Crown Point Field Trip

Below is a short article that will be printed in our fledgling neighbourhood newspaper called  The Point.  It was a lot of fun to write and to prepare for.  Hoping to instill some community love and care into the little city slickers...

    

 

 

Crown Point Field trip.

 My kids are mad that we did not buy my parents’ farm last year.  “You can’t have good memories without a farm”, they reasoned.  “How about the time I sent the four of you to Gage Park to scavenge for fall leaves and ginko nuts and you came back smelling of vomit and I laughed?” came my reply.  They remained unconvinced (they’re playing on my guilt at raising city kids) and so we set out on a deliberate mission to fabricate urban memories, right here in our neighbourhood. 

     It was one afternoon and as many different experiences as we could pack into four hours, kind of like the Crown Point version of the Grade 8 trip to Ottawa.  First stop, the The Bounty Hunter, where we chose the nerdy comic book paraphernalia that we would buy for Pops on Father’s Day and make definite plans for blowing future allowance money.  Next, to The Orange Tree women’s consignment store where the kids conspired to choose the gown that mom would try on to pose for an ipod picture.   The owner was very tactful in suggesting that the dress was rather generous for my proportions and gave me several other options, four sizes smaller, that would better suit.  Continuing on, we halted again on the sidewalk in front of the Quality Bakery just to store up in our nostrils, the smell of fresh baking.   Going inside, we bought a loaf of rye and each kid chose a fancy cookie.  We were told that the bread was made with the same recipe that the former owner, a Polish survivor of the holocaust, had passed on to the current woman who owns the bakery.  Our appetites piqued, we stopped for  some sliced carrots which my seven year old was insanely proud to have packed herself along with other provisions.  She even brought a roll of toilet paper, preparing for every eventuality, which made me think that I should just hand the reigns to her in running this family.  We’d all be more assiduously looked after.  This was confirmed in my mind when we were 2 whole minutes away from our snack spot and seemed to be lacking a certain five year old.  I was relieved to find her in the care of the statue across from Fabricland, completely un-kidnapped.  One more runway photoshoot  at  the Edit vintage clothing store, a stop at Earl’s Court Gallery to read about the giant whalebone sculpture, and we were back on our bikes making our way toward the escarpment. 

     You may have received, in your mailbox ,a homemade award saying something like  “We-like-your-garden” most likely if your lawn has a lot of whirligigs.  That was us.  And after the judging, we headed for the woods across the street from the tennis courts at Gage Park.  After all that dress shopping the boys needed to do some serious whacking of things with sticks and we focused our effort on the invasive garlic mustard growing by the sweet trail we discovered.   Then, a game of catch, some guerrilla flower planting in public places and we were on our way home.

      I think we made the most of our lack of pigs and corn fields that day and as your kids languish in the  summer blahs, maybe you could sally forth and try very hard to enjoy yourselves with your own list of Crown Point field trip ideas, farmless as you may be.

 

 

Gather Ye Tulips While Ye May.

The house that I was born in has been bulldozed.  There is nothing left but a giant hole in the ground and another hole in the Molenhuis family history.  Humour me and let me get a little sentimental here.
     My mom, soon to be 80, had been on an errand to return my dad's leftover rifle bullets to the man that owns the general store with a hunting shop out back.  She lives in a retirement condo now, since last May when my dad sold the farm to the neighbor who now owns the 2 country blocks that surround our 100 acres.  Not too many uses for rifles in town.   You're not even allowed to get rid of a raccoon yourself, my dad would say and shake his head at town life.  Since she was already in the neighbourhood, my mom decided to take a crop tour around the country roads and just drive by the old farm.  When there was too much light peeking through the cedar trees where the house should have been she decided to drive up the 200 m  laneway and investigate.    
    She told me she felt a "kick to the gut" when all that was left of her home of 50 years was a hole in the earth.  50 years of toddlers learning to walk, 6 year olds learning to bike, bandaids sticking on scrapes, teenagers fighting about dishes, coffee times at 10:00 after the pigs were fed, Santas scaring children at 50 Christmases, countless loads of diapers and knitted Dutch socks hung on the clothesline, harvesting crews eating sandwiches, ponyrides at birthday parties, baby ducks warming by the woodstove, cats sitting on mom's lap (she doesn't like cats much), freezers filled with enough garden vegetables to last all winter, and endless more things that no one can count that make up a farm family's daily life.  She knew it was coming and yet, when they moved last year, she cleaned the oven and scoured the tub and left the house clean for the backhoes.  
     This was the day before Mother's day and while tears she'll never admit to streamed down her cheeks she told the hole, with defiance, "If you're going to take my house, I'll take your tulips!"  And she picked every tulip she could find that grew from the bulbs that she herself had planted and gave half to my sister and half to herself for Mother's day. 
    I knew too, that the new owner was going to tear down our humble house and build a new fancier one.  The thing had septic problems and plumbing issues, and the basement flooded with some regularity.  And yet when I heard the news, for the rest of that day and the next, it felt as if my dad had died all over again.  So many links to my childhood and my kids' heritage have vanished off the face of the earth in the last few months. Things you assumed would be there as long as you needed them.  I'm a fairly prosaic person, I don't speak in poetry, but for some reason throughout those days the line "Gather ye rosebuds, while ye may" found it's way from some dark corner of forgotten things in my brain to the front of my thoughts.  I looked it up online and I think it has to do with virgins getting married and starting a new life but I found the sentiment applied to my thoughts quite well. 
Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May
(To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time)
By Robert Herrick
(1591 - 1674)
.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles today
To-morrow will be dying.
.
The glorious lamp of Heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run.
And nearer he's to setting.
.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

That same day, I was driving through town listening to CBC Radio One.  The host of a classical music radio show was introducing a piece by Mozart which was all about transitions  through phases in life, in his case, the shift from a time of fame and limelight in Vienna to one of more obscurity and uncertainty in a new city.  Again.   The theme of endings and beginnings and treasuring what has come before.  Weird synchronicity? 
     This poem and this music, both 400 years old, were great comforts and reminders that the things that we treasure in this life do not last.  They are precious gifts and ours to enjoy and hold  dearly, for a time but then their moment passes.  And now I'm in the throws of raising four lives, and I'm brushing their teeth, holding their hands to cross streets,  reading them books, yelling about holes in socks, hugging little bodies until they cry because they think their ribs have broken, watching their dirty dishes reproduce on the counter, praying for sick hamsters at bedtime (God, in his infinite wisdom called them home),  and the time is going too fast.  My youngest is 5 and I'm no longer the mother of babies.   It doesn't last.  But the Giver lets us squeeze every moment of joy and of trouble from the gift, the present, and the Giver lives on.   Farms, houses, and even Opas join the past in our memories  and we move on to whatever comes next.
     Hopefully this is good, but I find a lot of relief in the knowledge that we're all just passing through.  Ecclesiastes has always been a favourite book of mine.  It's all utterly meaningless under the sun.  Cheery words, eh?  I think so.  I feel it gives me leave not to take much very seriously, stressy things that may seem important but really don't matter much in the grand scheme.   Schooling my kids, then, better be about loving God's people and learning to gather tulips while we may.  Yes, quadratic equations and the laws of the conservation of mass and energy have a place within that curriculum.  They don't have much value outside of it.  So what are the bulbs that I can plant today so I can keep on picking tulips year after year? 

    

Education of all Kinds.

