Philosophy: Pleasure vs. Happiness

Last Thursday we had discussion #2 for the Philosophy topic of Happiness (see Here Comes the Sun for discussion #1).

Discussion topic: what is the difference between pleasure and happiness?

I kicked things off by reading We Were Tired of Living in a House by Liesel Moark Skorpen.

Then I put forth this proposal: pleasure is short-term, but happiness is long-term. Each of the places the children tried to live in felt good in the moment -- and each had its little pleasures -- but ultimately they wanted to go back home and live in a house again.

I also explained the difference between a debit card (the cup of chips) vs. a credit card (the empty lid).

With a debit card, you are pulling from something. Money is in the bank.

With a credit card, you have nothing. The lid is empty. You are borrowing money and promising to pay it back. And then the bill comes in the mail!

Shopping feels good in the short term (pleasure) but long-term happiness comes from not having a huge amount of debt hanging over your head.

ALL of the children had seen a credit card, but NONE of them had ever seen a credit card bill. So I printed out a few of my Discover card statements over the years, enough for them to each have two bills to look at. I let them find and circle the following things on the bills, starting with the older one.

date

interest rate

total amount of interest paid year-to-date

credit score

Then I asked them to compare the two bills and let me know their general observations. I explained all about credit score (from 300 to 850... a higher number is better) and interest rate (where a lower number is better).

Then I had everyone go around and read off the New Balance amount.

They realized that the balance had changed very little over the years. I explained that when you have a large balance at a high interest rate, if you make only the minimum payment, most of that payment goes to the interest and it barely knocks down the principal. This is even more true if you continue using the card. Lastly, I drew their attention to this little box:

Imagine how it would feel to still be paying your credit cards at the age of 90! It was a very important lesson for them, and I think it had a big impact.

To me this lesson perfectly summarizes the difference between pleasure and happiness. What do you think?

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Art History - Eva Hesse

In my 2025-2026 school year plan, I decided that our February artist would be Eva Hesse. (Here's the complete list of all the artists we've learned about so far.) Here are some resources and my planning notes:

Eva Hesse
1936 - 1970

also

Eva Hesse documentary (2016)
for teacher background
FREE with a Kino Film Collection one week trial

Eva Hesse on How to Be an Artist

Classroom Resource Sheet: Laocoön, 1965-66 (PDF)
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College

Study for Sculpture, 1967
National Museum of Women in the Arts

Expanded Expansion, 1969

The Afterlife of Eva Hesse’s “Expanded Expansion”
Guggenheim Museum

These Sculptures Changed What Art Could Be, Then Changed Themselves
The New York Times - Jul 19, 2024

The Encyclopedia of Artists

volume 3

---

week of Feb 2:

Mon

open-ended unconventional materials & texture exploration

Thu

read from Eva Hesse on How to Be an Artist

Lesson #1: If you’re stuck, try new materials and methods

Lesson #2: Embrace the absurd

Lesson #3: Explore your materials with spontaneity

Lesson #4: Practice fearlessness

week of Feb 9:

Mon

activity inspired by Laocoön (1965-66)

Thu

activity inspired by Hang Up (1966)

week of Feb 16:

Mon

activity inspired by Study for Sculpture (1967)

Thu

activity inspired by Repetition Nineteen III (1968)

watch video about The Afterlife of Eva Hesse’s “Expanded Expansion”

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Steam Engine Notes

We are wrapping up the first half of Local Geography & History (Southern Illinois) with a look at the importance of the railroad. In the second half, which I am combining with Personal Narratives, we will look at Industry.

Week One - Illinois State Symbols, Glaciers & Dinosaur Fossils

Week Two - Rivers & Drainage Basins, New Madrid Seismic Zone

Week Three - Mound Builders, Louisiana Purchase, Lewis & Clark

Week Four - Founding of Carbondale, Illinois Central Railroad

The railroad has been an interesting topic for kids. After reading portions of Illinois Trails & Traces: Portraits and Stories along the State’s Historic Routes (pp.171-179 and also the profile of Milton McDaniel), the children had lots of questions about how steam locomotives work. How did towns spring up along the train routes, and why did the trains specifically need water towers?

