Space 'n' Such

ASTROPUP: Yesterday marked the 56th anniversary of the launch of Laika, the mutt the Soviet space agency sent aloft back in 1957. Laika was the first living animal to orbit the Earth.
                                 
By all accounts, the original Laika probably wasn't nearly as happy as the pup Annabelle's artwork has pictured. :/  She gave her life for science. R.I.P, Space Pup.

EYES ON INDIA: For awhile now we've been tracking a project of the Indian Space Research Organization. Not long after midnight tonight (the wee hours of Nov. 5, or time) they will be launching their first interplanetary mission. Exciting! They are sending an orbiter to the Red Planet. The project has been dubbed Mars Orbiter Mission, or MOM. :)

ISRO has a countdown clock on the mission's Facebook page -  and as of this afternoon, it looked like the launch was set to go off a little after 1 a.m. our time (Pacific Standard Time).
                              
Photo: Indian Space Research Organization

A country launching its first interplanetary mission is a Pretty Darn Big Deal. On the mission page, there was a great graphic about "The Last Gaze." I love it ...

I'm thinking I'm going to get up to watch the launch, and the kids say to count them in, too. I'll let you know tomorrow whether or not that went down.

BIG HISTORY BIG DEBUT:  Several months ago, I mentioned a Microsoft project called Big History. The only reason I found about about it in the early stages was because a friend was working on the software design of the project, and the launch was limited..

Now, "Big History" is going global and we're excited. From their press release today:

We’re proud to announce the launch of the public version of the Big History Project. Aimed at the science nerd and history buff in all of us, this six to eight hour course will start you on your journey through Big History. Blending text and rich media, the course guides you through significant thresholds of big history, beginning with the Big Bang and ending with the future. Embedded in each is a quiz and those that pass all nine quizzes become certified Big Historians. We’ll even send you a sticker so you can show off to your friends.
 

Now, doesn't that sound awesome? CJ, especially, is a mega-ultra-history nerd, so we are definitely signing up!  Check out the Web site here: www.bighistoryproject.com - if you scroll toward the bottom, you'll see where you can get started with the course. 

LAME SAUCE: True confession time. It's November. Yeah, I know. You knew that already.  But what I haven't mentioned is that we haven't cracked the math textbooks yet for this year. Have I mentioned that it's November? :0

I dutifully picked up the Singapore Math 5A workbooks for the kids at the beginning of the school year. And they have been collecting dust ever since. Why? Well yes, we've been a little busy what with New York, London, California, and such, but that's just an excuse. The bottom line is we have ignored them because I couldn't bring myself to use them after taking the amazing edX course "How to Learn Math."

"What?! A math class makes you inclined to avoid math?! What kind of math class is that?" you might wonder.

Well, it was the best kind of math class, I would suggest. What it did was point out how traditional math classes can SUCK THE LOVE OF MATH right out of you. 

Today, for whatever reason, was a tipping point, and I finally felt guilty enough to open those books. Oh. MyGawd. It was worse than I anticipated. I mean seriously, what a terrible waste of time and meaningless exercise. :(  It was completely busy work for the kids. I had them start in on the first two lessons and about two minutes in a finally looked at what they were doing, apologized to them for wasting their time, and said we'd be doing math differently in the future. I can do better than this. We can do better. More logic puzzles. More real word story 'problems.' More postulating and estimating and wondering. 

THAT THING WE DO: Last Friday, we were lucky enough to have a reader inquire about our 'once a week school' as one of the kids explained to a curious adult in the park during 'school hours.'

I have had other inquiries from others over time wondering about our schedule and way of doing things. I'll attempt to sum it up here, with the caveat that no two days are alike and we are making this up as we go along. ...

Once upon a time CJ went to kindergarten at a local public school in 'the best' zip code one could hope for in Seattle. Unfortunately, it was awful and terrible in more ways than I care to explain, but let's just say it involved violence (peers), indifference (administrators), and intolerance (all around). And so, we decided not to do that any more. 

And so, we embarked on our great adventure. My original intent was to take a year to regroup. No great harm would be done by CJ missing 'Official First Grade' and Annabelle was a year away from being eligible for kindergarten. And so that year we went our own way and I started blogging our Monday through Friday doings, just to help give myself piece of mind that we weren't entirely pissing away CJ's elementary education year.

However, just a few months into the year, I definitely started to feel the freedom and see the possibilities. Sure, I looked at local private schools, but it burned my butt to think about spending $20,000 plus a year out of pocket for primary, elementary education. I'm super frugal by nature, and that just seemed like a ridiculously steep price tag (to me, not judging others) for a primary education. That $ would buy a lot of college, I reasoned. 

And so, I wondered, "What if we didn't go down the traditional path?" CJ was thriving - loving learning without the trials and tribulations of the daily grind in an institutional setting, and Annabelle was a preschool phenom. ;) What if we went down the Yellow Brick Road instead? 

And so off we went!

Truth be told, I don't know if I would have been brave enough to attempt this if not for the magic of the Internet. I see it as the great equalizer. Through it, we have access to the most wonderful resources - text, video, and more. We've been on live web casts with NASA experts, we can peruse the Library of Congress at our leisure, take virtual field trips any hour of any day. It's wonderful. Amazing, remarkable and so enriching.

