Posts by Joan Concilio

12Oct
17

The great math curriculum hoax

More than any other question in the dozens of homeschooling Facebook groups and email lists I frequent, the great debates rage over “Should I use this math curriculum or that one?”

Saxon, Math-U-See, Life of Fred, Common Core, not Common Core, lots of drill, not a lot of drill, workbooks, stories, manipulatives… the questions fly, and parents heatedly share their opinions as if discussing their views on peace in the Middle East, not methods of multiplication.

The fact is, the curriculum is not what matters most.

The great math curriculum hoax

Does it matter? Well, sure. Are there approaches that work better for some students than others? Almost certainly. Is it sometimes hard and confusing to switch methods midstream, even if the current one isn’t completely meeting your family’s needs? Sure.

But the big hoax is that the math curriculum you choose will make or break your child’s chance for success in high school and beyond.

The curriculum is only as valuable as the understanding you bring to it.

If you “get” math and you can explain things to your children if they’re struggling, a straightforward method might be fine. If you struggle yourself, a method that’s written at the student’s level, with little extra explanation required, might be preferable. If your child excels at math, maybe a deeper and more rigorous approach is best, or maybe you want to minimize the “calculation” approach and spend more time on theory.

No matter what math curriculum you choose, your student will succeed if you – and I mean both of you – truly understand the “why” behind the material.

Multiplication is awesome. Hundreds of thousands of children across the country can tell you that 5 times 7 is 35. Unfortunately, thousands of those children don’t understand that if they have 6 sets of 7 items and take one set of 7 away, they have the same answer – 35.

You’ve got to get it. You’ve got to know why you’re doing whatever operation or calculation you’re doing. There’s not really a program out there that can’t teach your son or daughter the formula for the area of a circle. But why does that matter? When might you do it? And WHY is it pi times the square of the radius? There are fascinating stories out there about the discovery of just that, and when it becomes memorable and useful – well, that’s when it becomes a real part of your child’s life, not something to memorize for a test and promptly forget.

It’s hard. If math is difficult for you as a parent, it’s even harder. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, to work through problems and watch video explanations yourself.

Don’t be afraid to ask WHY. That’s the curriculum that I most recommend to build lifelong math skills. Whatever else accompanies that? Well, that’s up to you.

Just don’t let the curriculum get in the way of your learning!

Note: This post originally was written for the no-longer-active blog of online video learning company Uzinggo, a review partner of ours. When I was writing recently about real-world math, I wanted to reference some of these thoughts, realized they were no longer online and decided to revive them! I have one other similar post coming soon.

06Oct
6

Real world high school math: Learning algebra and geometry from life

I often talk about how I believe that real-world math is what matters.

You can, like our family, use an entirely real-world approach to math, with no required workbooks or textbooks. You can also use a super-structured math program. You can love math yourself, or be mystified by it. You can have a preschooler or a high-schooler, a child with math anxiety or one gifted with numbers.

In either extreme, or anywhere in the middle, I believe that knowing the real-world applications of the math you encounter is what’s most important.

While I’ve talked about this issue in many ways before, today I’d like to focus on a specific concern or question I hear, even among proponents of real-world math. Many people think it’s fine “to start with.” But the concern I hear above all others is this:

“If your daughter doesn’t learn algebra and geometry, how can she graduate?”

real-world-high-school-math

That’s what I want to address today, both by talking a little about our learning philosophy and by sharing some resources where you can read and explore more about math in the real world.

Real world high school algebra and geometry

First of all, I want to point something out:

“Learning algebra and geometry” is not the same thing as “working your way through an algebra or geometry textbook.” It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. In Pennsylvania, our homeschool law doesn’t even specify that you must have a whole semester or year of those subjects; you must study math in high school, and it must include algebra and geometry.

In our family, algebra happens naturally. It happens when we figure out grocery-store price comparisons. It happens when we’re keeping track of our personal finances. It happens when, as part of a summer camp on forensics, Ashar finds out that you can estimate someone’s height based on the size of their footprint.

It’s amazing the amount of times we talk about algebra in our family without ever mentioning “math.” I’ve said before that algebra is simply overlaying sets of equations onto the world around us, and the biggest thing we do to promote a real-world approach to algebra is to talk.

We talk about gas mileage in our two cars, one a decade old and the other brand new. We talk about when it makes sense to invest in something expensive – like a new microwave – and how cost-per-use works out to make it more effective to spend more money up front to spend less over time in some situations.

And geometry and its science counterpart, physics, are even more natural. Have you packed a full cart of groceries into your car’s trunk recently? Played sports? Fit things into your pantry?

These are the things we do, and the things we talk about.

And, again, what makes this work is the engagement. I’m not saying “never do math.” I’m actually saying exactly the opposite – stop relegating math to a subject on a chart for however many minutes a day. See how much of it is all around you, and share that with your kids.