     Earlier today I climbed up to the attic where my handy husband was installing a built in desk in my soon-to-be sewing/hide from the children room.   I paused and asked "...Do you hear that?"  *Explosions of belly laughter*  "That's the kids reading the body changes book that you took out of the library."  This book has been laying in wait in the kitchen since it was taken out of the library about 40 renewals and $300 in fines ago.   Ed had the day off of work today and was on a tear getting jobs done around the house.  Door jambs routed, desk installed, Ed bounded up the stairs with the pink and purple book with the cute cartoon pictures of pubic hair, ready to get'er done after the girls were in bed later in the day.  ...  I'm downstairs and I cannot handle it.  I'm hearing isolated words in the conversation float down the gaping hole that is now between the dining room and upstairs bathroom. (leaky drainpipe, sodden ceiling plaster--hole.  Yesterday's adventure.)  I'm plugging my ears and rocking and can only imagine what my naïve 9 and 12 year old boys are doing.  They're not laughing.  I had expected this scene to be hilarious.  When Ed came down the stairs he went immediately with a flashlight to climb the ladder in our dining room to check the hole like he had scratched off the last thing on today's list and wanted to get a start on tomorrow's list.  "So what'd they say?"   "Oh, they didn't get it.  It's too outrageous of a concept."  Two years of stalling about getting around to this moment and that's it?  Regardless, I'm sure the boys will remember that lesson for much longer than the one about the identifying features of Romanesque architecture we had yesterday. 
     So that was the back end of the day.   The front end began with Ed heading to Fortinos to buy a live lobster and a bag of chips.  The kids had a presentation to give at a homeschooling unit study group that we've been a part of for the last month.   Their talk was about PEI and Isaac was going to be speaking about some of the local crustaceans on the island and he wanted a visual for each one.  We've been kinda late getting to this group on all the other meeting dates but since today was our day to present, we were trying really hard to get out of the door on time.   I thought that if we announced it was time to get boots and coats on and begin the manoevre to the van at 9:00 we'd be good to get there before 10:00 with a half hour drive in between.   It's 9:05, 9:07, 9:12 and Ed's not home with the lobster and a bag of chips.  Finally, he gets in the door a long minute later, we together pull the wriggling animal out of the bag and try to get a hold of it with tongs so we don't have to touch it with our hands.  The shell is slippery, the tongs break and the fella is making a break for it across the counter and we both squeal and when it flicks it's tail.   We grab two spoons and he clatters to the stovetop a few times before we are successful in plunging him headfirst into the pot that has been boiling for the last half hour. Our first plan was to cook the lobster as part of the presentation but I'm sure there would have been a lot of small children crying from the trauma if we had gone that route. When the black and green creature  turned the bright red colour that cartoon lobsters are known for  we were soon in the van with a steaming hot lobster sitting in the passenger seat beside me. 
     I think the kids surprised themselves with how well they could put together an oral presentation and get up and speak in front of their peers (and their moms).   The first practice with Anneke, especially, was a bit rough.  I made like I was introducing her saying: "And now Anneke would like to share with you a bit about Anne of Green Gables".     "WAAAAAAAAAh"  and huge tears rolled down her cheeks.   "Is that what you're going to say for your presentation?" I inquired.   She quickly laughed through her tears and launched into her material and had the biggest grin when she did a good job of finishing it in front the me.   Then I heard her practicing upstairs for her imaginary friends and she adlibbed like she was the most fascinating thing they had ever heard.  Tobin, too, was entertaining his lego minifigures with  dramatic gesticulating and rousing cadence about why the soil is red on PEI.   Their actual performances at show time were more reserved but I was a proud mama at they way they pulled themselves together and pulled it off proving to themselves that they are capable of doing difficult things.   They weren't even dry heaving or miserably rattled beforehand which was a relief.   Isaac explained:  "Well.  I was a bit nervous before we started but I felt prepared so it wasn't so bad after all."  I wish you could hear his understated, matter of fact, oh-so-cute voice saying those words.   Like the Beaver, delivering a line. 

Two Month Check Up

    This blog is brought to you by the misfortune that my husband, a carpenter, had a run in with his saw requiring 4 stitches and 7 days off of work.  He took the kids to Friday shinny=two and a half hours of quiet time for me alone at home sans enfants.  Afternoon is such a better time to write (or do anything at all) coherently as opposed to 9:30 after the daily ordeal of bedtime.  By now I've proven to myself that there is a legitimate list to be written that testifies to the significant learning moments that naturally, and supernaturally present themselves each and every day.  And so I've slowed down my nightly blogging and spent more evening time on the couch beside my husband either reading or watching TV or drooling on my shirt while staring at the wall.   I'd still like to take some time to reflect on some of the more macro lessons that I've learned through our experiment so far.
     Soo many people have approached me and said things like: "Unschooling sounds like it's so much harder than traditional teaching" .   I don't get that.   We spend our days reading books, talking, looking at articles, playing, trying science experiments, baking, crafting, doing household chores, meeting with friends, hiking, and yes, completing a short list of 4 daily exercises --piano practice, writing entries in our gratitude journal, Rosetta stone French and 5 minutes of computer math fact drill.  We don't feel hurried and I don't fear, as I did more so at the beginning, that a day will go by with nothing to feed our thoughts.   It's a joy!  What's so hard about joy?? Before I go on, I want to make abundantly clear the fact that this joy doesn't mean that everybody's happy all the time.  Joy and happiness are two different things and we've got unhappiness aplenty, on certain days, just like any other normal family.  The kids still fight,  I still get fed up with asking people a hundred times to do  simple tasks, and moodiness puts a damper on creativity and curiosity on many days.   And yet, I feel a whole lot less uptight because so much less of my day is spent "shoving boulders up hills" in order to get a long list of subjects done by 4 kids of different ages.  That's hard!!
     And the next inevitable question:  "Well, there must be gaps in the education, if you're completing so many fewer school related lessons throughout the day".  Honey, I used to live in desperate fear of those gaps before, back when we were  scrambling to get all those pages, and prepared lessons done in the hours allotted to "school-time".   I remember when I noticed that my 7 year old son could tell a Matisse from a Picasso and state his opinion of Hammurabi's code but could not spell his own last name while all his school peers could manage that 3 years ago.  And icy fear would pierce my heart when my daughter couldn't say what came after Thursday, but could tell you who was the unifier of India and could sew a nine-patch quilt.   This came as a surprise to me, but these gaps freak me out a lot less, now that we are "getting less school done".   Taking this time to set aside the curriculum has given us ample pause to actually recognize which things are essential to higher problem solving and effective communication and focus on these things without the distraction of whatever was being presented on the next 2 pages of the workbook.  For example,  we've used lots of different methods and language programs with the oldest, but he still struggles with basic sentence structure.  So,  drop everything and develop that specific skill without drowning in abstract exercises that assume that sentence structure is already firm just because we've got to get that blasted Gr. 6 book done by June.   Done.  I feel like we've been given a gift of more time to focus on the basic building blocks of the three Rs  which will definitely make success in the more complex lessons much smoother.  I no longer worry that I'm not doing enough things.   Now we can focus on whether we're doing the right things.  
     Are there days when motivation is low and seemingly nothing gets done?   Yes.   This is another thing that used to really disturb me and make me into a crazy woman.  I found that this reaction was a less than effective motivator to inspire a love of learning.  And it's only been two month, I'm not completely over this, but I have  begun to recognize the value of boredom.   My kids are not allowed any screen time until just before supper so if they can't find something constructive to occupy themselves, they usually end up sitting around in the living room and eventually getting on each other's nerves.   From a mom's standpoint, this sucks and there's no getting around that.   We'd so much rather see the children become passionately involved in some newly discovered interest and emerge from their bedrooms, hours later, having developed the solution to global warming or composed a sonnet about the cat.   Instead, they're sitting on their screaming brother's head or spending too much time in front of the heat register watching the dust settle.   I used to instantly get on their case about how they needed quit being lazy and use their imagination to use their time more wisely.  This is useless, I've discovered.  It creates guilt and pressure which breed more restlessness and bratty behaviour.  I've found that boredom is it's own motivator.   Sometimes, a body needs to sit and do nothing, gather thoughts and make plans about how to make life more interesting when being bored gets boring.   And it happens.  Every time.  Don't we adults have creative energy in bursts with sluggish, unproductive days in between?  How annoying would it be to have someone stand behind you and prod you with "inspirational messages" about how we should "be more creative",  "amuse yourself",  "get something done!"   These moments have become opportunities to read the next chapter in our read-aloud or go outside when they don't launch into building Olympic ski runs out of lego, or sewing pigs or making chemical concoctions in the kitchen. 
     Will I go back to curriculum-led learning?   ...Not sure yet.   Having trouble figuring out why we would, in some ways.   We have until September to decide.   Until then, we'll endeavor to enjoy this oasis in time and childhood.  Already, both I and the kids have a new appreciation and mindfulness of the opportunities to learn, even in the most mundane things.  We'll decide, together, which sequential book learning needs to be brought back in to provide the kids with the tools they will need to become the people they are meant to be.    And I emphasize the word people, persons, rather than the engineers, scrap-metal dealers, teachers,  carpenters that they may become.   Charlotte Mason, a nineteenth century maverick of living education, emphasized that kids are persons first, then future job-holders.   Hopefully these persons in our house will not only be solid men and women of character, but also be somewhat employable in the future that none of us can predict. 

A recent article in the National Post about Unschooling.

    Opinions all over the map in this article.  http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/05/28/the-politics-of-unschooling-raising-independent-trailblazers-or-lazy-free-floaters/

Family Genes.

