The shovel of death is a good example of the kind of writing NaNo encourages. It doesn't have to be perfectly original. All of life is full of cliches, after all. But rather, it is about using your creativity to come up with fun and imaginative takes on those familiar ideas.

If you think that's fascinating, just wait - in the coming days I'll explain about some more amateur writer terms like "write or die", "word sprints", "plot bunnies" and "pantsers"! You know you can't wait!

NaNoWriMo - Day Six: Friends and writing don't mix

2010-11-06T22:52:00.000-07:00

I'm just kidding, of course. Friends are wonderful, and an unexpected evening with friends, eating good food, playing games, chatting and laughing - that's the best! Some people say not to socialize during NaNoWriMo, but I don't agree with that. I also don't agree with the "don't socialize until after your quota is met" approach. Which is just as well, because I think I'd have a full out mutiny on my hands if I tried to tell my 10 year old daughters that they needed to clear their social calendar for the month of November, just so I could rack up a few thousand poorly chosen words.

Which is why we all got to enjoy a nice evening out at Alicia's tonight, even though I'd forgotten about NaNo in the morning and had only 700 words knocked out. (Yes, I forget things like this often. It makes life interesting.) And I did get to finish up my writing quota anyway, even though it was 1:42 in the morning before I was done. It was great to feel like I pushed myself and stuck to my goal. It was even greater to be able to finally go to sleep! My writing was more questionable than ever today, but I haven't yet had to resort to any of the old NaNo fallbacks, like the shovel of death. (More about that later, maybe tomorrow, so stay tuned!)

My word count for today was a respectable 1790, my record thus far, in fact. My total word count is now 7429, 14% through the 50,000 word goal.

Thanks so much for the fun evening and good company, Alicia!

NaNoWriMo - Day Five quick update - Just in case you are concerned

2010-11-05T06:34:00.000-07:00

One of the bits of advice I remember reading before starting this project was about what to do if you missed days. Don't try to make up missed days all at once, the advice stated. Just adjust your average daily target.

I'm really glad I read that, because I have to admit that having two low production days in a row was really discouraging, even though I tried not to let it get to me toooo much. Making all that up is a lot of writing, enough to make you decide to quit, to be honest. But when I followed the above advice, and calculated a new average to reach my target, it turned out only to have moved from 1667 words per day to 1766.

In other words, it is early - there is plenty of time to make it up, so make it up I did! It is 9:26 am, and I've already hit my goal for the day! I have 1776 words for the morning, making a grand total of 5639. Over 10% of my goal is done. It is pretty awful, but it is done! And, I have most (but not all) of my notes re-assembled and properly backed up.

Now I need to get dressed (call me crazy, but a shower would be nice, too . . .), then school and the grocery store. I hear Harris Teeter has super doubles this week.

It is a great feeling to have today's goal behind me already!

NaNoWriMo - Day Four update - They say it's my birthday!

2010-11-04T21:08:00.000-07:00

I kept forgetting that today was going to be my birthday. It is entirely possible that there was some sort of mental block there! Anyway, regardless of my forgetfulness, I'm now another year older, and about 20 words closer to 50,000! wooo-hoooo!

I'll be back tomorrow! (Technically, it is actually 5 minutes into tomorrow already, but I won't tell if you don't. It's been a long day of birthday goodness, which is much better than yesterday's long day of technological badness!)

NaNoWriMo - Day Three update: Reality bites!

2010-11-03T21:10:00.000-07:00

Soooo, I was about 400 words into my quota for today when my laptop overheated and abruptly shut down, corrupting the data files for my novel-writing software. Which would be no problem, except that the backups I'd been so conscientiously making turned out to be the less ideal kind of backup copies. Thankfully, I was able to manually get into my files to access the text I'd written out.

Unfortunately, it is all in plain text, and I have to go into my noveling software and start all over with creating new little files for each character, setting, etc., that I'd made notes on, and then copying and pasting the correct bits of text into each of them, then reformating. Which I really didn't have TIME for today.

By the way, this is not, repeat NOT the software's fault. I LOVE the software, which is a Beta version of a program that's only been available on Macs until about a week ago. (more about that on a day with less inherent drama.) Anyway, this is a classic case of POE - Pure Operator Error. But hey, now I know what kind of back ups I need to make going forward.

Today we had a full slate of doctor's checkups, babysitting and dance classes already on the schedule. Then the steak for my supper fajitas tasted a bit off. And when I switched to just chicken, the new fajita seasoning I used turned out to be lessssss than yummy, too. I get a touch grouchy when I have to throw out steak and wash my already cooked chicken. Oh, and stitch my soon-to-be-novel back together again! So with all this drama, I haven't gotten any further with my word count. The day stands at right around 400. I'm just taking deep breaths and reminding myself that there's plenty of time yet. In fact, someone on one of my Yahoo Groups just signed up for NaNo today. That takes real courage - starting out when you are already two days down! Very cool!

Stay tuned for better news tomorrow!

NaNoWriMo - Day Two update

2010-11-02T19:22:00.000-07:00

Happy election day, everyone - a day to be celebrated by any American citizen of any political affiliation or none at all, because this is the day we get to exercise our freedom to choose our leaders. (Yeah, they may not live up to what we think the good leaders should be, but I still say freedom to choose our leaders beats the alternative!)

Now, for our daily NaNo update:

Well, I finished up yesterday with 1,733 words, 66 more than I needed - yay! This is good, because I need to start banking extra words for sick days and Thanksgiving. This point was driven home to me when I started feeling ultra puny with a gross sore throat yesterday afternoon. Not too puny to type, however! There's actually a thread on the NaNoWriMo forums started by someone who was excited to be sick because she got to stay home and write!

Sore throats and colds are one thing - migraines are a whole 'nother ball of wax, and since I get lots of those (migraines, not balls of wax), I definitely need to be logging a few extra words when I can.

Today we were babysitting my niece and nephew, and the kids got to watch "How to Train Your Dragon". They were riveted. I got in my quota. Everyone was happy. (They also played lots with Barbies and legos, so don't be afraid I that I parked them in front of the TV all day!)

Today my word count was 1,710, for a grand total of 3,443. Not too bad for a puny-feeling day with extras running around!

I can't help but notice that I'm still on the first chapter, though. I'm getting the distinct impression that I may well make it to 50,000 words, but still only be halfway done with the book! That's fine though, actually, because most novels are a good bit more than 50,000 words. There are books of 50k words, like Brave New World, but most novels these days seem to be more like 90,000-100,000+. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was over 250,000 words! (See I'm learning so much doing all this - it's great!)

Tomorrow will be a bit of a challenge, I'm thinking - we have lessons, doctor check-ups, and probably more babysitting in the afternoon, so a very busy day! Stay tuned to see if I can pull it off!

Here goes nothing!