It’s kind of fun. Play “spot the math” for a week, and see who can find the most examples. You might be surprised!

Real world high school math resources

  • It’s not all about numbers: Unschooling math – This post came about when I tried to explain our family’s unschooling approach as it relates to the traditional subject areas most families are familiar with. It’s a great starting point and I encourage you to read it first!
  • Real world math resources series – This is a starting point for most of my posts about real-world math, including the “5 Days of Real-World Math” series I wrote in 2012 and continue to add to. It breaks down the math you encounter in the kitchen, playing sports, at the grocery store, in personal finance and more.
  • Real world math resources you’ll love – The final part of the series I mentioned above. I continue to add to this, and in fact need to update it with the resources I’m including today!
  • The unschooled version of a ninth-grade-ish curriculum – A look at what we’re learning this year, including math, and how.
  • DragonBox Algebra 12+ – An amazing way to learn algebra through an app that doesn’t even really look like algebra. This is not what I’d call an “educational game.” It’s a game. It happens to be educational. It’s also amazing. I play it too. 🙂
  • DragonBox Elements – This app is the newer one from WeWantToKnow, and Ashar FLEW through the geometric concepts in it. Much like DragonBox Algebra, the point here is conceptual math, which is awesome.
  • Get the Math – Dude. Rap/hip-hop style music videos showing how algebra is used in music, a video-game designer sharing how she uses math to create games, and more. Seriously cool.
  • A Charlotte Mason approach to math: Living Math – This article in Homeschool magazine is by my friend Jimmie of Jimmie’s Collage, and it’s a great example of how living math happens at all levels
  • Pinterest: Unschooling math – I contribute to this group board along with Aadel of These Temporary Tents and our fellow unschooling friend Mariellen. Great stuff for all ages!
  • Pinterest: Unschooling high school science and math – This is a board I started this year (with contributions from my friend Karen of Homeschool Girls) to try to compile specific higher-level real world resources and conversation-starters.
  • The Life of Fred book series – I’ve talked about this series often. It’s a math textbook series – sort of. It’s a story about a 5-year-old math genius named Fred, and instead of tons of exercises, it tells stories about how Fred encounters everything from arithmetic to calculus in the real world. Ashar likes reading the stories, and we highly recommend it. While this is described as a Christian series, we are a secular homeschooling family and haven’t had any problems using the fairly few spiritual references we’ve found as talking points about what different people believe, which we like to do anyway.
  • Digital currency: Video games for math – This post focuses mainly on games Ashar played when she was a little younger, but it poses some questions to help you think more expansively about how math appears in your family’s favorite games.

Bringing homeschool subjects to life

This post is part of a series through the iHomeschool Network about bringing homeschool subjects to life. Click the image below to see how my blog friends bring their favorite subjects to life, from history to art to nature study and more!

Bringing Math to Life - iHomeschool Network linkup

05Oct
2

Unschooling: Our September 2014 adventures

WOW, it’s October. I feel like we crammed a ton of things into September, and while it was fun, I’m looking forward to things slowing down a bit as it gets colder. They probably won’t, but I can dream, right? Anyway, here’s a look back at just a few things we got into as a family this September.

(If this is your first time catching our month-in-review posts, welcome! Check out July’s here and August’s here for a little bit of background on why we’re taking this approach to documenting some of our unschooling learning adventures.)

Our biggest project this month was the 4-H alpaca show at the York Fair. Here are Ashar and Jupiter.

Our biggest project this month was the 4-H alpaca show at the York Fair. Here are Ashar and Jupiter.

Books

Disclosure: This post has some affiliate links. I only link to things we legitimately use and recommend, so if you see such a link, it's because we really do believe in the book or item!
Remember our Bionic Blox? Ashar dug them out and built this cool, somewhat anti-gravity tower this month.

Remember our Bionic Blox? Ashar dug them out and built this cool, somewhat anti-gravity tower this month.

Movies and TV

One early morning, this katydid (leaf bug) was on the windshield of our car!

One early morning, this katydid (leaf bug) was on the windshield of our car!

Video games

  • Dragon’s Dogma
  • World of Warcraft
  • Club Penguin
  • L.A. Noire
  • Fibbage – Think of this as a “digital Balderdash” played through your TV using your iPod, iPad, phone, etc. We crack up playing it! (Watch out – there’s no rating on the questions, so sometimes you get some that are not topics you want to discuss. But it’s A TON of fun if you have teens or adults.)
The terrarium Ashar made over the summer for 4-H won second place at the York Fair!

The terrarium Ashar made over the summer for 4-H won second place at the York Fair!

Videos

Um, Ashar had never seen this, I don’t know how. I feel like a failure as a parent. But less so now.