     I've missed the practice of taking stock at the end of a day and also the looking forward to, and musing about, what I might include in the evening news about our learning adventures.  It's been almost a month since I've written and two weeks today since my dad passed away.  Before his death we travelled to be together with the family and then returned to Hamilton, briefly, to await the call that Dad had gone home.  Lots of lifelearning, to be sure, but keeping a record of the arithmetic lessons and literary accomplishments seemed inconsequential in the shadow of the end of a life.   

     Yet, Dad's life echoes in our pursuit of true understanding that we are fumbling through during this season.  He, being born in the 30s, finished his formal education at the end of Gr. 8 but the bookshelves that covered every wall of our childhood home, and the memories of many  an armchair debate about politics, science, agriculture and theology attest that his education had very little to do with whatever his teachers' curriculum dictated during those few years he spent behind a pupil's desk.  And he revered his grandmother who he claimed was the smartest woman he ever knew even though she was denied the right to go to school at all, being born illegitimately in the 1870s.   He loved to tell the story about how a recent graduate of agricultural college tried to teach her something about cross pollination between bean varieties and her curt reply was "It very well may say that in your textbook, but in the garden, it's different."  Years later, my dad came across an article in an agricultural magazine about a "new" finding which confirmed what my great-grandmother already knew by her own observation.  Dad was always a champion of anything that questioned conventional wisdom and knowledge.  Must be a genetic thing.

     I am grateful for the Olympics which taught my kids all sorts of lessons while I lacked the emotional energy to pursue any kind of intentional brain food.  Stories of courage, triumph, sacrifice, heartbreak, success and grace through failure were reported all day long on CBC.  I remember spending a lot of time talking about that in class when I was in school.   Plus, we figured out how to keep score in a curling game which none of us understood even while we watched and tried to cheer at the appropriate times.  And, good for me, I taped a world map to the mantel so we could locate the top 10 medal winning countries each day.   And when Sochi went to bed at 3 pm, our time, (insert lesson about timezones) we even read the rest of Romeo and Juliet with beers (ginger ale) to help with understanding the difficult language.  And of course, the kids' more than appropriate response was:  "What a bunch of dumb butts, everybody dying all over the place just because two people got married after one day!"  That's how I knew they understood the story perfectly.

     This week we're back to our regular routine...of not having a routine, and my goodness, is it OK that I love it so much?? Must mean we're not trying hard enough if we're not all frazzled and frantic, right?  We're reading lots of chapters of really great books (Elijah of Buxton and Ruby Holler at the moment) making Richard Scarry gingerbread pigs, unit price comparing at the grocery store,  learning how to ferment our own Root Beer (Isaac watched a video but we have yet to find the ingredients.), carving soap,sewing wonderful marvelous pigs, tracing letters, copying books  and all sorts of good stuff.   And of course, many lessons, some not yet worthy of a passing grade, in giving space to the ill-tempered screaming ones and giving the sly tormentors a wide berth.  Although, they all seem to be able to give words to the appropriate responses in these situations when they themselves are not involved in the current fray.  Much good may it do them tomorrow.

    It's good to be back in the swing at home.  It was good to reflect on the 83 years of history of a Dad , Opa, pig-farmer, tuba player, lada collector, refugee sponsor, pot-stirrer.  As my 82 year old Dad "liked" a quote by Mark Twain, on Facebook, that said when we find ourselves on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect, so shall we carry on the family tradition of questioning everything.  Except things like why we have to go to sleep at bedtime.  That crap you just do if you know what's good for you.

Monday.

     We watched the Sunday Family Movie last night and it happened to be Gnomeo and Juliet, the old story of star-crossed lovers from feuding families of ...ceramic garden gnomes.   Red hats.  Blue hats.  The kids were laughing at all the funny parts but missing all the classic references to the most famous piece of writing in the English language.   I told them that on Monday we'd read the real thing  (a Charles and Mary Lamb retold for kids' version).  "Is it funny?" asks Isaac.  "Hilarious" is my reply.   So after breakfast as the kids worked on their new Rainbow loom stitches as seen on Youtube, we meet Romeo who ditches Rosaline, hooks up with Juliet, peeps in her bedroom windows and marries her within the first two pages.   "This isn't funny."  notes Isaac.   Nope.  Dripping with impulsive romance and really difficult to understand.  We had fun comparing and contrasting with the lawn ornament movie though, and the kids are being good sports about finishing in the next few days.
     Blogger is going fritzy on me so I'll continue tomorrow.   The rest of today was just the usual anyway.  Piano lessons, playing, multiplication drill computer challenge thingy, hockey on the ice, writing grateful list entries, chores and kijiji.  Always kijiji with the Tobin boy.  He met a man with two St. Bernards on the way home from piano lessons who stopped and talked to him about the breed and let Tobin pet his dogs.   Tobin opens Google after he tells me this and I think that he's going to research more about the breed but no, he's going to Kijiji to see if there are any enormous dogs available for sale and for how much.  Then, he and Anneke count their combined life savings including Ruby's six dollars and change.   Didn't take long to talk him down, out of the crazy tree, though.  Just had to remind him of what puppies are like from the time we dog-sat for a friend during the summer.  He's an impulsive boy but he is learning already, by experience, that the thrill of buying things that you want only lasts a very short while and costs you months of allowance.   His new scheme is to buy Lord of the Rings lego sets on clearance, sit on them for a while and then sell when they are no longer available in stores.  ("Why would you sit on them? You'd smush the box and ruin it."  --Isaac)  He worked out the rules of buy low, sell high, price caps, and supply and demand all by his little self in his quietly whirring mind.  Might be a fun business experiment and would put his kijiji "skills" to work.
    
    
    
    
    
    

Friday Reading Day. Well...listening, it's a Ted.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html


Thanks, Carina for the above.
I wish these showed up nicely with a picture like they do on Facebook.

Field Trip Thursday Cancelled on account of Preference for Pajamas

     That would be the headline for today.   Since September, we've tried to go out on location somewhere, mostly with just the 5 of us, to anywhere that interests us on Thursday afternoons.  We've gone to St. Jacobs after a conversation about the Amish, we've gone to pick plastic off of Van Wagner's beach after watching one of those depressing documentaries about the ocean gyres, we've gone to Dundurn castle with the free library pass and other places that strike our fancy that week.  I got into watching Downton Abbey shortly after our Dundurn trip and when Anneke got out of bed for one thousand glasses of water she'd say  " Are you watching Lady MacNab again?!"   (The lady of the house at Dundurn )  Anyway, today was yet another cold day and 4 out of 5 of us had our pajamas on all day. 
     The morning started with 3 kids in my bed learning what 7 and 5 are along with Pippi Longstocking who went to school so she could get Christmas vacation like the other village children.  This is our 3rd go-round with this book.  So much fun.  I have fond memories of my older sister reading it to me in my bed when I was little.  The school chapter was double funny, in our current state of Villa Villekula-like education, with Pippi lamenting a tormented future for all those children who wouldn't have the answer if someone should stop them on the street and demand the capital of Portugal, and would have to write a letter directly to Lisbon to ask the answer.  We just need to get ourselves a suitcase full of gold coins and become cannibal kings and queens. 
     After breakfast two more kids finished their math books and Tobin worked on a pluttification drill game on the computer.   When piano and French were done we sat around the campfire (vent) and I challenged the kids to write 100 good things that they would count as gifts of grace in a journal.  I explained a bit of the backstory behind Ann Voskamp's battle with anxiety and depression and how being awake to gratefulness transformed her outlook on life.  Their interest was piqued.  This family is not immune to anxiety and I'm praying that this exercise could have lifelong benefits in building a habit of thanksgiving, every day.   PLUS, it gets them writing complete sentences that actually mean something.   They only have to come up with at least three a day but they have to get to the target of 100.  So far we've got snow on pine trees, backyard rinks, people to play with, Wednesday hikes...
    Then we made bombs.  Lots and lots of bombs.  The boys figured out how to do those exploding popsicle stick triangles by watching "Rob's World" on Youtube.  Rob is a physics student who does tutorials for little boyish, tricky things that actually abide by physical laws.  We learned the concepts of potential energy and kinetic energy.   All by accident.   I was delighted and the kids tolerated my bringing up those terms in every conversation very well.  I think it's duly branded into their memories by now.   So while we read many chapters of "Ruby Holler"  on the couches, the boys stockpiled weapons.  
     After supper we watched The Nature of Things about leatherback turtles and we remedied the fact that the kids didn't know who David Suzuki is.  And now I'm done for the day and I'm going to watch Chuck with Ed. 