2010-11-01T08:59:00.000-07:00

So, at 12:00am NaNoWriMo officially started. I stayed up late to get a few words logged before bed last night. Unsurprisingly, the NaNo website was swamped, and barely functioning! That's a good thing, because it meant less time wasted on the very active NaNo forums, and more time writing actual words. It's now 11:47, and I am already up to 1,272 words. (and even got some school done! We are getting ready to finish up, now.) That's pretty good - the gold standard daily quota is 1,667 words per day to reach 50,000 by month's end.

That said, if I were to be killed in a car wreck today, I would be mortified for anyone to read those 1200 words! (And, trust me, me dying is the only way anyone will. Otherwise, I'd die of embarrassment anyway, so let's not go there.) The standard approach in NaNo is NOT TO EDIT. That is virtually impossible for me, but so far I've limited myself to correcting typos, and fixing things if I change tacts mid-paragraph. I've highlighted a bunch of stuff that I want to delete later. I keep promising myself that in December I can come back and change and tweak and polish to my heart's content.

But November is about getting something down first, so I have something to edit in the first place.

I'll be interested to see how successful I can be at not editing as I go. I usually type in an extremely non-linear way, and even my emails and blog posts are polished continually as I go. I'm almost obsessive about it. I can easily spend an hour on one email, by accident. So this is a great exercise for me - a whole different way of approaching things. We'll see how it goes!

My agreement with myself is to post at least a word count update every day in November. Even if I don't get any writing done. That's a great incentive to keep on track, I think. So check back daily to see how I do. The drama, it is exciting!!!

Preparing for NaNoWriMo - A Keyboard Love Story

2010-10-22T06:32:00.000-07:00

Having made up my mind to commit to NaNoWriMo this year (also known as NaNo. Or WriMo.), I immediately embarked upon a time honored process to prepare: procrastinating actual novel planning by finding gadgets, books, software, and forums to waste my time - er, to make my writing much more productive. Okay, probably a little of both, and hopefully more of the helpful than the time-wasting. Besides, I did get my planning started, too.

For the sake of the curious (assuming there are any, and you know what they say about assuming . . .), and hopefully to save other procrastinators some time in getting themselves ready to write, I'm going to do a few posts on what I have found to be awesome:

First up - A bluetooth keyboard for my iPad! Wow, I love this thing!

Okay, okay, I know what you are thinking - if I'm going to use a keyboard with my iPad, why not just use my laptop? Fair question, Imaginary Reader, but I do have several good reasons for getting the keyboard even though I have a perfectly good laptop. Really! They are very important reasons, not just rationalizations. And, really, who are you to judge my purchasing decisions, anyway? No, I am NOT getting a bit defensive. I wish I had a stick-your-tongue-out emoticon on here. Oh, just keep reading! ;p

First of all, my children have several of their homeschooling curricula on my laptop. So if I want to work on my writing while they are working on their assignments, then I need a keyboard for the iPad. Yes, Dear Reader, I do realize that in addition to the laptop, we are also blessed to own a desktop computer. Unfortunately, however, the desktop computer doesn't fit comfortably on my lap when I'm having a Bad Day and need to spend a lot of time horizontal. It also doesn't fit in my purse when I'm out and about. Guess what does? The iPad! Even the keyboard fits in my purse, no kidding! Okay, so my purse is a messenger bag style - best decision I ever made in terms of pocketbook selection. Oversized thought it may be, however, neither our desktop nor my laptop will fit in my purse, so the iPad saves the day in terms of ultra-lightweight portable writing on a whim. Trust me, with my swiss-cheese-caliber brain, I need to be able to get my thoughts down ASAP, even if I happen to be in the middle of Target when they blunder their way into my cranium.

There. Enough neurotic justifications, now on to the part where I rave about how awesome this keyboard is!

I bought the Microsoft keyboard instead of the Mac one because it has good reviews, it comes with a separate number pad that I can use with my laptop, it is ergonomically designed, and it is black, which coordinates great with the iPad. The Mac Keyboard, of course, is light colored. To be fair, it probably coordinates well with the back of the iPad, which is light colored metal, but since my iPad is in a black case, and since I normally type while looking at the front of the iPad, not the back, all I can see are the black parts of it, and my imagination has a hard time making the Mac keyboard match. This keyboard looks like it was made to go with Paddy.

Yes, such minor cosmetic details are all highly important, crucial even, but what is even more crucial is price. This keyboard was marked down to $10 less than the Mac keyboard, and I was able to get a returned unit from Amazon Warehouse Deals for $7 less than that, so Happy Birthday to me!

Now that it is here, I love, love, love it. The keys have a great feel to them - I can type fast on them with no strain at all. The keyboard is so light and thin, yet the keys feel solid and sturdy. A great combination! Even thought the keyboard isn't specifically designed for the iPad, the volume controls and arrow key buttons work perfectly. I guess that's due to the wonder of Bluetooth technology.

I only had to go through the bluetooth connection procedure once, and after that Paddy has automagically recognized the keyboard whenever I turn it on. Some of the other keyboards I looked at had reviews that said they had to be manually connected every time you wanted to use them. Yuck.

With the iPad, you can't use both the bluetooth keyboard and the additional number pad at the same time. This is not a big problem for me, since I'm mostly interested in using the number pad for my laptop, which doesn't have a dedicated number pad.

The wireless signal on these things is great. In fact, yesterday I tried to use the keyboard, but I couldn't get it to come on. Then I realized that I'd left the number pad switched on when I stored it in the cabinet across the room. I opened the cabinet, removed the number pad from its pouch, and yep - it was still connected to the iPad, preventing the other keyboard from connecting. I switched it off, and we were back in business, but I thought that was a nice example of the range of these products. Not that I expect to need to type on Paddy from across the room . . . but I just think these things are cool. I'm geeky like that.

I actually like the iPad's on-screen keyboard quite a bit. It is wonderful for web surfing, and even emails and such. Since the keys aren't real, though, you can't type by touch. You have to look at your hands while you type, and you can't go as fast as with a "real" keyboard. For serious writing (and I do consider 50,000 words in one month "serious"), the bluetooth keyboard is a very productive luxury.

I've already been using the keyboard to do some initial plans for my WriMo project. I even used it to write this post! It is definitely the coolest keyboard I've ever owned. I highly recommend it to all my fellow procrastinators!

Next up: Choosing what software and apps to use for this project. Otherwise know as: Hours and hours of your life you will never get back, but totally worth it.

NaNoWriMo: a crazy, possibly insane decision

2010-10-17T15:23:00.000-07:00

Every November, thousands of creative folks band together to put their internal editors on vacation in the interests of pounding out 50,000 words of prose that may or may not be more appealing than raw sewage. But it really doesn't matter if the writing stinks. "Quantity over Quality" is the mantra echoed throughout the month.