Places and projects

  • Words of the Day. This is going to get its own entire post soon, but essentially, every day, Ashar is choosing a word and making a poster about it, with facts, the word in other languages, a quote and more. This was entirely her idea and the sum total of my contributions has been to download A LOT OF FONTS for her formatting pleasure. Some of her favorite words so far: Barricade. Matrix. Apocalypse. Space. It’s been awesome and a huge rabbit-trail starter.
  • 2014 York Fair. At our county fair, Ashar and I both entered paintings of ours; we both won prizes for two pieces! She also showed her 4-H project alpaca, who was kind of a poop, but she had fun. The best part was dressing him up in costume – she was James Bond, and he was Jupiter, normally an evil henchman to one of Bond’s enemies who was working with Bond on one mission. They dressed up, and she wrote a story to accompany their appearance.
  • Coursera philosophy course. Ashar and I have been checking out Introduction to Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Not just because we like the lecturers’ accents, but it helps. Another huge conversation-starter.
The alpaca costume contest. Ashar, aka James Bond, with Jupiter, henchman to her enemy, but who she was using to complete a mission. You know, because he has a long neck and makes a good lookout.

The alpaca costume contest. Ashar, aka James Bond, with Jupiter, henchman to her enemy, but who she was using to complete a mission. You know, because he has a long neck and makes a good lookout.

Odds and ends of stuff we’ve talked about/read/geeked out over

  • In a rather long philosophy discussion, the ideas of religious plurality and Universalism, why most religions including ours fundamentally involve other religions being “wrong” and more.
  • The Scottish independence vote and why it mattered (even though it was “no”).
  • An overview of military history in the 20th century and beyond thanks to Wikipedia’s List of Invasions page.
  • That Daniel Craig is going to have a small part in the new Star Wars.
  • How a genet is making friends with large animals like a rhino and a buffalo.
  • Whether our society’s opinions about eating animals in the future are likely to change, either because of how the animals are treated and might feel or because of the health concerns things like antibiotic use bring for humans.
  • How Hitler convinced many Germans to either ignore or tacitly or actively support the killing of the Jews during World War II.
Sarah's paintings - Jazz Bluebird, top left, and Geordi's Visor, bottom center - won ribbons at the York Fair.

Ashar’s paintings – Jazz Bluebird, top left, and Geordi’s Visor, bottom center – won ribbons at the York Fair.

So what’s new with your family this month? Drop me a comment! I love hearing from all my “blog friends!”

03Oct
41

Why video games are vital to education

I’ve shared several stories about our family’s journey to radical unschooling, and in all of them, there’s a theme: Public school didn’t work for Sarah, who we began homeschooling midway through her sixth-grade year in 2012.

What did work?

Pursuing her passions.

Learning from life.

Ashar loves video games. I do too. And so at first, they just seemed like “a good place to start” in pursuing passions and life learning.

What video games teach about learning

But I quickly found out that there’s WAY more value than “a place to start” when it comes to video games in learning. In fact, I discovered that there’s a lot to learn about how we learn in video game design, and I’ve become kind of a student of video game methodology and educational philosophy myself.

Disclosure: This post has some affiliate links. I only link to things we legitimately use and recommend, so if you see such a link, it's because we really do believe in the book or item!
And that’s why I contributed a chapter on “Learning from video games” to The Big Book of Homeschool Ideas.

I talked about the ways we learn from specific video games in detail – pieces of which you can find in my series on video-game learning from January 2013.

But today, I’d like to tell you a little more about why I think this is so important.

How we can learn about learning from video games

Earlier this year, I took a course on video games and learning from Coursera. Previously, I’d taken one on gamification, or the application of game principles to non-game situations, usually business but education as well.

It was an amazing chance to think more critically about games in general – not just “educational” ones.

I was already seeing Ashar’s interest in what some might consider educational topics that sprang directly from the games she played, from an interest in the Revolutionary War from Assassins Creed III to her problem-solving and math skills from Minecraft.

But among the things I discovered, starting with those Coursera courses, was how much video games of any sort teach players how to learn.

Onboarding is one of the biggest pieces of video-game design. Think of any computer game, console game or game app you use. The levels get harder as you go, right? There are tutorials or tips or early missions or challenges that show you how the game is played. World of Warcraft, one of Ashar’s favorite games, is GREAT for this – the early missions teach you how to use weapons, how to interact with other players and non-player characters and more.

These experiences build on each other, and the game offers less and less direct advice as you go, instead leaving decisions more and more in your hands.

Does that sound like educational mastery? Onboarding in games has taught Ashar, who sometimes struggles with “putting things together,” how to take her skills in one area and transfer them to new problems and questions.

Talk about learning how to learn! That’s a skill that, even more so than math or history, will take her far in life.

Then there are the real-life discussions we have because we game together. What about violence? What about gender roles and gender depictions? What about the treatment of Native Americans? These are ALL conversations – deep ones – we’ve had as a result of our family gaming.

While our family doesn’t enforce any video game “limits,” I say often – and will say again – that it doesn’t mean I think you should give your 10-year-old a copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and set ’em loose on their own. But Ashar is 14 (well on the way to 15, sadly!) and able to handle some pretty mature themes, which I’m glad to talk about openly with her.