Just Brimming...

     I've not been blogging the last couple of days.  Oh no, I've become that blogger that apologizes for depriving their millions of daily followers of access to their random, mundane thinkings and doings.  Blogging can be so presumptuous.  Any person under the sun could have something worthwhile to say when they stop and reflect at the end of a day so why should I expect others to read about the highlights of my rather ordinary days.  Oh, but I do love it.  It has kept me so mindful of valuing the gifts that happen even during the worst, horrible, moody days full of screeching and spills.  I feel that it is no accident that our women's group at church is currently reading "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp which is all about seeking out the ordinary gifts of grace that everyone receives from a good God even in the midst of banality, ugliness and even tragedy.  In the end, the gifts, such as a smile from a child who has just finished a 30 minute stint of maniacal wailing, are less significant than the open-handed posture of the mother who is ready to seek out and receive grace in all things. 
     It is Wednesday.  There have been 5 days since my last post.  Too many gifts to explain, in depth, over the weekend, up until now but here are a few:

• Tobin learned to change a headlight with Dad.
• Lots of skating on the backyard rink, even in frigid temperatures.
• Girls coming in from outside brimming with ideas for their very important to do list for the day.  They must play babies, do a craft, play "Old Granny"  (this game is new and it involves sneaking into the kitchen to steal from the sugar bowl before the Old One (Mom) raps them on the knuckles.)   "Let's get started, Ruby, or we won't get these things done!"
• Kids crouching on the stairs to listen to Mom and 5 friends speak broken French at a monthly meeting we've begun just to practice something we have made and effort to learn and enjoy.
• Isaac brimming with pride after he took the responsibility of putting the girls to bed while Mom was downstairs with her French Friends and Dad was out.  Ruby:  "I love Isaac!  He brushed our teeth, tucked us under the blankets and read us the story about potatoes with an Irish accent!".
• The warm smell of baking bread on Sundays when Anneke and Daddy make a loaf from scratch every week.
• Tobin asking for prayer for the Morelli family every evening.
• Cries of "Another chapter!"  when we snuggle under blankets on the couches and read aloud.
• Anneke copying out her library books because she wants to teach herself to write.
• Tobin finishing his math book and the others will be done by tomorrow.
• Tobin found studs in the wall and leveled a book shelf that he and Dad mounted beside his bed to put his reading books on.
• Isaac saying that he calls his marshmallow snowman "Nude Descending a Staircase" because he reads Calvin and Hobbes.  I showed him the Marcel Duchamp version and he laughed.  He will remember that art lesson because it is attached to a moment in his play.
• Tobin got a paying job shoveling someone's snow from the flyers he sent out.
• The boys writing "hamburger paragraphs" ...more on this later...
• Ruby, ever and always immersed in little worlds where the big spoon is the mom to the little spoon and the entire living room floor is needed to house the spoon family.

   Ach, there's so many.   So ordinary.  So wonderful and we don't feel busy in the accomplishment of them.  Now, if anyone has their finger poised on the last digit of the number for Children's Services, you should know that I do see a need for regular instruction for writing and math.  In September, we will return to using a sequential program of instruction in these areas.  Many unschooling families testify that kids will naturally learn what they need to learn in these areas if given support and encouragement and I don't doubt them.  Maybe it's the fear talking, but I see definite deficiencies in my kids' ability to write with confidence.  I must also add that I have seen that gap close as the kids get older and are more ready to tackle this arduous task with the confidence they have gained by reading more fluently and just being generally more mature and aware of the necessity of being able to express oneself  in writing.  But it is still painful to watch my boys struggle with basic sentence and paragraph structure at the ripe old ages of 9 and 12.  But we are both learning the meta-lessons of reducing these mountains to speedbumps by taking baby steps, baby steps, baby steps.  If you have encouragement to share in this regard, as a homeschooler or someone who sends their kids to school,  please share. 
    Another meta-lesson has been learned with our biting hamster.  Anneke's idyllic notions of having a pet that would enjoy being grabbed, squeezed and made to say hello to the cat have been quashed as "Tia" has begun using her teeth to communicate.   "I want to get rid of her" was said through tears as we snuggled it out on the couch.  But instead of giving up on the project the moment it went in a direction she was not happy with, we decided that maybe we should change our approach to the little creature, one thousandth our size and see if we can't make our commitment to her work in a way that both enjoy.  And it worked.  Anneke is slow and quiet and respectful to her hamster and the rodent returns her gentle efforts with causing less bloody fingers.  When things look hopeless and disappointing, maybe it can get better if we pause and problem solve to improve the situation.   She said as much, in her own words, to her brothers.
   And now there are two families coming to do an art lesson on visual problem solving a la Da Vinci.  We're going to read a story about Da Vinci and then work with a pile of materials to solve visual problems to invent a prosthetic for flying creatures with dysfunctional wings.   Hope it works out as well as I hope it will. 

Some Friday Reading.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/give-childhood-back-to-children-if-we-want-our-offspring-to-have-happy-productive-and-moral-lives-we-must-allow-more-time-for-play-not-less-are-you-listening-gove-9054433.html

Order Rodentia

     It's fairly safe to say that we are full swing into a unit study on the order (or is it class, phylum, family?) Rodentia.   Tobin is now the proud owner of two gerbils.   Welcome, Cooper and Ralph.   A total of three rodents in the house.  And  the traps are set for their cousins, the field mice who may wander in from the cold.   It is actually fascinating to note how much like a fat little pom pom the hamster is compared with the jack rabbit-like leanness of the gerbils.  We observed and listed anatomical reasons for this difference in agility.  Science is all about observation, right?
     Tobin lead us to the gerbil dealer's house by way of a good old fashioned map of Oakville.  He looked up the street on the index, found the coordinates, circled the location and legally sat in the front seat and navigated our way first to Oakville's museum and from there to our friend "Barrie" the gerbil man.  With Black History month coming up and Oakville being a bit of a jaunt to fetch vermin to bring into your home, we decided to make a field trip out of the afternoon and visit the multi-media exhibit about the underground railroad that they have on display at the old estate museum.   I can tell that the stories of injustice and slavery hit home for Isaac because he brought up some abolitionist arguments when asked to do the dishes after supper.   He said that I was a slave catcher and he had to run and get further from the border to be safe from a life of work with no pay.  He should wait until the weather gets above -20 degrees.  I read about a prisoner that escaped this week but turned back to the warmth of his cell when he got a little chilly in his prison issue pants.
     Barrie, the gerbil farmer is not your typical middle aged Oakville resident.  His house looks like he built it himself with his brother named Limpy back in Gr. 8.  It's on a ravine so if you look away from the street and plug your ears it feels like you're at a backwoods cabin in Virginia.  But you're not.  You're in Oakville.  Ed has built houses 5 blocks away whose owners flew to Egypt to select the marble for their bathroom vanity.  Barrie could walk to the downtown strip of boutiques to find 75 dollar tee shirts with nautical themes and khaki trousers to match.  But his gerbils seem healthy and well cared for and mine and Tobin's life is more interesting for having visited his curious little patch of land.   At the rate we're going with collecting animals, we're well on our way to being eccentrics ourselves. 
      Skating and read-aloud after supper and the end of another beautiful day of learning together. 
    

Wednesday, Wednesday.

Math.  Skating.  Friends over. Lunch.  Meeting with director of Partners Worldwide.  Skating. "Adventure Time" Is it OK for four year olds?  Well, that depends on their birth order.  Supper.  Reading aloud.  More skating.  Playing cards. Bed. 

My Village Arrived Today.