NaNoWriMo (also shortened to just Wrimo) is the National Novel Writing Month. I've followed the progress of this event for the past five or six years, and it has always sounded like a cool thing for crazy people to do. Basically, participants write a novel in November. One month - 30 days - to write to the goal of 50,000 words.

Now, those 50,000 words may never see the light of day. They might even get flushed quicker than little Jimmie's dead goldfish. But nobody can take away the fact that those authors wrote 50,000 words in a month. And just like marathon runners, they get the satisfaction of knowing that for the rest of their lives.

And hey, some NaNoWriMo books actually get published, like Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants. It's being made into a movie starring Robert Pattinson!

Apparently, the possibility of writing a story for Robert Pattinson must have been the last straw, because this year I am officially insane enough to consider trying this crazy little endeavor. I have some character sketches I'm working on, along with an intriguing setting, and the beginnings of some plot ideas. The timing for actually starting on the project in earnest couldn't be better.

So, bright and early on November 1 I'll be writing till my fingers bleed (hopefully not literally) and blogging about the whole process, start to finish. The blogging part is not a casual afterthought. It's important, even vital, because it puts pretty significant pressure on me to follow through or risk public humiliation. No matter how ugly things get. Or sludgy.

Looks like the moment I hit publish on this post is the moment of no return . . .

Wall Street Journal: Handwriting trains the brain!

2010-10-13T12:55:00.000-07:00

As a longtime fan of writing in longhand, I thought this article in the Wall Stree Journal was interesting. These days, there are so many methods of quickly communicating and recording thoughts via keyboard that handwriting is frequently taking a back seat to typing.

The article above emphasizes how the act of writing itself helps the brain to develop in productive ways - ways that keyboarding will not. Information written in longhand is more easily remembered, for example, and the physical act of writing stimulates the brain in ways that could help keep it sharper, longer.

There are, of course, very good reasons why keyboarding has become more popular. It is legible to everyone, it usually comes with spell-check, it is faster, and it is much easier to edit.

Personally, I use both handwriting and typing. When I am journaling, I almost exclusively use cursive handwriting. I have filled literally dozens of notebooks with my random jottings, many of which I'll never read again. The act of writing them down, of slowly unwinding the words onto the page with plenty of time to reflect - that was the point. Journaling allows me to put my brain on paper where I can keep an eye on it. (And nowadays I've graduated from journaling on paper to journaling in longhand with my iPad, which is another story for another day!) I usually take notes in longhand as well. I feel that I can retain the information better this way, although if speed or legibility is a real concern I may type notes.

When I am writing anything that will need editing, I usually type it. It is just so much easier to edit on the computer. Sometimes I will brainstorm on paper and then type up drafts on the computer, but most of my formal, structured writing is done on the computer. I have no idea how all the classic masterpieces of human civilization were composed without computers - that makes them even more incredible in my opinion. I usually don't have a coherent paragraph without rewriting at least three times. Okay, maybe five. I could be an obsessive editor, however!

What do I have my children doing? Well, they are learning cursive handwriting and typing right now. They do both every day, and I'm convinced that they will both be highly useful tools for training their brains and helping them communicate throughout their lives.

Why We Should Never Take Ourselves (or anyone else) Too Seriously

2010-09-27T14:23:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, I had a pretty good brain. It learned quickly, understood a lot, and could do pretty much whatever I wanted it to do with minimal effort. Of course, I didn't appreciate that brain at the time. Totally took it for granted, and assumed that it would always serve me in just the same way.

Sure, once I had the twins, I noticed a bit of sluggishness in both of my upper hemispheres. My friends and I refer often to Mommy Brain, and we mean it. I wonder if that has ever been studied? Do our brains really work less efficiently? Or do we just have a lot more to keep up with?

Still, my brain worked fairly well overall . . . until I got sick. I went from one month being able to do most anything I wanted (someday . . .) to the next month (and the following two years) being frustrated to no end with my clunky, unreliable blobby mess of tangled neurons. I can function fine on some levels, but I still have a never-ending fog that I struggle against, as well as random hiccups (to put it delicately) that strike out of nowhere and create havoc when I least expect it.

The advantage of all this? (Yes, there's an advantage. You'll learn this about me - there's almost always an advantage.) Well, I've gotten a lot more up close and personal with just how delicate a balancing act our brains are. That experience has opened my eyes to the misconceptions I had about my grasp on reality. When my brain was working comparatively smoothly, I thought that I had things under control, had a good idea of how the world worked, what was going on in my life, and so forth. I think most of us like to think of ourselves as stable, rational, reasonable beings. And to a large extent, we are. But I've seen how the slightest bit of hormone or neurotransmitter glitch can throw things way off track, without us even being consciously aware of it. Sleep, stress, diet, stress, activity, stress . . . can all throw our supposedly "rational" evaluations way out of kilter. Not to mention all the ways in which our brains are hardwired to make mistakes right out of the gate.

Think about it - have you ever noticed how sometimes you can tolerate certain things (kids' noise, traffic, etc), and other days almost the same exact stimulus can seem like more than you can bear?

When things are going smoothly, I think our brains sweep all these little glitches under the rug, where they go pretty much unnoticed. We chalk them up to flukes, but don't recognize them as symptoms of our real limitations. Once the pile under my rug was as tall as a house, I had no choice but to recognize that everything isn't always what it seems. That I do not, in fact, have everything figured out. That I don't come close to understanding everything that is going on. That I forget more than I remember. And that I always have, but I just never noticed.

So now I make it a point never to take myself - or anyone else - too seriously.

Here's a link to a cool book that I found that points out just how fallible we can be:
Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure That We Are Way Above Average.

We can't all be above average. I mean average is average. Most of us are, in fact, average (or close to it), by definition. Some of us are actually below average, whether we like to admit it or not. (And not just politicians, either.) So why do we all think we are above average? That's a fascinating question that this book addresses, along with many other quirks of our oh-so-important, but oh-so-human brains.

A Sunset Home Run: The Power of Analogies

2010-08-06T06:05:00.000-07:00

Do you ever wonder how much of what your children learn will be forgotten in a year? what about (gulp) two years? I often question the effectiveness of my methods - when we go to the trouble of learning something, I like it when we actually remember it later.

Somehow, some of the things we learn do stick, and I'm always so curious to see which things stick, and why. I love to look for clues that point out the best ways for each member of our family to learn AND REMEMBER.

(and, if we're lucky, even USE - oh, happy day!)

Recently, we were driving home from a short beach trip, and we were treated to one of the most breathtaking sunsets I've ever seen. It wasn't particularly colorful, although there were some of the swirling oranges and reds we are used to seeing. There was this one pale cloud, though, that was entirely rimmed with white light, and several times we even saw it form a little cap or "halo", a neon rainbow circle that crowned the cloud's highest peak. And behind us, the full moon was brilliantly lit with reflected light.