And then there are the actual topic lessons, which are not insignificant. At an “unconference” earlier this year in nearby Harrisburg, PA, I was privileged to meet the founder of Submrge, a site dedicated to the classroom use of commercial games, which was amazing. Hearing from classroom educators who see the value in this really reinforced my thoughts and made me want to learn even more about learning through games of all types, and I highly encourage you to Google “learning with” your family’s favorite games to see more of this type of material.

In fact, if my work schedule hadn’t gotten in the way, I’d be spending next weekend at THATCamp Games, an unconference in Baltimore, Maryland, about humanities and technology, which I highly recommend if you’re in the area!

Updated to add: I found a link the day after I published this post that I’d forgotten about – a short but good read on Lessons from Assassin’s Creed for Constructing Educational Games on a site I like, Play The Past (about history and gaming).

Read more in The Big Book of Homeschool Ideas

You can find out more about all of the ways we learn from video games – and about a billion other topics – in The Big Book of Homeschool Ideas. Get your copy of The Big Book of Homeschool Ideas for just 99 cents!

The Big Book of Homeschool Ideas contains 103 chapters, more than 560 pages, from 55 authors. The digital e-book comes in three formats for Kindle and other mobile devices.

Get it for just 99 cents now!

02Oct
4

A birthday celebration: Hugh Jackman and Les Misérables

You might know him as Wolverine, and we like him that way, claws and all.

But in honor of his 46th birthday on Oct. 12, we’re taking a look at some awesome facts about Hugh Jackman, specifically as he relates to one of our new favorite musicals, Les Misérables, as part of the iHomeschool Network’s celebration of October birthdays.

Hugh Jackman Les Misérables unit study

All about Hugh Jackman

Hugh Michael Jackman was born Oct. 12, 1968, in Australia. He had a fairly average childhood, enjoying the outdoors and dreaming of travel, and went to college and earned a degree in communications. He took an acting class during his senior year of college and, after graduating, studied acting full-time for a year at a school in Sydney.

Disclosure: This post has some affiliate links. I only link to things we legitimately use and recommend, so if you see such a link, it's because we really do believe in the book or item!
It wasn’t until he was about 22 that he truly thought that his hobby of acting could become a career, and he then went to acting school for four years, graduating in 1994. After graduating, he earned a role in an ABC series; performed in some theater shows, including a starring role in a London stage presentation of Oklahoma!; and then got his big break when he was cast as Wolverine in the X-Men series, playing that role in seven movies in the series.

He had several other key roles, but the one that interested us most (outside of the X-Men series, which we do like) was Les Misérables, in which he starred as Jean Valjean, and which opened on Christmas Day 2012 and which we’ll talk more about in a minute.

You can read more about Jackman on Wikipedia and on IMDb.

And he has a large social media presence, too – find him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

All about Les Misérables

Les Misérables is an 1862 novel by Victor Hugo (and later a Broadway musical, and later a movie based on that musical) that tells the story of a French man named Jean Valjean, who, after spending 20 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread and running, starts a new life in Paris in 1815, plagued by the shadow of Inspector Javert, the policeman who vows Valjean will never stop paying for his crime.

Amid this, Valjean gets embroiled in the lives of a single mother named Fantine and her daughter Cosette, who Valjean later takes and raises as his daughter after Fantine’s death. They continue to try to avoid Javert and make a good life for themselves, but both become key parts in an uprising led by university students, one of whom is in love with Cosette.

This is not “the French Revolution,” as many who know only the basics of the story of Les Mis believe, but rather another event that takes place many years after the Revolution called the June Rebellion, or the Paris Uprising of 1832. This is a real event that frames the centerpiece of much of Les Misérables, which is actually one of very few works of literature that describe the event.

The plot of Les Mis is many things – a story about personal redemption, a story about secrets, a love story between parent and child, a love story between a young couple, a tragedy, a drama, a portrayal of battle – the list goes on. I think the reason we love the story so much is how real all of the characters seem, especially when brought to life in musical form.

I will mention that in the theater and stage versions, there are some fairly graphic things depicted – one character forced into prostitution and essentially raped; another’s suicide; and some other things. If you’re watching with your family, just be aware of that up front!

Les Misérables resources

Other movies starring Hugh Jackman

Join the birthday party

If you’re interested, there are many more cool October birthday lessons from my fellow iHomeschool Network bloggers. Click the image below to check them out!

October birthday image
And thanks for stopping by to help me wish Hugh Jackman a happy birthday!

You can check out more posts in our Learning Party series here!

29Sep
10

A birthday celebration: Talking about the controversial music of Eminem

We’re going a little bit out on a limb today.

As you know, we love to participate in the iHomeschool Network monthly birthday celebration, where we talk about things we’ve learned about celebrities of all sorts in the month of their birth.