And this city we live in. Seattle is AMAZING! So many museums. So many coastlines. So many venues with amazing speakers and performers. We've been here six years now and I feel like we've barely scratched the surface! Every day is an educational adventure!

Though we're well on our way down the Yellow Brick Road, I am always looking for ways to enrich the kids' education and experience. We've experimented with different learning models, and we're lucky living in the state of Washington, where we have freedom to explore. For starters, here, it is legal to homeschool your kids. That's not true everywhere. I've heard from parents in other countries who risk serious legal repercussions for homeschooling their children. I can't imagine living under that cloud.

But here in Washington the options are many. You can go it entirely alone - homeschool your kids K-12, with the only requirement being filing a 'declaration of intent' annually with the local school district once your child turns. You also have to meet some pretty liberal requirements in order to qualify as your child's educator. More on that later. ;)

We in Washington also have great options for being involved in online learning programs that are very comprehensive and 'school' like, as far as curriculum goes, which is great for people looking for a school-like experience without physically going to school. The biggest is Washington Virtual Academies, a statewide effort. They offer a complete curriculum and online access to certificated educators. There are school districts throughout the state who have Internet-only students, on a smaller scale than WAVA. 

In Washington, several local school districts also try to attract homeschoolers by offering alternative programs. (The reason I say 'try to attract' may not be fair, because my thought is that in some instances they are trying to attract the homeschoolers' tax dollars without offering all the services a standard bricks and mortar school does.)  

In my never ending quest to make sure I'm doing OK by the kids, I have periodically checked out the offerings of local and surrounding districts to homeschool students. We took some classes down south (Highline district) before, and enjoyed them, and we have been taking some classes in the Shoreline school district for about three years now, I think. It has its pluses and minuses. Pluses are, in our case, we are there two hours a week. Most weeks, that's OK. ... ;) I do like that my kids have a place to think of as 'school' with which they have positive thoughts. They have a playground they think of as 'theirs' there, and the science teacher they have there is phenomenal, and we heart science. They also enjoy their math class, which is NOT, thankfully, straight up book stuff at all, and their math teacher is really great and loves Star Wars, so we heart that. :) 

Downsides of our affiliation? Monthly reports take time, but because I blog our adventures, it's pretty easy to keep track of it all. Each year, the requirements of involvement in the Shoreline program seem to grow, per state regulations. For some families, that's not a problem. In fact, they love being at the campus multiple days a week. For us, two hours a week is more than enough. Different strokes, different folks! 

Beyond that, there are some downsides of homeschooling in general. First of all, I get Super Freaking Tired of busy body people asking why the kids aren't in school. There is one annoying checker at Albertons who asks us Every Single Time we go in the store between 8 and 4 why the kids aren't in school. And I mean Every. Single. Time. And so, we don't go there anymore during school hours. And there are random people in the park, you name it, who do the same. And there's no easy answer. I have coached the kids to give X Y and Z as possible responses to make life easier, but you know, I don't think my 9-year-old should continually have to explain why she's not twiddling her thumbs in a 'normal' classroom to complete strangers. But it is what it is.

Another uneasiness I have about homeschooling is that, believe it or not. I am a huge fan and advocate of public schools and think they provide a great and necessary service . My two oldest went to (mostly) great public schools K-12, and for their undergraduate degrees. They then went on to earn their masters and are both educators now, the oldest at a public school, the second born at a private school. I always vote for school bonds and levies, and still donate considerable resources to public schools.  

Of course, another uncomfortable uneasiness regarding homeschooling is the obvious question whether or not kids are getting an adequate education without benefit of professionals. 

This summer at a pre- back-to-homeschool function, I visited with a parent who was so clearly and genuinely concerned about providing her middle school aged daughter a good education, but she confided to me that she wasn't sure she could do it because she hadn't even graduated high school. It was clear her intentions and heart were in the right place, and I unhesitatingly told her, "Of course you can do it! You can just learn right along with her!" Heck, Annabelle, CJ, and I have done that so much already, in the physics, etc. courses we've taken online - and they're nowhere near high school aged. Bottom line is, where there's a will, there's a way.

I guess when there's a problem (IMHO) is when there's not a will. Case in point, a couple of weeks ago, I was working at a table in a place that I won't name, and a homeschooling parent was 'working' with her fifth grade son on his math. The young man wasn't understanding it, and he was asking his mother for help and the problem was, his mother couldn't do the math, either. Not at all. Not even close. The son went storming off down the hall and the mother was mad at him for being frustrated. :(  I don't know what the 'happy ending' is there.  

But overall and overwhelmingly, as I grow older and hopefully wiser, I realize there are more colors to the rainbow. More than ever, I think coloring outside the lines is not just OK, but something to be encouraged. ;)

And I think there are any number of ways to describe 'school.'  I feel so fortunate that for my big old boys, school was by and large a WONDERFUL thing/place. In fact, it must have been a positive experience to them, as they're both now teachers! However, that was a different place and a different time, and even back then, I spent, oh, around 15-20 hours a week at their school, and always considered myself their primary educator.

For my current kids, 'school' is a bricks and mortar place they spend two hours a week. And they like it, it's just a wholly different experience than their much bigger brothers had. 

Bottom line is, school is whatever you decide to call it (X amount of hours at Y facility) and learning is what you make it - and hopefully a never-ending proposition!