     If every day were like today I'd never complain about anything again.  It was just so lovely and rambling  and unrushed and yet productive.   And nobody fought.   And I had enough sleep to enjoy it all.
   I rose before the children like a good mother should.  O.K. it was 8:35 and the phone woke me up.  But while the children slept, I threw buckets of water on our skating rink which froze instantly in the crazy -19 temperatures.  Ed had cleared a 15x30 foot rectangle in the backyard the last time it snowed and we've been slowly building up the ice hoping to have our first ever, successful skating rink to keep the kids outside and active in the winter.  Well, it worked.  These freezing temperatures are handy for that at least.  In the afternoon, the boys shot pucks around and practiced their turns and manouevres while the girls actually learned to skate.  Well, Ruby spent most of the time shuffling on her hands and knees pretending to be a Zamboni.
     When I came in from flooding,  Anneke had a magic trick to show me that Tobin had taught her with a kit he got for Christmas.   With a lot more practice she could be a carny doing the shell game trick.  After breakfast, I had to drop off the van at the Fix-it shop and the kids mostly got their math and piano done in my absence.   Then, while the boys went upstairs to read, I cuddled up with the girls and read the Railway Children.  Tobin heard me reading and ran down the stairs to listen.  He has always loved listening to stories.  Any stories.  Baby books and difficult literature alike.  I think he really knows the difference between shlock and great writing.  If only that would translate into good writing from himself...Someday I'm going to spring for someone else to teach him to write.  It's too painful.
     Somehow, Tobin and I struck up a convo about how everything in the world is made up of endless combinations of a limited number of elements.  He was duly amazed.  And he really liked the idea of making models of molecules with marshmallows and toothpicks.  He really likes marshmallows.   He made an H40 molecule and we googled whether that was a thing or not.  Apparently it is marketed as the ultimate anti-oxidant drink and Tobin is keen to flush some free radicals so we might go find some someday.  And Isaac made a very nice snowman in a canopy bed with marshmallows which he ate in his hot chocolate after skating.
     After seeing Chris Hadfield sing the national anthem on Hockey night in Canada, the boys were stoked to see his videos in space about brushing your teeth, eating a sandwich and sleeping in zero gravity.   We can rule out the space program for Tobin as he is unwilling to swallow his own toothpaste froth in the name of science. 
     Just before supper we had some more time for reading together because all my dreams since ever becoming a parent came to fruition with one telephone call.  The elderly woman from down the street that I had visited yesterday called my house and said these words:   "Alicia, you need a break.  Now, I was down at Costco this morning and I picked up a meal for you and I'm going to give you a recipe for some excellent tomato chowder which is easy to make that you can have along with it."    You know how they say that it takes a village to raise a child?  Well, my village arrived.   How many times have I dreamed of someone validating the hard work that a parent does mostly alone behind closed doors and then offering a small token of help!   It was so simple but it was HUGE!   I sent some kids to go pick the food up from her door, not because I couldn't do it myself, but I wanted the kids to be the recipients of such a simple, kind gesture.  And the woman told Isaac he should be wearing his mittens.  That's what I said!    So sweet to have a 90 year old woman down the street making sure my son's hands are warm. 












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4

Monday:  A quick overview.

•     A great little Monday.  Normal stuff in the morning.  Piano, French, Math. 
•  Tobin researched gerbils' behavior and habits and found some on Kijiji and emailed back and forth with the breeder.  He also learned the difference between being "weaned" and being "circumcised".  Two different things it turns out.  Especially as it has to do with gerbils.
•   Lots of card playing.  Especially with Ruby.  And stories for her too.
• We happened to glance out of the window and saw the funeral procession of Bernie Morelli go down our street and pause in front of his late mother's house which is just across the street.
• Isaac is on Day 2 of his 20 days/20 experiments challenge.  We tried to do the mentos and coke kersplosion thing.  Watched a dude with a thick Russian accent fail at it several times too on Youtube.  Isaac learned how to do a Russian accent but not how to make the pop explode. 
• Tobin finished and sent off his song for Opa and Oma's 50th anniversary party.
• Tobin signed up for a birding email list in Hamilton area with his own email acct.  This could be quite cool.
• The girls went grocery shopping and baked cookies with me while the boys went to piano lessons.  Isaac got songs he likes this week and is, for the moment, an avid practiser.
• After supper, the kids played cards while Dad and Mom both had to go out.  I went to interview two elderly ladies , (87 and 90) about the neighbourhood for an article in our new Crown Point newspaper.  Turns out we've got some semi-famous characters from our hood.  Evelyn Dyck (murdered her husband in the '40s) and Michael Baldasaro (Reverend of the Church of the Universe which is quite into the use of marijuana.  He is also running for mayor which he has for many elections) Just as I was leaving,  my host whispered to me "Pst, come see my powder room"  So we shuffle to the back of the house and she flicks the lightswitch and checks my reaction to the main floor bathroom she boasts all decked out in lavish, over the top, 70s splendour.  Of course I told her how jealous I was. She took down my number, since she is housebound, in case she needs milk or bread and can't get out.  And I hope she uses it too.
• Came home to an Anneke missing a front tooth.  She's got a new swagger on now.

    

Fitness Fridays

    I don't think I'm the only one looking forward to enjoying being outside again and having regular exercise be easier to come by.  Until then, we have fitness Fridays.  We did our public swimming morning and 2 hours of shinny afternoon marathon again and now Tobin is at his hockey game.  They love it and I mostly do too. Except catching Ruby at the bottom of the water slide and getting a face full of water 57 times in a row.  But who's complaining.  This is how we know we love our children because we call things like this 'family fun'.
     Then, dripping wet, we put hockey gear on and the boys play their guts out for 2 and a half hours while the girls pretend to play arcade games without quarters.   Today I sat in the warm lookout spot and chatted with two moms with older kids that I don't know very well.  They talked about their experiences with sending their kids to highschool part time and how accommodating the schoolboard was about letting kids pick and choose any number of courses without enrolling full time.  Options for the future...When they started to talk about applying to top universities, and sharing struggles with children who only maintain a 92% average they lost me for a bit.  They both kind of cringed at the mention of going to, say, Windsor, or at the possibility that one of their kids might choose *gulp* community college.  I won't sell these women short, they're both wonderful people, but I just don't share their standards of what makes for a life worth living. Maybe they don't either, I hardly know them but many in our culture do still keep the condescending attitude that university is for smart, driven people and college is for the rest who can't hack it.
      I hope my kids go to community college.  Sure, if they had the makings of being a doctor, or an engineer or whatever I certainly wouldn't keep them from the path they would need to take to get there.  But so many people are saying now, that it is not necessary to dig yourself into an over your head hole of debt just to get a piece of paper that usually is just a ticket to further certification or more pricey education so that you can be one of thousands of other highly educated unemployed people that have no practical skills.  The world needs more bricklayers.  I think you can be a well rounded person with interests and ideas worth sharing and still know how to fix a furnace pipe.  And if in a few years you discover that you would like to try something new, the cost and time commitment of going back to school for a second career is much more doable than tossing a useless $60,000 degree and starting again.
      As for the benefits of a liberal arts education for broadening the mind, I kind of hope that this is what I am offering now with great literature shared together, freedom to experiment with science (Isaac is super excited to be starting his 20 days, 20 experiments challenge on Monday.  He's been using his newfound library ordering skills to stock up on lots of kid science books.  He's a hands-on guy.) getting out and enjoying and observing nature on a regular basis,  volunteering our time and money, listening to stories from history and playing, playing, playing.  My hope is that if I offer good, nourishing food for their minds and souls now while they are still young, that they will not settle for brain candy later in life.  Then it wouldn't matter what career path they chose, as long as they could be productive,  compassionate people who know how to enjoy the good gifts on this earth.  I hope I feel the same when my kids are actually at the point of choosing post-secondary education.
     As for the rest of the night, Isaac learned to use a compass at cadets and Anneke and I had two great discussions in the van.  One about car pollution, oil, tarsands, and electric cars and the other about what boys were made for.  "They're good at opening jars." 
    If you are reading this, weigh in with your thoughts below.   It's starting to creep me out seeing that people are reading and I don't know who they are...

