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.