One Stick, Two Stick

Nope, this isn't going to be a post about knitting, although you will likely see knitting posts from time to time.

When we all first started taking kung fu, there were certain things we expected to learn at some point during our training. We knew that eventually we would learn traditional forms, fighting applications, and well, we hoped that at some time we'd get to learn how to use weapons. We expected those to be the tai chi sword (straight sword), the broad sword, and my husband's most anticipated--the long staff. My husband had taken kung fu for a brief time several years ago, so he had an idea of what was to come. As for me, the only kung fu that I knew came from what I saw in Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li films. Over the years, we would regularly all gather around the computer screen while my husband went from one video to the next on traditional kung fu forms and styles. It was through those videos that I became acquainted with the traditional weapons used.

Imagine our surprise when we started learning kali (also known as eskrima and arnis). This is a Filipino martial art that uses sticks as weapons. There's more to it, in that eventually you can use improvised weapons in the same manner, and like most martial arts, the applications are endless. In any case, this was not something we ever expected to learn, thinking that we probably wouldn't stray far from the traditional weapons used in Chinese martial arts. I have to add that this is a testament to how wonderful our sifu is. He sees the value in teaching us a broad curriculum of styles and applications, and his enthusiasm is infectious. We've been learning kali for a few months now, and I'm greatly enjoying myself with these sticks. While I've had the opportunity to use the straight sword, so far I feel more "at home" with the sticks. The sword is a beautiful weapon that I'm looking forward to using more often, but it certainly doesn't feel as instinctual for me. The stick and arm movements seem infinitely more natural. The footwork however, continues to be a challenge. My husband believes that I find it generally more natural because I used to be a majorette years ago, and therefore feel more comfortable with a stick weapon I can "twirl around." This is not to suggest that batons are weapons of course, although when one cracks you on the head after you fail to catch a toss, you may just think otherwise.

Kali has definitely become something I greatly look forward to every time I go to class. I think it's funny for my husband to see just how invested I am in this whole kung fu and kali experiment seeing as I was so reluctant at the very beginning. It was only supposed to be about the kids and getting them involved in a martial art. And yet here I am, enjoying it all as much as they do. I'm so glad I tagged along that first day.

Probably the most famous name in kali stick fighting is Dan Inosanto, who was one of the three men Bruce Lee certified to teach his own style of Jeet Kune Do. I've spent inordinate amounts of time watching videos of Dan and other kali practitioners on youtube, and find myself getting more and more excited about this martial art. But the funny thing is that really, there hasn't been a single thing I've learned that I haven't enjoyed.

Click here to watch Dan Inosanto in action. It's a shame the video cuts off at the end, but it's the most recent, and best quality one I could find on youtube.

Really Learning Latin

Just yesterday, as I struggled to translate a Latin sentence through what this site refers to as a "crossword puzzle" reading of it, I realized that I had a problem that needed addressing. Deconstructing sentences this way is wholly inefficient. I tend to follow all of the steps thusly: pick out the verb, determine the conjugation (1st, 2nd, etc.), determine the personal ending, the number (singular or plural), the tense, the voice, the mood, pick out the subject, determine the number, check for an object, again check if it's singular or plural, determine the noun cases, etc. And I didn't even get to adjective declensions, or issues of gender. Not to mention that I'm still learning all of the vocabulary.

The article I've hyperlinked above details the Dowling Method for learning Latin. It speaks of learning Latin grammar via "brute memorization." Well, after yesterday's exercise in frustration, I've come to the conclusion that yes, nothing but brute memorization is required here. Surely, internalizing all of the forms by way of daily recitation and keeping copywork notebooks full of charts would be more than helpful. The article recommends that these charts and tables be copied 200 times each--100 times for the adjectives table. That's a lot of copying. If I'm not able to master the paradigms after that, I'd have to pack it all in. But how could one not get it after all of that? Now, despite my agreement with all of this drilling and copying, I just don't see the point in holding off so long before introducing reading selections. The article explains how the forms must be mastered first, and asserts that this could take about six months' time. That's a big time commitment to nothing but rote memorization. I'm a big believer in the immersion method to language learning, which requires little to no prior familiarity with the target language. And yes, while immersion in Latin is very different than immersion in a modern language (it's not like you will be surrounded by native speakers or anything like that--unless of course there's some society of classicists that do nothing but hang around together and speak Latin all day), I still see value in exposing oneself and one's children to Latin readings early on. In my opinion, it gives children (and adults) something for which to strive. Drilling forms, I've determined, is essential, but why hold off on something as pleasurable as reading? Why can we not have our cakes and eat them too?