Today we are watching sections of this video on how a steam engine works, reading Locomotive by Brian Floca, and looking at a sheet of stamps for the 150 year anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.

just a reminder that the lines shown snaking across the country are telegraph lines, not telephone lines

here are my notes on teaching Morse Code to children

Below I have organized my notes as to the sections of the steam locomotive video that I thought would be most accessible for ages 8-11. I am also starting by reminding the class that the Big Boy was the world’s largest and most powerful steam train! It is much larger than the locomotive in Locomotive, but the mechanisms of the steam engine are largely the same.

Begin video at 0:00

STOP after
“There’s a steam dome at the top where steam collects and flows out of the boiler.”

JUMP to 7:05

STOP after
“Water flowing into the boiler must be pumped or injected in to overcome boiler pressure.”

JUMP to 10:00

STOP after
“The piston and valve continue their synchronized movements, exchanging fresh superheated steam for spent exhaust, as the train chuffs down the track.”

JUMP to 25:15

STOP after
“It’s covered with critical instruments, gauges, knobs, and more.”

JUMP to 33:05 and watch to the end

We are extremely excited to have Daniel Overturf -- the photographer for Illinois Trails & Traces: Portraits and Stories along the State’s Historic Routes -- come in as a special guest on Monday to talk about Illinois rail history more with the children, and explain how the author and he organized all of this extensive information (which includes railroads but also land travel in Illinois more generally) into a 10 chapter book! Note: Their previous book together, A River Through Illinois, covered the main Illinois waterway.

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Grapefruit

Yoko Ono
1933 -

Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings by Yoko Ono

(a collection of instruction pieces from 1961-1964)

We read through this yesterday and loved so many of them!!! But these are the ones that the children feel are most doable in the school environment:

TAPE PIECE I

Stone Piece

Take the sound of the stone aging.

TAPE PIECE II

Room Piece

Take the sound of the room breathing.

1) at dawn
2) in the morning
3) in the afternoon
4) in the evening
5) before dawn

Bottle the smell of the room of that particular hour as well.

TAPE PIECE III

Snow Piece

Take a tape of the sound of the snow falling.
This should be done in the evening.
Do not listen to the tape.
Cut it and use it as strings to tie gifts with.

TAPE PIECE IV

Moving Piece

Take a tape of the sound of the stars moving.
Do not listen to the tape.
Cut it and give it out to the people on the street.
Or you may sell it for a moderate price.

COLLECTING PIECE

Collect sounds in your mind that you have overheard through the week. Repeat them in your mind in different orders one afternoon.

BEAT PIECE

Listen to a heart beat.

SNOW PIECE

Think that snow is falling.
Think that snow is falling everywhere all the time.
When you talk with a person, think that snow is falling between you and on the person.
Stop conversing when you think the person is covered by snow.

PAINTING FOR THE WIND

Cut a hole in a bag filled with seeds of any kind and place the bag where there is wind.

SHADOW PIECE

Put your shadows together until they become one.

PAINTING TO SHAKE HANDS
(painting for cowards)

Drill a hole in a canvas and put your hand out from behind.
Receive your guests in that position.
Shake hands and converse with hands.

PAINTING TO BE CONSTRUCTED IN YOUR HEAD

Observe three paintings carefully.
Mix them well in your head.

PEA PIECE

Carry a bag of peas.
Leave a pea wherever you go.

CONVERSATION PIECE

Bandage any part of your body.
If people ask about it, make a story and tell.
If people do not ask about it, draw their attention to it and tell.
If people forget about it, remind them of it and keep telling.
Do not talk about anything else.

CLOUD PIECE

Imagine the clouds dripping.
Dig a hole in your garden to put them in.

LAUNDRY PIECE

In entertaining your guests, bring out your laundry of the day and explain to them about each item. How and when it became dirty and why, etc.

MASK PIECE

Wear a blank mask.
Ask people to put in wrinkles, dimples, eyes, mouth, etc. as you go.

NAME PIECE

Change your name by the period of your age.
By the year.
By the day.
By occasions.
By the color of your dress.

NUMBER PIECE I

Count all the words in the book instead of reading them.