Which led us to discussing how the moon and the clouds don't actually generate light of their own. We'd covered this a couple of years ago, but I had no clue if the kids would remember much from the lesson. Madeline piped right up though, and said, "Sure, it's just like a baseball game, remember?" And then I remembered that when we talked about how the sun's light reflected off the moon back toward earth, Madeline had come up with that baseball analogy.

The sun is the pitcher. He throws the ball (light) towards the batter (the moon, or other object), and the ball is hit back towards the fielders (us).

This visual had stuck with her all that time, and, from what Claire said when it came up, it had stuck with her sister, too. I've found that analogies to familiar concepts really help me understand and remember new concepts and relationships. Apparently they help the girls as well.

So, now I'm curious how we can come up with more analogies. If a textbook doesn't point one out (which they often don't) then it means we have to do a little thinking about what we are learning, asking ourselves what this information reminds us of. ("This is just like . . . ") I'm guessing this is where a fertile imagination comes into play! So, maybe searching for analogies helps in more than one way.

#1) it helps cement understanding and retention
#2) It helps exercise and develop the imagination.

Analogies are also indispensable in writing. They help communicate information to an audience in a clear and colorful way. Just like a picture, sometimes one apt analogy can be worth a thousand words. (see the analogy I used, there?!) I suppose that makes three ways that working to think in terms of analogies can help:

#3) improves writing and communication

Looks like devoting a little extra brainwidth to focus on analogies is a solid investment. What would that look like in your family?

Planning and Pondering - What is Success?

2010-08-03T14:24:00.000-07:00

As many of us (homeschoolers or not) get ready to plunge into a new school year, it's a great time to make the effort to ponder that Big Picture. What do we really consider success to look like? What are we really, ultimately, trying to do in raising our children to be (hopefully)successful adults?

Here are a couple of quotes I've run across that help me think about my real goals. I now have them posted front and center on my kitchen whiteboard (using black construction paper decorated with glittery gel pens). They are helping keep me on track in this season of planning our curricula, projects, and activities:

"All success consists of this: You are doing something for somebody - benefiting humanity - and the feeling of success comes from the consciousness of this." - Elbert Hubbard, 1923

"Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value." - Albert Einstein (1955)

Those are great thoughts to ponder. To me, the trick, (and the fun!), is figuring out what to do with them.

I find that our path twists and loops - a sort of 3-D cursive that looks different every day. Once our feet hit the ground each morning, we are off on another adventure. The way our madcap wanderings unfold makes planning a challenge, at best! Even with all the bumps and ruts, challenges, and choices, though, it is still enchanting to anticipate what could lie around the next bend. . .

I Thought of It So Now I Have to Do It . . .

2010-07-27T06:21:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I asked on this blog how big a commitment to discipline needs to be in order to yield significant improvement. I've been guilty more than once of trying different systems and methods in an attempt to introduce a smidge of discipline into my life . . . Only to fail miserably at actually changing anything long term.

The Power of One Minute

Thus was born a system of my very own - the ITOISNIHTDI technique. (Oh, yeah, I was coming up with crazy, unpronounceable acronyms LONG before "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" thought of it.) This mouthful stands for a pretty simple idea: I thought of it, so now I have to do it.

Sounds pretty revolutionary, right? (insert gentle sarcasm) I mean, nobody ever thought of something like that before! Frankly, if it were just as simple as that, I'd be able to get mountains of work done every day of my life without fail. And some people really DO have that ability down pat - they may not do everything as soon as they think of it, but they don't put off a lot of things that they could just as well go ahead and do.

What I was really trying to get at, though, was WHY some of us (like me) don't always do things that need doing when we think of them. Procrastinating on the daily things that pop into my head is a habit that I'd finally recognized in myself, and, based on what I've heard, is also a problem for a lot of other people.

"I need to clean the toilet when I get a chance."
"I need to tidy the living room, sometime today."
"Somebody should really change that light bulb."

With the swiss cheese I now have for a brain, unless I get things done right away or at least write them down, I'm going to forget all about it until the next time I trip over a book, or try to turn on the light.

Bearing that in mind, I tried to recognize obstacles to discipline. Removing those obstacles would create a smooth path to actually completing the things I wanted to do without having to trip over the book 5 times first.

So why don't we do the things we should be doing to keep our lives running smoothly? My own favorite excuses include, "It's too hard, I'm too tired, I don't have time, if I do one thing, I'll have to do these 200 other things, too/first", and so on.

To demolish these excuses would be no small feat. . .

Or, wait a minute, maybe a small feat was exactly what was needed!

In fact only the very smallest chores would be a part of this "system". Only chores that took one minute or less need apply! Surely I couldn't tell myself it was too hard to do something for one minute! I quickly compiled a manageable list of four or five items that took less than a minute each to execute, and prepared to put ITOISNIHTDI into practice.

I have to admit, after all those ambitious projects had all failed, I initially found it hard to get very excited about making smaller changes. Because, really, if a big change doesn't make much difference, how much difference can a small change possibly make?!

Well - out of boredom, or, possibly, desperation to prove that I could in fact discipline myself for at the very least ONE minute of my life, I decided to go ahead and make this smallest practical change that I could.

After all, if I really couldn't take control of myself for one stinkin' minute, then a disorganized home life was going to be the least of my worries!

But, I soon realized that if I really wanted to get rid of the whole litany of excuses, I needed one more simple rule. That's because, as soon as my brain heard "one minute", Worry started up - "What if I think of 50 one minute chores, one right after the other? You're not going to trick me into working for an hour that easily!"

That was when I made the rule that I didn't have to make myself do more than 3 one-minute-chores (OMC's to the initiated) in a row. I could do a few more if I wanted to, but if I did three of them, I didn't have to worry or feel pressured to do more of them for at least TWO HOURS. I mean, I was really setting a pretty low bar, here.

Other than that, though, as soon as one of my selected chores popped into my head, I required myself to do it right then. Even if I was on my way out the door, or needed to do something else more "important". These few simple chores were sacrosanct, my own personal dare to myself. A dare so easy, that I couldn't help but honor it.

The Results?

I was pretty surprised at how much difference even a small (practically miniscule!) amount of discipline helps, especially if, like me, you haven't ever considered yourself to be particularly well-disciplined. If I was tempted to skip something, or to put it off for later, I would ask myself if I really couldn't spare ONE minute to do something and have it out of the way. That self-reminder generally shamed me into action, which, of course, was the point!

Since then, I am happy and encouraged to say that I have very successfully adopted these little habits into my routines, and they have made a huge difference in my entire process of keeping house. While I required myself to complete the chores whenever I thought of them, in practice, I eventually settled into a routine where I thought of them at the same times every day, often when getting ready in the morning. Eventually, many of them became automatic, which meant i did them without even thinking about it, often while thinking of other things. It was like I developed muscle memory for these chores, a new reflex, something that requires very little conscious discipline to keep up. Which is kind of awesome, when you think about it! Habits are powerful.

