What Happens When You Kiss a Frog?

Yesterday morning my friend was running late—she slept very little the night before due to a cranky wee one. So, Pamela, another friend and her son, and I amused ourselves. This comfortable mossy spot intrigued me. I listened to birds and hoped to see one to photograph. When that failed, I stalked this eastern comma butterfly (Polygonia comma) and added another entry to my BAMONA account.



Pamela basked in the sun with her buddy. The focal point of this picture suggests the color red, and I found it intriguing that, on the walk, vermillion things popped out at us. My friend Jennifer Gagnon blogs about how attention to red can be one way to spot things with new eyes...

... a shy cardinal



... budding red maples against a cerulean sky



Jennifer also recommends focusing on one theme, such as blooms. This week, we saw even more of our state flower (Carolina jessamine) dotting the landscape with their lively yellow trumpets.

Another focal point is your own interests. Spiders intrigue Jennifer, while birds catch my eye. Do you see the flock of wild turkeys? We often find them foraging far off in the distance. One seasonal interest that has caught our attention in this wetland is water. The past couple of weeks have poured down rain. Last week, one of the kids noted, "Now we have a real castle (a 'tree' with numerous skinny trunks). It is surrounded by a moat." Spots that were once dry are now flooded!





We were nearing the end of our weekly walk when the magic began! Jennifer encourages students of nature to listen. When you have a bunch of littles running around, that is hard to do. We heard this noise that sounded like cars on a highway rushing by—only we know there is no nearby highway. We listened hard for some distinctive call in between the child sounds and our own shushes. Our first theory was birds. Grackles travel in flocks and can be quite noisy. The characteristic squeaky-gate sound never popped out. One of the kids suggested a waterfall, and then my friend's husband suggested frogs. We decided to go off trail and follow the sound to its source.

As we drew closer, the noise grew louder and louder; and we confirmed the frog theory. We found a spot of wetlands filled with frogs. The water burbled with the motion of these amphibians. As we explored, we stopped caring about getting our feet wet. Keeping the children clean was not on our minds. The excitement of making our own discovery enchanted us.



We spotted hundreds and thousands of frog eggs.



And, then, one of our party caught a frog! How do we know these are frogs? Bulgy eyes, narrow body, smooth, moist skin. The question I have is what kind of frog? As I cannot make up my mind yet because Carolina offers many possibilities, I will leave it unanswered until our next visit. You know there will be another visit.



Everyone had to see the little frog, of course!





Then, Pamela surprised us! She softly murmured, "Frog turn into a prince." She suddenly leaned over and pretended to kiss the little guy (we assume)! Alas! I was not filming. I turned on the recorder and asked her to try again, and she did! She is now called the frog whisperer.



I put together this short video to give you an idea of our adventure!

When Life Hands You Lemons, Make Lemon Batteries!

Right now, I am trying to develop the habit of writing for the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival, led by mi amiga Amy Tuttle who is a missionary mom in Peru. My first submission for the year focused on topic of awe, an important ingredient in developing a love of learning in our children and ourselves. A quote from the chapter on personhood in Mason's last book inspired that post to the February 5 carnival. In this round, we consider the tension between authority and docility.

The overemphasis of compliance in teaching autistic children spotlights the challenge of putting authority and docility in its proper place. This post should resonate with any person raising or teaching children because an exuberant effort to teach the habit of obedience diminishes the habit of thinking. Mi amiga Di Maitland, a mindful mom who lives in South Africa, recently blogged an enlightening test of how well a child consciously reflects during the day. This clip from a webinar by Dr. Stephen Gutstein defines operating on a conscious level as stopping to analyze a situation when something unexpected happens. What are the parts and how do they fit together into a whole? What is the same and what is different? How does the situation relate, or not relate, to other situations?

For two days, Di decided to hang out and observe her son. She deliberately avoided making any demands upon her preverbal autistic teen. She watched him carefully to see if he was operating on a conscious level. She found that most of the time he followed through his typical routines and rituals with very little variation. Another mindful professional, Dr. James MacDonald , author of Communicating Partners, calls this a "lazy mode of operating" as mi amiga Penny in Tennessee blogged. MacDonald observed,

Out of rational fear, many of us tell the child (usually non-verbally) I WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU NO MATTER WHAT. And it can be just that unnecessary "taking care" that keeps the child in a learned helplessness, or as I prefer, a LAZY mode of operating.

Think of your job now as catching yourself when you are about to do for your child when he needs to do for himself...

