Copasetic Flow

 This is a story from back in February. I wanted to share a cool moment in time that Mota, Tawnse, and I had on Monday. Daize had gone off to attend College Algebra, and I was working from the house. I walked into the kitchen and it looked like a portion of the recent bomb cyclone had landed in there. I had 25 minutes to kill, so I called Motaand Tawnse. When they arrived, I was already taking the recycling bag out to the garage. I asked them to empty the dishwasher and they got to work. When I returned, I moved everything off the stove into one sink. I asked them to load the dishwasher back up. While they were doing that, I got to work on scrubbing pans. As I did, I looked around the kitchen. I noticed a few dishes they’d missed, pointed it out, and they plopped those in as well. I asked them to check the rest of the house for dishes. While they were checking, I finished the pans, and got to work on cleaning the stove top. When they returned, I asked the two of them to get all the...

There's a scholarship available for CW ops! When I wrote the Sprat article on our keyer, I thought I was kidding, but I guess the keyer actually is for kids... er students... ummm not that students can't be older than kid age... Anyway. :) The CWOps club offers a $1000 scholarship annually for students who operate CW on the ham bands . Here's what a student needs to do to prove they operate CW "CW Ability: Demonstrated CW operating ability within the last 24 months by providing a copy of a certificate,listing in a magazine showing results or a letter from a person responsible for membership. Examples include but are not limited to the following : i.  ARRL Code Proficiency certificate at 15 wpm or higher; ii. Successful completion of CWA Basic Level or higher; iii. Membership in CWops or HSC or other club where some level of CW proficiency is a requirement for membership; iv. Participation in a CW contest where the results have been published (participation in a multi-o...

  An interesting question came up a few days ago, should parents provide their kids with broad exposure to the world, or try to protect them from things that the parent sees as either ‘dangerous or immoral’? I come down pretty squarely on the side of broad exposure.  Our hometown, San Francisco, winds up on the news frequently, (or at least I hear from acquaintances from out of town that it does), for things like open drug use and homelessness. I wish our town did more to help the people who are victims of these two issues—by that, I mean of course, the people who are drug users and the homeless, not the frequently pearl-clutching newscasters.  I’ve seen both open drug use and homelessness in San Francisco. I’m not here to tell you that it doesn't happen. I am here to tell you that it’s not a lifestyle that anyone chooses. I am hear to tell you that the people experiencing it aren’t having a good time with it. I am also here to tell you that contrary to whatever myths th...

We used to love inviting other people on our adventures pre-pandemic! Right now though, we're still just trying to relearn the ropes for what's safe and what's not. We're trying to head back out to our old haunts, but just with ourselves until we get a feel for what's going on out in the world. Still, I thought it might be handy to share our expeiences as we went so other people could know what to expect.  If anyone else would like to share the places they're going in the outside world, I'd be delighted to get their perspective!  On Wednesday, we headed to the DeYoung! D estination:  The DeYoung Museum Starting point : The Excelsior Route:  44 from Excelsior to Golden Gate Concourse across from the DeYoung Time of day:  around noon on a Wednesday Transit:  If you’re headed towards Mission, either going North or South, the 44 is more crowded than it will be after you get across Mission. When I say crowded, I mean it was impossible to stay six feet away from ...

Playground day was huge yesterday!  The nearby homeschooling chess club was cancelled, and so everyone turned up at the playground!  There were all ages of kids from two to ten to mid-teens, and of course 9 y.o. Daize, 7 y.o. Towser, and 5 y.o. Tawnse, (aliases all).  And before anyone asks, "Playground day ?"  Allow me to jump out ahead.  Yup, we have one playground day a week, and it was yesterday.  But, it’s a bit of a misnomer.  Playgrounds are more of a daily thing.  This morning?  The kids were at a different playground where the youngest of the group is taking a cooking class through Parks & Rec.  Buddies who live near that playground often turn up to play some more.  This afternoon, another set of buddies will turn up at math group at a nearby public library.  And so it goes throughout the week.  There’s one day a week we call playground day because it’s set aside for kids and parents to meet at a differe...

Homeschooling Stereotypes The 9, 7, and 5 y.o. unschooling gang, (also known by their aliases here as Daize, Towser, and Tawnse respectively), went to vote with me this morning.  We got to visit city hall which the kids love.  City Hall in San Francisco is a bit of a thing.  It’s ornate in the extreme, and then to top it all off, people get married there.  We haven’t ever been without seeing a variety of gorgeous wedding dresses. We all took our time taking in all the wonder of the place for the umpteenth time—it actually never gets old, at least not for us—then we headed to the desks where we could pick up my ballot. The people at the desk observed that it was odd to see three school aged kids at their polling place on a school day.  Before long they’d put together that the gang is homeschooled.  They asked the kids the usual questions.  How do they liked being homeschooled?  The gang’s used to this one by now.  They all responded ...