When you see my list of simple chores, you won't think that they could possibly make much difference. I was amazed, however at how much easier it was to lock into the whole mindset of bringing order to my home once I committed to those chores. They are (cue drumroll, please):

Make my bed.
Swish my toilet
Wipe off my bathroom countertops.
Take the trash bag out of the kitchen can as soon as it gets full. (No more Mt. Trashmore!)
Unload the dishwasher. (This one sometimes takes as much as two minutes - I added it as a "challenge" after a couple of months of doing the other OMC's)

That's it.

Really!

Now, I don't want you to get the wrong idea - I am still by no means a model housekeeper, and with all the health problems and family crises we've been dealing with over the past couple of years, more times than not our house is an absolute wreck. The whole house is almost never entirely clean at once. And, my husband pitches in with laundry and dishes since I've gotten sick, which helps immensely.

But, I still stick with my commitment to do those same quick, easy chores, regardless of how silly they may seem, regardless of how many other, potentially more "important", tasks there may be, and somehow I almost always feel like I am no more than an hour or so away from being able to tidy things into some semblance of order again. No matter what else is going on, I feel like I am still doing things to maintain our home, to keep it from getting completely out of hand. My OMC's provide a foundation on which to build, when I'm ready and able to do more.

Very often, one thing leads to another, and I'll find myself doing many other tasks, and gladly too, because of how nice it feels to make the house a bit more orderly, and because I've learned how much I really can get done in a minute or two. I still haven't gotten our house exactly the way I want it, but at least I can say that I have made actual progress since I started. Somehow, in just minutes a day, I have changed.

Which sounds silly, but honestly, it is more than I can say for any of the more ambitious systems!

I've resisted adding other disciplinary commitments since then, though, wanting to give those first ones the chance to become firmly embedded as habit, especially in the face of all the health turmoil I've experienced in the past few years. Yesterday I realized that I first came up with this strategy about three years ago! Do you suppose that counts as a sufficiently ingrained habit, by now?!

Now that I am ready to consider adding more "official" OMC's, I wonder what I should commit to next?

What little things do you do that make things run smoothly and "feel" right?

Discipline ~ A Loaded Word

2010-07-13T17:05:00.000-07:00

What do you think of when you hear or see the word "discipline"?

Talk about a word with a variety of connotations and accompanying emotions! Some people cringe when they hear the word - it means someone did something bad and is having to face the consequences! That's what I used to think of right off, whenever I heard the word.

There is, of course, more to the term than that. Discipline can also evoke images of a graceful and controlled martial artist, honing his technique through years of discipline, of devotion to doing what it takes to do a task well.

Think of how this second type of discipline could benefit a person, or a family. Could a firm commitment to doing what it takes to do something well help you? Make you feel good about yourself? Help you get things done? Maybe even lead to other good things?

If you could add more discipline to your life right now, where would you want it? Also, how big of a commitment to discipline do you think is needed in order to see a significant change?

It could be worse . . . And maybe it should be?

2010-07-08T07:21:00.000-07:00

No doubt you've noticed that different people can have strikingly different feelings about the same kind of learning experience. I'm sure many of the differences are due to personality and learning style characteristics. These are the factors that are usually pointed out. I think these factors miss something big, however.

As a homeschooler, I can't tell you how many times I've heard parents rave about how their kids finally came to love learning when they left school, while at the very same time I've also heard heaps of other homeschoolers bemoaning their children's lack of enthusiasm toward learning and wondering where they went wrong. Curriculum reviewers talk about how their children are finally loving math, while others lament their children's boredom or frustration with the very same curriculum.

These differences probably go beyond just what could be explained by personality, learning style, or educational merit. When you think about it, doesn't prior experience have as much to do with success as anything else? So much depends on the setup, the context, into which a learning experience is introduced.

A simple example: A student who has struggled through a math program with 50 practice problems a day might think a program with only 25 problems is like a vacation. What about a student who has always just done 25 problems, though? Or a student who is accustomed to doing 15?

I'm guessing they won't be impressed, to put it mildly.

Similarly, a student accustomed to a traditional, regimented, classroom learning environment may revel in the comparative freedom that even a rigorous homeschooling approach allows. A lifelong homeschooled kid may chafe at the very same program.

So the question that my mischievous little brain wants to ask is, is it ever a good idea to purposely choose a program or approach that we know might be unsuccessful, or at least not enjoyable, just to give our children a different frame of reference?

Most of the parents I know (myself included) tend to obsess over finding and using approaches that our children will like, as much as possible. When our children don't do well with the approach, we blame the method, thinking it is a bad fit for our child, and that we need to find something else.

An overwhelmingly common concern among parents is that they not crush their children's love of learning. In the face of this nurturing, and in the right context, many children flourish. But others become coddled, resistant to most effort and blind to the rewards of discipline.

This flies in the face of what most of us would call good educational technique - But maybe what we really need in some of these cases is an opportunity for a change in perspective.

(I guess that's a fancy, positive way to say "attitude adjustment".)

Picasso and the second mouse - "Quartz Quotes" of the week

2010-07-07T09:08:00.000-07:00

One of my weird peculiarities is that I love to collect quotes and sayings. They can be fun and inspirational and sometimes just clever. This week, I have a couple of quotes for your consideration.

I love this first one. When I read it, I realized that it pretty much sums our entire homeschooling motto up in 17 words.

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."
~Pablo Picasso
Spanish Cubist painter (1881 - 1973)

Living life is an art form in itself, so I do agree it is a problem when grown-ups lose so much of that child-like creativity in their approach to daily existence. Drawing and painting are important and meaningful, but Art goes much further than that. I think any time we exercise our creative muscles is time well spent.

Certainly, it's a great reminder for us to give our kids lots of examples and opportunities to make and do beautiful and creative things. And it reminds us to approach every undertaking with an eye to making that task a little work of art.

The second quote is an insightful little tweak on a completely unrelated common saying. A pretty valid point, if you think about it!

"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese." ~Author Unknown

Just goes to show, some of these traditional words of wisdom are not as cut and dried as they seem!

Image: "Child with a Dove" by Pablo Picasso

Distractions

2010-07-06T10:59:00.000-07:00

Opportunities abound in this blink of an eye that we call the modern world. The sky is the limit, the world is our oyster. We can learn about anything, keep up with everything, be whatever we want to be.

In these exciting times I am constantly inspired to great and worthwhile pursuits. Opportunities that were once available to only a lucky few can now be done by anyone who will. Write a book, start a movement, teach others, share what you've learned, connect with people around the world, make art, design anything.

Possibilities are enchanting; potential enthralls.

If you think about it, however, you can predict the downside to all this bounty:

Somehow, someday, when I'm ready to actually bring even one of those possibilities into reality ...