So, how does conscious reflecting look? A few weeks ago Steve was getting ready to leave Kansas and come to Carolina for a visit. That morning I slept in because I was able to make it through the night without waking from a coughing fit. Kansas got socked with snowy weather, so Steve skyped the following message to me: "There is a blizzard out there this morning." After I woke up and before I got on the computer, Pamela said to me, "Dad's not coming. There's too much snow."

This is operating on a conscious level for several reasons: (1) Pamela inferred something and did not simple repeat exactly what Steve wrote, (2) she knew I had not seen his message yet, and (3) she decided to tell me because she knew I did not know.

Awareness is the beginning of consciously reflecting. Acting as a result of that awareness is another.

What do authority and docility have to do with consciously reflecting? Because of behaviorism and enlightenment thinking, we in authority have overstepped our bounds by telling children what to do and what to think far more often than we ought. Even though docility is willingness to be taught, we see unthinking obedience as the hallmark of docility. Mason put the habit of obedience and the habit of thinking in their proper spheres through an indirect method. She recommended governing children ("Do as you're bid") without them being aware of their governance ("Go as you please"). But, how does this look in real life?

It is easier than you think as pointed out by a recent blog post at Guiding Families in Hawaii! Spotlight the problem, not the solution! Every time we point out the solution, we steal an opportunity for our children to think. I can understand barking out commands when you are running late, inconveniencing innocent bystanders, or preventing extreme injury, pain, etc. But, whenever possible, I try to point out the problem, not the solution.

Today, Pamela and I were working on math problems at the car dealership. We sat at a table with Pamela on my right. When we transitioned to knitting, I needed to move to her right. I could have told her to stand up and switch chairs with me. Instead, I walked around the table and moved to her right. Without thinking, she scooted her chair to the left and made space for me. Had she thought for a moment, she would have stood up and sat in the chair to her left. I told her, "But, I want to sit down!" Then, she scooted her chair and the one on the left even further left. I added, "I have no chair!" After a few rounds of this, she finally realized that she could move over to the chair on her left.

I even try to spotlight the problem and not the solution in my role as her teacher. To provide background knowledge for the book about Michael Faraday, we explored batteries and built our own lemon battery. First, we tested various size batteries with a volt meter. Then, we made a lemon battery. We tried this the other day but blew a fuse on the volt meter, so Pamela was already familiar with the difference between positive and negative terminals. She recorded what she learned in her science notebook.

As her teacher, I did not tell her exactly what to do. Pamela remembered enough from the last time to set up the circuit with the volt meter independently. However, she made many mistakes and I did not prevent her from doing so. Each time I pointed out the problem. Because she is used to operating on a conscious level, she came up with the solution.

When Pamela tested the AA battery, she reversed the probes. It was the first time she had made this mistake. I spotlighted the problem: a negative reading, which did not seem to concern her. Then I pointed to the red probe and told her that it was supposed to be positive. Immediately, she said, "Turn it around." However, she turned it around twice and got another negative reading. As soon as I pointed out the problem, she turned around her a battery correctly and got a positive reading.



With the triple A battery, she saw her mistake immediately and corrected it without any spotlighting.




In this clip, Pamela gave the lemon two negative terminals. Even though I knew she was making a mistake, I did not stop her. I wanted her to think about what having two terminals might mean. I was even willing to let her test the double negative lemon. She realized right away that it would not work and pulled out the galvanized nail before we tested the lemon for the first time.



In this clip, Pamela reversed the probes of the volt meter. I now realize I should have used alligator clips because she had a hard time keeping them steady. However, you can see that, although the voltage flitted between -0.01 to -0.08, she had no problem reading it as -0.07—a sign of her level of comfort with uncertainty. She realized that she had reversed the probes and corrected it as soon as I reported a negative number.



In this clip, we intentionally tested a lemon without terminals. She was not at all surprised that the volt meter detected no current.

Exploring Botany

On the first day of school, I posted our first steps in a formal botany study and posted her science notebook entries.

First Pamela matched the seeds to the packets. She knew five of them, which left her to guess correctly the sixth (buckwheat). Since she also needs to work on describing what she sees, I guided her through a written narration about the seeds.

For about a week, nothing happened. Pamela added a picture of our seed-sprouting containers to her notebook.

Exactly a week later, Pamela noticed the first signs of life. (I had noticed them a day or two before but I waited. I want her to see it for herself.) The first seed emerged. Then, the second and the third. We had neglected to add markers, so we weren't exactly sure of what seed was sprouting where. That turned out to be a good thing.









