Ronald at Work on the USS Mahan (DDG 72)

Ron emailed me the other day to let me know that his picture was posted somewhere on the www.nav.mil website and to do a search for "Mahan pictures".

There are thousands of pictures of the USS Mahan (DDG 72). I learned a lot about his ship and what they do. I will share more about that later.

I spent over an hour searching for his photo. I finally go the bright idea to use his name in the search engine (duh) and...BINGO! His picture popped up immediately.

So, here he is at work. I miss him a lot.

Memorizing Math Facts...Why?

I never forced my children to memorize math facts...or cursive writing. (gasp!)Well, I attempted to force them to learn for a while, but came to realize that it was an unnecessary and foolish waste of time and energy, that my children had many more engaging and important things to do with their time than memorizing numbers that had no meaning to them.


My daughter is 19 and was "extremely relaxed homeschooled" until her senior year, graduated public high school with honors and STILL doesn't know her times tables and this does not affect her life negatively in any way. By the way, she has beautiful handwriting.


My 20 year old son, also "extremely relaxed homeschooled", didn't know his times tables until he went in the Navy. He wanted to take enrichment classes in his teen years and was told by his teacher that he was WAY behind on his math skills and must work very hard to catch up in order to get along well in our world. I blew him off and told my son to learn math if he wanted to, that those particular skills are not necessary for everyday life and he can learn them later if he feels he needs them. He never opened a math textbook again, although he did spend much time with his head in a computer and with computer literate people. He also spent a lot of time with scientific minded folks having deep discussions about things I have never even heard of.



He went into the Navy and during his "college" training he and another homeschooled kid tutored many of the other guys who didn't understand the "higher level math skills". (That's pretty good for a kid who was told just a couple years previous that he was very unskilled at math. I also think this may contradict the studies that state that homeschooled kids are behind their public school peers in math skills. Although this example is only two children, I have to wonder if public schooled kids may be better at taking the test showing math skills while the homeschooled kids are better able to apply math skills to everyday life? I suppose that is a topic for another day.) Currently he has a Naval career in electronics, computers and encryption, which regularly uses those skills and more.


After he had been out on his own for a while I asked him if he wished that I had handled his education differently and if he had any suggestions for his younger siblings. His only suggestion was that I had used the "real" terms in math, like "sum", "addend", "quotient" and such. I think those are really only necessary if you have a math based career though.



Also, my 13 yo knows some multiplication facts but was not forced to learn them. He learned them through normal every day experiences, like calculating a tip for the waitress or figuring tax on an item he wanted to purchase. My 10 yo loves doing all sorts of complex math in his head, skills he learned intuitively, completely on his own while "playing" outdoors. (in reality he was observing and interacting with nature and learning a lot about natural patterns in our world)



I love to brag about my children, but the reality is that I had nothing to do with it. I let them be, encouraged them when they wanted it, lived life with them and loved them. They are intelligent, considerate people. It has worked out well for us so far.

Old Fashioned Text Books, On Line Libraries and Book Collections

You know the old one room schoolhouse and those little books they learned from?

Well, today I was referred to a site that has links to online versions of a bunch of them. Through that site I found another site that links to 140 old text books!

I downloaded several of these old text book to add to my educational collection(my "curriculum"?).

My youngest absolutely loves the old math texts, with those real life questions that are not written out in numbers but are things you may have to figure out in real life. He also enjoys how the old readers tell stories of children doing things he likes to do, like boys going fishing, feeding the chickens, petting a cat or playing ball with his dog.

My second older boy enjoys adventure stories for boys like those written by G.A.Henty. I often find him with his nose in a book. He is currently reading a book about classic cars and another about Dr. Doolittle. I realize neither of those titles are historical fiction, but that is what he is reading right now. He probably has several other books that he is currently reading also but I don't know what they are.

I hope you will take the time to visit the links on this page. The online libraries and collections are great fun to look through. We use many online books for our education. There are many books that are either out of print or we simply can't afford to purchase. We do prefer to hold a book in out hands and enjoy turning the pages, but this is the next best thing. Check it out.

War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast

We listened to the radio broadcast of War of the Worlds today. My birth mother, who is a very cultured woman and exposed my brother and I to many wonderful experiences, shared this unique program with us when we were children. We were a bit too young to fully understand all that was happening in the program, but we both enjoyed it and found it fascinating that people were frightened by it because they thought it was really happening.

Today I downloaded copyright-free books on my sons computer so he can read them at his leisure. When he discovered that War of the Worlds was in his file he excitedly told my father that he had heard of this before and that Judy (his new grandma) and mom (me) told him that this was played on the radio a long time ago and people panicked and thought it was really happening. After a short conversation he asked if there was any way we could listen to it.

We quickly found a very easy to use site that allowed us to listen online without downloading it. This same site has the entire script of the actual radio broadcast. We are a very visual family and often wander off in daydreams with no visual reminders to help us remain focused, no matter how interesting the subject matter is, so we appreciate that option.

A little trivia:

We learned that the War of the Worlds was performed as a Halloween episode on October 30, 1938.

The rumored panic that this broadcast caused may have been false. Careful research has shown that people were frightened but there is no evidence that people fled their homes. (I was always told that people fled their homes and such things.)

It has also been suggested that this broadcast was a "psychological warfare experiment" or part of a "crowd psychology" experiment.

At some point during the broadcast my son left his computer, and the script on it, to come sit near his brother and I.

When it was finished I asked what they thought. My older son said that his mind wandered off and he barely heard it and laughed at himself saying that it is hard to stay focused. My younger son said that he did not enjoy it much because he did not understand some of the words and the sound quality was poor so it was difficult to figure them out within the context of the story.

Maybe, like my brother and I, they will appreciate it when they are older. They are happy that we all sat and listened together even though they did not enjoy the actual program. I think that falls under the philosophy that "It's the journey that matters, not the destination."