Just a pointer on kids and clothes.  Not about your kids per se, what you do with your kids is your and their business, but more about kids in general.  Please, let them where what they wanna wear, and keep your comments to yourself. Fortunately, the gang here hasn’t ever been hassled about their clothes.  Their shoestrings on more than one occasion, but so far, not their clothes.  (Which isn’t to say I haven’t been regaled with the ‘your baby’s too warm/cold/temperate’ nonsense, because I have, but the kids haven’t.)  The fact that the gang have not been hit up about their clothes is somewhat amazing.  Given that they wear a combination of all their available clothes including the clothes I wore as a kid—apparently my dad’s a bit of a clothes archivist, who knew?—the kids here on any given day look very much like Tyler Durden curated their ensemble.  Still, while we get the occasional wide-eyed look from folks on the sidewalks of San Francisco—t...

Getting kids ready to head out into the world on their own?  Here are some the things the kids here did to get ready. Get down on the ground As each new kid here learned to toddle, I took them out of the wrap as often as I could so they could walk beside me, instead of on the side of me.  The kids generally loved it . They got to explore.  They got to interact with the world.  I got to see the world from their perspective: only a few feet above the surface of the ground.  The kid, noticed things I hadn’t seen before.  They showed me their world.  Was it slow?  Yes, yes it was, but it was more than worth it.  The more they walked, the more they could walk, and soon, I was free of carrying kids, and had buddies I could wander around with. Learn to Lead Early on it’s nice to have a rapport at a distance with your kids.  A few simple instructions like left, right, stop, and u-turn are all they need to know.  These things come in...

Eight year-old No. One stood in front of a room of 50 people at the junior track of engineering conference with a mic and a laser pointer.  She was describing a two-bit binary adder she’d built, and she nailed it! She and her sibs pretty routinely speak in public—although not with that big of an audience—in one form or another.  To them, it’s not a big deal.  It’s something everyone else around them does, so why wouldn’t they?  They never got the memo telling them that public speaking was something to be feared. Part of their comfort—I think—has to do with the fact that they inadvertently grew up speaking in public; thanks in part to me being lazy.  Here are five things we did together that I think got them used to the idea of public speaking. Paying the ticket at the restaurant:  It’s always been the job of the youngest kid to take our money for the restaurant bill to our server.  The three to four year-old kid wanders around, finds the pers...

Yesterday when I wrote about the 8 yo kid here learning algebra, I left out one caveat.  Math is kinda one of our things around the house.  We’re all immersed in it all the time.  My partner studied physics with a minor in math.  I studied engineering.  We both enjoy math, and consequently, we talk about math often, whether the kids are nearby or not.  So, math might be easier to pick up at our house just by virtue of being there. Here’s the thing though, when everyone frets “yes, but how will the kids learn math?”  Beyond the fact that if their interested in it they can find resources to learn it, beyond that fact, maybe it just doesn’t matter. Every family is into something, lots of things really.  If the family's cooking along without anyone knowing trigonometry, perhaps that’s because the things they’re passionate about just don’t need trigonometry.  And guess what?  The kids in that family will be immersed in those passions....

Socialization in the Real World I say we’re an unschooling family with no curriculum, and to an extent that’s true.  To an extent though, it’s not.  I do have goals for the kids.  I’d like them to move more fluidly through the world than I did as a kid.  I was shy.  Sometimes I couldn't’ think of the right things to say.  Sometimes, I didn’t want to speak at all.  To this day, new experiences jar me.  I’ve developed coping techniques, and yet.  If I get a chance to visit a place by myself and take it in, I’m fine.  If I get dropped into a place out of the blue with other people, I’m just a little bit disoriented.  Things are just a little bit harder to do.  I’d like for the gang here to not have these experiences.  I’d like for them to feel okay talking to whoever, wherever, and whenever.  To that end, the gang and I spend a lot of time in places where the kids can practice communicating, where they can see new thing...

I got to visit with friends in New Mexico this week.  I grew up in NM, so it was great to be back, to see out over the wide open spaces, and to breath the crisp fresh air.  Oh, and also to get my fill of green chili.  Yum! As it usually does—especially when I travel with one of the kids—homeschooling and ‘exactly how that works’ came up.  Everything was fine.  I went through the basics of it: how you only have to file a one page affidavit to homeschool in California; how the kids learn new things, how and when the kids hang out with their friends.  I’ve answered these questions hundreds of times at this point, so I have plenty of practice, and it’s nice that our friends are interested in the kids. Upon returning home I was treated to a tweet espousing how great homeschooling might be if only it wasn’t so isolating.  Bleah, the isolation thing again.  So, without further ado, please allow me to walk through how un-isolating homeschooling is onc...