I will probably have to focus,
to look all that limitless potential
right in the eye
and start slamming doors, pruning ruthlessly, eyes closed, fingers in ears, la-la-la-la, choosing over and over to ignore, pass by, forego.

Opportunities that were golden just moments ago, before the decision to Actually Do Something, are now nothing more than shiny traps and siren songs luring the unwary into the Bog of Distraction.

In case you haven't figured out, it's a problem for me. Just sayin'

The Future of Learning?

2010-06-20T20:40:00.000-07:00

What if you could hold pretty much everything you needed to know right in your lap?

Riding down the road, waiting at the dentist, lying on your couch, tucked into bed, and any time you needed to know something, or read something, or make a note, or jot down a poem, or whip out a sketch, or plan a trip, or add a doctor's visit to your schedule, or look up reviews, or watch a movie, or listen to music, or check the weather, or find out where, exactly, you are, anyway, (and which way is North), or how to get where you are going, or play a game or ten, or check your email, or look in on Facebook, or look up a recipe (and display it while you cook), or share photos, or write a report - or a letter (typed or handwritten), or research the habits of bees, or look up an address, or remember a birthday, or make out a grocery list (that you'll always actually have with you), or check the news, or find out what constellation you are facing, or play some Scrabble with your friends, or look up your bank account, or bid on an auction, or keep an eye on Craig's list, or look up a phone number, or check the store hours, or find the movie times, or learn a foreign language, or learn how to knit, or find a synonym or an elusive definition, or design a zen garden, or update your blog, or complete an iTunes University video course, or read all the classics that you missed, or meditate to a custom sound experience as you drift off to sleep - any time you need to do any of that, no matter where you are, you just can.

It is hard to explain what an iPad is. It is even harder to explain what an iPad is without coming across as the world's gushiest tech geek. Truthfully, the iPad does do a lot of things that other machines can do already. . . But not in your lap. Not in your purse. Not big enough to be beautiful and practical as well as convenient. Not long lasting enough to go all day, everywhere that you do.

No laptop is always there when you need it, as convenient as any paper notebook - just open and go, instantly, without taking longer to boot than to do what you needed to do in the first place. No cell phone has such smooth and appealing navigation. Things look the way they are supposed to, and you can type!

My bold prediction is that the iPad and its forthcoming competitors will be just as useful to jocks as to geeks. Especially if the jocks carry purses big enough to hold them.

My next big prediction is that because of that purse thing, women will find the iPad to be more insanely useful than men. . .

And there will be competitors coming out of the woodwork!

Competition is a very good thing for getting pricing down to the place where everyone can afford a tablet like this!

Until then, there's always selling things on Ebay to raise funds. Ask me how I know! (Just don't ask me where my poor Kindle is ...)

Many Rooms

2010-06-09T12:52:00.000-07:00

In all my years as a homeschooler, and as a homeschooling parent (heck, as a human being!) I've learned ... that I have a lot to learn.

It's not so much a matter of the more I learn the less I know, but rather the more I learn, the more I seem to recognize how much there is to know ... and how little of it I've mastered.

Does that sound discouraging? I guess I don't really think of it as a bad thing, though I do frequently wish for more hours in the day. I feel as if rather than living life stuck in a few small, familiar rooms, I've had chances to open up lots of doors, I've seen lots of rooms, (more than some, less than others) and I've even made inroads into learning quite a bit about some of them.

I could have lived my life in those first little rooms, happy, but ignorant of the whole rest of the blueprint, the rest of the story. Maybe not even knowing how small those first little rooms were. And maybe even missing a lot of what's really going on.

My point here, though, is not that I am particularly special. Of course, we'd all like to think we are especially refined, but don't you think the truth is that nobody actually stays in those first small rooms? Pretty much everybody opens doors and broadens horizons throughout their lives, one way or another.

No, to me, the interesting question is:

Which doors do you open, and why?

Free Planitarium DVD from NASA

2010-06-08T01:02:00.000-07:00

NASA and the National Museum of Natural History area teaming up to offer a free planetarium DVD to parents and educators. You are free to request as many DVD's as you need. Go to this page to request your copy. Non US residents can email them to request a copy, as well.

We are looking forward to getting our copy!

Tapestry of Grace End of Unit Celebration

2010-05-04T00:53:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, we finished our first unit of Tapestry of Grace, and I thought I'd upload a few pictures of the displays that the girls created for our end of unit celebration. We were studying colonial America (Year 2, Unit 3), and the girls had undertaken several projects to commemorate their learning. Here's a slideshow of our photos (click on the slideshow image to view larger photos):

iSchooling - Homeschooling with Your Ebook Reader

2010-02-24T23:36:00.000-08:00

For the past year, one of my most beloved possessions has been my Kindle. And, a couple of weeks ago, I replaced the Kindle with an iPad. Since I started using eBook readers, I've been able to read reading countless novels and public domain classics, like all the novels Jane Austen ever wrote.

Lately, I've been finding more and more classic educational materials for ebook readers. Many of these materials have long been available for reading on your computer. Project Gutenberg alone has thousands and thousands of public domain books available. I've found, though, that I really dislike reading books on the computer. Too much time in awkward positions spent staring at the glare of my laptop is sure to send me into a massive migraine! (For some reason the iPad doesn't do the same, possibly due to the ease of adjusting the display characteristics.) Plus, it is often difficult to take notes or add highlighting on the computer screen. Last, but definitely not least, many of the public domain classics are UGLY on the computer. Usually these are plain text documents, with minimal formatting and ugly fonts.

In the past, I have avoided a few of these issues by printing the documents. I've found, though, that ink and paper costs often eat up any savings you may have had over just purchasing the printed book in the first place. Not to mention, I've found myself swimming in stacks of printouts and unwieldy binders from various sources.

Now that ebook readers are readily available, I foresee a huge spike in the usefulness of all these plain public domain documents. Many of them are available in formats designed for your reader, but even plain text documents can look good on your eBook reader. There may be a few wonky paragraph breaks or alignment issues, but the standard font and spacing that the reader uses means that these books basically look and feel just like any other book! I find this to be an advantage even over reading classics that you purchase from your neighborhood bookstore. Those public domain classics are often printed in ugly or old fashioned type on cheap paper, with stiff and unwieldy bindings.

With an eBook reader, all books are created equal. Those theoretically-nice-but-unpleasant-to-use plain text online repositories are finally coming into their own.

The homeschooling movement's love of "living books" means that many homeschoolers appreciate children's classics. The lesson plans and curricula that have been developed for homeschoolers reflect that appreciation for children's literature. Works by Thornton Burgess, Andrew Lang, Edith Nesbit, and more can be at your fingertips in moments, in a format that you can use and love!

Beyond classic literature, it also turns out that there are many books for parents and educators available in the public domain. Educators of the 19th and early 20th centuries like Charlotte Mason and Maria Montessori wrote books that are popular with many homeschoolers today.