As far as Latin reading material is concerned, I do own the first of Hans Orberg's series, also referenced in the above article. I've only read through a dozen or so pages, but I was able to understand everything I've encountered there so far. I understand there is a huge jump in difficulty as you go along, but that's to be expected, and brings us closer to our goal of eventually reading more complex material. It's such a neat idea. In fact, I wish such a series existed for most languages, but especially for ancient Greek. The illustrations basically help you understand the text. Really, it's as much of an immersion program as can be found for Latin students.

Some other books I either own, or am contemplating purchasing for the kids are Ecce Romani (similar to Orberg in that you are immediately immersed in Latin, although Orberg's books are far better and infinitely more thorough), and an assortment of children's books/stories translated into Latin (Fairy Tales in Latin: Fabulae Mirabiles, Harrius Potter books which I recently found are also available in ANCIENT GREEK, and various Dr. Seuss titles as well). There are just so many options now, and it would be a pity to hold off on them until all of the Latin grammar is committed to memory.

   

Lists, Lists, Lists

Hello, my name is Patty and I'm an obsessive "lister."

My to-do lists are often as long as my must-read lists, and believe me, those are long ones, often further cataloged by genre. One list per genre, obviously. What's the point in keeping all of those lovely books unsorted? My Amazon wish list, until just the other day, included a whopping 876 titles. I have self-improvement lists, task lists, curriculum lists, long-term goal lists, short-term goal lists, menu lists, grocery lists, character development lists (I dabble in a bit of creative writing on the side), and well, the list (ha ha) is endless. Today's list contains directives on making a few last Christmas-related online purchases, reminders about pending appointments, last-ditch motivational pleas to myself to complete and/or start a handful of homemade gifts, and of course, a daily affirmation or two--itemized of course. Do these all keep me on task? Well, of course not, but I'm always hopeful that they will help me stay on task whenever I begin a new one. At the very least, I like to think of them as reminders. I have a terrible memory, and if something is not written down, I'm apt to forget it. Writing things down, whether these are plans, goals, or whatever, makes them more concrete, and therefore seemingly more attainable. Seemingly. Now, writing them on this blog means another thing entirely--accountability.

I obsess about any number of things really, but listing things is high up there on my, um, LIST of quirks. I am certain to never consciously leave home without a paper and pen handy, as I'd surely be lost without them. (Oh, and it must be a pen. The right sort of pen, too. But that's a whole other issue. I swear I can write yet a whole other blog post or two about my fascination with pens. I'm less stuffy about the paper I use, although I do drool over nice quality paper stock, a symptom I think, of having worked in the publishing industry years ago. But I digress...) I write lists, keep lists, and even contemplate future lists. I have even been known to recopy lists. These are things I do practically non-stop.

I first realized that I had a "problem" a while back when I stepped out of my home without, (Gasp!), a writing instrument. Seems as if someone, possibly a little someone, entered my purse and extracted my pen. After a thorough search of my purse which ended with most of its contents poured out onto my lap (that's a lot of stuff, by the way), I came to the realization that I didn't even have anything I wanted to write down. Nope, not a single thing. Perhaps if I had wanted to write a list at all at the time, it would have included just one item. "Double-check purse for writing instrument before leaving home." But of course, one item does not a list make. I reference this story because along with the "not-having-anything-to-write" realization, came another more enlightening one. Had I been in possession of a pen, I would have just come up with something to write. Yes, possibly in list form. So for me at least, having the right instruments, or vehicles of expression at my disposal, can sort of goad on a bit of list creativity. And seeing as most, but not all, of my lists consist of tasks that need to be done, I invite yet another factor into the equation. I am also seeking to sort out priorities and organize the "to-do" chaos that is often undecipherable in my head.