Thursday

     Two little girls crawl into my bed every morning and sometimes a big boy.  This is my alarm clock.   It's so cozy we often push the snooze button for quite a while under all those wooly blankets.  This morning Anneke said she missed going to the art class that we had been going to for about 4 years until this year.  I told her one of the reasons we took a break for this year was that there were more kids able to go now.  If it costs $10/kid and 4 kids go, how much will Mom have to pay for all of the children to have art lessons?  10, 20,30, 40... There you go, pluttification and we're still in bed.  Then we went down and did real, serious math in our curriculum books.  Anneke had 3 pages of having to circle the cone shapes while avoiding the cubes and triangular prisms.   Sometimes you feel like you've accomplished something because 3 whole worksheets have been completed even when the material on the page could have been done by any 2 yr old with decent vision.  Of course not all the math pages are like that but this morning it made me laugh at the false sense of accomplishment.
     One of the gifts that we identified that Isaac has is being great with little kids.  So while I helped Tobin write a few verses for the song we're going to sing with all the cousins at my parents' 50th anniversary dinner next week, Isaac helped Ruby draw letters on a dry-rase card.  He does such a great job of patiently guiding her with things like that.  He will be a "nice guy"  when he grows up and doesn't have a brother pushing his buttons all day long anymore. 
     I had to drop off some things to people in the neighbourhood so the kids spent the next hour making the fastest slide on the couch with cushions, blankets, and sleeping bags.   As I walked down the street I thought about how I could create a worksheet about slope, friction reduction and velocity and challenge the kids to problem solve to find a way to move a 50 pound weight, with the greatest speed down an incline.  It sounds like education when you put it that way.   When I got back they were all still alive and having fun.  I pointed out that they had done an A-1 job of reducing friction to increase speed.  Well done, students of life.
    After lunch we went to a library presentation for homeschoolers on how to use the public library to do research.   We learned some neat tips to avoid Google burnout by using the HPL website databases like Worldbook encyclopedia, Consumer Reports, and Novelist book suggestion lists.  I was glad to learn these things but another more poignant lesson hit me on the way home.  My kids have never really liked public spaces or being put in situations where they have to mix with kids they don't know very well.   I spend a lot of energy worrying about this.  There was another little girl there who seemed so free being her spunky self and I found myself wishing my kids would show their spark in front of other people too.  Later, the mother of this girl came up to me and told me how chilled out and relaxed my kids were and how she wished her daughter would sit and listen in situations like these.   Mothers are a tightly wound bunch.  Here I was worrying about my kids shortcomings and admiring someone else's kid's strengths while that kid's mother was worrying about her kid's shortcomings and admiring my kids' strengths.  AND WE WERE LOOKING AT THE EXACT SAME BEHAVIOURS IN BOTH SETS OF KIDS.   Alicia, quit worrying about your babies' perceived faults and nourish their God-given gifts!  They belong in this world for a purpose just the way they are.   The longer I live the more often I see it reinforced that a person's strengths are always also their weaknesses, it just depends on how the person uses this aspect of their character.  My kids are just like other people in this.  Who knew?
     There were lots of other little conversations, questions and answers and aha moments that happened throughout the day which is the same as every other day, but it's impossible to remember them all or write them all down if I did.  For example,  Anneke observed for the first time, that the yellow line on the road separates oncoming traffic.  I clearly remember the moment I learned that when I was a kid too.  You just never know what little things will stick with them for the rest of their lives. 

I love Wednesdays.

     Today began with a few surprises.   First, Isaac couldn't find any jeans without any holes in the knees.  That's not the surprising part.  I just bought him 2 pair just before Christmas and already he's bust through them.  He asked me to search while he watched from his warm bed.  Sure enough, no intact jeans but ho now, what's  this black rectangular thing??...THE iPOD!!!!!!!!  We'll not question the reason for it being there. 
    Yesterday, we were all in quite a fug having played an annoying game of musical beds all through the previous night.   I finally fell asleep at 2:00(this happens to me about 12x a year, about every 28 days...) and was  in no mood to put up with kids who didn't  care to tow the freakin' line the next morning.  Of course everyone felt that way and there was a lot of "He's looking at me!" screaming and general shenanigans.  After the Math marathon was over Tobin and I worked on a Change.org online petition for his basketball court campaign for Councilor Morelli.   He really had started out excited about this authentic writing project back before Christmas but when he began to realize how much PR work it was going to be to get people to sign the thing he began to hate it a little and said so.  Then Mom went a little bit batshit and chucked all kinds of pearls of wisdom at his face about following through with things and putting more effort into things instead of scraping by doing the bare minimum etc.   I then went to my room to read a bit and relax, away from earshot of the word "Mom."   Anneke broke the tension by sitting on the top step outside my room playing a blues-y tune on the harmonica.  It was so ridiculous, it was hilarious and I went downstairs to clear the air and have one of our fireside chats by the register.  Then we took a much needed outing to PetSmart and watched the staff at Doggy Daycare endlessly throw balls to 10 dogs in a small room and  we discussed the importance of getting an education.
     Back to this morning's surprises.  After choosing the jeans with the smallest holes for Isaac to wear, I went downstairs and checked my email and Facebook.   A neighbour  posted the news that Councilor Morelli had actually died just this morning.  I shared this with Tobin and you should have seen the guilty smile of relief spread across his face.  Ward 3 has lost a faithful representative of 22 years and our heart goes out to the family....but Tobin is off the hook for getting 100 people to petition the man to build a basketball court at Gage Park.  Mysterious ways, indeed.
      This morning was hike day and we walked around Coote's Paradise with 5 other families.  Chilly, but great to get outside and spend time with friends.  Tobin spotted a new kind of duck in the water and got to add it to his Bird Life List that he decided to begin.  A  Bufflehead, as far as we could tell.  Coolio.
      Straight after hiking we arrived at the Perkin's Centre to pack Good Food boxes.   Vegetables that are sold at a cheaper price than in the store, by the box so that more people can access fresh, and as much as possible local produce.    Anneke really shines at this.  I never have to double check her work.  She's more on the ball than I am in working efficiently at a task like this. 
       Off to trade kids now since we switched out pairs of kids for our weekly playdate with the kids' besties.  And we'll listen to Jim Weiss narrate Story of the World all the way in the van and learn about  those crazy Frankish kids Clovis and Clothilde and what they were up to in the founding of the nation of France.  5 years of listening to this series in the van now and the kids still ask for it. 
   
   
   

Monday #2

     More questions than answers, it seemed today.  Everyone was kind of tired and not terribly motivated for most of the day.  It didn't help that we slept in quite a bit so by the time we got math, French and piano done  (actually just one kid took forever with this) it was getting on toward noon.  Tobin spent some time after this writing down 5 questions that he would like to pursue about birdwatching.  There was glimmer of passion as he wrote these, he really does love birds, but it's not like he immersed himself in the pursuit of ornithology and completely lost track of time.   But that's what the poster children of unschooling do all day, right?  They revel in their passions until it gets them their own TED talk or at least an article in Scientific American about the new species they discovered.   We've still got until August.  I'm sure these things are in store for us too. :)
       I perused some blogs about learner-led education this morning to read about what other families do in cases where kids don't seem motivated to lead in any particular direction.   Mostly, they just don't freak out about it.  We all have times when we feel inspired and times when we just need to chill.  I'm not at all feeling panicky.   I know the moments of truly memorable learning happen when you least expect them, often when you aren't methodically pursuing them.  We've enjoyed lots of these times, which is part of the reason I wanted to take this time to value those opportunities in the first place.  The blogs also reminded me that the "meta- lessons"  are so much more important than the material learned anyway.   Today, for me, this meant trying to take on a role as an encourager of my kids and their characters, not a nagger to guilt them into being brilliantly fruitful every minute, every hour, all day long.  Wow kids, you sure are having fun playing ministicks together.  That's cool.  (Oh wait, now you're all mad.  Oh well.)
     The other thing that stood out from the blogs is how important it is for Mom to model enjoyable productivity.    Just as I read that the phone rang.  I had won a trip to the Bahamas.   Then the phone rang again and it was actually a real person.  The president of  Partners Worldwide (the organization that my Little Wooly Mama money goes to.  See posts from 2011) was calling to arrange a meeting with me to find out how PW can support me in my connection to their ministry.  Wha?  So random.   I almost said out loud, "Do you babysit?"  but instead I tried to sound cool and unsurprised that they should be calling me and asked "Interesting.  What would this support look like?"  He said he would like for me to meet some other representatives in other regions and discuss the importance of connecting globally.  One of these women is a banker, and the other I can't remember what.    SO glad I was on the phone and not speaking in person.   It reminded me of the times when our financial advisor calls us into his office to sign papers because he's transferring funds from here to there due to ....what follows is usually said in Charlie Brown's teacher's voice.  And I sit there having conversations in my head like:  "Try to look interested, Alicia.  Focus your eyes like you know what he is saying.  NOT THAT focused, now you're cross-eyed....Did he just slip into Cling-On?  Dang, I wish I had paid more attention in Cling-On class back in school..."  Then I spend the next 5 minutes trying to keep a straight face and nod at the appropriate times.  But I'm sure this won't be like that at all.  Maybe the banker and I will have a lot to say to each other.  We'll talk about global markets, economies of scale, employee management,  importing and exporting until the cows come home.  Oooh I like cows.  So many black and white spots.  Some are brown...  Anyway, I said yes, let's pursue this and see where it leads.   Good modeling, Mom.
     Anneke baked cookies.
      The girls and I went grocery shopping.  Anneke helped my compare prices on butter.  She chose the one that was $2 cheaper because cartons of chocolate milk were on sale for $1 a litre.  "We can get two of those now, because we saved $2 on the butter!"  Smart kid.
      Tobin finished his letter to our Ward Councillor about getting a basketball court built in our park and knocked on a few doors to get signatures to hand in to City Hall with it.   He was excited to do a real life writing project back when we had this idea back in December.  Knocking on doors and asking for support is way.  way.  out of his comfort zone, though, so he needed some nudging to get out and follow through today.  I thought it was worth the gentle pushing to prove to himself that he is capable of doing things that are hard, and things that matter.   I hope he gets enough signatures to make this a successful venture.  And heck, if the park gets the basketball court, they better put his name on it.
     
