Tuesday, June 23, 2009

ICT and other fun stuff of summer

Around here, the ice cream truck is only referred to in code (ICT) so as to avoid severe spasmodic screaming and door banging (by the current 2 year old). Not that the thing doesn't make it's presence known all by itself, but still. I have a love-hate relationship with our daily ICT. Yes, it's daily. Most days, I cringe when I hear her coming because it's always right when we sit down to dinner or right when we're bringing everyone in for bed. Yes, it's twice daily.

But on days like today, when we've been sitting in the orthodontist's office (all younger children in tow) and then in a hot car delivering meals, I welcome the ICT with a smile and a shout of "ice cream for dinner!" That's always a huge hit. (Note: I'm on the receiving end of the bringing a meal tradition far more than on the giving side. I write it here only to assuage my guilt remind myself, some day down the road, that I actually did cook for other people once in a very long while).

We're plugging happily along with our summer math lessons and history readers. I'm loving all this early American stuff because I managed to pass the Higher Level International Baccalaureate history exam in high school (and it was my best score) and major in History at an Ivy League college without studying the overall history of the US. At least not in depth. The IB curriculum focused on "the Americas" and we read books by Howard Zinn and Carl Degler. I wouldn't call that a "fair and balanced" approach. In college, for some reason I focused on British history. So I'm learning a lot of this for the first time myself. We just finished The Witch of Blackbird Pond tonight - next up is Johnny Tremain. Bobo's reading The Skippack School and Elbow is poised to finish Squanto.

The Patriot is being baptized this Sunday by his dear, old dad. Pictures will be forthcoming I'm sure...


6 comments:

jess s said...

Can't wait to see the pictures!

Katie said...

When we moved from Fargo to our little rural town the first time our son heard the local Lutheran church bells ring at 7PM he jumped out of his chair and yelled "ice cream truck!". Not so!

Jaime said...

Howard Zinn! That would be a fairly Marxist take I would guess?

I did IB too but we didn't read Zinn...

Mark Erickson said...

Your family is wondering how you could major in history and not study the American version. You didn't have Mr. Hanson in HS? I didn't like A People's History either, it read like a laundry list to me. Try Terrorism and War, it's great.

Degler's wikipedia entry just says he's an opposing viewpoint to Zinn, but he must be a lefty to you, I guess.

Michelle Waters said...

Mark,
I missed Hanson because I took IB instead of AP. The only US I did in high school was with Adelman and it was - like I mentioned - "A History of the Americas." We didn't even study the presidents or the establishment of the Am government in detail!

Mark Erickson said...

Okay, but what about college? Surely you could have taken a dozen different US History courses.

BTW, Binker's elementary school is pre-IB. We'll have to make sure he understands his home's history, especially that the Tea Parties of 2009 had absolutely nothing in common with the actual Boston Tea Party.