As of last Monday, five of six seeds had sprouted. We dug up the lone hold out, which ended up being the sunflower seed. Pamela decided it needed more water and she is going to give it more time. She can be quite patient. Sometimes.









Last Monday, we also searched online for pictures of seeds like ours germinating. We easily figured out the bean, corn, pumpkin, sunflower, and buckwheat. By process of elimination, we figured out the seed. Pamela labeled all of our seedlings. Then, she went back into her science notebook and labeled all her drawings of seedlings, too. You may notice that we prefer writing directly into a notebook. I could make my own worksheets, but then I would be doing too much of the thinking.



Pamela wrote the order in which the seedlings emerged from the soil. Next, she will write a narration about how differently they emerge from the soil. Each kind of seed has its own personality in how it makes its debut. I never thought about that before this study of botany.

Forgetting How Hard It Used to Be

Sometimes, I forget how hard it used to be. Granted, some people have it much easier than we do. Children become more and more independent. They go off to college. They leave the nest. Life with Pamela is a 24/7 thing, but things have gotten so much easier. I have forgotten...

• ...feeling exhausted because both of us worked full-time careers in the Navy and Pamela only slept four hours a night!
• ...the horrible diapers, especially when the leaked because her digestive system was in such an awful state—you do not want a description.
• ...the awful stares and glares shot our way when our perfectly normal looking daughter pitched a fit when her senses overloaded.
• ...the limited range of convenience foods and snacks for someone on a gluten-/casein-free diet.
• ...having to guess what Pamela was experiencing because she lacked the language to tell us and had no idea we needed to know.
• ...always taking the stairs for ten years, including walking to the thirteen floor of an apartment building while on vacation.

My folks gave me some pictures taken almost nine years ago. This was before we figured out how to fill in missing developmental gaps through Relationship Development Intervention. This was before we had fleshed out fully what Pamela needed for her aphasia (the association method).

What struck me about these pictures was Pamela's complete lack of ability to pose for a simple picture. Right around this time, we renewed passports for the kids. The photographer had to take at least ten pictures to get one with her eyes open. Even though we begged and pleaded for her to keep her eyes open, Pamela shut them the moment she heard the click of the camera. We ended up having to use the picture we nicknamed "the angry drunk" because she was screeching "Say cheese!" She looked quite belligerent in the shot! The four sets of pictures below illustrate how hard I had to work to get Pamela to look into the camera. She is either looking the wrong way while I frantically point or she is grimacing her face in anger.





When my folks gave me these old pictures, they remarked at how much progress Pamela has made. They would know! She spends several hours at their home, twice a week. My dad stated that she seems to be accelerating, especially in comparison to before. Most people expect adults with autism to slow down their rate of development. We are told once a developmental door closes that is slammed shut for good. I am starting to see that as myth based upon how far Pamela has come since these pictures were taken.

The other day, I snapped three pictures of Pamela during our weekly nature walk. I did not have to point or go out of my way to get her to stop and pose. Her ability to share joint attention has come a long way. While taking this photograph, we were talking about the little flower, the Carolina jessamine that blooms this time of year. You can see how relaxed and at ease she is in front of the camera.

Here are two more pictures that illustrate the difference nine years can make! You can see how Pamela is "with" me!





I have one more example of how well Pamela is progressing. When she visits my folks, she gets her programmed television fix for we have none at our house. Lately, they have asked her to go upstairs (especially when Downton Abbey conflicts with sports). Pamela does not enjoy watching that television for it only has nine channels. She would fuss and argue when asked to go upstairs. Finally, I had to tell her that she would have to come to church with me on those nights if she kept giving my parents a hard time. I talked to her about it a week ago, and her attitude has improved.

On the way to watercolor class, we tried listening to a CD in the car. It did not work. Pamela became unglued. I warned her that I could not have her freaking out at art class—we listen to classical music there and sometimes the CD player fails. I tried various strategies to help her calm down, but she was till having outbursts. Finally, I tersely and firmly told her we were going home because she had broken her promise to calm down.

I let her know that I was upset at her, too. Pamela apologized, but I knew she could do more to repair the situation. So, I grew silent and ignored her. I waited and waited, letting her dwell on the long awkward pause. I decided that, if she made a more elaborate attempt to repair the breakdown, I would change my mind and take her to class. I did not share what I was thinking.