      

    

Friday!

     If we have been hibernating during the cold snap and getting kind of restless, today we made up for it.   We went swimming at 11:30-12:30 and then drove across town to an arena to play homeschooler shinny for two hours.   The pre-wet hair under the helmets made the boys feel like cool, sweaty teenagers when they were through.  Thankfully, they still smell like sweet babies and not post-pubescent hockey players.   It was so much fun to get out and be active with friends and other homeschooled kids and their parents (Yay! Other people for me to talk to who don't ask me to peel their apples).  This shinny "league" is a real confidence booster and skill-builder for the boys.  The more relaxed play lets them try stuff they would be too timid to do in their other hockey league (which is also pretty lax).  Never mind all the subject matter we try to get into our kids, I think our efforts at building their confidence will carry them further than any other lesson.  Scoring a goal is more of a healthy ego boost (and street cred boost) than being able to list the major Pharoahs in order.  That's what more than  justifies the cheque I wrote to pay for more hockey.
     Before heading out in the morning we got our math and piano done and the boys actually initiated a "guess the province capital"  competition.   Maybe the separation line between learning things and having fun is fading...or maybe it was another opportunity for older brother to kick younger brother's butt.  But they both enjoyed it and Isaac did some butt-kicking of his own.  Thatta boy.  Fight smart.
     When we got home from the arena we ate carbs and drank tea and read aloud on the couches.  MMmmmm, I love those times.  Then off to hockey, cadets, and a birthday party in the evening.  What a fun day.  And now it's the weekend.  Time to make an abrupt end to all learning for two days.  (insert winky emoticon with tongue sticking out.) 

Thursday, the First:


    The day began like any other.  Ruby smashed her toe on the basement stairs till they bled a little bit.  It hurt, but the hospital was narrowly avoided once more.  To distract her from her pain, I asked her to count the polka dots on her shirt.  The older kids helped out and it was discovered that she had at least 250 on just one sleeve.  We used the method that they use to count hundreds of thousands of bats in a cave that we learned a few years ago.   Count how many are in a small patch and multiply the number of patches to cover the sleeve.  Ok, Tobin rolled his eyes at Mom's bringing out math at breakfast but oh well, I can take it.
     After eating, the kids snuck upstairs and immersed themselves in lego creations.  This is the oldest trick they've got.    It's a clever ploy to be busy with something constructive and creative to avoid the math books.  And by golly, it works because it's not every day that they get excited about lego.  I told myself that I could write a very schoolish assignment requiring the children to visually represent scenes from their favourite literature,  Lord of the Rings,  in 3-dimensional space.  A+  for occupying themselves for over an hour with it.   It is a shame that Captain Underpants does not come in lego sets.
     Besides lego, the hamster is a new and popular diversion. Isaac and Tobin segued into a new construction venture of building mazes for the hamster with toilet rolls.  Isaac took it one step further and built mazes out of wood blocks.   What if we turned this into a beginner lesson on Structures, thinks Mom?   I asked Isaac if he could build a bridge that would support a hamster and then gave him some supplies.  He gave it a go until Big Brother made a disparaging remark and kicked his rough start over.   And Younger Brother has a rule that he lives by:  If at first you don't succeed,  destroy your attempt and mutter about how it wouldn't have worked anyway.  Oooooooooooooooooh the lecture was boiling and festering just behind my clenched teeth.   Here's what I managed not to spit at him:   "Well, with that attitude you'll never get anywhere!  How are you ever going to get a job if you quit before you really try?   You'll end up sitting on my couch until you're forty playing video games and getting chips all between the couch cushions.  And another thing...."   It's the fear that makes us crazy.  Fear that your kids won't succeed and you'd better do something about that right here and right now.  But if you give into the crazy you're more likely to bring about the thing you feared in the first place.   By the grace of God, today, instead of making him a condemning speech, I made him a sandwich.  The pressure that he felt, thinking that I expected architectural genius in his hamster bridge-building project subsided and we all returned to our heads after lunch and sat down to play with the building materials.  We had watched a Bill Nye youtube on strong shapes used in bridge building and we experimented with a few and the little rodent made it safely across the pass.
     Tobin spent a part of the rest of the afternoon writing up and printing a flyer he wants to distribute in the hood to promote his snowshoveling/dog-walking services.   He's trying to save up dough to replace the ipod that I may or may not have lost 3 weeks ago. A real life math problem that didn't make his eyes roll was figuring out the cost per page to print the flyers at home vs.  at a copy store.  He appreciates sensible problems that  could actually save him real money.   He also spent time researching information on the net about hamster care and social behavior .  He thinks he wants one of his own.  We spent a little minute learning how to search online and order library books on hamsters too. 
     I feel like I learned more than the kids today.  I want to direct their energy toward ideas that might take their play and work one step further to open their eyes to new possibilities.   But you've got to do this without being super lame or putting pressure on them to perform brilliantly when all they want to do is putz around.  Die hard unschoolers will defend to the death the educational benefits of a kid watching videos all day while eating Doritos.  I think the sweet spot of freedom and inspiration in education lies a little to the left of that scenario.  It's a delicate balance. 

    
    

Day 3

     Really, if you're  reading this, a lot of it is for myself to keep my own records.  I feel kinda sheepish writing a list of good things that happened in our household for others to read.  The purpose of it all is to prove to myself that there is beauty in the mayhem, that the screaming and pestering  and messes are not the sum-total of our day's worth.   Maybe you don't believe me.  I don't ,when I read those blogs with titles like "Any Mess can be Beautiful!", and then the picture is a photographer quality shot of organic, homemade, spelt, gluten-free breadcrumbs on a vintage plate with little birds on it.  Does anyone want to see the squashed raisins stuck with cat fur and blonde hairs under my table?  They've been there a long time.  It never seems like the right moment to go and get a bread tag to scrape the ick off.  Maybe it's not a raisin at all.
    
*Shudder*.   Anyways, it's only been three days but already I'm grooving on highlighting the lovely moments and actually writing them down which everyone always says you should do but rarely do you get around to it because you think if it's so special you're bound to remember.   But you don't.  And just the act of compiling a list almost makes you in a more present state throughout the day to make sure those moments happen.  Maybe it sounds contrived but it's more like seizing the opportunities that naturally pop up when you're noticing.   I hope to practice noticing more and more.

   Today is Wednesday.  Usually that is our hike day with our usual group of stalwarts, many of whom have been hiking every single Wednesday in every kind of weather and around the turning of the season for about 6 or 7 years now.  Only twice in 7 years have I thought it would have been better to stay at home at the end one of these hikes.  Once it was a spring mud season and when I had finally gotten my infant wrapped onto me  the toddler fell headlong into a mud puddle and wailed while I tried to keep her moving for at least a little while for the sake of the older boys.  The other was when I was trudging through knee deep snow while pregnant, with a 2 year old strapped to my back and a livid four year old being dragged behind my up a steep hill and down the other side.  The other 298 or so hikes have been great.  Today, however,  we chose to go to the RBG greenhouse because it's still very, very cold.  The kids tried to get the koi fish to bite their fingers and we learned how to make a jade plant flower.  Success.

       One little story from in the van which I found gratifying:  Isaac was explaining to Anneke the difference between fiction and non-fiction, which he learned on TV.   "Harry Potter is definitely fiction, right Mom?"  Then Anneke:  "So that story about that brown man that got out of jail and saved the world is non-fiction, right Mom?"  We read the kid's version of Nelson Mandela's biography after his death and it seems she was suitably struck by it.  Fist pump.

    The rest of the day was a play date with their bestest friends which gave me fight-free time to set up my new sewing room in the attic.   And.  And.   On the way to our meeting point to swap the kids back,  Anneke became the proud owner of her very own dwarf hamster.  She now speaks with authority on all things hamster-related to her less informed siblings and she requested prayer for "the poor and those without hamsters"  at dinner time.   Long may she live.  The hamster, I mean.
      