I let Ashar pick our “people” each month, and this year, she’s also taken over the responsibility for most of the research and information in these posts. I just come along and tie it all together in writing.

When she saw October’s birthday list included rapper Marshall Bruce Mathers III, more commonly known as Eminem, she said, “We’ve got to write about him!”

I admit: I almost tried to talk her out of it. We’re pretty weird in our family, and a lot of what we do is criticized (on the internet and in person). My parenting decisions are called into question on the regular, and while I stand by them, I tend to keep my head down in a lot of ways because I don’t want Ashar to bear the brunt of people’s disagreements with me.

But she likes Eminem. I like Eminem. And even if you’re more conservative, I hope you’ll give us a chance to share some of the conversations we’ve had about a rapper known for his abusive relationships, drug abuse, seriously foul language and more.

You’ll make your own decisions, and I’m sure that for most of my readers, Eminem isn’t going to make it into the family music rotation. That’s cool, but I hope you’ll still read to the end before coming to any conclusions about the fate of my eternal soul or what have you.

Eminem discussion points for families

The basics about Eminem

Eminem’s Wikipedia page provides a good overview of his life, his career and the many controversies therein.

He was born Oct. 17, 1972. He was raised primarily in a poor neighborhood in Detroit by his single mom, Debbie, after his father left. Eminem had a rough relationship with his mom, and that and the absence of his father are themes in many of his songs.

Eminem spent three years in ninth grade, originally wanted to be a comic-book artist before discovering hip-hop. He started rapping at the age of 14, dropped out of high school at 17 and had a daughter, Hailie, with his girlfriend (and later wife) Kim Scott. Another rough relationship, another theme in many of Eminem’s songs.

In a move that’s maybe strange for a guy who goes by a name that’s not his in the first place, Eminem further mixed things up by creating an alter-ego, Slim Shady, whose pretty-awful exploits (like killing his wife and hiding her body with his infant daughter in the car) he sang about. To be clear, that wasn’t a true story from Eminem’s life, but his lyrics made a lot of people pretty mad even so.

His career grew, but so did his struggles; he and Kim married, split up, remarried, split up again; he struggled with drugs and alcohol and went to rehab (a few times). He starred in 8 Mile, a movie about life in Detroit that wasn’t entirely autobiographical but wasn’t exactly not, either. Struggling teenagers found themselves represented in his music; many parents – and others – found his lyrics misogynistic, homophobic and generally hate-filled.

And in our family, there’s a perfect generation gap – Eminem has been topping charts for 15 years, from my senior year of high school to Ashar’s freshman year. That’s where the next part of today’s post comes in: Instead of telling you facts about Eminem, I’m going to share with you the ways Ashar and I talk about his music – and a lot of other serious issues.

An interview with Ashar (then 14) about Eminem

Me: What do you like about Eminem’s music?

Sarah: The stories in his songs.

Me: What’s different about the stories in his songs versus in other songs?

Sarah: In a song like Unwritten (one of Ashar’s favorite songs, by Natasha Bedingfield), it’s about a book you write yourself. In his songs, it’s a book that’s already written. You get the story right away and you don’t have to wait for it.

Me: But it’s his story, not yours.

Sarah: Right.

Me: What do you think about the swear words?

Sarah: I ignore them, honestly. You can listen to the clean versions of his songs, or the original versions, and either way you still get the story.

Me: He’s had a lot of problems with drugs and stuff like that.

Sarah: That does make his stories different. And some of his songs talk about getting out of that lifestyle and not doing that. Country songs always involve some kind of alcohol, usually. I don’t get that.

This led to a detailed discussion about alcohol mentions in songs, including how brand names in particular are used to represent particular lifestyles – the kind of people who drink Cristal and Grey Goose; the kind of people who drink cheap beer in country songs; that sort of thing. Since no one in our house drinks, this became a funny conversation, as my only way of knowing how to pronounce most liquor is from songs.

My fiance, Kaitlyn, helping with this discussion: Did you know that Robert Downey Jr. (one of Ashar’s favorite actors as Iron Man), he’s spent time in jail for doing drugs? Does that change how you view his movies?

Sarah: No. A lot of actors have done drugs.

Kaitlyn: And music artists, too.

Sarah: The Beatles did. It made their songs more creative. Back then everybody was doing that.

Me: Well, not everyone, but a lot of people.

Sarah: They thought it helped them make better songs as a band.

This led to a discussion on how we can’t know if drugs made The Beatles more or less creative or more or less famous, since there isn’t a world where they didn’t do those things for us to compare them to.

We then talked about how something like 4% of American teens have reported using cocaine or heroin. That’s mind-blowing on a large scale, but it got even more real when we talked about how that would work out to something like 16 people who were in Ashar’s class at our local public school probably having done hard drugs. That’s scary. It’s also almost certainly true, if not slightly under the actual number.