We passed the art gallery, and I turned and drove around the block. When she realized that I was taking her home, Pamela asked, "Where are we going?" I remained silent. She must have reflected about keeping her promise the night before at my parents' house for she said, "I watched TV upstairs." Translation: "Mom, I kept my promise last night. I can do it again." I replied, "That's a good point! Because you kept your promise last night, I will give you another chance."

Even though Pamela "won" the argument and "got her way," she continued to repair the situation. I was still disappointed, so, at watercolor class, she apologized several times, held my hand, and made kissing sounds. She kept looking me in the face to see how I responded. I think she did this three or four times to assess the results of her effort to cheer me up. Clearly, winning a victory did not satisfy her if I continued to be upset.

The CD at class did act up. We were listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. To my utter shock and dismay, the CD stopped just seconds before the soloists came in during the fourth movement—my favorite part—the "Ode to Joy" section. I freaked out—in good fun—more than Pamela did. In fact, she remained absolutely calm.

On "Wise Passivity"–The next element in the attitude of masterly inactivity is good humour–frank, cordial, natural, good humour. This is quite a different thing from overmuch complacency, and a general giving-in to all the children's whims. The one is the outcome of strength, the other of weakness, and children are very quick to see the difference. 'Oh, mother, may we go blackberrying this afternoon, instead of lessons?' The masterly and the abject 'yes' are quite different notes. The first makes the holiday doubly a delight; the second produces a restless desire to gain some other easy victory. ~ Charlotte Mason

Feeling Pressed for Time?

We all have busy lives for one reason or another and often feel pressed for time. I understand the feeling. Random events conspire to steal time when the clock is ticking. Steve is coming home for a visit, and precious minutes this morning were spent cleaning up a shattered pyrex bowl. Oh, yeah, and our lone dog has thrown up twice and now has left a little present that lacks its usual form. At least, she was nowhere near a carpet. So, now, on top of all the other cleaning, I have the worst kind of mess to remove and disinfect.

Charlotte Mason suggests we should change our thoughts when anxiety strikes.

Change your thoughts? Really? Have you seen my floor?

Before running off to do the dreaded task, I crank up Handel's Messiah. Thanks to an intriguing video about feeling short on time, I realize my problem is not the lack of time. Rather, it is the lack of awe. What better way to restore my sense of awe than to hear a masterpiece?

Melanie Rudd, who wrote her dissertation on time perception, explains that experiencing awe makes you feel like you have more time available and "makes you feel more rich in time." She and two other researchers conducted three experiments and concluded that people who experience a strong sense of awe felt like they had more free time, were less impatient, were more willing to spend time to help others, sought experiences over material goods, and were more satisfied by life.

What is awe? They defined awe as a powerful positive emotion which arises from encountering something so vast and large that it causes a person to seek more knowledge and understanding. They offered examples of situations that produce awe: thunderstorms, childbirth, and the Grand Canyon. They suspect that awe helps people savor the present. It harnesses the power of living in the moment and focuses attention on what is unfolding.

What conditions produced a sense of awe in their experiments? Reading a brief story. Reliving a memory. Handel's Messiah unfolds the greatest story ever told from beginning to end. Hearing Messiah triggers many wonderful memories: singing it at my alma mater, going to The Middletown Tavern afterwards with friends for cheesecake, and introducing it to my children when they were young. Messiah led me to other great choral works! Pamela requested it for our composer study for the first term, and she has already experienced a moment of awe. Intense stretches of music in the overture swept her away, and she smiled and clapped in time for a couple of bars.

Rudd describes two defining characteristics of awe: the event must create a sense of perceptual vastness—something large, complex, intricate (and Messiah is certainly that). It must also inspire a person to seek more knowledge to help one interpret and understand the world.

Some days, I feel like there is not enough time to pack in homeschooling plus all that other stuff. I feel pressed and I feel like I am dropping some forgotten ball somewhere. Somehow, things always get done. And, yet, Pamela often remarks about a homeschooling block of time, "That was fast!"

I think how we explore our great abundance and variety of books and things creates a sense of time flying. Short lessons that offer many diverse ideas means we have more opportunities to experience awe! Those moments of awe cause the mind to reason, imagine, reflect, and judge. Mason wrote, "History must afford its pageants, science its wonders, literature its intimacies, philosophy its speculations, religion its assurances to every man, and his education must have prepared him for wanderings in these realms of gold."