January 7:  Day 2

     Today was crazy cold at our house as it was across the country.   -39 with the windchill in the morning.  Our house has its own windchill factor, having been built before insulation was a thing.  I decided to make muffins for breakfast, thinking that there was no rush to get XYZ done before a certain time and the oven would warm up the house.  Also, there was no cereal in the cupboard and only that new veggie bread that smells exactly like hay when it is being toasted.  I never, never, never make muffins for breakfast and after I had used almost every dish in my house, even the Slap Chop, I  remembered why I don't like to be ambitious in the kitchen first thing in the morning.  But as my baker-girl whacked away at the walnuts I thought I'd seize the teachable moment to share the interesting fact I had heard somewhere about how a lot of foods resemble the organs that they benefit.  When the muffins were in the oven ,we consulted that respected online medical journal--Woman's Day--and found great comparison pictures of a sliced carrot and a retina,  a whole walnut and a brain, clams and testicles etc.   The boys even learned proper terms for their nuts and all agreed that saying that clams resemble testicles is a stretch of the imagination.  
     Each kid has about 20 pages to go to finish the first of two math books that make up our regular Jump Math program and I decided I would like them to finish it (I paid for those babies!) before we leave all workbooks behind for the year.    I'll be glad when they're done.  If the kids were reliably quick and efficient in finishing their two pages I would probably keep it up all year but they are not and too much daylight is burned in prodding the pokey ones. Especially if you are also trying to wash a mountain of breakfast dishes during the kids' freshest brain hours.  When math was done we sat in a semi-circle, facing the heat register and brainstormed 6 different ways of gathering information about a subject that interests us.    So now we have 3 lists to keep adding to as we go:  talents, interests, and research methods.  Tomorrow we'll compile a list of different possibilities for presenting the info we gather.     I don't know want to be too methodical about how we go about pursuing a subject but it seemed to me that these 4 lists would be a good base for how to go about learning independently.
      Besides piano practice and Rosetta Stone French , that was all the formal lessons we had today. (Ya can't learn a language without daily practice and I'm a certified French teacher so they are stuck, stuck, stuck with it.  They like Rosetta Stone , though, even if they say they don't.)
      Here is how the rest of the day rolled out:

• Anneke decided an interest that she wanted to develop was making crafts, so we used a craft book she got for Christmas to learn daisy chain seed bead patterns  She caught on quick and loved the intricate pattern she was able to bead all by herself.  A conversation about native women beadwork and wampum belts came up and we got out our First Nations non-fiction books and learned to use an index to find out more about wampum.   One page talked aobut how wampum is no longer used partially because kids forgot their own customs as a result of  being snatched and brought to residential schools.   Anneke became indignant and used her hands-on-hips-snotty girl voice to say that white people shouldn't have done that.  They should have just left those kids to learn their own things.    You said it , girlfriend!
• Isaac read Harry Potter #6 on his bed for quite a while.
• Tobin helped Ruby build a lego zoo using generic lego as well as online instruction for mixing boxed sets.  (Really, any excuse to consult an electronic will do with the boy.)
• We read another chapter of The Railway Children.  Isaac is not an aural learner and has never really liked being read to.   He remarked, "Those kids save people too much".
• Some sort of running through the house at top speed hide and seek game happened for a while.
• A friend posted that she had thrown boiling water up in the air outside so we gave it a go too.  POOF! it vapourized and hardly any came back to the ground.  Coolio.  We then blew bubbles and watched them get frosty patterns before they shattered.  Saw that once on You tube.
• Stories for Ruby and GEMS for Anneke, in the evening.

I'd have to say that I'm loving the pace, so far.  I spend so much less time being frantic and irritable.  Except maybe when I was ransacking the freezing cold garage for fishing line for the beading for a really long time.  It's only been two days and we haven't really gone full swing yet, though.  I'm loving the mindfulness of cultivating learning in the moment.   Blogging helps with that.  I hesitated with letting anyone know that I was blogging because I wasn't sure I felt like dealing with opinions, but the accountability factor is super helpful.  Here's hoping I can keep it up.

2014:  The Beginning of... the Rest of our Lives. 

     How did I know to write such a great segue post (below) almost two years ago?  I've decided to return to blogging to chronicle our newest educational experiment which began today.   After listening to a TED talk about unschooling last December, I got all excited about embracing the world of possibilities that opens up when you leave off workbook learning  and take advantage of all the opportunities that home-learning offers.--All the wonderful stuff about developing talents, keeping wonder alive, cultivating the joy of learning and riding pink unicorns in a fairy land of our own overstimulated imagination.   All the things that made me want to keep my kids at home in the first place that have ebbed away by the same degrees that we have added structured, prescriptive book learning.   So after carefully considering for about a 5 minute period, I burst into the living room and pitched the idea to the children:   "Let's ditch our school books and do stuff we want to do after Christmas!"   They were very enthusiastic and needed surprisingly little convincing.

   To be honest, our school life was going fine.   The kids dutifully checked off their subjects with less gnashing and spitting than in previous years and probably even learned useful things from time to time.   But I didn't make the fairly radical decision to keep my kids off the schoolbus  (Oh that sexy yellow truck that gives moms hours on end alone to pee uninterrupted and do whatever else it is that women do without any little people incessantly tugging their sleeves  asking for hamsters.)  and have them spend all their hours and days and weeks with me in our house just for things to be fine.  I missed the starry-eyed, younger, thinner, mother of toddlers that would  tell other people all about what education would look like in our home.  And it did look that way when my oldest was 4 and the rest of the kids were not born or were nappers.    We read Farmer Boy and my son would look up at me with those big, round swimming pool eyes and say things like:  "Can we dye cloth with roots and berries the way Almonzo's mother did?"  And I would smile broadly, tweak his little nose and say, "Of course we can Honey."   ...Fast forward 8 years and 4 non-napping children later.  If my youngest, now 4 years old,  would meet her sweet almond shaped eyes with mine and ask, "Mom can we make moccasins out of deerhide like Sam Gribley did?"  My unhesitating response would be:  "Are you even kidding me???  Ain't nobody got time for that!"    And that is because we are busy doing important things that are no fun for anyone.

     I will speak to the  truth that some things that kids find completely uninspiring are absolutely necessary if only to teach them perseverance through drudgery another day.   Now I want to get to our first day.   We did very little today.   Or did we?   I decided to start slow and build into our new mode of self -directed learning.  Here is an itemized list of what we learned today by intentionally pursuing curiosity:

• Googled why gigabyte cards only come in double numbers.  ie. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 GB
• Wrote a list of what we think our God-given talents are.
• Wrote a list of our interests
• Rocket science.   Isaac made several prototypes of a rocket he saw at Indigo last week.  This led to a discussion about how Thomas Edison made about a billion light bulbs before he made on that worked.
• Tobin researched the pros and cons of Android vs. Apple
• Anneke baked cookies.
• We read a chapter of The Railway Children.  (Yay!  More time for reading together.)
• Ruby got several stories.  (Yay!  The poor neglected youngest got some attention.)
• Anneke made a puzzle and then flipped it over and wrote the numbers 1-100 on the pieces.
• All the kids played ministicks.
• The boys slid all the way on icy sidewalks to piano lessons.
• We read a story  at the supper table about the battle between the Armenians and the Persians and had a discussion about how we can love people who believe in different things than we do.

I plan to make a list like this every evening just to reassure myself  that every conversation counts and learning happens all the time, especially if we focus on a home culture that encourages curiosity about God's world and our place in it..  The last thing I hope to accomplish by this practice is to make any reader shrink in defeat thinking that THAT family must have their crap together to do all those lovely, wonderful things.   Please, please be assured that I could make another list that involves pinching, pushing, yelling and wailing but I'm not going to itemize those in the same way unless  the resolution of these things brought about some lesson that will be surely forgotten tomorrow.

    I'm tired.  So I'll finish up with the highlight of my day.   My oldest, who has many talents, has not very much confidence.   He got a little twitchy when he had to make a list of his gifts and still had a blank page after several minutes and gave me a weak smile when I looked in his direction.  We had a great talk that he especially needed to hear about how you don't have to be the Olympic champion of a skill in order to consider it as something that you possess that can be used in this world.  We then listed ways in which the Force was strong in him and later discovered how they dovetailed in many ways with his interests.   For example, his "spidey-senses" or acute knack for noticing what others overlook would be very useful in birdwatching.   His genuine smile when he realized this connection  could power the lights in Times Square.  (All those lights! Way to go Thomas Edison.)