"So, How do you measure outcomes?" The engineer meant well, when she asked the question and, to be fair, she'd never heard of unschooling.  Still, I had to double-clutch several times as the gears in my mind shifted to traditional schooling terminology.  The kids and I were at a small company in San Francisco where they were testing a new game package that was supposed to teach coding.  While the kids were testing, another engineer was asking me about the coding work we did at home.  I mentioned that the kids had been working through Google's CSFirst for the last several months.  This inspired the outcomes question. I went with the not so elegant, but oh so pragmatic initial response of, "What...?" Buying myself some time while I boggled at what the hell an outcome was... Wait, I had it!  That's right, other schooling methodologies measure what's 'taught' by 'testing' what the kid has learned compared to 'the expected outcom...

While I was out of town for work, the gang—7 y.o. No. One, 5 y.o. No. Two, and 3 y.o. No. Three—continued their CSFirst work with my partner.  Google cleverly refers to CSFirst as a club.  No. One took it a step further and decided the club was in fact a camp, you know, like summer camp.  One decided that as a camp they of course needed a banner, and went to work. I heard during the day that the gang had worked together to set up One’s sandbox—the web app where CSFirst students do their programming work. I also heard that they were pair-programming; I’m a huge fan of pair-programming, so I was excited to get home last night to find out how everything went. NOTE:  For those who aren’t into programming in general, or agile programming methodologies in particular, pair-programming is the practice of two programmers sitting down at one screen to work on a piece of code.  As one programmer types, the other checks their work.  They both discuss ideas for the...

The gang—7 y.o. No. 1, 5 y.o. No. 2, and 3 y.o. No. 3—and I received our materials for our CSFirst computer club from Google in the mail last week!  Google had indicated it might take as many as three weeks for the materials to arrive, but I suppose since we’re only 40 miles or so from Google headquarters, the materials arrived in a few days.  If you haven’t heard of CSFirst yet, it’s a program from Google to teach kids how to program. We’re trying out the Music and Sound theme.  With a group of kids, some of whom aren’t reading yet, this seemed the better choice for us.  I’m hoping the outcome of the programming activities will be aural output each member of the gang can appreciate on their own.  Also, one of the activities is a dance party.  Everyone in the gang loves a good dance party as evidenced by the number of times we’ve watched Xanadu in the last seven years. When it arrived last week, we dug through our box of materials.  There was...

A few weeks ago, we went to a friend’s birthday party at a water park.  After we’d gained admission to the park, five year-old No. Two was promptly nowhere to be seen. “Have you seen Two?” I asked my partner. “Nope.” So, off to look I went.  Fortunately, the water park had a rather compact design.  There was the splash area, a full sized pool for swimmers, and those learning to swim, and a collection of seven or so water slides, all fed by the same three story tall set of stairs and platforms.  I knew Two wasn’t in the splash area because that’s where we were.  As I meandered between the big pool and the slides, I caught a flash of Two’s ultra-blonde mop of hair out of the corner of my eye and way up. In disbelief, I looked up the water slide tower to see if I had really spotted Two.  I had to wait a few moments, but I caught a glimpse of him again.  He was at the entrance to the slides on a platform thirty feet up in the air.  He’d line...

The unschooling gang here gets a science lesson a week.  They learn about things like electricity, magnetism, waves, the Doppler effect, and water pressure.  They don’t do any homework or worksheets . The lessons are based on demonstration and play.  They watch the demonstration first, and then they get to play with it, (perhaps a more stern educational type than I might call it experimenting rather than playing).  There are no worksheets, no homework, and no books. People might ask, “Can a kid really learn something without doing some type or rote homework to help them internalize it?”  As with most things unschooling, we’re discovering that the repetition that might be necessary to learn happens not at a desk or at our kitchen table, but instead in the outside world where the 7, 5, and 3 y.o. gang here spend most of their time. Take water pressure for example.  The kids performed a water pressure experiment using milk jugs.  They filled two jugs ...

Life skill testing?  Sounds like a bad idea, because, well, it is.  If you’re wondering what on Earth I’m talking about, it came up in yesterday’s post when I wondered if perhaps unschooling kids could hang out with vetted Directors of Tactical Ops, (DTOs aka nannies),  while traveling with their parents on work trips.  As a brief recap, I reasoned/hoped that kids could travel with their parents on business trips, hang out with local DTOs, and then explore the area with their parent over the weekend.  It’s not quite what’s known as World Schooling, where families travel the world freely instead of going to school.  It’s a middle ground.  From the kid’s point of view: Mom or Dad are travelling, there’s stuff I could experience, I’m going with them.  There were two issues though, one was vetting DTOs.  The other one, the one that led me to thoughts of life-skill testing was vetting kids, in order to qualify them to wander around towns with D...