If you've been thinking about purchasing an ebook reader but are worried about the cost of getting one, perhaps it would help if you look at it this way: For $200-$600 (depending on the model), you are purchasing a collection of all the greatest adult and children's classics throughout history. And you get a cool ebook reader thrown into the deal!

I've started collecting links to free books that homeschoolers. teachers, and autodidacts may find useful. Check them out, and then check back often as I add more. I'm sorting by method or type of resource, as well as curriculum, so that you can find the books that will be most useful to you.

Enjoy!

Updated on 6/21/10: Changed name of this post from Kindle-Schooling to iSchooling. Figured there was no reason to get too device specific, and I think most people associate that little "i" with personal mobile devices, which is consistent with the real spirit of the post - the ability to get information and read it where you are, when you need it!

What we are working on . . .

2010-02-10T23:12:00.000-08:00

I wanted to start this semester off by moving on from our medieval overview and into a focus on early American history. Here's how we're accomplishing that:

We are using Unit 3 of Tapestry of Grace's Year 2 curriculum. This is an 8 week unit study of colonial American history, a topic which we have never specifically addressed before. It will probably take us a bit longer than that, since we have several "life" events that will be popping up here and there. My children like that they get to help schedule what they will be doing each week and when, so for now they are liking it very much!

We will be using it in a more secular manner than it is written, and I started up a Yahoo group for anyone else who wants to discuss the ins and outs of using Tapestry of Grace from a more secular perspective. Here's the link for anyone who is interested: togsecular.

This has been a tough winter, healthwise, so I am happy to be using a program that gives me some direction for planning lessons. It doesn't plan out every detail, however, so I can still feed my need to have fun with planning without getting overwhelmed by researching every possible resource on Amazon, which is what I had been doing!

I can commit to this for 8 weeks of instruction, no problem! And because you purchase the program unit by unit, I can change to something else at any point that it stops working for us or fitting our needs. I don't have to feel like I am locked in to something for an entire year, whether it works or not. I'm really hoping that this is a good match for our unique health AND educational needs.

Learning from the Classics

2009-12-12T05:22:00.000-08:00

A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of;- and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and class-books, and when we leave school, the "Little Reading," and story-books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The above quote was pointed out to me by Michael Clay Thompson in his excellent little book, Classics in the Classroom. Despite the title of his volume, the advice that MCT gives is inspirational for not just classroom teaching, but for those in any setting who aspire to teach and to learn.

The quote that he uses from Thoreau is undoubtedly thought provoking. We don't often acknowledge how advantaged most of us are - In this age of technology and open information, libraries and Amazon, anyone who can read this post can also easily and inexpensively access all the accumulated wisdom of thousands of years. I personally own a Kindle that allows me free access to all the public domain writings of all the classics that Thoreau would have read, including all of Thoreau's work, as well. (Not a bad deal, for a $250 investment.)

But the question is - though most of us have access to all this information for much less than we spend on fast food or cable every year . . . Do we take advantage of our great good luck?

The answer for most of us is either "no" or "not as much as we could". Why is that? Is it because reading the classics takes effort and (shudder) time? Probably that has something to do with it, although we modern types do sometimes willingly venture to attempt feats of mental challenge. Witness all the "Brain Age" games for the Nintendos and the wild popularity of Sudoku. And we're not totally averse to blowing an hour or two of our precious time on TV or Facebook, either.

Maybe it is because we don't want to - that we don't think that these classics contain wisdom relevant to today. Who wants to waste their limited time and energy studying ancient relics? In this new millennium, things change so quickly that much of our new information is obsolete before the month is out. How can works written 100 or 1000 years ago still be of value?

I think that most of us believe the classics are famous because they are part of history. They are a record of how people once thought, once wrote - at one time, long, long ago. These droll ancient people who had no idea how the universe worked or how human bodies functioned. Even those authors who lived a hundred years ago had no conception of the wonders and challenges of the 21st century - computers and nuclear weapons and terrorism and modern appliances.

We understand why classic works would be important to people whose jobs are to study the progress of human thought - history professors and museum curators, for example - but how can it be that so many well-read individuals from all time periods and all walks of life have had the kind-of-goofy notion that everyone should read these dusty relics?

Are people like Thoreau and Michael Clay Thompson so blinded by their warped elitist egos that they mistakenly try to impose irrelevant "wisdom" on people who are just trying their best to live in the real world?

I'm guessing you've guessed that I don't believe that to be the case.

I haven't personally read nearly enough yet to qualify as "well read" in the classical sense, but I definitely suspect that Thoreau and MCT are on to something. Here's the very simple reason why: I have never once in my adult life regretted the time that I've spent reading something worthwhile. I've often regretted the time I spent surfing the internet, or reading silly romances, or watching TV. I've wondered if I shouldn't have been doing something else with my time. But I've never had regrets after an hour reading Hemingway or Jane Austen or Plato.

The truth is that the classics are still classics not because they are mere historic relics, but because they are the best thoughts and ideas that people have been able to come up with over the past several thousand years. Think about it - most of the books that come out this year will be long gone within 50 years (or even 10!) But the classics are classic because they offer brilliant insights into the things that don't change and that are universal to human experience.

I never read a great book without coming out of it knowing something that I didn't even know I was missing.

Who knows what else I might be missing? I'm getting off here to go read . . .

Multiplication Chart Downloads

2009-11-03T13:51:00.000-08:00

The past few weeks, we have been working on solidifying multiplication facts and strategies. I designed these multiplication chart templates to use for practice recalling and writing the facts. You can download them and use for your children, as well. They are a little more colorful than some of the others I found online!

[download id="6" format="1"]

This project was created using Serif's incomparable Digital Scrapbook Artist, and the Happy Day Out Digikit from DaisyTrail.com.

Due to requests for a theme that is a little more boy-friendly, I've just added the following chart with a Southwest theme:

[download id="7" format="1"]

This page was also made in Digital Scrapbook Artist, using the Mexican Wave Digikit from DaisyTrail.com

Printable Money Chart uploaded - Two versions

2009-09-17T12:08:00.000-07:00

Today I created a printable money chart activity. My girls have known how to count money for a couple of years now, but unless they review it often, they tend to forget which coin is which. Since I wanted to upload the pages here for you to print out, I made two versions - one feminine and one gender neutral. The chart has spaces for you to arrange coins alongside their names and values. I've included a page of tags with the names and values for you to cut out and print. (And I've written the cents two different ways - take your pick!)

I'm always amused a little bit by activities that use the plastic play coins or fake printed coins when teaching money. I prefer to use the actual coins themselves, whenever it is possible. I've seen some fake coins that cost more than the real ones are worth! Besides, once you are done, you can use the real coins as real money, something that plastic coins definitely don't do! For each copy of this chart, you will need one quarter, one dime, one nickel, and one penny.