Sarah: His stories are good, even though they do mention that stuff.

Me: What about the idea that listening to his music would make you more likely to do things like drugs, or be in abusive relationship, or whatever? And the same idea about video games. Like people will say that if you play L.A. Noire or Call of Duty, that you might be more likely to kill people or shoot things because it “seems fun” or cool?

Sarah: If you’re only listening to it as a song, I don’t think that’s true at all.

Me: Do you think there are people who do feel that way, like they think it’s cool to “bust caps” and stuff because they hear it in songs?

Sarah: Some people think “that totally sounds like me, I want to do that.” Other people think “Well, this is just a song, it’s neat to listen to, but I’m not going to go out and do those things.”

At this point, Kaitlyn suggested a relevant Jon Stewart quote, in which he points out that listening to Julie Andrews sing Climb Every Mountain didn’t inspire a generation of mountain-climbers. Oversimplified, sure, but Ashar appreciated the example.

We talked at this point about the difference between the kind of people who listen to music “as a song” compared to those who take it as personal advice for how to act.

We also talked about how, while some of that divide happens on gender lines, there are plenty of female hip-hop artists who regularly sing about using men as objects, or as a way to “get stuff” they want, usually by doing some pretty not-OK things with them.

Sarah: If you want a Lamborghini, get it yourself.

THAT’S MY GIRL.

Ideas for discussion

I don’t recommend you buy your 10-year-old an Eminem CD and turn ’em loose. Far from it.

As relaxed as I am about music, there are songs that absolutely don’t get ANY airplay in our family, both of his and of other popular artists.

The thing is, even if you never listen to a single Eminem song, I think there’s a lot of room for discussion in your family based on some of the themes from his music.

  • What do you think about the amount of drug use among teens?
  • Why do you think some people are more susceptible to suggestions of violence in music, video games and movies than others?
  • What kinds of stories are told in the music you like? Do you tend to like music whose stories represent things you’re familiar with, or things you’re not? (I could talk about this idea for hours; as a professional writer, I’m a storyteller at heart, and the stories in songs are almost always what attract me, usually in an even mix of “This helps me understand something I wouldn’t otherwise” and “This reflects me, who I am and what I’ve experienced.”)

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these issues in particular in the comments, especially if you’re open to talking about them with your kids. These are the kinds of conversations that, while tough to have, really help me see Ashar’s maturity level as well as her own moral compass, which is as true as any I’ve ever seen in a teenager, and I hope you’ll have them in your family as well.

Join the birthday party

If you’re interested, there are many more cool (and probably more kid-friendly) “October birthday” lessons from my fellow iHomeschool Network bloggers. Click the image below to check them out!

October birthday image
And thanks for reading this far to see why we’re wishing Eminem a happy birthday!

You can check out more posts in our Learning Party series here!

28Sep
2

Learning about Roger Moore, a seven-time 007

You know we love James Bond, right?

From learning about the life of Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming to sharing our thoughts on what kids and parents should know about Skyfall, we’re always up for learning based on our favorite secret agent.

 

Roger Moore unit study from Unschool Rules

All about Roger Moore

Disclosure: This post has some affiliate links. I only link to things we legitimately use and recommend, so if you see such a link, it's because we really do believe in the book or item!

The man who’d later go on to play James Bond in the most movies, and to do so at the oldest age, was born Roger George Moore on Oct. 14, 1927, in London, England.

Moore grew up in England, then served in the British military, where he eventually became a captain, serving in Germany. His first acting gigs came in the early 1950s, when he was in commercials for knitwear and toothpaste. Hey, everyone starts somewhere!

His first regular performances included the TV show Maverick, on which he was “Cousin Beau,” and a series called The Saint, where he starred as a sort of modern-day Robin Hood. He first portrayed James Bond in Live and Let Die, which came out in 1973, and starred in six more Bond films after that, ending with A View to a Kill in 1985.

He acted in several other roles afterward, but nothing remarkable; instead, he devoted much of his time to fundraising efforts for many charities, most notably UNICEF, and in 2003, he was knighted by the Queen of England for the work he did for charity, even though he no longer lives in England, splitting his time between homes in Monaco, Switzerland and France.

Some of the fun things we learned about Moore included that, as seen in the picture with today’s post, he was a big cigar-smoker, and his contract to play Bond included an unlimited supply of Montecristo cigars during filming, which cost something like thousands of dollars. However, he quit smoking cigarettes in 1971 when he was co-starring in The Persuaders with actor Tony Curtis, who lectured him about it, and he quit smoking cigars when he was 65 years old after having prostate cancer surgery.

Sadly, Moore passed away May 23, 2017 after a short battle with cancer.

Read more about Roger Moore

James Bond movies starring Roger Moore (in order)

Ashar has seen all of these, and liked most of them. She’s seen Moore play Bond as well as, of course, Daniel Craig (her favorite), Sean Connery and Timothy Dalton. We’ve missed George Lazenby, the “forgotten Bond,” thus far.