NUMBER PIECE II

Replace nouns in the book with numbers and read.
Replace adjectives in the book with numbers and read.
Replace all the words in the book with numbers and read.

DOOR PIECE

Make a tiny door to get in and out so that you have to bend and squeeze each time you get in... this will make you aware of your size and about getting in and out.

WATCH

Draw a large circle in the sky.
Let us know the diameter of the circle (guess), direction and the color of the sky you were watching and the duration of your watching experience.

COUNT

Count the clouds.
Name them.

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Math Game - Divvy Up

Right now the older students are working on Long Division. In the Montessori math progression, this is usually done first with the Golden Beads, then with the Stamp Game, and finally with the Racks & Tubes.

Now we are doing it with abstraction (which I refer to as simply using logic).

Once you've done the Racks & Tubes, the algorithm makes so much sense!

Rather than wait until the children had mastered it all to introduce a Long Division game, I went straight into a game. The whole class played against me! That incentivized them to learn the steps in the algorithm more quickly, in order to make predictions and decide on a winning strategy.

Here is the game:

click on image to enlarge

I found this loose paper in my teacher stash, but I don't know what book I pulled it out of. Sorry!

Divvy Up is a cousin to the Dice Game, which we use every year to reinforce Place Value. And the children have loved it. You can play this game with either a six-sided or ten-sided die. I think 10 is more fun. However, I asked the children if a zero came up to just re-roll. I didn't want to chance a zero in the divisor (which is undefined).

Tips: Because it is too easy to end up with the exact same problem when using a two digit dividend, I let them use a three digit or four digit dividend. And I HIGHLY recommend having children do long division on graph paper to help keep the place value lined up. I like these math journals:

Tomorrow's math game: Remainders Wanted!

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Knitted Doll (Grade 4)

It's very cold and snowy here today, so I finally finished up my knitted doll!

In my Handwork Teacher Training, this was suggested as a third grade project, but I think it works really well in grade 4 as part of the Zoology block (to go with chapter 1 of Kovacs). A doll + wardrobe are the final patterns in A First Book of Knitting for Children, but I particularly like this one because it encourages children to make their dolls unique.

It also goes spectacularly well with the Kovacs chapter, and I really noticed the children looking at human proportions to see how big to make the head and how long to make the arms.

Thank you to Nicole for this "pattern" and the lovely wording!

you will need worsted weight yarn in a variety of colors (shoe color, clothing colors, skin color, hair color, accessory colors) and corresponding knitting needles

"I can't give you a pattern for this because people are different sizes"

"we come in all different colors and so do our dolls”

"we come in all different sizes and so do our dolls”

you will begin at one of the doll’s feet

cast on 12 stitches

knit until the leg is as long as you would like, then cast on for a second

knit second leg, then join them by knitting across all rows

knit torso as long as you want it to be

knit the head smaller — fewer stitches, fewer rows — than you did the torso

k2tog across the entire row, then use the gathering stitch to complete the head

now you will make two arms

cast on 10 stitches for arms in shirt color

knit until the arm is as long as you would like, switch to hand color at end of arm and then use the gathering stitch to complete the arm

notes:

for a smaller doll, cast on 10 instead of 12 stitches for the legs (in which case use 8 stitches instead of 10 stitches for the arms)

for a variety of textures, you could use garter stitch for skin but use stockinette stitch (knit a row, purl a row) for the shoes and clothing

the doll can be made so that he/she is completely clothed already (for slower knitters) OR made with skin and undergarments like tights/undies and then you can have fun inventing and knitting separate clothing and accessories

do NOT make the doll all in skin color such that he/she is naked

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Poisonous or Venomous?

Maybe you already know that Seth Meyers has spent a lot of time on this. But just recently, a Jackal wrote in with the best explanation I've ever heard... and since it's good to know when teaching Zoology (grade 4) and Botany (grade 5), I thought I would share it!

If you bite it and you die, it's poisonous.

If it bites you and you die, it's venomous.

Another tip for poisonous is to think about Snow White and the apple.

And for venomous, someone pointed out that the letter V looks like fangs!

the poisoned apple for Snow White
(I needle-felted this back in April 2016)