What can all this mean, and what does this say about me? Well, some people seem to think it's a sign of artistic genius, or rather that incidentally, many great artists have had this obsessive list-making trait. Seriously! Oh boy, you better believe I considered jumping on that bandwagon immediately as I'm a wannabe great artist and all that! More likely however, as boring as it may seem and as much as I hate to admit it, perhaps it's just all part of human nature to catalog things on personal lists. And perhaps those who consider themselves list-writers can be further divided into groups, as the BBC article I've hyperlinked suggests. If I had been in charge of dividing them, I'd have done it differently...perhaps classifying these as occasional list writers and obsessive list writers. I just happen to fall into the latter group. Yes, perhaps this list making trait is all haphazard and ultimately meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but then again, maybe it's not. I mean, perhaps the level of obsession is relative to the level of genius?

Should I develop an insatiable urge to paint something magnificent, I'll be sure to come back and update.

Personalized Learning and Finding Joy in Life

Entertaining and spot on, as usual.



If anyone has missed Sir Ken Robinson's first TED talk on creativity in schools, you can view it here.

About Those Phonograms...

In my last post, I mention how reading didn't come easily for my daughter. What I didn't mention, was that teaching reading didn't come easily to me either. I was a voracious reader as a child, and I just assumed, wrongly so, that my daughter would just naturally take after me. She loved to be read to, and I spent many days, cuddled with her on the couch, reading through countless books. She memorized several stories line by line, and often begged me to read her favorite books over and over again. I was thrilled that she loved books so much, and was certain that she would enjoy reading all on her own just as much. Of course, as per my last post, that just wasn't the case.

I went through several reading and phonics books, and I can't really say what eventually worked. I'm sort of leaning toward it just having been due to her readiness, but I may be wrong. We used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and that was a bust. I know it works for many children, but I kept getting annoyed with their orthographic method. Perhaps that was just my hang-up, but we dropped it after a while. Next came Phonics Pathways. I liked it. It was traditional, and straightforward, but my daughter found it boring. Then we tried Reading Reflex. That worked much better! I was getting warm! All the while, I had been "hearing" about the Spalding method, but reviews out there describing the method as difficult to wade through, really intimidated me and I kept passing it up. Eventually however, I built up the nerve to try, particularly when I found a helpful companion program called Reading Works. Thanks to that program, and the consistent hand-holding it offered, I was able to wade through the Writing Road to Reading (Spalding). The program made sense to me, and my daughter was progressing.

In working through the phonograms, I was finally cognizant about just how difficult the English language can be to learn. In this post, I'm referring specifically to English language reading, but spelling is also a stumbling point for many. Take the phonogram OUGH for instance--bough, though, through, rough, bought, cough! None of these is pronounced the same way! While I pronounced them properly, with nary a thought to their differences, seeing them listed all together like that really made me a lot more able to understand my daughter's confusion. I realized that it would take some work, and I ceased pressuring my daughter to understand something which was quite illogical to her at the time.

All of the above has reminded me of an episode of I Love Lucy, in which Ricky aptly illustrates what he regards as the "problem" with the English language. I quite agree with him.

Classical Education or Bust

When we first decided to homeschool our children, I was filled with all of these romantic thoughts of how joyous it would be to educate them. Actually, I probably would have not even used the word "educate." I preferred saying that I would facilitate my children's learning. Somehow, that seemed less controlling in my view. I remember having read John Holt's Teach Your Own, and being completely enthralled by the idea of unschooling. Heck, I still am! It made sense to me. It was organic, and wonderful, and yet really really tough--at least for me. Within a few months of starting out as "unschoolers" (in quotes because I'm sure there will be those who may believe, as even I do, that I went about it all wrong, and therefore wasn't technically a practicing unschooler), I was stressed beyond belief. A large part of it was because I didn't trust the method would work for me. I still wholeheartedly believe that it can work for nearly any child (if not all children), but perhaps not for every parent, as was the case with me. So I branched out and my homeschooling library grew to include books on other methods.

I think I ascribed to the "better late than early" philosophy for as long as it took before I was inundated with questions from well-meaning friends and family regarding my daughter's progress. Some people are able to field these questions effortlessly, but I was still working on thickening my skin in all matters related to home education. And frankly, the only reason I decided to jump on board with the whole "better late than early" view to education, was because I had already tried pushing early academics and made absolutely no progress. I guess you could say that personally, I was a reluctant advocate of the "better late than early" approach to homeschooling. Choosing to wait wasn't my preference, but it made me feel better to know that there was a school of thought out there that saw nothing wrong with waiting. Still, I felt conflicted.