Ideas for discussion

  • What’s it like to follow in someone’s footsteps? Moore took the Bond torch from Sean Connery, who started the film franchise. Whether it’s a new boss following a well-liked boss who leaves or always being compared to older siblings, there’s a lot to talk about concerning the pros and cons of following in someone’s footsteps, whether they’re loved or hated.
  • What is modern-day knighthood? One of the coolest things we learned about Roger Moore was that he was knighted. That means something different in many ways than what it used to, yet some of the values – chivalry, generosity, etc. – are the same. So what does it mean to be a knight? If we knighted people in the United States, who would you pick?
  • If you were well-known, how would you use your fame? Look, even Moore has said in interviews that he wasn’t a super-great James Bond. And his non-Bond roles were fairly run-of-the-mill, too. But he has been well known because of it, and rather than try to leverage it for his own good, Moore spends a lot of time fundraising for UNICEF and other organizations, raising millions of dollars.

Join the birthday party

If you’re interested, there are many more cool facts about celebrities with October birthdays from my fellow iHomeschool Network bloggers. Click the image below to check them out!

October birthday image
And thanks for stopping by to learn more about Roger Moore!

You can check out more posts in our Learning Party series here!

Thanks to publicity photographer Allan Warren for the base photo used in the main image in today’s post.

01Sep
5

Into the Matrix with Keanu Reeves

Is it possible we’re living in a world that isn’t what we think it is?

That’s the big question posed by The Matrix movie trilogy, one of Ashar’s favorite series and the reason she’s decided she wants to study philosophy this year, in large part thanks to its compelling star.

That’s why we’re celebrating Keanu Reeves today with some awesome facts, movie ideas and more!

Keanu Reeves unit study from Unschool Rules

All about Keanu Reeves

Keanu Reeves was born in Beirut, Lebanon, on Sept. 2, 1964, and raised around the world before becoming a naturalized Canadian citizen.

Disclosure: This post has some affiliate links. I only link to things we legitimately use and recommend, so if you see such a link, it's because we really do believe in the book or item!

His father was Hawaiian-American, and Keanu means “cool breeze over mountains” in Hawaiian. It’s derived from his great-great-uncle’s name, Keaweaheulu, which means “cool breeze raising.”

Keanu dropped out of high school (in fact, he attended four high schools in five years and was expelled from one of them). However, he’d been acting since he was 9 years old, and after he dropped out, he pursued acting. He had several roles in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, and he was in a band called Dogstar, where he played bass guitar, in the 1990s.

In 1992, he played Jonathan Harker in the Francis Ford Coppola version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which we’re hoping to watch since that’s one of the classics Ashar is reading this year, and in 1994 starred in Speed, which we’ve seen most of as well and want to catch the rest of soon!

But it was the Matrix trilogy – The Matrix, in 1999, and The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, both in 2003 – that brought him arguably the most fame generally as well as in our family.

(Ashar also recommends Reeves’ 2013 movie Man of Tai Chi, which she watched on Netflix. “It’s mostly a fighting movie,” she said.)

Reeves has his own star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood. He gave $50 million of the $70 million he made for the last two Matrix movies – or maybe more, some accounts say as much as $75 million – to the makeup and special effects crews for the movies. That floored us when we found out about it – pretty cool!

He’s also a huge motorcycle rider, and has been in a huge number of fairly serious accidents. He’s still alive, but he’s got a lot of scars, fake teeth, a plate in his neck… it’s been pretty bad!

Read more about Keanu Reeves

Books and movies related to The Matrix

A cool behind-the-scenes video

Special effects were one of the highlights of The Matrix. Here’s a look at how “flying” happened in The Matrix.

Some of the best clips from The Matrix

This nine-clip series shows some of the best scenes from the original film. If you haven’t seen it, there’s a lot of cool action and food for thought to check out!

However, the very first clip there starts just after Ashar’s favorite line, about the splinter in your mind. She was adamant that we needed to include that too! You can check that out here.

Ideas for discussion

  • What is “reality”? While most of us can be pretty sure we’re not living in an entirely fabricated “Matrix” world, what about the special effects in the movies above? What about Photoshopped celebrity pictures? Where are we kind of intersecting with a reality that isn’t quite what it seems? This topic fascinates me.
  • What are the comparative religious influences of The Matrix? If you’ve seen The Matrix, you know there are a lot of religious references and parallels in it, to Christianity, Buddhism and more. Can you spot some of these references? Do you know where they come from? Ashar has been reading about some of the problems inherent in the religious structure in The Matrix, where Neo is worshipped as a savior, as “The One.” But it makes you think about our desire as humans, especially during bad times, to have a savior figure or a deliverer who will take away all their problems.
  • What are the splinters in your mind? What are those things that you know but you can’t quite grasp or explain? Ashar’s example is that Neo, when he’s “Mr. Anderson” in the Matrix, is able to grasp the idea of the Matrix, even without being outside of it. I think all of us have things like this – things we “just know” or grasp or feel intuitively that go beyond rational thought. Some of them are good understandings, and some of these “splinters” are bad, like things we know just aren’t right but can’t quite figure out why. But if you can identify them, it’s a way to take that splinter out, as Ashar put it.