My children wanted to be able to put the chart together and keep it for reference when working on money questions. I wanted them to be able to do it multiple times for review. So we laminated the chart and then put little bits of Velcro directly on the backs of the tags and coins, as well as on the spaces on the chart. I think another great way to do this would be to use magnetic tape, but I didn't have any of that, and I did have lots of Velcro!

Now, the children can assemble the chart and have it available for reference. Every week or two, I can take the chart apart and let them review the assembly process. This is a great activity for our workboxes!

Here are the files for your downloading pleasure:

[download id="3" format="2"] [download id="4" format="2"] [download id="5" format="2"]

I designed everything with the fantastic, fantabulous new Serif Digital Scrapbook Artist, using the "Melon School" and "Happy Day Out" Digikits from DaisyTrail.com.

Workboxes at Our House

2009-09-14T12:13:00.000-07:00

At the end of last school year, I started learning about the workbox techniques popularized by Sue Patrick. Sue is the mom of a special needs child, who adapted some of the educational methods she learned from her child's therapies to enhance her homeschooling routine. The method has generated a flurry of interest in homeschool circles, with more than a thousand homeschoolers joining the Workboxes Yahoo Group.

I personally find it fascinating to watch the ways in which a resource like Sue's book is adapted in turn by so many homeschoolers to fit unique situations of their own. Then the various adaptations branch off and gather steam of their own. It is like a little sociology experiment in fast forward, courtesy of the internet

We've been using workboxes since spring, and I have to say that I love these little boxes!

I have a rack for each child that stores twelve plastic shoe boxes. Each "workbox" day, I load the boxes with all the materials that we will need to accomplish our work. It has been a GREAT structure for the girls, but, perhaps more importantly, it has made me more organized and effective, as well. (Which, frankly, is no minor feat - I'm extremely organizational reform-resistant. Though I dearly love them, most "systems" stick with me about as well as scrambled eggs on a new teflon frying pan.)

Anyway, as I was saying, it turns out that it really isn't that much more work to put everything into the boxes than it is to fly by the seat of your pants. When I do "wing it", though, I've noticed that there are several problems that tend to crop up:

You have to stop in the middle of your work time to gather supplies for an assignment or project, which gets your children out of their "ready to learn" zone and into "fiddling around waiting and then wandering off to play or bicker with siblings" mode.

You forget about some of your materials, and they go the entire year without being used.

You don't forget about some of your materials, but are so focused on getting your basic skills mastered that you rarely get around to actually doing some of the enriching activities that you want to do. Things like art, music, science, history, and foreign language.

Your children don't know what to expect for the day, and start thinking that school will never end, no matter what they do.

Your children DO know what to expect for the day, because you inadvertantly get into a rut - doing the same things over and over, week after week, and both you and the children become bored out of your minds.

Let's just say that we've encountered all of those issues at various points on our homeschooling journey. For now, workboxes seem to be working better than anything else we've tried to combat all of those problems at the same time.

Here's a little tour of how this approach is working for us:

We start off our day by "clocking in". No doubt there are some kids who would roll their eyes at this, but mine love it. They just move their name cards to the "Ready to Learn" pocket when we start, and the "Completed" pocket when we are done.

Here's a look at our box setup.

This is the standard $15 shoe rack from Target, with 12 plastic shoeboxes on each rack. Notice that I've attached velcro tabs to three spots on the front of each box. Once I get the boxes full of activities and laid out on the shelves, I attach the appropriate number tag in the center. Then I attach a "Work With Mom" tag if the box contains an activity that I need to help out with. If the activity is a group activity that both girls share, I attach a "Work Together" tag on the right. When they get each box, they know whether they should work independently, along with their sister, or with me one-on-one.

Each box contains all the materials they will need to complete the activity or assignment. Once they have completed the box, the girls put away their materials, remove the tags from the box, and stack up the empty boxes, ready to go for the next day. When they remove the number tag, they move it over to their assignment grid, to signal that they've completed that box. My girls are very much "box checker" types (I wonder where they get that from? :-) ), so they love having the visual confirmation of their progress. They can see their shelves emptying out, the stack of empty boxes building up, and their assignment grid filling up with completed items. Fun, fun, fun! (If you are a "certain type", which we definitely are!)

What do I put in the boxes? Well, I try to make each box contain one simple assignment, and if there are complicated or multi-part assignments, I'll break them apart and put one section in each box, to keep the boxes moving along at a steady pace. Here's a sample of what our boxes might have on a given day:

Handwriting/Picture Study workbook (and pencil)

Page of math review problems (include ruler, dice, or any other tools or manipulatives that may be needed.)

Reading Break - 20 minutes of whatever you like (with a timer included)

All About Spelling assignment (with card file-box and dry erase marker for whiteboard activities)

Sentence Family (with crayons and paper for illustrating the grammar story as I tell it)

Math Time (flexible math lesson that I plan out based on what we need to be working on, and usually involving me and a whiteboard, plus manipulatives, but possibly involving baking brownies)

Artistic Pursuits (with art materials needed for the lesson)

Galore Park Junior Science (British prep school curriculum that we read through together)

Kids Guide to the US (US geography kit, with map and stickers for learning about each state)

Pianimals (piano practice curriculum)

Puertas Abiertas (DVD-based Spanish curriculum)

That's a pretty heavy day, so on many days we have fewer boxes. We have a variety of subjects and resources that we rotate through based on what day it is, and what we have time for. There might be boxes with math card games, internet lessons, science projects, file folder games, or many other possibilities.

So far the boxes are working out great for us, and I'm looking forward to putting together more posts about them as we move forward. One lovely thing about "workboxing" is that so many families have generously shared the materials, graphics, forms, and other printouts that they've developed for managing this system. I'll be adding some of the materials that I've put together here so that you can download and use them as well.

The Brick Factory

2009-09-05T23:50:00.000-07:00

This holiday weekend, we began a major architectural endeavor at our house. No, we aren't knocking out any walls or building an addition.

We are making bricks. Lots of bricks.

[caption id="attachment_51" align="aligncenter" width="451" caption="The Factory - Also known as our kitchen table"][/caption]

The girls have never done anything like this before, so I helped them quite a bit at first.

[caption id="attachment_52" align="aligncenter" width="451" caption="Claire at the Factory"][/caption]

By the time we hit our seventh batch, they were doing all the measuring, pouring, mixing and molding. Thank goodness, too, because we aren't halfway done yet. Right now my only job is to somehow pry all these cute little bricks out of their molds. It is sort of like pulling 34 little gray teeth with each batch.

[caption id="attachment_61" align="aligncenter" width="346" caption="Madeline at the Factory"][/caption]

No, I'm not going to say what we are planning to make until I know if the project will end up in any way resembling our original goal. I like to keep my options open!