Pamela and I wander in these realms of gold every day! After reading about trade and London, Pamela brightened up when she recalled that we ordered our doorbell of our Edwardian era house from London. To provide background knowledge for a biography about Michael Faraday, we are studying electricity. When we played with a balloon, comb, and hole-puncher chads, seeing the power of static electricity made Pamela gasp and say, "Wow!" several times. The first chapter of The Yearling describes scenery very much like our own, and, after reading about the construction of a flutter wheel from sticks and palmetto fronds—readily available here in Carolina—I looked for pictures of one on my Nook. The illustration of Jody's flutter mill by none other than N. C. Wyeth created a sense of awe in me, and I am looking forward to building one with Pamela when the weather is more tolerable.

Do you experience glimmers of awe during your day?

Do you feel pressed for time?

Don't run to your calendar or to-do-list and find a better way to slice up your day. Go out and find some awe!

Another Elaboration on Picture Study

In past posts, I have blogged many aspects of picture study, Charlotte Mason style: focus on theory of mind for Monet and Vermeer, making connections, videos of Monet study and da Vinci study in action, and museum visits.

What is picture study, you ask?

Mason taught pictorial art along two lines: appreciation and expression. We study masterpieces to see what a truly gifted artist can do. We focus on one artist per term, a new artist every term, to heighten their sense of beauty and foster a relationship with the work of an artist.

Mason outlined how to do a picture talk and basically you ask the child to (1) recall the previous picture, (2) study a new one carefully, and, when ready, (3) narrate the picture after you put away the card. Afterwards, you might have a conversation about the picture (the backstory, for example) or have child sketch the chief lines in the composition. You really do form a relationship with the work of an artist. You cannot imagine the exhilaration of seeing an original painting in its proper size and space with the finest detail of brushwork, form, and feeling before your eyes in a museum. The joy feel comes from our deep appreciation of an artist's accomplishments.

Since my last update, we have studied Millet, van Gogh and modern artist Makoto Fujimura, and Pamela met the latter last June as narrated in the following clip.



This term, we will be getting to know Winslow Homer, who, like Pamela, fell in love with watercolors. The "wrinkle" I added to picture study emphasizes the importance of theory of mind—knowing that what is in your mind may not be in the mind of another person unless you communicate. Pamela selects one picture from the stack of cards (the ones by Dover are quite handy and, once an artist I have in mind is available in one of Emily Cottrill's portfolios, I will try that). After she finishes studying the card, she must narrate the painting so well that I can figure out the one she had in mind. The following paintings illustrate the importance of describing a scene fully: Girl with Laurel (the upper painting) and Peach Blossoms (the lower painting). The two paintings have much in common: one young woman wearing a long dress and hat standing near flowering trees and a green field. If Pamela leaves out the wrong details in an oral narration, I might pick the wrong painting!





Since this was the first picture study of the term, Pamela probably did not realize how similar the two paintings looked. She selected Girl with Laurel, studied it, put away the card, and narrated the full scene. She described the girl and the background. Based upon her narration, I boiled down my selection to the two paintings. To spotlight the importance of offering a detailed description, I pointed out the information she had given me that helped me choose the right one. I said, "You told me there was a blue sky, but this one [Peach Blossom] has a gray sky. You also told me the girl was wearing a blue dress, but this girl is wearing a yellow dress. And, you said she carried a basket, but this one has no basket. So, it can't be Peach Blossom, so I am going to say it was Girl with Laurel." Giving her feedback on my thinking is an important part of helping see the effectiveness of her communication.

This year, I am adding another level of elaboration to Pamela's picture study. Because she is still learning English as a first language due to her aphasia, I let go of written narration a few years back. Pamela simply was not developmentally ready. Every day, she still works on the foundation for writing: oral narration, recitation, reading living books, copywork, and studied dictation. Her ability to describe paintings has improved to the point of being able to try her hand at written narration.

Because I would like her to write one narration a week, I plan to have her do picture study once a week as well. After she finishes her oral narration and I give her feedback, she will write a narration. I limited the scope of what she had to describe for her first attempt: I asked her to write about the girl while she was looking at the painting. I left the room to avoid influencing her in any way, and I am pleased with her efforts. She had already erased and made her own corrections before I returned. You can see the grammar glitches that come with syntactic aphasia. You can also see that her use of irregular verbs and personal pronouns is spot on!