Join the birthday party

If you’re interested, there are many more cool facts about famous people with September birthdays from my fellow iHomeschool Network bloggers. Click the image below to check them out!

September birthday unit studies
And thanks for stopping by to help me celebrate Keanu Reeves!

You can check out more posts in our Learning Party series here!

Many thanks to Jamie Zawinski, creator of the background I used for our Matrix collage image!

31Aug
6

Unschooling: Our August 2014 adventures

This edition of our “unschooling roundup” has a theme: Animals. Also nerdiness. Oh, wait. That’s all our unschooling. Never mind!

We went to Pittsburgh, and Ashar geeked out over the stadiums along the river.

We went to Pittsburgh, and Ashar geeked out over the stadiums along the river.

(If this is your first time catching our month-in-review posts, welcome! Check out last month’s for a little bit of background on why we’re taking this approach to documenting some of our learning adventures.)

One of our August highlights: Ashar got blue, light blue and emerald green hair with white-blonde spikes in the back!

One of our August highlights: Ashar got blue, light blue and emerald green hair with white-blonde spikes in the back!

Books

Disclosure: This post has some affiliate links. I only link to things we legitimately use and recommend, so if you see such a link, it's because we really do believe in the book or item!
The actual reason we Pittsburgh'ed: to meet Levar Burton and get his autograph.

The actual reason we Pittsburgh’ed: to meet Levar Burton and get his autograph.

Movies and TV

At Steel City Con in Pittsburgh, we met these cool people cosplaying as Scully and Mulder from the X-Files, which was awesome since we'd just seen the X-Files : Fight the Future movie.

At Steel City Con in Pittsburgh, we met these cool people cosplaying as Scully and Mulder from the X-Files, which was awesome since we’d just seen the X-Files : Fight the Future movie.

Video games

Videos

What, you don’t randomly quote your two dozen favorite Monty Python sketches and make your friends watch them? Sure you do. Also, goats. And the new World of Warcraft expansion, which Ashar is anxiously awaiting.

Places and projects

  • Feathered Sanctuary Exotic Bird Rescue – This was a fun day trip!
  • Ashar has a Rubik’s Cube that we’ve been TRYING to follow the instructions to get “finished.” Hasn’t happened yet. It’s an undertaking.
  • York County 4-H Fair
  • Steel City Con, where Ashar got Levar Burton’s autograph, and after which we hung out at Point State Park in Pittsburgh, where we took our not-back-to-school pictures
  • Mini golfing at Lost Treasure in Lancaster and bowling
  • 4-H alpaca club show
  • Dirt-track racing and demolition derby at Susquehanna Speedway Park
  • YorkFest (where I did a reading as a literary award winner, and Ashar’s abstract painting won first place for 14- to 18-year-old art!)
Ashar won first place for art by 14- to 18-year-olds at Yorkfest, our annual regional art show. That's her painting at left!

Ashar won first place for art by 14- to 18-year-olds at Yorkfest, our annual regional art show. That’s her painting at left!

Odds and ends of stuff we’ve talked about/read/geeked out over

So what’s new with your family this month? Drop me a comment! I love hearing from all my “blog friends!”

17Aug
2

(Not-back-to) school pictures 2014: Pittsburgh edition

2014-15 not back to school pictures

One of the things I love best about our family’s unschooling lifestyle is how often we get to go to cool new places and just explore.

So when we made a fairly impromptu trip to the Aug. 9 Steel City Con in Monroeville, PA, outside Pittsburgh, to collect Levar Burton’s autograph for Ashar’s collection of Star Trek: The Next Generation celebrities, we decided to ramble toward the city proper to end our day.

We ended up at Point State Park in Pittsburgh, wandering around the water, wading in the fountain, checking out PNC Park (home of the Pirates) and Heinz Field (home of the Steelers), and dreaming about owning a houseboat, because ain’t no way we could afford a house AND one of the boats so popular on the rivers there!

And we goofed off, relaxed and were generally silly whilst photo-documenting it all.

So when I realized that this week marked school pictures week in the iHomeschool Network’s 2014 Not-Back-To-School Blog Hop, just as I was sorting through our Pittsburgh pictures, I thought, how perfect! In case anyone’s new around here, that’s me at left; Ashar’s at right, looking just like me but with more hat and basketball gear.

not back to school pictures

We’re ready to blast off into the new year!

(And I’m excited, because we learned how to make an animated .gif in Photoshop. See, always learning?)

not back to school pictures in Pittsburgh

We hope your new year will be a blast, too!