I went on to read about the Charlotte Mason approach, and then moved on to other books on classical education. That's when I became interested in The Well-Trained Mind. It was the sort of education I wished I had had. I  quickly fell in love with the method, and tried to follow the schedules perfectly. I later learned that those schedules were only added to the book at the insistence of the publisher, and that they were only just loose suggestions. Still, I wanted to do it all. But I ran into a wall. My daughter was not learning to read as effortlessly as other children I read about on homeschooling boards. She struggled so much. I found that my perfect schedule was getting left behind. There was no time for all of the cool and interesting things I had planned to teach her, because our days turned into hours-long reading lessons. It ceased to be fun, for her and for me. And here's where I feel very ashamed of myself. I built that initial difficulty up into this insurmountable obstacle. I wasted precious time getting my daughter to excel at reading, without realizing that I was making it all such a tedious chore. Thankfully, it was around this time that I started to seek out support again online. And go figure, there were several other homeschoolers out there who were experiencing the same things! These homeschoolers also wanted to give their children a classical education, and were finding ways to do so, regardless of their children's struggles with reading. This was a major a-ha moment for me, because in my mind, I was still regarding the task of reading, and writing, to be prerequisites to a classical education. Once I eased up my expectations, and we started to conduct a lot of our lessons orally, setting aside a decent amount of our time each day to reading and writing instruction, things started improving. Those romantic ideas I had when I first started out, were not wholly unfounded after all. Granted, among our good days, were a smattering of difficult days. And as good as the good days could be, the difficult days were HARD, often bringing me to the verge of tears. But we pressed on. (Note: We eventually made our way into a more Latin-centered classical approach, but that's another story, best kept for another post!)

My little girl is now fourteen years old. She's a reader. She's still a reluctant writer, but she's making progress. She works very hard, and has taken ownership over her education. Yesterday, as we were discussing John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men," and really getting into our literary analysis, I was just struck by how much she's matured. She's grown to be such a sweet, mature, and introspective young lady. I don't think I've ever enjoyed homeschooling her as much as I do now. She is such a pleasure to be with, and discuss things with. This is exactly what I had hoped to get out of our homeschooling, all those years ago when I first romanticized about setting out on this journey. She may not be getting a "by the book" classical education, but she certainly seems to be no worse for the wear.

Smile, You're on Candid Camera!

Note to self (and whoever else may be reading out there): Think twice before getting your children a video camera. I'm only half-serious here of course. I would never dream of stunting my children's intellectual growth by planting obstacles keeping them from their chosen mode of artistic expression. But today, I came >thisclose< to doing just that, right after I heard the unmistakable sound of my own voice coming at me from the living room. I peered over in the direction of my voice, now emanating loudly from the television set, and there were my two youngest children, having a nice laugh over what they had candidly captured. And what did they capture, you may ask? Why, an embarrassingly frequent episode of my freaking out over yet another misplaced item, of course! In the video, I accuse my prankster daughter of hiding the item (this time it was her kung fu shirt that I had only just washed and dried). Don't worry guys, I'm never forceful when making these accusations, even though I'm seldom off-base. If something is awry, you can pretty much assume "prankster daughter" is behind it, but really, that's beside the point.

Anyone who has, ahem, ever had the pleasure of knowing me for more than a nanosecond, will have undoubtedly witnessed many such episodes. I lose everything. I lose my glasses daily. Well, it's not like I can see them when I'm not wearing them! Pencils mysteriously go missing. My keys? Heck, I lose those in my own purse. I'd be hard-pressed to turn up a matching pair of socks, particularly if they're patterned ones. Oh, how I love just plain white socks! Anyway, I know I haven't written much, but surely this post will clue you into the chaos that has currently unpacked and settled into my own head. And now I have digital proof of it all! There's nothing like seeing and hearing of your faults in full color and surround sound. Perhaps I should thank the kids for bringing this to my attention. But that would just encourage them to keep taping. I guess I'll consider my self-improvement in this area an early New Year's resolution.