The paintings themselves with offer natural elaboration: some will have two or more human subjects, several will have a crowd. The dramatic scenes will offer her the chance to describe actions and emotions. The seascapes and landscapes will require her to focus on background. When she feels comfortable in all of the above, then I can ask her to describe the whole picture while viewing it. Once she can do that well, I will remove the final piece of scaffolding and she will have to write her narration based upon her memory of the picture.

It is quite natural to make elaborations from Mason's ideas. There is one I plan to avoid. Some families try to take picture study from the line of simple appreciation to expression by making their own copy of the painting. I did this in the late 1990s before I came across Mason's ideas. It backfired on us because we were terrible at drawing and were clueless about elements of artistic composition. It became a chore, and we were never satisfied with our work. Mason was concerned for a different reason, "Beyond this of a rough study from memory of a given picture or of any section of it, these picture studies do not afford much material for actual drawing; they are never copied lest an attempt to copy should lessen a child's reverence for great work" (Page 216).

There is a time and place for art expression. Mason encouraged children to illustrate their favorite scenes from a book. And, if an artist has truly inspired them, perhaps they can try in the spirit of said artist.

Where We Do School in Spite of My Sore Throat

Pamela has been looking forward to today for a long time. Over the holidays, she choose to do schoolwork so that she could do exam week so that she could have the first day of school with a brand new crop of books. Unfortunately, a nasty sore throat started plaguing me yesterday and, between that and the nausea and headaches, I was afraid I might let her down.

Pamela's determination won my over, and we managed to do a full day with copious napping on my part. I loved seeing her bright smile when we began a new book. The wave of joy that swept across her face when she heard the recording of her daddy reading El cuento de Ferdinando kept me going.

This year, we upped the ante of copywork. Pamela now copies seven words in Spanish and two sentences from any book that we read during the day. I cracked up at the juxtaposition of her last entry of the last crop of books to the new entry. "Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?" is what Jesus said to the disciples on the day he calmed the storm. "And suppose you do know the answer to that question, what difference does it make? Who cares?" was taken from a science book asking if two different sized stones will hit the ground at the same time if dropped at the same time.





And, speaking of storms, we witnessed the coolest thing as we were leaving watercolor class last Thursday. The sky blackened and, near the end of class massive thunder rocked our ears. As we were getting up to leave, lightning struck and we saw blue and green flashes outside. The building lost power, and the static electricity in the air put Pamela's iPod to sleep. It did not wake up until the next morning. I figured out later that we witnessed St. Elmo's Fire, which is the making of plasma. Since Pamela needs to work on sequencing non-biographical events, I guided her through a written narration of what happened.



Seeing plasma live was one of those lovely moments God orchestrated for us. The Friday before, our Charlotte Mason community had tried to make plasma in the microwave, but we failed. Fortunately, the experiment had worked at my friend's house and she showed us a video of it. Pamela added this fourth state of matter to her science journal.



Devoting some time to the growing of plants is a scary thing since I have a black thumb. First Pamela matched the seeds to the packets. She knew five of them, which left her to guess correctly the sixth (buckwheat). Since she also needs to work on describing what she sees, I guided her through a written narration about the seeds.



With my sore throat, planting the seeds offered the chance to gesture to her. I guided her to narrate in writing the steps we took to plant seeds.


Pamela has such an eye for detail and pattern that mathematics is her best subject. This year we are going to test drive Jacob's Algebra and Jacob's Geometry, side by side, at very leisurely pace. We will also be throwing in Kahn Academy to hone basic arithmetic. Inspired by my friend Laurie Bestvater, I have been pondering how to keep a mathematics notebook. In addition to a three-ringed binder for loose-leafed papers, Pamela will put her problems in a composition book and her thoughts and ideas in a journal.

After reading the letter to the student, Pamela's entry cracked me up! She recalls watching her brother work through Jacob's Algebra as he prepared for the mathematics placement test at CSU. After we finished mathematics, Pamela announced that she was not getting a job and, if she had to get a job, she was going to be a farmer of her stuffed animals.



Pamela adored the first page of algebra, which focused on number tricks. She giggled as we tried the trick on 100 and 0, which turned out the result of 5 every time! For geometry, she drew two equilateral triangles using two different construction techniques: (1) using the 30-60 triangle from RightStart and (2) using the unusual compass from RightStart. I did not have a traditional protractor on hand, which I need to purchase. By the time we finished geometry, I was too worn out to go beyond making the triangles.





Pamela is continuing to work on her baby blanket for her "babies". Once she finishes this ball of yarn, I will teach her how to purl and she can practice stockinette stitches.